NATIONAL NEWS
A) Adivasi rights activist Fr. Stan Swamy dies in custody
Father Stan Swamy, 84, a Jesuit priest who had campaigned for the democratic and land rights of Jharkhand’s adivasis for over five decades, passed away today at 1.24 p.m in Mumbai. Dr. Ian D’Souza, medical director of the Holy Family Hospital where Fr. Swamy was admitted, told a division bench of Justices S.S. Shinde and N.J. Jamadar of the Bombay High Court that Fr. Swamy had a pulmonary infection, following post-Covid-19 complications in the lungs and pneumonia. He also had Parkinson’s disease. Dr. D’souza said Fr. Swamy had suffered a cardiac arrest on July 4 at 4.30 a.m. He was put on a ventilator, and he never regained consciousness. Senior advocate Mihir Desai, representing Fr. Swamy, said, We have no grievance against the hospital. However, we cannot say the same thing about the National Investigation Agency [NIA] and State authorities. I am seeking judicial custody into this as there was a delay of 10 days in taking him to the hospital from jail. The Bench said, With all humility at our command, this is a shocking news. We passed that order, to take him to the hospital of his choice. We have no words to express our condolences. But since the doctor informed us here, so remaining matter on any other date we will hear. Desai said the NIA did not seek his custody even for a day and he was sent to the Taloja Jail as soon as he was arrested. He requested the court to pass an order to hand over Fr. Swamy’s body to Father Frazer. Fr. Swamy was shifted to the private hospital from the jail on May 29 after being directed by the High Court. He tested positive for Covid-19 on May 30 and suffered lower back pain and bilateral hearing loss among other ailments. He had told the court on May 21, I am eating less and less and my co-accused are worried about me. Only one thing that I would request the judiciary is to consider for interim bail. That is the only request. Political leaders and activists on Monday called for accountability over the death of 84-year-old jesuit priest and tribal rights activist Father Stan Swamy. Congress MP Jairam Ramesh said in a tweet, Who in the apparatus of the Indian state will be held responsible for this tragedy? Make no mistake – it is the Indian state that killed Fr. Stan Swamy, who was such a passionate crusader for social justice. Lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan said, This is nothing less than murder by the State of one of the gentlest & kindest men I have known. Unfortunately our judicial system is also complicit in this.
B) Board exams 2022: CBSE divides academic year into two terms, with 50% syllabus each
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Monday announced a special assessment scheme for class 10 and 12 board exams for the next year in view of the Covid-19 pandemic, splitting the academic session into two terms, PTI reported. The board has also announced plans to rationalise the syllabus for the 2021-22 academic session and to make the internal assessment and project work more credible and valid. As per an official order by Joseph Emmanuel, Director (Academic), CBSE, the term one exams will be held in November-December, 2021 while the second term exams will be conducted in March-April, 2022. The syllabus for the academic session 2021-22 will be divided into two terms by following a systematic approach of looking into the interconnectivity of concepts and topics by the Subject Experts, he said. The Board will conduct examinations at the end of each term on the basis of the bifurcated syllabus. This has been done to increase the probability of having a board-conducted classes X and XII examinations at the end of the academic session, he said. The syllabus for the board examination 2021-22 will be rationalised similar to that of the last academic session to be notified in July 2021. Schools will also use alternative academic calendar and inputs from the NCERT on transacting the curriculum. Efforts will be made to make internal assessment, practical, project work more credible and valid as per the guidelines and moderation policy to be announced by the board to ensure fair distribution of marks, he added.
C) ‘Distressing’ and ‘shocking’ that people are still tried under Section 66A of IT Act, says SC
The Supreme Court on Monday found it distressing, shocking and terrible that people were still booked and tried under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act even six years after the Supreme Court struck down the provision as unconstitutional and a violation of free speech. Section 66A had prescribed three years’ imprisonment if a social media message caused annoyance or was found grossly offensive. The Supreme Court, in the Shreya Singhal judgment authored by Justice Rohinton F. Nariman in March 2015, had concluded the provision was vague and worded arbitrarily. On Monday, senior advocate Sanjay Parikh and advocate Aparna Bhat, for the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), said the number of cases under Section 66A had actually increased post the judgment. What is going on is terrible, distressing! We will issue notice, Justice Nariman, heading a three-judge Bench also comprising Justices K.M. Joseph and B.R. Gavai, exclaimed. Attorney General K.K. Venugopal pointed out that law books published post the verdict featured the non-existent Section 66A in full. The police officer, while registering a case, looks at only the Section in the main text. The fact that the Section has been struck down is given only as a footnote. Venugopal submitted. And not being Mr. Venugopal, he [police officer] does not read the footnote. Justice Nariman said light-heartedly. But Justice Nariman agreed with Parikh that the state of affairs is shocking. Parikh said the court had to intervene and work out a mechanism to disseminate the Shreya Singhal judgment to every police station and trial court in the country. Yes, we will work out something, Justice Nariman assured. The government was given two weeks to file its reply and the PUCL was given a week to file its rejoinder. The case would be listed for hearing after this.
