Opposition tears into Govt: NCT Bill unconstitutional, anti-democratic

Leader after leader from the Opposition ranks also took potshots at BJD and YSRCP, the parties that supported the Bill despite being in government in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Initiating the discussion, Congress’s Abhishek Singhvi said that “all those who are supporting the Bill should remember that someday this anti-federal knock will come at your door…. What is happening to the Delhi government today can happen to you, too…everybody’s number can come.”

His party colleague P Chidambaram said he can understand the full support given by BJP to the Bill but cannot understand “the half-hearted support” given by BJD and YSRCP.

While AAP’s Raghav Chadha said the Bill was aimed at taking away the powers of an elected government, Singhvi said it is “completely unconstitutional, fundamentally anti-democratic, a front assault on the regional voice and aspirations of the people of Delhi; (it) violates all principles of federalism and all norms of civil service accountability and all models of Assembly-based democracy.”

Chadha said the Bill is “the most anti-Constitutional, illegal, undemocratic legislation ever presented” in the House. He said BJP had been fighting from 1977 to 2015 seeking full statehood for Delhi. “This Bill is an insult not only to democracy and the Constitution but also to (BJP leaders) Lal Krishna Advani, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Madan Lal Khurana, Sushma Swaraj and their 40 years of struggle,” the AAP MP said.

The real reason for bringing this Bill is that BJP has lost six elections in Delhi in the last 25 years, he said. “They know they won’t be able to win in the next 25 years as well. So they are trying to destroy the state government,” Chadha said.

Several Opposition MPs said the Bill is an attempt to “illegally power grab through the backdoor”.

Chidambaram said the Law Ministry knows the Bill is “unconstitutional”. He said the government thinks this Bill is a model for Delhi. The Centre had invented a model for J&K, too, which is in court today, Chidambaram said. “We are breaking the Constitutional machinery by passing this Bill. We are breaking the Constitutional machinery envisaged. We broke it on August 5, 2019, in Kashmir — divided a state into two Union Territories (and) sending a chill in the spines of every state that any state can be broken into Union Territories,” he said.

“You have no Constitutional authority to pass this Bill…you don’t even have the moral authority,” he said.

Singhvi said no government in the past had tried to “overrule” two judgments of the Constitution bench of the Supreme Court on the status of National Capital Territory. The Bill, Singhvi and many other Opposition MPs said, violates the basic structure and eliminates the accountability of civil service.

Singhvi asked: “Why did no other government create an authority where the Chief Minister of Delhi is in a minority? Why did no other government empower two bureaucrats to overrule an elected Chief Minister?…. Why did no government make it available to the L-G’s powers to appoint heads of regulatory agencies…all of Delhi, for Delhi, by Delhi, funded and budgeted by the NCT government but the power of appointment is with the L-G. This government and this Bill has done it all.”

Singhvi said it was not done earlier because “unfortunately, it is the ‘fitrat’ (trait) of this control-freak government, whose visiting card appears to be vendetta, whose identity badge is of a graceless and fuming electoral loser, whose approach is to control, control and control by hook or by crook — usually more by crook and less by hook. Make no mistake about it.”

The Congress leader said the Bill, which envisages creation of a National Capital Civil Service Authority empowered to recommend transfers and postings of all Group A and DANICS officers, will render the CM powerless. “The authority will have three people — Chief Secretary, Principal Secretary and the Chief Minister, who will be the chairman. It is a strange situation. The quorum is of two people and he will be the chairman without a chair,” Singhvi said.

“An elected chief executive will be under two secretaries. These two secretaries will sit and decide and the Chief Minister will just be a mute spectator,” Singhvi said. “He can only give a dissent note. Then the decision and the recommendation will go to the super-CM, and then to the super-boss, who is sitting before us — the Home Minister.”

The L-G will also appoint the heads of all the boards, he said.

DMK’s Tiruchi Siva said the CM will become a “rubber stamp” if the Bill comes into force.

“In the annals of history is legislation…I have not seen Bills like this. The Secretary of the department is made in charge of preparing and authenticating every memo, including cabinet notes…. Disagreements between the secretary and minister have to be recorded in writing and then sent to the L-G…and Secretary may write on the note which he sends to the L-G why the Secretary thinks the council of ministers is taking a decision (that is) contrary to law…” Singhvi said.

“It makes the elected government hollow, a chief minister paralysed and unable to act, any minister shivering before his or her secretary and the bureaucracy looking up to L-G even for sneezing — and the L-G, of course, looking up to the Home Ministry,” he said.

The Bill, Singhvi said, “eliminates two out of the three interlocking fundamental, distinct chains and institutions which form the bedrock of any Assembly-based democracy and therefore they hit at the root of the basic structure: a political executive through the council of ministers answerable to the people, a civil service answerable to the political executive and hence accountable to the people through the political executive…the Bill eliminates two and three…. The object is not to make Hamlet the Prince of Denmark…not even the slave of Denmark, but to take over Denmark itself…. It is to make Denmark a hollow shell… (just) substitute NCT for Denmark.”

Singhvi said: “The civil service after this Bill will jump, bend, crawl, answer at the behest of an external agency — be it the Home Ministry of the super-Chief Minister. There is not even a token diarchy of powers between the CM and the L-G. It converts an impartial civil service into a dictatorial civil service…. It is a real example of that forgotten serial — ‘Yes Minister’…the civil servant is saying only, ‘No minister’,” Singhvi said.

The Opposition bloc also got support from the BRS, which called the Bill as a move to usurp powers of the elected Delhi government. Calling it a regressive Bill, RJD’s Manoj Kumar Jha slammed one clause that a quorum will be made under the chairmanship of the CM, saying it is “an instrument to decimate the idea of an elected government”.

Tiruchi Siva of DMK said the Bill infringes upon the spirit of democracy and the Constitution. Arguing that the Bill is against Constitutional morality, Siva said an elected state government is answerable to the people and noted that democracy is in peril. “If something is passed by the (state) government, the Governor does not endorse…either the Central government encroaches or the Governor does on its behalf,” Siva said.

Alluding to the Prime Minister, TMC’s Derek O’Brien asked, “Why a child of democracy would mutilate democracy? Why would he ensure that one-third of the Bills passed in Parliament in the last three years would be anti-federal?”

Editor’s note: The article was updated after certain remarks by Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha were expunged by the Chair