Round The States

New Delhi, 16 April 2022

Hey Ram-Navmi!

FESTIVITY, VIOLENCE, DEMOLITION

By Insaf

Madhya Pradesh has set an alarming precedent. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Thursday last justified his government’s directive to Khargone district administration to demolish illegal buildings of the ‘stone pelters’ involved in the attack on a Ram Navami procession on Sunday last. The bulldozer ran over 45 houses and shops a day later! So far 121 people have been arrested and the demolition has been carried out by only ‘identifying’ those involved in the clashes. Curfew continues in the district and Chouhan said damage caused to public and private properties will be recovered from rioters and a tribunal under the Public and Private Property Recovery Act-2021has been constituted. “The houses from where stones were pelted will be turned into rubble,” is the government’s warning. A cue from his counterpart in Uttar Pradesh? Shockingly, it’s aimed at a particular community. The reason given: “The houses of persons belonging to the SC community were set ablaze (by the rioters in Khargone). Why shouldn’t action be taken against such people?” The big question is whether due process of law was followed. The answer a big no. But is anyone listening. Worse, States such as Gujarat, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and West Bengal, which witnessed similar violence, could get emboldened to follow suit. 

It won’t be wrong to presume that one of these shall, Gujarat. In the BJP-ruled State,  communal clashes took place in Anand district’s Khambhat and Sabarkantha district’s Himmatnagar. Stone pelting and arson was reported at both places and police had to fire teargas shells to control the situation. The police now claim it was a “pre-planned conspiracy” and Maulvi Mustaqin has been named as the mastermind behind it. Boys, it said, were lured with money to help for stone pelting. The theory is conveniently again targeted at a particular community. It goes on further to state that “once the Ram Navami procession was stoned and threatened, no such religious procession would take place in the future.” The accusation must be proved for it sends out a sinister message. Rather than bridging the divide, the Statecontinues to ignite passions and promote enmity to shred the secular fabric. Time for the Modi government to rein in his Chief Ministers, before it gets too late. Or is it already? Hey Ram!

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Telangana’s Paddy War

In his penchant to hit out at Prime Minister Modi, has Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao bitten more than he can chew? On Wednesday last, he pronounced that his government will procure all the paddy from farmers as the Union government has refused to  procure parboiled rice. What he didn’t say was the Centre had agreed to take raw rice only. And thus the procurement had to begin, and paddy purchase centres were opened the next day. But only 48 hours earlier, he had staged a day-long dharna on Monday in Delhi’s Telangana Bhavan, demanding the Union government procure 15 lakh tonnes of parboiled rice and draft a new uniform paddy procurement policy, failing which the TRS will take the protest to a national scale. Whether he will be able to take his battle on to that a scale time will tell, but  doubts are emerging in his own State whether the entire stock of grains will be picked up. The questions being:The cash-strapped government will incur a huge expenditure of Rs 15,000 crore if all the rabi produce has to be procured. Where will the government get this amount from? What will it do with huge stocks of boiled rice? Who will it give to? The farmers’ concern sadly will get caught in the Centre-State pow wow.  

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Karnataka Shame

A “40% commission government”--a term coined by Congress to describe BJP’s ruling dispensation in Karnataka. Clever and putting spotlight on corruption, which citizens by and large have become immune to. ButSanthosh Patil, a contractor and a BJP worker committing suicide in Udipi on Tuesday last and holding blaming Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister Eshwarapparesponsible for it, has triggered anger and a huge controversy. Patil had accused him and his associates of not releasing payments for road work worth Rs 4 crore,  carried out at Hindalga village in Belagavi, and “demanding a commission of 40%”.Eshwarappa was defiant, claimed he didn’t know Patil. But 48 hours later, he said he would resign on Friday evening, as he wanted “to prevent embarrassment to the BJP.” Chief Minister Bommai saying “there was no pressure from the party high command” added insult to injury. An FIR was lodged against the minister on Tuesday. The resignation is no balm for Patil’s family. It wants his arrest. Is that asking for too much, when lesser mortals are put behind bars on mere complaints? Justice must be done. Enough of politics.  

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Punjab Faux Pas?

Who is running Punjab? Just about a month since AAP formed its government, it has given a handle to the Opposition to question Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s capability to run the State. With word going out that party supremo and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal held a meeting with “top officers” of Punjab on Monday last in Delhi,without Mann to ‘discuss ways to implement the party’s promise of providing 300 units of free electricity in the State’, the Opposition had a field day training their guns at him. Said SAD his government is being run through ‘remote control’; former Chief Minister Amarinder Singh called him a ‘rubber stamp’ and Congress said there was a ‘breach of federalism’. Rejecting the accusations, Mann on Thursday insisted it was he who had sent the officials to meet Kejriwal. “The same officers had gone to Gujarat and Tamil Nadu for training…I will continue to send them to other States to learn anything that can be implemented…and if we have to send them to Israel for Punjab’s benefit, I will send them there too!”He claimed there was ‘good news’ in the offing and once that is out “then you will say keep sending them.” Convincing enough?

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Food For Thought

“You are all JNUites first’, is how Jawaharlal Nehru University Vice-Chancellor Pandit seeks to bring in calm at the prestigious institution in Delhi. Adding, she doesn’t see them ‘as being from some ideology’. Couldn’t be more off the mark. For on Sunday last, the university witnessed yet again clashes between two groups allegedly over serving of non-vegetarian food in a hostel mess, where a puja was organised by some students on Ram Navami. At least 20 students were injured. Both Left-backed student bodies and RSS-affiliated ABVP traded charges against each other for starting the violence. Pandit saying the university ‘doesn't impose food choices on students’ and advising ‘they can debate, agitate but shouldn’t indulge in violence’, will have few takers in the backdrop of polarisation in society having taken sinister roots. ‘Outsiders from other hostels being involved in the attack’as said now has been heard before, after the 5 January 2020 violence in the campus. A proctorial inquiry has been ordered.

Much more needs to be doneMadam Vice-Chancellor. ---INFA

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