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On this episode of Centre vs Supreme Court, the Modi government has asked the SC collegium to reconsider their recommendation to elevate Uttarakhand High Court Chief Justice K.M. Joseph to the top court. In a a letter to the CJI, law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad cited the need for diversity and seniority as the reason. ”Political rivals and a section of the legal fraternity say that the move undermines the independence of the judiciary,” Hindustan Times reports.
CJI Dipak Misra, however, thinks ‘the government is well within its rights to do so’, ThePrint‘s Apurva Vishwanath reported Thursday. Vishwanath also reported that two senior judges of the collegium want the CJI to call a meeting as soon as possible to reiterate their recommendation to elevate Justice Joseph to the top court.
Just in case you don’t understand why this whole thing is a big deal, ThePrint saves you some time by explaining the historic crisis in the Supreme Court:
13 children died Thursday when a train rammed into their school van at an unmanned railway crossing in UP’s Kushinagar district. A nine-year-old survivor told The Times of India that the driver “couldn’t hear the children screaming to warn him about the fast approaching train as he was talking on his cellphone”.
Meanwhile, CM Yogi Adityanath reached the accident site and told protesters to “stop the “nautanki (drama)”, NDTV reports.
Congress has appointed Kamal Nath as chief of the party’s Madhya Pradesh unit ahead of elections in the state later this year, The Indian Express reports. The decision to choose 71-year-old Nath over the younger Jyotiraditya Scindia, reportedly driven by advice from general secretary Digvijaya Singh, indicates that despite the party’s ‘youth leaders’ push, senior leaders continue to have a say in its functioning, Kumar Anshuman reports for ThePrint.
The Supreme Court has indicated that it might move the Kathua rape-murder case out of Jammu and Kashmir “in case it concludes that a fair trial of the suspects is not possible there”, Hindustan Times reports.
On Friday, a UK court is set to rule on the admissibility of some key documents regarding India’s request for Vijay Mallya’s extradition. Mallya, a fugitive businessman “who once ran a thriving conglomerate, faces charges of financial misconduct amounting to nearly ₹9,000 crore in debt owed to Indian banks by his defunct airline Kingfisher”, Hindustan Times reports.
Now, India may also introduce the death penalty for rape of boys under 12. Less than a week after the Centre passed an ordinance allowing the death penalty for those convicted of raping girls aged below 12, the union women and child development ministry is set to move the Cabinet seeking the same punishment for sexual assaults on young boys, Hindustan Times reports.
Resetting India-China ties a walk in the park: Modi left for China Friday, and The Times of India tells us that he will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping six times in 24 hours, “including (a meeting) in a boat on East Lake”, a walk in a park, and a tour of a provincial museum. Modi said the two planned to “review the developments in the India-China relations from a strategic and long-term perspective”.
Tripura CM Biplab Deb is at it again. The man who claimed the internet has been around since the Mahabharata, and who recently advised West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to get “mental treatment”, has now “targeted beauty pageants, arguing that they are a ruse to push international cosmetic products in India”, The Hindu reports front page, and Scroll online.
In ThePrint
Congress isn’t the only one playing ghar-ghar in Karnataka. The BJP’s B.S. Yeddyurappa is known to run two ‘dynasties’ of his own: Politics and business. Rohini Swamy reports on the BJP leader and his two sons, B.Y. Vijayendra and B.Y. Raghavendra, who have been initiated by their father into the political world.
DNA testing has been in the news a lot lately, for the lack of forensic infrastructure in the country, as well as its use in reportedly cracking the Kathua rape case. Now, Ananya Bhardwaj finds that it took one chromosome and a unique test to find the culprit in the Himachal Kotkhai rape case of 2017. Read her story to know more.
Business Class
Google’s parent company Alphabet may soon hold a minority stake in India’s largest e-commerce company, Flipkart, reports The Economic Times. It writes, “Alphabet will probably invest $1-2 billion after the Walmart acquisition, expected to be announced shortly.”
Axis Bank posted its first quarterly loss since it was listed on the exchanges in 1998, reports The Economic Times. The company reported a loss of Rs 2,188.74 crore for the quarter January-March 2018.
Cracking the whip in the alleged IDBI fraud case, the CBI has registered cases against former Aircel promoter C. Sivasankaran and 15 senior executives of the bank, including two former chiefs, for allegedly cheating the bank of ₹600 crore, reports Business Standard.
News it’s just kinda cool to know
While Mark Zuckerberg has vowed to clean up Facebook after the data-breach scandal, it turns out he can’t even manage to eliminate his own impostor accounts. Facebook profiles claiming to be CEO Zuckerberg or COO Sheryl Sandberg have been swindling Facebook users out of thousands of dollars, The New York Times reports.
WhatsApp is increasing its minimum user age from 13 to 16 in Europe. The move comes as a tough data law called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is slotted to be passed in Europe. The GDPR “standardises data protection law across all 28 EU countries and imposes strict new rules on controlling and processing personally identifiable information”, Forbes tells us. Facebook is determined to avoid any more compliance related bad-press, which is why the Facebook-owned messaging app is making some changes, NewsByte reports.
Transformers, assemble! Fans were waiting for technology to advance so the movie could become a reality, and now it has! A Japanese company, Brave Robotics, unveiled Wednesday “a Transformers-style, humanoid robot that can shape-shift into a sports car in about 60 seconds”, Reuters reports.
Point of View
Despite the collegium’s recommendation, the government is denying the elevation of Uttarakhand High Court Chief Justice K.M. Joseph to the Supreme Court. The Indian Express writes in its editorial, “Government’s case against Justice K.M. Joseph is not convincing. The CJI and collegium must stand up by putting their foot down.”
In the wake of Asaram’s conviction in a rape case, The Hindu writes in its editorial that such convictions “reinforce public trust”. It adds, “Verdicts such as these are needed at a time when sections of society see tainted men as guardians of India’s age-old spiritual tradition.”
PM Narendra Modi is in China on a two-day visit and will meet President Xi Jinping in Wuhan. BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, in his column in The Indian Express, writes, “This meeting is not ‘outcome-centric’, it is ‘understanding-centric’.”
The ‘reset’ in India-China relations has raised curiosity about why the two countries have decided to ‘de-escalate’ tensions. Zorawar Daulet Singh, a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, writes in his column in The Hindu “there is now a shared belief in both capitals that a posture of hostility has undermined Indian and Chinese interests”.
In the wake of rising NPAs and bank frauds, there is a growing demand to evaluate the role and power of the RBI. Ashima Goyal, member, PM’s economic advisory council, writes in her column in The Times Of India, “While RBI’s independence is valuable, it needs to also be accountable to the voter. Accountability can be increased by instituting formal reporting to Parliament.”