Delhi vs Centre | Exclusion Of Power Over Civil Services Negates Purpose Of State Governance, Negates People's Will : Singhvi Tells SC

The Supreme Court on Tuesday commenced hearing on the dispute between the Delhi government and the union government regarding control of administrative services in the National Capital Territory of DelhiThe five-judge bench of Chief Justices D. Y. Chandrachud, M. R. Shah, Krishna Murari, Hima Kohli and P. S. Narasimha heard Senior Advocate Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, for the government of NCT of Delhi. Last year, a 3-judge bench had referred the matter to the Constitution Bench.Here is an account of today's hearing :Dr. Singhvi: "There are four or five broad themes. This is the case at the core- it is not merely about distribution of powers and the balance between the government of India and the NCT. It is about whether civil servants serving in the NCT are accountable through the government, the ministerial responsibility, and through them to the people of Delhi which elected the Delhi government. Civil servants must be accountable to ministers. That is the first leg of the chain. The buck stops at the minister, he takes the responsibility, but they are accountable internally to the ministers. Second, the minister is accountable to the legislature. This is the heart of the whole system. Otherwise the whole system cannot function. Finally, the members of the legislature are accountable to the people who elected them. This is the triple basis of how the accountability of the civil servants gets fused ultimately with the people who elect the government"Dr. Singhvi: "The second broad theme is that in any federal system, there are at the minimum a dual set of governments operating. Dual manifestation of public will goes along with dual governance. Intelligence of the electorate, especially in India, Your Lordships have noted in several judgments. Federalism is ultimately a vehicle for manifesting diversity. It is like a pressure cooker, it allows you to let off steam, to manage this cauldron of diversity, and India is the most diverse on planet Earth"Dr. Singhvi: "The third broad facet arising here is that any government which seeks to fulfil the will of the people will have to have the ability to create posts, to appoint staff to those posts and to interchange them according to that government’s perceived sense of that person’s competence, ability, efficacy. Unless the government has the power of creating and managing civil services, appointing persons, transferring persons, a government cannot function. Government is represented at the political level by ministers who create policies, create decisions of a broad nature. But any government- central, state, municipal, whatever- the implementation of those policies depends only on the civil servants. Imagine a situation where those who are charged with the obligation of implementing, the political executive is excluded from dealing with them or controlling them. So the exclusion of civil services power from any government negates the purpose of any government, negates the purpose of giving it any autonomy, negates the purpose of state governance or local governance. Exclusion of the services means civil servants fail to be accountable to the people through the chain of command which I have just spoken about. You are negating the will of the people. Exclusion means an impossible-to-consider situation where I, at the ministerial level, am in charge of making policies but those who are implementing it are not responsible to the policymakers. Your civil servant is the servant of a different master, serving in my department but serving a different master. When you have no accountability of those in service, then you function on your own. There is complete insubordination, chaos. Is it even conceivable to argue or suggest that civil services be excluded? As has been done by the impugned notification? Then Your Lordships need not have created Article 239AA"Dr. Singhvi: "There is a joint cadre, there is all India service and there are state services. In all India service also, you are always rooted and anchored in a state. Services are of India but you don’t hang in the air, you are employed in a given state. If All India cadre decides to release 'A' for the NCT or the state 'X', then how that person works, where he is posted tomorrow, is entirely an intrastate issue, intra- UT issue. It will never be an issue which a third party can decide, otherwise you can’t run any UT. All India services and central government services are designed to serve different states. But after being allocated, how they operate, how they implement the policy, where they go, which department, transfer or keeping XYZ at XYZ place is an intrastate issue. If you do not give that power to a UT, it is impossible to conceive of a functioning system. Like, Your lordships know we have a chamber of a lawyer or a senior counsel, he gets juniors, he decides this person's unique ability lies in this area of law and will be given these kinds of matters when they come, or that he will be in the Supreme...

Delhi vs Centre | Exclusion Of Power Over Civil Services Negates Purpose Of State Governance, Negates People's Will : Singhvi Tells SC

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