Editorials

Home > Editorials

Editorials - 27-08-2022

People living along the mighty river in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have faced three floods in the last two months. T. Appala Naidu , P. Sridhar and B. Chandrashekhar report on the recurrent floods, logistics of irrigation dams, and concerns about relief and rehabilitation

In the last week of June, Kunja Sai Kumar, a farmer belonging to the Koya tribe, was jubilant as he sat with the 160 families of his community in Mukunuru village for a dinner. The village is situated on the banks of the Sabari river, a tributary of the mighty Godavari. The Koyas sang songs of prayer for a good harvest in Mukunuru, situated in the Alluri Sitharama Raju district of Andhra Pradesh. The men completed all the rituals mandated for bringing down the curtains on the three-day Bhumi Puja, celebrated to mark the commencement of the agriculture season in July. Paddy, sesame, pulses and chilli are the major crops grown in Mukunuru and its surrounding areas. In summer, the farmers earn their income by selling sweet-smelling mahua flowers and nuts collected from the forest.

Their prayers went unanswered. Within a fortnight, the Koyas turned sombre as the Godavari, in all its rage, submerged their crops, fields, homes, and hopes as early as July. They were surprised, for they were generally prepared for floods in the months of August and September every year. This time, the villagers were subjected to not one but three floods in July and the first three weeks of August, which cut them off from the mainland. While they mourn the loss of their crop, they are equally worried about the next harvest. “How can crops now be grown on this land,” asked a distraught Sai Kumar.

Beeraboyina Ramakrishna, 50, said the Godavari floods have “wrecked their plans”. Water gushed into his thatched house and spoiled the seeds he had stored, which were to be sown on 11 acres of land. “Except my bullock cart, which I had tied to a tree, everything was swept away by the floods,” the farmer said.

On August 25, when the waters had mostly receded, thousands of tribal people, who had fled their villages, said they were waiting to return to their houses, which are still filled with mud and yellow-brown water.

Apart from Alluri Sitharama Raju, the flood waters have affected four districts in Andhra Pradesh — Eluru, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Konaseema, West Godavari and East Godavari — affecting the lives of over two million people.

A survey of the damage caused by the floods is still in progress. “We have not been able to carry out the survey because of these repeated floods,” officials said. The Indian Navy (Eastern Naval Command, Visakhapatnam) and the National Disaster Response Force were deployed to help the government in relief and rescue efforts.

Tussle over a project

In the neighbouring State of Telangana too, a similar mood of despondency prevailed. On July 16, in the temple town of Bhadrachalam in Kothagudem district, the waters of the Godavari swelled frightfully, taking the flood level to 71.30 ft. This was the highest level the town had seen after the floods of 1986 when the water level reached 75.6 ft. It was way above the third warning level of 53 feet (the second warning level is 48 feet and the first is 43 feet). This year, the flood level rose above the third warning level of 53 ft four times. The flood waters forced the authorities to shut the bridge running across the town for two days. While Kothagudem district was among the worst affected by the floods in Telangana, the Adilabad, Jayashankar Bhupalpally, Kumuram Bheem Asifabad, Mancherial, Mulugu, Nirmal, and Peddapalli districts were battered by heavy rain.

Rambabu of Subash Nagar colony in Bhadrachalam recalled how his family had to move out of their home on July 15. “We left all our belongings behind. We moved to a relief camp at a local school and spent sleepless nights there for over a week. In the last week of July, we returned to our home only to find a portion of the house damaged. Electric appliances were wet and the certificates of our children were soaked,” he said.

The Telangana government blamed the Andhra Pradesh government’s decision to increase the height of the Polavaram irrigation project by 1.5 metres, for its woes. The Polavaram project is an under-construction multi-purpose irrigation project on the Godavari river, in the Eluru and East Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh. Following Andhra Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s direction on July 15, the State government raised the height of the upper cofferdam of the project to increase its capacity so that it could withstand massive floods. The decision helped Andhra Pradesh prevent damage to the cofferdam as well as the overflowing of floodwaters, but, ironically, several low-lying areas of Bhadrachalam were marooned soon after. Telangana’s Transport Minister Puvvada Ajay Kumar demanded that the five villages, which were given to Andhra Pradesh during bifurcation along with six other mandals, be given back to Telangana so that the government can take foolproof measures such as the construction of flood embankments to prevent flooding in the temple town. Andhra Pradesh Minister for Water Resources Ambati Rambabu refuted the contention that raising the upper cofferdam’s height had caused the floods in Bhadrachalam and asserted that the project design had been cleared by the Central Water Commission.

Apart from its problems with the Telangana government, the Andhra Pradesh government is also engaged in a tussle with the Centre on the relief and rehabilitation package. This has led to doubts on the rehabilitation of the tribal people from the submerged areas, who are mostly from the Koya community and the Konda Reddi community, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group. Jagan Mohan Reddy said the Centre is yet to release funds to the State for relief and rehabilitation (the project was accorded ‘national status’).

While the dispute over the project raged on, aggrieved residents of Subash Nagar Colony in Bhadrachalam staged a dharna in July to draw attention to the recurring problem of flooding. Scores of people, mainly women, squatted on the main road in front of the Government Degree College to press for a permanent solution to the problem.

“We are apprehensive that the water level in the Godavari will constantly hover above the first flood warning level of 43 ft at Bhadrachalam once the Polavaram project is completed,” said Swamy, a resident of the temple town. “Both the Telangana and Andhra governments should work together to safeguard Bhadrachalam. This is home to the 17th century Sri Sitaramachandra Swamy temple. It is frequented by devotees from both the States.”

Anxieties over the project deepened, especially after the last round of flooding. “There is a worry that the severe flooding in Bhadrachalam was caused by the increase of the height of the upper cofferdam of the Polavaram project,” said M. Venkateshwarlu, District Secretary, Telangana Vyavasaya Karmika Sangham. “This needs to be addressed by both the State governments. They must constitute an expert panel to study the backwater effects on Bhadrachalam and other upstream areas of the Polavaram project.”

Jhansi, of the flood-prone Kotha Colony in Bhadrachalam, is an activist of the All-India Democratic Women's Association. “Strengthening the two-decade-oldkarakatta (flood bank) along the banks of the Godavari in Bhadrachalam and extending it to the entire flood-prone area in the Bhadrachalam and Pinapaka constituencies is the only way to find a lasting solution to the flood menace,” she said. “It is imperative that the five gram panchayats situated near Bhadrachalam in Andhra be transferred back to Telangana’s Bhadrachalam division so that thekarakatta can be extended.”

On July 17, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao announced the allocation of Rs. 1,000 crore to take up works for the protection of Bhadrachalam town. “This should be immediately released and alternative housing should be provided,” said Deva of Ayyapa Colony. Officials said compensation of Rs. 10,000 each has already been disbursed to about 16,000 families affected by the floods.

‘We can never leave the river’

In Andhra Pradesh, the Godavari meets the Bay of Bengal through its five branches — Gowthami, Vridha Gowthami, Coringa, Vasista, and Vynateya — which together let a staggering 1,300 tmcft (thousand million cubic feet) of floodwater into the sea last August alone. The division into these five branches occurs downstream of the Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage at Dowleswaram near Rajamahendravaram city. “In the central and eastern delta, spread across the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Konaseema district, 98 habitations in 17 mandals had been affected by the Godavari floods by July 16. More than 14,000 people were evacuated,” said District Revenue Officer Ch. Sattibabu. A majority of these are island villages.

On the rainy midnight of July 16, Malladi Peda Satyam, 60, had fled his thatched house in Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Konaseema. Half his house, at Vakala Garuvu village, was already under water. He ekes out a living by fishing in the Godavari.

“All my six daughters are married. This year, I borrowed Rs. 70,000 from them to replace the roof of my thatched house. But now the floods have shattered my hopes of building a permanent house,” he said. Peda Satyam named his youngest daughter after the Godavari. “We can never leave the river,” he said.

In the Godavari region of Andhra Pradesh, the flood causes losses to the tune of Rs. 2,000 crore every year. In 2020, the estimated loss was above Rs. 2,000 crore, as per government records. This year, the losses have not been estimated due to repeated floods.

In the low-lying Eluru district, villagers said the situation was so bad that they ran out of drinking water. Villagers in Toorpu Mettu said they were compelled to drink the flood water. The Navy was pressed into relief operations. Those suffering from prolonged illness were forced to brave the flood waters to reach nearby hospitals, and pregnant women had to be airlifted. This Koya tribal habitation has 79 families.

Apart from the people, the floods have also affected the wildlife of the region. Deer and black bucks can be found on at least 20 islands of the river, all of which have been affected by the floods. In the flood mitigation plan of the State government, the protection of wildlife is still to get any attention, said environmentalists.

On the Chintoor-VR Puram stretch, thousands of tribal women waited for clothes as all their belongings had been carried away by the floodwaters. At Mukunuru village in Chintoor mandal of East Godavari, a Koya tribal girl said she had no clothes left. In Hyderabad, G. Yadaiah, who previously ran Koitur Bata, a school for the Koyas, agreed this was a major problem. “We have been flooded with requests from the Koyas and Konda Reddis in the flood-hit villages for clothes. We have managed to arrange some hundred sets of clothes to be distributed by August-end.”

Residents of the region were also worried that their fertile agricultural lands along the Godavari would be taken up for construction of the guide bund of the barrage of the Sitamma Sagar multi-purpose project.

For those living in remote areas in the forest, commuting during floods is nothing short of a nightmare. A pregnant woman of Aswapurampadu village in Karakagudem mandal had to be carried on a ‘doli’ (makeshift stretcher) by her family members through slushy terrain to a road point, when a local stream flooded the kutcha road connecting their village. She was subsequently shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital in Kothagudem in an ambulance.

“About 190 pregnant women from the flood-prone areas were shifted to our hospital based on the expected delivery date, by the officials between July 10 and 29,” said Dr. Ramakrishna, Superintendent, Government Area Hospital, Bhadrachalam. All of them had safe deliveries at the hospital last month, he said.

There are dozens of tribal habitations that lack pucca roads, said Aruna, a former Zilla Praja Parishad member of Yellandu. “Bike ambulances fitted with sidecars should be immediately pressed into service in such areas in the tribal majority district until all the tribal habitations get pucca roads,” she suggested.

Devastation in Kaleshwaram

The floods have left a trail of devastation not only in Bhadrachalam, but also in the upstream area of Kaleshwaram. Here too, there is a debate on a project — the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project. Construction on this project by the Telangana government began in 2016 after redesigning and re-engineering of the Pranahitha-Chevella Lift Irrigation Project taken up by the united Andhra Pradesh government in 2007. The project is expected to provide water for drinking and irrigation purposes to about 45 lakh acres in 20 districts in Telangana, apart from Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

The July floods inundated two pump-houses of the project on the night of July 14-15 as the river witnessed an unprecedented flow of 28.71 lakh cusecs (cubic feet per second) at Medigadda, one of the three key barrages of the project. (The other two are Annaram and Sundilla.) According to the project authorities, the flood level in the Godavari at Kaleshwaram, located in the upstream of Medigadda Barrage, surpassed the previous highest level of 107.05 m, recorded in the 1986 floods.

The first pump house constructed to lift water from Medigadda at Kannepally is designed to stand a flood level of 107.5 m at that location against the highest flood level of 106.7 m recorded in 1986. However, the pump house was flooded as the level crossed the 107.5 m barrier this time. Opposition parties have alleged that the pump houses were designed at levels lower than what was recommended.

As there was damage to crops as well as siltation along the course of Godavari and its tributaries, the flood level in the river at Kaleshwaram reached a new flood level of 108.8 m. A senior engineer of the Irrigation Department said this had ripple effects, with the pump house at Kasipeta, in the upstream of Annaram Barrage, also being submerged.

New records of the flood level were also seen at several other locations in the upstream.

‘Our lives have been paralysed’

With the Godavari witnessing heavy floods in 36 years of the last 70 years, people living along the river’s course both in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh brace themselves to face the impact every alternate year on an average. As Venkatesh Jatvi, a resident of Chintoor, said: “Since July, our lives have been paralysed. People who died of prolonged illness during the floods could not even get a decent farewell.”

This year, the river has discharged nearly 4,277 tmcft of surplus water into the sea from Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage as on August 26. This is the highest in the last decade. The disaster calls for the two governments to strengthen embankments of the river in the stretches where people live, to minimise the impact of inundation, and address their concerns about irrigation projects and water levels.



Read in source website

The north-east needs to be freed from the net of AFSPA, as it has subsumed constitutional rights with impunity

The statement made by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, in April this year, to the people of the North-east to the effect that the Government intends withdrawing the much-dreaded Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958, or AFSPA, completely from the region — this follows its partial withdrawal from parts of Assam, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur in March this year — could spell tidings for the denizens of these States. The Prime Minister was addressing a ‘Peace, Unity and Development’ rally in Diphu in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district. In the north-east, Nagaland has largely borne the brunt of this draconian law after it was imposed in the late 1950s when insurgency raised its head in the State.

Roots in the Raj

The genesis of the law can be traced to the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance 1942 which was enacted by the British to subjugate the rebels in the country during the Quit India movement, particularly in Assam and Bengal in October 1942. The law continues to be enforced in its new format as the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958.

Indubitably, the need for the law was required in the 1950s when Naga insurgents resorted to large-scale violence. Hundreds of Indian Army soldiers, central and State paramilitary personnel were either killed or injured in ambushes that had been meticulously planned and launched by the insurgents. Informers of the security forces were eliminated or disabled.

