'Constitutional' question

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha was seen carrying a copy of the Constitution of India at a recent event in Delhi at which he was the chief guest. He held on to it even as he took the podium. To explain why, he told the audience that it was part of a lesson he had learned as a bureaucrat. When he was a director in the ministry of industries, he said, the joint secretary advised him to carry, for effect, "a bunch of papers or files, even useless ones" whenever he attended a meeting with a senior official. "I brought this Constitution along with that purpose," Sinha joked. That flattered the audience, but it does beg the question of whether the Constitution can be considered just "a bunch of papers".