Girl’s kidnapping adds to Hindu concerns
Hindu organisations claim there has been an increase in crimes against the community.
The Haryana government has made a fresh attempt at mollifying the state’s agitating guest teachers by offering them extra points in appointments. But the protesters say they will settle for nothing less than regularisation of jobs for all the over 15,000 guest teachers. The state’s Council of Ministers met this week on the issue and thought they had found a solution when they devised a new formula for appointments. “The Cabinet has given an in-principle approval to the fresh criteria for recruitment of primary teachers, trained graduate teachers (TGTs) and post graduate teachers (PGTs),” said the state spokesperson after the Cabinet meet. The new method is that out of a total of 100 marks, 80% will be for a written test that everyone must take. The interview will be worth 12%, and 8% will be reserved for experience, something that could help guest teachers. A year’s experience will fetch them 1%, so a guest teacher who has put in eight years in service will get 8% extra for his experience. This plan has been rejected by the association of guest teachers. The problem the BJP government is faced with is that during the run-up to the Assembly elections last year, party leaders had promised to regularise these teachers’ jobs. In accordance with court orders, their services were to be terminated by the government. The High Court of Punjab and Haryana, and then the Supreme Court have ruled out any extension in their tenures. The apex court did, however, grant them temporary relief, saying that they can continue until replacements are appointed. While the teachers took to the streets with elections around the corner, they got assurance from the BJP. BJP leaders such as Ram Bilas Sharma promised that all of the teachers will be given regular appointments if the party came to power. Now that it is in power, the guest teachers trying to hold the leaders to their word. However, the government has to carry out the court orders and so dispensed with the services of 3,700 teachers. This only aggravated the situation and the teachers intensified their agitation.
Aspirants and candidates who appeared in the Delhi Judicial Services (DJS) 2014 exams, in which only 15 out of the 659 candidates who qualified for the mains were selected for interviews, have started an online campaign to scrap the current recruitment process. The recent kidnapping of a minor girl in West Bengal has created ripples among Hindu organisations, which see it a trend of increasing crimes against Hindus in the recent years in the state.
According to the claims of Tapan Kumar Ghosh, who heads Hindu Samhati, as many as 34 large-scale incidents of violence have taken place in the last eight years that had communal overtones. He said the situation was bad under the CPM, but has become worse under the Trinamool Congress, mainly because of the administration’s insensitivity.
In the most recent incident, Tuktuki Mandal, a Class X student and daughter of labourer Subhash Mandal living in Magrahat, in South 24 district, was allegedly kidnapped by a local named Babusona Gazi, and his gang at around midnight on 4 May, according to a complaint lodged by her father, who says he is being pressurised to drop the names of the accused from the FIR.
The miscreants also ran- sacked their small house as a warning before she was dragged away, Subhash Mandal alleged in a letter to the chief secretary. According to the complaint, she was repeatedly raped in captivity. A copy of the letter has also been sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Ghosh said that in the 34 cases he mentioned, Hindu families were attacked by members of a particular community whose population has grown in the last few years, mainly because of large scale illegal immigration from Bangladesh.
“Out of 650 blocks in the state, there are about 100 where Hindus have become less than 50%. This decline is a matter of serious concern,” Ghosh said.
Hindu Samhati lists several such incidents: In January, shops belonging to Hindus were looted and burnt in Usthi, South 24 Parganas district. There have been at least four communal clashes at Burdwan, Samudragarh, Panchagram and Baduria in the last 15 days. Last year, a minor girl was gang raped in Raghunathganj under Murshidabad district. There was also an attack on villagers of Rampur Halder Gheri for celebrating after the swearing in of Prime Minister Modi. At least 26 people were injured in the incident.
Vishwa Hindu Parisha (VHP) spokesperson Vinod Bansal said his organisation is aware of the situation and is in constant touch with the government in this regard. “These have communal connotations which can create unrest if the Mamata Banerjee government fails to act in time. However, the state government does not appear to be sensitive to it,” he said. The Central government is planning to construct more flats in the national capital to accommodate Members of Parliament, to avoid their staying in luxury hotels that cost crores of rupees to the public exchequer.
“We are planning to build three more blocks — Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati — to house MPs. We are also exploring the option of building apartments with 100 rooms behind Western Court,” said Chairman of the House Committee of Lok Sabha, Arjun Ram Meghwal, At present, most LS members live in the MP flats on North Avenue and South Avenue, as well as in Narmada and Kaveri blocks on B.D. Marg near Mandi House. Meghwal said that due to a lack of accommodation, new MPs are often housed in Hotel Ashoka. There have been cases when the House Committee allots houses or flats for them, but since they are not prepared in time by the Urban Development Ministry, the MPs have to be housed in hotels.
Sources said that in a recent meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Accommodation, Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu pushed for rule changes, questioning the need for the government to pay for MPs’ hotel stays when Parliament was not in session and when the MPs were not in the Capital.
The reply to an RTI query filed by S.C. Agarwal, shows the government spent Rs 24 crore on transit stay of LS members in the last year. As of April, about 35 MPs had been allotted houses but have not moved in due to renovation work. There were also disputes as some MPs had requested bigger houses. The reply states that the rent paid for transit stay of MPs in 2014 was Rs 2.96 crore, and Rs 21.02 crore so far in 2015.
“Earlier experience reveals a virtual battle between Union Ministry of Urban Development, the LS Secretariat and the public-sector ITDC for years for disputed bills of ITDC hotels where the Lok Sabha members continued enjoying five-star rooms even after regular government accommodations were provided. The government should ensure that hotel bills of all MPs who have overstayed should be deducted from their salaries and allowances to avoid such conflicts in future,” RTI activist Agarwal said.
The ITDC had earlier raised the issue of the high outstanding amounts, which had become too high. The government is in the process of forming rules to provide MPs accommodation only during the Parliamentary session and for Parliamentary committee meetings.