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Govt holds out SC lesson before critics
-The Telegraph

The Manmohan Singh government has decided to aggressively highlight the Supreme Court’s opinion on allocation of natural resources to debunk the CAG’s coal report that presumed losses of Rs 1.86 lakh crore.

Although the government had given a restrained formal response yesterday, senior ministers P. Chidambaram, Salman Khurshid and Kapil Sibal were fielded again today.

The ministers carefully avoided attacking the CAG directly but the essence of their argument was that the government was wrongly targeted on the presumption that auction was a constitutional necessity.

Law minister Salman Khurshid read out paragraph 120 on page 118 of the Supreme Court’s opinion to buttress the government’s case: “In conclusion, the submission that the mandate of Article 14 (equality before law) is that any disposal of a natural resource for commercial use must be for revenue maximisation, and thus by auction, is based neither on law nor logic.”

No minister chose to criticise the CAG, but Sibal said: “The underlying premise of the CAG report, the benchmark on which the presumptive loss was calculated was auction. The court has said that allocation of natural resources to the highest bidder may at times run counter to public good.”

Asked further on the CAG’s computation methods and his own zero-loss theory, he suggested that those who fail to read the message are naïve.

Khurshid, responding to a question if the CAG exceeded its brief, said: “Our understanding of the law and our conviction guided our policy. Now the Supreme Court has clarified and laid down the principle. We hope everybody, including the media, will accept that principle.”

He took a subtle dig at the CAG by saying “I hope all the constitutional authorities will keep the court’s opinion in mind in future. It is a learning process, we are also learning.”

The government wants to underscore the importance of the court’s opinion but has consciously decided not to turn the debate into a verbal duel with the CAG.

A Congress leader said: “Why should we divert attention by attacking the CAG and attract charges of irresponsibility? The content is so strong, the message is so precise from the Supreme Court that our purpose will be served by only highlighting the relevant portions.”

The government has asserted that a decision to allocate coal and lignite only through the auction process had already been taken in February 2012 and that would be the norm henceforth. It added that the 2G licences cancelled by the court earlier would also be auctioned before the year-end and promised to act on other guidelines given by the court in its opinion.

Chidambaram said those who questioned the motive of the government in moving the presidential reference to the Supreme Court should see that the court had endorsed its position.

“All the principles laid down by the court are in consonance with what we said over the last two years,” he said.

Recalling that the court had said “auction continues to be an attractive and preferred means of disposal of natural resources, especially when revenue maximisation is a priority”, he said this is what the government’s argument was.

Chidambaram pointed out that the court had refused to accept the logic that auction was a constitutional principle and had ruled, “auctions may be the best way of maximising revenue but revenue maximisation may not always be the best way to subserve public good. Common good is the sole guiding factor under Article 39(b) for distribution of natural resources. It is the touchstone of testing whether any policy subserves the common good, and if it does, irrespective of the means adopted, it is clearly in accordance with the principle enshrined in Article 39(b).”

The ministers asserted that the court had upheld the government’s right of making policy choices and it was not open to dispute that any wrongdoing or illegality in implementation of policies will attract consequences.

They claimed that the government never tried to protect the guilty and they cited CBI investigations in both the 2G and coal allocations.