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A Tale Of One Incident , Two People , Three Months And Four Arrests !

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  BY R.K.MISRA This is a tale of one incident, two people, three months and four arrests. So it is that ninety days   after the Morbi suspension bridge collapse which killed 135 people , including 50 children, Jaysukh Patel, promoter of the   Rs 1200 crore Oreva group employing a workforce of over 5000 remains elusive and untraceable, but activist Saket Gokhale, hauled up for a tweet pertaining to it, continues behind bars after four arrests and counting. Premier investigating agencies which claim the prowess of ferreting an ant out of a molehill have abysmally failed in arresting the industrialist who remains on the run but has filed for anticipatory bail which is expected to be heard on february1. And all this after a   Gujarat High Court division bench led by its Chief Justice Aravind Kumar had suo moto taken up the bridge collapse case and has been pursuing it with equanimity. Oreva group is a Morbi based clock and home appliance manufacturer which was given   the contrac
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Currency Capers Of Conniving Cops In Gujarat !

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  BY R.K.MISRA Crime does not pay but the criminal does! So it was that the currency capers of conniving cops became the flavour of the season, this last week in Gujarat. On December 12,2022, Bharat alias Bobby Patel alleged by the cops to be   the notorious kingpin of an international illegal immigration racket operating out of Gujarat was nabbed by law enforcement agencies   in Ahmedabad. The arrest came ten months after an FIR was filed against him   when a Gujarati   family froze to death while trying to make an illegal crossing into the US from Canada. The State Monitoring Cell(SMC),a watchdog body which functions under the direct charge of the state police chief took credit for it though a thick fat dossier on his criminal activities was handed over to the Indian authorities by their counterpart agencies abroad as was a tip on his movement. Ninety four passports including five fake ones were learnt to have been seized from his office. Two of the happiest hunting grounds for
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Congress Conundrum : The Resurrection And The Reality

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BY R.K.MISRA Failure fuels a win if you don’t make losing a habit.   The factsheet suggests   that the Congress with seven consecutive defeats in Gujarat may well lose on the curves what it gains on the straights with elections to nine state assemblies due this year.   The   stupendous success of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat-jodo’ yatra has   resurrected him as a   leader of credence and the Congress as the only national party capable of taking on the Narendra Modi-led BJP. However   the ignominious Gujarat defeat   has exposed chinks in the Congress party’s national armour which cannot be papered over by the tepid win in Himachal Pradesh.   The states headed for the hustings are Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, and the north-eastern states of Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram besides the Congress ruled states of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. There is   also speculation that Jammu and Kashmir may be added to this list. Round the clock electioneers, the ruling BJP has alread
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Is Gujarat Peaceful Or Disturbed ?

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  BY R.K.MISRA Contradictions confound .Is Gujarat peaceful or disturbed? Peaceful says the   BJP   which swept Gujarat with its highest ever tally for a seventh term in the just concluded elections claiming that it had established permanent peace statewide in its quarter century old rule. The assertion came from the union home minister. Contradiction :   published studies establish that the area under the Disturbed Areas Act(DAA) grew by over 50 per cent in the six years from 2013 to 2019 in Ahmedabad alone. So is the state peaceful or is it disturbed? In the contradiction hangs a tale. The Disturbed Areas Act was first enacted   a year after the 1985 communal riots in Ahmedabad after it was observed that people who were in numerical minority in a   particular area were being coerced to sell their properties at throwaway prices to move to areas which afforded the security of their own communities. The Act was meant to   prevent this segregation through distress sale. First int
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Duplicity Over Hooch Deaths !

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  BY R.K.MISRA Celebrate endings- for they precede new beginnings, goes a saying.  And as the old year yields place to the new ,hopes surface that   India’s lawmakers will   spare time to pause and ponder at the plummeting levels of public discourse and the crass contradictions   that mark their conduct. The contradictions are most noticeable in the matter of the spurious liquor tragedy in Saran district of Bihar in December where over 80 people lost their lives. Both Houses of the Bihar legislature were adjourned indefinitely ahead of schedule following the BJP opposition’s backlash over the hooch deaths and the demand for a review of the prohibition policy in the state. Taking Suo moto cognizance, the National Human Rights Commission(NHRC) issued notice to the Bihar government. The NHRC also underlined the failure of the State government to implement its policy of prohibition of sale and consumption of illicit liquor in Bihar since 2016. Soon after a 9-member NHRC team landed up
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Talking Lions , Chasing Cheetahs !

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  BY R.K.MISRA What happened to the Asiatic lions for whom a second home   at Kuno Palpur was in the making for over two decades? How did a second home for the original lions transform into a cradle for ’alien’ cheetahs?     As the country’s media went ecstatic trumping up the cheetah chapter, lost in the hype and hoopla was the fact that the prime Minister’s own state, under his own 13 year old rule as chief minister   kept dragging it’s feet to give its neighbour Madhya Pradesh   ruled   by their very own party, the promised lions .This was even after it was so ordained by the highest judicial authority in the land. Does this imply that the second home for the lions stands effectively scuttled despite roof-top warnings that a virus had wiped out 30 per cent of the lion population in Serengeti forest of East Africa in the early nineties?. Is it that parochial considerations piloted by the powers- that- be, have taken precedence over national concerns even international wildlife
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Choice For India's Opposition : Hang Together Or Hang Separately !

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  BY R.K.MISRA Every victory leaves a lesson behind in takeaway tales. As much for the triumphant ,many more for the trounced . The just concluded elections to the state Assemblies of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) are no exception. In fact,   the last named would not even qualify to be in the august company of the first two ,were it not for the unprecedented heavy artillery unleashed by the ruling BJP to win a civic poll. Bundled   together, the three elections threw up three winners and   six losers. The three principal combatants-BJP, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party(AAP)- had one victory each to gloat about and two defeats each to ponder over.   If Gujarat was retained by the BJP through a record breaking victory, its defeat in Himachal and MCD were ego-bruising. Himachal was a morale booster for the Congress for it   once again proved that the invincibility of   the ruling party at the Centre was more a fallacy than a fact(MP, Rajasth
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