1. Home
  2. Miscellaneous
  3. 'Modi can be finished only in the political arena'

'Modi can be finished only in the political arena'

[email protected] (Amit Baruah for Open )
December 11, 2012

bhatt-modi

Autorickshaw drivers know the way to Sanjiv Bhatt's house in Memnagar, Ahmedabad. It currently resembles a campaign office as Shweta Bhatt, the IPS officer's wife, gears up for electoral battle against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Outside, a motley group of cops shuffles about with no obvious purpose. Inside, between many phone calls, the man who has taken on Modi, tells Amit Baruah that he has gone beyond thinking about the personal consequences of his actions. Excerpts from the conversation

Q Everybody likes their cushy, middle-class existence. You had a good job in the police. How come you decided to take on a man like Narendra Modi?

Sanjiv Bhatt: You join the Service with a purpose, with passion to do something for the country. You are looking for a job that gives you purpose and action. That is why I chose the police [service]. Now, when you are trained to uphold the Constitution of the land and you see it being subverted completely...

Q Many others see the same, but people react in different ways.

SB: People do react in different ways. People change with time. For me, 2002 (a reference to the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat after the Godhra train killings) was a very different experience. I saw the values I had stood for all my life, the basic tenets of policing, being turned on their head in one go.

Q What changed you after 2002 that made you take a course of action seeking justice for victims of the riots?

SB: Nothing changed me. I decided this was something that should never be allowed to happen anywhere in the country, this kind of systemic subversion of the police, a kind of complete breakdown of the police machinery. Just to forward someone's agenda, that too an agenda that involves killing people and destroying property. That cannot be allowed.

Q It has been 10 years since the killings of 2002. If you were to do a cost-benefit analysis, where would you stand?

SB: I have gained so much by way of satisfaction. And, yes, I have been doing what I always wanted to do. I still have the same passion, the same fire in the belly as when I joined the police. And I am grateful to God that I have a family that supports me through everything.

Q You have been talking about Narendra Modi's 'complicity' in the riots time and again. But the legal process hasn't touched him in 10 years.

SB: Not yet.

Q You think there is any material that points to his complicity?

SB: Absolutely. He will not be able to escape the consequences of his actions or inactions. It will take time, yes.

Q Modi has national ambitions. Do you think he will succeed in moving to national politics?

SB: Modi is a very ambitious man. That's good for him. But I don't feel his ambitions of leading this nation will ever be realised. I do believe there are a set of secular people in this country who will go the whole hog to ensure he never becomes Prime Minister and gets a chance to subvert the Constitution of this country.

He has the mindset, intentions, conviction and the wherewithal. Yes, he also has the motivation. If he gets a chance, he can definitely do that.

Q So you think he will make a serious bid for the Prime Minister's job?

SB: He is already. Modi has to go from Gujarat for the simple reason that the chickens are coming home to roost. He has fooled the people of Gujarat for 10 long years and now the skeletons are coming out.He needs to go somewhere, where he can protect himself from the wrongdoings of so many years. That is possible either if he is in the central government or he is kingmaker at the Centre. If he can't become the king, he will bid to become kingmaker.

Q Many people believe that the BJP talks about Modi as Prime Minister before an Assembly election to help him beat anti-incumbency. Is that the case?

SB: That's a very smart strategy of deflecting and giving a subliminal kind of message that being Chief Minister is a cakewalk and we are [now] looking at the Prime Minister's job. Otherwise, he would have had to answer questions about his 10 years of governance here.

Q I heard you say in a television interview that you were ready to take the political plunge, if necessary.

SB: Tomorrow, if such a situation arises, if I have to take the plunge, I will do that. It doesn't bother me at all. Nothing bothers me. I don't think of the consequences of my actions now.

Q But how is that possible. Everyone thinks of consequences.

SB: It sounds a little difficult but it's not. You do what needs to be done.

Q You could be dismissed from service.

SB: I know. I don't care much, actually. I will be 49 on December 21. I've lived my life, put in 24 years of service already. I'm financially in a comfort zone, where I don't have to worry about the next five to seven years. I have savings... the moment I give up the [police] job, I will be able to earn for myself.

Q You are being criticised a lot for putting your wife in the electoral fray against Modi.

SB: I don't need to put her forward; Shweta is a woman with a mind of her own. She's far more intelligent than me. The evening I was arrested last year, my house was raided twice. My mom's house and in-laws' place were also raided. Just to try and terrorise everyone. They thought they could scare us.

Till that day, Shweta had seen the police as an officer's wife. Now, all of a sudden, she saw the police as agents of coercion. As long as [Modi's] enmity was with me, it was fine... I knew it then that he'd taken on the wrong person. What I felt then has come true now (with Shweta contesting against Modi).

Q Earlier, you were seen as an independent person, now it appears you were acting at the behest of the Congress since your wife is contesting on a Congress ticket.

SB: That is a very real risk, which I have taken because Modi is a political creature. A creature of politics has to be finished politically. Whatever other [government] officers and I do, we can just slow him down, bog him down in the legal arena.

Ultimately, it's in the political arena that you have to pin him and finish off his ideology, his politics of hatred. This is the next logical level of the battle.

I was clear that if at all [Shweta] took the plunge, it should be as an Independent. I was being sounded out by many parties because I have friends across the board. First, it was, 'Will you contest?'; then, 'Will Shweta contest?'

