'A writ petition has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking release of children being detained illegally in Kashmir ever since special provisions of Article 370 were read down and the state was bifurcated into two Union Territories. The writ petition has been filed by Enakshi Ganguly and Shanta Sinha under Article 32 of the Constitution, which provides the right to constitutional remedies. Ganguly is an eminent child rights expert and Sinha was the first chairperson of the National Commission for Child Rights (NCPCR)...'
'While the BJP has rejected accusations that the arrest and subsequent jailing of Congress leader P. Chidambaram is ‘political vendetta’, a party MLA from Uttar Pradesh has “warned” West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to “mend her ways” or face the “same fate” as the former finance minister. Surendra Singh, the MLA from Bairia assembly constituency, said the Trinamool Congress supremo should “become the prime minister of Bangladesh” as she was opposed to the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
'Last week, papers published in the journals Cell and Science reinforced two well-established but controversial facts of ancient Indian history: first, that the Indus Valley Civilisation was pre-Vedic, and second, that Sanskrit came to India through migrants from the north-west at a time when the Indus Valley Civilisation had declined. Media coverage, however, reported the exact opposite of what the studies found. To understand why newspaper headlines, television and Twitter feeds misrepresented the research so comprehensively, one needs to grasp why the facts are controversial.
'...there is a case for autonomy [of central banks], for sure. And that autonomy is important for all institutions, and that autonomy in the central bank in India was dead, certainly, in November 2016, when demonetisation was announced. Because it was very clear at that time that this was a decision taken against the wishes of the RBI, imposed on the RBI, which then had to implement something, which it did very badly. Which it had absolutely no knowledge of, and no preparation for.
'Opposition JMM termed it as IAS officers' 'compromise' with the Constitution and 'betrayal' of the country... #JharkhandWithModi was also trending on Twitter for some time. Co-founder of Alt News, Mohammed Zubair tweeted on Thursday late night that at least 79 tweets were posted by Deputy Commissioners posted in Jharkhand. Some deputy commissioners like East Singhbhum DC (twitter handle @DCEastSinghbhum) posted 12 tweets. Besides them, the tweets with #JharkhandWithModi came from other deputy commissioners including DC Pakur, DC Chatra, DC Latehar and DC Koderma...
'It seems almost sacrilegious to be less than sentimental about Chandrayaan 2. Such a huge and heroic effort! Such a massive investment of scientific skills! Such a national fervour worked up to a feverish pitch! The pride of 130 crore Indians! However, the truth is greater than any scientific breakthrough, and it must be reckoned with at all costs. First, the national hysteria about Chandrayaan 2 was deliberately worked up.
'The authors of two scientific papers about Aryan migration endorsed a theory closer to the cultural triumphalism of the political right while the papers had themselves disfavoured it... What is surprising is that, in a press conference held in New Delhi on September 6 to explain their findings from Rakhigarhi soon after the papers were published online, coauthors Vasant Shinde, archeologist and vice-chancellor of Deccan College, Pune, and Niraj Rai, head of the ancient DNA laboratory at the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleosciences, Lucknow, advanced the contested ‘Out of India’ theory.
'The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is facing a barrage of criticism from prominent lawyers, human rights activists and philanthropists after it announced that it would honour India’s controversial Hindu nationalist prime minister with an award later this month. The Global Goalkeeper award recognises Narendra Modi’s flagship Clean India programme, through which the government has built millions of toilets and publicised the benefits of sanitation and hygiene. The award comes amid growing criticism of the disenfranchisement, detention and deportation of Muslims in Assam and Kashmir.
'The Jharkhand police has dropped murder charges against the 11 people accused of lynching 22-year-old Tabrez Ansari. Ansari was beaten by a mob who apparently thought he was a thief, and forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Jai Hanuman’ on June 18 this year. He died days later, in police custody. Reports say that the police have used the final post-mortem report, which says Ansari died of “cardiac arrest”, to drop the murder charge. The chargesheet again the 11 now only includes culpable homicide not amounting to murder...'
'Almost a month after an Alwar court pronounced its judgement in the Pehlu Khan lynching case, a similar case is lined up to have its day in court. In this case too, self-styled gau rakshaks, apparently convinced of Muslim men being cattle smugglers, thrashed him to death. Rakbar Khan was killed on the night of July 20, 2018, when he and his friend Aslam Khan were brutally attacked by a mob while they were transporting milch cows on foot to their home in Haryana’s Kolgaon from a village in Alwar...'
