NATIONAL NEWS
A) Mamata urges Supreme Court to take suo motu cognisance of Pegasus spyware row
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday urged the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognisance of the Pegasus spyware row, and asked all Opposition parties to form a united front against the BJP without any delay. My humble regards to our Hon’ble Supreme Court. Why can’t the court take suo motu cognisance when judges’ phones are tapped? Either take suo motu cognisance or set up an SIT [special investigation team] monitored by you to know whose phones were affected. Only the judiciary can save democracy, she said. Banerjee was addressing the annual Martyrs’ Day rally in Kolkata, which was telecast live across several States, including Delhi. (The July 21 Martyrs’ Day rally is an annual one organised by the Trinamool Congress to commemorate the 1993 Kolkata firing). The Trinamool Congress chairperson asserted, We have to come together; we must forget our individual interests and come together to save the country. To work together, we must form a front without any delay. She would visit New Delhi later this month and would be happy to attend any meeting of Opposition leaders between July 26 and 29. I also want to meet important leaders. Chidambaram ji [Congress leader P. Chidambaram] will be there, Sharad ji [NCP chairperson Sharad Pawar] will be there, I am ready to attend any meeting between July 26 and 29, she stated. Banerjee, who is likely to visit Delhi after two years on July 25, remarked, The general election is still two-and-a-half years away but nothing will be achieved if we form an alliance just before it. The Chief Minister urged each and every Opposition party to start working together to make a front and not leave matters for the last moment. If the doctor comes after death, nothing will happen. If the treatment is done on time, the patient can be cured. Now is your time. The more time you waste, the more the situation will worsen, she emphasised. The Chief Minister alleged that her phone was tapped. She said she had put plasters on her phone as they [Centre] tap everything.
B) Parliamentary panel on IT to discuss Pegasus issue on July 28
The Standing Committee on Information Technology, headed by senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, will deliberate on the use of Pegasus spyware against nearly 300 persons in India, on July 28. Officials of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITy), the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the Department of Telecommunications have been summoned to depose on the subject, Citizens’ data security and privacy. The committee has had several rounds of meeting on the subject. It was deliberated upon in two meetings held in November 2019. The panel has not submitted a report so far because all investigation remained inconclusive. The government has neither confirmed nor denied the involvement in the snooping episode targeting activists in 2019. The latest revelations show that it is a more serious situation. Does the government have access to Pegasus or not is the key question, one of the members said.
C) Pandemic orphaned 1.1 lakh in India, over 10 lakh globally, says Lancet report
As many as 1.19 lakh children in India lost their primary caregiver (parent or custodial grandparent) due to Covid-19, placing the country at the third spot after Mexico (1.4 lakh) and Brazil (1.3 lakh), according to estimates in a new study published in The Lancet. Globally, this figure stood at 11.34 lakh between March 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021. Children who lost either a mother or a father were 10.42 lakh, including 1.16 lakh in India. The study developed estimates of pandemic-associated orphanhood and caregiver deaths using excess mortality and deaths for 21 countries that accounted for 76·4% of global deaths between March 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021. It then used these findings to develop global extrapolations. It was conducted by researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control’s COVID-19 Response Team, the Imperial College, London, the University of Oxford, and the World Bank, among others. More than 15 lakh children around the world had lost at least one primary caregiver or a co-residing grandparent. This figure stood at 1.86 lakh for India. There were up to five times more children with deceased fathers than mothers. For example, in India, an estimated 25,500 children lost their mother and 90,751 their father and 12 children both parents. The study underlines that such children are at greater risk of family separation and institutionalisation and recommends investments towards strengthening family-based care, with the help of a surviving caregiver or through kinship, foster care or adoption.
D) Completely false to say no one died due to oxygen shortage: Delhi Health Minister
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on July 21 said there have been many deaths due to oxygen shortage in Delhi and many other places across the country. If there was no shortage of oxygen, why did hospitals move court? Hospitals and the media had been flagging oxygen shortage issues daily. Television channels showed how hospitals were running out of the life-saving gas. It is completely false to say that no one died due to oxygen shortage. There have been many deaths due to oxygen shortage in Delhi and many other places across the country, he said. The Central government on July 20 informed the Rajya Sabha that no deaths due to lack of oxygen were specifically reported by states and UTs during the second Covid-19 wave. But there was an unprecedented surge in demand for medical oxygen during the second wave and it peaked at nearly 9,000 MT compared to 3,095 MT in the first wave following which the Centre had to step in to facilitate equitable distribution among the states, it said. Interestingly, Maharashtra Health Minister and senior Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Rajesh Tope on Wednesday clarified that there was no record in the State of any death due to shortage of oxygen during the two waves of the pandemic.
