The politics of the Miramar assault case

Last Saturdays newspaper had an unusual piece of news. It described a fight between a group of people on the Miramar – Dona Paula road – the Marine Drive of Goa – where an innocent passerby – a girl – got stabbed, along with one of the group.
This was unusual because, public brawls are not very common in Goa, and if such incidences do takes place, it has to do with tourists. And public brawls with swords and weapons indeed are so rare, they definitely makes one to sit up and wonder if it is a typing error, of a news from another part of the world.
And then there is the surprising revelation that the assault victim is from Taleigao and the assaulters are from St. Cruz, and all are Goans. That this incidence has taken in broad day light on one of the busier areas close to a Minister’s bungalow and where police presence is found round the clock.
Next day, newspapers inform us that all five St. Cruz persons who assaulted the Taleigao person have been arrested at Ambolim and brought to Panaji. And we wonder how have our policemen become so efficient?
It doesn’t need rocket science to relate this incident to the political developments in the capital, irrespective of the newspaper version that it was a simple quarrel between one man who used to beat up five men so often that the five retaliated in frustration!
Ever since Monserrate revealed his intentions of dropping ideas of contesting elections from Panaji and instead prefer St. Cruz constituency while his wife contested from his home ground of Taleigao, there has been some tension in the air.
The present MLA of St. Cruz definitely must have felt threatened, as was seen at the show of solidarity by congressmen who gathered last month to celebrate her birthday. And the present stabbing must have been something to do with the ground work friction between the two opposing groups, now that the elections are due in less than a year hence.
The victim’s Godfather apparently has enough clout with the police to galvanize action and get the offenders within a day. It also makes one wonder why Goa’s policemen are capable of arresting offenders who have fled the state, but are unable to catch offenders who rob people’s houses even in day light.

The tragedy of the Indian cricket team

When Sachin Tendulkar had led the Indian cricket team to England in 1999, Kapil Dev, the coach had advised the team to “enjoy” as they were trashed by the Englishmen in the test series. We are not sure whether Sachin was amused by the idea, or whether he looked for help from elsewhere, but Dhoni, the captain of the present Indian cricket team which has been trashed 0-4 by the English cricket team, seems to have the same advise to offer his team mates.

So Sreesanth, who was inducted into the side when Zaheer got injured in the first test, after getting a trashing from the English batsman, said: "I enjoyed it." When quizzed further, he added: "I kept running in hard. It's not frustrating; it's not hard on the body. I enjoy it."

What else can he say, when the Indian captain Dhoni, himself kept reiterating that the key was not to worry too much about the result, but to try and enjoy the game. So it was not amusing to hear Sreesanth say the same thing after one of India’s worst day on the field.

The Indian cricket team apparently play to enjoy the game while the whole nation believes it’s a national shame to lose all four test matches to a team that was a year ago considered one of the worst teams in the international circuit. And that too at a stage when the Indian team is considered the number one team in test cricket!

If it were not for the nation’s attention being held by the more important agenda at hand on the Lokpal Bill issue, Dhoni’s remark would have had more disastrous consequences. We don’t know whether it was by design that the Indian team should lose so terribly in England.

The match fixing ghost which had faded away once again makes a appearance in the background. Was it too much cricket and strain on the cricketers which led to injuries or is it a different reason?

Does India really not have a bench strength to replace the injured players? Yet wasn’t it a few months in the past when the team comprising the bench players that won India matches?

Are the cricketers killing the goose that has laid them golden eggs till now?

A fight that we need to win – desperately!

The Manmohan Singh government continues to send postmen to negotiate with the Anna Hazare team as the latters fast crosses the two hundred hour mark. And postmen being merely postmen continue to spout the line handed over to them – parliamentary procedures cannot be short-circuited.

There are no decision takers in the team of postmen appointed by the government to discuss the demands set by Anna Hazare and hence the talks fail to reach any conclusion. The Prime Minister continues to be a dummy who prefers not to talk, and in the absence of Sonia Gandhi, maintains a stoic silence.

The acting chief Rahul Gandhi who is known more for inserting his foot in mouth every time he opens his mouth to talk, has probably been advised to keep it shut. His advisors prefer to send him to distant villages on Quixotic missions to keep him away from the television cameras and their awkward questions.

