Posts Tagged ‘Nitish Kumar’
In its manifesto for the Delhi Assembly elections in 2013, BJP promised ‘full statehood to Delhi’. Now it has taken away whatever powers the Delhi Assembly and the elected government of Delhi had. The Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2021, adopted by Parliament, simply passes all the powers of the Assembly and the elected government on to the Lieutenant-Governor (LG) picked up by the Modi government not on his administrative competence but on his capacity to overlook rules and regulations to please his two masters.
The Bill simply provides that ‘Government’ means ‘Lieutenant-Governor’; he will have discretionary powers even in matters where the Assembly is empowered to make laws; and his opinion will be necessary to implement any decision taken by the Council of Ministers; and the Assembly will not make any rule to enable itself to consider he matters of day-to-day administration.
During the Bihar Assembly elections last year, BJP promised good governance in the State. BJP could not get full majority there but got enough to occupy the driver’s seat with the help of smaller number of Nitish Kumar’s JDU. Though Kumar is the Chief Minister but he is completely at the mercy of the BJP. Instead of taking any steps to provide good governance in the State, the BJP-JDU government has endowed the Special Armed Police (which was previously known as the Bihar Military Police) with extraordinary powers. The Special Armed Police can now arrest anyone without a warrant or without permission from a magistrate; it can search any premises without a warrant or magistrate’s permission; if an officer is accused of having committed a crime, the court cannot take cognisance on its own; and court cannot inquire on its own an allegation of torture/harassment in custody.
The Bihar Police Bill negates the rule of law. Not only that, it amounts to the contempt of Supreme Court as it violates Supreme Court’s 1997 directions on arrest. More dreadfully, the Delhi and Bihar bills give a peep into the dangerous designs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. If they get hold of the West Bengal Assembly, win a sizeable number of seats in the poll-bound Southern States and BJP acquires majority in Rajya Sabha also, one can only imagine what will happen to the Constitution.
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SUPREME COURT DIRECTIONS ON ARREST:
In view of the increasing incidence of violence and torture in custody, the Supreme Court (in D K Basu vs. State of West Bengal, 1997) laid down 11 specific requirements and procedures that the police and other agencies have to follow for the arrest, detention and interrogation of any person. These are:
1. Police arresting and interrogating suspects should wear “accurate, visible and clear” identification and name tags, and details of interrogating police officers should be recorded in a register.
2. A memo of arrest must be prepared at the time of arrest. This should have the time and date of arrest, be attested by at least one witness who may either be a family member of the person arrested or a respectable person of the locality where the arrest was made, and be counter-signed by the person arrested.
3. The person arrested, detained or being interrogated has a right to have a relative, friend or well-wisher informed as soon as practicable, of the arrest and the place of detention or custody. If the person to be informed has signed the arrest memo as a witness this is not required.
4. Where the friend or relative of the person arrested lives outside the district, the time and place of arrest and venue of custody must be notified by police within 8 to 12 hours after arrest. This should be done by a telegram through the District Legal Aid Authority and the concerned police station.
5. The person arrested should be told of the right to have someone informed of the arrest, as soon as the arrest or detention is made.
6. An entry must be made in the diary at the place of detention about the arrest, the name of the person informed and the name and particulars of the police officers in whose custody the person arrested is.
7. The person being arrested can request a physical examination at the time of arrest. Minor and major injuries if any should be recorded. The ‘Inspection Memo’ should be signed by the person arrested as well as the arresting police officer. A copy of this memo must be given to the person arrested.
8. The person arrested must have a medical examination by a qualified doctor every 48 hours during detention. This should be done by a doctor who is on the panel, which must be constituted by the Director of Health Services of every State.
9. Copies of all documents including the arrest memo have to be sent to the Area Magistrate (ilaqa Magistrate) for his record.
10. The person arrested has a right to meet a lawyer during the interrogation, although not for the whole time.
11. There should be a police control room in every District and State headquarters where information regarding the arrest and the place of custody of the person arrested must be sent by the arresting officer.
