NCRB seeks Aadhaar access, and HC says magazine cover on breastfeeding not obscene
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NCRB seeks Aadhaar access, and HC says magazine cover on breastfeeding not obscene

Front Page The NCRB wants access to Aadhaar details: National Crime Records Bureau director Ish Kumar Thursday requested the government to provide the agency limited access to the Aadhaar database. He said this can help investigating agencies match fingerprints of inter-state criminals and crack cases, reports The Hindu. Congress veteran echoes Musharraf, says Kashmir will […]

   
Aadhaar card

An Aadhaar card | Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

Front Page

The NCRB wants access to Aadhaar details: National Crime Records Bureau director Ish Kumar Thursday requested the government to provide the agency limited access to the Aadhaar database. He said this can help investigating agencies match fingerprints of inter-state criminals and crack cases, reports The Hindu.

Congress veteran echoes Musharraf, says Kashmir will vote for ‘independence’: “If Kashmiris are given a chance today to exercise their free will, they would prefer to be independent,” senior Congress leader and former union Minister Saifuddin Soz has written in his upcoming book Kashmir: Glimpses of History and the Story of Struggle, D.K. Singh reports for ThePrint. Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had made the same assessment in 2007.

Journeys worth Rs 2 cr made illegally, facility for Army misused: Train journeys worth Rs 2 crore were undertaken illegally by misusing a special booking facility extended to the Army at Lucknow Cantonment, a railway investigation has found. The Army is conducting its own probe in the matter, reports The Indian Express.

Radicalisation at militant funerals on forces’ radar: The Jammu & Kashmir police will act against those who eulogise militants at their funerals in provocative speeches that are believed to motivate young people to join militant groups, reports Hindustan Times. Police will also ensure such gatherings are not too large.

Punjab AAP legislator, security guards assaulted by sand mafia: Punjab’s AAP  MLA Amarjit Singh Sandoa and his armed security guards were attacked by suspected sand mafia in Ropar district Thursday afternoon, Chitleen K. Sethi reports for ThePrint. This comes two days after two officials of the forest department barely survived an alleged attack by the sand mafia in Mohali district.

Ajwinder Singh and the AAP MLA Amarjit Sandoa are seen together at an AAP programme | @ChitleenKSethi/Twitter

Govt to scrap subsidy for private electric cars: The Centre plans to scrap cash incentives currently offered to buyers of electric cars “despite having incentivised these clean fuel technologies till just a few months ago”, reports The Times of India. Instead, the subsidy will now go to shared-mobility operators such as Ola and Uber, “as their vehicles will run much more than private cars”.

Kerala HC clears Grihalakshmi magazine’s breastfeeding cover: The court, while hearing a petition against the cover, observed that as beauty lay in the beholder’s eye, so did obscenity, adding that “one man’s vulgarity may be a lyric for another”, reports Hindustan Times.

News it’s just kinda cool to know

In Telangana, villages have gone missing:  Things go missing. People go missing. But entire villages going missing? It’s happened. About 450 villages in Telangana have gone ‘missing’ from government records, reports The Hindu.

China wants its own piece of the internet: Advocating something its leaders call “cyberspace sovereignty”, China aims to control and censor as much information as possible, reports The Atlantic.

Koko, the famed gorilla who could talk to humans, has passed away: Aged 46, the female western lowland gorilla, who gained fame for her mastery of “gorilla sign language”, died in California, reports The Guardian. The subject of numerous documentaries, Koko also appeared on the cover of National Geographic, in a picture that the primate took of itself in a mirror.

Koko, the gorilla | Flickr

Business Class

Intel Corp chief executive Brian Krzanich has had to resign after a probe found his consensual relationship with another employee violated the company policy, reports Reuters. The company named chief financial officer Robert Swan its interim CEO.

The Indian Banks’ Association has taken exception to the spate of chargesheets filed against bank officials and arrests made in recent scams, reports The Economic Times. It has called an emergency meeting in Mumbai Friday to discuss the matter. In light of PNB fraud and rising bad loans in banks, investigative agencies are going tough on the alleged collusion of bank employees.

Point of View

The reasons vary but the result is the same: Death by lynching. Either it’s lynching in the name of cow protection or lynching to avert a suspected crime. The Hindu writes in its editorial, “Murder is murder, but the killing of another human being by a murderous crowd out to enforce mob justice or avert an imagined crime takes an extraordinary toll of the civilities of wider society.”

The latest bank to make news for all the wrong reasons is Bank of Maharashtra. Senior officials of the bank have been arrested for alleged collusion with real estate developers for money laundering. The Times Of India writes in its editorial, “The surge in bad loans over the last couple of years first raised questions about the quality of credit appraisal at banks. But now it’s apparent the problem is more fundamental: Governance standards are appalling.”

With the rise of the Hindu Right and Hindutva propagators, there is confusion in the minds of the masses about what Hinduism stands for. Former chief economist and World Bank senior vice-president Kaushik Basu, in his column in The Indian Express, recalls a visit to the Ramakrishna Mission complex in Kolkata, writing, “…I needed to see this face of Hinduism — philosophical, tolerant, and embracing of other religions. This is so different from what is bring propagated in the name of Hinduism by today’s Right-wing Hindutva groups.”

The Modi government is fighting a battle on the economy front. And with general elections less than a year away, it becomes important for the government to manage perceptions. Journalist Chaitanya Kalbag, in his column in The Economic Times, explains how demonetisation hit the economy and that banking sector problems looks insurmountable.

File photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi | PTI

Prime Time

‘Anti-nationals’ again

Republic TV’s Arnab Goswami discussed the deployment of NSG in Kashmir and the crackdown on militants following the fall of the BJP-PDP government. Goswami categorised his panelists into two groups: “For Kashmir crackdown” and “Against Kashmir crackdown”, and called the latter “anti-national” every few minutes.

A furious Goswami remarked, “Our hands were tied because of the unholy BJP-PDP alliance but now operations will clean every square inch of the Valley.” Major Gaurav Arya (Retd) said NSG commandos were experts in anti-terrorism operations. “Now there is no place to hide. NSG will find you,” he added.

Bigotry the new norm?

Referring to the news of an inter-faith couple being denied passports by an officer in UP, CNN News 18’s Bhupendra Chaubey asked: “Is religious bigotry the new India norm?” In an attempt to evade the question, the BJP’s Sambit Patra said, “Shikanji-Coca-Cola party will now talk about WhatsApp knowledge.”

Congress’ Priyanka Chaturvedi laid stress on Yogi Adityanath’s history of making hateful speeches. On similar lines, the SP’s Ghanshyam Tiwari said such incidents would happen “when you have an entire state run on religious propaganda”.

An apple a day

On NDTV India, Ravish Kumar began his 9 pm show by declaring that there’s only one thing needed to become a politician in India: The shamelessness of lying. Kumar talked of the deplorable medical conditions in India and displayed footage of a crumbling primary health centre in Bihar. “Politicians are sharp enough to engage the public in Hindu-Muslim debate so that they don’t pay attention here,” Kumar said. He then went on to explain the ailments plaguing the medical system in India.