By Haider Abbas
Satya Pal Malik, from Bhagpat, UP, the Ex. Governor of Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), Goa and Meghalaya, in chronology, is the ‘man-in-news’. His interviews, with DB Live on April 11, and then with The Wire on April 14, have typically stirred the hornets’ nest with his profound truism (sic) and media, mainstream and otherwise, is all agog with it. For any analyst the interviews just did not come as any surprise, considering his earlier barbs and knack for being a loose-cannon. He has been the Vice-President of BJP and has not as yet resigned from its primary membership. He has been the Governor of J&K (August 23, 2018-October 30, 2019) during the most turbulent time, when Pulwana attack and later the abrogation of Article 370 of Constitution of India, which gave Special Status to J&K had taken place.
In his interview on April 14, he has accused, the BJP government, that had the Pulwana Jawans provided with aircrafts, the February 14, 2019 attack, which killed 40 Jawans, was not to have happened. He was later asked by PM Narendra Modi and NSA Ajit Doval to (Chup Rahye)-keep his mouth shut. He ‘shut-up’ to help see BJP regain to second-term in office. His internal representations with PM or even ‘external blurts’, immediately after Pulwama that ‘we are responsible’ holds no credibility, as after all he finally pivoted a waypoint in the matrix for BJP to rise to power again by May 2019. His allegations that he was to have got Rs 300 Crores for sanctioning a Hydel project and for Reliance Insurance deal in J&K, and calling for persons like Haseeb Drabu, Ambani and Ram Madhav, involved in corruption as PM men, is a devalued gibe. No one can be tried for it!
He tried his level best to betray all signs of innocence, as during his interview, he said that he was never to have acceded to making J&K-a Union Territory on August 5, 2019. In fact as a standard practice, when a celebrity dies, a day or two before it is usually announced that the ‘patient is well’. He gave the same ‘sense to his agency’ that nothing of that sort would happen two-days-before what he calls now as the ultimate indignation to the people of J&K. But, despite that, he continued to hold office until October 30, 2019. He wants to become a ‘moral-master’, and confided that he was to have stepped-down as Union Home Minister (a satire to Rajnath Singh) if Pulwana had occurred during his regime. But, all the while he stuck to his seat as Governor! His claims are an utter-hollow.
Why was he is in such a kinetic-high to dissolve J&K Assembly (on November 23, 2018) even when one month was still to go for the President rule to end? He did this within three months of his assuming to office. He did this only to fine-tune his masters in New Delhi! What a joke, has come out, that on that fateful day, his Fax-Machine was out of order. He was incommunicado on phone. As has been alleged by Ex. J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti of PDP-BJP coalition government, who was ready to form the government with Farooq Abdullah and Congress with 56/87 members, after BJP had discarded the coalition dharma on June 19, 2018. What was there for him to care for? What else could have been expected from a BJP’s hit man who chose to listen to the echo system from New Delhi and signed the death warrant to democracy? Is this how a Lohiaite (sic) would nurse democracy? He thus chose to bulldoze the elected J&K Assembly on the occasion of EID-as a gift to Muslims. With his deft craftiness, he therefore, cleared for the decks for the upcoming August 5, 2019.
He is a camouflaged pseudo Lohiaite. On his own admission he claims that on one occasion PM Modi asked him what would happen if something is done (towards annulment of 370 ), he responded ‘Aap befikar rahein’ ( don’t worry at all), and then prided the sense of fatigue he had honed in Kashmir, in the last six-months of his workmanship! He chided his Chief Secretary that he was confident that after his six-months ‘work’ it will not let even a single dog-to-bark. After he killed 370! No wonder as a prelude to his spadework, he had already banned Jamaat-e-Islami in Kashmir on February 28, 2019. Isn’t it here the dog stands for the Muslims of Kashmir? Remember once PM Modi calling Muslims as puppies!
If Satya Pal Malik had any moral scruples, then, why ever did he take his assignments under the government which saw Lalit Modi, Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi ‘sneaking-out’ of India, after swindling billions? He should have rightly walked-out of his Bihar office, after four-SC judges, on January 12, 2018, had cried to save democracy over alleged corruption under the outgoing Chief Justice Deepak Mishra. He was then to have been the hero-of-the-day. Had he tried to save Constitution! Ironically, the coterie included CJI Ranjan Gogoi, who later decided the Babri Masjid title-suit in favour of the Hindu side, to become a benchmark inside Rajya Sabha.
Satya Pal Malik’s love for BJP spilled yet again, that time in a garb of revolt, when he announced, on November 7, 2021, that out of the courtesies of two-three big people in New Delhi, he had become a Governor, and if they find it ‘bad’ for his support for farmers, who were protesting for one year against PM Modi’s three draconian anti-farmers laws, he would step down, and within a fortnight PM Modi rolled them back. The agitation had seen around 700 deaths. UP was then seething with anger with high anti-incumbency against BJP. Had PM Modi not taken the U-turn, BJP was to have been decimated in UP-2022. But, the savior of Satya Pal Malik bailed-it-out.
This time, too, BJP is teetering on the edge, and he wants PM Modi to abandon Gautam Adani, to come clean to stomp in 2024. He might have fallen-ill with PM Modi at personal level as his security has been slashed to a ‘Sipahi’, but his has been a job well done. A similar job also needs a mention, of not so late, when the then Union Home Indirajit Gupta, a purported socialist, had sent the CM of Bihar Lalu Prasad Yadav go-home-packing. Today it needs three months and a SC intervention to lodge an FIR against a sitting BJP MP.
Yet, there is none to get an FIR lodged against the likes of Anurag Thakur, Parvesh Verma and Kapil Mishra , for their inflammatory statements towards the Delhi riots-2020.
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The writer is a former UP State Information Commissioner.
The article indeed is an eye opener for the reader and for an adept political observer.
Kudus to the Writer
Dr Kazmi