The Crooked Nib

The Rajya Sabha has been in the news recently, and not just because of the elections fiasco. Some two fortnights ago, it was castigated as the “indirectly elected House” which, it was claimed, was inheren­tly inferior to the “directly elected House”. Attempts to cut the Rajya Sabha to size, if not abolish it altogether, have been made earlier, beginning early in its life. Attempts were made again in 1971, 1972, 1975 and 1981, but again, better sense prevailed and these Bills did not pass muster. The biggest damage to the Rajya Sabha as originally conceived of by the Constituent Assembly was done in 2003, when the Representation of the People Act, 1951, was amended to delete the requirement of “domicile” in the state concerned for getting elected, and to introduce the open ballot system. (At present, it’s limited open ballot—the party representative may see it.) These amendments were challenged in the Supreme Court but the petition was dismissed. The appropriateness of the amendments and the corr­ectness of the judgement is to be inferred from the following.

The Constitution, and the Act, both use the expression ‘Council of States’ without exception. It was in keeping with the spirit of the ‘Council of States’ and ‘Representatives of the States’ that the “qualification for membership of the Council of States” stated that “a person shall not be qualified to be chosen as a representative of any State or Union territory in the Council of States unless he is an elector for a Parliamentary constituency in that state or territory”.

This limited the choice of political parties to persons belonging to that particular state. Removal of this req­uirement has only made it even easier for political parties to choose whoever they like without any regard for the wishes of the people or their elected representatives. The second amendment, of the open ballot system, is even more interesting. The rationale came from the First Report of the Ethics Committee of Parliament, adopted on December 15, 1999. Noting that cross-voting by a party’s members led sometimes to the defeat of its official candidate, and with allegations that this was money power at work, the committee suggested a look at open ballot, eventually introduced in 2003. What it has achieved was visible in the recent elections!

The decapacitation of the Rajya Sabha begins with the selection of candidates. It is the monopoly of the leadership of various political parties, depending on the number of MLAs from their parties in the state assemblies. It’s no secret that it is a standard practice to rehabilitate so-called senior leaders. The rest is supposed to be taken care of by the anti-defection law and the open ballot system. But since these two are also not strong enough to counter the lure of Mammon, we are witnessing attempts to discredit it.

The rot starts even earlier, when candidates for assembly elections are chosen. The only criterion seems to be winnability, often at any cost. When people of questionable antecedents are elected as MLAs, no wonder rules for Rajya Sabha election have to be made that specify the colour of the ink and thickness of the nib of the pen for marking the ballot paper, which has to be shown to the party representative!

Historian Granville Austin wrote: “Constitutions, however ‘living’, are inert. They do not work, they are worked.” Those who worked the Constitution over the last couple of decades and who are supposed to be working it today—which means the entire political establishment—seem to be determined to ensure that it does not work. This political establishment consists of all the political parties.

Differences of opinion between the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha are not new. In one of the earliest such situations, the then prime minister said that the two Houses “are in fact part of the same structure and any lack of that spirit of cooperation and accommodation would lead to difficulties and come in the way of the proper functioning of our Constitution.” Alas, today’s  political parties leave no room for such sentiments.

(Jagdeep S. Chhokar is former professor, dean, and director in-charge of IIM Ahmedabad.)

Slide Show

“While it is being made into a fight about a pen, it’s an internal tussle in the INLD and the Congress that led to this result,” says Subhash Chandra, who defeated the Congress’s R.K. Anand in Haryana.