Weighty Issues

Going (coco)nuts over Assembly questions

Not a week passes without some central government ministry, state ministry, or the Supreme Court making some comment or the other on the justification of the Right To Information (that’s the only right you have in India gifted by Sonia Gandhi, the rest is all bakwas) or, whether it is really within your rights. Never mind the very essence of RTI, which I thought was your right to information. Period. But, look at the way your MLAs waste official money and time of government babus and clerks. The questions asked in the March Budget Session of the Goa Assembly literally and figuratively outweigh any RTI question that may have been asked across the length and breadth of India. By outweigh I don’t mean overshadow, I mean they truly tipped the scales. The MLA from St. Cruz, Victoria Fernandes asked to list the beneficiaries of various schemes of the Agriculture Department. The answer all of 1,549 pages, I thought, must have weighed at least 5 kilogrammes. What on earth did she want to know that for? Another question asked by her, more or less covered the same areas, with some deviations like whether the government intends to start new schemes; whether the government has explored the various potential uses of the coconut, other than for cooking (!); details of the support price scheme i.e amount given to various persons in the past two years for various agriculture produce covered along with names and addresses. Names and addresses, addresses! For crying out loud, what in blazes for? Since Victoria I think doesn’t have a beef with Agriculture Minister Vishwjeet Rane, she must really hate the department’s officials who must have spent weeks correlating piles of information to produce the 971 pages produced to the Assembly. Factor in the 40 copies handed over to MLAs, media and those with less baggage to carry, that was a lot of wasted paper. And many trees must have been cut so Victoria could seem earnest.

PhD anyone?

But was Victoria given the right answers? You will never know, will you? She wanted to know the list of beneficiaries who have taken the benefit of the support price for various crops (constituency-wise that too) such as sugarcane, beetlenut etc from June 2007 till date. Constituency wise! Now YOU would be within your rights to think she might be doing her doctorate.

Rane through the wringer

You pick, but the March 2010 Budget Session did look like suspiciously like a Question-Rane Week. Why would the Mayem MLA Anant Shet want to know whether the government has plans to offer the various schemes of the department to farmers cultivating their fields in property owned by the government or under custodian of Evacuee Property? Or, why would the Mandrem MLA Laxmikant Parsekar want to know the taluk-wise quantity of paddy produced in the last three years, the area under cultivation, details of farmers who have got the benefit of the support price –their names and benefit availed. The answers given went into 73 pages. There was this weighty question asked of Rane by Manohar Parrikar. ‘Give the number of referral cases from various health centres to Asilo Hospital and Hospicio Hospital,’ the question said. The answer was 9,967 cases. But the 195 pages really went to answer ‘give details with name of patient, date of referral and reasons for referral for the last two years’. Rane is also the Health Minister. But for lighthearted quizzing, this question from the Siolim MLA Dayanand Mandrekar, whatever his intentions were, must take the cake, bakery and leftovers too. The question put to the Power Minister Aleixo Sequeira was ‘give the number of posts filled by the Electricity Department from 2008 till date with details like names, dates of advertising the posts, interview dates and copies of their educational certificates.’ The answers took 575 pages. Class participation comes with a price for the babus and forests!

Long arm of the law

The Law Commission was set up on April 6, 2009 and a grant-in-aid of Rs 35 lakh was given to be spent till March 2, 2010. Here’s how it spent your tax bucks. Salaries Rs 16,24,678. Honorarium to members (sitting fee of Rs 1,500) Rs 1,11,000. Domestic travel Rs 37,189. Office expenses Rs 2,25,304. P.O.L Rs 1,32,185. Wages Rs 1,700. Advertising Rs 2,840. Total Rs 21,34,896. An extra Rs 11,42,528 was spent on its chairman. Breakup: Salaries paid to his personal staff Rs 11,05,339. Tour expenses Rs 37,189. Now Goa would actually not need a Law Commission if it had an Advocate General who could deliver says my friend Aires Rodrigues. So, was it created to accommodate Ramakant Khalap, its chairman, because then why the cabinet status rank for him? Just for the record all previous chairman of Law Commissions across India are retired High Court or Supreme Court Judges.

The first Law Commission was appointed by the Union Territory of Goa, Daman and Diu on July 20, 1968 in pursuance of a government resolution dated July 18, 1968 to examine the Portuguese Laws in force. The Government appointed Gopal Apa Kamat as chairman, the law secretary O.P Garg as a member and made Tito de Menezes as its third member (appointed by the chairman). The tenure of the Commission was for a period of three years in the first instance.

Today, the two other members are Cleofato Coutinho and Mario Pinto Almeida, both lawyers. There is a huge task ahead of them, but of that later.

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