Nagaland, other aberrations

While there was some semblance of peace having been restored after the Shillong Peace Accord with the Naga insurgents in 1975, the situation took an ugly turn after the breakaway group led by Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah formed the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah), better known as the NSCN(I-M), in January 1980, and resorted to large-scale violence across the States of Nagaland and Manipur. Thuingaleng Muivah is a Tangkhul Naga from Ukhrul district of Manipur while Isak Chishi Swu was a Sumi Naga from Zunehboto in Nagaland. Isak Chishi Swu died in June 2016 after the Naga Framework Agreement had been signed between the Government and the NSCN (I-M) in August 2015. It is believed that the agreement was rushed through given Isak Swu’s health condition. The agreement has been hanging fire since then as the Government has not agreed to permit a separate flag and constitution for Nagaland which the NSCN (I-M) is determined to have.

A generation has lived with AFSPA in Manipur and Nagaland. Residents in these States have been victims of the aberrations committed by security forces for decades. While AFSPA gives sweeping powers to the security forces to shoot and kill anyone on suspicion and even search or arrest any person without warrant, no prosecution against them is possible for any wrongdoing without the previous sanction of the Central government. While the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Ordinance 1942, authorised “Any officer not below the rank of Captain in (the Indian) Military forces... to use such force as may be necessary, even to the causing death against any person…”, AFSPA 1958 empowers even a non-commissioned officer (may be a Lance Naik, a Naik or Havildar) to “fire upon or otherwise use force; even to the causing of death”; no prosecution against them is possible without the consent of the Central Government.

It is the consent from the Central government that is delaying any further action being taken against the commandos of the Army’s 21 Para (Special Forces) who killed six locals initially in a case of mistaken identity in Mon district of Nagaland on December 4, 2021. The incident led to a riotous situation in which more persons, including an Assam Rifles jawan, were killed. Unconfirmed reports put the civilian death toll at 17.

Court’s stand

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of India passed an interim order recently “staying further proceedings pursuant to FIR No.27 of 2021/Final Report of the Special Investigation Team [SIT]/Chargesheet,” on a petition filed by the wives of the commandos found guilty by the SIT.

Armed with unbridled power, aberrations by security forces operating in the States are bound to take place. When the Extrajudicial Execution Victim Families’ Association Manipur (EEVFAM) approached the top court in 2012 to have 1,528 cases of alleged fake encounters investigated through the Central Bureau of Investigation (Extra Judicial Execution Victim Families Association (EEVFAM) vs Union of India & Anr. ), it was found that the first six cases investigated were indeed fake encounters. This prompted the Court to conclude that the veracity of the allegations made by the Association was beyond suspicion. Having come under the scanner, the AFSPA drew critical comments from the Supreme Court.

Despised by every citizen of the States where it has been in force, AFSPA was not withdrawn despite their demands. The very basic tenets of democracy which espouse the principles “of the people, by the people and for the people” have stood negated. No section of society would ever allow itself to be subjected to a law that is as draconian as AFSPA, which in effect curbs the liberty and the rights of the people as enshrined in the Constitution — a Constitution that is held sacrosanct by the nation.

Resistance to a rescinding

Efforts made in the past to rescind the law have met with failure. The iron lady of Manipur, Irom Chanu Sharmila, went on a 16-year long hunger strike starting from November 2000. Hailed as a heroine for nearly two decades, she fell from glory when people were disapproving of her breaking the fast. On being asked to comment on the withdrawal of AFSPA in several parts of Manipur, Assam and Nagaland, she was of the opinion that this was a new beginning and a result of decades-long fight.

The Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy Commission that was tasked with reviewing the provisions of AFSPA submitted its report on June 6, 2005 with the recommendation that AFSPA be withdrawn. Surprisingly, it had suggested making amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) to achieve the purpose of AFSPA. The report was subsequently shelved.

Former Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram was of the firm opinion that AFSPA should be withdrawn. But stiff resistance from the Defence Ministry which was headed by A.K. Antony scuttled the proposal. The Indian Army offered stiff opposition to any proposal to do away with the much-detested law.

There needs to be a review

The present dispensation at the Centre has been hailed for its bold decision to rescind the law as the Army would have still offered resistance to its withdrawal. It must be noted that at a function in Guwahati on April 23, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that all three wings of the defence forces were in favour of the removal of AFSPA from the Northeast and Jammu and Kashmir, but the act remained in place “due to the situation”. In Nagaland, AFSPA has been removed from the jurisdiction of 15 police stations in seven districts, while in Assam, it has been removed completely from 23 districts; one district will be covered partially under the Act. In Manipur, 15 police station areas of six districts will be excluded. However, there needs to be a comprehensive and serious periodical review undertaken by the Centre till the entire North-east is freed from the tentacles of AFSPA.

Investigations into the 1,528 alleged fake encounters also need to be fast tracked and taken to their logical conclusion. If necessary, there needs to be incarceration of the guilty, thereby sending out a clear message that those who murder under the cloak of the uniform of the security forces cannot expect to go scot free if there are violations.

M.P. Nathanael was Inspector General of Police, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)



Read in source website

Five years after the crucial judgment on the right to privacy, the ground reality is an eye-opener

August 24 has passed, marking five years since a nine-judge Bench of the Supreme Court of India delivered a crucial judgment in the case ofJustice K.S. Puttaswamy (retd.) vs Union of India (2017). The judgment delivered on that date formally recognised the right to privacy as being a fundamental right stemming from the right to life and personal liberty, guaranteed under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The Bench also held that while the right to privacy is intrinsic to an individual’s ability to exercise bodily autonomy, it is still not an “absolute right” in and of itself, placing limitations in a manner similar to those placed on the right to free speech and expression.

An erosion

Five years later, however, the once eventual-beneficiaries of the agency that the recognition of the fundamental right had promised may realise that the order delivered as part of the judgment has not been upheld in letter or in practice. For example, one can consider the nature of the relationship that is currently shared among consumers and companies. If one looks at how the negotiation of privacy is placed now, they would realise that not much changed following the formal recognition of the right to privacy. The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2021, which had been in the offing for quite some time now (despite how flawed it may have been) was withdrawn earlier this month after an unnecessarily long period of stagnation.

Personal data for a price

Meanwhile, the ground reality for the citizenry has not changed much either. Data security breaches which result in the loss and theft of personal, sensitive data have not reduced in terms of measurable frequency or their impact. Even worse, as of today, any person or business within and outside India is still in a position where, for a slight bargain, they can procure the personal information for a vast majority of the people, categorised and labelled neatly wherever possible, for use and consumption.

Data concerning the scale and nature described here is used most often by some legitimate advertising agencies, unscrupulous telemarketing firms, and cyber criminals. Brokers of such data have in fact become so brazen where they have taken to listing their goods for sale on mainstream e-commerce platforms. This may be done in a bid to reach more customers who can discover and subsequently purchase the data they provide, but perhaps also in an attempt to lend some kind of legitimacy to the unethical and possibly illegal nature of their trade. Thisstatus quo leaves the general populace open to a range of harm in the form of elaborate phishing attacks and financial scams aided by the attacker’s access to personal information, as well as other harmful activities which rely on the attacker possessing key bits of information about an individual.

‘Spying’ from above

While the threat model for a general user of the Internet in India may only comprise non-state actors (such as cyber criminals and unscrupulous businesses), individuals with certain political and intellectual affinities however have found themselves worrying about the capabilities of the Government in this regard; and rightly so, as far as the security and integrity of their electronic devices are concerned.

An investigation in January 2022 byThe New York Times offered some credence to the debate and outcry that had existed around the alleged use of the Pegasus spyware in India. The investigation revealed that the Indian government had purchased access to the Pegasus spyware suite in 2017 as part of a roughly $2 billion acquisition deal for weapons and miscellaneous surveillance gear from Israel. The alarming revelations and the planting incriminating evidence in at least one case, targeting Indian nationals (alleged to have been carried out by the Government of India) reveals a blatant disregard for any jurisprudential significance the Puttaswamy judgment might have been thought to carry.

Other ‘transgressions’

The recent interventions by the Government which aim to restrict Indian nationals from subscribing to and accessing VPN services shows a similar disregard, too. Summarily, the Government has demanded that VPN service providers — most of which operate in jurisdictions outside of India — start collecting and maintaining KYC records on Indian nationals who seek to avail their services.

The kind of information requested to be collected and stored includes general identifiers such as full name, phone number, home address, and more (information which generally is not sought by VPN service providers, and which may only be validated by a potential customer having to furnish valid identity documents to a given service provider), along with a small box asking for the “reason” for which an individual sought access to the VPN service. The justification provided by the Government for the request to collect and furnish data predictably begins and ends with a mention of the words “national security”.

While it need not even be said that VPN services in and of themselves do not enable or significantly further criminal activity in a way where such a response would be warranted, the Government’s position demonstrates that it is not above placing hindrances in an individual’s effort to exercise their fundamental right to privacy, of which informational privacy is a part. However, this should not be surprising given other privacy-infringing transgressions, and considering that the initial position, argued by the then Attorney General was that “the right of privacy may at best be a common law right, but not a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution”.

In light of all of this, five years later, it can be said confidently that the Puttaswamy judgment has missed the mark quite spectacularly for the objective that was sought, and that it represents a foregone opportunity to protect the rights of Indian citizens while ensuring all of the checks and balances necessary to prevent Government overreach and abuse of power.

Karan Saini is an independent security researcher and public interest technologist. He is presently a Technology Fellow at Bellingcat



Read in source website

He should resign as CM and not continue in the hope of getting elected within six months

Uncertainty looms large over Hemant Soren’s continuation as Jharkhand Chief Minister as he is likely to be disqualified by the Governor as Member of the Legislative Assembly; the Governor has received the Election Commission of India’s opinion on the question. Technically speaking, Mr. Soren could remain in the post for up to six months without being an MLA. He could also get elected in the meantime. But that technicality apart, it is a huge loss of face for him and the parties that form the ruling coalition in Jharkhand, i.e., the JMM, the Congress, and the RJD. The case against him has its roots in a mining lease that he gave himself as a Minister for Mines in 2021. The BJP complained to the Governor on February 11, 2022, that this act was in violation of Section 9(A) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. The Governor referred the complaint to the Election Commission of India (ECI) for its opinion, as required by law, on March 28. On August 25, the ECI wrote to the Governor that Mr. Soren could be disqualified under Section 9(A). The awarding of a mining lease to himself was a brazen act of self-service, misuse of office and breach of people’s trust. One cannot also not take note of the innocence of his thought that such a transparent act of corruption would go unnoticed or unpunished — reminiscent of his father Shibu Soren going to a bank and depositing the cash he had received as bribe.

Mr. Soren’s agonies may not end with disqualification. Two PILs against him are pending in the Jharkhand High Court which seek a probe into the alleged allotment of mining lease for a stone quarry in a 0.88-acre land parcel in the Angara Block of Ranchi and the alleged laundering of money via some shell companies said to be linked to his family members. On June 3, the High Court accepted the maintainability of the PILs, holding that they did not suffer from any anomaly. In separate pleas, the High Court’s decision was challenged by the Chief Minister and the State government in the Supreme Court, which on August 17 reserved its order in the matter and stayed the High Court proceedings. The BJP is waiting in the wings to upend the Jharkhand government, and has tasted blood. The arrest in July of three Jharkhand Congress MLAs in West Bengal with huge amounts of money they had allegedly received to defect was a smoking gun. Cornered by proceedings of disqualification as an MLA and potentially facing a corruption investigation, Mr. Soren will have diminished authority over the MLAs of the alliance. The honourable thing for him to do in this instance of disqualification would be to resign as Chief Minister. His absence from the central seat of power in the State will be a test for the alliance and its government.



Read in source website

Deaths during manual cleaningof sewage are unacceptable

All human lives are precious, but, in practice, some are seen as less precious than others. Despite the efforts of courts and governments, law and enforcement have been unable to keep a certain category of workers out of harm’s way: those who are engaged in sewage cleaning. While the job itself is dangerous, as several other human pursuits are, sewage cleaning involves working with human excreta, and cannot be seen without invoking the concept of dignity of labour. To allot the task of removing excreta and cleaning sewers to humans when machines are able to do the work is a gross violation of rights. It is in this context that Tamil Nadu’s recent move to notify the rules of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, though belated, must be seen. While manual ‘scavenging’ is completely prohibited, the rules allow manual cleaning, in specific conditions where mechanical equipment cannot be deployed to fix the problem, or when it is absolutely necessary to have human intervention, after stating the valid reasons for allowing such a process to take place. But, more importantly, it specifies a long list of protective devices and gear that any person engaged to clean a sewer or a septic tank must be provided, including air line breathing apparatus, air line respirator, air purifier gas mask, a device for artificial respiration, mask and breathing apparatus. Besides this, chlorine masks, emergency medical oxygen resuscitator kit, gas monitor for gases, hydraulic devices, and first aid will have to be provided by the employer. The list is not limited to those devices mentioned. Regular maintenance of the equipment and devices has also been mandated by the rules. Naturally, all workers must be fitted out in the safety gear before they enter the sewer line.

The practice of manual cleaning of septic tanks and sewers has been, and will always be, as long as it exists, a serious concern in any country sworn to humane treatment of all citizens. While quibbling has dominated discussions about the actual number of deaths due to manual scavenging, government-acknowledged deaths from manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks are shocking enough. A total of 971 people lost their lives while cleaning sewers or septic tanks since 1993, the year the law prohibiting employment of manual scavengers was enacted, according to the Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry. Tamil Nadu is among the top States in the list. Since the causes of deaths while cleaning sewers and septic tanks are predictable — noxious gases — not taking measures to prevent those deaths would be criminal. Proper implementation of the rules, and adequate monitoring are absolutely essential. Simultaneously, all efforts must be taken, within existing schemes, to provide compensation to the family members of those who have died, and to provide them a way out of the profession, if they so wish.



Read in source website

Google has described the Jigsaw programme as a pilot study that can eventually be implemented more widely.

