The National Advisory Council (NAC) of India was a body set up by the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to advise the Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh. Sonia Gandhi served as its chairperson for much of the tenure of the UPA.

The council ceased to exist when the BJP government took office after the 2014 Indian general elections.

The Constitution of India confers the power to draft bills to the Legislature. Any person from Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha can introduce a bill and seeks the permission of the Parliament for passage.

But the NAC acted as a super constitutional body. It unelected and acted as a “super cabinet” with Sonia the “Super Prime Minister”.

Lets understand how it worked?

Dr. Manmohan  Singh though was a great economist had no political base. He was carefully chosen so as to allow Sonia clan run the writ over the Government.

The government of India, in 2017, has made public 710 files related to the National Advisory Committee (NAC). The files give an insight of the relationship with the National Advisory Committee and the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

These files reveal how NAC, far from its charter to provide inputs for policy formulation and support to government, was influencing  policy making in disinvestment, coal, power and real estate apart from social sectors. What is interesting to note is that NAC sway over the government from 2004-2014 came with less accountability.

They clearly reveal that when it came to decisions, Sonia’s words were final.

The most infamous law drafted by NAC was the Communal Violence Bill, officially referred to as the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011, would have proved to be one of the most disastrous laws if it were to be enacted. It assumed that only religious minorities to be the victims of Communal violence. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had correctly said then that the bill was anti-Hindu and presumed that the majority community is always to blame for the communal violence.

The other infamous law drafted by the NAC was the Land Acquisition law, 2013. Though the law was said to protect farmer rights, the law in reality made land acquisition impossible. The intent of the law was to stop India’s industrial progress. Since Land acquisition is an area where states can also make laws, majority of the states (including the Congress ruled ones) have made massive amendments to make the law industry and infrastructure friendly.

Lets look at the prominent members of the NAC.

  1. Teesta Setalvad: She siphoned off the money she collected for Gujarat riot victims and is now jailed. Sonia through her confidant Ahmad Patel gave her huge sums of money to implicate Modiji in the Gujarat riots.
  2. Ram Puniyani: He had opposed the hanging of terrorist Afzal Guru. He is associated with the Center for Study of Society and Secularism (CSSS) and ANHAD. He speaks about the greatness of Aurangzeb and blames Hindus for Mughals destroying Hindu temples.
  3. Maulana Niaz Farooqui: He is the General Secretary, Jamiat Ulama-I-Hind.
  4. John Dayal: He is one of the ‘prominent personalities’ batting for Rohingyas and wants them to be given Indian citizenship.
  5. Usha Ramanathan: She is a member of Amnesty International’s Advisory Panel on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. She was a speaker at an event at JNU that was concerned with the repeal of AFSPA across the country.
  6. Harsh Mander: He had once written “there has never been a harder time to be a Muslim in India, not since the stormy months that followed India’s Partition.” Mander’s NGO has received a significant amount of financial contribution from foreign organizations.
  7. Roop Rekha Verma: She vehemently opposes the celebration of our culture in government institutions, even Saraswati Puja at educational institutes.
  8. Shabnam Hashmi: Shabnam Hashmi is one of the founders of the NGO ANHAD whose FCRA registration was cancelled in 2016 by the NDA government due to “undesirable” activities against the public interest.

The profile of the “prominent” members make the nature of the NAC clear.

I now leave it to the readers to give their judgement on NAC.

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