Tag Archives: Home Ministry

Chidambaram wants Nilekani to log out

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is getting a lot of mail these days. It was the turn of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram to take up the protest pen on November 11, 2011, to raise serious security concerns about Nandan Nilekani’s Unique Identification Authority of India’s ‘Aadhar’ cards project. In his note, Chidambaram has also accused Nilekani of dangerously encroaching on the legally mandated enrolment work being conducted by the Registrar General of India, which is in the Home Ministry’s domain.

Reflecting the shadow war between him and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Chidambaram’s note suggests that its not only Nilekani who is encroaching on the Home Ministry’s territory. “The UIDAI was allowed to get enrolments of 10 crore residents through multiple registrars up to 31 March 2011.

This was raised to an additional 10 crore residents up to March 2012 by the Ministry of Finance (subject to post facto ratification by the CC-UIDAD. This was approved as interim measure.)”Nilekani’s reporting structure is unprecedented in history; he reports directly to the Prime Minister, thus bypassing all checks and balances in government. The Planning Commission had shot off two letters to the Finance Ministry and the Home Ministry protesting the UIDAI’s handling of finances. Its chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia suggested the UIDAI to be “financially self-contained with its own financial advisor entrusted with clearing expenditure within their approved budget while observing relevant government rules.”

After Nilekani bypassed Montek and requested the Finance Minister to grant him additional funds of `15,000 crore over and above the `2,000-crore plan allocation and `1,000 crore from the non-plan head, the Plan Panel was furious. “UIDAI’s present system represents a major departure from government procedures and removes all inbuilt checks and balances. We need a relook at the UIDAI’s administrative structure.” It can be inferred from Chidambaram’s note that Nilekani being unaccountable to the system is setting a dangerous precedent. Chidambaram writes the decision to register all citizens and issue identity cards to them precedes the formation of the UIDAI. The legal provisions were put in place way back in 2003. “The enrolments were to be done only by the Registrar General of India (RGI),’’ the note stresses, adding that “the primary role of UIDAI was clearly laid down: generate and assign UID to residents’’.

Chidambaram notes that despite the advice given to him by the PM to consult the Attorney-General to amend the legal provisions so as to render UIDAI data “acceptable’’, he was constrained to point out that “the NPR project has been conceived by the MHA based on its appreciation of internal security in the country.’’ Chidambaram writes while “the MHA is to carry out enrolment (biographic and biometric), the UIDAI is to carry out de-duplication and issue Aadhar numbers.’’

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Army Rollback: A Promise of Freedom from the Gunpoint

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For Kashmiris, freedom is only in words and not in deeds. There is not even a semblance of freedom in the world’s most heavily militarized zone, where they are stopped any time for security checks and their homes are often raided.

AFSPA

As the debate over the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) gets heated, it’s that indomitable quest for freedom that shook the established political arrogance to rethink about a possible revocation of this draconian law. Under this rule, the troops can forgo warrants and use force. It even allows the army to shoot or arrest anyone on mere suspicion, a rule often criticized to be powering the army with complete impunity against human rights violation. The AFSPA was initially passed 1958 giving special powers to the army to be exercised in specially categorized “disturbed areas” in the North-Eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. The Special Powers Act was later extended to Jammu and Kashmir in 1990.

The act clearly says, “Fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law” against “assembly of five or more persons” or possession of deadly weapons.” It also permits the forces to arrest without a warrant and with the use of “necessary” force anyone who has committed certain offenses or is suspected of having done so. The army also can enter and search any premise in order to make such arrests.

While the government figures tell us that insurgency and fatalities due to terrorist attacks are weakening, it’s startling to know that the soldiers-to-civilians ratio still remains to be very high that there is a soldier for every ten civilians in Kashmir.

Irom Sharmila

However, the army has raised strong objections against the suggestions made by Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah for the withdrawal of the controversial special powers to the troops and it reportedly has the full backing from the defense ministry. The army would never agree on proposals on diluting the AFSPA until soldiers are assured of legal protection against being dragged to civilian courts.

Backed by the Home Ministry‘s suggestion that violence-free areas can be denotified as “disturbed areas,” the state government is all-set to revoke the Disturbed Ares Act from districts like Badgam, Samba, Srinagar, and Jammu.

The iron-lady of Manipur Irom Sharmila‘s fight seems to have gotten the attention of the nation as several hundreds are taking it to the streets to join ‘Save Sharmila Solidarity Campaign which calls for the revocation of the special armed force act. Her decade-long Gandhian way of protest has become a nucleus for collective protest against the draconian law.

The account of human rights violations under the shadow of this law is unimaginable as it can be better said to be “over 50 years of human rights violation” in Kashmir and in the North-Eastern states. While the army should be given its needed freedom and adequate protection in its fight against insurgency, the revocation of this draconian law would be the much-needed taste of freedom from the gunpoint.

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