📰 Debate in Parliament and not jeer at each other for nation to be world leader: Supreme Court
‘After 75 years of Independence, elected members are expected to show statesmanship and not brinkmanship’
•A nation aspiring to be a "world leader" should debate on the welfare of its citizens rather than make Parliament a stage to exchange jeers and launch personal attacks on one another, the Supreme Court said in a judgment on Friday.
•To see Members of Parliament and Legislative Assemblies ridicule each other instead of engaging in constructive debates in Houses is hardly worthy of the claim that "we are the oldest civilisation on the planet and the world’s largest democracy".
•With the completion of 75 years of Independence and ambitions of becoming a world leader, elected members should at least know that they are expected to show statesmanship and not brinkmanship in the House.
•"For becoming world leaders and self-dependent/reliant, quality of debates in the House ought to be of the highest order," a three-judge Bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar said in the judgment.
•Legislature is the first place where justice is dispensed to the common man through a democratic process, it observed.
Suspension of 12 BJP MLAs
•The order dealt with the year-long suspension of 12 BJP MLAs from the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly for disorderly conduct.
•Parliament or the State legislatures are no places to create a ruckus. "It is a place where policies and laws are propounded for governing the citizenry. It is here that the entire range of activities concerning the masses until the last mile, are discussed and their destinies are shaped," Justice Khanwilkar, who authored the judgment, wrote.
•The goal of the House was to ensure the welfare and happiness of "we the people of this nation".
•The court pointed out that Parliament/ Assemblies were becoming more and more an intransigent place. "The philosophical tenet that one must agree to disagree is seldom seen during debates... It has become common to hear that the House could not complete its usual scheduled business and most of the time had been spent in jeering and personal attacks against each other," it noted.
•The Bench, also comprising Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and C.T. Ravikumar, said disheartened observers felt it was high time to take corrective steps.
•Justice Khanwilkar observed, "Aggression during the debates has no place in the setting of country governed by the Rule of Law. Even a complex issue needs to be resolved in a congenial atmosphere by observing collegiality and showing full respect and deference towards each other".
Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan occupy second and third slots
•Maharashtra tops India’s list in the number of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) owned by entrepreneurs from the Scheduled Castes with as many as 96,805 enterprises.
•Tamil Nadu with 42,997 enterprises and Rajasthan with 38,517 units occupy the second and third slots, according to the data furnished by the Office of the Development Commissioner in the Union Ministry of MSME exclusively to The Hindu regarding the number of SC-owned enterprises covered under the Udyam system of registration.
•The fourth, fifth and sixth slots belong to Uttar Pradesh (36,913 units), Karnataka (28,803 enterprises) and Punjab (24,503 units) respectively. As on January 23, 2022, the number of SC-owned enterprises at the all-India level was 4,53,972, of which micro enterprises accounted for 4,50,835, small – 3,004 and medium - 133.
•Generally, the proportion of enterprises owned by Scheduled Caste entrepreneurs in the overall national tally of MSMEs is 6%.
•The Udyam system of registration, which came into force on July 1, 2020, is a pre-requisite for any MSME (regardless of the social category of ownership) to avail itself of concessions or benefits from the Central and State governments and the last date for migration to Udyam has been extended up to March 31, 2022, said K.K. Sharma, General Manager, National SC/ST Hub.
•Mr. Sharma, however, clarified that this stipulation is only in respect of MSMEs, which want to get covered under schemes of the governments including priority sector lending of banks. Otherwise, the enterprises, which had registered themselves under the previous system such as Udyog Aadhar Memorandum (UAM), can carry on their business.
•A perusal of the data on registration of enterprises under the two systems - Udyam (July 1, 2020 to January 23, 2022) and UAM (September 1, 2015 to June 30, 2020) revealed that under the latter system, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh were in the first, third and fourth places with 1,46,244 enterprises; 1,33,552 and 1,08,715 enterprises respectively whereas, under Udyam, their numbers stood at 23,195, 36,913 and 19,875 respectively.
