Prof. K. T. Shah’s amendment requires that if a person is holding the office of a Minister and wishes to contest an election, the first condition must be that he shall resign his office as a Minister. In other words, ministership by itself would be a disqualification for election. It seems to me that Prof. K. T. Shah has not devoted sufficient attention to his amendment. In the first place, if a Minister resigns then this amendment is unnecessary. The second point which I think Prof. Shah has not considered and which seems to me to be very crucial is this. Supposing we accept his amendment that a Minister shall resign before he stands as a candidate for Presidentship, it is quite clear that between the period of the dissolution of the old Parliament and the time when the new Parliament assembles there can be no Ministers at all in charge of the administration. And the question that we have to consider is this. What is to happen to the administration during the period which is involved between the dissolution of the old Parliament and the assembly of the new Parliament? Are we to hand over the administration to the bureaucrats or the heads of the administrative departments to carry on until the new Parliament is elected? Or is there to be some kind of expedient whereby we are to go about and find a set of temporary Ministers who would take charge of Government during this short period of two or three months and thus forego the opportunity of contesting elections and becoming Ministers themselves in a new Parliament for the full period of their term? It seems to me that the amendment of Prof. K. T. Shah, if accepted, would create complete administrative chaos in the Government of the country and therefore I submit…..
