Why we need people like former Maha Advocate General Shreehari Aney in public life

There are many things to quibble over former Advocate General Shreehari Aney’s public statements and the resignation letter that he sent to Governor Vidyasagar Rao. The first is of course whether he should have argued in the first place for separate statehood for Marathwada. The second is whether he is right in saying in his letter that neither Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis nor Governor Rao have asked him to put in his papers. There has been speculation that Fadnavis had wanted him to quit because of the uproar his statement on Marathwada had created. But these are issues of detail in a sense. Aney took the argument to a different level when he asserted that the advocate general is not a mere government pleader but he or she is the first lawyer of the people. It can be discussed as a mere rhetorical flourish. But it is something more than this. It takes us back to first principles, the fundamentals, for a change — something which we never even think of most of the time. 

It is a point that needs to be stated and restated in the most unambiguous language. The advocate general is taken to be the topmost legal officer of the government of the day, and many people in that position deem themselves to be so. The word for public officials is of course public servant, and the meaning of the word ‘public servant’ should be self-evident. Aney has also given two other examples of his function as a public servant. He said in the letter that he had advised the government on the issue of sedition and about the entry of women into places of worship, both of which had to do with public weal. It is this higher calling which has been relegated to the background in a way that people have even forgotten about its existence. Aney has brought it back to centre stage. 

The second point that is brought home by Aney in his resignation letter is the importance of the budget session of legislative assembly, something which the legislators never even seem to remember. He reminded that the budget session deals with the bread and butter issues of the people and that those issues cannot be buried under disruptions. Here too the former advocate general has raised the level of the debate by talking about “institutional stability”. It is a phrase that many of the politicians will take some time to grasp because it has political connotations which go beyond the mere winning of elections. 

There is little doubt that Aney is a politician and he has strong views. Many persons in his position would have maintained a tactical silence on controversial issues, and like a typical official or bureaucrat would have gone on with his work in a mechanical manner. He chose to speak out even if it meant speaking out of turn. That was indeed a political decision, but not political in the sense of winning brownie points. He may choose to formally join politics. But it would be useful to remember that he spoke up for Marathwada and Vidarbha because he saw the blatant inequities in the conditions of the people of those regions. Did he consider the possibility that the two regions could be developed while remaining part of the bigger state of Maharashtra? Perhaps he did and he might have concluded that the balance of power was such that these two regions will never get fair treatment. It is an assumption and he could be wrong. But we need people like Aney who can speak out if democracy is to be meaningful in the state and in the country.