EDITORIAL
Loop and
sync
The Central
Government stating that it is not in the loop
that has seen the State Government effect the
release of several jailed terrorists and the
Chief Minister holding that the State and Central
Governments are in perfect sync with regard to
dealing with the situation in the State is more
than a semantic play. It indicates the equation
that has come to rule the relationship between
the Central Government and the one in the State.
Apparently there is an understanding on the broad
frames of working which are important for any
State Government to work under the constitution.
That must be what the Chief Minister meant when
he talked of perfect understanding between the
State and Central Government. Functioning under
the same constitution and with the same broad
objectives there cannot but be a broad
understanding between them. No Government can
work but in accordance to the constitutional
dispensation, nor can any commitments or promises
be there unless they are subsumed within the
constitutional scheme.
Going out of that
scheme and intent would render a Government
un-constitutional. There is another level of
understanding too, viz that of the national
interest. Though there are differences in the
perception as to many acts and ideas whether they
can be called as truly representing the national
interest, there is a wide body of acts of
commission and omission that are clearly seen as
being primary to the national interest. Primacy
of constitution and the law, respect for national
institutions, the integrity of the country, peace
and brotherhood, etc are points where the
perception of national interest is clear and
unambiguous. Regarding the State of Jammu and
Kashmir maintenance of the communal harmony and
respect for the national perceptions is something
that no nationalist can overlook. Indeed, it is
only the people who want to make the State a
fools' paradise as would think of tempering with
these tenets. With that understanding the State
Governments would be free to act within their
spheres of jurisdiction. The exercise of that
jurisdiction involves the loops, the way the
thinking and decision-making takes place.
The spheres of the
activity of the State and Central Governments are
all too clearly delineated. The constitution
empowers all the units to act within their
spheres and guarantees freedom to act there. This
became clear when the Home Minister did not
demand that the State should have consulted the
Central Government when releasing the jailed
terrorists. He only placed it on record that it
was a decision taken by the State Government
wherein it had not contributed. The Chief
Minister has not countered that. And roping in
the intelligence agencies, which had not approved
of the piecemeal releases, was an unwarranted
implication promoted by the State Government and
its partners. Whatever input the State Government
gets normally it need not talk about, whatever it
receives from Center has to be given out as a
Central advice not consulting the intelligence
agencies. That attempt to rope in the agencies
for a justification for the releases was not a
proper thing. If the Government decides in its
wisdom to release people, it has to accept
consequences to those actions. And, so must the
partners in that Government. It would not do to
claim credit for healing touch and throw the
consequences that may arise there from, at Center
Government or agencies. That seems to have been
attempted in the recent controversy over the
releases.
Bengal
bend
It is
an ironic twist that Bangladesh over whose
freedom India took on the whole world three
decades ago should become a hot bed for the
nefarious activities of the notorious agency and
elements from the nation that so viciously sought
to subjugate, if not enslave it. The recently
released book by the Pak journalist details how
the US and China actually came to colluding
against India for her role in gaining the
Bengalis freedom. That was when America and China
actually came nearer, as both were worried over
how to defend and maintain the then dictator
Yahya in the saddle in Pakistan. Today the two
countries are colluding again to give another
dictator there a breather, though that is beside
the point here. The point here is a virtual
betrayal by Bangladesh letting the ISI and wreck
the Pak designs against India from its soil. That
the Foreign Minister had actually to describe
these nefarious activities to the Parliament
indicates that the violation of trust has gone
rather too far.
Though it is
difficult to tell of the level of involvement
from the Bangladesh side--- the Foreign Minister
also spoke of his Bangladeshi counterpart
assuring that they would not allow activities
against India-- it is a fact that diverse forces
are acting there at different levels. The
communal rhetoric, which can be taken as a
springboard for the activists and sympathizers of
the Pak agenda and agency, actual persecution of
the minorities including attacks on the
populations and temples and the ruling BNP
settling its political scores with minority
bashing, a brew that is ripe for an anti-India
program. Earlier this year, the leading Bangla
weekly, Holiday published a series of articles
trying to wriggle out of the Indian debt in
freedom. Another series nearly echoed the Pak
line on Kashmir. The reports of shipment of Al
Qaeda men from Karachi to Bangladesh earlier have
now been coupled with the madarassa boom along
the Indo-Bangla border. The links of the
northeast terrorist groups in the Bangladesh
countryside have been known for a long time.
Then, the present ruling party there has no love
lost for India. Together that makes Bangladesh a
choice refuge for the Al Qaida terrorists and the
operatives of ISI. And, it appears to have become
that.
