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| Difficult time for Congress, coalition in crisis | | Resolution on Guru | |
STARK REALITY -- I
RUSTAM
JAMMU, Sep 19: Ruling party in the state, like any other ruling party anywhere in the country, has the power to accept any private member’s bill. No one can question its authority and prerogative. It is true that ruling party or ruling coalition is considered non-partisan the moment it assumes power or the office. This is what people’s democracy really means. However, it would be difficult to say if the ruling party or the ruling coalition doesn’t watch, protect and promote further its political interests. It can also be said that the ruling party or the ruling coalition takes decisions which do not in any manner harm it or harm the coalition partners. After all, the government under the Indian political system functions for five years or six years, whatever may be the case. The ruling party and the coalition partners have, like all other political players in the electoral arena, to contest election if they wish to remain part of the legislature or again rule. There had been occasions in the state and at the centre and other states of the Union when the opposition parties did accuse the ruling party or the ruling coalition of being biased towards the opposition. Only recently, the main opposition BJP levelled a similar charge against the Congress-led UPA Government.
As mentioned, it is the prerogative of the ruling party/ruling coalition to accept or reject any private member’s bill. The ruling party/ruling coalition exercised its prerogative and accepted as many as 35 private members’ resolutions, including the resolution seeking mercy for Afzal Guru, who was convicted years ago in the Parliament terrorist attack case. Engineer Rashid, an independent MLA from Kashmir’s Langate assembly constituency, had submitted this bill. It was obvious that his intentions were not noble.
One cannot challenge the decision of the ruling party/ruling coalition, although its decision to accept the highly controversial resolution has raised several issues, including the issue that the ruling NC perhaps wanted the said resolution to be accepted so that it could identify itself with those in Kashmir, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who have been asking New Delhi to allow Guru to walk free. It bears recalling that the hardcore Pakistan Geelani and others of his ilk had sometime back threatened New Delhi that the hanging of Guru would create a volcanic situation in Kashmir Valley, which the authorities would not be able to control. The belief that the NC could be supportive of the highly outrageous resolution was further strengthened when the Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ali Mohammad Sagar told a section of media that the NC would take a position that is in consonance with the people’s stand on Guru. Earlier, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had cautioned New Delhi and urged it to take the larger issue into account before taking a final decision. The NC, it appears, seems determined to take recourse to the politics of competitive communalism and soft secessionism.
The decision of the ruling party/ruling coalition has created another serious controversy which has the potential of snowballing into a conflict between the nationalists who want New Delhi to implement the February 1994 unanimous parliamentary resolution that mandated the Union Government to take back from Pakistan all the illegally-occupied territories, including the so-called Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, which are legitimately Indian, and those against the implementation of the historic resolution -- historical because it was for the first time in February 1994 that the Union Government took a clear stand on Pakistan-occupied-Jammu and Kashmir.
The issue in point is the rejection by the ruling party/ruling coalition of the private member’s bill seeking integration of the occupied areas into India. The bill was moved by Ashok Khajuria of the BJP who represents in the assembly the Jammu East Constituency. Everybody is likely to construe the government’s move as controversial, and even biased. In fact, it has already happened. It has become talk of the town since yesterday with everyone attaching motives and questioning the intentions of the NC/the ruling coalition. What has added a serious dimension to the controversy is the rejection of the Khajuria’s bill at the very initial stage. (To be continued) |
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