All posts tagged Narendra Modi

#RIP- Brave Peace Fighter who risked his life to save innocent muslims ,Someshwar Pandya, Sardarpura

Someshwar Pandya who risked his life to save poor and innocent Muslims from the murderous mobs of Patels at Sardarpura on 1.3.2002 passed away this morning. He also suffered a physical attack when he went to testify, to tell the Truth…

Pandya lost an eye and suffered grievous injury at the hands of people determined to prevent him from deposing before the Nanavati Commission.

Besna is on Friday May 24

http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/aug/06spec.htm

Down, but not Out!
Someshwar Pandya still wants to tell
the truth!

Last updated on: August 06, 2003 23:46 IST
Justice A S Anand, former Chief Justice of India [ Images ] and National Human Rights Commission Chairman, does not need to look far to justify his request to the Supreme Court to transfer the hearing of communal riots cases out of Gujarat.

The Supreme Court may want to consider Someshwar Pandya’s case.

Pandya lost an eye and suffered grievous injury at the hands of people determined to prevent him from deposing before the Nanavati Commission. It is a case where the communal violence that pitted Hindus against Muslims in Gujarat last year is now turning into a caste conflict, where liberal Hindus are being targeted for standing up against communal forces.

Someshwar Pandya is bed-ridden these days. The 65 year old was brutally attacked by hoodlums who wanted to defeat him in his purpose. But that is not easy. Someshwar Pandya may be down, but he is not out.He still wants to testify before the Nanavati Commission about the communal riots in Sardarpur, a small town near Mehsana, north Gujarat. The violence claimed 38 Muslim lives.

And there are many who do not want him to testify.A year ago, thugs attacked Pandya savagely. He survived, but lost an eye and suffered multiple fractures.

Pandya’s story began on March 1, 2002, a day when Sardarpur saw its worst communal riots. A huge mob surrounded a Muslim area and set it afire, killing 38 people. Pandya saw what happened. Sardarpur is among the four worst riot cases in Gujarat. The other three are the Naroda-Patiya killings, near Ahmedabad [ Images ], that claimed 89 lives; the Gulberg Society killings that claimed 42 lives in Ahmedabad, including that of former MP Ehsan Jafri; and the Best Bakery case in Vadodara that claimed 14 lives.

According to political analyst Achyut Yagnik, “Of all these cases, the process of justice is most weak in the Sardarpur case because the accused and victims are clearly divided on political and caste lines. That makes it difficult for the Muslim victims.” The investigation into the Sardarpur killings has been shabby. A K Sharma, the Superintendent of Police during the investigation, is considered close to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi [ Images]. During the Gujarat assembly election last December, the Election Commission shifted Sharma to another area.

Thirty-two people have been accused of the killing. The prime accused hail from Gujarat’s dominant Patel caste. The accused are currently out on bail. The fear is that the accused and/or their supporters will prevent witnesses from taking the stand before the Nanavati Commission.

Pandya is a leader of the Dalit community and a member of the Congress party. His neighbour Laxmanbhai recalls that the men who attacked Pandya did so without fear of being caught. The assailants attacked Pandya when he was sitting in the marketplace, reading a newspaper. He sustained more than 10 fractures and lost an eye.

His son Pravin, an unemployed labourer, told rediff.com, “My father helped the Muslims file a case against the Patels. He was punished for helping them. Goons from the neighbouring town attacked him.” Ashok Shrimali, a relative of Pandya and a social worker, alleged, “It’s jungle raj here. The police is not playing a neutral role. Thanks to the hawkers in the bazaar his (Pandya’s) life was saved.”

The Nanavati Commission of Inquiry, consisting of Justices G T Nanavati and K G Shah, has not yet held an inquiry into the Sardarpur case, but will start hearings soon. Besides the post-Godhra situation, there were other factors for the antipathy to Muslims in Sardarpur. The village, which over the years has traditionally supported the Congress, boasts a large population of Muslims with cultivable land, something not common in Gujarat. In much of Gujarat, the most fertile land is held by the Patidar caste (most of who bear the surname Patel) while the Dalits and Muslims work as labourers on the farms.

Moreover, most of the Dalits in Sardarpur are reasonably educated and began to challenge the Patel hegemony after 1981. Before 1980, Dalits were not allowed to conduct marriage processions while Dalit women in the village bazaar had to cover their heads. Pandya and other Dalits, with support from Muslims and the Congress party, defied such diktats, something that did not go down well with the Patels.

The caste cleavage acquired political affiliations with the Dalits and Muslims backing the Congress while the Patels veered towards the Bharatiya Janata Party [ Images ].

There is also an element of greed. In Sardarpur, most Muslims live in the heart of the town, in Darbargadh. The real estate value of this area has shot up over the years, with many others eyeing it.

On March 1, 2002, when mobs attacked the Muslims, they encircled the entire area to prevent anyone from escaping the violence. A few Muslims sneaked into neighbouring Indira Garibnagar, where mostly Dalits live. The Dalits sheltered the Muslims.After the riots, when many Muslims fled Darbargadh and lived in camps, land sharks began to pressurize the Muslim residents not to return.

“A BJP leader visits Darbargadh often and tells the Muslims to sell their land,” claims Ashok Shrimali.Another villager said many Muslims have not been allowed to return to their farmland.

The atmosphere in Sardarpur is so communally charged that no Hindu lawyer was willing to take up the Muslims’ case, compelling the community to get a Muslim lawyer from another state. This lawyer has been given little support from the local police in marshalling his evidence.After the March 1, 2002, killings, Pandya went to the Vijapur police station nearby to file the First Information Report about the killing of 38 Muslims. Some people tried to stop him from doing so. “Uncle has said he will tell the Commission what he saw on March 1,” says Pandya’s relative Ashok Shrimali.Pandya was unavailable for comment as he is traveling for medical treatment.

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1611465/report-2002-gujarat-riots-he-saved-100-lives-in-sardarpura

2002 Gujarat riots: He saved 100 lives in Sardarpura

Saturday, Nov 12, 2011, 15:40 IST | Place: Sardarpura | Agency: DNA

Someshwar Pandya, 78, who was deputy sarpanch of Sardarpura at the time of the 2002 riots, played a major role in saving at least 100 lives.

“I sat at the main market of the village everyday. Even when the mob burnt shops of Muslim traders a day after the Godhra carnage, I watched from afar,” relates Someshwar Pandya, 78, who was deputy sarpanch of Sardarpura at the time of the 2002 riots. Pandya, who now walks with a stick, played a major role in saving at least 100 lives. “I was not physically strong to save anybody by fighting with the angry mob. I was nearly 69 at that time. The mob was so angry that it was impossible to stop it or try to make the people understand right from wrong. If I had tried to stop anybody, I might have become their prey,” said Pandya recalling the black day of Sardarpura’s history.

Apart from the Shaikh community, other Muslim communities like Pathans, Memans and Mansuris also lived in the village. However, after the Shaikh Vas was destroyed on March 1, 2002, Memans and Mansuris left Sardarpura. Pathans are still living in the village. “There were around 150 families of Memans and Mansuris, but now they have left the village. Pandya saved lives of many people of these communities,” said Munsafkhan Pathan, witness of the riots in Sardarpura.

While the mob was moving around in the village, most of the members of those communities took refuge in Harijan Vas. Pandya, who belongs to a scheduled caste, was present there. “While the people gathered around the Vas, I was present there. Seeing me at the place, the mob dispersed fearing that I would become a witness to their actions.”

However, Pandya had to pay the price of his left eye, as he was also attacked later by the mob. “They attacked me and I lost eyesight in one eye because of injury.”But like many of the villagers of his age in Sardarpura, Pandya wants to forget everything and start afresh with communal harmony. He said, “Now I don’t want to remember all those wounds, which are healing with time.”

http://teestasetalvad.blogspot.in/2012/03/insaf-ki-dagar-par-on-path-of-justice.html

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Insaf Ki Dagar Par (On the Path of Justice)

by Dr Bindu Desai

Insaf Ki Dagar Par (On the Path of Justice)

Recalling the pogrom in Gujarat, February 2012

February 27^th marked the tenth anniversary of the horrific events that followed the terrible fire in a train compartment near Godhra. The fire resulted in the tragic death of 59 ‘kar sevaks’, more than 100 were injured. They were returning from Ayodhya as part of a campaign to build a temple dedicated to Ram on the site where previously a Masjid had existed. In the next few days and weeks Gujarat witnessed carnage where thousands of individuals, mainly Muslim, were murdered, raped, looted, displaced, their homes ransacked, livelihood destroyed.

A number of organizations planned a Memorial for February 27^th in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Lucknow, Malegaon, Aligarh, Calicut, Delhi and Ayodhya-Faizabad. Teesta Setalvad asked me if I would attend the one at the Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad, where 68 people were murdered, their bodies allowed to smoulder for days. 28 are still listed as ‘missing’. I felt it a privilege to be part of such a memorial service. So come February 27^th morning I left for Ahmedabad by the Shatabdi Express. Approaching the road on which Gulberg Society is located I could see the building from afar. I got down at a gate which was guarded by two policemen; they directed me to the main gate where some 30 policemen, a few with automatic weapons guns, stood by. A thought flashed through me: if only they had been there a decade ago and done their duty Gulberg Society would be peopled and full of life.

The society is L shaped. At the short arm of the L is a small bungalow. The long arm has a central path with many cottages on either side and two high rises of 3 stories. The central path was filled with people; many had come from villages affected by the pogrom. Their presence made the place appear less sinister. There were children whose energy was a refreshing balm to the somber reality of empty buildings, shattered windows and walls with burn marks.

Teesta was busy arranging events; I waved to her and embraced her. “Kem Che Deekra” I asked? She guided me to tables where I could leave my travel bag. I was keen to change into a sari, as I had worn a pair of slacks and a kurta for the train journey. I had a sari with me and had earlier inquired if I could change into it at the site. A Sayra Sandhi led me to the only room that afforded a bit of privacy. The police made way for us; one even carried my overnight case to the verandah. So helpful today when 10 years ago several of their colleagues had led the 20,000 strong mob into Gulberg and watched idly while acts of infamy were carried out, ah, police obey orders do they not? Sayra was dressed in a Gujrati style sari. As I introduced myself and told her I was a friend of Teesta’s, she said matter of factly:”Teestaben works very hard for us. My son died here”. Later I learnt that her brother-in-law, her sister-in-law, her niece were among those murdered.

The presence of loss was everywhere; neither the bright shining sun nor the exuberant bougainvillea could overcome this feeling. I sat in the shade and tried to absorb the reality of the place. No photograph captures the enduring sadness; the sheer inability to accept that in such a solid, pleasant airy place on a bustling road of a great city, scores of people could be burnt alive. My mind refused to accept that this could happen, and yet it did. Highly inflammable chemicals were used, the killing preplanned with precision. I looked up at shattered windows, empty doorways and overgrown grass.

There being numerous events recalling the carnage making for a long day, the organizers had provided everything one would need for the long day: Cold water jugs every 30 to 50 feet, bottles of water, endless cups of tea. The families of some survivors had cooked fresh snacks and sweets for those who had come to share their sorrow. Later in the evening 4 rounds of “dhoop” were carried through the grounds to ward off mosquitoes and insects. There were quite a lot of persons from the media, press and TV.

A statement was issued by Retired Mumbai High Court Judge Hosbet Suresh who had been one of 8 distinguished jurists, academics and activists forming the Concerned Citizen’s Tribunal that had investigated the Gujarat carnage in 2002. Teesta introduced me to the Justice. Clad in a Khadi kurta-pyjama one could not help being impressed by his down to earth-ness and transparent simplicity. He had spent 2 weeks in Gujarat for the Tribunal and felt that there could be no moving on till the wheels of Justice brought those responsible for these crimes to answer for their horrific deeds.

I was pleasantly surprised to meet Valjibhai Patel, a respected Dalit leader who I had met 2 decades ago. He told me that generally in a conflagration against Muslims he was able to save lives, here he said he was not able to, the police themselves had encouraged the mobs. He recounted the courage and bravery of a Dalit Someshwar Pandya who had managed to save 100 of 133 in Sardarpura and who was later beaten by BJP goons and lost an eye. Valjibhai was critical of the media which he characterized as irresponsible, at times publishing outright untruths. Taking action against the media is a tortuous process requiring a Police Inspector to agree that lies have been published, he explained. A Police Inspector, who agreed and moved the Government to take action, was transferred, the replacement said there was no case worth pursuing and the matter was dropped. Valjibhai looked fit and full of zest to continue his lifelong pursuit of justice and fairness for those marginalized and oppressed.

