No Surprises in Modi's Final Budget; Curbing Hate Speech is 'Censorship' Says Delhi HC; How to Make EVMs Tamper Proof

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK 

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Snapshot of the day

February 1, 2024

Siddharth Varadarajan

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her government’s interim budget – its last before the general election. There was a stated emphasis on capital expenditure but no major surprises or announcements. Just lots of questionable claims and data, and an indirect admission of not having done enough for the most vulnerable, i.e. the vast majority of Indians.

One surprise, given that it has nothing to do with the budget: Sitharaman said the government is going to form a high-powered committee to “comprehensively” look into challenges arising from “fast population growth and demographic changes”. Given that India’s population growth today is not considered ‘fast’, the purpose behind the committee could well be to give wind to the Sangh parivar’s conspiracy theories about Muslim Indians.

Within hours of a local court’s surprising order to allow puja in a part of the Gyanvapi mosque’s basement, the authorities rushed to facilitate the entry of Hindu devotees – creating facts on the ground that will prove difficult to reverse easily. The mosque committee sought the Supreme Court’s urgent intervention but was rebuffed, and had to approach the Allahabad High Court seeking a stay on the lower court’s