E) Govt seeks more time share data that RTI activist says was provided to him two months ago
A day after the Finance Ministry told the Rajya Sabha it needed more time to furnish data on sale of electoral bonds as asked by an MP, RTI activist Kanhaiya Kumar said on Wednesday the details had been provided to him via an RTI reply by the SBI two months ago. Trinamool Congress MP Santanu Sen had sought the details of the sale of the bonds during the 15th and 16th phase, which was in the run-up to the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Puducherry, Assam and Kerala from March to May. Sen also asked about the bonds sold since the scheme started in 2018 and the cost of printing the same. The government seeks more time to furnish the replies, the written reply by Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said on Tuesday. Kumar, a Bihar-based RTI activist, had received a reply from the SBI, the only bank authorised to sell the bonds, on May 14 to his query. As reported by The Hindu on May 18, the SBI reply had said bonds worth ₹695.34 crore had been sold from April 1 till 10. The SBI had declined to share the details of the political parties that encashed them and the commission it earned from the sales, both of which were asked by Sen too. The questions are submitted 15 days in advance. The SBI has already provided this information in response to my RTI query. So it’s quite obvious that they have information in requisite format. Still, the Ministry says it needs more time to furnish the replies, Kumar said.
F) Supreme Court criticises Goa, Vedanta’s delayed review pleas in mining case
A Supreme Court Bench led by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud has slammed the Goa government and Vedanta for preferring to file their review petitions against a February 2018 judgment after the retirement of two judges who authored it. A Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta, in their February 7, 2018, judgment, cancelled 88 mining leases, which were renewed by the BJP government in Goa in 2015 to benefit private mining leaseholders. Their 102-page judgment had traced the rapacious and rampant exploitation of Goa’s fragile ecology by private mining lease holders, whose sole motive was to make profits, for years. The verdict had noted how these leases were hastily renewed by the State in 2014 with retrospective effect from 2007, just in the nick of time before an amended Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act made auction of leases mandatory to mine notified minerals like iron ore. Review petitions are heard by the same Bench that passed the original judgment. Justices Lokur and Gupta retired on December 30, 2018 and May 6, 2020, respectively. The State of Goa preferred its four review petitions in November 2019, after Justice Lokur’s retirement. Vedanta preferred its four review petitions in August 2020, right after Justice Gupta’s retirement. Justice Chandrachud and Justice Shah, the second judge on the Review Bench, said no cogent grounds were furnished by either Goa or Vedanta to justify their delay between 20 and 26 months to file their review petitions. Under the Supreme Court Rules of 2013, a plea for review has to be filed within 30 days of the judgment. Dismissing the review, the Review Bench observed that such practice must be firmly disapproved to preserve the institutional sanctity of the decision-making of this court. The review petitioners were aware of the decision of this court. Keeping in mind the above, we are inclined to dismiss these review petitions on the ground of limitation alone. However, in any event, we also find that no legitimate grounds for review of the judgment… and dismiss these review petitions on merits as well, Justice Chandrachud and Shah recorded in their recent five-page order.