I met Trupti Shah and Rohit Prajapati, activists from Vadodara who had been involved in seeking justice for the many victims of this pogrom in their home city. Mallika Sarabhai came to affirm her solidarity with the victims. I went around the society and was shaken by what I saw. On a wall hung photographs of those killed, to name a few: Azar Dara Modi, whose family was at the site today, and who would have been 24 this year and upon whom the film Parzania is based; Ehsan Jafri, a former MP who was murdered most brutally whose widow, son and daughter were there; photos of Sayra’s family Mohammedhusen Salimbhai Sandhi, Jahangirbhai Noormohammed Sandhi. What tore at one’s heart was their faces, full of hope for what life might hold for them, hardest to bear with were those of children and babies….There were blanks for those missing or those whose family did not possess a photo of their loved one.

The building where Ehsan Jafri lived was visited by many to pay homage to the scores who perished in it. They had come seeking shelter and thinking his previous high office, as he was a former Member of Parliament, might offer protection. Nearby a toran fluttered with rectangular strips of paper on which people had written what they wished for, most wished for justice.

Close relatives addressed those present, among them Dara and Rupa Modi. It was difficult to hold back tears as individuals recounted how neighbours had turned against them. The afternoon sun gradually sank below the horizon. Suresh Mehta, former BJP Chief Minister came , saying it was his duty to come. A decade ago emotions had been allowed to rule, what had happened was wrong , he went on. I was honoured to meet R B Sreekumar, former Director General of Police(DGP) and at the time of the massacres Additional(Addl) DGP Intelligence Branch(IB). He has testified in detail, over 1000 pages he told me, of how the Modi government colluded in and encouraged the long reign of terror unleashed upon the Muslims of Gujarat. To meet Sreekumar was to meet a genuine hero. A man of dignity, forthright and taking his duties seriously, he invited the ire of the Chief Minister (CM) of Gujarat Narendra Modi. Sreekumar was transferred from Addl DGP IB to Police Reform, where as our police are so conscientious there was not much for him to do! Deprived of his pension on retirement he took the Gujarat Government to court and won his pension and his promotion to DGP. Sreekumar, very simply said his loyalty was to the Government of India and to the office of the Chief Minister, not to the person who happened to be CM. He felt those IAS and IPS officers who surround Modi nowadays are so afraid of him that they indulge in ‘anticipatory sycophancy’! How glad one is that Sreekumar is as upright as he is, how much better India would be if there were countless officials like him. His wife Rajlakshmi who sat next to him was unassuming and when I asked how she managed when they had no pension for 2 years, she smiled and said ‘I have to support Sreekumar; Teesta helped us with getting good lawyers to fight our case’.

Dusk saw the arrangements being made for Shubha Mudgal’s concert. I thought I should have a small snack as I expected to be at Gulberg till late at night and went to see where they were being distributed. I could not find the table and decided I would do without it. After a few minutes I saw a gentleman approach the empty chair near me with a plate of snacks in his hand. I asked him where he had got it. He replied “I’ll get you a plate if you hold this magazine for me.” I did so, he returned and sat on the chair beside me. I leaned over to introduce myself and shake his hand. “I am Bindu Desai” I said, “I am Tanvir Jafri” he replied, I gripped his hand strongly, lowered my eyes and winced. He nodded implying that he understood I was trying to convey how deeply I regretted what had been done to his family. We were silent for a few minutes. He now lives with his mother Zakia in Surat. “I cannot live in Ahmedabad now” he said in a soft voice. His sister Nishrin who lives in the USA came by and remarked how good it was for her mother to have so many survivors come and sit by her and talk to her. One marvels at how this family can maintain their equanimity after the gruesome way in which their father Ehsan Jafri was killed.

Shiv Vishwanathan, who had written the latest issue of Communalism Combat: 2002-2012: The Gujarat Genocide TEN YEARS LATER, was as he has been in his writings witty, scholarly and deeply committed to getting Justice for the victims. Shiv and his students provided the audio-visual back up for the meet. The stage for Shubha Mudgal was ready on the terrace of the L end of Gulberg Society. Candles were lit by young and old and their flickering light reminded me of Mahatma Gandhi’s words:

“In the midst of darkness light persists,

In the midst of untruth truth persists

I n the midst of death life persists,”

Tridip Suhrud introduced Shubha Mudgal and her words before the concert set the tone for what followed. Shubha first acknowledged her accompanying musicians Aneesh Pradhan on the tabla, Sudhir Nayak on the harmonium. She began by apologizing for coming so late to the struggle for Justice and said that what she would sing today was not an entertainment but a tribute and a recall of what religion and a citizen’s sense of security should be. Her voice rang through the air, the crescent moon and an occasional star shining down, witness to our crimes, perhaps wondering how a decade later such an exquisite voice could fill the air of so sad a place. She sang of Mazhab as love, of, an individual perplexed at being singled out by fate, of the gnawing pain and grief of losing loved ones…..

I have been to Hiroshima and Auschwitz. Both conveyed their own particular horror and unsettling and painful as they were, Gulberg society was wrenching. Though the US has never meaningfully apologized for its barbaric acts, Germany has admitted its crimes and provided reparation. Official Gujarat has shown no remorse, the larger society has reelected the instigator twice and admires him. But a decade later the struggle goes on. It is awesome to behold the determination of 540 witnesses, a lot of them women, who have been given armed protection ordered by the Supreme Court of India, not to give up, to pursue the matter diligently and persistently till those guilty are punished for their crimes. The overwhelming force that drives them is to ensure that other sisters, widows and mothers do not have to endure what they have had to.

Over 3000 thousand people had come to Gulberg Society to pay their respects to the dead and missing and to offer such comfort as they might to those whose grief is bottomless.

May Justice be done and soon.

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The Importance of Zakia Jafri’s Protest Petition

(EPW 25MAY2013)

Vol – XLVIII No. 21, May 25, 2013 | Teesta Setalvad

The protest petition filed by Zakia Jafri against the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team report, which absolved Narendra Modi of all responsibility for the 2002 killings in Gujarat, is an important step towards justice for all the victims. This article recapitulates the long and diffi cult battle for justice through the courts and exposes the complicity of the SIT in protecting Modi from his crimes.

Teesta Setalvad (teestateesta@gmail.com) is secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace.

It is not often that the battle against aggressive communalism gets sustained and validated through courts of law. This communalism is not just visible in instances of violence but encompasses the sustained mobilisation that precedes the violence, it includes hate speech and writing, as well as the deliberate debilitation of preventive measures of law and order to prevent such violence and protect the lives and properties of citizens. In the south Asian context, majoritarian communalism, fed in an insidious manner by its minority prototype, has the proclivity to deteriorate into authoritarianism, even fascism. Events, past and present, in Sri Lanka, Pakistan or India are testimony to this. In the cases of all countries of the region, communalists of the majority find ready partners with their mirror-images among the minority.

For over four decades now, aggressive communalism has made deep inroads into the pillars of the Indian republic, executive, legislature and even the judiciary. The calculated, and bloody mobilisation of an ostensibly religious kind by India’s main opposition party from the late 1980s was purely political; it consolidated a vote bank of middle- and upper-class Hindus while demonising the “minority vote bank” as the raison d’être for its existence. This section of Indians, fortuitously a numerical minority yet substantial in numbers at 27 to 30% of the overall vote, has aggressively celebrated the bloody attacks on minorities and on its opposition. Writers and commentators have analysed this phenomenon as the republic’s descent into proto-fascism, with forces of the Hindu right (the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the parliamentary wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – and its other avatars, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal (BD)) manipulating institutions of democratic governance. Our administration, our police, even our courts of justice barely withstood this systemic onslaught.

Some Success

It is in this unique context that the battle for acknowledgement, justice and accountability for the well-orchestrated state directed and executed crimes of 2002 in Gujarat, needs to be understood. For over 11 years now, a steely band of survivors, backed by groups of civil and legal rights groups and activists have extracted for the first time a degree of acknowledgement, transparency and accountability from an indifferent system. One hundred and sixteen life imprisonments pronounced to, among others, policemen, powerful politicians (one former minister) and strongmen of outfits of the VHP and BD, is a success story in its own right.

What the Zakia Jafri protest petition filed on 15 April 2013 attempts is to take this battle for accountability several steps further, and deeper. In carving out a substantial case of criminal conspiracy planned and executed by the state’s chief minister, who is also its home minister, this unique and historic legal intervention raises serious questions about the systemic build-up of communal mobilisation and inaction by state agencies and actors, the state and government’s specific response to a tragedy like Godhra on 27 February 2002 and their lack of intent to contain the impact and spread of violence.

This protest petition also brings focus on the lacunae in checking hate speech and propaganda, asks for facts about summoning assistance from the military and paramilitary forces, and does a comparative analysis of districts and police commissionerates worst affected by violence (which were 15 in number) and those where the police and civilian officials refused to bow down to political masters. It also highlights the role of whistleblowers, of survivors/activists/legal and civil rights groups, and of the media in pinning down accountability on the political leadership for these mass crimes.

Gathering the Tinder

Gujarat in early 2002 was sitting on a communal cauldron, carefully stoked since October-November of 2001. Records of the State Intelligence Bureau (SIB) that are well-documented parts of the protest petition (annexures to the affidavit of former SIB Gujarat chief, R B Sreekumar) as well as responses received from the office of the chief minister during the course of the investigation, clearly establish that sustained efforts to keep districts and cities of Gujarat on the boil were afoot (reference p 178, paras 426-42 of the protest petition). What these indicate is that the then newly sworn in chief minister, Narendra Modi who had been brought in by the party’s national leadership after a series of bye-election losses in September 2001, was at the helm of the law and order machinery as the state’s home minister but did little to act against this communal mobilisation.

SIB warnings include detailed notings of the aggressive anti-minority speeches being made by BJP leaders as also of the VHP and BD. One such comment, by one Prahlad Patel on his way to Faizabad-Ayodhya, recorded by the SIB would prove to be prescient, “Yeh andar ki baat hai, police hamaare saath hai” (The inside information is that the police is working with us). Despite this climate and the warnings, Godhra – with a poor record of communal violence – was left unguarded and unprepared. Despite platoons of the military and paramilitary being not far away (at Vadodara), they are not galvanised. When the Sabarmati Express arrived five hours late at the Godhra station on the fateful day of 27 February 2002, Gujarat was already sitting on a communal tinderbox.

It is how the Godhra tragedy has been deliberately manipulated that requires a careful and dispassionate study for all those concerned with non-partisan governance. The first information on Godhra received by the chief minister from the district magistrate, Jayanti Ravi, details the sequence of events – aggressive and provocative sloganeering by kar sevaks that caused a mob of Muslims to gather and pelt stones. The reasoning that explains partially, at least how and why a crowd gathered when the train stopped after it had left and the chain was pulled, is thereafter deliberately and consciously obliterated by the government in official statements and releases. The chief minister in the assembly around 1 pm hints at a sinister and Machiavellian conspiracy (paras 50-54 at pp 37-39 of the protest petition and paras 127-74, pp 71-92 of the protest petition).

It is other jigsaws in the puzzle that have fallen into place during the analysis of investigation papers and preparation of the protest petition that point to the chilling manoeuvres by men and women in positions of governance to abdicate their oath to the Indian Constitution and consciously allow a chain of criminal actions to spiral out of control.

Lighting the Fire

Between 9 am, when news of the tragedy at Godhra had been received, and 10.30 am, when an official meeting of home department officials was called by the chief minister, phone call records (that were deliberately ignored by the Special Investigation Team (SIT)) show that the chief minister was in close touch with Jaideep Patel (accused in the criminal complaint). Jaideep Patel, far from being a man from officialdom, was actually a strong man of the VHP, general secretary of their state unit. Despatched to Godhra soon after these telephone conversations it was the same Jaideep Patel who thereafter attended an official meeting at the Collectorate at Godhra (para 69, p 45 of the protest petition) and to whom the chief minister ordered the 54 dead bodies of Godhra victims to be handed over to. It was this VHP man who was given the responsibility of transporting these bodies to Ahmedabad in a motor cavalcade that caused violence in its wake (paras 73-81 at pp 47-50 of the protest petition) and it was Jaideep Patel who handed them over to the authorities at Sola Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad.

