CURRENT AFFAIRS
12 February 2021
NATIONAL NEWS:
A) Rajnath Singh confirms troops withdrawal at LAC in Ladakh.
India and China have reached an agreement for disengagement in the Pangong Lake area to cease their forward deployments in a phased, coordinated, and verified manner and it will substantially restore the situation to what it was before the stand-off last year, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. The Chinese side will keep its troop presence in the North Bank area to the east of Finger 8. Reciprocally, the Indian troops will be based at their permanent base at Dhan Singh Thapa Post near Finger 3. A similar action would be taken in the South Bank area by both sides, Singh said in a statement. These are mutual and reciprocal steps and any structures that had been built by both sides since April 2020 in both North and South Bank area will be removed and the landforms will be restored, he said. Further, both sides had agreed on a temporary moratorium on military activities in the North Bank, including patrolling in the traditional areas. Patrolling will be resumed only when both sides reach an agreement in diplomatic and military talks that would be held subsequently, Singh added.The implementation of this agreement started on Wednesday in the North and South Bank of the Pangong Lake. He want to assure this House that in these talks they have not conceded anything, Singh said, while stating that there were still some outstanding issues with regard to deployment and patrolling at some other points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. These will be the focus of further discussions with the Chinese side.
B) Companies like Twitter should follow Indian law: Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Minister for Information Technology and Communications Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday said global social media platforms such as Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and others were welcome to work, and earn money in India but they should follow the law and the Constitution of India. Replying to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Prasad said his Ministry had flagged Twitter and called out the microblogging site for double standards, adding that freedom of speech was there but Article 19 (2) of the Constitution added reasonable restrictions because of sovereignty and integrity of India. Why is it that when police act in Washington’s Capitol Hill ransacking, a micro-blogging site stands in their support, but when a similar action is taken at Red Fort, our national pride, the platform opposes it? Freedom of speech is there, but with reasonable restrictions. Why double standards? You cannot spread hate messages such as ‘PM Modi massacre of farmers’, Prasad said animatedly. Twitter and the government of India have been at loggerheads over issues related to content removal and freedom of expression.
C) Delhi HC issues notice on plea seeking court-monitored SIT probe into death of farmer on Republic Day.
The Delhi High Court on Thursday issued a notice seeking the response of the Delhi government and Delhi police on a plea seeking a court-monitored SIT probe into the death of Navreet Singh, a 25-year-old farmer who died after his tractor overturned during the protesting farmers’ tractor rally on Republic Day, PTI reported. The notice, issued also to the Uttar Pradesh government and the Chief Medical Officer of the DistrictHospital at Rampur, where the post mortem was conducted, was in response to a petition by Singh’s grandfather who has claimed that the victim had suffered gunshot injuries to his head. The court directed the Delhi Police to file a status report with regard to the investigation on or before the next date of hearing on February 26. Advocate Vrinda Grover, appearing for the victim’s grandfather, told the court that the way Delhi Police has conducted itself in the matter does not inspire a shred of confidence. She said that the police abandoned all procedures, like carrying out inquest proceedings, conducting a post mortem and lodging of an FIR, as required under the law, even if it was a case of accidental death. She said the police, instead, seized all the CCTV footage from the area, including from cameras which were closest to the incident site, and only selectively released video recorded from far. It also released a statement to the media, on the evening of January 26, saying that the farmer died due to overturning of the tractor without even carrying out a probe, she told the court. It may be recalled that multiple FIRs in different states, alleging sedition and creation of communal disharmony, had been quickly registered against several journalists, including India Today’s Rajdeep Sardesai, over reports that seemed to cast doubt on the police narrative that Singh had died due to injuries caused by his tractor overturning.
