NATIONAL NEWS
A) Sidhu’s likely elevation as Punjab Congress president set to see opposition
In an apparent attempt to garner support, former Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Sunday continued to meet several party leaders across the State amid likelihood of his elevation as Punjab Congress Committee president, even as at least 10 MLAs came out openly in support of Chief Minister Captain (retd) Amarinder Singh, urging the high command not to let him down. In Delhi, Congress members of Parliament (both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha) informally met over lunch at Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa’s residence and are likely to seek an appointment with party president Sonia Gandhi for a ‘rethink’ on Sidhu’s proposed elevation. Officially the meeting was to formulate the party’s position on the call given by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha to raise the farmers’ issue and not allow any other business in the House during the Monsoon session unless the farm laws are repealed. But the photo-op at Bajwa’s house was meant to convey their opposition to Sidhu’s impending elevation. The former Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief had met Capt. Amarinder on Saturday. Asked what they would do if the high command went ahead with its decision, an MP at the meeting said, The party may not actually split, but it has already virtually split. There will be no-cooperation from our side. Prominent MPs, including Lok Sabha members Manish Tewari, Ravneet Bittu, Jasbir Gill and Perneet Kaur, wife of the Punjab Chief Minister, attended the lunch. In Chandigarh, senior MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira, sharing a statement on behalf of MLAs, urged the high command not to let down the Chief Minister because of whose unrelenting efforts the party stands well entrenched in Punjab. There was no doubt that the appointment of State PCC chief was the prerogative of the party high command but at the same time washing dirty linen in public has only decreased the party graph during the last couple of months, said the MLAs in the joint statement. The MLAs backing Captain Amarinder are Harminder Singh Gill, Fateh Bajwa, Gurpreet Singh, Kuldip Singh Vaid, Balwinder Singh Laddi, Santokh Singh Bhalaipur, Joginderpal, Jagdev Singh Kamalu, Primal Singh and Sukhpal Khaira. They said that Capt. Amarinder commanded immense respect across different sections of society, particularly the farmers for whom he even endangered his chair as Chief Minister while passing the 2004 Termination of Waters Agreement Act.
B) In a move that runs counter to its own earlier judgement, SC mulls limit to role as policy watchdog
The resolve voiced by a Division Bench of the Supreme Court in July to examine the extent to which the judiciary can question the government’s Covid-19 policies contradicts the court’s three-judge Bench judgment in May, which held that courts cannot be silent spectators when constitutional rights of citizens are infringed by executive policies. The May 31 judgment by a Supreme Court Bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud, L. Nageswara Rao and S. Ravindra Bhat is associated with the Centre’s reversal of its dual vaccine pricing policy. On July 14, a Bench of Justices Vineet Saran and Dinesh Maheshwari said courts should not undermine the executive at a time when a collective effort was required to overcome the public health crisis. Can the court tell the Executive to get the formula (for vaccines) from companies abroad or decide the number of ventilators… These are times of crisis when everybody has to be cautious… Is this when the court should get into all this? Executive has the benefit of experts with their expert knowledge… We will hear submissions on how far constitutional courts should go into these matters… How much we should restrain ourselves, Justice Saran had observed orally. There are certain norms based on which every institution should function, Justice Maheshwari had noted. The oral remarks from the Division Bench hardly gel with the observations made under a sub-heading ‘Separation of Powers’ in the May judgment authored by Justice Chandrachud that a public health crisis like Covid-19 does not mean the Constitution should be kept away and forgotten by the government. The Justice Saran Bench was hearing an appeal by the Uttar Pradesh government against an Allahabad High Court order of May 17, which had described the medical system in smaller cities and villages of the State during the pandemic as Ram Bharose (at the mercy of the gods).
C) U.P. Assembly Elections: Mayawati tries to win support of Brahmins
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati is again trying to win the support of the dominant Brahmin community ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in 2022, despite suffering repeated failures since 2012. On Sunday, Mayawati appealed to the community to take ‘inspiration’ from the Dalits and remain ‘firm’ in not falling for any lure or gimmicks deployed by other parties, especially the ruling BJP. Mayawati said she was ‘proud’ that the Dalit community, to which she belongs, did not fall for any amount of lure they were tempted with by other parties, especially the BJP in the last few elections. She claimed that the Dalits voted one-way for her despite attempts to mislead them with money, visits to their homes by BJP leaders, and khichdi (meal). To attract the community to her party and build consensus among them that their interests were secure only under a BSP government, Mayawati has deputed Satish Chandra Mishra, Rajya Sabha MP and Brahmin face of the BSP, to start a campaign with special meetings for the community starting July 23. The campaign will start from the politically-sensitive town of Ayodhya. In the 2017 Assembly polls, the BSP was reduced to 19 seats. It was a huge fall for the party since it came to power with a full majority in the 403-member Assembly in 2007. Mayawati admitted that the BSP did not win many seats in 2017 but stressed that her vote percentage did not fall that drastically. Our vote percentage was even more than the Samajwadi Party’s, she said. While the BSP secured over 22% votes, the SP, which contested less number of seats due to an alliance with the Congress, got around 21.8% though it won more than double the seats won by the BSP. Mayawati said the upper caste communities, especially Brahmins, were in distress in U.P. under the BJP rule. In the last election, she said, the Brahmins voted heavily in favour of the BJP and helped it secure a five-year-term in power. But she now feels that the Brahmins are now ‘repenting’ and would not be ‘mislead’ by the BJP again.
