Extra-judicial killing
The death of gangster Vikas Dubey at the hands of the Uttar Pradesh police is yet another addition to the alarmingly high number of extra-judicial killings over the last few months.
The onus is on the State governments and the judiciary to nip this trend in the bud, lest we end up having police forces that see it fit to bypass judicial procedure as and when they please. While there is no doubt that those engaging in crime must be brought to justice, there must be strict adherence to procedure. It is the criminal acts of those responsible for maintaining law and order that have pushed the U.S. into chaos with large and continuous protests even amidst the pandemic. The world’s largest democracy must learn from the mistakes of the oldest democracy.
Kannan K.,
Chalakudy, Kerala
The elimination of notorious gangster Vikas Dubey in a shoot-out belongs to the realm of ‘believe it or not’. It is a story any person with minimal common sense will find it difficult to believe. The prime outcome of his elimination is that the large number of criminal cases against Dubey will be closed, bringing relief to the officials and politicians who were hand in glove with him.
K.R. Jayaprakash Rao
Mysuru
Utilisation of funds
While responding to a writ petition in the Supreme Court, the Central government rejected outright the plea to utilise the funds, received as voluntary donations by PM CARES, for National Disaster Response Fund to fight the pandemic. It has been further stated that PM CARES is governed by separate provision. Nobody knows what that ‘separate provision’ is. (Inside page, “PM CARES is separate from NDRF: govt.,” July 10). The funds received as voluntary donations for PM CARES will not attract any violation of Acts like those connected with money laundering, income tax, and foreign contributions. But when it comes to NGOs linked to the Congress Party, all these acts will come into play. The government is raising so many questions on the violations of legal provisions by NGOs linked to the Congress. But ironically, it has not spelt anything about how the PM CARES fund is spent and for what purpose, whether it is being audited. What applies to NGOs connected to the Congress must apply to PM CARES also.
D. Sethuraman,
Chennai
Crime and winnability
This bears reference to the article “Owning up to the criminalisation of politics” (Editorial page, July 10). While all political parties have been waxing eloquent on the need to rid politics of criminals, they have no qualms about offering tickets to those whose antecedents leave a lot to be desired. In most cases it is the winnability factor that remains paramount and all other considerations are cast aside with impunity. The recent decree of the Supreme Court wherein political parties were saddled with the responsibility of furnishing the reasons for selecting candidates with criminal records and also explain why they could not find candidates with clean records should shift the onus on to the parties.
C.V. Aravind,
Bengaluru
By voting for a tainted candidate, the voter himself or herself gets tainted. In the land of Gandhiji, by what measure of law do people with criminal backgrounds contest in elections with a view to access governance of law-abiding citizens? It is a remarkable judgment from the Supreme Court that the ‘sinned-but-winnable’ tag of a deviant candidate will no longer hold water. That a political party has to be more vigilant on the candidature as it now has to account for all the misdeeds of its candidate assumes greater relevance on the matter. The court has prudently held that mere fortunes for success will have no claims for a better candidature of one contestant to another. The country needs to be governed by a honest section of people rather than by the seemingly capable but unethical ones.
Sanath Kumar T.S.
Thrissur, Kerala
Erasing concepts from syllabus
The Central Board of Secondary Education’s decision to cut syllabus for Class IX-XII cannot be acceptable on any academic grounds. In fact, the government is trying to divert the attention of students away from the basic concepts of India’s constitutional structure such as democratic rights, federalism, citizenship, gender, religion, nationalism and secularism. The study of such themes advances the students’ understanding of justice, equity and the foundation of our Constitution which is the need of the hour. The deletion is thus erroneous and must be rescinded.
S.K. Khosla,
Chandigarh
Scattered across
There is no doubt that the depiction of facts using modern visualisation techniques, like scatterplots and other kinds of graphical tools, enriches the readers’ understanding of the topic, and of course, raises journalistic standards. I suppose data journalists are probably the only group of journalists who are immune to subjectivity, as they deal only with hard facts. ‘Data Point’ evidently stands out and offers a quick reprieve from all other text-dominant sections in the newspaper. When it comes to insights derived from the visualised data, it also calls for the readers to maintain a sharper presence of mind, which is totally fine. I hope the newspaper retains this section, without change, forever.
Bejoy Sebastian,
Kochi
Holding’s speech
Former West Indian pace legend Michael Holding deserves huge appreciation for his powerful and spine-tingling speech on racism, which overshadowed the rain-marred Day 1 of the first Test between England and West Indies at Southampton that saw resumption of cricket after a four-month hiatus in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. (“Pace legend Holding delivers stirring message against racism,” Sport/Life, July 9). It was also touching that before the start of the game, players from both sides “took a knee” for the Black Lives Matter campaign. Systemic racism exists across the world and cricket is not immune to the scourge as it commits itself to bring changes amid the BLM Foundation, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy. Naturally therefore, Holdings speech against racism gains a lot of significance.
R. Sivakumar,
Chennai
