Wake-up call to China
US President Bill Clinton, the arch unlearner from politico-military experiences, distant or recent, has propelled NATO into more destructive action after the bombing of civilian areas in the Yugoslav capital.

Bad news for BJP
THE threat of revolt by at least 36 ruling party legislators against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh is bound to make the BJP high command take the issue more seriously than it has done so far.

CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
by S. Sahay
IN one of my articles I said that the majority of the experts believed that President K.R. Narayanan had unwittingly suggested to Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee that he should seek a vote of confidence from the Lok Sabha. Fresh facts have come to light that show that the President acted not unwittingly but under pressure from the non-BJP parties.

Sino-Indian ties back on track
by Swaran Singh
THE recent eleventh meeting at Beijing of the Sino-Indian Joint Working Group on the boundary question has finally confirmed the return of normalcy in Sino-Indian ties. Popularly known as the JWG, this Sino-Indian official forum has lately emerged as the single most generic as also most reliable process of interaction between the officials of the two countries.

Cabinet acts on President’s advice !
by Anupam Gupta
COULD the 12th Lok Sabha, dissolved last fortnight, have been dissolved by the President without a recommendation by the Cabinet headed by Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee?

The socialite-civil servant nexus
by Humra Quraishi
LAST week’s shoot-out at the Tamarind Court restaurant seems to have overshot just about anything else here. And though much has been decried about the party, the guestlist, the unlicensed bar and the young men involved but unfortunately the crux seems to be going unfocused.

Toddling back to innocence
by S.S. Bhatti
WHEN I experienced fatherhood with our first child, vis-a-vis the overflowing indulgence of my father towards her (he even bought her, when she was hardly two years of age, an independent dressing-table !), I was led to define grannies: as senile parents who spoil your children for their fun.

75 Years Ago

A pertinent question
WE have already dealt at length with the reported decision of the Bengal government to serve as many as 1200 of its employees in the Educational and Medical Departments with notices of discharge on the ground that their salaries have been refused by the Council.

Wake-up call to China

US President Bill Clinton, the arch unlearner from politico-military experiences, distant or recent, has propelled NATO into more destructive action after the bombing of civilian areas in the Yugoslav capital. The dazed Chinese Ambassador, Mr Pan Zhanlin, stood near the ruins of his embassy amidst a blaze and smoke, saying: “The People’s Republic of China has been attacked”. The Chinese people all over the world are agitated. In fact, much of the civilised world is angry. Friday’s NATO missile onslaughts were made straight on the Chinese buildings with much precision. It should be nobody’s case to call the action justified. No embassy is safe in a city which is being bombed continuously. Residential areas — including hospitals, schools and diplomatic centres — have been targeted by alliance aircraft. At least 250 lives have been lost in such localities. China has called the action barbarous. The Chinese government could not control American belligerence. There is worldwide resentment against NATO’s aggression. It does not behove Mr Clinton to explain away the alliance attack on the embassy as unintended. The building was hit “by mistake”, says the super power chief. The alliance planes have bombed more than a dozen non-military sites, killing hundreds of Yugoslav citizens in Belgrade, Nis and other thickly populated cities. The attack on the Chinese embassy is a gross violation of international law and decent diplomatic norms. Lakhs of overseas Chinese have joined their fellow-countrymen in condemning the USA’s callousness which amounts to a war crime. Mr Clinton’s “regrets” are opportunistic and nonchalant. NATO planes have not halted their death-dealing missile rain. They will interrupt their mission of high-tech decimation of life and property only when the Serbian forces are withdrawn from Kosovo, the refugees return to a virtually NATO-ruled country and the authority of the USA as a new and unrelenting global coloniser is universally accepted under duress and fear. The terms are unacceptable to most of the self-respecting countries.

