Mr D.V. Sadananda Gowda, who has been given the law ministry during the recent reshuffle and expansion of the Union Cabinet, has many plans for his ministry from repealing dead laws to bringing reforms like cross examining the accused through video conferencing instead of bringing them to the courts in person. Though he is busy working to bring these reforms and seems happy with the new ministry he has been allotted, it looks like Mr Gowda has a grouse that he did not get enough time to enforce his ideas in his earlier stint as Chief Minister or as Railway Minister. Mr Gowda’s house in Mangaluru used to be crowded with railway officials during his stint as Railway Minister who are now missing. He welcomes everybody with his usual smile and assures help to those who come to him. In an interview with Deccan Chronicle, Mr Gowda spoke about his plans and other issues
The Union government under the leadership of Narendra Modi believes in reforms. What is your initiative in the law department?
It is about one and half months since I took charge as Law Minister.Be it Prime Ministers’ Office or the Defence or External Affairs Ministry, it is the Law Ministry which has to bring legislation.
I have marked several works that need to be given priority like transparency in judiciary, tackling the pendency of cases in courts, vacancies in courts and infrastructure development.
We also want to take IT initiatives like cross examination of the accused through video conferencing. Above all we want to amend arbitration acts.
What are your steps for repealing obsolete and dead laws.
I have already initiated this. I want to bring all dead laws out of the statute books. About 2000 dead laws should be taken out .
Who decides on the laws that need to be repealed?
The Law Commission will identify the acts that are obsolete and dead and place them before the law department. This will be then placed before parliament which will decide on repealing them.
What about long pending cases?
There are about 2.7 crore pending cases across the country of which 45 lakh are in High Courts and about 50,000 in the Apex Court. We want to reduce these. In the Lok Adalat held on December 6, about 44 lakh pending cases were disposed and about 2 crore pre-litigations were disposed.
Why were you removed from the Railway ministry? There were rumours that your style of functioning was the reason?
I do not want to comment on this as it is the prerogative of the PM to decide on who should be the batsman, bowler and wicket-keeper in his team. It is not fair on the part of any team-mate to criticize this.I tried my level best in the Railways and presented one of the best budgets in the last 65 years which was appreiciaed even by former railway ministers like Lalu Prasad Yadav. I will serve wherever the PM directs me to.
How do you analyse the performance of the Karnataka government?
In a democracy, dictatorship does not survive. Mr Siddaramaiah really does not involve his colleagues in the administration. The government and the ruling Congress party should should function jointly. But the Congress party functions parallel to the government with KPCC president Dr G. Parameshwar running a parallel administration. Mr Siddaramaiah’s autocracy, his style of functioning does not suit present day democracy. His advisors are neither his partymen, nor his cabinet collegues or well wishers. They have their own agenda which they are getting implemented through the CM
.
Despite the Congress failing to keep its promise of clean administration, don’t you feel the BJP has failed to raise issues like corruption and the denotification scam due to corruption of its leaders?
I agree with you. In the last assembly election in 2013, the BJP did not lose out because of non performance of its government. But the infighting, corruption charges and the failure to put up a united fight failed us. But now we have learnt our lesson. The scenario in the BJP has totally changed. Central leaders headed by the Prime Minister and the Party president will not tolerate any infighting. Dissidents will be kicked out and the party will put up a united show. People will accept this.
There has been charges that you have amassed wealth after you entered the union cabinet.
I have availed a loan of Rs 8 crore for purchasing a 36,000 sq feet carpet area commercial building at Bengaluru and received Rs 2 crore as rental advance for renting out the same building. The rent of Rs 15 lakh per month is being credited to the bank against loan instalments. Everything is very clear as far as this property is concerned.
If I wanted to amass wealth I could have done the transaction in a benami account.
