Well, the Gujrat elections have come and gone, and in the process delivered a mighty blow to the grand old decayed party of India, also known as the Congress party. From the start, the Congress (ans almost the entire media) has declared that the Gujrat election will be the one surprise that will hasten the end of the BJP; what with the development slogan being false, by trying to pit the caste factions against each other; by trying to scare the people about Modi being a person who can get people killed without any worry. They in fact have been lulled into setting themselves up for this shock, believing the media that the election is theirs for the taking, that the BJP defectors will cause immense losses to the BJP. In the end, there was the ultimate weapon of the dynasty with Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi entering the fray and seeking to make it a Modi vs. Sonia battle.
In recent years, there has been wide-spread criticism by politicians of the Supreme Court run judicial system, claiming that it has gone out of control, and that the judiciary was over-reaching into the realm of the legislature and executive. There have been a number of cases, such as the Bihar and Jharkhand assembly cases, the whole issue about the demolitions in Delhi, and the nursery admissions in Delhi, that have raised the hackles of the Government and politicians. There are many other such cases that have caused controversy, typically with the court acting on a number of measures that are more in the realm of policy making such as anti-ragging, environment, traffic, etc. A 2 member bench of the Supreme Court has recently come out against the activist nature of the court, and asked the court system to stay in check:
Indian colleges have known the scourge of ragging for a long time. Justified on the basis of getting closer interaction between seniors and juniors, it actually gives a license to the seniors in the college to mistreat the juniors. To be clear, there is no earthly reason why a junior in a college has to obey the words of a person who is 1-3 years older than him/her and do things which the junior does not like or appreciate. It may seem harmless and fun to ask the juniors to sing songs or to propose to one another, but it is actually much more than that. It leads to people asking juniors to follow their every orders, to get them to strip and to make them uncomfortable in other ways; and most of all, it gives a license to the bad section among the seniors to misbehave as much as they want. There are numerous examples every year of people getting humiliated, of seeking to end their life, or otherwise getting distressed over the scourge of ragging.
In view of this overall scenario, the Supreme Court, some time back, had ordered the absolute abolishment of ragging, and asked the various educational institutions to do what they can to make sure that ragging does not happen. Noble ideas, but there was a backlash from educational institutions, many of them refused to admit that any ‘bad’ ragging happened in their campus, others sought to minimise the cases or pretend that the incidents was harmful fun. Well, the Supreme Court has again repeated the order and has now directed educational institutions to adopt a ‘zero tolerance’ policy.
Everybody now knows about the ongoing dispute between the Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss and the AIIMS Director P Venugopal (who is an eminent cardiac surgeon). This has been an ongoing dispute that has been going on and on, with a lot of discussions and dispute being parlayed through the media, and with the gutless Prime Minister not doing anything to rein in this dispute or to prevent the washing of dirty linen in public.
And now the Government has decided that it will show the AIIMS Director as to who exactly the boss is. The AIIMS Director in the past has won the various court cases where he was at loggerheads with the Health Minister, a move no doubt that would have enraged the health minister even more. And with the DMK being a reliable partner and one providing critical political support, the issues about autonomy of institutions and non-interference obviously do not count.
So, in an incredible law, the Government brought in a law that was primarily targeted at the AIIMS Director, setting an age limit of 65. The net effect of this law was that as soon the President signed the bill, the Government could then order the removal of Dr. Venugopal. And there has been almost no major protest against this law, which when seen in context, is an incredible attack on the autonomy of an institutions: