The government and the judiciary appear to be involved in a turf war over judicial appointments, and the inability of the former minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda to handle that and the embarrassments the government was facing in legal tussles led to his departure from the Ministry.
The new Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad struck a more conciliatory note on judicial appointments and the Ministry’s efforts to push for a Uniform Civil Code in the country.
‘Will seek consensus’
“We will be consulting, we will be meeting in an effort to find a common ground on the issue of judicial appointments. There is need to work in harmony. We respect the independence of the judiciary,” he said, adding that the question of UCC was referred to in Article 44 of the directive principles of state policy and that the sudden push towards it was not linked to the polls in Uttar Pradesh.
At the Ministry of External Affairs, former journalist M.J. Akbar took over as junior minister, even as this meant the further shrinking of the role played by his colleague in the ministry, General V.K. Singh, who has been consistently losing turf, from the Department of North Eastern Region being taken away in the reshuffle in November 2015, to his departments in MEA being merged with the main ministry.
