EDITORIAL
As the West Asian crisis takes a new turn with strong indications that President Obama may launch strikes on Syria after securing the green signal from the US Congress, the fallout of such an eventuality has been invoked by the PM to urge the BJP leaders to end their animosity towards the government and allow Parliament to pass key pending Bills. The BJP leaders appear to have responded positively to the PM's suggestion as is evident from their attitude to the pension Bill—after nearly a decade the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha with BJP support yesterday following the government's acceptance of a crucial proposal made by the parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance.
Likewise the land acquisition Bill too was approved by the Rajya Sabha with the BJP's backing even as the principal Opposition party in Parliament expressed reservations about some of its provisions.
However, these steps did not mean the BJP as well as the Opposition would let the PM off the hook lightly on the issue of the missing coal files. A day after Dr Manmohan Singh's assurance in Parliament that the “government had nothing to hide” on the missing files, the BJP called upon him to voluntarilly get examined by the CBI on the issue. And its demand for registering an FIR on the missing files was supported by several Opposition MPs.
But the BJP was really at the receiving end in Parliament over the 10-page explosive resignation letter of Gujarat's jailed DIG D.G. Vanzara, the person who allegedly carried out successive fake encounters in post-Godhra Gujarat, charging the Narendra Modi Government of the State with betraying its loyal officers “to save its own skin from the CBI” as also “gain political benefits”. It was quite natural for the Congress and Left MPs to seize the letter and demand Narendra Modi's resignation as well as prosecution.
Vanzara's confirmation of the suspicion that the “alleged terrorists were killed under orders from the highest quarters”, as pointed out in The Hindu, definitely needs to be explored in depth. The Times of India's observations are also highly significant and cannot be dismissed under any pretext: Gujarat's opaque governance is further evident from the government's dogged efforts to delay and then seek to pass a Lokayukta Bill that emasculates it of its substance. Modi clearly brooks no interference in the way he runs Gujarat. Under these circumstances, the demand for a commission that would include individuals with an exemplary record of public service to examine the issues raised by Vanzara is entirely apposite—and urgent.
All these assume importance against the backdrop of Modi's “march towards Delhi” as mentioned in Vanzara's letter. He and the BJP leaders may summarily reject its contents but these could come to haunt Modi in the near future.
Meanwhile as we go to press news has come that the proposed amendment to the RTI Act (to keep political parties out of the ambit of the SC ruling to ensure their transparent functioning) which Parliament was due to adopt today has been kept in abeyance and referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for more public discussion on the subject. This is a positive development and needs to be welcomed by all those, notably the activists, strongly opposed to amending the RTI Act.
At the same time a depressing news has also reached us today: the murder in Afghanistan of a bold Indian author, Sushmita Banerjee, who married an Afghan, suffered torture at the hands of the Taliban in that country, and wrote a popular memoir of her escape from the Taliban that was made into a film. A tragedy indeed but is it a precursor of what is in store for our neighbouring nation and its people in the near future?
September 5 S.C.