The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

PERSPECTIVE

A Tribune Special
The saga of Aya Rams and Gaya Rams
Transfer the power of disqualification of legislators
to courts, says Era Sezhian

THE Westminster model of parliamentary system is based on the concept of government by party. In his Cabinet Government, Ivor Jennings stated: “Democratic government just demands not only a parliamentary majority but also a parliamentary minority. The Opposition will, almost certainly, be defeated in the House of Commons, because it is a minority. Its appeals are to the electorate…The Opposition is at once the alternative to the government and a focus for the discontent of the people.”

Though in the UK, the Conservative and the Labour are two major parties coming to power mostly, there are as many as 351 parties registered with the Election Commission. However, in the last 2005 election, only candidates belonging 14 parties got elected to the House of Commons.

Of the present strength of 646 members in the Commons, the three major parties cornered 94 per cent of the strength of the House. While the Labour Party has 349 members, the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat have 193 and 63 members respectively.

However, the Indian Constitution as drafted in 1950 did not contain the word ‘party’ anywhere in it. Article 75(3) lays down that the Cabinet formed by the Prime Minister “shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People”.

It is quite possible to have Lok Sabha with a majority of Independent members without any party affiliations. Only the Constitution (52nd Amendment) Act 1985 introduced the term ‘party’ in the Tenth Schedule.

It may be noted that even now, the parliamentary debates of either House denote the name of the constituency of the participating member and not that of the party he belongs to.

Until the mid-Sixties, there had been many occasions when senior members of the Congress intervened in the debates to oppose the provisions of a Bill introduced by the government and even to vote against such a provision despite a whip issued; their actions did not attract any disciplinary action under a law or the rules of the House. At that time, the government had absolute majority and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru allowed dissents to be expressed.

In the UK, whenever a government or Opposition member does not vote with his own party in a particular division, it is called “crossing the floor”. There has been no disciplinary action against any member voting or abstaining against the whip issued by his party. On serious charges of misconduct of a member, the House may resort to order expulsion.

There is no anti-defection law in the UK, USA or Australia as we have in India. There have been demands in some quarters that a member leaving the party by which he was nominated and elected should resign and seek re-election to join another party.

In the Australian Federal Parliament during the period 1950-2004, there had been 439 instances of floor-crossing by members, Senator Reg Wright (Labour Party, Tasmania) had the record of 150 times and another Senator Ian Word (Labour Party, Queensland) 130 times. But no action had been taken against those members by the House or by the parties concerned.

The practice of members changing parties on principle or on personal equations has been there all along in India, without causing any alarming consequences. As regards defections in the state legislatures, there were 542 cases reported in the first 15 years of Independent India and 438 in 1967-68 alone during the infamous saga of Aya Rams and Gaya Rams.

A parliamentary committee was formed in 1967 under Home Minister Y. B. Chavan. The committee recommended that a defector should be debarred from appointment as a minister for a period of one year or till such time as he resigned his seat and got himself elected. The Constitution Amendment Bills introduced in 1973 and 1979 to give effect to the recommendations of the Chavan’s Committee lapsed on dissolution of the House. Ultimately in 1985, the Constitution (Fifty-Second Amendment) Act was passed to introduce the Tenth Schedule.

However, the Tenth Schedule contained a provision to bar the jurisdiction of courts in respect of any matter connected with the disqualification of a member. In the Kihota Hollohon case (AIR 1993 SC 412), the Supreme Court struck down that provision as unconstitutional.

In May 1990, the Janata Dal government constituted the Committee on Electoral Reforms with Union Law Minister Dinesh Goswami as Chairman and other members, H. K. L. Bhagat, MP (Congress), L. K. Advani, MP (BJP), Somnath Chatterjee, MP (CPM), Ghulam Rasool Matto, MP (National Conference), Chimanbhai Mehta, MP, Indrajit, MP, Homi F. Daji, Former MP (CPI), Era Sezhiyan, Former MP (Janata Dal), V. Kishore Chandra Deo, Former MP (Congress-S), L.P. Singh, former Governor and S. L. Shakdher, Former Chief Election Commissioner.

