Hindu Vivek Kendra
A RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE PROMOTION OF HINDUTVA
   
 
 
«« Back
 

Untangling the Knots of Kapil Sibal’s Self-Goal

Author: Sandeep Balakrishna
Publication: Medium.com
Date: December 10, 2017
URL:    https://medium.com/the-deep-chronicles/untangling-the-knots-of-kapil-sibals-self-goal-7ded294b5b9a

It’s confirmed that the Congress will never recover from the kiss of death it received in May 2014. Ever since that deathly month, it has proven time and time again that its capacity for scoring self-goals is as infinite and bottomless as the pit of political, moral, and ethical bankruptcy that it has distinguished itself for.

Even as the Congress ecosystem was busy pumping fresh and larger and larger doses of hot air to sustain the bubble of a “new” and “aggressive” and “independent-minded” Rahul Gandhi on the Gujarat campaign trail, it took two exactly two senior leaders from his own party to explode it spectacularly.

We’ll quickly deal with the second leader first. It’s none other than the filthy-tongued Mani Shankar Aiyar who called Narendra Modi “neech” (low/lowly) barely twenty-four hours before Gujaratis went to the polling booths. It appears that Mani Shankar Aiyar is the last-mile polling gift that keeps on giving rich dividends for Narendra Modi. He’s the electoral compound interest that the BJP receives even without investing anything. But “neech” is mild compared to Mani Shankar Aiyar’s own foul standards:

“Oh that bloody Mulayam — he looks just like me. It could be because my father visited Uttar Pradesh at some point. Why don’t you check with Mulayam’s mother?”

That was circa December 2000.
...
The Sibal Knot

But what the second leader, Kapil Sibal of zero-loss notoriety did will dearly cost what’s left of the Congress. When we examine its far-reaching ramifications, it’s not hard to conclude that the Congress in 2019 will be clobbered to a low below its current 44 seats in Parliament.

One of the key skills that Boy Scouts must master is to develop expertise in tying various knots. The number and complexity of these knots are in itself mind-boggling: be it a Sheepshank, Sheet Bend, Reef Knot, Bowline, Butterfly Loop, the Figure-of-Eight…the list is nearly as endless as the subject is fascinating. But even Baden Powell or the best of Knot Tyers couldn’t have anticipated the Sibal Knot.

One must be endowed with a special brand of foolhardiness to do what Kapil Sibal did by going to the Supreme Court and demand that the hearing of the Rama Janmabhoomi case be postponed until after the 2019 elections. Given the party to which Kapil Sibal belongs, the accurate descriptor is “sense of entitlement,” not foolhardiness. But when one also learns of the kind of ruckus that Kapil Sibal, and his lawyer friends, Dushyant Dave and Rajeev Dhawan raised in the highest court of the country, in the very presence of Chief Justice Dipak Mishra, the word “demand” will be replaced by “attempt to intimidate” the Supreme Court. This also shows yet another fresh instance of the dangerous extent to which our key institutions have been subverted by the Congress party.

This state of affairs owes much to the kind of leaders who were nurtured by and became extraordinarily powerful in the Sonia Congress party and the UPA Government. Be it Kapil Sibal, P Chidambaram, Salman Khurshid, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, or Manish Tiwari, it could be said that none of them (except perhaps Chidambaram and Khurshid) reached their swanky ministerial berths after getting their hands dirty in grassroots politics for decades. It appears that their special prowess lay in manoeuvring institutions, the bureaucracy, NGOs, fixing appointments, and generally doing the kind of things that don’t make “Sonia unhappy.”

But then there was a downside to this kind of “leadership.”
...
The Legal Stalwarts of the Congress Party

Indeed, the biggest problem with these legal stalwart-leaders of the Congress party is the fact that they are unable to distinguish their politics from their legal practice. As a politician one has to appeal to the sentiments of the masses or at least appear to be someone who has their best interests in mind. As a lawyer, one is only required to have the client’s best interests in mind and try and protect them before the judge irrespective of what one might feel about the case that has to be argued. Such is the intrinsic nature of the modern legal beast.

Unfortunately, we have someone like Kapil Sibal who is a competent lawyer but a thoroughly incompetent politician. We’re yet to hear of a two-time MP and multiple-times Union Minister who stood at a distant third place in his constituency in the 2014 General Elections, outraced even by someone like AAP’s Ashtutosh who is generally distinguished for his all-encompassing buffoonery. It could also be argued that few leaders could withstand the enormous tsunami of the Narendra Modi juggernaut but in Sibal’s case, a major reason for his paltry18 per cent vote share owes to his political ineptitude.

As an advocate for the Sunni Waqf Board which would ideally want the Babri Mosque to be rebuilt at the earliest possible date to where it had stood, Kapil Sibal is expected to be pushing for a disposal of the matter at the earliest possible date. The Sunni Waqf Board is the Appellant in the various appeals against the 2010 judgement of the Allahabad High Court pending before the Supreme Court.

Like millions of Hindus, we believe that a Sri Rama Temple ought to be built on the disputed site and that it is a crying shame for the Hindu community that the Ram Lala Murti has to be placed under a sheet of tarpaulin.

Having said that, from the perspective of the Muslim Waqf Board, the status quo is distinctly unfavourable because:

(a) There is no Babri Mosque after the 6th of December 1992 and

(b) There is a makeshift temple of Ram Lala.

