Letters to the Editor: Dismal power supply

Dismal power supply

Assam Public Distribution Company Ltd. (APDCL) is mandated to supply electricity to all consumers in the state, but due to its negligence, policy deficit, and inefficient performance over decades of existence, it has miserably failed to pick up. The frequent load shedding has become a part of our daily lives, coercing consumers to utter suffering. Even we are disgustingly failing to view the ongoing Olympic Games in Paris '24 due to repeated power cuts throughout the day and evening hours. In this era, electricity is an essential item for daily household chores, and in these hot summer days, electricity is essentially required for the use of fans and other cooling systems. The state's own generation of electricity is meagre at 260 MW, which barely meets about 10 percent of total consumption. The state power department should work on a mission to consider the capacity building of its own power generation to save the power situation in the present state.

Pannalal Dey,

Guwahati

Judicial hierarchy

The special feature and privilege of the Indian judiciary is the relative non-interference in its functioning by either the executive or the legislature. Also, the hierarchical system of the judiciary has ensured that no litigant goes unsatisfied with a particular court's verdict. At the same time, the topmost court in India, the Supreme Court, has time and again reiterated that no court in the country is above another. Especially with regard to the High Courts, the SC has made it clear that although its judgements are binding on every court in India under Article 141 of the Constitution, the High Courts are in no way inferior to them because the former's administrative control is independent of the top court. The SC has consistently refused to direct a high court to clear a case in a time-bound manner for the same reason.

Justice Abhay Oka of the SC, during the course of a hearing, succinctly remarked that "a court is a court." Chief Justice DY Chandrachud had, at a function in 2022, decried the tendency to refer to the district courts as subordinate judiciary because there was no definition of the word "subordinate," although the word is frequently used in the Indian Constitution. In the hierarchical system, since the High Court, an appellate court, has opportunities to reverse the judgements delivered by the district judges and session judges, and since the High Court has administrative jurisdiction over the district-level courts, the public has developed a distinct impression that the district judiciary is subordinate to the State High Court.

Dr. Ganapathi Bhat

(gbhat13@gmail.com)

Tackling flooding

in Guwahati

The news headline 'Guwahati comes to a standstill' published in your esteemed daily on August 6 has sharply drawn our attention. A spell of sharp shower lasted around two hours and completely paralysed normal life as roads turned into rivers of dirty water flowing out of the nearby drains or down the hills, misplacing pride in the power that be over Guwahati, begging the tag of smart city'. The city's nerve centre, GS Road, was among the worst-hit, as traffic and commuters remained stranded on end for hours together. These are recurring events that come to the news during every rainy season, causing untold misery to the people with heavy damage to property and often loss of life. It is also a source of mental agony for the city dwellers in the affected areas brought in by the uncertainties, with no solution coming in even after decades of various initiatives. A sense of despair and hopelessness is palpable, and people have almost accepted it as faith. How have things come to such a pass, and can we leave it only to destiny? The GMDA Master Plan 2025 explicitly mentions, ''If the Bharalu River fails, the entire drainage system of the city will collapse''.

It is not known how well the useful recommendations made in this master plan are followed by the city planners, so an independent review is called for. Together with the Bharalu, the Silsako drainage must be restored to its original capacity for efficient flushing of surface runoff. We need a lasting solution that has to take a holistic view of the artificial flooding problem, which can be a combination of structural and non-structural measures. Compounding the problem, new areas of the city are experiencing perennial waterlogging. Waterlogging at Rukminigaon is always horrible. It is because the Bahini River is overflowing. Many stretches of the city's key roads remained submerged.

People were stranded in their vehicles for hours on end, fatigued, hungry, and helpless. Yesterday's situation should serve as a lesson for the state government and disaster management services, as well as for traffic police personnel who were nowhere to be seen to help the affected people.

Iqbal Saikia,

Guwahati.

Fate of Bangladesh

Lakhs of people poured out on the streets of Dhaka on Monday as the news spread that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had bowed down before the protesters seeking her government's ouster. People were seen rejoicing on the streets after weeks of bloodbaths across the country. Following a High Court ruling to reinstate 30% job quotas for descendants of liberation fighters, protests got underway last month. It is a tangible sensation that those rejected by the electorate and turned to violence to regain power demonstrate contempt for governmental directives. Hasina has left Bangladesh for Delhi, and a caretaker government will take over.

Before flying out, Hasina and her sister had been taken to a “safe shelter” as hundreds of thousands of protesters demanded she resign amid deadly anti-government protests. Interestingly, the Chief of Army Staff of Bangladesh, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, after holding a meeting with several stakeholders, barring the Awami League, said an interim government would take charge soon. The way thousands of Bangladeshi protesters, many brandishing sticks, gathered in a central square in Dhaka, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina following a deadly police raid, reminds me that as Bangladesh teetered on the brink, the world watched with bated breath. The "final battle" promised by the protesters today could have been the most intense (sadly, even the angry students have broken the statue of Bangladesh's founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) and violent confrontation since the 1971 Liberation War.

Bangladesh is now under military rule, and Sheikh Hasina is now in Delhi for her future action. But it seems that after Hasina’s bow down to people's anger, Bangladesh will not only lose its democracy, but who knows, it will not become another Pakistan.

Bidyut Kumar Chatterjee,

Faridabad.