A scam vanishes into thin air

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

It can only be likened to the fabled Indian rope trick. As the nation stood transfixed by the 2G scam, billed as the biggest of its kind, it vanished into thin air. 

The scam broke seven years ago even as the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government headed by Manmohan Singh began its second five-year term. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), Vinod Rai, in a report placed before Parliament, estimated that the allocation of 2G telecom spectrum by the first UPA government had resulted in a presumptive loss of Rs1.76 trillion to the exchequer. 

The supposedly irregular allocations were made by A. Raja, of the Dravida Munetra Kazhagam, who was Minister of Communication and Information Technology in UPA 1. He had announced that the government had decided to allocate spectrum on a ‘first-come first-served’ basis, instead of auctioning. By the stipulated date the Department of Telecommunications received 575 applications from 46 firms. 

When the CAG report came Raja was minister in UPA 2. The opposition, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, disrupted the proceedings of Parliament day after day demanding his resignation. After consultations with DMK chief M Karunanidhi in Chennai, he announced his resignation “to avoid embarrassment to the government” and to facilitate smooth functioning of Parliament. “I will prove that I did everything according to the norms,” he added. 

Criminal investigation of the 2G allocations had begun a year before the CAG report with the Central Vigilance Commissioner, acting on a complaint by a non-government organisation alleging irregularities, ordering a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation. 

Soon the courts entered the scene. The Delhi High Court ruled that the setting of cut-off date for spectrum applications was illegal. In March 2011, the Centre, on the orders of the Supreme Court, set up a special court to try the accused in the spectrum cases.  

The special court heard three cases, two filed by the CBI and one by the Enforcement Directorate, against Raja, Kanimozhi, Karunanidhi’s daughter and DMK MP, and top officials of the government and of telecom companies.

Even as the special court was hearing the cases, the Supreme Court, in separate legal proceedings, cancelled all the 122 spectrum licences issued by Raja and ordered that fresh allocations be made through auctions. 

The widely publicised spectrum cases and the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare badly tarnished the image of the Manmohan Singh government and paved the way for the BJP’s spectacular success in 2014 under Narendra Modi’s leadership.  

Last week Special Judge OP Saini, in a 1,552-page judgment, took the prosecution cases to pieces and threw them out lock, stock and barrel. He said the CBI’s “well-choreographed chargesheet” was based “mainly on misreading, selective reading, non-reading and out-of-context reading” of the official record. There was no evidence to indicate criminality in the acts of the accused. 

The CBI and the ED had cited a loan of Rs2 billion provided to a Tamil television channel controlled by Karunanidhi’s family by a beneficiary of 2G allocation as evidence of corruption and money laundering. However, the judge said, the prosecution put no question to any witness to establish that the loan was illegal gratification. 

The judge added that he had sat in the courtroom for seven years but not a soul turned up to provide evidence to establish corruption. 

In the circumstances he concluded that some people had created a scam where there was none by “artfully arranging a few selected facts and exaggerating things beyond recognition to astronomical levels”. 

Judge Saini’s is not the last word on the subject. The CBI and the ED have said they would appeal to the High Court against his judgment. Above the High Court, there is the Supreme Court.  

The CBI had once enjoyed a high reputation as an investigating agency but it is now generally seen as a tool in the hands of its political masters. Some time ago the Supreme Court dubbed it as a caged parrot. 

There have been insinuations that the Modi government may have allowed the 2G cases to collapse to prepare the ground for an alliance between the BJP and the DMK in Tamil Nadu for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.   

The CBI has failed miserably in several high-profile cases in the recent past. Maybe, in the light of experience, there is a need to redefine ‘scam’ in the Indian context as a political scandal, real or imaginary, which offers immense scope for partisan warfare, helps bureaucrats attain celebrity status, enables investigative journalists to earn reporting laurels before subliming into history. 

The saddest part of the story of the scams is the erosion of people’s faith in the institutions to which they look up to sustain the democratic system. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 27, 2017.