As regards the Anti-Defection Law, the Goswami Committee recommended:

lthat disqualification provisions should be limited to cases of (a) voluntary giving up the membership of his political party

lvoting or abstaining against the party direction only in respect of a vote of confidence or no confidence or Money Bill or Motion of Vote of Thanks to the President’s Address.

lthat the power of deciding the legal issue of disqualification should not be left to the Speaker or Chairman of the House but to the President or the Governor as the case may be, who shall act on the advice of the Election Commission to whom the question should be referred for determination as in the case of any other post-election disqualification of a Member and

lthat the nominated members of the House concerned should incur disqualification if he joins any political party at any period of time.

Excepting the Congress Member H. K. L. Bhagat who opposed the above recommendations, all others in the committee unanimously supported them.

Paragraph 3 of Tenth Schedule on Disqualification on ground of split by less than one-third of the total members of the legislature was removed fully by the Constitution (Ninety-first Amendment) Act 2003 (with effect from January 1, 2004).

As regards recognition of a political party in Parliament, Speaker Mavalankar enunciated certain principles which were incorporated in the Speaker’s Directions 120 and 121. Therein, it was required that a political party should have a minimum of one-tenth or more of the total membership of the House and that a political group should have at least 30 members.

However, in certain cases, where an association had less than 30 members, the Speaker gave the nomenclature of a group for the sake of convenience without according formal recognition.

When the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution came into effect from March 1, 1985 and Section 29A of the Representation of People Act (from June 15, 1989) required compulsory registration of all political parties with the Election Commission, the concept of recognition of political parties and groups in the House by the Speaker has materially changed.

Kaul and Shakhder’s Practice and Procedure of Parliament states: “However during the deliberations of the Janata Dal case under the Tenth Schedule to the Constitution, the provisions of the Tenth Schedule came in for in-depth scrutiny. In the context of the breakaway groups that emerged due to splits in the legislature parties in the Lok Sabha, a view came to be established that accord of recognition to political parties came within the sole domain of the Election Commission…

Consequently, from the Eleventh Lok Sabha onwards, while legislature parties continue to enjoy certain functional facilities on the basis of their numerical strength in the House, the practice of according recognition by the Speaker in terms of Directions 120 and 121 was done away with.” (Page 360, Fifth Edition 2001)

The Goswami Committee had earlier recommended that the legal issue of disqualification under the Tenth Schedule should be left to be decided by the Election Commission.

In its Report (2002), the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution headed by Justice M.N. Venkatachalaih also recommended:

“Further, the power to decide questions as to disqualification on ground of defection should vest in the Election Commission instead of in the Chairman or Speaker of the House concerned.” (Para 4.18.2, Report 2000).

At the Symposium on “Anti-Defection Law – Need for Review” held during the Conference of Presiding Officers of Legislative Bodies in India, in Chandigarh, on September 23, 2008, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, presiding over the deliberations, stated: “The judiciary has taken up matters where the decisions of the Presiding Officers under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution have been challenged and this jurisdiction has been upheld by the Supreme Court of India.

...It is my considered view that it is desirable and indeed necessary, that the jurisdiction and authority to deal with matters of defection as provided in the Tenth Schedule need not continue to be exercised by the Presiding Officers and the power should be conferred on some other authority like a special tribunal comprising people well versed in law or on an authority like the Election Commission.”

It is desirable to take note of the sober advice given by Speaker Somnath Chatterjee who has not only a distinguished long-term experience in Parliament but also an eminent lawyer and jurist by himself. It is high time a thorough review was made to transfer all matters of defection in legislatures to the jurisdiction of the courts.

The writer, Senior Fellow, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, is a former Member of Parliament

OPED

Nobel affair again
Peace Prize selection comes into question
by Punyapriya Dasgupta

THE world’s most prestigious awards for the best works in the previous year in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, economic were announced from Stockholm and for peace from Oslo in October. This year the name of Martti Ahtisaari’s qualifications for the peace prize has come into question in spite of an avalanche of praise for him in the influential media.

