Af­ter be­ing pulled up by the Delhi High Court while ad­ju­di­cat­ing a pub­lic in­ter­est lit­i­ga­tion filed by Bud­dhist ac­tivist Ab­hay Ratan Bauddh, In­di­a’s Union gov­ern­ment has ap­pointed for­mer In­dian Po­lice Ser­vice of­fi­cer from Pun­jab and spokesper­son of the Bharatiya Janta Party -Iqbal Singh Lalpura, as the chair­per­son of the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties. De­spite the Delhi High Court or­der, the com­mis­sion has only a Vice-chair, while five posts are still va­cant. WSN ed­i­tor and hu­man rights ac­tivist Jag­mo­han Singh, who has worked closely with the body, un­cov­ers the sig­nif­i­cance of this move by the right-wing gov­ern­ment which barely cares for mi­nor­ity rights.

Iqbal Singh Lalpura, a se­nior po­lice of­fi­cer from Pun­jab fully ‘qual­i­fies’ to be the chief of the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties. He has been a pli­able po­lice of­fi­cer, con­tro­ver­sial dur­ing the mil­i­tancy pe­riod in Pun­jab, dec­o­rated with Pres­i­den­tial and Po­lice medals, who joined the BJP party soon af­ter re­tire­ment to reach the zenith like the pre­sent one and the ic­ing on the cake is the In­dian me­dia call­ing him “a Sikh philoso­pher who has writ­ten many books on the Sikh re­li­gion.”

Iqbal Singh Lalpura has been “awarded” the post for fac­ing farm­ers’ ire in Pun­jab on the ques­tion of 3 anti-farmer laws and for his mer­i­to­ri­ous po­lice ser­vices as SSP Am­rit­sar and SSP Tarn Taran dur­ing mil­i­tancy in the Pun­jab.  

No one has any doubts that the Bharatiya Janata Party has no love lost for mi­nori­ties in In­dia.  How else one can ex­plain that while the mi­nori­ties suf­fer daily, the BJP gov­ern­ment takes months to fill posts to the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties and in the court pro­ceed­ings hides be­hind the fact that the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties Act, 1992, is silent on the sub­ject of au­to­matic fill­ing of the posts.

The pe­ti­tioner Ab­hay Ratan Bauddh, Na­tional Or­ga­nizer, Na­tional Co-or­di­na­tion Com­mit­tee of Bud­dhist Or­ga­ni­za­tions, rep­re­sented by ad­vo­cate Vinay Ku­mar, had sought di­rec­tions to fill va­cant posts of chair­per­son and mem­bers from the Bud­dhist, Chris­t­ian, Parsi, Sikh and Jain com­mu­ni­ties as per the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties Act. 

Iron­i­cally, In­di­a’s Min­istry of Mi­nor­ity Af­fairs cited that ut­most care is re­quired to se­lect nom­i­nees, Covid19 pan­demic has been a hin­drance and ul­ti­mately that model code of con­duct is in place. 

How­ever, Jus­tice Prat­i­bha Manin­der Singh was dis­sat­is­fied and ob­served in her 8 March 2021 or­der that “This Court has pe­rused the af­fi­davit filed on record and the same is com­pletely un­sat­is­fac­tory. The mere fact that per­sons of em­i­nence, abil­ity and in­tegrity have to be ap­pointed would not mean that the said ap­point­ments would not be ex­pe­di­tiously made. The va­can­cies ought to be ex­pe­di­tiously filled and there ought to be a proper time­line for the same. Ac­cord­ingly, it is di­rected that within a pe­riod of two weeks, the sta­tus of the spe­cific ap­point­ments shall be given in a sta­tus re­port, along with proper time­lines.”  Yet the ap­point­ment was de­layed and was fi­nally done on 10 Sep­tem­ber 2021.

From the pre­vi­ous Com­mis­sion, chair­per­son Syed Ghay­orul Hasan Rizvi demit­ted of­fice on 25 June 2020. Vice Chair­per­son  Atif Rasheed con­tin­ues in of­fice to date. Mem­bers Sunil Singhi, Ms Sulekha Kumb­hare, Shri Vada Das­turji Khur­shed Kaikobad Das­toor and Man­jit Singh Rai all demit­ted of­fice by June 2020. So, for the last 15 months, the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties was a one-man show and this is not the first time that this has hap­pened. 

