India News
Centre to hold talks with farmers on withdrawing farm laws, MSP
The Centre is all set to hold a seventh round of talks with farmers on Monday and eliminate the deadlock. The talks will be held on two key issues — the complete withdrawal of the three contentious agricultural legislation and giving legal status to the minimum support price guarantee.
The Centre is all set to hold a seventh round of talks with farmers on Monday and eliminate the deadlock. The talks will be held on two key issues — the complete withdrawal of the three contentious agricultural legislation and giving legal status to the minimum support price guarantee. The farmers from Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and across the country have been protesting at the Delhi borders against the Centre’s new farm laws since November 26, 2020. Despite bitter cold and rains, the farmers are not ready to step back and have warned that they will hold a tractor rally on Republic day if their demands of scrapping of the legislations and MSP guarantee are not met.
Meanwhile, Bharatiya Kisan Union leader, Rakesh Tikait said so far, 60 farmers have lost their lives during the protest. One farmer is dying every 16 hours. It is the responsibility of the government to answer.
In the previous round of meeting, the central government said that farmers have reached a consensus on two of the four demands, withdrawal of the Electricity Amendment Bill and the penal provisions for stubble burning in the Air Quality Commission Ordinance.
But the farmers have laid the seize to Delhi over the farm laws passed in September even as the government scrambles to find an amicable solution. The farmers’ representatives who attended the last round of talks on December 30, said the government has indicated that it would not repeal the laws, citing the long process required.
The government has projected the laws as a major reform in the agriculture sector that will remove the APMC mandi system and middlemen, and will allow farmers to sell their produce anywhere in the country. However, the protesting farmers have argued that the new laws will leave them at the mercy of big corporates. They argue that they would settle for nothing less than total scrapping of the farm laws.
India News
Chhattisgarh: Rahul Gandhi says PM Modi also has a remote control but he presses it secretly
The Congress MP said when he questioned PM Modi on Adani in the Lok Sabha and his Lok Sabha membership got cancelled.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi launched Mukhyamantri Gramin Awas Nyay Yojana in Chhattisgarh through a remote control. He said PM Narendra Modi also has a remote control but he presses it secretly. Rahul Gandhi waved a remote control at the event in Chhattisgarh and said BJPs remote controls are all secret. Gandhi said the Congress party presses the remote control in the open. But the BJP presses secretly and the public sector becomes private and Adaniji gets Mumbai airport.
The Congress MP said when he questioned PM Modi on Adani in the Lok Sabha and his Lok Sabha membership got cancelled. He attacked the BJP government at the Centre after PM Modi addressed a rally in the poll bound Madhya Pradesh and said the Congress party has rusted like iron. PM Modi said Congress would push back Madhya Pradesh in the sick category whereas 1.5 crore people came out of poverty under the BJP rule in the last five years.
According to PM Modi the Congress and its allies have supported the bill out of hesitation and compulsion as they understood the power of Nari Shakti. PM Modi said Modi means the guarantee of fulfilling guarantees. Rahul Gandhi repeated what he had said in the Lok Sabha during his intervention on the women’s reservation bill.
He said there are only 3 OBC bureaucrats working for the government of India. Rahul Gandhi said caste census is the X-ray of Hindustan. The caste census will determine how many Dalits, SC/STs are there. Gandhi said the government is running away from caste census. He promised the congress will do a caste census.
In all Congress ruled states the public is at the centre and the government is not run by Adaniji. Talking to the media on Sunday Rahul Gandhi said he was confident Congress is winning the election in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. In Rajasthan the fight would be close Gandhi predicted.
India News
Bihar: Dalit woman stripped naked over Rs 1,500 loan, money lender, son booked for assault
The accused have not been arrested so far, and police have initiated a search for them.
In yet another shocking incident, a Dalit woman was assaulted in Bihar’s Patna district by a money lender and his son on Saturday, according to the police. The victim alleged that the accused also urinated on her and tried to disrobe her for not making recurring interest payments on a Rs 1,500 loan that her husband had taken.
According to the victim, Pramod Singh and his son Anshu Singh summoned her to their house on Saturday night mentioning that they had detained her husband and that he would be allowed to go only after the interest on the loan he took from them was fully repaid.
When she reached Singh’s house, her husband was not there. They had lied to her about detaining her husband. The father and son beat her up and tried to disrobe her, and the son also urinated upon her, the woman told the police.
The woman also mentioned that the Rs 1,500 her husband took on loan years ago had already been repaid with interest, but the money lender continued to seek interest from them at regular intervals.
According to reports, police have registered a case against Pramod and Anshu Singh under IPC sections related to assault and misbehaving with a woman, as well as under sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The accused have not been arrested so far, and police have initiated a search for them.
Patna Rural SP Imran Masood asserted that the woman was undergoing treatment for her injuries at a primary healthcare centre. The woman’s brother-in-law told The Indian Express that the poor people of the village have been trapped by money lenders and that it is like a goonda bank. He explained that as most of them are illiterate and cannot get loans from banks, they have to depend on these money lenders and face humiliation.
India News
UP student slapping row: State should take responsibility of incident, says Supreme Court
The bench underlined that if this incident has happened, then it should shake the conscience of the state. It’s a serious issue, the bench noted.
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a teacher at a school in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar who instructed her students to slap a classmate, targeted one community and that the state must take responsibility for the incident.
Hearing a petition that raised concerns over the incident of school children taking turns to slap a muslim student on order of their teacher, a bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal made the aforesaid verbal observation. The video of the incident went viral across social media platforms last month.
The incident sparked widespread outrage, consequently a First Information Report (FIR) was registered against the teacher. While hearing the plea on Monday, the top court bench noted that it had serious objections to the way Uttar Pradesh police handled the matter.
The Supreme Court bench further observed that the teacher is targeting one community and that they will go deep into the matter. The bench questioned whether this was the way teachers teach students and whether this is this quality education.
The bench added that the state must take responsibility for this incident, questioning if the school appointed some counselor for the child? The bench underlined that if this incident has happened, then it should shake the conscience of the state. It’s a serious issue, the bench noted.
The apex court bench also mentioned that at first impression, it was a case of failure on the part of the Uttar Pradesh government to comply with the provisions of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, which prohibits physical and mental harassment of students and their discrimination on the basis of religion and caste. There cannot be any quality education if a student is sought to be penalised only on the grounds that he belongs to a particular community, it added.
The bench further ordered the Uttar Pradesh government to appoint an expert child counselor and provide counseling to the victim so that he can overcome his trauma. It also ordered that a senior IPS officer be appointed to supervise the investigation and submit a report to the court within three weeks.