G) Centre’s wrong decisions ‘killed’ 50 lakh people, alleges Rahul Gandhi
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said wrong decisions of the Government of India (GoI) killed 50 lakh people during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a tweet, Gandhi cited a report of the Washington-based think tank, Centre for Global Development, that offered three different scenarios of excess deaths in India between January 2020 and June 2021. The Truth. GOI’s wrong decisions during Covid second wave killed 50 lakh of our sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers, he tweeted, tagging the working paper of the Centre for Global Development. The study – authored by Abhishek Anand, Justin Sandefur and Arvind Subramanian (former chief economic advisor to the GoI) – projected three different estimates: a conservative estimate of 3.4 million deaths using civic registration data from the States; another estimate of 4 million deaths using infection fatality ratio and finally, a third estimate of 4.9 million deaths based on an analysis of a consumer pyramid household survey. Gandhi’s criticism of the government’s handling of the second wave of Covid-19 comes a day after the Rajya Sabha debated the issue on Tuesday. Participating in the debate, Congress’s deputy leader Anand Sharma raised the issue of excess deaths and urged the Centre to reconcile the figures from the States in order to give compensation to those who died of Covid-19.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) To reach a peace deal, Taliban say Afghan President must go
The Taliban on Friday said they don’t want to monopolise power, but insisted there won’t be peace in Afghanistan until there is a new negotiated government in Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani is removed. In an interview with the Associated Press, Taliban spokesman, Suhail Shaheen, also a member of the group’s negotiating team, laid out the insurgents’ stance on what should come next in a country on the precipice. The Taliban have captured territory in recent weeks, seized border crossings and are threatening a number of provincial capitals, as U.S. and NATO soldiers leave Afghanistan. This week, the top U.S. military officer, General Mark Milley, said that the Taliban have strategic momentum, and he did not rule out a complete Taliban takeover. But he said it is not inevitable. I don’t think the end game is yet written, he said. Afghans who can afford it are applying by the thousands for visas to leave Afghanistan, fearing a violent descent into chaos. The U.S.-NATO withdrawal is more than 95% complete. Shaheen said the Taliban will lay down their weapons when a negotiated government acceptable to all sides in the conflict is installed in Kabul and Mr. Ghani’s government is gone. I want to make it clear that we do not believe in the monopoly of power because any governments who (sought) to monopolise power in Afghanistan in the past, were not successful governments, said Shaheen, apparently including the Taliban’s own five-year rule in that assessment. So we do not want to repeat that same formula. But he was also uncompromising on the continued rule of Mr. Ghani, calling him a war monger and accusing him of using his Tuesday speech on the Islamic holy day of Id-al-Adha to promise an offensive against the Taliban. Shaheen dismissed Mr. Ghani’s right to govern, resurrecting allegations of widespread fraud that surrounded Mr. Ghani’s 2019 election win. After that vote, both Mr. Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah declared themselves President. After a compromise deal, Mr. Abdullah is now No. 2 in the government and heads the reconciliation council.
B) Xi Jinping visits Tibet border region, first by Chinese leader in years.
China’s President Xi Jinping this week became the first Chinese leader in many years to visit Tibet as well as its southeastern border region with India, as he inspected a newly opened and strategically important railway line. The official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday Mr. Xi arrived in Tibet on Wednesday, landing at the airport in Nyingchi, a town near the border with India’s Arunachal Pradesh. The Xinhua report said Mr. Xi drove to the Nyang river bridge to inspect the Yarlung Zangbo river, or Brahmaputra river — the Nyang is its second largest tributary. He also visited Nyingchi town and its railway station to inspect the newly built Sichuan-Tibet railway. Videos circulating on social media all through Thursday showed Mr. Xi had also visited Lhasa. Friday’s was the first official confirmation of the visit. This is Mr. Xi’s first visit to the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) since taking over as the general secretary of the Communist Party of China in 2012. He had visited in 2011 when he was Vice-President. Xi’s visit to Lhasa in 2011 was on July 21 that year, supposedly to mark the ‘60th Anniversary of the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet’, although no one’s sure why that date was chosen — it’s usually May 23. So yesterday could have been considered by the PRC as the 70th Anniversary, observed Tibetologist Robbie Barnett on Twitter. The Seventeen Point Agreement was signed on May 23, 1951. China refers to the agreement as heralding what it calls the peaceful liberation of Tibet. The agreement has been rejected by the Dalai Lama, who has said the Communist Party had both forced it on Tibet and subsequently violated its commitments, leading him to eventually flee to India in exile in 1959. Mr. Xi’s visit to Lhasa and the Potala Palace is expected to mark the anniversary. His visit to the border region and Nyingchi assumes particular significance coming a month after China started operating the first bullet train line in Tibet, linking Lhasa to Nyingchi near the border with Arunachal Pradesh. The China State Railway Group said the 435-km line, on which construction began in 2014, has a designed speed of 160 kilometres per hour and would connect the capital city of the Tibet Autonomous Region to the border city of Nyingchi with a travel time of three-and-a-half hours. The Lhasa-Nyingchi rail is one among several major infrastructure projects recently completed in Tibet’s southern and southeastern counties near the Arunachal border. Last month, China completed construction of a strategically significant highway through the Grand Canyon of the Yarlung Zangbo river, the second significant passageway to Medog county that borders Arunachal.
