Hello,

The latest from The Collective is the story on how the Modi government games the system to surround his government with yes-(wo)men and enablers in powerful posts – all to strengthen the grip on power.

Our member Shreegireesh Jalihal writes about such an attempt by the Women and Child Development Ministry. The ministry helped Rekha Sharma of the National Commission for Women and Priyank Kanoongo of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights get a second term by amending appointment rules just before their scheduled farewell -- by exploiting a grammatical obscurity in legal text.

Though appointment rules of both the commissions explicitly say no member or chairperson can serve more than two terms, the Ministry amended these to allow Sharma, who had just 2 more days in her tenure, and Kanoongo, with a little over a month, to be reappointed. Both of them were members of their commissions for a term before serving as the chairperson for another, together adding up to two terms.

To push the amendment favouring Kanoongo through the legal department, the ministry used Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta’s off-the-record opinion on how the conjunction “or” in the legal text on appointments could be used favourably, show previously unpublished documents obtained by RTI activist Anjali Bhardwaj and reviewed by The Collective. The story has great details of the solicitor General’s grammatical pedantry.

Sharma and Kanoongo head Commissions that are powerful enough to initiate inquiries, summon any person from any part of the country and examine them on oath, recommend to the government for action or approach High Courts or the Supreme Court for further orders.  Unlike the CBI, the commissions can initiate a probe in any part of India without a state government’s consent. The chairpersons enjoy the perks of a Cabinet Secretary, the highest-ranked bureaucrat.

With these powers, the two have been criticised for acting like the ideological sidekicks of the government by going after dissenters and critics of the government. The Kanoongo-led commission’s latest act that appeared closely allied with the Modi government was a notice on 11 July 2022 to police, asking them to file a first information report against Shiv Sena leader Aditya Thackeray, accusing him of “using” children in a protest to stop a controversial car shed in Mumbai’s lush Aarey Milk Colony. In the story, there are details of many more such opposition-seeking missiles the commissions have fired.

Click here to read the story by Shreegireesh Jalihal published in Article 14.