JUS(T)WANT SINGH
Jaswant Singh has always been forth right in expressing what he feels right. perhaps his earlier stint with the army has taught him to be so. As member of evaluation committee of field trial guns during the days of AB Bofors saga, he frankly declared Bofors was the best and not Sofma a French Company who had commercial relations with Ottovio Quotrochchi. Those were the days when Rajiv had a crystal clear image with a huge mandate. In fact this comment of Jaswant was used by those who defended the alleged kickbacks in the deal in later years. Again he was there defending Advani when he paid tributes to the father of Pakistan while he was in Pakistan. Jaswant also wrote to book which chronicled Indian History with a few eulogical references to Md.Ai Jinnah. BJP remote controlled by RSS took offence and quickly expelled him, not even Advani could stop his expulsion. He took this on his stride and unlike Gopinath Munde did not black mail the party with threat of joining Congress. This time again he has spoken up while the whole nation is a spectator very helpless at that citing that the probe is monitored by SC directly on the illegality of continuous detention of the accused in the 2G scam. He has kicked up a debate and I witnessed uprorious scenes during the telecast of the show in NDTV. Jaswant rightly observed that getting bail is something a basic right of an accused who should be released as soon as charges are framed in order to defend himself. This was with reference to the continued incarceration of Raja and Kanimozhi with the trial court, later the High court and even the SC denying them bail under the surmise that they could influence witnesses. He has rightly asked as to how come they could influence witnesses at all when they ar edeprived of their ministerial and political privieges? This was supported by a small minority of the viewers who consisted of the so called middle class seeking with rage and anger on the levels of corruption. Some one bemoaned the fact the case of more than 2 lacs undertrials are not highlighted while these high profile accused are sympathised. The anchor rightly pointed out the crimes they are charged with if proven in a court of law could only result in 7 years RI under IPC. No one seems to be worried about the loot perpetrated by telecom firms like Reliance infocom whose front company is Shahid Balwas Etilsat DB. while junior executives of Rcomm are arrested Anil Ambani remains free. He is not even named an accused even though R comm used Shahid Balwas firm as a front company. Rcomm claimed that it had only 9.8% holding below the minimum ceiling of 10% but the cost of these preference shares are 98% of paid up capital., No body writes about that.
Kanimozhi did a mistake well it was the mistake of Ramjethmalani to have sought leniency in dealing with women under Cr Pc. She should have sought bail as a matter of right. SC bench monitoring this high profile case at times expresses their opinion on the supposed crime which is never heard of in judicial history. They should have confined themselves to the merit of the petitioners in seeking bail and not dwell on the trumpeted charges. Thank you Mr, Jaswant Singh there are right thinking people like you around and with that our democracy will be safe from the onslaughts of judicial activism and middle class arrogance.
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