The Wire:
Goa: Tuesday, December 04, 2018.
A
few weeks after assuming office in August 2014, Goa governor Mridula Sinha gave
the media something to talk about by building a cowshed at Raj Bhavan. She
travelled 50 kilometres to a distant village and handpicked a cow and a calf
from a gaushala.
Sinha’s
daily cow puja ritual at the Raj Bhavan drew applause from the BJP’s Goa unit.
Four
years later, the Goa governor is in the news for stonewalling all RTI
applications over her extravagant expenditure in office spending that has
little to do with nurturing cows or promoting the prime minister’s Swachh
Bharat mission, for which the governor has written a ‘special’ song, slogans
and pledges popularising the mission. None of which has made any difference to
the reality on the ground and to the garbage piling up in the state by the day.
The
governor’s office has now moved the high court to challenge the October 15
order of the state’s chief information commissioner (CIC) ruling that the Goa
governor, as a person of public authority, is subject to the Right to
Information Act. The case is to come up before the high court on December 10.
This
is the only gubernatorial office in the country which has refused to submit to
the transparency law, Aires Rodrigues, an activist lawyer and petitioner in the
case, argued. He added that even Rashtrapati Bhavan has complied with the Act.
“Instead
of strengthening the law, the Goa governor’s office is trying to weaken it,” he
told the court.
In
his RTI application to Raj Bhavan, Rodrigues had asked for an account of
Sinha’s overseas and India travels with her family from the time she assumed
office, her expenditure on new cars and details of guests hosted at Raj Bhavan.
He
told The Wire that “the governor has converted Goa Raj Bhavan into a BJP
dharamshala” by hosting a stream of politicians and politically connected
people. Sinha was member of the BJP’s national executive and held charge of the
party’s Mahila Morcha till she was appointed as governor.
“The
governor’s extravagant spending is a criminal waste of public funds for a cash
strapped state like Goa,” Rodrigues said, pointing to the Raj Bhavan’s current
over 130-member staff. Known for his dogged persistence and with a long record
in fighting public interest litigations, Rodrigues says his criticism of misuse
of public office is not aimed at any specific political party.
Rodrigues
has spent nearly a decade trying to get the Goa Raj Bhavan to comply with RTI.
In November 2011 in a lengthy judgement, the high court of Bombay too held that
the RTI applied to the governor’s office. But with the Goa Raj Bhavan resisting
every RTI application, the case for transparency has been shunted between
authorities and courts.
In
the past, the governor has faced criticism over her partisan role in inviting
the BJP to form government even when the party lost the elections. Now even RSS
cadres are unhappy over Sinha’s “squandering of public money”.
Topping
their list of ire is the governor’s Mercedes E200.
The
Mercedes was bought when when Goa was reeling under closure of mines and the
overall governance deficit as chief minister Manohar Parrikar continued to
rule in absentia. Pegged at Rs 62 lakh,
the Mercedes cost much beyond the ceiling of Rs 21 lakh set by the Goa
government for a chief minister’s car.
On
top of this, Sinha is fond of travelling in a five-car convoy in a state where
no governor has ever faced a security risk.
In
a fiery public speech some weeks ago, the former Goa RSS chief Subhash
Velingkar came down heavily on the governor’s lavish lifestyle, saying Sinha
had come to a point where she no longer even drank “normal” water but only
tender coconut water. Government sources confirmed that Raj Bhavan did indeed
order some two dozen tender coconuts a day.
Sinha’s
tenure has been marked by a string of controversies. The governor once set off
a controversy by asking postgrad students to take an oath to not get divorce.
With
the BJP and its allies so dependent on the compliance of the governor to keep
the non-functioning Parrikar government afloat, humouring Mridula Sinha must
seem but a small price to pay, even if it comes at the expense of public funds.
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