Click to play videoNew Delhi: Ever since actress Jaya Bachchan was disqualified from her Rajya Sabha membership, the trend of people filing petitions to disqualify parliamentarians under the Office of Profit law has picked up.
But nobody seems to know the people who have been filing these petitions. It is also not clear as to whether they really have a case or if this is an exercise eventually proving to be a waste of time and resources for the country.
For instance, Rakesh Kumar, the man who filed a disqualification petition against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh under the Office of Profit law, is a political non-entity. Yet he is posing problems for no less a person than Prime Minister.
Rakesh Kumar is the General Secretary of a politically irrelevant body called Socialist Front.
He wants both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram disqualified under the Office of Profit law.
The two are trustees of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. On his part, Rakesh Kumar insists he is not doing this to enhance his political worth.
"My purpose is to inform the people that their leaders are violating the Constitution," he says. He is not the only one seeking a bit of limelight by hounding out political biggies under that OoP law.
I G Khandelval is another man in this league. If Office of Profit gained prominence, it was because of this man. He heads an organisation, interestingly named, Lashkar-e-Hind.
Khandelval was among the petitioners who caught Jaya Bachchan off-guard and triggered off a political avalanche of sorts in the process.
Khandelwal's OoP list included Dr Karan Singh, SP leader Amar Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
"I'm not a member of any political party. But as an ordinary citizen of this country. I think it's my fundamental duty to restrain anyone conducting himself wrongly," president of Lashkar-e-Hind, Khandelval claims.
Fifty-two MPs and over 250 MLAs were in the dock because these petitioners smelled a rat. And the Election Commission was deluged with a downpour of complaints.
These men are no political heavyweights but they have acted, they claim, according to their conscience. However, many suspect most of these to be a case of sour grapes.
For the CPM, the man who proved a big headache was an Trinamool MP, Mukul Roy. A relatively low-profile politician, Roy has become famous overnight for his long list of 10 CPM MPs against whom he filed a disqualification petition for allegedly enjoying offices of profit.
Among his targets were several Bengal biggies including Lok Sabha Speaker Somanth Chatterjee, MPs Nilotpal Basu, Amitava Nandi, Md Salim and Janab Hannan Mollah.
Mukul Roy says it was a ethical fight for him. "Those among us who are legislators and parliamentarians should not violate the Constitution. That's why I've filed these petitions," he claims.
(With Sougata Mukhopadhyay in Kolkota and Nafisa Islam in Mumbai)
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