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China: Former president Hu Jintao escorted out of closing ceremony of party congress, causes a stir

OpIndia Staff
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China: Former president Hu Jintao escorted out of closing ceremony of party congress, causes a stir

On Saturday 22nd October 2022, Former Chinese President Hu Jintao was unceremoniously led away from the Communist Party’s congress’s closing ceremony. 80-year-old Hu Jintao was seated to the left of his successor and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Two stewards took him off the stage of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing’s biggest auditorium.

In video footage of the event, a steward was seen repeatedly trying to pull Hu from his seat. Hu Jintao then placed his hand on a piece of paper that was lying in Xi’s folder, but Xi moved fast to lay his palm there.

Li Zhanshu, the senior lawmaker in China, who was seated on Hu Jintao’s right, handed a steward the former president’s folder while cleaning his own head with a handkerchief. Hu Jintao, who had a worried and confused expression, resisted going as the stewards led him outside, briefly going back to his seat. He spoke with Xi Jinping before patting Premier Li Keqiang on the shoulder who was seated on Xi Jinping’s right. After that, he was escorted out of the hall by two stewards.

There was no explanation offered for his exit, with just some analysts guessing that Hu Jintao has major health issues. According to a report by Reuters, Hu had already appeared slightly unsteady during the opening ceremony of a week-long party meeting last Sunday. Sky News tweeted that Hu Jintao appeared confused when he was being taken away by the stewards, indicating he was removed from the venue without his prior knowledge.

Many people are commenting that this incident illustrates the ever-increasing supremacy of Xi-Jinping in the party and in the government. It is also notable that former party leader Jiang Zemin didn’t attend the meeting in the Great Hall of People, which was attended by almost 2,300 delegates.

While Hu Jintao’s exit from the venue during the closing session of the party congress has been widely covered by international media, Chinese media has given it a complete miss. In fact, the visuals were also not aired on Chinese TV, and the footage that has gone viral was shot by an international news agency.

After the incident became a major issue in international media, Xinhua news agency suggested that Hu left the venue due to health reasons. The news agency posted on Twitter claiming that “Hu Jintao insisted on attending the closing session of the Party’s 20th National Congress, despite the fact that he has been taking time to recuperate recently.”

They added, “when he was not feeling well during the session, his staff, for his health, accompanied him to a room next to the meeting venue for a rest. Now, he is much better.” Others also said that in recent times Hu Jintao has been moving with assistance, including the opening session of the congress, and therefore the reason for his exit from the closing session is also his health.

The Communist Party is poised to affirm Xi Jinping, aged 69, for an unprecedented third five-year term as the week-long session concluded in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. The legislature essentially dismissed four of the seven members of senior leadership, including Premier Li Keqiang, the country’s second-highest official. It also included Xi Jinping’s key economic and military policy goals in the party’s constitution.

The Wire ombudsperson Pamela Philipose says the portal took serious missteps in handling the fake Meta story, accuses Meta of tarnishing Wire’s image

Raju Das
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The Wire ombudsperson Pamela Philipose says the portal took serious missteps in handling the fake Meta story, accuses Meta of tarnishing Wire’s image

Days after the ultra-leftist news portal The Wire withdrew its series of reports claiming that BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya had some superpowers to remove posts from Meta-owned Instagram after the reports were found to be fake based on fabricated evidence, the portal’s ‘ombudsperson’ Pamela Philipose has finally commented on the issue.

The ombudsperson, also known as public editor or reader’s editor, is supposed to work with The Wire‘s editorial structure, and the portal had said that the position was created to add a new layer of transparency and accountability to their editorial functioning. After remaining silent on the controversy for days, Pamela Philipose finally opened up on the issue after several netizens questioned her stand on the matter.

She specifically mentioned BuzzFeed reporter Pranav Dixit, who has posted several tweets questioning her role as ombudsperson if she has nothing to comment on serious allegations of fraud against The Wire.

While Pamela Philipose refrained from taking a clear stand, she admitted that The Wire committed some mistakes. But she did not directly admit that The Wire or its sources fabricated evidence, and instead claimed that the investigation conducted by The Wire is prima facie a significant one. She also made several allegations against Meta.

The Wire Ombudsperson said that three kinds of people were demanding a response from her in the issue, the supporters of Wire who believed the story, the opponents who ‘exhibited uninhibited glee at the supposed implosion of The Wire’s reputation’, and serious media watchers and domain experts in the matter. Interestingly, the journalist who is supposed to be an independent authority in The Wire, named OpIndia in the second group, called the portal “an unabashedly right-wing, anti-Muslim, Hindutva-driven organ”, noting that OpIndia has extensively covered the issue.

Despite overwhelming evidence that the entire story by Wire against BJP and Meta was fake, Pamela Philipose claims the ‘investigation’ done by Meta is significant, and “offers potentially important insights into the workings of social media behemoths”. It must be noted that The Wire had claimed that BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya had been given superpowers by Meta to moderate content on Instagram.

Based on the fact that an image posted on Instagram was deleted by an automated algorithm mistaking it for displaying nudity, Meta had made this claim, saying the post was removed on the instructions of Malviya. They had ignored the fact that the account that had posted the image had blamed the Instagram AI algorithm for the deletion, the account was private, and Malviya didn’t follow the account. There was absolutely no proof of Malviya having special access to Instagram, Wire completely made it up, but the ombudsperson thinks it was a significant investigation.

Pamela Philipose does not think that the evidence provided by The Wire to prove its story was fake, but instead tries to blame the sources named in the story for distancing themselves from the story and confirming that the entire story was fake. She says, “many of these sources either did not stand by what The Wire put out, or were misunderstood, or were wrongly quoted, or possibly had second thoughts,” but does not mention that the sources named in the reports have clearly said that The Wire produced fake emails to claim that they had supported the portal’s story.

Talking about how fast netizens were exposing the lies in the reports, she said The Wire could not match the speed in rebutting them with conviction. But she says that these exposures with in-depth analysis by independent experts were mere ‘public perception’, and that Wire was unable to correct that perception. She also fails to mention that many of the experts who exposed the Wire’s lies actually belong to the leftist ideology, and they hate BJP and PM Modi as much as The Wire does.

In the conclusion, Pamela Philipose admitted that The Wire committed serious mis-steps in the firefighting when contrary evidence piled up. She said that The Wire’s actions did more harm to its credibility instead of restoring it. She further said that Wire waited too long to withdraw the stories, saying they finally did the right thing to decide to review its reporting.

However, she does not mention what those ‘mis-steps’ were, which hides the seriousness of the crime committed by The Wire. By now it has been proved that The Wire not only created a fake email attributed to Meta official Andy Stone, but they also created fabricated emails to claim that two independent experts had certified the Andy Stone email to be true.

