Round one has gone in favour of the Government of India. It has made the right beginning by breaking the impasse, with activist Sonam Wangchuk ending his 26-day fast. This came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's direct message that the issue of paper leaks would be addressed on the highest priority.
Besides, the government specially deputed Union Health Minister JP Nadda, one of the senior leaders of the BJP and a former party president, along with Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh, who reached out to Wangchuk and offered him fluids to break his fast.
The important thing to note is that Wangchuk did not insist on the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan before ending his fast. He trusted Prime Minister Modi's assurance that appropriate action would be taken. The Prime Minister's announcement that fast-track courts would be set up for time-bound trials in paper leak cases was also welcomed by the fasting activist.
The government has obviously taken the wind out of the opposition's sails and that of the Cockroach Janata Party. Opposition parties, particularly the Congress, have insisted that they will continue their protest until Pradhan is sacked, a demand that is quite unlikely to be met by the government. The Government of India is right in its stand that its minister should not be made to resign over an issue with which he has no direct link.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has gone out guns blazing against Pradhan describing him as the “criminal education minister”. This remark is certainly above board and uncalled for. Levelling such harsh allegation without any evidence is unbecoming of the Leader of the Opposition. Pradhan, according to Gandhi, may have failed as the education minister, but “failure” is no crime. Gandhi should have chosen his words carefully.
The government has adopted the right policy on the issue. While on the one hand it has kept its communication channels open, which yielded good results with Wangchuk breaking his fast, at the same time, it has conveyed a firm message that unruly and violent protests will be dealt with the way these deserve to be dealt with. Nobody has any right to hold the national capital to ransom. The government already had the bitter experiences of the Shaheen Bagh protests and the anti-farm law agitation where farmers laid siege to the Delhi border for one full year causing a lot of inconvenience to lakhs of people besides subjecting industry to heavy losses.
Dissent is fine in a democracy but only when it does not intrude upon the freedom and convenience of others. Just because you feel aggrieved and you want to stage a protest, you cannot block the highways, the important places, as important as the national capital and say that this is your democratic right.
As far as the demand for resignation of the Education Minister is concerned, it cannot be decided and dictated by the street protests. Then what for is the parliament and what for are the elections. Yogendra Yadav may believe that democracy will be run from the streets and not the parliament, but that will mean unleashing anarchy. Democracy can only be run from the parliament and not the streets.
Imagine if Pradhan is made to resign just because a group of people hold him guilty through a Kangaroo court. This will amount to “political lynching” and set a dangerous precedent. In a country as vast as India and with a population of 1.45 billion people, the ministers head huge ministries and departments with tens of thousands of people working there. Should Pradhan be made to resign for the paper leaked by someone who is not even distantly and remotely linked to the minister, it will set a precedent for other ministries also. Ministers cannot be held responsible for such incidents as long as their direct or indirect link is not established. It is like asking the Home Minister Amit Shah or the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to resign if a cop or a soldier does something wrong on the ground. That is unacceptable and this trend must be nipped in the bud.
Also read: Wangchuk ends 26-day-long hunger strike after govt assurance
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