Executive disorder

All it needed was a directive from the court. All Shibu Soren required to abandon his fugitive ways was a simple ultimatum from the Jharkhand high court. So, come next week, and the JMM chief will surrender in the Jamtara court and hearings in the 1975 Chirrudih massacre case will move apace. Soren is back in Ranchi and all is presumably well with the political class. We should have known it would require a judicial touch. In the past couple of weeks, the country has helplessly watched an audacious scripting of what could become a precedent: a full-fledged minister in the Union cabinet going AWOL when a couple of cops arrive at his doorstep with an arrest warrant. Before and after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sought his resignation, a case has repeatedly been made by spokespersons of the UPA government that it was in fact acceptable for Soren to be on the run from the law in a “politically motivated” case, pending word from the courts.

It is easy to get lost in the political dimensions of the Soren episode and see it as part of an unfolding confrontation between the NDA and the UPA. Yet, it is part of another — rather longer — trend in Indian statecraft. In a recurring stacking up of political compulsions against issues of national interest — in terms of their repercussions on the state’s constitutional obligations and their moral implications — there is an alarming tendency of the state to leave it to the courts to impart clarity on the rights and wrongs of a matter. It goes like this. The government of the day concedes that it cannot take a moral or executive stand and refers the issue to the courts. It may be the government’s call. But since it lacks the strength to risk political setbacks or existing applecarts in making the obvious move, it chooses to pass the buck. It’s happened time and again over the past decade and more. Just this month, the SYL canal issue was referred by the UPA government to the Supreme Court under Article 143.

Yes, there is another tendency. To bemoan judicial activism. But at a time when the executive is becoming increasingly wary of owning responsibility for commenting and acting upon issues that could be politically contentious, when it clings to judicial cover for what should be executive decisions, the complaint is somewhat misplaced.