Jaideep Patel thereafter was also charged with being an instigator of mobs to commit violence at Naroda Gaam, the next day, 28 February 2002. This close contact between the chief minister and Jaideep Patel, both accused in Zakia Jafri’s criminal complaint dated 8 June 2006 continued right through till 28 February 2002 when the massacres at Naroda and Gulberg were being executed. At 15: 26:06 hours, Jaideep Patel called the chief minister at his official number and had a conversation lasting 141 seconds. Jaideep Patel’s was one of just three calls on this number. Incidentally, all the office and residential numbers of the chief minister for both days show a shockingly low number of calls, raising more questions than they answer. The mobile number of the chief minister has been left deliberately uninvestigated by the SIT (para 106, p 61 of the protest petition).

After these surreptitious indications of the criminal conspiracy that was to unfold, the chief minister, then health minister, Ashok Bhatt, minister of state for home, Gordhan Zadaphiya and Jaideep Patel were in touch and a controversial decision to conduct post-mortems on the bodies of the unfortunate Godhra victims, in the open at the railway yard in full public view of an aggressive crowd of VHP members baying for blood, was taken. The chief minister, who is accused number 1 in this protest petition, was present at Godhra at the railway yard while these illegal post-mortems were allowed (paras 473-77, pp 211-12 of the protest petition).

Law and procedure are exacting about whom the dead bodies are to be given; they require that the bodies remain in the safe-keeping of the police authorities (in this case the Godhra police where the case was registered) until claimed by relatives to whom they need to be handed over with due procedure. Photographs of gruesome and gory remains are strictly prohibited from being displayed or published (para 480, p 214 of the protest petition). Not only were the gory charred remains of the burnt passengers displayed but they were widely publicised in violation of Section 233, 4 (vi), Volume III of the Gujarat Police Manual.

Initiating Investigations

The narrative behind this legal journey is in itself an exploration into systemic efficacy and response. Zakia Jafri, widow of slain former parliamentarian Ahsan Jafri, first filed this criminal complaint before the director general of police, Gujarat. The man to hold this position on 8 June 2006, the date of the complaint, was none other than the many times promoted despite being indicted commissioner of police, Ahmedabad, P C Pande. When the Gujarat police failed to register a first information report (FIR), she along with the organisation Citizens for Justice and Peace approached the high court and later, when relief was denied further, the Supreme Court of India. On 27 April 2009 the Supreme Court seeing merit in the issues raised by the complaint handed it over to the already appointed SIT under former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director, R K Raghavan.

The investigations by the SIT resulted in four reports, three before the Supreme Court. While the SIT, despite contradictory findings, concluded there was no evidence against any of the accused, the amicus curiae (friend of the court) senior counsel Raju Ramachandran reported to the contrary. His report dated 25 July 2011 told the Supreme Court that there was a clear case for the prosecution of Modi and three others, at the least. Based on this contrary advice, the Supreme Court on 12 September 2011 told the SIT to file its final report after considering the amicus’ contrary view and, in the event of this being no different from its conclusions before the Supreme Court, specifically entitled Zakia Jafri to a complete set of the investigation papers to file a competent protest petition. After a battle of five years, the complaint that began with a plea for registration of an FIR had now proceeded to the stage of a charge sheet being filed against the accused.

The SIT did not change its conclusions and filed yet another report stating that no criminal charges were made out. Equally questionable was its adamant refusal to comply with the Supreme Court’s order of 12 September 2011 and give all the investigation papers to Zakia Jafri. The 514-page protest petition is an elaborate testimony to the reasons behind the SIT’s refusal to comply. Its own investigation papers have provided a wealth of further evidence about the complicity of the top political and administrative offices of the state government in paralysing its own administration into inaction, deliberately refusing preventive arrests or the declaration of curfew, allowing funeral processions to be the launching pads of attacks and rioting, etc. By 2013 it is clear that the SIT has not only performed an unprofessional job in a desultory manner, it is today, through its partisan conclusions, becoming a spokesperson for the Modi administration abandoning its role as an independent investigating agency that it was bound to be, given its appointment by the Supreme Court.

Ignoring Evidence

R K Raghavan, A K Malhotra and Himanshu Shukla, the three main spokespersons for the SIT, have cynically misled the Supreme Court when they stated that the funeral processions of the railway burning victims in Godhra and at least five to eight other locations (Khedbrahma, Vadodara, Modasa, Dahod, Anand) were peaceful. The evidence from police control room (PCR) records submitted by P C Pande (accused in the complaint) to the SIT after 15 March 2011 reveal a cold-blooded mobilisation of RSS and VHP workers at the Sola Civil hospital from 4 am onwards on 28 February 2002 in aggressive anticipation of the arrival of the dead bodies.

Repeated PCR messages, that the home department under Modi and P C Pande were trying to conceal, show that both in Ahmedabad and in several locations all over Gujarat, crowds were mobilised to aggressively parade bodies with bloodthirsty sloganeering, inciting mobs to attack innocent Muslims. The then joint police commissioner, Ahmedabad, Shivanand Jha, also an accused in the complaint was jurisdictionally in charge of Sola Civil Hospital in zone 1. As the messages extracted show, repeated PCR messages desperately ask for more “bandobast”, they speak of the staff and doctors of the hospital being under threat, of a 5,000-6,000 strong mob accompanying the bodies and finally one message also says that “riots have broken out” (paras 559-60 at pp 244-47 of the protest petition).

These records also reveal what the SIT was trying hard to conceal: that the Ahmedabad police under P C Pande, the then minister of state for home, Gordhan Zadaphiya (accused in the complaint), and Narendra Modi had enough forces to escort a VHP leader known for his incendiary slogans, Giriraj Kishore, from the airport to the Sola Civil hospital to accompany the processionists, but they did not have enough forces to send to Naroda Patiya where at least 96 persons were massacred in broad daylight and 69 persons at Gulberg society the same day and around the same time as these aggressive processions were being allowed.

Sustained warnings from the SIB, even after the Godhra tragedy on 27 February 2002, show that large sections of the police were aware and knew of what should be expected all over the state now that the Godhra tragedy had happened. As early as 12.30 pm on 27 February a SIB officer, through fax number 525, communicated to the headquarters that there were reports that some dead bodies would be brought to Kalupur Hospital station in Ahmedabad city. The same message said that kar sevaks had given explosive interviews to a television channel at Godhra and had threatened to unleash violence against Muslims.

But it is the panic messages from 1.51 am onwards on 28 February 2002 from police wireless vans positioned at Sola Civil Hospital demanding immediate protection from Special Reserve Police platoons and the presence of the deputy commissioner of police (DCP) zone 1, that are a grave testimony to the planned gory scenario that was to unfold. The message at 2.44 am on 28 February 2002 informed that the motor cavalcade had reached Sola Civil Hospital. Page No 5790 of Annexure IV, file XIV reveals that at 04.00 am a mob comprising of 3,000 RSS workers had already gathered at the Sola Civil Hospital. Again, another message three hours later at 7.17 am (p 5797 of Annexure IV, File XIV of the documents) says that a mob of 500 people was holding up traffic. By 11.55 am a PCR message was sent out saying that the Hindu mob had become violent and had set a vehicle on fire and was indulging in arson on the highway.

The message at 11.55 am (page no 6162 Annexure IV File XV) says that “Sayyed Saheb, the protocol officer had informed Sola-1 that riots have started at Sola civil hospital at the high court where the dead bodies were brought”. Again, there is another message with no indication of time (page no 6172 of 28 February 2002) that states that the officers and employees of the hospital had been surrounded by a 500 strong mob and they could not come out. The message also made a demand for more security for the civil hospital at Sola.

In a cynical disregard of this hard documentary evidence, the SIT, in its first investigation report dated 12 May 2010, in the chairman’s comments dated 14 May 2010 and in its final report dated 8 February 2012 says that the funeral processions were peaceful.

On the morning of 28 February 2002, another SIB message says that a funeral procession was allowed to take place at Khedbrahma, a town in Sabarkantha district, and adds that soon after the funeral procession two Muslims on their way to Khedbrahma were stabbed and the situation had become very tense. All this and more has been ignored by the SIT completely.

Other documentary evidence of deliberate acts of provocation by the likes of Jaideep Patel, Kaushik Mehta (both also accused) and Dileep Trivedi were recorded by the SIB. They made inflammatory false statements of “women being molested at Godhra” and the SIB records that other meetings at Vapi, Khedbrahma, Bhavnagar, etc, are being held by RSS, VHP and the BD to whip up sentiments (paras 631-37, pp 274-76 of the protest petition). One message at Annexure III, file XVIII (D-160) at page no 19, message no 531 from SIB police to K R Singh at 6.10 pm on 27 February 2002, actually records that “on 27 February 2002 at 4.30 pm when the train arrived at the Ahmedabad Railway station, the kar sevaks were armed with ‘dandas’ and shouting murderous slogans ‘khoon ka badla khoon’”.

SIT: Omissions and Commissions

While Modi travelled 300 kms to Godhra and returned the same night, he did not visit any of the refugee camps where women, children and men of the minority community had taken shelter until well after the 21-22 May 2002 visit of J S Verma, the then chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and former chief justice of India. He also announced a discriminatory compensation package for those killed at Godhra and those thereafter. The crucial, and sensational, meeting at his residence on the night of 27 February 2002 is where direct evidence of the conspiracy in operation has been alleged. Officers and others who were present have, over the past 11 years, indicated that clearly illegal orders were conveyed by the accused chief minister. Unlike crucial law and order meetings at times of crises, this meeting has not been minuted.

What transpired at this meeting was first publicly revealed through the report of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal – Crimes Against Humanity – headed by Justices V R Krishna Iyer, P B Sawant and Hosbet Suresh. Thereafter in the course of the SIT investigations, a serving officer of the Gujarat police, Sanjiv Bhatt testified directly and corroborated this. The protest petition makes a strong case for testing this evidence in court. Amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran in his report to the Supreme Court had also clearly opined that it is not for the investigating agency to prejudge the evidence but place it to be tested during trial.

Despite the evidence of intense communal mobilisation, bloodthirsty speeches and actual attacks on Muslim citizens on the day of the Godhra tragedy, there is no appeal for peace and calm by the state’s chief minister and home minister. No preventive arrests were made, despite 19 attacks on minorities in Ahmedabad on 27 February 2002 itself, nor were prohibitory orders issued. There is no clarity either, from the investigation papers, as to when the army was actually called and deployed. The SIT had not bothered to record the statement of major Zameeruddin Shah, in charge of the army operations in Gujarat, nor that of K P S Gill, sent by the central government in May 2002 simply because the violence continued and refused to stop. Hence the protest petition, apart from praying for the charge sheeting of all the accused, also makes a strong case for a transfer of the further investigation to an independent agency.

The failure of the SIT was in its inability to examine the evidence objectively. An honest and robust investigation would have made a strong comparative analysis between those districts of Gujarat that burned and those that withstood the illegal instructions from above while succumbing to rampaging militias of the RSS-VHP-BD combine from below. Bhavnagar and Panchmahals are interesting studies. Superintendent of police Rahul Sharma, despite all attempts to unleash bloodshed, held his own, even though reinforcements and troops were deliberately delayed by his seniors in Gandhinagar. Annoyed at his non-partisan conduct he was transferred by 26 March 2002. Brought to the crime branch, he again made significant inputs about non-partisan charge sheets in both the Gulberg and Naroda Patiya investigations; he was transferred yet again.

In Conclusion

The narrative of the conspiracy of partisan governance and subversion of the justice process runs parallel to a cynical policy of punishing those officers who refused to become collaborators in the planned bloodshed. Unfashionable as it is to quote from Jawaharlal Nehru when he said that “The [real] danger to India, is from Hindu right-wing communalism”, it seems more than appropriate given the continued attempts by the government in power in Gujarat and the party in power, to belittle what has been an onerous and exacting battle, fought at great risk, within the courts.

#India – Mother courage against #Narendramodi (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Gujarat – Contours of a conspiracy (kractivist.wordpress.com)
PRESS RELEASE- Gujarat- Mrs Zakia Jafri files her Protest Petition (kractivist.wordpress.com)
#India – Gujarat riots were not spontaneous and sudden Mr Narendra Modi (kractivist.wordpress.com)

Narendra Modi – Caesar can do no wrong

By Badri Raina

Sunday, May 19, 2013

After his triumph in Karnataka where he thundered in four electoral constituencies, losing all four to the Congress whom it seems his fulminations did not persuade the crowds to “hate” enough, Narendra Damodar Modi found more accolades awaiting him at home in Gandhinagar, where he is used to being Caesar, for his customary good governance. Good governance that began in early 2002 with the decisive quelling of the uppity Gujarati Muslims, yielding a decade of funereal peace and quiet conducive to profit maximization.

