If there is anything noteworthy in the white paper submitted by the CM in the State assembly it is the government’s own admission that, despite repeated warnings from the Central agencies about the impending bomb blasts in Kovai, adequate action was not taken to prevent the tragedy.
Such warnings were not of a general nature but were extremely specific to the exact dates on which the Al – Umma had decided to bombard the city. Now you and I and the man on the street would be tempted to ask where the authorities had gone to graze during the period preceding the fateful day, after they received this information.
Well, the very rational CM has a fantastic answer to this. The white paper says that these massages were promptly despatched to the CoP of Kovai, but he had failed to take action. The CoP for his dereliction of duty, has been promptly transferred, which is supposed to be the follow up action. An open and shut case, to put it simply.
Never has there been such a blatant attempt to bury a pumpkin in a bowl of halfboiled rice as this sham of a white paper. First, there is nothing new in the document other than what has been generally suspected and written in the media over the last few months, even preceding the bomb blasts in Kovai.
The fact that Muslim terrorists were on the prowl in Kovai, looking for plum targets, was known to all and sundry and all it needed was just elementary common sense, much less intelligence tip offs. Yet these were also available aplenty and if still the government failed to wake up to the devious designs of the infidels, it only betrays a lack of will on the part of the government to act against these known history sheeters.
Of course we all know the reason for the softness as a DMK government which believes in secularism is not expected to take note of violent section of the minority even if they happen to stock explosives and openly promise to use them for ‘selfdefence’. Also, the secular DMK government does not want to act if a militant group overtly distributes knives to its members, once again only to defend themselves.
So what if intelligence agencies forewarn, such things could always be dealt with, after the elections when minority compulsions are not at a peak as during election time, goes the logic. And even if the bombs go off on the appointed day, the ghosts of the dead could always be assuaged by transferring a careless CoP and there ends the government’s duty, the white paper seems to aver.
Secondly, the self–indictment that becomes evident from the white paper is striking. Unless there has been a clandestine shuffle in the portfolios, it is our understanding that the CM still heads the police department. Any information of such ramifications should have certainly been brought to the attention of the CM himself, and so there is no reason to believe otherwise.
Of course, if the CM claims that he was ignorant of such intelligence warnings, rightaway he loses the moral authority to rule, but such communication gap has obviously not taken place, and the CM was certainly aware of the extremists’ machinations.
This is because, though the white paper does not say who passed on the intelligence warnings to the CoP, it could be reasonably assumed that the CM’s Secretariat should have done it. Now the moot question is, if the CoP is guilty of taking the warnings lightly, is not the CM and his advisors that include the very eminent, permanent Chief Secretary also guilty of a higher level of negligence?
Are we believe that in a plot of such magnitude and with such catastrophic proportions and that too, when the information was very much in the possession of the highest political authority of the State, the CM was naive enough to think that all it needed was just a mild caution to the Kovai CoP?
Can the CM be allowed to just wash his hands off the guilt by merely saying that the CoP was told and there ended his duty, as if it was just a pick pocket crime that was in the offing? Would the CM himself have accepted this argument had there been a separate Minister in charge of the police portfolio?
To be sure, as we have been repeatedly crying ourselves hoarse in these columns, there has been a conspiracy of silence at the highest political level on the entire issue of Muslim fundamentalism for considerations of short term electoral gains and the white paper has only sought to pass the buck to the Kovai police by seeking to gloss over the political inaction.
It is not that we think the police had been unfairly made scapegoats for there could be no defending them, white paper or no white paper, as they were nearer to reality and were expected to know things firsthand. It is just that if the police are guilty of culpable negligence, the ‘police minister’ had sought to play all the rationalism that he is so proud of himself to gauge the intensity of the threat and initiate steps on a war footing to prevent the carnage.
Instead if the ‘police minister’, unabashedly and helplessly throws up his hands, then it is time the ‘Chief minister’ gives the former a thorough dressing down. Meaning, it is time Karunanidhi talks to his own conscience and does some soul searching.
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