Posts Tagged ‘Narottam Mishra’
Two-sided pressure seemed to have forced Shivraj Singh Chouhan to constitute a five-member cabinet on Tuesday, almost a month after he was sworn in as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. Three members of the cabinet — Narottam Mishra, Kamal Patel, and Meena Singh – were part of the last Chouhan cabinet. The other two, Tulsi Silawat and Govind Singh Rajput, belong to Scindia group and were members of the Kamal Nath cabinet. They will have to get elected to the Assembly within six months.
MLAs (including half a dozen ministers) who went with Jyotiraditya Scindia out of the Congress, resigned from the Assembly and joined the BJP, were getting restive at having been reduced to nonentities. After patiently waiting for quite some time, Scindia met Home Minister Amit Shah to plead for early formation of cabinet in Madhya Pradesh and adjust his supporters as was reportedly promised by the BJP. Shah directed him to BJP President J P Nadda. The BJP President was said to have discussed the matter with Chouhan.
The second was a letter written jointly by lawyers and Members of Rajya Sabha Kapil Sibal and Vivek Tankha to President Ram Nath Kovind drawing his attention to the unconstitutional manner in which the Madhya Pradesh government was functioning. The letter said: “We wish to bring to your attention Article 163 of the Constitution which mandates a Council of Ministers to aid and advise the Governor in the exercise of his functions. The Governor cannot act without the advice of the Council of Minister headed by the Chief Minister. Additionally, the proviso to Article 164(A) provides for the minimum strength of the Council of Ministers to be not less than twelve including the Chief Minister. Here the Council is missing, only the head exists. The Governor has, therefore without jurisdiction acting on the advice of Shivraj Singh Chouhan alone, promulgated two Ordinances.” These were Madhya Pradesh Finance Ordinance and Madhya Pradesh Appropriation Ordinance.
The letter said that these Ordinances authorised the State government to burden the State with an additional loan of Rs 4,443 crore, and also allowed the government the withdrawal of over one Rs 1.66 lakh crore from the Consolidated Fund of the State for the finance year 2020-21. The Congress leaders said that this was an unconstitutional act. The letter said that it was a matter of constitutional shame that Madhya Pradesh holds the dubious record of a Chief Minister functioning without a government — that too, for the longest period in the country’s constitutional history.
The letter also referred to the BJP Task Force and observed: “This Task Force, led by the State BJP President, is set up ostensibly to advise the State government in tackling COVID-19 pandemic. The Task Force has no sanctity in law, cannot be held accountable, and yet controls the functioning of the one-man non-government show, the death knell of democracy. The blatant exercise of such undemocratic decision-making cannot be countenanced”.
Constitution of a notional cabinet only created problems for the BJP, more particularly for Chouhan. As the talks about cabinet formation were going on for some days, several BJP aspirants had assembled in Bhopal and it was left mainly to Chouhan to assuage their hurt. Gopal Bhargava, who was a senior minister in the last Chouhan government and Leader of the Opposition during the Congress government of Kamal Nath, was said to have conveyed his displeasure at having been left out to BJP President Nadda. Scindia was also said to be unhappy because he wanted all six of his supporters, who were ministers in the Kamal Nath government, to be included in the cabinet. There are others like Bisahulal Singh who had no love for Scindia but had gone with him because Kamal Nath had ignored his seniority by not making him a minister.
Chouhan’s helplessness can be gauged from the fact that he had not been able to distribute portfolios even 24 hours after the ministers were administered the oath but, in a farcical move, had given the ministers charge of different divisions and asked them to supervise the government measures to contain coronavirus.
BJP has not been able to constitute a Council of Ministers in Madhya Pradesh to help Shivraj Singh Chouhan who has been Chief Minister since March 23, nor has it been able to approve of a name to be appointed as Health Minister. However, an extra-constitutional body has been set up by the party high command to virtually work as the cabinet. It has been given the pompous name of ‘High-powered Special Task Force’. State BJP president V D Sharma is its convener.
its members include Chief Minister Chouhan; Suhas Bhagat, State BJP General Secretary (Organisation), who has been deputed by RSS to the BJP; BJP’s National General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya; former State BJP president Rakesh Singh, MP; Gopal Bhargava, who was a minister in the previous Chouhan government and Leader of Opposition during the Congress government of Kamal Nath; Narottam Mishra, Rajendra Shukla, Meena Singh, Tulsi Silavat and Jagdish Devda, all former ministers. Tulsi Silavat was Health Minister in the Kamal Nath government and was one of the 22 Congress MLAs who had gone out of the Congress along with Jyotiraditya Scindia.
