HC directive to govt in fund misuse case

The Gujarat high court on Friday asked the state government to inform what steps it intended to take in connection with the alleged financial fraud involving BJP MLA from Radhanpur, Shankar Chaudhary.
    In this case, Chaudhary was asked by the HC two years ago to cough up Rs 21 lakh, which was siphoned off by the legislator from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) for the purpose of building a school damaged in the 2001 earthquake.
    Chaudhary was accused of spending the amount for construction of his own private school. The court had asked him to pay the money back with 10% interest. The court had also ordered an inquiry against the erring officials and observed that if need be, there should be an investigation by CID (crime). Following these directions, the government set up a committee to look into the roles of government officials in this alleged scam.
    After nearly two years, petitioner-complainant Farsu Goklani approached the HC again complaining against government’s inaction. The state government on Friday submitted an affidavit stating that the panel might require six more months to probe roles of government officials.

Incredible impunity

Of all the potential and credible contenders to be the next prime minister, the one least deserving is Narendra Modi

Here There Everywhere | Salil Tripathi

Posted: Wed, Feb 29 2012. 8:27 PM IST

Of all the reasons given to counter charges that Narendra Modi failed to protect the lives and property of thousands of Gujaratis (a large majority of them being Muslims) in the 2002 riots that followed the burning of a train compartment in Godhra in which 58 Hindus died, the most despicable is to equate those riots with the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 in northern India. It is despicable because it suggests a bizarre parity: if Congress supporters can target Sikhs after two bodyguards (who happened to be Sikh) assassinated Indira Gandhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) can also act with impunity.

Of all the explanations of Modi’s mismanagement of those riots, the least convincing is the defence that Modi had just assumed power and was new to his job at that time. Rajiv Gandhi was certainly new to his job on 31 October, as he was made prime minister soon after his mother was murdered, and presumably he had other things on his mind (like grief) than planning a pogrom. The day of the Godhra incident, Modi had been chief minister for over four months, and he was not a novice.

Of all the rationales of Modi’s conduct then, the least persuasive is that he acted quickly, ordering preventive arrests and restoring law and order. While initial rioting stopped in four days, it resurfaced about 10 days later, and went on for months, where mosques were razed, property destroyed, people uprooted and killed, with the last embers of fire subsiding only in June, a full four months after the initial spark.

Of all the hype surrounding Modi, the oddest are some of the claims concerning the state’s economic performance. Gujarat has done well in recent years, but it lost ground soon after the riots, picking up pace only later.

In the five years between 2004-05 and 2009-10, Gujarat’s per capita income nearly doubled from Rs32,021 to Rs63,961. In the same period its neighbour Maharashtra, the perceived languishing laggard, saw its per capita income grow from Rs35,915 to Rs74,027. Several states besides Gujarat have shown triple digit growth in their gross domestic product (the value of goods and services produced in a year) in recent years, and Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh have bigger economies. Gujarat now runs a revenue deficit—it spends more than it earns—and its surplus has disappeared. Several other states have improved their fiscal positions meanwhile. Reforms? Five states passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act before Gujarat did in 2005, and 20 states preceded Gujarat in implementing value-added tax. Surplus power? Several states, including some in the North-East, have that. Agricultural growth? And did the Narmada project, which preceded Modi, have nothing to do with it?

Of all the reasons given excusing Modi’s role in 2002, the least dignified is the idea that Gujarat’s economic growth offsets and, therefore, somehow compensates for the butchery of those months. To cite a good deed to mitigate the effects of a bad one is often irrelevant and such reasoning is contemptible.

Of all the achievements ascribed to Modi, the most tenuous credits Gujarati entrepreneurship to Modi’s leadership. Gujarati businesses have thrived in hostile business climate in different parts of the world. Remove controls and streamline procedures, and Gujarati traders will do even better. To claim credit for that is like a Kashmiri chief minister claiming credit for the beauty of his state.

Of all the justifications for Modi, unusual is the characterization of the special investigation team’s (SIT) reported “clean chit” to exonerate him, as if it paves the way for his path to the office of the prime minister. That assumes there are no other rivals within the BJP, and that he will be acceptable to allies in spite of the taints. SIT’s report, not yet public, appears to suggest that a case implicating Modi in the Ehsan Jafri murder may be difficult. Threshold for evidence in criminal trials is understandably high, and proving complicity is not easy. But Jafri’s was one of nearly 1,000 deaths in Gujarat at that time (going strictly by the official count). If not Modi, who was responsible for that colossal and systemic failure of law and order in those months? To suggest that the victims’ loved ones and the survivors should move on and let bygones be bygones, insults the survivors tenaciously seeking justice. Time heals wounds, but impunity and denial of justice revives pain.

Of all the assertions about Modi’s Gujarat, the least convincing is the way those cases are being handled. Victims have found it hard to get local lawyers in Gujarat. Witnesses have faced intimidation. The Supreme Court has had to transfer cases out of the state, and judges have chastised the state for using its powers to prosecute the victims’ rights activist Teesta Setalvad.

And so, of all the potential and credible contenders to be the next prime minister, the least deserving candidate is Narendra Modi.

THE VOICE OF GUJARAT’S RURAL MASSES

WHILE Narendra Modi discovered ‘ Sadbhavana’ in 2011, it was Dr Kanu Kalsaria, who had set up Sadbhavana Trust Hospital in January 1985 in Mahuva. Operational since August 1985, this hospital linked the lean 57- year- old surgeon to the rural masses of Mahuva. His work among the people propelled him to electoral politics and since 1998, Kalsaria has been the undefeated BJP candidate from Mahuva.

Today, apart from the hospital, Kalsaria is also attached to several other charitable trusts in the area. The amiable Kalsaria’s trouble with Modi started when he protested against the setting up of a cement plant in Mahuva by Nirma.

Mahuva, the coastal block of Bhavnagar, which was severely affected by salinity ingress, turned into a green zone after the Keshubhai Patel government built four check dam cum tidal regulatory structures ( CDTRS) across a stretch of 40 km at a cost of over ` 60 crore in 1999.

While the fate of agriculture in the area brightened with CDTRS, the Modi government allocated 4500 hectare land to Nirma for a cement plant. The plant would have displaced as many as 30,000 people apart from irreversibly damaging the agriculture in the area and exploiting the limestone reserve, which serves as a natural barrier for salinity ingress. With an apathetic government on one hand and greedy corporate on the other, Kalsaria carried on his crusade against the plant and was even assaulted by goons near the site of the proposed plant. But his grit paid off and Nirma had to give up their plan. In the process, Kalsaria emerged as the voice of the dispossessed in Saurashtra.

While initially the BJP’s state leadership ignored him, today, Kalsaria is a nightmare for the party. Expulsion would only make him a martyr. Kalsaria knows that the party cannot field him anymore, but that is of little consequence to him.

UNION minister for telecommunications and human resource development Kapil Sibal ruffled many feathers with his comment expressing the desire to regulate social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. Predictably, the Twitterati lampooned him at length.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, himself a regular on Twitter, wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to attack his favourite target — the United Progressive Alliance ( UPA) government.

He was quick to fire a salvo against Sibal. “ Babasaheb Ambedkar enshrined freedom of expression in the Constitution and on his nirvan diwas ( death anniversary), the UPA is seeking to to snatch it away! People are best judge,” the combative chief minister tweeted on Wednesday.

Of course, this support for the freedom of speech is rather interesting, coming from a politician who is known to have little tolerance towards dissent.

Modi meets his match from within the BJP

OPPOSING political currents are meeting, and their interaction is steadily raising the temperature along coastal Gujarat.

As the two principal political forces in Gujarat clashed in Bhavnagar, about 80 kilometers away from the famous ship breaking yard of Alang during Narendra Modi’s Sadbhavana fast last Saturday, the chief minister was challenged by a third force. Quietly in the same town, the discontent of the dispossessed and displaced found its voice — a leader who had emanated from the same cradle as Narendra Modi and his ilk.

