JANET RIZVI's Letter
fas...@rediffmail.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
tel. 0124-4074884
F-2601 Palam Vihar
e-mailja...@gmail.com
Gurgaon
Haryana - 122017
4 May 2007
Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
President of India
President's Secretariat
Rashtrapati Bhavan
New Delhi
Sub: Apparently arbitrary action against voluntary organizations by
the
local administration of Leh district, Ladakh, J&K
Your Excellency,
This is to bring to your notice the unfortunate situation that has
arisen in the Leh district as a result of actions that seem on the
face
of it arbitrary and unwarranted, on the part of the District
Magistrate, Sh. M.K. Dwivedi, against certain voluntary organizations.
Particularly targetted have been the Students' Educational and
Cultural
Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL), and its Director, Sh. Sonam Wangchuk.
I write to you as one who has known and loved Ladakh and the Ladakhis
for over thirty years. I lived in Leh for two years, 1976-1978, as
wife
of the then District Magistrate (now retired from Government service)
Sh. S.S. Rizvi, who wishes to be associated with me in this petition.
Since our transfer away from Ladakh in 1978, I have kept in touch with
Leh and Kargil through my research for my two books-Ladakh, Crossroads
of High Asia (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2nd (revised) edn.
1996) and Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant
Traders in Ladakh (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1999)-and
through my membership of the International Association for Ladakh
Studies.
As you, Sir, are aware, in the light of your visit to Leh in June
2006,
SECMOL has been in the forefront of educational reform in the
district.
It was instrumental in formulating the project Operation New Hope
(ONH), a tripartite educational partnership between Government, the
community and the voluntary sector which was brought into being in
April 1994 by a Memorandum of Understanding signed by the then
District
Magistrate, representing Government, and leading representatives of
the
community and the voluntary sector. Working within the terms of the
MOU, and in close collaboration with the Education Department, SECMOL
has done remarkable work since then. By 2006, all the 300 village
schools in the Leh district, as well as 32 schools in the Chigtan
block
of the Kargil district, were functioning under the supervision of
Village Education Committees (VECs) set up at SECMOL's initiative. At
its campus at Phey SECMOL had trained a total of 3567 village
leaders-not only VEC members, but also panchayat leaders, gobas
(village headmen) and women leaders. It also ran residential refresher
courses for about 1000 teachers; and study courses for students from
remote and disadvantaged regions of the district, giving them the
chance which they would otherwise not have had to pass their
school-leaving exams and go on to varied careers as teachers, NGO
directors, and film-makers, among others. Some are even now serving on
the Leh Autonomous Hill Development Council.
Other initiatives of SECMOL have been the creation of a solar
residential school at Lalok in the high-altitude and remote region of
Chang-thang, replacing small and dysfunctional schools in individual
villages, which has been replicated by Government in other regions;
revision of the school curriculum; and a programme of creating and
distributing English-language textbooks for the primary classes which
incorporate local concerns and images, as well as reflecting the most
up-to-date theories of education.
The scale of SECMOL's achievement can be gauged by the pass percentage
figures for the Matric (Class X) exam from the Leh district, found in
the J&K Education Board Gazettes. In 1996, 1997 and 1998, the pass
rate
of candidates from the Leh district hovered around five per cent. The
enormity of the failure represented by this figure needs no
underlining. It was in 1999 that the first batch of students to have
had a significant exposure to the early educational reforms of ONH
reached Class X. From that year, the pass percentage started rising,
and within a span of only five years, by 2004, it had reached 55 per
cent; it has remained in the fifties since then. The Ladakh Model of
the Sarva Shikshya Abhiyan, which was to represent the second phase of
Operation New Hope, and which you, Sir, inaugurated in June 2006, set
a
target of 90 per cent pass-rate by 2010. In the light of the recent
events, SECMOL has been obliged to withdraw its co-operation from the
Education Department, putting the achievement of this target, and the
future of hundreds of students, in grave doubt.
Over the years, SECMOL the organization and Sonam Wangchuk as its
Director, have received national and international recognition. As
early as 1996, Sonam Wangchuk received the Governor's Medal for
educational reform in Jammu and Kashmir; and in 2002, he was awarded
the Ashoka Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurship by the Ashoka
Foundation, USA. Since 2004, he has been a member of the National
Governing Council for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in the Ministry of Human
Resources Development, chaired by the Hon'ble Prime Minister of India;
and that same year the magazine Sanctuary Asia conferred the Green
Teacher's Award on him. You, yourself, Sir, appreciated SECMOL's
achievements as embodied in the Ladakh Model of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan,
which you were gracious enough to mention in your address to the
nation
on 15 August 2006 as one of the initiatives which, if replicated
widely
enough, could contribute to the creation of a Knowledge Society in
India by 2020. You also kindly donated Rs 3 lakh as seed money for the
VECs functioning under ONH.
