|
|
Undercurrents of terror
Office of profit |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
A divided opposition
All-India judicial service
Chilika and the Palace Island
Back to Jinnah
Protesters target ‘climate criminals’
At least sport keeps men busy
|
|
Office of profit
The
Supreme Court has rightly upheld the constitutional validity of the Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Amendment Act, 2006, which adds to the list of offices of profit that do not disqualify the holders thereof for being chosen as or for being the Members of Parliament. A Bench consisting of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice J.M. Panchal has not only upheld Parliament’s power to amend the Act but also rejected the petitioners’ contention that there was “no rational criterion for the wholesale exemption” of 55 offices of profit from the disqualification rule by means of the impugned legislation. It agreed with the submission of the Centre’s counsels that Parliament’s power to enact a law with retrospective effect on this important issue was adjudicated by the apex court as far back as 1969 in Kanta Kathuria vs. Manak Chand Sharma case. In this case, the court clearly held that when an MP accepts an office of profit and incurs a disqualification, and such disqualification is retrospectively removed, the MP would continue to be a Member. Parliament’s power to enact a law includes its power to enact such law retrospectively, it ruled. Having examined the constitutional schemes in Articles 101 to 104, the Bench has ruled that these Articles contained several “irrefutable indications” that the vacancy of an MP’s seat would occur only when a decision is rendered by the President under Article 103 which declares that an MP has incurred a disqualification under Article 102 (1) and not at the point of time when the MP is alleged to have incurred the disqualification. The constitutional scheme is such that the President takes a decision regarding an MP’s disqualification on the aid and advice of the Election Commission. Significantly, the Bench has ruled that the question as to which office (or offices) should be excluded for purposes of disqualification lies in the legislative domain. In this case, Parliament has the power to decide what kind of office would amount to an office of profit under the government and whether such an office of profit is to be exempted. |
|
|
A divided opposition
The
BJP’s decision to snap ties with the Indian National Lok Dal and contest the ensuing Assembly elections in Haryana on its own is a reflection of its fragile relationship with the Chautala clan and its overconfidence to win elections independently. In particular, it is a serious setback to INLD supremo Om Prakash Chautala who is keen on wresting power from the Congress. Peeved by the BJP’s somersault, Mr Chautala announced on Tuesday that the INLD is no longer part of the NDA and that it will never have any electoral pact with the BJP in future. The INLD has been jolted by a series of desertions, especially by its senior leaders, in recent weeks. The INLD-BJP alliance, which ruled Haryana for five years from 1999, had collapsed in 2004 following differences between Mr Chautala and the BJP leaders. The latest split is a fallout of their refusal to appreciate ground realities and evolve a mutually acceptable seat-sharing formula. Apparently, the BJP has demanded 45 out of 90 Assembly seats which the INLD has refused to concede. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, though both parties had contested five seats each, they failed to open their account. The BJP-INLD relations have never been smooth. The BJP had extended support to the late Devi Lal in the 1980s and later withdrawn it. Then, it forged alliance with the Haryana Vikas Party in 1996 but later pulled out in 1999. It had once again supported Mr Chautala in 1999 but later dissociated itself and contested the 2004 Lok Sabha and 2005 Assembly elections on its own. It was only late last year that the BJP revived its ties with the INLD. Mr Chautala switched over to the NDA from the nebulous Third Front. However, the BJP workers opposed this, fearing erosion of support in their ranks. As both parties are riddled with factionalism, none would be able to take on the Congress independently in the elections. The Bahujan Samaj Party and the Haryana Janhit Congress don’t have a state-wide presence. The absence of a strong opposition is advantageous for the Congress. |
|
|
He wrapped himself in quotations — as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors. — Rudyard Kipling
|
All-India judicial service
NO, “My Lord”, the Chief Justice of India (or should it be “Your Honour”, reiterating the 1971 decision by the present Supreme Court) — the judiciary does not “impliedly obey” the law passed by Parliament — the judiciary owes allegiance only to the Constitution of India and to their own conscience. That is why I am somewhat sad that the CJI should have indirectly suggested that judges are not willing on their own to file the statement of assets and the same to be made available to the public — especially when the judges do so in the US, Britain and other Commonwealth countries. One can appreciate the anxiety to have some provision to prevent vexatious or scandalous accusations by mischievous persons (though it must be remembered that these hazards are common to all public officials whether in the executive or the legislature). Of course, the self-patting by the legislators that they disclose their assets at the time of filing their nominations is conveniently sidetracked by the fact that it was only under the Supreme Court directions in the PUCL case that this requirement is now being followed