Sounding a note of caution on the state of democracy in the country, Vice-President M. Hamid Ansari Monday said “no serious observer of the Indian scene can deny the signs of waste and exhaustion” in it.Ansari made the observation while delivering a convocation address at the Indian Law Institute after distributing the Master of Law (LLM) and other degrees.
He sounded pessimistic about the future of Indian democracy. “The rule of law is not sufficiently protected in the Indian society and challenges to it continue to undermine Indian democracy and pose grave threat to democracy”.
A former diplomat, Ansari, equally blamed all three organs of the State – the legislature, executive and the judiciary – for their respective failures that were together undermining Indian democracy.
Quoting a 2006 study of the Indian parliament by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Ansari said: “The parliament is increasingly becoming ineffective in providing surveillance of the executive branch of the government.”
“One part of this is attributed to the behaviour pattern of MPs and the wastage of time (when they disrupt parliament) that otherwise could be devoted to legislative duties and scrutiny of executive action,” Ansari said.
Ansari said “the increasing complexity of modern governance” requires “greater professionalism in legislative work”. The absence of this has resulted in “a hobbled legislature, ceding ground not to the executive or external forces but to the judiciary”, he noted.
Lambasting the executive wing for its failures, Ansari said: “The balance between its political and professional components has been disturbed; this is evident in the functioning of the civil service and the police.”
On the judiciary, Ansari said: “The excessive zeal reflected at times in pronouncements by members of the judiciary is another area of concern”.
Endorsing the views of the Lok Sabha speaker and others, Ansari added: “Some observers have asserted that the Supreme Court has given up any formal pretence to the doctrine of the separation of power.”
“This is perceived to upset, as the Lok Sabha speaker has observed, the fine constitutional balance and the democratic functioning of the state as a whole,” he said, adding: “It is evident that the careful balance visualized in the constitution has been disturbed.”
The vice-president criticised the judiciary right in the presence of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and two senior-most judges of the apex court, Justice B.N. Agarwal and Justice Arijit Pasayat, who attended the convocation.
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