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Sanjay Gandhi – Mark II Naxals on the prowl Website justice |
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The Bangalore connection
A salute to the postal system
Lal Masjid – Storm after ‘Operation Silence’ Courts should apply contempt laws with care China executes food scandal kingpin
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Sanjay Gandhi – Mark II LAW, rather than whims and fancies of the rulers, should guide the decisions of a government. Mystery shrouds the reasons that compelled the Mayawati government to ask the occupants of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar State Sports Complex in Lucknow to vacate the premises in the dead of night. Reports suggest that the government had prepared a plan to have the stadium demolished to make it a fait accompli. The presence of bulldozers at the site - a la demolition of the Turkman Gate during Sanjay Gandhi’s time — strengthens such a belief. It was the alertness of a citizen to knock the doors of the High Court and the readiness of a judge to take the petition in all its seriousness that stopped the government in its tracks. The court has ordered status quo ante. Sportsmen have condemned the government’s move to encroach upon the stadium. Having been caught in the act, the government has tried to wriggle out by producing a one-month old letter that mentioned a security threat to the stadium. Would it have thought of demolishing the Taj if the intelligence authorities had received a letter that threatened the monument of love? There is no reason to disbelieve reports that the government wanted to demolish the stadium so that it becomes a part of the adjoining Ambedkar Udyan, which was Mayawati’s dream project when she was in power last time. She wants a befitting memorial for her mentor and BSP founder Kanshi Ram. There are even reports that plans for a statue of Kanshi Ram, bigger than the Statue of Liberty, are already afoot. While the Chief Minister is within her rights to plan a memorial for Kanshi Ram — he deserves one — she cannot overlook established procedures. In any case such a project cannot be executed in the darkness of night. It’s true that Ambedkar Stadium belongs to the government but that does not allow it to demolish it. Converting sports stadiums into memorials has not even been heard of. There is enough time for Mayawati to think of a big people-centric project that can be named after Kanshi Ram. UP has a surfeit of statues and foundation stones an endless line of chief ministers has laid. What it needs are programmes and projects that will transform Uttar Pradesh into a modern, developed state, where people don’t suffer from poverty and want.
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Naxals on the prowl The
killing of 25 security men by Maoists in an ambush in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh is one more chilling reminder that the Naxal menace is growing stronger by the day. Only four months ago, they had killed as many as 55 security men in Bijapur district. Every such gruesome strike sends a chilling message to the populace that they have no option but to kowtow to the militants’ diktat. That is why over 160 of the country’s 600-plus districts are already in the Naxal grip, by the Home Ministry’s own admission. The regrettable part is that the government does not go much beyond holding “emergency meetings” of top officers in Delhi or state capitals concerned. Even otherwise, this socio-economic problem cannot be dealt with like a law and order problem. There is acute poverty and squalor in states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. There are no employment opportunities. Jobless and starving people meekly accept the offer of Maoists to join their ranks and get paid Rs 3,000 or more per month. There is no dearth of money with the militants because they collect crores in “levy” from industrialists and rich people. Instead of rising to the challenge, the government has been withdrawing gradually. Polling booths are set up at “sanitised places” where even voters think twice before going. The local people are not in the loop of governance. For instance, there have been no panchayat elections in Jharkhand for years and panchayats are administered by junior state government officials. After sunset, huge swathes of the country have no government worth the name. To say that the situation is alarming will be an understatement. It can be improved only if a holistic policy is evolved and implemented. However, most politicians are happy putting off everything for another day, which rarely comes.
