Law or mockery?

The UPA government seems bent on amending the law with regard to offices of profit so as to make it all but meaningless. Whether that is the intention or not, it will be the result of the hurry to save some 50 parliamentarians and state legislators from being unseated. All blame for this should not rest on the government alone, it should be shared by its supporters in the Left parties (who have stated that they want the law re-visited) and by the opposition parties. The position taken by the BJP-led government in Jharkhand demonstrates that when matters come to the crunch, there is nothing to distinguish between the positions adopted by the major parties. Parliamentarians and legislators seem united therefore in the desire to hold on to their seats as well as such "offices of profit" as they are able to wrest. Perhaps this is what one should expect when the technicalities of the law come up against corruptions that have gained the patina of accepted practice. But then, it would be more honest to abolish the law altogether, rather than amend it into such anaemic shape that it becomes a non-law""with responsibility for administering it taken away from the Election Commission and handed over to the government of the day (everyone knows what that means).

While this farcical drama gets played out, some questions need answers. For instance, why is it so important for Somnath Chatterjee to adorn the chairmanship of a local development body in his constituency? Or for Karan Singh to be chairman of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and Vasant Sathe before him? The council is run by a senior member of the foreign service, and the chairman's post is mostly decorative""except that politicians who are out of office tend to lobby for these things because it makes them feel relevant and perhaps gives them some perquisites. The same question can be asked of Kapila Vatsyayan, whose leadership of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts seems to have been co-terminous with unfinished building projects, budgetary over-runs and eventually audit objections. If, despite this record, her services are badly needed at the Centre, then she should not sit in Parliament""which discusses audit issues of the kind raised about the Centre. Equally, is there a crying need for Jaya Bachchan to sit on a body in UP that occasionally dispenses money to film producers? Surely, there are others who could do that job (and it does not necessarily need familiarity with the film industry). In any case, UP is not known for a vibrant film production industry, so the council must by definition be a marginal body. In short, no great public purpose is served by re-defining offices of profit to permit parliamentarians to retain their seats as well as occupy such offices.

It is ironical, therefore, that the one office where a parliamentarian's role could be justified was Sonia Gandhi's as chairperson of the National Advisory Council. This newspaper is among those who have felt that, through the council, she has pushed government policy in directions that are not always wise. But that is another matter. In essence, the position of the NAC chairperson is the same as that of the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission""an office that has rightly been excluded from being covered by the law in question. On the other hand, private businessmen, who today become MPs more often than in an earlier age, surely have conflicts of interest if they use their position to plead for businesses that they run or own. If such a businessman does desire a role in public life, he should be required to formally distance himself from his businesses. In some ways, therefore, the law on conflict of interest (for, that is what the issue of office of profit is about) should be tightened, not reduced to a mockery of its original form.