Accountability of government in Constitution

:: M.Y.Siddiqui ::

In India’s system of democratic constitutional governance, all the three organs of the state, the executive (government), legislature and the judiciary are accountable and answerable to ”WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA”. To ensure accountability, the Constitution has envisaged checks. The executive is answerable to the legislature and legislature to the people.The higher judiciary, Supreme Court and High Courts, has been made accountable through impeachment under Article 124 (4) and lower judiciary through supervisory control of the High Courts under Article 235. These checks, however, have not been effective for quite some time now. In 1973, supersession of judges followed by committed judiciary during the Emergency that was reversed by omnibus Constitution amendments Act by the Janata Party union government. More so under the current fascist one-man union government since 2014, for fear of blackmail by agencies taking advantages of chinks in every body’s armour, however, high and mighty and the lure of after-retirement-lucrative employment and so on work as hindrances to the judges being independent and fair.

In the recent past since 2014, there has been growing public outcry for accountability of all the organs of the State from which judiciary is also not spared. The Preamble of the Constitution of India promising to “secure to all its citizens, JUSTICE, social, economic and political” has been subverted by the current RSS Pariwar union government altogether. As a result, there are chaos, uncertainty, fear and insecurity, under the spell of growing strident communal, divisive, polarizing and subversive politics with no accountability as people have been intoxicated with opium of religion with toxic majoritarian politics for electoral gains.  All public institutions like Election Commission, CBI, ED, NIA, CAG, Judiciary etc. have been hollowed out from within and replaced by men of straw, with their inability to impart justice, equality and fair-play as their conscience do not prick for all round subversion of democratic governance in the country. They have become communal, biased, unfair in their dispensation of checks and balances, in the process eroding democracy altogether. Consequently, checks and balances over the breakdown of the rule of law-based system of democratic governancehave choked completely with public accountability as the foremost casualty

Parliament has been made irrelevant. Bills are passed without discussions, debates and scrutiny. Joint Committees, Select Committees, Standing Committees, where bills are discussed threadbare and scrutinized by stakeholders like corporates, academics, social activists, legal luminaries have been rendered dormant and ineffective as negligible bills are referred there before being forwarded to Parliament for consideration and passing. Besides, opposition parties are not allowed to voice out and raise pressing issues like massive unemployment, unprecedented price rise, growing social fissures like toxic communalism, divisive politics, religious polarization, failure of economic policy, failure of foreign relations, battering of county’s image in the comity of nations etc. Even questions on emergent current issues by the opposition are not allowed. Members of opposition parties are suspended arbitrarily without credible reasons. All such developments have eroded public accountability with ever increasing fascistic autocratic governance nullifying the process of accountability of the government to the people (electors).

People have witnessed under the current fascist anti-people RSS Pariwar union government how three agricultural laws since revoked were passed without consultation with stakeholders and scrutiny in the Parliament. Year long strikes by farmers that forced the government to withdraw the ill conceived disruptive agricultural laws had resulted in deaths of over 700 farmers. And the government did not account for itself to the people.  The disruptive draconian demonetization that disturbed entire people forcing them to line up before banks to deposit demonetized currency and withdraw money from banks for their sustenance had resulted in deaths of over 150 people in the queue gasping for breath harrowed, harassed, tired, and dehydrated. Purported objectives in both the disruptively annoying decisions were not served. And the government did not account for its dreaded ill-conceived decisions that impacted massively adversely the people of India.

Given the fact that people love their country; they have inalienable constitutional democratic rights to voice their dissent against the government, agitate peacefully, and scrutinize government’s functioning in terms of the promises made during the elections that propelled the government to power. But such criticisms of government are viewed as ant-national acts and such people are subjected to brutal repression as also oppression and framed under some dreaded laws like sedition and anti-terror oppression by misusing the partisan, corrupt and communal police as instrument of oppression as in a fascist or colonial rule where people are treated as subjects unlike in democracy where they are the sovereign masters of the government they (people) elect. This brings public accountability of the elected government to naught.

