Front Page
The Supreme Court collegium is ‘split on the elevation of Justice Joseph’. The collegium has now deferred its decision to reiterate Justice Joseph’s elevation to the apex court due to lack of internal unanimity, Apurva Vishwanath and Maneesh Chhibber reported for ThePrint Wednesday. Sources said that even as four judges were in agreement that Joseph’s name must first be reiterated before discussing fair regional representation from other high courts, the CJI did not agree.
For the first time in Kashmir’s tumultuous history, street protesters stoned a school bus in Shopian, injuring a Class II student severely in the head, The Indian Express reports as their lead story. The incident has resulted in outrage among parents and politcial parties, with chief minister Mehbooba Mufti calling it a “senseless and cowardly act”.
Chhota Rajan gets life for killing journalist J. Dey in June 2011. The Hindu reports that a special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court Wednesday sentenced the gangster and eight others to life imprisonment. The 599-page judgment called the murder “a cold-blooded act”. However, Jigna Vora, the scribe who had been accused of instigating Dey’s murder, has been acquitted.
Goodbye, Cambridge Analytica: The UK-based marketing analytics firm, best known for the recent Facebook data breach scandal, “announced Wednesday it was ‘immediately ceasing all operations’ and filing for insolvency in Britain and the United States”, The Hindu reports. The company said it was “no longer viable to continue operating the business”.
India’s military joins the big boys in terms of spending. As of 2017, India had become the world’s fifth largest military spender, behind the US, China, Saudi Arabia and Russia, as the “government enhanced the operational capability of its armed forces in the face of tensions with China and Pakistan”, Hindustan Times reports, based on a study by “an influential thinktank”. Together, these five nations account for 60 per cent of global military spending.
The government is expanding the reach of a scheme for the development of minorities from 196 districts to 308 in a bid to “improve the socio-economic infrastructure for minorities in education, health and skill development”, The Times of India reports.
President Ram Nath Kovind doesn’t seem to like long award functions. The President said he would attend the National Film Award ceremony for just an hour. The 140 winners of the award aren’t happy and have threatened to boycott the ceremony if the President isn’t able to personally hand them their award, Amrita Nayak Dutta reported for ThePrint Wednesday.
Can private firms use your Aadhaar data? The Supreme Court raised the question Wednesday, saying “that if the 12-digit biometric number was meant for disbursing welfare benefits to the underprivileged”, then non-state entities using it “would be beyond the mandate of the underlying law, the Aadhaar Act,” Hindustan Times reports.
In ThePrint
If you don’t clean your streets, you don’t get any funds: “The BJP-led Maharashtra government has threatened to withhold development funds to urban local bodies if they fail to meet targets under the Swachh Bharat mission, one of PM Modi’s pet projects,” Manasi Phadke reports.
An RSS-linked institute, the Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini (RMP), which teaches ‘leadership, politics and governance’, is sending eight students to the BJP’s war room in Karnataka “as the party tries to topple the Congress from one of its last bastions,” Pragya Kaushika reports.
Business Class
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is all set to go public, expecting to raise $10 billion, reports Business Standard. The company had suffered a net loss of $6.9 billion in 2017.
HT Media’s CEO Rajiv Verma is stepping down. HT Media chairperson and editorial director Shobhana Bhartia issued a statement communicating the same, Hindustan Times reports in its business section today. The board also announced that Verma will “continue to remain associated with the company in an advisory role”.
News it’s just kinda cool to know
3 May is UN World Press Freedom Day, as proclaimed by the General Assembly in December 1993. It is observed on the anniversary of the ‘Declaration of Windhoek’, a UNESCO seminar held in Windhoek, Namibia, in 1991, where principles of press freedom were put together by African newspaper journalists.
Mission Mars: NASA’s InSight spacecraft, short for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (let’s just say InSight), will set off for Mars on 5 May, Saturday. Unlike previous explorations in search of life and water, this spacecraft will study the structure of Mars, and may be the first to detect a Marsquake. Read NASA’s own explanation to understand why this is actually a really cool thing.
A couple was beaten up for ‘standing too close’ to each other at a metro station in Kolkata earlier this week. So the youth of the city are protesting by showing more love. A ‘free hugs’ campaign was launched outside the Tollygunj Metro Station in Kolkata Wednesday against moral policing, The Times of India reports.
Stephen Hawking’s final research paper supports the multiverse theory, suggesting that our universe may just be one of many other similar ones. The paper tries to resolve a cosmic paradox of the late British physicist’s own making, The New Indian Express reports.
Instagram added a new bully filter to screen comments aimed at harassing its 800 million users, The New York Times reports.
Point of View
The government has issued instructions to telecom operators to accept IDs other than Aadhaar for SIM cards. The Times Of India, in its editorial, praises the move, writing, “Aadhaar use should be reasonable, making it non-binding for phones (is a) welcome step”.
Has the government of India sold the Red Fort to the Dalmia Bharat Group? No. The Indian Express, in its editorial, welcomes the monument’s adoption by the Dalmia group. It writes, “The involvement of corporate groups in conserving heritage monuments should be seen in light of… failure of the ASI.”
Digital India is a flagship scheme of this government. NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, in his column in The Economic Times, writes that adoption of technology in the governance system has brought massive transformation in delivering services and cutting losses.
MEDIA: ‘Means of empowerment for development through informed actions’. Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu uses this acronym in his column in The Indian Express, where he exhorts the media to stay away from “sensationalism” and “rumour-mongering” and dedicate itself “to the promotion of truth in a responsible and professional manner”.
PM Modi’s recent China trip was more about optics, less about deliverables. Former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao writes in her column in The Hindu, “The message from Wuhan is: Let us give each other space and rationalise our differences in a grown-up way.”
Talking about the same India-China meet, another former foreign secretary, Shyam Saran, writes in his column in The Indian Express, “India-China relations must be managed through a mix of competitive and cooperative policies and regular leadership-level interaction. The Wuhan Consensus reflects this understanding.”