She also does not mention that Wire had created a fake Workplace account, two days after its initial story, to support its Amit Malviya-Instagram claim. And as Meta informed that it was a spoof account created on a trial account, Pamela Philipose attacked Meta instead, for not revealing the person who created the spoof account.

She forgot that the account was exclusively shared by The Wire as evidence of its claims, therefore, it must be created by someone from The Wire or its sources. Unlike social media accounts, accounts on collaboration tools like Workplace, Slack etc are not visible to the public or even to users of different groups. Therefore, the person who produced the video of the software knows who created it, and being the ombudsperson of Wire, she can just ask editor Siddharth Varadarajan to know who created it. It is notable here that Varadarajan has said that all the tech side of the story was handled by its ‘tech expert’ Devesh Kumar, who had admitted to running as many as 40 servers to manipulate bots and online polls to defeat ‘BJP IT cell’.

Pamela Philipose concluded by saying that “it appears then that Meta knows a lot more than it has let on, even as it tried to muddy the image of The Wire,” a shocking and hilarious claim. It was The Wire which was trying to tarnish the image of Meta by claiming that the social media giant with known and self-admitted pro-left tilt was colluding with BJP to remove posts from private accounts with merely few hundred accounts. The Wire claimed Meta had given unlimited authority to Amit Malviya to delete content from its platforms, and when Meta demolished all those allegations, she is accusing Meta of tarnishing the so-called image of The Wire.

She also believes that in the process, “the reputation of a world renowned social media platform has itself been muddied,” a claim hardly anyone outside The Wire will believe at this juncture. Even if one ignores the evidence produced by Meta, confirmations from experts that Wire fabricated their emails, and other independent experts demolishing the Wire reports point by point with detailed technology analysis shows who has suffered the loss of image.

How Waqf Boards have been insidiously encroaching upon and occupying various properties and claiming their right over them

OpIndia Staff
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How Waqf Boards have been insidiously encroaching upon and occupying various properties and claiming their right over them

In India, the issue of illegal land encroachment in the name of religion is not new. A slew of instances has clearly proven how establishments such as the Central Wakf Board may be illegally taking ownership of land by labelling it as ‘Waqf’ property. The same board has been accused over and again of fraudulently obtaining lands and public spaces, and the relevance of their actions has rightly remained questionable.

The Waqf Board is presently India’s third largest landowner, trailing only the Armed Forces and Indian Railways. The Central Waqf Council of India was founded in 1964 by the Government of India under the Waqf Act of 1954.

Waqf is not prevalent in the Islamic countries of Turkey, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Tunisia, and Iraq. However, thanks to vote-bank politics in India, not only is the Waqf Board the largest urban landowner, but it also has a law to protect them legally.

Notably, by the end of the nineteenth century, a case of waqf abolition in India came to light. During the time of British rule, a dispute over a waqf property began in the Privy Council of London. Four British justices who heard the case ruled that the waqf was illegal because it was “worst and most harmful.”

The decision by the four judges was, however, not accepted in India and the Mussalman Waqf Validating Act of 1913 saved the institution of Waqf in India. Since then, no attempt has been made to curb Waqfs, and Waqf Board is now the 3rd largest land owner in India.

In fact, political vote banks dictating the institution of Waqf have only been strengthened post-independence. The Waqf Act of 1954 passed by the Nehru government provided a pathway toward the centralisation of Waqfs. Central Waqf Council of India, a statutory body was established in 1964 by the Government of India under this Waqf Act of 1954. This central body oversees the work under various state Waqf boards which were established under provisions of Section 9(1) of the Waqf Act, 1954. In fact, the Waqf Act, which is an overriding law and there are no legislative powers over it, was made even more favourable to Muslims in 1995 by the then UPA Govt.

The country today has up to 30 Waqf Boards, which have thus far infringed on many properties and temple lands, with the pattern of operation being consistent in most cases. Muslims usually first start performing namaz on these lands. Then, villages are constructed around it after declaring it a religious site. It then becomes easier to sell or lease land near these illegal settlements.

There are currently 50,000 Waqf properties in the country, covering 6,00,000 acres. These properties have earned 150 crores in revenue thus far and consistent efforts are being made to increase this.

Below we have cited 21 such instances when the Waqf Board in India has mismanaged assets, encroached, illegally disposed of and infringed on various properties in the last few years.

1. Tamil Nadu Waqf Board claims ownership of a Hindu-majority village

A shocking case of the Waqf Board encroaching on a property came to light in Tamil Nadu in September this year, where an entire village with a Hindu majority population has been declared as waqf property. Thiruchenthurai village near Trichy, Tamil Nadu has been designated as a waqf property by the Tamil Nadu Waqf Board. Thiruchenthurai is a village situated on the south bank of the Cauvery river in Tamil Nadu.

The issue was uncovered when a person named Rajagopal attempted to sell his 1 acre 2 cents of land to one Rajarajeshwari. When Rajagopal, a resident of the nearby village Mullikarupur village arrived at the Registrar’s office to get the sale of his land registered, he was surprised to learn that the land did not belong to him and instead belonged to the Waqf Board.

In fact, days after news surfaced that the Waqf Board had encroached on an entire hamlet with a Hindu majority population in Tamil Nadu, reports emerged on how this village is not the only one. Reports suggested that the Tamil Nadu Waqf board has claimed ownership of 7 such Hindu villages in the state. The villagers have additionally, alleged that the Waqf Board has also claimed that the 1500-year-old Sundareswarar Temple belongs to them.

Notably, the Waqf Board has placed posters across the villages claiming ownership of the village land.

2. Uproar over orders to hand over Gurudwara land to Waqf Board in Haryana

In July of this year, residents of Jathlana village in Haryana’s Yamunanagar district flocked to the streets to protest court rulings granting the Waqf Board possession of a Gurdwara land.

Actually, there has been a long conflict going on concerning Gurudwara’s 14-marle land in Haryana’s Jathlana village. The Waqf Board had petitioned the court in this regard and the court, in turn, assigned this land to the Waqf Board. The court directed the Gurudwara committee to vacate the land and hand it over to the Waqf Board.

As the news spread, people of the village gathered outside the Giridwara to protest against the court order.

Gurdwara Committee members Manish Batra, Jaswinder Singh, and Sardar Satwinder Singh confirmed that since 1947, the Gurdwara has stood on this site and that there has never been a mosque on the property where the Gurudwara is located, a claim made by the Waqf Board to acquire the property.

3. Surat Municipal Corporation headquarters at Muglisara had been declared waqf property

In November 2021, the Surat Municipal Corporation headquarters at Muglisara had been declared waqf property. The board had claimed that during the Mughal rule of Shah Jahan, his daughter Jahanara Begum owned Surat and her confidante Ishaqbail Yazdi alias Haqiqat Khan constructed the building back in 1644 and named it Humayun Sarai. It was reportedly donated for Haj pilgrims to rest.

