The citizens’ right to know forms part of the Constitution’s basic structure which includes judicial independence, secularism, socialism, sovereignty and democracy apart from the right to secure social, economic and political justice declared in the preamble. But today, our free flow of information about Manipur, Adani, Ambani or the Waqf properties has been whittled down by the state.
This is why the delay of over 18 months to send 5,000 troops to Manipur to quell the genocide there, ignited the flames which broke out in May 2023 that left over 250 tribals dead and an untold number missing. Article 356 of the Constitution allows the President to impose central rule without waiting for the Governor’s report if satisfied there has been a breakdown of the Constitutional machinery.
The Constituent Assembly Debates record B.R. Ambedkar as having declared : “ ………where we were considering the general principles of the Constitution, the Constitution should provide some machinery for the breakdown of the Constitution ………We must give liberty to the President to act even when there is no report by the Governor and when the President is aware of certain facts on which he ought to act in fulfillment of his duty.”
Manipur is very different from Mizoram and Nagaland which was torn apart by insurgency demanding secession from India several decades ago. Terrorists routinely slaughter innocent people in Jammu and Kashmir but Manipur presents a different scenario. The trigger for the ongoing genocide was a high court judgment allowing land rights to the Meitis who were dwelling in the plains. The judge was transferred after the outbreak of violence.
The Army would have quelled the genocide in a single day if they had been sent to Manipur with a clear mandate to shoot-at-sight arsonists. That 5,000 troops were sent in November 2024 after the rapine loot of properties, places of worship, and human beings escalated, speaks for the lack of seriousness from the government to stymie the genocide.
The Supreme Court merely opined in a Public Interest Litigation filed before it on May 8, 2023: “ The Solicitor General states that as a consequence of the measures which have been adopted, no violence has been reported in the state during the course of the previous two days and the situation is gradually returning to normalcy.” However, with a woman who was raped and paraded naked through the streets, the situation was always abnormal. Now, another PIL has been filed.
In an unrelated incident, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankar rejected 18 notices in Parliament to suspend scheduled business and take up issues of the Adani Group’s indictment (apart from seven others) for alleged bribery in public procurement processes and grave regulatory lapses in ensuring fair competition. These 18 notices demanded setting up of a Joint Parliamentary Committee to investigate the alleged misconduct including bribery, financial irregularities of the Adani group in connivance with government officials whom the Adan group had allegedly bribed, according to media reports.
By rejecting these notices, the Opposition’s bid to make the Adani group accountable in India after being charged by the U.S. department of justice with being part of an alleged scheme to pay USD 265 million (Rs 1750 crore) in bribes to government officials to win contracts for supply of solar electricity that would yield USD 2 billion profit over a 20-year-period has been thwarted. The Adani group has denied all allegations.
Manipur and the Adani imbroglios taken together force us to accept the government is denying us vital information to make us live in an imaginary utopian world. This annihilates the basic structure of the Constitution which, according to Jagdeep Dhankar, being a senior advocate apart from the Vice President of India, claimed the judiciary had no jurisdiction to conceptualize because it usurped the power of Parliament.
Now we come to the third aspect which is the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2024, piloted in the Lok Sabha on August 8, 2024 to evaluate whether it harms the cause of one-nation, one-law. A waqf is different from a trust because the founder of the waqf cannot take any benefit for himself and unlike a private charitable trust, a waqf is permanent, irrevocable and inalienable.
It is Allah (God) who owns all waqf properties and not the 32 Waqf Boards in different states which only administers these private properties. The total area of Hindu religious institutions in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana comprise 47,800 acres, 465,000 acres and 87,235 acres with an additional 7123 acres with the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthan adding to a mind-boggling area of 10,37,358 acres in these three states alone which is easily more than the private land donated by pious Muslims to the Waqf Boards. That the Waqf properties are the third largest land owners after the railways and the port trusts is merely propaganda.
If we study the amendments, we see that Section 3A of the amended Bill mandates that only a lawful owner can create a Waqf which is exactly what Islam mandates. Section 3 (r) (iv) inserted the words “maintenance of widows, divorced women and orphans” which is good but these purposes were directly covered by the expression “welfare” and other such purposes recognized by Muslim law.
These waqf properties ensured that orphans were born in waqf houses, slept in waqf cradles, ate and drank from waqf properties, were taught in madrasas run by the waqf boards, and were buried in waqf graves. The government’s amendments must ensure there is no mismanagement of waqf properties because like Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar, who have been accused of bribery, poor qazis (priests) were amenable to bribes during Akbar’s regime. It is to curb corruption in administering these Waqf properties that these amendments were proposed.
But with Manipur still on the boil, the Adani Group on the roil and these amendments to the Waqf law being opposed by some sons of the soil, can the government satisfy the minorities in Manipur and elsewhere that they won’t be treated as second-class citizens?
Olav Albuquerque holds a Ph.D in law and is a senior journalist-cum-advocate of the Bombay high court.
