NEW DELHI: India’s elec­­tion commission on Friday named 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs in Delhi assembly it wants disqualified for alleged conflict of interest or holding office of profit, but party leaders rejected the charge saying the poll body was acting like a “letter box of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

The Bharatiya Janata Party welcomed the decision of the election commission whereby it has recommended the disqualification of the MLAs to President Ram Nath Kovind.

The president is bound to accept the commission’s recommendations. Congress president Rahul Gandhi is under pressure from the party’s Delhi unit to endorse the disqualification, but any chance of the party winning an early by-election is considered low.

The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to pass any interim order of protection to AAP MLAs, whose names have been recommended for disqualification.

Justice Rekha Palli, however, asked the ECI to inf­orm it on Jan 22 whether the recommendation has been communicated to President Ram Nath Kovind, as the MLAs have sought that they be heard by the poll panel if no such communication has been made.

The order was passed late in the evening as the poll panel’s lawyer, Amit Sharma, said he was not aware whether the recommendation has been sent to the president. On being asked by the court to check with the ECI, he said he was unable to get in touch with them in this later hour.

The ECI recommended to the president the disqualification of 20 legislators who were appointed as parliamentary secretaries by the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi.

During the hearing, the court made it clear that it was not inclined to pass any interim order in view of the conduct of the MLAs in the proceedings before the poll panel. It was displeased by the MLAs’ conduct of telling the poll panel not to go ahead with the matter as the issue has been challenged in the high court.

“You don’t have a stay from the high court, but you tell the ECI that it should not touch the matter as the high court is seized of the matter.

“Your conduct is such that you do not care to go before the ECI. The high court did not prevent you from going before the ECI,” the judge said and added, “you have used the pendency of your pleas in the high court as a shield”.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2018