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Super whimper Drift and rift |
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Credibility
at stake
Dealing with
terrorism
Mission
Snowfall
The terrorist threat Curious case of a
forged biography Legal Notes
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Super whimper THE much-awaited presidential primaries in 22 US states on the so-called Super Tuesday ended with a whimper. No clear winner could emerge for the Democratic nomination for the November poll. All eyes were fixed on Ms Hillary Clinton and Mr Barack Obama because most observers of the US election scene expect the Republican Party to lose the battle for the White House. Ms Clinton continues to have an edge over Mr Obama in the crucial states like California, Massachusetts and New Jersey, but her struggle remains as challenging as it has been since she suffered the first setback in Iowa. She appears to have lost the momentum seen initially. She has ceased to be a match for Mr Obama in the fund-raising exercise. In January alone he got $32 million from his supporters, a far bigger amount than Ms Clinton’s $13 million. Despite Ms Clinton having secured the maximum number of delegates so far, her performance has been declining primary after primary. Pollsters put her far ahead of the Illionis Senator, but she failed to retain the lead. Today there is no significant difference in the position of the two main claimants for the Democratic nomination. The neck-and-neck race continues. The speed with which Mr Obama has been improving his showing makes one believe that he may ultimately leave behind the former First Lady in the fight for power. He is believed to symbolise the American voters’ craving for change. Yet, a prediction of the outcome will be fallacious. On the Republican front, Super Tuesday did help Mr John McCain emerge as the undisputed frontrunner by capturing most key states. He shattered his rival Mitt Romney’s presidential dreams despite his being fiercely independent-minded, a trait not liked by his party members. Mr McCain is known for having entered into deals with Democrats in the Senate. Even if his rivals manage to remain in the race, they will only cause a division in the anti-McCain votes. But his victory is not getting as much attention as it could have in the normal circumstances. This is because many believe the Republican Party of President George W. Bush does not have a chance this time.
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Drift and rift TUESDAY’S police firing which claimed the lives of six Forward Bloc activists and injured many others in Cooch Behar’s Dinhata town has exacerbated West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s problems. As in Nandigram in March last, the police fired indiscriminately in Dinhata, too, violating the guidelines for crowd control. This once again raises the question whether West Bengal has turned into a police state or not. The Forward Bloc, supported by the Congress, the Trinamool Congress and the SUCI, organised a statewide bandh on Wednesday in protest against the firing. The bandh, a clear violation of the rulings of the Supreme Court and the Calcutta High Court, paralysed normal life in the state. The recurring incidents of violence in the state is a blot on the Left Front. It may have ruled the state for a record three decades, but there is an impression that the common man is not safe and that the government is unable to maintain law and order. Worse, there is no cohesion and internal discipline among the partners of the ruling coalition. The rift in the Left Front seems to have widened after the chief minister announced his investment-friendly policies. The Forward Bloc, the second largest constituent of the Left Front, differs with the government on many issues such as the SEZs and the entry of big companies in retail and farm products business. Small wonder that it has decided to contest the ensuing panchayat elections on its own. In Tripura, it has rejected the CPM’s seat-sharing formula for the Assembly elections this month. The Forward Bloc has also formed a “mini-front” with the RSP and the CPI to stall the CPM’s efforts to relax the rural land ceiling law for industrial projects. While the Dinhata firing has increased the Forward Bloc’s isolation in the ruling coalition, the RSP and the CPI fear that it was a “bad omen” for the Front’s unity. Above all, the image of the CPM — by extension, the Chief Minister’s — has been getting eroded day by day. Not surprisingly, veteran CPM leader Jyoti Basu lamented the other day that the party was no longer attracting cadres because its leaders and workers were misusing power for their own welfare.
