IAS officers from Vokkaliga community

I was reading T V R Shenoy's column in Rediff titled The decline of Bangalore and one strange sentence caught me off guard. The relevant portion is reproduced here (note in italics mine).

... A few months ago, he (S M Krishna) was invited to a function to congratulate newly selected IAS officers from the Vokkaliga community, scarcely an official duty of the governor of Maharashtra! (The Vokkaligas and the Lingayats by far the two most powerful castes in Karnataka politics.) ...

I can't believe this. There is a function to congratulate the IAS officers of a particular community, mind you these people are supposed to act without any bias of caste, language religion etc. and still IAS officers go on and participate. (And more worse, a person of the stature of Krishna - formerly a chief minister and presently a governor - also attends the function). If this happens, what is the gaurantee that they will act impartially in any event of communal clash or in the postings of junior officers? Just a few weeks ago EC has to recall a Gujarat IAS officer, who didn't wanted any Dalit and OBC colleagues.

Isn't there any code of conduct for IAS officers? Or the Ministry of Personnel (which, I believe deals with these) doesn't see this incident as a gross violation by the IAS officers, who participated in the function? The caste/religion/language syndrome has earlier inflicted our politicians. But, if it also penetrates in the bureaucracy, it spells more ills for the nation.

Resign Mr. Buta Singh

In an important judgement the SC today declared the May 23 dissolution of Bihar assembly as unconstitutional, but it permitted the elections to be conducted taking into account the prevailing circumstances.

Since independence, Congress has used the Governor's office as an extension of its own party offices and has removed several unfriendly governments abusing the power of article 356 provided by the constitution. It is often said that old habits never die. True to the saying the since last May, when Congress came to power - thanks to its unexpected victory - quickly got to its pastime of playing politics with governor's offices around different state capitals.

To begin with governors appointed by the previous NDA regime were asked to resign before the end of their tenure. The next episodes happened in quick succession in Goa and Jharkand. Then followed the dissolution of Bihar assembly, which was dissolved at an unholy ghost hour with president signing it from a distant Moscow. We were explained that, this is to prevent horse-trading (a practice followed by Congress many a times in the past to gain majority).

Lalu second-fiddled by the leftists, who suffer from NDAphobia (rather, BJPphobia) finally managed to convince the Congress boss about the impending danger of NDA forming government with voluntary support from breakaway LJP MLAs. And, pooh... the government dissolved in less than a day after a report that was manufactured by governor.

The SC enquiry of the dissolution (when it was challenged by few NDA and breakaway LJP MLAs) raised more questions and more interestingly SC decided to call for the confidential reports of the governor to the home ministry. The weak links in the chain of events were exposed in due course. We learnt that the governor's report dated May 21, 2005 actually contianed an attachment of a press report, which appeared on May 22, 2005 in Sunday Tribune. And, we were told by Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium that, "though the clipping was part of the governor's report, it was not gone thro' by him". Astonishing explanation! Now we have a situation, where by a governor's report is doctored by some unknown person (of course, without his knowledge) and the central government dissolves the assembly based on such a report.

Now, with SC striking down the dissolution as unconstitutional, the mistake has at least been partly corrected. Lalu-Buta & Co has already caused embarassment to the prime minister and the president by their actions. This should not be allowed to continue.

Mr. Buta Singh should be asked to resign immediately and failing this, he should be removed. Only this will ensure a free and fair elections in Bihar.