NATIONAL NEWS
A) Government committed to the democratic process for completion of delimitation exercise: Modi tells J&K leaders.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his meeting with 14 leaders of eight mainstream political parties of Jammu and Kashmir said his government was committed to the democratic process and asked for cooperation in completing the delimitation exercise for Assembly seats in the Union Territory which would lead to elections and eventual statehood. Government sources said that in his address to political leaders from J&K, Prime Minister Modi said Dilli ki doori kam honi chahiye aur Dil ki door bhi (The distance from Delhi the seat of central power, and the distance between hearts should both be removed) to convey the spirit in which the meeting was called. He also asked that political parties constructively engage with the delimitation exercise following which Assembly polls could be held in the Union Territory. He emphasised that there can be political differences but national interest should be prioritised, said the source. Former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Ghulam Nabi Azad, who led the Congress delegation at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting on Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) on Thursday, said they had placed five demands, including restoring full Statehood and holding elections.
Azad told reporters after the meeting, which lasted more than three hours, that in the new Bill, the government should protect land rights and guarantee employment for locals. The other demands by the Congress delegation, which included J&K Pradesh Congress Committee chief Ghulam Ahmad Mir and former deputy Chief Minister Tara Chand, also raised the issue of the return of Kashmiri pandits to the valley and the release of all political detainees. However, he didn’t specifically mention the restoration of special status for J&K under Article 370 or status quo ante. Farooq Abdullah of the National Conference told PTI, after the meeting, that his party would continue to challenge through legal and constitutional means the abrogation of the special status of J&K under Article 370 of the Constitution. There is a loss of trust which needs to be restored immediately and for that, to begin with, the Centre should work for the restoration of complete statehood to Jammu and Kashmir, Abdullah, who is a Lok Sabha member, said. I conveyed to the prime minister that statehood means reverting even the IAS and IPS cadres of Jammu and Kashmir. The state has to be in totality, he said.
B) Class 12 results: SC asks State Boards to notify in 10 days own schemes for internal assessment of final marks.
The Supreme Court on Thursday directed State Boards to notify their respective schemes for internal assessment of the final marks of Class 12 students within the next 10 days and ordered them to declare the results by July 31. A Bench of Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari refused to entertain a plea for a uniform scheme of assessment to be made applicable across Boards in the country. The court said each Board, whether CBSE, ICSE or State Boards, was autonomous and independent. They could formulate their own schemes after consultation with experts. However, the Bench clarified that allowing Boards to form their own independent schemes did not preclude the court from judicially reviewing their correctness and validity when an occasion arose. By directing the State Boards to declare their results before July 31, the court ensured that students across the country get a level playing field in college admissions and other opportunities for higher studies. Earlier, the CBSE and the ICSE had agreed in the Supreme Court to announce the internal assessment results of their Class 12 students by July 31. During the hearing, Justice Khanwilkar orally remarked that University Grants Commission (UGC) should announce a cut-off date for admissions to prompt school Boards to declare Class 12 results on time. There should not be any cause for uncertainty, Justice Maheshwari noted. Most States have canceled their Class 12 exams due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
C) Why was DRDO’s Covid-19 drug license given only to one laboratory, asks Madras HC
The Madras High Court on Thursday directed the Centre to explain by Friday the reason for the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) having partnered with Dr. Reddy’s Laboratory in Hyderabad alone to produce 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG), an adjunct drug to treat Covid-19 patients. Justices N. Kirubakaran and T.V. Thamilselvi wanted to know why the DRDO had not issued licenses to as many reputed laboratories as possible to ramp up production of the oral powder that has been approved to be used as an adjunct in treating moderate to severe Covid-19 patients. The judges said it was imperative on the part of the government to give a fillip to the production, especially when lakhs had died during the first two waves of the pandemic and the threat of the third wave was looming large. They directed a Central government standing counsel to ascertain the response of the Ministry of Defence, DRDO & Union Health Ministry by Friday. The interim direction was issued on a public interest litigation petition filed by D. Saravanan, a private sector employee based in Chennai. According to the petitioner, DRDO’s Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS) had come up with the oral powder 2-DG and obtained emergency use authorization from the Drugs Controller General of India. However, surprisingly, the license for manufacturing the drug had been granted only to Dr. Reddy’s Laboratory, which had planned to sell it at a price of ₹990 per sachet containing 2.34 g of the oral powder. Fearing that such monopoly might not augur well when lakhs of lives were being lost to the pandemic, the litigant insisted on the granting of the license to multiple pharmaceutical companies. His counsel T. Sundaravadanam insisted that DRDO should not only share the technical know-how about the drug with multiple pharmaceutical companies but also ensure that it was sold at an affordable price.
