Supreme Court on CTG:A case of confusion confounded
A seven-member Appellate Division bench of the Supreme Court has ruled that the constitutional provision of a caretaker government (CTG) is illegal. In a judgment delivered yesterday on a petition filed in January 2000, the apex court declared the 13th amendment void and ultra vires of the constitution. More intriguingly, the court has observed that the next two parliamentary elections can be held under caretaker administrations. It has also made the point that Parliament may amend the constitution to exclude the provision of retired chief justices or judges of the Appellate Division taking over as heads of caretaker governments.
We are, to say the least, perplexed by the judgement because we are not quite sure what it says specifically. If the provision of a caretaker government is now deemed to be illegal, there can be no difficulty in understanding what the Supreme Court is saying. However, for the court to suggest at the same time that the next two elections, scheduled for 2013 and 2018, can be supervised by caretaker regimes in order to 'avoid chaos' only confounds the issue. At a time when various ideas are being mooted about the next caretaker government and politicians as well as civil society are engaged in a debate about the probable nature of it, the Supreme Court verdict only adds to the confusion. How can a provision deemed illegal be permitted to continue for two more elections? What is the guarantee that the elections conducted under the caretaker system in 2013 and 2018 will not become questionable under the law? Additionally, the SC view on judges in the caretaker system leaves quite a few questions to be answered.
We cannot but state the obvious here. In a political climate where politicians have always distrusted one another on the matter of elections, the caretaker system has ensured locally and globally credible free and fair elections in the country. The four caretaker governments we have had since 1991 are thus deserving of credit. An aberration was of course the lengthy tenure of the last such government. To ensure, however, that the experience is not repeated, the Supreme Court, rather than opening up a whole new controversy with its latest mixed-bag pronouncement, could simply have put a watertight cap on the caretaker system being in place for no more than ninety days.
http://amardeshonline.com/pages/details/2011/05/12/80950
http://amardeshonline.com/pages/details/2011/05/12/80964
http://www.bd-pratidin.com/?view=details&type=gold&data=Soccer&pub_no=374&cat_id=1&menu_id=1&news_type_id=1&index=2
http://www.bd-pratidin.com/?view=details&type=gold&data=Soccer&pub_no=374&cat_id=1&menu_id=1&news_type_id=1&index=4
http://jugantor.us/enews/issue/2011/05/12/news0548.htm
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