A Division Bench of the Gujarat High Court has had the gumption to accuse his government of “shielding, protecting, and siding with police officials” arraigned in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter killing.

At a time when stories of executive interference in the investigative workings of the Central Bureau of Investigation are the flavour of the electronic channels, justices Jayant Patel and Abhilasha Kumari observed how the Special Investigation Team had earlier alleged interference on the part of the State, while the CBI report left no doubt that the State government was shielding the accused cops (see The Hindu, May 11). Just to remind ourselves that, apart from being Caesar, Modi is also the Home minister of the state, and has been so from day one.

Poor CBI has recently been driven to issuing an arrest warrant against Additional Director General of Police, P.P. Pandey—no less—who seems to have gone missing with the benign connivance of the government in Gujarat, a circumstance rather reminiscent of the many months through which the convicted and sentenced Babu Bajrangi was shielded and hidden away under the aegis of Caesar himself as per Bajrangi’s confessions on the Tehelka Sting tapes. One has of course lost count of the number of similarly high-ranking police officers similarly accused in other fake encounter killings who are cooling their heels in the slammer—all, no doubt, testimony to the proverbial good governance of Narendra Modi. Ask an Adani, or an Ambani, or a Tata, and they would tell you how all these underside happenings are of little account so long as good governance keeps extending to unimpeded freebies and bonanzaz for them in the supreme “national interest.” Indeed the latest to join that chorus is the redoubtable icon of entrepreneurial success and probity, Shri Narayanmurthi. It seems the shining roads of Ahmedabad have done it for him.

Then there is the case of the senior IPS officer, Satish Verma, who was a member of the SIT in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case, and the first to call the killing a cold blooded murder. While the Court had instructed the CBI to continue to avail of the services of Satish Verma inorder to nab the other accused, the State government sought his services elsewhere in habitual deflection of Court orders.

In the meanwhile, news comes that the judicial magistrate who had been hearing Zakia Jaffri’s Protest Petition on a day to day basis has been transferred after a week or so into the hearings. Just to recall that the Protest Petition challenges the conclusions drawn by the Raghavan-led SIT whom the Supreme Court had appointed to enquire into the Gulberg massacre case. The challenge, which is based on hitherto concealed evidence comprising call records and case diaries pertaining to the fateful days—Feb.,27 to March 1, 2002—demonstrates, for those who care to see, both the complicity of the Gujarat government at the highest level in the killings, and the failure or unwillingness of the SIT to admit such evidence and draw the inferences it should have drawn, although the amicus curiae in the case, also appointed by the Supreme Court, was to independently hold that the evidence already recorded by the SIT was sufficient to warrant the filing of charges against Modi. Indeed the Supreme Court itself had been askance at the inexplicable divergence between the SIT’s recorded evidence and its exoneratory conclusions with respect to Modi.

It is not clear at the time of writing as to who might have been the authority that has ordered the transfer of the magistrate in the case, the Hight Court or the Government. If the former, it is regrettable that the honourable court should not have considered the delay, perhaps an inordinate one, that will not but be caused in the disposal of the Petition, since a new incumbent cannot but take a great deal of time to master the details of the SIT report, and the more than a thousand pages of text and audio-visual evidence annexed thereof challenging the exonerative conclusions by the SIT. If, on the other hand, the transferring authority in the case has been the Gujarat government, what could be a greater giveaway of how, true to pattern, it intends to thwart consideration of the Protest Petition, since its admittance would lead directly to the filing of charges against the accused listed by the Petitioner, at the head of which list happens to be Narendra Modi.

A further piece of news concerns Shri Gulab Chand Kataria, an erstwhile minister and bigwig in the Rajasthan BJP, who has been now charge -sheeted for complicity in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter murder. The BJP top brass sees this to be a sinister conspiracy on behalf of the Congress party which it accuses of using the CBI in the matter with the ulterior purpose of going after Modi. Poor CBI, it can do nothing right, except when it aids and abets the BJP in its difficult times. Sterling example: the murder of Modi’s cabinet colleague, the late Haren Pandya was generally recognized for what it was—a supari killing to eliminate the prospect of Pandya testifying openly to what had transpired at the meeting Modi held with his sartraps on the late evening of February, 27, 2002. Recall that he had actually confided to the Citizens’s Enquiry Panel that Modi had issued instructions to his police not to thwart the vendetta on behalf of Hindus that was sure to happen the next day during the VHP bandh call which was supported by the BJP. The investigation in the matter was passed on to the CBI by the then Home Minister of India, L.K. Advani, and, lo and behold, the CBI quickly concluded the murder to have been the work of “jehadi elements”. Interestingly, all the accused were freed as innocent victims by the Court, and the real killers were never investigated or caught. The BJP and the then NDA government at the centre tom -tommed this finding of the CBI as exemplary proof of the disinformation against Modi. And yet, the same CBI’s case against Gulab Chand Kataria is a priori being propagandized by the BJP top brass as a case of proven vendetta. Just to note: from all available independent sources that have thus far gone into the Sohrabuddin killing, as well as the subsequent murders of his wife, Kausar Bi, and the only witness to the events, Tulsi Ram Prajapati, the CBI may indeed have an open and shut case against both Kataria and Amit Shah, the latter erstwhile Minister of State for Home affairs under Modi at the time, and already charged.

However you look at it, there continues to be an exonerative Teflon all over Narendra Modi; no matter what sorts of facts keep emerging about his reign in Gujarat, no screaming, holier-than-everybody television anchor, not to speak of his own party people who never fail to point fingers every second of every day, and may I add with dismay, some noted mainline Dailies, may persuade themselves to think one bad thought about Modi.

The fact may be that, notwithstanding their routine imprecations on behalf of democracy and the rule of law, most corporates who own these channels, and who fund the print media, and the elites who cotton to them with gusto are all at bottom looking for the great dictator to arrive in the blazing purity of saffron, willing to set the country right through edicts in the superman style.

When the American Constitutional regime was being considered, one of the central contentions was whether the new world should opt for a government of men or laws. As is well known, the chips fell in favour of laws, since the good book taught, and teaches, that all humankind is depraved because of the “original” transgression of Adam and Eve.

It seems that here in India where in Hindu thought depravity is never a serious matter, and never unmanageable at any rate, our forward-looking generation now pines for the rule by one man who may, if he so wishes, be a law unto himself.

Currently, no Indian demogauge fits that requirement more than Modi. Thus the Teflon and the immunity in elite perception.

___________________________________________________________________

Badri Raina,

CBI encounters ‘ Narendra Modi hand’ in triple-murder (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Naroda Patiya case: Modi government does a U-turn on Kodnani, Bajrangi #deathpenalty (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Press Release- Narendra Modi what about actual policy about Farmers and Workers of Gujarat (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Narendra Modi Attacks His Henchmen-Chanakya and Machiavelli Rolled into One (kractivist.wordpress.com)

1 Comment

by kracktivist on May 20, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Advocacy, Announcements, Human Rights, Justice, Kractivism, Law

Tagged babu bajrangi, Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, CBI, Central Bureau of Investigation, Gujarat, Haren Pandya, Narendra Modi

Posted by kracktivist on May 20, 2013

http://kractivist.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/narendra-modi-caesar-can-do-no-wrong/

Press Release- Narendra Modi what about actual policy about Farmers and Workers of Gujarat

PRESS RELEASE

DATE: 20 May 2013

During ninth ‘Krishi Mahotsav of Gujarat’, Government of Gujarat, tried to fool farmers with false promises while during ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ they insulted Farm, Farming, Farmers, and Workers of Gujarat.

We want clarification from “only and only one working man” Mr. CM of Gujarat’ about his actual policy about Farm, Farming, Farmers, and Workers of Gujarat.

During ninth ‘Krishi Mahotsav of Gujarat’, Government of Gujarat, is trying to fool farmers by showing with promises but when Mr. Narendra Modi’s Government of Gujarat organised the Vibrant Gujarat they have no problem in insulting Farm, Farming, Farmers and Workers of Gujarat.
The then Finance Minister of Gujarat Mr. Vajubhai Vala on 11^th January 2011 while addressing a day-long pre-Vibrant Gujarat Summit seminar at Ahmedabad Management Association on ‘Industry Responsive Skill Development: The Emerging Trends in Gujarat’ said, “A farmer engaged in agriculture on a five acre plot will earn enough only for his family. But if an industry is set up on that land, it will provide sustenance to families of 25-30 thousand workers.” I would like to inform small and marginal farmers of Gujarat that the real agenda of Mr. Modi is to pursue corporate farming; his vision about the growth of agricultural sector of Gujarat is at the cost of livelihood of small and marginal farmers and food security.

The capital investment mania does not stop here but also insults the workers of Gujarat. Mr. Vala further instructed local industrialists not to spoil workers by giving them more than what is rightfully due to them. Government of Gujarat has converted worker of Gujarat from ‘workers to shramyogi’ and later on from ‘shramyogi to sahyak’.
At present, in “Vibrant” Gujarat, new employees in government are not recruited but sahyak are appointed in all the government department, who are low-paid temporary contract worker lured with a permanent job in future. In private industry, you may get job that will be low-paid as casual or contract worker and working hours varies from 10-12-14 hours.

Because of the commitment for capital to achieve two-digit growth, Gujarat is number 11 (two-digit figure) in Human Development Index among Indian states.
Let Mr. Modi clarify his real policy about Farm, Farming, Farmers and Workers of Gujarat.

Rohit Prajapati
Social Activist of Gujarat.

#India – How Narendra Modi rules by changing the laws #Gujarat (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Open letter to #FICCI on Narendra Modi hiding the Truth about Women in Gujarat #Vaw #Womenrights (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Press Release- Narendra Modi you need to reply to Permanent-Resident-Gujaratis (PRG) (kractivist.wordpress.com)
CBI encounters ‘ Narendra Modi hand’ in triple-murder (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Gujarat- The Great Land Grab (kractivist.wordpress.com)

2 Comments

by kracktivist on May 20, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Advocacy, Announcements, Health Care, Human Rights, Justice, Kractivism, Law, Press Release

Tagged Ahmedabad Management Association, Gujarat, Gujarat government, Human Development Index, Modi, Narendra Modi, Vajubhai Vala, Vibrant Gujarat

Posted by kracktivist on May 20, 2013

http://kractivist.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/press-release-narendra-modi-what-about-actual-policy-about-farmers-and-workers-of-gujarat/

CBI encounters ‘ Narendra Modi hand’ in triple-murder

Ajay Umat, TNN | May 19

AHMEDABAD: After the chargesheeting of Gulab Chand Kataria, the former home minister of Rajasthan and the present leader of opposition in the Rajasthan assembly , BJP leader Arun Jaitley lost no time in announcing that the real target of the CBI was the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. He quoted a CBI officer’s noting in the documents before the court in the Sohrabuddin-Kauserbi-Tulsiram killings as saying, “I especially underline the importance of Annexure-C for its potential in respect to the chief minister also.”

Case documents available with TOI quotes the CBI as saying, “Amit Shah was instrumental in the acts of commission and omission by the officers in the investigation of this case. Although the files for these administrative decisions in respect of these officers were definitely put up to the chief minister also for final orders as per the rules of business in respect of All India Service officers, the primary responsibility for suggesting at the ministerial level the course of action was of Amit Shah.”

In the said annexure, the investigating officer had pointed out to the fact that the government in the middle of December 2006, a few days before Tulsiram Prajapati was murdered at Ambaji near the Gujarat-Rajasthan border, transferred D G Vanzara from ATS Ahmedabad to the post of DIG, Border Range, from where he had carried out the entire operation of the kidnapping and fake encounter of Prajapati . This decision to transfer Vanzara could not have been taken by Amit Shah as per the rules of the business and it was only the chief minister who could have finally passed the order. Other instance of decisions which only Modi could have taken have been enumerated by the CBI.

Modi rewards

CBI says these are 3 rewards only Modi could have given.

P C Pande

The then DGP P C Pande was rewarded with a post-retirement berth as the chairman of Gujarat State Police Housing Corporation which enables him to retain his official bungalow and allied perks.

