Wednesday 31 July 2013

In Mafia Raj Honesty Is Worst Casualty

DURGA SAKTI NAGPAL, IAS

It is ‘mafia raj’. No matter what the Supreme Court observes, strong lobby of contractors with bagful of money have and will have their way in any state of the country. The Uttar Pradesh government headed by Akhilesh Yadav, son of Mulayam Singh Yadav has done the act in blatant violation of the apex court order not in letter but in spirit. A young IAS officer was victimized for doing her job honestly in NOIDA, Durga Shakti Nagpal, the Sub-Divisional Magistrate had seized trucks and dumpers of sand contractors who were illegally lifting sand from the bed of river Yamuna. She was suspended from service by the chief minister under the garb of ‘disturbing communal harmony’ in the state.

A wall of the mosque illegally constructed was demolished by the orders of the SDM. It was enough provocation or reason to remove the officer. There was no communal tension in the area as claimed by the government. On the contrary, the Police reported that everything was calm and there was no tension. Just a few days before sacking Durga, the U P Government had removed the mining officer of the area for checking illegal mining of sand.
Hardly, the ink had dried on the suspension order of the SDM, the mafia has returned to the bed of Yamuna with more than 200 trucks and dumpers. The business has resumed and so has the supply of money to Lucknow.

It is an old story. No upright officer posted in NOIDA or Greater NOIDA survives his term of three years in office. He or she is shifted within months of joining if the officer tries to enforce rules and check illegal land dealings and settlement. Any attempt to check illegal mining is also frustrated by the state government.

How one can expect the country to have good governance when the government connives with criminals and mafias?

True to its characters, the Congress has preferred to maintain ‘silence’ on the suspension of the officer and on illegal mining of sand in the area. How can Congress speak against corruption? The Party has always encouraged corrupt practices in the government and has helped people to make fortunes by doling out favours be it increasing the price of natural gas or petrol to private players.

See what Salman Khursheed, a senior Congress minister said on the issue. According to Khrusheed, the hands of the government are tied. Can he say that the hands of the Congress are also chained? Well, it is entirely under the purview of the state government to appoint, transfer and suspend its officials. The Centre can’t intervene. But the Congress Party has no restriction on speaking out its mind on an issue that has generated a national debate and outrage. Why can’t the Congress condemn the illegal mining which is a serious threat to environment? The platitudes of its ministers at world environment conferences showing concern about the global warming and environmental pollution sound hollow.   

Everything has a price. The silence of the Congress leaders on illegal mining can be attributed to its policy of appeasement to regional satraps. The UPA Government and the Congress Party will not attack Mulayam Singh since they need his political support now and may be in the future. Already, the government is trying to influence the CBI which is investigating the Disproportionate Assets case against Mulyam Singh to give the Samajvadi Party leader a clean chit in the case. How can it criticize the UP Government for a ‘small thing like illegal sand mining”?


~R. K. Sinha 

Saturday 27 July 2013

Batla House: Whipping Communal Passion

Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma after injured
A court judgment is open to discussion but it cannot be a tool to whip up communal passion that divides Indians. If a section of people including politicians, social and human rights activists and journalists think that the encounter at Batla House was fake and stage managed and that the accused Shahzad was not present when the incident took place, the activists can challenge the decision of the court. The trial court judgment is open to review in the High Court and in the Supreme Court. The accused has the opportunity to seek redress if the verdict is not correct. Where is the occasion to whip up communal passion amongst the minorities and hammer the point that the police and the prosecution are regular offenders of booking innocent people on charges of terrorism in the country?

Such innuendo would only alienate the minorities further from the mainstream and force them to react and even retaliate in a manner that would aggravate terrorism in India. Those people who are masquerading as the champions of the Muslims flaunting their tags of secularism are in fact harming the cause of the minorities in particular and the country in general.

One can debate a court order or judgment but one can’t question the verdict. The merit of the judgment can be questioned and challenged only in a court of law at higher level.