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Credibility at stake VICE-PRESIDENT Mohammed Hamid Ansari speaks for all Indians when he says that the credibility of legislatures is on the decline. In fact, the downward trend is a matter of serious national concern because, instead of evoking confidence, the representatives of the people today evoke apprehensions. Mr Ansari knows these concerns intimately, in his capacity as chairman of the Rajya Sabha. He and many of his predecessors have confessed that reining in even the Elders can be a difficult proposition at times. What is true of the Rajya Sabha is all the more true of the Lok Sabha and the state legislatures. Far too many aberrations have been injected into their functioning over the years. The most alarming is the criminalisation of politics due to which the process of lawmaking has become polluted. Worse is the erosion of values among the otherwise above-board politicians and leaders. They seem to have become flippant about their role. The number of sittings has come down drastically. The Rajya Sabha sittings declined from an annual average of 90.5 in 1952-61 to 71.3 in 1992-2001. The Lok Sabha sittings declined by 34 per cent during the same period. Poor attendance is the order of the day. Adjournments further diminish the time spent on productive work. The end result is that vital Bills are guillotined. In place of informed deliberations, there are only rhetorical clashes. Very few leaders engage in substantive research. No wonder, the quality of governance has declined. Instead of mourning this deterioration, what is needed is a collective effort to stop this damage and, if possible, reverse it. Mr Ansari’s suggestion that there should be at least 130 days of parliamentary sittings in a year is in the domain of the possible. As far as maintaining the decorum is concerned, it is the responsibility of the party whips. But the onus of sending the right men into the legislatures lies on the public itself.
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In America any boy may become President and I suppose it’s just one of the risks he takes! — Adlai Stevenson
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Dealing with terrorism Dr Manmohan Singh
astonished the country after a meeting with President Musharraf in Havana in September 2006, when he announced that like India, Pakistan was also a "victim" of terrorism. He then proceeded to tell his baffled countrymen and the world at large that the terrorist violence in India was not being perpetrated by the ISI, but by "autonomous jihadi groups". The Prime Minister had earlier proclaimed that the dialogue process with Pakistan was "irreversible", suggesting, as a perceptive observer noted, that "the threshold of our tolerance for Pakistan's sponsorship of terrorism has no limits". He also proudly announced the establishment of a "Joint Terror Mechanism" with Pakistan, which was to be the magic mantra for curing all the ills of ISI sponsorship of terrorism. This ill-conceived proposal has fallen by the wayside, with Pakistan renouncing its earlier pledge not to allow "territory under its control" to be used for terrorism against India, by claiming that the violence in J&K was not terrorism but a "freedom struggle". Testimony given by American academic and erstwhile adviser to Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, Mr Ashley Tellis, to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 16 suggests that Dr Manmohan Singh's comments in Havana may well have been made in order to bring India's foreign policy in line with the US, which was determined not to do anything to embarrass its favourite General in Islamabad. Describing the US approach to broker a Benazir-Musharraf political alliance, Mr Tellis said that Benazir's assassination had "undermined the administration's efforts to broker a ‘marriage of convenience’ between Bhutto and Musharraf that would produce a governing dispensation that is civilian in appearance, accept Musharraf's continuance in office because of his importance to US interests and strengthen the elements of moderation in Pakistan. Bhutto's violent end instantaneously fractured these goals". Were Dr Manmohan Singh and his aides absolving General Musharraf of all responsibility in sponsoring terrorism in Havana either because of President Musharraf's "importance to US interests," or were they carried away by the American advocacy that the Pakistani ruler is our "best bet" also? Mr Tellis has painted a grim scenario ahead for President Musharraf, who has pledged that his "re-election" by the outgoing lame-duck National Assembly would be submitted to the incoming National Assembly for validation. He notes that Pakistan's people "are tired of both President Musharraf and entrenched military rule”, adding that "they are unlikely to give President Musharraf the benefit of the doubt if the February elections are marked by gross irregularities". With polls by the International Republican Institute estimating President Musharraf's support as varying between 21 per and 30 per cent, it should be evident that unless the elections are massively rigged, (a scenario that is not entirely improbable according to Mr Tellis), President Musharraf will face an assembly with those opposed to him enjoying a majority. According to Mr Tellis: "Musharraf's problems are that he cannot countenance any National Assembly that would not agree to validate his election, or restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and his associates", who were dismissed for refusing to endorse the patently unconstitutional Provisional Constitution Order, abrogating fundamental rights, issued by President Musharraf. With the new Army Chief, Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, ordering his officers to stay away from politics and politicians and with around 100 former Generals, Admirals and Air Marshals demanding President Musharraf's resignation, the besieged former General can hardly expect the Army to come rushing to his aid in the event of a political confrontation. Referring to terrorism emanating from territories under Pakistan's control, Mr