The peace prize and its recipient attracts most attention because peace immediately concerns more people in the world than any of the other awards which also sometimes provoke criticism but that remains confined to the academia.

Alfred Nobel clearly wrote that his peace prize should be given “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Does Martti Ahtisaari, really meet any of those three conditions?

As Finland’s ambassador to Tanzania, Ahtisaari was, to start with, sympathetic to African aspirations but then he changed. He became a UN diplomat and the temptations from the rich and powerful West immediately too much for him to resist. After the Nobel Committee’s announcement of his name as the winner in 2008, Ahtisaari mentioned his role in Namibia’s accession to freedom as his biggest contribution to peacemaking. What he says for himself now about Namibia should be cross-checked with what has been written in an autobiography, Where Others Wavered, by Sam Nujoma, leader of the Namibia’s struggle for independence and then president of the sovereign state.

By Nujoma’s account, Ahtisaari was to play an important role for years to come “though not always as our ally”. A Council for South West Africa (Namibia) operating at UN since 1967, supported Nujoma’s SWAPO but when the time for freedom came Ahtisaari as UN Special Representative and head of UN Transitional Advisory Group “was seen by the Western powers as the man to handle the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 435 for Namibian independence under UN control leaving the Council virtually no role in it. More concerned with his career at UN than with his responsibilities towards the oppressed people of Namibia under illegal South African occupation, he had thus become a collaborator of US and Britain on such questions as how UN would supervise and control the upcoming elections.”

Ahtisaari was “ready to bow to the administrations of Reagan and Thatcher whose interests in Namibia were purely economic.” On the eve of the signing of the negotiated agreement for the withdrawal of white-ruled South Africa from Namibia and the beginning of the territory’s transition to freedom through a UN-controlled phase, Ahtisaari, UN’s Special Representative, obeyed a dictate from Margaret Thatcher and allowed a battalion of the South African army to enter Namibia and make one last attempt at crippling Nujoma’s SWAPO forces on the Angolan border.

Several hundred lives were lost on both sides but the momentum for Namibian freedom under SWAPO leadership could not be arrested. Ahtisaari stayed on for some time to oversee the transition to sovereignty but without any respect from Nujoma, President of SWAPO for 47 years and of the Namibian republic for 15.

He negotiated a settlement leading to Jakarta’s acceptance of some of the Aceh people’s demands including withdrawal of non-local forces in exchange for an end to the secessionist demand. The West’s trusted friend made his way to the Balkans and at the end of the 78-day bombing of Serbia by NATO aircraft, presented President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade America’s terms for a virtual surrender on the Kosovo issue. Thanks to Kofi Annan, Ahtisaari donned the mantle again of a UN Special Representative, this time for Kosovo Status Process and began pushing for Kosovo’s separation from Serbia.

However, here the German intelligence uncovered his corruption-laced consorting with the Albanian mafia controlling Kosovo. To save himself from humiliation, Ahtisaari withdrew from the make-believe mediator’s office he had set up in Vienna. Kosovo is now a unilaterally declared independent state recognised by only the NATO constituents and friends.

Ahtisaari has not lost his usefulness to Washington yet. He is now trying to clear the bloody mess created in Iraq by the American Bushmen by setting Shias against Sunnis in Iraq and forfeiting the confidence of both. He had some three dozen men from the two sects in Iraq flown to Scandinavia and tried to lure them into active commitment to American guardianship over their country.

This is what the Nobel Committee is referring to in its citation that “in 2008 through CMI (Ahtisaari’s own Crisis Management Initiative) and cooperation with other institutions Ahtisaari has tried to help find a peaceful conclusion to the problem of Iraq.”