The ‘Task Force’ was constituted by the BJP in a hush-hush manner, without making a formal announcement. According to a newspaper report, the ‘Task Force’ will review the steps taken by Chouhan to contain the coronavirus which appears to have gone out of control of the Chouhan government, the number of infected persons in the State having gone beyond 600. The Health Department of the State has been paralysed with over 70 of its personnel, right from Principal Secretary Pallavi Jain Govil downwards, in the grip of the virus.
This is a very unusual and extra-constitutional step by the BJP as the members of the party committee will practically work like ministers, being privy to official/confidential files/notings and aid and advise the chief minister which is the task of the Council of Ministers. They will be virtual ministers without any accountability. Such a framework of governance was never heard in the country in the past.
That apart, the constitution of the ‘Task Force’ is a bad news for Chouhan. It is a sort of no-confidence in Chouhan’s capability to handle the situation. The presence of some of his arch rivals in the Task Force, particularly of Kailash Vijayvargiya and Gopal Bhargava, is going to kill his joy of being the Chief Minister. This has also led to speculation that chouhan may be replaced as Chief Minister once the situation becomes normal.
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Shivraj Singh Chouhan was sworn in as Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh in the night of March 23. He has not so far formed his Council of Ministers; not even appointed Health Minister in spite of the raging coronavirus epidemic in the State.
Cabinet formation is not easy for Chouhan as there are several aspirants in the BJP for the ministerial berths. This is made more complicated by the 22 Congress MLAs who were purchased by the BJP and made to resign from the Assembly in order to bring down the Congress government of Kamal Nath. When these ex-MLAs joined BJP, some of them were assured of a place in the cabinet. BJP’s central leadership is too busy at the moment to pay attention to cabinet formation hassles in Madhya Pradesh.
Appointing a Health Minister is also not easy. Under normal circumstances, he would have taken Narottam Mishra who was Health Minister in his earlier cabinet. But now Chouhan is said to have become wary of Mishra because of his ambition. When the fall of the Kamal Nath government had become imminent, Mishra’s name had started doing the rounds, along with the names of Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, for the chief ministership. Besides, Mishra has proved himself to be as big a manipulator as Chouhan, with an expertise managing media and judiciary. Picking up someone else by ignoring Mishra is hazardous.
While Mishra was hinting to his ‘friends’ in the media that the chair of Chief Minister was going to be his, Chouhan made a sort of coup. Meeting of BJP Legislature Party to elect the leader was scheduled for March 24. Chouhan talked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi a few times on March 23, assembled the BJP legislators the same day at 6 PM and was elected leader. He was sworn in by Governor Lalji Tandon at 9 PM. Next day he won the trust vote in the Assembly while the Congress MLAs boycotted the session. At night the three-week country-wide lockdown was imposed by the Union Government.
In any case, Chouhan feels quite comfortable with bureaucrats, most of whom are much too pliable without bothering about morality and ethics. The few who feel troubled conscience in obeying Chouhan’s illegal or anti-people wishes are quietly side-lined. Chouhan does not believe in punishing bureaucrats so far as possible; rather he goes out of his way to help them when they are in trouble because of their corrupt or criminal actions. He had displayed his ‘benevolent’ attitude quite early in his tenure as Chief Minister. The office of Lokayukta, after a prolonged inquiry into corruption charges against an IAS officer, filed the charge-sheet in a court. The rules of service in vogue demanded that the officer should be placed under suspension as soon as a charge-sheet was filed against him. Chouhan amended the rules of service to help the IAS officer.
In another case, there was a Supreme Court directive (early 2011) to Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Madhya Pradesh police to complete the inquiry into corruption charges against an IAS officer within 90 days (that is, by April end) and put up the charge-sheet in a court. For public consumption, Chouhan had bragged before media persons that he would not rest till this officer was sent to jail. Soon thereafter, the officer was made Secretary, Women and Children Welfare Department, where he befriended Chouhan’s ambitious wife Sadhna Singh by inviting her to certain women-related activities and seeking her advice about women’s welfare. Forget the EOW and forget the Supreme Court and forget Chauhan’s boast that he would not rest till the officer was sent to jail. The officer retired as Chief Secretary. Chouhan is particularly considerate towards IPS officers who help him in running his mafia-type raj.
