|
Dear Reader,
The cancellation of stand-up comedian Munawar Faruqui’s show in Bengaluru, consequent to denial of permission by the Bengaluru Police for his event, is the most recent assault on free speech in a litany of events seen to be diminishing freedoms.
The latest cancellation, the 12th in the last two months, of Faruqui’s events raise some critical issues, other than the apparent restrictions on free speech. Mojo Story and The News Minute underline the issues - the institutional perfidy of the Bengaluru Police, which instead of protecting the artiste’s freedom actually chose to give in to the threats by vested groups, the performer’s right to livelihood, and the ‘chilling effect’ the cancellations impose on other artistes.
Article 14 reports from Srinagar, in Kashmir on the 25-year struggle of Jameela Bano, the widow of a daily wager who was killed “extra-judicially”. Bano now finds closure, as a court in the Valley declares her husband innocent and orders an SIT probe into the earlier probe which had indicted him.
Prime Minister Modi announced a slew of goals at the COP26, at Glasgow in Scotland, including net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. However, it is not clear, says Down To Earth, how these targets were arrived at – because the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change (PMCCC), the body responsible for the task, “has not met once in the last seven years”!
The Supreme Court’s Constitution Benches, where the most constitutionally significant of Court’s pronouncements are made and set the law for lower courts, are a critical component of our justice structure.
However, the Supreme Court Observer notes that the Constitution Bench judgments have been drastically declining - from 134 in the 1960s to just 2 this year. As of the first week of this month, a whopping 50 Constitution Bench cases are pending.
And, in a ground-reported documentary, The Probe investigates the practice of manual scavenging in the national capital and brings you heart-wrenching stories of how humans are forced to risk their lives and go down manholes to clean human waste, even as the government feigns ignorance.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
|
