more-in The Election Commission on Monday reserved its order on the plea of 21 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs who are facing the office-of-profit charge. The MLAs had asked for the proceedings against them to be dropped as the Delhi High Court had already set aside their appointment as parliamentary secretaries. During the fourth hearing of the final round of arguments on the petition filed by advocate Prashant Patel, the commission said it was reserving its order on whether the proceedings against the MLAs should continue. ‘No pecuniary benefit’ The proceedings had begun in December 2015 after the electoral body received a reference from President Pranab Mukherjee in November that year on a petition, which sought disqualification of the MLAs as they had been appointed by the Delhi government as parliamentary secretaries. L-G’s approval missing Arguing that they had not received any “pecuniary benefit” from the post, the MLAs said in their response that they had taken recourse to the Delhi High Court judgment of September 2016. The court had set aside their appointment as the State government had not taken the mandatory concurrence of the Lieutenant-Governor. ‘Infructuous’ The AAP MLAs have pleaded that since their appointments had been set aside, the proceedings were rendered infructuous. However, the petitioner challenged the contention stating that the High Court order had no bearing on the case, which is pending before the Election Commission, as the MLAs had held the office of parliamentary secretary till their appointment was set aside. After several hearings, the commission had last heard both the parties on December 16, 2016, about the relevance of the High Court’s order to the ongoing proceedings. Subsequently, the commission could not hold hearings because of Assembly elections in five States.

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