The NYT has a correspondent in India- which is a pretty big country about which plenty of information is available on the web. Yet it is incapable of writing a single sentence about India which is not false, foolish or mischievously misleading. Start with the headline-
Leader of India’s Opposition to Modi Is Expelled From Parliament
Rahul Gandhi does not lead his own Party, let alone the opposition. He is merely a MP. Since his party has less than ten percent of the seats in the lower house, there is no 'leader of the opposition' there. Even there he does not lead his party. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is the leader.
Has Rahul been 'expelled' from parliament? No. He has been automatically disqualified in consequence of a Court Judgment. The British parliament does expel members who however are not barred from seeking elections. India suspends members but this too is no bar to reelection.
The puzzle is why Rahul didn't have a lawyer in the Surat Court House to immediately post a review petition. Alternatively, he could have knocked on the door of the Apex Court. In 2016, a BJP M.P was sentenced to three years. He immediately settled the matter with the complainant by agreeing to pay him a good sum and got the Supreme Court to quash the case within 16 days. The Parliamentary Secretariat was roundly abused by Congress for failing to disqualify the man immediately which is why they acted with alacrity in Rahul's case.
The expulsion of Rahul Gandhi is a devastating blow to the once-powerful Indian National Congress party.
It makes no difference whatsoever. Rahul performs poorly in Parliament. The hope is that opposition unity will increase if Rahul is barred from holding office till 2034. However, it is likely that a higher court will suspend the sentence or lower the quantum of punishment so that disbarment is not triggered.
He and several other politicians are now in jeopardy through India’s legal system.
Nonsense! Criminals are always in jeopardy but that is why they are careful to cover their tracks.
NEW DELHI — Rahul Gandhi, one of the last
No. Rahul is the least successful
national figures standing in political opposition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, was disqualified as a member of Parliament on Friday, sending shock waves across the country’s political scene and devastating the once-powerful Indian National Congress party Mr. Gandhi leads.
What a load of crap! The Surat judgment was a surprise and most of us had not grasped that disqualification would be immediate rather than after 30 days but we all know that Rahul's lawyer- the superb Abhishek Singhvi- can get a quick hearing in a superior court; but this is little more than a storm in a teacup. A higher court is likely to reduce the quantum of sentence. Two years imprisonment is the maximum tariff applicable and a little humility on Rahul's part will be enough to appease the Bench. On the other hand, if Congress plays the long game- or Rahul's Messianic megalomania gets the better of him and he defies the Judges, they can suspend the sentence but let the conviction stand thus keeping him out of office till 2034- when he will be in his mid Sixties and hopefully will have matured a little- then Congress has a chance of forming an alliance with opposition heavyweights.
Mr. Gandhi was expelled from the lower house the day after a court in Gujarat, Mr. Modi’s home state, convicted him on a charge of criminal defamation. The charge stemmed from a comment he made on the campaign trail in 2019, characterizing Mr. Modi as one of a group of “thieves” named Modi — referring to two prominent fugitives with the same last name.
No. He asked why all thieves have Modi as their surname. Further he named two proclaimed offenders, gratuitously added the name of the PM who is known to be honest and then said 'a little investigation will show there are plenty more Modis who are thieves'. Thus he defamed an entire community known for their skill and integrity in mercantile commerce. The fact is, Modi is a surname very similar to Gandhi. Rahul's family is accused of corrupt practices and currently under the scanner in the National Herald Case. His father, Rajiv, was brought down by allegations of corruption in the matter of the acquisition of artillery from Bofors- a Swedish company.
Mr. Gandhi received a two-year prison sentence, the maximum. He is out on 30 days’ bail.
Which is plenty of time to get a superior court to intervene
Any jail sentence of two years or more is supposed to result in automatic expulsion, but legal experts had expected Mr. Gandhi to have the chance to challenge his conviction.
He does have that chance. The question was whether the Speaker had discretion in the matter. It turned out that he hadn't. The Lok Sabha Secretariat issued the disqualification letter as per current rules and regulations. Since the Election Commission lawyers recommended disqualification and since under Article 103 the President takes advise from the EC in such cases, it is clear that the Secretariat had no other choice.
The Secretary General of the Lok Sabha Secretariat is a senior, Uttarakhand cadre, IAS officer who was promoted after the retirement of a lady officer from the MP cadre. Nobody has ever suggested that either had or has any political affiliations. Yet this is the suggestio falsi in the NYT's next line.
A notification signed by a parliamentary bureaucrat appointed by Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party
this is wholly false. On the retirement of the Secretary General, her deputy was appointed in line with Civil Service procedures and with due regard to seniority, experience, etc. There is no suggestion that Kumar was promoted out of turn or that there was any favoritism or partisanship in his appointment. This was purely an internal matter for the Civil Service. It is not true that Mr. Kumar was appointed by Modi or any other politician.
on Friday stated that Mr. Gandhi had been disqualified automatically by the conviction itself, per the Constitution of India.
A Supreme Court decision in 2013 ensured this outcome. Manmohan introduced an ordinance to prevent this but Rahul tore up that ordinance and so it had to be withdrawn.