NATO harps on the Yugoslav President’s “attempt at ethnic cleansing”. Seeing the continuing Clintonic depredation, one feels inclined to consider what Mr Milosevic has said: The hundreds of thousands of refugees are a result of the NATO bombings and not that of any policy of ethnic cleansing.... The attack on the Chinese embassy, allegedly due to an identification error, is being described in unbiased parts of the world as a calculated act meant to terrorise and eliminate in the cruellest way the diplomatic missions which work in Yugoslavia and witness the crimes committed against a sovereign country and its citizens. China and Russia have stated that while subscribing to this view they have not blindly followed the Milosevic attitude. Beijing and Moscow must take cognisance of the principled stand adopted by India. China promised “all help” to the hapless country under NATO attack. So did Russia. Now that its own diplomatic rights have come under direct assault, China should wake up and shake off its dollar-induced reluctance to oppose the USA in actual terms. Other embassies and consulates have also been hit by missiles. They, too, should show sufficient respect for their sovereignty and stop paying obeisance particularly to the US-British neo-colonialist personification of arrogant power. What is happening in Yugoslavia can happen in other parts of the world too if the NATO trend of dominance through the sky is not checked.

Bad news for BJP

THE threat of revolt by at least 36 ruling party legislators against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh is bound to make the BJP high command take the issue more seriously than it has done so far. The rebels have their eyes on the Lok Sabha elections. By raising the decibel level of the in-house voices demanding Mr Kalyan Singh’s ouster the rebels hope to politically blackmail the high command to at least pay attention to their grievances. However, the UP Chief Minister has a better track record than the rebels in the matter of political manipulation for survival. The fact that he represents the politically sensitive backward constituency is the source of his strength and the secret of his survival in spite of charges of wrongdoing and autocratic style of functioning. In the context of the Lok Sabha elections, there has been more bad news than good news for the BJP. In fact, the only piece of good news after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee lost the trust vote by the narrowest possible margin was Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s visit to Rashtrapati Bhavan to convey that she did not have the numbers to form the government. And the developments in UP can, by no stretch of the imagination, be dismissed as an insignificant piece of bad news, considering the fact that the state sends 85 members to the Lok Sabha.

Reports of a steady trickle of politicians from other parties to the Congress too is likely to cause some disquiet in the BJP ranks. It is almost a reversal of the 1998 trend which saw a large number of politicians deserting their parties — primarily the Congress — in favour of the BJP. Of course, as of today the political trickle towards the Congress is confined to the South unless Mr Buta Singh’s “homecoming” can be played up as a “momentous event”. The two main parties in the race for power will get an opportunity to read the direction of the political wind as early as June 4 when Assembly elections are held in Goa. The Goa verdict may not necessarily provide reliable data on the preference of the voters in the Lok Sabha elections in September-October. However, the Assembly elections would provide an opportunity to the Congress and the BJP to test the effectiveness of the strategy they are likely to adopt for influencing voters and winning seats in the 13th Lok Sabha. As of today, the Congress may stick to the policy of going it alone — to cash in on the popular resentment against coalitions for not providing stable governments — while the BJP has no choice but to seek fresh regional alliances for expanding its base in unrepresented territories. What can be said with a fair degree of certainty is that the BJP is not likely to make Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s nationality an election issue in at least the Goa Assembly elections. Early feedbacks indicate that a personal attack on the Congress President even at the national level may prove counter-productive.

CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUES
Significance of voters’ verdict
by S. Sahay

IN one of my articles I said that the majority of the experts believed that President K.R. Narayanan had unwittingly suggested to Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee that he should seek a vote of confidence from the Lok Sabha.

Fresh facts have come to light that show that the President acted not unwittingly but under pressure from the non-BJP parties. Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee told a Hindi weekly, Panchjanya in an interview that the President told him that if he (the President) did not ask the government to seek a vote of confidence, the Lok Sabha would not be allowed to function and the Budget would not be passed. The threat had come from the Congress and the other parties opposed to the BJP.

Mr Vajpayee was asked: did the President succumb to this pressure? “O, yes, yes, totally”. The President told him that such a situation should not be allowed to arise.