D) Gupkar alliance says it is disappointed with outcome of Delhi meeting with PM Modi
The People’s Alliance for the Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), an amalgam of five political parties of Jammu and Kashmir, on Monday said it was disappointed with the outcome of the meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 24 in New Delhi. All the members of the PAGD have expressed their disappointment at the outcome of the Delhi meeting, especially at the absence of any substantial confidence-building measures (CBMs), such as releasing political and other prisoners from jails, and taking concrete steps to end the siege and atmosphere of suppression that has choked J&K since 2019, Gupkar alliance spokesman M.Y. Tarigami said. He underlined that the CBMs would have initiated the much-needed process of reaching out to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, who were the biggest stakeholders and sufferers of the problem. Hardening its position on the restoration of Statehood, Tarigami said, As far as restoration of Statehood is concerned, it has been BJP’s commitment on the floor of the Parliament and they must honour their word. So, any Assembly election must be held only after restoration of full Statehood for J&K. To this end, the PAGD has decided to reach out to other political parties in J&K, with a view to take a common position on the issue. The PAGD, which held a series of meetings on Sunday, reiterated to fight together to reverse the unconstitutional and unacceptable changes foisted on the people of J&K on 5th August 2019 using all constitutional, legal and political means at its disposal. The PAGD’s struggle for undoing these changes will continue as long as it takes while striving to achieve this objective as early as possible, it said. The alliance’s stand assumes significance as it comes a day ahead of the visit of the J&K Delimitation Commission to the Union Territory to hold meetings with political parties, civil society groups and the officials. Tarigami said the political parties associated with the alliance will take a decision about meeting the delimitation panel at the party level. The Commission, which is arriving on July 6 for a four-day visit, has invited the political parties in the Union Territory, besides the five members, including two MPs from the BJP and three from the NC. It has sought suggestions before redrawing the boundaries of seven new constituencies.
E) 12 BJP MLAs suspended from Maharashtra Assembly for 1 year
Twelve BJP MLAs have been suspended from Maharashtra Assembly for one year for ‘abusing’ and ‘misbehaving’ with the presiding officer in chair, both inside and outside the Assembly. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anil Parab presened a resolution to suspend the MLAs and the House passed it on majority vote. The BJP, while boycotting the House, termed it an act to suppress its voice and an attempt to bring down the number of the Opposition. The MLAs, Dr Sanjay Kute, Ashish Shelar, Abhimanyu Pawar, Girish Mahajan, Atul Bhatkhalkar, Harish Pimple, Jaikumar Rawal, Yogesh Sagar, Narayan Kuche, Bunty Bhangdiya, Parag Alvani and Ram Satpute, will be barred from entering the legislative premises for the next 12 months. The ruckus inside the Assembly took place as the tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government brought a resolution seeking empirical data on OBCs from the Central government. Leader of the Opposition Devendra Fadnavis raised a point of objection before senior Minister Chhagan Bhujbal presented the resolution, claiming the State government did not follow the Supreme Court directions for 15 months, which resulted in the scrapping of political reservation for OBCs. After allowing Fadnavis to speak, Sena MLA Bhaskar Jadhav, who was the presiding officer in the Speakers’ chair, directed Bhujbal to read out the reply and present the resolution. As he denied Fadnavis an opportunity to reply to Bhujbal, agitated BJP MLAs rushed in front of his chair and attacked the mike. They also tried to lift the sceptre in front of the Speaker’s chair. The House was adjourned for 10 minutes after the resolution was passed. It was then adjourned three times for 15 minutes and once for 30 minutes. When I was inside the Deputy Speaker’s chamber, BJP MLAs rushed inside and started abusing me and circled me. Fadnavis was there and he did not stop them, said Jadhav in the Assembly. Only Shelar later apologised to him twice. Fadnavis accepted that there were some heated exchange of unsuitable words as the BJP MLAs were angry. But we apologised later. Suspending Opposition MLAs is an attempt to lessen our numbers, which is an undemocratic act, he claimed. The ruling coalition, however, went ahead with the resolution and subsequently all the 12 MLAs were suspended for a year.