Tellis notes that there are five different types of terrorism that one has to look at. Firstly, there is sectarian terrorism (entirely domestic) by extremist Sunni, Wahabi-oriented, groups like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Secondly, there is terrorism sponsored by groups like the Lashkar-e -Taiyaba and the Hizbul Mujahideen involved in terrorism in J&K and elsewhere in India. Thirdly, there is the Tehriq-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan led by Baitullah Mehsud, who, despite denials, is conveniently accused of masterminding Benazir's assassination. This group virtually controls the tribal areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan Fourthly, there is the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Omar operating against the Karzai regime and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Finally, there is the Al-Qaeda and its Uzbek and other affiliates, operating along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in North Waziristan. Mr Tellis notes that since September 2001 General Musharraf has pursued a "highly differentiated counter-terrorism policy". He has acted against indigenous sectarian outfits like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Al-Qaeda and its "non South Asian affiliates". Mr Tellis confirms that in contrast, President Musharraf has "largely ignored" terrorist outfits operating against India and dealt with the Taliban controlled by Mullah Omar, "more akin to the Kashmiri terrorists, and has avoided targeting them (the Afghan Taliban) comprehensively. He (Musharraf) has specially overlooked their leadership, now resident in and around Quetta". Mr Tellis argues that this strategy practised by President Musharraf since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001 is not just his personal approach, but evidently constitutes the considered strategy of the Pakistan military establishment. He adds: "Because the original Taliban and especially its Kandahar leadership is critical to Islamabad's objectives vis-a-vis Afghanistan, just as the Kashmiri terrorist groups vis-a-vis India, the Pakistan State has refrained from attacking them in any significant way. The Tellis testimony contains a message for those who express "grudging admiration" for President Musharraf, wail that terrorism against India is being conducted by "freelance terrorist groups" and believe that ill-conceived ideas like the "Joint Terror Mechanism" will end Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. He concludes: "Even if Musharraf was to suddenly exit the Pakistan political scene at some point, Islamabad's currently discordant counter-terrorism strategy will still survive so long as the 'men on horseback' continue to be principal guardians of national security decision making in Islamabad". One cannot, however, agree with the optimism that Mr Tellis expresses on securing Pakistani cooperation to hunt down Al-Qaeda elements. Over six-feet tall Osama bin Laden, who suffers from renal failure, requiring regular dialysis, cannot survive all these years without high quality medical attention, which is hardly available in the mountains of North Waziristan. The Pakistanis fear, not without justification, that should Osama meet his end, there will be little prospect of their getting the sort of massive American assistance they now receive. But, more importantly, one hopes that our government will get its act together in dealing with the continuing acts of terrorism sponsored from across the border. The ISI is set to continue using terrorism as an instrument of state policy in both India and
Afghanistan.
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Mission Snowfall It
was Thursday. Even the diehard lazy bones would know that it was a working day. My recently acquired good habit of getting up early (to please a few ; did not do this all my life ) and being a early bird who cannot chirp, was put to test each morning. News on the front page of The Tribune announced snowfall in Kasauli after so many years. That was enough. All programmes cancelled, lasers rescheduled and the receptionist started informing the patients , “aj hatti band hai”. The children were up and about instantly when they came to know that this wakeup call is for a different reason altogether. I guided them from my previous experiences. Dress yourself in layers, take spare pair of socks and shoes etc. because you are likely to get wet in snow. My wife decided to drop the chauffeur, I got the job. Soon we were in the hilly track with children popping out of the Swift’s sunroof, singing and enjoying each moment. Nearing Kasauli, it’s still sunny and then I got worried. The eyes of the eye specialist went for a six when every white thing on sides of the road — cigarette wrappers, papers, polybags and road/hill markings — appeared to be snow! The suspense was soon shattered when the barrier guy dropped the bombshell,’’ It melted long ago, yesterday in fact!”. But I took it sportingly; after all we were not alone in Kasauli, there were a handful of fools more. To save myself from the wrath of co-passengers, I suggested “Man Ki” point on the hillock to my intensely religious wife who didn’t bat an eyelid, “Sharm karo, you’re born on Tuesday and don’t offer prayers to Hanumanji — this is His way of teaching you a lesson, in the garb of snow !. (Harbhajan distorted this “Man Ki” to “Maa ki” and deaf and guilty conscience Symonds heard Monkey. I have now heard that monkeys in Mumbai zoo are on hunger strike because somebody called them Symonds). There were dogs and monkeys but the former appeared pretty harmless and well behaved in latter’s presence. Although I was afraid of Maneka Gandhi, but I snarled back at monkeys which worked — they kept on guessing who’s this who barks and is on two feet. “How many times you must have been here in Kasauli, pa “ my little Johnian enquired. “Seventeen,” I replied immediately, taking pride in my memory, reconfirming to myself that Alzheimer’s is not very near. In all probability, the mission snowfall will continue in my fav destination, Patnitop, but I am a bit scary of literal meaning of this
word.