D) Rahul Gandhi appears before Surat court in a defamation case.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi appeared before a magistrate’s court in Surat on Thursday to record his statement in a criminal defamation suit filed by a Gujarat MLA and denied making any defamatory remarks on people with ‘Modi’ surname. The suit was filed by Surat BJP MLA Purnesh Modi over Gandhi’s alleged remark on the ‘Modi’ surname. In his statement before Surat’s Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) A N Dave, Gandhi denied making any defamatory remarks on people with Modi surname during a rally at Kolar in Karnataka ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. When the magistrate asked Gandhi if he had said Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave ₹30 crore to an industrialist, Gandhi told the court that being a national leader, he keeps raising issues of corruption and unemployment in his addresses in the interest of the nation, and it is his right to do so. When the court asked if he had said all people with Modi surname are thieves, Gandhi claimed he never said such words. Besides, to most of the remaining questions related to the evidence and statements of witnesses in the case, Gandhi said I don’t know. After recording the statement, the magistrate kept the case for next hearing on July 12. Earlier, Rahul Gandhi had appeared before the court in October 2019 and pleaded not guilty for his comment. Legislator Purnesh Modi filed a complaint against Gandhi in April 2019 under Indian Penal Code Sections 499 and 500, that deal with defamation. A week back, CJM Dave directed Gandhi to remain present on June 24 to record his statement in the case. In his complaint, the MLA had alleged that Gandhi defamed the entire Modi community by saying How come all the thieves have Modi as the common surname? while addressing a poll rally in 2019.
SPORTS NEWS
A) Best Test team should be decided over at least three games: Kohli after losing WTC final
Echoing the views of head coach Ravi Shastri, India skipper Virat Kohli has said that the best Test team in the world should be decided by a best-of-three final and not a one-off game like it was in the inaugural edition. India were able to bounce back to win the series against Australia and England but couldn’t do so with the World Test Championship final, a one-off game against New Zealand which ended with Kohli’s men losing by eight wickets on Wednesday. Well, look, firstly, I’m not in absolute agreement of deciding the best Test side in the world over the course of one game, to be very honest, Kohli said in the post-match press conference. If it is a Test series, it has to be a test of character over three Tests, which team has the ability to come back into the series or totally blow away the other team. It can’t just be a pressure applied over two days of good cricket and then you suddenly are not a good Test side anymore. I don’t believe in that. Shastri had advocated a three-match finale before the team departed for England earlier this month. Kohli feels a multi-game final would also capture the essence of Test cricket much better than a one off showdown.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) Russia, U.K. spar over Black Sea incident.
Russia accused Britain on Thursday of spreading lies over a warship confrontation in the Black Sea and warned London that it would res- pond resolutely to any further provocative actions by the British Navy off the coast of Russia annexed Crimea. Russia summoned the British Ambassador in Moscow for a formal diplomatic scolding after the warship breached what the Kremlin says are its territorial waters but which Britain and most of the world say belong to Ukraine. Britain said Russia was sowing inaccuracies and disputed Russia’s account, saying no warning shots had been fired and that no bombs had been dropped in the path of the Royal Navy destroyer Defender. Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned Ambassador Deborah Bronnert to deliver a tough demarche diplomatic jargon for a telling off spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused London of barefaced lies. We believe it was a deliberate and premeditated pro- vocation, Kremlin spokes- man Dmitry Peskov said of the incident, in which Moscow said it fired warning shots and dropped bombs in the path of the British destroyer. In the event of a repeat of unacceptable provocative action — if those actions go too far, no options can be ruled out in terms of legally defending Russia’s borders, Mr. Peskov told reporters. The Black Sea, which Russia uses to project its power in the Mediterranean, has for centuries been a flashpoint between Russia and its competitors such as Turkey, France, U.S. and the U.K. Russia seized and annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and considers areas around its coast to be Russian waters. Western countries deem the Crimea to be part of Ukraine and reject Russia’s claim to the seas around it. Ukrainian waters: Boris British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the warship was acting in accordance with the law and had been in international waters. The important point is that we don’t recognise the Russian annexation of Cri- mea, he told reporters. These are Ukrainian waters and it was entirely right to use them to go from A to B. He also disagreed with the suggestion that relations with Russia were at an historic low. I can remember times in my own lifetime when things have been far worse, he said. Britain has also disputed the Russian version of events, with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab saying: No shots were fired at HMS Defender. The Royal Navy ship was conducting innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters, he told reporters on a visit to Singapore: We were doing so in accordance with inter- national law and the Russian characterisation is ppredictably inaccurate. Under international law of the sea, innocent passage permits a vessel to pass through another state’s territorial waters so long as this does not affect its security. During its 2008 war with Georgia, Russia bristled at U.S. warships operating in the Black Sea, and in April the U.S. cancelled the deployment of two warships to the area. BBC released footage from the ship showing a Russian coast guard warning that he would shoot if the British ship did not change course.
B) Amid vaccine shortage, Bhutan for mixing doses.
Bhutan’s Prime Minister on Thursday said he has no problem in mixing-and matching COVID-19 vaccine doses to immunise a population of about 7,00,000 people in the tiny Himalayan nation. Bhutan, nestled between India and China, has one of the world’s lowest COVID-19 fatality counts, with just one person dying from the infectious disease since the pandemic began. Prime Minister Lotay Tshering who is also a practicing urologist – said over 90% of the country’s eligible population had received a first dose of AstraZeneca’s vaccine and that the deadline to administer the second dose after a gap of 12 weeks was scheduled to end this month. Knowing immunology, knowing how our body reacts to vaccines, I am comfortable to secure a second dose of any vaccine that is, of course, approved by the WHO. Earlier this year, India provided 5,50,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Bhutan. But New Delhi has no surplus to give to any nation as India exits the worst of a deadly wave of the coronavirus that doubled its death toll in two months.
