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Flashback 2006 Tumultuous year ahead for Communists Farewell Filing replies: Delhi HC takes Army to task |
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’06: RSS hold on BJP New Delhi, December 31 The year ending today would go down in the BJP’s history as a year when it abandoned policies of “moderation and reconciliation” and return to the RSS-inspired and dictated path of hard Hinduatva.
Police reforms: States to seek more time Remand for Kavita case accused
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N-deal — biggest success story Rajeev Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, December 31 On the contra side, the increasing grip of fundamentalist Islamists in Bangladesh,renewed civil war in Sri lanka and rapid gain in strength of the Taliban and the Al-Qaida in Afghanistan were a cause of concern to New Delhi.The return of democratic rule in Nepal – a far cry from the royal coup of February 1, 2005 – provided a bright spot for Indian diplomacy in the neighbourhood. In the year just gone by, India significantly improved its relations with its giant neighbour in the east, China. And perhaps for the first time, India started playing a balancing game as it started crafting a close and strategic partnership with Asian giant, Japan — the bete noire of China. The best thing was that it was not New Delhi wooing Tokyo, but the other way round – yet another demonstration of India’s ever-growing clout in the global scheme of things. The growing Indian stature in the international arena was evident from three high-profile vists to New Delhi in the first nine weeks of the year. Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud came calling here in January. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh broke free from protocol and received the ruler of the most powerful and richest Islamic country at the airport – the only other time Dr Singh did it this year when US President George W. Bush visted India early March. That the custodian of the two holy mosques broke from his royal protocol and chose to put his signatures on the Joint Declaration along with the Indian Prime Minister — a unique gesture from a Saudi King— showed the importance of India in the new world order. In between the Saudi King’s and President Bush’s visits, French President Jacques Chirac also visted New Delhi. India-Pakistan relations continued in the Tom-and-Jerry mould throughout 2006. While major confidence-building measures like the ceasefire between the two nation’s security forces along the international border, the Line of Control and the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) and the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service launched on April 7, 2005, continued to be in place, July 11 terrorist bombings in Mumbai and Srinagar inflicted a major setback to the peace process. It took the highest political leadership of the two countries to break the logjam and give peace yet another chance. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf met in Havana (Cuba)in September and agreed, among other things, to an out-of-the-box formula – an Indo-Pak Joint Mechanism to combat terrorism. The two countries’ Foreign Secretaries – Mr Shivshankar Menon and Mr Riaz Mohammad Khan – met in New Delhi on November 14-15 and announced a three-member joint mechanism from each side. However, leave alone the first meeting of the mechanism, even its constituents could not be announced as 2006 petered out. Now, back to the biggest success story of Indian foreign policy in 2006 – the Indo-US nuclear deal. As President George W Bush put his signatures on the “Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006” on December 18, thus ending 35-year-long nuclear apartheid of India, the relations between the world’s most powerful and the largest democracies leapfrogged to a higher strategic level. For India, it is only the winning of a battle as the war can be won only, and only after, New Delhi successfully negotiates three more mandatory stages of the game. These are: India signing the bilateral 123 agreement with the US (with no deal-breaking clause in it), India signing an India-specific safeguards agreement and an Additional Protocol with the IAEA and the 45 –nation Nuclear Suppliers Group okaying the Indo-US nuke deal by consensus – all of which is expected to come up in 2007. However, a perceived deal-breaker and a trailer of things to come in the 123 agreement is the provision relating to Congressional prescription on India’s Iran policy outlined in Section 103 of the Hyde Act, a non-binding section. Section 103 (b) (4) states the United States will “Secure India’s full and active participation in United States efforts to dissuade, isolate, and, if necessary, sanction and contain Iran for its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons capability and the capability to enrich uranium or reprocess nuclear fuel, and the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction.”
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Tumultuous year ahead for Communists New Delhi, December 31 Even the cohesive Left Front faces internal cracks due to contradictions in theory and practice. The Singur Tata Motor project seems to have brought out the contradictions between the Marxists following “brand Buddhadeb” and its worker-peasant support base of its cadre. Indian Communists may pride with having “gherao” included in the English dictionary by its militant industrial strike, but they could have little expected to be paid back in their own terms by Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee in her own “Gandhigiri”. Marxists are on the back-foot now, as the Rs 1 lakh dream people’s car project of Tata has alienated even the Left leaning intellectuals, social workers and members of civil society. Left Front partners, the CPI, Revolutionary Socialist Party and the All India Forward Bloc, have also expressed opposition to the project. This provides a window of opportunity for the UPA government, which has been striving hard to go in for a big-ticket second generation reforms. They had to go slow in the past due to the pressure exerted by the Left parties, which with its crucial numbers is giving outside support to the coalition. Disinvestment of government stakes in profit-making public sector units have been kept on hold, so is the pension Bill, banking Bill and the moves to increase the FDI cap in various sectors, including insurance and retail. With its continued pressure, the Left parties forced the government to pass the Right to Information Act, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the Forest Bill, giving tribals and other traditional forest dwellers legal right to the area. It was, however, on the foreign policy front especially its anti-US tirade that the Communist evoked much support from different sections and it played the role of Opposition as well as crotch for the coalition to stay in office. New Delhi’s vote in the International Atomic Energy Agency on the Iran issue provided enough ammo for the Communists to woo Muslims and it provided the necessary electoral benefits for the party to return to power in Kerala and make inroads in some of the uncharted territories. The Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation agreement was another issue they lapped up, to unveil the larger design of Uncle Sam to undermine India’s foreign policy for its own strategic designs. The Left’s role of moulding yet not changing the UPA government’s policy helped the Communist to create a record of sort by returning to power for the seventh consecutive term. However, “brand Buddhadeb” agenda brought out the contradictions in its stand in Delhi and Kolkotta - the struggles it wages against the UPA would continue but it is in no hurry to pull down as it believes that such contradictions help in its growth. Perhaps not, if the figures of those joining the Left parties-led trade unions are any indications as ideologically, they proclaim to represent the proletariat. The BJP-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), India’s largest trade union, is now more than twice its size in 1996, with a membership of 60 lakh. The Congress-affiliated INTUC has over 38 lakh members, up from 25 lakh 10 years ago. The CPI’s AITUC has seen an astonishing membership rise from 9 lakh to 33 lakh, followed by the CPM’s CITU, whose strength has grown from 17 lakh to 26 lakh.
