Accountability matters

In his K.N. Katju memorial lecture delivered recently, BJP leader Arun Jaitley pointed to the stark contrast between the accountability of politicians and lack of accountability of judges.

In his K.N. Katju memorial lecture delivered recently, BJP leader Arun Jaitley pointed to the stark contrast between the accountability of politicians and lack of accountability of judges. 8220;If the judiciary can intervene in the matters of executive by claiming that executive has not been able to deliver, then why cannot the same logic be applied vice versa and let executive intervene and usurp the powers of an incompetent judiciary that is just not delivering on its basic responsibility? After all, there are more than 2.5 crore pending cases in the courts of India and this number is showing no signs of subsidence,8221; Jaitley said.

In a TV discussion the very next day, eminent lawyers including Ravi Shankar Prasad and Abhishek Manu Singhvi stressed upon the need for rethinking the collegium system. They were of the view that when judges were appointed by the judiciary and executive, the quality of appointees was much higher. After the selection went purely into the hands of a collegium of judges, it has been questionable whether the same quality could be sustained.

EC in charge

Hats off to the Chief Election Commissioner CEC N. Gopalaswamy for his outstanding management of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections. Gopalaswamy along with Navin Chawla and S.Y. Qureshi, the other election commissioners, has achieved everything he set out to. This time every political party has distributed much higher amounts of money among the candidates than in the past. At Rs 50 lakh per candidate, the Samajwadi Party has shelled out the maximum amount, meaning that Rs 200 crore have been distributed among candidates apart from the whopping expenses. But the sweet irony is that the candidates have no idea how to spend this windfall. The restrictions imposed by EC imply that no banners, posters, cutouts or hoardings can be used by candidates. No more than three cars can be part of an election convoy.

Third strike

Once again there are desperate attempts to stitch together a third front. A recent congregation of the proposed third front in Allahabad turned out to be a convention of defeated leaders. Jayalalithaa, Om Prakash Chautala, Chandrababu Naidu and Brindaban Goswami have all lost their sway in Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Assam respectively.

There is another peculiar similarity 8212; all of them confront serious corruption charges.

In my opinion, the only option left for Mulayam Singh is to join the NDA as the third front is bound to be a non-starter.

The writer is a Congress MP in Rajya Sabha