Meanwhile congress party spokesmen prefer to attempt to divide the civic society by roping in prominent personalities and writers to create an anti-Hazare wave, and still fail. The leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley hit the hammer on the head, when he said that the enormity of protests is proportionate to the public anger and the enormity of the anger is proportionate to the corruption.

The government is not willing to draft a strong bill on the argument that a Lokpal bill alone cannot tackle corruption. Manmohan Singh said that he does not have a magic wand to rid the country of corruption. But he doesn’t realize that no country tackles corruption with magic wands.

It needs only a committed government which does not tolerate corruption to end corruption. And the Manmohan Singh government clearly doesn’t want corruption to end. It is obviously more concerned about maintaining status quo.

Anna Hazare has rightly said that this is the second fight for freedom. The fight is more important because politics has become a family business and corruption has become the tool for increasing the fiscal status of the family business.

The government has with their inability to draft an appropriate Lokpal Bill have let down the people who have elected them. And Anna Hazare needs all the support he can get to fight a battle which he is doing for you and me.

We desperately need to win this fight!

The law of the land

It is often said that the three pillars of democracy- the Judiciary, the Executive and the legislature are expected to work independent of each other. Yet the political class is often accused of interfering and influencing the working of the executive while the Judiciary has been labeled pure and working independently. And it is an accepted norm without asking any questions.

Yet the Anna Hazare drama that unfolded in the last two weeks has exposed many a indications where rules and regulations have been overridden setting new precedents. It raises just one question – is this how the Judiciary works behind the scenes away from the public glare?

The first glaring role of the Judicial Magistrate was when the Commissioner of Police arrests Anna Hazare who threatened to go on a fast; he had been arrested even before the fast began. The Judicial Magistrate not only accepted the arrest as being under the rule of law, but went on to order a remand of seven days under Judicial custody.

There is no law of the land that any person can be arrested for going on a fast. Yet this arrest has taken place and reported widely not only in India, but the world over, and yet the vigilant Supreme Court or even the High Court does not take any suo moto cognizance of the illegality committed by a lower Court.

Comical does it seem that the same court which thought it necessary to keep Anna Hazare under Judicial lock up for seven days, reverses its own order in the evening and orders his release from custody. The entire exercise makes one notice how the police and the judiciary have acted on commands of the politicians.

Have our judiciary and police – the two pillars of democracy become used to so unconstitutional governance that they have become a willing tool in the hands of the political masters. Doesn’t this speak volumes of our country’s democracy?

 It is inevitable that the Anna Hazare movement has taken shape into a people’s movement. The Congress government does not realize even now that the Jan Lokpal Bill has been set aside and it is the resentment against the government that is being vented through this movement.

The government may argue that the Lokpal Bill initiated in Parliament has scope for improvement. But the public is far ahead in its thinking and may ultimately ask for new representatives in the Lok Sabha.

Disaster management in Goa is better

The pipeline carrying naphta from the Marmagoa harbour to Zuari Industries in Zuarinagar sprung a leakage reportedly when the work of digging by earth moving machinery for the expansion of highways was underway. Some locals allege that it occurred when miscreants tried to drill a hole into the pipeline mistaking it for the petroleum pipeline leading to Zuari Indian Oil Tanking premises.

The result was that large quantity of naphta flowed into the stream leading into a lake at Mangor in Vasco, and it caught fire accidentally. The inferno caused huge damage to the vegetation as well as a number of houses. Five persons were seriously injured because of the fire.

The naphta flowed into wells which were used by the locals polluting the water. On the positive side, the fire tenders of the State as well as the Indian Navy responded immediately and brought the fire under control and averted what could have been a much larger catastrophe.

Though local newspapers tried to point fingers and find fault with the Disaster Management Group of the government, the overall management at the site was to be appreciated. The affected people were immediately evacuated from the site and provided with prompt assistance both the government agencies as well as by the Zuari Industries group.

Around two hundred houses around the site of disaster were affected and these have reportedly been evacuated and have been provided food and shelter by locals as well as by the industry sources. This prompt action both by the government and industry needs to be appreciated.

The chemical found in the water of two wells on the hills western slopes have been extracted and the extracted water with the chemical has been taken to the Zuari Indian Oil Tanking premises. The other wells in the locality have not been contaminated.