•Asked about the wide variation in the numbers of registered units with regard to the northern States, Mr. Sharma and Milind Kamble, founder chairman of the Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DICCI), explained that the Udyam system of registration is more streamlined than the previous Udyog Aadhar Memorandum. There is no room for duplication under the new system, which has a provision for integration with the GSTN (Goods and Services Tax Network). Mr. Sharma acknowledged that the UAM had suffered from rampant duplication while Mr. Kamble pointed out that detailing is greater under Udyog than the other system.
📰 India willing to talk to Pakistan on pilgrim flights
Sources say agreement on sending humanitarian aid to Afghanistan through Pakistan likely shortly
•India is “positive” and “willing to engage” in talks with Pakistan on upgrading the 1974 joint protocol on religious pilgrimages to allow air travel as well as increase the number of shrines pilgrims from both countries could visit, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Friday.
•The government’s response follows a report in The Hindu earlier this week that the Pakistan government had sent a proposal from the Pakistan Hindu Council (PHC) to allow a group of 170 pilgrims to fly directly from Karachi and Lahore to places of worship in India.
•The MEA also confirmed that it hoped to secure clearances to transport food aid to Afghanistan over the land route to Pakistan, which is otherwise closed, shortly.
•“There is an interest on both sides to expand the agreed list of shrines and mode of travel. Let me underline that India has a positive approach on this matter and is willing to engage the Pakistani side,” said MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi in response to a question from The Hindu. The government hoped that the current time period when COVID-19 restrictions were in place could be “utilised to hold discussions under the bilateral protocol”, he stated and hoped to facilitate “early exchange of visits to all shrines of interest to pilgrims”.
•While the MEA’s statement indicates the permissions requested for flights beginning January 29 have not been granted at present, the offer of talks with Pakistan on renegotiating the joint protocol is a rare departure from other issues where both sides have suspended talks for several years.
•Sources noted that India had conveyed its position to Pakistan through formal channels as well, and officials on both sides could meet early next week to iron out the details of how to upgrade the protocols that mandate up to 20 visits by each side to the other, of groups including Hindu, Muslim and Sikh pilgrims.
•The new proposal, sent by the PHC, calls for pilgrim flights every month from each country to the other side, to give a push to its “faith tourism initiative”.
•“Even if there is some delay in agreeing to the flights, it is heartening that both governments are positive about the proposal,” its head Ramesh Kumar Vankwani said.
High Commission’s tweets
•The Pakistan High Commission here did not comment on the MEA statement. However, in a series of tweets about the impact of faith tourism and the newly reopened Kartarpur corridor, it said it had issued a visa to Indian national Sika Khan, who had reunited with his brother, Pakistani national Muhammed Siddique, after their separation during Partition, at Kartarpur this month.
•“The story of the two brothers is a powerful illustration of how the historic opening of the visa-free Kartarpur Sahib Corridor in November 2019 by Pakistan is bringing people closer to each other,” the High Commission said.
•The MEA spokesperson also struck a positive note on the ongoing discussions over India’s proposal to send 500,000 tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan as humanitarian aid that has been awaiting Pakistan government permissions for months despite a formal announcement by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan clearing the proposal in November. India has sent about 500,000 COVID-19 vaccines and 5.6 tonnes of medical assistance to Kabul via special flights.
•“The [Indian] government is committed to providing humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people, comprising food grains, COVID-19 vaccines and essential life-saving drugs,” Mr. Bagchi said at the weekly press conference. “The process to procure wheat and to arrange its transportation is currently underway. Naturally, this takes some time. We will share with you updates as soon as we have them. We hope to be able to do this shortly,” he added.