The Committee also gushes: Ahtisaari’s “efforts on several continents and over more than three decades, to resolve international conflicts…have contributed to a more peaceful world and to a fraternity between nations in Alfred Nobel’s spirit.” This is a dubious claim. Alfred Nobel clearly wrote that his peace prize should be given “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Does Ahtisaari met any of these qualifications? The answer is in Ahtisaari’s statement on record in a Helsinki newspaper explaining his total support to the American aggression on Iraq even when the rest of the world had realised that the Bush-Cheney scare about Saddam Husain’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction was a calculated lie: “Since I know that about a million people have been killed by the government of Iraq, I do not need much those weapons of mass destruction.”

This does not fit anyone the Nobel Committee with members nominated by the political parties in proportion to their strength in the Norwegian parliament, rewards for his promotion of “fraternity between nations in Alfred Nobel’s spirit”. The Nobel Peace Prize has gone this time, according to critics, to a fixer for the West.

A look at the list of the Nobel Peace laureates of the preceding five years may also be instructive. In 2003, the prize went to Shirin Ebadi for her fight for women’s rights in Iran and in 2004 to Wangari Maathai for planting 30 million trees in Africa. In 2005, it was given jointly to IAEA and its Director-General Mohammed El Baradei.

In 2006, Mohammed Yunus was surprised to get the peace award. In 2007, it was won jointly by Al Gore and the Rajendra Pachauri-led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Nobel Committee in Oslo failed to see the “problem” in Iraq or in Afghanistan all these years.

Profile
Acting not Preity Zinta’s only avocation
by Harihar Swarup

THE Jury of the Chicago International Film Festival praised Bollywood star Preity Zinta’s role in Heaven on Earth as “strong yet subtle performance” while conferring on her the Best Actress Award. The Silver Hugo Award, won by Zinta, is considered one of the top honours in the filmdom.

Produced by Deepa Mehta, Heaven on Earth explores the struggle of an immigrant Punjabi bride (a role played by Preity Zinta). Married to an Indian resident in Canada, she has used her immigration, wit and soul strength to keep her sanity and self-esteem. The jury lauded Zinta for keeping up her dreams despite brutal realities.

In the role of a battered Punjabi wife, Zinta excels even though her Punjabi is extremely poor and she has to brush it up with the help of Anupam Kher, get the right diction and pronouncement. “I attended his acting school to get my Punjabi right”. He taught me how to pronounce the words properly. Zinta is apprehensive that being a Punjabi film, Heaven on Earth may have limited appeal but she is hopeful that Deepa would beak the barrier.

Preity’s reaction on getting the Best Actress Award was impromptu: “I am walking on sunshine. I can’t believe where I am”. Deepa informed her that she had won. Neither she nor Deepa could go to Chicago. “Without any lobbying I have done it. I am so excited and happy”, Zinta said. She is also getting rave reviews for her performance in the just-released Heroes. She is indeed immensely thankful to Anupam Kher for her convincing performance in both the films.

Acting has not been only avocation of Preity Zinta. Besides writing a series of popular columns for BBC News Online, she involved herself with humanitarian work. She supported women-related causes in India, for instance, female infanticide. She also participated in AIDS awareness drive and campaigns to clean up Mumbai. Zinta also lent her support to the cause of women’s empowerment and promoted blood donation. “Donating blood doesn’t kill one but goes on to save somebody’s life…once blood is donated it becomes universal and might be used by anyone in need, irrespective of community, caste or religion”, she says.

In her personal life, Zinta is a reserved person. She visits her native town Shimla when she is not busy shooting. In 2006, she moved into her own home in Mumbai. She does not identify with any particular religion but believes in doing good deeds. She narrowly escaped death twice in 2002; first after an explosion at a concert in Colombo and second during Indian Tsunami.

Wittingly or unwittingly, she got involved in many controversies. In 2003, as a witness to Bharat Shah case, she testified against the Indian mafia. Shah, the financer of one of her movies — Chori Chori, Chupke Chupke — was arrested in 2000 for having connections with Chota Shakeel, a Mumbai underworld boss. Unlike several of her colleagues, Zinta repeated in court her earlier statement that she had received extortion threats from the mafia during the shooting of the film. After her testimony, she was given witness protection and was forced to stay out of the public for two months.