Election Commissioner O P Rawat surprised his admirers and detractors alike by his outburst at the blatant use of money and misuse of government machinery in the elections. This was not the Rawat I had known from his days in Madhya Pradesh, where he served in various important positions in the government; he was never known to speak publicly, and that too, in a harsh language, about what he was thinking on an issue. His detractors had, in fact, dubbed him as a ‘ghunna’ (one who keeps his strong feelings about something or somebody within himself).
That even Rawat should have lost his calm can only mean that the electoral process has reached such a low as to require immediate drastic measures to keep the people’s faith intact in the elections. Democracy thrives, Rawat observed, ‘when elections are free, fair and transparent’. Rawat shared his distress in his keynote address at the consultation on electoral and political reforms organised by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) in New Delhi in August.
He said, ‘it has come to the notice of the (Election) Commission that paid operators run by PR firms are being actively deployed to shape public opinion online. It appears to a cynical common man that we have been scripting a narrative that places maximum premium on winning at all costs to the total exclusion of ethical considerations. In this narrative, poaching of legislators is extolled as small political management; strategic introduction of money for allurement, tough-minded use of State machinery for intimidation, etc, are all commended as resourcefulness’.
He said, ‘the winner can commit no sin; a defector crossing over to the ruling camp stands cleansed of all the guilt as also possible criminality. It is this creeping new normal of political morality that should be the target for exemplary action by all political parties, politicians, media, civil society organisations, constitutional authorities and all those having faith in democratic polity for better election, a better tomorrow’.
Rawat pointed out that ‘although money was necessary for political parties and candidates, experience has shown that there is a real and present risk that some parties and candidates, once in office, will be more responsive to the interests of a particular group of donors rather than to wider public interest. Policy capture occurs when the interests of a narrow group dominate those of other stakeholders to the benefit of that narrow group’.
Referring to the Election Commission’s objection to the Electoral Bonds introduced by the government, he observed that it might lead to the use of black money in electoral politics. Rawat said, ‘the recent amendments in the election and income tax laws make it clear that any donation received by a political party through an Electoral Bond has been taken out of ambit of reporting in the Contribution Report which political parties have to submit to the EC. Implications of this step can be retrograde as far as transparency is concerned. Furthermore, where contributions received through Electoral Bonds are not reported, a perusal of contribution reports will not make it clear whether the party in question has taken any donations in violation of Section 29B of the Representation of the People Act, which prohibits political parties from taking donations from government companies and foreign sources’.
Amit Shah reacts
The Election Commission had, he said, expressed apprehension that the abolition of relevant provisions of the Companies Act of removing a cap of 7.5 per cent of profit for political donations can lead to money laundering ‘by setting up of shell companies for diverting funds for donations to political parties.
Rawat’s plain speaking came apparently in the light of the developments during the Gujarat Rajya Sabha elections in which blatant use of money, government machinery and intimidation was witnessed. BJP president Amit Shah was hailed as the ‘manager’ of the election strategy.
Shah did not take note of Rawat’s speech at ADR event directly. But he reacted to Rawat’s observations in his own way. During his three-day visit to Bhopal a few days later, he opted to have his lunch at the house of Narottam Mishra to the exclusion of all other party leaders. Narottam Mishra, Minister of Public Relations, Legislative Affairs and Water Resources in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, is on a stay after he was found guilty of ‘paid news’ by the Election Commission in June and disqualified as well as barred from contesting elections for three years. The stay against the Election Commission’s order did not come to him easily. His prayer for a stay was rejected by the Gwalior bench of Madhya Pradesh High Court, by a single bench of Delhi High Court (where the matter was transferred by the Supreme Court), by a division bench of Delhi High Court where he had appealed against the single bench order. He then went to the Supreme Court which returned his appeal to the Delhi High Court. Eventually a division bench of Delhi High Court granted him stay.