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The terrorist threat Radical
elements are now a threat to the survival of Pakistan, prompting Pakistani military leaders to recognize that more aggressive efforts are needed to get the elements under control, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said Tuesday in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "In the last year, the number of terrorist attacks and deaths were greater than the past six years combined," McConnell said in an unusually strong warning about Pakistan's political problems. "What's happened is Pakistan has now recognized that this is an existential threat to their very survival." Pakistan leaders, he said, are "starting a process to be more aggressive in getting control of the situation." The elements include Al Qaida and Taliban members who for years were nurtured by Pakistani military and intelligence officials, prompting U.S. lawmakers and others to question the sincerity of the government's effort. At the same hearing, focused on threats to U.S. interests around the globe, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden publicly confirmed for the first time that the agency's interrogators had used a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding on a total of three al Qaida detainees in 2002 and 2003. After the hearing, Hayden told reporters that the information obtained from those detainees amounted to a quarter of all the human intelligence the CIA gained about the terrorist organization between 2002 and 2006. "We would not have done it if it were not that valuable," Hayden told reporters after he and other leaders of the intelligence community testified. The agency has been under pressure to justify its use of the technique because military officials, lawmakers, human rights experts, and international lawyers have called it torture banned by U.S. laws and treaties. Hayden confirmed previous reports that waterboarding was used against Abu Zubaida, Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri and Khalid Sheik Mohamed, the latter considered the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks." We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said, adding, "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings." A specially appointed federal prosecutor has opened a probe into the CIA's destruction of tapes showing Nashiri being interrogated and Zubaida being waterboarded. Typically, the technique involves strapping the victim on a board tilted head downward while water is pored onto cloth or cellophane covering the face. A senior intelligence official at the hearing Tuesday said the CIA officers and contractors who conducted interrogations involving waterboarding were told it was legal at the time but "the legal landscape has changed." The official, who spoke privately, said the Justice Department's investigation was "potentially chilling" for the agency personnel. FBI Director Robert Mueller, asked at the hearing whether the FBI used the same interrogation techniques as the CIA, replied, "It has been our policy not to use coercive techniques." He added that this policy reflected the fact that FBI questioning was mostly within the United States and often involved U.S. citizens. On another controversial issue, McConnell said that in retrospect, "I probably would have changed a thing or two" in the public presentation of a National Intelligence Estimate two months ago that concluded that Iran had stopped work on the design of a nuclear weapon. The estimate appeared to conflict with Bush administration rhetoric and undermined its effort to win support for tough sanctions against Iran. McConnell said Tuesday the weaponization design halt was the "least important part" of the program and "the only thing halted." He said Iran had continued its production of fissile material, though it faces "significant technical problems" operating centrifuges. He also disclosed differences within the community about when Tehran could get enough highly enriched uranium for a weapons, with some saying 2009, others 2010 to 2015 but all recognizing the possibility it could not come "until after 2015." Meanwhile, McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey wrote Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Tuesday to register their opposition to several Democrat-proposed amendments to a new surveillance bill that are slated to come to a Senate vote Wednesday. One of the controversial amendments would strike a provision granting immunity to telecommunications companies from dozens of lawsuits alleging violations of privacy because of the firms' cooperation with a warrantless government surveillance program initiated after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Another would require the attorney general and director of national intelligence to certify that any surveillance the government conducts "is limited to communications" involving specific individual targets reasonably believed to be outside the United States. A third would require that a special court approve surveillance if a "significant purpose" of that effort is to acquire the communications of a person reasonably believed to be inside the United States. The last two are meant to prevent unauthorized government spying on U.S. citizens and residents. But McConnell and Mukasey complained they would create "unacceptable operational uncertainties and problems," hindering intelligence-gathering when a foreign terrorist overseas is calling into the United States. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Curious case of a forged biography It