4. How property in Shiv Shakti society of Mora, Surat, came in Waqf possession 

In February this year, OpIndia reported how the Waqf Board had got a stay on the demolition of illegal madarsa built on Surat Municipal Corporation land because the district administration reportedly did not update records on time.

As per local media reports, in ward no 3, city survey nos 4936 and 4939 a madarsa in the name of Anwar-e-Rabbani Talim-ul-Islam is operational. For a long time, it has been disputed that it is built illegally on the land owned by Surat Municipal Corporation. Hence earlier, to demolish the same, the district administration had asked for police bandobast as well. However, owing to the dispute between the Waqf and trustees on the madarsa registered with the Waqf board, the police force was not arranged for.

5. Sunni Waqf Board claims Shah Jahan gave them the Taj Mahal, SC demands a transfer deed with his signature

In 2018, the Supreme Court asked the Sunni Waqf Board to submit papers signed by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in which they were given the rights to the Taj Mahal. The Sunni Waqf Board is pursuing a legal battle against the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) for the ownership of the iconic monument.

The SC has given a week’s time to the Sunni Waqf Board to submit the papers signed by the Emperor. Shah Jahan died in 1666, 18 years after the Taj Mahal was built.

According to reports, the Sunni Waqf Board, which is the current regulatory body of the property for religious, educational and charitable purposes had passed an order in July 2005 which decreed that the monument should be registered as their property. There is a stay in that order currently. The ASI had filed a petition in the SC challenging the order.

6. UP Sunni Waqf Board’s claim that the Kashi Vishwanath Mandir is Waqf property

The Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board’s claimed that the disputed property upon which the Gyanvyapi Masjid stands today is a Waqf property. In fact, in August 2022, when the hearing of the Gyanvapi Mosque-Shringar Gauri case resumed in Varanasi in the court of the district judge, Anjuman Intezamia Masajid (AIM), the mosque management committee, argued that the civil court didn’t have the right to hear the issue related to the mosque as it was a waqf property and could only be heard by the Waqf Board.

The Gyanvapi Mosque complex is a disputed structure built over the ruins of the desecrated old Kashi Vishwanath Temple by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb after it was desecrated multiple times by Islamic monarchs such as Qutb al-Din Aibak and Aurangzeb.

To this day, parts of this ancient temple are clearly visible on the outer walls of the mosque. Even from afar, the statues of the bull Nandi and Maa Shringaar Gauri can be seen.

The Kashi Vishwanath Temple complex, which is adjacent to the disputed mosque complex and where devotees can do puja and prayers, was built by Ahilya Bai Holkar of Indore in 1780.

However, the puja at Maa Shringar Gauri Temple, on the western side of the disputed Gyanvapi Mosque was restricted. The ongoing case is related to a plea regarding the removal of this very restriction.

7. Shia Waqf board grabs Hindu Shivalay in Lucknow

In July of this year, it was revealed that a Shivalay in Lucknow had been registered as a Waqf property in collusion with the Uttar Pradesh Shia Central Waqf Board. Local Hindi media had reported how the former Mutawalli Abbas Amir and former Shia Waqf Board chairman Wasim Rizvi alias Jitendra Narayan Tyagi were the ones who got the Hindu Shivalay land registered in the name of the Shia Waqf Board.

Speaking about the illegally acquired Hindu property by the Waqf Board, advocate Mahvish stated that the Hindu pagoda is mentioned in the revenue record of 1862, whereas the Waqf Board was created in 1908. He stated that the pagoda was placed in Waqf under section 35.

8. Waqf Board stakes claim on two islands in Bet Dwarka

In December last year, Waqf Board has written an application to the Gujarat High Court staking a claim on the ownership of two islands in Bet Dwarka in Devbhoomi Dwarka. As per a report in the Gujarati daily Divya Bhaskar, the hearing of the application was heard in the court of Justice Sangeeta Vishen.

The Waqf committee in its application claimed that the ownership of two islands on Bet Dwarka island belongs to the Waqf Board. On hearing this, the Gujarat High Court expressed disproval and hit out, “Are you aware of what you are saying? How can Waqf Board claim ownership of land in Krishnanagari?’ and refused to hear the application.

Bet Dwarka or Beyt Dwarka was the residence of Shri Krishna during the time he ruled Gujarat. It is a small island off the coast of Dwarka and one needs to take about a 30-minute boat ride from Okha. The small island is inhabited by about 7,000 families of which about 6,000 families are Muslim families. Bet Dwarka is one of the holy pilgrimage sites for Hindus.

9. Waqf Board is presently India’s third largest landowner

The Central Waqf Board is a central council established in 1964 to regulate and develop Auqaf/waqf in India. In Islam, auqaf refers to assets or properties given or purchased for religious purposes. The Waqf Board was established under Article 30 of the Indian Constitution to empower Indian minorities.

Waqf basically refers to religious property. A property can be deemed waqf if it has been used for religious or charitable purposes for a long period of time. When a property is designated as Waqf, it is administered by the Waqf Board.

Waqf Board has a tremendous amount of property. It has around 4 lakh registered properties and around 6 lakh acres of land according to a joint parliamentary committee report headed by K Rehman Khan in 2009.

10. Wakf claims ownership over Aurangabad’s Jalna road property

In August 2014, the Wakf Board sent a notice to the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) claiming ownership of a disputed piece of land near Jalna road and urging it to halt the process of obtaining the land from another party for road widening. The AMC’s town planning department recommended paying another party Rs 1.8 crore to acquire the land for the construction of a development plan road.

On July 19, members of the civic standing committee also opposed the proposal, citing foul play. Mir Hidayat Ali, a Congress corporator, stated that the municipal corporation was prioritising the plan for the wrong reasons.

11. Waqf board opposes Hyderabad municipal corporation’s move to acquire mosque land, calls it Waqf property

In the year 2013, a controversy erupted after the Telangana Waqf Board opposed the Hyderabad municipal corporation’s move to acquire a portion of land belonging to the green mosque in the city’s Banjara Hill for road widening. The board contested that the land was a Waqf property, while the government had maintained that the land belonged to them.

12. Karnataka Waqf Board scam: BJP alleges 29,000 acres used ‘commercially’

Republic TV reported in 2020 how citing a 2012 report by the Karnataka Minorities Commission, BJP alleged that the Karnataka Waqf land used 29,000 acres of land for commercial purposes.

The 7000-page study, issued in 2012 by the Karnataka State Minorities Commission, documented the commercial usage of land allocated to the Karnataka Waqf board which reportedly cost Rs 2 lakh crores – through exploiting state lands.