Shah was later reported to have told party men that the BJP had to win all the 29 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh anyhow in 2019. He was said to have particularly named Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia who, he said, had to be defeated ‘at any cost’. His reported advice to the members of the cabinet: Never do any work of Congressmen, make them uncomfortable and lure them to the BJP.
The Congress government of Harish Rawat in Uttarakhand is facing a crisis following large scale defections from the ruling party. Assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal has tried to save the government, for the time being, by allowing the Appropriation Bill to be passed by a voice vote. But Kunjwal has only followed what Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker Sita Sharan Sharma had done last year. Kunjwal did it to save government. Sharma had done it to save corruption.
BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya has described Kunjwal as an agent of chief minister Harish Rawat and has accused him of violating the provisions of the Constitution by allowing the Appropriation Bill to be passed by voice vote. BJP spokesman Munna Singh Chauhan said that ‘he (Kunjwal) has no moral right to preside over the proceedings of the State Assembly as he has brought his office into disrepute. He should resign immediately if he has even an iota of self-respect left in him’. BJP leaders perhaps think that only Congressmen should have self-respect, those belonging to BJP do not require it.
Appropriation Bill is a Constitutional provision. After the budget estimates have been passed by the Assembly, the Appropriation Bill is presented to the House in a prescribed manner, debated and voted, if the members so desire, and passed. The BJP leaders’ allegation is that Uttarakhand Assembly Speaker Kunjwal has not put the Appropriation Bill to vote as the members had desired and thus violated the provision of the Constitution. Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker Sita Sharan Sharma had done worse in his eagerness to save chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Vyapam scam-related embarrassment.
Last year the budget session of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly was due to start on February 18. Two days before that, Digvijaya Singh threw a virtual bombshell. He submitted a sworn affidavit to the High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) claiming that the excel sheets in the computers of the Vyapam had been tampered with to save chief minister Chouhan. Later he released a copy of his affidavit with the “tampered” excel sheets at a press conference.
On February 24, STF told the media that an FIR had been registered against the Governor on the basis of the statements made by some Vyapam officials who had been arrested by Special Task Force (STF) over a year earlier and were in judicial custody. The STF did not explain why it waited for over a year to act on the allegations made by the Vyapam officials in custody.
The FIR against the Governor created a sensation but it did not dampen the clamour against the chief minister. As Chouhan found it too embarrassing to face the incessant Opposition demand in the House for his resignation, Speaker Sita Sharan Sharma abruptly adjourned the budget session sine die on a motion of Legal Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra as the House assembled on February 26 (though it was scheduled to last till March 27). Before adjourning the House, the Speaker declared the budget passed – as well as the Appropriation Bill introduced, admitted and passed, in flagrant violation of the rules.
The Appropriation Bill cannot be passed at 11 AM. Rule 158(2) of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha says that after introduction of the Appropriation Bill in the Vidhan Sabha, the Speaker will allot day or days for discussion of its various stages and “shall at 5.0 clock on the allotted day or as the case may be, the last of the allotted days, forthwith put every question necessary to dispose of all the outstanding matters in connection with the stage or stages for which the day or days have been allotted”. Apparently, for Speaker Sharma, saving the chief minister from continued embarrassment was more important than observance of the rules and propriety.
After Bhopal Raj Bhavan’s alleged involvement in Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s infamous VYAPAM scam became public, Congress leader and former Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Ajay Singh suggested that Governor Ram Naresh Yadav should resign. Ajay Singh was a bit too late in seeking Yadav’s resignation, like his father Arjun Singh who could never take a political decision at the right time.
The right time for seeking Yadav’s resignation was when the Governor had, by his inexplicable action, lowered the dignity of the Constitution, brought to disrepute the office of the Governor and created embarrassment for the Congress party, to which he himself belongs, on the eve of the November 2013 Assembly elections. The conduct of most of the occupants of the Bhopal Raj Bhavan in the past couple of decades has, sadly, been less than exemplary.
The Assembly was abruptly adjourned while a Congress-sponsored motion of lack of confidence in the BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan government was pending. The motion, levelling serious charges of corruption against Chouhan and his family members and close relatives, was admitted on July 9 (2013) and the time allotted for a discussion in the House. When it was taken up for a debate on July 11, Speaker Ishwardas Rohani called Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh to speak. However, Deputy Leader of Opposition Rakesh Singh Chaturvedi stood up and said that he was opposed to the no-confidence motion. The BJP members were promptly on their feet hailing him and creating loud noise. The Congress members took a little time to recover from this sudden shock and denounce Chaturvedi.