All the above facts are in the public domain and verifiable; some are
taken from Government's own publications. This, then, is the
organization which the present District Magistrate of Leh, Sh. M.K.
Dwivedi, considers a 'significant threat to the administration and
peace of the region' (vide Notice No; DCL/NGO/06(704)/151, dated:
28.02.2007). The District Magistrate has based this opinion on certain
'very serious allegations' against the organization and its Director;
these include (1) illegal occupation of 200 kanals of land, (2)
misappropriation of foreign funds, (3) 'anti-national connections in
China and other places, which have been or may be exploited for anti
national activities', and (4) 'threatening Council and District
Administration from time to time with adverse remarks and with threat
of dire consequences there by destabilizing the harmony of the place.'
The Notice in question states the intention to '[initiate] action in
all these matters against your NGO and in particular you in personal
capacity so as to take preventive safety measure to prevent any
disturbance in the region'. It is served against SECMOL and its
Director, Sonam Wangchuk, with no evidence of any enquiry having been
made into the veracity of the allegations, and without giving the
recipients any opportunity to answer them. In taking this action, I
submit, the District Magistrate has acted, if not ultra vires,
certainly beyond the bounds of natural justice.
SECMOL's reply, dated 1 March 2007, deals with the allegations
serially. (1) The organization has officially applied for the land
under their occupation; for 12 years no Government official has
questioned their occupation, indeed the Hill Council has partnered
them in conducting multifarious activities on that same land; and if
the Revenue Department has not finalized the case even after 12 years,
numerous other functioning voluntary organizations and private
individuals are in exactly the same position. (2) The accounts of the
organization's foreign funds are maintained in accordance with the
procedures laid down by the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act, and
they have satisfactorily answered any queries received from the FCRA
Division of the Home Ministry; therefore the allegation is baseless.
(3) Such an allegation made without any kind of substantiation is
outrageous, and amounts to character assassination. Sonam Wangchuk's
only connection with China is his pilgrimage to Lhasa with his mother
six years ago; he adds that if a Lhasa pilgrimage amounts to an
anti-national activity, then many others including some top leaders
are
equally guilty. (4) This unsubstantiated allegation is denied. SECMOL
has issued appeals, never threats.
In order to clarify its position with the public, in the face of this
official assault, SECMOL also prepared a CD for circulation in the
villages. The reaction of the District Magistrate was to invoke Sec.
144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, and impose
a complete ban on circulation of such materials like audio/video CDs/
Cassette, written text, pamphlet/ books/ brochures/ letters etc. by
Mr.
Sonam Wangchuk or any staff/ worker of NGO SECMOL. Further, the ban is
imposed to restrict all public meetings, speeches, gatherings, direct
or indirect propaganda by the said person, SECMOL NGO or any person
associated with them within the entire jurisdiction of district Leh.
(NO:DCL/NGO/06(704)/174, dated: 08-03-2007).
Since no convincing evidence has been offered of any action on the
part
of SECMOL that would lead to a breach of the peace, this would appear
to be a blatant violation of their human rights, particularly the
right
to freedom of ex-pression.
The stated reasons for imposing the ban are revealing, in that they
attribute the necessity for action to, among other things, the
resentment of the Education Department staff against 'interference' by
SECMOL, and 'day-to-day humiliation.... being faced by large number of
Government employees in effecting their duties due to provocative
propaganda by the said person and staff or his NGO'. As stated above,
SECMOL has been working in close collaboration with the Education
Department since 1994, and the results of the collaboration speak for
themselves. No doubt the kind of thoroughgoing reforms this
collaboration has brought about in the Department have angered the
vested interests of the idle and the corrupt. The document under
consideration, which also refers to a letter from the All Leh
Teachers'
Association, would seem to indicate that such vested interests have
captured the ear of the District Magistrate. The order u/s 144 was
followed by a circular (no. 23009-56, dt. 12.03.07) from the Chief
Educational Officer, Leh, instructing all employees of the Department
to suspend all co-operation with SECMOL.
The District Magistrate's actions in February-March 2007 may be seen
in
the light of a similar situation of his making a year earlier, when,
on
the basis of unspecified 'intelligence reports from various sources',
he issued an order requiring all the voluntary organizations in Leh
district to submit details of their membership and activities to his
office, and further requiring them to submit monthly reports including
details of receipt and expenditure, threatening raids and
de-recognition in case of non-compliance (Order no. DC-(NGO) 06 (704)
dated: 4-04-2006). The Leh Voluntary Network, representing all the
district's Non-Government Organizations, protested the arbitrary tone
of the order, and particularly the impractical requirement of
submitting monthly reports; however, in the interests of
accountability
and transparency all its constituent members agreed to furnish Annual
Reports and Audited Statements of Accounts for the previous three
years
to the Chief Executive Councillor of the Leh Autonomous Hill
Development Council, and further offered to institute a system of
social audit (vide LVN's letters to the DC, 30 May 2006, and to the
CEC, LAHDC, 5 June 2006). On 25 July 2006, the District Magistrate
issued an order withdrawing the non-political certification of the NGO
Rural Development and You, whose director, as Chairman of the Leh
Voluntary Network, had signed the above-mentioned letters (Order no.
