CCI clears several projects in Oil, Gas Block, Power, Iron Ore and Coal Sectors

PM at 8th Civil Service Day ( April 21 , 2013 )

I am very happy to be with you today, as you begin your deliberations on the occasion of the 8th Civil Services Day. In these inaugural remarks, I wish to make a few points about the topics on your agenda. I also propose to touch upon some issues that are not a part of the agenda but which I feel are of particular relevance to the functioning of our Civil Services in the present difficult times. But let me first congratulate the bright Civil Servants whose work we have honored today. India's rapid progress depends critically on our ability to be innovative and enterprising in a diverse range of areas particularly in the field of Public Administration. I am happy that we have recognized the innovation and enterprise these Civil Servants have shown in finding practical, pragmatic solutions to various problems. We need more creativity of this kind. And we need to build an environment in our country where creativity, entrepreneurship and enterprise are encouraged and amply rewarded. While on this subject, I would also like to compliment the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances for bringing out a compilation of 14 good governance initiatives from various parts of our country titled Thinking out of the Box. This brings me to the issue of the collective capability of our Civil Services to be innovative in their approach to solving problems and to think out of the box. This is also broadly the first subject on the agenda of this conference. Making the Civil Services Fit for Future requires efforts in many dimensions, some of which are listed in the papers that have been circulated. I would, however, confine myself to making some general remarks on this issue. In the last two decades or so, the role of the Government has undergone a major transformation in many sectors of the economy. We have moved far away from the command and control economy of the earlier times. Ensuring good governance and managing the economy today are extremely complex tasks. How to ensure that our Civil Services have the required sets of skills to manage this complexity is a major challenge before us. I would urge you to consider ways and means of meeting this challenge. I would also like to emphasize here that officers in the Civil Services need to be provided top class training early in their careers to equip them with the tools necessary to understand the underlying logic and complexities of governance and having good systems in place. Another issue that will determine how fit the Civil Services are for the future is whether we have an effective system in place to incentivize innovation and remove inefficiency. We could perhaps learn from best practices across the world how such a system could be evolved. I understand that you will also be discussing ways and means of addressing the challenges in delivery of public services. Providing access to basic services to our people is one of the primary responsibilities of any modern Government. Our citizens need access to quality education, quality health services at affordable costs, provision of safe drinking water, sanitation and so on. And in providing these services we have to take special care of the needs of those sections of the society which are socially and economically backward and under privileged. We must recognize that we have a lot of work to do to bring the delivery of some of our basic public services up to the requisite standards. I am happy that we have made good progress in putting in place a legal framework which would help us in improving matters. The Right of Citizens for Time Bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill, 2011 is under consideration of our Parliament. This, when enacted, will give our citizens the right to receive specified goods and services in a time bound manner. It is encouraging that several States have also taken the initiative to enact similar laws for their own states. Our Government has also made sustained efforts to curb corruption, enhance transparency and accountability in the work of public authorities. There are several legislative initiatives that we have taken in this regard, for example the Right to Information Act, the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill and the Whistleblowers Protection Bill. These are intended to also help in improving the standards of delivery of public services in our country. However, in a country as diverse and as complex as ours, we cannot always find standardized solutions for improving the delivery of public services across various regions and States. These solutions would often have to be area specific and would depend on a host of local factors. We also need to make full use of new and modern technology not only in the delivery of public services but in governance in general. A good example of such use is the Aadhar program for providing all the residents of our country a unique identity, and also the Direct Benefits Transfer Scheme based on Aadhar numbers that our Government launched a few months back. The Direct Benefits Transfer scheme now covers 121 districts of our country. It will lead to better targeting of subsidies and reducing delays in the delivery of benefits such as scholarships and pensions to the intended beneficiaries. It will also help in curbing wastages and leakages, and result in greater financial inclusion. I think it is also important to recognize the fact that the programs like the Direct Benefits Scheme also give a sense of empowerment to our people, increase their faith in the processes of Governance and therefore have a far larger positive effect than can be measured by the direct advantages they confer. I would urge those of you who are involved directly or indirectly in the implementation of the Direct Benefits Transfer Scheme to ensure that the scheme