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| Don’t undermine status of legislature | | |
Over past few years, the ruling establishment in Jammu and Kashmir, whichever party or parties, it is led by has made absolute mockery of the institution of legislature. In any parliamentary democracy the legislature is always the supreme body from where all organs of government, including the judiciary draw their strengths. It is a platform where most important issues pertaining to the State and its people are debated and decided with consensus. It empowers the governments with laws and rules which come into being after a careful scrutiny of the elected representatives of the peoples. However, it is quite unfortunate that in Jammu and Kashmir the legislative assembly has been virtually reduced to an instrument of the ruling coalition to serve its schemes of things and suit its tastes and temperaments without caring for the norms and precedents. It all began with the formation of the Peoples Democratic Party-Congress coalition government in 2002 when the ruling establishment made first compromise with established norm of budget present presentation and went through the mode of a Vote on Account for three months. Which the decision on Vote on Account was itself bad in taste as the government had come into shape in November and it had five months in hand to study finances and present a full budget but the Finance Minister said that he wanted more time ‘to set this things right’. Not only that the precedence of full budget presentation was unjustifiably compromises with, the government also reduced the assembly session to two weeks to complete a mere formality. Opposition cried hoarse at this decision but it is worst that even in case of legislature it is the ruling establishment which has the last laugh and not the legislature, per se. in following years many such compromises were made with absolute arrogance. When Ghulam Nabi Azad took over as Chief Minister he set a new trend by advancing the budget session to January. He justified this unprecedented development with the claim that an advanced budget session will enable the government to avail more time for developmental works. Nowhere in the country are such practices put in place. And interestingly, later Azad himself would say that most of the funds earmarked for developmental works are lapsed due to an inefficient bureaucracy. While his statement on inefficient bureaucracy needs to be dealt with separately but he must have understood later that advancing budget session and reducing its period could never have made anyone efficient. For six years the timing and the period of the session of legislature has remained more or less a process to suit the whims and fancies of the ruling regime. The new has continued the same practice with a Vote on Account and a session reduced to mare eleven sittings. At least the first session of new assembly should have kept enough time for the new legislators to understand the legislature and talk about the issues of importance. When Omar Abdullah took over as a Chief Minister he made a highly encouraging state on continuing the good practices of the previous coalition government reviewing those which were not really good the public. In this context the Chief Minister should have first picked up the duration of the assembly session for review renewed the practice that was in place till 2002 when his father Dr Farooq Abdullah was the Chief Minister.
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