The Hindu : Cancellation and court

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Sep 02, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Cancellation and court

THE SUPREME COURT'S stay order on the Centre's notification cancelling the allotments of petrol pumps and LPG/kerosene agencies should surprise nobody. It was plain from the very beginning that the Vajpayee Government's decision — which was held up as proof of its commitment towards dealing with the scandal — was flawed and unlikely to stand judicial scrutiny. As expected, the three member-Bench of the Supreme Court faulted the Government for not giving the allottees any notice or any opportunity of a hearing before issuing the cancellation order. The sweeping nature of the cancellation order was also questioned as it made no distinction between those who had secured allotments on merit and those who had done so by fraud or nepotism. As the Court suggested, there were issues of livelihood involved here and cancellation without even an issue of notice is unjustified in cases where fraud is not established.

The Court's stay order covers only those petrol pumps and LPG/kerosene agencies which have already been commissioned. It has not been extended to include those cases for which letters of intent have not been issued, presumably on the ground that those who are not financially hurt by the cancellation order can afford to wait until the main petition challenging it is disposed of. Only recently, the Centre was in the process of considering the issue of an ordinance to statutorily support the Prime Minister's cancellation order, but mercifully this has been given up. Taking the ordinance route as a specific means of outdoing or bypassing the Judiciary is an objectionable form of governance. It was only recently that the controversial poll reform ordinance was issued for this very purpose — a move which met with condemnation in intellectual circles and which worried the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, enough for him to seek clarifications about some of its controversial provisions.

The Centre is now left with the option of defending the cancellation order when the hearing in the case comes up in November. From all appearances, it is not perturbed at all at this outcome. By defending the cancellation order in Court, the Centre can continue to portray that it was taken "in the public interest and on moral grounds". At the same time, the fact that whole issue is tied up in Court focusses attention on the legal validity of the cancellation order and deflects it away from the most important issue about the petrol pumps scandal. Namely, how so many petrol pumps, LPG agencies and kerosene outlets could have been allotted to those who are members of parties in the ruling coalition or those who are closely related to them.

The nation is still clueless about how this happened and the Centre has offered no credible explanation of how the allotment process was undermined by so much nepotism and patronage. Rather than get to the bottom of this, representatives of the Union Government have attempted to divert attention by speaking about probes into all allotments of petrol pumps and gas/kerosene agencies over the last two decades. The political objective of taking such a stand is clear — it is to suggest that the allotment process was tinged with nepotism before the BJP-led Government assumed power. But its moral objective is confused and puzzling — does the fact that political patronage influenced allotments in the past justify what happened during the tenure of the Union Minister of Petroleum, Ram Naik? A scandal cannot be cancelled out by a notification or by putting up a defence for such a move in court. Scandals are dealt with effectively only if there is a willingness to punish those responsible for their perpetration. This is what the Vajpayee Government has been unwilling to do from the very beginning — it has been unprepared to hold those responsible for the petrol pumps scandal guilty for it.

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