Justice is the bedrock of democracy. That is why the Constitution makers attached the highest importance to the independence of the judiciary as viewed in Chapter 1V of Part V of the Constitution which deals with the Supreme Court and Chapters V and V1 which deals with the High Courts and the lower courts (Subordinate Courts) respectively.Further more, the state is directed to separate judiciary from the public services of the state in terms of Article 50 of the Directive Principles. And by the Amendment brought in force in 1977, Article 39A was inserted to provide for Equal Justice and Free Legal Aid to ensure that justice is not denied to any citizen by reason of economic and other disabilities. These articles relating to judiciary with the Preamble of the Constitution envisage  the judiciary to dispense justice without fear and favour to all citizens in all walks of life. Added to this, the Supreme Court in a landmark judgment Hussainara VsState of Bihar, AIR 1979 SC 1379 held that speedy trial is a fundamental right. This makes judiciary accountable to the people. Both judges and lawyers are duty bound to deliver justice fairly, justly and quickly, raising public outcry that the judiciary has caved in to the pressure of the current autocratic government in dispensing justice favourable to the government, denying the people of their inalienable fundamental right to liberty, fundamental right to life, biased in favour of the rich, anti-poor, allowing the governments, both Central and States, incarcerating innocents, poor, judiciary’s reliance on communally biased and corrupt to the hilt police’s shoddy investigations, denial of justice to the poor and have-nots. India’s judiciary as a whole has failed the people although individual judges outshine in upholding human rights of the people.

People, the electors of the government, are disturbed when there is prima facie case of corruption against a judge, there has been tendency by the court to put the whole thing under carpet. Prevention of Corruption Act, hitherto, remains not applicable to the judiciary. People have witnessed how the impeachment processes of judges found corrupt failed in Parliament on account of Members of Parliament being divided among themselves on the basis of castes, communities, religions and parochialism. Added to this, there is massive corruption in the lower courts following well entrenched deep police-bar-bench-free legal aid nexus resulting in unabated continuing detention of the poor, incarcerated for petty crimes or otherwise by make-believe bogus investigations by the corrupt and communally biased police. No body in the government, legislature, judiciary, legal fraternity, and all stakeholders bothers about. For, the bench-bar nexus helps limitless adjournments increasing botherations for the litigants in terms of wastes of money, time and energy. For the judges, adjournments relieve pressure of workloads and the lawyers get away with their full fees. Enforcing accountability of the judiciary to the people must break this abhorrent nexus. Order XV11 of the Civil Procedure Code already restrains judges from granting adjournments too readily. So there is no point pulling wool over the eye telling the people that the fountain of justice is pure. As in July 2022, total pendency of cases fron the apex court, all High Courts and subordinate district couts is at 4.7 crore (40.2 millions).

It cannot be forgotten that after all, raison de’ tre for existence of the judiciary in our system of the constitutional democratic governance is dispensing expeditious justice to the people and the judges and lawyers, who are officers of the court, should refrain from doing acts that protract litigations and erode the credibility as well as accountability of the judiciary and the advocates. Rule of law, essential for democracy, is the first casualty of ‘slow motion’ justice resulting in hampering credibility of the entire legal system.

The upshot of the foregoing explains how all the organs of the state have failed our democracy depicting them as proponents of repressive colonial regime. Added to this, the protective provision in all of our criminal laws that affected people cannot question actions taken in good faith by the implementing authorities in any courtor otherwise, made by colonial regime, continue to impede accountability of the elected government and its machinery to the people. As for the media conceived as a fourth estate (eyes and ears) of the people in our democracyas carrier of  truth as to what the elected government is doing for the overall wellbeing and progress of the people through its truthful news, views, scrutiny, analysis and evaluation, less said the better. Media as a whole have lost its sheen and largely function as captive to the government mouthing the RSS Pariwar union government’s agenda of communalism, religious polarization, minorities’ bashings, hate campaign and dreaded anti-democratic, anti-national integration, anti-communal/social harmony anti-diversity and draconian majoritarian politics, thus making a mincemeat of what India stands for, tearing into pieces what the country stands for thus making the government unaccountable to the people and helping the fascist union government carry on with its purported objectives for electoral gains thus deflecting public attention from major pressing issues facing them. However, there is a glimmer of hope in that individual audacious media professionals on social media have risked their lives and limbs by showing mirror of truths to the power through their news, scrutiny of government’s functioning as permissible in our Constitutions! 

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