Was the President yielding to threat not a serious matter? The Prime Minister’s answer was that the President did yield to this threat. He told me: “Look, my worry is that if the Budget does not get passed, there would be a lot of complications. That is why I have told you what they told me.”

What would have happened if he had toughened his stand on this? Mr Vajpayee was asked. He replied that he could not have done so in view of the past precedence, as for instance set by Mr Deve Gowda.

Clearly, the President, who is expected to keep his cool under all circumstances, allowed himself to be bullied. It is another matter that the detractors of the BJP were hoist on their own petard. Had not the Congress and others indulged in the numbers game there could have been a case for the Congress, with 233 MPs, being asked to attempt a viable government. And once the offer had come, fun and games could have started. But what upset Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s applecart was the President’s insistence on a list of those who preferred to support her. Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav told the President that he would not support the Congress and this paid to Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s plans.

It may be observed that, faced with a similar situation, after the fall of the Chandra Shekhar government, President R. Venkataraman sought the advice of experts on, among other questions, what he could do in the event of Parliament not adopting the Budget.

Opinion was divided on whether or not the President could adopt the Budget through an Ordinance. But had a contingency really arisen (fortunately it did not), the nation would have certainly understood if an Ordinance was in fact promulgated, for the alternative would have been administrative chaos.

Mr Vajpayee has also disclosed that after the failure of Mrs Sonia Gandhi to form the government, the President did not ask him whether he would like to make an attempt, the President handed him down his decision that a mid-term poll had become inevitable.

The fact that the President suggested that the Cabinet should recommend to him the dissolution of the Lok Sabha, has now led to litigation.

Anyway, the voters had better treat the past as past and concern themselves with the future. In the event of a fractured vote once again would they like to ensure at least that the Lok Sabha lasts its full term?

Various constructive suggestions have been made, some of which require an amendment of the Constitution and the laws, but others do not. Among the latter category comes the suggestion by Mr Venkataraman that the parliamentary rules be amended to stipulate that a motion of no-confidence would be accompanied by the name of a successor Prime Minister.

As experts have pointed out, the German constitution has such a provision, which makes the throwing out of the Chancellor a rather difficult exercise. Mr Venkataraman’s proposal has the merit of simplifying the procedure and obviating the necessity of amending the Constitution.

Voters had better exercised their minds on the criterion of the President inviting a person to attempt to form a viable government. If there is a clear majority for a party or alliance formed before the election, the President’s choice is clear. But if no single party or group has a clear majority should the President go by the numbers that may be claimed by a party or group after the poll results are known, or should he strictly go by the poll results?

The Bommai ruling of the Supreme Court has made it crystal clear that the place to test the strength of a party or coalition is the floor of the House, not Rashtrapati Bhavan or Raj Bhavans. It follows then that the question of the leadership of the House — and it is the leader who becomes the Prime Minister — should be left to the House itself.

At present, the Constitution leaves the task of who the Prime Minister should be to the President. This causes problems for the President and involves him in avoidable criticism. As some experts have suggested, instead of himself getting involved in the exercise, the President can ask the House itself to choose its own leader, through a message, for which there is constitutional provision.

What could be usefully done by the principal parties, in particular the BJP and its allies, the Congress and its allies and the third force is to put in simple and clear terms the constitutional choice before the people and ask them for their verdict.

The foreign birth of Mrs Sonia Gandhi has already become an electoral issue, or so the BJP would like us to believe. If the other constitutional questions, as indicated above, are added to the citizenship issue, not only would the level of debate rise to an acceptable status, but also the constitutional questions, would act a referendum, which no political parties can afford to ignore.

Sino-Indian ties back on track
by Swaran Singh

THE recent eleventh meeting at Beijing of the Sino-Indian Joint Working Group on the boundary question has finally confirmed the return of normalcy in Sino-Indian ties. Popularly known as the JWG, this Sino-Indian official forum has lately emerged as the single most generic as also most reliable process of interaction between the officials of the two countries.

