Front page
No-confidence motion moved in Parliament. The Lok Sabha will start debating the no-confidence motion, the first in 15 years, Friday. Going by the arithmetic in the House, which currently has 535 members, the BJP-led NDA is expected to defeat the motion, The Indian Express reports.
Day after attack, Swami Agnivesh says attack ‘state-sponsored’. A day after he was attacked in Jharkhand’s Pakur area, allegedly by Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activists, social activist Swami Agnivesh claimed Wednesday that the attack was “state-sponsored” and demanded a judicial inquiry, reports The Tribune.
J&K bans 30 TV channels. Rahiba Parveen reports for ThePrint that the ban includes Pakistani news channels, as well as some offering religious content. Cable operators have labelled the order a threat to their business.
Defence got Rs 36 crore in FDI in 18 years. According to ministry of defence figures submitted in Parliament Wednesday, there has been a mere $5.13 million (Rs 36 crore) investment, with only 41 FDI proposals or joint ventures being approved to manufacture various defence equipment, both in public and private sectors, reports the Tribune.
AgustaWestland Scam: Ex-IAF chief’s firm ‘got over Rs 1 crore in kickbacks’. According to The Indian Express, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) told a special court Wednesday that a company where former Indian Air Force chief S.P. Tyagi served as a partner received over Rs 1 crore in kickbacks in the AgustaWestland VIP chopper deal.
Hotel-for-land scam: JD(U) alleges ‘match-fixing’. Claiming that there has been an undue delay in giving sanction for the prosecution of those accused in the alleged 2005 railways’ hotel-for-land scam, the JD(U) Wednesday alleged “match-fixing somewhere and at some level at the Centre”, reports The Times of India.
Top probe agencies not on the same page? India’s two premier investigating agencies, the CBI and the ED, are engaged in over 50 cases involving top politicians and big corporates. However, sources have told The Indian Express that there are differences between the CBI and the ED in several cases, key among them being the AirAsia case.
There’s no move to increase retirement age of judges. The BJP-led Centre Wednesday denied media reports that suggested the government was considering a constitutional amendment to increase the retirement age for judges in the higher judiciary, reports Maneesh Chhibber for ThePrint.
Parliament Tracker: A snapshot of Day One, monsoon session
The Rajya Sabha passed two Bills — The Requisitioning and Acquisition of Immovable Property (Amendment) Bill, 2017 and State Banks (Repeal and Amendment) Bill, 2017, while the Lok Sabha passed The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Second Amendment) Bill, 2017.
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought the cooperation of all parties for the smooth functioning of Parliament.
- Questions on nuclear power plants, the monsoon and India Post were taken up during Question Hour.
- In the Zero Hour, where members raise matters of urgent public importance, the renaming of Mumbai’s Kings Circle railway station, the flood of garbage at Delhi’s dump yards, and preferred seating in airlines were discussed.
- The no-detention policy for elementary-school-level students was abolished with the passage of The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Second Amendment) Bill, 2017.
- Rajnath Singh assured the protection of SC/STs under the Constitution, saying it cannot be taken away by any institution or any individual.
What the Supreme Court said Wednesday
- Saying that a temple is open to all, the court ruled that women, too, had fundamental right to enter Sabarimala temple
- Speaking on the recent sealing drive in Delhi, it asked the government to make guidelines to blacklist defaulter builders, but continue the drive.
- Pulling up the Centre and states over the absence of ad-hoc judges and pending cases, it asked them to submit an action plan in eight weeks to deal with the situation.
Business Class
Saying the idea of disinvestment in Air India had not been abandoned, the government Wednesday said it would look into the plan after global oil prices, foreign exchange and other economic parameters stabilised, reports Business Standard.
American e-commerce giant Amazon’s stock market value reached $900 billion Wednesday, for the first time since it was publicly listed 21 years ago, reports Reuters. Apple Inc is other company with a stock market value of more than $900 billion.
Point of View
The Supreme Court recently condemned lynching and asked Parliament to enact a law against it. The Times Of India, in its editorial, writes, “By denouncing the new wave of mobocracy in the strongest possible terms, Supreme Court has lived up to its reputation as the last resort for citizens when fundamental rights are threatened.”
Social activist Harsh Mander also referred to the judgment in his column for The Indian Express. “What the judgment also fails to acknowledge is that these hate crimes flourish most of all because of the enabling climate for hate speech and violence which is fostered and legitimised from above, which frees people to act out their prejudices; and the impunity assured by state administrations to the perpetrators,” he writes.
Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has finally accepted the motion of no confidence moved by the opposition parties. The Economic Times writes in its editorial, “Even more vital for welcoming the vote of no confidence is the danger to democracy inherent in a Speaker rejecting a vote of no confidence duly moved by a sufficient number of MPs.”
Earlier this month, the Census released language data based on the 2011 survey. Literary critic and language expert G.N. Devy writes in his column in The Hindu, “Just as nature’s creations do not require a tsunami to destroy them, the destruction of culture can be caused by something as small as a bureaucrat’s benign decision. Even a well-intentioned language census can do much damage.”
Prime Time
Empathy or sympathy?
Marya Shakil of CNN News 18 discussed the relevance of #TalkToAMuslim, and all her panelists seemed to agree that a social media campaign wasn’t enough.
Poet Harnidh Kaur said she understands and appreciates the hashtag but “empathy isn’t a one-time selfie; it has to be a constant effort”.
AMU student union chief Maskoor Ahmad Usmani added, “This is not about dividing the community. This is also not about sympathy. This shows how much hatred is in the country.”
‘Prime Minister’ Robert Vadra
Republic TV’s Arnab Goswami questioned Sonia Gandhi’s claim that the opposition had the numbers to pass the no-confidence motion against the government.
In the debate featuring 10 panelists, Goswami asked several times, “Will we have prime minister Sonia Gandhi on Saturday or prime minister Robert Vadra?”
With inputs from Prateek Gupta