The work by the agencies including the Disaster Management Cell of the government needs to be appreciated because similar disaster around the world has had much more fatalities and cause much more destruction. In this fire, there were two domestic gas cylinder explosions, but there were no casualties when it had spread to the houses.

We need to accept the fact that such accidents are pure accidents. The police had in the past caught offenders who had tapped into the petrol pipeline of Zuari Indian Oil Tanking and it is obvious that in the present case some miscreants had tried to attempt the same.

Why don’t sportsperson have anything to say on corruption?

The Indian cricket team has been reduced to a bunch of floundering amateurs against an inexorable English side in the current Test series. Victory has come so ridiculously easy for the Englishmen that the Indian team seems to be trying to improvise on the worst margin to lose in each following match.

The hottest topic of discussion on prime time on our television news channel after the defeat in the third test was the reasons of such alarming margins of defeat. Cricket experts and everybody’s uncle fell over each other trying to jostle for space in television court rooms, and each had a opinion to shout.

That was until 15^th August came and Anna Hazare took over. And suddenly the national game of India has been sidelined into a byline at the bottom of the television screen to be shown intermittently during advertisement breaks.

Yet sports has featured in the national shame list, the latest being the doping scandal in athletics; who can forget Kalmadi and his hall of shame in the Common Wealth Games. Till now, nobody has associated the present set of our cricketers to the corruption scene; I am sure, if the discussion interrupted by Anna Hazare had continued, this could have been attributed as one of the reasons.

For a world number one team to fall from glory without even a whimper or a fight, with the inclusion of a batsman who is considered God in cricket, if it doesn’t raise eyebrows, what else will?

After the Azharuddin match fixing scandal, the Indian cricket team has not been accused of any match fixing charges. They may have been accused of being more devoted to their commercial schedules, but other wise no serious charge has been made. Occasionally they have been shown interested in social causes, but they have used black ribbons to signify their protest for causes in the past.

Surprising that when Indians the world over are reacting to Anna’s anti-corruption drive, when Indians of every walk of life expressing some opinion on corruption, not a single sportsperson has anything to say.

No sportsperson wants to join Anna in his crusade against corruption; no tennis player, no athlete, no cricketer, nobody. We even have lawyers striking work in support of Anna, even children of policemen working in Tihar jail passing out free food and water to protestors, but not even a peep from our sportspersons.

That shouldn’t raise eyebrows, that should raise your whole forehead!

Opportunity of Goans to go to Tihar Jail missed?

The High Court of Bombay at Goa objected to the government decision of accepting a bid for the running of the Mapusa District Hospital on a Public-Private-Partnership basis from Radiant Life Care Pvt Ltd. This company had asked for an amount of Rs.1.97 crores per year from the government to run the hospital.

The government had rejected the offer from Shalby Ltd which had offered to run the hospital without any cost from the government on the grounds that the bid was not in proper format. This has brought onto focus the approach of the administration in matters of public revenue.

And this was highlighted by the high court of Bombay at Goa, which observed: "There is no doubt that since the matter involves public revenue the government was duty-bound by law to accept the lowest or the most beneficial tender."

The court also held that in the present case, the state, like any prudent businessman, ought to have sought the necessary clarification if it entertained any doubts, since the tender which it left out of consideration appeared to be financially the best offer.
The court observed: "It seems plain that (Shalby) does not want any payment from the government nor do they intend to make any payment. It is understandable that a question could have arisen in the mind of the (government) as to the exact meaning of the quotation, but then the simple answer to that was to ask the petitioner what they meant."
The court directed the government to consider the existing offers afresh and to set aside the letter of intent issued to Radiant.

The government of the State of Goa is following the lines of the government at the Centre in matters of decisions that reek of corruption. It does not seem to draw lessons from the inmates of Tihar Jail – A. Raja and Suresh Kalmadi who have been lodged there precisely for similar decisions.

So in the days to come, if the Courts had not stopped the government from accepting the bid of Radiant Life Care Pvt Ltd, we would probably have had a Goan in company with the cabinet ministers in Tihar Jail.

Opportunity missed?

The nationwide support for Anna Hazare

No one had anticipated the extent of country wide support for Anna Hazare and his crusade against corruption. Within hours of the news of his arrest breaking on the networks, spontaneous protests broke out all over the country including Goa leaving the government open mouthed at the national demonstration.

