For more than a week the legislature and the executive have been grappling with the IPL controversy. Almost every enforcement agency is busy digging up the dirt and as more and more murky deals come to surface the cry for an all-encompassing enquiry gets louder, leading to repeated adjournment of parliamentary proceedings. But how fair and meaningful can an enquiry be when it involves several ministers and senior legislators cutting across the party line?

Shouldn’t our legislators better employ their time and energy on the purpose for which they have been elected—to address the concerns of their electorate?  After all, their election is a solemn promise to the electorate to work for their betterment for the next five years. But as the IPL controversy reveals, many of our ministers and sitting MPs are busy with something else—running sports bodies. Shouldn’t we bar ministers and sitting legislators from taking up any job, for- or not-for-profit, other than the one we have given them?