📰 At the Centre: On India-Central Asia summit
India must stay in step with the changes in the Central Asian region
•As the joint statement at the end of the India-Central Asia virtual summit on Thursday noted, ties between India and the region have been historically close, with “civilisational, cultural, trade and people-to-people linkages”, but the lack of access to land routes, and the situation in Afghanistan are among the biggest challenges. Hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the Presidents of the five Central Asian Republics (CARs), it was a first, building on years of dialogue. The summit also came after the meeting of NSAs in Delhi, where they built on several common themes of concern and priority. To begin with, there is the problem of routing trade — a paltry $2 billion, spent mostly on Kazakhstan’s energy exports to India. In comparison, China’s CAR trade figures have exceeded $41 billion — they could double by 2030 — apart from the billions of dollars invested in the Belt and Road Initiative. With Pakistan denying India transit trade, New Delhi’s other option is to smoothen the route through Iran’s Chabahar port, but that will involve greater investment in rail and road routes to Iran’s northern boundaries with the CARs, something India is hesitant to do in the face of U.S. sanctions. A third option is to use the Russia-Iran International North-South Transport Corridor via Bandar Abbas port, but this is not fully operational and at least two CARs (Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) are not members. India too, has dragged its feet over TAPI gas pipeline plans (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India), due to supply guarantees, given the tensions with Pakistan. Finally, there is Afghanistan: the tenuous link between Central Asia and South Asia, where after the Taliban takeover, there is no official government, a humanitarian crisis is building, and there are worries of terrorism and radicalism spilling over its boundaries. Each theme has been outlined in the summit joint statement as areas to work upon. They have also agreed to more structured engagement, including the setting up of joint working groups, on Afghanistan and Chabahar, and more educational and cultural opportunities.
•While the attempt by India to institutionalise exchanges and press the pedal on trade, investment and development partnerships with the CARs is timely, it is by no means the only country strengthening its ties here. While Russia is the most strategic player, China is now the biggest development and infrastructure partner to the countries. The CAR Presidents held a similar virtual summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier. Pakistan has also increased its outreach to the CARs, signing transit trade agreements, offering trade access to the Indian Ocean at Gwadar and Karachi. India will need to move nimbly to ensure it stays in step with the changes, and to make certain the future of ties more closely resembles the deep ties of the distant past.
📰 To the poll booth, with no donor knowledge
Worries over the electoral bond scheme go beyond its patent unconstitutionality — it befouls democracy and elections
•Late last year, the Union government authorised the State Bank of India to issue and encash a new tranche of electoral bonds, the 19th such parcel since the scheme’s notification in 2018. The timing of the announcement was predictable, with elections slated to be held to five different State Assemblies beginning next month. Now, as a result, voters in those States will go to the ballot box with no knowledge about the donors backing the various contestants.
Anything but transparent
•Ensuring citizens have access to information, especially material on political funding, one would think, is an essential feature of a democracy. But ever since its introduction, the electoral bond scheme has envenomed the democratic process, by destroying altogether any notion of transparency in political funding. In this time, the Supreme Court of India has paid scant attention to the issue. It has allowed the scheme to continue unabated and has denied an interim stay on its operation without so much as conducting a full-fledged hearing.
•In one such provisional order, the Court asserted that the bonds were not, in fact, anonymous. Voters interested in finding out the identity of political donors, the Bench said, could simply perform what the order described as “match the following.” According to the Court, since both the purchase and the encashment of bonds are made through banking channels, all it would take for a person to glean the identity of a donor was for her to look through every corporation’s financial statement — these records, the Court said, ought to be available with the Registrar of Companies.
Parties have no obligation
•Even assuming for a moment that voters have the resources to go through annual returns filed by every corporation in India, what the order ignored was that there is no attendant obligation on political parties to provide details to the public on each donation received by them through electoral bonds. Companies are also under no obligation to disclose the name of the party to whom they made the donation. Therefore, this “match the following” exercise apart, from being impossible to perform, will also do nothing to pierce the veil concealing the bonds. This is because anonymity is written into the programme’s ideals; it represents the basic leitmotif of the system.
