Constitutional posts to politics
Maneesh Chhibber Posted online: Wed Dec 19 2012, 01:24 hrs
In the midst of the debate over the “loss” caused to the exchequer due to the controversial allotment of 2G telecom licences, Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh accused Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai of having “political ambitions”. Singh cited the instance of one of Rai’s predecessors — T N Chaturvedi — to buttress his assertion of the CAG “misusing his office” to score brownie points with the Opposition.
Whether Singh is proven right or wrong, what he has achieved is a re-ignition of the debate over whether holders of constitutional offices such as judges of the Supreme Court and high courts, CAG, election commissioners etc, should accept post-retirement jobs, political or otherwise, or enter politics.
Of course, Singh omitted to mention that his own party shares the blame, there being numerous examples of former constitutional functionaries becoming members of the Congress, some of them even going on to enter Parliament on the party’s mandate.
Some of the leading examples of former constitutional figures becoming card-carrying politicians are former CAG Chaturvedi (BJP), former chief election commissioner M S Gill (Congress), CJI-turned-Rajya Sabha MP Ranganath Mishra (Congress) and Supreme Court judge-turned-Lok Sabha MP Baharul Islam (Congress), Punjab and Haryana High Court chief justice-turned-governor-turned-Rajya Sabha MP Rama Jois (BJP) and Congress Rajya Sabha MP-turned Supreme Court judge-turned-Janata Party Lok Sabha MP-turned-Speaker K S Hegde.
The list doesn’t include many others who held constitutional positions before becoming governors on retirement.
T N CHATURVEDI
Till Digvijaya Singh accused Vinod Rai of acting like him, many people, especially the post-Bofors generation, had forgotten about CAG-turned-Rajya Sabha MP-turned-governor Triloki Nath Chaturvedi. The 1950-batch, Rajasthan-cadre IAS officer, now 84, leads a quiet life in Noida.
He held important posts including those of home secretary and education secretary in the Indira Gandhi government, before being appointed CAG by the Rajiv Gandhi regime in 1984. It was during Chaturvedi’s tenure till 1990 that the CAG began an inquiry into the purchase of Bofors guns. The CAG went on to make a scathing indictment of the Rajiv government.
However, it was not his tenure in important positions, that as CAG, or the Padma Vibhushan he got in 1990 for “service to the nation” (under the V P Singh regime) that brought Chaturvedi to the limelight. That came when in April 1991, just one year after his retirement as CAG, he joined the BJP. In July 1992, he got elected to the Rajya Sabha. He was re-elected in July 1998, but quit before the end of his term after being appointed governor of Karnataka by the Atal Behari Vajpayee government in 2002.
Incidentally, asked by reporters about his views on the new governor, then Karnataka chief minister S M Krishna had said he hoped “the objectivity that he would have developed as the Comptroller and Auditor General is something which he can share with us”. Krishna incidentally was in the Rajya Sabha the same time as Chaturvedi.
Since Digvijaya Singh’s statement, Chaturvedi has hit back, pointing out that there are “no constitutional norms which say that a former CAG or a former Supreme Court judge cannot hold a political post”. “It is incorrect to attach motive to CAG, saying that the report was given to take political mileage,” Chaturvedi told the media, adding that he was, however, happy “that Digvijaya Singh is at last remembering me”.
While supporting current CAG Vinod Rai, he also cited the case of one of his predecessors, S Ranganathan, who had entered the Rajya Sabha with Congress support.
“The CAG report only points out how the departments are functioning. The reports are discussed in the Public Accounts Committee. But the 2G report is being politicised and they (Congress leaders) are attacking the CAG and I am also dragged into this for the same reason. If Mr Digivijaya Singh is so keen to protect constitutional functionaries from being appointed to post-retirement jobs, he must prevail upon the government, of which his party is the biggest component, to amend the Constitution to bar such appointments. I am sure the Opposition too will support this,” he told The Indian Express. He added: “But judges must also be covered under this amendment.”
However, there are many who feel Chaturvedi wasn’t in the right in aligning with the BJP. “I am not going into his actions as CAG. But his decision to join the party that benefited from the adverse report given by CAG under him and to enter the Rajya Sabha on that party’s nomination was certainly unethical. He is a good, honest man... He is right in saying that there isn’t a bar on holders of constitutional offices joining politics or becoming Rajya Sabha MPs or governors... But such people must understand that there is a difference between legality and propriety. Most such jobs can be viewed as a reward for something done in office,” said Constitution expert and senior lawyer P P Rao.
