Former union minister Arun Shourie
There has never has been a weaker Prime Minister's Office even though all functions are centralised, former union minister and BJP leader Arun Shourie has said.
"You centralise the functions but do not have either the domain expertise or the authority... then things get stuck," Mr Shourie, a one-time admirer of Narendra Modi, said on Monday at an event moderated by NDTV's Sreenivasan Jain. The 73-year-old also said that people "were beginning to miss" former prime minister Manmohan Singh who was present in the audience.
The Prime Minister's Office, under Mr Modi, lacked the expertise, Mr Shourie said, of the likes of Brijesh Mishra or LK Jha, former Principal Secretaries to Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Mr Shourie was a member of the Vajpayee cabinet.
Responding to the veteran leader's remarks, Arvind Subramanian, the Chief Economic Adviser to the government, said that while he felt that the government did operate with some constraints, he "certainly had the space" and had "never been stopped or muzzled from speaking up."
Mr Shourie also tore into the government for what he claimed was a confrontational attitude, citing the tussle with the judiciary over the appointment of judges. A "confrontation had been engineered" by the government, Mr Shourie said, referring to the Centre's arguments in support of a National Judicial Appointments Commission - a proposed body to appoint senior judges where the government would have greater control.
"The kind of arguments that were put forward on behalf of government in the court, it has never happened that even very gentle judges had to take the AG (Attorney General) to task," Mr Shourie said.
Last week, the Supreme Court held that the National Judicial Appointments Committee Act, passed by Parliament in August 2014, was unconstitutional and struck it down. The verdict was criticised by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, prompting some to warn against a clash with the judiciary.
Arun Shourie was also unsparing of many of the government's claims like the coal auctions and earnings from Foreign Direct Investment, which he said were exaggerated.