reluctantly. Of course, a question may well be raised not by the judiciary because it does not enter into public debate but by the electorate as to what percentage of legislators, including the members of Parliament, have filed or are filing their statement of assets regularly and whether such information will be available under the Right to Information Act. Some may even embarrass the legislators by making a polite enquiry about the fate of the Lok Pal Bill which has been promised by different party governments for over last 30 years. Is it that legislators’ accountability is less urgent than judicial accountability? It must be emphasised that overwhelming members of the bar and the judiciary themselves are in favour of a law on judicial accountability by a panel which will not only have an in-house membership but will also include a representative from outside jointly selected by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. Let the judiciary or the legislature not try to score points against each other. Both are integral and essential to our democratic polity — only demarcation of the functions of each is to be recognised and respected. It is a heartening gesture that the conference has advised the high courts to increase their work period from the present 210 to 220 days, but this seems to have been watered down by suggesting an alternative of increasing half an hour extra every day. In my opinion, the straightaway increase of 10 days is the only correct method — the increase of half an hour will be merely cosmetic. It may be further suggested that on the same parity of reasoning the Supreme Court will also increase its work period to at least 200 days with a full working day on Monday and Friday. Let me hasten to add, however, that at least 70 per cent of 52 Saturdays are utilised by judges in completing judgements and orders unlike the executive who have all 52 Saturdays either as a holiday or on a foreign jaunt. Similarly, one hopes the executive will also work out the days it works. So, why pick on the judiciary alone? Parliament, even according to the Vice-President and former Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, has much to answer — the sittings of the Parliament are becoming less and less and the actual work the minimal. Let us remember what the great Saint Kabir said, “I went out to search a bad person, but could not find anyone. But when I looked within myself, I realised that none was worse than myself”. To be honest, we all are in the embarrassing position of an en emperor proudly standing in a bath tub but none pointed out till the innocent child shouted, “the emperor has no clothes”. So, no one can point one’s figure at the other excepting the real sovereign under our Constitution — the people of India. The conference rightly did not approve of the constitution of a All-India judicial service. The whole idea is ludicrous — this was rejected as far back as 1985 by the chief justices’ conference. It is well known that in the court, proceedings upto the district level are carried out in the language of the state. Thus, only in the Hindi-speaking states of UP, MP and Bihar, persons selected from these states could be transferred within. In all other states, i.e. Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Punjab, it is impossible to post a person from outside the state because of his non-familiarity with the state language. The illustration given of an All-India judicial service like the IAS and IPS is completely off the mark. The requirement of their being familiar with the state language is rudimentary and only minimal — at a higher level they use English in the administration. Judgements of the courts are a serious business requiring a deep knowledge of the state language. Also at present the High Court is the final controlling and disciplinary authority over the subordinate judiciary. But if you have an All-India Judicial Service then will the disciplinary authority change every time a judge is transferred from one state to another. And also in an all-India Administrative Service the authority of the Central government is supreme with limited powers given to the state governments. Who then will be the ultimate authority — the Supreme Court obviously can not take the load? So, will the Central government by this invidious tactic claim to be the ultimate disciplinary authority? This impinging by the executive would be the surest way to strike at the independence of the judiciary. It is regrettable that the chief justices conference did not decide that in the interest of continuity and familiarly with the working of the state judiciary, a local chief justice is a must — the present practice of appointing chief justices outside their parent courts and many a time for as short a period as three months or six months has dealt a severe blow to the prestige and harmonious working of the high courts, and serious laxity in the supervision of the lower judiciary. As for the uncle-nephew nexus, a chief justice of a high court had effectively enforced an order that the cases of relations of judges will not be posted before any other judge whose relations are also practising in the same high court. Another embarrassing reflection on the judiciary is the misdemeanour of cases pending for a long time against High Court Judges being discussed publicly because the Supreme Court is not taking a final decision. Let me put in a caveat by invoking Justice Holmes of the US Supreme Court who said, “I trust that no one will understand me to be speaking with disrespect of the law, because I criticise it so freely………but one may criticise even what one reveres……. And I should show less than devotion, if I did not do what in me lies to improve it.”
