Dr Subramanian Swamy and Navjyot Singh Sidhu have been nominated for Rajya Sabha despite being active office bearers of the BJP. In a response provided to RTI activist Anil Galgali by the Union Home Ministry Dr Swamy has been declared as Economist and Sidhu as a cricketer to be nominated by the President to the Rajya Sabha.
Galgali had sought information from the President’s office about the details of persons nominated for the Rajya Sabha along with the details of the selection procedure. Avoiding responding to the query directly, the President’s office transferred the applicant to the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Director of the Union Home Ministry, Ashutosh Jain informed Galgali that The President on the recommendation of the Prime Minister and as per provisions of Section 80(1) & 80(3) of the constitution has nominated members to the Rajya Sabha. Out of the 11 person’s nominated, 2 names are directly and actively associated with politics.
Rules for the nomination of eminent personalities to the Rajya Sabha state that the person nominated can take membership of any political party if he or she joins within six months of assuming the membership. Also it is important that they should not be members of any political parties before nomination.
Anil Galgali said, “I have appealed to the President Pranab Mukherjee to remove these two persons and nominate two new persons who belong to the category. The person’s supposed to be nominated as President’s nominees must be from the fields of Literature, Science, Arts and Social Service, they should possess special knowledge of the field and working experience to enrich the parliament proceedings.”
In a letter addressed to Dr Swamy and Sidhu, Galgali urged that to maintain morality they both should resign from the membership and offer opportunity to a person from the fields of Special Knowledge.
