Peace of mind: guaranteed

Like the state government-appointed Justice Nanavati-Shah commission,looking at the Godhra train carnage and the post-Godhra riots. It had told the Gujarat High Court in February that it hoped to complete the job by this month-end,then obtained its 14th extension of term from the state government last week.

If that sounds like stretching things a bit,some would be be grateful that the commission had spared much anxiety over the one point everyone was keen to know,about the post-Godhra riots — the state government’s role in it. The commission took care of that a year ago. It had concluded its still incomplete probe of post-Godhra riots,in its first report on the Godhra train carnage. No matter if that report itself said on the cover it was all about the train incident — not the riots.

To some,this effort has left no more room for prickly doubts,even if the Supreme Court-appointed SIT probing the riots may have its own thoughts. The report had assured there was no evidence of any lapse on the state Government’s part,“in providing protection,relief and rehabilitation to victims of the communal riots,and in the matter of not complying with the recommendations and directions given by the National Human Rights Commission.”

Now,unless there is a backflip at the end of its long run on state government-granted extensions,few would expect the second report to bring the heavens down when it is released. No matter how later.

As a popular advertisement says — Peace of Mind : Guaranteed.

What if the commission actually goes against the grain and comes up with something unexpected? Nothing. It won’t be enforceable. The state government need not accept the report if it doesn’t like it. At least in theory,the government can wake up one morning,reach for a pen and axe the commission with a scribble. It can ask another retired judge or two to do it all over again or choose to have no commission at all. The 58-year-old Commissions of Inquiry Act can’t do a thing about it.

Ideally,Gujarat should wait and see if the commission would at least bring home a proud new record for longevity: The current national record is 18 years,achieved by the Justice Liberhan commission,at a trivial public cost of some 90-odd million rupees.

Still,what if a commission probing issues of life and death wants to earnestly see itself through it?

Recall the Justice P M Chauhan commission that inquired the 1992 Surat riots. The commission was set up under Justice I C Bhatt by Chimanbhai Patel’s Congress government,not long after the blood had dried and the smoke lifted from Surat’s killing fields. Justice P M Chauhan later took over from Bhatt,after the latter went off to become the Lok Ayukta.

The Chauhan commission was on the job for the next few years. But only till politics caught up: by then Shankersinh Vaghela,who was state BJP chief when riots engulfed Surat,had split his party and pulled down the Suresh Mehta government,yoking the Congress to his side to become the CM himself in 1996.

The very next year,Vaghela disbanded the Chauhan commission. This was just before the commission was to come out with its report.

The report never saw daylight. No fresh commission replaced it. Officially,the Surat riots had left 152 dead,not counting the many gone “missing”. Dozens of rapes and many more cases of arson and other destruction remained to be probed.

Eighteen years later,no one is the wiser. No one is in jail.

Peace of Mind: Guaranteed.

M/s POT AND KETTLE
Calamity aid is gratefully taken and consumed to survive a nasty aberrance. But living on needs some lasting self respect and pride.

Is that all to the Patna-Gandhinagar tamasha ?

Who really got the bunch of Surat businessmen to splash that advertisement across Patna newspapers — and helped Nitish do what he probably was raring to do — is still vague. There is no argument that the dole the ad bragged about came from the Gujarat Chief Minister’s Relief Fund,not Modi’s own piggy bank. So did the money for other Gujarat aid morsels sent to Kosi.

But if it was crass to use a state-to-state dole to erase a politically inconvenient taint,no more edifying was the official response to that from the Gujarat government : it sounded more like from a pawnshop clerk’s notebook.

The statement talked about the accrued interest that Bihar may have enjoyed on the returned Rs 5 crore (did not mention the rate,mercifully),put a Rs 20 crore price tag on the foodstuff and relief given away in kind. Even took pains to laud “Gujarat BJP volunteers” — not Gujarat volunteers— for going to Kosi.

And then,the government patted itself for doing so much,in such a “humble” way. It has vowed to humbly do the same in future too.rajeev.pi@expressindia.com