SC To Hear Haridwar Hate Speech & Punjab ‘Security Lapse’; Tek Fog Helps BJP By Turning Real News into Fake

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
January 10, 2022

Pratik Kanjilal

This morning, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a public interest plea filed by Justice Anjana Prakash, formerly of the Patna High Court, against hate speech at the Haridwar Dharma Sansad on December 17-19. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal drew the attention of Chief Justice NV Ramana to the matter, though scores of lawyers had already written to him about it. The apex court will also appoint a committee headed by a retired judge to probe alleged security lapses during the PM’s trip to Punjab. Probes by the Centre and state remain stayed. 

New Covid-19 infections in India were nearly 180,000 on Sunday and are set to keep rising sharply. The US saw some 700,000 new cases, the UK 141,000. The virus is tearing through the capital, with national consequences. At least four of 32 judges in the apex court and 150 out of nearly 3,000 staff are infected. In Parliament, committee meetings scheduled for today have been called off as 398 personnel tested positive in January 4-8 ― 65 in the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, 200 in the Lok Sabha Secretariat and 133 in allied services. The Budget session is three weeks away. The Allahabad High Court has reverted to exclusively online hearings after eight judges tested positive. Plunging headlong into election season, India should be worried. Conflicting signals from the drug regulator and the Covid-19 task force are not helping.

The India-US 2+2 dialogue originally scheduled for December last year may not be held till March, reports The Tribune. The dates were pushed back from the first week of December to the third week of January.

We are now told that the Intelligence Bureau had shared with the Punjab government “specific and actionable” input about the possibility of a gherao: “some sort of demonstration or agitation” could not be ruled out while the PM was on his way to Hussainiwala, a stronghold of farmers’ unions.

The Ministry of Home Affairs did not notify the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 rules till Sunday, the third extended deadline after the Act was passed. Earlier, it had sought time till April 9, 2021 and then July 9, 2021. Without notification, the Act can­not be implemented. 

​​The National Statistical Office (NSO) has released GDP estimates. Over the last two years, 2019-2021, India’s annual GDP growth was 0.6%. The Indian economy, one of the most disheartening stories of the pandemic period, was slowing well before Covid-19.

Independent journalists like Abhisar Sharma and NDTV star Ravish Kumar have pushed back against the UP government’s Islamophobic advertisements. Kumar has called for a readers’ revolt to press the media to do its job instead of merely relaying propaganda. Meanwhile, a Dalit journalist reporting on social justice writes for restofworld.org about how “rampant caste-based harassment means Dalits like me are silenced on social media.”

A video from Unnao showing BJP MLA Pankaj Gupta being slapped by a farmer has gone viral but the lawmaker insists it was just a fond pat on the cheek from his uncle. But the video showed policemen taking the ‘uncle’ away after he hit the MLA.

In a Supreme Court hearing on the income criterion for the government’s EWS quota, the bench observed that prima facie, it seemed arbitrary. Given that the same income criterion of Rs 8 lakh per annum was used to exclude the ‘creamy layer’ from the OBC quota, the court asked if the Centre had mechanically lifted the OBC criterion and applied it to EWS. Scroll explains the problem with the Centre’s argument.

Looking at some of the Centre’s decisions to temporarily control prices, Mint reports that “while maintaining the right monetary policy is important, winning elections is more important and the central government is doing whatever it can on the economic front to improve the poll prospects of the BJP… And in the weeks ahead, as the Union Budget season approaches, there might just be a few more sweeteners.”

The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh is on a renaming spree, which started on November 15 when Bhopal’s Habibganj Railway Station was renamed Gond Rani Kamlapati Station. The Indore Patalpani Railway Station has now been renamed after tribal icon Tantya Bheel. Minto Hall, the old Assembly, has been renamed after BJP founder member Kushabhau Thakre.

The New York Times reports that couples in south India are hosting increasingly elaborate weddings tuned for social media. More than 60% of celebrations in Kerala now include choreographed performances, riffing on trends that blur the nation’s religious and cultural lines.

Acclaimed English professor, scholar and theologian Rev Dr Francis Soundararaj died in Chennai on Friday. The 86-year-old former principal of the premier Madras Christian College had been ailing.

Tek Fog is the next level in fake news

In Part 2 of its investigation into the secret app being used by organised propagandists to push the BJP’s agenda online on an industrial scale, The Wire has described how Tek Fog’s ability to modify the URLs of mainstream news portals to create and automate fake news using OpenAI is massively high tech and dangerous. The description of WhatsApp hijacking also suggests millions of Indians could be exposed to the risk of identity theft and also prosecution – if their accounts are used to circulate messages inciting hatred and violence. In France, both