The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Twitter troubles
Parody evokes a mature response

Politicians love large audiences. Little wonder that they love the kind of a reach that Twitter and even sites like Facebook give them. It’s another matter that people love to follow celebrities like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, rather than politicians, with the significant exception of US President Barack Obama. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is no stranger to Twitter. He has landed in some or the other political soup from time to time because of Twitter messages, and had sworn to even stop tweeting at one point, till the allure of real-time expression and sharing photographs with his followers got him tweeting again.

Now he is facing a common online situation, of parody account, someone who has substituted the numerical ‘0’ with the letter ‘O’, and has thus insinuated himself in the charmed world of Omar and his 1,91,662 followers. Parody accounts are common, and indeed encouraged on Twitter and Abdullah did not take the route of asking Twitter to ban the account, which The New York Times had done some time ago, only to bow down to online protests and pressure and withdraw its objections within a few days. On the other hand, Abdullah merely asked his followers not to retweet i.e. forward the tweets of the other account by mistake.

Many would be reminded of the CM’s recent tweet in which he said: “Gotta hand it to the Govts at the Centre & in Mumbai for the mature way they handled this. Shows we can still keep a secret if we need to.” Well, he too did the mature thing by not letting this parody get him. He just warned his followers, and moved on. As he says in a recent tweet: “I’ve been teaching myself not to react to everything other people have to say. When needed, I speak for myself.” Good advice, distilled to 140 characters. Something others with hyper-sensitivity to matters online could well emulate, and all the supporters of the girls who were criminalised because of their Facebook message would appreciate. More followers for Omar? Maybe.

Reel stars
To promote ‘Heaven on Earth’

A majority of Indians were introduced to the charms of Kashmir the celluloid way. The shikara chase of bashful heroines by serenading heroes, or the lover’s melancholy strains resounding Shalimar Bagh with its snow-capped mountains pushed families to explore Char Chinar and Dal Lake when the plains got unbearably hot in summer months. So, the decision to rope in Bollywood stars to endorse tourism for Jammu & Kashmir reflects just a logical progression. It is through films that most Indians are introduced to exotic locales within the country and abroad. In fact, more than the stars, cinematographers of Hindi cinema have contributed a lot to promoting tourism in J&K.

The precedent for endorsing tourism by film stars was set by the ‘Incredible India’ campaign which roped in Amir Khan to teach ordinary denizens how to stop littering on the roads, help foreign tourists in distress and not to harass them. Then Amitabh Bachchan endorsed tourism in Gujarat and Shah Rukh Khan was roped in by Mamata Banerjee to endorse West Bengal. With a growing double-income middle class, the tourism industry is all set to grow by close to 10 per cent annually. Though the potential of this industry still remains largely untapped due to lack of world class infrastructure, it is still the largest service industry which is expected to touch $ 375.5 billion worth of business in the next five years.

The reason why the tourism industry is looking at film stars to get more visitors to their respective states lies in some statistics. Twentythree million people watch a Bollywood film in India and many of them would want to go to the places they have seen in a film. This has been noted by tourism officials who are also providing funding and location advice and access to film makers. Since the Minister of State for Tourism happens to be a film star himself, chances are the celluloid magic will work fine for tourism.

Thought for the Day

I had to live in the desert before I could understand the full value of grass in a green ditch. — Ella Maillart

ARTICLE

Dealing with two biggest powers
After China’s change, Obama’s re-election
by Inder Malhotra

WITH the installation of the new, sixth-generation leadership of China and President Barack Obama’s re-election, there is need to take a close re-look at this country’s relationship with the world’s two most powerful nations, one of them a next-door neighbour of ours. Since it was because of China’s rise and assertiveness that the US shifted its “pivot” from the West to “Indo-Pacific” the state of Sino-US relations would greatly influence the relationship with either of these two countries of all other major players on the world stage. This is particularly true of the relations between India and China, Asia’s two largest countries, sharing a 4,000-km disputed border, and with a history of a brief but brutal border war in 1962.

What will impact China’s relations with other powers even more profoundly is the nature of the change in China itself, which looks encouraging. The generation headed by Xi Jinping that now comprises the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) was born just before the Chinese Revolution in 1949 or in the early fifties. While growing up, it witnessed the abject poverty of their parents, the horrendous excesses of the Cultural Revolution and, finally, the affluence brought to the Chinese by Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. To preserve this affluence, without having to change the single-party political system is, therefore, going to be the first priority of the new rulers. They are also painfully aware of the tide of corruption that, as the outgoing leader, Hu Jintao, warned them, could “even cause the collapse of the party and fall of the state”. The new leadership, therefore, is bound to do all it can to rein in corruption and sufficiently to improve the working of the existing political system to mitigate the discontent with it.