This must be done within 12 hours of the arrest. The control room should prominently display the information on a notice board. These requirements were issued to the Director General of Police and the Home Secretary of every State. They were obliged to circulate the requirements to every police station under their charge. Every police station in the country had to display these guidelines prominently. The judgment also encouraged that the requirements be broadcast through radio and television and pamphlets in local languages be distributed to spread awareness. These requirements are in addition to other rights and rules, such as:
• The right to be informed at the time of arrest of the offence for which the person is being arrested.
• The right to be presented before a magistrate within 24 hours of the arrest.
• The right not to be ill-treated or tortured during arrest or in custody.
• Confessions made in police custody cannot be used as evidence against the accused.
• A boy under 15 years of age and women cannot be called to the police station only for questioning.
Musings on Bihar outcome
Posted on: November 9, 2015
A major cause, among various others, of BJP’s humiliating performance in the Bihar Assembly elections may be Amit Shah’s inability to enroll fake voters in large numbers as he was believed to have done in Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency from where Narendra Modi had announced his decision to contest. Later the attempt to rig the Delhi Assembly polls was thwarted by the vigilant Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership.
Modi was elected from Varanasi in 2014 with a margin of three lakh and odd votes. When the Election Commission later undertook the task of revision of electoral rolls in Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency, over six lakh forgeries in the electoral rolls were discovered.
Perhaps sensing the manipulations in Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency, AAP and Congress Party leaders complained to the Election Commission about the bogus entries in the voters’ lists before the Delhi Assembly elections but the Election Commission did not pay attention to their complaints. The matter was then raised before the Delhi High Court which pulled up the Election Commission and asked it what action it had taken on the allegation about the presence of a large number of bogus voters in various Assembly constituencies of the national capital.
Only then the Election Commission made a move and detected over 1.2 lakh bogus voters in the electoral lists of Delhi. Narendra Modi’s party, which had done ‘so well’ in the ok Sabha elections only a few months earlier, suffered the worst ever imaginable defeat in the Delhi Assembly elections.
The atmosphere of insecurity among the minorities created on the eve of the Bihar Assembly elections might also have alienated a large sections of the peace-loving people of all castes and creeds from the BJP. The abusive language used by several BJP leaders, most notably by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah also militated against the chances of the BJP. To say that those who would vote against the BJP would be trying to please Pakistan betrayed only mental sickness of BJP president Amit Shah.
An offshoot of the Bihar Assembly elections is the new lease of political life given to discredited Lalu Prasad Yadav by the most absurdly handled poll campaign by the BJP leaders. The alliance of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav turned out to be a deadly combination for the BJP leaders to handle. Soft-spoken Nitish Kumar enjoys the confidence of the majority of the people for his simplicity and his zeal to do something for the common man. He could not be expected to stand up to Narendra Modi’s mostly irrelevant jibes. It was left to Lalu to reply to Modi in his own boorish language which the Yadav leader did brilliantly.
Shivraj Singh Chauhan unhinged
Posted on: January 30, 2012
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan is feeling uneasy because of the RSS attitude, the rumblings within his own party and the Congress onslaught. The RSS attitude had become clear over two years back at the BJP’s national council conclave at Indore. The newly elected party president Nitin Gadkari had virtually snubbed Chauhan (who was sitting with him on the dais) by ignoring him while praising highly the development works being carried on by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in his State. Gadkari had a few words of praise even for Nitish Kumar, only an ally of the BJP, for the good work he was doing in Bihar. Chauhan was even left out of the grouping of top party leaders mentioned by Gadkari towards the close of the three-day conclave.
Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj had then tried to lessen Chauhan’s public humiliation by promptly taking the mike and stating that Gujarat could be a model of good governance but the Madhya Pradesh government was a model of sensitivity (Gujarat good governance ka model ho sakta hai, lekin Madhya Pradesh government samvedansheelta ka model hai).
Later on, State BJP vice-president Raghunandan Sharma created a flutter in the party circles by describing chief minister Chauhan as “ghoshnaveer” (one who makes empty promises). So upset were Chauhan and State BJP president Prabhat Jha that they promptly removed Sharma from the post of vice-president and served a show-cause notice on him seeking his explanation within ten days on his allegedly anti-chief minister utterances. (Jha’s antipathy towards Raghunandan Sharma goes back to the early 1990s when Jha was party PRO virtually watching then chief minister Patwa’s interests and Sharma was the BJP office secretary).
