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.