It might seem a bit like hiring the Big Bad Wolf to babysit Red Riding Hood, but hear the case out: Google, through its subsidiary Jigsaw, is launching a programme next week to tackle the scourge of disinformation in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic on Ukrainian refugees. The programme, which essentially comprises 90-second clips designed to “inoculate” people against fake news and other harmful content online, is based on “prebunking”. This is an emerging area of study which looks at whether people can be made resilient against misinformation if they are taught to identify manipulation in content. The idea being that they would be far less susceptible to fake news this way than if they are told that a certain piece of content is manipulated or fake.

Google has described the Jigsaw programme as a pilot study that can eventually be implemented more widely. Given how much real-world harm can be caused by content online, this attempt to stem the misinformation flow is welcome — even if that attempt turns out to be only as effective as a beaver dam in a raging river. Still, it should be remembered that the role of Big Tech in the dissemination of harmful content remains under a cloud, despite the work of whistleblowers like Frances Haugen and court cases around the world. Consider the furore that erupted in 2020 when the Global Disinformation Index revealed that Google had been running ads from organisations like Red Cross and Save the Children on Covid-19 conspiracy sites.

In the war against misinformation — a global affliction that has jeopardised elections, led to violence and ruined or changed relationships forever — all allies are welcome. But considering the role played by Big Tech, including Google, Meta (formerly known as Facebook) and Twitter, in shaping the smoke-and-mirrors world that the internet now is, a little scepticism — or “inoculation” as Google might describe it — is warranted.



Read in source website

The recruitment of Gorkhas takes place under a 1947 tripartite treaty between the governments in India, Nepal and Britain.

The Agnipath scheme for recruiting personnel for the armed forces has had a fallout in Kathmandu that Delhi cannot afford to ignore — or leave unaddressed. The Indian Army recruits soldiers for its seven Gorkha regiments from ethnic Gorkha communities — two-thirds from Nepal, and one-third from India. Until the last recruitment, this worked out to about 1,400 recruits from Nepal annually. Over 30,000 soldiers from Nepal serve in the Indian Army at any given time, and there is a 1.4 lakh strong community of Indian Army pensioners in that country. In a country battling massive unemployment, the annual inflow of Indian Army pensions and salaries is a vital injection of money into the local economy. Kathmandu was evidently taken by surprise when the Agnipath scheme — under which 75 per cent of recruits would be let go after four years with no pension benefits — was announced. Apart from the uncertainty about the numbers to be hired in Nepal, and the question of how the returnees would be absorbed back into the Nepali workforce, there is concern about the impact of the All Country All Class recruitment on ethnic Gorkha regiments in the Indian Army, and on Gorkha recruits. The Narendra Modi government must reach out, and address Kathmandu’s anxieties.

The recruitment of Gorkhas takes place under a 1947 tripartite treaty between the governments in India, Nepal and Britain. The Indian Army set August 25 as the start date for the recruitment, subject to approval from Kathmandu — in the past this approval has been granted routinely. This time, the government in Nepal has conveyed that the recruitment cannot go ahead for now as it needs to study the impact of the new scheme, which it has also described as a violation of the treaty — one of the terms of the treaty is that Nepali citizens must be allowed to serve long enough to be eligible for pensions. In a country where anti-India sentiments are high, the recruitment of Gorkhas has given a crucial institutional connect to the people-to-people relationship. When PM Modi visited Nepal in 2014, he highlighted the Gorkha link — Gorkhas are deployed at the LoC in Kashmir, and the LAC with China. PM Modi rightly said that India had won no war without the sacrifice of Nepalis.

The message that the Nepal government is suspending the recruitment drive comes only days ahead of the Indian Army chief’s customary annual visit to Nepal. It is still not too late to initiate consultations with the Nepal government on this matter and ensure that the 75-year-old practice of recruiting Gorkhas in the Indian Army continues into the future.

Congress needs to acknowledge the truth of what Azad’s resignation letter says and act if it wants to rescue itself before it is too late



Read in source website

There are several reasons for, and many sites of, Congress decline in times of BJP dominance. It can be contended that Azad's diagnosis is incomplete, that it ignores wider and structural reasons for the party's crisis that go beyond an individual.

Ghulam Nabi Azad’s letter, as he resigned from Congress on Friday, sharply and forthrightly locates the crumbling within. For him, there is also a clear and present culprit — Rahul Gandhi. Azad’s now-erstwhile party colleagues have been quick to read motives in his decision. Their reaction is narrow and dispiriting. A leader who has worked in and for the party for five decades deserves to be heard, at the very least, with humility and respect. Of course, it is possible to lock horns with Azad’s argument, after listening to it. There are several reasons for, and many sites of, Congress decline in times of BJP dominance. It can be contended that Azad’s diagnosis is incomplete, that it ignores wider and structural reasons for the party’s crisis that go beyond an individual. Congress diminishment can also be blamed, for example, on its inability to connect with the changing aspirations of the electorate, its refusal to learn any lessons in the face of the rising BJP behemoth. And yet, in this moment, none of those counter-arguments sounds credible, for two reasons. One, because the Congress has notched up such a long and formidable record of evading and obfuscating its own predicament. And two, because what Azad has pointed to is an inalienable part of the Congress shrinking.

Azad’s letter is undeniably a significant moment not just in his own career, but also in that of the Congress. Not since Sharad Pawar walked out on the “foreign origin” issue, has a senior leader of similar prominence or stature articulated such a powerful critique of the party at the very top. In fact, Azad’s critique is far more political than Pawar’s — it is about the inner life of an institution, not identity. Azad’s recurring use of the term “coterie”, and his anger at the breakdown of consultative mechanisms within, is resonant. His flagging of the conduct of a leader who makes a public show of tearing into his own government’s ordinance, relies on “inexperienced sycophants”, steps down from party presidentship in a “huff”, and controls the party through “remote control” and “proxies” is important not because all this is being said for the first time — it isn’t — but because he is saying it. The fact is that the Congress’s serial electoral losses, its inexorable ceding of space to the BJP and to the regional party, its incoherence on major issues and its inability to hold on to several of its young and ambitious leaders, all have something to do with the erraticness, lack of ideas or any real empathy or connect at its very top.

It has become increasingly clear that for there to be any Congress revival, its top leadership cannot be quarantined from the change. And that is why the Congress would be doing itself a grave disservice if it doesn’t read and re-read Azad’s letter. The party needs to acknowledge the truth of what he has said, and act on it, if it wants to rescue itself — before it’s too late.



Read in source website

There are several reasons for, and many sites of, Congress decline in times of BJP dominance. It can be contended that Azad's diagnosis is incomplete, that it ignores wider and structural reasons for the party's crisis that go beyond an individual.

Ghulam Nabi Azad’s letter, as he resigned from Congress on Friday, sharply and forthrightly locates the crumbling within. For him, there is also a clear and present culprit — Rahul Gandhi. Azad’s now-erstwhile party colleagues have been quick to read motives in his decision. Their reaction is narrow and dispiriting. A leader who has worked in and for the party for five decades deserves to be heard, at the very least, with humility and respect. Of course, it is possible to lock horns with Azad’s argument, after listening to it. There are several reasons for, and many sites of, Congress decline in times of BJP dominance. It can be contended that Azad’s diagnosis is incomplete, that it ignores wider and structural reasons for the party’s crisis that go beyond an individual. Congress diminishment can also be blamed, for example, on its inability to connect with the changing aspirations of the electorate, its refusal to learn any lessons in the face of the rising BJP behemoth. And yet, in this moment, none of those counter-arguments sounds credible, for two reasons. One, because the Congress has notched up such a long and formidable record of evading and obfuscating its own predicament. And two, because what Azad has pointed to is an inalienable part of the Congress shrinking.

Azad’s letter is undeniably a significant moment not just in his own career, but also in that of the Congress. Not since Sharad Pawar walked out on the “foreign origin” issue, has a senior leader of similar prominence or stature articulated such a powerful critique of the party at the very top. In fact, Azad’s critique is far more political than Pawar’s — it is about the inner life of an institution, not identity. Azad’s recurring use of the term “coterie”, and his anger at the breakdown of consultative mechanisms within, is resonant. His flagging of the conduct of a leader who makes a public show of tearing into his own government’s ordinance, relies on “inexperienced sycophants”, steps down from party presidentship in a “huff”, and controls the party through “remote control” and “proxies” is important not because all this is being said for the first time — it isn’t — but because he is saying it. The fact is that the Congress’s serial electoral losses, its inexorable ceding of space to the BJP and to the regional party, its incoherence on major issues and its inability to hold on to several of its young and ambitious leaders, all have something to do with the erraticness, lack of ideas or any real empathy or connect at its very top.

It has become increasingly clear that for there to be any Congress revival, its top leadership cannot be quarantined from the change. And that is why the Congress would be doing itself a grave disservice if it doesn’t read and re-read Azad’s letter. The party needs to acknowledge the truth of what he has said, and act on it, if it wants to rescue itself — before it’s too late.



Read in source website

Anand Venkitachalam writes: Not every superhero should be white or male and there should indeed be greater representation of all sections. But when their sole focus is pushing a political agenda, movies miss the mark

Ever since Phase 3, Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has been witnessing a severe decline in quality, with several movies such as Captain Marvel and Black Panther focusing more and more on identity politics and feminism. Nonetheless, we also got some of the finest of MCU in Phase 3, such as Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. It is only from MCU Phase 4 that Marvel movies have truly become sub-par in every single aspect. Why is it so?

For starters, what are Phase 3 and Phase 4? The MCU is divided into a total of six phases by its creators, with each phase focusing on certain characters and culminating in a particular story arc – for example, MCU Phase 1-3 started with Iron Man and ended with Spider-Man: Far From Home.

Post Avengers: Endgame, at the beginning of Phase 4, we have witnessed a rapid decline in Marvel content, be it Thor: Love and Thunder, Ms Marvel, She-Hulk, Black Widow, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Loki, The Eternals, etc. The lack of quality content can be attributed to many factors, but the most prominent among them is Disney’s pandering to America’s woke culture and doing a complete 180-degree turn on its priorities.

The priority of any movie or television show should be, first and foremost, to tell a story. To make those stories interesting, we need things such as risks and challenges, twists, an understanding of the tone and setting, growth of the main characters by giving them their own traumas and weaknesses that come to define who they are in the subsequent stories.

For example, Tony Stark evolved from a self-absorbed weapons manufacturing billionaire into a philanthropist and superhero who instead devoted his resources to making clean energy and protecting people after he saw American soldiers being killed by the very weapons he had designed. Black Widow turned from a cold-blooded killer and spy into a person who found something to fight for and gave her life to protect it. Thor went from an arrogant prince to a humble warrior who found something to protect and later found himself. Even Thanos was more than a generic villain. He had a genuine if twisted cause and his motivations made sense, since he had seen his home world die out.

This kind of character development is essential. Then there is the element of world-building. Marvel spent years creating a universe that we grew to care about spanning several planets and multiple movies. But at one point, the MCU decided to cater to the lowest common denominator. The films now not only lack imagination but also a spine. Disney/Marvel seem more worried about identity politics, representation, diversity and multiculturalism rather than character depth and storytelling.

Supporting diversity is great. Not every superhero should be white or male and there should indeed be greater representation of all sections in the superhero world. But when the sole focus of your work is pushing a political agenda, then your movies are going to miss the mark.

Once upon a time, there was a sense of fun and ambition in MCU movies. But the MCU is now a pale shadow of its former self. The plots are as predictable as can be, the comedy mundane and unoriginal, and the amount of CGI will give viewers migraines. And perhaps most importantly, the characters are entirely one-dimensional and of course, the good guys win and bad guys lose.

Every movie does not need to be The Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars, Schindler’s List or Ben Hur. The MCU has always been about having fun. But they knew how to do so without being dumb.

Disney, like many a corporation, is a cash cow that doesn’t want to take risks. And, sadly, given the power of the marketing machine, it can probably make money without doing so.



Read in source website

Indira Jaising writes: Can we expect the apex court to undo the injustice? Bilkis was not heard, it is her voice that ought to be taken into consideration

The Supreme Court (SC) on August 25 issued a notice in a petition challenging the remission of the 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano case. The petition was filed by CPI(M) MP Subhashini Ali, journalist Revati Laul and academic Roop Rekha Verma challenging the Gujarat government’s decision. The court also asked the petitioners to implead the 11 convicts and listed the matter after two weeks.

While discussing the remission granted to the accused in the Bilkis Bano case, we must first answer the question of whether the communal violence that took place in Gujarat in 2002 was “spontaneous” or if it was waiting to happen through the systemic degradation of the ecosystem due to the long-term build-up of hate speech against the minority community. While the SC held in the Zakia Jafri case that the violence was “spontaneous”, no evidence was placed before the Court to substantiate this statement.

Let us revisit the issue as it unfolded in the SC.

In 2003, a writ petition by the NHRC to the Supreme Court (SC) pointed out that widespread communal violence had taken place in Gujarat. It also noted that the accused were being acquitted without a proper trial and requested the SC needed to intervene. In response, the SC appointed Harish Salve as amicus curiae and set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT). It asked for reinvestigation in nine cases of atrocities in nine districts. While there may or may not have been a conspiracy, one fails to understand the Court’s reason for describing the violence as “spontaneous”. Bilkis Bano had also approached the Court about the mass murder of her family members and her own gang rape. Salve was also appointed an amicus in her case. The pattern of atrocities now becomes clear.

Let us now focus on the remission granted to the convicts after the completion of 14 years and five months of their sentence. Rape, by any reckoning, can never be said to be “spontaneous”. It was for this atrocity that they were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. We know that in law, a life sentence means a sentence for the rest of one’s natural life. However, the Criminal Procedure Code does contain provisions that permit remission after 14 years in prison.

Now comes the question of whether mass murderers and gang rapists ought to be granted remission. In any civilised system of jurisprudence, the crimes committed against Bilkis Bano would count as crimes against humanity, as they were committed during a period of communal violence against a minority community. Whether such convicts can be granted remission after 14 years is the question that the SC will have to deal with, now that it has issued a notice and a PIL by concerned citizens is calling for a quashing of the order of remission.

