Political parties ‘mum’ on socio-economic justice: CJI
NEW DELHI: Chief Justice of India Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar on Saturday said that although political parties talk about economic reforms and globalisation in their manifestos they never link the achievements of economic growth with the constitutional goal of socio-economic justice for the SC/STs and other weaker sections of society.
Pointing out that the manifestos of different parties were “remarkably” similar, Khehar said that the problem arises in their implementation where the generation of wealth is compartmentalised.
He said there was no link with the goal of socio-economic justice as spelt out in the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution.
Khehar said that it was always easy to speak of constitutional values and all the more easy to speak in abstract.
He said that the question is “How to operate the economic system for the good governance of the people through constitutional means”. He also said that economic growth has to be coupled with economic justice and economic harmony.
Khehar expressed his candid views in his address at the inauguration of the two-day all India seminar on ‘Economic Recovery with reference to Electoral Issues’ organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry.
Calling for the accountability of the elected representatives, President Pranab Mukherjee in his inaugural address said that all the political parties will have to develop a voluntary code of conduct for their working.
He said that except for the two general elections of 1957 and 1984, in no election since has any party in the Lok Sabha secured 50 plus percentage of votes.
Even in 1984, the Congress under late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi got only 48.6 per cent of votes.
Mukherjee said that the difficulty was that those getting less than 50 per cent votes and not in power have “every thing but no accountability”.
Calling for a healthy debate, the President said that Parliament was not just a deliberating body but also a decision making body.