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Website justice The
National e-courts Project launched by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam on Monday is a commendable step towards introducing e-governance in expediting justice. The three-phase project, introduced at a cost of Rs 854-crore, seeks to demystify the process of adjudication and make the judiciary cost-effective, transparent and accountable. It envisages the creation of a comprehensive database of all courts and cases with retrievable facilities and digital archiving of judgments of the Supreme Court and the high courts. There will be an integrated and customised software application for the entire judicial system with regional language support. It also seeks to improve the capacity building of judges. About 15,000 laptops are also being supplied to the judges under the project. The long-term objective is to build up a National Judicial Data Centre to help litigants, lawyers and the judges. The aims and goals of the project are, no doubt, laudable. However, it remains to be seen to what extent it would help ensure the speedy dispensation of justice. For one thing, the courts — from the Supreme Court to the subordinate judiciary — are bursting at the seams with huge backlog of cases. For another, earlier attempts to speed up the system have not helped matters much. Against this background, how effective would the new system be and to what extent it would be user-friendly, especially to poor litigants many of whom have been the victims of lack of education and the slow and cumbersome judicial process? Now that all the courts will be computerised, the enormous time wasted in the hearings must be reduced. The arguments of both the defence counsel and prosecution can be put on the website itself. This would obviate the menace of adjournments and help judges quicken the pace of justice. The greatest beneficiaries will be the litigants who lose precious time, money and energy because of adjournments. President Kalam expects e-courts to resolve say, a civil dispute case, within a fortnight. Of course, lawyers always resist attempts to speed up court work. But they must fall in line this time. The courts are meant for the people, not for lawyers.
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The only way to have a friend is to be one.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson |
The Bangalore connection Following
the terrorist strikes of 9/11, American scholar Richard Hass, who quit the Bush Administration primarily because of his opposition to any invasion of Iraq, warned against stereotyping Muslims worldwide, as being sympathetic to terrorism. He noted India could be proud that none of its Muslim citizens had responded to Osama bin Laden’s call for an international Jihad against “Jews and Crusaders”. He asserted that the Indian experience showed that the successful functioning of a pluralistic democracy was the best antidote for terrorism in the name of Jihad. I, like many others, told my foreign and particularly western interlocutors that as an Indian I was proud that my fellow Muslim citizens shunned violence as a means to redress grievances. Like many others, I overlooked a series of events in India that should have rung alarm bells in the minds of all thinking Indians. These pertained to a chain of terrorist attacks in urban centres like Delhi, Ayodhya, Mumbai, Malegaon, Bangalore and Hyderabad in which the motivators may have been sitting across our borders, but the perpetrators were Indian nationals. I chose to ignore this fact primarily out of considerations of “political correctness”. But, the involvement of highly qualified Indian nationals hailing from a city of international repute like Bangalore, in acts of terrorism and suicide bombing in London and Glasgow and the arrest of Indian nationals in the UK and Australia can no longer be brushed under the carpet by considerations of “political correctness”. What is it that possessed these well-to-do and well qualified Indians to participate in actions that have brought disgrace to India and created circumstances that are going to be severely damaging for Indians seeking employment and residence abroad? Are we now not going to be subject to the same humiliations and suspicions that visitors from Pakistan face in immigration counters and local communities abroad? While the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993 can be attributed to the rage of sections of the Muslim community following the destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 and some recent acts of terrorism within India can be attributed to the trauma following the communal carnage in Gujarat, what