The Indian Express, Nov 29 2013
The vandals
BJP members'lumpen response in the 'Tehelka' case brings great discredit to the party.
The charges against Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal elicited an unseemly burst of enthusiasm from the BJP on Thursday. Shortly after managing editor Shoma Chaudhury had resigned from her post, BJP workers, led by a leader in search of the spotlight ahead of the Delhi polls, Vijay Jolly, gathered outside her house and defaced her nameplate. A case has been filed against Jolly, who attempted to justify his actions as the "spill over" of public anger. Senior BJP leaders have distanced themselves from the incident since and promised action against Jolly and his lumpen band. But the embarrassment for the party will not easily go away. How could Jolly make such a spectacle of his so-called outrage, apparently in defiance of the explicit advice against doing so by party seniors? The unmistakable impression is of the BJP seeking to turn a case involving serious criminal charges into a political scrimmage.
The case against Tejpal is being handled in Goa, incidentally a state governed by the BJP. After the matter came into public view, the Goa Police took suo motu cognisance. An FIR has been filed, statements are being recorded, a police probe is on. The BJP members who gathered outside Chaudhury's home on Thursday showed not just a disrespect towards this due process, but a lynch mob mentality that has no place in a society governed by the rule of law.
The allegation at the centre of the Tehelka case is grave — of rape. It was bad enough that in his own defence, Tejpal has sought to cloud the seriousness of the issue by invoking secularism and conjuring up spectres of a political conspiracy, claiming that the case against him is the result of the BJP's "wrath of vengeance" in retaliation for the adversarial journalistic positions he has taken against the party. The Congress soon walked into that trap, drawing contrived parallels between the Tejpal case and the Modi surveillance controversy. Now, not to be left behind, the BJP is pitching in to further lend the matter an unfortunate political taint. It must ponder the costs and consequences of its intemperance.
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