WHEN THE FIRST elected President of the Central Legislative Assembly (now Speaker of the Lok Sabha) Vithalbhai Patel ruled that the Public Safety Bill could not be taken up by the Legislative Assembly, the then Viceroy of India, by exercising his special powers, issued an ordinance to enforce it. Mahatma Gandhi charged that the Viceroy thereby proved the futility of the legislatures.
In an article ‘Viceroy’s Ire’ published in the Navajivan on April 21, 1929, Gandhi wrote, “Legislative Assemblies and such other bodies are like toys in the hands of the rulers. As long as they wish, they play with them and, when they please no longer, they wreck them. Swaraj can never be won by means of such playthings.”
Those utterances of Gandhi resonate in the wake of Union Home Minister Amit Shah ‘wrecking’ the constitutional principle of executive responsibility to the legislature, by failing to appear before either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha to make a statement on the police violence inflicted on protestors agitating over the deteriorating education system and examination process.
The Home Minister is wilfully not paying heed to the incessant demand of opposition Member of Parliaments (‘MPs’) to come to both the Houses of Parliament and make a statement on the brutal police crackdown on July 20 on the peaceful protests of students demanding resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on a host of issues concerning fatal collapse of standards of education and the NEET-UG paper leak issue.
The Home Minister’s conduct in not attending the Parliament to make a statement in response to the repeated demand of the opposition constitutes a gross violation of the Constitution and constitutional morality.
Causing havoc on constitutional provisions
It is all the more perplexing that the Home Minister has not come to the Rajya Sabha even after its Chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan, requested Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, on August 6, to consider the Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge’s request for the home minister to come to the House. “As a parliamentary affairs minister,” Radhakrishnan said, “you can echo the sentiments of the opposition to the home minister.” A day later on August 7, Rijiju responded by saying that the Chair had not issued any such direction and so the Opposition cannot direct which minister would come to the House, and that the Home Minister remained in Parliament from morning till late night. Rijiju needlessly remarked that “Amit Shah is that person, whose name makes all terrorists shiver,” and added that an Opposition which raises slogans and leaves the House would not be able to listen to his reply.
Such stubborn refusal on the part of the Home Minister to remain accountable to the legislature for the ruthless use of lathis, tear gas, and pellet guns on unarmed students registering their protest against repeated violations of the integrity of examinations conducted by the National Testing Agency, functioning directly under the Education Minister, is unprecedented in the history of Parliament. His conduct in not attending the Parliament to make a statement in response to the repeated demand of the opposition constitutes a gross violation of the Constitution and constitutional morality.
Article 75(3) of the Constitution provides that, “The Council of Ministers shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People.” It is the foundational pillar of parliamentary democracy which is the basic structure of the Constitution. Article 77(3) mandates that, “The President shall make rules for the more convenient transaction of the business of the Government of India, and for the allocation among Ministers of the said business.”
A minister being part of the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha. It does not mean that the Minister is not responsible to the Parliament or legislature in their individual capacity for their acts of commission or omission.
Under Article 77, the President of India allocates business to the Ministers so that they would perform their duties. While doing so, the President acts on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister. So, the individual ministers having been allocated with business for doing their work are always held accountable to the legislature and people for every act done or not done. Many procedural devices of the parliament including the device of asking questions have been provided in the rules governing the functioning of the Parliament so that MPs by asking questions to the individual ministers hold them responsible to the Parliament.
On February 5, 1970, a six-judge bench of the Supreme Court in A. Sanjeevi Naidu v. State of Madras while noting that the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha remarked that “similarly an individual Minister is responsible to the legislature for every action taken or omitted to be taken in his ministry.”
Therefore, the inviolable constitutional principle and the mandate of constitutional morality must be strictly followed by Home Minister in letter and spirit and he must come to the House and remain accountable to the Parliament by making a statement about the lathi charge, firing of tear gas shells and use of pellet gun by the Delhi police and the Rapid Action Force which fall within the jurisdiction of the Home Minister. He cannot evade the responsibility to face the Parliament which he is constitutionally mandated to do.
Ambedkar’s vision violated
On May 18, 1949, B R Ambedkar while participating in the discussion on Article 85 (Article 69 of the draft Constitution) dealing with the sessions of Parliament, and their prorogation and dissolution, recalled that in 1935, during British rule in India, “the legislature was summoned primarily for the purpose of collecting revenue… the executive was not very keen to meet the legislature in order to permit the legislature either to question the day-to-day administration by exercising its right of interpellation or of moving legislation to remove social grievances”. He described the situation as a “travesty of democracy” and added, “I do not think any executive would hereafter be capable of showing this kind of callous conduct towards the legislature.” Those words of Ambedkar represent the legislative intent of the Constituent Assembly.
A minister being part of the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the legislature.
By displaying sinister obstinacy in refusing to face Parliament on the issue of police brutality against protestors, Union Home Minister is acting on the lines of the British colonial playbook of devaluing legislatures, and his conduct amounts to nothing less than a travesty of the cardinal constitutional mandate securing ministerial accountability to Parliament. Ambedkar’s fond hope that in independent India the no executive “…would hereafter be capable of showing this kind of callous conduct towards the legislature” has been shattered by the Home Minister’s egregious conduct not to remain accountable to the Parliament, which represents the supreme will of the people. It would be better if he carried out a course correction and upheld the Constitution, in defence of which people are at the forefront of a countrywide civil society movement.