(The Indian Express
December 07, 2006)
PAGE 1 ANCHOR)
Heat in house, dust on Babri panel
by Seema Chishti
Waiting for ‘Judge Saheb’ to file report on Dec 31
Staff fish out the board for photo-op
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New Delhi, December 6: Exactly 14 years to the date when the “Ram Janma Bhoomi — Babri Masjid structure” (as it is defined, officially) was destroyed, the office probing the demolition and the role of various leaders and government officials appears pretty much not there itself.
What was a sprawl until some five years ago - on the first floor of the prestigious Vigyan Bhawan Annexe in central Delhi — has now shrunk to a few nondescript rooms. The board that once announced this crucial Commission royally — “The Liberhan Ayodhya Commission of Inquiry” — lies in a room full of cobwebs and a few broken chairs.
The staff is kind enough to pull it out when told about the need for a photo. But the fifteen or twenty of the surviving staff of the Commission of Inquiry tell you that once the North East Development Board set up shop on their floor, and got the place whitewashed two months ago, they installed their own impressive brass nameplate and knocked out what was once there.
This place may well be called Commission Bhawan. It had the Jain Commission (probing Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination), the Subhash Chandra Bose Commission and the Nanavati Commission (looking into the Sikh Riots of 1984) operating from here. But they have all wound up and gone away.
Now it is just Liberhan, the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Commission and the buzzing Administrative Reforms Commission (headed by Veerappa Moily).
Staff has shrunk, and the roughly one-third staffers still remaining are very amused when we want to know how they spend their day. A nine-to-five routine seems to be all about merely “routine things, like paying our phone bills, making sure everyone gets salaries on time, composing a letter or arranging a certificate if someone needs one, and receiving occasional advocates.”
Amidst orange peels on the floor, dial phones on the table like other government offices, the Judicial Section houses six Godrej almirahs that stock the original documents painstakingly collected over a hundred depositions and arguments that followed.
The last witness, former UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh, walked in on June 3 last year; and now, after a year of arguments, the man at the helm of the one-man Commission, (Retired) Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan lives in Chandigarh and is probably sharpening his arguments as he gets ready to meet the target of New Year’s Eve.
His colleagues here in the capital are not at all clued in on whether the deadline will be met. The Report was to be submitted first on March 16, 1993, but a series of extensions has finally meant that 14 years since the demolition, the wait continues.
Political shades of all description have been in office this past tumulous decade and a half, but yet, there is no report. People who have worked with Judge Saheb (as he is referred to here) say he “knows best and will do justice to the Report. We don’t know anything. We just supply the odd document he needs or any other help.”
The staff here maintain that the photocopier here is just three years old and four Pentium-4 computers and telephones are spanking new. They do not miss out on the irony, that when the Commission was set up, it was well before the time when computers made their way into government offices - so “it is not as if all the records have been computerized,” they laugh.
Babri Masjid is long gone, the politics over it has taken several twists and turns, the BJP has lost and won elections, the Congress has made its apologies to ‘Muslims’ and yet, there is nobody who has had to pay for the destruction or the violence that followed. The ‘event’ though is enough reason for Parliament to be stalled each year on December 6 — as it was today as well — and Gandhiji’s meditative statue a rallying point each year for irate legislators.
This year was no different. But just as we are about to make our way back from the Commission — which too now seems only a symbol — a staffer kindly parts with two copies of his favourite booklet Aaj Ka Vichar by Robert Best, a Brahmakumari publication, which he says he reads for most of the day.
Someone who was once associated with the commission said recently: “In 14 years, even Lord Ram got back from exile, this just may be the magic year when the truth is revealed.”
