New Delhi: Prime time news Wednesday night was quite mixed up. Mirror Now discussed adultery in armed forces, ABP News focused on the Covid vaccine roll out in India while India Today and Aaj Tak trained their attention on the farmers’ protests.
India Today’s Rahul Kanwal discussed the Supreme Court’s intervention in the farmers’ protests. The SC stayed the implementation of the three farm laws Tuesday and set up an expert committee to mediate with the protesting farmers.
Kanwal noted that several critics believe the top court had entered “unchartered territory” by intervening in a legislative matter. Some have also raised concerns about the constitution of the committee.
Justice Deepak Gupta, a former SC judge, said, “If the Supreme Court would have found that the laws were prima facie illegal then only it should have granted a stay.”
Gupta added that the order lacked reason to grant a stay and just facilitating dialogue is not reason enough for the SC.
But BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra responded, “First, we as citizens of this country should have faith in certain constitutional institutions of this country. Second, if the farmers are questioning the credibility of the SC committee then we can also question the credibility of farmers’ leaders.”
However V.M. Singh, national convenor of the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) thought otherwise: “The Supreme Court committee should have had people from both sides (farmers and government) in the committee.”
Aaj Tak anchor Rohit Sardana centred his entire discussion on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and a tweet by him.
In the tweet, Gandhi had said, “Modi government was not embarrassed when more than 60 farmers lost their lives while protesting, but the tractor rally is a cause of embarrassment for them?”
Busybee Sambit Patra, who appeared on multiple shows, attacked Gandhi: “The government expresses its condolences to the deceased(s) but we cannot be blamed, Rahul Gandhi should look at the 1984 riots where Sikhs were brutally killed.”
That got Congress’ Gourav Vallabh fired up:“Can the Modi government not even tweet about the lives lost at Singhu border, if PM Modi could write a letter of condolence to (former Pakistan PM) Nawaz Sharif on his mother’s demise then why can’t he address this issue at hand?”
On Mirror Now, adultery in the armed forces, which is a criminal offence, was the topic of the debate. The Supreme Court Wednesday agreed to examine the government’s request to keep adultery a crime in the armed forces.
“Should adultery laws be different for civilians and soldiers?” asked anchor Tanvi Shukla.
“The military has a unique organisation ethic. It promotes values like self sacrifice, honour and integrity. Defining these values in purely legal terms is difficult,” Lt Gen. (retd) D.S. Hooda, a former army commander, argued.
He added: “For us these values are not something to just talk about, they are essential for organisational purposes. In the Army, there is a culture where unhonourable behaviour is rewarded and bad behaviour is punished.”
However, Ranjana Kumari, director of Centre for Social Research, said, “Adultery comes from the British understanding, they themselves have done away with this law. But we in India want to bring it back in the name of the military. The armed forces can’t have its own rules.”
Republic TV went south, with anchor Niranjan Narayanaswamy discussing language politics in poll-bound Tamil Nadu after DMK leader T.R. Baalu wrote a stern letter to Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad demanding that postal department recruitment exams should be conducted in Tamil. At present, they are only conducted in Hindi and English.
Hemachandran, a media strategy expert, said, “This is a move to impose Hindi on aspirations of vernacular people, who come from the grassroots.”
He added that the Modi government needs to know that knowledge and language have no connection to each other.
BJP spokesperson from Tamil Nadu, S.G. Suryah, responded: “If there was some merit to this, we would be happy. The DMK has written a letter seeking cancellation. The exams were always conducted in English and Hindi for years, no one has complained.”
Journalist Prakash M. Swamy noted, “DMK runs schools where Hindi is being taught, the party is trying to play with language just to get votes.”
Swamy added that the language issue only crops up around elections in the state and one should take a note of why this happens.
With inputs from Bismee Taskin