Editorial 1 : Reject
Context: One Nation, One Election (ONOE)
Issues with the Ram Nath Kovind committee
- The Kovind committee was constituted in September 2023.
- Its composition and terms of reference were very skewed. It seemed like a rubber stamp in the thin garb of a committee discussing electoral reforms in the world’s largest democracy.
- Its eight members had either openly expressed their support for simultaneous polls or were seen to be broadly in tune with the government and its favoured projects.
- The stated mandate of the committee was to find ways to implement a proposal certified as being in national interest, not to ask why.
- Despite the serious implications of ONOE for the federal system, and in spite of it raising concerns about the national dominating the local, no regional party leader, no chief minister, was taken on board.
Ball is in opposition’s court
- The committee has done what it set out to do and the Cabinet has put its stamp on it.
- The Opposition, in a stronger position after the general election verdict, must not miss the opportunity that is still available to it.
- The ONOE proposal requires a special majority in Parliament and, in the second phase, ratification of at least half state legislatures.
- ONOE proposal must not be allowed to go through.
Arguments against One Nation One Election
- It makes the will of the people and their representatives subservient to a fixed calendar imposed in the name of cutting costs and increasing administrative convenience.
- The arguments of cutting costs and increasing administrative convenience don’t stand any rigorous test of evidence.
- ONOE sees elections as an interruption in good governance, not as what they really are i.e. an expression of people’s will that is full-bodied and dynamic and that must be recognised and respected as such for there to be responsive governance.
- It goes against the founding vision of the nation’s polity i.e. of a parliamentary and federal system, not one that is presidential and unitary.
Conclusion
- In a diverse democracy like India’s, the sooner ONOE is rejected, the better it is for the polity.
- Elections must be held whenever and wherever governments lose the trust of the people as embodied and expressed by their representatives.
- That’s a constitutional guarantee without any qualifications.
- Imposing a calendar and defining limits for the House, undermines the will of the people and spirit of parliamentary democracy.
Editorial 2 : For Liberty, By Law
Context: With recent decisions, Supreme Court has deepened constitutional idea of personal liberty
Arguments in the Constituent Assembly
- K M Munshi presented a programmatic argument on why due process protection has to be given for a person’s life and liberty.
- In a clash between due process rights and ordinary legislation, the Constitution could not be silent.
- Irrespective of the rationale behind any law, this fundamental right to life and personal liberty ought not to be silenced.
- Other members like K T Shah, Bakshi Tek Chand and Purnima Banerji supported this argument.
- The robust protection of personal liberty and the creation of a constitutional architecture that ensures this is something the members of the Constituent Assembly repeatedly asserted.
Recent Supreme Court Judgements
- In July, a division bench of the Supreme Court examined whether constitutional courts have supreme discretion to grant bail irrespective of the nature of the law involved.
- SC invoked Article 21 and the right to life and personal liberty to declare that when a trial has been prolonged, the accused person cannot be kept behind bars forevermore, notwithstanding the seriousness of the charge.
- The court said “A constitutional court cannot be restrained from granting bail to an accused on account of restrictive statutory provisions in a penal statute if it finds that the right of the accused undertrial under Article 21 of the Constitution of India has been infringed.”
- This trend in judicial thought was reaffirmed by the SC once again last month when speaking in the context of bail under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, it observed that since the right to life and personal liberty is a higher constitutional right, statutory provisions should align themselves to the higher constitutional edict.
Bail is the rule, Jail is the exception
- Bail is the rule and jail is the exception was one of the most time-honoured principles in Indian constitutional jurisprudence.
- It was the most logical outcome of the idea of preserving personal liberty.
- The endeavour was that when a person is taken into custody, they must ordinarily be released on bail unless compelling circumstances to the contrary are shown.
- Acts like PMLA and UAPA turned the tide against this principle.
- The recent decisions demonstrate, courts can maintain their fidelity to the Constitution while also providing a working framework for laws which deal with special situations.
Conclusion
- Even though Article 21 originally made no mention of due process rights. It prevailed in the long run.
- For the constitution makers, the triumph of due process rights lay at the heart of fundamental freedoms which is being safeguarded effectively by the judiciary.