Politics started over the submission of judicial probe report on Jhiram valley incident of May 2013, in which 29 people, including senior Chhattisgarh Congress leaders, were killed. The Congress took exception to submission of report to Governor Anusuiya Uike and asked why was it (the report) hidden from the government.
Chhattisgarh Congress chief Mohan Markam said at a press conference on Sunday that direct submission of the report to the governor was against norms, and demanded that the report be handed over to the state government as soon as possible.
BJP state president Dharamlal Kaushik retorted, asking why the Congress was freaking out over the issue and demanded that the report should be made public.
The report of the judicial probe, headed by Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra, was handed over to the governor on Saturday by secretary of the probe committee and registrar of the Chhattisgarh High Court, Santosh Kumar Tiwari, at Raj Bhavan. The report is exhaustive, running into 10 volumes and 4,184 pages. Justice Mishra is currently the chief justice of the Andhra Pradesh High Court and is said to have completed the probe before taking up his new assignment.
The Jhiram valley incident that involved Maoist attack on the Parivartan Yatra of Chhattisgarh Congress on May 25, 2013 has a massive political implication. The attack killed 29 people, including the erstwhile state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, his son Dinesh Patel, powerful tribal leader Mahendra Karma, Uday Mudliar, on the spot. Another very senior leader, Vidyacharan Shukla, was grievously injured in the attack and succumbed later, changing the entire political setup in Chhattisgarh.
The judicial probe had been notified on June 27, 2013 and the probe ran into controversy frequently during the past eight years, with the Congress raising objections on different counts. On Sunday, the state Congress chief held a press conference along with the kin of people killed in the incident and highlighted more objections, mainly the failure to submit the report to the state government (state cabinet) though it was the government that constituted the probe committee.
Markam said the submission of the report to the governor sent out a wrong message and asked what was being hidden from the government. He also raised objections to the sudden submission of the report when the probe panel had recently sought extension of its tenure. He also said that the hearings of the probe panel stopped suddenly on October 11 and five witnesses of the state government did not get the chance to give their testimonies. Markam demanded that the state government institute another probe into the incident.
BJP chief Kaushik, however, said the facts of the report will not change irrespective of who it was submitted to and added that Congress was probably freaking out as the report submission will bring to end an important political issue for the ruling party.
He added that if Congress had objections, the content of the report should be made public. He also said the governor was the constitutional head of the state and there should be no objection to the report being submitted to her.
