NEW DELHI: How many to downing Street equivalents does India have? While the Supreme Court last week.
Questioned the policy of granting government accommodation, for life, to Primo Ministers and Presidents, it also issued notices to $8 politicians and Bureaucrats, as the first stop to wants recovering, for the next government, Rental arrears amounting to lakhs of Rupees which were waived by the present government. Hearing the case on waiver of rent due on government houses granted to VIPs, the division bench comprising Justices Kuldip Singh and S.P. Kurdokar, directed these individuals to show cause why the waiver by the Cabinet Committee on Accommodation (CCA) should not be held unjustified and set aside.
The court also came down strongly on the arbitrariness with which the CCA approved the waivers on a case to case basis.
In particular, the bench was referring to the grant of a government house for life to B, Devi, wife of former deputy, prime minister Jagjeevan Ram, While it is government policy to allot a house for life to the prime minister and president, this I was not true for a deputy prime minister, Even Devi Lal had to vacate his house, the bench stated.
Moreover, till now, only three houses have been allotted for life to wives of former prime ministers Sonia Gandhi, wife of Rajiv Gandhi, Lalita Shastri wife of Lal Bahadur Shastri and Gayatri Devi, wife of Charan Singh. I however, when the additional solicitor general, K.T.S. Tulsi justified the allotment to Indrayani Devi, on the ground that the CCA could “constitutionally act irrespective of law,” the court pulled him up.
Yet Tulsi maintained that under Article 73 of the Constitution, the executive power of the Union government was vested in the Parliament and President.
Article extracted from this publication >>May 1, 1996
