Wrong Priorities

The meeting of chief secretaries and police chiefs of states convened by the union home ministry on June 28 to review internal security has received much attention in the media. A minister-level meeting is supposed to follow. The thinking in the home ministry before the meeting, according to press reports, indicated that under consideration were (i) framing a law to regulate the centre’s intervention in law and order in the states and (ii) for this purpose the transfer of the subjects of ‘Police’ and ‘Public Order’ from the State List to the Concurrent List, invoking Article 355 of the Constitution. Under the article, the union government is obliged “to protect every state against external aggression and internal disturbance”.

Surprisingly, there has been no reference at all in this context to the fact that the Sarkaria Commission on centre-states relations had gone into the issues arising under Article 355 or that the Inter-State Council has been seized of this matter. The council had in January 1999 set up a committee with George Fernandes as convenor. The committee has yet to make its report to the council, but clearly the subject is pending with the council and any step, however short term, taken at this stage without waiting for the council’s views would amount to pre-empting the council. It seems to be insufficiently realised, in quarters that matter at the centre, that precisely moves of this type, be it in matters of administration or finance, are likely to encourage suspicions about the NDA government’s professed commitment to cooperative federalism.