When television channels brought news of his arrest at 7.30 am in Delhi, there was outrage and anger at the government’s high handedness even amongst people who had reservations on his method of protest. And the government once again revealed its political immaturity in handling the campaign.

Anna in his address to the nation on Monday had urged his supporters not to resort to violence. "If you take to violence, it will take this government minutes to crush you," he had said. As Anna was whisked away by the police, Delhi rediscovered Gandhigiri when the protestors shunned from raining the police with their favourite weapon- the stone.

Instead chants of “Bharat Mata ki Jai” rang through the air embodied the spirit of the new age Indian protestor. The Delhi police too had a tough task because they had to tackle irate protestors all over the city instead of at the single place of arrest.

Far away from the fast-moving developments in Delhi, people from all walks of life took to the streets spontaneously, in rain and shine, not just in the metros but even in smaller towns. Everywhere, the protesters denounced the government and chanted slogans demanding a stronger Lokpal Bill.

The fact that Anna had been lodged in Tihar's Jail, the same building in which CWG scam accused Suresh Kalmadi is also lodged, seemed to many an insult to injury. "Democracy had been murdered," was the common refrain across the country, as protesters swelled in numbers. Candlelight processions were taken out in the evening in several metros.

The government has been caught with its back against the wall and there seems to be nobody bold enough to take a decision. The Prime Minister has become a mute spectator and has shunned the press and media. And as expected the Congress High Command which emerges every time credit is to be taken for achievements is conspicuous by its absence.

Party spokespersons are making ribald statements and then realizing that they have put their foot in their mouths are quietly withdrawing from the scene. The only alternative left with the Congress is to resign en-mass and call for reelections or accept Anna Hazare’s version of the Lokpal Bill.

The Anna Hazare Ultimatum

Anna Hazare has been detained from an apartment that he was staying in today morning after police reportedly failed to persuade him to call off his fast to defy prohibitory orders and stage a protest at Jai Prakash Narain Park in Delhi.

The Parliament witnessed uproarious scenes shortly after it assembled for the ongoing monsoon session over the arrest. Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were adjourned amid noisy scenes and arguments between the opposition and treasury benches.

The Congress seems to be totally at sea when it comes to dealing with Anna Hazare on corruption. They don’t seem to realize that situation like these have to be dealt with good political wisdom. The party has made three lawyers – P. Chidambaran, Kapil Sibal and Manish Tiwari, in charge of handling the Hazare team.

They probably are trying to match the father-son duo lawyer team in the Hazare team. Whoever made the decision to unleash the three on Hazare before he is to begin his fast has obviously not been in touch with the ground realities.

First, they try to argue that the civil society is trying to subvert the parliamentary democracy. They don’t realize that the common man is disenchanted with their own political representatives. When this method failed, they presented their own draft of the bill, which the Hazare team called it the Jokepal Bill.

When even this did not work, the next step was vengeful and naïve. They thought of discrediting Anna Hazare himself. . Manish Tewari went to town by digging out an old report of a Commission to prove Anna as corrupt. Then Sibal joined to question the source of funding of Anna's movement. Chidambaram added that Anna's fast would be forcibly ended.

When they failed to get any reactions on this from the newspapers, they have now detained Anna from entering J P Park. What the Congress is unable to grasp is that the issue is now not “their bill and our bill” but the whole issue of corruption itself. The Congress is not able to convince the civic society that they are against corruption.

The government is not realising that Anna is articulating the emotion of distress of the people in response to rampant corruption. The Congress desperately needs someone in authority who is able to think politically. And Prime Minister Manmohan Singh definitely is not that man.

The ageing political scenario of India

The average age of the cabinet ministers in the Manmohan Singh government is 65 years of which 14 ministers including the Prime Minister are over 70 years of age. Just one minister is in the 40s while the average age of the council of ministers is 60 years.

Contrast this with the Prime Minister of Great Britain who is 45 years old, and the President of the United States of America is 50 years. The three youngest ministers of state in the Manmohan Singh government are under 35 years and all three of them are the children of influential politicians.

Rahul Gandhi at the age of 41 years does not want to take up any ministerial position in the government as he feels he is too young and not ready to take the responsibility yet.

