“…the sheep developed a great liking for this maxim, and often as they lay in the field they would all start bleating “Four legs good, two legs bad! Four legs good, two legs bad!” and keep it up for hours on end, never growing tired of it.”

The sheep in George Orwell’s allegorical masterpiece have been a subject of massive academic research. Their impromptu bouts of bleating and adherence to simplistic slogans and repetition — which occur throughout the novella — seem to destroy any possibility of independent thought among the animals. At strategic times, when all other animals of the Manor Farm struggle to come to terms with sudden and shocking changes in the policy, sheep’s incessant and mindless bleating closes the possibility of a question and gives the change a legitimacy. In fiction, situations often necessitate absurdities and grotesqueness.

In the life of a nation, however, mindless bleating is plain mindless bleating. And when it is from the prime minister’s office, the PMO, and not the bleating, takes an exclamation mark. When the supreme court in a landmark judgment on Tuesday said that Subramanian Swamy had the locus standi to seek sanction to prosecute A Raja in 2G scam and squarely blamed PMO for sitting over Swamy’s plea to PM Manmohan Singh, all PMO did was bursting into a mindless bleating.

“We welcome the fact that both the learned judges (justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly) have completely vindicated the prime minister while appreciating the onerous duties of his office,” a statement from the PMO said. This statement is bizarre if not brazen. Jurists believe the court has taken a fine line to respect the sanctity of a constitutional institution (the PM’s) while also driving home the point about lapses caused at his end. And even if the court (actually) vindicated the PM, it rapped the PMO over the knuckles for its failures.

“Unfortunately, those who were expected to give proper advice to Respondent No. 1 (the PM) and place full facts and legal position before him failed to do so,” the judgment read. The common man in the street, meanwhile, wonders as to how the PMO becomes more powerful than the PM in certain matters. And if indeed so, then who does lead whom? More strangely, when reprimanded by the country’s apex court, how can the PMO brazenly issue a statement welcoming the fact that the PM has been vindicated? Mindless bleating.