Maximum government

Disregarding constitutional, financial, governance and moral considerations, the Badal government has appointed seven more Chief Parliamentary Secretaries close to assembly elections with the obvious intent to pacify discontented MLAs and buy their loyalty with the taxpayers’ money. There is no provision for the post of CPS in the Constitution. The appointments violate the Constitutional cap on the numer of ministers a state can have. In 2012 the Punjab and Haryana High Court had questioned the legal sanctity of CPS posts. Calling it a “fraud” on the Constitution, the Himachal High Court struck down CPS appointments as unconstitutional in 2005. 

Given the near financial bankruptcy Punjab faces, the government could have avoided this additional burden on the exchequer. In 2012 the high court was told that each CPS costs Rs 1.21 lakh a month to the government. Already the jumbo-sized Badal ministry is a drain on resources. Having little work, CPSs and advisers happily enjoy ministerial perks, eating up limited resources, which could be better used, say, for the welfare of farmers, who are daily ending their lives in frustration, or on industrial development for creating jobs for the unemployed, desperately turning to drugs or migrating to other states or abroad. For the Badals the priorities are clear in utilising state resources: family first, then MLAs, then panchayats in the Akali constituencies. Their politics is equally uncomplicated: use public money to please voters, offer free pilgrimage and free power; build memorials; and divide and rule, that is, fragment the Sikh community into Sehajdharis, ‘Patits’ and Amritdharis for SGPC control. 

The BJP’s state leaders too have actively shared the spoils of office and contributed to misgovernance. They have joined the Akalis in turning Modi’s maxim — minimum government, maximum governance — on its head. They have helped Akalis destroy institutional, rule-based governance. Tehsil-level politically useful gangsters and drug-peddlers enjoy police patronage. Presiding over a once-prosperous state in over-all decline, the Badals feel no moral compunction in misspending taxpayers' money on consolidating their political hold on state power.