is a success. The subjects of strengthening our rural economy and expanding employment opportunities close to rural areas are vast and complex. But, the criticality of agriculture to good performance of our economy is pretty obvious. I am happy that in the 11th Plan we have achieved a record agricultural growth. We need to build on this momentum. I would not like to go into the specifics of what needs to be done to strengthen agricultural performance in the country as a whole. But, I do wish to point out that States should give greater attention to this vital sector of our economy, especially in the areas of agricultural research and extension services and selection of officers in their agriculture departments. The agriculture sector deserves the best and brightest of our Civil Servants. We must also make concerted efforts for developing skills in our young men and women, both in rural and urban areas, to enable them to gain productive employment. This is the only way to reap advantages of our Potential Demographic Dividend. Our Government has launched a massive program of skill development, which I hope will be implemented effectively. I would also like to mention in passing the need for strengthening the implementation of our flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which by most accounts has been a success. Even as we make efforts to strengthen the rural economy, we must keep in mind that with India’s economic growth, there will be large movements of people from rural to urban areas. Management of Urbanization, therefore, is an area which requires much greater attention on the part of all our planners. It is estimated that in next 20 years time, nearly 50 percent of our population will be living in urban areas. We have, therefore, to ensure that our towns and cities provide public services of a high quality to their residents. To that end, much greater attention has to be paid to the modernization of the processes of municipal governance. This is the subject which has not received the attention it deserves. I urge, all our Civil Services also should be better equipped with skills for managing processes of urbanization and urban spaces. Our Civil Servants should be given requisite training to master the skill in the early part of their careers. Before I conclude, I would like to touch upon three other subjects that I consider important. The first concerns the safety, security and status of women in our society. It is widely accepted that, as a country, we have vast improvements to make in this vital area. These issues came into sharper focus after the horrific gang-rape incident in Delhi last December. The gruesome assault on a little girl a few days back reminds us once again of the need to work collectively to root out this sort of depravity from our society. The agitations that have followed the two incidents also point to the need for showing concern and sensitivity while dealing with the public anxiety that such incidents generate. Our Government has moved with speed in strengthening the law to be able to deal more effectively with offences against women. But, this is only a small part of what needs to be done. All of us, as responsible citizens, have a special obligation to contribute to the social and economic empowerment of women in our country. We need a wide spread national movement in that direction. As leaders in Government your responsibility to ensure this outcome is even greater. The second subject relates to our economy which is passing through difficult times. As I have said earlier, I believe that we are facing only a temporary downturn that we should correct as quickly as possible. Without going into the reasons for the downturn, I wish to emphasize the need for boosting investment across sectors to help us emerge from the existing difficult situation. Our Government has taken a major initiative in setting up the Cabinet Committee on Investment for far-reaching industrial and infrastructural projects. The Committee has made encouraging progress. But much more needs to be done, particularly for building a climate that is perceived to be friendly to enterprise and investment. Many of you work in areas and organizations that have a direct bearing on the achievement of this task and I would urge you to give the maximum possible attention to it. Yet another area which I would like to stress relates to the management of national disasters. Owing to its peculiar geo-climatic conditions, our country has always been vulnerable to natural disasters such as floods, droughts, cyclones, earthquakes and landslides. Climate change is likely to further accentuate the frequency and intensity of these natural disasters. In addition, unsafe building practices in rapidly growing urban settlements also constitute a major challenge for those charged with the responsibility of managing disasters. Handling disasters requires a multi-disciplinary approach and specialized skills acquired over a long period of time. Some of our civil servants get first-hand experience in the area of Disaster Management very early in their career. We ought to identify best practices, document them properly and disseminate them widely so that we are prepared when a disaster hits us. While relief and rehabilitation are central to our approach in managing the fall out once a disaster happens, we should not lose sight of pre-disaster issues of prevention, mitigation, and preparedness. I believe that each one of our Civil Servants, whatever their seniority or assignment, has a very meaningful contribution to make to our society and our country. Today’s occasion gives you an opportunity to reflect on your role and performance, your successes and, if I may say so, some failures. I hope you will make full use of this opportunity to find even more efficient ways of discharging your responsibilities in the service of Indian people. I wish you all the best in your endeavors.”