Guidance can be obtained from the Rome statute, which deals with crimes against humanity. There is a clear indication that such convicts can be granted a sentence of up to 30 years, depending on the gravity, brutality, and the context in which the crime occurs. India is not a party to the Rome statute. But this only means no case can be brought against India under the statute. Also, the obligation of nation states to prosecute and punish crimes against humanity would constitute customary international law.

Rape is regarded as “an impact crime”. Such a crime is committed not only against the person but also against the community she represents. It’s a message to the community as a whole and sends waves of everlasting fear through it. The message here was clear — this is revenge on you for being a member of the minority community.

The Constitution guarantees to all citizens, under Article 15, that there shall be no discrimination based on sex, caste, religion, and place of birth. It’s time that the enforcement of criminal law is judged on the touchstone of the Constitution and we wake up to the reality of selective enforcement and benefits to the accused.

There is a disturbing issue with the SC judgment of May this year, when it asked the Gujarat government to consider the application of one of the convicts for premature release — as per the state’s 1992 remission policy. Gujarat was the “appropriate government” to decide on questions like remission or early release because it was there that “the crime was committed and not the state where the trial was transferred,” the court ruled. However, the Gujarat High Court had, on another petition filed by one of the convicts, held that the appropriate government to grant remission was Maharashtra, as the trial had taken place there. That apart, the law requires that the judge who sentenced the accused persons must be consulted. This was not done. Justice U D Salvi of the Bombay HC has gone on record to say that he was unaware of the fact that remission was proposed for the convicts. He has also said that they showed no remorse even after their release. On the contrary, they were felicitated.

We are confronted here with a civilisational moral and constitutional issue. Immoral decisions cannot get the imprimatur of the SC, or any court in India. The morality of democracy in India has been damaged — I hope not beyond repair. This, in turn, has damaged our constitutional morality. The SC must also explain how and why a judgment of the Gujarat HC was quashed not in an appeal against the judgment but in a petition filed under Article 32. In Mirajkar (1966), the SC said that no judgment of any court can be challenged under Article 32 and that the appropriate remedy would be an appeal. As part of constitutional morality, can we not expect the SC to follow its judgments or, at the very least when they depart from them to tell us what is the basis of this departure? I believe that the SC will be confronted with these questions while hearing the PIL filed by concerned citizens. We can only wait.

Can we expect the SC to undo the injustice? Bilkis Bano was not heard, and it is her voice that ought to be taken into consideration.

The writer is a senior advocate and former Additional Solicitor General of India



Read in source website

Suranjali Tandon writes: RBI needs to be cognisant of risks climate change poses to economy

As the world copes with the repercussions of legacy emissions, there is growing pressure to achieve climate-compatible growth. Fiscal and monetary authorities will now have to be cognisant of the feedback from climate change to the economy and suitably adapt their policy responses. Exposure of assets to extreme weather events and loss of asset value due to a green transition are imminent risks to the financial system.

Yet, the inclusion of climate change in a central bank’s policy response function is a widely contested issue. Some experts see no harm in the bank’s internal assessment of the impact climate change would have on the economy but shy away from asking the bank to actively set a monetary policy based on such assessments. Others argue that climate change is a significant threat to financial stability and a central bank that does not address climate risk is “failing to do its job”.

Central banks can guide the flow of finance by restricting the flow of credit to fossil fuel-dependent sectors. Central Banks adopt a range of best practices and approaches. For example, the Bank of Lebanon sets different reserve requirements for loans linked to energy savings. The People’s Bank of China offers positive incentives to commercial banks for extending green credit and India includes renewable energy (RE) within priority sector lending.

The RBI has been measured yet receptive in addressing the concern. In 2021, it joined the Network for Greening Financial System, a voluntary group of 116 central banks that promotes the exchange of best practices on green finance. In July 2022, it released a discussion paper that covers the issue of climate risks and sustainable finance. The paper seeks to understand preferred approaches to identification and disclosure of exposures to climate-related risks, frameworks for management of risks and capacity building within the banking sector.

Heeding the shift, RBI’s paper indicates interest in understanding the degree of physical and transition risks. While at the same time it reflects that RBI prefers to tread carefully by assessing the preparedness of the system rather than indicate its own approach to what a central bank can do. The RBI’s approach is reasoned since acknowledgement of risks is a double-edged sword. Not recognising the risks hints at complacency whereas preempting all such risks through regulation means that the already stressed loan books will be aggravated. The paper, therefore, allows the RBI to respond based on existing practices and a better understanding of the risk profiles of banks.

RBI’s past research papers also indicate a growing acknowledgement of risks to the financial system. In 2021, an RBI research paper demonstrated that extreme weather events can elevate inflation — as was demonstrated by wheat prices this year. In 2022, RBI estimated the exposure of Indian banks to green transition. The report found that direct exposure of public and private banks to three fossil fuel-based sectors — electricity, chemicals, and automobiles — may not be “not alarming”. Nevertheless, indirect exposure through other sectors within the fossil fuel value chain must also be closely monitored, given that some already have bad loans.

Both reports indicate that there is a need for further comprehensive risk assessment to be carried out. To add to this, the risk to public borrowing from declining fossil fuel revenue also needs to be established. While the wheels are turning within RBI, disclosures and risk assessment frameworks are a starting point. It remains to be seen what macro and micro-prudential regulations RBI will introduce. Moreover, the scope of discussion in the paper remains limited and without a general narrative on the central bank’s role. It does not detail the various instruments such as capital requirements for fossil fuel-based lending by banks or credit guidance a central bank can work with to ensure the greening of the financial system.

The RBI’s consultation paper shows the bank’s inclination to address risks from climate change. It indicates that regulatory changes are in the offing yet their direction remains unknown. Moreover, it leaves to the imagination if climate change will be a key consideration for monetary policy. A point that needs due consideration is that a full assessment of macro-risks from disinvestment from fossil fuel-based assets requires a clear identification of the horizon for phasing down fossil fuels across sectors. While these are not in the remit of the RBI, it is a precondition for comparability of risk assessment carried out by financial institutions thus forming the basis for regulation. The release of the paper is therefore only the beginning and requires an overall net zero plan for the disclosures to be used objectively.

The writer is assistant professor, NIPFP



Read in source website

Hitesh Jain writes: Supreme Court-appointed committee's report has settled the matter. But the way in which Pegasus issue was treated needs reflection

On July 18, 2021, a consortium of journalistic organisations from several nations, including one Indian portal, released a report which alleged that a spyware, Pegasus, targeted over 50,000 phone numbers worldwide and over 300 mobile phone numbers in India. This report sparked outrage across political and legal circles in India. Several opposition leaders viewed this as an opportunity to settle their political scores and wasted no time in hurling all sorts of accusations at the Centre. However, at the very outset, two aspects were strikingly unusual about this report, which claimed to be the culmination of a long investigative effort.

Firstly, it would be the most obvious course of action that when such grave allegations are raised, a detailed analysis is to be carried out to substantiate such allegations. In this case, although journalistic organisations claimed that more than 50,000 phone numbers were allegedly targeted by the Pegasus spyware, forensic tests were only carried out on 37 such phones. The question as to why forensic tests were apparently conducted on such a small number of phones remains unanswered. Further, the organisations involved failed to publish any details as to how such forensic tests were carried out. Rather, they merely expected one to believe that simply because telephone numbers were listed on a database, each and every phone number was subject to the spyware. Secondly, even the timing of these reports raised questions — they appeared a day before the Monsoon Session of Parliament in 2021.

Despite these glaring inconsistencies, several writ petitions came to be filed in the Supreme Court of India seeking an independent probe into the matter. During the court proceedings, although the Union of India’s hands were tied by the constraints of national security, it proposed the constitution of a committee of experts that would dive deep into the allegations raised regarding the usage of the Pegasus spyware. However, the Court rejected such a proposal on the ground that justice must not only be done, but it must also be seen to be done. Ultimately, considering multiple factors such as the impact on fundamental rights and the seriousness of the allegations levelled, the Court was compelled to get to the root of the matter. Hence, it appointed an expert committee whose functioning would be overseen by a retired judge of the Supreme Court.

Almost six months after the committee was appointed by the SC to probe the allegations in the Pegasus matter, it submitted its report to the Court on August 2. After examining this report, a three-judge bench led by the Chief Justice of India stated that no Pegasus spyware was found in the 29 devices examined by the committee. And, although there was some malware found in five of the devices submitted, the committee concluded that such malware too could not have been linked to Pegasus.

Aspersions were immediately cast on the functioning of the three-member expert committee as it issued a finding which was contrary to what the petitioners had sought. However, to dispel such aspersions and to uphold the rule of law, it is necessary to remind ourselves of the procedure adopted by the Court to appoint this committee in the first place. In its order dated October 27, 2021, the Court stated that it did not rely upon any government agencies while constituting this committee. Rather, it shortlisted expert members based on information collected independently as its objective was to select people who were not only free from ideological prejudice but were also independent and competent.

Therefore, what we observe is that initially, the Court accepted the prayers sought by the petitioner and appointed an independent committee to probe the Pegasus matter. Moreover, the Court took due care and consideration to ensure that the committee operated free from any government influence. Ultimately, it was this very committee which comprised of experts in the field of cyber security, digital forensics, networks, and hardware which concluded that out of the 29 devices submitted, Pegasus spyware was not found in any of them.

Although this turn of events indicates that the Pegasus issue is as good as closed, this whole episode raises two larger concerns. First, there exists a tendency to jump the gun on issues when one possesses limited information and to follow it up with unsubstantiated allegations and off-the-cuff remarks. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate if we let the law take its course? Second, in these times where there exists a constant need to score political brownie points, the focus is often steered away from the larger issue at hand, that is, the vulnerability of tech platforms. Wouldn’t it serve us better if we stay focused on the core issue and continue to strive for an open, safe, and accountable internet instead of indulging in needless political mudslinging?

The writer is a lawyer and vice-president, BJP Mumbai Pradesh



Read in source website

Apar Gupta writes | The Pegasus case frames CJI Ramana’s legacy: Great expectations only to be met with greater disappointment

A day before the retirement of Chief Justice N V Ramana, the Supreme Court listed the Pegasus case for hearing before his bench for examining the reports submitted by a technical committee constituted last year. In the midst of the hearing the Chief Justice took the reports on record, unsealed them and read out some portions and then adjourned the case. Later at night, a three paragraph order was released without any operative directions and the reports were resealed. These events have sharpened public cynicism on the possibility of fixing accountability for the use of Pegasus and the role of the Court.

The first strand of a lack of trust in the Court comes from a broader assessment of how it negotiates the process and progress for sensitive cases. It stems from a wider institutional critique of how a range of issues that concern India’s democratic framework and fundamental rights are jettisoned. Here, it almost seems that the SC lacks confidence in its own power and tentatively assesses the response of a muscular executive branch. Take, for instance, the course of the Pegasus case. It took the Court four hearings over two weeks to issue a pre-admission notice to the central government. As per the transcripts made available by court reporters, these four hearings are instructive regarding the failed attempts by the Court to solicit the cooperation of the Union government. For instance, the only written pleading by the Union government till date is a limited affidavit of three pages on August 16, 2021. When examined by the Court, the Chief Justice remarked, “…you don’t want to take a stand…”. It was another matter, that he also stated to the Solicitor General, “We cannot compel you to do something you don’t want to.” This is exactly what the Union government ended up doing.

It set the stage for the second ground of pessimism when the SC on October 27, 2021 constituted a committee of technical experts monitored by retired Supreme Court Justice R V Raveendran. As a court romantic, writing in these pages I had expressed hope that if the committee conducted its proceedings fairly and transparently it could lead to a clear factual determination given the evasiveness of the executive. Here, the Court had expressly noted that central and state governments are “directed to extend full facilities” and even the correspondence from the committee to them would be coordinated by the court registrar. Its role became more important when the SC on December 17, 2021 restrained a similar committee, constituted by the West Bengal government and headed by retired Supreme Court Justice M B Lokur.

But doubts soon began to emerge. While the committee created a website and published a methodology, inviting submissions and devices for study through a public notice, the video recordings for depositions made available were only of victims and some expert witnesses. There was a conspicuous absence of any such testimonial statements by state or central government functionaries. Further, in response to a question on its website — “Will your final report be in the public domain?” — the answer provided was, “The technical committee’s report will be submitted to the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India”.

This final report was submitted by the committee in August in a sealed cover. After its submission, the case was first tentatively listed for hearing on August 12, which came to be deleted and shown as being listed on September 2. This obviously did not happen with the Court listing the case on August 25. These slight delays may be attributable to the heavy caseload in the final few days of a chief justice. However, they do show judicial priorities. The Court has chosen to provide extensive time for hearing a petition concerning “freebies” announced as poll promises by political parties.

This is a quibble when compared to the oral remarks made when select portions of the report were read out. The findings of the committee were announced in summary without disclosing material particulars such as that of the 29 devices examined, five showed signs of a malware that could not be confirmed as Pegasus. Further, the Court remarked that as per the report the government failed to cooperate with the committee. In retrospect, it would have been astounding for a technical committee to obtain evidence and testimony from the government given the failure of the SC. The final material remark was the Court’s response on the committee requesting withholding the public disclosure of the report claiming that it contains information that may create security problems and that the persons who had deposed requested confidentiality. To be clear, the chief justice indicated that a redacted version of the report may be published after the Court has reviewed its contents. However, as per yesterday evening’s order, the report has been resealed and kept in the custody of the Secretary General of the Supreme Court of India. Yesterday’s oral observations have led to a media maelstrom with headlines that attack the victims of Pegasus, fueled by a press conference conducted yesterday by the former Minister for Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, who called the Pegasus case part of a “motivated campaign” by “opposition parties, so-called intellectuals, some NGOs and a section of the media” against the Prime Minister. How are the petitioners in the case, the press and experts expected to rebut ad-hominem allegations without the public disclosure of the report?

