NEW DELHI: Finance Minister Manmohan Singh on Dec.28 figured in the Election Commissions hit list of 20 Rajya Sabha members against whom penal action was ordered for providing bogus and false declarations about residing in the States from where they were elected.
Mr. Singh who was elected from Assam is among seven Ministers including External Affairs Minister Dinesh Singh who were found to have given false information to the Commission. Dinesh Singh was elected from Haryana.
The Commission on Tuesday published a list of 20 members against whom action has been ordered because they had got elected from States where they were not ordinarily resident.
The Ministers of State named by the Commission are Rameswar Thakur (Rural Development-elected from Bihar) H.R Bhardwal (Law-Madhya Pradesh) Ghulam Nabi Azad (Civil Aviation-Maharashtra) Abrar Ahmed (Finance-Rajasthan) and Bhuvanesh Chaturvedi (PMO-Rajasthan)
The other members are R.K. Dhawan (Andhra Pradesh) M_L. Fotedar (Uttar Pradesh) and S.S. Ahluwalia (Bihar) of the Congress party and S.R.Bommai (Orissa) UK Gujral (Bihar) and Prof M.G.K. Monon (Rajasthan) of the Janata Dal
The BJP members are J.P.Mathur (Uttar Pradesh) Sikandar Bakht and O .Rajagopal (both Madhya Pradesh) and Krishan Lal Sharma (Himachal Pradesh)
The list also includes the names of Subramanian Swamy Ram Jethmalani and Kamal Morarka.
Giving the list EC Secretary K.P.G. Kutty said it was only presumption and would have to be verified in detail by the chief electoral officers.
Further the list is only illustrative and not exhaustive (I) covers the period from January 11988 onwards. The period starting January 11988 has been taken for the reason that persons elected earlier would have completed their term Kutty said.
In another development the Commission ordered a halt for the process of holding alt entary and Assembly elections in West Bengal because of the State Governments stand on the issue of identity cards to all voters.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 7, 1994