The writer is a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi.
|
|||||
Chilika and the Palace Island In
recalled memory my visit to Chilika Lake has a dream-like quality. After the passage of 27 years, the unparallelled sequences of beauty still haunt me. Rummaging through old papers, I came across my notes on this lagoon which during the monsoon stretches to almost 1165 sq. km till it flows into the Bay of Bengal. Inspired by the Indian Civil Service men of erstwhile Bengal Province, I would then meticulously maintain a diary and note down the events of each day as they had occurred. The notes on Chilika Lake and the mysterious Parikud island within it, where once lived a King read like a fairytale. I should have travelled on this inland sea in a boat of glass and seen the grey stretches of Chilika curve into the sky. With green islands and white birds rising into the languorous air, this limitlessness is anchored; it seems, in the ethereal substance of beauty. My idiom is trapped in word sequences; if I could have caught the visual hues of Chilika and come to terms with its scales of music, there would have been no cause to write, no boats of glass. Endlessly, Chilika stretches into the ocean. Below its sullen surface exists a maritime world, known to man but scarcely. Around its banks, gentle hills lift into forested slopes. There are no visitors here, almost just birds transiting between terminal land surfaces which rise out of the water in strange tangents to the upper spheres. The ambit of largeness overtakes man, forbidding any distortion of the human role. The vast spaces are overwhelming and so man blends with nature to maintain his equipoise; seeking strength from its forceful presence. As if etched in calligraphic lines, fishing boats float along the slopes in weak angular moves, unable to add colour or form to the totality. And, yet, so much Chilika’s life relates to the maritime efflorescence of Kalinga, to quiet entrepreneurs sailing into the dark waters, to the shores of Java and Sumatra and Bali — to the classic temples of Angkor Wat, where architecture set standards of human endeavour in the golden islands. Could the mercantile men have set their sights on the Siberian bird? And, here, also Lord Jagannath rested in the jade waters spreading His compassion between the island and the seas. Away from Barikula and Nalabana lies the central island of Parikud resting on Victorian banners with its palace behind a mellow coat of arms wrapped in banana leaves. There is the courtyard of Ganapati where lines of vermilion light up ancient eyes set in stone; and then, the courtyard of the little prince. The grand stairway has made room for bats. We ascend an iron spiral winding along the great walls, above the trees and into the secret chambers of the palace. Pink dominates the day lounge. The white china trapped in time surges forward in the sunlight. A red bulb above the old banquet hall announces that the prince is in residence, and that, therefore, all is well on the island. Parikud is an uncertain series of shifting images — launches leading to country boats, bullock carts and a beaten road without trees. At the main entrance there is ceremony and on the fringes, the house staff reels past, slowly fermented in rice and heat and yellowing
leaves.
|
|||||
Back to Jinnah The
expulsion of Jaswant Singh from the BJP for authoring the controversial book ‘Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence’ was unfortunate, and yet understandable, even inevitable. Mr Singh’s continuation in the BJP had become untenable after the sales promotion campaign of the book in which he was seen to be extolling the ‘virtues’ of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the creator of Pakistan and the man widely held responsible in India for Partition and its horrendous fallout. The BJP might have even ignored Mr Singh’s praise of Jinnah, but there was no way that the party could forgive Mr Singh for committing the cardinal sin of blaming titans like Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel for not accommodating Jinnah’s political demands, thereby pushing India towards partition. This amounted to cutting at the ideological roots of the party, and no one was going to buy Mr Singh’s claim that this was only his personal opinion and had nothing to do with the party. Already, the BJP was finding it impossible to distance itself from Mr Singh’s ‘personal opinion’, much less live down the ridicule that was being heaped on it by its political opponents who were calling it the ‘Bharatiya Jinnah Party”. Any other political party in the same position would have almost certainly reacted in a similar fashion – remember the treatment meted out to Mohit Sen by the CPM or the intolerance that the Congress has shown towards anyone in its ranks who questioned its icons. Mr Singh’s tragedy, however, is that his detractors have pronounced their judgement without having taken the trouble of reading the book. Perhaps even if they had read the book, they would have failed to understand the fine nuances in the book that effectively rubbish Jinnah’s achievement in creating Pakistan. In all likelihood, therefore, their reaction would have been no different had they read the book, but at least then the debate around Mr Singh’s controversial assertions would have been more well-informed, maybe even enlightening. Despite its revisionism, the book provides a lot of food for thought for anyone on