Cut Karo, Please!” — When the Legal Question Got Too Legal...
- dhadakkamgarunion0
- 22 hours ago
- 3 min read
🖋️ *From The Desk of Abhijeet Rane*
“Cut Karo, Please!” — When the Legal Question Got Too Legal. YouTuber Santosh Pandit was arrested by Pune Police at 1 a.m. over an allegedly objectionable video concerning Minister Chandrakant Patil. Journalist Rahul Kulkarni later visited the police station and spoke to the complainant, police and lawyers. Then came one simple but crucial legal question: “If Chandrakant Patil himself is not the complainant, can a third person legally file such a complaint?” The young lawyer’s memorable response? “Thamba ki jara… cut kara ki!” Poor fellow! Kulkarni should have stopped the camera and allowed him a quick revision break. Perhaps a leader would have received that courtesy! Journalism can be terribly inconsiderate sometimes—it asks lawyers legal questions without advance notice. Next time, please issue the questions beforehand. Open-book viva is only fair!
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🖋️ *From The Desk of Abhijeet Rane*
Political Parties or Tax Laundromats? The reported case of Gujarat’s Aam Janmat Party raises a disturbing question about India’s thousands of Registered Unrecognised Political Parties (RUPPs). If a tiny party with barely visible political activity can report donations running into hundreds of crores while contesting hardly any elections, the Election Commission and Income Tax Department must investigate the money trail. Donations to eligible political parties can provide donors deductions under Section 80GGC, creating obvious scope for abuse if shell-like parties and intermediaries are used merely to manufacture tax deductions or recycle money. The problem is bigger than one party. India needs tougher disclosure requirements, real-time scrutiny of suspicious donations and stronger powers to deregister persistently non-compliant entities. A political party should exist to contest politics, not to operate as a receipt-printing machine for converting questionable money into perfectly respectable paperwork.
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🖋️ *From The Desk of Abhijeet Rane*
NOTA and EWS: Two Reforms That Missed the Point. NOTA gives voters the satisfaction of rejecting every candidate—but practically changes nothing. Even if NOTA receives more votes than every contestant, under the prevailing system the candidate with the highest valid candidate-votes can still win. It is protest without consequence. EWS reservation suffers from a different contradiction. Introduced through the 103rd Constitutional Amendment, it created a 10% quota based on economic weakness for eligible persons outside existing SC/ST/OBC reservations, irrespective of religion. It was projected as relief for economically weaker sections of the unreserved population, yet it did not increase the open-category space; it created another reserved category within the overall seat structure. NOTA tells the dissatisfied voter, “Reject everyone, but we won’t care.” EWS tells the unreserved poor, “Here is your quota—but competition and structural grievances remain.” Different reforms, same problem: symbolism exceeded systemic change.
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🖋️ *From The Desk of Abhijeet Rane*
Welfare or Religion-Based Politics? Tamil Nadu’s new minority-welfare package raises a question that deserves an answer beyond party politics. The government has announced tuition support for eligible Muslim women pursuing undergraduate education, scholarships for Muslim schoolgirls, skill training for 10,000 minority youth, a minority women’s college and a ₹100-crore interest-free revolving fund for income-generating assets on Muslim Waqf and Christian religious properties. Helping disadvantaged citizens is unquestionably a legitimate duty of government. But why should economic assistance increasingly be designed around religious identity rather than economic deprivation? A poor Hindu girl, Muslim girl or Christian girl faces the same problem when her family cannot afford college fees. Secular welfare should identify poverty, educational backwardness and genuine need—not first ask the beneficiary which God she worships. Otherwise welfare slowly becomes electoral appeasement.
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🖋️ *From The Desk of Abhijeet Rane*
Everyone advises activists to use polite, constitutional language. Fair enough. Abuse cannot become a substitute for argument. But there is an uncomfortable question: does our system listen to polite citizens with the same urgency? A common man may submit applications, representations and complaints for months without response, while one politically powerful phone call can suddenly make the machinery sprint—even at midnight. That is why viral videos have become the ordinary citizen’s new weapon of accountability. Santosh Pandit’s language can certainly be criticised; so can his methods. But criticising his vocabulary is easier than confronting the issues he raises. Not everyone can become Pandit or Vidyanand Bapat, nor should everyone imitate them. Yet democracy needs citizens willing to question power. When polite questions are routinely ignored, society should not be surprised when questions eventually arrive in an impolite voice.
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