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| Sunday, June 11, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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Crisis in LDF over seat sharing Paswan convinces PM Bad news and more bad news Pay relief to
Roop Lal,
orders HC Arun Gawli’s detention
set aside ITBP scales peak Fernandes to
visit UK |
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Crisis in LDF over seat sharing THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, June 10 (UNI) — A row over the sharing of seats for the June 23 Rajya Sabha elections from Kerala has plunged the ruling Marxist-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) into a crisis, akin to the one in West Bengal, but with more
intensity. With the CPI, the second largest partner in the coalition, deciding to field its own candidate disregarding the “unilateral” decision of the CPM to field its candidate and another of the RSP, fissures in the six-party coalition led by the CPM has now widened. The fact that it took two days for the CPI state council to arrive at a decision on the Rajya Sabha issue showed that it took the extreme step of challenging the authority of the CPM after considering all aspects and consequences. The CPI’s decision, which was rather more emotional than the usual pressure tactics and believed to have been taken with the full knowledge of the central leadership, had brought to fore its pent up feelings against the “authoritarian” actions of the CPM not only on this issue, but also on several other issues of importance. The decision also seems to have a hidden message for the CPM: “Kerala is not West Bengal.” Of the three Rajya Sabha seats from Kerala, the LDF could win two seats, going by its strength in the 140-member state Assembly, and left the remaining one to the Congress-led opposition UDF which has 63 members as against LDF’s 77. The CPM had deliberately pushed the
CPI against the wall when it announced Mr K. Chandran Pillai as the party’s candidate for one of the two seats and prominently carried in its mouthpiece Desabhimani the name of the other candidate, Mr N.K. Premachandran, of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP). |
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Paswan convinces PM NEW DELHI, June 10 (UNI) — Communications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan today scored a major victory when Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee approved his proposal to provide free telephones to all employees of Department of Telecom (DoT) and Department of Telecom Services (DTS). The proposal ran into rough weather when Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha raised objections. The Prime Minister called both ministers and heard their versions. Mr Paswan could convince the Prime Minister that the package was negotiated with the employees after careful deliberations. According to an official spokesman, the Prime Minister considered the overall package as reasonable and acceptable. He said under the package bonus of the employees was being frozen at 70 days for 1999-2000. It would also facilitate corporatisation and providing rent-free telephones instead of extra calls. It was also decided to launch the corporate entity to be called Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited in October, this year. The Communications Minister earlier had said that both the Department of DoT and DTS would be corporatised by January 2001. Now that decision has been advanced to October. The decision of providing rent-free telephone would benefit nearly 3.25 lakh workers in the class III and IV category. Mr Paswan believes that the move would develop better work culture among its employees and would enable them in competing more effectively in the global economy. According to official sources, the Telecom Commission had earlier approved the proposal of providing rent-free telephones. The sources said that the Telecom Commission was competent enough to clear and sanction any financial matter subject to a maximum of Rs 100 crore per month and under this rent-free package it would cost the government only Rs 70 crore per month till the time of corporatisation of these two departments. Apart from this the employees demand for 73 day bonus was brought down to 70 days under the package of providing rent-free telephones. This move resulted in a saving of nearly Rs 35 crore for the government since one day’s bonus costs the exchequer around Rs 12 crore, the sources added. PTI: The BJP today said Communications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan should have consulted Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee before going ahead with the move to provide free telephones to 3.2 lakh Telecom employees. “The minister should have first consulted Mr Vajpayee before taking the decision as it involved expenditure from public exchequer,” party vice-president J.P. Mathur told reporters here. “Prior consultation will not have led to unnecessary public debate on the issue,” he said. |
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Bad news and more bad news PULL out your copy of The Tribune published on Saturday, June 10, 2000, (if you haven’t already sold it to the raddiwallah) from wherever you store old newspapers. Read carefully the headlines of each and every report published on page one. It will explain why you did not relish the special weekend breakfast prepared for you by your wife or mother. The fault lies not with the newspaper, but the whole wide world which seems to have lost the will to generate even a single piece of good news. In our book, of course, no news is bad news and bad news is good news. I remember how I, as a cub reporter, had darted across the road, putting my own life at risk, for an eyewitness account of an accident in which a cyclist was knocked down by a speeding car. I pushed my way through the crowd with great enthusiasm. I was disappointed to learn that the cyclist had not been “crushed to death”. He had sustained only minor bruises. “Not worth reporting” is the journalistic expression for such incidents. However, even if newspapers went out of their way looking with a magnifying glass the ever elusive “good news”, they would not find enough reports for filling up the space left at their disposal by the advertisement department. B. G. Verghese was a great votary of developmental journalism. He even adopted a village near Delhi as Editor of The Hindustan Times. The newspaper carried weekly reports about the people and their problems, and the official initiative in providing basic amenities like roads, drinking water, electricity, school and healthcare centre to the village. But even a genuine do-gooder like Verghese could not resist the temptation of arranging a negative series of reports, appropriately captioned “Foundation Stones of Electoral Success”. They revealed that most of the projects, for which Indira Gandhi used to lay the foundation stones before elections, never got completed. He was shown the door and the policy of promoting developmental journalism too was abandoned by the newspaper. It was a case of the good news being thrown out with what the political leadership treated as bad news. It is an established fact that more journalists die in harness than those in similar professions related to reading and writing. The high mortality rate among journalists may have something to do with the irregular hours they keep and constant exposure to what is essentially bad news. But Saturday, June 10, 2000, was exceptionally bad even for hardened journalists. A black border on page one could easily have passed muster. Let me take you on a conducted tour of the world as it looked through the page one of the newspaper. Begin at the beginning. Read the reports in the “spotlight” section in column one. The first report was filed by our Samana correspondent. He showed great enterprise in piecing together separate incidents of drowning of five children in pools of water created by the unseasonal downpour. Three of them were siblings. The second report was about the CBI raids at the premises of a railway employee in Chennai. Even you must have stopped reacting to such reports, because raids on the premises of officials suspected to be involved in corrupt deals have become routine. But it was negative news nevertheless. The third report may have been of little interest to most of us. But those interested in international affairs may have spotted a bit of silver lining in the fact that warring Solomon Islands militias agreed to a 14-day ceasefire. But bloody civil strife anywhere in the world is certainly not good news. The fact that the Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered a CBI probe in the death of Bibi Jagir Kaur’s daughter would have evoked two reactions. Kamaljit Singh and his family would have been satisfied with the order. But the political opponents of Bibi Jagir Kaur may have shown elation for reasons which have nothing to do with the circumstances in which her daughter Harpreet died. From Himachal Pradesh came the unhappy news of the washing away of almost an entire village because of the flood in the Pabbar river. Houses, bridges and roads disappeared as if they never existed. The report that the CBI court has framed charges against Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi and Laloo Prasad Yadav in the disproportionate assets cases too was not exactly good news — in the context of the role of politicians in giving acts of corruption the undeserved aura of respectability. It goes without saying that the happiness quotient of Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan must have hit the ceiling while Laloo and his wife sat sulking in a corner. The report that Union Home Minister L. K. Advani has agreed to a probe into the blasts in several churches in the country was a classical example of good news following the bad. The planned blasts for creating communal tension was the bad news. The decision to order a probe was the good news. The cricket match-fixing enquiry in South Africa continued to bring bad news for the addicts, who must be wondering whether it was ever a game which was played by gentlemen. The arrest of the Panjab University Controller of Examination in connection with the paper leakage scam, on the other hand, must have made those who still care for higher education go into deep depression. It exposed the ugly face of the prestigious university. The report that the residents of a village near Zirakpur were raising peacocks in captivity should have made wildlife enthusiasts report the incident to Maneka Gandhi. But how does one react to the report of the gagging to death of two children in Jalandhar? The drowning of children in Samana was an accident. So was the disappearance of an entire village in Himachal Pradesh. The first was caused by human negligence and the other by human greed. The High Court’s order in Harpreet’s death would form part of what is called legal reporting and the report of the assets case in Bihar was part legal and part crime. The report about the blasts in churches in several states was a combination of political, communal and “Pakistan” factors. The Panjab University story exposed the rot in the system of higher education. The breeding of peacocks in captivity would form part of a new discipline in journalism which deals exclusively with wildlife and environmental issues. But the Jalandhar story defies classification. If what happened in Jalandhar was a crime, it was a crime against humanity. If I could have my way, I would have the murderer of nine-year-old Hena and six-year-old Abhishek tried under the provisions of the Wildlife Act which allows killing of mad animals and man-eaters. The faceless killer does not deserve to be tried by an ordinary court which would apply the usual law of the land for deciding his guilt or innocence. The killer, who took advantage of the innocence of young children, should be