GOVT BRINGING THIRD PILLAR OF DEMOCRACY TO STANDSTILL: SC

A MAJORITY OF THE MEETINGS ARE NOW HELD TO ENSURE SMOOTH FUNCTIONING OF THE HOUSE: DATA

NEW DELHI: Citing massive vacancies of judges across the high courts in the country, the Supreme Court on Monday blasted the Union government for bringing the “third pillar of democracy to a standstill” by not appointing judges and warned that the government’s administration will also come to a standstill if this attitude continues.

“The government authority must realise that this is not how it will work. If you want to bring the judicial system to a standstill, your system will also come to a standstill... The line has been crossed by the government. You cannot let the third pillar of democracy to come to a standstill,” rued a bench of justices SK Kaul and Hrishikesh Roy.

As on August 1, a total of 455 posts of high court judges were lying vacant in the 25 high courts across the country.

The ambit of the long-standing culture of holding all-party meetings on crucial national and international issues appears to have narrowed over the years, government data indicates, with such meetings largely focussing on parliamentary affairs in recent years.

While the all-party meetings were mostly chaired by the Prime Minister, the home ministry and the finance ministry on various issues in the governments led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, a large majority of those under the current ruling dispensation have been chaired by the parliamentary affairs ministry for the smooth functioning of the House, the official data shows.

Records available with the minings istry of parliamentary affairs show that Prime Minister Vajpayee’s government was most active in calling such meetings. Between 1998 and 2004, 31 all-party meetings were held.

To be sure, the Narendra Modiled government has held more such meetings — 26 — in the last seven years than the Manmohan Singh-led government, which held 17 all-party meetings in 10 years, it said.

The data shows that during the last seven years, routine all-party meetings have been held every year ahead of Parliament sessions. The meetings were organised on the same subject: smooth functioning of the sessions. On three occasions of the 26 gatherings, all related to the raging pandemic, PM Modi chaired the meetings with floor leaders of Parliament since March 2020. The three meetwere crucial, as many policy directives including those on how to end the federal lockdown were discussed, and the Centre announced that the lockdown would not be stopped abruptly. One meeting, in September 2016, was chaired by the Union home minister on the state of affairs in Jammu & Kashmir. The 23 remaining meetings were chaired by the parliamentary affairs minister or his ministry.

In the previous two regimes, the PM, home minister and the finance minister presided a larger number of the meetings.

Vajpayee presided over 23 out of the 31 meetings that were called on a variety of subjects under his leadership. On March 10, 2003, floor leaders met to discuss “the evolving situation with regard to Iraq” followed by another meeting on the “current situation in Iraq” on March 22 in the same year. In 1998, months after Vajpayee came to power, two all-party meetings were held on the women’s reservation bill on October 7 and December 9.

A drought situation in 2000 and an earthquake in Gujarat in the same year led to an all-party meeting headed by the Prime Minister. During Singh’s government, parliamentary party leaders met to discuss “rising prices of essential commodities in India” on November 23, 2009. A meeting was also held on the land acquisition bill on April 9 and 18, 2013, while Reservation in Promotions SCs & STs in the Posts and Services was discussed at an all-party meeting at PM Singh’s house on August 8, 2012.

The latest all-party meeting on Covid-19 in the current government was held on July 18. PM Modi chaired the physical meeting at the Parliament annex and the Union health ministry gave a detailed briefing to several floor leaders on the progress related to vaccines, and Covid management.

An all-party meeting chaired by defence minister Rajnath Singh was a near possibility during the ongoing Parliament session to end the logjam over Opposition protests triggered by the Pegasus issue and over three contentious farm laws. It, however, has not happened so far as the Opposition has remained firm on its demand for a debate on the Pegasus row. Government managers, who were negotiating with the Opposition leaders for a breakthrough, saw little merit in such a meeting when the outcome appeared to be predetermined, a person aware of the matter said.

“It is always expected that the government of the day will hold all-party meetings on important internal and external developments regularly. All-party meetings can, at times, facilitate better functioning of Parliament, but frequent consultations with other parties, taking them on board, can help bring down political temperature of the country. In the past, Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao had even sent Leader of the Opposition Atal Bihari Vajpayee to UNGA,” said former Lok Sabha secretary general P Sreedharan.