Slamming the Government’s decision to promulgate Ordinances to raise foreign direct investment in insurance and on the coal Bill, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court, Justice Rajindar Sachar, has said these are “absolutely illegal and afraud on the Constitution.”
“If the matter was so urgent, why was Parliament sessions not extended,” he said in a press statement issued on Thursday.
Justice Sachar cited a Supreme Court ruling in 1987, where it held that the ordinance making power “is in the nature of emergency power to take action when the legislature is not in session this power is to be used to meet an extraordinary situation and it can not be allowed to be” “perverted to serve political ends”.
Hoping President Pranab Mukherjee would decline to issue the Ordinances, Justice Sachar questioned the “urgency” of the Government. “Is the urgency born out of compulsions to honour a secret pact with foreign invertors, who in any case will not invest in this uncertain State of law. Why this unseemly hurry,”” he said, adding that Life Insurance Corporation had been paying dividends to the Centre since the past five years.
“The Ordinance on coal mines is in violation of the Coal Mines Nationalization Act, which prohibits mining of coal by private parties,’ he said