Anyone who expected professional advice from Shubhashis Gangopadhyay’s article “Corruption: Let’s be professional about it” (April 23) would have been disappointed. To be professional one must get the Constitution right. He has called the drafting body of the anti-corruption law extra-constitutional because it was not chosen by the people. And his other argument is that in a democracy law-making should be left to elected representatives.
The author has confused law-drafting and law-making. Drafting can be done by a government agency, namely, the drafting section of the law ministry but it can also be done by an average citizen. Plenty of laws are drafted by individuals and they are called private Bills. There is no restriction on drafting a law. Parliament usually rejects them but there is nothing unconstitutional about a Bill being drafted by a person or a group of people. After all, the draft will be discussed in Parliament, sent to a standing committee and finally put to vote. One must remember that five ministers (including the veteran Pranab Mukherjee), one ex-judge of the Supreme Court and two veteran lawyers are on the drafting panel. They would never agree to do something so unconstitutional.
Sukumar Mukhopadhyay, New Delhi
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