Jaitley's "outburst" against judiciary suggests he is feeling sidelined under Modi: Ex-Gujarat BJP CM Suresh Mehta

By Our Representative
In a scathing letter to Union finance minister Jaitley, former BJP chief minister of Gujarat, Suresh Mehta, has said that Jaitley’s recent outpourings (click HERE) against thejudiciary is the direct result of what he calls BJP’s “flamboyant Rajya Sabha MP” Subramaniam Swamy’s attacks on him.
“Shocked” to read Jaitley’s statement in the Rajya Sabha (May 11, 2016), where he said that the judiciary is destroying the edifice of India’s legislature “step by step, brick by brick”, Mehta, in his four-page letter to Jaitley, release to media, says, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears keen to pit Swamy against you.”
Recalling how Swamy recently alleged in a recent TV interview that Jaitley was trying to “undermine the investigation into AugustaWesland chopper scam” amidst reports that Swamy may be replaced as India’s finance minister, Mehta tells Jaitley, “I wonder if you are feeling nervous."
Mehta – who became compromise Gujarat chief minister in October 1995 following a rebellion against the then chief minister Keshubhai Patel, led by current Congress leader Shankarsinh Vaghela and reportedly engineered by Narendra Modi – resigned from the BJP in December 2007.
Mehta says in his letter, “Your statement particularly acquires significance as it comes one day after the BJP lost the floor test in Uttarakhand, thanks to Supreme Court intervention.”
Regretting that the statement accusing the judiciary has come from “an eminent and perceptive Supreme Court advocate”, Mehta, who has been a lawyer by profession, says, “It is not the judiciary which is seeking to undermine the executive or the legislature. Rather, it is the executive, led by Modi, which is seeking to destroy the independence of judiciary.”
Providing instances, Mehta says, its first indication was in April 2015, when the Prime Minister told a joint conference of Chief Ministers and Chief Justices of High Courts that India’s courts “need to be cautious against perception-driven verdicts", accusing “five star activists" of being the resource persons for providing material for such verdicts.
“Modi’s statement on ‘perception-driven verdict’ came just around the time when clean chit was sought to be given to BJP president Amit Shah, one of the prime accused in two of the most notorious fake encounter cases of Gujarat -- Sohrabuddin Shaikh and Ishrat Jahan”, Mehta says.
“The whole effort of the Prime Minister was to drive home the point that the judiciary should not go by the ‘perception’ supposedly held by activists that a criminal politician, who acts behind the scene, is responsible for crimes committed on the ground”, Mehta says.
In a second instance, Mehta says, the Modi government has been “stalling the appointment of around 170 judges to High Courts, recommended by the Supreme Court collegium”, with the perception having gone strong that “this is happening because the Supreme Court struck down its efforts to take under it wings all the powers of appointing judges through a National Judicial Appointments Commission.”
“Clearly, the government appears not very keen to allow smooth functioning of the Supreme Court collegium, which has the powers to appoint judges. In fact, it wants to have a say in recommending names of candidates, insisting that the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for appointing judges”, Mehta says, referring to recent reports on government’s suggestions for MoP.

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Girl child education: 20 major states 'score' better than Gujarat, says GoI report

By Rajiv Shah
A Government of India report, released last month, has suggested that “model” Gujarat has failed to make any progress vis-à-vis other states in ensuring that girls continue to remain enrolled after they leave primary schools. The report finds that, in the age group 14-17, Gujarat’s 71% girls are enrolled at the secondary and higher secondary level, which is worse than 20 out of 22 major states for which data have been made available.

Savarkar in Ahmedabad "declared support" to two-nation theory in 1937, followed by Jinnah three years later

By Our Representative
One of the top freedom fighters whom BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi revere the most, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, was also a great supporter of the two nation theory for India, one for Hindus another for Muslims, claims a new expose on the man who is also known to be the original proponent of the concept of Hindutva.

Congress 'promises' cancellation of Adani power project: Jharkhand elections

Counterview Desk
Pointing out that people's issues take a backseat in Jharkhand's 2019 assembly elections, the state's civil rights organization, the Jharkhand Janadhikar Mahasabha, a coalition of activists and people’s organisations, has said that political parties have largely ignored in their electoral manifestos the need to implement the fifth schedule of the Constitution in a predominantly tribal district.

Hindutva founders 'borrowed' Nazi, fascist idea of one flag, one leader, one ideology

By Shamsul Islam*
With the unleashing of the reign of terror by the RSS/BJP rulers against working-class, peasant organizations, women organizations, student movements, intellectuals, writers, poets and progressive social/political activists, India also witnessed a series of resistance programmes organized by the pro-people cultural organizations in different parts of the country. My address in some of these programmes is reproduced here...
*** Before sharing my views on the tasks of artists-writers-intellectuals in the times of fascism, let me briefly define fascism and how it is different from totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is political concept, a dictatorship of an individual, family or group which prohibits opposition in any form, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life. It is also described as authoritarianism.
Whereas fascism, while retaining all these repressive characteristics, also believes in god-ordained superiority of race, cultur…

Ex-World Bank chief economist doubts spurt in India's ease of doing business rank

By Rajiv Shah
This is in continuation of my previous blog where I had quoted from a commentary which top economist Prof Kaushik Basu had written in the New York Times (NYT) a little less than a month ago, on November 6, to be exact. He recalled this article through a tweet on November 29, soon after it was made known that India's growth rate had slumped (officially!) to 4.5%.

With RSS around, does India need foreign enemy to undo its democratic-secular fabric?

By Shamsul Islam*
Many well-meaning liberal and secular political analysts are highly perturbed by sectarian policy decisions of RSS/BJP rulers led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, especially after starting his second inning. They are vocal in red-flagging lynching incidents, policies of the Modi government on Kashmir, the National Register of Citizens (NRC), the demand for 'Bharat Ratna' to Savarkar who submitted 6-7 mercy petitions to the British masters (getting remission of 40 years out of 50 years' sentence), and the murder of constitutional norms in Goa, Karnataka and now in Maharashtra.

Post-Balakot, danger that events might spiral out of control is 'greater, not less'

By Tapan Bose*
The fear of war in South Asia is increasing. Tensions are escalating between India and Pakistan after the Indian defence minister's announcement in August this year that India may revoke its current commitment to only use nuclear weapons in retaliation for a nuclear attack, known as ‘no first use’. According to some experts who are watching the situation the risk of a conflict between the two countries has never been greater since they both tested nuclear weapons in 1998.

Rushdie, Pamuk, 260 writers tell Modi: Aatish episode casts chill on public discourse

Counterview Desk
As many as 260 writers, journalists, artists, academics and activists across the world, including Salman Rushdie, British Indian novelist, Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature, and Margaret Atwood, Canadian poet and novelist, have called upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi to review the decision to strip British Indian writer Aatish Taseer of his overseas Indian citizenship.

Worrying signs in BJP: Modi, Shah begin 'cold-shouldering' Gujarat CM, party chief

By RK Misra*
The political developments in neighbouring Maharashtra where a Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government assumed office has had a trickle down effect in Gujarat with both the ruling BJP and the Congress opposition going into revamp mode.

Ships recycling Bill 'allows' India to be turned into a landfill for foreign hazardous waste

Counterview Desk
In a letter to M Venkaiah Naidu, chairman, Rajya Sabha, senior activist Gopal Krishna of the Toxics Watch Alliance has said that the Recycling of Ships Bill, 2019 should be referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change to "safeguard country’s maritime environment from harmful and hazardous wastes and materials".

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