Front Page
The Telegraph’s lead headline about the CBI vs CBI faceoff reads almost like a sneer. Loud and at the centre of its front page, it says, “Dirty Tricks, Under Mr Clean’s Nose”.
Not only have all the CBI’s innards been exposed, but “the dirtiest chapter in the agency’s history was being written under the nose of a Prime Minister who had stormed to power four years ago on the pledge of cleaning the dung-caked stables”, it writes.
According to The Times of India, the CBI “heaped more embarrassment upon itself” by alleging special director Rakesh Asthana and his junior, deputy superintendent of police Devender Kumar, were “running an extortion racket in the garb of investigation”.
Director Alok Verma certainly paid the price for it. While he wasted no time in making sure Asthana was “divested of all supervisory charges with immediate effect”, the government removed him from his job as the head of India’s premier investigative agency late Tuesday night.
“The central government waded into the ongoing tussle between two top officials of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) by divesting the agency’s director, Alok Verma, of his charge,” The Indian Express reported. He will be replaced by CBI joint director M. Nageshwar Rao.
As far as the courts go, Hindustan Times reported that Asthana “cannot be arrested for now, but the CBI can continue with the investigation against him”. Whether this will materialise is yet to be seen.
Meanwhile, union minister Smriti Irani’s preposterous statements about menstruation have reverberated across social media and newspaper headlines. “Smriti Irani has a question: Will you take sanitary pads steeped in blood to a friend’s home?” reads a headline in The Indian Express. Her answer was no.
The Times of India reported that, speaking on the sidelines of a conference organised by the British High Commission and the thinktank Observer Research Foundation in Mumbai, Irani said she “believed that while women have the right to pray, they do not have the right to desecrate places of worship with their menstrual ‘soaked’ pads”.
Her comments come in the wake of protests against the Supreme Court order allowing women of all ages to enter the Sabarimala temple in Kerala.
Hindustan Times reports on page 9 that “Smriti defends her Sabarimala remark, cries propaganda in controversy”. She “clarified” her statement in a tweet:
As far as those who jump the gun regarding women visiting friend’s place with a sanitary napkin dipped in menstrual blood — I am yet to find a person who ‘takes’ a blood soaked napkin to ‘offer’ to any one let alone a friend.
— Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) October 23, 2018
Music director A.R. Rahman has woken up to the #MeToo movement and is “shocked” by the names thrown up.
He expressed support for the movement, but followed it up with a warning: “Social media offers great freedom for victims to speak up, however we should be careful in creating a new internet justice system, in case it’s misused.”
— A.R.Rahman (@arrahman) October 22, 2018
On its front page, The Times of India also carries a report on Rajasthan’s waning Aravalis, headlining its piece, “A fourth of Aravali hills in Rajasthan gone forever”. The report follows the Supreme Court’s notice to the state to end all illegal mining within 48 hours. “Thirty-one of 128 hills in the Aravali range in Rajasthan had vanished in the last 50 years due to massive illegal quarrying,” the paper reports.
Prime Time
To sing or not to sing ‘Vande Mataram’
On Republic TV, Arnab Goswami conducted a discussion on whether singing or not singing Vande Mataram could be a yardstick to judge patriotism.
The discussion followed a controversial remark by Prakash Ambedkar, the grandson of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, questioning the need for a national song when India already had a national anthem.
AIMIM leader Waris Pathan, a panelist, said the BJP was trying to impose its ideology on others. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra, however, said secularism needed some common ground. “Secularism can’t be one-way-traffic,” he added.
Fireworks and pollution
On India Today, Shiv Aroor discussed the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling on firecrackers.
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that only “green firecrackers” will be permitted during all festivals.
Environmentalist Vimlendu Jha said the order was redundant because there are “no green firecrackers available in the country”. “Every firecracker is a polluting firecracker,” he added.
Pandit Ajay Gautam, the founder of a portal called ‘humhindu.com’, asked why the Supreme Court was only concerned about pollution on Diwali. “If the Supreme Court is letting us breathe in a gas chamber for 364 days, why are they suddenly concerned about one day? We are living in a metropolitan city, not on Mars, where there is no pollution,” he added.
News it’s just kinda cool to know
A new 3D printing technique can one day help produce artificial arteries and organ tissues, a study published in the journal Nature Communications has said, PTI reports.