While there may be far more detailed evaluations of Ramana’s term, when viewed specifically from the perspective of the Pegasus case it represented great expectations only to be met with greater disappointment. Given the Pegasus case is pending it is hoped that remedial measures are undertaken, contents of the report are released and clear directions are issued to the government enforcing the writ of the Supreme Court of India.

The writer is an Advocate and Executive Director of the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF)



Read in source website

Rahul Gandhi must take the blame for barricading himself from his well-meaning party colleagues. But Congress can still upset BJP applecart

There are many who appeared gobsmacked by erstwhile (seems rather strange referring to him as the former stalwart) Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad’s resignation from the party. The timing was characteristically spectacular; the grand old party, somnambulating for the most part since 2014, has been showing some signs of resuscitation with the announcement of the Bharat Jodo Yatra. That’s what smart politicians do — they ensure amplification of their messaging.

Azad has ensured that his earth-shattering resignation has at least temporarily hijacked, if not somewhat smeared, Congress’s call for a national renewal, a second freedom struggle of sorts against the authoritarian predispositions and sectarian manifestations of the BJP-led NDA government. His letter is unambiguous in terms of what and who he holds singularly responsible for his bye-bye moment — former Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his new kids on the block. Ask the disgruntled members of G-23 and they will agree with Azad’s comments. The majority of Congress members, however, for decades conditioned to the formidable might of the Gandhi family name, will treat Azad’s resignation as an act of exaggerated self-importance of an ageing stalwart in the December of his political career. And therein lies the problem. The Congress is refusing to see the writing on the wall. That is why they cannot read it. One should treat every resignation seriously. Do a biopsy of it.

The notorious word “coterie”, a cabal of dubious lieutenants of the 1970s is back in circulation, because the grand old party has become an anachronism even as India has moved ahead. Tragically, it is the Congress that has constructed modern India, despite some terrible aberrations like the Emergency, establishing a democratic infrastructure, unleashing the animal spirit of economic liberalisation and privatisation, hi-tech and revolutionary telecom penetration. So how come the current existential dilemma amidst a climate of utter despondency? It all points towards leadership. There is a popular adage that is often used in the corporate world: A company becomes like its leader. It is no different for a political organisation. So let us go back to who Azad is explicitly targeting, Rahul Gandhi.

Ever since the lethal blowout in the 2014 general elections, the Congress has been atrophying at a galloping rate. It needed an inspirational leader, someone who motivates cadres, engages energetically with seniors and leaders across tiers and encourages a political culture of candid conversations. That’s what internal democracy is about. Instead, Rahul Gandhi, abruptly thrust into the forefront in 2013, went into a cocoon. He literally disappeared, surfacing sporadically during state assembly elections as a star campaigner. His “Suit Boot Ki Sarkar” and “Fair and Lovely” were masterstroke soundbites, but the consistency eviscerated in a bit. I tried meeting Rahul myself with a detailed PPT presentation that Prashant Kishor would have found intellectually stimulating perhaps but was stalled by his obdurate gatekeepers. Ideation was replaced by genuflecting adulation. A leader, hugely fortified by SPG security, can often be given a visa to hallucination island by self-serving parasites. It is this caucus that has Azad, Anand Sharma and even Jaiveer Shergill hopping mad. The buck stops at the top, and Rahul must take the blame for barricading himself from his own well-meaning party colleagues.

Azad has ensured that his earth-shattering resignation has at least temporarily hijacked, if not somewhat smeared, Congress’s call for a national renewal, a second freedom struggle of sorts against the authoritarian predispositions and sectarian manifestations of the BJP-led NDA government.

One of the illustrious members of this august coterie once put forth his preposterous theory to me; “The Congress must strictly avoid TV shows. Once the Congress vs BJP slugfest is off the menu card, their TV ratings will drop. And we will not be subjected to unwarranted prejudices of TV anchors”. His advice clearly worked because following the 2019 Lok Sabha defeat, the party boycotted TV channels for an extended period. I spoke fervently against the palpably counterintuitive idea arguing that mainstream media is a vehicle for public outreach, especially for an opposition party. Abandoning the platform altogether was committing hara-kiri. A miffed member of Rahul’s team subtly conveyed to me: “Lay off or there will be consequences”. Six months later, a suitably chastised Congress was back in the TV studios. There are innumerable such instances that perhaps Azad and Sharma can cite that had them feeling short-charged, disparaged. Fact is that Rahul’s band of boys (some are astute political entrepreneurs on a self-serving mission) have become an unassailable lobby because Rahul prefers to work with interlocutors rather than engage directly. This circuitous antediluvian model of communication has clearly boomeranged.

Ironically, despite the several setbacks and the continuing headwinds, the Congress still possesses exceptional talent, political experience, policy formulation capabilities, organisational base, and frontal organisations to galvanize the disillusioned voter. It also remains the true inheritor of the fast vapourising Idea of India. A week is a long time in politics. A rejuvenated Congress can still upset the arrogant BJP’s applecart in several state elections till December 2023 where the two parties are in a head-to-head contest (Gujarat, HP, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh). But it needs to be bold. Pragmatic. And think out of the box instead of its traditional tunnel vision approach. Instead of being irrationally obstinate, they should let Rahul fight the battle without necessarily being the numero uno. The Congress needs a Priyanka Gandhi-Sachin Pilot ticket.

Priyanka possesses a natural charisma, enjoys meeting people from all walks of life, and thoroughly relishes the big fight. She will also keep the Gandhi loyalists both within the party and outside content that the once-magical political brand is not going anywhere. And Pilot, a hardworking ambitious man who enjoys the theatre of political contests, can kickstart a bottom-up revival of the party. It is possible. But will the Congress dare to reinvent itself or fade away, ensconced in its make-believe notion of infallibility? They should remember that “too big to fail” is a risky gamble. Ask Lehman Brothers. Or the two big traditional parties in France, the Socialists and Les Republicans who are virtually non-existent today.

Not just Azad but India will be watching.

The writer is a former spokesperson of the Congress



Read in source website

Alok Prasanna Kumar writes: Zero is the number of Constitution Benches set up to hear substantial questions of interpretation of the Constitution or the law. Appeal in the hijab case has been kept pending for 163 days. 71,411 is the number of cases pending before the Supreme Court as of August 14, 2022

The traditional way to assess a judge’s legacy on the bench is to look at their disposal rates and the number of judgments they deliver. While these are objective measures, one resorts to subjective measures also, such as the quality of the judgments, adherence to constitutional principles in their reasoning and conduct on the bench.

But these are different times for the Indian judiciary and the Supreme Court. Never has there been more coverage of so much of the Court’s functioning and never has the scrutiny been greater. Any serious assessment of a judge cannot limit itself purely to the prose they produce. This is more so in the case of a Chief Justice — the one who sets the agenda for the court and the manner of its functioning.

In assessing CJI NV Ramana’s legacy, I have eschewed the traditional method of looking at his judgments and instead, assessed his tenure through three key numbers that tell us all we need to know about his 16-month tenure as the 48th CJI. The three key numbers are 0, 163 and 71,411.

Zero is the number of Constitution Benches set up by CJI Ramana to hear important and substantial questions of interpretation of the Constitution or the law. There are, at present, 53 such matters pending before the court — an increase from the 48 that were pending when he took over as CJI. These are not arcane or academic matters — they relate to some of the most pressing issues of the day, including the abrogation of Article 370, the constitutionality of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, the validity of the reservations for Economically Weaker Sections, among many others.

There is simply no explanation for this. The Supreme Court was at or near full strength during his tenure with the number of judges never falling below 30.

163: This is the number of days that the appeal in the hijab case has been kept pending in the Supreme Court without being given a first hearing. The judgement of the Karnataka High Court upholding the state’s ban on hijabs in school was challenged on the very next day in the Supreme Court, on March 16. As of publication, this case has still not been listed even for a preliminary hearing.

The delay is inexplicable. In the usual course, a case filed in the Supreme Court is usually listed for hearing a couple of weeks after filing. The lawyers for the young students who filed the appeal have “mentioned” the matter on four separate occasions before the CJI. On each occasion, CJI Ramana promised to list the matter in the next few days or a week but did not do so.

This is no negligence or oversight. This is an active refusal once again to give even the most basic modicum of justice — a hearing in court. While CJI Ramana delivered lectures about the importance of fundamental rights and the court’s role in being their guardian, this omission exposes the utter hollowness of his words.

The complaint about delayed listing of cases is not exclusive to the hijab case. Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave recently pointed out the systemic problems in the registry that have hit junior lawyers of the courts hardest. But even then, the hijab case stands out as an example of callousness in even denying a first hearing.

71,411: These are the number of cases pending before the Supreme Court as of August 14, 2022. This is the second-highest level of pending cases in the Supreme Court since monthly data were made public in 2010, and as per legal scholar Nick Robinson’s research, the second highest since the court changed the way it counts the number of pending cases in the early 90s. In fact, the highest ever number of pending cases in the Supreme Court — 72,062 — was during July this year. This was accompanied by the usual post-vacancy drop in pending cases but even at or near full strength, the Supreme Court under CJI Ramana has been unable to keep the rising pendency in check.

When Ramana took over as CJI in April 2022, the number of pending cases was 67,279. This was a sharp increase from 59,935 cases pending at the start of the tenure of his immediate predecessor, CJI Bobde. However, the pandemic-induced lockdowns, lack of judicial appointments and the difficult transition to virtual hearings are some mitigating factors that explain the increase in cases during CJI SA Bobde’s term. However, it remains a fact that little to no progress has been made during CJI Ramana’s term in reducing the number of pending cases in the Supreme Court.

CJI Ramana has achieved less than nothing. Like his immediate predecessors, he leaves behind a court in worse shape than which he found it.

What these numbers tell us is that the Court has lost its purpose and its nerve. Neither has it weighed in on important questions of law and the Constitution nor has it ensured speedy disposal of long pending cases. Ramana’s tenure as CJI was marked by “judicial tiki-taka” – important matters being handed over to committees or simply adjourned. This is best exemplified in the Pegasus saga. When faced with allegations that the Indian government maliciously used foreign spyware against its own citizens, CJI Ramana refused to compel the government to respond, preferring to push the matter to a committee whose report was not taken up for hearing until the last few days of his tenure. The ball has been passed on once again to a future bench with no clear idea if anything consequential will come out of the case.

Perhaps the comparison with the football tactic is unfair. The Barcelona and Spanish teams which adopted tiki-taka achieved great success through this tactic until it was countered successfully. CJI Ramana has achieved less than nothing. Like his immediate predecessors, he leaves behind a court in worse shape than which he found it.

The writer is Senior Resident Fellow, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Bengaluru



Read in source website

Ghulam Nabi Azad writes: In a scathing letter to Congress party interim chief Sonia Gandhi, veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said "all the important decisions were being taken by Shri Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs."

Veteran Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who resigned from all party posts Friday, shared a five-page letter with party chief Sonia Gandhi, in which he said the party should undertake a ‘Congress jodo yatra’. Azad also criticised former party vice-president Rahul Gandhi for demolishing the party’s existing consultive mechanisms. “All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the Party,” he added.

Read Ghulam Nabi Azad’s letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi here:

Hon’ble Congress President,

I joined the Indian National Congress in Jammu & Kashmir in mid 1970s when it was still a taboo to be associated with the party given its chequered history in the state from August 1953 onwards — the arrest of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah being the nadir of its political myopia.

Notwithstanding all this, inspired from my student days by the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal L.al Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Subhash Chandra Bose and other leading lights of our freedom struggle, and subsequently, at the personal insistence of Late Sh Sanjay Gandhi I agreed to shoulder the responsibility of the Presidentship of the Jammu & Kashmir Youth Congress in 1975-76. I was already serving the Indian National Congress as a Block General Secretary from 1973-1975 after completing my post-graduation from Kashmir University.

During the period from 1977 onwards as General Secretary of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) led by Late Shri Sanjay Gandhi we went from jail to jail along with thousands of Youth Congress leaders and workers. My longest period in Tihar jail was from 20th December, 1978 to end of January 1979, for leading a protest rally against the arrest of Mrs. Indira Gandhi from Jama Masjid Delhi to Parliament House. We opposed the Janata Party dispensation and paved the way for the revival and rejuvenation of the party founded by the Late Mrs Indira Gandhi in the January of 1978. Within three years as a consequence of that heroic struggle the Indian National Congress stormed back into power in 1980.

After the tragic death of the youth icon, I took over as the National President of IYC in 1980. As President, I had the privilege of inducting your husband Late Shri Rajiv Gandhi into the Indian Youth Congress as a Member of the National Council on the first death anniversary of Late Shri Sanjay Gandhi on 23rd June 1981. Subsequently Late Shri Rajiv Gandhi took over the leadership of the IYC in a Special Session of IYC held in Bangalore on 29th and 30th December of that year (1981) again under my Presidentship.

I have had the honour of serving as a Union Minister in Late Smt. Indira Gandhi’s, Late Sh Rajiv Gandhi’s, Late Sh. PV Narasimha Rao’s and Dr Manmohan Singh’s government respectively from 1982 till 2014. I have also had the opportunity of serving as a General Secretary in the AICC with every President of the Indian National Congress since the mid-1980s.

I was a Member of the Congress Parliamentary Board headed by your late husband and then Congress President Sh. Rajiv Gandhi till his tragic assassination in May 1991 and later with Sh PV Narasimha Rao till the latter decided not to reconstitute the Congress Parliamentary Board in October 1992.

I have also been a Member of the Congress Working Committee continuously for nearly four decades both in an elected and a nominated capacity. I have been the AICC General Secretary in-charge of every state and Union Territory of the country at one point of time or the other over the last thirty-five years. I am happy to state that INC won 90% of the states that I was in charge from time to time.

