Editorial
Working of JS standing committees
Ministries should help them play their oversight role
THE chiefs of the parliamentary standing committees have made it known that they are not happy with the role of the ministries insofar as compliance with their recommendations is concerned. They have decided to take up the matter with the prime minister and let her know the difficulties that the committees are facing in performing the job assigned to them.
Now, the committee system, the cornerstone of an accountable and answerable parliamentary democracy, is supposed to oversee the performance of the executive branch. They may summon government functionaries or ask them to produce documents before a committee if and when they deem such action necessary. The purpose is to ensure accountability and transparency -- two vital ingredients of good governance. But the point to be noted here is that overseeing should not be of an interventionist kind. On the other hand, the ministries' job is to extend all kinds of cooperation and support to the committees. They must not miss the point that such oversight by the committees will help enhance the ministries' credibility in the public eye.
However, it seems the system is not working as smoothly as one would have expected it to. The ministries and other government agencies are not taking the committees' recommendations seriously enough. One instance should help make the point clear. The chairman of the committee on the communications ministry has stated that the minister concerned questioned the very jurisdiction of the committee when it asked the ministry to produce certain documents. Similarly, government officials do not feel obliged to appear as witness before any committee. But the committees cannot do much to have such non-compliance redressed.
It has been reported that the committee chiefs are going to tell the prime minister that the rules of procedure may have to be amended to enable the committees function purposefully. We believe they have a good point since the ministries of their own are not being adequately responsive to most of the recommendations made by the committees over the last 18 months.
The system must be made to work, and there are best practices to take the cue from as to how such committees work in established democracies. The deficit of the spirit of accommodation and cooperation between the ministries and the parliamentary standing committees will have to be mitigated. In fact, they should be complementary and cooperative with each other for the sake of good, accountable and transparent governance. As the ministries acknowledge their responsibilities so also the committees should give no impression of being interfering and interventionist.
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