BJP's CM candidate for Delhi: more myth than fact // Lawyers body condemns Kiran Bedi's CM candidature for Delhi polls

By Dilip -
A part of her legend appears to be a myth, endorsed by the media and cleverly marketed by Bedi herself. In April 2010, Bedi was invited to speak at a programme for students in Bhopal. Among other things, she spoke about the legend of Crane Bedi. "I knew that I will be transferred when I decided to lift Indira Gandhi's car (for wrong parking). I gave a thought to it and decided to do what was right then," Bedi told a student who asked her about her daring decision to remove the car of none other than Indira Gandhi herself and what happened after that. Bedi said, "Wahi hua jo sabeke saath hota hai" (same thing happened which happens with all others). I was transferred to Goa the next day but that did not deter me from doing right things because of my strong foundation of knowledge and value system."  Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Here are the facts of the case, sourced from Bedi’s own website. A white ambassador car (DHD 1817) was parked outside a shop in Connaught Circus on August 5, 1982. When a sub-inspector of the traffic police saw it parked in a no-parking zone, he issued a challan—not to the driver but to the owner of the shop— and refused to withdraw it even after being told that it was from the PM’s fleet.
The PM and her family were not even in India. The driver had gone to CP alone, perhaps for buying some accessories for the car. ‘Crane Bedi’ was not around either at the time of the incident. But later she took credit for the whole incident, edging the inspector out of the narrative. So, was she transferred to Goa next morning for annoying Indira Gandhi? No. Bedi not only continued in her post, she was also entrusted the responsibility of managing traffic during the Asian Games at Delhi (November-December 1982). She was sent to Goa in March 1983, a full seven more months after the incident at CP. And that too because she was found suitable for making arrangements for the CHOGM summit hosted by India in Goa.
In hindsight, it appears Bedi was actually rewarded for her performance in the Indira raj and handpicked for high-profile assignments like the Asian Games and the CHOGM summits. And her image of Crane Bedi may be a result of the carte blanche given to her by the government during an important event like the Asian Games.
This is not an isolated incident of myth-making. As pointed out by Firstpost earlier, Bedi has played the ‘wronged victim’ several times in her career, arguing that she was denied important posts, including the job of Delhi’s top cop, because she didn’t bend before politicians. And she is fond of ascribing higher, exalted motives for her inability to complete her terms to explain her frequent transfers. Could the opposite be true about Kiran Bedi? Instead of being penalized by politicians, was she a beneficiary of her proximity to the system?
Bedi was, for instance, in Indira Gandhi’s good books. The former PM even invited Bedi to meet her after she became the first woman IPS officer in the country. Later, during Rajiv Gandhi’s government, when Bedi got into trouble because of Justice Wadhwa committee’s probe into her role in a lathi charge on Tis Hazari lawyers, she was saved by the then home minister Buta Singh, who refused to suspend her in spite of pressure from lawyers and politicians. Of course, she had several spats with politicians. In 1995, the then Delhi chief minister Madan Lal Khurana had accused Bedi of giving VIP treatment to Charles Sobhraj, who was lodged in Tihar jail. Bedi, who was the jail superintendent, was well within her rights to allow Sobhraj the use of a typewriter and some other liberties. But that didn’t stop Khurana from ranting against her.
During the strike by Tis Hazari lawyers, most of the political parties—including the BJP led by Khurana— ganged up against Bedi, seeking her immediate suspension. When it comes to myths, a petty squabble with Khurana over a notorious bikini killer is nothing compared to the legend of a spat with Indira Gandhi. But, as Mark Twain famously said, never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/bjps-cm-candidate-for-delhi-story-of-kiran-crane-bedi-is-more-myth-than-fact-2056451.html

  Lawyers body condemns Kiran Bedi's CM candidature for Delhi polls
New Delhi: Lawyers of all six district courts in the national capital on Wednesday condemned BJP's decision to nominate former IPS officer Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial candidate for the upcoming Delhi Assembly polls. The coordination committee of all district court bar associations said the "legal fraternity wants to place on record that the decision to make her (Bedi) the chief ministerial candidate on the basis of her administrative skill is contrary to the records". It further said that when she was posted as the DCP North in New Delhi, Bedi did "everything to take avenge from lawyers of Tis Hazari court who were demanding commission of enquiry against brutal 'lathi' charge on innocent lawyers". "Thus, the legal fraternity in no circumstances shall ever accept Bedi as chief minister of Delhi and therefore has decided to burn her effigy...," the statement said.
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/lawyers-body-condemns-kiran-bedis-cm-candidature-delhi-polls-2057965.html