•When he explained the contours of the electoral bond scheme to the Lok Sabha, the then Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stressed on this very feature. “The donor will know, which party he is depositing money to,” he said. “The political party will file return with the Election Commission [of India]. Now, which donor gave to which political party, that is the only thing which will not be known.” This avowed objective runs athwart one of the most basic features of a democracy, that the right to freedom of expression, which the Constitution guarantees, includes within it a right to know.
•The electoral bond scheme is designed to allow an individual, or any “artificial juridical person”, including body corporates, to purchase bonds issued by the State Bank of India during notified periods of time. These instruments are issued in the form of promissory notes, and in denominations ranging from ₹1,000 to ₹1 crore. Once purchased, the buyer can donate the bond to any political party of their choice and the party can then encash it on demand. The purchasers are not obliged to disclose to whom they presented the bond, and a political party encashing a bond is compelled to keep the donor’s identity secret.
Untenable arguments
•What is more, a series of restrictions that were in place before the scheme’s introduction have now been done away with. For example, amendments have been made removing a previous prohibition that disallowed a company from donating anything more than 7.5% of its net profits over the course of the preceding three years. Similarly, a mandate that a company had to have been in existence for at least three years before it could make donations (a requirement that was aimed at discouraging persons from using shell corporations to funnel money into politics) was also lifted.
•Thus, through its very architecture, the electoral bond scheme permits unlimited and anonymous corporate funding of political parties. In its defence, the Government says two things: one, that voters have no fundamental right to know how political parties are funded and two, that the scheme helps eliminate the role of black money in funding elections. On any reasonable examination, it ought to be clear that neither of these arguments is tenable.
•First, the Supreme Court has consistently held that voters have a right to freely express themselves during an election and that they are entitled to all pieces of information that give purpose and vigour to this right. Surely, to participate in the electoral process in a meaningful manner and to choose one’s votes carefully, a citizen must know the identity of those backing the candidates.
•Second, as affidavits filed by the Election Commission of India in the Supreme Court have demonstrated, the scheme, if anything, augments the potential role of black money in elections — it does so by, among other things, removing existing barriers against shell entities and dying concerns from donating to political parties.
•Moreover, even if the bonds were meant to eliminate the presence of unaccounted currency, it is difficult to see what nexus the decision to provide complete anonymity of the donor bears to this objective. Indeed, it is for this reason that the Reserve Bank of India reportedly advised the Government against the scheme’s introduction.
For the higher judiciary
•The worries over the electoral bond scheme, however, go beyond its patent unconstitutionality. This is because in allowing anonymity it befouls the basis of our democracy and prevents our elections from being truly free and fair. There are, therefore, few issues of greater moral urgency than this that are awaiting the Supreme Court’s consideration. Yet, despite challenges to the scheme having been launched quickly on the heels of its notification in 2018, the Court has failed to hear and decide on the programme’s validity.
•A delay in adjudication, as we have seen in a plethora of cases that are pending consideration, invariably presents a fait accompli. In this case, the damage from the pendency is all the starker, because the integrity of the electoral process is at stake. Judges of yore warned as far back as in 1957 of the threats posed by limitless corporate funding of elections. Chief Justice M.C. Chagla of the Bombay High Court predicted that any decision to allow companies to fund political parties might “ultimately overwhelm and even throttle democracy in this country”.
•Justice P.B. Mukharji of the Calcutta High Court used language that was stronger still. “To induce the Government of the day by contributing money to the political funds of political parties, is to adopt the most sinister principle fraught with grave dangers to commercial as well as public standards of administration,” he wrote. “…The individual citizens although in name equal will be gravely handicapped in their voice because the length of their contribution cannot ever hope to equal the length of the contribution of the big companies.”
•Today, those dangers are heightened by individual voters not only being in a position where they are unable to match contributions made by corporations but also find themselves in a position where they have no knowledge over the identity of the donors bankrolling the political establishment. Can there be a greater threat to our democracy?
