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| NAC's rebirth may bring Government under Sonia's tight leash | | CHANGING POWER SCHEME OF DELHI - I | |
ABID SHAH
Early Times Report
NEW DELHI, May 15: Sonia Gandhi's decision to revive National Advisory Council (NAC) may be backed by her desire to reset the priorities of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government. Yet, when UPA in its second term is going to complete first year in office on May 22, the rebirth of NAC has signalled a possible change in power scheme of Delhi.
And as through the remaining four years of Government's term the NAC is going to keep a tab over the Government vis-à-vis its important decisions that can have wider impact and shape people's opinion about the present dispensation, the question that lurks through the NAC move is whether this is going to clip the wings of Manmohan Singh's Government.
Last time when UPA first came to power in May 2004, the formation of NAC under Sonia Gandhi had quite a bit of justification and it had a clear cut task to oversee the implementation of Common Minimum Programme (CMP) that was drawn in consultation with the Left parties in lieu of their support to the UPA Government.
But NAC came to an abrupt end in March 2006 amid allegations against Sonia Gandhi for holding an office of profit as chairperson of NAC while also being an MP. Sonia promptly resigned both from NAC as well as her Lok Sabha membership though she was re-elected from Rae Bareli in a couple of months.
And four years after this when her appointment as NAC chairperson with a rank of a Cabinet Minister was again announced by the Government on March 29 this year, a more active role for Sonia vis-à-vis policy decision and its implementation became a certainty.
The question that arises is what prompted Sonia Gandhi to take the NAC route once again when she had already made her mark during her last nearly two-year-long tenure as NAC chairperson by successfully getting Acts like Right to Information (RTI) and National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREGA) passed by Parliament.
Not only this but laws like the one to ensure Right to Education and mechanism for giving National Identification Number to all citizens have also been moving as per her plans. As for reasons behind her latest move, those in the know of things point to mainly three areas where Sonia differed with the approach taken by the Government.
These are move to dilute RTI Act instead of taking it forward by bringing in judges under its purview, inadequacies discovered by her in the draft of Food Security Bill and approach to the problems arising out of Naxalite violence and ways to tackle this.
In the wake of a Government move to delete officials noting and comments while providing files to applicants under RTI, several activists have been up in arms.
And this could not have missed Sonia's attention, point out sources. Her confidant Wajahat Habibullah who heads Central RTI set up in Delhi was held back manly by her despite a move to shift him to Jammu and Kashmir. Sonia Gandhi values Habibullah's opinion on such matters so he was retained in Delhi, say the sources.
The second source of Sonia's concern has been Food Security Bill where she pointed out through a letter to the Government problems regarding quantity, quality of foodgrains to be provided to poor families as also the issues related to numbers of poor that the Planning Commission had put at 26 percent whereas S Tendulkar Committee estimates the below poverty line (BPL) families at around 37 percent of the total number of households in the country.
And as for the Government approach to the Naxalite problem Sonia has come out openly saying in the latest issue of a party journal that while acting decisively against terrorism, the root cause, meaning abject poverty and lack of development in Naxal prone areas generally inhabited by tribal people, has to be addressed through taking development and its fruits to the grass root level.
All these three areas have been proving a major source of difference in perceptions between the Government and the party, say the informed Congressmen while pointing out that not only Sonia Gandhi but also party general secretaries like Rahul Gandhi and Digvijay Singh have often preferred to go by their instincts and feedback coming to them instead of the Government approach to issues of vital public importance. And the variance that has thus been sharpening has led Sonia Gandhi to try out NAC as a think tank once again. (To be continued)
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