In the free-for-all that followed, minister of legislative affairs Narottam Mishra moved a motion for an adjournment of the House. Speaker Rohani promptly adjourned the House sine die, leaving Opposition members flabbergasted. Top BJP leaders led by chief minister Chouhan hugged and lionised Chaturvedi and took him outside where Chaturvedi announced before media persons that he was joining the BJP. Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh (who lacks the acumen of his late father) made the tactical mistake of not opposing the motion moved by Narottam Mishra for an adjournment of the House. That, though, was a minor thing.
The Congress then petitioned Governor Ram Naresh Yadav. The Governor had two options before him. He could prorogue the Assembly under Article 174(2) of the Constitution or he could send a message to the House under Article 175(2) for the consideration of the pending motion. Article 175(2) says: “The Governor may send messages to the House or Houses of the Legislature of the State, whether with respect to a Bill pending in the Legislature or otherwise, and a House to which any message is so sent shall with all convenient despatch consider any matter required by the message to be taken into consideration.”
This is followed by Rule 20 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha which says: “Message by Governor: – Where a message from the Governor for the Vidhan Sabha under Article 175(2) of the Constitution is received by the Speaker, he shall read the message to the House and give necessary directions in regard to the procedure that shall be followed for the consideration of the matters referred to in the message. In giving these directions the Speaker shall be empowered to suspend or vary the rules to such extent as it may be necessary to do so.”
Instead of acting in either way, the Governor started consultations with all and sundry, the lawyers and Constitutional experts included. He also sought opinion from the Advocate-General who has his office at Jabalpur. Congress leaders met him several times as did the leaders of some other parties. He had meetings with chief minister Chouhan and even called Speaker Rohani. In between, he made a trip to Delhi leaving an impression behind that he had gone to take directions. On return from Delhi, too, he continued to dither.
Then on July 26, he wrote a brief letter to the chief minister suggesting that the Assembly session should be reconvened. It was a vague and illiterate letter because the Executive does not come between Governor (who is part and head of the Legislature) and the Assembly. Moreover, the Governor did not cite under which provision of the Constitution or any other law he had written to the chief minister. Predictably, the chief minister did not take any notice of the letter. The whole thing came as a huge embarrassment to the Congress which was much too confident of debating the no-confidence motion in the House with the intervention of the Governor.
Rohani’s act in abruptly adjourning the Assembly was reprehensible enough, but what Governor Yadav did was most abominable. Instead of taking a decision either way as mandated by the Constitution, he started dilly-dallying and reportedly making compromises with chief minister Chouhan, casting thus an indelible slur on the institution of Governor.
Suicidal act of Congress in MP
Posted on: August 18, 2012
The Madhya Pradesh Assembly set within a span of nine days two dubious precedents. On July 18, it terminated the membership of two Congress MLAs, Chaudhary Rakesh Singh Chaturvedi and Kalpana Parulekar. On July 27, it restored their membership by revoking its July 18 decision.
Whether Chaturvedi and Parulekar did get beck the status and privileges of MLAs was not clear till today because the Assembly secretariat or the two Congress leaders had not received any communication from the Election Commission. After terminating their membership of the House on July 18, the Assembly secretariat had promptly communicated the decision to the Election Commission which had immediately notified their constituencies as vacant and the two were declared ineligible to vote in the Presidential election the following day.
The exercise, however, does bring to the fore that the leaders of the ruling BJP treat the Assembly more like their family shop than an institution created by the Constitution with certain rules and regulations which everyone is expected to follow. The Congress, in the process, suffered a debasing setback which it will not find easy to overcome in near future.
On July 16, the first day of the monsoon session of the Assembly, the Congress members created a ruckus demanding a discussion on their adjournment motion on the rampant corruption in the State in the light of the Income-Tax Department raids on the premises of Dilip Suryavanshi and Sudhir Sharma and their closeness to the chief minister’s household. Prodded by the chief minister, Speaker Ishwardas Rohani rejected their demand. Rohani, too, was worried about his own skeletons following the publication, a few days earlier, of a State CID report giving details of his prolonged business association with top Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) leader and a SIMI patron Abdul Razzak (now in custody) and his son Sartaj, both notorious criminals of Jabalpur from where Rohani hails.