Modi sat, stood and waved from an elevated dais fortified with fierce gun- toting security men and the state machinery put in every effort to mobilise a jingoistic crowd. But it was BJP MLA Kanu Kalsaria, who sat on a parallel Samvedana Parv a few kilometers away, who got the people talking.

Dr Kalsaria, who has been elected three times consecutively from Mahuva, has for all practical purposes emerged as the face of rural Gujarat’s discontent against Modi regime. And the otherwise authoritarian Gujarat BJP appears helpless before this lean 57 year old surgeon. Despite Kalsaria’s tirade against Narendra Modi, the BJP can only hope that he would one day resign from the party on his own. Contrast this with the treatment the party had meted out to the heavyweights like Keshubhai Patel, Kashiram Rana, Suresh Mehta and several others and the predicament that Gujarat BJP finds itself in with respect to Kalsaria becomes only more evident.

MODI sat in a royal tent, with all the amenities to take the heat off him as devotees queued up for a darshan. The main Opposition party — the Congress — did stage a routine counter fast at a pandal erected a few kilometers away, by the Bor Talav, a dying lake that was once the centre of the town. If Modi’s fast was a show of the state’s arrogance and opulence, Congress betrayed the monotony of routine opposition. On the other side of the lake, in the scorching afternoon sun, Kalsaria and his motley crowd sat unguarded.

The surgeon did not really speak, it was for the people to say what they wanted to and their anger was for all to hear — be it Ibrahim Illiyas, the fisherman from Mundra in Kutch, or the ten- yearold farmer boy who only managed to say “ nobody listens to us, no one,” before vanishing into the crowd. It was, however, their earnestness and steely resolve that signified the fuming amber of discontent in rural Gujarat, which is waiting for someone to stoke it properly. Gujarat’s ‘ Development’ story has certainly not reached these people so far.

Kalsaria took on Modi about two- and- a- half years back, when he resisted the corporate giant Nirma which was setting up a multi- crore cement plant in his constituency Mahuva. The proposed plant threatened to destroy the fertile agricultural land that had been developed by the local people over the years.

Despite having the state government’s support, the company had to retrace its footsteps.

Kalsaria, who had spearheaded a people’s movement, emerged as the man who delivered.

While the BJP initially ignored him, his support grew and soon enough the unassuming doctor became a rallying point for Gandhians, activists and farmers, who were getting the rough end of Modi’s development stick. Today, Kalsaria is the face of the farmer’s struggle for their land across Gujarat.

His strategy has been simple.

While movement against land acquisition is on at various pockets in Gujarat, Kalsaria never has tried to usurp the leadership anywhere, but has not shied away from lending his support to their cause either.

“ I don’t know what these movements will lead to, but at this point it is important that I do what is right and that’s what I am doing,” he says. The steel of his resolve shines through his bright smile. One is more than tempted to believe in him and his constituency does. “ I am not against anyone, I am only standing up for the farmers who are suffering,” he says. “ But they ( the BJP) think I am against them,” he adds with a smile. The dichotomy is for the BJP to resolve.

Modi meets his match from within the BJP

OPPOSING political currents are meeting, and their interaction is steadily raising the temperature along coastal Gujarat.

As the two principal political forces in Gujarat clashed in Bhavnagar, about 80 kilometers away from the famous ship breaking yard of Alang during Narendra Modi’s Sadbhavana fast last Saturday, the chief minister was challenged by a third force. Quietly in the same town, the discontent of the dispossessed and displaced found its voice — a leader who had emanated from the same cradle as Narendra Modi and his ilk.

Modi sat, stood and waved from an elevated dais fortified with fierce gun- toting security men and the state machinery put in every effort to mobilise a jingoistic crowd. But it was BJP MLA Kanu Kalsaria, who sat on a parallel Samvedana Parv a few kilometers away, who got the people talking.

