No gloating, please

No gloating, please

The Bharatiya Janata Party has been quick to claim its stalwarts have been acquitted and to accuse the CBI of mala fide intent. The VHP, characteristically, has gone even further and declared the verdict is a vindication of its stand on the Ram temple. These are attempts to throw dust in the eyes of the public. By no stretch of the imagination can what transpired in court be called an acquittal or an encouragement of temple-building ambitions. Whatever political advantage the BJP hopes to gain by its disingenuous statements will be short-lived. No one will be misled for long. A technical hitch has led to a delay in the trial of L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti and five others in the Babri Masjid demolition case. But that trial ought to be resumed when the CBI's defective notification is replaced by a fresh one. Indeed the court points out clearly the direction the Uttar Pradesh government and the CBI should take when it says the defect is ``curable''.

It is necessary to distinguish the political from the legal. Legally, the position is fairly clear. The fact that the CBI's notification has been found defective with regard to Advani and others does not impair the legal validity of the case against them. It only causes a delay. Other findings reinforce this view. No fault has been found with the constitution of the special CBI court notified in 1993 to try Kalyan Singh, Bal Thackeray and others. Second, the framing of charges by the CBI against Kalyan Singh and others is upheld. Those charges are similar to and were filed on the same day (December 6, 1992) as the charges against Advani and others. What happens next outside court in the political sphere will be very relevant, of course. The pause that has occurred can be temporary or protracted depending on how the BJP government in UP and the CBI decide to handle it. UP can decide to delay issuing a fresh notification and given the political heavyweights involved, probably will. A lot of dust will accumulateon the file in the law department. A CBI challenge to the Lucknow bench verdict in the Supreme Court could prove its independence. On the other hand, such a course could also add to the delay.

Legal wrangles on issues other than the central ones will have the effect of stretching matters out for many more years. That would be in keeping with the glacial progress of the case so far. The BJP will find it convenient politically to keep the limelight on technical issues rather than the charges of inciting communal violence, conspiracy, demolition etc. The cynical view, that an endlessly postponed trial would be as good as an acquittal, is what the party seems to subscribe to. Having long denounced attempts to pin responsibility for the demolition of the Babri Masjid as politically motivated, it sees no reason to cooperate with the prosecutors. It does great harm when the highest in the land and the party of government display such attitudes towards the law. They should know that the ends of justice are served only when the courts have heard all sides and pronounced on the case.