Welcome Rulings from the Highest Judiciary

As we go to press, news has come that Union Textiles Minister Dayanidhi Maran has tendered his resignation from the Union Cabinet. In fact his continuance in the Manmohan Singh Govern-ment had become untenable after the CBI sub-mitted, on July 6, its 71-page status report to the Supreme Court (under the latter’s directive) wherein it was made clear that Maran, as the Union Telecom Minister between 2004 and 2007, had misused his office to force the promoter of the mobile phone company Aircel, C. Sivasankaran, to sell his stake in the telecom company to a Malaysian firm, the Maxis Group, as per the investigation agency’s preliminary inquiry into Sivasankaran’s allegation to that effect; Sivasan-karan had also alleged that as part of the quid pro quo Maxis invested Rs 599 crores in Sun Direct, a family concern of the Marans.

Maran’s exit marks the second casualty among the Union Ministers in the 2G spectrum scam. Maran’s successor in the Telecom Ministry, A. Raja, tendered his resignation in November 2010 before his intensive interrogation by the CBI followed by his Court-directed imprisonment. Thereafter the same fate befell DMK MP and party patriarch M. Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi. Now Maran has been compelled to resign from the Union Council of Ministers for his role as the Telecom Minister in the UPA-I Government, even though no charge-sheet has yet been filed and no FIR issued against him.

Maran’s resignation followed the PM’s meeting with several of his ministerial colleagues including Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Law Minister Veerappa Moily as well as Advocate General G.E. Vahanvati. Maran also had a brief meeting with Dr Manmohan Singh before quitting the Union Ministry. It is further learnt that both UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and the PM had telephonic conversations with Karunanidhi who is believed to have distanced himself from Maran after the fresh charges against him.

This development is bound to have serious repercussions on UPA-II which finds itself increasingly beleaguered due to the unearthing of a series of scams involving DMK and Congress functionaries. There is much strength in the Opposition charge that the PM himself is unable to take prompt action against his Cabinet members wallowing in corruption and this is reinforced from the performance and pronouncements of the head of government at his first media interaction after several months a few days ago. (As far as the 2G spectrum scam is concerned, while the focus initially was on A. Raja, the buzz in the Capital now is that the entire scandal began with Dayanidhi Maran while the leading lights of the government, including the PM, looked the other way.) As a consequence the government’s credibility and governability have suffered grievous blows and been substantially eroded leading to its considerable alienation from the masses responsible for voting it to power.

While on the issue of the government’s alienation from the people at large, mention must necessarily be made of the official decision, taken on June 24, to raise the prices of diesel, kerosene and cooking gas (LPG). As The Times of India lucidly pointed out in its front-page lead report on the subject the following day,
When you work out your household budget for July, in additioin to existing woes, factor in higher prices of dal-chawal, fruits and vegetables, bus and taxi-fares.
That’s because the government on Friday decided to raise the price of diesel by Rs 3 a litre and kerosene by Rs 2 a litre while cooking gas will cost Rs 50 more per cylinder.

Since the revision excludes local levis, the actual increase would be 50 paise or so more in Delhi where diesel attracts 13.36 per cent VAT. In States that have higher local taxes, the incremental increase could be Rs 1 or even more.

The decision has indeed added fuel to the inflation fire and evoked condemnation from all segments of the Opposition while some parties in the ruling coalition, like the Trinamul Congress, have also voiced their sharp criticism. TMC chief and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee has openly announced that her party will never approve such an action by the Centre and urged the Union Government to reduce the hike. Simultaneously in a bid to offer some relief to the poorer sections of the State in particular, she declared her government’s decision to withdraw VAT on LPG in West Bengal, a step that would go a long way in helping the consumers who will now have to pay Rs 16 less on a cylinder. Other States too are learnt to be emulating West Bengal in this regard.

That the decision would hit the common man hard is universally acknowledged even if influential sections of the media are extending their support to the move insisting that the market, not politics, should determine the fuel prices and decrying the political response to the issue as “irrespon-sible”. The point that is being missed, deliberately or otherwise, is the heavy burden the people of the country, especially the marginalised, would have to bear on account of the measure. Logically it has further alienated the government at the Centre from the public, something about which the corporates (who wield undue influence on the polity today) are least bothered.

It is in this setting that there are some silver-linings. These are related to certain welcome decisions by the country’s Apex Court (of course, the Maran case too has been closely monitored by the Supreme Court which is actually responsible for the Minister’s exit). On July 4 the Supreme Court slammed the government’s ‘laggardly pace’ of tracking black money and took over the charge of investigation into the issue by appointing a Special Investigation Team (SIT) under a retired SC judge. Significantly, the SC Bench (comprising Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar) that gave the ruling specifically cited the case of Hasan Ali.

The two-judge SIT will comprise retired SC judges, Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy and M.B. Shah. The order was an unambiguous indictment of the slow manner in which the government was trying to track unaccounted wealth inside the country and would definitely give a fillip to the UPA-II’s adversaries and critics.

The very next day the same SC Bench came out with another striking judgment: it ordered the Chhattisgarh Government to disband and disarm 6500 Special Police Officers (SPOs)—who were armed by the State authorities to fight the Maoists, and called ‘Salwa Judum’ (meaning ‘peace march’ in the Gondi dialect)—engaged in anti-Maoist operations in the State, with the special instruction that the Union Government should “cease and desist, forthwith, from using any of its funds in supporting, directly or indirectly, the recruitment of SPOs for the purpose of engaging in any form of counter-insurgency activities against Maoist/Naxalite groups”. It observed, in its 80-page ruling, that the “appointment of tribal youth as SPOs, whoare barely literate, for temporary periods, and armed with firearms, had endangered and will necessarily endanger the human rights of others in society”.

More valuable was its considered view on the genesis of the problem (even as it rejected all attempts to condone the acts of violence against the state by Maoists): the wrong socio-economic policies of the government. In its own words,
The primordial problem lies deep within the socio-economic policies pursued by the state on a society that was already, endemically and horrifically, suffering from gross inequalities. Consequently, the fight against Maoists/Naxalities is no less a fight for moral, constitutional and legal authority over the minds and hearts of our people.

That was not all. According to the SC Bench,

The policy of privatisation has also meant that the state has incapacitated itself, actually and ideologically, from devoting adequate financial resources in building the capacity to control the social unrest that has been unleashed.

In effect this was an eloquent critique of the prevailing neoliberal outlook dominating the contemporary development discourse.

Quite understandably, these judgements have been sharply criticised by some sections of the media. But those who are well aware of the ground realities and whose visions are not blurred by the machinations of vested interests, have no hesitation in conveying their whole-hearted endorsement of such rulings which definitely help in restoring the concepts of a welfare state and justice for all in equal measure.

These welcome rulings from the highest judiciary in a scenario that is marked by mounting depression [lately heightened by the public impatience with the persisting Telangana imbroglio and the just-exposed doping scandal in athletics, even as the political class continues to target well-meaning social activists like Anna Hazare for demanding an effective Lokpal at the earliest, as was witnessed at the all-party meet on the Lokpal Bill on July 3] offer a distinct ray of hope for the future.

July 7 S.C.