'On Saturday, February 16, a circular was issued by the proctor’s office of Delhi University, banning any kind of protests or demonstrations on the university campus. The circular read: “All students of Delhi University are advised not to occupy premises of departments, library and administrative blocks for protests and dharnas. These acts cause disruption in academic activities as well as day to day functioning of the respective offices. The students found violating the ordinance can be expelled, rusticated, fined or debarred from taking the examinations.”...
'The BJP government in Uttar Pradesh has suspended a senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officer — who had booked Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in 2002, when Adityanath was the Member of Parliament (MP) from Gorakhpur, under the National Security Act (NSA). The suspension came more than a fortnight after the IPS officer, Jasvir Singh, said in an interview with Huffington Post that he had been sidelined ever since he had booked Adityanath.
'On July 16, 2016, seven people belonging to a dalit family were flogged in public in Una, Gujarat. The incident was videotaped and circulated by men belonging to upper caste. The trial of the case that had begun more than two years later in August 2018, now stands the risk of witnesses turning hostile. Dipendra Yadav, the Public Prosecutor in the case has been repeatedly writing to concerned authorities demanding an office for himself to prepare the witnesses, and security for witnesses but in vain.
'As news of the lapse of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016 flashed on TV screens, people of Assam breathed a huge sigh of relief. Scenes of spontaneous pouring in of people on to the streets and celebrating the lapse of the Bill only shows how people across the state were anxious over the tabling of the Bill in the Rajya Sabha.
'Fighter jet deal caught in web of overpricing, abuse of authority and cronyism charges... On Friday, February 8, 2019, The Hindu daily in India reported that the standard Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) was not included in the deal. It meant that standard clauses on “Penalty for use of Undue Influence, Agents/Agency Commission, and Access to Company accounts” of Rafale manufacturer Dassault Aviation and MBDA France were waived by the Indian government in the supply protocols.
'...First there was that price claim about how much the Rafale would cost, with the government suddenly refusing to give specific details. Then there was the matter of Dassault, the manufacturer, partnering with Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence instead of the state-run Hindustan Aeronatics Limited and whether the Indian government had a role in this decision. Finally, there have been a series of questions about whether Modi broke protocol in the way the agreement actually took place...'
'In the wake of Dalit scholar Anand Teltumbde’s illegal arrest by Pune police and his subsequent release, the five petitioners who had approached the Supreme Court against the arrest of the civil rights activists, have called the development a “mockery of constitutional guarantees, of due process and of democracy”. Teltumbde, who was granted relief from arrest until February 11 by the apex court was regardless arrested on Saturday after a Pune court refused to grant him anticipatory bail in a case related to the Bhima Koregaon violence.
'Negligence in maintaining the security of a Jharkhand government web system has resulted in the leaking of personal information and Aadhaar numbers of nearly 1,66,000 government employees in India, TechCrunch reported on Friday. A web system that was used to record employee attendance was left without a password since 2014, exposing Aadhaar numbers, names, job titles and phone numbers of Jharkhand government workers on the Internet, claimed the report.
'As Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government gets ready to present its final Budget in a few days, here is a look at one of the key factors in fiscal calculations – debt. The combined debt of central and state governments stands at a staggering Rs. 97 lakh crore, up 59% since the end of March 2014, months before the BJP government took over in June 2014. The scale of this debt can be imagined by distributing it over the whole population (see chart below). This works out to Rs. 73,966 per person in 2017-18 as compared to Rs. 54,229 in 2014-15...
'The Delhi police on Monday filed its chargesheet against former Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar and others in a sedition case lodged in 2016... The Delhi police also charged former students – Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya – for allegedly using ‘anti-India’ slogans during an event organised on the JNU campus on February 9, 2016, on the anniversary of the hanging of Afzal Guru. Former JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid has also been named, but not charged...
