Elastic standards

It is a selective inquisition of the law and order situation in States that the Vajpayee Government is indulging in. Consider Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, for example.

PRAVEEN SWAMI
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN

DECIPHERING the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government's criteria to determine just what a breakdown of law and order constitutes might defeat the most skilled cryptographer. The aggressive demands of the BJP's allies in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Bihar for the dismissal of the governments in these States have been built on claims that they have proved incompetent in containing growing criminal and terrorist activity. The BJP's obfuscatory response to these demands itself makes clear the limited credibility of its allies' claims. But the Union Government's despatch of Central teams to investigate these claims is enough proof of the BJP's belief that should evidence of a deterioration in law and order be found, that would in principle legitimise the use of Article 356. But study of the law and order situation in States ruled by the BJP and its allies illustrates the absurd yardsticks on which the Union Government's inquisition is based.

The case of Jammu and Kashmir under the National Conference makes clear that the BJP's understanding of a law and order problem is founded not on fact, but on political expediency. The party participated in the parliamentary elections of 1996, which paved the way for the coming to power of the National Conference later that year, with great reluctance. BJP leaders had at the time argued that circumstances were not conducive to elections and that Central rule offered the best prospects for containing terrorism. This position did not change after Farooq Abdullah took power. The massacres of Kashmiri Pandits at Sangrampora in early 1997, and the butchery at Wandhama last year, were both deployed by the Jammu and Kashmir unit of the BJP to call for the dismissal of the National Conference Government. Senior party leaders, including Chaman Lal Gupta, who now represents Udhampur in the Lok Sabha, and president of the State unit of the BJP D.K. Kotwal, repeatedly claimed that the law and order situation in the State had deteriorated significantly since 1996.

With the United Front ruling in New Delhi, such charges served a clear political purpose: it enabled the BJP to occupy the principal oppositional space in the Jammu region and benefit from the communal polarisation brought about by terrorist attacks. The rise of terrorist activity in the Jammu belt became a central agitational issue for the State unit of the BJP. Massacres in the Rajouri, Poonch and Udhampur areas were used as evidence of the National Conference's inability to protect the lives of citizens. One campaign last year, in which L.K. Advani, now Union Home Minister, was a star participant, demanded that Doda be declared a Disturbed Area and "handed over to the Army". At the local level, BJP leaders claimed that the National Conference was a covert participant in assaults on Hindus in the Jammu region and demanded with monotonous regularity the dismissal of its government.

S. SUBRAMANIUM
Farooq Abdullah. The rise of terrorist activity in Jammu and Kashmir has been steady in the recent past.

It is significant that such charges were made despite evidence that State-wide killings in 1997 had in fact declined compared to the previous year. But after the coming to power of the BJP, the National Conference's command of two precious Lok Sabha seats led the BJP to execute a neat volte-face. Abdullah and Advani jointly visited Prankote in the wake of the April 17 massacre there, leaving BJP activists in Jammu more than a little confused. During Advani's rally at Prem Nagar, held shortly after he visited the site of the Chapnari massacre, both Gupta and Kotwal demanded that he meet his previous commitment to declare Doda a Disturbed Area. An embarrassed Union Home Minister, who had earlier told villagers at Chapnari that the use of the Disturbed Areas Act would not in itself bring about a "miracle", could only promise his audience that their "sentiments would be respected".

That the Jammu unit of the Congress(I) called for the Abdullah Ministry's dismissal in the wake of the Chapnari killings makes clear just how little such calls have to do with any kind of serious assessment of the law and order situation. At the Prem Nagar rally, when Kotwal held Abdullah responsible for the communal massacres in Doda and reminded the Union Home Minister of his role in the agitation to have Doda declared a Disturbed Area and his support for calls to dismiss the National Conference Government, Advani remained silent. "A king who cannot protect his citizens does not deserve to rule," Advani said, leaving the question of which 'king' he was referring to suitably vague. At a subsequent press conference in Srinagar, Advani studiously refused to answer questions calling on him to explain why Central teams were not despatched to Srinagar to study the supposedly deteriorating law and order situation there, when senior bureaucrats were sent to a few other States for the sole reason that his party's allies needed to be appeased.

THE BJP's amorality on Article 356 does not improve with altitude and climate. If the party's stand on developments in the Kashmir heights has been wholly hypocritical, it has shown a positively alarming lack of concern for lawlessness on the Rajasthan sands. The problem here is not terrorism, but a war unleashed by criminals against women, the minorities and Dalits. In 1996, according to figures given by the State Home Department, the total number of atrocities committed against women stood at 10,566. Between 1990 and 1996, cases of eve-teasing and molestation went up by a staggering 83 per cent while the number of cases of rape shot up by 56 per cent. More recent statistics relating to incidents of rape show that while the figure stood at 1,036 in 1995, it went up to 1,162 the next year and further to 1,255 in 1997. The numbers of women victims of sexual crimes, interestingly, are not dissimilar to the numbers of lives claimed by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir each year.