O P Mathur

The then ADGP O P Mathur was given the promotion to the rank of DGP, though a departmental enquiry having serious charges of moral turpitude was pending against him. The chargesheet in the above enquiry was dropped in September 2008 and he was promoted thereafter. And even after his retirement he was appointed as the director general of Raksha Shakti University.

Geetha Johri

A departmental enquiry was dropped against Anil Johri, IFS, husband of Geetha Johri, which included serious charges of corruption. This enquiry was later diluted in October 2008. A residential plot which was initially allotted to Geetha Johri and Anil Johri at a concessional rate by the government was later changed to some other plot of Geetha Johri’s choice without charging the premium. Geetha Johri’s name was recommended by the home department for the award of President’s Police Medal for distinguished services in the year 2009, even though reportedly she did not figure in the panel initially proposed by the DGP.

#India – Mother courage against #Narendramodi (kractivist.wordpress.com)
#India -Why Narendra Modi should not be the PRIME MINISTER (kractivist.wordpress.com)
PRESS RELEASE- Gujarat- Mrs Zakia Jafri files her Protest Petition (kractivist.wordpress.com)
How the support of the neo-middle class has been crucial to Modi’s rise (kractivist.wordpress.com)
#India – Gujarat riots were not spontaneous and sudden Mr Narendra Modi (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Press Release- Understanding Communal Mobilisation – Lessons from the Zakia Jafri Protest Petition (kractivist.wordpress.com)
On The Social Fabric In Narendra Modi’s Gujarat (kractivist.wordpress.com)

2 Comments

by kracktivist on May 19, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Advocacy, Announcements, Human Rights, Justice, Kractivism, Law, Minority Rights

Tagged Amit Shah, Arun Jaitley, CBI, Gujarat, Gulab Chand Kataria, Narendra Modi, Rajasthan, Raksha Shakti University

Posted by kracktivist on May 19, 2013

http://kractivist.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/cbi-encounters-narendra-modi-hand-in-triple-murder/

On The Social Fabric In Narendra Modi’s Gujarat

18 May 2013 By Shivam Vij

Narendra Modi; Pic Courtesy: in.com

Narendra Modi’s phenomenal success story is indeed very interesting; how he shaped his political victories based on to ‘the aam aadmi’ welfare concept is the real catch. Secular intellectuals of our country however blame him for creating an inhuman divide between Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat. There are many such things on which NaMo gets cornered!

This is an excerpt from the chapter, ‘The Enemy Within’ in NIIANJAN MUKHOPADHYAY’s book,Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.

From the label of “Master Divider” in India Today in January 2003 to the tag of “The Great Polariser” in the Outlook in July 2012 – Narendra Modi’s image remained static: self-declared champion of one community of people. But the strain Gujarat faced in the course of his tenure has increased manifold.

Wherever I travelled in Gujarat, there was a clear distinction between “us” and “them”. This difference was articulated by several Hindus every time the conversation veered in this direction. In contrast, counterparts among Muslims denied this. The disagreement with the hypothesis stemmed not from a belief and perception that they faced no discrimination but because of a “fear” that accepting such a viewpoint could be interpreted as levelling an allegation that they were being targeted – a risk no Muslim is willing to take after the post-Godhra violence.

The ever-widening gulf that exists amongst Hindus and Muslims at a social level was unmistakable in two places: first, in Bhuj, the headquarters of Kutch district and the epicentre of the 2001 earthquake that actually began the Modi-era in Gujarat’s narrative. The second place where the tattered social fabric of Gujarat becomes evident is in an outgrown village nearly twenty-five kms away from the heart of Ahmedabad – the spiritual headquarters of a community of people who belong to the Pirana sect.

In Bhuj we are in the office of Kutchmitra - the largest selling Gujarati paper in the district. A reporter who requests anonymity, mentions that Muslims in cities and towns of Kutch no longer cook non-vegetarian food at home. Instead, they go to a few Muslim-run restaurants in colonies where only people from their community live. This was done because of social pressure from Hindus. Kutch incidentally has the highest percentage of Muslims – twenty-one per cent – in the state.

The reporter continued his narrative on changed social customs in Kutch in the past decade: whenever there is a marriage in a Muslim family and they wish to invite Hindu business associates (there are no friends across communities- rishta sirf zaroorat ka hee hai – the relationship is purely need-based) – they make a special announcement in the wedding card. There will be a separate- and sanitized- dining hall for “Hindu guests” at the wedding reception.

The second place which testifies to the dramatic transformation of inter-community relationships in Gujarat in the aftermath of the post-Godhra violence is at the shrine in Pirana, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, whose followers have ancestral roots in Kutch. This religious order was established almost five hundred years ago by Imam Shah, a deviant from Islam who has often been given the tag of a Sufi for want of another label. He set up the sect and initially drew followers from the community of Patels of Anjar Taluka in Kutch.

Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times by Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay; Tranquebar Press

The temporal head of Satyapanthis – as the followers were named – fused practices of Islam with Hindu traditions and evolved a code of his own. The Patels integrated with Muslim followers (Syeds) of Imam Shah who ran his religious order on democratic lines with a governing council taking all key decisions. The council consisted of ten people — seven Patels and three Syeds and the successors of Imam Shah (called Kaka) were selected by mutual consultation over the past five centuries.

Soon, the Satyapanthis — like several other communities emerged as a small little third religious group, distinct from Hindus and Muslims. The outsider status of Satyapanthis started coming under strain from the late 1980s due to several reasons: growing sentiment among Patel followers and the then Kaka to give a greater “Hindu-thrust” to the sect and convert each member into a “political Hindu” being the most significant one. Called a dargah till then, the shrine came to be frequently referred to as a temple — deifying Shri Nishkalanki Narayan Bhagwan. The tombs which lay scattered around the shrine were one-by-one adorned with Hindu motifs. Rituals inside the sanctum sanctorum — the tomb of Imam Shah — acquired Hindu characteristics. In 1997, when I visited the shrine as part of a study on inter-community relations in Kutch, I still found Syeds among the regular devotees.

This was not the case in 2012 and a lot other than this had also changed. To begin with, the main gate of the dargah had been shut — which was a typical medieval structure and had a distinct influence of Islamic architecture. The entry to the shrine was now through a huge ornate gate, typical of temples with ample resources. The gate led into the main building of what was initially an adjunct but has now become the principal shrine. Inside the old dargah, barring the graves everything has a “Hindu look”. In the past decade, the Satyapanthis witnessed their gods being taken away.

The head of the governing council, the current Kaka got agitated with my probing questions – pertaining to the virtual disappearance of Syeds from the shrine and the reasons why the original main gate was closed. Syeds may have been virtually turned away from what used to be their shrine also till a decade ago, but their “presence” still causes problems — especially for Modi.

In September 2011, Modi launched a much-publicised officially-run campaign to promote social harmony. Called Sadbhavna Mission, the name was similar to programmes initiated by several Indian political leaders in the past with the intent of invoking secular-tokenism and have been accompanied by appropriate symbolism. But Modi did not make any gesture signalling public overtures to Muslims. The Sadbhavna Mission grabbed headlines after Modi’s refusal to accept a skull cap associated with Muslims though he accepted the shawl.

Media reports called the cleric a Sufi leader – Syed Imam Shahi Sayed. But, he is one of the deposed members of the governing council of Satyapanthis. Due to this deposition, Sayed now speaks more like a Muslim and less like a believer of a rebel-sect. He told journalists that ‘Modi’s refusal to accept the cap is not my insult but an insult to Islam.’ The contention of Vijay Rupani, BJP spokesman was similar to what Modi told me in an interview:

‘Narendra Modi has clearly said that his policy is not of appeasement of a section of society unlike other parties, but our approach is development for all and treating everyone as equal.’

In less than a decade and a half, Kutch has witnessed social stratification that will be difficult to undo. Similarly, the Pirana Dargah has lost its name, its spiritual pluralism and a large section of its followers who have tragically reverted back to the faith from where the founder branched out. Though the onset of these developments pre-dates the Modi era in Gujarat, it reached acute and probably irreversible levels of disconnect in his tenure coinciding with the period when the “us” and “they” have become more antagonistic.

When I had begun working on this biography I was painfully aware that the nascent schisms which I had witnessed in Gujarat in 1997 would have been brutally prised wider. The crudeness with which the divisions in the state were amplified, I was sure, would yield multiple narratives. To ensure that I did not stray from the narrative I was in search of — my own “Modinama”– I consciously decided to restrict my visit to only Pirana Dargah (as I still insisted on calling the place) and Kutch instead of travelling to other places in Gujarat known for spiritual diversity which includes Hindu folk deities.

One of the most emotive reasons behind the pillorying of the “other” by Hindus in Gujarat has been the sustained campaign advocating that “they” are swamping “us” — it was also the underlying sentiment of Modi’s Ame paanch, Amara pachhees (we are five and we have twenty-five) speech — that echoed the old argument of rabid Hindu communalists that “Muslims breed more”. But this claim is not consistent with census data based on religion from the pre-independence period. Religious demography of Gujarat is also available in post-independent India through the various decadal census reports.

According to this, the first census in 1951 pegged Gujarat’s Muslim population at 8.9 per cent. But in 1951, the state as we know was yet to be formed and a better representative figure would be 1961 which lowered the figure by half a point to 8.4 per cent. According to census data of 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001 the percentage of Muslims in Gujarat remained more or less similar and touched 9.1 per cent in the latest headcount for which religion-wise data has been tabulated — an increase for sure but not dramatic or alarming by any yardsticks to merit propagation of myths regarding higher breeding rates among Muslims.

The “breed more” theory also gets knocked off by data presented by the committee appointed by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, to study the “social, economic and educational” status of Muslims in India. Called the Sachar Committee in popular parlance, it found that contraceptive prevalence rate among Muslim couples is almost equal to the overall state rate.

Among Christians there has been an increase of only 0.2 percentage points between 1991 and 2001, but it could be argued that in absolute terms the number is fairly high because of small numbers of Christians in the state. From a total number of almost eighty thousand Christians in 1951 the numbers had increased to more than two lakh eighty-four thousand in 2001. In absolute numbers, the data has been used as a handy tool to spread the campaign of hate and distrust with an aim to heighten paranoia.

The propagandist approach with use of distorted demographic data has often been used as a justification for anti-conversion laws in different states. Gujarat too joined the list of such states in 2003 with the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act. The most contentious part of the law was that permission has to be sought from the local administration by any person wishing to either convert personally to another faith or act as the “convertor” by virtue of being a priest, maulvi or pandit. After being notified in 2008, the law was challenged in the High Court in March 2009 but though a notice was sent to the state government, there has been little progress towards hearing the plea filed by Gujarat United Christian Forum for Human Rights and some other petitioners.

The main basis on which the law has been challenged is that it violates Article 25 of the Indian Constitution which states that every citizen is ‘equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion.’ The law virtually makes inter-religious marriages effectively impossible unless it has the consent of both families. But if a couple risks bravery, then there are always some people who are forever ready with “corrective steps.”

Gujaratis account for almost five per cent of the Indian population which Modi now keeps reminding everyone, adds up to six crores. With a Muslim population close to nine per cent it almost seems that Modi has to contend with more than five million people, the majority of whom by and large feel alienated from his government. I asked Modi about this, arguing that whether we like it not, Muslims and the issue of their existence cannot be brushed aside.

I contended that since there were a large numbers of Muslims in Gujarat it was necessary to include them in the state’s political evolution and growth. Or did he think they could be kept outside?

Modi of course said that he pursued an inclusive approach to politics but did not believe that there was need for any extra thrust for any group which according to him was “appeasement”. I asked him further if he felt that there was any need for him to invite people for dialogue if there was a sentiment of disgruntlement? His reply can be interpreted in several ways and he said: ‘I am always ready (for a dialogue). My doors were open… anyone can come, everyone is welcome, I am ready anytime, every time.’

But there are critics from within his fraternity who felt that Modi had not done enough to assuage the hurt of 2002. Govindacharya is one of them. I asked him about his assessment of the progression of social tension between 2002 and 2012. In reply, he said:

The situation has not eased – instead is similar to a wound which is bandaged – no healing. On the contrary, I have noticed that whenever society cannot find any solution there is a danger of a section slipping into a phase of melancholy. This is the opposite of the violent phase. I very often find Gujarat to be going through this phase of melancholy.

