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Arnab demands ban on PFI and Amit Shah challenges the Gandhis on ABP

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Pakistan is back on the front pages of mainstream newspapers Friday after Prime Minister Narendra Modi attacked the Opposition for the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. The PM said the agitators were silent on Pakistan’s atrocities against Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Christians.

This is the lead in The Indian Express and The Hindu while Hindustan Times focuses on the Tatas moving Supreme Court against the order reinstating Cyrus Mistry as the executive chairman of Tata Sons Limited. The Times of India leads with the fire in Delhi’s Peeragarhi which claimed the life of one fireman.

PM on anti-CAA protests: HT reports that PM Modi “slammed the Congress, its allies and the ecosystem” they created for “rising against the Indian Parliament” and protesting against the “Dalits, the downtrodden and the exploited” who came to India from Pakistan and sought refuge.

Hindu adds that Modi has asked the protesters to carry out “agitations against the oppressions of Pakistan against its minorities, including Dalits, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, for the past 70 years”.

Tatas against Mistry: Tata Sons Private Limited, “the multi-billionaire salt-to-software conglomerate,” has appealed against the National Company Law Tribunal’s (NCLT) decision to reinstate Cyrus Mistry as its chairman and said the order was a “blow to corporate democracy and rights of the Board of Directors”, reports Hindu.

According to HT, the appeal also added that the order was “completely inconsistent with the annals of corporate law and would set a dangerous legal precedent”.

Anti-CAA protests: Express reports that “two men affiliated to fringe Hindu outfits red-flagged by police” are among six arrested in Patna for the murder of a teenager whose body was found on 31 December” in Bihar, “10 days after he was last seen participating in an RJD protest against the CAA and NRC with a tricolour in his hand”.

Others: “One fireman died while 14 others had a narrow escape” when a part of the factory-cum-outlet of a well-known battery manufacturing firm, where they were battling a major blaze, collapsed following a series of sudden explosions in west Delhi’s Peeragarhi, reports TOI.

Also on TOI, Minister of Defence Rajnath Singh has rejected the tableau proposals of both Bengal and Maharashtra for the Republic Day parade, fuelling a political row.

HT reports that a “prominent organiser” has called off the “anti-citizenship law protests in south-east Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh Thursday citing political interference, but other groups rejected his stance and hundreds of people showed up at the demonstration”.

Opinion

Hindustan Times: Prime Minister Modi started 2020 by sending New Year wishes to some of India’s important neighbours, including Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh. This points to the PM’s commitment to “neighbourhood first” policy, writes HT in its editorial titled ‘Reaching out to the neighbours’.

It notes that in 2014, the SAARC nations were present in Modi’s swearing-in ceremony but in 2019, when he was appointed PM for a second term, it was the leaders of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (Bimstec) who attended the ceremony since India considered Pakistan’s presence in SAARC “untenable”.

The leaders whom PM Modi called on New Year are associated with Bimstec.

The return of the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka, Nepal’s increased cooperation with China and the CAA issue in Bangladesh, however, hint that “translating neighbourhood first into tangible outcomes will be a hard task ahead for Delhi,” it suggests.

The Indian Express: IIT-Kanpur has an artist-in residence programme to promote holistic education and hence the institute’s action to set-up a committee to inquire if Faiz’s ‘Hum Dekhenge’ is anti-Hindu, seems ironic, writes Express in ‘Who’s afraid of a song’.

‘Hum Dekhenge’, written by Faiz and sung by Iqbal Bano is a “part of the subcontinent’s collective cultural heritage,” it writes. Even if a Google search wasn’t enough, a junior faculty member from the institution’s humanities department could have explained who Faiz was to the deputy director who is heading the committee.

The newspaper expresses concern that the move sends out a message of insecurity. There is no reason why a democracy that upholds the right to free speech, needs to feel similarly discomfited as Pakistan did once, it writes.

Prime Time

Prime Time debate Thursday was a mixed bag. On NDTV 24/7, anchor Sanket Upadhyay asked if UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s notice to anti-CAA “rioters” seeking recovery for damage was “revenge or illegal”.

On Republic TV, Arnab Goswami demanded a ban on the Popular Front of India (PFI) as “it pushes elderly women and students to the front and instigates violence”.

Zee News asked when will there be protests against Pakistan for its atrocities on minorities in ‘#PakKeKhilafProtestKab?’

ABP News: Anchor Sumit Awasthi interviewed Home Minister Amit Shah on various issues at the event, including on CAA.

Shah said there was no mention of NRC in the amended Citizenship Act and the Opposition was spreading lies. “I publicly challenge Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to show me one provision which says that anybody’s citizenship shall be taken away,” he said.

When asked how the Opposition managed to get so many people on the streets, Shah said the government was trying to create awareness about the CAA. “BJP’s workers will go to millions of homes and clear all misconceptions about it. We are already doing public rallies on the same”.

Awasthi also why violence during the protests took place in BJP-ruled states. Shah replied by saying the question should instead be posed to the Congress. “Why there was no violence in Congress-ruled states? Public knows who is behind these riots and violence.”

Times Now: On #CAAIsIslamistLinkProbe, anchor Rahul Shivshankar debated whether there is really no evidence to ban the PFI.

National Secretary of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDP) I. T. A. Rahmani, clarified that anti-CAA protests were not communal and that he “denounces and dissociates from any kind of religious sloganeering in the movement”.

Lawyer Shehzad Poonawalla questioned Rahmani on whether he puts “samvidhan over sharia”.

CNN-News18: On ‘The Right Stand’, anchor Marya Shakil asked if Modi’s speech at Tumakuru was to “defend the Constitution or vote bank politics?”

CPI’s Bhalchandra Kango said, “The BJP’s politics of passing laws such as the CAA is to take India back to the pre-Partition days.”

The debate also quoted from Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad comments on the Constitution and when he urged Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to take legal advice for moving a resolution demanding the scrapping of CAA.

Avoiding questions seemed to be the practice of the day Thursday, as BJP spokesperson Sudesh Verma also said that those talking about the Constitution should first learn to respect it and know that “it is the Constitution which gives one the right to make laws”.

Aaj Tak: On ‘Dangal’ with anchor Rohit Sardana, the issue of recent infant deaths in a Kota hospital – the J K Lon Hospital –were debated on. Sardana questioned Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s indifference to the deaths.

Congress’ Chetan Singh invoked Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla’s Rajasthani roots and asked: “Why didn’t the government send its health secretary to the hospital when the speaker himself belongs to Kota?”

BJP’s Prem Shukla satirised Singh’s remarks and asked if “the central government should take over from the state…matters pertaining to health as well.”

“A small incident caused Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to visit UP without a helmet…a hundred people have died in Kota, shouldn’t she go there?” he asked.

S.D. Sharma, superintendent of the J K Lon Hospital in Kota, urged everybody to not politicise the issue. “The primary reasons behind the infant deaths constitute lack of resources and a lack of awareness among the masses.”

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