District Collector / District Magistrate / Deputy Commissioner / Deputy Development Commissioner / IAS

A District Collector is the chief administrative and revenue officer of an Indian district. The Collector is also referred to as the District Magistrate, Deputy Commissioner and, in some districts, as Deputy Development Commissioner. A District Collector is a member of the Indian Administrative Service, and is appointed by the State government.

History

Strict Administration in India is a legacy of the British Raj. District Collectors were members of the Indian Civil Service, and were charged with supervising general administration in the district.

Warren Hastings introduced the office of the District Collector in 1772. Sir George Campbell, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal from 1871-1874, intended “ to render the heads of districts no longer the drudges of many departments and masters of none, but in fact the general controlling authority over all departments in each district."

The office of the Collector during the British Raj held multiple responsibilities– as Collector, he was the head of the revenue organization, charged with registration, alteration, and partition of holdings; the settlement of disputes; the management of indebted estates; loans to agriculturists, and famine relief. As District Magistrate, he exercised general supervision over the inferior courts and in particular, directed the police work. The office was meant to achieve the "peculiar purpose" of collecting revenue and of keeping the peace. The Superintendent of Police, Inspector General of Jails, the Surgeon General, the Chief Conservator of Forests and the Chief Engineer had to inform the Collector of every activity in their Departments. Though the Additional Commissioners of Income Tax are important officials of the district they do not have to send a report to the collector as they work for the central government and not the state governments.

Until the later part of the nineteenth century, no native was eligible to become a District Collector. But with the introduction of open competitive examinations for the Indian Civil Services, the office was opened to natives.  The district continued to be the unit of administration after India gained independence in 1947. The role of the District Collector remained largely unchanged, except for separation of most judicial powers to judicial officers of the district. Later, with the promulgation of the National Extension Services and Community Development Programme by the Nehru government in 1952, the District Collector was entrusted with the additional responsibility of implementing the government's development programs in the district.

Appointment

District Collectors are appointed by the State government, from among the pool of Indian Administrative Service officers in the state. The members of the Indian Administrative Service are either directly recruited by the Union Public Service Commission or promoted from civil services of the State government. The direct recruits are posted as Collectors in their twenties and thirties whereas the promotees from state civil services generally occupy this position in their fifties.

Duties

The District Collector is entrusted with a wide range of duties in the jurisdiction of the district. An Indian district has between 11,054,131 to 7,948 residents, with an average of two million residents. The area of land in a district also varies widely, from 45,652 sq. km (larger than Denmark or Switzerland) to 9 sq. km.

While the actual extant of the responsibilities varies in each State, they generally involve:

As Collector:

Ø land assessment

Ø land acquisition

Ø collection of land revenue

Ø collection of income tax dues, excise duties, irrigation dues etc.

Ø distribution of agricultural loans

As District Magistrate:

Ø maintenance of law and order

Ø supervision of the police and jails

Ø supervision of subordinate Executive magistracy

Ø hearing cases under the preventive section of the Criminal Procedure Code

Ø supervision of jails and certification of execution of capital sentences

As Crisis Administrator

Ø Disaster management during natural calamities such as floods, famines or epidemics

Ø Crisis management during riots or external aggression

As Development Officer

Ø Ex-officio chairman of the District Rural Development Agency, which carries out various developmental activities

Ø Chairman of the District Bankers Coordination Committee

Ø Head of the District Industries Centre

He is assisted by the following officers for carrying out day to day work in various fields:--

1.     Additional deputy commissioner

2.     Assistant commissioner (general)

3.     Assistant commissioner (grievances)

4.     Executive magistrate

5.     District revenue officer

6.     District transport officer

7.     District development and panchayat officer

8.     Civil defense officer

9.     Urban ceiling officer

The Power to Pardon

Independent India has had 17 Heads of State. Of these, two were Governors General — Lord Louis Mountbatten (1947-1948) and C. Rajagopalachari (1948-1950). They were followed by 15 Presidencies, if we take Babu Rajendra Prasad’s three spells in that office to be the distinct Presidencies that they were ( 1950-1952, 1952-1957, 1957-1962).

Each one of the 17 has had to deal with cases involving what, in the language of common parlance, is called “the power of pardon.” This ‘power’ is the authority which Article 72 of the Constitution of India confers on the Head of State to “… grant pardon or commute the sentence ... in all cases where the sentence is a sentence of death.” This power is not a penthouse provision for the President to luxuriate in, arbitrarily or in a moment of operational surplus.

