A Nehru-Mavalankar debate on ordinances

While the first LS Speaker felt ordinances were undemocratic, Nehru saw them as the last resort

March 02, 2015 12:30 am | Updated November 16, 2021 05:15 pm IST - NEW DELHI

Prime Minister Nehru in earnest conversation with G.V. Mavlankar, Speaker of the Lok Sabha, at a reception given in his honour in Parliament House, New Delhi, on July 24, 1955. The Hindu Archives.

Prime Minister Nehru in earnest conversation with G.V. Mavlankar, Speaker of the Lok Sabha, at a reception given in his honour in Parliament House, New Delhi, on July 24, 1955. The Hindu Archives.

Even as the Narendra Modi government and the Congress traded blame over the frequent promulgation of ordinances, a series of correspondence between the first Lok Sabha Speaker G. V. Mavalankar and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru discusses the dangers and necessities of a government taking the ordinance route.

The correspondence resonates now as the Modi government chose to respond to the Congress criticism on the slew of ordinances promulgated recently with details of those issued during the Congress regimes, even asking whether Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi should be termed “dictators.”

In his letter on November 25, 1950, Speaker Mavalankar said the promulgation of ordinances is “inherently undemocratic.” “Whether an ordinance is justifiable or not, the issue of a large number of ordinances has psychologically, a bad effect. The people carry an impression that government is carried on by ordinances,” he wrote.

In his reply, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on December 13, 1950, said: “I think all of my colleagues will agree with you that the issue of ordinances is normally not desirable and should be avoided except on special and urgent occasions.”

“As to when such an occasion may or may not arise, it is a matter of judgment,” Prime Minister Nehru wrote.

“Parliamentary procedure is sufficient to give the fullest opportunities for consideration and debate and to check errors and mistakes creeping in. That is obviously desirable. But, all this involves considerable delay. The result is that important legislation is held up,” he wrote.

On July 17, 1954, Speaker Mavalankar again wrote to the Prime Minister: “The issue of an ordinance is undemocratic and cannot be justified except in case of extreme urgency or emergency. We, as the 1st Lok Sabha, carry a responsibility of laying down traditions.”

He said unless the ordinance was limited to “extreme and very urgent cases”, “the result may be, in future, the government may go on issuing ordinances giving the Lok Sabha no option, but to rubber-stamp the ordinances.”

To this letter, Prime Minister Nehru said his government issued ordinances compelled by circumstances. “We have issued in the past a very limited number of ordinances and we have always placed before the Parliament the reason for having issued each one of them,” Mr. Nehru wrote back.

Speaker Mavalankar’s warning is reiterated in the 1986 Supreme Court judgment in D.C. Wadhwa versus State of Bihar case, when it said that “Ordinance Raj” cannot be permitted.

In this case, a Constitution Bench led by then Chief Justice of India P.N. Bhagwati dealt with the Bihar government’s practice of re-promulgating ordinances on a massive scale from time to time without their provisions being enacted into acts of the Legislature.

“The power to promulgate an ordinance is essentially a power to be used to meet an extraordinary situation and it cannot be allowed to be perverted to serve political ends,” the Supreme Court held. The court had held that “it is contrary to all democratic norms that the Executive should have the power to make a law.”

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