NEW DELHI: The BJP has questioned the Center’s decision to allow Amnesty International to send a team to Bombay to enquire into allegations of police excesses against minorities. K.R.Malkani, a party vice president, alleged on April 26 that the Maharashtra Chief

Minister, Sharad Pawar as op posed to the move but the Prime. Minister had overruled the Chief Minister. He hoped the PM would review his decision as Amnesty International enquiry would seriously compromise the sovereignty of the country.

If there were grievances against the state police, the BJP leader said, the Center could hold an enquiry into it. But allowing a foreign agency, whose bona fides were uncertain, to meddle in internal affairs of the country was unacceptable,

Malkani wondered if the Prime Minister was under pressure from certain foreign powers to act the way he was acting.

Talking exception of Amnesty International’s advice to the government on the setting upof a human rights commission, the BJP leader said it was not fora foreign agency to dictate terms to the country on the scope and powers of the commission. He alleged that the Home Ministry Officials were interacting with representatives of the agency in this respect and Said the government should not have entertained this type of interference from such agencies.

Asked if his erstwhile party the then Jana Sangha  had not complained to the Amnesty International against denial of fundamental rights by the emergency regimes of Indira Gandhi, Malkant said he did not know if that was so. In any case, it was a different matter to seek international publicity against denial of rights and another to conduct public hearing in Bombay by a foreign agency,

The Rao government, he observed, was not standing up to international pressure and thereby doing great harm to the country.

Malkani in a written statement said it was hardly surprising that the police in Srinagar had “mutinied” and that they had been joined by the administrative staff. He blamed it on changing horses in midstream by the Center and said transfer of Governor Saxena and earlier governor Jagmohan had sent wrong signals.

Article extracted from this publication >>  April 30, 1993