it that motivated Kafeel Ahmed to blow himself up in Glasgow, when the British had not done him or his countrymen any harm and Indo-British ties are now better than ever before? Is it justifiable for an Indian national to disgrace his country merely because he feels strongly about American and British actions in Iraq and elsewhere? What now motivates such terrorism in the name of Jihad in India and elsewhere? The origin of present-day terrorism lies in the Reagan Administration’s decision in 1981 to treat the opposition to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan as a Jihad. The organisations opposing the Soviet occupation were ideologically motivated and funded by Saudi Arabia. Wahhabi Islam, thereafter, gained a toehold in the subcontinent. The Saudis sought to use an obliging General Zia ul-Haq to nurture and strengthen the influence of Wahhabi organisations in Pakistan. Saudi Arabia was one of the only three countries in the world that recognized the Taliban. But Saudi Arabia soon became a target of its own erstwhile protégés - Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, who objected to the presence of American forces in the desert kingdom. Further, by 1993, Wahhabi-oriented groups were used by the ISI for its Jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani interest in undermining communal harmony in India came through starkly to me when a former Director General of the ISI responded to my assertion that Indian Muslims strongly opposed Pakistan’s Jihad in Kashmir by asserting: “You will see. We will soon make the Kashmir issue an issue of faith amongst your Muslims’. There is no dearth of evidence that in recent years, assiduous efforts have been made by Pakistan to radicalise Indian Muslims in Saudi Arabia and the UAE by attempting to poison their minds about alleged injustices that Muslims faced from people practicing other faiths across the world. The Lashkar e Taiba, which has played a prominent role in this effort, openly proclaims that “Hindus, Jews and Christians are enemies of Islam”. It is well established that Wahhabi oriented groups now spreading their wings in India like the SIMI, the Jamat e Islami, the Tableeghi Jamat and the Jamat Ahle Hadise draw their ideological inspiration from Wahhabi groups Saudi Arabia. It would be wrong to assume that there is a unified, worldwide, or monolithic Islamist ideology. The Shia-Sunni cleavage is evident not only from developments in Iraq, but also from the Iranian-Arab divide. Interestingly, the Al-Qaeda works against the Shia Hezbollah by strengthening its Sunni rivals in Lebanon and has been noticeably silent of American pressures to force Iran to end its nuclear enrichment programme. It is important for New Delhi to strengthen its intelligence surveillance in Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. We also need to keep a closer watch on infiltration from Bangladesh and Nepal by members of groups determined to build local assets to carry forward their agenda of disturbing communal harmony in India. While the external challenge can be suitably addressed, it is the internal challenge posed by the London and Glasgow events that requires careful and sensitive handling. Sadly, the approach to promoting communal harmony has become an issue of political football and vote- bank politics in India. It is imperative that political parties across the country should unite in getting together with leaders of the Muslim community, to agree on measures that community leaders should take to ensure that pernicious Wahhabi indoctrination does not lead to misguided youth turning to violence. This should be the sole subject for serious discussion in a special meeting of the National Integration Council. Secondly, the intelligence surveillance of organisations like the Jamat-e-Islami and the Tableeghi Jamat should be enhanced. Should credible evidence emerge, such organisations should be banned and investigations into terrorist attacks should not be hampered by political interference. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spent a sleepless night agonising over the plight of the parents of an alleged terrorist and acted as a spokesman for the plight of Pakistanis, even before full facts of what had transpired emerged. It would have been appropriate if he had manifested similar sorrow at the pain suffered by the victims of terrorist violence and the families of armed forces personnel killed in the line of duty, fighting terrorists. India can no longer afford the luxury of ignoring the possibility that its citizens will be influenced by pernicious propaganda, which leads to them becoming suicide bombers and indulging in acts of terrorism
abroad.
