Chandrachud to Be CJI But Govt Still Stymying Judicial Appointments; Vacant PSU Posts Bad for Business
Govt's alarming new privacy pitch, banks avoid rupee payments for Russia, Stalin warns BJP against 'language war', Sooryavansham most popular Big B movie
A newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas | Contributors: MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, Sushant Singh and Tanweer Alam | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal
Snapshot of the day
October 11, 2022
Pratik Kanjilal
India has a Lokayukta in 29 states. However, only seven of these states have made their annual reports accessible to the public and one, Mizoram, has made its report public for 2021. Even the Lokpal, which was established in 2014, has released its annual reports for only two years: 2019 and 2020. Ten states, in fact, are yet to set up an official website for their Lokayuktas. Among these ten is Delhi, where the Lokayukta Act was passed in 1995.
The Centre has cleared the Supreme Court Collegium’s recommendation for transfer of Justice Pankaj Mittal, Chief Justice of J&K HC as Chief Justice of Rajasthan HC but has sat on the recommendation for transfer of Justice Muralidhar as Chief Justice of Madras HC. This is a practice mastered by the Modi regime even as the apex court looks away at the pick and choose done by the government to effectively make its own selections, irrespective of the Collegium’s recommendations.
CJI UU Lalit has recommended Justice DY Chandrachud as his successor. Justice Chandrachud is to take over as the 50th Chief Justice of India on November 9, 2022 for a period of two years.
India was the worst performer among its peers if forecast revisions of GDP growth for 2022 are considered. A number of rating agencies, domestic banks, and groups have pared the forecast for India’s economic growth. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which will release its World Economic Outlook today, is expected to do the same. The IMF had revised India’s forecast from 1.6 percentage points from 9% in January 2022 to 7.4% in July 2022. The world output had been cut by 1.2 percentage points and advanced economies by 1.4 percentage points. Emerging markets and developing economies, the group India belongs to, had seen a 1.2-percentage point revision. If the trend continues, despite being one of the fastest growing major economies, India will be the biggest loser.
Canara Bank has written off Rs 1.29 lakh crore bad loans of big defaulters in eleven years and refused to share names. Canara Bank is the fourth-largest public sector bank and continues to write off bad loans of big defaulters who have borrowed Rs 100 crore and more. At the same time, the Bank refuses to share names of these big defaulters under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, again wrongly using section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, reports Moneylife.
India has made an intriguing submission to the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Cybercrime, regarding ownership of all data relating to Indian citizens anywhere in the world on grounds of Privacy. Digital rights activists have raised alarm bells.
Pakistan has been invited to the closing ceremony day after tomorrow, of the ongoing Joint Anti-Terror Exercise under the ambit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) being hosted by India.. “The Pakistan delegation has been extended an invitation for the closing ceremony on the last day of JATE ‘Manesar Anti-Terror 2022’,” diplomatic sources said.
Large Indian banks, including State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Central Bank of India, are reluctant to process direct rupee trade transactions with Russia months after the mechanism was put in place for fear of becoming the target of sanctions by the United States and Europe over the invasion of Ukraine, reports Reuters. An Indian diplomat in Russia said Russian banks had reached out to eight large Indian counterparts to set up rupee trade settlements, but the Indian banks had not responded. Two smaller banks have moved to adopt the system after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said in July that it had set up an arrangement for international trade settlements in Indian rupees with immediate effect.
Digital app firms fear that the draft Telecommunication Bill, 2022 may lead to a “regulatory overreach” with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) incorporating powers from other ministries, such as the Electronics and IT Ministry and the Information & Broadcasting Ministry. Digital app companies are detailing their concerns and will convey them to the DoT through their industry associations. The companies say that the DoT’s initial consultation paper in July on the need for a legal framework for governing telecom services made no mention of any desire to bring services like OTT communications services and electronic mail under its licensing ambit by incorporating it as ‘communication services’ on a par with telecom services.
