Commentary/Ashok Mitra
Bihar farmers need SPG cover more than certain New Delhi VIPs
It is an increasingly sorry situation we find ourselves in now. The distinction between politicians
indulging in gross criminal activities and professional criminals
who have donned politicians's clothing is getting obliterated with
each passing year. Public interest litigation, and the judiciary's positive responses to these, have partly redeemed the
situation. The tribe of sleaze-sodden
politicians have been inconvenienced no end by the active interest
the judges are taking now.
Not surprisingly, we have seen much waxing of righteous indignation from career politicians and their friends.
It looks as if a new code of reciprocity is being laid. If odd members
of the judiciary are discovered to be corrupt, politicians too
have every right to go astray, haven't they? A few politicians even maintain that the way things are developing, a grisly confrontation
between the government's legislative and the judicial wings is well on the cards. And this, they claim, will certainly cause irretrievable
damage to Indian democracy -- all because of a handful of wayward judges!
Public litigation cases continue to be filed against politicians
for legions of evil doings; reluctant official agencies are often
sternly instructed by judges to speed up investigations and, where prima facie evidence is convincing, to file
charges. The politicians involved engage slick lawyers and seek
bail. They may have been accused of defalcating hundreds of crore
of public funds, or of receiving huge bribes, or of any number
of other heinous criminal offences. But they are soon out
on bail, and persist in behaving as if the world owes them
a realm.
Much worse, they continue to be showered with special privileges -- such as blanket security cover -- at taxpayers's expense, from the
Special Protection Group. Especially in the capital,
the concept of threat perception and the grant or non-grant of
SPG cover have in course of time emerged as an aspect of social
status and stratification.
The SPG list has accordingly emerged as the authorised social
register, the equivalent of Debrett's in Britain. In case you
have secured entry into the list, you strain hard to ensure that
your name is not dropped out at the next revision.
Alternately, you try to get promoted from a lower-category,
entitling you to enjoy increasingly more ostentatious and elaborate
forms of protection.
Meanwhile, other things may happen.
For instance, because of the idiosyncrasy of an overactive judge,
you may be chargesheeted for a criminal offence. A bizarre circumstance
then ensue. You are facing prosecution; but since the
authorities have earlier conceded that a threat exists
against your life, your SPG cover continues.
The absurdity may
not stop here. To make your security 100 per cent fool
proof, the SPG may insist that you need to move into a huge official
bungalow in the national capital with lush, leafy surroundings,
a well-laid expanse of a lawn and a long drive-way.
Such a bungalow
will be arranged for you again at taxpayers's expense. Should you
ever feel the urge to enjoy a drive in the balmy spring or autumn
weather through the regal avenues of New Delhi, a fleet of cars
would form an impressive retinue, and all civil traffic would
come to a halt along the route. You may, a la
Kalpnath Rai, be any day judged guilty under this or that provision
of the criminal procedure code and sentenced to 20 or 30 years
of hard labour. So what? For the present, threat perception is
threat perception, and your SPG cover is secure.
Now, assume that an Z-category security recipient has been sentenced to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment and appeals
to the highest judiciary fail to reverse the sentence. What happens
to the SPG cover?
Let us refer to an even more absurd situation. According
to the existing legislation, if you happen to belong to a former prime minister's family, you are entitled to a number of special
security prerogatives. The particular
statute, however, does not say whether, in case someone from such a
household is packed off to prison, the SPG cover would continue inside
or not. One cannot blame those who drafted the stature; they could
not insert sections and sub-sections in it to take care of all
hypothetical developments.
But what about non-hypothetical situations? Take, for instance, several hundred thousand landless agricultural
workers in Bihar's Jehanabad district. Every day, they are
under threat of attack by private armies financed and organised
by the upper caste landlords. Scores of incidents have
taken place in recent months when these private hordes such as
the Ranvir Sena, aided by the local police, massacred helpless bataidars and farm
workers. By all accounts, the threat to life
and limb of each sharecropper and each landless farm worker in Bihar is inordinately high.
Such
being the reality, these hundreds of thousands of rural poor are
entitled to SPG cover the same way occupants
of certain privileged addresses in New Delhi are. The cost involved
in offering adequate protection to the workers ought not to be a consideration
at all. Actually, Article 14 of the Constitution bars any
such extraneous consideration: All citizens, this Article says,
are equal before the law. If VIPs in New Delhi qualify for SPG protection, there is absolutely no ground for denying it
to the landless multitude in Jehanabad.
These rustic people, perhaps the excuse will be lamely trotted
out, have not formally prayed for SPG cover. But several of the
dubious eminence currently being taken care of by the SPG did not formally apply either. In their case, the threat,
the authorities will maintain, was adjudged to be so great that
no special requests from the prospective victims were felt necessary.
Is the threat to the Jehanabad lower peasantry any less?
Played into an awkward corner, the authorities will no doubt draw
attention to Parliamentary provisions
pertaining to the rights and prerogatives
of a former prime
minister's family members.
The debate will still not be resolved. Parliament
can modify the provisions in the Constitution
if circumstances so warrant. It cannot, however, change the basic
character of the Constitution. To provide security of a certain
specification to a select number of citizens, which is denied
to commoners, despite an identical perception
of threat to their lives, does not jell with Article 14. Besides, it leaves a bad taste in the
mouth.
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