MAHENDRA PD GUPTA Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE proceedings are in continuation from yesterday. The public has a right to know why the Court did not give a plan and instead asked the Government officials to get back to their desks and leave the plan with the Registrar General in the evening instead of filing it directly in the Court.

(2.) TODAY 's newspaper amply display the faithful defense by spokesman of the Government, the State counsel who apparently feels there is no insecurity to life and property in the State of Bihar. Such a defence shows little sensitivity either to the incident of the killing of the engineers Dubey nor to what the vernacular newspapers blast day in and day out about the violence which regularly occurs. Such reassurances canot dispel the effect in the mind of the public of daily reports of engineers shot, teachers shot, doctors shot, businessmen shot, women raped, children abducted, the sadism of eye -gouging and other acts of vigilante justice and so many other incidents of violence.

(3.) THIS is no joke. One life lost is enough. How many have to be lost for somebody to wake up that all is not well in Bihar, that coercion and intimidation hamper peace and progress in this State? Only those who sit in the safety of their cocoons, whether the Governor, the Chief Minister, the Chief Justice, the Judges, the ministers and those with their own security arrangements, seem to live under a theoretical safety. Let us step outside, into the unprotected world and then the violence can be seen. You do not need a 70 mm screen to see it, it is all around 360 degrees. Let the State counsel and the absentee Advocate General tell the Chief Minister of the fundamental duties enshrined in the Constitution. In this very specific context the Constitution of India says that it shall be the duty of every citizen of India to safeguard public property and abjure violence (Article 51 A) -how much more so is the duty of the Government?