both sides of the great India-Pakistan divide who cares to think about the events and attitudes that led to Partition. The storm unleashed by the book centres primarily around two major issues. The first is the person of Jinnah and Mr Singh’s admiration of him. The second is Jinnah’s politics and the justification or, should we say, alibi that Mr Singh tries to provide for it. Jinnah was without doubt an exceptional man. His doggedness, his legal brilliance, his financial propriety, his sartorial elegance, his self-confidence (he once quipped “What is the Muslim League except me and my stenographer?”), was all the stuff of legends. But Mr Singh’s attraction to the personality of Jinnah merely on the grounds that he was a ‘self-made man’ is somewhat strange, if not specious. This is akin to someone admiring Dawood Ibrahim simply because he too is a self-made man, and is (or was) quite secular both in his personal habits as well as in his profession. That Jinnah was secular in his personal life is a well-established fact. But drinking whisky, eating pork, or having friends belonging to another community is a rather spurious definition of secularism, particularly in the context of someone who in his public life espouses a cause which is totally sectarian and communal. Ultimately, the secular is what the secular does, and the political platform that Jinnah adopted raises the question of whether Jinnah was secularly communal or communally secular. It can be argued that despite running a virulently communal campaign for Pakistan, Jinnah did not want a theocratic state. But a denominational state, which is what Pakistan has become, was always going to be the logical culmination of forces that Jinnah had unleashed in his tussle with the Indian National Congress. Perhaps there was a time – 1916 and the Lucknow pact – when Jinnah was an ‘Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’. But two decades later – 1937 onwards – it was a very different Jinnah. Either for reasons of personal ego and political self-aggrandisement, or as a spoiler working at the behest of the British Raj (see Wali Khan’s Facts are Facts) or even as a born-again Muslim, Jinnah had become the standard-bearer of the pernicious ‘Two-Nation theory’ that sought to divide, rather than unite, the two communities. From this point on, instead of building bridges between the communities, he was only interested in advocating, articulating and securing the interests of a single community, if possible within a loosely structured Indian federation, otherwise as a separate state. The imperial interests of the British, coupled with Jinnah’s relentless advocacy of his case for Pakistan, had made partition inevitable. The communal genie that was let out of the bottle could never have been put back in and had partition been avoided in 1947, it would have taken place 10, 20 or maybe even 50 years later. In the circumstances that prevailed at that time, the decision taken by Nehru and Patel was unexceptionable. To talk today, with the benefit of hindsight, of the Cabinet Mission plan as a possible way of avoiding Partition is to close one’s eyes to the reality of those times. The Cabinet Mission plan was never going to work. By the time this plan was proposed, the poison of communalism and separatism had seeped far too deep in the psyche of the Muslims of India for them to be amenable to anything short of Pakistan. It was then not so much a question of addressing the self-created and self-serving insecurities of the Muslim community as it was about the future stability and functionality of the newly independent state. Had the Cabinet Mission plan been accepted, it would have created 50 Pakistans. Nehru and Patel were absolutely correct in rooting for a strong centre over a loosely structured federation, even if this meant conceding Pakistan. That they were right and Jinnah was wrong is evident from the fact that Pakistan too has rejected the sort of federal structure that Jinnah had insisted upon as the price to be paid for keeping India united. The tragedy is not so much that India was partitioned. After all, states have been formed, reformed, deformed, and unformed throughout the history of the subcontinent. In this sense Partition is nothing out of the ordinary. Under the prevailing circumstances Partition was probably the only, if not the best, solution. But the religious cleansing and mass murder and migration that followed Partition has probably no parallel in the history of the subcontinent. Nor for that matter is there any historical precedent in the subcontinent of borders being sealed for citizens of different states that have existed from time to time. But maybe the bitterness and hatred that Partition had created, and which was nurtured by successive rulers of Pakistan, made hostility between India and Pakistan inevitable. The question now is whether the peoples of the subcontinent can put behind them a very painful chapter of their history. Mistakes and miscalculations were made on all sides, sometimes out of pettiness, at other times because of hubris, and often in response to a situation over which they had little control. While we can endlessly quibble and quarrel over what happened, why it happened, who was responsible etc, there is a need to look towards the future. This, in the ultimate analysis, is the message of the book that Jaswant Singh has written, a message that has unfortunately got drowned in the din surrounding the
book.
