India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI—Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, India’s leading socio-religious organisation, has expressed serious concern over anti-Muslim violence in different parts of the country during processions taken out to mark the Ram Navami celebrations in the last week of March.
Addressing media persons at the JIH headquarters here on Thursday, JIH vice-president Prof. Mohammad Salim Engineer said, “Any violence that is conducted under the guise of a religious procession is highly disturbing.”
He appealed to religious leaders to come out openly against this trend and urge their followers to ensure religious activities were not hijacked by anti-social elements.
Prof Salim felt that “the Ram Navami violence was not spontaneous but pre-planned.”
The JIH leader appealed to the police to ensure that the songs played out during the processions were not provocative to any religion.
He advised the police to not allow such processions to pass through communally-sensitive areas. He wondered why the religious processions must select a path and pass in front of other religious places.
JIH Welcomes SC verdict on MediaOne
He also welcomed the verdict by the Supreme Court of India to set aside the Centre’s order for refusing to grant renewal of the broadcasting license to the Malayalam news channel – Media One.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had refused to give a license due to the denial of security clearance by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Jamaat agreed with the observations of the apex court that “The state is using national security as a tool to deny citizens remedies that are provided under the law. This is not compatible with the rule of law.”
MHA had denied the security clearance claiming that the channel was airing anti-establishment content. But the SC order rejected the MHA’s arguments saying that “the critical views of the channel about policies of the government cannot be termed anti-establishment. The use of such terminology in itself represents an expectation that the press must support the establishment.” The apex court said that denying security clearance on the basis of such arguments would adversely affect the freedom of press in the country.
Prof. Salim hoped that the government would refrain from curbing the freedom of the press and welcome constructive criticism of its policies and decisions. This will strengthen democracy and improve our ranking in the Press Freedom Index.
Rajasthan High Court Verdict on Jaipur Blasts:Justice delayed is justice denied
While welcoming the judgment of the Rajasthan High Court acquittal four youths who had been awarded death sentence in the 2008 Jaipur bomb blast case by a trial court, the JIH leader, however, said that the justice came too late and the innocent youths wasted 15 years of their precious life in jail for a crime they had not committed.
The JIH demanded a re-investigation of the case, identifying and punishing the real culprits to ensure that the families of the victims who were killed and injured in the blast got justice.
Demands transparency in funding of political parties
JIH demanded legislation to curb the growing power of money in politics and introduce transparency in the funding of political parties.
Referring to a recent report by the Association for Democratic Reforms, Prof. Salim said that more than 66 percent of the total income of seven national parties in 2021-22 came from unknown sources like electoral bonds. Income through electoral bonds accounted for a whopping 83 percent of the income of the political parties.
According to an RTI reply, political parties collected a total sum of Rs. 10,791 crores through the electoral bonds scheme since 2018.
This disproportionate share of money in electoral politics and that too in a non-transparent manner is not healthy for our democracy.
Govt must clean on Adani-Hindenburg episode
Prof. Salim also expressed concern over the reluctance of the government to discuss the Adani-Hindenburg report in Parliament and form a Joint Parliamentary Committee to probe the Adani affair.
The Hindenburg report alleged that the Adani group had inflated its profits and understated its debt through stock manipulation and unconventional accounting practices.
The report directly also hinted at the failure of the regulatory agencies in curbing manipulation by the Adani group..
The Adani episode damaged the reputation of our regulatory bodies and our auditors.
The JIH leader demanded that the government must come clean over any allegations against the failure of RBI, SEBI, and other regulatory bodies in preventing such a massive overpricing of stock evaluation of nearly 80 billion dollars.
“If there was no wrongdoing and everything was fair, the government should not shy away from a discussion and constitute an inquiry,” Prof Salim suggested.
