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It was double whammy for Amarinder government. It was hit by two verdicts on the two most controversial issues during its tenure. The recruitment of sports quota DSPs and auction of liquor vends. And they came hours before the results of the two bye-elections.

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	“Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.” Charles Lamb, 1833 “Frankly, despite my horror of the press, I’d love to rise from the grave every ten years or so and go buy a few newspapers.” Luis Buñuel, Spanish filmmaker “I often wonder what future historians will say about us. One sentence will suffice to describe modern man: he fornicated and he read newspapers.” Albert Camus, French novelist, dramatist, philosopher, 1956

Two Verdicts And A Govt:
Amarinder Ignored Advice
For Course-Correction

S P Singh

LEGAL niceties have a problem if they are not observed to the last fault: they come back to hit you like a sledgehammer. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s government, just over halfway through its tenure, was today hit by the repercussions it almost custom-designed for itself with highly controversial liquor vend auctions and shady recruitments of DSPs under sports quota.

If Amarinder's Minister-rank Advisor BIS Chahal was widely seen as the pushing force behind recruitments of the Deputy Superintendants of Police – his own son as well as the son of his close chum Ferozepur SSP Harinder Singh Chahal were among the ‘lucky’ ones to have been recruited – Ponty Chadha was the liquor vend trade baron who was the key mover behind fast-tracking of vend auctions in March this year. Chahal's stamp was unmistakable in DSP selection process, and Chadha spilled all over the auctions.

By a quirk of fate, the day of reckoning coincided in both cases.

Amarinder's defence of the questionable practices in both cases was unambiguous: "Nothing wrong has happened." Entire liquor manufacturing lobby came together in the form of Confederation of Indian Alcoholic Beverage Companies (CIABC), termed the auctions as "retrograde and consumer-unfriendly" but Amarinder remained unmoved.

When media criticism grew unbearably sharp, the Chief Minister on March 8 this year came up with an unprecedented suggestion, asking mediamen to join hands and bid for liquor vends themselves if they think discriminatory practices were happening!

Obviously the regime was missing the point. Course correction was possible, but was not resorted to. "Now after the two judgements, one at the apex court in excise auction case and the other delivered by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on the issue of recruitment of DSPs, the Amarinder government's stock has gone into a spin," conceded a senior minister.

"In both cases, senior officials were offering saner advice, but that was disregarded," he said, making it clear that the political bosses had the benefit of knowledge about the right course which could have prevented the embarrassment that is the government's lot today.

Political analysts said the damning verdicts in both cases are bound to bring down Amarinder's stock by several notches, and if the electoral results in Garhshankar and Kapurthala didn't bring some happy news tomorrow, the government in a spin could suffer a googly. In faction-ridden parties, anytime could be bouncer time.■

October 15, 2004

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LeBlanc Stare?

In 1922, after Belgian poet, dramatist and Nobel Prize recipient Maurice Maeterlinck's widely-publicized romance with French actress Georgette Leblanc became unraveled (after twenty years), the writer married a nineteen-year-old girl. Though it was well known that he refused to speak publicly on the subject, a sly American reporter once sought to extract an interview by appealing to his humanity:

"I am an American writer in great difficulties," she wrote. "If I can do an interview on you for my paper I can pay my passage home, and all will be well. If not, my only alternative will be to commit suicide."

Having been invited to Maeterlinck's Mediterranean villa, the journalist opened a notebook and the interview began: "May I ask why you left Georgette Leblanc?"

This question evoked an icy glare from Maeterlinck. "Go," he replied, "and commit suicide, madame!"

(Source: P. Mahony, Barbed Wit and Malicious Humor)

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