Dr Kalsaria, who has been elected three times consecutively from Mahuva, has for all practical purposes emerged as the face of rural Gujarat’s discontent against Modi regime. And the otherwise authoritarian Gujarat BJP appears helpless before this lean 57 year old surgeon. Despite Kalsaria’s tirade against Narendra Modi, the BJP can only hope that he would one day resign from the party on his own. Contrast this with the treatment the party had meted out to the heavyweights like Keshubhai Patel, Kashiram Rana, Suresh Mehta and several others and the predicament that Gujarat BJP finds itself in with respect to Kalsaria becomes only more evident.

MODI sat in a royal tent, with all the amenities to take the heat off him as devotees queued up for a darshan. The main Opposition party — the Congress — did stage a routine counter fast at a pandal erected a few kilometers away, by the Bor Talav, a dying lake that was once the centre of the town. If Modi’s fast was a show of the state’s arrogance and opulence, Congress betrayed the monotony of routine opposition. On the other side of the lake, in the scorching afternoon sun, Kalsaria and his motley crowd sat unguarded.

The surgeon did not really speak, it was for the people to say what they wanted to and their anger was for all to hear — be it Ibrahim Illiyas, the fisherman from Mundra in Kutch, or the ten- yearold farmer boy who only managed to say “ nobody listens to us, no one,” before vanishing into the crowd. It was, however, their earnestness and steely resolve that signified the fuming amber of discontent in rural Gujarat, which is waiting for someone to stoke it properly. Gujarat’s ‘ Development’ story has certainly not reached these people so far.

Kalsaria took on Modi about two- and- a- half years back, when he resisted the corporate giant Nirma which was setting up a multi- crore cement plant in his constituency Mahuva. The proposed plant threatened to destroy the fertile agricultural land that had been developed by the local people over the years.

Despite having the state government’s support, the company had to retrace its footsteps.

Kalsaria, who had spearheaded a people’s movement, emerged as the man who delivered.

While the BJP initially ignored him, his support grew and soon enough the unassuming doctor became a rallying point for Gandhians, activists and farmers, who were getting the rough end of Modi’s development stick. Today, Kalsaria is the face of the farmer’s struggle for their land across Gujarat.

His strategy has been simple.

While movement against land acquisition is on at various pockets in Gujarat, Kalsaria never has tried to usurp the leadership anywhere, but has not shied away from lending his support to their cause either.

“ I don’t know what these movements will lead to, but at this point it is important that I do what is right and that’s what I am doing,” he says. The steel of his resolve shines through his bright smile. One is more than tempted to believe in him and his constituency does. “ I am not against anyone, I am only standing up for the farmers who are suffering,” he says. “ But they ( the BJP) think I am against them,” he adds with a smile. The dichotomy is for the BJP to resolve.

Senior IAS officer H N Chibber booked day before retirement

Rajiv Topno, currently with the Prime Minister’s Office, also gets the chargesheet in a decade old case; they had unearthed mining scam involving former BJP minister Babu Bokhiria

It is not just the IPS officers, daring to challenge the regime, who get chargesheeted in Gujarat. In a surprise move, two senior IAS officers of Gujarat have found themselves in the “bad books” of the Modi government. H N Chhiber and Rajiv Topno have been chargesheeted in an old case. Incidentally, Topno is the only IAS officer from Gujarat serving in the PMO at present.

Mirror has confirmed information that just a day before he retired on November 30, Chhiber who was serving as additional commissioner in rural development department, and Topno, a director in the Prime Minister’s Office, have been served a chargesheet in a 10-year-old case.

The case pertains to debris removal in the post-earthquake phase in Kutch when both officers were posted there. “The government perhaps wanted to target Chhiber since he had unearthed a major scam involving a top BJP politician in Porbandar. They tried hard to pin him down but he continued his tirade and extensively damaged BJP’s reputation by exposing the mining mafia who were enjoying BJP’s patronage. The only case they could fish out against Chhiber was an old matter of Kutch,” the source said.

