- By Shubham Bajpai
- Sun, 30 Mar 2025 02:50 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
The Haryana and Punjab High Court has issued notice to the Haryana government, the Centre, and the Election Commission of India (ECI) and all other respondent parties while hearing a petition challenging breach of limit in the appointment of ministers in the state government.
The court sought their responses by May 6. The High Court's division bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sumit Goyal issued this notice.
Number of ministers cannot exceed 15%
Regarding this matter, Advocate Jagmohan Singh Bhatti filed a petition and said that under the 91st amendment of the Constitution, the number of Cabinet Ministers in the state can not exceed 15 percent of the total number of MLAs in the assembly. The total number of MLAs in the Haryana Legislative Assembly is 90.
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In such a situation, according to the amendment of the Constitution, the maximum number of ministers in the cabinet can be 13.5. But, Haryana currently has 14 ministers, which is a violation of the amendment of the Constitution, Bhatti added. It will depend on the court whether it considers 13.5 as 13 ministers or 14 ministers. The central government has considered such a number to be 14 in one case.
Bhatti also alleged that the number of ministers is being increased to please the MLAs. The petitioner appealed to the High Court and said that the additional ministers should be removed due to there being more ministers than the fixed number.
Petition vs whole Haryana Cabinet
In the petition, Bhatti has made the Central Government and Haryana Legislative Assembly as respondents, besides Haryana Chief Minister Naib Singh Saini, Anil Vij, Krishnalal Panwar, Rao Narbir, Mahipal Dhanda, Vipul Goyal, Dr. Arvind Sharma, Shyam Singh Rana, Ranbir Gangwa, Krishna Kumar Bedi, Shruti Chaudhary, Aarti Singh Rao, Rajesh Nagar and Gaurav Gautam. The petitioner alleged that the ministerial posts and cabinet ranks distributed by the Haryana government are directly affecting the public.