What is most noticeable about crime in Rajasthan is the alleged direct and indirect involvement of BJP MLAs in cases relating to sexual exploitation or rape. The most recent example of this pattern was the alleged gang-rape of a woman pilgrim in Karauli district by an MLA along with a BJP-affiliated sarpanch, a block member and a fourth person. In another significant case, an acid attack on a young girl, the victim, Shivani Jadeja, is reported to have named the son of a Minister.

SANKAR CHAKRAVARTHY
Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. Crimes against women have gone up sharply in Rajasthan.

Kavita Srivastava, an activist of the Mahila Atyachar Virodhi Jan Andolan, told Frontline that the Bhairon Singh Shekhawat Government and its agencies were working against the victims as well as those representing their cause. Srivastava said that one-fourth of all rape cases filed in 1997 were proclaimed to have been false by the State police. About 20 per cent of dowry-related deaths in 1996 were also declared false. "We look to the state for justice," she said, "but find the Government abdicating its responsibility."

Events in the seven days between May 20 and May 27 this year are typical of what Rajasthan now routinely experiences. A 16-year-old student, Neelu Rana, was murdered in Kota, allegedly after being raped. It took protests against poor investigation, by local residents as well as Opposition parties, to force the transfer of the Rana rape-murder case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Rana's murder was followed by the gang-rape at Karauli. One day later, allegations that the victim in the infamous case of rape and sexual exploitation at J.C. Bose hostel was subjected to gang-rape again surfaced. (Later she retracted her statement and denied that rape had been committed.) That same week, a young girl in Alwar was murdered after her family protested against the eve-teasing she was subjected to. The public outrage generated by these incidents has done little to make the State Government act to protect women. Two Dalit women in Marauli village of Chittorgarh district were hung by their feet to extract a confession from them on a theft charge.

The Shekhawat Government has also been hauled up for excessive use of force by trigger-happy policepersons, especially when dealing with minority groups. In December 1997, the police fired upon people protesting against encroachments on a graveyard in Jaipur (Frontline, January 23, 1998); six persons died and several were injured. Three months later, the police in Ajmer opened fire on a crowd, ostensibly to quell some local skirmishes. Persons belonging to the minority community were seriously injured in the firing. The latest and most gruesome incident was reported in April in a village in Chittorgarh district, where one cleric was burnt alive in the presence of the police (Frontline, May 8). Opposition groups have cited these incidents, and those of crimes against women, to demand the dismissal of the Shekhawat Government. Predictably, the BJP has not responded.

SUBIR ROY
Kalyan Singh. According to independent estimates, there has been a sharp increase in the number of crimes in U.P.

UTTAR PRADESH provides similarly graphic examples of the BJP's elastic standards on Article 356. Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, whose commitment to upholding the law and the Constitution was made hilariously clear by his role in the demolition of the Babri Masjid, has been struggling to ward off credible charges that Uttar Pradesh under his rule has become something of a playground for criminals. On July 21, Kalyan Singh told the State Assembly that the law and order situation in the State was, in fact, improving. According to him, there has been a decline of 10 per cent in the number of murders, 5 per cent in the number of cases of rape and 15 per cent in the number of dacoities over the last two months as compared to the corresponding period last year. Kalyan Singh added that only 5 per cent of the offenders have not been "brought to book". These figures, however, appear to be at variance with the lived realities of citizens.

The answer, independent observers argue, lies in Kalyan Singh's manipulation of statistics. According to independent estimates, there has been an increase of approximately 20 per cent in the number of serious crimes such as kidnapping, dacoity and rape over the last four months compared with the corresponding period last year. Recent cases of kidnapping indicate that the central area of mafia operations has shifted from western Uttar Pradesh to Lucknow. As many as six major incidents of kidnapping and killing have been reported from Lucknow in the past four months. Among the most gruesome of these was the killing of businessman C.K. Rastogi while he was trying to save his son Kunal from kidnappers. Kunal was kidnapped while taking a morning walk in the Botanical Gardens, situated in the middle of the city. The police response to the killing and kidnapping bordered on the farcical: citizens were warned not to take morning walks.

NONE of this is necessarily a case for the dismissal of the State governments concerned. These case studies merely illustrate the obvious: that the BJP-led Central Government's position on the law and order situation in the States emerges not from any serious engagement with the issues, but from its desperate need to placate its allies. In the process, it has shown itself willing to sacrifice principle and the most elementary political scruple. The problems of Jammu and Kashmir, which emerge from terrorist activity, are considerably more serious than those cited to press for the dismissal of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Government in Tamil Nadu. Similarly, the war against women in Rajasthan has involved atrocities far more gruesome than those the Left Front's detractors allege have taken place in West Bengal. Uttar Pradesh, too, suffers from organised crime, political and economic, in a manner similar to Bihar.

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