A Mayor’s dilemma over ‘forged’ letter to comrade

NEW DELHI: The biggest takeaway from the purportedly fake or forged letter written by the youngest Mayor in the country, 23-year-old Arya Rajendran of Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, to her senior party colleague, asking him to provide a list of party nominees to fill some 295 vacancies under her jurisdiction, is that the Mayor and her party, the CPI(M), have scant respect for the law of the land or the police force which is responsible for protecting the lives and properties of the citizens of the state.
Rajendran, in a letter dated 1 November, had allegedly requested the CPI(M) Thiruvananthapuram district secretary to provide a priority list of cadres to be appointed for various posts in the health unit of the corporation by 16 November, the last date for submission of applications. The letter was addressed “Comrade”. Once the letter was leaked in Malayala Manorama, the largest Malayalam daily, Arya and the CPI(M) disowned the letter, saying it was a fake one.
What will ordinary citizens do when someone forges their signatures or drafts fake documents in their names or, simply put, impersonates them. There are innumerable cases such as even tenants forging the house owner’s signature and selling the house to a third party.
Such things do happen in Bharat, but the natural instinct of law abiding citizens will be to go to the nearest police station and file a complaint with the Station House Officer there or anyone in charge at that point in time.
This is exactly what a lady doctor did a fortnight or so ago in Kerala’s capital city of Thiruvananthapuram when a stranger tried to molest her while she was on her morning walk near the Museum. She had promptly gone to the Museum police station and lodged a complaint there. What happened thereafter is another story altogether and whether the doctor concerned would approach the police again if she encounters another such bad experience is anybody’s guess.
But in the case of the young Mayor, she seems to have no belief in the law of the land or faith in the police force. She did not bother to go to a local police station and write down a simple complaint of forgery on a foolscap paper and submit it to the officer there. As she was away first in Delhi when the supposedly forged letter was circulated (ironically taking part in a protest rally in front of Parliament asking ‘Where is my job’ to the central government) and later in Kozhikode on a private visit, it may not have been possible for her to file a complaint in a police station in those places since the incident happened in the jurisdiction of the Thiruvananthapuram police, though the supposedly forged letter did its rounds across the state.
The ordinary man or woman on the street cannot be blamed if she or he thought that the young Mayor would file a police complaint as soon as she reached Thiruvananthapuram. As things unfolded, it was not to be. Instead of going to a police station, she thought it prudent to lodge the complaint with the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan himself. That the Chief Minister is also supposed to be the Home Minister of the state is another matter altogether.
After that, as Mayor and as the complainant, Arya Rajendran held a press conference where she said, “This is a very serious matter and that is why I personally handed over my complaint to the Chief Minister himself.” It is not known whether any of the reporters present at the press conference asked why Arya Rajendran was reluctant to file an FIR with the police.
So the question is whether henceforth ordinary citizens of Kerala can go straight with a complaint to the Chief Minister for possible redressal of their grievances? After all, going to a police station anywhere in Kerala, let alone the country, is not a pleasant experience.
Perhaps what is holding back the Mayor from going to the police may be the force’s track record in recent years in the state. There is a litany of “isolated cases” of grave lapses on the part of Kerala police with ordinary citizens denied natural justice, even of men with mistaken identity done to death in lockups. Let us only hope that as a party worker from her childhood, Arya Rajendran doesn’t think it a reflection on the efficacy of the Home Minister of the state, who also happens to be a member of the highest decision-making body of the party she believes in, the largest communist party in the country, the CPI(M).
The case of the forged letter cannot be treated as an internal matter of the CPI(M). It involves the office of the Mayor who is in charge of the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation and is an elected representative of the people of the city. If her letterhead can be used to forge letters, what is the guarantee that thousands of people working in government offices will not meet the same fate? Who will come in their defence?
Recently, the state police chief Anil Kant talked about his force’s plan to launch an awareness programme ‘Watch Your Neighbour’ in a supposed bid to curb crime in society. Even if we forget the political implications (the hidden agenda of the State machinery) in such a move, the police chief was simply asking citizens to spy on their neighbours. If things such as the forging of a Mayor’s letterhead can happen, then the police chief should think of extending the programme to government offices too.