BJP leaders "pooh-poohed" minority status to Hindus in J&K 20 yrs ago, NDA govt "cold shouldered" recommendation

By Our Representative
In a significant revelation, a former chairman of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) has said that a report, prepared under him, recommending to the NDA government under Atal Behari Vajpayee that Hindus be treated as minorities in non-Hindu majority states of India was “pooh-poohed” by BJP leaders and “cold shouldered” by the government.
According to former NCM chairman Tahir Mahmood, who was also member of the Law Commission of India, this happened “two decades” ago, when he “personally prepared a special report titled ‘Hindu Minorities in India’, written after visiting the states concerned and hearing local leaders.”
“My report, recommending state-level minority status for Hindus in Jammu & Kashmir, Lakshadweep, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Punjab, was endorsed by the Commission and submitted to the central government, then led by the BJP”, Mahmood says in an article, adding though, it was rejected.
Mahmood’s stark revelation comes amidst a petition filed in the Supreme Court seeking to recognize Hindus as a religious minority in certain states, but says Mahmood, “If the petitioner’s idea has his party’s support it is intriguing.”
There are two petitions on the issue. One of them, filed by Ankur Sharma, a Jammu lawyer, came up for hearing the Supreme Court this month, insisting on the need to set up minorities commission in J&K, because, according to him, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians were “unable” to access benefits meant for minorities in the state, where 68.3% of the population is Muslim.
Sharma’s plea came after a BJP lawyer-leader Ashwani Kumar Upadhyay, petitioned the apex court to direct the Government of India to confer minority status on Hindus in seven states, including J&K, and a Union Territory.
On the advice of a bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Upadhyay withdrew his petition and has now approached the National Commission for Minorities, which is said to be considering the matter.
According to Sharma, in J&K, in the absence of a minorities commission, “crores worth aid are being given away to a certain community, which is the majority Muslim community, in an illegal and arbitrary manner”.
Says Mahmood, the apex court said, since J&K does not fall within the purview of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, a state minorities commission can only be set up "through legislation by the state assembly or an administrative order by the state government."
He notes, in the Constitution, Article 29 proclaims that “any section of citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have a right to conserve the same”.
He adds, "Article 30 recognises the right of a religious or linguistic minority to establish and administer educational institutions."
"Read together, the two provisions may be taken as the constitutional charter for religious and linguistic minorities at all levels", he underlines, adding, however, "The Constitution does not specify a mechanism for identifying groups of citizens covered by either of these provisions."
According to Mahmood, "The National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, confined in application to religious minorities, does not list them either; it only states that for the purposes of the Act the word 'minorities' means communities 'notified as such' by the central government."
Based on this, he says, a notification "issued under this provision in 1993 proclaimed Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs and Parsis as minorities".
Mahmood adds, "The Jains protested against their exclusion and, on taking over as the Commission’s chairman, I took the position that since the Constitution and the laws bracket Jains with Buddhists and Sikhs, the government had two options: either drop Buddhists and Sikhs from the list or to extend it to Jains."
Fifteen years later, the government went for the second option – on the persistent demand of some Jain leaders, the 1993 notification was modified to include their community among the minorities.

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World Bank clarifies: Its 26th rank to India not for universal access to power but for ease of doing business

By Our Representative
In a major embarrassment to the Government of India, the World Bank has reportedly clarified that it has not ranked India 26th out of 130 countries for providing power to its population. The top international banker’s clarification comes following Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal’s claim that India has “improved to 26 position from 99” in access to electricity in just one year.

"Misleading" satellite images being shared on Balakot surgical strike on Jaish camp

By Dr Vinay Kate*
With every passing day more questions are being raised about the surgical strike India did in Balakot as a response to Pulwama attacks. So far the Indian media has claimed mass casulaty of 300+ terrorists of Jaish-e-Mohammad in this surgical strike, but there is hardly any report from foreign media about the same.

Extreme repression, corporate loot, cultural genocide "characterise" India's tribal belt

Counterview Desk
As Lok Sabha polls approach, there is considerable ferment in one section of the population -- India's Adivasis, forming about 8.6 per cent of India's population. Things became particularly critical following the February 14, 2019 Supreme Court order, allegedly seeking to evict lakhs of tribals from their forest lands.

Industry in India "barely growing", export growth 0%, whither moral anchors?

Counterview Desk
In a sharp critique of the Modi government, the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), one of world renowned economist Prof Kaushik Basu, who is Professor of Economics and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, has told students at the IIM-A’s 54th Annual Convocation on March 16, 2019 that they have a “special responsibility” on their shoulders, “the responsibility to reject narrow sectarianism, uphold scientific thinking, openness to new ideas, and freedom of speech.”

Gujarat model? Industrial effluents "invade" borewells, discharge coloured water in farms

By Rajiv Shah
In a major embarrassment for Gujarat model, of the 21 samples taken by officials of the state government's environmental watchdog Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) in two villages of Vadodara district and analyzed by its laboratory in Gandhinagar, the state capital, to find out pollution level in groundwater, 16 were assessed as highly contaminated – these were, in fact, found to be discharging reddish, brownish, reddish, or yellowish water.

Refugees as criminals? US govt report blames Amit Shah for calling Bangladeshis termites

Counterview Desk
The chapter “Freedom of Movement” of the US State Department’s “India 2018 Human Rights Report”, released recently, has criticized BJP chief Amit Shah for terming alleged Bangladeshis who may be in Assam as “termites”, because their names were struck down from the list of National Register of Citizens, under preparation in the state.
Pointing out that four million residents were excluded from Assam’s final draft list, leading to “uncertainty over the status of these individuals, many of whose families had lived in the state for several generations”, the report regrets, the Indian law does not even contain the term “refugee,” treating refugees like Rohingiyas as “any other foreigners.”
“Undocumented physical presence in the country is a criminal offense. Persons without documentation were vulnerable to forced returns and abuse”, the report says.
Text of the Freedom of Movement chapter: The law provides for freedom of internal movement, foreign travel, emigration, a…

Congress would win just 9 of 26 Lok Sabha seats: Gujarat Assembly segment-wise analysis

By Rajiv Shah
Even as the Congress plans its first working committee meet in Gujarat on February 28 after an almost 58 year gap, there is reason to wonder what is in store for India’s grand old party in a state which has been long been a BJP bastion – in fact ever since mid-1990s. Ahead of the then assembly polls in late 2012, talking with me, a senior Gujarat Congress leader, currently Rajya Sabha MP, frankly said he saw no reason why Congress would win.

"Pro-corporate" Supreme Court order on FRA would further marginalize Adivasis

By VS Roy David, JP Raju*
For millions of Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers February 13, 2019 will go down in history as the day of apocalypse. This is like the proverbial Black Friday where millions of most marginalized people of India were ordered by malicious anti-people draconian Supreme Court order depriving them the life and livelihood by evicting them from their habitats.

Financial inclusion? Not micro-loans; India's poor "need" investment in health, education

By Moin Qazi*
India has grown into a global powerhouse. Its economy is soaring but the picture on the ground is still quite arid. The green shoots that you see are only a patch of its landscape. Most Indians are hapless victims of inequity. India is one country where intense poverty abounds in the shadow of immense wealth.

India, Pakistan told to eliminate nuclear weapons: N-war "would kill" 2 billion

Counterview Desk
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), a non-partisan federation of national medical organizations in 64 countries, representing tens of thousands of doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned citizens, claiming to share the common goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation, has warned that “an unprecedented global catastrophe” awaits the globe against the backdrop of warmongering in India and Pakistan.

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