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A Pettifogging 15 Km, That's All

The only question left is whether Manohar Joshi will now begin haranguing us about a judge and his recent judgement. After all, that was Joshi's reaction the last time the judge in question pronounced a verdict. Strictly, that verdict was not a judgement, only the report of an Inquiry. As we all know, according to our Commissions of Inquiry Act such a report is not a judgement in the legal sense. Still, it carried the moral force of a judgement. That's why Joshi felt so keenly compelled to respond, and respond in the way he did.

That response, as you remember well, was a vicious attack last August on the floor of the Maharashtra Assembly. Justice BN Srikrishna, Joshi told us, was "anti-Hindu" and "biased." Srikrishna's report about the riots in Bombay in 1992-93 was just as biased.

Why these allegations? Because in his report, Srikrishna severely criticised the doings during the riots of Bal Thackeray, Joshi's puppet-master, and the Shiv Sena, their party. He held Thackeray directly responsible for much of the murderous carnage we lived through then. "The Shiv Sena pramukh Bal Thackeray," wrote Srikrishna, "like a veteran general, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims." Elsewhere, he wrote: "The attacks on Muslims by the Shiv Sainiks were mounted with military precision, with list of establishments and voter's lists in hand."

Srikrishna had come to these damning conclusions after over four years of public hearings. In that time, diligent Shiv Sena lawyers had brought before him their own evidence and witnesses; they had cross-examined every other witness who appeared before the inquiry. Joshi could hardly make the case that Srikrishna had not allowed his party a fair say. He had. It was their own say, their own crimes, that had indicted them.

Naturally, Joshi had no option but to trash the report and its author. That he did with the crude demagoguery that his leader has trademarked. The great protectors of Hindus have been sullied! Rally around to smear the man responsible! Shout loud that he has denigrated us and our faith!

But pay no attention to what Srikrishna really says; the serious indictments he makes of murderers, their cheerleaders and a deliberately impotent administration; the punitive action he recommends for a society wounded and divided. That cannot be allowed, because actually taking action based on Srikrishna's report would mean exposing the claim of Hindu protection for the senseless grandstanding it really is.

And that is just why this latest judgement is so telltale.

The case involved Joshi's son-in-law, one Girish Vyas. A Pune builder, Vyas got unduly quick and unduly favourable treatment from the state government Joshi once headed. ("Unduly," that is, if you don't just happen to have a Chief Minister as a pa-in-law). Luckily, two Pune citizens challenged that treatment in the Bombay High Court. Their petitions were heard by Justices SS Parkar and BN Srikrishna. The same Justice Srikrishna.

Here's a quick run-down of what was at issue. Son-in-law had his building eyes on plot 110 on Prabhat Road in Erandwane, one of Pune's most desirable localities. Only, the city's development plan had reserved this particular plot for a municipal primary school. Now the state's so-called development control rules do allow for plots reserved for public purposes, as this one was, to be de-reserved. But to do so, an equivalent plot for the same purpose must be set aside, and set aside no more than 200 metres away. The idea, obviously, is that you want public amenities like hospitals and schools to be located throughout the city. If a reservation for one such is to be de-reserved, you want to ensure that the amenity stays in the general area, that it will still serve the people of that part of the city.

Ostensibly since the rules allow for it, plot 110 was de-reserved so Vyas could build on it. Ostensibly as the rules specify, another plot was reserved for the school. Only, this plot was fifteen kilometres away, in the town of Mundhwa.

15 km instead of 200 metres: this was really the crux of the case, this absurdly simple, yet utterly gross violation of the DC rules. Violation accomplished, Vyas wasted no time in erecting a multi-storeyed building on plot 110.

When the whole business was challenged in court, alleging that pa-in-law had illegally favoured son-in-law, Joshi pointed to a note he had made on the file concerning the plot. "Action should be taken in accordance with law," Joshi had written, whatever he might have meant by that. Also, he wrote that he had "no objection" to the 15 km shift in the reservation. According to Joshi, this note proved he had nothing to do with the de-reservation.

"We do not think [Joshi] can seek absolution by saying this," was the judges' response to this particular chicanery. In their judgement, they went on to observe that Joshi had "pressurised officials" in the Urban Development Department, including the minister, to hand the plot over to Vyas. While the Minister did order this patently illegal transfer, "he must have done it to oblige [Joshi]." Of Joshi's submission to the court, the two justices said: "We do not expect a chief minister to file an affidavit like a pettifogging official to mislead the court." Overruling various other interesting arguments, they ordered Vyas's illegally erected building to be demolished.

As an intriguing aside, demolishing illegal buildings in Pune has been a newsworthy affair of late. That's via the efforts of Arun Bhatia, appointed municipal commissioner of Pune only days ago. Bhatia began work with a drive to pull down illegal construction in the city. Not the shanties of street-dwellers, the usual target of Municipalities, but illegal construction by rich and powerful Pune-kars. That zeal lost Bhatia his job in double-quick time: his seven days in office as municipal commissioner must be some kind of record. Now that he has been evicted, the question arises: who will carry out the court-ordered de-construction on the plot de-reserved for a son-in-law's unlawfully constructed benefit?

But that, of course, is another story for another time. Getting back to this one, you will have noticed that Joshi has not launched himself into an attack on Justice Srikrishna. This time, there have been no rants about the biases of the judge, his desire to abuse Hindus. Nor have we heard those rants from Joshi's remote-controller or his successor as chief minister of Maharashtra.

Whether this silence is because of Joshi's recent fall in his party ranks, I don't know. I suspect it has more to do with the sheer absurdity of the idea. Even the Shiv Sena's most ardent followers will find it hard to argue that coming down on Joshi's unabashed contempt for the DC rules is a case of being "anti-Hindu." This, even though they seemed sure that coming down on the Sena's unabashed contempt for the law during the 1992-93 riots qualified as being "anti-Hindu."

Yes, this case of the favoured son-in-law does really tell some tales. It shows you that the exalted champions of Hinduism are really just grubby grabbers, no different from many thousands who at least go without such pretensions. The cloak of standing up to protect Hinduism is just that: a cloak, a smokescreen, for all kinds of murky malfeasance. Worse, it is malfeasance that must be paid for by ordinary Indians, Hindus and others, you and me.

In Pune, this is what protecting Hinduism really translates to: robbing Indians in Erandwane of a whole primary school so a son-in-law can profit. Some protection. Some profit.

Dilip D'Souza