Ordinance route breaches people's trust: President in R-Day address

In his address on the eve of Republic Day, Mukherjee urges govt to honour the trust that voters had placed on it

After cautioning the Government against taking the ordinance route, President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday did some plain speaking, saying enacting laws without discussions “breaches the trust” reposed by people and is not good for democracy.

Mukherjee spoke about the importance of legislature and said that after three decades, people had voted a single party to majority for having a stable government.

“Enacting laws without discussion impacts the law-making role of the Parliament. It breaches the trust reposed in it by the people. This is neither good for the democracy nor for the policies relating to those laws,” he said. Mukherjee had earlier stated that ordinances are meant for specific purposes, that is “to meet an extraordinary situation under extraordinary circumstances”.

"The voter has played her part; it is now up to those who have been elected to honour this trust. It was a vote for clean, efficient, effective, gender-sensitive, transparent, accountable and citizen-friendly governance," he said.

Dwelling upon the role of legislature, the President said it is a "platform where progressive legislations using civilised dialogue" which must create delivery mechanism for realizing the aspirations of the people and also reconciling the differences among all the stakeholders before enacting laws.

The remarks had come against the backdrop of the Modi government having issued nine ordinances including those for raising the FDI limit in the insurance sector and e-auctioning of coal mines.