Against this backdrop, it is perfectly realistic to expect that pragmatism would prevail in Beijing, and the Xi government would follow pragmatic foreign policies. This does not mean that he and his colleagues would stop asserting China’s sovereignty claims whether in the South China Sea or across the Himalayas. But almost certainly they would not do anything so provocative as to cause an armed conflict. One Sinologist who discussed India-China relations with policy makers in Beijing reported that his hosts were aware of the havoc that even a brief spat between their country and India would cause to the world oil prices.

Above all, ever since the Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation deal, China has been unhappy about this country’s “growing proximity” to the US. It would not, therefore, want to push these two countries even closer together. Even this does not mean that what the Chinese would do, and indeed are doing already, would not impinge on India’s core geo-strategic interests. But the overall situation does enable this country to deal with the situation more deftly than in the past.

On the 50th anniversary of the 1962 War this country’s confident message was that 1962 could never again be repeated. It was unnecessary to tell the Chinese that, for they know that Indian defences are more than adequate. They are also aware that on the Himalayan border they yet have no military aircraft to match our Sukhoi-30. At the same time they know that we have no offensive capacity there while their offensive capability is more than ample. Furthermore, our belated efforts to improve our infrastructure on the China border are hampered by our own deficiencies such as enormous delays in getting environmental clearances. Budgetary constraints have become a drag on the most urgent acquisitions. This is deplorable. For, the gap between Indian and Chinese military power is large and growing larger. Any sign of weakness and irresoluteness on our part would be an invitation to disaster.

Regrettably, while China is always stridently assertive about its claims however tenuous, we tend to express our serious concerns hesitantly. The China-Pakistan nuclear nexus is a pertinent case in point. At first a device by China to confine this country to South Asia alone, this nexus has now acquired a wider dimension. China has built Gwadar port on Pakistan’s Makran coast to acquire access to the Gulf oil there and then transport it homewards through the Karakoram highway or a pipeline. On the other hand, there are several areas in which the two Asian giants have been cooperating because it is in their interest to do so. Trade and investment between the two sides has expanded so fast that China is now our largest trading partner. There are a number of institutionalised India-China dialogues, including those on geo-strategy and economic strategy. In relation to global issues, the two countries have cooperated credibly on climate change and multilateral trade. There is no reason why this cannot be extended also to the grave Af-Pak problem because neither country wants the Taliban to rule Afghanistan yet again. On the critical border issue, however, the progress is zilch.

As for the United States, its relations with China can never be the same as they were with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Then neither superpower had any stake in the other. Mutual economic stakes between the US and China are so huge that they would compel them to remain engaged, pivot or no pivot. In any case, Mitt Romney, who was threatening to declare China a “currency manipulator” on his first day in office, is safely away from the White House. In these circumstances, nobody should crib about an equally close engagement between New Delhi and Beijing.

Before, during and after the US presidential poll, competent observers on both sides have been relaxed in the confident belief that close and friendly Indo-US relations would continue because many core interests of both countries converge. Now, however, many Americans are insisting that, instead of “more of the same”, relations between the largest and most powerful democracies must widen and deepen. This can surely happen in sectors such as trade, investment and defence cooperation. On the issue of the China pivot, however, there could be a subtle divergence.

The talk about India’s “nonalignment” between the US and China is meaningless. But while being America’s strategic partner, not ally, India is and must be equally friendly with other major powers, including Russia, China, Japan, et al. It is also a member of a trilateral India-Russia-China forum, an observer at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and a member of BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

MIDDLE

Of bricks and stones
by Seema Sachdeva

It was holiday time. I got irked when I saw my 11-year-old glued to the television set all day long. When I ticked him off for not going out to play with his friends, he replied, “But mom, where should we play? There is no space for us to play in the park.”

I hate to admit but he was right. The nearby park, like other open areas, was being used to park cars and other vehicles. Children didn’t have any open space to play. This is unlike the times when we were kids. There were enough open spaces where one could spend all day exploring one’s small world. One could climb trees, and while enjoying the view from the tree-top, we would sometimes be lucky enough to savour luscious fruits like mangoes and jamuns straight from trees. In the evenings, one could see grown-ups and children relaxing in parks near their houses. Life was simpler then, and one took nature for granted.

But in times such as these, cities are fast turning into concrete jungles. Birds like house sparrows, parrots, crows and vultures, which were once found in abundance, seem to have vanished altogether. Research has found that with mobile companies invading the air space, commonly found birds have moved away to places where there is less intrusion into nature. The melodious sound of the koel on a hot afternoon, as also that of the parrots, pigeons, etc, has been replaced with the honking of car horns. These birds can now only be seen on TV channels like Animal Planet and National Geographic.