“They are destroying the constitution, killing it,” said Srinivas B.V.,
who is not a lawyer and, at 42, not particularly young
president of the Indian National Congress Party’s youth wing. “The court gave Mr. Gandhi 30 days to appeal against the order, and hardly 24 hours have passed since.”
The disqualification took effect immediately the judgment was handed down as the notification clarified. It was Congress which raised a hue and cry when a BJP MP was not immediately disqualified on sentencing in 2016. But that MP got the Supreme Court to quash the case within 16 days. Rahul's lawyers could have done it in within 5 days.
Mr. Gandhi said in a Twitter post on Friday, “I am fighting for the voice of this country. I am ready to pay any price.”
That price came due when he defamed an entire community numbering millions of people.
Mr. Srinivas said the party will fight the expulsion, politically and legally.
The fellow is a nonentity. How shite is the NYT's local correspondent if she couldn't get a quote from somebody smart- like Singhvi?
One of the party’s most prominent members, Shashi Tharoor, who like Mr. Gandhi is a member of the lower house in the state of Kerala, said on Twitter that the action ending his tenure in Parliament was “politics with the gloves off, and it bodes ill for our democracy.”
Again, a light weight. What the NYT should have done is got a quote from Singhvi or, if he was too busy, a smart Supreme Court lawyer who had read the judgment and could predict what line Singhvi would take.
If I were writing this article I would, as Singhvi has done, highlight the fact that the petitioner sought to delay the case perhaps hoping that a new magistrate would be more sympathetic to. The thing is a red herring- the complainant had had to get orders from the High Court twice to quash decisions of the previous Magistrate- but it is newsworthy.
Mr. Gandhi, a scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family whose father, grandmother and great-grandfather served as prime minister, has taken pains to improve his national profile in recent months.
He went on a long walk. But he grew messianic and started babbling nonsense. In particular his crazy remarks while in England drew severe criticism.
He led an unexpectedly popular march late last year across swaths of India, rallying crowds to “unite India” against the Hindu-first nationalism espoused by Mr. Modi.
He was imitating Murli Manohar's 'Ekta yatra' (Unity March) from 1991.
And since the fortunes of Gautam Adani, a tycoon long associated with Mr. Modi, collapsed under pressure from a short-seller’s report in January,
but they have revived. It is Credit Suisse, which was critical of Adani, which has collapsed.
Mr. Gandhi has been using his platform in Parliament to call for an investigation of his business empire.
He hasn't been using shit. The cretin doesn't get that Gehlot and Mamta and Stalin need Adani. The country needs Adani. Nobody needs Rahul.
The Congress Party is not alone in worrying about the implications for India’s democracy that Mr. Gandhi’s disqualification poses.
Democracy improves if imbeciles are replaced, in Parliament, by smart people who don't babble defamatory or paranoid nonsense.
With parliamentary elections coming next year, the government's attempts to clamp down on dissent seem to be gaining momentum, other opposition leaders pointed out.
Why clamp down on stupidity? It is a different matter that putting pols in jail for corruption is popular. But having Rahul around is helpful to Modi. What is odd is that the CBI is assuring Tejashwi Yadav that he won't be arrested in the land for jobs scam.
Last month, Manish Sisodia, the second in command of the Aam Aadmi Party, was arrested on charges related to fraud.
Even though nobody had said 'All Sisodias are fraudsters.' The fact is people get arrested for crimes if there is evidence they committed those crimes. On the other hand, it may be that the ED is conducting fishing expeditions. The Tax Man can shift the burden of proof onto those it suspects of tax evasion. But, for 'money laundering', if there are no disproportionate assets and no paper trail, how can there be a presumption of guilt?
Earlier this month Kavitha K., a leader from a regional party that recently turned to national politics, was questioned by federal investigators in connection with the same case.
Sounds like a fishing expedition. But there's plenty of that sort of things going in the NYT's backyard.
The string of criminal cases against politicians — though none have been brought against high-profile members of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P.
they were accused of murder and terrorism by the previous administration on the basis of fabricated evidence
— contrasts awkwardly with Mr. Modi’s presentation of India as “the Mother of Democracy” during a global publicity blitz to accompany its hosting the Group of 20 summit meeting this year.
Fuck off! Modi has the highest approval rating of any elected world leader. With India overtaking China as the most populous country, there can be no question it is the mother of all democracies.
What's more America needs India otherwise it just gets frozen out of South Asia totally. You are welcome to class India as an autocracy. But that means Democracy is shrinking and will soon be confined to the ageing populations of Europe and its settler colonies.
Police raids against the BBC’s office in India and some of the country’s leading think tanks have intensified doubts about the strength of India’s democracy.
India's First Amendment goes in the opposite direction to America's. The Government is welcome to ban anti-national propaganda and to arrest journalists or close down news organizations which break Indian law. This does not endanger democracy which depends on things India has- like a strong and independent Election Commission and a wholly separate and self-selecting Judiciary- whereas America does not. The plain fact is that there is plenty of voter suppression in America. Nothing similar could be said of India.
Eliminating the opposition from parliament through the courts might heighten those misgivings dramatically.
But those misgivings don't matter at all. America is weak and in retreat. It could 'Magnitsky' Bangladeshi or Myanmarese officials but India is in no mood to defer to a corrupt country now wholly committed to the path of cowardly retreat.
No comments:
Post a Comment