The JWG is led by the Foreign Secretary from the Indian side and by the Vice-Foreign Minister from the Chinese side, and both of them have direct access to their executive Heads of State for seeking direction and for discussing proposals that are brought for deliberation at the JWG. All this speaks for the centrality as also the credibility of the JWG in determining the tenor and direction of Sino-Indian ties.

What made the JWG so newsworthy this time is the fact that following India’s decision to detonate five nuclear devices during May last year, the Chinese side had refused to agree on any dates for the JWG. They had repeatedly censured New Delhi for having “hurt” Beijing’s sentiments by describing China as being the main reason for India’s decision to finally exercise its nuclear option that has been kept suspended for the past 24 years.

This had also witnessed China carrying out an anti-India campaign world-wide, seeking New Delhi to surrender its nuclear option and to unconditionally sign non-proliferation treaties like the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and the comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT).

This had vitiated Sino-Indian ties with many other official interactions also being either postponed or delayed. Those interactions were not as friendly and fruitful as they could have been. And among these, the JWG’s meeting was one most important forum that was delayed by over 19 months time.

Ever since its creation in 1989, the JWG has been meeting at least once a year, though since 1995 it was expected that both sides will try to make this meeting twice a year. In fact, in 1995 itself the JWG had actually met twice. Conversely, 1998 became the first such year when no JWG meeting was held for a whole year.

The last time JWG had met was in New Delhi during August, 1997, when the two sides had exchanged instruments of ratification of their Agreement on Extending Confidence-Building Measures to the military field. This agreement had been signed during President Jiang Zemin’s visit to New Delhi during November, 1996, and had been hailed as the historic achievement of the JWG meetings. Similarly, the earlier historic agreement on Sino-Indian CBMs signed in September, 1993, has also been the product of JWG deliberations.

As regards the significance of this 11th meeting of the JWG, the fact that it was finally held itself perhaps marks the most important turning point in post-Pokhran-II Sino-Indian ties. It seems to mark a full circle with both sides being able to resurrect their rapprochement despite various other continuing difficulties. Once such most obvious continuing distraction was the impending political uncertainties with many commentators suggesting the Chinese would not prefer to re-start the JWG with a lameduck government in New Delhi.

Besides, India’s testing of its Agni-II intermediate-range missile (which is obviously meant for deterring the Chinese) followed by Pakistan’s tests of their Ghauri-II and Shaheen missiles has also led various commentators to believe that this might further delay the JWG meeting. However, the Chinese seem to have finally made up their mind, and the JWG met in Beijing on April 26-27, 1999.

Clearly, one most important contribution of this 11th JWG meeting has been its successful attempt at clearing various misperceptions that had cropped up during this post-Pokhran-II political polemics. And here, apart from leading the Indian side at the JWG meetings with his counterpart, Mr Yang Wenchang, India’s Foreign Secretary, Mr K. Raghunath, also took this opportunity to brief and interact with various other think-tanks, research institutes, media persons, Indologists and other scholars and important leaders in Beijing.

This long-awaited 11th meeting of the JWG only marks a new beginning. It has apparently resurrected a positive trend in Sino-Indian rapprochement, and this must now be the basis for further positive initiatives from both sides.

— INFA.

(The author is associated with the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi).

Toddling back to innocence
by S.S. Bhatti

WHEN I experienced fatherhood with our first child, vis-a-vis the overflowing indulgence of my father towards her (he even bought her, when she was hardly two years of age, an independent dressing-table !), I was led to define grannies: as senile parents who spoil your children for their fun. Now that, as grandfather, I am at the receiving end, I have experienced a sudden transformation of my attitude, outlook, and indulgence — justifying, in retrospect, once-abhorable traits of my own father ! And I am compelled, ironically though, to follow in his footsteps. My instinct prods me into a frantic endeavour even to outrival him in pampering my one-year-old granddaughter. Sahiba is a bundle of charismatic charm, cuddlesome chubbiness, and choleric cheer. Eyesight weakened by age is a blessing in disguise. It blurs all forms into impressionistic images of overpowering beauty — and, providentially, relegates shortcomings to an out-of-focus background ! She cannot say “nanoo”. Indeed, what she does succeed in saying sounds like “none” or “nun”. Perhaps, she means that either I am “nobody”, or I am, at best, a she-monk perforce cast in the mould of an exclusive baby-sitter. Mere mention of her name, just the same, tickles my heart, and I burst into exultant laughter. I am drunk with utmost joy at the recovery of my long-lost freedom — like a prisoner released after serving his lifesentence !