With not many parks left, one rarely finds frogs and grasshoppers in gardens. Statistics reveal that frogs have been nearly wiped out from the subcontinent. This is also being cited as a major reason for the rising number of cases of dengue and malaria. The many-hued butterflies and fireflies that we, as kids, loved to catch and keep as trophies, seem to have disappeared. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that most of the children are confined to homes, either watching television or playing games on their PlayStations.

The situation is worse in metros. When I met a friend from Mumbai recently, her first comment was, “You are so lucky to be living in a city like Chandigarh. There is so much greenery here. Also here you can, at least, see the skyline. We only get to see skyscrapers and high-rise buildings.”

Her comment sent a shiver down my spine. Is this the price one has to pay for rapid urbanisation? A world of bricks and stones, with no life.

The next time you see drops of rain soaking the parched land, a beautiful full-moon night, the sun rising from behind the mountains, hear the chirping of birds, or the croaking of frogs, take a break and count your blessings as our future generations may not be lucky enough to experience this bounty of nature.

Oped Law

Phone tapping & judicial misdemeanours
Fresh revelations about an earlier controversy that beset the Punjab and Haryana High Court has resurfaced after four years raising troubling questions about the conduct of the Punjab police and the higher judiciary. A Tribune analysis
Saurabh Malik

The selective media leak of a letter written by a Supreme Court Judge, Justice Tirath Singh Thakur, in 2009, when he was the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, has revived the controversy about alleged attempts by the police to overawe the judiciary through the tapping of phones without following the prescribed procedure and of possible judicial misdemeanours.

Addressed to the then Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan, the letter dated January 11, 2009, indicates the possibility of the Punjab Vigilance Bureau, then headed by Sumedh Singh Saini, currently Punjab's Director General of Police, gathering indirect evidence against judges through not-so-legal means.

Justice Thakur was responding to a letter his predecessor, Chief Justice Vijender Kumar Jain, had written on June 14, 2008, concerning a brother Judge, Justice Mehtab Singh Gill, calling for his possible indictment or transfer on grounds of alleged improprieties.

The genesis

Justice Jain

The controversy erupted in 2008 when Justice Jain was apparently keen on elevating six District and Sessions Judges to the High Court. However, two members of the collegium formed to appoint them, expressed misgivings about the process. One of them, Justice J.S. Khehar, expressed his reservations about the suitability of three candidates for promotion.

The other member, Justice Mehtab Singh Gill, wrote a two-page dissenting note. He was reportedly of the opinion that the High Court did not have the requisite space for the new judges to sit and hear the cases. In view of the dissent, Chief Justice Jain then reportedly consulted two other Judges on the issue, even though they were not members of the original collegium.

Chief Justice Jain's letter against Justice Gill, written a month before the differences came out in the open, mentioned five grounds for the initiation of action against him - the earlier surfacing of his name in the decade-old PPSC scam; Justice Gill choosing Ludhiana as administrative district; his suo-motu notice of the Moga sex-scam; complaints by judicial officers and a recorded telephonic conversation between two individuals.

The clean chit

Justice Gill

In his letter Chief Justice Thakur struck down the arguments raised by Justice Jain for action against Justice Gill. He stated that no blemish was "cast on Justice Gill by the committee of Judges, which looked into the PPSC scam"; the family litigation was transferred out of Ludhiana soon after Justice Gill took over as the administrative Judge of Ludhiana sessions division; and the Moga sex scam was directed to be listed before Justice Gill by Chief Justice Jain himself. If Justice Gill was disqualified to hear the matter, it "could and ought to have been listed before some other Bench".

Justice Thakur also wrote that Justice Jain's communication was silent as to whether the complaints by the judicial officers were oral or in writing. "If they were oral, I can say nothing about the veracity thereof. But if they were made in writing, one would expect them to be on record for fair and objective evaluation".

Justice Thakur left alarm bells ringing while dealing with the issue of phone tapping and attempts to repress the judiciary. Justice Thakur was told that the phones of the Judges, judicial officers and their relatives were never tapped, but the telephone numbers of two "private persons" were placed under "electronic surveillance with effect from April 17, 2008".

Unauthorised phone tapping

Justice Thakur

The phone tapping was reportedly spread over three months "during which matters concerning the High Court and the subordinate judiciary came to light." Inquiries by Justice Thakur revealed that the top brass of the administration and the police was not aware of the tapping. The then DGP said instructions in this regard were never issued; the Home Secretary also denied any knowledge, but suggested that the Punjab Vigilance Bureau, which was reporting directly to the Chief Secretary, could have done it. The Chief Secretary too initially expressed ignorance.

Justice Thakur then received a letter from the Chief Secretary stating that inquiries from the Director-General, Vigilance, (Sumedh Singh Saini) revealed that the phones of two "private persons" were kept under surveillance for the "detection of organised crime and security of the state". A report on the same was submitted to then Advocate-General Hardev Singh Mattewal, who handed it over to Chief Justice Jain.