Notably, Waqf is the permanent donation of any movable or immovable property by a Muslim to any purpose recognised by Muslim law as pious, religious, or charitable.

The report stated that the Karnataka Waqf board had been allotted 54,000 acres worth Rs 410 lakh crore with 33,741 registered properties in the state, for religious or charitable purposes, however, the former Waqf Board heads misused assets, encroached, unlawfully disposed of, mismanaged, and indulged in fraudulent actions in Gulbarga, Bangalore Urban, Bangalore Rural, Ramanagaram, and Koppal in collusion with senior Congress politicians.

“In 2006, under PM Manmohan Singh’s rule, the resources meant for the poor minorities under the Waqf Board were being looted by his own party’s politicians. This political hypocrisy has been in play for a very long time,” BJP MP Rajeev Chandrashekhar was quoted as saying.

13. 1,700 new Waqf properties discovered in Maharashtra

In 2018, the Maharashtra government conducted a survey that revealed the presence of 1,700 additional waqf properties in two districts of Pune and Parbhani alone. “The survey of auqafs in Parbhani and Pune conducted by the Settlement Commissioner and the Directorate of Land Records detected 273 new properties in Parbhani and 1,465 in Pune. When the last auqaf survey was conducted in 2002, Parbhani and Pune had a total of 1,189 and 153 properties respectively,” said a senior official from the department.

14. 17,000 Waqf properties encroached in country

According to the government, Punjab has the highest number of Waqf Board properties under encroachment, with around 17,000 such properties across the country. Encroachment on Waqf Board properties totalled 16,937 across the country, with 5,610 in Punjab. Punjab is followed by Madhya Pradesh (3240), West Bengal (3082), Tamil Nadu (1335), and Karnataka (862), according to statistics from the ministry’s 24 state Waqf Board assets.

15. Telangana Waqf Board declares 4-acre Waqf property as private

Corruption and irregularities have become rampant in the Telangana Waqf Board. A serious anomaly was discovered during a government land survey in May of this year. Waqf land measuring 4 acres and 5 guntas have been designated private property.

On May 26, 2017, a letter was issued to the Collector Malkajgiri district, signed by Chief Executive Officer Mannan Farooqui, a copy of which is accessible with Siasat. The letter declared the land under survey numbers 648, 659, and 660 to be non-Waqf.

The letter indicated that the three survey numbers do not fall under Waqf. The letter referred to the application made by Narsingh Rao, a resident of Malkajgiri. Narsingh Rao had requested a NOC in connection with the three pieces of land.

16. Andhra Pradesh Waqf Board stakes claim on 1,654.32 acres of Manikonda village 

In February this year, the Supreme Court ruled the decades-old litigation regarding the Manikonda Jagir land in favour of the state government saying that ‘all the lands are held with the state government only’. The Andhra Pradesh Waqf Board had claimed the ownership of 1,654.32 acres of Manikonda village and had said that the land belonged to Dargah Hazrat Hussain Shah Wali.

The final verdict pronounced by a division bench comprising Justice Hemnath Gupta and Justice V Ramasubramanian provided much-needed relief to several public and private institutes besides individual landowners. The lands in question are situated at Manikonda Jagir Village, Gandipet Mandal of Rangareddy district and are valued at more than Rs 50,000 crore as of today, as per reports.

17. Telangana Wakf board claims Hafeezpet land as its property

Last year, the Telangana High Court resolved a dispute over the title of 140 acres of prime land in Survey No. 80 at Hafeezpet in Serilingampally, Rangareddy district, by declaring it private property. Both the Telangana government and the State Waqf Board had staked claims on the aforementioned land.

While ruling that the land belongs to private individuals, a division bench overturned the Waqf Board’s resolution and the gazette notifying the land as its property. It also set aside items in the revenue records that favoured the government.

The court had also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on the State government and Waqf Board, payable to each of the petitioners in the Hafeezpet land issue. It also directed the authorities not to interfere in the peaceful possession of the petitioners.

18. Delhi Waqf Board files plea against the delisting of its 123 alleged properties by the Centre arguing that they belonged to the board

In March 2022, the Delhi High Court refused to provide relief to the Delhi Waqf Board, which had filed a petition against the delisting of its 123 alleged properties by the Centre.

One of the properties sought by the Islamic body is a graveyard by the name of Qabristan Qadeem that was handed over by the Union government to the border patrolling organisation, India Tibetan Border Police (ITBP).

The Delhi Waqf Board argued that the 123 properties purportedly belong to it and that the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act of 2013 has no provision to recall the order of withdrawal.

19. BJP MP accuses the Sunni Waqf Board of land grab

Last year, Upendra Rawat, the BJP’s Barabanki MP, wrote to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, supporting the demolition of a mosque in the area and accused the Sunni Waqf Board of stealing government land.

“The Waqf Board has illegally registered mosques on government land,” Rawat stated, demanding an investigation into the problem.

The Barabanki administration razed the mosque in the Ram Sanehi Ghat tehsil, saying that it was built illegally and was being dismantled due to court orders.

20. West Bengal waqf scam worth Rs 1000 Cr under CBI scanner

In 2012, the CBI launched an investigation into an alleged Rs 1000 crore West Bengal state Waqf Board fraud.

According to State Waqf Board records, the total number of registered waqf properties with the State Waqf Board is 8,160. There are 7352 public Waqf Estates and 808 Aulad Waqf Estates.

The panel discovered that nine Waqf estates changed hands between 1980 and 1985, and 117 between 1986 and 1995. 28 were sold, 47 were leased, 21 were exchanged, and 30 were handed over to promoters.

21. J&K Waqf Board stakes claim over 500 Kanals of land

Recently, OpIndia reported how a petitioner in the case against Jammu and Kashmir Waqf Board complained that the concerned deputy commissioners in the case were deliberately delaying in responding to the court notices. Petitioner Ankur Sharma in the year 2018 had challenged J&K Waqf Board’s notification claiming authority over 500 kanals of land.

According to the reports, the J&K Waqf Board issued a notification in the year 1985 in which over 500 Kanals of land were notified as Waqf property in the Poonch district. Sharma challenged the notification in 2018 and accused revenue officers of deliberately delaying the case on September 22.

Central Forensic Laboratory refuses to share the DNA report of Gumnami Baba, believed to be Netaji Bose in disguise, sought in an RTI query

OpIndia Staff
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Central Forensic Laboratory refuses to share the DNA report of Gumnami Baba, believed to be Netaji Bose in disguise, sought in an RTI query

The Central Forensic Laboratory (CFSL) in Kolkata has rejected to disclose the electropherogram report of the DNA sample of Gumnami Baba, which some claim was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose disguised as a sadhu, citing Sections 8(1)(A), (E), and 11(1) of the Right to Information Act, 2005.