He doesn’t absolve political parties either, saying they must avoid fielding such candidates, or the government, saying it mustn’t offer them post-retirement jobs.
M S GILL
To say that the appointment of former IAS officer Manohar Singh Gill as election commissioner along with G V G Krishnamurthy through an ordinance on October 1, 1993, was controversial would be an understatement.
The P V Narasimha Rao government turned the single-member Election Commission into a three-member body, with the chief election commissioner working in tandem with two election commissioners. A series of petitions were filed in the Supreme Court against the appointments, including one by then CEC T N Seshan. He accused the government of trying to “erode his authority” because he was not ready to toe its line on postponing some Assembly elections at the time.
The petitions were eventually disallowed, but not before Seshan had mentioned “the extraodinary haste with which all this was done while the CEC was at Pune and the urgency with which one of the appointees, Shri M S Gill, was called to Delhi by a special aircraft”. Singh went on to become the CEC, a post he held for about five years (December 12, 1996, to June 13, 2001).
In 2004, the Congress again set off a controversy by bringing Gill into the Rajya Sabha from Punjab. Many Congress leaders of Punjab were said to have been against his candidature. In 2008, Singh went on to be given independent charge as minister of state, youth affairs and sports. He was reappointed when the UPA returned to power in 2009, as well as given a second straight term in the Rajya Sabha in 2010. Eventually, in a June 2011 reshuffle, he was dropped reportedly for non-performance.
“Mr Gill should have never been made a minister, neither should he have accepted it. It was highly improper and unethical,” says former CJI J S Verma. “I have always said people holding constitutional positions must not accept post-retirement jobs that could be seen as reward for something that they might have done while in office... I hope the government amends the Constitution to bar such appointments.”
The ex-CJI adds that not just constitutional functionaries, but officers such as the CBI director, central vigilance commissioner, and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India chief etc must not be allowed either to take up any assignment within the government or in the private sector for at least two years after retiring. “There is always the question of conflict of interest,” he said.
RANGANATH MISRA
Justice Misra, who died recently, had a few firsts to his credit. He was the first chairman of the National Human Rights Commission of India when it was set up in 1993. He was also the first former CJI to join a political party — the Congress — to contest a Rajya Sabha election (1998), which he won. The move raised some controversy. After the end of his Rajya Sabha term in 2004, he was appointed chairman of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, where he submitted a report in 2007 recommending a 15 per cent quota for minorities at national level. As a Supreme Court judge, he had headed the much-criticised one-man inquiry commission that probed the anti-Sikh riots following Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984.
BAHARUL ISLAM
His is the first case in India’s history of a politician becoming a high court judge. He would retire as chief justice, then — within a space of eight months — become a judge of the Supreme Court, then quit just 45-odd days before his date of retirement, in time to contest the Lok Sabha elections on a Congress ticket, and win.
Justice Baharul Islam, a prominent Muslim face of Assam, was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1962 and got another term in 1968. He resigned mid-way to become a judge of the then Assam and Nagaland High Court, now known as Gauhati High Court, in 1972. On July 7, 1979, he became its chief justice. While he retired on March 1, 1980, he was brought back from retirement to be appointed a Supreme Court judge on December 4, 1980.
For some, however, the unusual career took its lowest dip when Justice Islam gave up his Supreme Court judgeship 46 days before his retirement to contest as a Congress candidate from Barpeta constituency, going on to win in a one-sided contest.
K S HEGDE
Justice Hegde is possibly only the second judge — after Justice Islam — to have been an MP before being appointed a judge. His career is again similar to Justice Islam’s in that he eventually returned to politics and became an MP again. Incidentally, Justice Hegde’s son — former Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh N Hegde — is also a former judge of the Supreme Court.
Justice Hegde was a Congress Rajya Sabha MP from 1952 to 1957. In 1957, he resigned after his appointment as a judge of the Mysore High Court (now Karnataka HC), from where he went on to become the first chief justice of the Delhi and Himachal Pradesh High Court. In 1967, he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India, a post he held till April 30, 1973, when he resigned to protest against the appointment of a judge junior to him as CJI by the Indira Gandhi government.