As someone who represents Plaintiffs and Appellants as opposed to Defendants and Respondents almost fifty per cent of the time before various courts in and outside Delhi, the co-author, Raghav Awasthi can attest to the fact that the difficult part, even tougher than arguing the case itself, lies in ensuring that cases are actually heard before the court. Given the unfortunate docket explosion that our judicial system has to contend with, an entire jurisprudence has developed around what constitutes “urgency” in civil suits and appeals. Not infrequently, the Plaintiff/Appellants lawyer has to first convince the court to hear a case on an “urgent basis” before getting into the actual merits of the matter.

In this view of the matter, it is exceptionally bizarre that someone of Kapil Sibal’s calibre who would literally be expected to walk over hot coals for his client, would seek an adjournment over the non-service of the documents of the case in the first instance.

Then, on the Fifth of December, arguing before the Chief Justice of India, he went on to make an even more preposterous argument about how the verdict of the case had the potential of affecting communal harmony adversely and therefore, that it would be fitting if it was heard in 2019. As we noted earlier, other senior counsels who supported his submissions included Dushyant Dave and Rajeev Dhawan both of who have had distinguished careers as Senior Counsels. Until now.

The Chief Justice Dipak Mishra predictably took great offence at this submission which arguably amounted to Criminal Contempt of the Honourable Supreme Court of India. The Learned Senior Counsels also walked out in a huff unbecoming of their positions and damaged the decorum of this hallowed institution. It was almost literally like real life imitating cinema. As someone who was present in the Supreme Court that day, the co-author Raghav Awasthi was reminded of the scene in the 2017 Bollywood movie, Jolly LLB 2 where the lawyer’s character played by Annu Kapoor tries employs all the tricks of his profession to ensure that his client escapes justice by trying to get an adjournment on one particular date.

These ugly antics only incensed the Chief Justice of India further, and he proceeded to dictate some thoroughly scathing observations against these aforementioned Senior Counsels. When their juniors told these lawyer-stalwarts that their legal careers were now at the risk of a premature closure, the same Senior Counsels rushed back into the court and begged and cajoled the Chief Justice to expunge the observations against them.

In a gesture of magnanimity Chief Justice Dipak Mishra obliged, and the matter has now been posted for final arguments in February 2018 with a firm direction to the Registrar of the Supreme Court to ensure that all formalities are concluded under his aegis before the matter is listed again.

However, further damage was in store for Kapil Sibal. The stink rose up to the heavens when one of the members of the Sunni Waqf Board publicly declared that the Board had, understandably, issued no such instructions to Mr. Sibal. In turn, Kapil Sibal countered this by stating that he had not been engaged by the Board. The situation worsened further when first Kapil Sibal made a manifestly false assertion that he was not being engaged by the Sunni Waqf Board, a claim that was verifiably false as the Appearance Slip submitted to the court master clearly reflected the indisputable fact that India’s premier lawyer had lied outside court, and not necessarily at the behest of his client.

And so, the big question that Kapil Sibal needs need to answer is: at whose behest did Kapil Sibal make a manifestly false statement?
...
Congress Party’s Mounting Desperation

The contours of this answer obviously lies in Kapil Sibal’s politics. Or more accurately, his Congress party’s politics of mounting desperation since 2014. When you notice that a student has applied to the Guinness Book to enlist Rahul Gandhi’s name for losing a record of 27 elections, this desperation takes on the hue of mortal fear.

Indeed, when one surveys what the Congress party has become today, the picture is unflattering: from being the “controller” of the Communists (under Mrs. Gandhi) to morphing into a Far-Left and radical Islamist hellhole, it has reached its logical end.

For about sixty years, Hindu voters magnanimously, repeatedly forgave and repeatedly voted for the Congress because while it was pandering to Muslims, it still retained a veneer of tolerance towards the Hindus. Even Rajiv Gandhi was a token Hindu and at least in public, showed some respect for Hindu rituals, Swamijis, institutions, etc. But it was under his widow Sonia that the Congress became a full-blown, unapologetic anti-Hindu political party in a Hindu-majority India. It is an open secret that her closest advisors, bureaucrats, and the deadly National Advisory Council were drawn from an assortment of people close to Radical Islamic outfits, Evangelical Christian organisations, and anti-India NGOs. Needless, all of these were united in their hatred for anything remotely Hindu. It’s this that made them influence Congress ministers to concoct and publicly utter the bogey of “Hindu/Saffron terror,” and imprison senior RSS leader, Indresh Kumar.

And now the Congress is still wondering how it completely lost the Hindu vote. So, it’s rather hilarious to watch a Randeep Surjewala explain Rahul Gandhi’s “Hinduism” on his behalf.

Expectedly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and star BJP campaigner, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath have torn into Kapil Sibal’s antics in the Supreme Court as they’ve done Mani Shankar Aiyar’s spectacular and filthy self-goal.
...

To put it bluntly, a Supreme Court verdict upholding the Allahabad High Court’s 2010 verdict, which paves way for the construction of the Rama Mandir at Ayodhya will literally be the final nail in the Congress party’s coffin. Forget the ongoing Gujarat Elections, which the BJP will win, this sort of verdict has all the potential for the Narendra Modi-led BJP to surpass its existing tally of 282 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 General Elections.

It is this real fear that Kapil Sibal has himself indirectly admitted in his Supreme Court plea.

Even Kapil Sibal can’t untie the Sibal Knot.

Co-authored by Raghav Awasthi. Twitter: @raghav355
 
«« Back
 
 
 
  Search Articles
 
  Special Annoucements