Low commission

The unsavoury spat between Chief Election Commissioner Gopalaswamy and his deputy Navin Chawla comes as a sad blow to the prestige of this constitutional institution. How the CEC’s letter to the president about Navin Chawla was known to media even before it reached Rashtrapati Bhawan is a moot question. I don’t hold any brief for Navin Chawla. Still, CEC Gopalaswamy has crossed all limits, labeling trivial charges upon Chawla of leaking information out to political parties from a toilet. Everyone knows that even if an end-decision is known to a political party, it cannot prevent autonomous functioning of the election commission. On the other hand, fingers are now pointing to Gopalaswamy for the decision to advance HP elections, which seemed to have benefited BJP. Similarly, Karnataka elections were declared even before voter lists were finalised. Various phases of J&K elections were scheduled deliberately to help BJP in the Jammu region. There are accusations that as ex-member of the delimitation commission in Gujarat, Gopalaswamy routinely attended all meetings and helped BJP secure many seats. Gopalaswamy was home secretary during the Gujarat riots and the NDA subsequently appointed him election commissioner.

Funds crunchers

I believe it is high time that chairmen of all public sector banks take a stand and pull up the bureaucratic machinery below them. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had initiated some bold economic steps in the last two months. Reserve Bank had reduced PLR and CRR to leave more money with the banks, which could be lent to people and companies to kick start economic activity and boost demand. Under normal circumstances, these steps would have flooded the market with liquidity. The unlikely obstruction has come from junior officers of banks; who refuse to shed their archaic, anti-lending mindset. There are cases when even the chairman’s directive could not move the machinery below him and disbursal of funds has been held up for months. Clearly, it is time for the chairmen to wield a stick.

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