He then re-entered politics, contesting and winning from Bangalore South constituency in the 1977 election on a Janata Party ticket. Within a few months, on July 21, 1977, after the resignation of then Speaker Neelam Sanjiva Reddy to contest the presidential poll, Hegde was unanimously elected speaker of the Lok Sabha, the first time a first-time Lok Sabha MP was elected to the post.
M RAMA JOIS
Justice Jois first hit headlines when, as a lawyer, he was a part of the legal challenge mounted by opposition parties to the India government’s action of detaining all those against imposition of Emergency under the draconian Maintenance of Internal Security Act.
After Emergency, when the Janata Party government ruled at the Centre, Jois was elevated to judgeship in the high court of Karnataka. In May 1992, he went to the Punjab and Haryana High Court as chief justice, but would stay in the post for just three months, resigning over the elevation of Justice N Venkatachala, who was junior to him, as a judge of the Supreme Court.
In June 2002, Justice Jois was appointed governor of Jharkhand by the then NDA government. From Jharkhand, he was shifted to Bihar, a post he held till October 2004, resigning after the UPA government replaced the NDA at the Centre. In June 2008, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha on a BJP nomination.
RAM KRISHNA TRIVEDI
An Uttar Pradesh-cadre IAS officer who entered the service before Independence, Ram Krishna Trivedi rose to hold important positions in the government, especially after his retirement in 1979.
As an IAS officer, some of the important posts that he held were those of Uttar Pradesh home secretary, and secretary, Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms in the Government of India. Post-retirement, he was made the CVC in October 1980, and the CEC in June 1982. It was during his tenure as CEC that the 1984 general elections were held (in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination) as were polls in the terrorism-hit states of Punjab and Assam. He was appointed governor of Gujarat on February 26, 1986, and remained there till May 2, 1990.
M FATHIMA BEEVI
The country’s first woman Supreme Court judge, Justice Beevi is among the couple of judges elevated to the apex court after their retirement from high courts. Her appointment to the Supreme Court on October 6, 1989 — over five months after her retirement as a judge of the Kerala HC — was, in fact, viewed as then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s olive branch to the Muslim community in the aftermath of the Shah Bano case controversy. She retired on April 29, 1992, but was later appointed member of the NHRC.
In 1997, the Central government appointed her governor of Tamil Nadu, where she was at the centre of a political storm over her decision to ignore established constitutional norms and administer the oath of office to AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa as the chief minister in May 2001 despite the fact that Jayalalithaa couldn’t contest the Assembly elections due to her conviction in a corruption case.
Upset with the decision, DMK chief M Karunanidhi, who had been responsible for Justice Beevi’s appointment as governor, lobbied hard for her removal. However, she herself put in her papers after the NDA government decided to recommend to the President that she be recalled for not acting independently and failing to discharge her constitutional duties in the aftermath of the controversial arrest of Karunanidhi and two Union ministers by the Jayalalithaa government.
V S RAMADEVI
An Indian Legal Service officer, V S Ramadevi held important posts in the Government of India’s Law Ministry before she was appointed secretary general, Rajya Sabha, a post she held between July 1,1993, and July 25,1997. In between, she was CEC for less than a month, thereby becoming the only woman till date to hold this post. In July 1997, she was appointed governor of Himachal Pradesh, where she remained till December 1, 1999. From Himachal Pradesh, she was transferred to Karnataka and remained there till August 20, 2002.
T N SESHAN
AS the CEC from December 12, 1990, to December 11, 1996, T N Seshan virtually bulldozed politicians of all sides into accepting his diktats, some of them very controversial. However, he earned a lot of admirers for cleaning up the Indian political scene. A year after his retirement, in 1997, Seshan contested for the post of President against Congress nominee K R Narayanan. While his foray into the electoral arena came a cropper, with Seshan losing his security deposit, he tried again two years later, accepting the Congress’s offer of contesting against BJP stalwart L K Advani from Gandhinagar in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. Advani’s victory by a margin of over 1.88 lakh votes left nobody in doubt about what people thought of Seshan’s volte-face; his critics viewed his entry into electoral politics as an attempt to cash in on his positive image among the voters.
The man who almost single-handedly changed the way elections were conducted in India lost much of his halo after his failed attempts at electoral politics.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/1047299/