In reply to an RTI request from Sayak Sen,  a resident of Konnagar in Hooghly, the CFSL agreed that the electropherogram report of Gumnami Baba’s DNA sample, who died in 1985, is in its possession.

Although it is generally believed that Netaji died in an aeroplane crash in Taiwan on August 18, 1945, some suggest that he survived the crash and went into hiding to evade the then-British government. 

Sayak Sen told India Today that the CFSL denied his RTI plea, stating that it would not provide the electropherogram report for three reasons. “I’ve been notified that the electropherogram cannot be provided for three reasons. Most importantly, making it public may have an impact on India’s sovereignty and ties with other countries,” Sen said.

Sen also asked why a man who lived in a distant area of Uttar Pradesh would matter so much to India’s international relations and make such a commotion in the country if his electropherogram was revealed to the public.

“Gumnami Baba was clearly more than a common man, and he was special. As per my research, he was Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in disguise,” Sen asserted.

The RTI application had sought, whether the electropherogram report of Gumnami Baba’s DNA test conducted under the supervision of Mukherjee Commission is available in Calcutta CFSL, if not available the report of the destruction of the report, and if the report exists, hand over the report to the petitioner. He plea had noted that the report was not given to the Mukherjee Commission and the Mukherjee Commission has been abolished now. In its reply, CFSL said that it still has the report and it has not been destroyed, but it can’t be handed over.

An electropherogram is a plot depicting the results of an electrophoresis automated sequencing analysis. An electropherogram is a data series produced by automated DNA sequencing equipment. Electropherograms can be used to determine the outcomes of genealogical DNA testing and paternity testing.

Notably, a section of people who believe that Bose survived the plane crash argues that after disguising his name, Netaji lived in several locales in Uttar Pradesh, including Naimisharanya (Nimsar), Basti, Ayodhya, and Faizabad. Following Gumnami Baba’s death in 1985, the Mukherjee Commission, established by the then-Central government, failed to substantiate that Gumnami Baba was Bose since handwriting and DNA test results indicated otherwise.

Video of men offering namaz onboard a train in UP’s Kushinagar goes viral, probe ordered

OpIndia Staff
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Video of men offering namaz onboard a train in UP’s Kushinagar goes viral, probe ordered

A video of men offering namaz being performed onboard a train is going viral on social media. The viral video is reportedly from Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh. In the footage, a group of people in the sleeping class is seen praying in the gallery while also blocking onlookers. An ex-BJP MLA reportedly recorded the video. According to the Railway Protection Force (RPF), the incident will be investigated thoroughly. The video went viral on Friday, 21 October 2022.

The video of namaz is from Satyagraha Express having train number 15273. Passengers are seen sitting on both sides of the sleeper class coach in the viral video. In the passageway, a sheet has been placed on which four namazis can be seen praying in a queue. During this time, another person protecting these Namazis requests that commuters halt and wait. Women can also be spotted among the passengers who are inconvenienced.

According to media sources, the worshipers’ identities are yet to be ascertained. However, based on the information provided, this video was shot at Kushinagar’s Khadda railway station by former BJP MLA Deeplal Bharti. Describing such an act as exasperating, Deeplal Bharti said that he himself was travelling in the same train. According to the former MLA, he was also one of the victims of inconvenience and had to sit in another coach. Deeplal Bharti has requested that those who committed this be held accountable.

After the video went viral, the administration acted quickly to initiate a probe. Both the Central Railway Protection Force and the Uttar Pradesh State Railway Police Protection Force have taken cognizance of the issue. The area’s SP Railway, Awadhesh Singh, asserted, “Investigation will be done and then further action will be taken on the matter.” The RPF Varanasi zone is also gathering information from the public and informing them about the inquiry and course of action at the same time.

This is not the first time the issue of offering namaz in public places has become an issue. Recently on October 4, two persons were found offering namaz at the Panchkula Bus Stand. Shlok Aggarwal, a resident of Panchkula, Haryana, shared a tweet on social media where he raised objection against the practice of using government property for religious activities.

In recent times, the issue became a reason for communal tension between Hindus and Muslims in Gurugram, where Muslims in large numbers would travel to public places to offer namaz. The matter resulted in clashes between the two communities, and the authorities had to revoke permissions to offer namaz in public places.

Did Manmohan Singh violate the Official Secrets Act? Here is what Sanjaya Baru said after controversy over Tavleen Singh’s remarks

Raju Das
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Did Manmohan Singh violate the Official Secrets Act? Here is what Sanjaya Baru said after controversy over Tavleen Singh’s remarks

Journalist Tavleen Singh had angered the Congress leaders three days ago by claiming that former PM Dr Manmohan Singh had violated the Official Secrets Act by sending confidential government files to Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi during the UPA regime. In a discussion of the Gandhi family remote controlling the party on India Today channel in the aftermath of Mallikarjun Kharge’s election as the Congress president, Singh had made the remarks.

While Tavleen Singh had said that she will provide evidence of her claim, now she has backtracked from her claim. Following massive criticism and trolling by Congress leaders and workers, and demands to furnish proof of the claim, the veteran journalist has now conceded that she has no proof that Dr. Singh had violated the Official Secrets Act.

When Tavleen Singh had made the claims on the show hosted by Rajdeep Sardesai on India Today TV, Congress leader Praveen Chakravarti, who was also on the panel, had objected to this claim, and demanded evidence. Soon after that, several other Congress leaders like P Chidambaram, Pawan Khera and others came forward to criticise the journalist and demanded proof that Dr. Singh violated the law.

The Congress party leaders followed this up by sending letters to Tavleen Singh demanding the promised proofs, and threatening legal action. Praveen Chakravarty, chairman of the Data Analytics cell of the Congress party, wrote to her demanding the proof, and an apology if she fails to provide the proof. He also said that the party will proceed with legal action if she does not come with either evidence or apology.

Responding to this growing demand, Tavleen Singh said that Sanjaya Baru in his book mentioned the name of the person who carried files between PMO and Sonia Gandhi’s residence. She also said, “Jayanthi Natarajan in a letter to Sonia Gandhi reminded her of her having stopped certain projects”.

While Tavleen Singh didn’t name the book, it was evident that she was talking about the book titled The Accidental Prime Minister, The Making And Unmaking Of Manmohan Singh, authored by Sanjaya Baru, who was the media advisor of PM Manmohan Singh.

In another tweet responding to P Chidambaram, she again said that “people who worked in the PMO have named officials who carried government files to 10 Janpath”, and that former ministers admit taking orders from Sonia Gandhi. “She was de facto PM then and will remain de facto Congress President now,” she said.

