NATIONAL NEWS
Opposition takes out protest march against government over alleged manhandling of MPs
Leaders of several opposition parties on Thursday took out a protest march in Delhi against the government on several issues, including Pegasus and the alleged manhandling of their MPs in the Rajya Sabha, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi saying the voice of people was crushed in the House, PTI reported. Top leaders of several opposition parties met in the chamber of the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and then walked in protest from Parliament House to Vijay Chowk. Those who attended the meeting included Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Kharge, Sanjay Raut, Manoj Jha and other opposition leaders. The protest comes a day after the passage of bills in Rajya Sabha amid charges of manhandling of opposition leaders.The protesting MPs carried placards and banners against the government that read ‘Stop murder of democracy’ and ‘We demand repeal of anti-farmers laws’. The Parliament session is over. Frankly, as far as 60% of the country is concerned, there was no Parliament session as the voice of 70% of the people was crushed, humiliated, Gandhi told reporters. On Wednesday, Rajya Sabha MPs were physically beaten, he charged. He said the Ppposition was not allowed to speak inside Parliament and this is nothing short of murder of democracy. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi had termed as totally false the Opposition’s allegations that marshals manhandled their MPs and said one can check facts from the CCTV footage.
Twitter blocks Congress’s official handles, several leaders’ accounts
A virtual war erupted between Twitter India and the Congress on Thursday after the social media platform blocked the party’s official handle and the accounts of several senior leaders. Twitter also blocked the party’s Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra handles, besides that of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee and the Daman & Diu Congress Committee. The move comes just days after Twitter blocked former Congress president Rahul Gandhi for posting a photograph of the parents of a nine-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and murdered in Delhi. In defiance, party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra changed her display picture to Gandhi’s, while others like Youth Congress chief B.V. Srinivas changed both his display picture as well the name of his handle to Rahul Gandhi. By late Wednesday evening, prominent leaders whose handles had been suspended by Twitter for violating its policy included Randeep Surjewala, K.C. Venugopal, Ajay Maken, Sushmita Dev, Bhanwar Jitendra Singh and Lok Sabha member Manickam Tagore among others. All these leaders’ as well as the Congress’s handle had shared the same photograph in solidarity with Gandhi. Breaking his silence on the Twitter episode, Gandhi said on Instagram, If fighting for justice for murder and rape victim is a crime, then I am guilty. They can lock us out on a platform but they can’t lock our voice for the sake of the people. Party leaders claimed that not just prominent leaders but thousands of handles associated with the Congress have been blocked by Twitter. Last week, Twitter removed Gandhi’s tweet along with the photo, as sharing of photos of a victim or her relatives is barred under the Indian Law. However, the Congress targeted Twitter for adopting double standards, since functionaries of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) had shared similar photos with the parents of the victims but no action was taken against them. Vadra said on Twitter, Is Twitter following its own policy for the suspension of Congress leaders’ accounts or the Modi government’s? Why hadn’t it locked the account of SC commission that had tweeted similar photos before any of our leaders did? By locking Congress leaders’ accounts en masse, Twitter is blatantly colluding with the stifling of democracy by the BJP government in India. When The Hindu checked the timeline of the NCSC, the offending photograph from August 2 was removed for violation of Twitter’s policy. The account was, however, functional as the handle tweeted about a public hearing by a member at 3:19 p.m. on August 12. Replying to a query on the development, a Twitter spokesperson said the ‘Twitter Rules’ were enforced judiciously and impartially for everyone on its service.
GSLV-F10 fails to launch earth observation satellite into intended orbit
A technical anomaly preventing the ignition of the GSLV-F10 rocket’s cryogenic upper stage spelt disappointment for Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday morning, as the national space agency could not accomplish the mission to launch earth observation satellite EOS-03 into the intended orbit. Though the lift-off at the scheduled time of 5.43 a.m. from the second launch pad in the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, some 100 km from here, was successful, the anomaly was realised only after a few minutes. The performance of the first and second stages was normal. However, cryogenic upper stage ignition did not happen due to a technical anomaly. The mission couldn’t be accomplished as intended, the ISRO said in a statement. It did not elaborate any further. EOS-03, intended to be positioned in the geostationary transfer orbit initially, was supposed to reach the final geostationary orbit. It was expected to provide near real-time imaging of a large area of interest at frequent intervals, which could be used for quick monitoring of natural disasters, episodic events, and any short-term events. The mission life of the satellite was 10 years. Soon after the 51.70 metre-tall GSLV-F10’s went up, a live telecast on Doordarshan showed scientists in the Mission Control Centre (MCC) eagerly waiting and hoping for its smooth and successful functioning. The launch resembled a routine affair until the rocket’s second stage, some five minutes after the lift-off. A sense of suspicion and uncertainty descended upon the MCC as the graph on the screens showed a slight deviation of the rocket’s path. A few minutes later, some ISRO officials were seen discussing with ISRO chairman K. Sivan. After a few rounds of discussions, the Range Operations Director announced: Performance anomaly [was] observed in the cryogenic stage. [The] mission could not be accomplished fully. Union Minister Jitendra Singh said the mission can be rescheduled again.