Popular posts from this blog

Third degree torture used on Maruti workers: Rights body

By Dilip -
The People’s Union for Democratic Rights on Tuesday alleged that third degree torture methods were used by the Gurgaon Criminal Investigation Agency while interrogating workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited’s Manesar plant who are accused of involvement in the killing of an HR manager and the violent attack at the plant on July 18. The PUDR alleged that the Gurgaon CIA investigation “did not seem” to be directed at solving the crime or probing the involvement of the arrested workers in the incidents and crimes recorded in the FIR but instead was based on their involvement in trade union activities. Grave doubts  “The use of third degree torture in police custody, and the securing of arrestees’ signatures on blank papers by the police, gives rise to grave doubts regarding the ability of such an investigation in effectively identifying or arresting those guilty. The police and the State seem keener to reassure Maruti Suzuki Ltd. and ensure that production continues,” the ...
Read more

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning

By Dilip -
According to Murakami, “1Q84” is just an amplification of one of his most popular short stories,   which (in its English version) is five pages long. “Basically, it’s the same,” he told me. “A boy meets a girl. They have separated and are looking for each other. It’s a simple story. I just made it long.” One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert..." read the story: http://www.youmightfindyourself.com/post/22131227...
Read more

Albert Camus's lecture 'The Human Crisis', New York, March 1946. 'No cause justifies the murder of innocents'

By Dilip -
The morning after a great historical crisis, you feel as sad and sick as after a heavy night. But there is no aspirin for historical hangovers .. The world is no longer divided into the just or unjust, but into masters and slaves. He who is right is he who enslaves.  Albert Camus     La crise de l'homme : THE HUMAN CRISIS   (Text read by Viggo Mortensen on March 28 2016)   Ladies and Gentlemen: when I was invited to give a series of lectures in the United States of America, I felt some doubt and hesitation. I am really not old enough to give lectures, and I am more at ease with the process of thinking than I am making categorical statements... since I don't feel I have any claim on what is generally called the truth. I shared this reservation and was very politely told that my personal opinion didn't matter. What mattered was that I'd be able to offer some facts about France so that my listeners could form their own opinions. It was then suggested...
Read more

The Almond Trees by Albert Camus (1940)

By Dilip -
Image
'Do you know', Napoleon once said to Fontanes, 'what astounds me most about the world?  The impotence of force to establish anything.  There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the mind.  In the end, the sword is always conquered by the mind' Conquerors, you see, are sometimes melancholy.  They have to pay some price for so much vainglory. But what a hundred years ago was true of the sword is no longer true today of the tank. Conquerors have made progress, and the dismal silence of places without intelligence has been established for years at a time in a lacerated Europe. At the time of the hideous wars of Flanders, Dutch painters could still perhaps paint the cockerels in their farmyards. The Hundred Years War has likewise been forgotten, and yet the prayers of Silesian mystics still linger in some hearts. But today, things have changed; the painter and the monk have been drafted - we are one with the world.  The mind has lost that regal certai...
Read more

Etel Adnan - To Be In A Time Of War

By Dilip -
NB: Etel Adnan, writer, poet, artist and musician was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. This prose poem is the final chapter of her book  In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country .  Read more about her here  - DS To Be In A Time Of War To say nothing, do nothing, mark time, to bend, to straighten up, to blame oneself, to stand, to go toward the window, to change one’s mind in the process, to return to one’s chair, to stand again, to go to the bathroom, to close the door, to then open the door, to go to the kitchen, to not eat nor drink, to return to the table, to be bored, to take a few steps on the rug, to come close to the chimney, to look at it, to find it dull, to turn left until the main door, to come back to the room, to hesitate, to go on, just a bit, a trifle, to stop, to pull the right side of the curtain, then the other side, ...
Read more

After the Truth Shower

By Dilip -
Dear Readers Thank you for reading my blog for the past eleven years. (This is a link to the new one) During this time it has had nearly 1.7 million hits; and I have posted over 9500 posts covering a variety of themes. From July 11 to 19, 2022, my blog was withdrawn by the Blogger administration on account of what its machinery suspected to be 'Impersonation'. It took over a week and the efforts of several well-wishers to get it back online I thank them all for their kindness and goodwill  My blog has always been - and remains - non-commercial. I have used it for academic purposes; and to foster a culture of debate and informed commentary in civil society. Because it contains a large amount of material gathered and collated for over a decade, I cannot afford to lose its contents. I hope it will remain undisturbed now and function as an archive. However, I have decided to use a new blog on WordPress as a platform for my newest comments and posts The new blog is titled After the...
Read more

James Gilligan on Shame, Guilt and Violence

By Dilip -
Shame, Guilt, and Violence / James Gilligan During the past 35 years I have used prisons and prison mental hospitals as "laboratories" in which to investigate the causes and prevention of the various forms of violence and the relationships between these forms and to what I will call (with a nod to William James) "the varieties of moral experience." In the course of that work, I have been struck by the frequency with which I received the same answer when I asked prisoners, or mental patients, why they assaulted or even killed someone. Time after time, they would reply "because he disrespected me" or "he disrespected my visitor [or wife, mother, sister, girl-friend, daughter, etc.]." In fact, they used that phrase so often that they abbreviated it into the slang phrase, "He dis'ed me." Whenever people use a word so often that they abbreviate it, it is clearly central to their moral and emotional vocabulary. But even when they did n...
Read more