D) Midday meals result in better health for next generation, says study
Girls who had access to the free lunches provided at government schools, had children with a higher height-to-age ratio than those who did not, says a new study on the inter-generational benefits of India’s midday meal scheme published in Nature Communications this week. Using nationally representative data on cohorts of mothers and their children spanning 23 years, the paper showed that by 2016, the prevalence of stunting was significantly lower in areas where the midday mean scheme was implemented in 2005. More than one in three Indian children are stunted, or too short for their age, which reflects chronic under nutrition. The fight against stunting has often focused on boosting nutrition for young children, but nutritionists have long argued that maternal health and well-being is the key to reduce stunting in their offspring. Noting that interventions to improve maternal height and education must be implemented years before those girls and young women become mothers, the study has attempted a first-of-its-kind inter-generational analysis of the impacts of a mass feeding programme. The paper was authored by a researcher from the University of Washington and economists and nutrition experts at the International Food Policy Research Institute. It found that the midday meal scheme was associated with 13-32% of India’s improvement in height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) between 2006 and 2016. The linkages between midday meals and lower stunting in the next generation were stronger in lower socio-economic strata and likely work through women’s education, fertility, and use of health services, said the paper. The midday meal scheme was launched in 1995 to provide children in government schools with a free cooked meal with a minimum energy content of 450 kcal, but only 6% of girls aged 6-10 years had benefited from the scheme in 1999. By 2011, with an expansion in budget, and state implementation following a Supreme Court order, coverage had grown to 46%. The study tracked nationally representative cohorts of mothers by birth year and socio-economic status to show how exposure to the scheme reduced stunting in their children.
E) Danish Siddiqui to be buried at Jamia Millia Islamia graveyard
Slain photojournalist Danish Siddiqui will be laid to rest at the Jamia Millia Islamia graveyard, according to a statement released on July 18. Jamia Millia Islamia [JMI] Vice-Chancellor accepted the request of the family of late photojournalist Danish Siddiqui to bury his body at the JMI graveyard meant exclusively for university employees, their spouses and minor child, the university said in the statement. Siddiqui had done his masters from the university. His father Akhtar Siddiqui was the Dean of Faculty of Education there. Danish Siddiqui had studied at AJK Mass Communication Research Centre (MCRC) from 2005 -2007. The Officiating Director of AJK MCRC said, Danish was one of the brightest stars in our hall of fame and a proactive alumnus who kept returning to his alma mater to share with students his work and experiences. We will miss him deeply but are determined to keep his memory alive. Professor Sabeena Gadihoke said his photographs were hard-hitting but he never compromised on the dignity of those within his frames. Danish had the unique ability to bestow a journalistic picture with empathy and to give dignity and grace to his subjects, she added.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) Winds of change in Sri Lanka
From the time the pandemic struck last year, China has topped the charts in providing crucial and timely support to Sri Lanka, by way of over $2 billion in loans and a currency swap, not to mention Sinopharm vaccines totalling over a million in donation and about six million for procurement. However, China is curiously under more public scrutiny in the island nation than ever before. Meera Srinivasan, The Hindu’s correspondent in Colombo, explains this week what has changed in how Sri Lankans perceive their country’s relationship with China, and the significance of this perception shift. But how much that shift applies to the leadership is another question. In a rare diplomatic gesture last week, Sri Lanka issued a commemorative coin marking the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party. Newly appointed Sri Lanka’s Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa leaves after signing documents during his swearing-in ceremony, in Colombo on July 8, 2021. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s leading political family, which has made no secret of its wishes to cultivate deeper ties with China, is expanding its hold over the country’s politics. Basil Rajapaksa, brother of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, was on Thursday sworn in as Sri Lanka’s Minister of Finance, becoming the fourth Rajapaksa brother and fifth member of the first family to enter the Cabinet. In this profile of the Rajapaksas, Meera Srinivasan examines the rise, fall, and rise again of this political family, and how they have managed to secure their grip on the island’s politics.
B) Because of Taliban’s claims, India to temporarily close its consulate in Kandahar
As the Taliban’s claims about taking Afghan territory grow, India has decided to temporarily close its consulate in Kandahar, sending a special Indian Air Force flight to evacuate about 50 diplomats and security personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) back to Delhi, government sources confirmed to The Hindu. Officials said the move was purely precautionary, and stemmed from reports that if the Taliban continue to push on to the southern city of Kandahar, which was their headquarters in the 1990s, the fighting in the city with Afghan Defence and Security Forces (ANDSF) could get fierce. A day after The Hindu’s report, the Ministry of External Affairs said the move was a purely temporary measure in view of the fighting between Taliban and Afghan security forces. The security situation in Kandahar continues to remain grim with fierce fighting going on. India has been closely watching the situation in the Afghan cities of Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif. Operations at India’s other Consulates in Herat and Jalalabad were suspended in April 2020, when all Indian personnel were brought back to Delhi due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ahead of a full security review. Addressing a joint press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said India is concerned at the direction of events in Afghanistan. The Taliban, meanwhile, claimed on Friday to be in control of 85% of Afghanistan after seizing key border crossings with Iran and Turkmenistan following a sweeping offensive launched as U.S. troops pulled out of the country. With U.S. troops almost completely out of Afghanistan and the Taliban making rapid territorial gains in the country, President Joe Biden said the U.S. was not in Afghanistan for nation-building purposes and that it was for the Afghans to decide their future. Mr. Biden also said that the U.S. military mission would conclude by August 31. In a rare diplomatic gesture, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar travelled to Tehran on Thursday, and called on Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi, a month before he assumes office. Mr. Jaishankar made a transit halt in Tehran on his way to Moscow.
