Just imagine if CM West Bengal has been provoked with a CBI raid on her DGP by UPA government who would have sprung to her defence first? CM Gujarat, Mr Modi. This happened in 2013, and in one famous speech thereafter, Mr Modi called the CBI -Congress Bureau of Investigation! So for all those political newbies out there outraging over the events in Kolkata for the past 24 hours, please relax for this is just a redux!
The detention of CBI team briefly is also comparatively less infringing than the sealing offices midnight, admittedly at the advise of the NSA by Delhi Police. If you thought that the NSA has become very much an extra constitutional authority, think again of the Dhawan days under Madame G! At least, Mr Doval has an official charter of duties that overlap to internal policing, a Minister of State ranking and more.
It just needs one to place events in context, to understand how and why Mr Jaitley the trouble shooting paragon of the BJP took exception to the investigative adventurism over only Ms Chanda Kochhar of the ICICI Bank, perhaps as a reassurance to other prima donnas of our Banking sector, particularly those in private sector, that Big Daddy is concerned, so soothe your frayed nerves!
If today Mr Mukul Roy and Mr Hemanta Biswas are not at the centre of the Sharadha Chit Fund scam investigations it is because they shifted to the right party. If the Reddy brothers found salvation just ahead of the Karnataka Assembly elections, it was again because Mr Yedurappa made them indispensable. Finally we have a front page advertisement on The Hindu amongst other national newspapers, where Goa’s miners collective, appealed to let iron ore mining resume in Goa as 3 lakh jobs were dependent on it, amongst other things! Greenpeace unable to face a hostile environment in India have wound up their operations!
These are not stray statements or events. Remember that Reddy brothers were once Congress, like Mr Mukul and Mr Hemanta, Trinamool or otherwise. It is not that India’s politics has strange bedfellows, India’s judicial discourse too saw present Chief Justice once fore fronting the attack on his own Supreme Court and the Government, now adopting sealed cover tactics, one that is simply odious in the prosecution of justice, for it means that a petitioner goes into trial blind about the contentions of the other side!
Sharadha Scam SC orders were clear- CBI had to go back to Kolkata High Court for further assistance in the matter, so why has the CBI now again approached the SC? The Kolkata HC had expressly forbidden any raids in the matter without due process, the West Bengal government had withdrawn the permissions for CBI to operate in that state without fetters, so the CBI descending on the Park Street residence of Mr Rajeev Kumar, IPS was as out of place as this worthy’s presence alongside Ms Mamata at the Metro station dharna later.https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/cbi-to-move-supreme-court-officials-detention-kolkata-police-1446068-2019-02-03
We have a hackneyed system of investigation, where our sole objective is to obtain custodial interrogation of the accused, so what people fear is arrest and police custody, and what our common people mistakenly accept as action is such arrests/detentions. Corporate members, politicians and ordinary people face different degrees of treatment in custody, custodial deaths are still not uncommon as is custodial disappearances. In vogue now is to invade the premises of a citizen and proceed to examine him or her for hours on end without any court order, since technically the individual is neither detained nor arrested!
So let us not get agitated about all this drama. If we really were to review this situation, we cannot avoid dismantling the architecture that ensures skullduggery at every level, obfuscation and perverse use of power. Unfortunately this is par for the course. What Mamata faces now she would face if she were inconvenient or identified as an opponent by any regime, the dropping of cases against Mr Amit Shah too is a process that depends on the continued power of Mr Modi and his benevolent view of Mr Shah. The Politics is all pervasive. It is all corrosive. Now even bosom pals and chums turncoat proudly wearing their political colours!
indiarubberman.com 