Keshubhai [Patel, chief of the Gujarat Parivartan Party] was very keen, but I wanted her to contest as an Independent because of these allegations (that Bhatt was acting at the behest of the Congress). But the Congress is an old party and they might have [felt] if they didn't field a candidate against Modi, it would raise questions that they had given up without a fight. According to Shweta, the Congress was best suited.

Tomorrow, if required, the battleground might shift. Why Maninagar? Because [Modi] chose Maninagar. In life, you choose your battles, you don't choose your battlegrounds.

+++

(Amit Baruah is an independent, Delhi-based journalist)

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
January 27,2020

Mumbai, Jan 27: The country's largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) on Monday said it has increased prices of select models by up to Rs 10,000 with immediate effect to offset the impact of rising input costs.

The price change varies across models and ranges up to 4.7 per cent (ex-showroom Delhi) and are effective from January, 27 2020, MSI said in a statement.

The price of entry level model Alto range has gone up in the range of Rs 9,000-6,000, S-Presso between Rs 1,500 to 8,000, WagonR between Rs 1,500 and Rs 4,000.

The company has also increased the price of its multi purpose vehicle Ertiga between Rs 4,000-10,000, Baleno by Rs 3,000 to 8,000 and XL6 by up to Rs 5,000 (all prices ex-showroom Delhi).

Currently, the company sells a range of vehicles starting from entry-level small car Alto to premium multi purpose vehicle XL6 with price ranging from Rs 2.89 lakh to Rs 11.47 lakh (ex-showroom Delhi).

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
July 2,2020

Leiden, Jul 2: Astronomers have discovered a luminous galaxy caught in the act of reionizing its surrounding gas only 800 million years after the Big Bang.

The research, led by Romain Meyer, PhD student at UCL in London, UK, has been presented at the virtual annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS).

Studying the first galaxies that formed 13 billion years ago is essential to understanding our cosmic origins. One of the current hot topics in extragalactic astronomy is 'cosmic reionization,' the process in which the intergalactic gas was ionized (atoms stripped of their electrons).

Cosmic reionization is similar to an unsolved murder: We have clear evidence for it, but who did it, how and when? We now have strong evidence that hydrogen reionization was completed about 13 billion years ago, in the first billion years of the universe, with bubbles of ionized gas slowly growing and overlapping.

The objects capable of creating such ionized hydrogen bubbles have however remained mysterious until now: the discovery of a luminous galaxy in which 60-100 percent of ionizing photons escape, is likely responsible for ionizing its local bubble. This suggests the case is closer to being solved.

The two main suspects for cosmic reionization are usually 1) a population of numerous faint galaxies leaking ~10 percent of their energetic photons, and 2) an 'oligarchy' of luminous galaxies with a much larger percentage (>50 percent) of photons escaping each galaxy.

In either case, these first galaxies were very different from those today: galaxies in the local universe are very inefficient leakers, with only <2-3 percent of ionizing photons escaping their host. To understand which galaxies governed cosmic reionization, astronomers must measure the so-called escape fractions of galaxies in the reionization era.

The detection of light from excited hydrogen atoms (the so-called Lyman-alpha line) can be used to infer the fraction of escaping photons. On the one hand, such detections are rare because reionization-era galaxies are surrounded by neutral gas which absorbs that signature hydrogen emission.

On the other hand, if this hydrogen signal is detected it represents a 'smoking gun' for a large ionized bubble, meaning we have caught a galaxy reionizing its surroundings. The size of the bubble and the galaxy's luminosity determines whether it is solely responsible for creating this ionized bubble or if unseen accomplices are necessary.

The discovery of a luminous galaxy 800 million years after the Big Bang supports the scenario where an 'oligarchy' of bright leakers emits most of the ionizing photons.

"It is the first time we can point to an object responsible for creating an ionized bubble, without the need for a contribution from unseen galaxies.

Additional observations with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will enable us to study further what is likely one of the best suspects for the unsolved case of cosmic reionization," said Meyer.

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
May 19,2020

Cybersecurity researchers on Monday warned of a Trojan malware campaign which is targeting India's co-operative banks using COVID-19 as a bait.

Seqrite, the enterprise arm of IT security firm Quick Heal Technologies, detected the new wave of Adwind Java Remote Access Trojan (RAT) campaign.

Researchers at Seqrite warned that if attackers are successful, they can take over the victim's device to steal sensitive data like SWIFT logins and customer details and move laterally to launch large scale cyberattacks and financial frauds.

According to the researchers, the Java RAT campaign starts with a spear-phishing email which claims to have originated from either the Reserve Bank of India or a nationalised bank.

The content of the email refers to COVID-19 guidelines or a financial transaction, with detailed information in an attachment, which is a zip file containing a JAR based malware.

Upon further investigation, researchers at Seqrite found that the JAR based malware is a Remote Access Trojan that can run on any machine which has Java runtime enabled and hence it can impact a variety of endpoints, irrespective of their base operating system.

Once the RAT is installed, the attacker can take over the victim's device, send commands from a remote machine, and spread laterally in the network.

In addition, this malware can also log keystrokes, capture screenshots, download additional payloads, and extract sensitive user information, Seqrite said, adding that such attack campaigns can effectively jeopardise the privacy and security of sensitive data at the co-operative banks and result in large scale attacks and financial frauds.

To prevent such attacks, users need to exercise ample caution and avoid opening attachments and clicking on web links in unsolicited emails.

Banks should also keep their operating systems updated and have a full-fledged security solution installed on all the devices, Seqrite advised.

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.