SPEECH SPOT: Sunnat members at the mosque

Ahmedabad: A clash of ideologies turned violent at small town in Gujarat recently. At Dahod, the birthplace of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, 72 people were arrested after members of the Ahl-e-Sunnat, an offspring of the Barelvi Islamic school, clashed with those of the Tableeghi Jamaat.

The Barelvi school encourages worship at dargahs and celebrates the Urs fair in memory of Sufi saints while the Tableeghi stand for the puritanical Salafi brand of Islam. Sunnat followers say two Tableeghi Jamaat preachers from Kashmir landed up at the Sunnat Noor mosque last week and started collecting donations. When they insisted on sleeping in the mosque, trouble began. The preachers slipped away. Now the Tableegh say they don't know who they were or why they were collecting funds. Incidentally, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is now propping up the Sunnat in Pakistan to counteract radical Islamic groups.

-Uday Mahurkar

LOOPHOLE
Muzzling the Investigator

Jaipur: The Rajasthan High Court last week quashed a CBI fir in a corruption case against IAS officer Ravi Shankar Srivastava. Justice J.C. Verma based his order on two grounds. One, that the state had not given consent since 1989 to enable the CBI to probe a case in Rajasthan. Second, as the state Government had not notified the CBI as a police station, the agency had no legal authority to register an FIR without a specific order by the authority concerned. After its request for suspension of the judgment was turned down, the CBI stopped work on pending cases to start working on a special leave petition before the Supreme Court.

-Rohit Parihar

THE GOLDEN PUMPKIN

Ajit Jogi climbed his way to the chief minister's chair within 12 years of joining active politics. Now he's careening downhill on the results of two court cases involving his claim to and on behalf of tribals.

Within days of entering office, Jogi took on the Centre over the disinvestment of the Bharat Aluminium Company (BALCO). After he egged on reluctant workers like a trade unionist, tehsildars and patwaris ordered Sterlite, the buyers of the privatised PSU to vacate tribal land. Electricity and water to the plant was cut off. Jogi promised the workers the moon ... and then quietly withdrew during the eclipse. The workers went back to work, and now the Supreme Court has upheld the decision to sell BALCO. The court has deprecated Jogi's "baseless allegations against the Union Government" and reprimanded his government for raising the issue of tribal land years after giving it away to BALCO.

The second case refers to Jogi's own status as a tribal. The National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has put a spanner in the works by declaring him an sc. If the courts agree, it will be a quick ride down the political escalator.

SIGNPOSTS

CONFERRED: The Gandhi Peace Prize, on John Hume, architect of the Northern Ireland peace process.

RESIGNED: Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy, as chairman of the Law Commission, citing "personal reasons".

SACKED: Amar Mani Tripathi, Uttar Pradesh minister of state for trade tax, for allegedly harbouring criminals.

SWORN IN: Ranil Wickremesinghe, as Sri Lanka's prime minister.

AWARDED: The Kellogg's Hannah Neil World of Children Prize, to Sharadkumar Dicksheet, plastic surgeon, for service to poor children in India.

DIED: Dharam Singh Gill, 84, Olympic gold medallist for hockey in 1952 and 1964.

CLARIFIED: By Habib Bank Ag Zurich, that it is not a Pakistani bank, after it was said to be affected by the US Government's anti-terrorism measures.