Govt still lukewarm on terror information

The government is not only ignoring the justifiable expectations of the public, it is also failing to comply in a material sense with a high court order.

The two reports that the government has submitted to the HC in response to the November 30 ruling instructing it to report progress of investigations every two weeks are so threadbare and partial that in no way can they be described as being in compliance with the court order. To make matters worse, the two reports are more or less identical despite the fact that they have been issued at two-week intervals.

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This is highly regrettable. The government has not only a moral duty, it now has a legal obligation to inform the public of the results of the ongoing investigations, but it has cavalierly continued with utter disregard both for the rights and expectations of the public, and now the law of the land.

In the first place, the public has a right to know how the investigations are progressing. The serial bomb blasts of August 17 and the suicide bombings since then have understandably unnerved the entire nation, and it is incumbent on the government to project a sense of security. Details of what steps the government has taken and what has been uncovered so far would go a long way in raising public morale and restoring a sense of safety.

The second reason why it is in the government's interest to release more information is in this way it can dispel suspicions, which have been raised in several quarters, that it has something to hide. The longer the government stonewalls and refuses to discuss openly the status and findings of the investigations, the deeper will grow the public belief that the reason that it is being so unforthcoming is that the investigations are either uncovering information that it does not wish to share or have hardly progressed at all.

This is no time for politics as usual and it is no time for circling the wagons. The government's continued lukewarm response to the demand for information is harmful both to public interest and to its own credibility.