Harin Raval walks all over UPA
Harin Raval is apparently not the first Additional Solicitor General of India to quit office by questioning Attorney General of India GE Vahanvati’s professional integrity. In fact, the former Additional Solicitor General of India, Bishwajit Bhattacharya, who retired on November 9, 2012 also did the same but in greater details. Bhattacharya had secretly been penning his memoir. However, a day after his retirement, he came out with My Experience with the Office of Additional Solicitor General of India (Universal Law Publishing). The book was released by late Justice JS Verma in a scintillating function at Indian International Centre held on November 10 last year.
The book exposes how the Government was more interested in benefiting the corporate houses rather than recovering taxes due upon them. Bhattacharya has an expertise in fighting cases of indirect taxes. He has been specifically hired by the Government to right indirect tax litigations involving thousands of crores. But to his surprise, the Government itself appeared non-committal. There seemed a conspiracy to keep his role perfunctory. He was mostly given to deal with Income Tax cases. The briefs arrived late, at times even in the middle of the night. He had no office to keep the important files. He had to keep them inside his car. It became evident that the Government him to become inactive. It was deliberately handing over victories to the corporate houses. The motives of the decision-makers were not difficult to guess.
The meticulously written book stops short of naming any individual. But readers cannot be blamed, if they are led to conclude the hidden presence of GE Vahanvati and P Chidambaram. The latter’s role is obvious in reversing the Vodafone retrospective taxation on capital gains that was passed by President Pranab Mukherjee.
The demand of accessing the ‘legal opinions’ of the Attorney General of India under RTI Act, 2005 now seems justified. Recently in a long decision held on December 10, 2012, the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) turned down the appeal of Subhas Chander Agrawal, Ajitabh Sinha and Mani Ram Sharma to bring that office under the RTI Act. The CIC Satyanand Mishra, IAS concluded that the Attorney General is not a public authority. He merely renders legal advice to Government of India as to a client. However, nowhere in the Judgment is the opinion of the Attorney General been pronounced an ‘official secret’. All that public is interested in knowing, as in any other case, is the ‘text of the legal opinion’ of the Attorney General.
Other details of his Office are redundant to policy-making making. The ‘legal opinions’ of the Attorney General should be allowed to be accessed from the concerned ministry. But the CBI being itself opaque to the RTI Act, 2005, makes the case difficult in the case of Coalgate. The UPA Government’s reputation has already been blackened by the affairs of Coal. Harin Raval’s parting letter has given it the final touch of tar.