“However since both Chhiber and Topno were posted in Kutch, Chhiber perhaps could not be singled out and hence they have been chargesheeted together,” the source added.

The General Administration Department (GAD) issued the charge sheet on November 29, a day before Chhiber retired. “The government chargesheeted Chhiber and Topno in an old matter in Kutch. I don’t recall the details of the case,” a top bureaucrat in the government confirmed to Mirror without sharing the details and nature of the case.

As a result of the charge sheet, Chhiber will have to wait for his retirement dues till he is exonerated in the inquiry while Topno, very bright and only officer working in the PMO, may not be promoted to secretary level along with his 1996 batchmates.

“This is total pettiness on the part of the government. This is just meant to play with the officers’ career,” said a senior secretary in the government, deploring the government decision.

A massive investigation by the Porbandar district administration and the state mines and mineral department had revealed that powerful local politicians, goons and petty operators had illegally mined 1.50 crore tonnes of limestone worth Rs 500 crore over the past decade in the district.

The alleged main operators in the racket were all big-time politicians — former BJP minister Babu Bokhiria, a local gangster Bhima Dula (brother of BJP MLA Karsan Dula), his son Laxman Bhima and former Congress MP Bharat Odedra. The operation came to light in 2006, when the then district collector Chibber and the police chief raided a big mine near Porbandar and caught several labourers illicitly excavating limestone.

Bokhiria and his relatives are the main accused in the case. Due to illegal mining of limestone from the government land and supply of the mineral without payment of government royalty, the state exchequer had lost close to Rs 600 crore, as per the report Chhiber had prepared then.

An arch-rival of Gujarat Congress president Arjun Modhvadia, Bokhiria was also arrested in connection with the scam and is out on bail. Bhima Dula is right now in jail in a murder case. He is also alleged to have played a crucial role in the assassination of senior BJP leader and former minister Haren Pandya.

After he exposed the scam and launched a drive to stop mining in government lands, Chhiber was transferred and given insignificant assignment as additional commissioner, rural development.

Because of Chhiber’s interest in exposing BJP leaders involved in the scam, the local police had registered over 12 FIRs in various illegal mining cases.

“Any official who has discharged his professional duty in accordance with the law and has angered the regime has been harassed in some way or the other. Be they IPS officers like Rahul Sharma, R B Shreekumar, Rajnish Rai, Sanjiv Bhatt, Satish Verma or Kuldip Sharma or IAS officers like J S Rana, Pradeep Sharma, H N Chhiber or Rajiv Topno, all are being targeted,” the source claimed.

PROMOTION PROCESS ON

The Gujarat government has initiated the process to promote 1987 batch IAS officers from secretary to principal secretary level. There are five officials in this batch who are likely to be elevated. They include Civil Supplies Secretary Rajkumar, Gujarat State Road Transport Corporations MD Raj Gopal, Primary Education Secretary R P Gupta, Secretary Expenditure in finance department L Chuango and Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation MD V S Gadhvi. Besides this, the government has also initiated the process to elevate 1996 batch officers to secretary level. These include urban development Additional Secretary Mona Khandhar, her husband and IndextB Managing Director Mukesh Kumar, AUDA CEO Mamta Verma, revenue department Additional Secretary T Natarajan, Director in PMO Rajiv Topno, Madhya Gujarat Vij Company MD A N Khatri and Registrar of Cooperatives D K Rawal.

Long Road Ahead

TOI Mumbai

25OCT2011

BJP seems in too much of a hurry to arrive at centrestage

The BJP may have prematurely rejoiced sometime ago when it erroneously claimed that the Supreme Court had effectively 'exonerated' Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in the case related to Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri's killing. Thus buoyed, Modi appeared to plan a leadership pitch in national politics. But he seems to have run into fresh trouble. A confidential report, authored by the Supreme Court's amicus curiae, lays grounds for renewing a probe into his alleged role in the post-Godhra riots. According to it, top police officials, including Sanjiv Bhatt, who was till recently in jail courtesy the Modi administration, should be cross-examined. Police testimonies, it reportedly suggests, can help to throw light on 2002's tragic events.