Half-hearted anti-graft measures

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The largest single factor that contributed to the resounding defeat of the 10-year-old Congress-led government in last year’s parliamentary elections was the corruption scandals that engulfed it. Some Congress party leaders and a former minister belonging to coalition partner Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam were facing criminal charges when the country went to the polls.

A Gandhian movement led by Anna Hazare and backed by civil society groups raised the issue of corruption high up in the national agenda, and Narendra Modi, as Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate, cashed it in his vigorous election campaign.

Last week, nearly a year later, the Modi government announced a set of proposals to tackle the issue of corruption. It provides for enhancement of the minimum term of imprisonment for corruption from six months to three years and the maximum term from five years to seven years.

The higher penalties will raise corruption to the level of a heinous crime. However, some of the proposed changes may render the legal framework weaker than at present. For instance, there is a proposal to extend the protective umbrella of prior sanction for prosecution of public servants to those who have retired or resigned.

Under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988, a public servant is guilty of criminal misconduct and liable for punishment if “he while holding office obtains for any person any valuable thing or pecuniary advantage without any public interest.” Bureaucrats have long been unhappy that this provision as it renders them liable for action even when they have not derived any pecuniary benefit from their actions. One of the contemplated changes seeks to vest the power to grant prior sanction for investigation in such cases in the Lokpal or Lok Ayukta instead of the government.

On an average, trial proceedings in a case under the Prevention of Corruption Act last more than eight years. The government plans to fix a two-year time-frame for completing the proceedings. The cumbersome legal procedures and dilatory tactics employed by either of the parties involved may defeat the objective.

In the Transparency International’s global corruption index, India ranked 85th among the 175 countries surveyed last year. The authorities were pleased with the finding as the previous year the country was in the 94th position.

The licence raj which flourished under the restrictive economic policy which the country followed in the early years of Independence was widely believed to have bred corruption at the political and administrative levels. The 2G scam case in which the former DMK minister and several high-ranking bureaucrats are involved indicates that under economic liberalisation the situation has become worse. Not better.

Under the law, the bribe-giver and the bribe-taker are both liable for prosecution. A company official who bribes a bureaucrat can be prosecuted but not the company on whose behalf he makes the payment. An amendment under consideration envisages prosecution of the company as well.

Corruption takes place at the lower levels as well as the higher levels of the administration. At the lower levels, it takes the form of demanding or accepting illegal gratification to provide services which officials are bound to provide anyway. This hurts the poor. At the higher levels, it takes the form of payment of consideration for doing a favour. This benefits the rich.

When prosecution is rare and conviction even rarer, enhancement of punishment is an exercise with little practical significance. Except in rare instances like the 2G case, which, incidentally, was the result of exertions by constitutional functionaries like the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Supreme Court, only small fry are caught in the net.

Corruption is an affliction that affects many sectors. Studies have identified defence sector companies, all of which are government-owned, and the health care system, which is dominated by the private sector, as areas where ethical practices are extremely weak. 

The proposed changes are, at best, half-hearted measures. They cannot make any material difference since they do not address the core issue of political corruption, arising from the parties’ growing need for funds to fight elections. On the face of it, the BJP, which is now the main beneficiary of corporate munificence, and Narendra Modi, who used a business tycoon’s private aircraft for campaign tours and accepted a custom-made suit reportedly worth Rs 1 million presented by a businessman, are unlikely agents of change in this crucial area. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 5, 2015.

Not playing by the rules

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

 

The joint parliamentary committee (JPC) probing the 2G scam has run into a stalemate. The chief of the Central Bureau of Investigation has admitted to sharing with the political executive a progress report on the coal scandal probe which was prepared on a Supreme Court directive. Parliament has transacted little business in recent days with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party stalling the proceedings demanding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s resignation on the issue of interference in the coal scam investigation.

All these indicate that the government and the opposition are not playing the game according to the rules.

The JPC was set up to look into allegations of corruption in the allotment of 2G spectrum. Several criminal cases in connection with the scam are under investigation or prosecution, and the accused include A Raja, a former minister belonging to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and several senior officials.

