New Delhi: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa Saturday became the third leading politician and the first sitting chief minister to face disqualification as a legislator after being convicted in a disproportionate assets case.
A trial court in Bangalore Saturday convicted her in a disproportionate assets case filed by the former DMK government in 1996.
The court sentenced her to four years’ jail term and slapped a Rs.100-crore fine on her in the Rs.66-crore disproportionate assets’ case.
Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Lalu Prasad was disqualified from his seat in the Lok Sabha and Congress leader Rasheed Masood from the Rajya Sabha in the wake of the July 2013 judgment of the Supreme court that denied the three-month breathing period to MPs and MLAs for moving a higher court against their conviction.
The elected representatives, both in the parliament and the state assemblies, lost the shield of three months to appeal against their conviction after sub-section 4 of section 8 of the Representation of People Act, 1951 was declared ultra vires by the apex court.
Masood was convicted last year of diverting nine seats of the undergraduate medical course reserved for Tripura while Lalu Prasad was convicted in the fodder scam case last year.
Sanjay R. Hegde, an advocate at the Supreme Court, said that Jayalalithaa stands disqualified as MLA with immediate effect following her conviction.
He said that the apex court had said in another of its verdicts that no person who is convicted shall hold the post of chief minister.
Hegde said that Jayalalithaa would not be able to contest elections for the term of her sentence and six years after that, according to the provisions of law.
However, he said that in case she gets relief from a higher court in the form of a stay of her conviction, she would need to take oath again as chief minister.
A former chief election commissioner, who did not want to be named, said that the “disqualification is applicable from the date of conviction unless stayed.”