Some activists argue that the entire encounter was stage managed. Because the slain inspector did not wear a bullet proof jacket showed that the raiding team of Delhi Police knew that people in the flat of Batla House were not ‘terrorists’. The police have explained its position and there is no point in repeating the same.

If one goes by the view of the activists and some Congress leaders that the people hiding in the flat were innocent then question arises who killed Inspector Sharma and grievously injured two more policemen in the firing? Some cynics went out to say that Sharma was killed by his own colleagues. If Policemen killed Sharma then this fact would have come out within days of the shootout at Batla House. Such things cannot be hidden for long. There were and there are many Police officers who would have leaked this operation to assassinate Sharma. If some Police officer wanted to eliminate their colleagues there were other methods to do so. Who knows better than the Police? Why stage a fake encounter in the heart of the capital?

It is ridiculous to suggest that it was a fake encounter at Batla House.

Again, if the Police erred in killing innocent people in the shootout, why the Congress led UPA Government did not book the Police officers guilty of killing innocent people in the guise of terrorists? The Delhi Police is directly under the control of the Centre, the Home Ministry to be precise. Why the then Home Minister Shivraj Patil did not order an inquiry into the incident?

After the trial court verdict in the case, P Chidambaram, a senior Minister of the Manmohan Singh Government is on record saying that the encounter was genuine and that those killed in the shootout were terrorists. But it is typical style of the Congress to allow its leaders to play Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, the characters of the Novel written in 19th Century by famous writer Robert Louis Stevenson. The senior Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh and Ministers like Rahman Khan and Salman Khursheed contradict the government and Chidambaram on the Batla House case.  Singh still maintains that the encounter was stage managed. Whom the Congress is fooling?

~R. K. Sinha


 


Thursday 25 July 2013

Attack on Mumbai Restaurant Is Attack on Freedom of Speech & Expression: Reminds Emergency Days

Coffee is a stimulant. In India, Coffee House and Tea Shop have been centres of intellectual activism for decades. But establishment of the day never likes the thinking class to think and stimulate discourse or debate the ills of the government and raise voice of dissent.

In Mumbai, it is not a coffee house but a restaurant that attracted the ire of the Congress Party not because the eating joint was an ‘adda’ (hub) of thinkers and intellectuals who discussed and debated the current political situation in the country. It is like any other restaurant where people go for eating vegetarian meals and snacks.

The crime of the owner of the restaurant was that he started thinking and reacting to the performance of the UPA Government at the Centre intelligently. The bill of Aditi Restaurant in Mumbai carried a line as a pun on the UPA- “AS PER UPA GOVT. EATING MONEY (2G, COAL, CWG SCAM) IS A NECESSITY & EATING FOOD IN AC RESTAURANT IS A LUXURY”

The restaurant owner was peeved to find that those who eat in an air conditioned restaurant pay more by way of taxes. Aditi or for that matter majority of restaurants in Mumbai are air conditioned because of humid weather condition.

The printed bill was enough provocation for the Youth Congress activists who attacked the eating joint on Tuesday, July 23, 2013. The Maharashtra Government instead of booking the Youth Congress activists for vandalism registered a case of defamation against the restaurant owner. Defaming whom, the UPA Government. Does the government of the day have any fame to lose?

The intolerance of the Congress reminds me of the Emergency days. There used to be a Coffee House in Connaught Place of Delhi, quite famous and popular. For, it was the host of Delhi’s thinking class, writers, poets, journalists, jurists and political activists. The Congress then took the view that the Delhi Coffee House had become a centre of discourse of a class of people who were spreading dissent and encouraging rebellion against the government and against Indira Gandhi in particular who was Prime Minister. At the behest of Sanjay Gandhi, the Coffee House was closed and during the Emergency in 1975 the structure was demolished. Delhi lost its landmark and thinking class its hub.

Many years later the Coffee Board of India opened its outlet on Baba Kharag Singh Marg on the lane that houses State Emporiums. But it never replaced the old Coffee House that carried a distinct aura and ambiance besides its special clientele.