My strange behaviour, rivalling the best of circus clowns’, irritates (more than amuse) my family members. They find it symptomatic of an impending madness that few retirees are lucky to avert. Though their verdict tends to outdo that of any celebrity psychiatrist, little do they realise that I am a helpless victim of my own newfound emotional euphoria. I have toddled back to innocence — a territory of human-ness far from the madding crowd, where there is a strange security even in awesome vulnerability. My energies are no longer wasted in mindless combat against the harrowing experience of the adult world — whose “wickedness and terror” now seem to be more imaginary than real. But, paradoxically, our machinations, manoeuvrings and mischiefs against others are more real than imaginary !

Sahiba’s wobbly walk and penguin gait, combined with her babble talk and infectious effervescence, have performed an incredible miracle on me. Her giggles gladden me out of cares of the world. Her lips language, swift as the radio, transmits the heart’s message with unfailing accuracy. And evokes my response to filial love promptly thereby lowering my blood pressure. And when she dances, clutching at the bedstead for support — to a Daler Mehndi pop hit—my joints no longer pain— and I dance and clap with her in gay abandon. And, in moments of intense ecstasy, a realisation suddenly dawns on me. That grannie-hood has been ordained to be a rewinding of life to a state of second parenthood —blessed belatedly with the interminable time of a retiree’s life, so that you can participate in the ethos of growth from birth to where you will be forced to willy-nilly barter your innocence for the sake of worldly success.

Strange are we humans who forsake the soulful poetry of life and love for the prosaic pedestrianism of maverick ambition and vainglorious achievement. Yet the fact remains that humanism grows best in the soil of innocence when love’s pristine passion pollutes no mind. And where, above all, the recovery of innocence from the thick-skinned encrustations of adulthood is the triumphant discovery of human beings’ path-finding truth !

Cabinet acts on President’s advice !

by Anupam Gupta

COULD the 12th Lok Sabha, dissolved last fortnight, have been dissolved by the President without a recommendation by the Cabinet headed by Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee?

An academic question, you would say in irritation, for the Cabinet did recommend that the Lok Sabha be dissolved and a fresh mandate be obtained from the people. Both the recommendation and the dissolution came, in fact, the same day (April 26), the second on the heels of the first. Why waste your time on an academic question?

Look at it a little more closely, I would submit, for the question teetered precariously on the verge of being thrown up on April 26. It was a rather reluctant Cabinet which recommended dissolution to the President that day, apprehensive that a refusal would impel the President to install, in the words of India Today, “a more obliging caretaker government”.

And that it was actually the Cabinet acting on the “advice” of the President (to recommend dissolution), rather than the other way round, is confirmed by the language used by the Cabinet and publicly conveyed to newsmen by the Information and Broadcasting Minister, Mr Pramod Mahajan, as reported in The Hindu of April 27:

“In deference to the President’s assessment of the situation, as conveyed by him to the Prime Minister on April 25, the Cabinet decides to recommend to him that he may dissolve the House.”

What if, in a moment of pique or defiance, the Cabinet had acted otherwise? And refused to recommend dissolution? Could the President then have proceeded to dissolve the Lok Sabha on his own?

Speaking through his memoirs “My Presidential Years” published in 1994, the former President Mr R. Venkataraman answers that question unambiguously in the negative. A lucid though prosaic account of his presidency from 1987 to 1992, the book is essential reading for all incumbents of the office faced with similar or not so similar constitutional problems.

“The President cannot, on his own responsibility, dissolve the House,” says Mr Venkataraman. “If he had such a power, he could distort democracy by dissolving the Lok Sabha at his whim, subject only to being impeached after a new House was constituted.”

