The Hindu : Law to legitimise political funding needed: Jaitley

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Apr 28, 2002

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Law to legitimise political funding needed: Jaitley

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 27. While the CII plenary session devoted to `Social and Ethical Breakdown' witnessed speaker after speaker voicing concern over communal violence and calling for action before it was too late, the Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, today said a law to legitimise political funding was necessary to tackle corruption in public life.

``After 55 years, we have not been able to device a system for

political funding and we expect individual industry to siphon

funds to support a party,'' he said in the discussion on `Constitution Review Commission: New canons of Better Governance'.

Mr. Jaitley said the commission had made some recommendations on political funding after going through suggestions made by previous committees, which were being examined. ``We would need to introduce a law in Parliament which legitimises the process of political fundings as in Britain.''

On judicial management, the commission had suggested setting up of a National Judicial Commission (NJC). There was an urgent need to make judicial services attractive to bring in the best talent. Corruption in judiciary was so far an `unanswered issue' and the problem was visible in the subordinate judiciary. High Courts had the jurisdiction to look into it effectively and, recently, some judicial officers had been given compulsory retirement.

The Government was for the continuation of reservation for certain sections in view of the plight of the socially depressed strata of society. Elimination of the `creamy layer ' from the quota of reservations would be an effective way of implementing the policy but the problem lay in the criteria or basis of identification of the `creamy layer'.

Consensus among the participants at the session — which focused on the communal divide in the wake of violence in Gujarat — was that it was time to act collectively to snuff out the evil. Concerted efforts were needed to revive and inculcate social values that would strengthen the secular fabric and help keep the fanatics at bay.

The Member, Planning Commission, N.K. Singh, outlined six challenges to improve tele-density in the country. The great physical challenge of improving the overall tele-density from negligible levels of today to at least 17 per thousand with emphasis on improving rural tele-density to 5 per thousand in the next five years must be met. These targets would require about 365,000 km of optic fibre network and Rs. 300,000 crores of investment to provide high-quality services at low cost.

Speaking on the Indian Economy and its management problems, the Secretary, Economic Affairs, AICC, Jairam Ramesh, said India was a miracle of sorts and the miracle could be divided into 3 Ds — Democracy, Diversity and Development. There was not much problem with the first two 2 Ds, he said. Observing that it was Development where India had a long way to go, he said one outstanding achievement was in the country's transformation from a food-importing nation fifty years ago, to a surplus country with huge stocks to spare. But this has turned into an embarrassment of surpluses and India cannot be classified as a `rock of stability'.

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