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Men,
Matters and Memories
Judges must be above
suspicion
By M L Kotru
Take a
week off, something kept telling me. Save
the pearls of wisdom for yourself. Just
for a week, the voice insisted. But, no,
said I. I must have my say, pearls or no
pearls. But then let me try something
different, a different approach at least
- for just this week, to be sure. And you
know who prompted me? Justice K.
Venkatswami! Yes, the Tehelka judge, who,
it had just transpired, had been
entrusted with another spot of work by
the Government, one, which carried with
it a suitable honourarium apart from a
fixed tenure. The ever vigilant Congress
Party was quick to spot an impropriety
and so enraged were the puritans of the
Congress that even the soft-spoken
Manmohan Singh, the party leader in the
Rajya Sabha, decided to walk-out of the
chamber.
Manmohan
Singh, to you and me it might have
sounded like "Nau sau choohe kha ke
billi Haj ko chali gayee" but
Justice Venkatswami saw himself being
made a pawn in the game. His second
appointment had been cleared by the
former Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, who was well aware of judge
Swami's preoccupation with
"Tehelka" and confident also
that no conflict of interest arose. But
Justice Venkatswami chose to resign from
the both the commissions, the Tehelka
one, nearly about to conclude.
His
resignation raised several questions but
one that caught the eye of the aggrieved
Tehelka portal was that it had been
embroiled in the whole business wrongly
by a vengeful Government keen to put it
in the dog-house for its termerity to
raise suspicions over the integrity for
political heavyweights like the former
BJP President Bangaru Laxman and Defence
Minister George Fernandez, the
first-resigned and the second joined him
as sequel to Tehelka revelations. He
would return to the Government only after
the Commission cleared him, Fernandez
said. That he joined even before the
Venkatswami Commission submitted its
report - it has not done so even now is
another matter which George and his
conscience alone can tell.
What was
implied but not said was that Justice
Venkatswami was perhaps offered an
advance sop to give Fernandez a clean
chit. As I said, it is an unstated
allegations. I personally, would not
subscribe to the view that the good Judge
could have been party to such a quid pro
quo but then the impression created was
that the second assignment was an implict
reward.
I don't
know what is wrong with rewarding people
for a job well done but then judge's like
Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.
And that's were the rub lies. Justice
Venkatswami failed to see that the second
appointment may seem improper. It had
come to him on the recommendation of the
than Chief Justice of India, he
apparently justified to himself.
*********
Be that as
it may, how exactly would you explain the
Government seen rewarding a former Chief
Justice of a High Court for quashing
Hawala cases against all politicians,
including some Ministers. The judge's
subsequent appointment as the chairman of
the a prestigious national commission it
would be said was not a reward mind you,
I am not talking of the National Human
Rights Commission which is currently
headed by the former Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court, Justice, J. S. Verma. I am
talking of the Minorities Commission
where he judge who had found no case
against the hawala culprits was offered
the chairmanship and he readily accepted
it. This you cannot call a reward because
politicians of all hues, including the
Congress, were involved in it. Or let's
take the other case when the Supreme
Court, no less and no more, also decided
to grant a reprieve to the Hawala
accused. If the High Court foround the
Jain diary entries, listing payments made
to politicians (some of whom admitted
having received the money) unacceptable
as evidence, the Supreme Court which was
monitoring the case chose not only not to
intervene but, to everybody's horror, the
Chief Justice stunned the packed
courtroom one day saying that he was
pressured by some in the Hawala episode
without caring to name who was applying
pressure on him. One would have expected
the Chief of India to name the culprits
and make an example of them. He did not.
And, Justice Verma soon after his
retirement found himself taking over the
chairmanship of the National Human Rights
Commission. Don't blame anyone if such
appointments causes eyebrows to be
raised. The dimwitted might even
suggested that an element of reward was
present there as well. The churlish might
even ask that all such post-retirement
appointments must be made in a manner
that is not only transparent but leaves
no room for misgiving whatsoever.
Parcelling out sinecures to retired
judges in an extremely delicate matter.
************
Talk of
judges brings to mind the blistering
indictment by Judge Prem Kumar of Rajiv
Gandhi's role on the alleged cover-up of
the Bofors pay-offs. The Special Judge
was equally harsh on the former Defence
Secretary S K Bhatnagar and a former Army
Chief, Gen K Sundarji, both dead. Even
Arun Singh, generally considered above
board, did not escape the notice of the
judge in his very elaborate judgement.