The ap­point­ment of a BJP spokesper­son as the Chair­per­son of the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties is omi­nous of the pos­si­bil­i­ties of jus­tice from this quasi-ju­di­cial only-rec­om­menda­tory body. 

One needs to ask as to how does the Com­mis­sion func­tion like this? As it is, the NCM is per­ceived and func­tions as a tooth­less body, and with no mem­bers, does it not show to­tal dis­re­spect to mi­nori­ties?

The ap­point­ment of a BJP spokesper­son as the Chair­per­son of the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties is omi­nous of the pos­si­bil­i­ties of jus­tice from this quasi-ju­di­cial only-rec­om­menda­tory body. 

Jus­tice Ran­ganathan Mishra of the Ran­ganathan Mishra Com­mis­sion that in­ves­ti­gated the pogrom of No­vem­ber 1984 against Sikhs in Delhi and other parts of the coun­try and pro­duced a half-baked re­port, ended up be­com­ing the Chief of In­di­a’s Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Hu­man Rights.  Is Iqbal Singh Lalpu­ra’s ap­point­ment also in the same genre?

Break­ing the tra­di­tion to ap­point a Mus­lim from the biggest mi­nor­ity com­mu­nity in In­dia, the BJP seems to have a dearth of pli­able Mus­lims and hence for the sec­ond time in the his­tory of the body, a Sikh mem­ber has been ap­pointed as the chair­per­son, the first one be­ing for­mer bu­reau­crat Tar­lochan Singh, who later went on to be­come a Mem­ber Par­lia­ment. 

The ap­point­ment of Jus­tice Ran­ganathan Mishra to the Na­tional Com­mi­sion for Hu­man Rights and now Iqbal Singh Lalpura to the Na­tional Com­mis­sion for Mi­nori­ties -Is it not of the same genre?

In the past, NCM has had Sikh func­tionar­ies in the past who by sheer grit have done timely in­ter­ven­tions to up­hold Sikh mi­nor­ity rights. The last in­cum­bent -Man­jit Singh Rai was quick to in­ter­vene in the case of at­tempted re­moval of poor Sikhs from the heart of Shil­long, where they have been liv­ing for two cen­turies. Tar­lochan Singh, dur­ing his term also took up is­sues re­lat­ing to mi­nori­ties, in­clud­ing the fate of Afghan Sikhs. Ear­lier Vice-chair­per­son Bal­want Singh Ramoowalia too in­ter­vened in many cases, in­clud­ing the de­moc­ra­ti­sa­tion of the Sikh polity in SGPC. Vice-chair­per­son Har­cha­ran Singh Josh was also proac­tive in many spheres, es­pe­cially the sit­u­a­tion and sta­tus of poor Sik­li­gar and Van­jara Sikhs. 

In the past, NCM has had Sikh func­tionar­ies in the past who by sheer grit have done timely in­ter­ven­tions to up­hold Sikh mi­nor­ity rights. Yet, it is ob­served that is­sues are not taken their log­i­cal con­clu­sions.

Yet, it is seen that in many cases, in­volv­ing Sikhs and other mi­nor­ity com­mu­ni­ties, that the is­sues are not taken to their log­i­cal con­clu­sion, ei­ther be­cause of hid­den gov­ern­men­tal in­ter­fer­ence or the sheer fact that the Com­mis­sion does not con­vene for lack of quo­rum. What else can ex­plain that de­spite be­ing manda­tory, many states, in­clud­ing BJP states, do not have func­tion­ing State Mi­nor­ity com­mis­sions? At the NCM, there is not much re­search work for “lack of funds” and se­ri­ous re­ports that need gov­ern­men­tal fol­low up are not tabled in Par­lia­ment.

Iqbal Singh Lalpura has started his pub­lic in­ter­ac­tion by men­tion­ing on the NCM web­site that he will be avail­able to mem­bers of the pub­lic for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions on a reg­u­lar ba­sis. While that may be a good be­gin­ning, but if the BJP has no­tions that by ap­point­ing Lalpura and Sam­pla to cov­eted na­tional posts, it will be able to sat­isfy Pun­jabis, it is sadly mis­taken.