The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Friday, July 13, 2001, Chandigarh, India

THE TRIBUNE SPECIALS

50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

TERCENTENARY CELEBRATIONS

M A I L B A G

Using police as CMs’ private army

AS Mr Hari Jaisingh has said in his write-up on the situation in Chennai (July 6), "society is going to the dogs" because whereas society was ruled by the "allegedly corrupt" before Ms Jayalalitha's coronation, now it is ruled by the "convicted corrupt". Your readers had, at that time, warned of the consequences likely to follow, but pundits read different things in the Constitution, just as Pandits read different ideologies in the Upanishads.

And so we took months to realise that the Governor, a representative of the President at the state level, had "elevated a law-breaker, Ms Jayalalitha, to a protector of law."

What next? The government professing "zero tolerance" towards corruption will justify its impotence on the ground of lack of numbers. It will not resign because this much of decency is not to be expected of an unprincipled conglomerate. The IAS, who claim to be the very picture of righteousness even while "willing to crawl before the powers that be", as stated by Mr Hari Jaisingh, will take their orders from a thief.

The police, who beats up an ordinary thief black and blue, will go on imprisoning out-of-power thieves on orders from in-power thieves. Had an ordinary citizen come to the rescue of an ordinary thief, the police would have found all the rules to put that citizen behind the bars, but when a Bofors and JMM convicted party speaks for Jayalalitha, it is a different matter indeed.

Is our Constitution working? Let the committee set up for the purpose find out if the state assemblies are at all relevant to India's developmental effort. Is not Parliament enough by way of democracy?

Above all, let us resolve to vote intelligently rather than emotionally. We cannot have an honest administration by voting corrupt persons to power; nor can we have a strong centre with a "weak-kneed" PM in the chair.

L. R. SHARMA, Solan

TRANSPARENCY: Apropos "using police as CMs’ private army" by Mr Hari Jaisingh I want to make the following points:

(a) The principle "Nobody is above law" must be followed in true spirit impartially.

(b) Politicians/legislators are required to make laws/rules and get these enforced through bureaucrats and the police. Postings/transfers and spending of money/funds must be left to the respective departments whose heads are responsible to the government for any irregularity.

(d) Anybody interfering with the principles of equality and deginity of any citizen must be severely dealt with irrespective of the vote bank.

(e) The common man must be saved from the high-handedness of people having money, muscle and political power.

(f) The law-makers should not themselves help law-beakers.

Col B. S. CHAUHAN, Nabipur Gurdaspur

MEDIA BIASED: Though I, being a woman, envy her huge collection of saris and shoes, I am not a Jayalalitha fan or follower. And thus do not support her reportedly revengeful acts.

But while looking objectively at the goings-on in Tamil Nadu, it seems that the print media is carrying some strong bias against Jayalalitha. The recent thrashing of a few media persons might be the reason.

For while TV clippings showing a wailing Karunanidhi being carried by the TN police was not only highlighted by the print media, but was also used as the "clinching" evidence to write scathing editorials/articles. The media totally ignored the fact that though during a physical scuffle, the first casualty always is one's turban or spectacles, Mr Karunanidhi's dark-glasses (his only recognisable trait) remained intact. This in fact happens only in films where fighting heroes, despite jumping up and down, never lose the grip of their goggles or cigars!

And the visuals that the TN police released later in which a central minister is shown slapping a police officer seems to have been blacked out by the print media deliberately.

Thanks for informing us that a minister while obstructing a police officer to carry the orders of his superiors has the constitutional right to slap/hit him. And his arrest for that "small matter" could cause "constitutional anarchy"!

RUPINDER B. SINGH, Chandigarh

Police brutality? It’s routine

I know nothing of politics except that the majority of our politicians are corrupt. The well-known fact that almost every job, from that of a peon to a teacher to a police personnel to a civil servant, which Indian states scarcely offer these days, carries a hefty price-tag, should sufficiently support my assertion.

Yet none can ever be punished for any such corrupt practice, tehelka or no tehelka, thanks to our lengthy and cumbersome judicial system, for the "lack of proper evidence"!

That is why the Karunanidhi episode, shown repeatedly by various TV channels, did not evoke in me, or in my small social circle, any "shattering" response.

No wonder your description in the editorial "Heil Fuhrer Jayalalitha" episode as a "horror play which has shaken the nation into disbelief" sounded simply silly. And your hyper remark that the incident was enacted "in medieval style brutality", confirms that you live in the medieval period!

For as far as the police brutality is concerned there is nothing new to Karunanidhi's arrest, may be politically motivated, except that this time the arrested person is a big shot.

Arresting a person "at an unholy hour, in an unlawful manner and in an inhuman way" is a routine that our police, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, practises everyday. Please don't tell us that the police has changed its inhuman face overnight!

Let at least for once, there be a single instance where a corrupt politician is actually jailed and his total ill-gotten wealth confiscated, then see the jubilation that would shake not only the nation but also the world in disbelief!

BALVINDER, Chandigarh