Judge Prem Kumar has of course heavily
relied on the evidence rendered by Arun
Nehru, Rajiv's cousin. Now it so happens
that Arun Nehru, who served in Rajiv's
cabinet, was one of the principal
negotiators with Bofors. The question
arises how come the principal negotiators
evidence came to be relied upon so
heavily without anyone asking the
question how come he undertook the
negotiations, if these were so horribly
tainted.
*********
Hoist on
his own petard is Harin Pandya, the man
who loves to hate Narendra Modi, a
feeling thoroughly reciprocated by the
latter. If Pandya found himself deprived
of his Ellisganj seat in Ahmedabad in the
upcoming elections he has himself to
blame. Forget his refusal to vacate the
seat to accommodate Modi when he was
asked to takeover from Keshubhai as the
Gujarat Chief Minister. Pandya later
deposed before the Citizens' Commission
inquiring into Ahmedabad riots, headed by
Justice Krishna Iyer, roundly accusing
Modi of foisting the riots on the State.
Wait a minute, if you are a
pseudo-secularist. The Citizens'
Commission may have damned the Modi
Government for its role in the
post-Godhra riots but then it also
indicted Pandya for leading the rampaging
mobs attacking Muslims in Ahmedabad. It's
Hobson's choice for the
pseudo-secularist. Like it or leave it
the choice is between Modi and Pandya.
*********
The second
attack in six months by terrorists on
Jammu's hallowed Raghunath temple has
shocked the nation as indeed it has the
people and the Government of the State.
But to go by the accounts offered
courtesy the TV channels by BJP stalwards
such as Arun Jaitley, Minister of State
for Home Affairs, Mr. I. D. Swami, Mr V K
Malhotra, spokeman of the BJP
Parliamentary party and Minister Chaman
Lal Gupta they made it appear as if it
was the handiwork of the State Chief
Minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. The
terrorists had been emboldened by the
Mufti's "soft" policy towards
militancy. Mufti had released many
terrorists, he wants unconditional
negotiations with all parts in Jammu and
Kashmir, he wants peace and a place of
honour for the population. That was their
chant. It is not as if Mufti Sayeed has
thrown open the doors of all jails and
released every single terrorist. He did
release a few including Yaseen Malik and
another of his colleagues from the JKLF.
What's forgotten is that Malik was jailed
and released several times before. More
importantly, the BJP does not want to
remember that Malik was the first to
renounce the gun in the mid 90s after
launching militancy in the State.
If Mufti
favours unnconditional talks with
political parties in Kashmir what's wrong
with that? Even Prime Minister Vajpayee
has favoured such talks. He wants peace
and human dignity to be restored in the
State. How does this become a crime? For
a people caught in the cross-fire between
terrorists and the Security Forces for
over 13 years, with many unavoidably
hurt, is it a crime to look for peace and
a place of dignity within one's own State
and country.
When
exactly did Mufti Sayeed abdicate his
Constitutional responsibilities? When did
he ask for secession? He has been an MLA,
a Minister in the State Government, the
country's Home Minister and how the duly
elected Chief Minister of Jammu and
Kashmir. Do the BJP men want him to be
seen wrapped up in the tricolour 24 hours
of the day and night for them to accept
his patriotic credientials? And for
heaven's sake, if the tragedy at
Raghunath Bazar was so horrifying - it
indeed was - what exactly caused
Akshardham where the BJP had its own
Government in control? Such mealy -
mouthed criticism does not bring any
credit to these BJP spokesmen and
certainly not to their party.
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Yours
Randomly
Hollow autonomy
grounded!.............
By Dr R L Bhat
Those who
have studied the autonomy document of the
State Autonomy Committee would not have
missed its being a thinly veiled plaint
of the National Conference against the
Government of India-specifically against
the then ruling party which has somehow
been generalized to cover all the
Government at the Center. Whatever the
private promises made to personae, and
how so they may have been kept or not
kept, that does not form a justifiable
basis for asking for exclusivism,
assurances etc. in the name of the
people. Especially when the people, often
have to be protected against the tyranny
of persons and cliques. And that is a
pressing need for the peoples of Asia.
Asia watchers never tire of telling that
the people here have to be protected from
the people who either get one-time
assents to rule and then roll everything
around them, or usurp it and wrap up the
whole State apparatus, institutions and
laws and put them in their own keeping.
The example of Pakistan passing through
its most recent spell of 'rolling up' and
'putting aside' easily comes to mind.
