Will Salman Khurshid be sacked today for defying EC?

The  mark of a bad lawyer is that he continues to argue his case even after he has been vanquished.  On that count, Law Minister Salman Khurshid, who was served a stinging indictment by the Election Commission for violating the model code of conduct governing elections, is coming across as a rank bad lawyer. A day after Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi wrote to President Pratibha Patil seeking her intervention against the Law Minister’s “unlawful” pronouncements virtually daring the Election Commission to “hang” him for promises of reservations for minorities with an eye on the elections,  Khurshid was still at it. On Sunday, Khurshid argued that his controversial comments on quotas for minorities was an issue of “governance” and did not relate to the elections, and therefore did  not constitute a “defiance” of the  Election Commission. [caption id=“attachment_159338” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“The Opposition has demanded the Salman Khurshid be sacked. PTI”]  [/caption] Khurshid also spoke to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the telephone from Lucknow, but there was no official word of what transpired between the two. It is believed that Manmohan Singh will convene a meeting of his senior ministers on Monday to discuss the Khurshid controversy, but it appears that the government will not ask the Minister to step down, despite Opposition demands that he be sacked. The BJP on Sunday demanded Khurshid’s dismissal, noting that the “Law Minister has become the main law breaker” and that the Congress was trying to “communalise” polls. The BJP also demanded that Khurshid be barred from further campaigning for the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. Khurshid told reporters he had only given voice to what the Congress manifesto had promised in its manifesto. The issue, he added, had nothing to do with elections, but was one of governance. suggesting perhaps that the Election Commission wasn’t right to have waded into issues of “governance”. But the Congress distanced itself from Khurshid’s remarks and noted that it would prefer that its leaders abided by the norms of discourse in public life and the law. “The Election Commission is a constitutional body. Congress always wants that all Congressmen should speak as per the norms of public life and the law of the land,” AICC general secretary  Janardan Dwivedi said in a statement. The crisis was escalated a notch after the Election Commission sought the “immediate and decisive” intervention of President Pratibha Patil after it charged Khurshid with “improper and unlawful” defiance of its orders under which he was censured for promising sub-quota for minorities. . Asked to comment on Dwivedi’s remarks, Khurshid said, “Hum bhi to yahi keh rahe hain…Sabko apne dayre me rahna chahiye,” (I am saying the same thing… Everyone should remain within his limits". Khurshid also said there may be different points of view but there are no differences. Meanwhile, Congress leader and the original loose cannon, Digvijay Singh, defended Khurshid, and said that every political party had the right to talk about their programmes during election campaigns and it was not correct to press charges like these against political leaders. “With great humility, I would like to suggest to the Election Commission that if political outfits are not allowed to speak about their agenda, then the party manifesto should also be stopped,” Digvijay said. Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj of the BJP demanded Khurshid’s dismissal  as the Law Minister for acting against the Constitution. “We request the President to withdraw her pleasure and dismiss Salman Khurshid as a Minister of the Union Cabinet for acting against the law and the Constitution,” she said. BJP leaders L K Advani and Arun Jaitley, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, also made a similar demand. “The PM should sack Khurshid for making comments on the EC. No minister had ever made comments against the EC in such a way. After being censured by the Commission, the minister is making a mockery of the model code of conduct,” Advani said. Jaitley in turn saw the Khurshid episode as “part of a scripted conspiracy by the Congress to communalise the Uttar Pradesh elections…It is my appeal to Prime Minister that such a cheap tradition - where the Law Minister becomes the main lawbreaker - should not be set during elections.” Supporting the EC’s move against the Law Minister, CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat said the Commission had the complete right to implement code of conduct in case of any violation. JD-U president Sharad Yadav too maintained that the Law Minister had a “politically driven agenda” and demanded that the Prime Minister should “ban” him in Uttar Pradesh as he was trying to “desperately” get votes.