F) Use of facial recognition to verify vaccine beneficiaries was without any authorisation
Even though the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has admitted in a recent RTI query response to the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) for online verification of beneficiaries at vaccination centres, it failed to provide any legislative or legal order that authorised the use of such technology. The MoHFW has also said that no privacy impact assessment of the use of FRT was conducted prior to its deployment. Facial recognition authentication is used as one of the methods for Aadhaar Authentication for online verification of beneficiary prior to Covid-19 vaccination wherein facial template is captured and sent to UIDAI for verification of image of beneficiary, the Ministry said in response to an RTI filed by the not-for-profit Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF). It also stated that no additional procurement has been made for the implementation of FRT-based verification and that a pilot project for such authentication is still under way. However, MoHFW failed to specify any legislative or legal order that authorised the use of FRT nor could they provide copies of any relevant privacy impact assessment, the IFF said, adding that the reply stated that use of FRT for verification of the beneficiaries’ data would be according to the terms furnished in the ‘Verifier & Vaccinator Module User Manual’ included in the CoWin portal. However the manual was not available on the CoWin portal or any open source webpage. The IFF said the government was also unable to provide any information related to the accuracy of the FRT used, any third party assessments which may have been conducted, and the exhaustive list of databases with which the facial recognition technology will be linked in order to identify individuals.
G) Twitter failed to comply with new IT Rules: Centre to Delhi High Court
The Central government on Monday informed the Delhi High Court that micro-blogging site Twitter has failed to comply with India’s law regulating tech companies that are rendering their services as ‘intermediaries’. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity), in an affidavit filed before the high court, stated that despite three months time being granted to all Significant Social Media Intermediaries (SSMIs) to comply with the Information Technology (IT) Rules 2021, Twitter has failed to fully comply with the same. Twitter, last week, had informed the high court that the interim Resident Grievance Officer and the interim Nodal Contact Person in India had resigned from their positions in June. The tech giant had stated that it was in the final stages of appointing a replacement, meanwhile the grievances of Indian users are being addressed by the Grievance Officer. The Meity, however, pointed out that as per the details gleaned from Twitter’s website, the grievances from India are currently being handled by its personnel situated in the United States of America which amounts to non-compliance with the IT Rules 2021. In India, Section 79 of the IT Act shields social media platforms or intermediaries such as Twitter from liability for any third party information, data, or communication link made available or hosted by it in certain cases. The Ministry said when an intermediary fails to observe the IT Rules, the intermediary could be liable for any punishment under any law for the time being in force in respect of the offending content. The Ministry stated that the immunity conferred on intermediaries is a conditional immunity subject to the intermediary satisfying the various conditions. The IT Rules, 2021 are the law of the land and Respondent No. 2 (Twitter) is mandatorily required to comply with the same, it added. The Ministry’s affidavit came in response to a petition by advocate Amit Acharya, seeking to appoint a Resident Grievance Officer under Rule 4 of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Ethics Code) Rules 2021. Acharya, in his plea filed through advocates Akash Vajpai and Manish Kumar, had claimed that he wanted to raise grievance against two alleged offensive and objectionable tweets at the Resident Grievance Officer. However the Petitioner was unable to find the contact details of the Resident Grievance Officer on the website of Twitter, he had said.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) Learn to live with virus, Johnson tells Britons.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed on Monday that his government plans to scrap laws requiring face masks and social distancing later this month, though he acknowledged that lifting the restrictions will drive surging coronavirus cases even higher. Mr. Johnson said legal controls will be replaced by personal responsibility when the country moves to the final stage of its lockdown-lifting roadmap. That is scheduled to happen on July 19, though he said a final decision would come on July 12. This means people can throw away masks after months of enforced face-covering, though businesses and transit operators may still require them, and they will still be recommended in some enclosed spaces. Mr. Johnson said he would set out how the country would learn to live with this virus – a major shift in tone from a leader who has previously painted CO. VID-19 as an enemy to be vanquished. I want to stress from the outset that this pandemic is far from over, he said, predicting that cases could hit 50,000 a day by July 19. We must reconcile ourselves, sadly, to more deaths from COVID.
B) Israel looks to renew law that keeps out Palestinian spouses.
Israel’s Parliament is set to vote on Monday on whether to renew a temporary law first enacted in 2003 that bars Arab citizens of Israel from extending citizenship or even residency to spouses from the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Critics, including many left-wing and Arab lawmakers, say it’s a racist measure aimed at restricting the growth of Israel’s Arab minority, while supporters say it’s needed for security purposes and to preserve Israel’s Jewish character. The law creates an array of difficulties for Palestinian families that span the wardrawn and largely invisible frontiers separating Israel from east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, territories it seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for a future state. You want your security, it’s no problem, you can check each case by itself, said Taiseer Khatib. His wife of more than 15 years, from the West Bank city of Jenin, must regularly apply for permits to live with him and their three children in Israel. There’s no need for this collective punishment just because you are Palestinian, he said. Israel’s dominant rightwing parties strongly support the law, and it has been renewed every year since being enacted. But Israel’s new government includes opponents of the measure, and the right-wing opposition led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned it won’t provide the votes needed to renew the law. Ahead of the vote, PM Naftali Bennett called on Mr. Netanyahu to join him in renewing the law. Harming state security for a quarter of a political point is not the right thing to do, he said.