Muslim man in Kanpur thrashed, asked to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’, as minor daughter begs for mercy
A Muslim man was assaulted in the public and allegedly asked to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ even as his minor daughter tried to save him, said police here on Thursday, PTI reported. A one-minute video of the incident surfaced on social media on Wednesday. The 45-year-old man is seen being assaulted by some men, who ask him to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. The victim’s daughter is seen trying to save her father, crying and asking the attackers not to beat him. Later, some policemen took the man to their Jeep. The footage also shows the man being hit while in police custody. Deputy Police Commissioner (South) Raveena Tyagi said the matter came to the fore at the Kacchi Basti locality near the Ram Gopal crossing in the Barra area of Kanpur on Wednesday. On the complaint of the victim, we have lodged an FIR and legal action is under way, she said. Police, however, did not mention the name of the organisation involved in the act. The victim, an e-rickshaw driver, said that around 3 pm, some people started abusing and assaulting him. They threatened to kill his family. He said he was saved by police. The man is a relative of a Muslim family, which is involved in a dispute with their Hindu neighbours in the Kanpur locality. Police statement said that in July, the two families had filed cases against each other at the local police station.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Kabul offers Taliban a power-sharing arrangement to end violence
The Taliban seized the strategic Afghan city of Ghazni on Thursday, just 150 kilometres (95 miles) from Kabul, their most important gain in a lightning offensive that has seen them overrun 10 provincial capitals in a week. The interior ministry confirmed the fall of the city, which lies along the major Kabul-Kandahar highway and serves as a gateway between the capital and militant strongholds in the south. The enemy took control, spokesman Mirwais Stanikzai said in a message to media, adding later the city’s governor had been arrested by Afghan security forces. Pro-Taliban Twitter feeds showed a video of him being escorted out of Ghazni by Taliban fighters and sent on his way in a convoy, prompting speculation in the capital that the government was angered with how the provincial administration capitulated. As security forces retreated across the country, Kabul handed a proposal to Taliban negotiators in Qatar offering a power-sharing deal in return for an end to fighting, according to a member of the government’s team in Doha who asked not to be named. A second negotiator, Ghulam Farooq Majroh, said the Taliban had been given an offer about a government of peace without providing more specifics. Authorities in Kabul have now effectively lost most of northern and western Afghanistan and are left holding a scattered archipelago of contested cities also dangerously at risk of falling to the Taliban. The conflict has escalated dramatically since May, when US-led forces began the final stage of a troop withdrawal due to end later this month following a 20-year occupation. The loss of Ghazni will likely pile more pressure on the country’s already overstretched air force, needed to bolster Afghanistan’s dispersed security forces who have increasingly been cut off from reinforcements by road. Pro-Taliban social media accounts also boasted of the vast spoils of war their fighters had recovered in recent days, posting photos of armoured vehicles, heavy weapons, and even a drone seized by the insurgents at abandoned Afghan military bases. In less than a week, the insurgents have taken 10 provincial capitals and encircled the biggest city in the north, the traditional anti-Taliban bastion of Mazar-i-Sharif. Fighting was also raging in Kandahar and Lashkar Gar pro-Taliban heartlands in the south as well as Herat in the west. An official in Lashkar Gah said Taliban fighters were inching closer to government positions after a massive car bomb badly damaged the city’s police headquarters Wednesday evening. The blast forced local police to retreat to the governor’s office, while around 40 of their colleagues and one senior commander surrendered to the Taliban. And in Kandahar, the Taliban said they had overrun the heavily fortified jail, saying hundreds of prisoners were released and taken to safety. The Taliban frequently target prisons to release incarcerated fighters and replenish their ranks. The loss of the prison is a further ominous sign for the country’s second city, which has been besieged for weeks by the Taliban. Kandahar was once the stronghold of the Taliban — whose forces coalesced in the eponymously named province in the early 1990s — and its capture would serve as both a tactical and psychological victory for the militants. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced by the fighting that has enveloped the country. In recent days, Kabul has been swamped by the displaced, who have begun camping out in parks and other public spaces, sparking a fresh humanitarian crisis in the already overtaxed capital. In Washington, defence officials appeared to be grappling with the spiralling situation but insisted that Afghan security forces were still holding their ground.
China governance blueprint signals continuing crackdown.
A new blueprint issued by China to promote rule of law has called for more legal and institutional efforts to tighten what it called unjust micro-economic activities, signalling the ongoing crackdown on a number of sectors is likely to continue. The document was issued jointly on Wednesday by the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee and the State Council, or Cabinet, of the Government, and called for building a rule of government during the current five-year plan period (2021-25). It called for strengthening the Party’s leadership for the building of a government based on the rule of law. The new blueprint suggests the recent regulatory crackdown aimed at tightening control over some industries is likely to continue. Late last year, regulators launched investigations into alleged monopolistic practices of top tech companies, including Alibaba and Tencent, and took the unprecedented step of stopping at the last minute what was set to be a record-breaking IPO for Alipay, the financial payments arm of Alibaba. This year, crackdowns have followed targeting ridesharing app Didi Chuxing and the entire private education sector. The moves have wiped out close to $1 trillion in value for leading Chinese tech and education companies, according to estimates. Identifying promoting the rule of law for government as the main task in advancing law-based governance in all areas, the document highlighted the guiding philosophies, principles, and overall goals of this cause for the next five years, the official Xinhua news agency reported, adding the document urges improving government functions in various fields, including economic adjustment, market supervision, social management, public service, and environmental protection. It called for more legal and institutional efforts to curb unjust interventions in micro-economic activities, as well as concrete efforts to prevent the administrative power from eliminating or stifling competition.’ The document also called for strengthened enforcement of anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition laws and highlighted as key areas national security, biosecurity, infectious diseases prevention and control, and digital economy.