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A salute to the postal system
Thirtysix days only! That’s what my letter took to reach my brother….Ooops!! By ordinary post, yes!! A couple of days after having returned from a truly memorable holiday to the Andaman and Nicobar islands with my dearest friend Mayura, I sat down and dashed off “Thank you” cards and letters to all our friends there. Amongst this was a letter to my dear cousin who lives on the islands and who to a great extent had been responsible for making our vacation “a once in a lifetime” experience. I made copies of all the photographs of our crazy, fun-filled times that we had together. Then wrote out a letter expressing my heart-felt thanks…. the works. Oh, yes! I am still equally passionate about writing by snail-mail as I am by e-mail. With great aplomb, I added on extra stamps too for good measure and posted the letter myself… And then started the “wait” game…. I sms-ed Adil and told him of the forthcoming arrival of my letter and he was extremely excited. Sitting far-away on the islands, cut-off from main-land India, he was really touched by my gesture. After about 10 days, there were question marks being sms-ed back and forth between brother and sister. Where is the letter? Has the letter reached? Any sign of it? I was on the edge wondering if my letter and photographs had gone astray. Three weeks later, I could see Adil losing his patience as well. The jokes and jibes soon started and Adil felt that the letter had a “thing” for the water like me and preferred to swim in the deep, blue ocean than reach the shore…actually, exactly like me! A month later, I gave up and was more than exasperated. I felt pretty miserable and gave up the thought of the letter reaching its destination as a bad dream. One morning, I woke up to the sweetest sms from a really excited Adil, telling me that he had been through a rather rough night and had woken up with a pounding headache only to be greeted by the postman holding up my letter!! Whoa! The headache vanished and he was on top of the world…I did a victory dance myself back home! Whoopee! And then we counted…36 days only!! Who cared! The letter and snaps had reached and that’s all that mattered. Viva la post!! I called up Adil and could hear the excitement in the village with everyone ogling at the snaps. Then I did a head count of all the other cards I had posted, made some enquiries and found out that they had taken approximately the same time, give or take a day here and there…only one still to reach it’s destination! Missing in Action, eh! Oh, but the story continues….Adil wrote back to me from Kolhapur as he is on vacation in main-land India and since he couriered it, I received it within a week! And then I replied and couriered the letter too…it’s the 13th day today…no sign of my letter…reaching….. “Have faith!” says my brother!! Oh, believe me, I have plenty of that!! Yeah, right….. The wait
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Lal Masjid – Storm after ‘Operation Silence’ After
the failure of eleventh hour attempts to make a deal with the radical mullahs of Lal Masjid, the Pakistani security forces were really left with no option but to storm the Mosque-cum-Madrasa complex in the heart of Islamabad. While it is a matter of time before ‘Op Silence’ is successfully concluded, everyone is now bracing for the likely repercussions of the operation on Pakistan’s politics and security. For over six months the Musharraf regime had resisted taking any action against the Lal Masjid Taliban. The inability or unwillingness of the state to establish its writ in its proverbial front-yard not only gave an impression that the state was in cahoots with the clerics but also emboldened the Lal Masjid Taliban to take their vigilantism to new highs and provoke the state to the very limits of its tolerance. What is more, it would have confirmed the suspicions of those who believe that Musharraf is hand-in-glove with the mullahs and the entire Lal Masjid crisis was a drama to kill three birds with one stone: One, he wants to pre-empt any move by the full bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court to reinstate the suspended chief justice; Two, he wants to upstage the All Parties Conference of the opposition in London which has been called by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to start a movement against the regime; three, he wants to raise the specter of an Islamist takeover in Pakistan and scare the Americans who are believed to be putting pressure on him to take off his uniform, hold free and fair elections and enter into a political deal with the so-called liberal political forces in Pakistan. Conspiracy theorists in Pakistan also see the Lal Masjid crisis as a sinister plot to create disturbed conditions across the country which would then be used to justify the imposition of a state of emergency, or worse, martial law. At the very least, they expect the crisis created by the action against the zealots of Lal Masjid to result in the postponement of the elections. To the extent that the growing intransigence and brazenness of the Lal Masjid mullahs in enforcing their demands for imposing Shariat in the country has kept pace with the rising spiral of the judicial and political crisis created by the suspension of the chief justice, a case can be made out in favor of the conspiracy theorists. Not only has the Lal Masjid clash pushed both the chief justice’s case and the All Parties Conference in London in the