The next day saw some Congress MLAs sit on dharna in front of Rohani’s chamber while others continued their disruptive activities in the House where the ruling BJP members had tried to commence the proceedings by asking one of them to preside. However undesirable it might have been, there was nothing unprecedented in this. Even the gherao of the Speaker was not a new thing. The BJP members had held a similar gherao of then (Congress) Speaker Shrinivas Tiwari on January 20, 2001.
On July 18, Legislative Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra moved a resolution seeking termination of the membership of Chaturvedi and Parulekar who, Mishra claimed, had brought to disgrace the House and the chair by their unruly behaviour in the House the previous day. Rohani asked the House if they supported the resolution and the BJP members shouted “yes”; Rohani declared that the two ceased to be the members of the Assembly forthwith and adjourned the House sine die in contravention of the Rules of the House. This took barely a minute.
Rule violated
Rohani violated the law and rules for taking action against a member of the House. Such a drastic action (termination of the membership) was taken without giving a notice to the members concerned and without referring it to the committee of privileges constituted for the specific purpose of examining the complaints against the members and without allowing a discussion in the House. Even the tyrannical Khap Panchayats in Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh go through the farce of hearing the other side before announcing their pre-determined verdict. Rohani did not even deem that necessary.
The monsoon session was to last till July 27 but Rohani adjourned the House sine die on July 18 for which he was not authorised. Rule 12-B of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly clearly states that “the House shall not be adjourned sine die on a day in advance of the last sitting of the House fixed for the session except on a motion made by the Leader of the House and adopted by the House”.
In the case of a “grave disorder arising in the House”, Rule 266 permits the Speaker to “suspend the sitting of the House till a later hour on the same day or adjourn the House to the next sitting in the same session”.
Speaker Rohani and chief minister Chauhan realised the mistake soon afterwards as their action was strongly disapproved by their own party leaders. Chaturvedi and Parulekar challenged in the Madhya Pradesh High Court on July 19 the termination of their membership of the Assembly. The massive rally held by the Congress in Bhopal on July 20 further unnerved the BJP leaders. The police used lathi-charge, teargas shells and water cannons to crush the demonstration, injuring many of the protestors. All the Congress MLAs later handed over their resignations from the Assembly to AICC general secretary in charge of Madhya Pradesh affairs B K Hariprasad who announced that a decision on the resignations would be taken after consultations with the high command.
There was an anti-climax two days later when Chaturvedi and Parulekar sent regret letters to Rohani following meetings between Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh and Deputy Speaker Harvansh Singh (who also belongs to Congress) with chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Speaker Ishwardas Rohani. B K Hariprasad expressed his surprise and some Congress leaders including former minister Hajarilal Raghuvanshi described it a retrograde step.
In a special session of the Assembly convened on July 27, Narottam Mishra moved a resolution seeking revocation of the July 18 decision of the Assembly; the BJP members shouted “yes” and Speaker Rohani announced “restoration” of the membership of Chaturvedi and Parulekar — all took less than a minute. Later the two “restored” Congress members withdrew their petition from the State High Court.
Chauhan and Rohani have thus averted a possible embarrassment in the High Court and an agitation against them on corruption issues. The Congress has lost the momentum it had built with the expulsion of its two MLAs and the July 20 rally. The grapevine has it that the resources of Dilip Suryavanshi and Sudhir Sharma played a vital role in bringing about the anti-climax.
MP’s never-ending health scandal
Posted on: June 8, 2012
When the Lokayukta police raided the Bhopal residence of director of health services Dr A N Mittal in the second week of May, Dr Mittal was simply stunned. But his wife Alka Mittal could not keep her cool and shouted at the raiding party: “why don’t you raid the house of the minister whom we give Rs one crore every month; you are only after small fries like us”. Before she could say something more, Dr Mittal rushed to her, put his hand on her mouth and dragged her inside a room.
