Congress lawmaker and senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi in an interview with HT speaks on cross-voting by members of his party in the just-concluded Rajya Sabha polls as well as multiple no-confidence notices the Opposition has brought against constitutional functionaries. Edited excerpts: Congress lawmaker and senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi talks to HT about cross voting in RS polls. (File Photo)
In the Rajya Sabha polls, some Congress MLAs seem to have helped the NDA win. You, too, have lost in the past due to cross-voting.
You are right, precisely because the BJP has perfected the art of misusing money and limitless amounts of that if it is hell bent upon winning a seat. And it is not an excuse. Published figures show that the BJP in terms of monetary resources is 5 to 7 times all the other parties combined. This has never happened in India before. You have a consistent pattern in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Haryana and so many other states... And you can see that in the immediate yesterday’s elections.
It is but obvious. I saw a raw form of it in Himachal Pradesh. I think it is an open secret. If that be so, yes, ultimately the character of a person and the idealism and the strength matters. But do not forget that these are humongous inducements.
The Opposition is in a spree to move no-confidence motions against constitutional functionaries.
We are using a fully legitimate technique provided in the Constitution. What other means does the opposition have to expose the government on several issues including the lack of equal opportunity and time given in the Lok Sabha or the extremely egregious and excessively dictatorial approach of a constitutional authority? Or, the fact that a constitutional authority is violating all norms of his office and so on. The success or defeat of the motion is irrelevant.
Many times the numbers are known but that ignores the vital fact that firstly, it is highlighting to the entire nation through the temple of democracy what is important and that is the role of an opposition. Secondly, it puts on guard constitutional authorities that they cannot function as they like. Thirdly, it is subject to the democratic majority which is the fair way of doing something. Absent all this you would want a silent and supine opposition which is not the definition I accept.
You have drafted the latest notice, which is against chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Don’t you think its political relevance would be lost once West Bengal elections are over?
Don’t look upon it as a Bengal-centric resolution. I can tell you that it cites specifically several alleged misdemeanours, which according to us constitute constitutional infringements which are anathema to the role of a constitutional body. It also reduces him to an active political participant instead of a neutral constitutional empire. Elections are constantly recurring in this country. What happened in Bihar is happening in Bengal. What is happening in Bengal will happen tomorrow in another state.
The CEC discharges the most significant constitutional duties in every election. He is the guardian of the basic structure because level playing field, democracy and free and fair elections all have been held to be part of the basic structure. Therefore, the impeachment motion raises far wider issues and it is neither territorially limited nor issue limited.
You have pushed the motion ahead of the West Bengal election.
Elections are recurring all the time. It will of course be a message to India. It will be a message to the Bengal electorate equally as it will be a message to the Tamil Nadu electorate as to the Kerala electorate. And it will be again a message to all the elections coming up next year. This message is not limited either territorially or to this year alone.
But the tussle between the CEC and Opposition is primarily over SIR or vote chori.
The Bihar SIR is the first one and there is a relatively recent origin. There have been cases much prior to that of simple requests, procedural requests like a PDF searchable copy not being given to us in several elections. There are a few instances of asking two simple questions of good governance for prior affidavits, signatures. A excessive reliance of form to the exclusion of substance. Not agreeing to a single demand in the last several years and so on. The problem is much deeper and much older than the SIR.
The BJP has accused the Opposition of disrupting Parliament. Former PM HD Devegowda has written to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi against disruptions.
I think this is an extremely unfair charge. Firstly, if you compare the disruptive role of BJP when it was an opposition compared to ours in statistical terms, in time terms, in frequency terms, we have a far better record. Secondly, we do not treat disruption as a legitimate form of parliamentary opposition as the Honourable Mr. Jaitley did. Thirdly, what we have seen is the most extreme form of intolerance by en masse collective suspension of 142 people. And yet they are complaining of disruption. Fourthly, the two major causes in the recent past have been a complete denial and throttling and strangulating of the leader of the opposition’s voice.
Forget the average member. Sixthly, you have found that when the ruling party’s person gets up on a point of order, he is listened to calmly and patiently. Even though the opposition is speaking.
If you reverse the roles, the opposition is not allowed to have a point of order. That’s happening every time. Seventhly, it is always the principle of parliamentary democracy that the opposition must have its say because ultimately the government will have its say.
The government seems to be keen to amend the women reservation bill for faster implementation.
This has been our view even when the bill was earlier announced. But why it has taken two years for the government to think about making it fool proof? If they had stretched out the hand and sat with us earlier, showed it together, we can make it. Nothing is full proof but we could have made it much stronger.
The current law makes its implementation possible not before 2032. Tell me one thing, if you are going to have something in 2032, what is the point of announcing it two years ago? Then you have to conceive that you are doing only a political move. You are only getting brownie point because some election was coming. They made an announcement with no intention of publishing it, implementing it till 2032. Also, though delimitation makes it more organized, there is absolutely no law which suggests that women’s reservation, a precondition is delimitation.