P
By Deepak Kumar Rath
The Congress chief and above all, the chair-person of the National Advisory Council (NAC), Smt. Sonia Gandhi is slowly but surely taking back what she abruptly gave up after hearing her ´inner voice´. She is also the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) for political deliberations with the coalition partners. NAC, the brainchild of Smt. Gandhi, is her pet Council, a parallel ´power centre´ of Prime Minister´s Office (PMO) where she acts like a super Prime Minister.
The NAC is virtually a super-Prime Minister´s office (PMO) where Madame Sonia is awarded a cabinet status and this ensures that she would have a secretariat and two joint secretaries, and would function from 2, Motilal Nehru Marg. To monitor the CMP, the NAC members would meet various ministers and secretaries from time to time. And Madame Sonia will send the recommendations of the meetings directly to the Prime Minister. Official information says that ?all the expenditure incurred in connection with the functioning of the NAC would be met by the Central Government and provided through the PMO.? The NAC would not exceed more than 20 members appointed by the Prime Minister in consultation with it´s chairperson. All members in the NAC are loyalists of Madame Sonia and Leftists.
In fact, sources say that there is no constitutional status for such a post for Madame Sonia. Law Minister, H.R. Bharadwaj however said that as chairperson of UPA and with her cabinet rank, Madame Sonia could call for any government file. Legal and constitutional norms however make it clear that Madame Sonia cannot have access to any government file. The cabinet ministers take the oath of secrecy and those accorded with cabinet rank are not eligible for taking an oath, administered by the President. Second, the Government of India (Transaction of Business) Rules, 1961, clearly states that only the Prime Minister is entitled to call for any government file for his perusal. The only exception to this is Finance Minister, but that too to a certain limit.
The chairman of a council with cabinet rank has been allowed to call for government files. But the strange fact is that the ´supreme sacrifice´ for which Madame Sonia was drawing sympathy from the people, vanished all of a sudden and now she need facilities that is provided to a highest decision-making body in the government.
Madame Sonia has instructed the Prime Minister to concentrate on the economy and budgetary exercise and on toning up of the administration. She would monitor from NAC, which comprises of experts on various fields. NAC will meet once in three months while the UPA´s coordination committee is expected to meet once a month.
Despite lots of opposition inside the Congress Party, she managed to build her own image as a guardian of the Congress Party. And now in UPA govern-ment, she plays an authoritarian role and at the same time is trying her best to nurture Rahul Gandhi as the future leader unit-ing the loyalists of the Nehru family. First Smt. Gandhi selected Manmohan Singh as the prime ministerial candidate. Now NAC is her ´power centre´ to interfere in the government work and to keep an eye on Dr Manmohan Singh.
Her ´supreme sacrifice´, supposed act of renunciation, seems to have dissolved faster than one would have expected. She did a U-turn from ´Sonia the abrupt renouncer to Sonia the gradual usurper´. Manmohan Singh has left no stone unturned to fulfill her wish-list.
To compound his disability Manmohan Singh is hamstrung by a document called Common Minimum Programme (CMP), which is more akin to a Communist Minimum Programme than an action plan. CMP is ´regressive´ and is blunting the competitive age of India.
Madame Sonia´s interference in the functioning of the government does not end here. The NAC, the dual ´power structure´, will definitely affect the new government although officially there is supposed to be work division between Madame Sonia and Manmohan Singh. But in the real sense, Madame Sonia is all set to take both political decisions in the party as well as in the government. The Prime Minister is only supposed to announce ´yes boss´ decisions officially.
It is now decided by the Madame that, instead of Manmohan Singh visiting her residence, she will now visit 7, Race Course Road on every Saturday to exchange notes. After Manmohan Singh was selected for PM´s job, he visited 10, Janpath more than fourteen times in two days to finalise the portfolio distribution.
Madame Sonia has instructed the Prime Minister to concentrate on the economy and budgetary exercise and on toning up of the administration. She would monitor from NAC, which comprises of experts on various fields. NAC will meet once in three months while the UPA´s coordination committee is expected to meet once a month.
Now, highly placed sources in the Planning Commission are of the opinion that NAC is nothing but a parallel ´power structure´ of the Planning Commission. All the government programmes would now be scrutinised by two government agencies having the same function. The Planning Commission would set all its programmes keeping in view the interests of the CMP of UPA, and this would create differences between the two agencies ideologically and administratively. It is estimated that around one billion rupees would be spent per year for NAC, which comes to the same amount of expenditure as spent on the Planning Commission.
We can say that the NAC is nothing but an orgnaisation created with the purpose of fulfilling the political agenda of Madame Gandhi´s family of the Congress, and for the Left parties, by spending an extra one billion rupees from government treasury. Mild-mannered bureaucrat-turned-politician, Dr Manmohan Singh is entitled to our sympathies because he will not be able to absorb the shocks of his own party and the alliance partners for long.
