Lo and behold! Aam Aadmi Party and its Il Duce- Arvind Kejriwal are back in the media limelight- Not for abusing Modi, Not for campaigning for Punjab in Canada and No, not for getting inked or shoed again. This time, it is thanks to the President, Pranab Mukherjee who has rejected the amendment made by AAP to the Delhi Members of Legislative Assembly (Removal of Disqualification) Act, 1997. Basically what happened is this. AAP stormed to power in Delhi with a massive majority in February 2015. Now, according to the Constitution of India, the total number of ministers in the Council of Ministers must not exceed 15% of the total number of members of the House of the People. That meant that Kejriwal could not have 20 or30 ministers in the 70 member Delhi assembly. For AAP that had 67 elected MLAs, this was a big problem. Unless the loyalty of these MLAs could be ensured, Kejriwal’s government could be at the mercy of the nefarious designs of his political opponents. This was also a time when rebellion sponsored by YoYa and the Bhushans was raging. Hence, Kejriwal, in a political masterstroke, appointed 21 AAP MLAs as Parliamentary Secretaries on 13th March 2015. Thereafter, Delhi government introduced a law that retrospectively exempted the office of Parliamentary Secretary from the office of profit classification. It is this amendment that has now been rejected by the President.

21 AAP MLAs held Office of Profit:

Office of Profit is a term used in article 102(1)(A) of the Indian constitution, which