The Great Indian Conflict Of Interest

The Indian legal system is a curious place where both lawyers and politico-lawyers have time and again handled legal cases that are clearly in conflict of interest. Politician-lawyers who have represented companies that their representative government themselves are fighting. Strange, wouldn’t you say? Equally strange are lawyers that represent investigative agencies, while their spouse is being probed by government agencies. Very, very curious. So what’s the deal? How does Indian law allow this?

The truth is Indian law is soft on the issue of conflict of interest. When Sushma Swaraj favoured Lalit Modi, the BJP called it an error of judgement. But in the US, as in many other democracies, this would not only have been disallowed, it would even invite criminality under the country’s Title 18 of US Code 208. India has till date not dared to venture into this arena.

Indian law has no teeth to act on such cases that seem to be multiplying rather blatantly. Take for instance the case of senior lawyer Anand Grover. He was named as special public prosecutor to represent the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) on the 2G case in 2014. While he continues to represent the government on the matter, an NGO founded by his wife, Indira Jaising, also a prominent lawyer, is under the home ministry’s scanner. Lawyers Collective, a human rights advocacy forum, allegedly received foreign funds while Jaising was Additional Solicitor General (ASG). So it’s a case of one spouse legally representing important investigative agencies while the other is being probed. Curiously, Grover is himself president and founding member of the Lawyers Collective. And while is the ED and CBI’s lawyer, the ED is probing the foreign exchange issues surrounding Jaising’s NGO.

But this is not the only instance of blatant conflict of interest prevalent among Indian lawyers. Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has recused himself from scrutinizing files pertaining to Vodafone’s tax dispute as he had been previously advising the British telecom giant in his capacity of being a lawyer. Ravi Shankar Prasad who had advised Reliance Industries Group was the telecom minister ahead of Mukesh Ambani’s ambitious Reliance-Jio rollout.

Same is the case for current Attorney General of India, Mukul Rohatgi. Soon after becoming A-G, he gave an opinion to the government related to his former client, Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. Interestingly, he advised the government to not get into further litigation with the ADAG group and pay up the company’s accrued Rs 1,800 crore bill on the Delhi Metro’s Airport Express line.

So where is the unbiased and just arm of the law? Not prevalent in India, that’s for sure. A situation that can only be corrected with the advent of strong laws that prevent conflict of interest and strike down the impunity enjoyed by many prominent lawyers. Will that day dawn upon this country? We live in hope.