Unfortunately, the youngsters in Indian politics have little to offer to the government except their lineage. Most of them are the sons and daughters of politicians who see electoral politics as extension of their fiefdoms. They rarely speak in parliament and have never been seen taking up social issues.

The only thing they seem to be aware of are their exaggerated sense of entitlement attending well-orchestrated meetings and giving speeches which are tutored. In case they do speak out spontaneously, it is always to retract back their statements as they have no independent stand on contentious issues.

The youth outfits of political parties like Youth Congress of the Congress party and the Yuva Morcha of the BJP have turned out to be event managers organizing events around the country with no set agenda. Youth party elections have turned nurseries for introducing children and spouses of elected politicians.

Their meetings and seminars don’t espouse ideas but turn out to be well organized parades and discussions that have little to do with youth concerns. There is no cut and thrust of new ideas that can shape the minds of a new India.

Guilty till proven innocent

Television news channels have now turned court rooms with fish market cacophony ambiance at prime time, where the politicians are “tried” before a jury of prominent press persons. The principle of jurisprudence where an accused is presumed innocent till proven guilty has now been turned on its head.

The news anchor who presides over this “discussion” has turned judge and television has turned into a masala movie ambiance court where perception matters more than legal niceties.

Politicians and heavy weights like A Raja and Suresh Kalmadi have been deemed guilty by these television courts even before charge sheets have been filed. In the case of A Raja, there was suspicion of him deliberately misusing the telecom ministry for personal benefit, while in case of Kalmadi, there was suspicion that he had manipulated games contracts.

In normal circumstances, with the low moral standards of our politicians, these would never have resigned from their posts and offices. The present political morality is that even prima facie evidence of their involvement in illegal activities is not enough; a minister will resign only when he or she is convicted by a court of law.

Since the process of prosecution and conviction is long and cumbersome, these politicians would have continued in their ministerial office even as the cases drag in the courts of law for years. And they take recourse in saying “let the law take its course and prove me guilty”.

It is this growing frustration in the public minds that have provided fodder for television news channels to hold their daily courts at prime time, and thus generate high TRPs. The tardy judicial process has aptly created an environment of playing accuser, judge and prosecutor.

The result is that resignations have been forced on such tainted politicians by the courts of television by creating sufficient amount of cacophony.

There was a time when the merest whiff of a scandal was considered sufficient for a minister to resign even when there was no evidence to implicate them. Those times are gone and we are now in times of a Shibu Soren who returns back to the union cabinet immediately after securing a bail in a murder case or a Mayawati who continues to be the UP Chief Minister even while facing a disproportionate assets case in the Supreme Court.

And so would Kalamadi and Raja have continued in office it weren’t for the television courts. The latest accused on trial in the television court is Sheila Dixit, the Chief Minister of Delhi.

We have to wait and see how long the judges of television continue with the cacophony!

Unreasonable demands by tribal leaders

 A morcha was held under the banner of United Tribal Associations Alliance at Panaji yesterday. It culminated at Azad Maidan where several tribal leaders spoke before a crowd of nearly four thousand people. This meeting was held, reportedly, to protest against the arrest of BJP MLAs Mr. Vasudev Gaonkar of Sanguem and Ramesh Tawadkar of Poinginim, and former MLA Mr. Prakash Velip. They had been reportedly arrested by the Crime Branch for leading a protest outside its office in Dona Paula.

The tribal leaders in this meeting at Panaji yesterday also demanded from the government, a ban on sale of scheduled tribe land, notification of tribal areas and scheduled land for upliftment of the scheduled tribe community. They also wanted simplification of procedure for issue of the caste certificate.

The May 25 “rasta rook” agitation which turned violent, was initially held to demand for reservation in government jobs. This spate of agitations and demonstrations have been a regular feature with the tribal associations. It started off with the demand for funds ear marked for scheduled tribe areas which the government in the past have used for other projects.

The government subsequently acceded to this demand and earmarked Rs. 10 crore for the development of scheduled tribe welfare. Then came the demand for setting up of Scheduled Tribe Commission, which again the government acceded to.

The tribal leaders felt that the Rs.10 crore budget was not sufficient, and hence led a morcha to the Crime Branch Police Station at Dona Paula, where they were arrested.

It is a sorry state of affairs in the State of Goa that the government acts only when morchas are held. And the tribal leaders are resorting to morchas at the drop of a hat.

