What lies ahead Unfortunate reality
With reference to the editorial Don't revive inspector raj (Business Standard, November 24), there can’t be two views that doling out of the ‘discretionary’ powers to the tax officials is fraught with the risk of them being misused. The manner in which the centre is currently threatening the citizens through search and seizures, income-tax notices and even invocation of the legal provisions of sever-year imprisonment in times to come, there are genuine apprehensions among common men as to what lies ahead. One also fails to comprehend why the government is maintaining a stoic silence on the issue of proactively acting against the concealed political funding by various political parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
There are enough reasons to believe that should an inspector rajre-enter, witch hunting of innocent people and even honest tax payers can't be ruled out. Are all these “depositors” other than our honourable ministers, MPs and MLAs tax evaders?
Are we headed for yet another Emergency? During the infamous 1975-77 Emergency, the nation had helplessly witnessed the unprecedented misuse of official powers at the behest of the then all-powerful Congress government. Since the Modi-led BJP government also enjoys an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, a similar thing cannot perhaps be ruled out post-December 30. Why isn’t the government talking about monitoring of the deposits made or to be made by these inspectors also? Vinayak G Bengaluru demonetises the currency all of a sudden and mandates that the maximum you are allowed to exchange is ~4,000.
Next day, the woman goes to the bank and the bank exchanges ~4,000. What about the balance cash with her? The bank will not replace the cash as the exchange has been mandated only once. Nor is she able to open a bank account now with the balance cash as it is not a legal tender anymore. First of all, there is no law which mandates opening and operating a bank account. So, anybody can hold cash legally without any limit (provided it is from income subjected to tax). Second, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has promised in writing on the currency note “promise to pay the bearer the sum of so and so rupees”. Isn’t the RBI at fault for giving a false promise? Think over it.
Rajesh Menon Mumbai This refers to the article, Towards a swachh chunav mission by Nitin Desai, dated November 24, 2016. During the debate that took place in the Constituent Assembly, Prof. KT Shah was critical of the “heavy cost of seeking representation”, which inevitably led to the failure of democracy in actual practice. He, therefore, suggested that all election expenses be paid out of the public treasury and that anyone who fails to secure less than 10 percentage of votes should not be entitled to claim such expenses. To ensure that candidates, who for lack of funds, would otherwise not be able to come forward for public service, he suggested that the scale of expenditure should be laid down so that there is “no abuse of this privilege”. The Constituent Assembly, however, did not explicitly lay down any provision for simultaneous elections to panchayats, local bodies, state assemblies and Parliament. However, Syed Muhammad Saadulla did express his views on the objection raised against simultaneous elections — “the bogey of expenditure”.
It is unfortunate that even today elections in India are influenced more by the personality of the candidates contesting the elections than larger electoral issues. Shreyans Jain Delhi