Thirteen other witnesses before her, including celebrities, Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan, were witnesses in the case but later retracted their earlier statements. Zinta was only witness who did not become hostile to the prosecution. In praise of courage, she was honoured with Godgrey’s Mind of Steel Award.

On Record
Book on Duleep Singh a huge effort: Navtej
by Charu Singh

THE tragic life of Maharaja Duleep Singh, son of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, has been the subject of much discussion. Diplomat and author, Navtej Sarna, after a nine-year marathon on Duleep Singh that took him to different nations on the latter’s trail, through dusty and high-tech libraries and unused manuals, has come out with an insightful novel, The Exile, that looks at Duleep Singh’s life from a fresh angle.

In an interview with The Sunday Tribune at New Delhi’s India International Centre, he says that the book was set in a decade of internecine rivalry, intrigue and battle that saw the last days of the Sikh kingdom. The central character is Duleep Singh, inheritor of the Maharaja’s legacy but really subject to British machination. Duleep was carried away by the British while a young boy, converted to Christianity but disillusionment followed due to the treatment meted out by the British. Duleep reconverted to Sikhism and made several attempts to return to India to recover his lost legacy. But he could never do it and spent his last tragic years in Paris.

Excerpts:

Q: What made you write a book on Duleep Singh?

A: I think writers are always in search of a subject and I kept thinking that this is something that needs to be explored. The more I read on Duleep Singh, the more I realised that this was a story that had never been told from a sympathetic point of view, mostly British writers and historians have given an account of his life. I felt that this could be written with a fresh perspective, there is no doubt that his life was a unidimensional tragedy but there is more to it than that.

Q: When did your fascination with Duleep Singh begin?

A: It really began nine years ago but maybe I was carrying it with me longer than that. The book involved huge research and it has been the product of nine years of work. Of course, I took breaks in between and wrote two books, one a non-fiction work and the other pure fiction.

I was living in Washington at this time and was fortunate to access the Library of Congress which has tremendous resources on this subject. I found old lost books in Punjabi, memoirs of British soldiers, old manuscripts, name it. I also accessed the National Archives in Delhi among other libraries. Also it was inevitable for me to be interested in a period that saw such a powerful empire drift into chaos.

Q: Another arresting figure during this period is Rani Jinda. Any comments?

A: Rani Jinda is a rather poignant figure and I have tried to bring a lot of her in this book. But my focus was on Duleep as I feel that his life had a lot more variety and there was more potential for him. Also, there is surprisingly lesser material available on Rani Jinda, just a few letters and references.

Q: Was the process of writing this book trying?

A: You do begin to obsess about a book like this. During my stay in Paris, I was taking my entire family through every street, locale, house, where Duleep had lived or visited. It did become an obsession and I kept feeling that something was not complete. It was not easy unearthing this story, getting the narrative just right, just so, getting the correct voices for different characters and this was something that simply had to be done. Writing in different voices was a challenge, especially getting the correct voice. For instance, one of the characters, Mangla, speaks easily, it was smooth getting her. Then there were good days, bad days, days when one got really stuck.

Q: How did you follow Duleep’s trail?

A: Some places I visited while on leave such as England and Paris. Lahore I happened to visit and that was very fortunate. I had to get a feel of the land before I could write.

Q: Considering nine years of toil, how come your book is slim — around 250 pages?

A: It was much longer when I finished it. In the editing process, we lost some 15,000-20,000 words, approximately 50 pages.

Q: Are you working on another book, possibly another historical?

A: I have not yet made up my mind on what I would do next. This has been a huge effort and am resting right now and have not made up my mind on a subject. But there are ideas.

Q: Would you consider another book on Sikh history, say on the religious period?

A: Only ideas right now, nothing concrete. I have done voluminous research on this period and may come up with something. There is definitely a lot of drama and possibility in this period. But then, again I am not sure yet. I am just recovering from this book right now.