I wanted him to be more specific, which section of the society did he mean? He was unambiguous: Muslims. ‘This is the reason why they are not able to uplift themselves and are not able to contribute for the growth and development of Gujarat. Now I am not sure how this stagnancy will take a turn in the future – will it become a fodder or will it take a turn of assimilating tendency – there is a huge question mark on this. Unfortunately, I see no efforts being made to turn this into an assimilating tendency. All these Sadbhavna Yatras and other similar programmes are all varnishing efforts – they are not repair work.’

Source: www.kafila.org

Narendra Modi – Manual Scavenging is a Spiritual Experience #WTFnews (kractivist.wordpress.com)
#India -Why Narendra Modi should not be the PRIME MINISTER (kractivist.wordpress.com)
How many skeletons can Narendra Modi fit in his closet? (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Gujarat- Voice of Victims #Narendramodi (kractivist.wordpress.com)

1 Comment

by kracktivist on May 18, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Advocacy, Announcements, Human Rights, Justice, Kractivism, Law

Tagged Ahmedabad, Bhuj, Gujarat, Hindu, India Today, Kutchmitra, Narendra Modi, Times

Posted by kracktivist on May 18, 2013

http://kractivist.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/on-the-social-fabric-in-narendra-modis-gujarat/

Naroda Patiya case: Modi government does a U-turn on Kodnani, Bajrangi #deathpenalty

CNN-IBN | Updated May 14, 2013

Ahmedabad: In a U-turn of sorts, the Gujarat state legal department has written to the chief prosecutor in the Naroda Patiya massacre case, seeking approval for enhancement of punishment for BJP leader Maya Kodnani and Bajrang Dal’s Babu Bajrangi to be put on hold. The legal department wants the punishment to be put on hold until further instructions.

Earlier the department had given a sanction to the Special Investigation Team to file an application in the High Court seeking death sentence for Maya Kodnani, Babu Bajrangi and nine others. 97 persons were killed in Naroda Patiya during the 2002 Gujarat riots.

In 2012, a special court had sentenced Maya Kodnani to 28 years in jail for the massacre in Naroda Patiya. Kodnani is the sitting MLA from Naroda Patiya.

Kodnani, a three-time MLA from Naroda area, who was considered to be close to Chief Minister Narendra Modi, is the first woman and first MLA to be convicted and sentenced in a post-Godhra riots case.

Kodnani was the minister of women and child development in the Narendra Modi government but was forced to resign after a case was lodged against her in the Naroda Patiya massacre of 2002.

The trial court had convicted 32 people and acquitted 29 others in the Naroda Patiya massacre case which took place during the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The Naroda Patiya massacre is the largest single case of mass murder during the 2002 Gujarat riots that broke out following the Sabarmati Express train carnage near Godhra station. The case has been probed by a Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigating Team (SIT).

As many as 327 witnesses, comprising eye witnesses, victims, doctors, police personnel, government officials, forensic experts and journalists including Ashish Khetan, who conducted a TV sting operation on the accused, were examined by the court.

Naroda Patiya case: SIT to seek death for Kodnani, others (ibnlive.in.com)
#Gujarat- Death for Kodnani move to warn Advani, deflect Zakia? (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Narendra Modi Attacks His Henchmen-Chanakya and Machiavelli Rolled into One (kractivist.wordpress.com)

1 Comment

by kracktivist on May 14, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Advocacy, Announcements, Human Rights, Justice, Kractivism, Law, Violence against Women, Women Rights

Tagged babu bajrangi, Bajrang Dal, Gujarat, Maya Kodnani, Narendra Modi, Naroda, Naroda Patiya, Sabarmati Express

Posted by kracktivist on May 14, 2013

http://kractivist.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/naroda-patiya-case-modi-government-does-a-u-turn-on-kodnani-bajrangi-deathpenalty/

Press Release- Narendra Modi you need to reply to Permanent-Resident-Gujaratis (PRG)

PRESS RELEASE

Mr. Narendrabhai Modi replied the questions raised by Non-Resident-Gujaratis (NRG) so we hope that Mr. Modi will also reply the questions of Permanent-Resident-Gujaratis (PRG). – Rohit Prajapati & Trupti Shah, Permanent-Resident-Gujaratis (PRG)

Rohit Prajapati and Trupti Shah

Permanent-Resident-Gujaratis (PRG)

37 Patrakar Colony, Tandalja Road, Post: Akota,

Vadodara 390 020, Gujarat Phone/Fax No: +91-265-2320399,

Email: rohit.prajapati@gmail.com, trupti.vadodara@gmail.com

By Fax and Email

13 May 2013

To,

Shri Narendrabhai Modi

The Chief Minister of Gujarat

Government of Gujarat

1^st Block, 5^th Floor, New Sachivalaya,

Gandhinagar – 382 010.

Subject: You replied the questions raised by Non-Resident-Gujaratis (NRG) so we hope that you will also reply the questions of Permanent-Resident-Gujaratis (PRG).

Dear Sir,

We Permanent-Resident-Gujaratis (PRG) would like to raise certain issues for your response as we heard in the morning to your replies to the questions raise by the Non-Resident-Gujaratis (NRG). We are also sending the copy of the letter to the press so that you can also give your response to the press. These are not new; we have repeatedly raised these same issues in letters sent to your various departments and directly to you but we have yet to receive a proper reply. Your office always referred these letters to the so-called concerned department even when straight questions were addressed to you. We are ready for dialog in an open meeting with you. We are also prepared to attend a press conference to discuss these issues in the presence of press. We assure you that we are eager to engage in dialog with you, and are sending you our concerns so that the discussion may be thoughtful.

The then Finance Minister of Gujarat Mr. Vajubhai Vala on 11^th January 2011 said while addressing a day-long pre-Vibrant Gujarat Summit seminar at Ahmedabad Management Association on ‘Industry Responsive Skill Development: The Emerging Trends in Gujarat’ that “A farmer engaged in agriculture on a five acre plot will earn enough only for his family. But if an industry is set up on that land, it will provide sustenance to families of 25-30 thousand workers.” [1] He asked local industrialists not to spoil workers by giving them more than what is rightfully due to them.[2] We want you to clarify your position on such statements.

(1) Your book CONVENIENT ACTION – Gujarat’s Response To Challenges of Climate Change selectively presents information and data which are convenient to defend the ‘development model’ being pursued by the state. Even the Gujarat Ecology Commission report acknowledges the abysmal status of the environment in Gujarat. Why did you base your book on cherry-picked evidence that ignores the level of irreversible environmental degradation in the state of Gujarat? You have included in your book on page 132-133 a photo of the ‘Common Effluent Treatment Plant’ of Vapi, a facility which has not been able to fulfil the environmental norms prescribed by Gujarat Pollution Control Board since many years. While the photo is very large, there is no discussion about the functioning of CETP of Vapi. Your book completely ignores the failure of all major ‘industrial effluent treatment facilities’ of Gujarat. Why?

(2) Gujarat is the only state where all registered chemical factories have been identified and categorized in various hazard classes, by Directorate Industrial Safety and Health. Considering their hazard potential,[3] Major Accident Hazard (MAH) factories are identified as per standard norms of related law. Gujarat state is having highest total 497 MAH Class factories which amounts 30 % of MAH factories in India. At present in Gujarat state, 3204 ‘B’ +’C’ class hazardous chemical factories are identified. Gujarat is having total 30,310 factories registered under the Factories Act ( employing directly 940567 Workers ) out of which total 4,559 (15%) are hazardous chemical factories.[4]

The Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority (GSDMA), it seems, doesn’t think that chemical industries have potential to cause chemical disasters in the state. Despite the Bhopal gas tragedy that killed thousands of people 25 years ago, the Gujarat government doesn’t seem to have learnt anything. Reply to our Right to Information Application about Chemical Emergency Plan of the Gujarat state the GSDMA stated in their replies that “A Chemical Emergency Plan is currently under consideration at the Disaster Management Authority.”[5] GSDMA further stated in their replies that “In reference to your above mentioned letter where information like numbers and names of the chemical industries, chemical used, final product, pollutant generated and its impact, also information about engineered landfill site – treatment storage and disposal facility, effluent treatment plants, common effluent treatment plants, etc. have been sought by you, we would like to inform you that the requested information is not available with this office.”[6]

Mr. CM is the chairperson of the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority and the same authority has to implement ‘The Gujarat State Disaster Management Act, 2003. The Act clearly states ‘(2) (h) “ disaster” means an actual or imminent event, whether natural or otherwise occurring in any part of the State which causes, or threatens to cause all or any of the following: (i) widespread loss or damage to property, both immovable and movable; or (ii) widespread loss of human life or injury or illness to human beings; or (iii) damage or degradation of environment;’[7] but the web site of Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority states ‘The GSDMA has been constituted by the Government of Gujarat by the GAD’s Resolution dated 8th February 2001. The Authority has been created as a permanent arrangement to handle the natural calamities.’[8] What about environmental disasters? There is no ‘Comprehensive Chemical Emergency Plan’ with the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority. The Director, Health & Safety Department has an ‘Off Site Emergency Plan;’ but when I demanded a copy of it, I was told that it is secret.[9] A chemical emergency plan is not among the priorities in Gujarat, a chemical state with one of the country’s highest concentration of chemical industries. This is nothing but disastrous situation of Chemical State Gujarat.

4) We had also launched a complaint against residential & commercial complexes coming up in the vicinity of hazardous solid waste sites in Ahmedabad (Vatva & Naroda) in violation of GPCB notification on industrial hazardous solid waste and The Hazardous Waste (Management & Handling) Rules, 1989. These complexes were in violation of the CPCB & GPCB guideline and norms requiring a 500 meter safety distance from TSDFs & CETPs to residential complexes.

Instead of punishing the violating builders/contractors, The Forest & Environment Department and Urban Development and Urban Housing Department of Government of Gujarat decided, in the meeting dated 5-9-2011, to relax the required 500 meter safety radius to only 100 meters for the purpose of legalizing all illegal residential complexes which came after the notification. For future, it was decided that the 500 meter distance would be enforced.

The original guideline was issued with the intention of preventing risk to the health and safety of the people. The revision obviously looks at the profit margin of unscrupulous contractors, not the innocent residents who will suffer in future.

This post-facto regularization of illegal residential complexes sends a clear message that the safety norms can be bent to accommodate economic interests. This is going to be a disastrous action on the part of the concerned authorities as far as the health and safety of the people is concerned. It is clear that such a decision can only be due to immense pressure from the rich and powerful.

It cannot have been a suo motto decision. Instead of taking firm action and enforcing the regulations, these departments are succumbing to pressure from all sides from powerful rich people who want to legalize their illegal residential complexes.

Any post facto relaxation in the present environmental guidelines and norms is nothing but manipulation of present environmental norms to legalize illegal construction activities in order to favour powerful rich people who can pressurize the Government to act against the interests of ordinary people. We are opposed to the proposed dilution of norms, and have expressed this and written letters to you. We would like to know your position on this issue, especially the acceptability of changing laws to accommodate violators.

(5) As treatment facilities of Gujarat continue to be unable to meet the Gujarat Pollution Control Board‘s (GPCB) norms, a moratorium on opening new industries or expansion of existing industries was declared for the Ankleshwar area on 7-7-2007, and now the Ministry of Environment and Forests has extended till further order. Later on, on 13-1-2010 a moratorium was declared for other areas like Vatva, Bhavnagar, Junagadh, Vapi, etc. The moratorium was subsequently lifted for the Vapi, Bhavnagar, and Junagadh area because of the pressure of the Gujarat Government. We objected to the lifting of moratorium for Vapi because treatment facilities of Vapi are still not able to meet the GPCB norms. Today the moratorium for Vatva, Ankleshwar is extended till further order. This has rightly stalled the projected huge investment in these areas of Gujarat. However, we believe that as responsible citizens, we are not and cannot be concerned only with the quantum of investment, but also with what is being invested, what the goal of the investment is, and how it affects the people in general. The Gujarat Government has perpetually opposed these moratoriums, despite obvious need. Given that the industries are facing moratoriums from the Ministry of Environment and Forests for unabated cycle of pollution which continues to impact adversely all kinds of lives – human, agriculture and livestock, we are interested to know what you have to say regarding the industrial moratoriums in our state.

(6) Why does your government fail to have land use policy? Why is an abundance of chemical industries allowed in fertile land, including the ‘vegetable basket’ of India like Padra Taluka of Vadodara District?

