by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : BJP MP Manoj Tiwari on Tuesday said that he would bring a Private Member Bill in Parliament for the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
Tiwari made the statement after a delegation of over 25 Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leaders led by Bachan Singh met him at his residence here and gave him a memorandum for the temple construction.
“I just received a memorandum from the VHP delegation. And I want to assure them that I will raise the issue in Parliament and in my party,” Tiwari told the media here.
Asked if he would bring a Private Member Bill , he replied, “If required I will be the first person to bring a Private Member Bill in Parliament for the construction of the Ram temple.”
The MP said that he was shocked to learn that the matter of Ram temple has been pending for over 490 years, since 1528.
“The matter of Ram temple has been pending in court since 1950. And as the court is extending the matter and delaying the construction, we have submitted our memorandum to Tiwariji to raise the issue in Parliament,” Singh said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
New Delhi : The Monsoon session of Parliament saw 20 bills being passed by the two Houses, out of which 22 were introduced in the Lok Sabha and one in the Rajya Sabha, according to an official release.
The 20 bills passed by the two Houses includes four bills related to Goods and Services Tax (GST) and two appropriation bills, the release from the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs said.
The six money bills have been passed by the Lok Sabha and have been sent to the Rajya Sabha.
With both Houses adjourned sine die on Friday, the bills will not return to the Lok Sabha within the stipulated period of 14 days and will be deemed to have been passed by the upper House.
The release said that “passage of 20 bills is an achievement considering that it was a short session”.
Six Bills replacing the ordinances — the Fugitive Economic Offenders Ordinance, 2018; the Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018; the Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018; the Homoeopathy Central Council (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018; the National Sports University Ordinance, 2018; and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018 — were passed by both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
Four old pending bills were withdrawn (three in the Lok Sabha and one in the Rajya Sabha).
These bills are the National Sports University Bill, 2017; the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development (Amendment)Bill, 2015; the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance Bill, 2017; and the Armed Forces Tribunal (Amendment) Bill, 2012.
The Lok Sabha passed 21 Bills in its 17 sittings that lasted 112 hours.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said a bill to amend the SC/ST Atrocities Prevention Act, approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday, will be introduced in Parliament in the ongoing session for consideration and passage.
The Leader of Congress in the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, asked why the ordinance route was not adopted in this “important” case when the government brought six ordinances in several other bills.
“I am surprised… I don’t know why the members are raising this issue now. I think they are aware and they have the knowledge that the Union Cabinet under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Amendment Bill,” Rajnath Singh said in the Lok Sabha during Zero Hour.
He said the country knew that the Supreme Court had diluted the SC/ST Act through its ruling that a preliminary enquiry was required to arrest any person even under the SC/ST Act meant for preventing atrocities against those covered under the Act.
“The Prime Minister had said if there is any dilution in the Act, we will bring a bill. And there is no if and but in it, he (Modi) had promised. He also said the government will not allow dilution of SC/ST Act,” Singh said.
“We will introduce the Bill in this session of Parliament to make it a law.”
Kharge, who raised the issue during Zero Hour in Lok Sabha, said: “Four months have passed but no action has been taken by the government to nullify the Supreme Court order, which was a dilution of the SC/ST Act. They brought six ordinances, but why no ordinance in such an important matter.”
Kharge pointed out ordinances were brought in Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) bill, National Sports University bill, Homeopathy Central Council (Amendment) bill, Fugitive Economic Offenders bill, Criminal Law (Amendment) bill and Commercial Courts, Commercial Division, Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts (Amendment) bill.
“Atrocities against SC/ST are increasing in the country. Bring a bill tomorrow, and we will pass,” said Kharge.
“The government has not done anything to nullify the Supreme Court order. You bring ordinances for every small issue, why didn’t you bring an ordinance for this issue,” he said.
The Home Minister’s remarks come a day after the Union Cabinet decided to restore a provision of the SC/ST Act allowing the arrest of accused persons without a preliminary enquiry or prior approval that was struck down by the Supreme Court.
The preamble of the amendment says that the decision to arrest or not to arrest cannot be taken away from the investigating officer, a power given under the Criminal Procedure Code in which there is no provision for a preliminary enquiry.
Under the new provision, no preliminary enquiry will be required for registering FIRs against the accused and arrest of persons accused under the SC/ST Act and this will not require any approval.
The provision of anticipatory bail shall not be available to the accused notwithstanding any court judgment.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Representational Image
By Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd),
Only a diehard optimist would expect that India’s elected representatives would find the time to reflect on national security. But, with Parliament in session, should the improbable come to pass, here are some suggestions.
Each threat and challenge to India’s national security in the past 70 years has arisen not just due to the continued indifference of its political leadership but also its inability to learn from past mistakes. While the downward spiral of the defence budget (in real terms) and galloping asymmetry vis-à-vis China are causes for alarm, far more worrisome is the absence of a vision that could trigger remedial processes. Slogans are great for national morale, but someone must convert them into actionable strategies; so patently lacking in context of India’s military-industrial complex, defence modernisation or national security reform.
A possible reason for this “holiday” from long-term planning or strategising by ministers seems to be a shift of the onus of politics from party apparatchiks to their shoulders. The demands of Parliament, constituency, party politics and election campaigning leave very little time for their portfolios. In case of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), since the military has been deliberately excluded, crucial defence matters are, by default, left to personnel of the administrative, accounts and other civilian cadres who run the show. This uniquely Indian concatenation is definitely not the best way of managing national defence.
