Appointment of 11 parliamentary secretaries: Supreme Court notice to Chhattisgarh govt

New Delhi: The Supreme Court today declined to grant any interim relief on an appeal against a high court order dismissing pleas challenging the appointment of 11 parliamentary secretaries by the Raman Singh-led BJP government in Chhattisgarh.

However, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, issued notice on the appeal to the Chhattisgarh government and the parliamentary secretaries appointed by it and sought their responses.

The Chhattisgarh government had appointed 11 MLAs as parliamentary secretaries and granted them a status equivalent to state ministers.

BJP MLAs Ambesh Jangde, Labhchand Bafna, Lakhanlal Dewangan, Motiram Chandrvanshi, Rupkumari Chaudhary, Shivshankar Paikra, Suniti Rathiya, Tokhan Sahu, Champa Devi Pawale, Govardhan Singh Manjhi and Raju Singh Kshatri were appointed as parliamentary secretaries by the Chhattisgarh government.

The Chhattisgarh government was represented by Advocate General Jugal Kishore Gilda ,who accepted notice on behalf of the state while arguing that there was no need to grant any interim relief and issuance of any notice to the Chief Minister.

Senior advocate Sanjay Hegde and lawyer Pukhrambam Ramesh Kumar, who appeared for petitioner Rakesh Choubey, said the high court had failed to assess how the appointments were made when neither any provision of the Constitution, nor any statutory enactment allowed such appointments beyond a particular limit.

Hegde said there was neither any executive instruction, nor any subordinate or delegated legislation which empowered the state government to appoint Parliamentary Secretaries.

He also claimed that the entire exercise was with an "intention to acclimatise" those legislators who could not be accommodated with a berth in the Council of Ministers due to constitutional limitations.

"Such appointments made purely to satisfy party-political ego without any legal sanction and against the Constitution mandate is ultra vires to the very fabric of the Constitution. Therefore, an arbitrary action like this, which goes against the very letter and spirit of the Constitution, cannot be encouraged and must be repressed to uphold the Rule of Law," he said.

The petition also alleged that the Parliamentary Secretaries are "in fact the agents of the Government" and thus while "being political executives", have access to the state exchequer and were free to spend the tax money as per their discretion.

"If Executive or Legislature were allowed to exercise powers free of all limitation of law, it would suffer from the element of arbitrariness or patent discrimination, which is impermissible under basic rule of law.

"Therefore the appointment is invalid for want of legal sanction of the post by a competent authority, thus warrants to be set aside as being blatantly arbitrary and therefore violative of the basic structure of the Constitution of India," the plea added.

The Chhattisgarh High Court had on April 13 dismissed petitions challenging the appointment of 11 parliamentary secretaries by the Raman Singh government.

The HC had maintained its interim order of August last year that the parliamentary secretaries will not be entitled to power and facilities at par with ministers and dismissed the petitions.