Tarun Kapoor new adviser to PM Modi

Decisions on a death-row convict’s fate cannot be a mere “populist” move that would be forgotten the next day, the Supreme Court said on Monday while setting a deadline of two months for the Union government to take a final call on mercy plea of Balwant Singh Rajoana, an assassin of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh. A bench headed by Justice Uday Umesh Lalit also said that the pendency of appeals of other co-convicts in the apex court in the matter would not come in the way of authorities in deciding Rajoana’s plea. Rajoana, a former Punjab Police constable, was convicted for his involvement in an explosion outside Punjab civil secretariat that killed Beant Singh and 16 others on August 31, 1995. A special court had in July 2007 awarded the death sentence to him in the case. His death penalty was upheld by Punjab and Haryana high court in October 2010.

In a mega bureaucratic reshuffle, the Centre has appointed former petroleum secretary Tarun Kapoor as the current adviser to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with the transfer of 17 other IAS officers. “The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved appointment of Kapoor, as advisor to the Prime Minister, in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), in the rank and scale of Secretary to Government of India, initially for a period of two years from the date of joining,” reads the order issued by the personnel ministry. Kapoor is an IAS officer of the 1987 Himachal Pradesh cadre and was a secretary of the petroleum and natural gas ministry till November 30, 2021. The ministry has also appointed senior bureaucrats Atish Chandra and Hari Ranjan Rao as additional secretaries in the PMO.

The Jahangirpuri demolitions represent a double-engine assault on the rule of law. The first assault is the failure to adhere to the principles of natural justice – basic to any free and fair justice system and the second is the failure to give due respect to the injunction issued by the Supreme Court (SC), writes Madan Lokur, a former judge of the SC. On both counts, double-engine action should be taken by the SC to restore the status quo ante. First, the court should order payment of ad hoc compensation to those whose property, moveable or immovable, was demolished due to excesses by the State. Second, the court must hold all concerned officials accountable in real terms and not merely through passing strictures or expressing displeasure. The demolition of one’s home or means of livelihood is equivalent to civil death. The officials must be held accountable, personally and institutionally for brazen defiance of the rule of law, he writes.