Even before the Election Commission could take cognizance of the vacancy in the Rai Bareilly parliamentary constituency, Ms. Sonia Gandhi was on the campaign trail, shrilly shrieking victimhood to the gullible masses of the family’s old pocket borough. Her return to the Lok Sabha is not in doubt.
What is uncertain is whether the UPA’s proposed legislation to remove certain anomalies in the constitutional injunction against MPs holding an ‘office of profit’ can legitimately include the National Advisory Council (NAC), of which Ms. Gandhi is chairperson with cabinet rank. Legitimating office in public bodies such as that held by the expelled Ms. Jaya Bachchan, which could otherwise unseat Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and myriad MPs and MLAs in state legislatures, may be done as expeditiously as possible. And till such time, the Election Commission would do well not to encourage the politics of vendetta and hold its hand on pending complaints to avoid unsettling sitting governments and costly reelections.
The office of chairperson of the NAC, however, is of an entirely different genre. The NAC was constituted to give rank and status to Ms. Gandhi once it became clear that she could not be sworn-in as Prime Minister. It was also regarded as necessary because the UPA coalition needed some kind of forum to monitor the Common Minimum Programme (CMP), especially since the Marxist parties were supporting the government from outside. In fact, until the Congress vindictively declared that it would gun for Dr. Amar Singh after getting Ms. Jaya Bachchan expelled, few ordinary citizens knew that the NAC was a government body.
Yet the very nature of its primary responsibility, viz., to monitor the CMP, makes it amply clear that it is essentially an apex body of the UPA partners and supporting parties. In other words, it performs the same functions that the coordination committee performed when the NDA was in power, though that was ably supplemented by Atalji’s dinner diplomacy. Thus, at the mere cost of a dinner at Panchvati, Mr. Vajpayee handled the pulls and pressures of multi-party governance.
Perhaps this was possible because he did not have to give cabinet status to the RSS Sarsanghachalak. Dr. Manmohan Singh is not so lucky, and hence, the PMO foots a massive bill for the NAC, which was constituted through an order issued by the Cabinet Secretariat on 31 May 2004. And to ensure that Ms. Gandhi was not hemmed in by the coalition partners’ gripes, she was allowed to bring in her cronies (the ones who pick up half-baked ideas abroad) for consultation.
NAC in effect became some kind of mini-Planning Commission, mini-cabinet or mini-PMO. It had a secretariat and office space and an all-paid expense account. The Prime Minister would do well to tell us what it cost the public exchequer, and also explain the necessity for it, since it is the mandate of the UPA government to implement its own Common Minimum Programme. There is simply no justification for the PMO to fund a body that has no constitutional basis and that too, a body that would not exist at all if the Congress had come to power in its own right. NAC is clearly a party platform, and the exchequer cannot be made to foot its bill. Hence the Election Commission would do well to take cognizance of the Telugu Desam complaint and disqualify Ms. Gandhi in the same manner as Ms. Bachchan, i.e., by expunging her presence in the house and seeking refund of salary and perks.
The BJP has raised the issue of the NAC very tentatively, and while it is true that the party is preoccupied with elections and yatras, it should examine the legality and propriety of the NAC before concurring with the proposed legislation to remove snags in the law on office of profit. Whatever Congressmen may argue, the fact that the NAC was constituted by a notification of the Cabinet Secretariat makes it a government department or body. It makes recommendations which are not binding on the government, which is what the Planning Commission and other Commissions do. Yet mere ‘monitoring’ of the CMP hardly requires staff paid by the government, especially as the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation already functions as a kind of think-tank for the government.
Until these and related issues are sorted out, the myriad parties in Parliament and the State legislatures, who need to save their own people from disqualification, should separate the two issues. MPs and MLAs heading government corporations should not be protected with retrospective effect, as the issue has larger constitutional ramifications. Parliament could however, consider if they could be given a one-time special pardon since all are agreed that this is a grey area of the law.
The NAC however is neither fish nor fowl. No single-party government would need such a body. Its utility is exclusive to coalition governments, and hence the multiple parties participating in or supporting the regime should foot its bill. Meanwhile, if Ms. Gandhi is desperate to advise the government and enjoy cabinet rank, she can be made chairperson of the Planning Commission.
Organiser, 9 April 2006