I am recounting all these years of selfless service just to underscore my lifelong association with this great institution that I also served recently as the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha for 7 years. I have spent every working moment of my adult life in the service of the Indian National Congress at the cost of my health and family while undoubtedly as the President of the Indian National Congress you played a sterling role in the formation of both the UPA-1 and UPA-2 government’s.

However, one of the major reasons for this success was that as President you heeded the wise counsel of senior leaders, besides trusting their judgement and delegating powers to them.

However unfortunately after the entry of Shri Rahul Gandhi into politics and particularly after January, 2013 when he was appointed as Vice President by you, the entire consultative mechanism which existed earlier was demolished by him.

All senior and experienced leaders were sidelined and a new coterie of inexperienced sycophants started running the affairs of the Party.

One of the most glaring examples of this immaturity was the tearing up of a government ordinance in the full glare of the media by Shri Rahul Gandhi. The said ordinance was incubated in the Congress Core Group and subsequently unanimously approved by the Union Cabinet presided over by the Prime Minister of India and duly approved even by the President of India. ‘This ‘childish’ behaviour completely subverted the authority of the Prime Minister and Government of India. This one single action more than anything else contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA Government in 2014 which was at the receiving end of a campaign of calumny and insinuation from a combination of the forces of the right-wing and certain unscrupulous corporate interests.

You may recall that after you took over as the Congress President after dethroning Shri Sita Ram Kesri. the Congress leadership had met for a brainstorming in Panchmari in October of 1998. Subsequently, there was another such session in Simla in 2003 and then again in Jaipur in January 2013. I had the privilege of chairing the working group on Organisational Affairs on all these three occasions.

However, regrettably none of the recommendations of these retreats were ever properly implemented. In fact in January of 2013 at Jaipur, I had proposed with the assistance of others members of the Committee a detailed action plan to revitalize the party in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. That action plan duly approved by the CWC. These recommendations were supposed to be implemented in a time bound manner before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Unfortunately, these recommendations are lying in the storeroom of the AICC for the past 9 years.

In spite of my repeated reminders in person both to you and the then Vice President Shri Rahul Gandhi from 2013 onwards to implement these recommendations seriously. However, no effort was made to even examine them

Under your stewardship since 2014 and subsequently that of Shri Rahul Gandhi, the INC has lost two Lok Sabha elections in a humiliating manner. It has lost 39 out of the 49 assembly elections held between 2014 – 2022. The Party only won four state elections and was able to get into a coalition situation in six instances.

Unfortunately, today, the INC is ruling in only two states and is a very marginal coalition partner in two other states.

Since the 2019 elections, the situation in the party has only worsened. After Sh. Rahul Gandhi stepped down in a huff and not before insulting all the senior Party functionaries who have given their lives to the party in a meeting of the extended Working Committee, you took over as interim President. A position that you continue to hold even today for the past three years.

Worse still the ‘remote control model’ that demolished the institutional integrity of the UPA government now got applied to the Indian National Congress. While you are just a nominal figurehead all the important decisions were being taken by Shri Rahul Gandhi or rather worse his security guards and PAs.

In the August of 2020 when 1 and 22 other senior colleagues including former Union Ministers and Chief Ministers wrote to you to flag the abysmal drift in the Party, the coterie chose to unleash its sycophants on us and got us attacked, vilified and humiliated in the most crude manner possible.

In fact on the directions of the coterie that runs the AICC today my mock funeral procession was taken out in Jammu. Those who committed this indiscipline were feted in Delhi by the General Secretaries of the AICC and Shri Rahul Gandhi personally.

Subsequently, the same coterie unleashed its goondas to physically attack the residence of a former Ministerial Colleague Sh. Kapil Sibal who incidentally was defending you and your kin in the courts of law for your alleged attacks of omission and commission.

The only crime committed by the 23 senior leaders who wrote that letter out of concern for the Party is that they pointed out both the reasons for the weaknesses in the Party and the remedies thereof. Unfortunately, instead of taking those views on board in a constructive and cooperative manner we were abused, humiliated, insulted and vilified in a specially summoned meeting of the extended CWC meeting.

Unfortunately, the situation in the Congress party has reached such a point of no return that now proxies are being propped up to take over the leadership of the Party. This experiment is doomed to fail because the Party has been so comprehensively destroyed that situation has become irretrievable. Moreover, the chosen one would be nothing more than a puppet on a string.

Unfortunately, at the national level we have conceded the political space available to us to the BJP and state-level space to regional parties. This all happened because the leadership in the past 08 years has tried to foist a non-serious individual at the helm of the Party

The entire organizational election process is a farce and a sham. At no place anywhere in the country have elections been held at any level of the organisation.

Handpicked lieutenants of the AICC has been coerced to sign on lists prepared by the coterie that runs the AICC sitting at 24 Akbar Road. At no place in a booth, block, district or state was an electoral roll published, nominations invited. scrutinized, polling booths set up and elections held. The AICC leadership is squarely responsible for perpetrating a giant fraud on the party to perpetuate its hold on the ruins of what once was a national movement that fought for and attained the Independence of India. Does the Indian National Congress deserve this in the 75% year of India’s independence is a question that the AICC leadership must ask itself.

You are aware that I had an extremely close personal relationship with your family from Late Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Late Shri Sanjay Gandhi onwards including with your Late husband. In that spirit, I also have great personal regard for your individual trials and tribulations which would always continue.

Some of my other colleagues and I will now persevere to perpetuate the ideals for which we have dedicated our entire adult lives outside the formal fold of the Indian National Congress. For all the reasons mentioned above especially that the Indian National Congress has lost both the will and the ability under the tutelage of the Coterie that runs the AICC to fight for what is right for India. In fact, before starting Bharath Jodo Yatra the leadership should have undertaken a Congress Jodo exercise across the country. It is therefore with great regret and an extremely leaden heart that I have decided to sever my half-a-century-old association with the Indian National Congress and hereby resign from all my positions including the primary membership of the Indian National Congress.

With Regards.
Your sincerely,



Read in source website

Rekha Sharma writes: Given the crisis in the Supreme Court's credibility, he could have been more assertive, forthright and reformist. But, unlike some of his predecessors, N V Ramana leaves the Court better for his tenure.

Judges must never forget that sooner or later, they too will be judged. Of late, we have witnessed many who failed their oath of office and withered away unwept, unsung and unhonoured. Chief Justice of India N V Ramana, who retires on August 26, took over the reins of the Supreme Court in difficult times when the fundamental rights and civil liberties of the citizens were under threat as never before. Speaking against the government or its policies was treated as equivalent to speaking against the Indian state. People of all hues, including political opponents of the present dispensation, journalists, social activists, artists, and comedians, irrespective of their age or standing in life, were booked under the sedition law or the draconian Unlawful Activities and Prevention Act (UAPA), making it difficult — almost impossible — for them to obtain bail.

Judges at the district level, barring a few brave exceptions, treated the police version as the gospel truth. High courts were loath to interfere. Most people do not have the wherewithal to come to the Supreme Court. However, when journalist Siddique Kappan, who was apprehended on his way to cover the Hathras gangrape, approached the Supreme Court after spending over two years in custody he was sent back by the then Chief Justice. Even more shockingly, this was done with the observation that the court wanted to discourage petitions under Article 32 of the Constitution.

Against this background, Justice Ramana faced the onerous task of restoring the people’s faith in the judiciary. To his credit, by and large, he lived up to what was expected of him — though he could have done much more. Soon after assuming charge, speaking from a public platform, he said that the “judiciary is an independent organ which is answerable to the Constitution alone, and not to any political party”. It was a message to the political class that he was his own man. On another occasion, he said that “people are confident they will get relief from the judiciary — they know when things go wrong the judiciary will stand by them”. This statement held out the hope that the judiciary was there to protect the people. As Justice Ramana retires, it is time to look back, and see if he lived up to his own words. The answer isn’t black or white.

The bench headed by Justice Ramana passed some laudable, and pro-citizen orders — the order in the Pegasus spyware case, for example. A batch of petitions was filed in the Supreme Court alleging that the government had purchased software that was infiltrating malware into the digital devices of its political opponents, some senior state functionaries and others. The issue rocked Parliament, and an entire session was washed out. The government was not prepared to divulge any information, citing national security concerns. The Supreme Court pulled up the government and observed that “the state cannot get a free pass every time the spectre of national security is raised, and that national security cannot be the bugbear that the judiciary shies away from”. It appointed a committee overseen by a former judge of the Supreme Court to look into the matter. The committee has submitted its report.

Recently, Justice Ramana’s bench also agreed to revisit the British-era sedition law as embodied in Section 124 (A) of the Indian Penal Code. In the meanwhile, the bench urged the Centre and state governments to refrain from lodging FIRs under the said section. Given that the sedition law was being invoked by the police at the drop of a hat, this too was a welcome order. Again, had it not been for the CJI’s bench, Ashish Mishra, son of a Union Minister for State who allegedly mowed down five persons under the wheels of his SUV, would not have been in jail. The same bench also halted the demolition drive in Jahangirpuri, launched by Delhi municipal authorities targeting a particular community, and ordered the authorities to maintain the status quo.

Justice Ramana’s tenure had its disappointments too. The foremost among these was his failure to list cases of immense national and constitutional importance, such as the challenge to the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, the Citizenship Amendment Act, Electoral Bonds Scheme, etc. By not listing these cases, he followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, giving the impression that he was shying away from hearing these matters. As a result, these cases appear to be dying a slow death.

The Registry of the Supreme Court was under intense attack. It was openly being accused of favouritism. No less a person than a former judge of the apex court lamented the issue. He said that he had seen cases involving big money, and fancy law firms being listed in four weeks, while those involving junior lawyers not being listed even for six months. While citizens were crying for justice, there were forces set to defeat even their access to that right. Given this state of affairs, one expected Justice Ramana to put in place some corrective mechanisms.

While Justice Ramana deserves to be complimented for appointing a large number of judges to various high courts, and nine to the Supreme Court, these appointments have come at a price. The fact that Justice Akil Kureshi was not elevated to the apex court invited several questions. That this happened with Justice Ramana at the helm – who is known for his fairness — is disappointing.

One does wish that he had been more assertive, forthright, and reformist. He would have also added lustre to his tenure had he taken suo motu notice of the release and garlanding of Bilkis Bano’s rapists and the havoc played on the constitutional rights of the people by a recent judgment of the Supreme Court on the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. Yet, all said and done, Justice Ramana did try to change the face of the Supreme Court for the better.

The writer is a former judge of the Delhi High Court



Read in source website

Ghulam Nabi Azad’s resignation from Congress, and his savagely critical resignation letter, could be the final warnings for GOP to save itself from self-destruction. His exit came just as Congress developed cold feet over holding party-presidential elections. Azad’s scathing assessment of Rahul Gandhi as a “non-serious individual” dependent on an inexperienced coterie, and the blame Azad puts on this group for being a feeble opposition to BJP, isn’t far from the truth, whatever be his motives in calling a spade a spade now. The next few weeks are crucial for Congress. CWC is slated to meet on Sunday. Gandhi family favourite and Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot has publicly signalled his reluctance when asked if he is in contention for becoming the next president. Going by how Congress has functioned in the last two decades since the party stopped conducting elections, only nominees of Nehru-Gandhis have occupied top party positions. So the possibility that a Gandhi proxy will become president when Sonia demits office cannot be ruled out.

That would be an unmitigated disaster. Free and fair elections encouraging a number of contenders to come forward and battle it out for the top post would give the new president a credible start. On the assumption that despite the enormity of a new chief’s responsibility, there still may be leaders who want the job, Nehru-Gandhis should let it be known that they welcome ambition and will fully back the winner, a promise that means letting the new chief get on with his/her job as he/she sees fit. In fact, Nehru-Gandhis should stop playing high-profile roles, which will always diminish a new chief. Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Yatra starting in September is therefore staggeringly poorly timed. As Azad said, “remote control” destroys “institutional integrity”.



Read in source website

While speaking of nari shakti in the workforce and Vision 2047, PM Modi advocated flexible, work-from-home options to boost women’s labour force participation. India is a dismal standout in terms of women’s work participation. Oxfam estimated GDP would be higher by 43% if Indian women had the same work participation rates as men. There are many reasons for declining participation, from higher education and rising aspirations to simply fewer jobs to go around. While it may not apply to all kinds of work, the PM’s point about flexibility is critical. Women are usually time-poor, forced to work a double shift of housework and care responsibilities. Being handcuffed to a physical workplace is often the reason women are forced to drop out or choose a softer, less rewarding track.

The pandemic has shown how easy it is to allow many kinds of workers to work more productively at their own convenience. But it’s crucial to counteract gendered biases too – studies show that remote work tends to stall promotion and career advancement for women. Of course, the home is not exclusively a woman’s domain, and any real solution must involve men contributing equally to care and household work. It will also call for greater state or workplace investment in childcare, to make sure that women workers do not have to take a hit to their careers and have the same chances as men.



Read in source website

In the last few years, the desertion of senior leaders has become so commonplace in the Indian National Congress that sometimes it doesn’t even warrant comment, except on the hapless state of the party. Yet, the resignation of former Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad must sting, not only for the stature of the 73-year-old who served under four prime ministers and was the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, but also for the scathing indictment of the Congress’s working delivered in his letter to party president Sonia Gandhi.

In Mr Azad’s opinion, the problems with the Congress stem from the personality and behaviour of former party chief Rahul Gandhi (the letter uses the adjective “childish” at one point), the rise of a coterie around him; and the erosion of a culture of deliberation . He identifies three main areas of concern for the party – the sidelining of senior leaders and old-timers in favour of an inexperienced group, the sidestepping and deliberate discarding of recommendations made by internal panels for reform in the party, and the targeting of a group of leaders who wrote to Mrs Gandhi two years ago, pointing to problems in the party’s internal organisation and demanding a raft of changes in the functioning and structure of the party. The Congress has defended itself and pointed out that leaders who exit political outfits always hold grudges and have unresolved grievances. Yet, worryingly for the party, the problems flagged by Mr Azad are real: The Congress has leadership issues; it has organisational issues arising from a moribund leadership that is not up to the task of rejuvenating the grassroots cadre demoralised from a string of electoral reverses; and it has political issues with decisions being made by leaders with little ground connect.