Justice Thakur noted that the "nature of the organised crime" or the details of the case involving the security of the state were not available on record. "No follow-up action was taken against any one for organised criminal activity or for threatening the security of the state… If the telephone conversations were recorded by the Vigilance Bureau, reports based on the same should have been submitted to the next higher officer in the chain of command and not to the Advocate General of Punjab, who does not figure in the administrative hierarchy."

Justice Thakur added the record did not "disclose any application of mind on the part of the Home Secretary or any other authority" before granting permission to tap phones. Justice Thakur then raised doubts about Sumedh Singh Saini's motives behind carrying out the entire surveillance operation. "It is noteworthy that Justice Gill has in an order passed by him directed a CBI investigation against S.S. Saini, Director, Vigilance, in a case of custodial killing. The matter is pending in the Supreme Court in which H.S Mattewal appears for the state government, which has challenged the orders passed by Justice Gill".

Justice Gill told The Tribune: "The report was nothing, but the vindication of my stand and sets things right". Justice Gill added he and Justice Jain were getting along well, till the issue of appointments cropped up.

Justice Jain, on the other hand, told this paper, "The matter is four-and-a-half years old; and all I have to say is that I did what was best in the interest of the institution and the Judge concerned". DGP Saini did not respond to efforts made by this paper to get his opinion.

Illegal detention

S.S. Saini

Saini conducted an inquiry into the PPSC scam in 2002 on the direction of the then Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The committee of Judges later gave Justice Gill a clean chit.

Earlier in an attack on his cavalcade in August, 1991, Saini, who was then the UT SSP, sustained injuries, while three other policemen lost their lives. Among the suspects booked by the police was Davinder Singh Bhullar. As he was not available, the Chandigarh Police allegedly took his uncle and subsequently his father in custody. In the meantime, an Additional Sessions Judge acquitted him and at least two others.

As the UT challenged the acquittal orders, the High Court noticed some accused persons had been declared proclaimed offenders (PO). The UT was, subsequently, asked to detail upon the steps taken to procure their presence. Expressing dissatisfaction with the UT police's efforts to bring them to justice, the High Court Bench headed by Justice Gill ordered the CBI to probe the matter on October 5, 2007. Indicting Saini for his alleged involvement in the torture of two persons in connection with the bomb attack on him, the CBI registered a case of abduction, illegal detention and other offences against him and three more police officers on July 2, 2008.

Taking up the Punjab Government's appeal against the order, the apex court Bench of Justice B.S. Chauhan and Justice A.K. Patnaik on December 7, 2011, asserted that Saini had conducted the inquiry in 2002 on the direction of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice on the alleged appointment of judicial/executive officers in Punjab.

The Bench added that the impugned order gave the impression that the High Court was trying to procure the presence of the proclaimed offenders but, in fact, it was to target the police officers, who had conducted the inquiry. "The process adopted by the High Court led to greater injustice than securing the ends of justice. The path charted by the High Court inevitably reflects a biased approach…. The impugned orders challenged herein are declared to be nullity and as a consequence, the FIR registered by the CBI is also quashed".

The order came just about two years after Justice Thakur gave a clean chit to Justice Gill and hinted at reprisal on Saini's part due to the ordering of a CBI probe into the alleged killings.

Divided opinion

A section of the Bar feels that the apex court Bench should have taken into consideration the fact that Justice Thakur, in his report, had dealt with the issue of CBI probe into the “custodial killings” and had, in fact, hinted that the Judge was being targeted, instead of it being the other way round. Also, the CBI had registered the case after carrying out preliminary inquiries. Justice should have been done to those abducted or, perhaps, eliminated, they feel.

Another section believes that Justice Thakur’s assertion in his report to the Chief Justice of India was based on the circumstances hovering around the tapping of the phones, and cannot be construed as an expression on the merits of the order directing the CBI probe into the “custodial killings”. Moreover, the remarks were made on the administrative, and not the judicial side, and had little or no significance as far as the apex court’s Division Bench, hearing an appeal against the order was concerned. They opine that the matter was examined threadbare by the Division Bench of the Supreme Court before it arrived at its conclusions.

The last word on the controversy has not yet been heard. The jury is still out.

What it is all about

In 2008 the then Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice Tirath Singh Thakur, was asked to furnish his comments on a communication forwarded by his predecessor, Chief Justice Vijender Jain, to the then Chief Justice of India. Justice Jain had sought the initiation of action against a brother judge, Justice Mehtab Singh Gill, on five counts.

Four years later Justice Thakur’s letter, that has come to light at the time of Chief Justice Jain's appointment as the Chairman of the Haryana Human Rights Commission, has led to a fresh controversy about alleged attempts by policemen to settle scores with the higher judiciary.