Material and organisational shortcomings in our national security, periodically highlighted by the CAG or Parliamentary Committees, attract fleeting public and media attention, which dissipates after rhetorical government responses. However, an area with grave but hidden implications for national security is: Civil-military relations (CMR) whose crucial significance seems to have eluded India’s post-independence rulers.
A key feature of current CMR in India is the huge perceptional gap that exists between the two sides. While the political and bureaucratic establishments see nothing amiss and have remained staunch upholders of the “status quo”; the military and veterans seethe with dissatisfaction at an increasingly asymmetric and deliberately contrived civil-military equation.
The most worrisome impact of this dissonance is the MoD’s functioning. By stubbornly resisting integration of Army, Navy and Air HQs with MoD, the bureaucracy has denied itself readily-available professional advice and the ministry, some badly-needed decision-making ability. Proof of the system’s ineptitude is to be found in the languid manner it discharges its primary function of equipping the forces. Procurement of simple but urgently needed items, like rifles, helmets and bullet-proof jackets for soldiers takes 8 to 10 years; while major weapon-systems can take anything from 15 to 30 years.
Hardware acquisition programmes from abroad, as well as indigenous projects like the Tejas fighter, Arjun tank and Kaveri turbo-jet have remained in limbo for decades, for want of decision-making. The government may downplay this dysfunctionality, but voids in our military capability are obvious and have visibly eroded our credibility as a significant power.
While some aspects of CMR impinge directly on India’s national security, there are many consequences of this discord that have implications elsewhere. Among these are the military’s push-back after every Pay Commission award and the acrimonious negotiations that follow; the protracted veterans’ public agitation for “one-rank-one-pension” and frequent tussles about rank-equations with civilian cadres. Controversies related to opening of cantonments to the public and politicisation of “surgical strikes” have further muddied the waters. In the furore surrounding these debates, few have reflected on the roots of the persistent malady that afflicts CMR.
The division of the armed forces, in 1947, was accompanied by a hurried reorganisation of the imperial defence structure to suit the new republic’s needs. During this turmoil, the military leadership remained ignorant of a significant development that originated from the civil side. The armed forces HQs, instead of being merged with the MoD, or being designated “department(s)” of MoD, were reduced to “attached offices” and made subaltern to the Department of Defence (DoD). This automatically placed a layer of bureaucracy between the military and the politician and replaced “civilian (political) control” by de facto “bureaucratic control”.
This “act of commission”, a fatal flaw in our national security matrix, was followed by an equally damaging “act of omission” — the failure of the new Indian State to accord recognition to the functions and status of its armed forces. The IAS and IPS (to be joined, later, by the Indian Forest Service) were created as All India Services by Article 312 of the new Constitution. Another category known as the Central Civil Services, consisting of 89 Groups A and B services, that provide the huge government bureaucracy, was inherited from the Empire. However, the functions, responsibilities and status of the armed forces, their chiefs and senior functionaries, found no mention in the Constitution, any Act of Parliament or even the Government of India (GoI) Rules of Business, created in 1961.
This absence of recognition and lack of defined status has worked to the detriment of India’s military. Successive Pay Commissions, using whimsical equivalences, have depressed the armed forces, in terms of emoluments (and consequently status), relative to the All India Services as well as the Central Civil Services. Since eight of the latter were created to render support to the military, this has led to severe hierarchal problems. The chiefs receive perfunctory attention from politicians and bureaucrats because they have no locus standi in the edifice of the GoI. It is the Secretary DoD who, by Rules of Business, represents the three Services. This iniquity has stimulated a steady deterioration in CMR over the past decades.
It is incongruous that the standing of the armed forces of the Union should remain indeterminate and open to repeated misinterpretation, vis-a-vis civilian and police organisations. It is, similarly, inappropriate that the Service Chiefs, responsible for safeguarding national sovereignty on land, at sea and in the air, should be denied recognition by the State, and remain “invisible” in the MoD.
A part of the remedy for this acute anomaly lies in amending the Rules of Business. But the real answer lies in legislation that clearly defines the status of the armed forces, as well as role and functions of the military hierarchy. Since this issue impinges not only on our military’s morale, but also on CMR and, ultimately, on India’s national security, it should merit discussion in the ongoing session of Parliament – other pressing business notwithstanding.
(The author is a former Indian Navy Chief and Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee. The views expressed are personal. The article is in special arrangement with South Asia Monitor)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Tuesday condemned mob lynching incidents across the country and urged Parliament to enact a law to deal with the crime that threatens rule of law and the country’s social fabric.
“It is the duty of the State to maintain law and order, social and pluralistic fabric of the society and the rule of law,” bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkqar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said.
Pronouncing the judgment, Chief Justice Misra said that no one can take the law into their own hands or become a law unto himself.
Issuing a slew of directions including preventive, remedial and punitive steps to deal with the crime, the court said that mobocracy will not be allowed.
Asking the Centre to file a compliance report on its directions, the court adjourned the matter to August 20.
Th judgment came on a petition seeking the apex court’s intervention to curb the incidents of violence by the vigilante groups across the country.
—IANS
