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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Muslims aghast as a Hindu dons CEO’s cap

Mumbai : Sparking intense debate and deep unease among Muslims, the Maharashtra government has appointed a non-Muslim IAS officer as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the State Haj Committee (SHC), just as preparations for the annual Haj pilgrimage get underway.   According to official sources, Manoj Jadhav, a high-ranking IAS officer, is named the new SHC CEO, replacing Shaikh Ibrahim S. Aslam, who demitted office recently.   The appointment is being described by critics as unprecedented...

Muslims aghast as a Hindu dons CEO’s cap

Mumbai : Sparking intense debate and deep unease among Muslims, the Maharashtra government has appointed a non-Muslim IAS officer as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the State Haj Committee (SHC), just as preparations for the annual Haj pilgrimage get underway.   According to official sources, Manoj Jadhav, a high-ranking IAS officer, is named the new SHC CEO, replacing Shaikh Ibrahim S. Aslam, who demitted office recently.   The appointment is being described by critics as unprecedented in the state’s history, even as state government officials maintain that the SHC CEO’s role is administrative in nature.   Unconvinced, community leaders and legal experts point out that the position carries significant religious and operational responsibilities.   India sends around 1.75-lakh Haj pilgrims to Saudi Arabia every year, with a substantial majority coordinated through state and central Haj committees. The CEO is directly involved in overseeing the logistics, accommodation, travel schedules, coordination with Saudi authorities, and compliance with religious requirements associated with the Holy Haj pilgrimage.   Former SHC Chairman (2014-2018) Alhaj Ebrahim Gulam Nabi Shaikh, said the appointment has raised serious questions over its validity. “There is no provision in either the Central or State Haj Committee Acts that explicitly allows or envisages such an appointment. It is shocking how this decision was taken without consulting all stakeholders. Beyond administration, the CEO must address several religious and community-sensitive issues. Many Muslims are genuinely worried about how this will be handled,” he told The Perfect Voice.   Well-known advocate Yusuf Abrahani termed the decision “blatantly illegal” and said it has caused widespread distress. “I am in touch with major Muslim organisations, community leaders, trusts, and clerics across the state. We plan to challenge this appointment in court as early as next week,” he said.   Abrahani further noted that the CEO is traditionally expected to travel to Mecca and Medina, engage with Haj authorities, and possess a working understanding of Haj rites, rituals, and Islamic practices.   “This is far from being merely an organisational job. The question is not personal competence, but institutional appropriateness and legality,” he added.   Muslim intellectual M. Faisal Azmi, whose father, the late Hafiz Naushad Azmi was an ex-SHC Chairman, described the development as ‘absolutely unimaginable’. “It has shaken the entire Muslim community. Senior religious leaders and legal experts are discussing various options to challenge and rectify this,” he said.   “This is purely a matter of faith and religious administration of the Muslim community and cannot be tinkered with casually. It must be examined whether the Haj Committee Act permits such an appointment and under what circumstances. If it does not, the decision is clearly open to legal challenge.” SUHAIL KHANDWANI, Managing Trustee, Haji Ali Dargah & Mahim Dargah   “It is a matter of deep regret. Muslims are being systematically sidelined from key statutory and official bodies. Now even the Maharashtra State Haj Committee has not been spared. The motives may be questionable, but such actions will not succeed in weakening the community’s resolve.” MAULANA MAHMOOD DARYABDI, General Secretary, All India Ulema Council

Red Bonds

The Masala Bond gamble that helped fuel Kerala’s infrastructure boom now lays bare the Left’s uneasy marriage with the markets.

Kerala
Kerala

For a party that built its moral brand on austerity, probity and suspicion of global finance, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has developed a striking fondness for financial alchemy. Kerala’s celebrated experiment with rupee-denominated ‘Masala Bonds’ was meant to signal modern, market-savvy governance under Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Instead, it has now become a case study in doctrinal hypocrisy and potential regulatory defiance after the Enforcement Directorate issued show-cause notices under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) to Vijayan, former finance minister T. M. Thomas Isaac and former bureaucrat K. M. Abraham.


At the heart of the matter lies Rs. 466.91 crore - part of the Rs. 2,150-crore raised through bonds listed in London and Singapore in 2019 allegedly used to buy land, an end-use the regulator says was explicitly prohibited under the RBI’s master directions of June 2018. The Left, which traditionally treats foreign finance as a moral pollutant, now finds itself accused of misusing precisely the kind of capital it once denounced as imperial excess.

The CPI(M)’s first instinct, predictably, is denial wrapped in martyrdom. The notices are “politically motivated,” say its party leaders. The timing, just ahead of local body polls, adds a layer of theatrical outrage. The ED, long accused of being Delhi’s political bludgeon, makes an unconvincing villain in Kerala’s familiar script of federal victimhood. But to hide behind the Centre is to avoid an inconvenient truth as this trail did not begin with the ED but with the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).


The CAG’s 2019 audit of Kerala’s finances raised red flags on KIIFB’s borrowing structure and constitutional propriety. That report triggered the original FEMA probe in 2021. When the RBI told the Kerala High Court that the ED indeed had the power to investigate end-use of funds, the fig leaf of institutional immunity fell away.


The Left’s defence that land was ‘acquired’ rather than ‘purchased’ is a distinction without an economic difference. One changes accounting labels; the other changes reality. External commercial borrowing rules do not care much for semantic gymnastics. What matters is whether foreign capital, raised at a hefty 9.72 percent interest rate, was diverted into real estate in contravention of explicit norms.


This exposes the deeper contradiction of Vijayan’s rule. Kerala’s model today rests not on old-style redistribution, but on leveraged growth, off-balance-sheet borrowings and an infrastructure splurge disguised through quasi-sovereign vehicles like KIIFB. In effect, the CPI(M), once suspicious of debt markets, has recreated the very financial architecture it long condemned in ‘neoliberal’ states. It borrows abroad at premium rates, bypasses conventional budgetary scrutiny, and then pleads innocence when auditors and regulators come knocking.


The political defence is just as elastic. When the ED targets opposition leaders elsewhere, the CPI(M) thunders against authoritarianism. When it targets CPI(M) leaders, the agency becomes a BJP conspirator acting in cahoots with Kerala’s enemies.


That said, a show-cause notice is not a verdict and the ED itself is no paragon of institutional purity. But politics is not a court of law; it is a court of consistency. And here the CPI(M) stands exposed. A party that once equated foreign capital with exploitation now stakes its prestige on overseas bond markets. A government that preaches clean governance now faces detailed charges of prohibited end-use. A leadership that thrives on the rhetoric of siege now confronts questions born not in Delhi but in audit reports and balance sheets.


Kerala’s voters are sophisticated enough to grasp the distinction between due process and deflection. They can also sense when outrage becomes rehearsal rather than resistance. If the Left truly believes the ED’s case is hollow, it should welcome a transparent adjudication instead of drowning it in election-season conspiracy.


For a party that once promised to change the system, the CPI (M) now seems trapped in explaining why it looks so uncomfortably like the system it once despised. 


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