However, Tavleen Singh faced a setback as Sanjaya Baru denied making any such claims in his book. When a Twitter user tagged Sanjaya Baru responding to Tavleen Singh’s ‘evidence’, saying that Baru will be the right person to answer/clarify this, Baru responded. As Baru’s Twitter account is protected, the Twitter user named Shiva posted the screenshot of the reply, where Sanjaya Baru categorically denied the claims of Tavleen Singh.

“My book does not say PM breached Official Secrets Act. So Chidambaram is right to demand proof,” Baru wrote, causing a massive setback to Tavleen Singh. Therefore, when Praveen Chakravarty confronted her with Baru’s tweet, she was forced to concede that she does not have evidence for her claims.

“OK. If Sanjay Baru says that his book doesn’t mention a violation of the Official Secrets Act I am happy to admit that I was wrong about that,” Tavleen Singh tweeted responding to the Congress leader’s tweet. While she had not tendered an apology as demanded by Congress leaders, she conceded that she made wrong claims about confidential files being sent to Sonia Gandhi from PMO.

However, later she clarified she admitted her mistake on the claim of violation of the Official Secrets Act, and not on the transfer of files itself. “No. I admitted that the files sent to Sonia Gandhi from the PMO may not have been those that violated the Official Secrets Act,” she said responding to a tweet saying that she confessed that she was lying.

Therefore, Tavleen Singh maintains her position that files were sent from PMO and other ministries to Sonia Gandhi during the UPA govt, but she can’t say if it violated the Official Secrets Act.

Now coming to Sanjaya Baru’s book, it is a fact that he has been maintaining that he didn’t directly write that government files were carried to Sonia Gandhi, and certainly he didn’t write that the former PM violated the secrecy law. However, his book did talk about a PMO official having almost daily meetings with Sonia Gandhi, and seeking her instructions on important files cleared by the PM.

“Pulok, who was inducted into the Manmohan Singh PMO at the behest of Sonia Gandhi, had regular, almost daily, meetings with Sonia at which he was said to brief her on the key policy issues of the day and seek her instructions on important files to be cleared by the PM,” Baru wrote in Accidental Prime Minister, talking about IAS officer Pulok Chatterjee.

From the book The Accidental Prime Minister

He further wrote, “Pulok was the single most important point of regular contact between the PM and Sonia. He was also the PMO’s main point of contact with the National Advisory Council (NAC), a high-profile advisory body chaired by Sonia Gandhi, with social activists as members. It was sometimes dubbed the Shadow Cabinet.”

Therefore, while it is true that Baru never claimed that Dr Singh violated the Official Secrets Act, he did give enough hints that Pulok Chatterjee did carry files to Sonia Gandhi. Or even if he didn’t carry the actual files, he did convey information contained in them to Sonia Gandhi, to get her instructions on the matters.

Therefore, while Congress leaders may be celebrating that Tavleen Singh has backtracked and Sanjaya Baru has denied her claims, actually none of them have denied that official files were sent to Sonia Gandhi. Only thing they have conceded is that it can’t be claimed that Manmohan Singh violated the Official Secrets Act.

And that is understandable, as while it was known that Pulok Chatterjee was carrying files or their contents to Sonia Gandhi, it can’t be ascertained if they contained anything that violated the law.

Sanjaya Baru is not the only person to say that Chatterjee used to carry PMO files to 10 Janpath. Veteran Congress leader Natwar Singh had also made the same claim in his book One Life is Not Enough: An Autobiography.

‘He was kind enough to leave the child alive’: Madhya Pradesh HC Court commutes life sentence of rape convict

OpIndia Staff
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‘He was kind enough to leave the child alive’: Madhya Pradesh HC Court commutes life sentence of rape convict

A rape convict’s life sentence was reduced on Saturday by the Madhya Pradesh (MP) High Court after it was observed by the court that despite committing a horrible crime, the defendant was “kind enough” to spare the child’s life. Subsequently, the life sentence of the rape convict was reduced to 20 years by the high court’s Indore bench of Justice Subodh Abhyankar and Justice SK Singh.

The court observed, “In such circumstances, this court does not find any error in appreciation of evidence by the trial court and considering the demonic act of the appellant, who appears to have no respect for the dignity of a woman and has the propensity to commit sexual offences even with a girl child aged four years, this court does not find it to be a fit case where the sentence can be reduced to the sentence already undergone by him.”

“However, considering the fact that he was kind enough to leave the prosecutrix alive, this court is of the opinion that life imprisonment can be reduced to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment,” the bench added. “Accordingly, the criminal appeal is partly allowed and the appellant will be made to suffer the period of 20 years in accordance with the law,” it further added.

The accused contended in court that he had been falsely implicated in the case. He also stated that the prosecution did not present a chemical analysis report. As a result, he maintained that his sentence should be reduced because he had already served some time in jail. The police were found to be irresponsible by the High Court for failing to produce a chemical report despite the fact that the child’s vaginal smear was sent to a forensic laboratory.

In court, the defendant argued that he had been wrongly suspected of being involved in the altercation. He said that there was no chemical analysis report presented by the prosecution. He argued that since he had previously served some jail time, his sentence should be lowered. The child’s vaginal smear was submitted to a forensic laboratory, but the police were ruled negligent by the High Court for neglecting to produce a chemical report.

The judges argued that the court can simply not ignore other material that has been filed because of the report’s absence. In this specific case, they said, witness testimony and a medical examination provided sufficient evidence to establish the seriousness of the crime.

Allahabad High Court grants anticipatory bail to SP corporator Fazal Khan in the Atala violence case

OpIndia Staff
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Allahabad High Court grants anticipatory bail to SP corporator Fazal Khan in the Atala violence case

On 22nd October 2022, the Allahabad High Court in Prayagraj granted anticipatory bail to Samajwadi Party’s corporator Fazal Khan in the Atala violence case. The high court granted bail to Fazal Khan in two cases related to the violence. The high court has also asked the Uttar Pradesh state government to file its response in the case.

Fazal Khan is accused in three cases regarding the Atala violence. He is charged with inciting violence, arson, and stone-pelting.

On 10th June 2022, violence erupted in the Atala area of the Prayagraj district of Uttar Pradesh as a mob of Muslims pelted stones in the guise of protest against the so-called insulting remarks by the former Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Nupur Sharma against the Prophet Muhammad. The police also arrested some people in this connection. At the same time, SP councilor Fazal Khan was also accused of serious charges.

Prayagraj police had registered an FIR against more than 80 people and more than 5000 unidentified others in connection with the violence in Atala. Five of them were declared wanted, including Kareli councilor Fazal Khan. All of them are accused of conspiracy and promoting violence. In the violence that took place after Friday prayers in Prayagraj, Fazal Khan is accused of mobilizing miscreants and instigating a mob of Muslims to vandalize properties. A case was registered against Fazal. Apart from Fazal, another SP leader Dilshad Mansoori was also booked.