Mr Azad’s letter and his exit couldn’t have come at a worse time for the party, which is looking to reconnect with the masses through the Bharat Jodo Yatra and boost morale with the election of a new president. Mr Azad has weighed in on that too, commenting on the party’s efforts to find “proxies”, presumably for Mr Gandhi, and termed the process a “sham” and a “farce”. With elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh just months away, and then an almost continuous poll season in 2023 leading up to the general election in 2024, the Congress has little time to lose. That it is in an existential battle with the BJP in every state that goes to the polls from now – including the only two states it rules on its own – was known. Now, as Mr Azad’s letter shows, it would appear to be in an existential battle with itself – and those rarely end well.



Read in source website

If anything, Ghulam Nabi Azad’s dramatic resignation could push forward a process that may be underway. I’m referring to the possibility of significant change in the Congress party which could provide a turning point for our democracy. It arises out of the twin facts that the Congress is committed to electing a new president and that, reportedly, the Gandhis have decided they will not contest. So, could we, in turn, see the emergence of an invigorated, credible, and, perhaps, popular national Opposition?

I am, of course, relying on two assumptions. First, that a president chosen in a free and fair election, open for contest to all Congress members, will possess the electoral talent, the political sensitivity, the wider public appeal, and the gift of oratory to challenge the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and offer a meaningful alternative. Second, that he will be free to mould and change the Congress as he thinks fit. The Gandhis will not interfere. After Azad’s resignation, this may be the only way the Congress can survive.

Alas, the chances of my being wrong are greater than the possibility I may be prescient. A non-Gandhi Congress president may well be chosen, but will the family give him the freedom to act, speak, change strategy, and seek alliances as he wants? For the sake of their party and our democracy and, indeed, the future of the country, I can only hope they do.

Let me try to persuade them by arguing that there’s substantial evidence to suggest the BJP could be vulnerable in 2024. A revived Congress, under an effective and respected president, could use this to determine the election result. The evidence comes from India Today’s recent Mood of the Nation poll. Much of it is to do with the Indian people’s deep concern — even anguish — about the state of the economy. This is what matters most to the majority of us.

Of the respondents, 69% have identified issues to do with the economy as the biggest failure of the Narendra Modi government and 57% believe things will get worse or, at least, not improve. They far outnumber those who believe things will get better. More significantly, 67% say their economic status has deteriorated since Modi came to power in 2014 or remains unchanged. Only 28% say it’s got better. Add to this the 73% who think unemployment is either very serious or somewhat serious (56% say it’s very serious), and the 60% who believe their household income will either deteriorate or not improve and doesn’t it seem we’ve identified the Achilles' heel of the Modi government?

Yogendra Yadav, perhaps our most respected (former) psephologist, says the message is clear: “It’s the economy, the economy, the economy”. He says traditionally Indians are optimists about their economic future. This deep pessimism is a significant change which, if strategically handled, could lead to a major political shift.

However, the India Today poll suggests a second dramatic shift has also taken place. This time it’s to do with the Modi government’s democratic credentials. It seems a surprising but worsening infirmity has opened up. Asked “what do you think of the current state of democracy in India?”, 48% said it’s in danger and only 37% said it’s not. More importantly, those who believe it’s in danger increased by nearly 10% since January whilst those who say it’s not collapsed by almost 20. Today the gap between those who sense danger and those who don’t is an astonishing 11 percentage points.

Once again, this is something a new credible Congress president could build upon. Remember, the fact he would have won a free and fair election and represents an internally democratic party would strengthen his case.

Now, this opportunity may not last. Over the next 20 months, Modi and the BJP will do their utmost to reverse these perceptions. So, if this moment is to be taken at the flood, the Gandhis must step aside and give their successor his full chance.

Maybe, just maybe, Azad has ensured they will. But if they don’t, the Congress will continue to wallow in shallows and miseries.

Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story

The views expressed are personal



Read in source website

What is the role of a political party in a democracy?

A party is based on a set of principles to which a group of like-minded individuals subscribe. In a democracy, the task of a party is to articulate this vision, and expand the political appeal of this vision. In the process, the party is both an agenda-setting formation and an aggregator of interests.

Fulfilling this task rests on the leadership. A leader has to become a credible messenger to sell the party’s vision, weave in personal charisma, and evoke faith in citizens.

The task of selling the vision and generating trust in the ability of the party leadership to implement this vision then falls on the party organisation. This organisation needs to be rooted in society. It needs to play the role of an intermediary between the leadership and social groups. It needs to provide the infrastructure for political campaigns. And it needs to translate social support into votes on polling day.

When a party gets this mix of vision, leadership and organisation right, it succeeds. Consider the post-2013 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The vision rested on both a negative impulse — we are not the old, corrupt, and dynastic Congress, we are not hostage to regional interests or politics of “minority appeasement” — and a positive impulse — we will provide vikas (development), we will give Hindus a sense of pride, we will protect India’s national security, and we will give a strong government.

In Narendra Modi, this vision had an effective vehicle. He was able to project himself as a strong leader, committed to both “development” and Hindutva. Irrespective of what one thinks of the prime minister’s record, there has been no more effective salesperson of the vision of the BJP in all of the party’s history than Modi.

To sell the vision and the man, the BJP built the most powerful party organisation in Independent India’s history. This organisation works 24*7. It is there to defend the PM’s record and create an environment of support for the government. It is there to expand the BJP’s ideological base through consistent messaging. It is deeply rooted in the form of a booth-level structure that tracks and targets voters, village by village, household by household, individual by individual.

Now, go back to the Congress.

Is there any clarity on what the Congress stands for on the most urgent issues of the day? The party may suggest that the upcoming Bharat Jodo Yatra rests on three pillars that form its agenda — political which critiques the government’s increasing authoritarianism, social which critiques the regime’s social agenda, and economic which critiques the BJP’s alleged tilt towards crony capitalism and the persistence of unemployment.

This may sound like an effective seminar-room attack. But politically, a critique of the incumbent has to be accompanied with a positive agenda.

What is the Congress’s vision of Indian secularism? Is it a reversal to the old or is there a new framework that accommodates majority and minority interests and representation? What is the party’s vision of national security? Is there a road map to take on China’s growing belligerence (while being aware of the asymmetry in power and historical errors, for which the Congress is largely responsible)? What is the party’s vision of Indian democracy? Is it returning to the old where the Congress too misused institutions or is it the creation of a new, where the party will commit itself to the idea of individual freedom? What is the party’s vision of economic growth and justice? Is there a way to avoid cronyism (which the Congress encouraged too) while enabling the rise of private enterprise? Is there a way to take care of the vulnerable without relying only on the politics of welfare?

This lack of a clear message is coupled with the question of leadership. Rahul Gandhi’s paradoxical relationship with power — he grew up surrounded by power and is disdainful of it, but he isn’t willing to let go of it and wants to exercise power without responsibility — is at the root of the troubles. But so is the fact that in two national elections now, the Indian electorate has decisively rejected Gandhi.

Gandhi has also an inexplicable antipathy for the so-called “old guard”, but has done little to enable the rise of the young guard which is politically rooted. Instead, he has relied on a set of apolitical advisers and rootless leaders who have consistently lost even state-level elections.

Gandhi’s ad hoc experiments, from changes to the party’s youth and student wings in his early years to a change of guard in Punjab most recently, are a litany of failures. His ability to communicate his ideas is so dismal that even smart suggestions get drowned in the gaffes. His tendency to veer towards the abstract is a lesson in how not to speak to citizens. His effort to come across as anti-establishment when his family is synonymous with the establishment hasn’t worked. But nowhere was his streak of irresponsibility more visible than in his decision to suddenly resign as party president in 2019, while retaining all the levers of power in private. Add to this his frequent foreign holidays, and if he doesn’t come across as a serious agent of change, the Congress shouldn’t blame the media or citizens.

In this mix of a visionless and a leaderless party, it would be naive to expect the Congress organisation to perform robustly. The party already starts with the disadvantage of being a mass-based rather than a cadre-based formation. The Congress machine has always rested on patronage. In the absence of power (the party runs only two state governments), this has meant an erosion of patronage opportunities at all levels — from the district up to the Rajya Sabha. Morale is low. Conditions for exit are ripe, especially when a worker or a leader can see that deserting the barren land of the Congress and crossing the political bridge to another side can lead to political rewards.

The Congress organisation’s ability to sustain popular campaigns is non-existent. It has burnt its bridges with various social groups — from its old social coalition of Brahmins-Muslims-Dalits in the heartland to its champions in big business, from the young and aspirational lower middle classes in urban areas to the more assertive backward communities in rural areas. And its ability to convert even the support it has to votes on polling day is limited due to a weak footprint on the ground.

Add it all together. And it isn’t a surprise that Azad — no less than the party’s leader in the Rajya Sabha till last year — has joined the list of leaders leaving the party. As the Congress heads to a nationwide yatra and internal polls, it must go back to first principles and figure out why it is in politics in the first place. Otherwise, it is betraying both the 120 million voters who expressed faith in the party in the last elections and Indian democracy itself.

letters@hindustantimes.com



Read in source website

Gulzar Saheb

On August 18 this year, Sampooran Singh Kalra, universally known as Gulzar, celebrated his 88th birthday. His life is a biographer’s dream, from his coming as a refugee to Delhi after Partition, his move to Mumbai, his initially working as a motor mechanic, his first song, Mera gora ang lai le, for the film Bandini in 1963, his marriage to actress Rakhee, and his emergence as one of India’s finest poets, lyricists, film directors and scriptwriters.

I consider Gulzar to be one of my closest friends. It was my privilege to translate into English four volumes of his poetry, Selected Poems, Neglected Poems, Suspected Poems, and Green Poems — all for Penguin books. The name Neglected Poems has an interesting background. I was behind schedule in my translation of this volume, and needed to be reminded to get on with it. Few people are aware of what a great sense of humour Gulzar has. One evening — and we used to talk frequently — he called me in Bhutan, where I was India’s ambassador. In the course of our conversation, he asked me where I had reached with the translations. I said I’m sorry I am behind schedule. To which, very casually he remarked: “I think we should call this volume Neglected Poems.” There was silence on my side, and then we both had a good laugh. I resumed work on the translations the very next day.

Even more a matter of pride for me was when Gulzar translated my long poem, Yudhishtar and Draupadi, from English to Hindustani. His way of telling me was, again, unique. On a visit to Delhi, he called to say he needed to see me urgently for 10 minutes. Of course, I said yes. I went to the Habitat Centre where he was staying, and found him lying in bed propped on a pillow. He said that he was a little under the weather, but wanted me to hear one of his nazms (poems). He then read it out in his deep baritone. I found the imagery very moving, and told him so. He looked at me intently, and asked me to hear just one more.

As he was reading that, the penny dropped. Both were sonnets from Yudhishtar and Draupadi! When I exclaimed in surprise, he laughed. “Yahi tau batane ke liye aapko bulaya tha (This is the reason why I called you!)” He had finished the translation of the entire book, without breathing a word to me. The book was published again by Penguin in 2012, with my original and his translation, expectedly with more success! Happy birthday, Gulzar Saheb, and may you have many more!

Krishna and Ramayana

Every year, two landmark events of long-standing importance take place in Delhi. For a week before Janmashtami, there is the dance drama “Krishna” at Kamani. On the first day of the Navratras, the dance drama “Ramayana” can be seen, next to Kamani on the lawns of the Shriram Bhartiya Kala Kendra. Ramayana has been staged without a break since 1957, and Krishna since 1977.

Interestingly, the first production of Ramayana was facilitated by a government grant given by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of 26,000 (this covered roughly half the cost at that time) to Sumitra Charatram (the talented wife of business icon, Lala Charatram), who ran the Kala Kendra. Today, her mantle has been taken over by her indefatigable daughter, Shobha Deepak Singh, ably assisted by her husband, Deepak. Each year, the shows are packed. The first show of Ramayana this year will be on September 26.

Kathak Lok by Shovana Narayan

The renowned Kathak dancer, Shovana Narayan, in association with bureaucrat-writer, Geetika Kalha, released her book Kathak Lok recently at the India International Centre in Delhi. The book is the result of 7,000 kilometres of travel through North India, and five years of research, to understand the existence of Kathak villages, and what Kathak represents. I was delighted to speak at the launch, along with noted poet Ashok Vajpayee and professor BN Goswami — arguably India’s most erudite art historian — in a session chaired by former governor NN Vohra.

>

Pavan K Varma is author, diplomat, and former Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha)

Just Like That is a weekly column where Varma shares nuggets from the world of history, culture, literature, and personal reminiscences with HT Premium readers

The views expressed are personal



Read in source website

The Supreme Court has issued a notice on a petition challenging the recent decision of the Gujarat government to remit the sentences of 11 rape and murder convicts. It has thrown into sharp relief certain important legal questions. What does life imprisonment mean? Is the power to remit sentences unfettered? Was the law followed in Bilkis Bano’s case by the remission board? Finally, how about the different standards followed by different state governments in the application of remission policies?

Meaning of life imprisonment: The question of what life imprisonment means was answered by the Supreme Court in Union of India vs. Sriharan (2016) 7 SCC 1. The court simply held that the punishment of life imprisonment means imprisonment for the rest of the convict’s life. The court relied on two previous Constitution Bench judgments, Re: Gopal Vinayak Godse and Maru Ram, in which it had emphatically held that life imprisonment is nothing less than life imprisonment and such a sentence lasts till the last breath. The correct legal position, therefore, is that life imprisonment means the entirety of life unless the appropriate government grants remission to the convict. 