Raghunandan Sharma, a Rajya Sabha member, is not in the habit of talking about party matters in public unless there is a pressing reason for that. More importantly, he has maintained his close association with the RSS. Those who had predicted disciplinary action against him were in for a shock when Sharma replied to the show cause notice without feeling apologetic about his observations.
That Sharma was virtually conveying the RSS sentiments about the chief minister became even more apparent when Chauhan roared at a public function at Indore that his government would include Gita in the school syllabus and dared anyone to oppose it. Chauhan had chosen the opportunity to proclaim his abiding love for Gita at a time when RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was holding an RSS conclave in a neighbouring district. A few days later Sharma, addressing a public function along with Govindacharya, said that those who talked about Gita and philosophy and preached others about the value-oriented politics were themselves practising valueless politics.
In the midst of Chauhan’s problems with the RSS, the Congress party’s no-confidence motion against his government debated in the winter session of the Assembly exposed the rampant corruption and all-pervading inefficiency in various departments. None of his ministers was able to reply to the specific allegations made in the charge-sheet as well as by Congress members some of whom had come well-prepared. In his reply, Chauhan spoke for over three hours but his harangue was ridiculously devoid of substance (as it always is). Half through his speech in the House, an Opposition woman member urged him to please stop because his ranting was now causing headache.
Chauhan and his colleagues were still assessing the damage caused by the no-confidence motion when they received a jolt from unexpected quarters. Chairman of the State BJP’s disciplinary committee and former Rajya Sabha member Kailash Sarang wrote an article in a local Hindi daily in which he described the Congress party’s no-confidence motion as ringing alarm bells for the BJP in the State.
The allegations levelled against the BJP government during the discussion on the no-confidence motion give an indication of the Congress party’s preparedness for the future which, in fact, should serve as alarm bells for the BJP. Sarang recalls that some of the allegations could not be discussed in the House because of technical reasons (such as belonging to the period of the previous Vidhan Sabha). Those allegations could not be discussed in the House but it was certain that the Congress would take them to the people in the coming days. The Opposition was able to present effectively and aggressively the allegations which were included in the no-confidence motion, Sarang observed.
To rub salt into the wounds of the State BJP leaders, Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh promptly wrote to Kailash Sarang congratulating him for showing courage to publicly discuss the shortcomings in his own party. Ajay Singh took the opportunity to reiterate that the allegations levelled in the no-confidence motion were substantiated with facts and figures but the BJP ministers had, instead of replying to them, resorted to dilatory tactics.
A sick joke!
Posted on: August 15, 2011
Shivraj Singh Chauhan had, during his first term as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, written to eight non-Congress chief ministers including Parkash Singh Badal, Nitish Kumar and Mayawati telling them as to how to protest against the Centre’s alleged discrimination against the non-Congress-ruled States.
The childish antic of an upstart chief minister is one thing. What should one say when the entire cabinet comprising veterans like Babulal Gaur, Kailash Vijayvargiya, Jayant Malaiya and Sartaj Singh acts in a similar manner?
The cabinet adopted a resolution on August 9 urging the Centre to hand over to the State government the ten National Highways passing through the State because, the cabinet felt, the Centre was not properly maintaining these Highways. The resolution specifically mentioned that the State government would maintain these Highways from its own resources.
What about the State roads? Petitions are pending in the Madhya Pradesh High Court and the Supreme Court seeking directions to the State government to repair the roads which are in a very bad state almost all over the State. A resident of Kondrigaon village in Sultanpur area has written to Leader of Opposition in Parliament Sushma Swaraj reminding her of her promise made on the Raksha Bandhan day last year that she would ensure repair of the road leading to the village. A year has elapsed but “your promise” remains unfulfilled and the road condition has become much worse, Surat Singh Banjara has written in his letter.
The State Human Rights Commission has registered a complaint about the Bhopal roads which are full of potholes causing frequent mishaps. The complaint was lodged by a class eleventh student of Jawaharlal Nehru School (Bhopal) on August 5, four days before the cabinet adopted the farcical resolution.
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