The news of the Election Commission (EC) of India giving a clean chit to Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio on the Office of Profit issue is welcome and a similar verdict in favour of Leader of Opposition I. Imkong brings to end the unsavory political mudslinging that the people in the State witnessed in the first half of the year. Such non-issues could have been well avoided in the first place and in the end it has turned out to be a complete wastage of time, money and resource, which could have been better utilized for issues of more public concern. Hopefully, both the NPF and the Congress would have learnt some lesson and also to remind them that public welfare is better served not by political bickering but working together on issues that requires them to come together.
As has been mentioned in this column on earlier occasions, the statements emanating from the two major political parties in Nagaland only demonstrated their confusion over the legal interpretation of the term Office of Profit and whether certain offices were exempted from the Nagaland State Legislative Members (Removal of Disqualification) Act, 1964. Both the NPF and Congress had merely interpreted to their liking on what should constitute an office of profit so much so that for the ruling NPF the Leader of the Opposition was disqualified while the Congress party tried to prove the innocence of its leader and instead disqualified the Chief Minister. In a way the fact that both are referring to the same legal material but arriving at different conclusions meant only one thing, the ambiguity of the law itself. In future, rather than taking pot shots at each other the State legislators should sit together and resolve the nitty-gritty legal points and get on with the constitutional assigned duty of running the government whether as Chief Minister or as an Opposition Leader.
The ploy of the Opposition Congress in Nagaland to unseat Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio from his chair obviously backfired. If the Congress bungled by jumping the gun too soon the NPF too cannot be oblivious to the fact that an Assembly or for that matter Parliament will become a sheer mockery if the Office of the Leader of the Opposition is derided merely to score a few political points. More than the occupant, it is the office that counts in a functioning democracy. If at all the office of the Leader of the Opposition (in Nagaland) has not been exempted under (Removal of Disqualification) Act, 1964, it is most unfortunate and any future attempt to unseat a duly elected Leader of Opposition will be highly inappropriate in a parliamentary democracy. Now that the bickering is over, it is suggested that the legal lacuna regarding the office of the Leader of the Opposition must be corrected, hopefully during the next sitting of the Nagaland Legislative Assembly. At the end of it all, the absence of clarity was precisely the major cause for the entire controversy. Both the DAN and Opposition Congress MLAs have a responsibility to come forward and deliberate in clearing this ambiguity but without in anyway circumventing the letter and spirit of the constitution.