placed beyond the reach of the due process of law. The laws framed by men are meant to maintain the facade of civility for civilised human beings. But when beasts, even in human garb, go berserk, they are meant to be shot at sight before they are snuff out other innocent lives. A similar incident which had jolted the conscience of the nation was the killing of the Chopra children in Delhi in the 70s — a crime for which Billa and Ranga were hanged after a prompt trial. The Jalandhar episode was worse. The Chopra children were in their teens and had evidently fought with their tormentors before they were hacked to death. How could Hena or Abhishek have fought someone who was, according to an eyewitness, addressed as “chacha” by the girl? They could have at best struggled while the depraved person stuffed their mouth with polythene and sealed their lips with tape. As far as I am concerned, June 10, 2000, would forever remain the blackest Saturday of my life. In a larger context the fact that virtually every newspaper carries more bad news than good day after day has now begun to worry me. Where is the good news which can be turned into a lead story? However, brooding over the absence of good news is not going to help us fight sick minds. The Hena-Abhishek killing should make every sensitive Indian ponder over what needs to be done, and how, for restoring at least a semblance of sanity in a society. The enemies of civil society seem to be in a hurry to turn this planet into a madhouse. I have a feeling that time is not on our side. Sorry for having made you pull out Saturday’s copy of The Tribune. Life must go on. Go ahead, enjoy your meal. We must all eat to live. But must we live at all if we have no power to fashion a world of boundless happiness and complete harmony? A world in which Hena and Abhishek return home safe and happy from their tuition classes, without being accosted by the snake of the Garden of Eden, who in the present case presented himself as “chacha”. |
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Pay relief to
Roop Lal, orders HC
NEW DELHI, June 10 (PTI) — The Delhi High Court has asked the Union Government to pay a “legitimate compensation” to Mr Roop Lal Sahariya, who spent about 26 years in a Pakistani jail after being caught on espionage charges. Mr Justice Dalveer Bhandari yesterday asked the government to make the payment within a month and inform the court on July 10 about the implementation of the directives. Government counsel Kavita Wadia told the court that the matter was being processed at various levels and it would take some time to take a decision. Mr Roop Lal, who was released by Pakistan about two months ago, had filed a petition in the high court seeking salary arrears and pensionary benefits for the entire period. Mr Roop Lal, was arrested in 1974 by Pakistan and had been incarcerated in its jail since then. |
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Arun Gawli’s detention
set aside
NAGPUR, June 10 (PTI) — The Mumbai High Court has quashed the detention of notorious gangster Arun Gawli under the Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Slumlords, Bootleggers, Drug offenders and Dangerous persons Act (MPDA). Admitting Gawli’s petition yesterday, Mr Justice S.P. Kulkarni and Mr Justice P.S. Brahme of the Nagpur Bench of the high court set aside the impunged order on technical grounds. Gawli was detained by the police on November 16 last on the orders of the Pune District Magistrate, who alleged he was indulging in criminal activities in the area falling within his jurisdiction. He was subsequently lodged in Amravati jail. Gawli’s detention was later approved by the State Home Department. The gangster challenged his detention before the same authority which rejected it. He then moved the Advisory Board set up under MPDA which too dismissed his plea. His detention was ultimately confirmed by the state on January 7. Gawli then moved the high court here challenging his detention in a petition wherein he contended that at the time of serving the impugned order, the detaining authority had failed to comply with the statutory provision of communicating his right to make a representation against the detention within 12 days of its confirmation. |
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ITBP scales peak NEW DELHI, June 10 — A Sub Inspector in the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Wanchuck Sherpa, has become the first Indian to scale Kanchanjunga peak (28,591 feet) from the South-West route. “No Indian expedition had so far attempted to climb this peak from the South-West route. The ITBP Millennium Expedition undertook this challenge and SI Wanchuck Sherpa became the first Indian to climb Kanchanjunga from this difficult route and created a history in the field of Indian mountaineering,” the Director General of the ITBP, Mr Gautam Kaul, told newspersons here today. He said the third highest peak in the world was scaled on May 20 by the SI Sherpa and two other Sherpas hailing from Darjeeling. |
Fernandes to
visit UK NEW DELHI, June 10 — High- level defence ministerial-level discussions will be held between India and Britain in London on June 15 during the official visit of Defence Minister George Fernandes to that country, a Defence Ministry spokesman said here today. Defence Minister, George Fernandes will leave here on June 13 on a five-day official visit to Britain and Belgium. He will interact with leading members of the strategic community at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London and will also put forward India’s case, especially concerning its security environment. The minister will also hold discussions with British Minister for Trade and Industry Stephen Buyers. Before going to London, Mr Fernandes will go to Belgium on June 13 where he will give a lecture on ‘India’s security concerns in the 21st century’ at the European Institute of Asian Studies in Brussels.
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