The Hindu : Enforce the rule of law

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 20, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Enforce the rule of law

BY RULING OUT a fresh notification to constitute a Special Court to try the accused in the Babri Masjid demolition case, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mayawati, has only demonstrated her inability to match words with action. The BSP's stormy petrel had maintained, categorically through her election campaign and even at the time of forging the post-poll pact with the BJP in the State, that her party will not dilute its commitment to ensuring the rule of law. It is another matter that her protestations against the BJP were not taken seriously even then. To expect the BSP leader to issue a fresh notification setting up a Special Court in Lucknow (by way of rectifying the technical flaw in an earlier order due to which several influential leaders in the BJP and the VHP were discharged) was, as a matter of fact, asking Ms. Mayawati to put her own position as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh at stake. A fresh notification will mean the State Government setting the stage to prosecute important leaders of the BJP and there was no way Ms. Mayawati could have obtained sanction for such a decision from her own Cabinet of which the BJP too is a part. The Chief Minister could, of course, have taken the moral high ground, at the risk of jettisoning her position, and issued a notification after obtaining the statutory permission from the Allahabad High Court. But then, given Ms. Mayawati's own track record of political ambiguity and very little interest in ideology or principle, it would have been highly unlikely that she would have taken such a course.

Be that as it may, there is a point in the Chief Minister's argument that it is for the CBI to decide on prosecuting the BJP-VHP leaders in a regular court as long as the investigating agency is in possession of legally sustainable evidence against them in the Babri Masjid demolition case. The idea of a Special Court is based on the perceived need to ensure speedy trials. The Babri Masjid demolition case, in any case, pertains to an organised crime committed almost ten years ago and the fact that the case has not even reached the stage where the charges are framed is indeed a damaging commentary on the priorities of the CBI. Neither did the CBI, in this instance, file an appeal against the Allahabad High Court verdict (that led to the discharge of such leaders as L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi, Uma Bharati) nor did it urge the State Government to rectify the technical shortcoming in the earlier notification. These are factors that raise larger questions involving the autonomy of the investigating agency. The fact that the CBI has not yet made any substantive moves (even a decade after the crime was committed) to go ahead with prosecution in the case (No.198/92) in the relevant courts can only be construed as an instance of the investigating agency giving in to the concerns of the political establishment rather than exercising its statutory autonomy.

It is this context that calls into question Mr. Advani, Dr. Joshi and Ms. Uma Bharati continuing as Ministers. While the law as such does not impose a specific bar, the incongruity involved in the investigating agency (despite the autonomy on paper) proceeding against members of the Union Cabinet (including the Home Minister) cannot be glossed over. This aspect has indeed been underscored several times in the past, the most prominent among those instances being the Jain Hawala transactions and the charges against Laloo Prasad Yadav in the multi-crore fodder scam. The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, had asserted at that time that the cases against his colleagues in the Cabinet were political in nature and hence did not warrant invoking the moral principles as they did in the charges of corruption. However, the fact remains that the basic principle of the democratic set up — rule of law — cannot be enforced in this case so long as the persons under investigation occupy positions in the political establishment given the very limited extent of autonomy that the CBI enjoys in reality.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

Critical issues unaddressed

Enforce the rule of law

Evicting 10 million tribals

Nation building and cricket