The death of three young IAS aspirants on July 27 due to drowning in the flooded basement of a coaching institute in Delhi is heart rendering. The basement was being used for purposes other than for what it was sanctioned for. It had, contrary to existing building laws, no provision to drain out water. The road outside lacked adequate drainage infrastructure. This was known to all the authorities concerned. Yet nothing was done, to prevent the tragedy waiting to happen. In a macabre first reaction, the police arrested a person who was driving his car on the road outside!
Ever since, politicians have been indulging in the usual blame-game: the BJP blames the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and vice versa. This tragedy has become a football being kicked around all over the media and political landscape. Finger pointing comes easily to our political class, but no one wants to seriously — and collectively — resolve the systemic reasons underlying such tragedies. The fundamental problem is that nobody knows anymore who is running Delhi, and no one, therefore, can be held accountable for this disaster.
The principle of federalism, as outlined in our Constitution, is to demarcate clear-cut lines on the responsibilities between the central government and the states. Within this framework, Centre-state relations are supposed to function on the basis of constructive cooperation, irrespective of where which political party is. However, this is hardly the case today in our cut-throat and myopic politics. States where Opposition governments are in power complain about owed funds not being transferred by the Central government, and about governors who act like agents of the Central ruling party, sitting on legitimately passed bills by the state legislature for months and years. So much for the much-touted phrase “cooperative federalism”.
The case of Delhi, a Union Territory, is however sui generic, an example of the worst form of federal immaturity. The elected government, which is AAP, has no powers over the bureaucrats under it, because an unelected lieutenant governor (L-G), a nominee of the Central government, controls them. Administratively, this is obviously an unworkable situation. The people of Delhi elected the AAP, but neither chief minister (CM) Arvind Kejriwal, nor his cabinet ministers, have any control on the postings and performance of the bureaucrats working under them. True, as the national capital, Delhi is not a full state. But, even under this arrangement, the L-G had control of only three specific powers: Land, public order, and police. But in May 2015, a brazen usurpation was made, when by an executive order of the Union home ministry, control over officers was also taken away from the elected government and given to the L-G.
Understandably, the AAP government challenged this order in court. Eight year later, on May 11, 2023, a five-judge Constitutional bench of the Supreme Court (SC), in a landmark judgement, restored the department of services to the elected Delhi government. The SC based its verdict on the principles of federalism, whereby elected state governments must be able to exercise legitimate powers through a bureaucracy that is answerable to them. However, the BJP-led Central government decided to issue an ordinance to overrule the reasoned judgement of the SC’s Constitutional Bench, and gave the control of Delhi government bureaucrats back to the L-G.
I have been a bureaucrat myself, and know their psyche. If the chief secretary and senior officers of the Delhi government are not accountable to the elected government, and nor does their performance appraisal lie with it, why would they obey the elected government’s orders? There is a video in circulation that shows a AAP minister literally pleading with a senior bureaucrat to come with him for a joint inspection, and the officer curtly saying that he will do so only if he has the time!
The three youngsters, gasping for breath, would not have perhaps known that this complete and deliberate confusion on clear-cut executive accountability was the reason for their death. The L-G reports to the Union home minister, who is from the ruling BJP; the bureaucrats who run Delhi are controlled by the L-G; the people elected the Opposition AAP government in Delhi; but the government has highly truncated powers to fulfil their expectations. In the midst of all this, there are other multiple authorities like the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), first trifurcated in 2012, then reunited in 2022. In the MCD elections last year, AAP won, but for the 15 years before it was led by the BJP. There is also the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which reports to the Union government, and is chaired by the L-G. It is this administrative nightmare, riddled with rampant and verifiable corruption, that ultimately killed the three youngsters.
To most objective observers, it appears that in the backdrop of the bitter political rivalry and animosity between the AAP and the BJP, the L-G is hardly playing a neutral and supportive role. In the past, this was not the case, at least not so overtly. Sheila Dikshit was the Congress CM of Delhi for 15 years starting 1998, serving under L-Gs appointed by the rival BJP-led Central government, but there was never such a situation of complete acrimony and lack of trust between the two. Perhaps, Arvind Kejriwal, and the AAP as a whole, lack her political finesse and ability to get along with the L-G, but the AAP does face an entirely different and far more difficult obstacle — which she did not — of not having control over the bureaucracy.
I hold no brief for any party, but I do wonder if political differences can become so vicious as to imperil the lives of citizens? Do our politicians really no longer care about the consequences of their partisan actions? The AAP government may be guilty of administrative lapses, but is the BJP entirely innocent in its approach to AAP as the elected government? Was using an ordinance to overturn the verdict of a Constitutional Bench of the SC the correct decision? If so, to what purpose? Can a “double-engine” sarkar work when the track lines are all entangled? Must the L-G and the CM have an adversarial relationship? Do lives not matter at the altar of who wins the next election?
