'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.
'What happens when you ask leaders in the Narendra Modi government why they resent criticism? You get publicly hauled over the coals – and told you “hurt national interest” – by a whole army of Bharatiya Janata Party ministers and senior leaders. On Saturday, Bajaj Group chairman Rahul Bajaj asked a group of ministers – including Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal – some tough questions on lynching, Pragya Thakur and the government’s ability to accept criticism...
'The Madhya Pradesh police has conducted raids at the office of an Indore-based evening newspaper run by a local entrepreneur, along with other business concerns that he and his family own. The newspaper, Sanjha Lokswami, owned by Jitendra Soni, had reportedly published photographs of a former BJP minister in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government and the state principal secretary, considered a close confidant of the former chief minister, in a compromising position with some women, and simultaneously also released their video clips on YouTube.
'The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students’ protests against the new hostel manual and fee hike have become a talking point across the country, drawing varied reactions from all sections of society. As students continue raising their demand for a complete rollback of the proposed hike, the University has become the new favourite target of the fake news factory. Famous radio jockey Raunac, who voices the on air character ‘Baua’, recently released a video endorsing multiple fake claims regarding JNU and its students.
'At the start of this month we asked the following question: Can the Indian government confirm it did not use WhatsApp spyware on Indians? We weren’t the only ones. A group of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists that had been targeted by the spyware, known as Pegasus, wrote to the government two weeks ago asking the same question. The matter was also brought up in the Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology, despite an attempt to prevent a discussion by the Bharatiya Janata Party members. And Members of Parliament have put the question directly to the government...
'The police here have registered an FIR against an Aligarh Muslim University professor for sharing posts on social media that allegedly hurt the morale of the security forces in the Valley. The FIR cited an “inappropriate post” in which the assistant professor, whose husband is based in Kashmir, referred to the communication blackout in the Valley immediately after the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status. “Sach mein sampark toot jana kitna khatarnak aur dukhad hota hai, chahe Chandrayaan ho ya Kashmir,” the post said on the “pain” caused by losing contact.
'The Press Council of India’s letter to the Andhra Pradesh government in the first week of November expressing concern about an order that allows the secretaries of all department to file defamation cases against journalists was an indication of the intense pressure faced by the state’s media. The letter has also served to draw attention to more direct, brutal attacks on journalists in the state. Over the past five months, there have been four attacks on journalists, one of whom died after an assault...'
'Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns a week-old wave of online threats and hate messages targeting this well-known Indian journalist and calls on the authorities to shed light on the possible complicity of members of the police force... It began when Rana Ayyub, who is nowadays a Washington Post columnist, posted a cryptic message on Twitter on 8 November about the ruling that India’s supreme court was due to issue the next day on a fraught 30-year-old dispute between Hindus and Muslims over a religious site in the northern city of Ayodhya.
'Republic TV and Zee News, among other channels, called the students ‘freeloaders’ for protesting against the steep fee hike... On November 11, Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami hosted a primetime segment on the “chaos and mayhem” created by students of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi “for a mere Rs 290 fee hike”. As the channel flashed the hashtag #JNUFreebies, he asked if “those who want to freeload forever” should be allowed to “hold a university and its administration to ransom”.
'Ram Mandir and Kashmir (hyphenated with Pakistan) have obsessed TV news channels like no other issue. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that over the last two years at least, the twin issues have received more airtime than any other matter of national concern, even as the country was battling calamitous flooding, economic decline, rising unemployment, infant deaths, sexual crimes involving politicians.
