Author: Editorial
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: May 26, 2006
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/260506-editorial.html
The Lok Sabha Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee,
clearly finds it hard to shun his past political predilections while conducting
himself in an impartial and dignified manner as per the demands of the high
constitutional office. Indeed, a life-long Communist seeped in the party's
orthodoxy, he was a wrong choice for the Speaker's job, to begin with.
Someone less political, less partisan would
have filled the bill far better. But because he had come to occupy the high
chair in the House after the leftists had gained a decisive say in the ruling
dispensation at the Centre, Chatterjee seemed to be under some kind of a compulsion
to further burnish his ideological credentials. Thus, opposition members have
been often constrained to complain against his partiality for his erstwhile
colleagues.
For someone who was not a great parliamentarian,
notwithstanding that pro forma best parliamentarian of the year award, tending
to confuse high decibel noise for reasoned debate, Speaker Chatterjee's haughty
demeanour inside and outside the House came as an added irritation for quite
a few members. Two recent but separate instances have further buttressed the
controversial nature of the Speaker.
If only he had been a little more solicitous
of the high respect and dignity in which his office ought to be held by members
cutting across party lines, Chatterjee would have gone to some lengths to
avoid both these highly avoidable controversies. The first pertains to the
gratuitous reprimand administered to the former Lok Sabha Secretary-General
Subhash Kashyap for allegedly casting aspersions on the good and great LS
Speaker.
As Kashyap has reiterated time and again,
he actually said nothing to cause any offence to the Speaker. Commenting on
the tantrum of the Trinamool Congress leader, Mamata Banerjee, in a television
discussion, Kashyap noted that the Speaker had disallowed her motion on the
very legitimate ground that a similar motion on the same issue had been earlier
accepted by him from the leader of the Opposition, L.K. Advani. But inter
alia he also recalled the fact that Mamata Banerjee had first entered the
Lok Sabha after defeating Chatterjee.
Now, this was neither offensive nor untruthful.
Kashyap did not suggest that Chatterjee had given the ruling he gave because
he had once been defeated by the member concerned. No, he merely recalled
for the benefit of the viewers that Banerjee had once defeated Chatterjee
and maybe she found it hard to accept him as a fair and just Speaker.
If the privileges committee in its wisdom
deemed it fit to summon Kashyap to the bar of the House to administer him
the said reprimand, Chatterjee as the custodian of the House's powers and
privileges ought to have used his authority to dissuade members eager to please
him not to set a wrong precedent, not to misuse the powers of privilege vested
in them to humiliate a respected citizen who had spent a life-time serving
the Lok Sabha in various capacities, finally rising to the post of its Secretary-General.
At least after the Opposition BJP dissociated
itself from the decision of the privileges committee, Chatterjee ought to
have put his foot down against the reprimand of Kashyap. After all, members
of the ruling coalition were being needlessly overzealous in his defence.
The second case is no less serious.
By choosing to launch a broadside against
Chief Election Commissioner B B Tandon for the latter's unexceptionable action
in listing him along with several other MPs who were facing inquiries for
alleged violation of the office-of-profit law, Chatterjee showed his peevishness.
His mean-spirited attack on the CEC, ironically, was motivated by his felt
need to protect the constitutional office of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha.
Quite clearly, Chatterjee seemed to be oblivious that the Election Commission
was not concerned here with Chatterjee the Speaker but with Chatterjee the
Lok Sabha MP.
A complaint was made against him by a TMC
member that as the chairman of the Shantiniketan Development Authority he
was in conflict with the office-of-profit law. Whether Chatterjee drew any
salary or received any perks was not material because according to the case
law even without these you could still be in breach of the said provision.
But the Speaker showed rank poor taste in
abusing the CEC, though the latter had no option than to treat the complaint
against him at par with similar complaints against a number of other MPs.
The EC could not have deleted the complaint against Chatterjee merely because
he was holding the high office of the Speaker.
If that logic were to be followed, the courts
ought not to have entertained election petitions against Indira Gandhi since
she had since become Prime Minister. Chatterjee failed to appreciate that
he was an MP first and the Speaker later.
Such awful constitutional manners, such mean-spiritedness,
such lack of appreciation of the honour and dignity of a high constitutional
functionary which CEC certainly is, reflects poorly on the Lok Sabha Speaker.
He would do well not to play the injured party and instead try consciously
to be seen to be fair and independent so long as he sits in the exalted chair
of the LS Speaker.