DC-(NGO)06 (704), dated : July 25th 2006). The only ground given for
this action is the bizarre one that 'It has been reported that the
said
NGO is still organizing public activities'. He also initiated action
on
equally flimsy grounds against two other voluntary organizations, the
Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre and the Ladakh Environmental
and Health Organization.
The State Government considered the situation provoked by the District
Magistrate serious enough to warrant sending the Divisional
Commissioner to Leh in August 2006 to sort it out. After a series of
meetings that he held with representatives of the Voluntary
Organizations and with the District Magistrate, an agreement was
reached and signed by all parties. The District Magistrate agreed to
'[keep] in abeyance and withdraw' all the orders issued since April
2006, in view of the initiative taken by the voluntary organizations
'to introduce social audit and present their accounts, Policies,
Programme activities and achievement before the public periodically in
the shape of exhibitions', and to keep the district administration
informed of their activities. The voluntary organizations also
'offered
to withdraw the petition filed by them before the Hon'ble Court'. I am
informed, however, that in spite of the above agreement, the District
Magistrate has not withdrawn his orders in the eight months since
August 2006.
Your Excellency, during my ongoing association with Ladakh since 1978,
I have watched with admiration the growth and flowering of the
voluntary movement, especially in Leh district, which is unparalleled,
I believe, in any other region of India, and which represents a deeply
concerned civil society, committed to the betterment of the region and
its people. I have known Sonam Wangchuk for over fifteen years, and
whenever we meet I'm amazed all over again by the creativity and
agility of his mind, and his transparent and focussed commitment to
the
work which he has undertaken. It's impossible for me to believe that
there is an iota of truth in the allegations which form the basis of
the District Magistrate's actions against him and against SECMOL.
It would be a tragedy for the Leh district, for Ladakh as a whole, and
indeed for India, if the pioneering work done by SECMOL should be
brought to a halt by the actions of an administration which appears,
on
the face of it, to have fallen prey to local vested interests. If
indeed the District Magistrate sincerely believes that there is reason
to suppose Sonam Wangchuk, representing SECMOL, guilty of encroaching
unauthorizedly on Government land, of misappropriating funds, and of
anti-national activities, surely these are misdemeanours serious
enough
to warrant bringing a case against him and against the organization in
a court of law. If the District Magistrate is not prepared to do that,
then an impartial enquiry should be instituted into how he has taken
such stringent action against the organization and its Director on the
basis of mere unsubstantiated allegations.
We request you, Sir, to use your influence with the State Government
to
see that justice is done in this case, and an impartial enquiry
instituted into the apparent violation of the human rights of the
voluntary organizations of Leh district, particularly of SECMOL.
Yours faithfully,
Janet Rizvi S.S. Rizvi
Copy to
1. Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, Sh. Manmohan Singh.
2. Hon'ble Minister for Human Resources Development, Government of
India, Sh. Arjun Singh.
3. Hon'ble Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Sh. Lal Krishna
Advani.
4. Chairperson, Human Rights Commission of India, Hon'ble Justice Shri
S. Rajendra Babu.
5. Hon'ble Governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Lt. Gen. (retd.) S.K. Sinha.
6. Hon'ble Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Sh. Ghulam Nabi Azad.
7. Hon'ble Minister for Education, Government of Jammu and Kashmir,
Sh. Peerzada Yaqub
8. Hon'ble Minister for Power, Government Of Jammu and Kashmir, Sh.
Rigzin Jora.
9. Hon'ble Member of Parliament for Ladakh, Sh. Thubstan Chhewang.
10. Hon'ble Chief Executive Councillor, Leh Autonomous Hill
Development
Council, Sh. Chering Dorjay.
11. Hon'ble Member of Parliament for Srinagar and Chairman of the
National Conference of Jammu and Kashmir, Sh. Omar Abdullah.
12. Sh. C. Phonsog, Chief Secretary, Government of Jammu and Kashmir.
13. Sh. S.S. Kapoor, Secretary, Ladakh Affairs, Government of Jammu
and
Kashmir.
14. Sh. M.K. Dwivedi, District Magistrate, Leh.
15. Sh. Sonam Wangchuk, Director, SECMOL.
16. Sh. Padma Tashi, Chairperson, Leh Voluntary Network,.