This, in nutshell, is the story of corruption in Madhya Pradesh and the farce of Lokayukta Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar’s zeal for acting against the corrupt. The initial seizures at Dr Mittal’s residence were estimated around Rs 15 crore. The final figures of Dr Mittal’s worth will be known only after his bank lockers have been checked and his landed properties spread across Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have been evaluated.
It was not as if the Lokayukta had suddenly received tips about corruption in the health department. Complaints have been lying with the Lokayukta against the department and also against Dr Mittal. Former PCC spokesman K K Mishra had lodged a complaint with the Lokayukta that Dr Mittal had, while a joint director in the health department, bungled Rs 2.16 crore in the purchase of fogging machines, had misappropriated Rs 14 crore in the purchase of mosquito nets in 2009-2010, to mention only two.
Income-tax raids
More importantly, a raiding party of Income-Tax Department had found at the palatial residence of then director of health services Dr Yogiraj Sharma in 2007 cash stashed in beds and cupboards and kitchen utensils, besides a large number of gold jewellery and silver articles. But more than the cash, it was the details of his properties, investments and bank accounts that left the I-T sleuths wide-eyed. It took them more than two years to make some sense of the trail of investments made by Dr Sharma in his own name as well as in the names of his relatives and associates. As many as 85 bank accounts in the name of Dr Yogiraj Sharma and his family members were found with a total deposit of Rs 30 crore. Besides, the department had recovered 27 credit and other cards issued by banks.
Another director of health services Dr Ashok Sharma and health commissioner Rajesh Rajora, IAS, were also found in possession of assets disproportionate to their known sources of income. The raids had also led a trail to the family of then health minister Ajay Vishnoi. As the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections were round the corner, Shivraj Singh Chauhan had dropped him from the cabinet. After the elections, Vishnoi was re-inducted into the cabinet, though given charge of another department. Present health minister Narottam Mishra is a close confidant of chief minister Chauhan and his wife Sadhna Singh — and known for taking extra cautions in the matters extracurricular.
This is the money received mostly from the Centre under various schemes to provide health care to the children, the pregnant and lactating women, the weaker sections, the rural poor and the like. One can just imagine the condition of the health services in the State, unabashed lies being daily doled out by the chief minister notwithstanding. Was it a wonder that the sex ratio had started showing considerable improvement in all the 50 districts of the State from 2001 onwards but it drastically declined in 49 of the 50 districts during the Shivraj Singh Chauhan regime.
Moreover, what the Income-Tax and Lokayukta raids bring out is but a small percentage of the total amount siphoned off by the politicians and bureaucrats. It will be naive to presume that only Dr Mittal, or Dr Yogiraj Sharma, had been taking the money and others in the department had been just moot spectators.
A simultaneous raid on the residence of junior auditor Ganesh Prasad Kirar gives an idea of chief minister Chauhan’s meticulous corruption network. Kirar was employed in the chief minister’s secretariat and enjoyed the confidence of Chauhan household. About two years back he was transferred to the health department, reportedly at the suggestion of health minister Narottam Mishra. There are 17 auditors in the department. However, all the files of Dr Mittal were reportedly “cleared” by Kirar — for the obvious reason.
The raid on Kirar’s house had yielded Rs 10 lakh in cash, Rs ten lakh in two bank accounts, half a kg of gold, 4.5 kg of silver, 20 acres of land in Raisen district, two palatial bungalows and a flat in Bhopal, four shops in posh localities in Bhopal, two cars, two motor-cycles and a tractor.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has also been highlighting the bungling in the health department. The CAG, according to his report for the financial year ending March 31, 2009, for instance, had carried out test checks in 12 districts and found that 49 to 58 per cent pregnant women had not even been registered in health centres during their first trimester. The maternal and infant mortality rate continued to be high. Spectacles were not supplied to as many as 30,715 children out of 57,191 suffering from vision problems, from 2005 to 2009 in these 12 districts.
The CAG test checked 17 Community Health Centres declared as Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care but none of these had the required infrastructure; 25 test-checked Primary Health Centres were found to be non-functional or functioning only partially because of lack of sufficient staff and infrastructure and 101 Primary Health Centres were functioning without doctors.
The State had recruited only 42,777 accredited social health activists (ASHAs) as against the requirement of 44,379. These ASHAs were mostly functioning as motivators under the Janani Suraskha Yojana of the State’s health department, leaving other functions under the NRHM unattended, according to the report.
