The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Centre to explain the forceful eviction of yoga guru Baba Ramdev and his followers from Ramlila Maidan . Delhi Police has requested TV channels for footage of the police action which, along with CCTV tapes from the pandal, will be produced to back up the government’s claim that it exercised maximum restraint. Taking suo motu cognizance of the midnight raid on Ramdev’s camp, the vacation bench of Justices B S Chauhan and Swatanter Kumar issued notices to the Union home secretary, chief secretary of Delhi, Delhi administration and Delhi Police commissioner. The court asked them to explain within two weeks as to what were the circumstances under which people had to be forcibly dispersed at midnight. The court will hear the matter in the second week of July. However, the vacation bench turned down a petition filed by advocate Ajay Kumar seeking the court’s intervention, taking exception to the fact that the contents of the petition were leaked to the media.
The government’s “core” team monitoring the tense negotiations between Baba Ramdev and Union ministers Kapil Sibal and Subodh Kant Sahay accepted the yoga guru’s offer of a written assurance that he would call off his fast in two days with reluctance. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and home minister P Chidambaram were sceptical about the unsigned assurance Ramdev’s aide Balkrishna was ready to give to the Centre’s negotiators. It took a while before they came around to agreeing the assurance scribbled on a notepad would suffice. The top government leadership, kept in the loop on how the negotiations were progressing, was insistent on nothing short of a clear cut announcement or undertaking from Ramdev that he would not prolong his black money protest. The government was not inclined to accept the assurance the negotiators extracted from the guru as it was felt it would not be a strong enough commitment on the yoga guru’s part. The brief to the negotiators was to ensure Ramdev did not get any wiggle room and he agreed to a firm pledge in specific terms. Having wooed the guru with official briefings and promises to enact a tough law on tracking black money, the government wanted to seal the deal. With Ramdev insistent about not making any announcement to the waiting media, the negotiators managed to persuade the government the written assurance offered was good enough. The tough negotiations had gone beyond five-and-a-half hours and the government needed a closure before Ramdev went to Ramlila grounds to address his supporters. As events turned out, the hastily written promise helped the government to argue that the guru had reneged on his word although there remains a strong view that the Centre had held on a bit before revealing the assurance. After Ramdev showed no signs of delivering on his part, the government’s top brass grew concerned over a massive loss of face if the guru’s agitation snowballed. The view that the Centre’s authority must be enforced gathered momentum and police action was ordered as the government had waited on the guru with bated breath turned the heat on him. It would have been politically untenable to have allowed the guru to thumb his nose after having gone all out to placate him.
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