BJP Faces Questions Over Ex-IAS Subrata Gupta’s appointment as advisor of Bengal CM.
Gustakhi Maaf Haryana-Pawan Kumar Bansal
Government Officers, Politics and Double Standards-
Allahabad Verdict Then, Bengal Appointment Now-
BJP Faces Questions Over Ex-IAS Subrata Gupta ,s appointment as advisor of Bengal CM.
By eminent journalist Vinod Sharma.On reading the news of retired IAS officer Subrata Gupta’s appointment as advisor to the freshly minted West Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari, my thoughts went to the era when Indira Gandhi was disqualified as MP in 1975 for having used the services of a government employee, Yashpal Kapoor in the 1971 elections. In their earlier avatars, the Jana Sangh and its socialist co-travellers (including Jayaprakash Narayan) used the Allahabad high court judgement to paint Indira as corrupt and anti democratic for not quitting as PM, imposing the Emergency instead to sustain her rule.
The irony isn’t therefore lost when the progeny of the same Jana Sangh, the BJP, is the party that’s accused of having compromised and used the Election Commission of India (ECI) as its hand maiden in the recently concluded SIR (Special Intensive Revision) that knocked off lacks of voters from the electoral rolls in the run-up to demographically gerrymandered polls that earned the BJP a brute majority in the state it had never ruled. There indeed was a strong anti-incumbency against Mamata Banerjee. But the question remains whether the polls and the electoral rolls (on the basis of which they were conducted) were fair and transparent? Whether the ECI was a free agent or just taking diktats from a powerful minister physically present in the state with hundreds of thousands of troops of armed forces of the union?
If a proof was needed of the ECI’s complicity in the BJP project, the new CM has himself provided it by appointing Gupta as his advisor.
Books will later be written on the Supreme Courts role in the SIR and the consequent disenfranchisement of lakhs of voters. But in real time terms its views need to be ascertained on Gupta’s co-option in Adhikari’s team. The best way to do that would be to move the SC against the ECI and Gupta, together with the man who has chosen him as his advisor post-election. The people need to know whether it’s a reward for services rendered during the controversial SIR and the just held elections?
One writes this in the interest of democracy, the apex court, the justice delivery system and the people’s right to elect governments.