We get the feeling that the tribal leaders don’t want their problems resolved.

When they demanded for a tribal commission, they got it. When they demanded money for development, they got it.

And now, at the end of their wits, they are demanding release of their leaders arrested for the Balli violence, and apparently they are not going to get it.

So more vociferous is the demand.

Tomorrow, if by chance, they do get released, then we can expect one more morcha with several more unreasonable demands.

The government must put its foot down and stop tolerating all this. If the tribals have any genuine grievances, they must approach the government through the proper channel via the State Tribal Commission.

Let the Lokpal Bill get through

The Government’s decision to go ahead with the Lokpal Bill and Anna Hazare’s threat to go ahead with his fast has generated much heat in the media. While one section supports Anna Hazare (on the distant hope that this is what people want) another section approves the government decision with the faint hope that at least the Bill will finally go through (any anamolies can be rectified later as amendments).

We need to examine at least the good things of the Government version of the Lokpal Bill before deciding whether we don’t want this version. The most undesired stand by Anna Hazare is the “all or nothing” approach taken by his team. They want the total version of the bill drafted by them or nothing at all. They are not willing to accept any of the suggestions put by the government.

The stand taken by the Hazare team that the Lokpal must be an authority in itself. It wants the Lokpal an all-powerful body. In the governments version, the Judiciary has been left out. The Lokpal needs supervision and only the Judiciary can do it; for this it has to be left out within its own purview. This is one point that the Hazare team will not find any support.

The governments version of the Lokpal Bill does not need anyone’s permission in pursuing corruption against politicians and bureaucrats. In other Acts, the permission of the Speaker in case of politicians and the Government in case of senior bureaucrats, is required, which has been dispensed with.

The governments version of the Lokpal Bill also lays down the procedure for selection of the Institution of the Lokpal fairly well. The Chairman of the Lokpal has to be a serving or retires Judge of the Supreme Court, and of the eight members, four are from the Judiciary. Because of this clause, there will be more faith in the functioning of the Lokpal.

The government’s version of the Lokpal Bill also stresses more on the highest posts of the bureaucracy as well. There is no scope of the higher officers to shift the blame on the juniors. Because of this, we need to support the governments version of the bill.

Finally, the Anna Hazare team is peeved because the serving Prime Minister is not included in the Bill. This problem can be handled differently. In case the Prime Minister is involved in any case of corruption while in office, it may be on account of any portfolio that he handles. In such cases, there is no bar on tackling the same on the Minister of that portfolio.

We must remember that the aim of the Lokpal Bill is to remove corruption at the highest levels. The lower rung of the government officers are corrupt because they get protection from the top; if the top themselves are so vulnerable, there is no scope for corruption at the bottom.

The CAG erred in making public its findings

The auditor of a company cannot decide on the policies the management ought to follow. This is common sense. It is the management that decide what risks the company is to take to progress. Not the auditor. And in case there are decisions taken which have resulted in losses, it is the duty of the auditor to point out these. These observations by the auditor are taken as feedback for further improvement, and not as fodder for pointing fingers and pulling down the management.

A good auditor always refrains from sensationalism. He does not go to the press with his findings. He does not call a general body meeting to announce his findings. He places his findings before the Board of Directors, and they decide on action to be taken in the matter, if at it is necessary. It is not binding on them to punish anyone on these findings.

Yet, in our country, we find the CAG doing just that. It immediately called a press conference to announce its findings. And the press, which thrives on sensationalism, immediately pounced on the report and crucified publicly every person named in the report without verifying the veracity of the report. It is insane. No where in the world does an auditor hold a press conference.

In normal circumstances, in a company if the management has taken a risk, the Board never comes in the way of its thinking; in fact it expects more of it. At the same time, it does not ignore the auditors report. If the auditors do point out any fraud or corruption charges, it may even sack the management.

The CAG has called a press conference to reveal its findings on the Commonwealth Games. It has named the Chief Minister of New Delhi as well as the Prime Minsiter’s Office as the culprit in addition to Suresh Kalmadi for taking decisions during the organization of the Games.

In this report, the CAG has accused the Chief Minister of Delhi of spending nearly Rs 100 crores on Delhi’s beautification. The accusation implies that this money should not have been spent. There is no hint of any corruption in this observation. The CAG has merely pointed out that this is a “wastage of public funds”.