JPC chairman PC Chacko recently circulated a draft report which pins the blame solely on Raja and absolves the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister who were apparently aware of his actions. To beat Chacko’s plan to push the draft through the committee, which is equally divided, with his casting vote, the opposition members have written to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar saying they have lost confidence in him and asking that he be removed. To gain majority in the committee, Congress members have asked her to disqualify three opposition members citing conflict of interest. 

The JPC mechanism was first tried in 1987 when Rajiv Gandhi’s government faced allegations that the Swedish company Bofors had paid $12 million in kickbacks to secure an order for howitzers. Opposition members pulled out of it saying the chairman, B. Shankaranand, was acting in a partisan manner.

Alladi Aruna, of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which was then an ally of the Congress, stayed on and added a dissenting note to the committee’s report. He said later that Congress members were engaged in a cover-up effort. They did not follow the procedures properly and denied members enough time to study the documents.

The JPC failed to identify the beneficiaries of Bofors payments. The Central Bureau of Investigation, which probed the matter, too could not find them. Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman and friend of the Gandhis, whose name came up during the investigation, slipped away.

Between 1992 and 2003 there were three more JPC probes, all into irregularities in the financial market or the commercial sector. Since no member of the government was under the scanner, the committees could complete their work without any hitch. However, there was no meaningful follow-up action.

The 2G JPC has generated more acrimony than any previous probe. Raja offered to testify before it but Chacko turned down the offer. Chacko also rejected the BJP members’ suggestion to summon the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister.    

The poor record of JPCs notwithstanding, political parties still demand setting up of such committees when allegations come up. A proposal to set up a JPC to probe reports of kickbacks in the Agusta Westland helicopter deal, approved by the Rajya Sabha, is awaiting the Lok Sabha’s concurrence.    

CBI director Ranjit Sinha’s admission, in a sworn affidavit, that the agency had shown Law Minister Ashwini Kumar and senior officials of the Prime Minister’s office and the Coal Ministry a report on the progress of the coal scandal investigation before it was submitted to the Supreme Court may prove more troublesome to the government than the confrontation with the opposition in the JPC.

In this investigation, the Coal Ministry is in the position of a suspect since what is being looked into are its alleged wrongdoings. Sharing of the report with officials of the ministry was, therefore, an act of gross impropriety. Since Manmohan Singh personally handled the Coal portfolio at one stage his office’s interest in the investigation cannot be viewed as innocuous.

Sinha’s affidavit does not say whether the agency made any changes in the report at the instance of those who were shown it.  The court is not likely to overlook his silence on this crucial aspect.

The Supreme Court has been keen to ensure that the CBI has functional autonomy, especially in dealing with cases involving members of the political executive. An adverse finding by it on its handling of the coal probe report can have far-reaching consequences. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 30, 2013.

An eye to the 2014 poll

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

With the Congress party in deep trouble, foes are getting ready for the kill and friends are charting their own separate courses with an eye to the parliamentary elections, which is due in 2014 but can come sooner. The Samajwadi Party, which supports the government from outside, is exploring the possibility of reviving the third front.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, now in the latter half of its second five-year term, has been assailed by one scandal after another in the last two years. Just as it was sighing with relief over the split in Anna Hazare’s team, which had brought corruption to the top of the nation’s agenda, a scandal relating to coal mining contracts made headlines.

The coal scam, like the scandal relating to allocation of second generation (2G) spectrum, was brought to light by the Comptroller and Auditor General, the constitutional authority mandated to scrutinise government accounts. The CAG estimated that allotment of mining licences without auction had resulted in a loss of Rs1,830 billion to the exchequer. That made ‘Coalgate’ bigger than the 2G scam in which the loss was put at Rs1,766 billion.

The Congress was able to shift the focus in the 2G scam to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam of Tamil Nadu, its second largest partner in the UPA, as its nominee, A Raja, was the Communications Minister during the relevant period. The opposition could only charge the Congress and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with failure to rein it in. Raja and Kanimozhi, MP and daughter of DMK chief M Karunanidhi, are now facing corruption charges in a court, along with some senior officials.