The
rolling up of the whole Iraqi nation and
being by Saddam Hussein around his person
has somehow got blurred in America's
obsession to 'punish' him. Yet it remains
a hard fact. And that fact is the general
fate of people's empowerment almost all
over the gulf and beyond including much
of the south Asia. There are only minor
exceptions. And India is the sole country
hereabout that grants freedoms and
empowers its people without any
qualifications and conditions attached to
it. Its institutions, Parliament and the
Courts have withstood the vagaries of
more than a half-century and are going
strong as shown by the recent elections
in this State. There are no
extra-constitutional centers of power
here, no repositories of 'faith', no
dispensations out of law. The single
instance of the Chinese 'leader' Zemin
having retained the essential power in
his own hands even after 'allowing' the
new dispensation with a new president to
'take over puts the Indian promise and
practice in good contrast. But then,
there are dozens others examples around,
all pointing out the same fact. When
people call that openness into question,
one wonders what dispensation they have
in mind, except a dictatorial sway for
themselves a la Pakistan and its
Musharrafs.
That was
not the burnt of the Chief Ministers
reply on the Governor's address the other
day but he did hint at the outstanding
point in it. Thus, when he asked whether
the widely acclaimed elections held in
the State would have been possible
without the autonomous and independent
Election Commission supervising it, he
was not throwing a rhetorical question
but was referring to a hard reality. So
about the Supreme Court. It is the only
guarantee against wrongs by parties,
persons and even organizations available
to the people of this State. The
frequency with which the people here
resort to the Apex Court against the
State and its Government indicates how
deep that faith is, how well it is
redeemed. Even though the autonomy call
does not talk of any reduction for the
role of the army and security forces-nor
could it-the successive Governments in
the State as well as the people know
first hand how hard they depend on the
security. Sometimes that security is
needed against the lawmen and law-less
men of the State itself. And all that is
possible because there is a well founded
constitutional democracy in the country,
an accountable rule of law, an
appreciation of the needs, wants and
opinions.
That stout
democracy guarantees that all peoples,
all aspirations would be dealt with
fairly in accordance with the law and not
on whims and wishes of the leaders, how
so lauded they may be at one point of
time or other. That sturdy promise
resides not in one institution or body
but the totality of the Indian promise
made to all the people living here,
without favour or discrimination, without
bias or reservation. The Election
Commission is free because it is a
creature of the supreme constitution.
There are other commissions elsewhere but
they are too ready to be apprentices to
the tailor-masters masquerading as
democrats. There are Supreme Courts all
over but how powerful they are, is
something even they do not know! For it
is not the personal promises but laid
down laws alone that can guarantee powers
and independence, rights and freedom.
Laws, which apply to all and are equal,
laws that are not changed on the spur,
law that are not mangled, mauled and
twisted to justify illegalities, laws
that are legal instruments duly enacted
not orders passed on the sly to suit the
convenience or exigency. Those laws alone
can guarantee action and accountability,
they alone can call to question. Every
promise that seeks to blunt that fairness
of law is undesirable, irrespective of
how that objective is phrased, termed or
presented.
With the
detailed exposition of how the high
intents of the previous Government to
enact the Lok Pal Bill, had been scuttled
by a single official, the Law Minister
demolished all Opposition to the
accountability Bill in the State
legislature. Nobody asked whether that
high handedness would have been possible
without a patting hand of the powers that
ruled then. But all can see whether there
would have been even an inkling to the
whole affair had not a new Government
been in? Would new Governments and new
thinkings take over-can they take over
-unless there is free, fair and
unfettered rule of law? Elections to the
Pak National Assembly were held on the
same day that elections here took place,
but that Lagislature is still searching
for laws, still grappling for powers,
still gropping in fluid and uncertain
situation. What powers do the people
enjoy in that uncertainty, that fluidity,
that lawlessness? That may not be the
burnt of autonomy calls, but does it
promise anything very different? Isn't
that why people rejected it?
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Men
and Matters
Unnecessary noises
against father-daughter duo
By B L Kak
Politicians,
in the Opposition as well as on the
Treasury Benches, cannot be static, when
people in general and the ones in their
respective constituencies in particular
are in motion. With the movement of sorts
all around, the continuing physical
changes, literally, resemble the
motion-picture industry—action of
one character and immediate reaction of
another character.
No wonder,
then, that all-important father-daughter
duo on the Jammu and Kashmir scene became
the focus of attention, not only within
but also outside the State, since the
installation of the new Government on
November 2. The father is Mufti Mohammed
Sayeed, while the daughter is Ms Mehbooba
Mufti. Former is the Chief Minister,
while the latter has emerged as a
political heavyweight in her capacity as
the esprit de corps of the People’s
Democratic Party (PDP).
If their
actions or utterances, in recent days,
became subject matter for discussions or
critical analysis, there was a basis.