The development couldn't have been more ill-timed for the Gujarat dispensation and the BJP, main opposition party at the national level. Given the damage potential of the report which contests many of the Special Investigation Team's conclusions, Modi's apparent national ambitions will encounter resistance, both within and outside his party. The Congress will undoubtedly try to leverage the issue to its advantage, while Modi's acceptability to many in the NDA will be in bigger doubt.

Several state elections are due next year. The BJP seeks to use this period to refurbish its image. Projecting a clean and viable alternative to the beleaguered Congress-led UPA tops its agenda. In this context, the party's performance in recent byelections has been touted by its leaders as indicating favourable electoral trends. The issues of corruption and governance deficit have put the Congress on the backfoot; the BJP construes this as an automatic leg-up for it in the popularity charts. The truth, however, is that both national parties need to reinvent themselves.

The BJP can't deny its own share of in-house squabbles or tainted leaders. L K Advani has been quoted as saying it'll be difficult for the saffron outfit to fight the Congress on the anti-graft plank if it didn't clean up its own house, presumably a reference to Karnataka. Moreover, internal leadership contests seem to be getting messier by the day. Various leaders – Advani, Modi, Arun Jaitley, Yashwant Sinha and, now, Nitin Gadkari – seem to be signalling they are prime ministerial hopefuls. With general elections slated for 2014, that's surely jumping the gun, since the BJP has to first perform in many prior state polls. Before thinking of stormingNew Delhi's citadel, it must show that its anti-corruption campaign is based on more than rhetoric. It must also urge the Gujarat government – which it often holds up as a governance model – to cooperate with due processes meant to deliver justice in the 2002 riot cases.

'It is Premature to Talk of Either Clean Chits or Indictments'

Tehelka 13SEP2011

EXCLUSIVE

Cutting through the hype and getting down to brass tacks, amicus curiae Raju Ramachandranexplains to Ashish Khetan the Supreme Court order in the 2002 Gujarat massacre case

The Supreme Court order directing the Special Investigation Team to file its final report into the allegations of Narendra Modi being the architect of the 2002 Gujarat massacre before an Ahmedabad trial court has been wrongly interpreted as relief for the Gujarat chief minister by his party and sympathisers. The amicus curiae in the case, Raju Ramachandran, who had been assisting the apex court for almost a year tells TEHELKA that the order is neither an exoneration nor a clean-chit for Modi and several other state top functionaries who have been listed as accused in the slain Congress leader Ehsan Jafri’s widow Zakia Jafri’s complaint.

Explaining the true legal and judicial essence of the order, Ramachandran said that his comprehensive and independent evaluation of the SIT report would have a significant bearing in the final outcome of the probe against Modi. He also dismissed the apprehensions that entrusting the judicial proceedings into the allegations of larger conspiracy back to an Ahmedabad court would lead to derailment of the process of justice. He said the complainant would have all the judicial remedies available to her, in case she is dissatisfied with the trial court proceedings. Contrary to the picture painted by the BJP, Modi’s tryst with the law has only begun and not ended.

In your considered view, is the Supreme Court order instructing the SIT to place its final report or chargesheet before a trial court in Ahmedabad, a legal and moral victory for Narendra Modi and others—as being claimed by BJP and the government of Gujarat?
As an amicus, I would not like to comment on the reaction of this side or the other. I am, however, keen to see that the order is correctly understood. The Supreme Court’s order is an impeccable one. It upholds the rule of law. It protects the rights of both the complainant and the potential accused. The law will now take its course. My report contains an independent assessment of the material on record which was given after an interaction with relevant witnesses. The SIT Report and my report would be before the trial court. I have no doubt that the trial court will act in accordance with law and that the ends of justice will be met. It is premature to talk of either clean chits or indictments. That stage can come before the trial court when the law is set in motion.