Sovereign’s prerogative

Article 72 is about a very old but creatively renewed principle of a sovereign’s prerogative to adjudge capital crime against the backdrop of its circumstances, not legalistically but civilisationally. It is an opportunity for the sovereign, now our elected President, the First Citizen of India, to view a crime committed by one fellow citizen against another, which has invited the ultimate punishment, the legal taking away of the right to life, to see if that punishment than which there can be no greater punishment, is merited, deserved, fair, just and, above all, free from any error of judgment by those tasked to judge it.

In other words, the power to pardon is not about punishment as it is about redemption.

Sentencing people to death has been known to human societies, including ours, ever since the chance to commit crimes and the power to punish those have been known. But millennia after the death sentence has been made a part of our penal and punitive consciousnesses, the finer fibres of the human brain were actuated by the Supreme Court’s definitional ruling in 1980 which said the death sentence was to be awarded only in “the rarest of rare cases”. This pronouncement was as pragmatic as it was inspired by the world-wide trend against what was beginning to be seen as “judicial murder.”

When considering the process of the power of pardon, we should be mindful of four facts about it — facts that are so important and foundational that they acquire the status of what may be called ‘truths.’ I will not call them the Four Noble Truths, plagiarising the Buddha, but they are about an order of human behaviour in which the sovereign is one step ahead of society on the civilisational incline. The four may be summarised as:

First — Clemency is not a door which the President may open to let misplaced mercy through; but it is one he may cause to be opened to see if fairness has been blocked at its threshold.

Second — Pardon is not a gift the President may lavish on the criminal; but it is a power that the people of India have conferred on him to use when narrow codes hold a larger justice hostage.

Third — Mercy, when prayed for by one sentenced to death, is not just about an individual’s scream for life against its judicial extinction, but part of humanity’s journey towards a higher condition under law.

Fourth — Article 72 is not about the law, it is about the sovereign’s overview of the human situation involved in capital crime, that sees in it that which the law cannot see or evaluate, only the nation’s anointed guardian can and then again, not to saturate the law’s appetites, but the thirsts of society’s human sensibilities.

The power to pardon as given under Article 72 is a ‘given’ formulation of so many words which each copy of the Constitution of India must reproduce in exactly the same language. The Head of the State, however, is a human being, not a printed text. From predecessors distinct and from successors distinguishable, each Head of State is a thinking, reflecting human being, with views, memories, conditionings, predispositions. He or she can therefore bring a certain philosophy to bear on the matter or, perhaps, none. The President uses his calibrated power to either reject the prayer and thereby turn the rejection into a noose or accept it, as a measure of his confidence that the ends of justice are served through the lesser chastisement of a life-term in prison.

Differing Approaches

Lawyers though both were, Governor General Rajagopalachari and President Prasad seem to have had very differing approaches to the death sentence. The conservative Tamil was mostly on the same page as the sentencing judges, though there can be no doubt that he read every line of the case with the thoroughness of a lawyer studying his brief. As the lawyer and independent researcher, Bikram Jeet Batra, tells us in his 2009 study of constitutional clemency, Rajagopalachari received 384 mercy petitions, of which he rejected 318, commuting 66. Prasad was inclined to search for extenuations in the 2,762 mercy petitions he received, of which he rejected 2013, commuting 749. The commuting rate was higher with the reflective Bihari but even more important than the numbers was the manner of his handling the petitions. Batra tells us “In the 12 long years in office the interest shown by President Prasad in mercy petitions certainly played a major role in making the clemency system fairer and more credible. In addition while his rigorous analysis stretched the limited powers available and asserted his moral authority over the executive, his propriety avoided embarrassing confrontations on this front.”

President Radhakrishnan, as Batra tells us, was on the side of the “abolitionists” and started a discussion with Prime Minister Nehru on doing away with capital punishment. President Zakir Husain’s tenure (1967-1969) was attenuated by death but, incredibly, it yet saw the scholar-President take mercy petitions down the Radhakrishnan road. President Giri’s early years, likewise, saw commutation recommendations and their approval.

Two Presidents I was privileged to serve had widely differing views on the subject. By the time President R. Venkataraman began his tenure (1987-1992), the “rarest of rare” principle had brought the number of mercy petitions down. The first year of his tenure (1987-1992), like President Mukherjee’s saw ‘backlog’ mercy petitions — 28-29 of them — being ‘disposed’ of with vim and despatch. He received during his five years in office, a total of merely 39 mercy petitions of which sentences were commuted only in five cases — four commutations were on grounds of delay.

