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POLITICAL DIARY
Karunandhi Has Lost It
Polity Plays Football With
Constitution
By Poonam I Kaushish
New Delhi, 23 October 2007
India’s top leaders seem to have developed
an uncanny knack of making confusion worse confounded. First
we had Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh bombarding us about the
great benefits of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Then we were
suddenly lectured on the coalition dharma and how the survival
of the Government was more important than the ‘nuclear’ good
of the country. Now we have the DMK supremo Karunanidhi
shooting his mouth off on the Constitution. Leaving one
wondering whether he should at all be taken seriously.
On Monday last, the octogarian Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu
asserted out of the blue: “Our Constitution has been changed
many times…We need a new Constitution in the era of
coalitions…The country should look towards a federal form of
government in the true sense….. What should be done is that
all shortcomings of the Constitution should be addressed in
one sitting. That is what I feel.”
Karunanidhi Gone Senile
Clearly, Karunanidhi seems to have gone senile and lost it, as
some of his leading critics are saying. There are no other
words to describe this ridiculous and asinine suggestion.
Which sensible, mature and responsible leader would speak in
such a highly immature and irresponsible manner on the
Constitution which is the bedrock of our parliamentary
democracy? And demand that India should get a new Constitution
in one sitting! Never before has anyone heard something so
stupid and shocking.
Is the Constitution a football which can be kicked around
here, there and anywhere? And, pray, by whom? Our self-serving
and opportunistic polity? Can it be mindlessly dumped, if it
does not fit into our rulers’ scheme of things? Or, rewritten,
reconsidered and amended yet again? Why? Just because the
Constitution does not fit into Karunanidhi’s latest agenda? Or
just because he has mastered the art of blackmailing and
arm-twisting his UPA allies to get his way even at the cost of
the country.
Constitution’s Federal Structure
What “federal structure” is he talking about? Does he know
that the word “federal” does not occur anywhere in the
Constitution? Does he know that India is a Union of States and
an amendment changing it to a “federation of States” was
promptly rejected by the Constituent Assembly. India’s
founding fathers, unlike Karunanidhi, had but one concern: how
to ensure the country’s unity?
Look at the ludicrousness of his suggestion. “It would take
one sitting of a Constituent Assembly.” Really? Does the DMK
supremo have a clue abut what it means to frame a
Constitution? That India’s Constitution took over five years
to frame and that too when it had the benefit of the advice of
top constitutional experts. Who racked their brain and spent
minutes, hours and days debating on where even a comma should
be placed in a particular clause, leave alone the Article
itself. Placement of a mere comma can change the entire
meaning and emphasis of what is sought to be done.
Moreover, Karunanidhi has forgotten that the erstwhile BJP-led
NDA Government had set up a 11-member National Commission to
Review the Working of the Constitution headed by former Chief
Justice of India Venkatachaliah in 2000. Does he remember that
he and his DMK were part and parcel of the Vajpayee
Government? And that the Union Cabinet, which included DMK
Ministers, had also considered its voluminous 1976 pages
report, in two volumes, containing 249 recommendations.
Constitution Review Panel
The Justice Venkatachaliah Commission could not have been
weightier. Others included the then Law Commission Chairman
B.P. Jeevan Reddy, Attorney-General Soli Sorabjee, former
Supreme Court Judge who headed a Commission on Centre-State
relations R.S. Sarkaria, former Attorney-General K. Parasaran,
former Speaker of the Lok Sabha P.A. Sangma, former
Secretary-General of the Lok Sabha Subhash Kashyap and former
Ambassador to the United States Abid Hussain.
The objective of the exercise was to ensure that the tenets of
democracy --- government of the people, by the people and for
the people --- were practiced in letter and in spirit.
Encompassing stable governments both at the Centre and in the
States, improving the quality of our netagan, ensuring that
the Executive was strong, capable and willing to resolve major
problems, and, most important, to establish the Rule of Law
and usher in transparency and accountability.