background, it has also won plaudits for Musharraf from the US, UK and China. But if at all there is any link between the actions of the extremists in Lal Masjid and Musharraf’s escalating domestic and international problems, it is at best a very tenuous one. In fact, the Lal Masjid problem cropped up first in January, nearly two months before the chief justice’s suspension. If despite this there are reports that Musharraf was not averse to a deal with the mullahs under which they would have been arrested and then let off after things cooled down, then it not because he hatched a conspiracy to perpetuate himself but because of the deep relationship between the Pakistani establishment and the jihadis. In fact, this sort of shenanigan has been happening all the time when it comes to taking action against jihadis who function as auxiliaries of the Pakistan state. Only this time Musharraf was forced by the US to reject any deal with the Lal Masjid mullahs. If true, then Musharraf, who is adept in running with the jihadi hare and hunting with the American hound, will now try to balance his appeasement of the US by giving the Pashtun Taliban a free hand in mounting their operations against the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. With the situation in the Pashtun areas, particularly the tribal belt, expected to deteriorate, Musharraf can maintain plausible deniability by pleading that he is trying his best but is facing stiff resistance. Of course, this sort of double-game, if indeed it’s being played, will only end up damaging the Pakistani state and make it lose all control over the Pashtun areas to the Taliban. At the same time, it will not help in stopping terror attacks, including suicide bombings, in rest of Pakistan. After all there are enough jihadis who, unlike their leaders, are not willing to countenance any deal with what they see as a pro-US regime. Ultimately, the choice before the Pakistani establishment is clear: it can either kowtow to the radicals or else carry out a bloody purge against them. The time for playing both sides is fast coming to an end. In either case the end result will be a severely destabilised Pakistan. Indeed, if in the aftermath of the Lal Masjid operation, there is a spike in Taliban activity inside Afghanistan and a wave of terror attacks by Islamists inside Pakistan, not to talk of large areas in the Pashtun belt coming under the sway of the Pakistani Taliban, there is a very real possibility of emergency, martial law, or postponement of elections. But if this happens Musharraf, who is facing a growing people’s movement against his regime, will end up on the losing side as an extreme move like clamping emergency or imposing martial law could easily precipitate the political crisis and result in chaos and anarchy spilling over on the streets of Pakistan. Any outbreak of civic disturbances and that too at a time when the Pakistani state is facing the onslaught of the Islamists will almost certainly make a regime change inevitable. The big question is: what will be nature of the new regime? Will it launch a campaign against the Islamists, or will it adopt the path of Jihad? On the answer to this question will rest the future of Pakistan and the region. |
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Courts should apply contempt laws with care Reports
have recently appeared in the press about the contempt notices contemplated against the Additional Advocate General, Punjab, because of the alleged “intemperate language” used in Special Leave Petitions drawn and filed in the Supreme Court, and about the strong and harsh comments made in the court by the learned judge of the High Court. This is not a happy situation, displaying as it does a lack of civility and grace, besides a shocking lack of comity between the bench and the bar. The matter was resolved with the Advocate General tendering his unconditional apology. Another concerned advocate also tendered his apology. This episode underlines the dire need at all times for maintaining temperance and sobriety and the dignity of their respective roles by members of the bench and the bar. Two issues need to be addressed: 1) The scope of the power of contempt and the justifiability for its exercise, and whether the High Court could exercise this power in respect of pleadings in Special Leave Petitions finally disposed off by the Supreme Court. 2) The making of harsh and indiscriminate comments by the judges in open court and the ethics, manner and civility by counsel in conducting themselves in and outside court. The power of contempt is a very potent power in the hands of judges. But great judges have cautioned that this is “a weapon to be used sparingly and always with reference to the administration of justice.” What constitutes criminal contempt or scandalising the court has been admirably summed up in the case involving Arundhati Roy, where the court pointed out that “imputing partiality, corruption, bias, improper motives to a judge is scandalisation of the court and would be contempt of court. Even imputation of lack of impartiality or fairness to a judge in the discharge of his official duties amounts to contempt.” In the light of the above, it cannot be said that any wrong is committed by any member of the public who exercises his right to criticise in good faith, in private or in public, the judgements of the courts of law. What is true of the public is more true of the legal profession. As has been observed in another case, “Advocacy touches and asserts the