'In June 2019, we conducted a survey of 706 mothers in one district each in six states of India. We found serious concerns with the implementation of the Modi government’s Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana. The scheme gives monetary assistance of Rs 5,000 to pregnant women in three instalments for the birth of their first child. The assistance is lower than the Rs 6,000 entitlement for all births, not just the first child, under the National Food Security Act, 2013. Even this reduced amount often fails to reach the women.
'...PUDR has said that it analysed nine important legislations of the Monsoon Session in its study. Thereupon, it held that “all the above laws were introduced with little or no notice, bypassed deliberations, ignored proposed amendments, steamrolled opposition, over-ruled demands for scrutiny or references to Select Committees within parliament”. This, it said, “lays bare the anti-people agenda of the present government to dismantle rights and democratic institutions, but also their methods of distorting or side-stepping crucial processes of representative democracy”.
'Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has made a bizarre statement that pollution is not linked to the shortening of life in India. "No Indian study has shown pollution shortens life. Let us not create fear psychosis among people," Union minister Prakash Javadekar told Parliament on Friday... The minister's statement is in sharp contrast with several studies, where the Government of India is also a party. These studies have found that a rise in pollution is linked to deaths and shorter life spans.
'Those killed in the 'encounters' range from perpetrators of violence against women to suspected Maoists... Early on Friday morning, news broke that the Telangana police had shot and killed the four suspects in the rape-and-murder case of a Hyderabad veterinarian in an ‘encounter’. News reports said that the police had taken the suspects – Areef, Shiva, Naveen and Chennakeshavulu – to the scene of crime for “crime reconstruction”. There, they allegedly tried to “attack the police and escape”, when the police opened fire in “self-defence”.
Submitted by narendramodifacts on Fri, 12/06/2019 - 00:00
Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code defines "sedition", roughly, to be the act of inciting disaffection towards the government. The sedition law has been used as a tool to stifle protest and freedom of expression by consecutive governments in India. In particular it has been widely misused since the Narendra Modi government came to power at the centre in 2014.
''The police themselves are acting like investigator, judge and jury', says a woman rights activist on the police encounter of four rape-murder accused... Several activists and lawyers raised questions over the police encounter of four accused in the rape-murder case of a 26-year-old veterinarian in Telangana even as politicians across the party lines hailed the police action.
'Amit Jethava was not a well-known name outside the small circle of people that comprise environmental journalists and conservationists. But on July 20, 2010, when he was shot dead outside the High Court of Gujarat in Ahmedabad, his murder became national news. It was reported as the murder of a man who was a Right to Information (RTI) activist, a lawyer and an environmentalist. The needle of suspicion pointed to a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Member of Parliament named Dinu Bogha Solanki.
'Bharatiya Janata Party leader Virendra Singh Mast on Thursday dismissed reports of a slowdown in the automobile sector and claimed that traffic jams on roads were an indication of the growth, ANI reported. He alleged that the Opposition’s talks about slowdown were a conspiracy to “defame” the government and the nation. Mast, a Lok Sabha MP from Ballia constituency in Uttar Pradesh, told the Parliament that an atmosphere of economic slowdown was being created. “To defame the nation and government people are saying that the automobile sector has slowed down,” he said.
'The BJP’s Ashwini Choubey, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, has claimed that he is unaware of the onion crisis in the country because he is “a vegetarian and has never tasted an onion”. This comes a day after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made a statement in Parliament that she “comes from a family that does not consume much onion and garlic”. Sitharaman’s comment invited heavy trolling online and prompted the viral hashtag #SayItLikeNirmalaTai. “I am a vegetarian. How will a person like me know about the shortage and price of onions?” Choubey told news agency ANI.
'WhatsApp accounts belonging to Kashmiri users have begun to expire as the region completed 120 days of an internet blockade on Tuesday. The social media platform deletes accounts that have stayed inactive for that long. Several Twitter users shared screenshots showing that friends and family members based in Kashmir had exited WhatsApp groups they had been part of – most likely without their knowledge. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the disappearances from WhatsApp groups were the result of the company’s policy on inactive accounts.