President K.R. Narayanan’s tenure (1997-2002) saw an even smaller number of petitions but even these filtered cases required the power of pardon to have full play during its point in the script, and President Narayanan, when the recommendation was one of rejecting the appeal for commutation, explored the farthest limits of the case’s ‘rare’ ness. In the manner that he probed the recommendation he made it clear to the Home Ministry and, in particular to the sensitive Home Minister Indrajit Gupta, that this was not only no “hanging President” but one who held hanging to have in it that touch of murder that made it twin the crime.

“Sitting on” mercy petitions is abdication. But ‘disposing’ recommendations for rejection in the manner of an input-output equaliser is automation. Article 72 is neither meant to be switched off nor put on a treadmill.

‘Public Opinion’

There is such a thing as capital crime; there is such a thing as jurisprudential evolution. And there is of course such a thing as ‘public opinion.’ There are those who would say, and perhaps accurately, that if a referendum were to be held in India today, the hangman will not only stay but have to be paid “overtime.” Terror and crimes against women have given the noose just that dip in grease its immortality needs. But since when has the State become such a three-legged racer with ‘public opinion’? Would our progressive enactments on untouchability, dowry, domestic violence, have stood a chance against the orchestrations of opinion by khap panchayats and their kind? A democracy is about what a people want, but a Democratic Republic is also about what its enlightened New Agers fight to make it what it is meant to be.

The power of pardon as used by its 17 wielders presents a mixed picture. Some of them used Article 72 perfunctorily, even reluctantly, yet some others did so with differential effect, not just for the man under the shadow of the noose but for the future of capital crime and capital punishment. The death penalty may not be abolished in India “tomorrow” but that is where it has to go. With the “rarest of rare” principle, judges can no longer be “exonerating judges” and “hanging judges”. Likewise, there should be no “pardoning President,” no “hanging President,” only a sagacious and sublimating use of the power of pardon by one placed at the tallest summit of our evolving Statehood.

(Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a former Governor of West Bengal)

Doublespeak on electoral reforms

Politicians everywhere are known to indulge in doublespeak and our politicians are no exception. But some recent pronouncements of our Law Minister only show that our politicians may have very few serious rivals in this sport. Not long ago, the Minister was all praise for the Election Commission of India’s real time and effective monitoring of election expenses.

Now the same Minister has told the Supreme Court that the Election Commission is not concerned with the correctness or otherwise of the account of election expenses submitted by a candidate. In other words, the government wants the Commission to do an outstanding non-job!

Sound ‘Investment’

That the candidates in our Assembly and Parliament elections spend huge amounts, many times over the prescribed ceiling, on election expenditure is no secret. They seem to have come to realise that this is an investment capable of giving phenomenal returns which no other enterprise could rival and, so, the best way of getting rich quicker. No wonder, therefore, that even panchayat elections boast of huge expenditures incurred by the contestants. That some unscrupulous sections of the media found innovative ways to help themselves to some part of this huge expenditure during election time is too well documented by now. It is also common knowledge that the effort has been raised to a fine art, prescribing different rates, a base rate for coverage to a paying candidate and none for his non-paying rival, and a premium rate for high and sustained praise for the payer, and hell and damnation for his rival.

The Press Council of India (PCI) gave the first opening to the Election Commission to take deterrent action in this new game christened ‘Paid News,’ when the ECI followed up a PCI finding in respect of a candidate in the 2007 elections to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, and disqualified her by using its powers under Section 10 A of the Representation Of The People Act, 1951.

But when the Election Commission was approached to exercise that very power in the case of the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan, who, contesting the 2009 election to the Maharashtra Assembly, was alleged to have indulged in ‘paid news’ in a big way as found by an intrepid journalist after meticulous investigation, the Law Ministry seems to have woken up to the danger of a determined ECI exercising its power. Wanting to stop the Election Commission in its tracks, it has filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court seeking a ‘Plain Reading’ of that section of the law that was examined and interpreted beyond a shade of doubt by a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court in the R. Shivarama Gowda Vs P.M. Chandrasekhar case (AIR 1999 SC 252).