The incident took place in the Kareli Police Station area of Atala in the Prayagraj district. In anticipation of the violence following the Friday Namaz, police had deployed their personnel in large numbers in advance, but the violence still broke out. Hundreds of Islamists took to the streets and started targeting police officials to protest. The District Magistrate and the Senior Superintendent of Police tried to calm the situation down but to no effect. The protesters were demanding the hanging of Nupur Sharma for her remarks. Fazal Khan is accused in the cases regarding this violence.

Kerala: 4 Police officers thrash Indian Army soldier and his brother in a fabricated case, suspended

OpIndia Staff
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Kerala: 4 Police officers thrash Indian Army soldier and his brother in a fabricated case, suspended

On Friday, four Kerala Police officers were suspended for assaulting a serving Indian Army officer and his brother. This is after the Indian Army intervened in the matter and sought a report from the Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police (DGP) about the incident.

According to the reports, the incident is said to have happened on August 25 when Vishnu, who served as an Indian Army soldier in Rajasthan, and his brother Vighnesh were thrashed by the Kerala Police in a falsely fabricated case. The soldier was so badly beaten that he had to undergo treatment at the hospital.

Vignesh stated that he was summoned to the police station to bail out a defendant in a drug trafficking case, but he refused. Meanwhile, his brother, an army soldier, arrived on the scene. The brothers apparently got into an argument with a police officer on the station grounds, and police subsequently arrested them, claiming they had assaulted the officer. The brothers were reportedly tortured in the police station and were then placed in judicial detention for 12 days.

According to Vighnesh, ASI Prakash Chandran allegedly argued with his army brother and pulled him to the police station. He further stated that the officer in question was drunk and that he and his brother were tormented for hours inside the police station.

“My brother told them he is working in the Indian army, and at that time he (a police officer) slapped him on his face”, Vighnesh said. He also added that one police officer threatened his brother that he would damage his shooting finger and consequently be unable to wield a pistol. He further said that when he and his brother requested water to drink, the officers instructed them to consume their own urine.

Reportedly, the incident got recorded in CCTV footage which showed a police officer without a uniform. The police officer in the video is seen battling with the boys. Reports mention that the Kerala Police also filed a police report against the brothers, which said that Vignesh and Vishnu attacked the officer. However, the CCTV footage showed officers beating the brothers.

The Indian army intervened in the matter and requested a report from the Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police (DGP). Notably, the DGP ordered an investigation, and four police officers were suspended for the custodial abuse of an Indian army soldier and his brother on Friday afternoon.

The history and unconstitutionality of the Collegium system: It is time for our Judiciary to reform before the public loses faith

Saket Suryesh
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The history and unconstitutionality of the Collegium system: It is time for our Judiciary to reform before the public loses faith

‘I personally feel no doubt that the Chief Justice is very eminent person. But after all the Chief Justice is a man with all the failings, all the sentiments and prejudices which we as common people have. To allow the Chief Justice practically a veto upon the appointment of judges is really to transfer the authority to the Chief Justice which we not prepared to vest in the President or the government of day. I therefore think, that is also a dangerous proposition.’  

                                     – Dr. BR Ambedkar, President, Drafting Committee of Constitution of India

What Kiran Rijiju, the Law Minister in Narendra Modi-led NDA Government said on Monday this week in an event Sabarmati Samvad organised by Panchjanya, a weekly magazine of the RSS, was no different from the views expressed by Dr Ambedkar in Constituent Assembly debate on 24th of May, 1949. The public discontent towards the judiciary which is now more and more visible on public platforms emanates largely from the opacity of the process through which the Judges are appointed in the higher courts. Rijiju also spoke of the public discontent against the judiciary on various platforms and the plea made by the same judiciary to gag it which presided over the violence perpetrated over constitutionally cleared laws like the Farm Laws calling it an expression of dissent.

The arbitrariness of the judiciary has been pronounced and when people watch it, their trust in the judiciary is shaken. When they find that the beheading of a Kanhaiya Lal does not shake the conscience of the highest court as much as a beard cut of a man from a particular faith, they begin to question the competence of the learned men who act in a partisan manner while throwing both Constitutional and Mahatma Gandhi at us all the time. The biggest danger for the law is the loss of faith of the society that it intends to govern, and the biggest cause of this loss of faith is arbitrariness in law. When laws are very clear, and the constitution is very clear, how come a two-member bench of the Supreme Court has a split decision on Hijab in a public institution? Either the law is very bad, or the Judges must be very incompetent to interpret the law in totally diverse directions. A third possibility also arises which is even worse than the two mentioned, they are not interpreting the laws, they are hardening their opinions. This brings to mind the question of the way Judges are appointed. 

We find that this had been the cause of concern since the time the Constitution was written. Since the judges are always keen to project themselves as the last guardians of the Constitution, it is pertinent to note what the Constitution says about the manner in which Judges are appointed and whether the system that we have is constitutional at all. During the Constituent Assembly debates, the point was seriously debated and the three models were deliberated upon for the appointment of judges- Appointment by the Crown as in Great Britain (the Crown would be the elected President of India as equivalent here), the appointment by Senate as in the US, the appointment by the Judges, as is in practice right now under the Collegium system. As per the quote given by Dr Ambedkar, the last option was ruled out as very dangerous by the Constituent Assembly. Thus, under Article 124 of the Constitution, it was pronounced that:

‘Every Judge of the SC should be appointed by the President by warrant under his hand and seal after consultation with such of the judges of the Supreme Court and of High Courts in the state as the president may deem necessary for the purpose and shall hold office until he attains the age of Sixty-Five.’ 

To any person with a basic understanding of the English language would understand two things, while the Makers of the Indian Constitution, tried to keep the appointment of judges free from the on-ground party politics, they still tried to make way for the appointment of the judges reflective of the voice of the people through the elected head of a democratic Government, the President of India. To ensure that the President was ably advised by the legal minds in the process, they kept the provision for consultation with the Judges of Supreme Courts and High Courts but left it at the discretion of the President. The choice of words made it amply clear that the Constitution did not make the consultation with the legal luminaries binding on the elected president of Democratic India. The direct corollary of this would be that any mechanism in contradiction to this and the rights of the President of India would be unconstitutional, no matter what colour we paint it in. 

The system worked well when it did, except when it did not. When in times of Emergency, the judges aligned with the political masters of the day and Justice HR Khanna became the lone dissenting voice, he was quickly sidelined by Mrs Indira Gandhi who got seniority superseded and appointed her favourite judge as the Chief Justice of India. Justice HR Khanna resigned with disgust and disappointment. The good thing was that Indira was subject to democratic scrutiny and was thrown out of power. The people had the power to right the wrongs as the eventual power of the appointment of the judiciary was with an elected President. 

