Resumo de The Two Verdicts In India

Judicial activism has come under fire for many years now , especially when it envelops top VVIPs, that is politicians and bureaucrats. With the Supreme Court ruling that it is not bound to get the permission of the Executive to prosecute MPs and Ministers facing serious charges the nail has been hit on the head. Forget the hairsplitting over the demarcation of powers between the judiciary and the Executive. This raises the confidence level of the peope in democracy as a viable system.
Shibu Soren has been given life term for murder and Navjot Singh Sidhu three years for culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Soren has been deservedly punished by law for a sheet of crime that incudes bribery to bail out the Narasimha Rao Government and, allied with it, murdering an aide who wanted a cut in the spoils. Narasimha Rao is gone and the dead are beyond the reach of law. Constitutionally what he, and there by the Congress Party, did was wrong and ipso facto open to legal scrutiny. In any country believing in fair play and justice his government and the party would have been discredited. Now it has become a part of history and no one isany the wiser.
Congress should have owned moral responsibility for the nefarious behaviour of its own leader and apologised to the nation as Manmohan Singh did to the Sikh community or the anti-Sikh riots in 1984.
But that it not to be because they will come out with a similar demand against the BJP for the demolition of Babri Masjid. Now payment of bribery ihas become the norm to prop up and save a government. Parties like the JMM used regionalism as the plank to develop space in national politics and employed their own agenda to wrest concessions for their own state and remain a regional bully. It is evident in Bihar, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Punjab. Centrist parties are forced to cohort with them to strengthen their political space. A price to pay in coalition politics.
Regionalism, in itself, is a healthy trend in the context of uneven development provided it does not lose national perspective. However it is not so and has culminated in bribery-murder case. With political morality at the rock bottom parties misuse the coalition set up.
Very few have been convicted on corruption charges in India and even fewer have served any penalty. Curiously Soren has not been accounted for on the bribery issue but the murder arising out of it. Why? It is a constitutional issue and laws governing a constitutional improriety and misuse are vague on the penalty factor. Narasimha Rao Government certainl deserves punishment but its nature is not yetknown. That is why the Supreme Court ruling that MPs and Ministers are not exempt from the due course of law is heart warming. It means that constitutional impropriety is accountable and thegovernments/individuals will have to pay the price. As for the Sidhu episode , he was a shade better than an average politician in immediately responding with his resignation as MP. What he did was wrong and he has publicly acknowledged his accountability for it. The fact that Prakash Singh Badal has thrown in his lot with Sidhu for political reasons is another story. At least Badal can take a leaf out of Sidhu'spropriety in the over Rs.4000 crore corruption cases against him by offering his readiness to be accountable for it.
But the bottom line is thereassuring factor of judicial activism. It has come to stay for good.

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