The Commission made many good recommendations. It wanted the
Fundamental Rights to be enlarged to include the freedom of
the Press, the right to elementary education, the right to
privacy and the right against torture. The right to religious
freedom was made “non-suspendable.” It favoured greater
decentralization in Centre-State relations and recommended
minimum use of Article 356. It also mooted the setting up of a
National Judicial Commission to oversee the conduct of judges.
Election Of PM, CM
Importantly, it advocated that the Prime Minister and the
Chief Minister be directly elected by the Lok Sabha and the
Assembly to obviate the need to test majorities in the
Rashtrapati Bhawan or in a Raj Bhawan and combat horsetrading.
It also mooted changes in laws governing elections and
political parties. It wanted that only candidates who secured
50 per cent plus one vote of the popular mandate should stand
elected. If necessary, another poll should be held between the
first two.
Tragically, the Commission’s recommendations were never
brought before Parliament and were consigned to the dustbin of
history. What the NDA and Vajpayee needed to do was to convene
a special session of both Houses of Parliament, akin to a
full-fledged Constituent Assembly to debate and dissect the
Commission’s report. Following which, the recommendations
should have been thrown for a national debate, involving legal
luminaries and thinking public. Crib all one might but sadly,
the same fate was meted out to the Sarkaria Committee report
on Centre-State Relations by the then Congress regime. It too
was dumped.
New Punchhi Commission
Now adding insult to injury, the Congress-led UPA Government,
comprising again the DMK, set up in May last yet another
Commission to review the entire gamut of Centre-State
relations. The three-member panel is headed by former Chief
Justice of India MM Punchhi. No matter that the Sarkaria
Commission had undertaken the same exercise two decades ago.
This new Commission will not only examine and review the
existing arrangements between the Union and the States but
also go into a highly controversial areas: (i) the role,
responsibility and jurisdiction of the Centre vis-à-vis States
during major and prolonged outbreaks of communal and caste
violence. (ii) setting up a Central Law Enforcement Agency to
take up suo moto investigation of serious crimes that have
serious inter-state/ international national security
implications.
That apart, Karunanidhi has gone wholly wrong when he
advocates that the Constitution should provide for a “true
federal form.” He needs to remember some basics facts. India
is an independent sovereign republic and a Union of States,
not a federal republic like Germany or a federal state like
the USA. The Constituent Assembly rejected a motion seeking to
designate India as a “Federation of States”. The reason? The
Indian Union is indestructible but not its constituent states;
their identity can be altered and even obliterated. This is a
crucial departure from a classical federal feature.
India’s largely uninformed leaders, including Karunanidhi and
Union Ministers, do not seem to understand a basic difference
between a classical federal set-up and one that is not. The
word “federal” implies a polity in which sovereign independent
states voluntarily surrender a defined part of their
sovereignty to forge a federation for larger collective good,
even as they retain control over their own affairs and their
political identity and integrity through a perpetual covenant.
Moreover, the constituent states often retain
constitution-making rights of their own.
Union Of India
This is simply not the case with India, which was one whole
under the British Raj. True, there were 500 and more princely
states. But, as we all know, they were indirectly ruled by the
British under the overall umbrella of paramountcy. Thus, what
we witnessed in India was not a case of sovereign states
coming together to form a federation. But just the obverse. We
were one country, the Union of India, dividing its vast
territory into provinces, redesignated as states.
All in all, we must stop talking mindlessly of a new
Constitution and India as a federal polity and federalism. The
next time Karunanidhi chooses to shoot his mouth, he would be
well advised to heed the Father of the Constitution Ambedkar’s
pertinent observation: “A good Constitution in the hands of
bad people becomes a bad Constitution. A bad Constitution in
the hands of good people becomes a good Constitution.” Much
ultimately depends upon how “We the People”, who gave
ourselves the Constitution, choose to work it. ----- INFA
(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)
E-Mail :
newseditor@sarkaritel.com
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