Front Page
Govt clears Justice K.M. Joseph’s elevation to SC: After a months-long deadlock, the government has finally agreed to the SC collegium’s decision reiterating its recommendation to elevate the Uttarakhand High Court Chief Justice to the Supreme Court. Madras High Court Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Orissa High Court Chief Justice Vineet Saranto have also been elevated, The Indian Express reports.
Split in AAP: Seven rebel Aam Aadmi Party MLAs in Punjab, led by former leader of the opposition Sukhpal Singh Khaira, declared the state unit of the party “autonomous” and “free” from any control of the political management in Delhi, Chitleen K. Sethi reports for ThePrint. The crisis began last week when Khaira, who earlier came under fire for purportedly voicing support for a Khalistan referendum, was removed as the leader of opposition on 26 July.
Adultery is likely to be decriminalised, as the Supreme Court considers Section 497 to be archaic. The section states that only a man, married or unmarried, can be punished for having sex with a married woman without the permission of her husband. The apex court argued that the section is discriminatory towards a woman as it treats her like the property of her husband. Petitioner Shine Joseph said it was also unfair that only the man was punished for an act in which the married woman was a consenting participant, The Times of India reports.
Paper good, machine bad: Seventeen opposition parties, led by the Congress, have joined hands to contest the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Instead, they hope the Election Commission (EC) will bring paper ballot back. The EC has maintained that EVMs are tamper-proof, and Hindustan Times reports that it has “also repeatedly urged parties to refrain from expressing doubts about their efficacy”.
Eight Trinamool Congress members ‘roughed up, detained’ at Assam airport. The group, comprising six MPs and two MLAs, had arrived on a two-day visit to assess the situation in the wake of the publication of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) final draft, The Hindu reports. Back in Parliament, Trinamool Congress members marched into Well of the Rajya Sabha and demanded an explanation from home minister Rajnath Singh.
The over 40 lakh people left out of the final National Register of Citizens (NRC) draft in Assam will get an opportunity to provide a fresh or different set of identity papers during the upcoming claims-and-objections process, Prateek Hajela, the Supreme Court-mandated state coordinator of the NRC, told The Indian Express. The daily also tells us that this is different from the process adopted so far, where the first choice of documents could not be changed.
India and the US may make a trade breakthrough soon as New Delhi contemplates accepting some of Donald Trump’s demands regarding medical devices and electronics (IT) products, Hindustan Times reports. According to the report, an announcement is likely before the Indo-US ‘2+2’ talks in New Delhi on 6 September.
Business Class
CBI likely to seek Mehul Choksi’s extradition. According to a report by Livemint, CBI is keen to move an extradition request through the ministry of external affairs and may not wait for the Red Corner Notice application to come through, to expedite the process and bring the fraud-accused diamantaire back home soon. Choksi is said to have fled to Antigua.
Apple becomes first company to hit the $1 trillion mark. Apple Inc Thursday became the first publicly listed company to hit the magic mark. Apple’s stock rose 5.89 per cent to a record-high close of $201.50 following the company’s better-than-expected quarterly results, The Economic Times reports.
News it’s just kind of cool to know
French schools set age limit for smartphone use. If you’re 15 or younger in France, you will not be allowed to use a smartphone in school starting September, India Today reports, adding that French education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer believes the blanket ban will help prevent smartphone addiction at an early age.
Virat Kohli ends lean spell with century. The Indian cricket captain ended his unlucky spell in England with a hundred, his first in the country. The Indian Express reports that Kohli’s 149 off 225 deliveries accounted for more than half of the India’s tally.
Point of View
A column by journalist G. Sampath in The Hindu discusses why Rahul Gandhi should withdraw from the PM race and build on a Karnataka-style alliance. “The onus is on Mr Gandhi to refine the ‘Karnataka model’, as it were, for the national stage. This model of politics requires the Congress to concede more space to smaller parties and take a long-term view of alliances,”
Reservations have become a quick and dirty fix for problems caused by the state’s failure to deliver good governance, Livemint writes in an editorial. Citing the example of the Maratha Kranti Morcha, it says, “It would take political courage and effective governance of a high order to push back against quota politics. Even then, results would be slow in coming.”
Women’s rights lawyer Flavia Agnes, in a column for The Tribune, writes about the anti-trafficking bill. Quoting various sections of the bill, she observes, “While admitting that trafficking is clearly a criminal offence that requires strict measures to combat unscrupulous persons and criminal networks, activists point out how all measures to deal with trafficking in the bill focus on the victims rather than the perpetrators of the crime.”
An editorial in The Indian Express on the UK’s request for a video of Vijay Mallya’s future jail cell says, “The willingness of the Indian authorities to supply whatever documentation that London needs has been read by Indians on social media as a promise to provide fake news. A fake video, with fake and wholly unnatural light, perhaps shot at a fake location. As Mallya’s lawyers know, we live in dark times and will believe anything.”
Prime Time
Akhilesh ‘pay back’
On Thursday night, Times Now, instead of holding a loud and heated debate on ‘breaking news’, discussed the case of Akhilesh Yadav allegedly vandalising the CM’s house before vacating it, with the hashtag #AkhileshPayBack.
The Samajwadi Party’s Anurag Bhadoria claimed the BJP’s allegations were based on lies. “Where is the swimming pool they claimed the CM house has?” asked Bhadoria. BJP ideologue Tuhin Sinha pointed out that the uproar was not about the financial aspect of the damage caused but “an issue of public conduct”.