PARLIAMENT and the Supreme Court are the highest bodies in any democratic country. One legislates and the other interprets, keeping in mind the dictates of the constitution and equity. Both institutions, in fact, provide the axle on which the wheel of a democratic structure turns.

At times the two may work at cross purposes but only accidentally. Seldom has this happened by design. But last week it did. The Indian parliament made history of sorts by restoring an archaic service rule which the Supreme Court had struck down three years ago.

The rule said that government permission was required before any action was contemplated against an official holding the position of joint secretary or above. The court threw it out on the ground that “every person accused of committing the same offence is to be dealt with in the same manner.”

Yet, the government brought the Central Vigilance Commission bill which the parliament passed to restore the status quo ante, that is, the compulsion to have government’s prior permission to move against a joint secretary or above. Why this provision has been reinstated even at the risk of committing contempt of the Supreme Court is not difficult to explain.

The working of administration in the last two decades has shown that senior officials are the ones on whom the government relies for any hanky-panky. They understand the whims of the ministers and they interpret the rules in such a way that all the dishonest decisions are dressed up well. Nothing untoward gets exposed. Had the Supreme Court order been obeyed, the ministers would not have known how to get their “work” done.

Before the emergency (1975-77), the number of officials who acted as errand boys of the rulers was small. But after that, the number of such bureaucrats has multiplied. The rulers knew how a mere threat or a coveted position could make civil servants do even the dirtiest work. The desire for self-protection — desire for survival — was the factor for obedience during the emergency.

I do not know whether the prior permission rule operates in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or Nepal. But something like that must be in existence because ministers in those countries too get away literally with murder as in India. The only difference probably is that their Supreme Courts have not yet noticed how the government is overprotective about their senior officers.

New Delhi tried to cover up the track only after the Supreme Court ordered it to constitute the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). In what came to be known as the ‘hawala’ case, the court realized how the politicians and the bureaucrats had become too close for comfort over the years. The revelation came through a diary which was seized during a raid on a farmhouse in Delhi. The diary gave the names of the politicians and bureaucrats along with the amount of money they had received from abroad.

I was a member of the parliament select committee which considered the Central Vigilance Commission bill before its introduction in the parliament.

The manner in which the representatives of political parties, including the CPI (M), wanted to restore the prior permission power to the government convinced me that all rulers, no matter what their ideology was, used civil servants for their party and personal ends. No member of the committee listened to my plea that the experience of the emergency should be a warning that our civil service readily caved in before the extra-constitutional authorities and the senior among them became instruments of tyranny.

I wrote a dissenting note: “There has been no way to know why permission was granted in one case and rejected in another. The head of the department concerned has no guidelines from the government to follow. The entire process is ad hoc, capricious and whimsical. The Supreme Court rightly did away with the rule of jungle...”

Neither parties in power nor those in the opposition cared to support me when the bill came before the Rajya Sabha for approval last week. Privately, many told me that what I said was correct. But they admitted that their parties thought differently. Their parties also run the governments in some states.

My biggest disappointment came from the attorney-general. He was asked for his opinion before the government introduced the bill in parliament. He gave his approval. The highest judicial officer should have taken the orders of the Supreme Court more seriously. He on the one hand and parliament on the other have done something which may well be contempt of court. The matter will not rest here. Someone will challenge it in the Supreme Court. The attorney-general would look small if the court struck down the prior permission part in the act.

Apart from the question of corruption, what certainly can be sensed is that there is a general and wider acceptance of the officials who indulge in short-circuiting the administrative procedures — level-jumping in the chains of command, and non-conformity to standard administrative norms and values. It is the absence of service sanctions and the non-critical, almost supine, acceptance of the wrongdoings of the members of the services by the general run of officials spurs others to swell the ranks of the wrong-doers.

The CVC has been pushed, unwittingly, into another controversy which has to do with the health of the institutions. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is the top vigilance body of the parliament to scrutinize whether the budget allocations are spent properly. So important is the question that the chairmanship of the committee is always given to a member in the opposition.

For some reasons the government has felt edgy over the expenditure during the Kargil war. Certain leaks have appeared in the press to suggest that some of the equipment, flown in from abroad, were never used although they were meant for use at Kargil. The report of the PAC was awaited to know the truth. Defence Minister George Fernandes, who entrusted all defence purchases to the CVC for examination, has refused to give the PAC the CVC report on Kargil. Why? His explanation is that the report is “secret.”

Parliamentary committees have been shown top secret reports in the past. Why this plea now? Fernandes is insulting the MPs and their august body, parliament, when he says that he has the right to withhold certain information from them in the name of secrecy.

Apparently, the report has revealed something which the defence ministry wants to hide. Those who are denying its access to the MPs can be hauled up for breach of rights that the parliament enjoys. The opposition was within its rights to create a rumpus in both houses of parliament on the government’s refusal to show the report to the PAC. The PAC has a large contingent of members from the ruling coalition.

The government’s refusal to show the CVC report to the PAC and the restoration of prior approval of the government to move against senior officials convey the same message: extraneous considerations are far more important than transparency which gives confidence to governance.

Institutions have come to be doubted. And that is not good for democracy.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in New Delhi.