Front page
Crucial hearing in Supreme Court on Article 35A today. The SC is set to consider a petition arguing that a constitutional bench should look into why Jammu & Kashmir was given special status by Jawaharlal Nehru. Intelligence agencies have warned that the scrapping of the provision could trigger unrest in the valley and even antagonise the Kashmir police, reports The Hindustan Times.
ISI ‘is funding and promoting the Sikh Referendum 2020 campaign’. According to a report in The Tribune, “security agencies have intercepted digital, particularly social media, chatter to make this conclusive claim”. In what the report calls a “highly sophisticated online campaign”, social media apps like Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram are being used to spread the message.
Controversy over Justice Joseph refuses to die down. As he was elevated to the Supreme Court seven months after the collegium recommended his name, there is disquiet in the judiciary over an alleged government bid to undermine his seniority. The Centre’s notification appointing three new judges, issued on 3 August, listed the order of seniority thus — Justices Indira Banerjee, Vineet Saran and K.M. Joseph. This despite the fact that Banerjee and Saran were recommended for elevation a full six months after Justice Joseph, reports Ritika Jain for ThePrint.
‘Not averse to Mamata as PM,’ says Deve Gowda. The former Prime Minister made the statement as he pitched for a “formidable front” against the BJP in 2019, and amid a general consensus in the opposition camp to reportedly take up the PM question after the elections, PTI reports.
Meghalaya sets up checkpoints to stop ‘foreigners’ from Assam. Meghalaya police say they have established at least seven checkpoints on the Assam border “to detect any illegal foreigner entering the state”, reports The Indian Express. The move follows the release of the final NRC draft recently.
Central information commissioner opposes RTI Act amendments. According to a report in The Hindu, central information commissioner M. Sridhar Acharyulu has warned the chief information commissioner that corrupt government officials will escape public scrutiny if the RTI is amended according to the Srikrishna committee guidelines.
It has been a productive parliament this time round, with only one day of adjournment in the Rajya Sabha and both houses passing five major bills. The previous session of Parliament (Budget) was the least productive in 15 years, reports The Times Of India.
India has asked Antigua to extradite Choksi. After Antigua officials said they couldn’t annul Choksi’s citizenship, authorities assured Indian officials that they might consider extradition once a Red Corner Notice was issued, The Indian Express reports.
Business Class
Foreign payment firms may be allowed to “keep copies of customer data in India while retaining offshore storage operations”, Reuters quoted the government as saying. The RBI’s decision in April this year to store all payments data in the country led to a row with MasterCard, Visa and American Express.
US retail giant Walmart, which recently acquired e-commerce major Flipkart, is set to hire about 1,000 people for technology roles to gear up for competition with Amazon, reports The Economic Times.
News it’s just kinda cool to know
Meet Kusala Rajendran, winner of India’s first ‘National Award for Woman Scientist’. Rajendran is a pioneering force in the study of earthquakes, and much of what we know about Indian earthquakes, we know through her, Sandhya Ramesh writes as she interviews the celebrated scientist for ThePrint.
The Supreme Court wants MBAs as court managers. According to a report in The Indian Express, the court wants “professionally qualified court managers, preferably with an MBA degree… to render assistance in performing the court administration.’
Point of View
The horror story from the Muzaffarpur shelter is still unfolding. The Indian Express writes in an editorial, “The abuse and sexual violation of the young inmates of the Muzaffarpur-based NGO, Sewa Sankalp Evam Vikas Samiti, point at how the state fails its most vulnerable time and again. It is a story of sorry abdication, and a nefarious complicity, of several state agencies.”
The Congress and other opposition parties have reportedly decided to choose their PM pick after the 2019 election, with the former said to have taken a similar call on the assembly elections due later this year. While commending the 2019 move, The Times of India writes in an editorial, “…The party would actually do well to declare CM candidates. Much like the last Punjab assembly polls that Congress won, this will help rally the local units.”
The exclusion of about four million people from the NRC raises many questions. Political commentator Shiv Visvanathan writes in his column for The Hindu, “Today, the statistic of four million names off the draft National Register of Citizens (NRC) is reduced to an everyday problem of management. This routinisation of violence is deeply worrying.”
With Lok Sabha polls approaching, farmers’ issues have taken centre stage. Agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan credits the Modi government with this and writes in his column for The Times of India, “Designation of the agriculture ministry as the agriculture and farmers’ welfare ministry has stressed keeping farmers’ welfare as the measure of agriculture progress. Issuance of soil health cards to all farmers has been critical because soil health is basic to plant health and plant health is basic to human health.”
Prime Time
Is it time to revoke Article 35A?
On India Today TV, anchor Pooja Shali asked the panelists: Is it time to revoke Article 35A? Journalist Suhail Bukhari said Article 35A was the “very basis of the existence of Jammu & Kashmir in the union of India”.
Sameer Kaul of the National Conference said, “The very existence is being threatened, maliciously.” Shali pointed out that Article 35A was discriminatory against women who marry outside the state as they were thus barred from holding property.