In the present scandal the spotlight is on the prime minister as the coal ministry was in the hands of the Congress party throughout and Manmohan Singh himself was in charge for some time. The Bharatiya Janata Party has stalled the proceedings of both houses of Parliament for more than a week demanding the prime minister’s resignation. It has turned down the government’s offer to discuss the CAG report in Parliament and vowed to carry the fight into the streets.

The procedure laid down in the Constitution provides for scrutiny of CAG reports by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee. Any discussion in Parliament or action by the government on the report can only come after that. This procedure has been derailed on a few occasions since the CAG report on the corruption in the deal with the Swedish arms dealer Bofors for purchase of howitzers when Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister.

The combined opposition was able to force a probe by a joint parliamentary committee into the Bofors deal and the Central Bureau of Investigation conducted criminal investigation for years but no one could be brought to book. TN Chaturvedi, the CAG who produced the Bofors report, later became a BJP member of Parliament. Some observers believe Coalgate may go the Bofors way.

As in the case of the 2G scam, the Congress party’s first response to the CAG report was to deny there had been loss of revenue. Later a party spokesman accused the CAG, Vinod Rai, of harbouring political ambitions.

With opinion polls indicating that the Congress is going downhill and that its own fortunes are improving, the BJP is trying to force the government to quit and clear the way for early elections. With this end in view it is considering the possibility of mass resignation of opposition MPs. What is holding it back is the reluctance of some of its National Democratic Alliance partners to go the whole hog with it.

At one stage, the Congress itself was considering the possibility of early parliamentary elections as the drought spell in some parts of the country is likely to add to its difficulties later on. Its leadership, however, appears to be in a state of paralysis. It has not been able to take any meaningful steps to refurbish the image of the party and the government ahead of the elections.

The opinion polls show that as things now stand the BJP can hope to replace the Congress as the largest single party in the NDA as the largest single pre-poll alliance. But the indications are that they are getting only a part of the voters who are deserting the Congress. The bulk of them are moving towards the smaller national or regional parties. However, revival of the third front will not be easy. The Communist Party of India-Marxist, which played the midwife under similar circumstances in the past, is no longer in a position to do so. --Gulf Today, September 4, 2012.

Partisanship mars democracy

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India’s successful conduct of massive elections has earned praise, and countries like Egypt and Nigeria are trying to profit from its experience as they seek to democratise their political systems. But, then, democracy means much more than holding elections at regular intervals. It calls for an ability to rise above narrow loyalties with common good in view.

When the Indian constitution, which incorporates the good practices that evolved in all democratic societies, was finalised, its chief architect, BR Ambedkar said, howsoever good the document might be, it would turn out to be bad if those called upon to work it were a bad lot. Six decades later those words ring ominously true.

As the country grapples with the menace of growing corruption, there is unabashed display of partisanship by both the ruling coalition and the disparate opposition. They are more interested in scoring political points than in bringing to justice those who loot the public.

The 2G scam, brought to light by the Comptroller and Auditor General last year, is the biggest corruption case in India’s history. In a 77-page report tabled in Parliament, the CAG had slammed Communications Minister A. Raja for causing the state a presumptive loss of Rs1,766 billion in 2007-08 through allocation of second generation (2G) and dual technology licences.

The 2G allotment irregularities were already before the Central Bureau of Investigation but it was dragging its feet. Public interest petitions brought the Supreme Court into the picture and its observations after scrutiny of relevant documents forced the CBI to act. Raja, who belongs to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the ruling party of Tamil Nadu, resigned. He and several of his aides are now in jail awaiting trial.

The way the government and the opposition responded to the CAG report is a sordid story of political one-upmanship. Under the constitutional scheme, CAG reports are referred to the public accounts committee (PAC), which is headed by an opposition member and includes members from both the houses of Parliament.

The PAC’s mandate is to look into government spending and ascertain whether there had been any loss or irregularities. In view of the limited scope of PAC examination, the other opposition parties demanded the constitution of a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to go into the matter. The government refused. Determined disruption of Parliament’s budget session by the opposition forced the government to yield.