I remember another Coffee House in Patna on New Dak Bungalow Road. In early 1970s the Coffee Board of India opened a new air conditioned Coffee House, with state of the art interiors and furniture. It served delicious Dosa, Vada, Idly, Uthapams etc at reasonable rates. Its coffee had aroma and taste that has not been lost on me and many others who were regular visitor to this joint even after decades of its closure.

In those years there were very few air conditioned restaurant in Patna and there was no tea or coffee shop there that was air conditioned. So, the Coffee House attracted the intelligentsia- writers, poets, journalists, lawyers and politicians. I too was a regular visitor to the Patna Coffee House.

I used to find some big names entering the Coffee House. Jaya Prakash Narain was one of them. JP would spend few hours there chatting and discussing the situation in the country. Poet, Phaniswar Nath Renu and poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar were also regulars to the Coffee House. So were leaders like Mahamaya Prasad Sinha, Dr Purnendu Narain Sinha, Abdul Ghafoor etc.

The Coffee House closed because the government did not want it to run. The Coffee Board of India stopped taking interest in running the joint. Its furniture was getting worn out but was not replaced, its air conditioning plant stopped working and its food lost delicacy. The aroma of ‘coffee’ was gone. And with that the Patna Coffee House was shut down for ever.

~R. K. Sinha

   

Sunday 21 July 2013

Merchants of Death II- Bihar Officials Hands Stained In Blood


There is no change in the ground situation in Bihar even after ten days of the tragedy in which 23 school children died of poisoned food. Reports from Bihar suggest that the midday meals continue to be unfit and unhygienic that children eat in schools. The least the government should have done was to examine stocks of cereals and edible oil stored in schools for the midday meals; throw and destroy the rotten and contaminated materials immediately. The government should close all kitchens in schools till good quality food grains, edible oil and pulses are bought and supplied to schools under strict supervision. In many schools children have stopped eating midday meals. Many students have stopped going to schools and those who attend classes bring their own home cooked Tiffin.

The state government seems busy in conducting inquiry into the incident. Initial forensic reports confirm presence of poisonous substance in the oil used in cooking of meals on July 9 2013 in the school.

Latest reports from Bihar on the state of affairs in the state are shocking again. The government surrendered a huge amount of Rs. 462 crores to the Centre that was granted for building kitchens and buying utensils for the midday meal scheme. What face the Bihar Government has now to defend itself. It is a big amount that could have provided hygienic cooking conditions in  well equipped school kitchen.

The money was surrendered because the officials who were supposed to disburse the amount perhaps failed strike deal with education department staff for cut on the amount that would go to particular village or district.

According to a newspaper report, the state government sat on the fund for five years without spending a single rupee on upgrading the school kitchens in the state.

I am not surprised if other States in the country too failed to utilize the money for upgrading the school kitchens for midday meal scheme. Visuals shown on television news channels are a clear proof of criminal negligence in so much so that in majority of the schools in various states across the country meals are cooked most unhygienic conditions besides using rotten and substandard materials to cook the meals.

Coming close to the hills of children killed and taken ill after eating midday meals, in the national capital Delhi, children are taken ill after consuming iron and folic acid supplements given free by the Delhi Government. It is yet another racket of the government. Medicines worth crores of rupees must have been bought from wholesale dealers with a cut going to the pockets of the babus and the ministers. The Health Minister of Delhi says that it is normal to have side effects of iron and folic acid tablets at the initial stage. Once the body gets adjusted there will be no side effect of the medicines.

One has to verify if the medicines being supplied to school children are genuine and not spurious. If the medicines purchased from the market are not from the ‘expired lot’ with label changed to show new expiry dates. The government must reassure itself before continuing the scheme of iron and folic acid supplements for children.

~R. K. Sinha



Friday 19 July 2013

Merchant of Death: For A Few Rupees More

 
Noting can be more shameful and disgusting than people in a bid to make few extra buck literally indulge in killing people not, by bullet or sword but by feeding masses adulterated, rotten and poisonous food. The death of 23 children in Bihar put our heads hang in shame.

