Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 5, 2011
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/350921/SC-intervenes-again.html
UPA not only lame, also sitting duck
The Supreme Court, in its wisdom, has ordered
the setting up of a Special Investigation Team to oversee the ongoing inquiries
aimed at tracking down black money that has been parked in foreign bank accounts
and tax havens, identifying those hold these accounts, and prosecuting them
for the multiple offences they have committed. The SIT will be have a former
judge of the Supreme Court as its chairman and another former judge as its
deputy chairman; the other members of the team will include the heads of CBI,
R&AW, IB, CBDT, ED and other senior officials representing various agencies
that deal with financial crimes. The SIT will periodically brief the Supreme
Court about the progress of its work and will be responsible for solving the
multi-billion-rupee riddle also known as the black money conundrum: Everybody
knows that huge sums of money have been salted away; nobody knows the exact
quantum of the money; the beneficiaries of these illicit funds remain unidentified.
There are two aspects to the Supreme Court's verdict. First, it amounts to
appropriation of the executive's responsibility since it is the Government's
job to deal with the menace of black money. But it could be argued, logically
so, that had the Government been more alert to its responsibility and shown
greater diligence while acting on the issue, then such an order would not
have been necessary. To that extent, the Supreme Court has once agains stepped
into the breach created by Government apathy towards corruption and financial
malpractice which has become the leitmotif of the UPA regime. The failure
is as much of the Government as the Prime Minister and the Congress: They
are all to blame. Second, by broad-basing the SIT, the Supreme Court has done
what the Government should have initiated in the first place: A multi-agency
inquiry that covers all aspects of the crime of taking illicit funds out of
the country, holding it in undeclared foreign accounts, and bringing it back
after the money has been duly laundered. Hence, on this score too the Government's
failure is both abject and glaring. Hopefully the SIT will deliver what the
Government-appointed so-called High Level Team could not for reasons that
do not require elaboration.
Having said that, it would be in order to
highlight the fact that on a host of issues, ranging from scams and scandals
to day-to-day governance of the country, the executive's constitutionally
mandated role is being circumscribed by judicial intervention. While a Government
that fails to perform and fulfil its obligations is no doubt undesirable and
harmful for our democracy, the solution does not lie in the judiciary taking
on the role of the executive. True, judicial intervention has helped set right
the executive's folly, as has been witnessed in the Great 2G Spectrum Robbery
and now in the issue of black money and related matters. But this cannot,
indeed must not, become the standard. If Mr Manmohan Singh has any sense of
self-dignity and if he wishes to preserve what remains of his image, he should
resign from office rather than preside over the demolition of executive power
and authority for which he is largely to blame. It is his inaction, his indecisiveness
and his inability to lead from the front that has reduced the executive to
a pathetic caricature of what it is meant to be. The republic cannot suffer
on account of him and the inefficient, slothful, corrupt regime he heads.