No office too high

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck a blow for Indian democracy. It quashed the appointment of P.J. Thomas as the Central Vigilance Commissioner, and thereby returned institutional integrity to the office. Thomas’s appointment had been controversial from the very beginning. In fact, apart from the 1992 palmolein imports case that has compelled this reversal, Thomas, as a former telecom secretary, had already offered to recuse himself from investigations into the 2G spectrum allocation, possibly the biggest case that would have been overseen by the Central Vigilance Commission on his watch. It is, therefore, arguable how long the UPA government could have managed to defend his continuance in office. Nonetheless, the manner in which it sought the facts of the case and now the clarity with which it explained the judgment, the SC has reversed the corroding effect of the Thomas controversy on the office. It has, more importantly, demonstrated our democratic capacity for self-correction, with institutions making up for, or checking, the lapses of the others.

A certain arrogance coloured the executive’s refusal to reckon with how indefensible Thomas’s appointment was. That is perhaps why the government continued to portray the controversy as one born of politics, not of an institutional error. Now, the SC has confirmed that a consensus on who to recommend for the CVC’s office is not mandatory in the high-power committee of the prime minister, the home minister and the leader of the opposition. Otherwise, it pointed out, the requirement would amount to giving any one person a veto. By doing so, the court cleared the question before it of political overtones and addressed the legality of the appointment. The recommendation for Thomas’s appointment made by the committee, it said, did not consider the relevant material (the palmolein case) and so “does not exist in law”.

There has been enough controversy over whether or how that relevant material was considered by the committee, and the court’s strictures must yield a clear account from the government about how Thomas’s fact-sheet before the committee may have been so sparse — and how a committee with the prime minister could be so insufficiently informed. It cannot be business as usual when the executive invites this ringing stricture from the court: “No government authority focused on the larger issue of institutional integrity of the office of the CVC while recommending the name of Thomas.” This should be a humbling moment for the Centrl government, but in the blame-calling let’s not miss it for what it is too: an assertion of our democratic resilience.