If one were to go by the CAG’s advice (assuming the CAG had given it before the spends were incurred), then Delhi may have looked like a third world city during the Games and the foreign sportsperson who attended the Games would take home the image of a third world country.

The toothless Lokpal Bill in the Lok Sabha

The Government introduced the Lokpal bill in the Lok Sabha on Thursday amidst protests from the opposition over the non-inclusion of serving Prime Minister within its ambit. The focus incidentally is only on the inclusion or non-inclusion of the Prime Minister in the ambit, but the politicians – both ruling and opposition are, probably deliberately, are trying to take the focus away from other flaws in the bill.

For one, in a radical move, the Bill forbids the Lokpal to register any FIR without first giving a hearing to the accused. This is contrary to the general criminal law under which the police are obliged to register a case simply on the basis of information suggesting the commission of a cognizable offence.
Secondly, as if its additional requirement of giving a hearing to the accused at the pre-FIR stage is not bad enough, the Bill stipulates that the Lokpal, on completing the investigation, should give another hearing to the accused before filing a charge sheet in court. This is again a gratuitous safeguard. The legislation spares no thought for the increased risk to whistleblowers on account of such premature disclosure of evidence to the accused.
Third, the Bill provides that a cross case could be filed against the complainant and he would be liable to be punished severely if the complaint was found "false and frivolous or vexatious". The supreme irony lies in the provision that the minimum jail term for a "false or frivolous" complaint is two years, while the public servant in the event of conviction for corruption could get as little as six months.
In fact, such provisions make you wonder whether the Lokpal envisaged by the government can be effective at all.

Hence, is the government along with the opposition deliberately are trying to pass through a bill with anomalies so that in practicality, it is not possible to implement it.

The earlier Bill enjoined every department to come up with a citizens' charter spelling out its commitments relating to delivery of services or fulfilment of objectives. As a corollary, every department was required to designate a public grievance redressal officer to whom any aggrieved person may file a complaint for non-compliance of the citizens' charter. The Anna Hazare had demanded that a violation of the charter should carry sanctions. But, rather than providing teeth to it, the latest Bill drops the charter altogether. The message clearly is that inefficiency cannot be equated with corruption and so there is no need to give a statutory status to the citizens' charter.

Arm-twisting coalition partners to gain a point or two

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) National Secretary Jitendra Deshprabhu was finally arrested by the Crime Branch of the Goa Police in a criminal case of illegal mining. He had filed for an anticipatory bail in the Additional District Court which was rejected as he had ignored summons to appear in the crime branch on three occasions to answer the charges filed against him.

As expected  the NCP reacted by saying that this is a part of the political vendetta against Deshprabhu. NCP's Goa observer Bharati Chawan said that Deshprabhu could not be considered guilty till he was charge-sheeted and convicted.

This would not have been the case again had the Judiciary not intervened and taken a pro-active role. It may be recalled that activists Kashinath Shetye, Ketan Govekar and Pradeep Kakodkar had in filed a complaint in the police alleging illegal mining taking place in Korgao in the property of Deshprabhu.

After the police failed to draw an FIR against Deshprabhu, they had to approach the Judicial Magistrate First Class and get directions issued to the police to register the FIR against Deshprabhu.

In other words, the political class had flexed its muscle to see that a case must not be registered against one of their own, but only because the Judiciary stepped in, could the police be made to act as per law.

Shetye and others alleged that Deshprabhu had cheated the state government to the tune of Rs 50 crore due to the illegal extraction of ore in his property located at Pernem. The case was also registered against officials of various departments saying all were directly or indirectly responsible for the government losing Rs 50 crore.

Meanwhile the Crime Branch has already arrested Gitesh Naik, who was working with Mr. Deshprabhu as a contractor to transport the ore. The State Mines and Geology Department had earlier confirmed the illegal ore extraction and slapped a fine of Rs. 1.7 crore on Mr. Deshprabhu.

It is now worth waiting to see how the ruling Congress use this situation to arm twist the NCP in their threat to contest the elections independently. One thing is certain, the Congress never fails to use any adverse situation either to its own partymen or to its coalition party, to its benefit and we can expect a twist in the tale in the days to come.