While the question whether the advice of a “defeated Prime Minister is binding on the President is a moot point,” continues Mr Venkataraman (referring to the defeat of Mr V.P. Singh’s government on the floor of the House in 1990, following withdrawal of support by the BJP), “I had no doubt in my mind that the President had no power to dissolve the Lok Sabha except on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.”

If extraordinary circumstances necessitate dissolution of the House, he adds (without defining those circumstances), the President “must appoint a person as Prime Minister for the purpose of tendering the advice for dissolution.”

Though he does not cite any authorities in his support, Mr Venkataraman’s view is based upon a long line of British constitutional authority going back to those two great masters of constitutional thought and law: Sir William Anson and Prof A.V. Dicey.

For every public act of the King, Sir Anson wrote in 1913 during the controversy over the Irish Home Rule Bill, his Ministers must accept responsibility. If, therefore, the King should desire to dissolve Parliament and if the government are of the same opinion, the prerogative of dissolution would be exercised in the ordinary course. If not, it would be necessary to ascertain beforehand whether an alternative Ministry was prepared to accept the responsibility of a dissolution.

“It really comes to this (said Anson), that if the King should determine, in the interests of the people, to take a course which his Ministers disapprove, he must either convert his Ministers to his point of view, or, before taking action, must find other Ministers who agree with him.”

The difficulty, the insuperable difficulty, of President K.R. Narayanan finding another Ministry who agreed with him (on the issue of dissolution), had Mr Vajpayee’s Ministry chosen not to recommend dissolution, was that all his efforts to swear in an alternative government had already failed by the time the question of dissolution arose. That failure, in fact, was both the reason and the occasion for dissolving the House and going back to the people.

“Allow me,” Prof A.V. Dicey wrote to The Times, London, five days after reading the article containing Sir Anson’s views, “to express my complete agreement with Sir William Anson’s masterly exposition of the principles regulating the exercise of the prerogative of dissolution.”

If the King (read, the President) is to avoid personal implication in party controversies, he must obtain the advice of his Ministers to dissolve, says Prof E.C.S. Wade of Cambridge, editor of Dicey’s famous work on the Constitution, in a concluding note of his own. Dissolution must rest on the advice of Ministers alone. Otherwise “no dissolution would be free from ambiguity, and speculation as to the degree of responsibility of the Sovereign would be a feature of every election.”

It was to avoid such ambiguity and speculation that President Narayanan advised Mr Vajpayee to recommend dissolution. In doing so, he acted in absolute conformity with established constitutional doctrine. And in accepting his “advice”, though not without uneasiness in sections of his party and government, and recommending dissolution, Mr Vajpayee conducted himself with the responsibility that becomes a statesman.

For had he not done so, the country would have been thrown into a constitutional impasse of first-rate importance.

The socialite-civil servant nexus

by Humra Quraishi

LAST week’s shoot-out at the Tamarind Court restaurant seems to have overshot just about anything else here. And though much has been decried about the party, the guestlist, the unlicensed bar and the young men involved but unfortunately the crux seems to be going unfocused. Why are such partying places allowed to operate? How many more along the lines of Tamarind Court flourish here? What is the nexus between socialites, designers and some civil servants? Is it just for a glass of whisky or for a badly baked roti that the rich drive down several kilometres to frequent such places or are there other attractions as well? If so, who are these socialite businessmen and women who are involved in thrusting fashionable platters on the city — on one hand providing for all the possible risque groundwork and then simultaneously holding an international or national conference on AIDS! Safe, isn’t it? I personally feel that these are the people to be focused upon, but if clinches are permitted then it would lead to the proverbial dilemma — who’s going to bell the cat?