MP Speaker’s duplicity
Posted on: March 3, 2012
The manner in which Congress MLA Kalpana Parulekar has been arrested and jailed does little credit to the police, the government and the judiciary in Madhya Pradesh. It also exposes once again the duplicity of Assembly Speaker Ishwardas Rohani who has brought disgrace to the House many times by his partisan behaviour.
Parulekar’s offence is not such that the courts should repeatedly refuse bail to her. The police, which was once described by a judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court as the “criminal force in uniform”, has not so far explained how Parulekar has come to be treated as the main and only accused.
One afternoon in early February, the CID officers had swooped on the house of Parulekar at Mahidpur in Ujjain district, arrested her, brought her to Bhopal and produced her at the residence of a judicial magistrate in the night. The magistrate remanded her to judicial custody. The sessions court had refused to reverse the judicial magistrate’s order.
Parulekar had, for all that is known, distributed in the House and then at the Assembly press room during the last session towards the end of November a photograph showing Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar in the RSS uniform. Naolekar claimed that the photograph was morphed; the police registered an FIR and entrusted the case to the CID “for investigation”.
Who did the police or CID get the offending photograph from? Surely, it was not from Parulekar. Why has the person, from whose possession the photograph was recovered by the police, not been made an accused? If someone took the photograph to the police to lodge a complaint that his feelings had been hurt by seeing Lokayukta Naolekar in RSS uniform, why did not the police reveal the name of the complainant and the nature of his grievance? Why does the police keep the FIR a closely guarded secret? Then regrettably, how did the judges allow themselves to become party to this dirty game of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Lokayukta Naolekar? These are some of the questions which Parulekar’s incarceration has thrown up.
The matter of Parulekar’s arrest and incarceration was vigorously raised in the Assembly by Congress members on Wednesday, the first day of the budget session, when Arif Aquil sought a discussion on his notice of breach of privilege because the police had violated the sanctity of the House by arresting the MLA without the consent of the Speaker. He was supported by other members of the party. The Speaker guiltily looked to minister of legislative affairs Narottam Mishra who pronounced that Parulekar had committed a crime and had accordingly been arrested and jailed. Moreover, he said, the matter was sub judice. (Does a matter become sub judice simply because someone has been arrested and jailed while no investigation has been completed and no charge sheet presented?)
Deputy Leader of Opposition Chaudhary Rakesh Singh Chaturvedi even quoted M N Kaul and S L Shakdher, authorities on parliamentary practices, to point out that the entire premises formed part of the House and a member having done something on the premises could not be arrested without first seeking permission from the Speaker. Rohani was not impressed. He, however, got the escape route as dictated by Narottam Mishra and refused a discussion and, following the uproar that ensued, adjourned the House for the day.
Rohani, facing allegations of having acquired properties worth over Rs 300 crore in Jabalpur, shows concern for his authority only if it suits his interest. When a former Lokayukta had initiated investigation of a complaint of financial irregularities by two Assembly secretariat officials, Rohani lost no time in sending a notice of breach of privilege to the Lokayukta and five officials of the Lokayukta Organisation who had helped the Lokayukta in the preliminary investigation.
Rohani had received support for his stand from Yagya Dutt Sharma, who was Speaker during the Arjun Singh regime but had later joined the BJP. His view was that registration of a case against two officials of the Assembly Secretariat and service of notices on them by the Lokayukta amounted to challenging the rights of the Speaker. The Assembly and the staff working there are under the jurisdiction of the Speaker and the Lokayukta had encroached upon the rights of the Speaker by starting action against the officials without the Speaker’s permission. Another former Speaker, Shrinivas Tiwari, had felt that the staff working in the Assembly secretariat did not enjoy the privilege. It was a different matter in the case of Speaker and members.
The Lokayukta, too, had quoted from the “Practice and Procedure of Parliament” by M N Kaul and S L Shakdher to point out that the privileges of Parliament are granted to members only so that they may be able to perform their duties in Parliament without let or hindrance.
What Parulekar did was on the Assembly premises. Speaker Rohani, who remembered his jurisdiction and authority in the case of Assembly secretariat employees, is looking the other way in the case of a member. A fine instance of duplicity of a person holding constitutional position!
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