It is shocking to learn that the Principal of the School was told by the cook that there was something that smelt foul in the cooking oil. Instead of examining the complaint of the cook, the Principal ignored it. The result: innocent children died. The edible contained poisonous substance, a fact that the Principal of the School perhaps was aware of.

Media have been reporting since long about the substandard meals being fed to school going children in the mid-day meal scheme not only in Bihar but in other parts of the country as well. Rotten wheat and rice are bought by the education department and the school administration to feed children just to make extra money. Every other day we get news that children fall sick after eating mid-day meal in school.

As I write this column, there is a report from Tamil Nadu where 147 girl students fell sick after eating mid-day meal in school.

What prevents the education department and the school administration to see to it that meals are prepared in hygienic condition and that food grains and edible oil not fit for human consumption are not bought from the market?

There is argument that funds made available for the mid-day meal programme are not sufficient to ensure quality meal. I assume this to be an alibi of the government officials. Even if funds are raised, the thieves would continue to pocket the money and feed children substandard meals. Take the case of Indian Railways, passengers are charged for the meal and in trains like Rajdhani and Shatabdi the food charges are included in the fare. What happens in Railways, meals are substandard and on occasion we hear the news that dead bugs and cockroaches are found in the meal served in the train. Therefore it is wrong to say that if more funds are granted and money for each meal prepared for children is raised the quality of food would improve.

The sickness of mind of the people and the Indian society at large are responsible for such ghastly incidents. Politicians are silent or at best have expressed token concern for the tragedy. What prevents the government at the Centre and the government in the states to book the guilty of supplying unfit grains for human consumption? Why the government does not take strict action against the suppliers of food grains and oil to school.

In case of the tragedy in Bihar, it is said that the supply came from the husband of the principal of the school where children died. It is beyond comprehension to think that a normal human being can think of supplying poisonous edible oil to a school where his wife is the principal. This can happen in India only.

Even general public including VIPs and the rich section of the society are vulnerable to consuming adulterated food. Only a couple months back, the Supreme Court asked the Centre to file a reply on the complaint of spurious milk being supplied in the market. Milk is prepared from detergent powder and some other ingredients that are injurious to health. Green vegetables are treated with chemicals to make it look greener to lure buyers as quality stuff. Fruits are artificially ripened with carbide smoke that is dangerous for health. The flour and rice mills some time use rotten grain grind and then supply it in the market for consumption.

We need Parliament and the State Assembly to enact new legislations to punish all such criminals who are merchants of death. They should be punished with death penalty or life imprisonment for life for putting human life at risk.


~R. K. Sinha 

Sunday 14 July 2013

CLEANSING ROT IN POLITICS: SC BAR ON CRIMINALS PART I


There is a sense of nervousness among the politicians following Supreme Court decisions to bar criminals from contesting elections and disqualification of elected Member of Parliament and State Legislature on conviction by trial court.

I would first take up the verdict that bars anyone from contesting elections if he or she is in jail or in police custody. The apex court’s judgment briefly is based on the premise that if someone can’t cast vote (not an elector) he or she can’t contest elections. There have been many instances in the past when Politicians big or small have contested polls from behind the bar some of them even winning the seat. Apprehensions are that ruling party may abuse its power to falsely implicate rivals in criminal case on the eve of elections if the ruling party feels that a particular candidate is likely to defeat the ruling party’s nominee in the polls. Thus, the rival candidate will be eliminated from the race much before the race begins.

The government is studying the judgment and may prefer to go in for an appeal before a full Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court for review of the verdict. Some jurists including Mrakandey Katju, former judge of the Supreme Court who is currently Chairman of the Press Council of India on Saturday expressed his disagreement with the Supreme Court verdict. Katju said that “ … it is not for the judiciary to make law”. True, the job of making law by enacting legislation and amending existing law of the land rests with Indian Parliament and in some cases with the Legislative Assembly of the State that is with the Members of Parliament and Members of State Legislative Assembly.

But at the same time one should not forget that our Constitution has given ample scope and power to the higher judiciary – the High Courts and the Supreme Courts to interpret law and the Constitution. Any law or legislation which is ultra virus of the Constitution can be repealed or held null and void.
Here the Supreme Court has given new interpretation of certain sections of the Representation of the People Act. Section 4 and 5 of the R P Act says inter alia that in order to be elected to Parliament or State Legislature a person has to be an elector. If a person is in jail or police custody he or she can’t cast vote and thus, he or she is not an elector, hence can’t contest polls.

The government has the options to challenge the verdict before a full bench of the Supreme Court or alternatively it can amend the Representation of the People Act to nullify the verdict. In both the cases it will take time before the act is done.

Generally speaking people have welcomed the verdict. Statistics reveal that large number of candidates have criminal records. Taking advantage of our judicial process which is time consuming, criminals enjoy the benefit of law and contest polls despite being charged with criminal offence. While there may be some genuine cases where politicians have contested elections from jail but there are many examples where hard core criminals too have contested and won the polls.

Veteran socialist leader George Fernandes was in jail during the emergency. While other leaders were released from jail, Fernandes was behind the bars when elections were declared in 1977. He was facing criminal charges in the Baorda Dynamite Case under various sections of the Indian Penal Code. But Ferandes contested from Muzaffarpur  Lok Sabha constituency in Bihar while in jail and won the seat as Janata Party candidate with a huge margin.

This luxury of being charged in crime and still contesting elections will end for people with criminal background if the Supreme Court verdict prevails.


~R. K. Sinha

Monday 8 July 2013

BUDHA TEMPLE ATTACK: ASSAULT ON PEACE & COMPASSION


One wonders why anyone should assault the symbol of peace, love and compassion. But this is how terrorism works and this is what the terrorists stand for. The terrorists have not spared attacking their own place of worship- mosques in Pakistan.

It was a black Sunday for Bihar. Bodh Gaya Temple is the place where Budha attained enlightenment. Never before this place was target of vandalism and violence. But on 7th July 2013, a group of terrorists succeeded in planting and detonating bombs inside and outside the temple in serial blasts with nine explosions.

Why the terrorists chose the Budhist temple in Bodh Gaya? The common theory that has come up after the blasts is reprisal of persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar by the Budhists. It is highly unlikely that the Rohingyas executed the bomb blasts or masterminded the attack in Bodh Gaya. It is, however, possible that Indian Mujahideen or Terrorists outfit like Lashkar-e-Tyaba in Pakistan used its modules operating in India to target the Bodhi temple.

There have been clashes in the past between the Muslims and the Budhists in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh where Budhists were attacked and Budhist temples were torched. In Iran two years ago, the Bamiyan Budha, tallest statute of Mahatma Budha measuring 53 meters was destroyed by the Talibans.

Budhism is one religion that preaches and practices peace and compassion for all. Why the Muslim fundamentalists should feel threatened by a religion that denounces violence and follows the path of ‘ahimsa paramo dharma’.

The Bihar Government can’t escape its responsibility of ignoring alert warnings from the Union Home Ministry and the Intelligence Bureau about possible terrorist attack in Bodh Gaya. The security was lax and the terrorists had easy access to the shrine. The CCTV installed in and outside the temple is not monitored properly. The police deployed to protect the temple are not trained. The chief minister Nitish Kumar has a late realization when he says that the security of the temple should handed over to the Cintral Industrial Security Force(CISF).

Though forensic reports on the nature of explosives used for the blasts would come only after some time, the IED (improvised explosive device) used by the terrorists indicate that it is the work of the local operatives working for the LeT or any other terrorists organization. Had the terrorists wanted so they could have destroyed the temple and inflicted larger casualties by using sophisticated explosive device of high intensity, thanks God it was not so.