(7) On 7-5-2004 in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 657/1995, the Supreme Court ordered Gujarat State to provide clean drinking water to residents of villages near Vapi, Ankleshwar, and Effluent Channel Project of Vadodara, where the water supply was irrevocably damaged by industrial activities. Yet, there are ongoing actions contrary to what the Court has ordered. This order is waiting for its implementation. When will your government implement this order?

The quality of groundwater in Gujarat has reached at critical stage and yet it is being contaminated continuously. Orders for clean drinking water are passed based on the visit of the Supreme Court committee, and the committee is not able to visit all the affected villages of the Golden Corridor. The groundwater of about 14 districts and about 74 talukas of Gujarat are critically affected by pollution. Even if we take the routine parameter like Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), Total Hardness (TS), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), and some heavy metal like Cadmium, Copper, Lead, Mercury, Iron etc. Thus condition of the groundwater of Gujarat requires immediate attention as the rural population is deprived of the very basic need of safe drinking water and clean water for their animals and crops.

Ahmedabad, Daskroi, Mehmedavad, Vadodara, Ankleshwar, Bardoli, Choryasi, Kamrej, Mangrol, Olpad, Palsana, Valod, Vyara, Navsari, Sanand, Dhoraji, Jetpur, Okha Mandal etc talukas are critically polluted. Amreli, Jambusar, Junagad, Mandvi, Kalol, Morvi, Upleta, Mahuva, Chorila, Dhangadhar, Limdi, Bansda, Umbergaon etc talukas are found moderately polluted.[10] If we talk about Vatva to Vapi – Golden Corridor it is clear that 70% of the groundwater is contaminated and it has reached the irreversible level. When you are going to act on this serious issue of contamination of ground water?

(8) The air pollution situation is also alarming in the Golden Corridor of Gujarat. The Gujarat Pollution Control Board admits[11] in writing “5. PROBABLE POLLUTANTS: … (B) Air: HCL, SO2, NH3, H2S, NOx, PM2.5, PM10, VOCs, PAHs, PCBs, VINYL CHLORIDE. Note: Benzene, VOCs, PAHs, PCBs, vinyl chloride are not being monitored by GPCB, as no measuring facility is available with GPCB. This statement speaks for itself. In an advanced state like Gujarat, why do we not have facilities to take these basic measurements? Moreover, when will you take actions to clean up the air quality, which has become some poor?

(9) You are the chairman of the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority and the same authority has to implement ‘The Gujarat State Disaster Management Act, 2003. The Act clearly states ‘(2) (h) “ disaster” means an actual or imminent event, whether natural or otherwise occurring in any part of the State which causes, or threatens to cause all or any of the following: (i) widespread loss or damage to property, both immovable and movable; or (ii) widespread loss of human life or injury or illness to human beings; or (iii) damage or degradation of environment;’[12] but the web site of Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority states ‘The GSDMA has been constituted by the Government of Gujarat by the GAD’s Resolution dated 8th February 2001. The Authority has been created as a permanent arrangement to handle the natural calamities.’[13] What about environmental disasters? There is no ‘Comprehensive Chemical Emergency Plan’ with the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority. The Director, Health & Safety Department has an ‘Off Site Emergency Plan;’ but when we demanded a copy of it, we were told that it is secret. Kindly clarify your position on the crucial issue of a disaster management plan and its transparency.

(10) A direct outcome of our persistent efforts since 1994 has been forcing GPCB / Government to act against Hema Chemicals of Vadodara which was responsible for illegal dumping of hazardous chromium waste in Gorwa area of Vadodara. As per the direction of the Supreme Court Monitoring Committee the company has been ordered in year 2004 to pay Rs. 17 Crores as first instalment towards remediation of the site. Why has your government failed to remove the hazardous waste dumped by Hema Chemicals, recover the Rs 17 Crores fines from Hema Chemicals as per the direction of Supreme Court?

(11) In Gujarat the Final Effluent Treatment Plant (FETP) of Ankleshwar which was inaugurated by you continues to be unable to meet the Gujarat Pollution Control Board’s norms. The Project is designed to divert industrial pollution from Amla Khadi and the Narmada River. The FETP is operated by Bharuch Eco Aqua Infrastructure Ltd, (now known as ‘Narmada Clean Tech Ltd.’). The FETP was built by the sweat of tax payers. Out of a total project cost of Rs 131.43 Crores, the industries paid only Rs 21.75 Crores (about 17%); the rest of the tab (Rs 109 Crores) was spent by the Central Government, Gujarat Government, and Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) – all of which ultimately draw from public money. It is a familiar story: the profits are distributed privately, but the institutional costs and environmental burden are borne by another segment of the population. Why did you inaugurate the FETP pipeline project despite its non-compliance with the GPCB norms? Why do you endorse the public paying when industries pollute?

(12) Which law allows the effluent that does not meet Gujarat Pollution Control Board norms to be discharged from Tadgam Sarigam Pipeline, from FETP, Ankleshwar, ECP, Vadodara, CETPs of Ahmedabad? We would like you to clarify your position on the issue of such an open and blunt disregard of environment laws.

(13) The Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000 is violated across the state. Why Gujarat Pollution Control Board has failed to implement this law?

(14) As per the data provided by ‘The Director Industrial Safety and Health, Government of Gujarat’, 30.33 % of industries are closed in Gujarat as per Government of Gujarat’s own figures dated 1 January 2011. Why figures are not available up to 1 January 2013 on the website? Government of Gujarat is silent about the workers who must have lost their employment because of closure of these industries.

Office wise Factories – Gujarat State – AS on 01/01/2011
SR. NO	OFFICE	WORKING FACTORIES	CLOSED FACTORIES	TOTAL FACTORIES
1	Ahmedabad	6344	2998	9342
2	Gandhinagar	696	234	930
3	Mehsana	1859	754	2613
4	Nadiad	393	273	666
5	Anand	582	431	1013
6	Baroda	2747	989	3736
7	Godhra	397	372	769
8	Bharuch	1608	328	1936
9	Navsari	412	303	715
10	Valsad	2465	755	3220
11	Surendranagar	429	430	859
12	Bhavnagar	237	373	610
13	Alang	113	80	193
14	Rajkot	2533	752	3285
15	Jamnagar	371	450	821
16	Junagadh	611	110	721
17	Adipur	429	128	557
18	Surat	2980	1213	4193
	Total	25206	10973	36179

Source: Director Industrial Safety and Health, Government of Gujarat website http://labourandemployment.gov.in/dish/statistics/Factories/office_wise.htm

(15) Let us also looks at the Human Development Index of Gujarat State as Government of Gujarat is making very toll claims. Gujarat is no. 11 (two-digit figure) in Human Development Index. Why?

List of Indian states and territories by Human Development Index, 2011

Rank	State/Union Territory	HDI (2011)
High human development
1	Kerala	0.790
2	Delhi	0.750
3	Himachal Pradesh	0.652
4	Goa	0.617
5	Punjab	0.605
6	North eastern India (excluding Assam)	0.573
7	Maharashtra	0.572
8	Tamil Nadu	0.570
9	Haryana	0.552
10	Jammu and Kashmir	0.529
11	Gujarat	0.527
12	Karnataka	0.519
13	West Bengal	0.492
14	Uttarakhand	0.490
15	Andhra Pradesh	0.473
	India (national average)	0.467
16	Assam	0.444
17	Rajasthan	0.434
18	Uttar Pradesh	0.380
19	Jharkhand	0.376
20	Madhya Pradesh	0.375
21	Bihar	0.367
22	Odisha	0.362
23	Chattisgarh	0.358

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index

There is little to debate regarding the factual basis underlying our concerns. We have also made our perspective clear: the environment and the well-being of people in general should be treated with more respect than industrial/profit-making interests. By writing this letter, we are soliciting your stance on these issues in writing. In the interest of democracy and transparency, we feel we are entitled to a response from you.

Rohit Prajapati Trupti Shah

[Rohit Prajapati] [Trupti Shah]

[1] Gobbling farm land for industry a fair game: Minister, Indian Express, 12^th January 2011.

[2] Gobbling farm land for industry a fair game: Minister, Indian Express, 12^th January 2011.

[3] http://www.chemicalsafety.co.in/mesures.htm

[4] http://www.chemicalsafety.co.in/mesures.htm

[5] Reply by GSDMA to Rohit Prajapati dated 10-8-2007

[6] Reply by GSDMA to Rohit Prajapati dated 23-8-2007

[7] http://www.gsdma.org/dmact.pdf

[8] http://www.gsdma.org/profile.htm

[9] Reply by Director, Health & Safety Department, Vadodara, to Rohit Prajapati, dated 9-9-2010

[10] State Environmental Action Programme – Industrial Pollution Phase III – Sectoral Report, Volume – I, Gujarat Ecology Commission, April 2002

[11] Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Abatement Action Plan – Vapi Industrial Cluster – Gujarat, GPCB, Gandhinagar 2010

[12] http://www.gsdma.org/dmact.pdf

[13] http://www.gsdma.org/profile.htm

_________________________________
Rohit Prajapati / Trupti Shah
37, Patrakar Colony, Tandalja Road,
Post-Akota, Vadodara – 390 020
GUJARAT, INDIA
Phone No. (O) + 91 – 265 – 2320399
Email No: rohit.prajapati@gmail.com
_______________________________________________________________

#India -Why Narendra Modi should not be the PRIME MINISTER (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Narendra Modi – Manual Scavenging is a Spiritual Experience #WTFnews (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Glaring Lies of Glorious Gujarat: Exposing Narendra Modi and His Claims (kractivist.wordpress.com)
How many skeletons can Narendra Modi fit in his closet? (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Gujarat- Voice of Victims #Narendramodi (kractivist.wordpress.com)
Gujarat- The Great Land Grab (kractivist.wordpress.com)

1 Comment

by kracktivist on May 13, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Advocacy, Announcements, Human Rights, Justice, Kractivism, Law, Minority Rights

Tagged Ahmedabad Management Association, Akota, Gujarat, Gujarat Pollution Control Board, India, Narendra Modi, Vajubhai Vala, Vapi

Posted by kracktivist on May 13, 2013

http://kractivist.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/press-release-narendra-modi-you-need-to-reply-to-permanent-resident-gujaratis-prg/

How many skeletons can Narendra Modi fit in his closet?

Two biographies of the desperately aspiring Narendra Modi are reminders that Gujarat’s ‘CEO’ can’t hide from his grisly past, argues Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

18-05-2013, Issue 20 VolumeMore by the author >

Photo: AFP

With a substantial section of the Indian media choosing to hype the upcoming 16th General Election as an American presidential style contest between Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, it is not surprising that popular interest in the controversial leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has grown exponentially in recent months. Predictably, two journalist-authors and their publishers have sought to ride the crest of this wave of interest about a person who is arguably the most divisive and deeply contentious political personality in India at present.

It is, of course, a separate matter altogether that Modi’s attempts to project himself as a potential prime minister of the world’s largest democracy may well come to nought and his endeavours at playing a wider role in national politics outside Gujarat may prove to be more bluff and bluster than hard realpolitik. It is also very likely that if he is indeed sought to be projected as the tallest leader of the BJP, he will run into considerable opposition from not just within his own party, but, more importantly, from within the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition headed by the BJP. There is a real and present danger that the NDA may implode if Modi acquires the stature that he apparently seeks, an outcome that would likely result in the coalition’s next largest constituent, the Janata Dal (United) led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, breaking ranks with the BJP.

The Namo Story
Kingshuk Nag
Roli Books
208 pp; 295

Even more significant is the fact that it will be extremely difficult — rather impossible — for a so-called national political party and one of its important leaders to aspire to lead a heterogeneous country like India on a Hindu nationalist agenda after alienating one out of seven of the country’s citizens who believe in some variant or the other of the Islamic faith. Despite his best efforts at wooing them in his state, Muslims in India have a visceral hatred for Modi and this is hardly a secret inside and outside the BJP. In fact, as many political analysts have argued, the best bet for the Congress is to have a strong Modi in Gujarat, for this automatically ensures that Muslims and a section of ‘liberal’ Hindus remain distant from the BJP.

