The official amendment says that if the election of the President or Vice-President is set aside by the Supreme Court, then according to the amendment, the President or the Vice President will function on or before the date of the decision of the Supreme Court. I submit, Sir, that this would lead to absurdities. If the decision of the Supreme Court is passed, say, at 12 o’clock on a certain day, then according to the amendment the President or the Vice-President will function for the whole of the day on which the judgment is passed. He will function even after he ceases to have office. Although his election is set aside at 12 o’clock, yet he will be able, according to this clause, to function after 12 o’clock for the remainder of the day. My amendment would try first, to eliminate that article because the normal law would be that as soon as the judgment is passed, the President or the Vice-President loses his job and, therefore, he ceases to function altogether and therefore, a clause of this nature is not at all necessary. Even if it is necessary, it should be, I submit as in my amendment, the second part of amendment No. 584. It is to the effect that as soon as the judgment of the Supreme Court is communicated to him, he ceases to function at once and from that very moment. That is a sensible way of looking at it and the judgment should be effective as soon as it is communicated to him. Unless we are very precise as to the moment when the President or Vice-President ceases to have any office, very glaring constitutional anomalies may follow. In fact the President or the Vice-President may have to perform very important constitutional acts and the legality or propriety of the act will be very much jeopardized or be open to question if we are not very precise as to the moment when he ceased to function because anything done after that will be ultra vires and anything done upto that moment would be intra vires. In this view of the matter. I think, that the precise moment when the judgment is communicated to him should be the real operative moment from which he ceases to function. That is the reason why I have submitted this amendment.