arrived for me in Beirut under plain cover, a brown envelope containing a small, glossy paperback in Arabic, accompanied by a note from an Egyptian friend. "Robert!" it began. "Did you really write this?" The front cover bore a photograph of Saddam Hussein in the dock in Baghdad, the left side of his head in colour, the right side bleached out, wearing a black sports jacket but with no tie, holding a Koran in his right hand. "Saddam Hussein," the cover said in huge letters. "From Birth to Martyrdom." And then there was the author's name - in beautiful, calligraphic typeface and in gold in the top, right-hand corner. "By Robert Fisk." So there it was, 272 paperback pages on the life and times of the Hitler of Baghdad and selling very well in the Egyptian capital. "We all suspect a well-known man here," she added. "His name is Magdi Chukri." Needless to say, I noticed one or two problems with this book. It took a very lenient view of the brutality of Saddam, it didn't seem to care much about the gassed civilians of Halabja - and it was full of the kind of purple passages which I loathe. "After the American rejection of the Iraqi weapons report to the UN," 'Robert Fisk' wrote, "the beating of war drums turned into a cacophony..." Dare I suggest to readers that this kind of cliche doesn't sound like Robert Fisk? The only war drums I could hear were those of my own astonishment. For I never wrote this book. It wasn't plagiarism - a common practice in Cairo, which is why I ensure that all my real books are legally published in Arabic in Lebanon. No, this wasn't plagiarism. This was forgery. And it was clearly the moment for Detective Inspector Fisk to hunt down "The Mystery of the Cairo Forger". Elementary, my dear reader, which is why I boarded Middle East Airlines flight ME304 from Beirut to my least favourite Arab capital, the bureaucratic, traffic-snarled, bankrupt, wonderful, lawless, irredeemable, spectacular Cairo. I had called an Egyptian journalist friend, Saef Nasrawi, to be my Dr Watson and - a few metres from the front door of the Marriott Gezira Hotel - we found our faithful driver, Yasser Hassan. "Make sure you put my family name in your newspaper," he announced. I have now done so. It's always been my theory that a taxi driver - especially in Cairo - will be more helpful, more friendly and altogether more enthusiastic if he knows why you're in the back of his cab. So, when I showed him the slim paperback, he raced off at once to what we all hoped was the office of the publisher, clearly printed on page two. "Ibda" the company was supposedly called and the Egyptian telephone operator had traced the name to an address in Old Cairo, No 953 Corniche el-Nil. Through the downtown morning traffic, we ground, canyons of black and white taxis like our own; vast, single-storey buses packed with Galabiya-clad and bearded men; 4x4s carrying Cairo's demimonde of jewelled ladies and young men with shaving problems - the bewhiskered chin-for machismo is as much a problem in the Middle East as it is in London. No 953 was a tall tenement block into which Saef and I could not penetrate without the permission of a black-cowled lady whose child was playing in the dust of the roadway. She listened as we called upstairs. Yes, a woman's voice said. We could take the elevator. On the wall beside the lift was a sign: "Ibda - the house of creativity for journalism, publication and distribution". I could believe in the "creativity" bit. But the veiled and polite lady on the 11th floor was all ignorance. "We never published such a book," she said, and called her female boss, who was at the Cairo Book Fair. She called us back on our mobile and insisted - quite truthfully - that Saddam Hussein was not her work. Not only did she deny all knowledge of the forgery - her assistant weighed us down with her own genuinely produced books of literary endeavour. Saef and Yasser debated our problem. The publishing details in the front of the book were clearly wrong. But the frontispiece announced that the book had been registered for circulation with the Egyptian government - in other words, it has been cleared for sale by the official censor. So, Detective Inspector Fisk decided that a visit to the Dar al-Kutb - the official "House of Books" attached to the Ministry of Culture - was our next destination. Had the forger, the so-called Magdi Chukri, been smooth enough to legalise his illegally produced book with the oh-so-law-abiding Egyptian government of President Hosni Mubarak? "This is not good enough!" our driver, Yasser, roared at me. "Mr Robert, the people of Egypt will think you wrote this book. You must go to the British embassy, you must go to the Egyptian government, you must go to the police, you must go to our intelligence services." I had been through this kind of trust curtain before. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Egyptians still evince a blind confidence in Ottoman authority. The Brits wouldn't care a damn about this forgery and the Egyptians even less - always supposing "Magdi Chukri" hadn't slipped the civil servants a few piastas for registering a book by "Robert Fisk". We arrived at the Ministry of Culture, a bleak Stalinist office block next door to which we found "House of Books". On the first floor was an emporium - I hesitate to call it an office - of books, a vast atrium of volumes and manuscripts. They lay feet high on desks, metre high on shelves and - so it seemed - miles high from the floor. Hundreds, nay thousands, of books were stacked in Dickensian rows, floor to ceiling, bodice-rippers and Arabic fiction and treatises on Islamic jurisprudence and physics textbooks. Two veiled ladies and two bearded men sat at a desk amid this forest of literature, one of them - there is always a miracle in Cairo - in front of a grimy, faded-yellow desktop computer. I asked if my favourite volume had been approved by the Egyptian government for sale. "By Robert Fisk?" the man asked. "The very one!" I shouted. "Yes, it was registered with us on 30 May 2007." "Is there a name for the man who wanted to register it?" "No, only an address. 13 Hassan Ramadan Street in Dokki." Within seconds, Detective Inspector Fisk was bounding down the stairs, his faithful Dr Saef Watson on his heels. "To Dokki!" we demanded of the delighted Yasser. Now, surely, we were hot on the trail of the Forger of Cairo. A chance at last to confront Mr Magdi. The problem - which all three of us realised - is that Magdi Chukri is about as common in Cairo as John Smith is in Britain. By arrangement with
The Independent
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Legal Notes Disciplinary proceedings against an employee of an organisation has no meaning once his service has been terminated. Only because an appeal is pending in the court of law against the order of his dismissal would not mean that the same would remain under suspended animation till the final decision on the appeal. The important ruling was handed down by the Supreme Court in the case of a Punjab National Bank officer. The court held that the order of dismissal or discharge can be passed only once irrespective of the time consumed by the court in giving the final verdict on the appeal. Once the dismissal order is passed, the only importance attached to the appeal is whether the appellate authority sustains the termination order or modifies it and nothing beyond that. Upon dismissal from the service, the employee ceases to be on the roll from the very day when the original order of termination is passed not from the date when the appellate authority delivers its final verdict subject, of course, to the condition that the original order is affirmed. Bank officer M.L. Kalra was terminated in August, 1993, on disciplinary ground. When his appeal was still pending, he had attained the age of superannuation in November, 1994. He had claimed pensionary and other benefits beyond August, 1994, which were granted to him by the Delhi High Court, but the apex court set aside the said order declaring it wrong and beyond the provisions of the law.
Judgements sans reasons The high courts of Punjab and Haryana and Himachal Pradesh have come in for sharp criticism from the Supreme Court in a spate of recent judgements for passing verdicts without recording detailed reasons. While the Punjab and Haryana High Court was criticised in two cases relating to a marital dispute and dowry, registered in the name of Mangat Ram and Ran Singh respectively, the HP High Court was lambasted in the Paras Ram case relating to assault and setting a house on fire due to a land dispute. The apex court said that silence on reasons renders the appellate function of the court impossible. Right to reason is an indispensable part of a sound judicial system as it indicates the application of mind to the matter before the court. Besides, it enables the parties to the dispute to assess the case and know why the verdict has gone in their favour or against.
Impounding passports The police may have the power to seize a passport under the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) but they have no power to impound the same. The power of impounding a passport vests only with the Passport Authority under Section 10(3) of the Passport Act, the Supreme Court has ruled. Making a distinction between the use of power by the police under Section 102(1) of the CrPC and Section 10(3) of the Passport Act, the court said there is a vast difference between the seizure of a document and impounding it. The seizure is made at a particular moment when the competent authority in discharge of its duty takes possession of some property, including documents under probe for some alleged offences. However, if the property or documents are retained for some period of time, it amounted to impounding of the same but it could only be done under the appropriate provisions of the law. In the case of a passport, the impounding authority is only the Passport Authority. Even the court cannot impound a passport. Though Section 104 of CrPC states that the court may, if it thinks fit, impound any document or thing produced before it, this provision will only enable the court to impound other documents, not the passport, because the Passport Act as a special law, has provisions for impounding of it which would prevail upon the CrPC provisions. The court can only order the surrender of a passport in a particular case till the proceedings against the accused are pending. The ruling was given by the apex court in the case of noted arms dealer Suresh Nanda, a son of former naval chief S.M. Nanda, whose passport was seized by the CBI.
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