The govt must work, forget the polls

How else do you explain the fact that something as innocuous as the Companies Bill hasn’t been passed by Parliament for the last four years? Ironically, even the arguments in favour of preventing a `caretaker’ government from taking such decisions is flawed. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the projects cleared involved some kind of loss of revenue to the state, or that they violated some existing rules such as those of the environment ministry.

But the point is that these clearances would have been unjustified even if the Gujral government had lasted for a couple of years more. In fact, a government in power would find it easier to cover up the flaws in their decision-making process. In which case, the attempt should be to keep tabs on whether a decision is unfair, rather than seeing how much tenure a government has left when it takes a decision. To be sure, the fact that, in some of the recent cases, Cabinet papers were prepared in a rush, did a lot to contribute to the feeling that all was not well with the projects — in the case of the Rajasthan telecom circle project of Telelink, for example, the clearance was given despite the absence of telecom minister Beni Prasad Verma.

But even in this case, the fact is that the law ministry had given its clearance to the project as long as six months ago. The principal dispute between Telelink and the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) had arisen over whether the company’s bid was lower than the minimum value acceptable to the DoT. Telelink, in fact, petitioned the Tender Evaluation Committee (TEC) of the DoT on the matter — in April, its project received the final nod from the full Telecom Commission. The project then ran into another roadblock as the DoT was reluctant to award the license to a consortium which had a company named ARM as a partner — ARM was one of the companies which was accused in one of the various scams involving former telecom minister Sukh Ram. This controversy was also sorted out when, last July, ARM decided to opt out. Yet, for a variety of reasons — essentially, Verma’s unwillingness to take a decision on what he felt was a controversial project the Cabinet did not clear the project. Meanwhile, according to Telelink, they’ve already spent close over Rs 10 crore on the project in terms of commissions on bank guarantees, salaries and related costs. The story of the delays in the Radisson hotel project near the Indira Gandhi international airport in the capital is much the same. For around two years, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) were involved in a dispute as to who really owned the land on which the Rs 90 crore hotel had been built.

The lease belongs to the AAI, according to whose rules, the hotel was built — the AAI’s rules, however, are not the same as the DDA’s. So the hotel was observing norms according to one set of rules, and flouting them by another set. The matter was finally sent to the Law Ministry which ruled that AAI rules were to obtain, close to four months ago. Yet, the project continued to remain uncleared. That’s when the Cabinet came into the act, and decided to clear the project the around ten days ago. Ironically, the Prime Minister’s Office refuses to take credit for what this columnist, at least, feels was a good decision The Indian Express ran a news story a few days ago, breaking the news of the Cabinet clearance and said that the PMO had directed that a note be prepared for the Cabinet on the matter. In other words, the PMO, indeed most politicians and bureaucrats are afraid of being seen as party to any decision which helps clear stalled projects so what if these are critical to the economy’s growth? Such is the tyranny of the self-imposed code of celibacy for governments on their way out. For a country which seems to have gotten into the habit of changing governments every six months, the damage potential is colossal.