Remission under the Criminal Procedure Code: However, this grant of remission is not unfettered. The convict may request remission from the President or the governor under Articles 72 and 161 of the Constitution. This remission may also be granted under sections 432 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Under this framework, the appropriate government can commute, remit, or suspend sentences of a convicted person.

width:468px;height:60px" data-ad-client="ca-pub-4179177184249048" data-ad-slot="3146043443">

Bilkis Bano’s case: Even before delving into the many legal infirmities apparent in the remissions granted in the Bilkis Bano case there is an important question that must be asked, is it morally appropriate to remit a rape sentence? Rape and murder are heinous crimes; this brooks no disagreement. There has been an understanding in our society, particularly after the Nirbhaya case, that rape must be dealt with by a strong hand. Even the Centre’s recent remission policy for release of prisoners on Independence Day excluded rape convicts from its purview.

Why the remission in Bilkis Bano is incorrect: From a purely legal standpoint, the remissions stand on tenuous ground. First, there is the issue of consultation with the Central government before granting remission as the investigation was carried out by the CBI. It is unclear whether the state government carried out this consultation. If not, then the remission suffers from an apparent illegality as it runs counter to Section 435 of the CrPC. This consultation is important because cases investigated by the CBI cannot be left to the fancies of the Jail Advisory Committees on remission. 

Second, did the apex court correctly interpret the law when it decided to give the power to consider the remission in this particular case back to the Gujarat government? On this issue, Section 432(7) (b) could not be clearer. It explicitly states that the appropriate government is the state where the offender is sentenced or the sentencing order is passed. The offenders in this case were sentenced in Maharashtra and the Maharashtra government ought to be the appropriate government. The Supreme Court, with great respect, seems to have reinterpreted the language of the statute and perhaps maybe even the intent of the legislature when it held that the appropriate government would be the state where the crime was committed. 

It holds to reason that if a trial is transferred from State A to State B because there were apprehensions of bias in State A, should this logic not extend to the grant of remission as well? Would it be appropriate if the government accused of bias during the trial were given the power of remission post trial? 

Third, Section 432 requires that the opinion of the judge who convicted the accused be taken into consideration before granting remission. Indeed, the Supreme Court has held that the government's decision on remission should be guided by the opinion of the presiding officer. There is nothing on record to suggest the advisory board in Gujarat did this. The CBI judge who convicted the accused has come out and criticised the grant of remission.

Arbitrariness in the application of remission: The judicial system today is confronted with a spectre where some prisoners are languishing in jail interminably and yet others — who raped women and murdered children — are out. A case in point is of certain Sikh prisoners who continue to be in jail for more than 25 years. This despite consistent demands to release them on compassionate grounds. A country governed by the rule of law must — at a minimum — have some semblance of uniformity in its application of the law. The disparate ways in which remission policies are applied in different states is arbitrary and contrary to Article 14 of the Constitution. Remission policies should not be left to the vagaries of Jail Advisory Committees on remission.

Dissents in death penalty cases:  There is another related but important issue that needs to be considered — dissents in death penalty cases. Should a person be put to death if the very people deciding on the question disagree fundamentally? The death penalty is the epitome of the state’s coercive power and it happens to be irreversible. Should the order decreeing the use of this power not be unanimous? What if the other, equally competent judge, turns out to be correct? Indeed, in his dissent in Glossip v. Gross, Justice Breyer of the United States Supreme Court noted that those sentenced to death are 130 times more likely to be exonerated than those convicted of non-capital offences.

In Bachan Singh's case, the Supreme Court emphasised the need for scrupulous care in deciding death penalty cases. This argument could very well extend to imply that death penalty can be imposed only when there is not a shred of doubt regarding the quantum of sentence imposed. This issue came out starkly in Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar's case in which the seniormost judge in the three-judge bench, Justice M.B. Shah, had found Bhullar innocent and acquitted of any guilt.

At the cutting edge level, it is apparent that our criminal justice system seems to be shot through with wide discretion that is bound to lead to situations where some are let out of jail while others continue to serve without any possibility of parole or remission.



Read in source website

Is being judgmental connected with age?

I assume because I’m approaching a big birthday that I’m now in that total judgmental old person phase.

Grumble grumble grumble.

width:468px;height:60px" data-ad-client="ca-pub-4179177184249048" data-ad-slot="3146043443">

Young people these days.

Grumble grumble grumble.

Let me count the sins of youth.

One, they cannot eat ordinary Indian food like delicious (as in largely boring) daal and rice or daal and chapatis like we did.

Two, they are so lazy and such social misfits, always on some device.

Three, we never had all these food apps so we were so superior.

Four, they have a high sense of entitlement and no life skills.

Five, more gabba gabba gabba.

The other day. I watched a documentary on the disaster that was the music festival Woodstock 99. I can’t really remember this festival at all. Although in 1999 I was younger than I am now, though not as young as I was during Woodstock 1969.

But the 1969 was a seminal moment for many of us, even us of the generation not old enough to attend but soon young enough to celebrate the music and its peace, love, antiestablishment ethos. A lifetime of Crosby Stills and Nash, Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez, to name just three, followed.

So this Woodstock 99 tried to recreate a hippie festival 30 years later when most of the hippies had become the establishment.

The documentary told us from the outset that disaster was inevitable. Bad organisation and planning, brainless cost-cutting, excess greed and lack of attention were evident from Day One and by Day Three you had mayhem, death, rape and destruction. And a management that was unaware and unconcerned, caught up in their own bubble of self-declared success.

Lots of blaming went on. Yes, many young people behaved badly and irresponsibly. Yes, the sexual assault was horrible and visible on all the recordings of the time. But the bigger issue was definitely that of the organisers and their lack of planning and inadequate control as things spiraled out of control.

These were young people of the late 1990s. The parents of today’s young people. The children who won’t eat bhindi because they have a food app. I’m the grandparent type.

I force myself to look back. And judge. I would not eat bhindi as a kid and barely manage to eat it as an adult, unless it’s deep fried. I decide what I have to eat everyday and if I decide on daal-vegetable-rice for myself for four days in a row, I have a massive tantrum with myself.

I spend, like everyone who owns some Internet-connected device, inordinate amounts of time on those devices. Like right now. I’m on my laptop. I also have Twitter, Spider Solitaire and Gmail open. I switch between them. It’s just that I’m an adult, so I have the right.

But an 18-year-old adult doesn’t have the same rights?

I use that life skills and entitlement argument myself. The first comes because many of today’s young people prefer to live at home with their parents long after any parent bird would have thrown them out of the nest. Some of us who jumped out of the twig home cannot believe that these young ones are happy being told to eat bhindi and so on. Much as we loved our Mummy-Daddies, we wanted to taste a bit of freedom. Of being responsible for our own mistakes.

Like many others of my time, I suffered living in working women’s hostels, bad food, terrible rules about when you could come home, awful bathrooms and so on, just to have that freedom. No one telling you what to do. Several disasters did ensue. Sometimes parents swooped in to rescue you. Sometimes you wallowed in the muck of your making. Life skills that toughened you up? Maybe.

Or, maybe today’s young just want to make different choices? And there are many who do choose freedom.

One big difference is technology. How can you grow up if for every moment of your waking day, your parent or guardian is on your case? You are 24 years old. They will still ask if you have brushed your teeth, changed your clothes, bathed today, and other such nonsense. If these parents work in an office, they would never ask this of their young colleagues. But this infantilising of their own children is astounding. No wonder people complain these children are entitled. They’ve been given things constantly, nonstop advice keeps coming, why should they behave in any other way but full of expectation?

So I think I’ll switch my age-related grumbling. Am going to let young people off the hook. They have enough problems with their crazy parents dogging every second of their lives.

These parents, now. Hmmm. They are the ones who need help. They need to be cut off. They need to remember the times when they were young and rebelled against their parents. When they wouldn’t eat that bhindi or tinda or various kinds of ghastly gourds.

That music of Woodstock 99 was not really my kind of music, anyway. So I felt fully justified in looking on appalled.

But now the rock stars of my teenage years? Terrible, terrible behaviour. They are the ones who set the standard that these later musicians have copied.

How many nights have my friends and I crawled in home after a night on the town, hammered? We didn’t live with our parents, so no one knew. But I know that parents and my grandparents also lived the good life. I have photographs of one set of grandparents at New Year’s Eve celebrations at various clubs. I have photographs of the other lot on motorcycles in their 20s. Before their children arrived.

No sanctimonious oldies watching judgmentally.

Except me, now. Watching the middle-aged. Judgmentalism pouring out of my ears!



Read in source website

“Political football!” this is how Salman Rushdie had first described the banning of The Satanic Verses. The expression seems innocuous today but it spelt a world scoop for Madhu Jain, principal correspondent for India Today, who had spoken on the phone to Rushdie in London. 

Jain had special access to the author because she had “pigeoned” the controversial pages of the manuscript for India Today. References in those pages mocking the Prophet was like pouring oil into a blazing cauldron of communalism. Communalism was at fever pitch after the upturning of the Shah Bano judgement by Rajiv Gandhi, a brazen effort to consolidate the Muslim vote. With rat-like cunning, the Prime Minister’s men rushed to balance the situation: they opened the locks of Ram Mandir, promised Ram Rajya.  

Later, to keep the Muslim flock in his electoral enclosure he banned The Satanic Verses. Then he proceeded to lay the foundation of the Ram Mandir to win Hindu support. Sheikh bhi khush rahey, shaitaan bhi naraz na ho (keep the Mullah and Satan in good humour at the same time). He crashed between many stools. 

width:468px;height:60px" data-ad-client="ca-pub-4179177184249048" data-ad-slot="3146043443">

This was the torrid hothouse atmosphere into which Satanic Verses were tossed. Could not a calmer place have been chosen to test the waters? Rajiv Gandhi’s paranoia about the “Muslim” vote was because of the way his party understood his three-fourth majority in Parliament after the 1984 elections. Congress stalwarts saw in the results solid Hindu consolidation against Sikh extremism in Punjab.  

Hindu consolidation against one community can easily mutate into consolidation against the biggest minority. So the current Hindu consolidation has precedents.  

In his letter to Rajiv Gandhi on October 7, two days after the ban, Rushdie pulled no punches: the book has been banned with “devilish forethought”. Among his statements around the time of the ban, Rusdhie offers the diagnosis for Muslim anger: I am not “reverent” enough, he said. 

Cultures have different grades of irreverence as my first visit to the UK in the 60s revealed. Watching BBC on Christmas Day in London was something of a culture shock. A standup comedian was trying to regale us:  “If every day was Christmas/ by some fantastic trick,/If every day was Christmas/we’d all be bloody sick.” 

The next scene was a row of panties fluttering on a line. A man, obviously selected for looking like a debased lecher speaks with sensuous deliberation: “You would wonder what these have to do with Christmas? Well, these are Carol’s” 

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem on Jesus is not exactly low brow irreverence when he describes Christ on the Cross:  “Him just hang there on his tree/Looking real Petered out and real cool/And also/According to a roundup of late world news/From the usual unreliable sources, Real Dead.” 

Of the multiple personalities that make up a human being, this was the part of me which recites a brief portion of the poem with relish. The part of me which rejoices in Ferlinghetti’s irreverence was quite clearly groomed at school. 

The abiding part of me was shaped by my extended family, the sherwani clad boyhood with a surfeit of Urdu poetry, verses bristling with irreverence but never ever mocking at Mohammad and his family. “Ba khuda deewana baash o/ ba Mohammad hoshiyar (Take liberties with God; Be careful with Mohammad).” This was the red line. 

When Chandra Bhan Brahman crossed this red line he knew he had protection in powerful places. He was Dara Shikoh’s Prime Minister. He could therefore write with aplomb. “Panja dar panjaye Khuda daram/ Mun che parwaaye Mustafa daram (My hand is in God’s hand; Why should I worry about Mustafa).” 

Brahman’s irreverence is of an elegant order. By placing his hand in that of God, he has already protected himself. He leaves the Prophet’s supporters in a bind. They cannot pelt stones at him for holding God’s hand. In any case, whatever Brahman was saying had a restricted audience. 

Rushdie mocking at the Prophet, his wives and messages from God is in a globalised world of instant communication when the salacious passages can be discussed in magazines published oceans away and thereby create mayhem and push sales. 

Did Rushdie flourish the red rag to agitate the bull? In 9th century Spain (Andalusia) 48 Christian Bishops sought martyrdom by cursing Islam and its Prophet regularly to invite the harshest punishment from the Muslim authorities. 

Muslim rule in Spain, which began in 711 AD and lasted for about 800 years, had created a harmonious society of Muslims, Jews and Christian. Cordoba with one of the world’s most magnificent mosques, was counted among the largest cities of Europe. Sleeping cells of the Church were in deep thought. Martyrs were needed to awaken the Christian flock. 

One Bishop at a time would curse the Prophet in front of the mosque. An administration, reluctant to disturb the peace was, willy nilly, provoked to act against the Bishops who, quite ironically, were themselves seeking martyrdom. This was one of the points of ignition which ultimately led to Spain’s “Reconquesta” in 1492. 

Clearly, in my limited experience, irreverence for Christ is not a matter of life and death on the scale that irreverence for the Prophet is among Muslims. I suspect the tolerance level for taking liberties with the great Sikh Gurus would be zero. Hinduism, spectacular but with caverns of deep thought was once gloriously flexible and accommodating. It is becoming a brittle, congregational faith. But with Islamophobia as a sort of norm for our times, Rushdie and The Satanic Verses will encroach on the world’s attention now and then indefinitely for “political football”.  

As for Hadi Matar, the assailant, well, he could well be the devil who told Jesus: “My name is legion, for we are many.”



Read in source website