Speed is key

Questions arising from the CBI court summons

The summons issued by the special Central Bureau of Investigation court looking into coal mine allocations to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as well as to Hindalco head Kumar Mangalam Birla and former Coal Secretary P C Parakh, gives rise to several disturbing questions. Naturally, as is the custom, judgment on culpability must be deferred till the due process of law is completed. However, given the nature of this case, and its potential to cause grave systemic harm in the absence of solid closure one way or the other, the process itself must be completed at the earliest. It will do incalculable damage if the legal process is allowed to drag on for years. The court should perhaps look into ways to speed up proceedings, for example by minimising adjournments. Once such a process has been set in motion, by the initial First Information Report, it is perhaps difficult in the Indian system for it to stop short of the designated end-point of a court judgment, however desirable that may be. But at the very least this designated end-point should not endlessly retreat into the future.

The reason why this summons is of note is that it raises questions over what was previously considered perfectly acceptable behaviour. Can the act of a meeting between members of the executive and representatives of a private company, in order for the company to put its case for a change in a government ruling, be considered evidence of a criminal conspiracy? If so, then the existing interface between government and business will need to be overhauled, though it is far from certain what other systems could replace it. In this case, the accusation is that the Prime Minister’s Office, in response to a plea from Mr Birla’s Hindalco and the Odisha government, suggested to the coal ministry that the company be granted a share in an Odisha coal mine that had been reserved for the public sector. Whether that decision is conspiracy or the normal functioning of government is what is at issue. But, for the moment, the pressing question is this: can other such decisions, taken by various bureaucrats and ministers, be hauled up in this manner, years later, for investigation? This is certainly a question that many in the corridors of power will be asking themselves, and it is a question that will have a chilling effect on already slow decision-making.

The government should draw the right lessons from this episode. The importance of distancing the political executive from such decision making has been underlined. The first step has been taken, in the introduction of an auction-based system for coal. There are important further steps, however — these auctions are limited by the choices made by the executive as to which mines are in which “category”. The government must step back from such constraints, too. And, most important of all, a genuinely independent regulator – with pricing power, and not under the control of the coal ministry – is necessary.