Why not an all-party meet on freebies: Supreme Court tells Centre | India News

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday suggested the Centre could call “an all-party meeting to discuss the pros and cons of freebies and take a decision on how to curb it, if required”.
A bench of CJI N V Ramana and Justices Hima Kohli and CT Ravikumar told solicitor general Tushar Mehta“Ultimately, it is the political parties which make election-eve freebie promises and contest elections. Individuals do not matter in a party-based democratic system. All parties, whether ruling or those in opposition, face the ground reality. Unless there is a unanimous decision to destroy the economy with freebies, as distinguished from welfare measures, no amount of laws and SC orders can stop it. It should be debated by all political parties. They can meet and decide by consensus what steps are needed to curb the growing tendency of freebies.”
Mehta replied it would be futile to attempt a consensus among political parties that compete with each other in the freebie sphere.

“It is impossible to achieve any tangible result in an all-party meet when some parties are claiming it to be their fundamental right to announce freebies,” he said.
Political parties have opposed the Supreme Court’s suggestion on setting up an expert panel to examine regulatory mechanisms for freebies. Only the writ petitioners led by Ashwini Upadhyay and the Centre are agreeable to this suggestion.
The SG said he has suggested a broad-based panel that included representatives of every recognised national political party, tax-payer’s associations, and the stressed sectors like power generation and industry associations.
The SC said if the government is keen to get the issue examined by an expert panel, “why does it not constitute a committee and get a report for initiation of debate in an appropriate forum on freebies?”
The SG said, “Since the SC is seized of the issue, the government is committed to give full cooperation. Let a report from the SC-constituted committee come and the pros and cons of freebies can be debated before any decision in this regard is taken.”

Appearing for AAP, senior advocate A M Singhvi said the court should not ascribe such a level of gullibility to the common voters that they could be misled by announcement of freebies by political parties as election eve promises. “No one can fool voters all the time,” he said.
But senior advocate Arvind Datar said experience in Tamil Nadu shows that the party which promised colour tv as election promise won the election. “In the next election, the party in opposition promised gold chain, mixer grinder and other valuables and came to power,” he said.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal warned that any attempt by the SC to determine which election promise constituted freebies would make it walk into a political quagmire. He said the SC’s 2013 S Balaji judgment on freebies had not considered the provisions of Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, which puts fetters on states to engage in financial extravaganza.
The 2013 judgment also did not consider the inter-play of Article 38 and 39 in the directive principles chapter of the Constitution, Sibal said. Petitioner’s counsel Vikas Singh said the SC must reconsider the ratio in the 2013 judgment, to which Mehta agreed. SC to continue hearing on Thursday.