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| Hunt bananas, strew skin, slip on them | | | Chandan Mitra | 2/27/2012 12:08:00 AM |
| The Hindi saying 'Aabayl, mujhe maar', fits the Man-mohan Singh Government perfectly as its hotly contested NCTC and EC goof-ups demonstrate Instead of prudently practicing 'look before you leap', the Manmohan Singh Government is adept at the vice versa. Thus, it invariably lands on its face, gets bruised and battered and eventually retraces its moves. Both the National Counter-Terrorism Centre row of last week and the aborted proposal to circumscribe the Election Commission's powers fall in this category. The NCTC can still become a reality by March 1 if the Prime Minister chooses to brazen it out, but he will have to be ready for a combined onslaught as soon as Parliament convenes for the Budget Session on March 12. The fact that allies like Mamata Banerjee (and even Omar Abdullah) have made common cause with 'neutrals' such as Naveen Patnaik and J Jayalalithaa, apart from NDA Chief Ministers including Nitish Kumar, should sound alarm bells both in South Block and 24 Akbar Road. The Prime Minister may eventually succeed in bringing some regional parties around but not before some provisions of the proposed arrangement are diluted. It hardly needs reiteration that the confrontation could have been avoided had Mr Man-mohan Singh talked to the Chief Ministers before issuing a peremptory executive order to set up the NCTC. Nobody is opposed to the concept of NCTC, but few agree with the draconian and intrusive powers vested in the Intelligence Bureau through NCTC, which is now widely compared with those enjoyed by the dreaded KGB at the height of Stalin's authoritarian rule.
Even as the NCTC protests raged, the Government was faced with another slam dunk in the form of determined opposition to the proposed hiving off of the EC's authority. It may never be known if the news was deliberately leaked by way of conveying a threat to an apparently intransigent Commission or if the bureaucracy, alarmed at the idea, decided to sabotage the move by informing a section of the media. But the fact that a long-pending official note to this effect was on the agenda of the relevant Group of Ministers cannot be denied. Judging by the circumstances it would appear that the Government did not seriously intend to pursue it in the midst of the poll process, but someone must have wagered that the EC would be sufficiently rattled to lay off the Congress in Uttar Pradesh. That EC officers have not spared 'crown prince' Rahul Gandhi or his loudmouth brother-in-law must have angered the high command whose sycophants thought it fit to fire a salvo. The Salman Khurshid and Beni Prasad Verma episodes served as a perfect backdrop for the assault. There are two separate facets to the Government's reported proposal to restructure the Representation of the People Act. One is to confer upon the Election Commission statutory powers that would make the violation of the Model Code of Conduct enforceable. Since the 40-year-old Code is a voluntary agreement between political parties, the EC's power to take action against violators is limited. When the EC decided to proceed against the Union Minister for Law and Justice Salman Khurshid for daring the Commission, all that the EC could do was to lodge an angry but plaintive complaint with the President who acted as a post office and forwarded it to the Prime Minister without comment. While it had the desired effect of getting Mr Khurshid to say a half-hearted 'Sorry', the missive was actually an admission of the EC's powerlessness. It had the option of lodging an FIR or even banning Mr Khurshid from further campaigns in Uttar Pradesh, but while the former would have entailed a long-drawn legal battle, the latter could have been deemed too drastic. Empowered with statutory powers to enforce the Code, the EC can in future order prosecution of errant politicians without the rigmarole of first going to the police and hoping that the cops would pursue the issue subsequently with the courts. Although it may need fine-tuning, this proposal needs serious examination with certain qualifications. So far, violators of the Code have got away by replying to EC's notices and, eventually, a muted apology.
However, the prosecution of politicians would eventually be subject to the judicial process. In other words, the EC's ability to act promptly when campaigners violate the Code's tenets such as the 10 pm deadline, restrictions on the number of vehicles allowed in road-shows, inflammatory spee-ches, invoking religion to seek votes, and so on, would be taken out of its purview and lodged with the judiciary. In other words, during the campaign the EC would be reduced to a by-stander, running to the courts with every complaint. And the courts are constrained by rules to examine such issues in great detail, which leads to long delays in the framing of charges, leave alone delivering a verdict. The Government has argued that the note for the GoM was prepared long ago and had no connection with Congress leaders' recent run-ins with the EC. While that may be technically correct, the timing of the leak was curious in light of the serial violation of the Code by a succession of prominent Congress functionaries. Could it have been intended as a warning to a belligerent Commission to pipe down and not proceed against holy cows of the Congress? Further, any modification of the Model Code of Conduct should rightly be first raised at an all-party meeting and not pursued through executive order or legislation. Thus amendments to the Code are not in the exclusive domain of the Government of the day. Therefore, there is no justification for the GoM to have this on its agenda to begin with, before it is debated by political parties that framed the Code in the first place.
The second facet of the note is even more ticklish. It seeks to review the ambit of the Code itself on the ground that its prolonged enforcement stalls development work. If the Congress wants all manner of populist schemes to be announced, foundation stones of new projects to be laid and inauguration of bridges, flyovers etc, to be done during the campaign period, that is a preposterous idea. It would give the ruling party, whether in Delhi or State capitals, an unfair advantage, which cannot be permitted. However, the anomaly of the Code being in force till long after polling has taken place is an absurdity which the EC itself is empowered to rectify. What is the justification for keeping the Code in operation in Manipur and in Punjab and Uttarakhand till March 9, when votes have been cast there on January 28 and 30 respectively?
It is stupid to believe that the outcome in, say, Manipur, will influence voters of Goa! But at any rate, even if results are withheld, the Code must be lifted within three days of polling. It is not so much the establishment of the NCTC or the draft on electoral reforms, but the manner and timing of their introduction that has put the Government in the dock. Understandably, many think that the Government is not just slipping on banana peels one after the other, but in fact hunting for bananas to peel and strewing these, so that it can slip and fall with a thud! |
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