President signs Office of Profit Bill

Ending a fortnight-long suspense, President A P J Abdul Kalam on Friday gave his assent to the controversial Office of Profit Bill a day after Parliament approved setting up of a joint committee to define what constitutes such an office.

The President has given his assent to the Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Amendment Bill, 2006, a Rashtrapati Bhavan spokesman said on the legislation that was sent to Kalam on August one after Parliament re-enacted it without any changes.

Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who is also chairperson of the Santiniketan-Sriniketan Development Board, and Samajwadi Party parliamentarian Amar Singh, who is chairman of Uttar Pradesh Industrial Development Council, are among the 40 parliamentarians against whom disqualification petitions are pending on the ground that they hold offices of profit.

The Presidential assent to the law with retrospective effect is expected to provide relief to these parliamentarians. The original bill passed in May at the height of the controversy over disqualification of Samajwadi Party parliamentarian Jaya Bachchan was returned by the President with a suggestion to Parliament that there was need for comprehensive and generic criteria for defining an office of profit.

Under the Constitution, a bill sent to the President for a second time, has to be given assent to by him but there is no deadline set for it. The government was worried about what it thought was a delay in the assent for the re-enacted legislation and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had an unscheduled meeting with the President on Tuesday apparently seeking an early clearance of the bill.