Second question first: there is a move to take nominations out of the hands of the collegium. There has been some bitter exchanges of opinion and of tight-lipped statements on both sides; in the long run, the administration will win, but the judges have not surrendered their ethical position, even though a really admired judge like Chelameshwar has expressed his unhappiness with the amount of discussion that goes into the collegium selection process (he is a member of the collegium).
Your first point: The background is that the response to rioting or to mass gatherings with gunmen in the crowd firing at the security forces was earlier rubber bullets. This caused fatalities. Some liberal sources then suggested a shift to pellet guns, and that disastrous suggestion was taken up by a panicky bureaucracy, without any investigation of how it works and what might be a by-product. And we have regretted it ever since.
Pepper smoke instead of tear gas has been suggested; water cannon has been suggested; taser has been suggested. All these seem to be mired in bureaucratic indecision, just as bullet-proof vests for the Army and the RR have been not supplied. The irony is that some private Indian firms actually export such bullet-proof clothing.
If you go to a Facebook site that I can give you off line, not to violate the rules, you will see what the position of people like me is on the Kashmir issue. I will not articulate it here for fear of being called a self-publicising hypocrite (it is not for a referendum).
PS: It was not a comparison between the unrest in Kashmir and the Naxal terrorism, I merely explained why no pellet guns were used elsewhere. For instance, in the Naxal areas.