|
|
Protesters target ‘climate criminals’ Climate
change campaigners are to target the offices of a dozen companies and government departments across central London in a week of raucous direct action, starting on Wednesday with the opening of the 2009 Climate Camp. The actions, which will be sudden and unannounced and will range from noisy protests to the blocking of entrances to attempted occupation, will all be planned from the camp, to be set up this afternoon at a London location which has hitherto been kept secret. The key targets will be the headquarters of companies such as BP, Shell and the German energy giant E.ON, which the protesters have called "climate criminals" for their involvement in the fossil fuel industries whose carbon emissions are causing global warming. Also in the campaigners' sights are Heathrow Airport, the Bank of England, and government departments from the Treasury to Transport, Business, and even Ed Miliband's Department of Energy and Climate Change – which the activists claim is "not doing nearly enough to fulfil its alleged mandate". Although other bodies may also be the focus of protest, the main objectives are listed in a climate camp document as "the dirty dozen – 12 London-based organisations that are causing climate change". The document says: "Climate Camp has come back to London because to stop climate change, you have to go to the belly of the beast." The plan for the 2009 camp is significantly different from the three previous climate camps which were sited next to their protest targets – in 2006 at Drax power station in Yorkshire, in 2007 at Heathrow airport, and in 2008 at Kingsnorth power station in Kent – and in each case culminated in a mass demonstration to try to shut them down, followed by major confrontations with the police. Organisers of this year's camp say it will not itself be the site of mass protest, but will be used to train volunteers for direct action, especially in an attempt to shut down one of Britain's biggest power stations, planned for October (which one has yet to be decided). However, it has now become clear that the camp will be the base for disruptive demonstrations across central London throughout the coming days. "Think of it as a mother ship, from which people will stream out, for a week of fun and games," one source said last night. "They will be small groups who know each other and trust each other, but you are not going to know where and when they will turn up, or how many they will be." The planned location of the camp has been kept a tightly guarded secret; all that has been disclosed so far is that it will be "within the M25". At noon today, more than 1,000 activists are expected to turn up at six "swoop points" in London where they will receive text messages revealing the location; they will then head straight to it with their tents, sleeping bags and pots and pans. The six meeting points, which the campaigners say will not be the target of direct action, are all symbolic locations for them: they are the headquarters of major oil companies and of the mining giant Rio Tinto; the site of the 2012 Olympics; Stockwell Tube station where Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police in 2005; and the Bank of England, where bystander Ian Tomlinson died after an encounter with police during April's protests at the G20 summit in London. Climate campaigners were prominently involved in those protests, later making lengthy accusations of police brutality and violence. Police conduct has since been fiercely criticised in several official reports. The way they deal with this year's camp will be closely scrutinised, and the Metropolitan Police have been making conciliatory noises, saying they intend to deal with the camp in a "community policing" manner, holding several meetings with the camp organisers, and even setting up a special Twitter account to inform the activists in advance of police moves.n — By arrangement with
The Independent
|
|
At least sport keeps men busy It
would be something of an understatement to say I'm not interested in sport. I ducked out of the primary school netball team when I discovered that matches were played on Saturdays and, since then, my sporting interests have been limited to the following: Wimbledon on telly in the days of Bjorn Borg, half a match "in the flesh" on one of the side courts (can't remember the players, do remember the picnic), a single flash of speeding brown horseflesh at Ascot (the Pimms was lovely), and a football match at White Hart Lane, for a feature I was writing on a poet in residence at Spurs. The football match was quite fun. I'd dressed for Siberia and packed a Thermos flask of tea, but the other 31,999 people were drinking beer in T-shirts. The fountains on the pitch at the beginning reminded me of Versailles and the players, in their dazzling white outfits, looked shiny and smart. The crowd sang songs, the players leapt around and nobody scored any goals. By the end of the afternoon, as far as I could tell, nothing had been lost and nothing had been achieved. It wasn't an unpleasant experience, but I wouldn't want to repeat it. In this, I am unusual. Or perhaps I should say that in this, as a journalist, I am unusual. In the past week, The Independent's offices have been exploding with a passion I've never seen. Men hitherto incapable of looking up to say "good morning" have been yelling and cheering and groaning and laughing and writhing in delight at things that are happening on the TV screen I can't see from my desk, things, I think it's fair to say, that haven't had a lot to do with efficiency cuts or quantitative easing. If it's about 50 per cent of the British population that cares whether or not we win something called The Ashes, that percentage mysteriously rises (for obvious reasons) in a newspaper office, a House of Commons tea-room or a bank. And good luck to them! It's lovely when England wins anything, and there isn't an international egg and spoon race. I think it's great that men like sport. It keeps them busy. It stops them (well, at least some of the time) from fighting wars. It occupies that weird bit of the brain that would otherwise be alphabeticising record collections or setting pub quizzes, or constructing mad theories about blinks or nudges or black swans. And it gives them something to talk about. Boy does it give them something to talk about. Mention the game, or the match, or the goal, and we know where we are. One of us. Phew! There is not a single thing that will unite women in the same way. Fashion doesn't do it. The Booker Prize doesn't do it. Kate's crowsfeet and Madonna's arms don't do it. There is nothing you could put on the cover of a newspaper that would have the same effect as "The Ashes are home". Except, perhaps, "George Clooney looking for a wife". In an interview with Fay Weldon last week, she told me that "all women are the same, in a way that all men are not". She couldn't be more wrong. What is increasingly clear is that the battle of environment over heredity in gender stereotypes has been lost. This stuff is hardwiring. Which doesn't mean, guys, that you can't turn that TV
down. — By arrangement with The Independent
|
|
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