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Chandralekha — Unto the last dance
Chennai, December 31 A Bharatanatyam soloist of the 1950s, she caught the public imagination through her innovations and experiments in various dance forms. Her electrifying performances discarded the devotional elements of dance for passionate body-oriented movements. Oft described as an iconoclastic maverick dancer who has the capability to unite Bharatanatyam, Yoga and Kalarippayat in a single mind-blowing step, she has won national and international acclaims for her services. At the national level, she had received Sangeet Natak Academy Fellowship and Kalidas Samman, among others. Chandralekha’s international recognitions include the Gaia Award in 1992 from Italy and the Time Out Dance Umbrella Award in 1992 from London. She began her career as a traditional dancer after having received training from renowned Guru Kanchipuram Elappa Pillai in early 1950s. In 60s, she gave up performing and chose to become a writer and a woman’s and human rights activist. She made a major comeback to dance world in 1985 as a choreographer. Her comeback was marked by the “East West Dance Encounter” in Mumbai, where she presented three of her productions with the help of Kalakshetra students. Chandralekha’s return took her all over the world - from Moscow to London, Italy, Germany, Toronto, New York and Tokyo - stunning the audience with fiercely sensual and intensely iconoclastic productions. According to her, dance is a passionate, self-exploratory expression of the earthy, the erotic and the elemental, which is why, unlike other classical dancers, she never does the traditional pranam prior to performances. Chandralekha was also one of the most important voices on the Indian cultural scene. Her writings, books, prints and choreography have attained an unprecedented status in India and abroad. Most recently, she has been expressing her aesthetic and political vision through dance-making. Her works include Angika, Lilavati, Prana, Sri, Yantra, Mahakal, Raga, Sloka and the latest Sharira. — PTI
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Filing replies: Delhi HC takes Army to task Chandigarh, December 31 Army sources dealing with legal matters reveal that there are a large number of cases pending in courts, where the Army has faltered in filing affidavits or replies to petitions or rejoinders filed by aggrieved personnel. By Defence Ministry’s own admission, which is a respondent in most cases, there are as many as 8,000 cases filed by service personnel pending before various courts across the country. According to sources, a piquant situation exists in theArmy Headquarters, where two officers from the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Department, posted to the MS Branch on an ad hoc basis, are responsible for filing affidavits on behalf of the Army in cases relating to MS matters, while the legal cells in Delhi are responsible for other matters. Sources reveal that the two JAG officers have been posted there against “offset” vacancies. Though dealing with legal matters, these officers do not come under the technical control of the JAG Department, but report directly to the Additional Military Secretary, a major general. This, sources claim, has resulted in the JAG Department not being kept fully in the picture on legal aspects pertaining to cases concerning MS matters, even though the department has been named as the respondent in some cases. Though performing an important task, the posts of legal officers in the MS Branch are not ratified in the Peace Establishment table, which lists out all sanctioned posts in the Army.
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’06: RSS hold on BJP New Delhi, December 31 The process, which began with the replacement of Mr L.K. Advani with Mr Rajnath Singh as the party president in the first month of 2006, was completed at Lucknow in the last week of December when the BJP adopted significant amendments to the party constitution which empowered the party president to have additional posts for fulltime RSS pracharaks. The RSS moved swiftly and ensured that Mr Advani was cut to size and his influence on the party was considerable diminished. The tragic killing of party’s general secretary Pramod Mahajan by his younger brother went on to help the RSS in consolidating its hold over the BJP. At the same time, Mr Rajnath Singh faced problems as dissidence became prominent in the BJP-ruled states like Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. In Madhya Pradesh, former state Chief Minister and one of the darlings of the RSS Uma Bharti launched her own Bharatiya Janshakti Party. In Jharkhand, the fall of Chief Minister Arjun Munda was also partly blamed on discord in the BJP as party insiders said a party lobby opposed to him had worked against him. One of the architects of the BJP success in the state, former Chief Minister Babu Lal Marandi left the BJP and formed his own outfit. In line with its renewed policies, the BJP opposed resumption of peace talks with Pakistan in the wake of the July 11 Mumbai train bombings and also spoke about hot pursuit to destroy cross-border terror camps.
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Police reforms: States to seek more time New Delhi, December 31 A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting convened by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and attended by Chief Ministers and Home Ministers of various states here. It was decided that states would file separate affidavits before the apex court detailing steps taken so far with regard to police reforms and also put forth their views on making certain amends as suggested by the court in the September 22, 2006, order, sources said. The Centre will also file an affidavit on behalf of Union Territories, directly under its administrative control.
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Remand for Kavita case accused
Meerut, December 31 Yogesh, who was brought here after a Delhi court granted a transit remand, was sent in judicial custody yesterday by Duty Magistrate P.K. Mithal, who directed that the plea for seven days of police remand would be heard in a routine court. The investigating officer also produced a car and a memory chip, reportedly recovered from Yogesh.
— PTI
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