PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 79
(11)
PARLIAMENT (PREVENTION OF DISQUALIFICATION) BILL
*The Minister of Law (Dr. Ambedkar): I beg to move :
“That the Bill to make provision in regard to certain offices of profit under article 102 of the Constitution, be taken into consideration”.
I do not think that it is necessary for me to make any long statement to enable the hon. Members to understand the provisions of this Bill. It is a very short one. It has only one clause but just to put hon. Members in a position to know exactly what is being done, I would like to say that article
102 of the Constitution provides that certain persons shall be disqualified from being Members of Parliament. One of the disqualifications relates to holding of an office of profit under Government. So far as Ministers are concerned, they are exempted from the operation of article 102 by clause (2) of that article. We have however in the Government of India not only Ministers but also other categories of Ministers viz. Deputy Ministers and Ministers of State. These offices were created before the Constitution came into operation. Their occupants were entitled to hold office at the same time as Members of Parliament because during the period which intervened between the 15th August 1947 and the 26th January 1950 the Government of India Act 1935, as adapted, did not contain the provision to which I have made reference viz., holding of an office of profit as a disqualification. The situation has, of course, now altered by reason of the provision contained in Article 102 so that from the 26th January 1950 Ministers of States and Deputy Ministers would have become disqualified from sitting in Parliament. In order to get over the difficulty the Government issued an Ordinance permitting them to sit in Parliament and to remove the disqualification they would have otherwise incurred. As hon. Members know, under the new Constitution, the life of an Ordinance is a very
- P. D., Vol. 2, Part II, 9th March 1950, p. 1330.