Obviously, the father and the daughter
felt upset as certain elements chose to
resort to
criticism-for-the-sake-of-criticism
tactics. In this, some senior leaders of
the BJP at the national level did not
fight shy as they were found involved in
the task of whipping up emotions.
Understandably,
the exchange of heated expressions, if
not war of words,took place between the
camp loyal to Mufti Sayeed and the
critics of the new Government. Things
would have been different altogether, if
the critics of the PDP-led coalition
Government, particularly of Mufti Sayeed
and Ms Mehbooba Mufti, had conducted
detailed, dispassionate study of the
methodology employed to release a handful
of political detainees and of exact words
uttered by the Chief Minister’s
daughter in a BBC interview.
If most of
the released prisoners came out of their
places of confinement either on parole or
bail granted by courts, why should the
J&K Chief Minister be charged with
being ‘soft’ on the militants?
Did the critics, quite a few of them
being high-profile, try to get into touch
with higher-ups in the Union Home
Ministry to know about the controversial
and unpopular exploits by a number of the
members ofthe Special Operation Group
(SOG) in J&K, before deciding to pull
up Mufti Sayeed for no fault of his?
The Mufti,
his critics require to realize, would
have sent out a wrong signal to the
already disenchanted sections of the
population, particularly in the Valley,
if he had, after assuming reins of
Government in the troubled State, allowed
the men of SOG to continue to call the
shots.
Of course,
there are people, quite a few of them in
the intelligence community, who endorse
the Mufti’s statement on the floor
of the Legislative Council in Jammu on
November 28 that men of SOG, while
assisting in the nabbing of one militant,
were creating 10 terrorists. The Mufti
can’t be faulted for his argument
that SOG’s assimilation with the
local police force would enable the
surrendered militants to get better perks
and service conditions, vital for their
discipline.
Third
issue, which the Mufti Government’s
adversaries have sought to convert into
unnecessary noises, is the ruling
coalition’s unwillingness to permit
POTA to remain in force in Jammu and
Kashmir. In fact, anti-coalition elements
and groups enjoy giving currency to the
unsubstantiated, unconvincing
‘finding’ that the terrorist
attacks, since the installation of the
Mufti Government, had also been provoked
as a result of the State
administration’s official stand
against the continuance of POTA.
Alas,
these critics have forgotten that, before
the birth of the PDP-led coalition
Government, the existence of POTA had not
prevented the terrorists, particularly
fidayeen (suicide squads), from carrying
out a number of deadlier attacks in
different areas of the State!
If the new
Chief Minister seems satisfied with the
availability of other provisions such as
Public Safety Act (PSA) to deal with
militants and insurgents, why allow
unnecessary tensions on insisting only on
the potency of POTA? Dispassionate
observers and analysts will have to admit
that dangling of POTA scare
cannot—it did not in the
past—stop infiltration from across
the border and terrorist violence within
the State.
True,
unlike her mild-mannered, soft-spoken
father, the much-talked-about daughther
(Ms Mehbooba Mufti) is impulsive—at
times aggressive as well. Being in active
politics, she has to come across her foes
and friends as well. Her friends will
offer bouquets to her, while her foes
will have brickbats for her. It is not to
hold any brief for her if one insisted on
the relevance of the expression
‘criticism not for the sake of
criticism; criticism must be competent
and constructive’.
Again,
things would not have got unnecessarily
sensationalised and projected wrongly, if
any unbiased attempt had been allowed to
find out what actually has Ms Mehbooba
told BBC. It was not difficult for
persons of consequence in Delhi to get to
the bottom of the matter, had they simply
tried to obtain the full text of the
interview.
A careful
study of the text, available in the
market, makes it clear that the PDP
vice-president had not uttered a single
word against India. All that she was
reported to have stated in reply to a
question was: "It is very
unfortunate that there are certain
parties or certain people in the Indian
Government who are trying to make Kashmir
a battlefield to win the Gujarat
elections. They should not do this
because Kashmir is a national issue, it
is not like any other State.... Our
message is that if they (Pakistan and
Indian Government in New Delhi) cannot
help us in the situation, at least
don’t interfere unnecessarily".
That Ms
Mehbooba also sought to send out a
message on behalf of the Mufti Government
with regard to its commitment to
safeguarding the territorial integrity
was borne out by her statement to the
BBC: "There is a very responsible
Government there in the State of J&K
and it would do nothing to jeopardise the
security of the people of the
State".
Why then
unnecessary noises, unnecessary attempts
at triggering unnecessary controversies?
J&K continues to bleed. If human
heads defy to be cool, how can fussy
regions, such as Jammu and Kashmir, be
cool, calm and collected?
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