Introduction

Of late India's thirteenth Presisident Pranab Mukherjee  elected on 22 July ,2012  took oath on 25th July 2012 after retirement of first woman President Prativa Devi Singh Patil. Who doesnot have a dream to abide in in the Rashtrapati Bhawan (President's Abode)  with the halt palaces like Chharabra,Shimla or Rashtrapati Nilayam in Hyderabad as retreats ?

Do you know that this dreamland can be kept away from him if removed. This may be unbelievable but is true  that President of India can resign or be removed from his post in following curcumstances in ccordace with procedure explained hereafter.

Removal of President

We are all aware that the term of President is five years from the time of his taking oath. He will resume his duties until new President is elected according to Article No 56.

There are three reasons that may end the term before completing  five years. He may resign the post. Death may cause an end to his tenure. Third is the Impeachment. In Article No 61 , the term Impeachment is explained.  The resolution for impeachment  may be moved in  either Loksabha or Rajyasabha .This resolution must be notified before the date on which the President will be given notice by one fourth of the members of House. It must be approved by the two-third majority of the members  present and voting  to pass it over to the other House  who will act as investigating team .After interrogation  is over on  the allegarions of  violation of  Constitutional provisions (Article 61),this House will go through process of casting votes on the resolution. .During this process ,the President gets opportunity to present his defence against the resolution impaching him. He may defend himself by sending representative. No President of India has faced Impeavchmenmt so far. So,this provision has never been used.

Accession

If the post of the President of India is vacanted on his  death, resignation  or impeachment, the vice President will assime charge of  President until a new President is elected.

The Chief-Justice ,or in his absence ,the senior most Judge of the Supreme Court of India  takes the charge of  President till election of President or Vice President whichever is earlie. The provision for the vacancy due to the death of both the President and the Vice-President  was not there in the Indian Constitution. This was included in 1969.

What is this BAND and who is benefited?
Thursday the May31saw, another big band allover the country called by opposition against the present government to show their protest related to price rise of petrol in particular and inflation in general. However, the million-dollar question that comes to mind immediately is weather we achieve any positive results out of such Bands or strikes which make the life of public so difficult that this is simply beyond words to describe these acts. What I feel is that the bands mainly go against the public, which they claim to benefit the cause of poor. That poor is the one most hit by such strikes in the end, this band deprives him of his wages for the day. The most benefited party is the political groups that organizes such strikes and behave so shamelessly and against the rules on the roads. These strikes should not take place in the public interests in future and banned immediately by the appropriate authorities. This is not the proper way to protest and show your disagreement. The BAND should be banned with immediate effect.

Life of public is paralyzed
The strike organized by non-UPA parties more or less had its impact almost in every part of India including states where UPA lead governments are in power although not as seriously. In most parts of the country, activist stopped trains in different parts of the country, buses destroyed and private vehicles stopped from plying on the roads. Almost everywhere, the agitators tried to keep the markets and other institutes closed. Taxi and auto services were parts of strike; in fact, they stopped every public utility services including banking, government related and educational to make their agitation look like complete success. They succeeded in their mission up to some extent but at the cost of poor people, who suffered most.

These are use less for common people.

Fact is only poor faces the impact
That is true, these agitations said to be carried out for the welfare of poor people but the bitter fact is that these poor are the main victims of such agitations. Another truth is that the petrol users for whom the agitation was proposed were least effected and the diesel and CNG users were most effected people because petrol users were cooling their heels sitting back home while taxi, bus and auto run by diesel and CNG were off the road for wrong reasons.

Only laborers and poor face the music
This does not make much of a difference to people who can afford to stay back home for the duration of agitation and enjoy it like a holiday but the poor who has to his bread every day has to make compromise with his stomach for the day. Another fact is that nothing stops for the influential ones even during agitations and while every thing is closed as it appeared practically. But was it closed for most of the resourceful people? Perhaps not, because internet makes them enable to make transactions online and keep working online.

BAND has no more impact
Apart from gaining advantage, weight and showing others their political importance there is nothing much, they gain out of these undisciplined acts. The organizers of these strikes must admit it that they do it for their own gain, which carries very little advantage for public who they claim to be their main aim of such BANDS. People with online facilities were busy purchasing shares, tickets for traveling, dealing with customers, addressing their clients, dealing with their customers and chatting and talking with friends online. So the strike had no impact on them but the worst effected was the poor of this country.

Look at the figures
RS-15000, 00000000- yes, this is the official figure we have lost due to that agitation that took place on May31, I shall not dilute the impact by writing this figure in billions because it would not look as big then. There is much more in this, which we shall never be able to account for. How would you calculate the billions of hours of manpower that has been wasted, how would you calculate the revenue that was never generated due to closure of business and how would you calculate the losses incurred due to services cancelled.

