By A Surya Prakash

The Congress party in India is now going all out to garner Muslim support. Though this process accelerated after the Lok Sabha election in 2004 - remember the Prime Minister's outrageous and unconstitutional assertion that the Muslims have the first right on the nation's resources and the appointment of the Sachar Committee - the party is now giving fresh impetus to the cultivation of this minority vote-bank.

Three events in the recent past indicative of this trend are the party's reluctance to defend former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao's decision not to bring Uttar Pradesh under central rule prior to December 6, 1992; the deliberate omission of Rao's name by Congress President Sonia Gandhi in her speech to mark the 125th anniversary of the party; and the despicable attempt by Digvijay Singh, a General Secretary of the party, to raise doubts about the Batla House encounter with terrorists in 2008, in which Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma lost his life.

Obviously, the party is now so obsessed with the pursuit of this vote-bank that it is more than ready to debunk constitutional norms, truth and even national security.

Take the last event first: it is truly amazing how far politicians can go to harvest votes. The encounter took place when the Delhi Police acted on information that terrorists involved in the September 13, 2008, serial blasts in Delhi were holed up in an apartment in the Jamia Nagar area of the national capital. Two members of the Indian Mujahideen were killed in the encounter in which Inspector Sharma also lost his life. A couple of suspects escaped. Ever since that encounter, leaders of the Congress have been promoting the theory that this was a ‘fake' encounter. How a senior police officer can lose his life in a ‘fake' encounter is another matter.

The Congress, however, has persistently encouraged such talk despite the fact that the National Human Rights Commission cleared the police action and Delhi's Congress Government had itself decorated Inspector Sharma posthumously for gallantry. Ironically, even as Digvijay Singh was on his cynical vote-bank yatra to Azamgarh, the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terror squad nabbed an IM terrorist. He has given his interrogators a detailed account of the encounter and told them that he and his associate fired on Inspector Sharma before escaping from Batla House that day.

Given these facts, Singh's attempt to lend credence to the theory that the Balta House encounter was ‘fake' borders on criminal misrepresentation of facts. If he carries on in this vein, he could well jeopardize national security and the safety of 1 billion Indians.

As regards the Congress's attitude vis-à-vis the decisions of the Narasimha Rao Government in December, 1992, clearly there is an attempt to demonize him and to hold him responsible for the demolition of the structure, also known as Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The structure was demolished by kar sevaks mobilized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other Hindu organizations. Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister and the Government in Uttar Pradesh was headed by Kalyan Singh of the BJP.

Following the demolition of this structure, both the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party systematically targeted Rao and made him out to be the chief villain vis-à-vis the events of December 6, 1992. Even though the BJP was in power in the State and this Government had failed to live up to the solemn assurances given to the Union Government and the Supreme Court, these two parties held Rao and the Congress primarily responsible for the demolition. The Muslims fell for this argument and moved away from the Congress. The loss of Muslim support for the party was obvious in the Lok Sabha elections in 1996 and in subsequent elections to Parliament and the State legislature.

Anxious to win back Muslims voters, the Congress chose to tarnish the image of Rao when Parliament debated the Liberhan Commission report. Like its chief opponents in Uttar Pradesh, it took the position that the Government of the day had failed to intervene in time to prevent the demolition of the disputed structure.

This line obviously suits the vote-bank politics pursued by the party, but it is far removed from the scheme envisaged by the Constitution and contrary to the opinion of the Sarkaria Commission on Center-State relations and the Supreme Court's verdict in the Bommai Case, which upheld Sarkaria's views.

Narasimha Rao had told the Liberhan Commission that as the Governor of the State did not send any report about an imminent constitutional breakdown, the President could not act on mere hearsay or in a vacuum. Further, the "categorical assurance" of the State Government to the Union Government and the Supreme Court that it would protect the structure "weighed with my Government."

If Rao had dismissed the State Government on the ground that he did not have faith in the assurances given, the court could well have found fault with the action and declared it ‘unjustified.' The Sarkaria Commission, in fact, had said that Article 356 should be used to take remedial action in order to restore the constitutional machinery (and not to dismiss it.)

Since words such as ‘remedial' and ‘restore' were used, it clearly showed that this Article could not be used preventively or as a pre-emptive move.

The reasons given by Rao for not resorting to a pre-emptive strike against the Kalyan Singh Government is completely in line with the opinion of the Sarkaria Commission and the verdict of the Supreme Court in the Bommai Case. The court has said that it had the power to see whether the proclamation was based on any material and whether that material was relevant. Therefore, mere rumors, prejudices or hearsay were not enough for such a drastic step in democracy. "Governments could not run on subjective mistrust of each other," Rao had said.

However, since the Nehru-Gandhis have recklessly used Article 356 to settle political scores and to bring down non-Congress Governments, they are unaccustomed to such constitutional correctness. This is yet another reason why Rao is painted as the villain. Citizens who believe that the Government must work within Constitutional parameters will see merit in Rao's arguments. Those who do no, like those who justify the fascist Emergency regime of 1975-77, will not.