D) ‘Four people run this country’, says Rahul Gandhi, in sharp attack on government.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is running the country on a hum do hamare do (we two, ours two) policy, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said in Parliament today. He alleged that this policy has been evident in all of the dispensation’s major policy decisions, be it demonetisation, the implementation of GST, the Covid-19-related lockdown, and most recently, the three agri laws have triggered farmer protests across the country. You all must remember the saying we used for family planning, ‘Hum do, humare do’. This government has given that slogan a new meaning. The country is run by four people. ‘Hum do, aur humaare do,’ Gandhi said, adding that the intent of the three laws are to allow industrialists to buy unlimited quantity of foodgrains and hoard them as much as they want. The farm laws, he said, will not only ruin farmers, but finish the middlemen and have a devastating effect on small shopkeepers and small businessmen. It will be a massive blow to small and medium enterprise, which will destroy India’s rural economy. Gandhi also led his party members and those from the TMC and the DMK to observe a two-minute silence to mourn the death of 194 farmers who have died during the ongoing farmers’ agitation.
E) CAA will be implemented, says Amit Shah in Bengal rally.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday said the Citizenship (Amendment) Act will be implemented once the vaccination for COVID-19 is completed. They are a party that keeps their promise, Shah said at a gathering largely comprising people from the Matua sect at Thakaurnagar in the North 24 Parganas district. The CAA is an emotive issue for members of the sect of Hindu refugees from Bangladesh who had voted overwhelmingly for the BJP candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The delay in the implementation has been making them restless. They promised citizenship to Matuas in 2018. In 2019 they supported us. In 2020 we brought the CAA in Parliament, Shah said, adding that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been going to town saying the BJP made a false promise. The Covid-19 crisis came. Mamatadidi started saying it is a false promise and that she won’t allow the implementation of the CAA, Shah said. The Home Minister said he wants to promise the people that as soon as the vaccination process is complete, the BJP government will give citizenship to the Matuas. He also accused all the political parties of misleading the minorities by propagating that they will lose citizenship because of the CAA. As Union Home Minister I want to assure people that not a single Muslim brother or sister will lose citizenship because of the CAA, Shah said. He said the CAA is a legislation to give citizenship and not to take it away. Earlier in the day, the Home Minister addressed a rally in Cooch Behar and flagged off party ‘Parivartan’ yatra. Describing the upcoming Assembly polls as ‘historic’, he said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will be left chanting Jai Shri Ram after the polls.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) Biden speaks to Xi on phone, highlights concerns about China’s economic practices.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Wednesday evening (Washington time), the first call between the two leaders since Biden assumed office on January 20. Biden highlighted concerns about Beijing’s economic practices, its human rights record, and assertive actions in the region while affirming his priority of preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific, the White House said in a readout of the call. President Biden affirmed his priorities of protecting the American people’s security, prosperity, health, and way of life, and preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific. President Biden underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan, the White House said. Xi, however, is reported to have said that Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang are matters internal to China, as per China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. China and the U.S. should jointly safeguard peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, Xi is reported to have said. The Taiwan question and issues relating to Hong Kong, Xinjiang, etc. are China’s internal affairs and concern China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the U.S. side should respect China’s core interests and act prudently, Xi said, as per Xinhua. The Biden administration is conducting a review of Trump administration’s trade policies on China as well as a review of the impact of Chinese tech companies on U.S. national security. The administration is also, at least for the moment, not going forward with a Trump administration ban on social media app TikTok and its take-over by a U.S. company, according to reports.
B) China pulls BBC World News off air for content ‘violation’
China’s broadcasting regulator announced on Thursday it has pulled BBC World News from the air, saying the channel’s content had seriously violated guidelines for reporting in the country. In a statement, China’s National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) said BBC World News reports about China were found to seriously violate broadcast guidelines, including the requirement that news should be truthful and fair and not harm China’s national interests. The move comes after the BBC aired a report on February 3 detailing harrowing accounts of torture and sexual violence against Uighur women in Chinese camps. The NRTA does not permit the BBC to continue broadcasting in China, and does not accept its new annual application for broadcast, the statement from Beijing said. The BBC said it was disappointed with the move. The BBC is the world’s most trtßted international news broadcaster and reports on stories from around the world fairly, impartially and without fear or favour, a BBC spokesperson said.
