First let me tell you a story. I don’t know if this is true or false, but its message is quite relevant. It is said that once US President Lyndon Johnson was walking outside the White House. There was a thick fog. Suddenly a passerby collided with him. He asked: “Who are you?” The president replied: “Actually I’m trying to figure out who I am.” The passerby thought that he had collided with some madman. He pointed to the White House and asked sarcastically: “Do you know who lives there?” The answer was: “No one lives there permanently. People just come and go.” How true is this. Those holding statutory positions come and go, but their work and the dignity of the institutions remain.
What happened during the visit of the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy to Punjab is a clear violation of established norms and traditions. We must not forget that we have already lost a Prime Minister and a former Prime Minister due to security breach. All this happened in the border area of Punjab and there was a need for better security arrangements, but what happened was just the opposite. It is also time to revise the “Blue Book” maintained by the Intelligence Bureau.
This is a sensitive matter. Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur has rightly said about the exemplary action. Although the Punjab government has been trying to blame others from the very beginning. There is a system of multi-party democracy in our country. It has long been the case that a particular party or coalition has government at the Centre, while at the same time some states have been governed by parties with radically opposite views. This difference only deepens due to divergent ideologies, conflicts between state and central interests and the personal egos of some leaders. This does not bode well for the federal structure of the country.
Shortly before and during the West Bengal elections last year, we witnessed some bizarre scenes. One can recall how the Bengal Police kept Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials captive. Not only this, the car of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president JP Nadda was also attacked. There many BJP leaders are protected by central paramilitary forces, although this is the job of the state governments. Since the state police works on the instructions of the Chief Minister, such allegations are made from time to time by leaders of almost all political parties in all the states including West Bengal.
It is not that the central forces and agencies are completely clean. CBI, Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax Department were already facing charges. However, here I am talking about the Goods and Services Tax Department. This agency had raided the hideout of perfume trader Piyush Jain in Kanpur. Recovery of 177.45 crore should have been appreciated but the opposite happened. This triggered a political tussle between the BJP and the Samajwadi Party (SP). A few days later, something similar happened with the Income Tax raids at SP MLC Pumpi Jain. It is an old allegation of the opposition that during the elections, the central government uses these agencies against its allies. This isn’t happening for the first time. Modi has been a victim of this as the Chief Minister of Gujarat.
Election after election this trend is getting stronger. This incident of Punjab will prove to be the turning point in this. There is no doubt that there has been a clear violation of the procedure followed during the visit of the Prime Minister. It would have been better if the Punjab government had acted with an open mind, but the election time has its own compulsions. Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi constituted an inquiry commission and then put the whole matter in political mode. BJP leaders are also doing the same.
The Union Home Ministry has also constituted a high-level inquiry committee, but the Supreme Court has issued an order on Friday, seeking reports from all concerned officials and agencies. Till then all investigations will be put on hold. Proceedings will start again on Monday, but politics will continue on this issue.
Here I would like to quote a security expert from America. After the attack on then US President Ronald Regan in 1992, he said that our security managers should always recognize that your ‘subject’ is like the fragile glass in your palm. All the forces in the world, including your loved ones, would like to break it. You have to protect it, knowing that it can break at any time. Needless to say, since then no US President has been attacked like this. We have to make our system in the same way. This is also the lesson of Hussainiwala.
Shashi Shekhar is the editor-in-chief, India. views expressed are personal,
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