Absence of order

There is lack of thinking in the way the political class has been challenging the edicts of the Supreme Court

Vijay Sanghvi

Everyone in the political arena seems to have a habit of finding fault with each other and trading charges in public. Indeed, instead of reflecting on public interest issues of national importance, Indian politicians look quite happy in apportioning the blame on their opponents.

Nowhere is it more visible than in Delhi after the Supreme Court’s verdict compelled the Delhi Municipal Corporation to seal all commercial establishments and shops that are being operated from the residential areas. Faced with unemployment and loss of income, shopkeepers and their employees have taken to the streets and are fighting pitched battles with civic and law enforcement agencies. Many of them have held the Delhi government responsible for its failure to protect their interests. But is it the only truth?

Let us look at some of the other actors in this sordid drama. The Union Urban Development Minister, Jaipal Reddy, is one of them. He had threatened to bring in a new legislation or even amend the Constitution by convening a special session of Parliament. Reports indicate that he did not consulted the party leadership or even the prime minister before meting out the threat of calling a special session. Reddy was basically playing to the galleries trying to win support of the restive traders after police firing led to the death of three persons, including a child in Seelampur in east Delhi. Obviously, the minister was unaware of the strictures that the Supreme Court had passed when it last heard the petition of the government over the issue of legislation meant to provide relief to the harassed traders.

The issue is the serious intrusion into the sphere of the executive. The Supreme Court was expected to dispose of the petitions of the Residents' Welfare Associations (RWAs) that wanted to know whether it was legal to run the commercial establishments in residential areas. The apex court went a step ahead and ordered the municipal authorities to seal all such illegal establishments within a specific period.

On the new Delhi Special (2006) Act, the court angrily held that Parliament was acting as a super arbiter over the apex court after civic authorities were ordered to stop the sealing operations and unseal the commercial establishments. It was forgotten that neither the  government nor Parliament can undo what has been ordered by the Supreme Court under the existing laws. The only remedy was to plead the court yet again and appeal for a review of its verdict as it was causing untold misery to more than a million people in the Capital.

What was required was that all political parties should have come together and discussed the implications of the serious inroads the judiciary had made into the executive and seek a solution so that the system can function smoothly. Every government, with aspirations to come to power, is affected by the imbalance caused by an ineffective executive and an aggressive judiciary. The Supreme Court verdict is no doubt a serious reflection on the failures of the executive in not tackling the issue of commercial establishments spreading into the residential areas and causing serious hazards to residents and the structure of civic amenities.

Instead of owning up the fact that all the political parties have been responsible for the mess, the opposition began to blame the Congress. And the Congress managers could not think of any long-term perspective and thereby console the angry trader community. It sought to blame the BJP by claiming that the malaise had begun during the BJP regime and the Congress had merely inherited the lingering problem.

Obviously the 10 long years that the Congress has been ruling at the Centre has not been enough to find comprehensive answers to the problems that it has inherited. It is much easy to blame others than find solutions to difficult problems. That is why, while the two parties were engaged in the blame game, thousands were on the streets and fighting the police to save their livelihood.