The Election Commission seems to have unwittingly fallen into a trap in answering, through an interim order, the jurisdictional issue — apparently a red herring — raised by Mr. Chavan in the proceedings initiated before it. In the light of the unambiguous decision of the three-judge bench of the Supreme Court — which leaves little scope for any speculation on the issue of the powers of the ECI under Section 10A of the Act — the Election Commission could have gone ahead without harbouring any doubt. Nor should it have let anybody cast doubt and much less allowed him to get away with it. But that was not to be. The order of the Election Commission on the issue of jurisdiction, rejecting the objection raised by Mr. Chavan, the respondent, was challenged before the High Court in Delhi. Having lost the case there, Mr. Chavan has gone to the Supreme Court in an LPA (Letters Patent Appeal). Precious time has been lost in the process and the case initiated in November 2009 has yet to cross the first hurdle — three years down the line.

The government has joined Mr. Chavan in challenging the Election Commission’s power to disqualify a candidate under Section 10A of the Act for his failure to submit a correct and true rendering of his election expenditure.

The three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court lucidly brought out the scheme of the Act and the issues that have to be agitated in an election petition under Section 100 of the Act before the High Court where the remedy sought will be the unseating of the winner on the ground of corrupt practices, one of which is exceeding the limit on expenditure. No such election petition lies against any candidate except the winner. In contrast, Section 10 A can be invoked against any candidate on the ground of submitting a false or incorrect rendering of his election expenses. If proved, it will result in the disqualification for a maximum of three years even if he were the winning candidate.

The volte face

But suddenly this power is sought to be nullified. It is interesting to note that the Government Representative did not make this plea when the Ashok Chavan petition was heard by the Delhi High Court. On the contrary, the ASG did not support the petitioner’s plea that the 1955 decision of the Election Tribunal in Sucheta Kriplani Vs S.S. Dulat case (AIR 1955 SC758) was applicable to his case. The volte face by the government is, therefore, surprising. One is not sure whether the dramatis personae has suddenly assumed importance or the true import of the provision in Section 10A has dawned late, which has led to the Law Ministry taking up cudgels on behalf of Mr. Chavan before the Supreme Court.

Whatever the reason, it is clear that in advancing this plea and trying to whittle down the powers of the Election Commission, the government, contrary to its oft-repeated vehement concerns and commitment to curb money power and paid news in elections, is actually intent on perpetuating the same by making the Election Commission powerless to act even when the submitted accounts of election expenses are absurd in the extreme. That political parties and politicians are reluctant to initiate any electoral reform is no longer a secret. But a government working to undermine the ECI is the news now or a ‘scandal’ as The Hindu editorial called it.

The case before the Supreme Court is no longer one of Dr. Kinhalkar and others vs Ashok Chavan. It concerns every individual and institution that is uneasy about and opposed to the sway of money power in elections. In the last few years, the ECI has done a commendable job to monitor and tackle the menace of unbridled expenditure in elections. It has set up a monitoring division and monitoring arrangements down to the district level and is also closely interacting with government agencies like the Income Tax department to bring the offenders to book. With its customary policy of sharing information widely and transparently, the Election Commission has made it possible for interested civil society groups to get information from candidates’ affidavits and is providing similar access to the accounts they file by putting the abstract on the website. It has moved proactively to seek an amendment to the rule that allows 30 days to a candidate to file accounts and just 15 days thereafter to file an election petition before the courts by seeking more time for filing petitions. The ECI’s powers under Section 10 A can be invoked against all candidates, winners or losers, and if that is denied to it, only the winner’s election can be challenged in the High Court and that too only if it can be shown that he has breached the ceiling on expenditure.

Reprehensible

If the ECI’s powers are curbed, the whole activity of regulating election expenditure will come to a standstill with none having the authority to question and discipline the wrong-doers. If the government is aware of this, has thought about it, and has yet gone ahead to seek through its affidavit to the Supreme Court a ‘plain reading’ of the provisions of Section 10 A, a euphemism for negating the law laid down by the 1999 Supreme Court judgment, it is nothing but reprehensible.

The need of the hour is for civil society activists, NGOs and other concerned citizens to get together and voice their opinion against this calculated attack on the Election Commission’s powers. They would be well advised to go before the Supreme Court expressing their opposition to the government’s stand because the distortion being attempted can be allowed to go unchallenged only at the peril of democracy, and free and fair elections.

( N. Gopalaswami is a former Chief Election Commissioner of India )