As the PAC, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Murli Manohar Joshi summoned officials of the Prime Minister’s office (PMO) to testify, JPC chairman PC Chacko of the Congress asked that it pull back. He argued there was no need for parallel investigations by two parliamentary bodies.

Joshi turned down the suggestion and speeded up PAC work to finalise its report before his term as chairman expired on April 30. (He was yesterday renominated as chairman for another year.) Congress and DMK members created a ruckus and blocked examination of PMO officials. Nevertheless Joshi went ahead and produced a draft report.

The PAC meeting called to discuss and adopt the report broke up in confusion. Joshi left the meeting with his supporters when he found that Congress and DMK members, who had won over Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party members, were determined to block the report. In the absence of the chairman and his supporters, the remaining members adopted a resolution rejecting the report. Yet Joshi forwarded the draft report to Speaker Meira Kumar. She must now decide what to do with it.

It is not unusual for parliamentary committees to divide on party lines. Such bodies often arrive at decisions not by vote but by consensus. The well established practice is to prepare a report incorporating the majority viewpoint and for those with reservations to append dissenting notes.

Both the majority and the minority in the PAC are in breach of convention. How the Congress party earned the support of two parties and chalked up a majority in the committee is not known. It should cause no surprise if it transpires that it resorted to means that do not accord with democratic norms.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who protected the tainted DMK minister until it became impossible to do so, too has not emerged as a reliable upholder of democratic norms. Politicians guided by partisan considerations are dime a dozen. The Prime Minister must be a statesman who is guided by considerations of public good. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 2, 2011.

Tracking corruption at top

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

There are hopeful developments on the anti-corruption front. Prodded by the Supreme Court, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is pursuing cases against political leaders with some vigour. For the time, a former state minister faces the possibility of having to spend a year in jail.

Corruption of different kinds afflicts traditional and modern societies. In India, where the old and the new coexist, both kinds of corruption exist.

The corruption stories making big headlines in the media these days reveal graft of the kind that is familiar in the modern societies. They involve siphoning off of resources to corporate entities.

Corruption of this kind has grown alarmingly since India, under prime minister PV Narasimha Rao, took to the path of economic liberalisation in 1991. Some captains of Indian industry who figure in the Forbes list of the rich are beneficiaries of this trend.

The Comptroller and Auditor General, the constitutional authority mandated to look into government spending, reported last year that the manner in which the government allocated 2G spectrum to mobile companies had resulted in a loss of Rs1,760 billion. He is now examining a deal between the Indian Space Research Organisation’s commercial subsidiary and a private company floated by a former ISRO official, which, according to media reports, has inflicted an even greater loss. The deal gives the private operator free access to costly S-band spectrum.

At government establishments, including hospitals and police stations, citizens often encounter corruption of another kind. This involves having to pay bribes to get services which they are entitled to get free of cost. This kind of corruption hurts the poor directly and immediately. Transparency International’s India chapter, which studied the working of 11 government services, including the police, three years ago, estimated that people living below the poverty line paid over Rs9 billion annually as bribes to get basic need-based services.

Throughout the country the police was thought to be the most corrupt department and primary school education the least corrupt, it said.

The burden of corruption at higher levels also falls mainly on ordinary folks since manufacturers and distributors routinely transfer their costs to the consumers. However, people do not realise that the bribe component is also worked into the prices they pay. When the government bestows concessions on companies, normally they do not pass the benefit on to the consumer.

Unlike the other major countries of Asia like China, Japan and South Korea, India has a poor record in tracking down corruption at the top. Narasimha Rao, who was tried after he laid down office, was found not guilty. A Supreme Court judge who was impeached got away as members of parliament, voting according to party dictates, gave a majority verdict in his favour.

Against this background, the ongoing CBI investigations hold out some hope of action. Former Central minister A Raja and senior officials who worked with him were arrested recently in connection with the 2G scam. The net is closing in on Suresh Kalmadi, who was chief organiser of the Commonwealth Games held in New Delhi, and his close associates.

Raja is a leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which is Tamil Nadu’s ruling party and a constituent of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance which wields power at the Centre. Kalmadi is a leader of the Congress party.