Of late, Pakistan based terrorists have taken the Nepal route besides Jammu & Kashmir to infiltrate India. The border between Nepal and Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are porous making it much easier for the infiltrators to enter India. To a great extent, the state police and para military forces deployed on the Indo-Nepal border are to blame for the lax security. The terrorists from across the border also get easy logistic support from the locals in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh which are turning into safe havens for the terrorists from Pakistan. The state governments and the Centre must come together to identify the local modules and sleeping cells of terrorists in India.

A chink in the arms of the government! The response time of the NSG commandos to reach the place of occurrence on Sunday was so poor that it can’t be described in words. From Delhi to Bodh Gaya it took almost 12 hours for the commandos to reach by air. The official reasons given are bad weather. But the government is silent on having the aged and outdated aircrafts for emergency operations. We have heard our Prime Minister say that resource is not a constraint in fighting terror. Then why Mr. Prime Minister we still depend on the outdated fleet of aircrafts not only in the command of para military forces but also in the command of the Indian Air Force.

~ R. K. Sinha


  

Wednesday 3 July 2013

NEGLECTED IN DEATH: CONG SHOWS ITS FASCIST COLOUR



It is great relief to learn that the rescue operation in the disaster hit Uttarakhand is over. All the survivors have been rescued, thanks to our Army and Air Force Jawans and Officers. But there are reports that uncounted number of people who died in the tragedy still lay neglected and buried in the debris. The news would make even a healthy and strong person sick.

After the tragedy struck the hills of Uttarakhand, the Congress Government in Dehradun was looking for people with expertise to extricate the bodies of dead from debris. It finally located a charitable organization in Surat, Gujrat. The organization had worked in Bhuj after the earthquake and did a commendable work in searching the dead.

According to a report from Dehradun, a 14 member team of the Surat based Ekta Trust arrived in the state capital only to face humiliation. Some sick minded Congress politicians advised the government not to take the services of the trust from Gujarat – the state of Narendra Modi. Will someone has to remind the Congress that Gujarat is not the fiefdom or jagir of Modi, it a state of the union.

The fourteen member team comprised of people drawn from all religions. They were ready to search the bodies, extricate and do the final rites according to the religion of the dead people. The Gujrat Trust also said that they would render the service without charging a single rupee. But the government officials outright denied that they had approached the trust for the rescue work. Whereas the fact remains that the trust had received written communication from Dehradun. The government also arranged for their stay in Dehradun. The Chairman of the Trust is one Abdul Rahman who has said in a statement that despite the offer to render free service, the state government officials made its team members to loiter from one office to another for 3- 4 days and were humiliated. The Trust had also worked in Chennai after the tsunami had hit the coast.

On June 29 when the team arrived at the airport in Dehradun fully equipped to carry out the operations, it was asked to go back. But the team members stayed in Dehradun hoping that they would be able to do their work in search operation of the dead people, but it was in vain.

This incident which was not widely reported by the media except in some newspapers throws some basic questions that the Congress is obliged to answer to the nation. No one expect or ask the Congress to accord the BJP or for that matter Narendra Modi a red carpet treatment. But why the Congressmen should stop people from showing some respect to the dead?

Never before such incident has happened in India in my memory! During Satyagrah Andolan, Mahatma Gandhi had appealed to the people to boycott British goods. Will the Congress and the governments led by it at the Centre and in the states ask people to boycott anything and everything from Gujarat? If that be the case, then Congressmen should stop buying cars manufactured in Gujrat. Rich Congress politicians and Ministers who have fancy for diamonds from Surat should not pick up the glittering precious gem from Surat.

This is nothing but reflection of a sick mind and sick politics that the Congress Party today stands for. Political opposition is one thing but showing extreme hatred for a political opponent smacks of totalitarian brand of politics- the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. People and political parties opposed to the BJP in general and Narendra Modi in Particular often say that the BJP and Modi are authoritarian in approach and that they are undemocratic. After the Dehradun incident of turning away the rescue team from Surat just because it came from Gujarat, it goes without saying that the Congress Party and its leaders have the streak of fascism with imprints of Hitler and Mussolini embedded in them!


~R. K. Sinha