With the crack-of-dawn arrest of, the now former law minister of Delhi, Jitender Singh Tomar — on charges of obtaining two fake degrees from two different universities — the fracas between the Union and Delhi governments has gotten very ugly and unseemly. The arrest of a minister is not a new thing in this nation.
Many criminals have become ministers and many ministers have become criminals. The Delhi arrest is interesting because it comes against the larger background of the tussle between two elected governments, that of Union Territory of Delhi and the Union of India. Delhi’s law minister was seized from his residence by a posse of the Delhi Police, which takes its orders directly from the lieutenant-governor of Delhi, who is enjoined by the Cons-titution to be guided by the advice of the elected government.
This crisis has been brewing since the day the Aam Aadmi Party swept to power on an unprecedented mandate. The election was fought on the personalities of Arvind Kejriwal and Narendra Modi. Mr Kejriwal stamped on Mr Modi’s feet to show that they were made of clay. The novice newcomer thus positioned himself as the most credible national alternative to Mr Modi. Hence there is now an urgency to ensure the failure of the AAP government, which is only seeking the powers, which were sought by the Bharatiya Janata Party in all its previous election manifestoes. The BJP has now rejected its own demands for meaningful statehood and is out to destroy any political cachet Mr Kejriwal might hold in this country. Mr Tomar is only a small ant caught on the ground where political elephants are fighting.
The fulcrum around which this dogfight is raging is the powers of the Delhi government. On May 25, apparently vindicating the Delhi government’s stand on the transfer and posting of bureaucrats and police matters, the Delhi high court ruled that the L-G “must act on the advice of the Council of Ministers” and the mandate of the people, with whom the sovereign power resides, “must be respected by the L-G in respect of matters which fall within the domain of the Legislative Assembly”.
The high court added emphatically that: “Delhi shall not be administered by the President through the L-G in respect of matters over which the Legis-lative Assembly of the NCT has authority to make law.” The judge also ruled the Delhi government’s Anti-Corruption Branch has the “jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute” Delhi police officials. The Union of India has appealed against this to the Supreme Court. Good sense should have told it to await the highest court’s judgment, but it didn’t and decided to appoint via the L-G an ACB chief who the elected government has now refused to accept. All this washing of dirty political linen in public shows the constitutional processes in poor light, and the spectacle of an elected government and appointed L-G trying to outwit and outmanoeuvre one another is such a sad joke that it is not even funny.
Mr Tomar is accused of the serious crimes of forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy. Without wanting to lessen the seriousness of the offences he is charged with, one might add that such acts are now common currency among our leaders. Faking qualifications and filing false affidavits are a well-established norm among our politicians. The difference in the claimed marital status in the various election affidavits filed by Mr Modi are well known. Several times previously, he swore he was unmarried and then in 2014, suddenly there was the acknowledgement of a wife, who it seems was always there. Ditto for Smriti Irani’s correspondence college claims.
She sometimes claimed to be BA pass and at other times said she completed the first year of BCom (Pass) despite no record of having done so. One must not miss the irony of her now being the human resources and development minister of India. Mamata Banerjee at one time claimed to have a PhD. from a university, which was discovered to be fake. There is a whole clutch of MPs with dubious claims of being PhDs from Vijay Mallya to Sanjay Singh. I wonder what Mr Mallya’s dissertation was on?
Why aren’t they being investigated? Then there are some people with very suspicious degrees from Cambridge and elsewhere. They also need to be probed. All MPs begin their parliamentary innings with a patently false affidavit on their election expenses being below the limit. The irony of Mr Tomar’s degree or non-degree is that he doesn’t need it to become an MLA or minister. That was debated and decided in August 1950.
India’s first, and possibly its greatest, lawgiver and law minister B.R. Ambedkar, speaking on an amendment to the Representation of Peo-ples Act that stipulated a minimum educational qualification ruled it out by saying: “Now it seems to me that education can hardly be the sole qualification for membership of this House. If I may use the words of Buddha, he said that man requires two things. One is gyan and the other is sheel. Gyan without sheel is very dangerous: it must be accompanied by sheel, by which we mean character, moral courage, ability to be independent of any kind of temptation, truthful to one’s ideals.
Coming to the question of education, I do not wish to be understood that I regard ignorance to be a virtue: let that be quite clear. I regard education to be a very necessary qualification for possessing that degree of competence, which is very necessary for the performance of one’s duty. In this House there are people who, although they are not educated, are very competent to voice the grievances of the class whom they represent. I am sure about it.”
I have no doubt that Ambedkar would now be shocked not only by the lack of gyan, but the more depressing lack of sheel. Clearly, disho-nesty is not an issue. We now have a convicted person as chief minister of a major state. This is just a crude powerplay and an elected government with a huge majority is being shown its place by the hired minions of the home minister.
The writer held senior positions in government and industry, and is a policy analyst studying economic and security issues. He also specialises in the Chinese economy.
