Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan has rejected the nomination of Dasoju Sravan and Kurra Satyanarayana to the Legislative Council under the Governor’s quota as recommended by the Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
In a letter addressed to the Chief Minister and Chief Secretary A. Santhi Kumari, the Governor said the summary of the two sent to her indicated their active participation in politics, corporate and academic sector and did not indicate any special achievements in literature, arts, science, cooperative movement and social service. There was no apparent consideration of the fulfilment of pre-conditions required under Article 171(5) of the Constitution.
Except for the summary, no other details or documents were enclosed or sent to her and the methodology adopted in their consideration for nomination as member of the legislative council were also not enclosed. There were no reports either from the Intelligence or from other agencies indicating that they did not incur disqualification mentioned under Section 8 to 11(A) of the Representation of the Peoples Act, 1951.
“The entire file relating to the consideration of all relevant records and the criteria required to by fulfilled by the Constitution and the note file before the Cabinet and Hon’ble Chief Minister evidencing the consideration of all the relevant records have not been enclosed along with the recommendations,” Dr. Tamilisai said.
Bereft of the above, just a summary without any documentation in support thereof showing the fulfilment of the criteria, it would be inappropriate for her to consider and nominate the two as members of the legislative council, she added. The Governor said there were several eminent non-politically affiliated people recognised in the State fulfilling the requisites prescribed under Article 171(5) of the Constitution.
Non-consideration of those people and consideration of politically aligned persons to fill the posts earmarked for nomination in those fields would be a de-recognition of the merits and contributions of people with special knowledge and experience in the fields mentioned in Article 171(5). “These sort of nominations to fill up the specially nominated posts will make the Article 171(5) purposeless which may not be the intention of the Constitution makers,” she said adding it would take away the opportunities to genuine people fulfilling these qualifications.
Returning the files recommending the nomination of the two members, Dr. Tamilisai requested the Chief Minister and his Council of Ministers to avoid such politically aligned persons to fill up nominated posts under the Article 171(5) defeating the objectives and enactment and “consider only genuinely eminent persons in the respective field”.