Do you know?
There were more than fifteen thousands business organizations who participated in this strike and more than five hundred million business establishments allover the country kept their shutters down. Now this is up to you calculate direct and indirect taxes those could be generated during the day. True, some of them would be carried forwarded and shall be account for but the losses incurred due to loss of work force is not retraceable. The loss of destroyed vehicles would never be recovered; the losses incurred due to sabotage to public property would never be recovered. Now the question is what happened to the law that enabled government to recover the losses from the erring parties. Would they dare to take such a step?

What did you get at the end of the day?
They started with a slogan that nothing lesser than a complete rollback would be acceptable as far as the cost of petrol was concerned and the only point of agitation initially but later the point of inflation was added in the agenda to make it look it more impressive. There was an emergency meeting of oil companies to discuss and find out a solution and they though a deduction of rupees 1.60 would be appropriate to give relief to consumers but they also reached to the conclusion that there is a need to hike the prices of diesel and CNG to compensate and look prices more rational. This certainly is enough ground for another agitation in making and shaking the nation allover again.

The conclusion of my effort says that they should not repeat such agitations or BANDS, which have no use for the public in general but in the interest of political benefits for the parties in power and opposition only. As you can see even the parties, which are part of government from out side or openly were part of the agitation and were part of the naked show of making things look ugly.

In 1988 the congress party led by Rajiv Gandhi banned the Satanic Verses, even before the book had been published. The Congress was facing an election in 1989 and Rajiv Gandhi thought that by banning the Satanic verses, he would gain in the coming elections. He and his advisors reasoned that Muslims will be happy and they will vote for the Congress. This was a simplistic thought and one wonders how Rajiv could be so foolish. Needless to add the Congress party lost the elections and their seats were reduced from 415 to just about 155. It was a colossal defeat and showed that minority vote banks don’t work all the time.

The Congress party has a history of appeasement of the Muslims in India and that is one reason the party has lost its monolith hold in parliament.

This year again true to its colors the Congress party again thought of getting some electoral gains from the Rushdie issue. Rushdie was to attend the Jaipur literary fest. He had attended it last time in 2008 and there was no ruckus. Nobody even noticed it, but this time now the widow of Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi thought that the issue could be used to the congress party’s advantage in the coming UP elections.

The Congress party thus on her direction orchestrated a great charade. It was made out that hired assassins from Mumbai underworld were out to kill Rushdie. The same information was conveyed to Rushdie so as to deter him from coming to India. Later even a video link by which Rushdie was to connect to the fest was cancelled on the threat of a fringe minority of extremist Muslims. In this the Congress party cut a poor figure eland showed India in poor light. One may ask what the Indian prime minister was doing all along. Unfortunately Man Mohan Singh is a stooge (I am sorry I have to use this strong word) of the Gandhi family and with no backbone and no political base he just kept silent. Sad for India, that such a man heads a democracy of 1.2 billion people.

The Congress thus sabotaged the visit of Rushdie who in any case is a great writer. But the congress may soon realize like Rajiv Gandhi did, that such acts do not ensure a win at the hustings. The UP elections may throw up a real surprise and give a nasty shock to heir apparent Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi.

Pakistan, a country which is mired in constant political and social turmoil. Chaos reigns supreme and the hapless proxy government can only watch religious fundamentalism spreading its evil tentacles to every nook and corner of the society. Despite what many may believe, Pakistan’s greatest enemy and threat is not actually India, but the greatest threat to its social fabric is posed by the doctrine of hatred propagated with impunity by religious extremists.

A couple of days ago there were chilling scenes in the Kohistan district of Pakistan. A convoy of buses was stopped by a group of gunmen and 16 selected passengers were massacred by them. Investigations revealed that all the victims belonged to the minority Shia community. This gruesome sectarian murders was not a standalone incident. A couple of weeks ago a similar kind of heinous attack were carried against the Shia community, which resulted in 26 casualties. In fact such attacks on minorities have escalated over the past few months so much so that hardly a week passes in Pakistan without any sectarian violence.

Such attacks are a culmination of decades of preaching of ideology of hate and intolerance by fundamentalists. A spineless government which does not have any political gumption to crackdown on such groups, has led to a major surge in religious extremism which has become all pervasive. The children from a very tender age are baptized in such philosophies in the local madrasas, which have mushroomed all over the country and act as breeding grounds for extremist groups. After persecuting minority communities like the Hindus and the Christians for decades and banishing them from mainstream society, it is now the turn of the Shias to feel the brunt of their hatred.

Sectarian clashes have consumed thousands of innocent lives in Pakistan since 1979. The theological differences between the Shias and the Sunnis have escalated into a full blown war by 1980. Initially the strife was pretty even but from 1990 onwards the tide turned against the Shias as the Sunni thugs received tacit support from the political brass.

Pakistan, currently is ridden with a wide array of problems ranging from wide spread poverty, illiteracy and shambolic economic development. What people of Pakistan actually need is a panacea to all their above mentioned miseries, which will not be found in religious extremism and intolerance. The time is nigh for the democratically elected government of Pakistan to make a stand for the sake of the people and for the sake of the nation’s future. This evil must be completely rooted out or else this Frankenstein will destroy its creator in due course of time