Tuesday 2 October 2012

Conflict of Interest + Muslims At High posts

I was reading about our Attorney Generals and Solicitor Generals of India today and was startled to read about the conflicts of interest that these guys deal with. Sample this:

"The ongoing legal battle in the patent case of anti-cancer drug Glivec has taken a serious turn. Gopal Subramaniam, former solicitor general of India who represented  Government of India in the case, is now representing pharmaceutical company Novartis. What's more, Rohinton Nariman who recently took over as solicitor general from Subramaniam was earlier representing Novartis in the same case."

or this:

"Vahanvati (First Muslim Attorney General of India) being able to advise the Government of India on the Cairn-Vedanta deal though his son Essaji had worked on the transaction. This was subsequently downplayed by the government."

Now some of the conflicts are bound to come since these guys were once leading lawyers and corporates might have hired them for high stakes cases, but the two instances above clearly seem to be the ones where they could have recused themselves. 


By the way I wrote Muslim in front of Vahanvati to hghlight another important thing. There has been only one  muslim Attorney General and one Muslim cabinet secretary in history of India. Surprisingly or unsurprisingly Indian Army and Navy have never been headed by a Muslim. Indian Air-force had a Muslim chief though - ACM Idris Latif from 1982 - 1985.


The facts turned out to be startling to me. So I thought I will just go and check how many Muslims have actually taken up posts which are not ceremonious and selection is not via elections:


Post (in order of constitutional precedence)
Number of Appointees
Number of Muslim Appointees
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
39
3
Speaker
16
0
Deputy Chairpersons of the Planning Commission
24
0
CAG
11
0
Chief Election Commissioner
18
1
Attorney General
13
1
Cabinet Secretary
30
1
Air Chief Marshall
24
1
Chief of the Army Staff
27
0
Chief of the Naval Staff
23
0


*Could not find data for UPSC. Excluded two foreigners from Naval Staff.


Though we say that 18% of our population is Muslims, Muslims only account for 3% of the total posts above. The thing only has the following two possible explanations:

A) Muslims represent a small number in the pool from which these guys are selected (e.g. IAS for CEC, CAG) and the selection is purely on the basis of merit. 

B) Selection is biased against Muslims. 

Chief of Army seems to be the contentious thing. Remains interesting to see if GOI will be willing to appoint a Muslim there. 


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_order_of_precedence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chief_Justices_of_India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_of_Lok_Sabha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deputy_Chairman_of_the_Planning_Commission
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptroller_and_Auditor_General_of_India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Election_Commissioner_of_India
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/gopal-subramaniam-rohinton-nariman-swap-places-novartis-patent-case
First AG and SG - M. C. Setalvad and  C.K. Daphtary


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