“Since the Durban Conference, caste has been a subject of discussion at the UN and many other global platforms. As an academic and an activist, I will certainly work on highlighting the issue of caste and the need to internationally recognise it as an aspect of discrimination.” Amidst the discussion around the practice of caste discrimination among Indian diaspora abroad, the United Nations has appointed 36-year Ashwini KP, a woman from India as the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. Ashwini is the first Dalit woman from Asia appointed on the role by the UN Human Rights Council. In an interview to TNM, Ashwini traces her journey, her struggles both as a woman and a Dalit, her activism, her politcs, and the consequences she had to face for asserting her caste identity.
Copies of the FIR and arrest memo have finally been supplied to a man arrested during the massive crackdown on the Popular Front of India (PFI) before it was banned, the Delhi High Court was informed yesterday. This came days after the accused remonstrated the denial of information about the reasons for his arrest. The alleged PFI activist had moved the court seeking a copy of the FIR registered against members of the now outlawed organisation, the grounds for arrest of each of them, and the remand applications filed by the NIA for their custodial interrogation.
The All India Defence Employees Federation (AIDEF) has blamed the Union government for favouring private industries over public entities while floating a tender for large-scale production of the recently unveiled new combat uniform for army soldiers. The federation apprehends that the latest move will “pave the way for privatisation” of defence companies that were administered under the erstwhile Ordnance Factory Board. The Department of Military Affairs under the Ministry of Defence, earlier this month on October 6, invited bids for the production of over 11 lakh sets of the new combat uniform for the Indian Army soldiers.
In a welcome break from the past, the extensive media coverage that the Congress’s Bharat Jodo Yatra has been receiving in two states – Kerala and Karnataka – has surprised most. The viral image of the dutiful Rahul Gandhi tying the shoelaces of his mother Sonia Gandhi, when she accompanied him for a day on the yatra, remains the most vivid image of the yatra for the Congress. While the Malayalam TV media gave wall-to-wall coverage of the yatra, the Kannada TV media, which has been hostile towards the Congress in the eight years since Modi came to power, has deviated from its usual editorial stand. So heavy was the media coverage that BJP in Karnataka carried misleading full-page advertisements in several newspapers twice to counter the impact.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has cleared Uddhav Thackeray’s request of a new party name, allotting it the name 'Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray)', while Eknath Shinde’s faction was allotted the name 'Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena'. Ahead of the by-elections in Andheri East, the ECI yesterday allotted the new names. The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) has been allotted the 'Mashaal' (Flaming Torch) symbol. The Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena’s proposed symbols, however, have not been accepted and they have been given time till Tuesday morning to submit a fresh list of three symbols.
In a country that is increasingly becoming polarised over issues such as religion, a village in the suburbs of Kerala’s capital city Thiruvananthapuram is being hailed for its communal harmony. Pirappancode, about 20 kilometres from the city, has had harmony among the worship centres of different religions for as long as the residents can remember. One such incident of communal compatibility was witnessed on Sunday when the local temple threw a reception for an Eid Milad-un-Nabi—the birth anniversary of Prophet Muhammad, celebrated as Nabi Dinam in Kerala—rally organised by the local mosque. The village was news earlier this year, too, when the same temple organised a reception for the local church’s Way of the Cross procession Good Friday. The church and the mosque are known to have organised receptions for the temple’s annual procession as well.
Popular ‘Villupattu’ exponent Subbu Arumugam, who enthralled audiences for about four decades, passed away in Chennai yesterday. He was 94. ‘Villupattu’ is an ancient form of musical story-telling and the narration is interspersed with music. It is performed mostly during temple festivals. Arumugam is said to have popularised this art form effectively attracting audiences of all age groups over the years. DC
An analysis of the content on some verified YouTube channels gives us an idea about the online popularity of around 70 movies of Big B. Released in 1969, Bachchan's first movie Saat Hindustani (black and white) has recorded more than 3 lakh views since it was uploaded in February 2015. However, the maximum number of views have been recorded for his 1999 movie Sooryavansham. This movie, where Bachchan plays a double role, has garnered 36.5 crore views since it was uploaded in November 2020. It also topped the list in terms of the number of likes (23 lakh) and comments (40,497).
For many of Kerala’s lottery winners, initial joy turns into a nightmare. Past Kerala lottery winners have suffered for months and years dealing with people who approach them for money, losing many friendships in the process.
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