Opinion The political thicket
Court would do well not to enter it, even as it is concerned about the political vacuum in Delhi.
By issuing notice to the Congress and BJP “to know their position” on government formation in Delhi, the Supreme Court may have intervened on an issue best left to politics. The court has sought explanations from both parties for the continuing impasse in Delhi, while suggesting solutions. “If parties can come together on an issue to defeat the sitting chief minister of a party,” it observed, referring to the BJP and Congress opposing the Arvind Kejriwal-led government’s attempts to introduce the Jan Lokpal Bill in the Delhi Assembly, “it has to be supposed that anything can happen.” Politics is, indeed, the art of the possible, especially so ahead of a general election. But it should not be the court’s business to facilitate coalitions, unlikely or otherwise. Its legitimate concerns regarding the continuity of government and governance in Delhi may have prompted it to hear a petition filed by the AAP against the imposition of President’s rule in the NCT. But while parties use legal and quasi-legal tools to fight political battles — from filing FIRs to alleging violations of the EC’s model code of conduct — the apex court would be unwise to appear to lend legitimacy to their claims and counterclaims.
In effectively asking two opposing parties to come together to form a government in Delhi, the SC may be going against the spirit of its own verdict in the landmark S.R.Bommai case: “… since the president is not expected to record his reasons for his subjective satisfaction, it would be equally difficult for the court to enter ‘the political thicket’ to ascertain what weighed” behind the imposition of president’s rule. Just as it would be unthinkable for the court to recommend one or another coalition to salvage a hung Parliament at the Centre, it is inappropriate for it to wade into the resolution of the political tangle in Delhi.
The court’s remarks on the political vacuum in Delhi may even confirm a growing — and disquieting — tendency of the judiciary to take on questions that rightfully belong in other domains. In recent years, this phenomenon has been stoked by the perceived weakening of, and abdication by, other institutions, such as the executive and legislature. Well-intentioned though the court is, it must not exert itself in ways that could ultimately undermine its own hard-won authority, or unsettle the constitutional design of checks and balances by inviting suspicions of judicial overreach.
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