On a day when the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued notice to the government seeking reports within two weeks on the early morning crackdown on Baba Ramdev's supporters on the Ramlila Grounds here on Sunday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the episode as “unfortunate” but justified it, saying there was “no alternative.”
In his first comments on the episode here, Dr. Singh told journalists: “It is unfortunate that the operation had to be conducted, but quite honestly, there was no alternative.” He was speaking on the sidelines of a function organised by the Hindi daily Rajasthan Patrika while responding to questions on the much-criticised police action on the Ramlila Grounds.
Earlier in the day, Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad sought to separate the negotiations that had taken place last week between the government's representatives and Baba Ramdev and the police action. At a media briefing at the Indian Women's Press Corps, he said the two issues were different and eviction was a law and order issue.
“It was linked to the permission that was given to Baba Ramdev for yoga instruction to 5,000 persons. They didn't stick to their commitment and the situation was becoming totally unmanageable, [with the crowd] threatening to swell to 50,000, and there was talk of people coming in lakhs,” Mr. Azad said, asking “Isn't that a violation of the agreement?” As the situation could have turned ugly the police, in their wisdom, acted.
On the question of the timing of the eviction, Mr. Azad said that was “for the security agencies to decide, right or wrong — the Prime Minister does not decide such things.”
There is clearly discomfort in the party and the government on the turn of events — and at Sunday evening's meeting of office-bearers and senior Ministers Pranab Mukherjee, P. Chidambaram, A.K. Antony and Kapil Sibal, there was a critical appraisal of the events. Ms. Gandhi asked for a detailed account of what had happened, sources said. But at the end, the assessment was that the BJP had failed to fight the Congress politically, and so the RSS, on its behalf, was using non-state actors as props to get at the government, and that needed to be dealt with frontally.
On Monday, the Group of Ministers on media management decided that the briefing for the day would be left to the Congress as the focus now was on the political rather than administrative issues.
