VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 278 Date: 22.04.2019
Contents:
1. Justice Gogoi Did Not Follow The Principle Of Natural Justice
2. The BJP Is Best Advised To Pull Out Sadhvi Pragya From The Election Fray
3. Are Turf Wars Linked To Uncoordinated Raids By Financial Enforcement Agencies
Justice Gogoi Did Not Follow The Principle Of Natural Justice
The news that Justice Gogoi, Chief Justice Of India has been accused of sexual harassment was sensational and more so was the expediency and despatch with which Justice Gogoi convened a Special Bench to hear the matter with himself sitting on it though he left the announcement of the order to one of the other judges on the bench. Now consider the matter in its totality without being biased as to the position held by the accused and the fact that that the complainant was a woman and it was a sexual harassment issue. Justice Gogoi should have waited and set up a separate Bench as has been done now with Justice Bobde heading it and waited for its deliberations to see whether it clears him of the allegations or not. Instead of that he went ahead and played out a drama of how onerous and important a job that he is holding with many important judgments coming up ahead of him in the coming week. And how he has foregone material rewards to serve in his position and that these allegations are below his dignity to address. These arguments are emotional and have no place in a court of law where the accused stands stripped of his position and judgment should focus on the accusations and not on the accuser. This Justice Gogoi also did by almost naming the accuser, her husband and her brother-in-law giving their criminal histories so that by a system of triangulation you can arrive at the identity of those that are being hinted of. Thus what transpired during the hearing of the Special Bench was the sacrifice of the principle of natural justice, the playing out that India remains a paternalistic and position conscious society where the people lower down the pecking order, more so women, have no chance to seek fair and equitable justice. The accusations may be false, motivated and instigated as alleged but the manner in which Justice Gogoi came across at the accuser was like using a Bofors gun to kill a chicken. This clearly was patently unfair and Justice Gogoi did not serve the ends of justice by what he did in the matter. One hopes that the new Bench will come out with the truth exonerating Justice Gogoi and punishing the accuser as appropriate to her offence. As to Justice Gogoi whether he should continue in the chair he occupies is up to him to decide since he may not be guilty but he needs to ask himself that as holding the highest office for justice in the land did he uphold the principle of natural justice in this matter?
The BJP Is Best Advised To Pull Out Sadhvi Pragya From The Election Fray
In nominating Sadhvi Pragya from Bhopal the BJP will meet its Waterloo in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. Narendra Modi's impudence in first approving her nomination and then defending it will come a cropper as May 23 comes around. The BJP poll pundits may have done their calculations while giving her the ticket but one knows Bhopal as a city with a sizeable Muslim population which will surely work against the BJP candidate. In claiming that Sadhvi Pragya's nomination and forecasting her victory to demolish the label of Hindu terror, Narendra Modi has shown his and the BJP's communal agenda in supporting a terrorist. Narendra Modi the self-proclaimed fighter against terrorism around the world has succumbed and sided with a terrorist thus proving that his campaign against terror rings hollow. Irrespective of whether or not Sadhvi Pragya is convicted for the Malegaon bomb blast or not for which she is on bail the fact remains there is enough evidence that she was involved in terror activities both in its planning and execution. That is the reason why she should not have been nominated by the BJP for the Lok Sabha elections. Narendra Modi needs to also understand and differentiate between those on bail for civil offences and those involved in criminal and terror related offences. He often changes his colours as a chameleon does like in the instance of Karkare. Modi visited their home after Karkare's death at the hands of the Pakistan terrorists to commiserate with the family and offer them Rs. 1 crore for being martyred which the late wife of Karkare had refused. But now he is singing a different tune about Karkare and charging him with torturing Sadhvi Pragya. Simply put Modi lacks the quality of being steadfast on any issue and will change the dialogue to suit his present narrative. This is just to make short term gains or simply to prove a point in a debate or fit an argument. As for the torture of Sadhvi Pragya the same finicky process of thinking persists with Modi. Where he claims that he has been cleared of any guilt related to the Gujarat riots in 2002 because of a Supreme Court judgment and flaunts that clean chit around, in the context of Sadhvi Pragya he is refusing to accept the Supreme Court judgment which said that her claims of torture were baseless. This is a typical example of the classic saying that says - What is good for the goose is not good for the gander. As for Sadhvi Pragya she suffers from an advanced case of the foot-in-the-mouth disease. Symptoms of this have already emerged with her Karkare curse and that since she apologised for her comment, she has asked whether those who tortured her will now apologise. Her fevered mind probably does not realise that when there was no torture, where is the question of an apology? These are early days and Modi will realise what a liability he has picked up in this self-styled sadhvi. Modi cannot pull her out now but a diplomatic way out of the embarrassment would be to get her nomination papers rejected on the basis of some technicality to save the BJP's face, that is if Modi is bothered about the party's reputation.
Are Turf Wars Linked To Uncoordinated Raids By Financial Enforcement Agencies
That DMK Kanimozhi's house was being raided by the IT Dept. was the Breaking News on TV on the night of 16th April 2019. The next morning the newspapers carried the news that the raid did not reveal anything and was based on a 'false tip-off'. The IT Dept. seems to very agile when it comes to conducting raids on parties or agencies or people opposed to the present government. Also the TV news on 16th night indicated that the tip-off was that cash had been stashed in the first floor of the house. Now at election times, is not seizures of cash under the purview of the Election Commission - EC? So is the IT Dept. overstepping its boundaries and even if it had received the tip-off should they not have referred the matter to the EC. More so because Kanimozhi is contesting the elections from Tutikodi. Why is the IT Dept. so over-jealous in the performance of their responsibilities just prior to the elections which we do not see at other times? The raids now on politicians to look for cash is like going at harvest time to the Hapus mango orchards in Ratnagiri where you are bound to get some mangoes at the least. But if Kanimozhi has managed to get a clean chit, smart girl - she has managed to stay one step ahead of the IT Dept. Not only that the IT Dept. upon not getting anything at Kanimozhi's house tried to twist the story that it was not a raid but a 'surveillance' action. That still does not explain the timing of the raid just 2 days before the election date in Tutikodi! Not only that the IT Dept. per their latest instructions did not keep the EC informed about their plan to raid Kanimozhi's house. Was this deliberate? This instruction had been given to the Secretary of the Revenue Dept. by the Chief Election Commissioner - CEC after a meeting over the unbridled random raids that the financial enforcement agencies were conducting mostly against the Opposition parties. At that time the Revenue Dept. Secretary had the temerity to tell the CEC that they should be more active in seizing cash that was moving around in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections. In a sense this seemed to be asking the EC to lay off the domain of the IT, ED & the DRI. A clear turf war as it were was shaping up and maybe not informing the EC about the Tutikodi raid was part of that agenda. Under the present government this is how our governmental agencies have become extra-constitutional authorities filled with their own importance which makes them disregard any controls put into their area of operations. Or maybe they have the ear of the PMO and can count on support from that quarter if at all they are questioned or fall into a soup.
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