In the mid eighties Bina Ramani was working from a middleclass apartment in Hauz Khas. In fact, one of the magazines I was working for then had asked me to interview her. She sat surrounded by bales and bales of cloth and several tailors and cutters. Not very impressive but yes, definitely very talkative and forthcoming. She had no qualms talking about her divorce, her fleeing from New York with her two daughters, details of the struggle in trying to establish herself in the garment business. Just around the time one started spotting her at receptions, exhibition inaugurations and of course at large dos. Tall, lanky, often wearing low cut designer blouses and halter necked shirts she stood out. Few years later came up her well publicised boutique Once-Upon-A-Time at the Hauz Khas village and adjoining it the restaurant Bistro. Not an exceptionally classy joint but because of her partnership (in that restaurant with Suresh Kalmadi) a number of important parties were hosted there. If I am not mistaken some of the Delhi Tourism conducted tours of the city did make a stop at Bistro. In fact, at this restaurant’s inaugural launch party some senior civil servants and many politicians were to be spotted. After leaving her stamp on Hauz Khas village she next eyed the vast area lying opposite the Qutb Minar and about three years back there came up the anew shopping centre — Qutab Colonnade. And just around that time she tied the knot for the second time — with a half French half Canadian artist George Mailhot. And like all the events in her life even this second marriage wasn’t viewed as a non-event either, and was well splashed. And somewhere along the way she managed to become ‘aunt agony’ for a newspaper which has its editions coming out from UK, Dubai, Bombay and, of course, New Delhi ... well what do you have to say to that?

And for the series of parties and gettogethers at Tamarind Court only a few would have remained off the invitation list. And now see the fate of some of the regulars. However, the fact remains, will the clever and evasive remain safe as usual?

More transfers !

After the major round of transfers last week there is definite talk of yet another round of transfers. It is being said that since six more bureaucrats of the 1966 batch have to be posted at the Secretary level and some of the 1968 batch are awaiting their promotion to the additional secretary slots so there is bound to be another reshuffle. Meanwhile, the transfer of Union Home Secretary B.P. Singh at this juncture is being criticised and has come as a shock to many, for the rapport between Singh and Home Minister L.K. Advani wasn’t said to be going through any rough weather. If sources are to be believed Singh was transferred out because he was in favour of late elections. He himself was not available for comment for he is not talking to the Press.

And there has been news for some weeks now that Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar could be replacing former Cabinet Secretary Surinder Singh at the IMF or the World Bank. Singh’s tenure ends this July and though Prabhat Kumar retires only next year, it is said he might be keen to take up the new assignment. In case he does join the IMF or the World Bank the seniormost civil servant would be TR Prasad (presently Defence Secretary), for the Cabinet Secretary post.

50th year celebrations

Next year would not only be the turn of the century but the completion of the 50 years of our republic. And it is being felt that the occasion does deserve a major celebration, rather a series of celebrations. With the Secretariat in charge of the commemoration of the golden jubilee celebrations of our independence still functioning (lately it coordinated the Khalsa celebrations) it wouldn’t be very difficult for the government to organise another round of celebrations. However, unlike the independence celebrations when the Delhi administration under the then Chief Minister Sahib Singh Verma did interfere and ruin those functions with Bombayya troupes, the Secretariat and the Culture Department should be given a freehand of sorts. At the very least, care should be taken that bright ideas of politicians are kept at bay.

75 YEARS AGO

A pertinent question

WE have already dealt at length with the reported decision of the Bengal government to serve as many as 1200 of its employees in the Educational and Medical Departments with notices of discharge on the ground that their salaries have been refused by the Council.

In this connection the A.B. Patrika asks a question which is obviously pertinent. Our contemporary writes:—

The public knows this much, however, that under the Government of India Act, the Governor has not only the full power of restoring the rejected grants on the Reserved heads of the Budget but he can also “in cases of emergency authorise such expenditure as may be in his opinion necessary for the safety or tranquillity of the Province, or for the carrying on of any department.”

Of course, the Governor is under no statutory obligation to authorise any such expenditure in the Reserved Department.

If, however, His Excellency certifies the expenditure under the Reserved Department, as he will surely do, and chooses to allow the Transferred Department to be closed down, will not the natural inference be that His Excellency does not consider that the departments should be carried on?