Shimla: In a major blow to the Himachal Pradesh government, 6 Chief Parliamentary Secretaries (CPS) appointed in Himachal have been removed. The High Court has given this decision while hearing the CPS case on Wednesday (13 November). The court has declared their appointments unconstitutional.
The High Court has repealed the CPS Act of 2006. Along with this, orders have been given to withdraw all government facilities of all CPS with immediate effect.
Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu had made 6 Congress MLAs as CPS. After that, apart from a woman named Kalpana, 11 BJP MLAs and the People for Responsible Governance organization challenged the appointment of CPS in the Himachal High Court, calling it unconstitutional.
On their petition, the High Court issued an interim order in January this year to CPS not to use the powers of ministers. The state government had also knocked on the door of the Supreme Court (SC) in this matter.
The government had requested to club the case with the CPS cases going on in the Supreme Court of other states. But the Supreme Court, rejecting the request of the state government, ordered the case to be heard in the High Court itself. The hearing of this case was completed in the month of June. Then the High Court had reserved the decision.
According to the amendment made in Article 164 of the Indian Constitution, a state cannot have more than 15% ministers of the total number of its MLAs. Himachal has 68 MLAs, hence a maximum of 12 ministers can be made here.