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EDITORIAL When two important Constitutional functionaries grumble about the maladies afflicting the country, the nation must sit up and take notice. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Chief Election Commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh have in their characteristic ways brought into sharp focus the multiple evils that are eating into our system. In actual terms, both of them have underlined the role and significance of the elections and how important it is to keep them free from ......more It is extremely satisfying that the full facts about the leak of question papers for the MD/MS entrance examination in the State have been ascertained. The credit for this must go to the investigators involved in this difficult exercise. They appear to have done a thorough and speedy job. Not surprisingly, the racket has a multi-state dimension. Apart from a number of persons nabbed in the State itself, the search for the culprits had led the authorities to Punjab and Delhi. One person belonging to Haryana was also.....more |
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Performance
by new By Fazal Mehmood The three state assembly elec-tions have given mor-al boost to the BJP, thus, it has added three new states to its kitty. Will the new chief ministers succeed where their predecessors had failed? Many would say this question . ......more Government employees hijack elections By Bharat Jhunjhunwala Two issues have come to front in the recent elections of the five states. First issue is of priority between government expenditures on the social sectors and. ......more By Amit Verma The presence of life on planet earth makes it unique among the comity of planets known. This life is sustained mainly by the presence and unique composition of its atmosphere. The atmosphere......more |
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EDITORIAL When two important Constitutional functionaries grumble about the maladies afflicting the country, the nation must sit up and take notice. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Chief Election Commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh have in their characteristic ways brought into sharp focus the multiple evils that are eating into our system. In actual terms, both of them have underlined the role and significance of the elections and how important it is to keep them free from harmful influences. Without mincing any words, Mr Vajpayee has, in a commendable demonstration of fair play and impartiality, bracketed the Jogi tape and Judeo video episodes. He has, very rightly, described them as two ‘serious warning signals’ for the country’s democratic order. He has been left unsure about what the younger generation would think and how it would react to the unsavoury controversies involving a former Union minister and a former Chief Minister. Considering that an object of Mr Vajpayee’s ire was his own former ministerial colleague, Mr Dilip Singh Judeo, and not merely Mr Ajit Jogi, the ex-Congress Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, one would do well to appreciate his concern for the larger issue he has raised. Mentioning the two incidents as a ‘blot’ on our democracy, he was unable to hide his sense of anguish over these corruption cases involving the country’s two major political parties. Two main points that Mr Vajpayee has made are worth considering. One is that the country should ponder over the questions like the funding of elections which were becoming increasingly expensive as well as the future of democracy. The other is that the political parties should look at themselves and think whether they were rendering themselves vulnerable to corporate interests. He did not believe that Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani had prior knowledge of the sting operation against Mr Jogi but made it absolutely clear that the Central Bureau of Investigation was free to probe this aspect should it so desire. Just a day before the Prime Minister had expressed his sentiments in Parliament, the CEC had spoken on almost similar lines elsewhere in the national capital. Delivering a lecture, the CEC struck a note of caution that the situation in the country was becoming increasingly difficult for the conduct of free and fair elections. According to him, the main reasons for this were: the growing ‘partisan’ role of the State Government employees and the absence of rule of law in a vast area infested by extremist activities. It was quite revealing that Mr Lyngdoh had found it easy to hold the elections in Jammu and Kashmir than in many other states. ‘It was risky (in J&K) but it was easier because the administration was there everywhere,’ the CEC has stated. For a person who had won all-round praise for conducting the 2002 Assembly polls in the State, the more difficult task has been in more than half of Bihar, parts of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. He had found vast areas in these states where there was no rule of law and where the police writ did not run. On a deeper analysis, one would find that the burden of what both the Prime Minister and the CEC have said is that the sooner the country gets rid of poll malpractices, the better it would be for its democratic dispensation. The use of audio and video tapes has served to confirm what has been widely known so far. There is gross abuse of position by the members of the political class to dig into either the government money or gleefully pocket cash in exchange for help in getting a lucrative contract. In the age of privatisation, it is all the more necessary to guard against such temptations. Admittedly, the majority of well-intentioned corporate houses have no time except to do their business with a single-minded pursuit. This has been the case of those who have won laurels for the country in the sphere of information technology. The problem is when the unscrupulous among them see in the greed of the politicians a convenient way to turn the levers of power to their own advantage. Whatever that may be, it can’t be an excuse for the politicians to shun their responsibility towards society and the nation. For their own sake, they should see the writing on the wall and reverse a negative trend. It is extremely satisfying that the full facts about the leak of question papers for the MD/MS entrance examination in the State have been ascertained. The credit for this must go to the investigators involved in this difficult exercise. They appear to have done a thorough and speedy job. Not surprisingly, the racket has a multi-state dimension. Apart from a number of persons nabbed in the State itself, the search for the culprits had led the authorities to Punjab and Delhi. One person belonging to Haryana was also arrested in this matter. He, along with another colleague from Punjab, worked in the printing press in the national capital where the question papers had been printed. Probe has established that they had stolen the paper, which, evidently as part of a plan to make a fast buck, was brought by a third person to Jammu. On a tip-off, the authorities had found that the papers were available in the State for Rs 3 to Rs 4 lakhs per paper. In a country in which the question paper of the highly prestigious Common Admission Test (CAT) has been leaked, what happened in the State might seem a mini-scandal. It is perhaps better to avoid such comparisons. For, in either case the culprits have caused incalculable damage, which can’t be measured in monetary terms alone. Their misdeeds have violated the sanctity of the examinations and caused disappointment to those meritorious young persons who nurse big dreams for their State and the country by seeking a professional career of their choice. In the instances of the premature disclosure of question papers, the only option available to the concerned administrative machinery is to cancel them and reschedule the examinations. Therefore, there is nothing extraordinary about what the Board of Professional Entrance Examination has done in the State by taking these steps. What is needed is that adequate and foolproof measures are taken to prevent the recurrence of such incidents in future. One would trust the assurance given by Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed in the State Assembly in this regard. He might also do well to address a larger question. With the number of professional institutions on the rise in the State, it is absolutely necessary that their admission procedure is fair and credible. For that, there has to be total transparency. Over the years, undoubtedly, there has been some improvement in the system like, for example, the names of the selected candidates are published in order of merit in the newspapers. However, the parents who have accompanied their children during the exercise to allot colleges, which is conducted in the name of counselling, will vouch for the fact that there are a few rough edges that should be smoothened. They are just ushered in a room and verbally informed about the choices available to them. A better course may be to adopt a more reliable computerised system of displaying the names of colleges and their available vacancies at the time of their allotment as is being done at several places. There is no other way that people are convinced that what is being done is above suspicion. |
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