The CBI, the premier investigative agency of the country, is directly under the prime minister. Opposition parties have alleged that it is often guided by political considerations. The Supreme Court’s monitoring of highly sensitive cases has limited the scope for political interference in the investigation.

Last week, the apex court awarded a year’s rigorous imprisonment to Kerala Congress (B) leader R Balakrishna Pillai in a case relating to the period when he was the state’s power minister. He is the first minister in the country to be given a jail term by the highest court of the land. His party is a constituent of the Congress-led United Democratic Front, which is now in the opposition.

Sukh Ram, a former Union Communication Minister, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on corruption charges by the trial court two years ago. The last word in that case is still a long way off. His appeal is now before the high court. If he loses there, he can go to the Supreme Court. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, February 14, 2011,

Fighting off fascism

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

There are ominous signs on the Indian horizon. Two weeks ago Parliament ended its winter session without transacting any worthwhile business. Last week a district court in Chhattisgarh state sentenced a highly respected paediatric surgeon to life imprisonment on a charge of sedition.

Both houses of Parliament had remained paralysed throughout the session as a result of a strategy worked out by the main opposition, the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, to force the government to accept its demand for a joint parliamentary committee to go into what is believed to be the worst scam in the country’s history. The Left parties, led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, worked with it on this issue.

The scam relates to the allocation of 2G spectrum by A Raja of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam as Telecom minister in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government. He resigned a few days ago and the Central Bureau of Investigation later interrogated him.

The last time the CPI-M and the BJP came together was in the early 1980s when both backed and sustained the government led by VP Singh. At that time the BJP raised the communal temperature in the country by mounting a campaign in support of the demand of its Sangh Parivar patrons for the construction of a Ram temple at the Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya. Earlier, Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime had thrown the CPI-M and the BJP’s predecessor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, together by targeting both simultaneously. The new camaraderie between the two parties is a matter of concern as the previous joint ventures had resulted in a weakening of the secular fabric.

Both the BJP and the Left have indicated that they will stall the budget session of Parliament also if the demand for JPC is not conceded. If the government is unable to present the budget and get a vote of account passed before the current financial year ends on March 31, 2011, there will be a constitutional crisis. It was stultification of the parliamentary process that had paved the way for the rise of fascism in Europe in the period between the two World Wars.

The Congress has its share of responsibility for the current impasse. There is reason believe that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was aware of the 2G scam but did not act in time.

The opposition’s fondness for JPC is misplaced inasmuch as previous JPCs did not yield any concrete results. The JPC on the Bofors scandal is an example. The government’s dislike of JPC is equally misplaced inasmuch as previous JPCs did not pose any insurmountable problems for the government of the day.

Developments on the judicial front, like those on the parliamentary front, are fraught with serious consequences for the future of the democratic set-up. The conviction of Dr Binayak Sen, who was working in the tribal areas of Chhattisgarh, is a case in point. What brought him into conflict with the authorities was his championship of human rights as president of the state unit of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties.

Chhattisgarh has been witnessing armed conflicts between Maoists and government forces for a few years. The support the rebels get from the tribal population has been a source of worry for the authorities as it hampers the operations of the police and paramilitary forces.

Sen was arrested in 2007 for allegedly aiding the banned Maoist party and held without bail for two years before the Supreme Court ordered his release and directed that the trial be concluded expeditiously. The trial court delivered judgment within the deadline set by the apex court but its finding has been received with shock and dismay by human rights activists in India and abroad. Amnesty International has declared Dr Sen a Prisoner of Conscience.

So flimsy was the evidence the prosecution presented that the judge could not clearly define the nature of the relationship between the rebels and Sen and his co-accused. He could only say they were “either members or supporters” of the banned group and “either participated in its organisational work or provided support and encouragement.” He justified the harsh sentence by pointing to the ruthless and merciless killing policemen and tribals by Maoists. His reasoning echoes the jingoist arguments of right-wing propagandists.

These developments suggest that the time has come for secular and democratic forces to mount an all-out campaign against incipient fascism.-- Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 27, 2010.