primary value of freedom of expression…one of the basic conditions for the progress of advocacy and for the development of every man including the legal fraternity practising the profession of law…they equally owe countervailing duty to maintain dignity, decorum and order.” Chief Justice Gajendragadkar observed in 1964, “We ought never to forget that the power to punish for contempt, large as it is, must always be exercised cautiously, wisely, and with circumspection. Frequent or indiscriminate use of this power in anger or irritation would not help to sustain the dignity or status of the court, but may sometimes affect it adversely. Wise judges never forget that the best way to sustain the dignity and status of their office is to deserve respect from the public at large by the quality of their judgements, the fearlessness, fairness and objectivity of their approach, and the restraint, dignity and decorum which they observe in their judicial conduct.” Judicial language is the language of restraint. It has been universally acknowledged that in expressing their opinions, judges and magistrates must be guided by considerations of justice, fair play and restraint. In fact, sobriety and patience are the quintessential attributes of a judge leading to the use of the simile “as sober as a judge.” A judge must never lose his temper, however sorely tried. Use of intemperate language by the courts has been admonished by the Supreme Court as tending to show “either a lack of experience in judicial matters or an absence of judicial poise and balance.” “Judicial restraint and discipline are as necessary to the orderly administration of justice as they are to the effectiveness of the army…When these qualities fail or when litigants and the public believe that the judge has failed in these qualities, it will be neither good for the judge nor for the judicial process.” In another case, it has been stated: “Judges have the absolute and unchallengeable control of the court domain. But they cannot misuse their authority by intemperate comments, undignified banter or scathing criticism of counsel, parties or witnesses.” What is true of judges is equally true of lawyers. It is the duty of the bench and the bar to function as the two wheels of the chariot of justice. The writer is a retired high court judge. |
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China executes food scandal kingpin When
it came, retribution was swift and unyielding – after all, a whole country’s food and drugs’ exports were at stake. Zheng Xiaoyu, formerly the man responsible for ensuring the safety of China’s foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals was executed earlier this week for corruption. The Supreme People’s Court approved the death sentence for Zheng (62), former head of the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), for taking kickbacks worth 6.5 million yuan from drug companies to ensure he would approve medicines that should have been taken off the market. The execution stands as a warning after a series of health scandals have damaged the “Made in China” brand both at home and abroad. “Zheng Xiaoyu’s grave irresponsibility in pharmaceutical safety inspection and failure to conscientiously carry out his duties seriously damaged the interests of the state and people,” the court said in a statement carried on the Xinhua news agency. The case went to China’s top court under new rules which allow judges there to overrule death sentences from lower courts. The new regulations have seen the number of death sentences in China fall, but this time the court was swift in its decision. “The social impact has been utterly malign,” the court said of Zheng’s actions, adding that even though he had confessed and returned the bribes, this was not enough to warrant mercy. It’s the first time such a senior official has been executed since 2000. It was unclear how the sentence was carried out – most executions are by shooting in China, but some lethal injections are used, particularly in high-profile cases. Beijing has been under pressure to do something about consumer safety after a series of scandals. Billions of pounds worth of counterfeit and substandard goods, from snack bars to fake liquor and medicines to face creams, are produced every year in China and there are almost daily horror stories, which have badly rattled consumer confidence. Hong Kong government chemists last year detected in salted duck eggs Sudan II, an industrial dye fed to the birds to make the yolk in their eggs unusually red, a colour which consumers see as a sign of high quality. The China Daily reported that up to half of the water used in coolers in capital Beijing may not be as pure as manufacturers claim. In one of the most highly publicised scandals, China revealed in 2004 that 13 babies had died from malnutrition in the eastern province of Anhui after being fed fake baby milk powder. Chinese-made food products exported abroad are being closely examined for toxins after safety breaches involving poisons in dog food and toothpaste, following reports of tainted products in the Dominican Republic and Panama, and Washington has called on China to improve food safety and wants more transparent food regulation. By arrangement with
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The deathless self sees all, knows all. From him springs Brahma, who embodies the process of evolution into the name and form by which the one appears to be many.” |
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