DEEPAK LAAD
The recent acrimonious exchanges between the Union Finance Minister and the RBI Governor over Government’s proposal seeking transfer of about Rs 3.60 lakh crore from its reserves is fresh in our minds. The bitterness aggravated to such an extent that the government held out threat to usurp power under section 7 of the RBI act, supposedly in public interest, to twist RBI’s arm to agree to its dictates. After the Board meeting, both the RBI and the Government have taken a step back, leaving it for the committee to be formed, to decide about the extent of reserves the apex bank should ideally hold.
The Government has been systematically increasing its hold in the RBI board nominating its own people. Among the 18 member board first they had S Gurumurthy, chartered accountant by profession and a RSS ideologue and Satish Marathe, ex banker who, in his younger days was associated with BJP youth wing. Now two more, with closer ties to the ruling party, have recently been added - Revathy Iyer and Sachin Chaturvedi. This background makes someone like Gurumurthy, a chartered accountant, speak authoritatively and audaciously to media on monetary policies, which is not his forte, leaving the Governor embarrassed and upstaged in the process.
Earlier when Raghuram Rajan helmed the RBI, the Government incessantly wrangled with him on the issue of rate cuts. The pressure brought to bear on him hastened his exit. The new appointee Urjit Patel, their own man initially, has to stand his ground now refusing to part away part of the RBI reserve the Government has been eyeing. Earlier, the Government had kept him out of the loop over Demonetisation plans. He was informed at the very fag end, left with no other recourse but to toe the line. PM was the show stopper gathering accolades and applause.
There are other areas too, where the Government has subverted the functioning of the autonomous institutions and has compromised their integrity. The finance minister’s insistence that the ministers in the government of the day should be treated as superior, by virtue of their being elected directly by the electorates, to the appointees heading the autonomous bodies, is skewed. There are aberrations in our democratic system. The people’s representative are elected by semi-literate and illiterate majority, having little or no knowledge of Governance or economic policies. When only about 60% of the registered electorate actually vote, the one securing just about 31% votes wriggles out as the winner, which is antithetical to the very essence of majoritarian concept.
It was a black lettered day in the history of judiciary of the country when at the beginning of the year four senior judges of the Supreme Court descended on the lawn, with folded hands looking despairingly hapless, to warn us that the nation’s judiciary and consequently our democracy was in grave danger. They accused the Union Government of interfering in the functioning of the apex court by getting the sensitive cases assigned to certain judges with known closeness to the establishment. Later on the Union Law minister was found giving direction to Karnataka Chief justice to restart probe into a complaint against a district judge, who was earlier cleared by the collegium for promotion. The prime minister publicly accusing the Congress party of bullying the apex court in postponing the hearings in Ayodhya Ram janmabhumi case is an attempt to asperse the apex court suggesting that it cowers under pressure. These are some instances of the Government nosing into domain of the judiciary.
The CBI chief is appointed for fixed term of two years by Union Government on the recommendation of committee comprising the PM, opposition leader in Lok Sabha and CJI. PM had no business to summon the warring no 1 and no 2 of the CBI to his office or get orders issued in the dead of night to send the director on forced long leave. It was mockery of law and unwarranted interference in the affairs of the agency. In recent times the agency has, increasingly and blatantly, been seen used against opposition MPs and MLAs either to settle scores or to blackmail them in switching sides.
An over enthusiastic leader of the BJP had rushed to announce date of Karnataka elections hours before the red-faced Chief Election Commissioner announced it in the press conference. Recently it looked like the Election Commission had waited patiently for Modi and Vasundhara Raje to finish their public addresses in Rajasthan announcing freebies and concessions and then proceeded to announce the election dates.
When the mandate from the electorate in state elections is fractured, we have seen the Governors taking instructions from Delhi, thus setting off flurry of unethical defections and horse trading before floor test. Jammu and Kashmir Governor Satya Pal Malik who recently dissolved the assembly has told candidly to a public gathering that he did not heed instructions from Delhi and dissolved the assembly on his own volition.
Prime time debates on TV show the majority of moderators treat the ruling party spokesperson and sympathisers with reverence and the opposition with impertinence. When it is the other way round then the channel owners will have visitors from ED and/or IT dept at their places.
In his speech on the occasion of ‘Constitution day’ celebration CJI Ranjan Gogoi emphasised on the primacy of the constitution and warned that to preserve democracy and nation’s institutions liberty must be safeguarded.