For more visit:
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=Ws130911Exclusive.asp

2002 Riots: Just Wait for the Trial

Asianage

14SEP2011

The Supreme Court is not a trial court and Monday's decision is the logical next step after the completion of investigation

Much in life is interpretation. This alas is true of the action of the Supreme Court on Monday ending its involvement with the high-profile case involving Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, for which the investigation was being conducted under the court's direction. Since the investigation by the Special Investigation Team has been concluded, the court quite appropriately directed that the responsibility of trial must devolve on the magistrate's court in Ahmedabad.

The Supreme Court is not a trial court and Monday's decision is the logical next step after the completion of investigation. And yet the BJP behaves as if it had won the Derby. The most sober assessment has come from the party's legal eagle, Arun Jaitley, who said under media questioning that the Supreme Court's action did not amount to giving Mr Modi a “clean chit“. Nevertheless, his party publicly projects the episode as a victory. The Gujarat leader himself has as a victory. The Gujarat leader himself has been quoted as saying “God is great,“ as though he has walked through fire. In con Zakia trast, the deceased Congress MP's widow Jafri, who filed the case against the chief minister and 62 others for instigating post-Godhra communal violence in the state, in the course of which her husband and 69 others were murdered in cold blood, is deeply disappointed. She had perhaps thought she would get “justice“ from the country's highest court in the sense that Mr Modi would be proclaimed guilty.

The hard fact is that the trial is yet to open.

The Supreme Court had taken charge of the investigation because the Gujarat police was deemed to have become unreliable. Without a trial, the court could have neither held the chief minister guilty nor acquitted him. So then what explains the BJP's euphoria? It is possible that high-pitched exclamations of presumed victory are meant to hustle the Ahmedabad magistrate on whom a great burden has been cast. After all, when the state was being rocked by communal violence, its judicial structure too came under a cloud, and the Best Bakery case trial had to be shifted to Mumbai.

When the trial in the Zakia case begins, the presiding magistrate will be required to take note of the SIT report and the report of the Supreme Court's amicus curiae. The Supreme Court appointed an amicus curiae when aspersions were cast on certain aspects of the SIT's functioning, who then concluded that the SIT's conclusions were at variance with some of its own findings during investigations. The real state of play will become known when the magistrate frames the charges based on the two reports. Until then, politics should take a back seat.

The Ugly Truth Action Against Gujarat Cops Won’t Help BJP’s Credibility

Times of India
15AUG2011

Behind the burnished image of Gujarat's industrial growth and improved infrastructure, there lies a canker. It's a culture of vendetta and retribution promoted by the Gujarat government, whose recent actions against whistle blowing cops prove this spirit is still very much alive. The Narendra Modi government has done itself no favours by coming down hard on IPS officers Sanjiv Bhatt and Rahul Sharma. Bhatt, who had accused the authorities – including the office of the chief minister – of using the state machinery against Muslims during the 2002 Gujarat riots, was suspended last week. Sharma, who had furnished phone call records to the Nanavati commission and the Special Investigation Team alleging collusion between BJP leaders and the police during the riots, was chargesheeted for indiscipline.

That the two officers should earn the ire of the state government for not toeing the official line on the riots is despicable. Law and order is indeed a state subject. But the Gujarat government appears to believe that police must be completely subservient to their political masters. Failing to insulate the police from political interference is the main reason why the Gujarat riots happened in the first place. Bhatt's and Sharma's allegations against the Modi government – which include destroying evidence – cannot be taken lightly. It's also unbecoming of the BJP to threaten the UPA at the Centre of a tough time in Parliament should the latter intervene on the part of the whistleblowing police officers. Taken together, the BJP not only stands guilty of obstructing justice but also holding Parliament to ransom. Such conduct is a serious blow to BJP's credibility as a modern right-of-centre party that has overcome its antediluvian phantoms.