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| No follow-up of working group reports; both State, Centre disinterested | | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
Jammu, Sept 1: Going by absence of any follow-up action on the recommendations, the working groups set-up by Prime Minister's round-table conference appear to have vanished into thin air. Working group headed by Justice (Retd.) Syed Sagheer Ahmed was tasked with revisiting Jammu and Kashmir Constitution and come up with recommendations for addressing the Centre-State power distribution afresh. The half-truth about recommendations was trumpeted by present National Conference (NC) led coalition Government as its victory until actual contents of the legally flawed report became public. And discreet silence of both Centre and the State further compounds the confusion lending credence to theory that it was another experiment of New Delhi, which miserably failed but not before leaving traces of its four year long existence.
With Centre silently sitting over and State calling for RTI applications for getting access to this much leaked report, recommendations and ultimate fate of this group needs not to be detailed herein. But certain insiders who remained associated with this crucial working group confirmed that the group remained defunct for more than two years. Its Chairman actually never sought convening of the meeting of working group after its last inconclusive meeting on September 3, 2007.
Sagheer had promised and in fact, pledged another meeting of the group before the finalization of the report. But he went into total retirement in Lucknow, his home place. It is now learnt from reliable official sources that even during the meetings of the working group and thereafter, when he was supposedly preparing the report, Justice Sagheer relied totally upon the source material provided by administrative channels of Jammu and Kashmir Government.
Deliberations with officials of State Law Department confirm that no effort was made by Justice Sagheer to utilize services of well-known constitutional experts whose interpretation of State Constitution is acknowledged as an authority. Former Chief Justice of India Justice (Retd.) Adarsh Sen Anand is one of them. No doubt, his commentary has been extensively used in the report but he was never consulted for his advice.
Pointing towards certain specific incidents quoted in the report with regard to review of relationship between New Delhi and Srinagar, sources disclosed that since the chairman preferred to seek resource material for preparing the report from the State Law Department, it was fed with selective material. Besides, the Job of report writing had been entrusted to Secretary to the Commission Ajit Kumar, a fact which was confirmed by Kumar, a former tainted IAS officer while talking to Early Times at his residence in Rohini, New Delhi.
It is also million dollar question why Kumar was entrusted with job of Secretary to the Commission by former Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad when he was facing serious corruption charges and his case was pending with State Vigilance Organization (SVO). It further needs to be highlighted that former Principal Secretary to Law Department Akhtar Hussain Kochak who has now retired was throughout the hibernation period of Justice (Retd.) Sagheer heard saying that another meeting of group is on cards.
Supplemented by several other officials including a high profile Minister, Kochak on several occasion said that Justice (Retd.) Sagheer is averse to convening meeting of the working group since the situation in Pakistan is not conducive. They would emphasize that the chairman of the group has to prepare a report for addressing constitutional including those in relation to Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), for which peaceful atmosphere in Pakistan is must.
However, the chairman has rebutted all this talk in his report and said that he had no mandate to discuss issues related to other side of Line of Control. Hence, one feels no reservation that half of what was fed to media about the working group were blatant lies and no one including respective Chief Ministers exactly knew about the programmes and plans of Justice (Retd.) Syed Sagheer Ahmed vis-a-vis functioning of working group.
Inquiries further revealed that Sagheer had even lost contact with both the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Home Affairs. None bothered to seek an account of how the group was progressing and whether or not the retired justice wanted to continue heading the group, when he was not keeping good health. Resident Commission's office at New Delhi would repeatedly talk of Justice Sagheer's ailing health for group being unable to hold another round of meeting.
The neglect did irk the retired judge but he preferred silence over complain, asserted the sources. They further said that the chairman would always talk of consensus eluding the meetings of the group but never desisted from calling the meeting of the group. However, they maintain that after the last meeting on September 3, 2007; Justice (Retd.) Sagheer returned to Lucknow and remained unwell for some time.
They add that by March 2008, he had fully recovered yet he preferred keeping the meetings of the group inconclusive. Such was the hysteria surrounding the group that none would accept that Justice (Retd.) Sagheer was either finalizing the report or not interested in convening another round of meeting of members of the group. Sources aver that even Ajit Kumar was not in retired chairman's contact after June 2008.
However, they stressed that the report is retired Judge's work and Ajit Kumar has only drafted it. "Chairman has signed the report. There should be no confusion over this," said an official of Law Department. Whatever the reality, the fact remains that working group report on Centre-State relations is long dead, has already become thing of past and the only thing which is awaited is its burial ceremony.
It has enriched archives repository but failed to make kind of impact it was supposed to make. A.G. Noorani in his essay "A Cruel Hoax" has aptly commented on the report and said "It is a cruel hoax on the people of Kashmir. In its studied and cowardly evasion of the crucial issues, it would shame even a slippery politician. The quality of its discourse on the Constitution would disgrace an undergraduate in law. Sagheer Ahmad's report provides no assistance to the political parties who cooperated with him and least of all to those who entrusted so responsible a task to him."
Fifth working group was set-up for the implementation of decisions concerning the establishment of five working groups announced by the Prime Minister at the Round Table conference held at Srinagar on May 24 and 25, 2006. The issues under the purview of the Working Group V were as follows: Strengthening relations between the State and the Centre and to deliberate on 1) matters relating to the special status of Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian Union; 2) methods of strengthening democracy, secularism and the rule of law in the State; 3) effective devolution of powers among different regions to meet regional, sub-regional and ethnic aspirations.
Working group held five meetings on December 12, 2006 at New Delhi, February 3, 2007 at Jammu, March 29, 2007 at New Delhi, September 2, 2007 at New Delhi and September 3, 2007 at New Delhi. The report was sought to address the issues raised by various members during the deliberations of the working group. |
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