M A I L B A G

Jaswant takes nation for a ride

THE editorial “A Call to Honour?” (Aug 2) rightly pulled no punches while taking Mr Jaswant Singh to task for his verbal acrobatics over the last few days, in a crude attempt, to take the nation and the government for a ride.

It appears that it was a well planned gimmick and marketing strategy to push the sales of his otherwise ordinary book. Mr Singh has taken a political  tumble and has come a cropper with this eminently disgraceful episode. It is, certainly, not an honourable thing to do when one has been in the armed forces and a Union minister, to boot, holding charge of sensitive ministries like finance, defence and external affairs.

M.K. BAJAJ, Gurgaon

II

Till the publication of his book, Mr Jaswant Singh was considered an upright politician, a good leader and a reputed administrator. The people respected him for his balanced talk, and no-nonsense demeanour. But the comments in his book have lowered his rank several notches down. He is now like other petty politicians, far away from facts.

Senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani very rightly said that Mr Jaswant Singh can be prosecuted for maintaining silence over an important secret concerning national security. In my opinion, his book should now be titled, “A Call to Dishonour”.

NEERAJ KUMAR SHARMA, Advocate, Mandi

III

The editorial, “A Call to Honour?” rightly pinpoints Mr Jaswant Singh’s follies that obviously were aimed at promoting the sales of his book. He should have known that politicians cannot adopt similar modes that the likes of Rakhi Sumant, in the glamour world, use to promote and sell themselves.

BALVINDER, Chandigarh

IV

Mr Jaswant Singh should apologise to the nation. When he revealed that there was a mole in the late Narasimha Rao’s PMO, he numbed the nation because he kept the matter close to his chest for 10 long years. What is more shocking is that a senior Cabinet Minister like him did not deem it important enough to report and seek an investigation into the presence of a spy in the Prime Minister’s Office. Legal action should be taken against him for playing with nation’s security.

BIDYUT KUMAR CHATTERJEE, Faridabad

V

As a Cabinet Minister in the NDA government, why did Mr Jaswant Singh not get the matter probed? Having declined to divulge the name of the mole, he has done a great disservice to the nation. He should be tried under the relevant law for keeping mum for so many years on the presence of a mole in P.V. Narasimha Rao’s PMO. Clearly, he has no moral authority to continue as Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha.

IQBAL SINGH SAROYA, Mohali

VI

The editorial “The spy who flew away” (July 28) appears to be unduly critical about Mr Jaswant Singh’s belated disclosure that a mole existed in P.V. Narasimha Rao’s PMO. Apparently, Mr Jaswant Singh did not anticipate the adverse reaction to this revelation coinciding with the publication of his book.

Coming from an aristocratic family and having held the portfolios of External Affairs and Finance in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government with distinction, Mr Jaswant Singh’s revelation of the “spy racket” at this point of time, coinciding with the publication of his book, could not have been to promote the sale of his moralistically titled book, “A Call to honour”.

Brig H.S. CHANDEL (retd), Una

Boost to education Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh’s announcement of eight new colleges will give a boost to education in the state. The need of the hour is a complete overhaul of the education system and ensuring better infrastructure and uniform syllabi as per national and international requirements. The Education Minister must make best use of these institutes by introducing subjects like cyber laws, defence studies, human rights, environment studies, child psychology, human resource development and so on. He should also constitute a committee on streamlining the regular subjects in the present set up. The government will win public support by providing the much-needed professional and vocational courses to students at a reasonable fee. Dr SUNIL KUMAR BARIA, Pathankot

Housing in Delhi

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has a new costliest housing scheme of 2,800 flats constituting the middle income and high income groups. They are located at Dwarka, Rohini and Shalimar Bagh. It is envisaged that this scheme would reduce the disparity between the government and market rates.

Instead of providing affordable MIG and HIG housing schemes, the DDA is functioning as a builder mafia to make maximum profits. The DDA is not a commercialised institution. Its original objective was to provide housing for the masses with no profit. It was oriented towards the social welfare housing programmes by an Act of Parliament.

The DDA should build on a massive scale prefabricated oriented houses for MIG and HIG sections which are affordable to the common man.

GOPAL BHARGAVA, Delhi