ബദരീനാഥ് ക്ഷേത്ര പരിസരത്ത് സൈന്യം സംഘടിപ്പിച്ച 'ഭജൻ ജാമിംഗ്' പരിപാടി വലിയ വിവാദമായി. ക്ഷേത്രത്തിന്റെ പവിത്രതയ്ക്ക് നിരക്കാത്തതാണെന്ന് ആരോപിച്ച് മുരളീമനോഹർ ജോഷിയടക്കമുള്ളവർ രംഗത്തെത്തി. ജില്ലാ ഭരണകൂടവും സർക്കാരും പരസ്പരം പഴിചാരുന്നതിനിടെ, പരിപാടി 'ഓപ്പറേഷൻ സദ്ഭാവന'യുടെ ഭാഗമാണെന്ന് സൈന്യം വിശദീകരിക്കുന്നു. സഞ്ജീവ് ചതുർവേദി കേസും ചർച്ചയാകുന്നു.
Should the Indian Army have sponsored a 'bhajan jamming' session at Badrinath? Neither local priests nor BJP veterans like Murli Manohar Joshi seemed pleased about the two-day 'cultural festival' (19-20 September). Was it kosher to have loud music, stage lighting and dancers gyrating so close to one of Hinduism's holiest shrines? The silent, meditative atmosphere of Badrinath, where apparently even conch shells are not allowed to be blown, should not, critics said, have been sullied thus.
At first, the district administration tried to brush it under the carpet by issuing show cause notices to local officials. When it was pointed out that both Chamoli district magistrate Gaurav Kumar and chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami were involved, they quickly passed the buck.
Colonel Shantanu, commanding officer of Garhwal Scouts, was ticked off by Kumar, in writing: 'Such a mass gathering and the use of high-frequency sound at the sacred shrine is contrary to the sacred shrine's dignity and adversely impacts the daily worship rituals held at Shri Badrinath Dham. Such an event at the sacred shrine has caused displeasure amongst religious scholars and negatively impacts the image of the local administration... Please ensure that such a situation does not recur in the near future'.
In its defence, the Army stated that the festival was part of its civic outreach under 'Operation Sadbhavna', and was conducted in collaboration with the district administration and the tourism department. With the PM himself bhajan clubbing in Delhi recently, why are people surprised that the CM presided over this event?
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. The curious case of Sanjeev Chaturvedi
Why has judge after judge recused from cases involving Indian Forest Service officer Sanjeev Chaturvedi, whistleblower and Magsaysay awardee?
.Murli Manohar Joshi criticises 'concerts, DJ events' at Badrinath. If the grapevine in Dehradun is to be believed, one reason is the involvement of the PMO, the cabinet appointment committee headed by the prime minister, former health minister J.P. Nadda, Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) chairmen, former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Hooda, three former government secretaries, and CBI and IB officials against whom Chaturvedi filed contempt proceedings.
Over the last thirteen years, the recusals have come from two Supreme Court judges, four Uttarakhand HC judges, nine CAT judges (including a former CAT chairperson) and two district judges.
The first judge to recuse himself without giving any reason was Supreme Court judge Ranjan Gogoi in 2013. Justice Rajveer Singh Verma, a judicial member of the CAT Delhi bench, has just become the 17th.
The first case Chaturvedi filed was in 2013. As part of the Haryana cadre, he sought a CBI probe into irregularities which implicated senior government functionaries. Since then, he has initiated 200 corruption-related inquiries.
One of these was an exposé of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, where Chaturvedi was chief vigilance officer. Queries under the RTI Act revealed that on 23 August 2014, Prime Minister Modi had called then health minister Harsh Vardhan to discuss Chaturvedi's removal. Chaturvedi sent an exhaustive note to Modi with details of all the instances of corruption he had uncovered. No action followed. Chaturvedi was served a transfer notice.
Transferred to the Uttarakhand cadre, he promptly exposed the Munsiyari ecotourism scam, where 10 VIP huts and a hostel were illegally built inside the ecologically fragile Khaliya Reserve Forest without permission. In the Mussoorie and Raipur forest range -- both highly coveted by real estate developers -- 7,375 out of 12,321 forest boundary pillars had vanished, even as divisional forest officers' assets burgeoned.
.A state or real estate?. Will this David defeat Golilath? Not until the judges stop recusing themselves.
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No learning curve
Have we forgotten the 2013 Kedarnath flash floods that destroyed several hydropower projects and led to losses worth several hundred crores? What about 26 August, when Nepal's flash floods ended up destroying 12 hydropower projects on the Trishul river?
Despite being fully aware of the catastrophic impact of climate change against a background of rampant 'development' in the Himalaya, and despite warnings from every conceivable scientific quarter, the Centre is going ahead with a hydropower project in Kishau on the Uttarakhand-Himachal border.
The Centre claims the dam on the Tons, a tributary of the Yamuna which flows along the border of both these states, will help augment Delhi's water supply with an additional 60 MGD by 2033-34.
First proposed 86 years ago, the ecology of the region has drastically changed. Building a 232 m high gravity dam in a seismically active area is asking for trouble. Over 5,000 people from 20 villages will be displaced and several thousand acres of prime agricultural land destroyed. Villagers are on the warpath with the demand that the dam's height be lowered, and the site relocated from the fertile Kwanua region
Munna Rana, who heads the Kishau Dam Affected Protection Committee said, "We have met Dhami and informed him that the place where the dam is coming up is not hard rock. Already, the land has caved in in many places. Sadly, the government refused to heed our warnings."
.Let this warning not go in vain. The El Niño effect -- on power supply
Across the state, water levels have dipped due to El Niño. Reduced river flows have brought power generation (during peak hours) down from 1094 MW last year to 912 MW this year, says P.C. Dhyani, managing director of Uttarakhand Power Corporation Ltd (UPCL). The state requires 53 million units but is presently able to supply only 48 million. Supply from the central unit has also been affected because the Tehri Garhwal hydro project is shut due to technical problems.
Heavy industries are facing outages of over 15 hours. As generators ramp up production to offset weak hydro generation and evening drop-off in solar output, thermal power plants are also functioning below par, given that coal inventories are rapidly being exhausted. The result is that large swathes of the state are plunged in darkness, running on less than three hours of electricity a day.
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. Auto-generated deletions?
Many of the state's 95,000 voters marked 'ineligible' under the SIR were seen running from pillar to post, trying to muster the required documents so that their names could be included in the final electoral list (released on 3 October).
Around 1.73 lakh Form 7 applications were received during the SIR process, with more than 95,000 -- that's over half of them -- declared 'ineligible'.
State CEO B.V.R.C. Purshottam said the draft roll had been auto-generated after assistant electoral registration officers (AERO) and electoral registration officers (ERO) had marked voters ineligible. Uttarakhand Congress in-charge Kumari Selja asked how Form 7 applications could be auto-generated when 42,030 Form 7 applications were tied to AEROs and another 22,443 to EROs.
The CEO's office clarified that being declared 'ineligible' did not permanently shut the door on inclusion. All they had to do was submit Form 6 with requisite documents, on time. Right.
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