In 1981, the system came under question when SP Gupta Vs. President of India case came up in the Supreme Court before a  Seven-Judges Bench. The petition (s) were brought in to protest a circular from the then Law Minister of the Government of India, Shiv Shankar seeking the implementation of a policy for implementing the judges out of their home states. While considering various aspects of the questions raised in multiple petitions, the Bench also deliberated on where is the power to appoint the Judges of the High Court and the Supreme Court located. The bench then answered this question with the conclusion that the Chief Justice of India, the Chief Justice of the High Court and others have only a consultative role and the power of appointment rests solely and exclusively in the Central Government. The bench recorded on the contention of the petitioners that on the matter of judicial appointment wherein it is argued that the opinion of the Chief Justice of India should have primacy, the Seven-member Supreme Court Bench responds unequivocally that they are unable to accept this contention. The bench further proclaimed that the ultimate power of appointment rests with the central government and that is in accord with the constitutional practice prevailing in all democratic countries. The bench also agreed to this is left to the discretion of the Central Government whether or not they need the consultation of one or more of the judges of the Supreme Court or the High Court. 

Another case was brought in October 1993 by the Supreme Court Advocate-on-Record Association seeking clarification on the point of the primacy of the Chief Justice of India in the decision regarding the appointment of Judges. While as we have seen this point was expressly deliberated and answered in 1981 by a Seven-Member bench, another nine-member bench was constituted to re-examine the question. The previous petitioner, SP Gupta, a lawyer, supported by other lawyers like Kapil Sibal, Shanti Bhushan, and Ram Jethmalani argued that the decision of the previous bench was incorrect and that the CJI should hold primacy over the appointment of judges. In this case, in some roundabout way, an ‘assumption’ was made that while earlier there was no provision for consultation with the Chief Justice in the Government of India Act, 1935, this provision must have been made because the Constituent Assembly must have felt that the Chief Justice is best equipped to know and assess the worth of the candidate. Even the discretionary power of the president which was granted by the Constitution in this regard was diluted by claiming that the right is only given to act in the event of an error of judgement on the part of the Chief Justice of India, not as a position rather as a person. Using presumptions and assumptions, the bench decided that the deciding authority has lesser primacy than the consulting authority. The judgement makes great reading for those who still believe in an objective and neutral judiciary. This is where the tide began to turn with the unelected judiciary claiming to have unquestioned supremacy in the democratic scheme of things.

By 1998, the third Judges Case, wherein the President of India sought the opinion of the Supreme Court on the same question for the sake of clarity, the die was cast. The Executive was totally nudged out. The assumptions made by the 1993 bench were now formalised and the bench even placed the initiation of the process of appointment of the judges on the Judges and made the consultant the final decision-maker with the judgment which said that No appointment of any judge to Supreme Court or any High Court can be made unless it is in conformity with the opinion of the Chief Justice of India. The Nine-Member Bench not only junked the first judgement but declared itself the final authority on how the relevant terms in the constitution ought to be interpreted and read claiming that the constitutional scheme must now be understood and implemented in the manner indicated herein by us. The choice of words and the tone and tenor of the language are quite telling. This is when the Collegium system was formalised based on the judiciary which interpreted the Constitution as they deemed fit, gave themselves supremacy and devised a system to allow judges to appoint the judges in an absolutely arbitrary manner without any constitutional supervision. 

In the United Kingdom, to ensure that the absolute power over the appointment of judiciary lies neither with the Judges nor with the Crown, a Judicial Appointment Commission was constituted. In India too, some effort was made to revert to the original thoughts of the makers of the Constitution of Independent India with the Constitutional Amendment to create a National Judicial Appointment Commission to remove arbitrariness in the appointment of Judges, to bring transparency in the process and to reduce the despotic element in the current scheme of things which reflects in the statement of Justice Krishna Iyer who said about the collegium system- 

‘There is no structure to hear the public in the process of selection. No principle is laid down, no investigation is made, a sort of anarchy prevail.’ 

In 2013, Law Minister Kapil Sibal tried to undo the harm which lawyer Kapil Sibal had done in 1993 by bringing a bill for an amendment to the Constitution (120th Amendment Bill) seeking to appoint Judicial Appointment Committee. ‘Appointment of judges is the role of the executive and not the judiciary’ said the then Congress Law minister, Kapil Sibal. It was put to vote in the Rajya Sabha and was cleared with 131 votes in favour. Under the NDA, another attempt was made when 99th Amendment Act, 2014 to the Constitution was brought in and the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014 was formulated and passed by both the houses of elected Parliament. This was challenged by the same petitioner who brought the dilution to the Constitution with a petition in 1993, the Supreme Court Advocate-on-Record Association. The amendment and the bill were struck down as unconstitutional. The Judiciary which was deciding on it had already decided that the Constitution ought to be interpreted only in the way that they direct so whether or not the decision was constitutional can hardly be debated. So when dumping the bill which had the CJI as head of NJAC and placed him equal to the president when the bench hides behind the same Constituent Assembly, interpreting the voluntary consultation as mandatory, who are we, the common citizens to question it?

In their judgement, they mention that the mandatory requirement for consultation with the Chief Justice of India has been done with. We may read and re-read the exact words of the CA debates and think whether it was mandatory for the President or was it when he deemed it fit. This is something for the judiciary to also ponder about, you cannot keep shutting people. Elected or otherwise, it is from the people that any judiciary derives its power. The Governments might have their compulsions to keep up appearances, but the people are watching. You cannot shut down the democratic rights of people by running to the same government which you pull up when the latter tries to control anarchic protests in the name of Constitutional rights. Human societies are precariously built structures which stand on very fragile things called faith. Raoul Berger wrote in Government by Judiciary an interesting observation which should be read by the Judiciary and people. He wrote :

‘How long can the public respect for the Court, on which its power ultimately depends, survive if the people become aware that the tribunal which condemns the acts of others as constitutional is itself acting unconstitutionally? Respect for the limits of power are the essence of a democratic society; without it the entire democratic structure is undermined and the way is paved from Weimar to Hitler.’ 

All the twisting and turning of the Constitutional History of the country to justify the changes will come to a nought once public trust is lost. These slow degradations are evident in the changes in the position regarding the declaration of the property of the judges over the year from mandatory to recommendatory to impossible as well, but let that be a story for another day. Currently, we need to introspect why the petition for genocide of Kashmiri Hindus gets thrown away but the petition on perceived hate speeches in specific states is considered. When a petition by certain environmentalists wanting the Courts to declare him as the President of India is also heard, one wonders how a democracy descends from sublime into absurd. 

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