As Kingshuk Nag points out right in the beginning of The NaMo Story — much shorter and more tightly written than Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay’s Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times — there is perhaps no one in the country who is indifferent to Modi: you either love him or you hate him. His personality is not amenable to dissection in nuanced shades of grey. There are no ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ as far as the Gujarat chief minister is concerned. Nag is clear where he stands. He is certain (as is this reviewer, who has been quoted in The NaMo Story) that Modi will never ever be able to live down the fact that he presided over an administration that oversaw the genocide of at least 700 Muslims, most of them in Gujarat’s capital Ahmedabad, in a three-month period between late- February and early-May 2002. The ghosts of the not-too-distant past will invariably return to haunt Modi over and over again, no matter how hard he tries to change his public image to that of a go-getting, pro-business leader, the chief executive officer of an industrialised and commerce-friendly state. Some of his overtures have borne fruit: it is hardly surprising that he is the only leader who has been showered with so many accolades by corporate captains, who otherwise prefer to play coy about disclosing their preferences about political leaders.

Narendra Modi: The
Man, The Times
Nilanjan
Mukhopadhyay
Tranquebar
420 pp; 495

Mukhopadhyay is more ambivalent in his condemnation of Modi, although it would be unfair to describe his book as either a hagiography or an authorised biography of Modi. He goes to great length to explain what motivated him to behave the way he did and what went through his brain when he chose to ask certain questions (and not ask others) while he interacted with the protagonist of his book. The author tries hard to establish his credentials as an objective political analyst. Given that he had written an earlier book on the December 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid (The Demolition: India at the Crossroads), he has sought to situate the rise of Modi in the BJP in the broader historical context of the emergence of political Hindutva. That he should describe himself as persona non grata in Modi’s world is more a reflection of the intolerance of the Gujarat chief minister than the author’s attempt to portray the latter’s ‘human’ side.

But what is especially disappointing is that Mukhopadhyay has chosen to either completely ignore or play down substantially the views of certain individuals. Such people include the journalist-activist Teesta Setalvad and dancer-activist Mallika Sarabhai. One may or may not endorse their views, but for them to be ignored altogether in a book about Modi took this reviewer by surprise. Even stranger is the fact that there is hardly a mention in the book of a certain Maya Kodnani, former minister for women and child development in Modi’s government and state legislator from Naroda, who is now behind bars for her abhorrent role in the communal riots — the only woman and the only MLA to be convicted so far.

Nag, on the other hand, has highlighted how the Gujarat chief minister sought to become a votary of economic liberalisation and small government as he rose above his humble, low-caste origins in a relatively underprivileged family. The person who was not a particularly bright student in a nondescript school later became an ardent advocate of the use of ‘hi-tech’ in his election campaigns. From serving tea to wearing designer kurtas, the metamorphosis of Modi from a servile small-time party worker to a egoistic megalomaniac is documented. Nag also points out instances of corruption and crony capitalism in Modi’s government despite his claims of running a squeaky-clean administration.

Both authors have written about Modi’s ‘hidden’ wife to whom he was betrothed at a young age, but never lived with. And both books expectedly end somewhat abruptly. For Modi’s story is far from over. Nag rightly wonders if he was prescient when he told a gathering of well-heeled businessmen from across the world that he hoped to be meeting them again in the January 2015 edition of ‘Vibrant Gujarat!’

letters@tehelka.com

#India -Why Narendra Modi should not be the PRIME MINISTER (kractivist.wordpress.com)
“Modi go back”: Protest against Narendra Modi’s Karnataka visit (kractivist.wordpress.com)
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2 Comments

by kracktivist on May 12, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Advocacy, Announcements, Health Care, Human Rights, Justice, Kractivism, Law, Minority Rights, Prison

Tagged Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, Gujarat, India, Janata Dal, Modi, Narendra Modi, National Democratic Alliance

Posted by kracktivist on May 12, 2013

http://kractivist.wordpress.com/2013/05/12/how-many-skeletons-can-narendra-modi-fit-in-his-closet/

Narendra Modi – Manual Scavenging is a Spiritual Experience #WTFnews

Narandra Modi's Vibrant Gujarat Story: Propaganda vs Fact #mustread

MAINSTREAM, VOL LI, NO 18, APRIL 20, 2013

On Modi’s Social Engineering

Subhash Gatade

The system of untouchability has been a goldmine for the Hindus. This system affords 60 millions of untouchables to do the dirty work of scavenging and sweeping to the 240 million Hindus who are debarred by their religion to do such dirty work. But the work must be done for the Hindus and who else than the untouchables?

—Dr B.R. Ambedkar

Can shit collection or cleaning of gutters—which has condemned lakhs of people to a life of indignity since ages—be considered a ‘Spiritual Experience’? Definitely not. Everybody would yell. Well, Mr Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, has a different take on this, which he mentions in the book ‘Karmayog’ (publication year 2007).

The book is basically a collection of his speeches to high-profile IAS officials. Herein he discusses the age-old caste-based vocation of the Valmikis as an “experience in spirituality”. He writes: “I do not believe that they have been doing this job just to sustain their livelihood. Had this been so, they would not have continued with this type of job generation after gene-ration…. At some point of time, somebody must have got the enlightenment that it is their (Valmikis’) duty to work for the happiness of the entire society and the Gods; that they have to do this job bestowed upon them by Gods; and that this job of cleaning up should continue as an internal spiritual activity for centuries. This should have continued generation after generation. It is impossible to believe that their ancestors did not have the choice of adopting any other work or business.”

Looking at the fact that a section of the Dalits themselves—especially its upwardly mobile and more articulate section—has joined the Hindutva bandwagon, it was expected that there would be no angry reaction to his utterances within the State. A section of the Ambedkarite Dalits and many human rights activists did protest but their voices got drowned in the cacophony of voices of Modi supporters. It is a different matter that when Modi’s remark got published in The Times of India in mid-November 2007, which was later translated in a few Tamil news-papers, it resulted in a massive reaction of Dalits in Tamil Nadu. Not only did they stage protests for calling their menial job a “spiritual experience” but Modi’s effigies were burnt in different parts of the State. Sensing trouble Modi immediately withdrew 5000 copies of the book, but still stuck to his opinion. Two years later, addressing 9000-odd safai karmacharis, he likened the safai karmacharis’ job of cleaning up others’ dirt to that of a temple priest. He told them: “A priest cleans a temple every day before prayers, you also clean the city like a temple. You and the temple priest work alike.”

One was reminded of these ideas of Mr Modi when news came in that the Budget for the coming year passed by the Gujarat State Assembly has allocated a sum of Rs 22.5 lakhs for giving training in karmkand (rituals) to the safai kamdars themselves. The idea is to train them in scriptures so that they can perform puja. It is clear that the ‘new scheme’, as it was presented before the people, was just a revised version of its earlier version wherein members of the Scheduled Castes were given training to become ‘Gurubrahmins’ so that they could also perform pujas. Insiders can also share with you that the said scheme has miserably failed and people who were trained to perform pujas are still searching for jobs.

It could well be asked that if Modi values safai karmacharis so highly, why is it that he has begun outsourcing all the menial jobs for a very low pay, between Rs 3000 and Rs 3500 per month per worker? Why are they not being employed on a permanent basis? A leading Dalit poet raised an altogether different question: “Why didn’t it occur to Modi that the spirituality involved in doing menial jobs hasn’t ever been experienced by the upper castes?”

It is worth emphasising that when the Gujarat Government declared its intention to train safai kamdars in karmkand, supposedly to integrate them into the mainstream of the Hindu society, it also happened to be the period when the anti-Dalit stance of the people in power was very much evident in two clear examples: the manner in which the State officials tried to cover up the social boycott of Dalits in a village, and the way they tried to save the guilty police officials involved in Dalit killings; both of these had already hit the headlines.

Not very many people would have heard about the village Galsana, Dhanduka tehsil, Ahmedabad district, which is around 100 kms from the city. The Dalits in the village, who are about 500 in number, are not allowed entry into any of the five temples in the village. The younger generation of Dalits protested this ban which resulted in their social boycott. When the news last came in, the boycott was already a few months old. Incidentally when officers from the Social Justice Department visited the village, they did not even acknowledge that Dalits are facing social boycott, forget asking the police to take action against the guilty.

The other news concerned the arrest of guilty police officials involved in the gruesome killings of Dalits at Thangarh. (September 2012) After four months, cop Jadeja and two other accused police officials in the Thangarh Dalit massacre case were arrested on February 23, 2013. It is reported that the killings at Thangarh were the fallout of a minor clash between Dalits and Bharwads over auctioning of stalls at an annual fair organised by the Thangarh municipality. When the Dalits filed a complaint against the Bharwads at the police station, the police refused to take any action; the anger of the Dalits spilled over onto the streets the next day which saw the participation of Dalits in large numbers and the police resorting to strong-arm tactics resulting in the killings. Despite knowing the fact that the infamous police officer had on an earlier occasion also fired upon the Dalits without any provo-cation, the administration tried every trick in its kitty to save him and his colleagues. It was only because of judicial intervention that they were ordered to be arrested.

Galsana and Thangarh can be said to be tip of the iceberg as far as Dalit deprivation and denial of justice is concerned. In fact much has been written about the way the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Atrocities Prevention) Act, 1989 is implemented in the State. One finds that the rate of conviction of cases under the Prevention of Atrocity Act against SCs/STs in Gujarat is a mere 2.5 per cent while the rate of acquittal is 97.5 per cent. A 23-page confidential report submitted by the State Social Justice Department to the State Chief Secretary and Legal Department provides glaring examples of ‘mishandling of cases registered under Prevention of Atrocities Act against SCs/STs’. (The Indian Express, September 15, 2006)

The report provides details of how cases are not investigated properly by the police and the hostile role played by public prosecutors during the time of trials.

• The Act clearly stipulates that offences which are registered under this Act cannot be investigated by an officer below the rank of DySP but more than 4000 such cases have been investigated by the Police Inspector or Police Sub-Inspector.

• Acquittal of the perpetrator because the victim not identified as a member of the SC or ST community. Reason: not attaching caste certificate of the victim with the case papers.

• Public prosecutors’ false claims before the courts that the Act has been modified by the State Government although it is known that it is a Central Act.

• Granting of anticipatory bails although there is no such provision in the Act. Interestingly, the Parliamentary Committee on SC and ST affairs had also expressed concern over such anticipatory bails granted ‘in atrocity cases in the State of Gujarat’.

In this backdrop it is worth underlining how little Mr Modi knew about this important law and its implications. One could rather say that in Gujarat the Chief Minister is directly responsible for the non-implementation of the Atrocity Act. As Raju Solanki, the famous poet and Dalit rights activist, writes in his blog:

It was on April 16, 2004, that a question was asked to Chief Minister Modi in the Gujarat Legislative Assembly: “Honourable Chief Minister [Home] may oblige us to tell, is it true that the DSP is responsible for the appointment of an officer not below the rank of DySP as investigating officer in the offences under the Atrocities Act?” The answer of our Chief Minister was shocking. He said: “No, but there is a provision under rule 7 (1) of SC/ST Act, 1995 to appoint officers not above the rank of DySP to inquire into all cases booked under atrocities act. It is not the responsibility of the DSP.”

“The officer not above the rank of DySP” means he may be a PSI or PI and in most of the atrocities cases courts acquit the accused because the investigation officer is either a PSI or PI. Over 150 such judgments collected by the Council for Social Justice revealed that in 95 per cent of the cases, the accused have been acquitted because of negligence on the part of the authorities. In a number of these cases, while the accused has been convicted under the IPC section for murder and attempt to murder, he has gone scot-free on the atrocity charge.

In the end, one would like to put on record the way the presence of Dalits in records is being obliterated without any qualims. During the panchayat elections, Nathu Vadla, a small village of Gujarat with hardly 1000 population, had suddenly hit the headlines. The panchayat election in this village was to have been conducted on the basis of the 2001 data. The village has at least 100 Scheduled Caste people and one seat was to be reserved as per law, but the census data has not been modified since in 2001 the SC population was nil in the village; the election in 2013 was to have been conducted on the basis of the 2001 census. Here also the courts had to intervene to stay the election in the village. The Gujarat High Court stayed the election in the village saying that the electoral exercise in the circumstances would be a ‘mockery of democracy’.

In Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, no Narmada water for dalits #WTFnews (kractivist.wordpress.com)
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4 Comments

by kracktivist on May 9, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Advocacy, Announcements, Human Rights, Justice, Kractivism, Law, Minority Rights

Tagged B R Ambedkar, Dalit, Gujarat, Hindu, Modi, Narendra Modi, Tamil Nadu, Times of India

Posted by kracktivist on May 9, 2013

http://kractivist.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/narendra-modi-manual-scavenging-is-a-spiritual-experience-wtfnews/

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