The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court comprising of Justice K K Sasindhran and Justice P D Audikesavalu ordered ‘status quo’ in Sterlite Copper plant case, staying the National Green Tribunal’s permission of reopening it. The court passed the order on a petition filed by activist and politician Fatima Babu who had protested against the reopening of the Sterlite plant.
The National Green Tribunal, on December 15, had set aside the order of AIADMK led Tamil Nandu government’s order of permanently closing down the copper plant directing its owner Vedanta Ltd to spend Rs 100 crore over a period of three years on the welfare of the people in the area. The NGT had termed the order of the State government of closing down the copper smelter plant as unjustified and against the principles of natural justice.
In the affidavit filed by Fatima Babu, an MDMK politician, it was alleged that the NGT did not take into account the findings of the Traun Aggarwal report. The affidavit stated, “The order of the National Green Tribunal suffers from several procedural defects, violates principles of natural justice and is patently wrong on both facts and law and hence by the present Writ petition, I am seeking to set aside the order of the National Green Tribunal dated 15.12.2018 for the following reasons”.
The Bench has sought the response of the Centre, the State Chief Secretary, the CEO of Sterlite and other agencies on the petition. The next hearing on the petition will take place on January 21.
The measures adopted by the Modi government of cleaning river Ganga are finally yielding the envisaged results. As per reports, experts believe that the marine life in the Ganga river is set to flourish once again as the river witnesses considerable improvement in its water quality.
Experts carrying out research around the banks of river Ganga believe that there’s a marked improvement in the level of dissolved oxygen in the river in more than a decade. The experts have also asserted that along with dissolved oxygen, even pH amount has reached satisfactory levels.
The laboratory tests of the water samples have uncovered a pH level of more than 8.5, the biological oxygen demand level was 2.5 milligram per litre of water. Prof Pravin Bhai Patel of CSJM University Kanpur and principal investigator in the project claimed the results to be extremely favourable for the aquatic life to proliferate.
The research is being carried out by a group of experts belonging to esteemed institutes and scientific bodies, including the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). They had collected river water samples at 20 points in six highly polluted river banks – Ganga Barrage, Bhaironghat, Parmat, Shuklaganj, Jajmau and Wajidpur for laboratory testing.
According to the Professor, the average pH level in the last 10 years has consistently been below 6 while the biological oxygen demand ranged between 3.5 to 4. He said that such alarming levels of pH are hazardous for aquatic life to flourish.
Experts have proclaimed the tapping of large sewers as the reason for the remarkable improvement in the water quality of Ganga. In November, engineers in Kanpur got rid of waste from Asia’s largest sewer being emptied in Ganga. The waste was diverted to Jajamau treatment plant where the waste was sanitised and harmful effluents removed from it.
Kuldeep Misra of UP Pollution Control Board (UPPCB) also concurred with the findings of the experts. He said, “At present the water quality of the river has improved due to two reasons. First, the sewers have been tapped and there is complete control over tannery waste water going into the river. This has checked the oxygen depletion both upstream and downstream”.
The treatment of waste going into the river has delivered enormous results. The water of the river has become favourable for aquatic life. The ideal water condition for marine life requires pH level at 6.5 to 8.5 milligram per litre of water and the biological oxygen demand level less than three milligram per litre.
Note: This article has been updated to reflect correct parameters
BJP candidate Kunvarji Bavaliya won by almost 20,000 votes in the Jasdan by-polls held earlier this month, taking the total seat tally up to 100 in the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha.
Ahead of Jasdan by-elections, fake news had gone viral on social media that the BJP President Amit Shah and Gujarat Chief Minister had made casteist remarks against the Bania and Koli communities respectively. Bavaliya, who won the election from the BJP this time hails from the Koli community.
Bavaliya, the then working president of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) and sitting Congress MLA from Jasdan when he quit the party and resigned in July this year. Hours later, he joined the BJP and swore in as a minister in the Vijay Rupani cabinet. It was important for Bavaliya to win the elections as he had to become an elected member of the assembly before January next year to continue being a minister.
Bavaliya has won all the elections from Jasdan since 1995, but he felt that Congress did not value his record in elections. Moreso, he said he was not able to serve the people of Jasdan as he had always been an MLA from the Opposition party.
A deeply disturbing video, which is reported to be that of Samajwadi Party leader Deepchand Sonkar, brother of Samajwadi Party MLA and former Minister Jagdish Sonkar, has emerged in which his goons are seen brutally thrashing some women with a stick. The video reportedly relates to an incident that took place on Dec 14 in the Sarai Khwaja police station area of Jaunpur district, Uttar Pradesh. In the video, Sonkar can be seen abusing the women while one person is beating them with a stick.
The police had initially registered a Non-Cognizable Report (NCR) in the matter before the video went viral. It was only after the video went public that an FIR was lodged by the police against Karanja Kala Block Pramukh Deepchand Sonkar and five others. As per reports, the matter relates to a land dispute, in which the people of Dalit Basti were demanding a passage through an area. When Sonkar went to the place for some block related work, the women started a protest demanding a passage. They said that they will not let the work proceed unless their demand is met. After this, the Block Head ordered his men to chase them away, and one of his henchmen beat them with a stick. The condition of one of the victims is reported to be critical.
After the video of the incident went viral, the Samajwadi Party took action against its leader almost after a week after the incident. The Party posted a tweet informing that all the people involved in the incident including Deepchnad Sonkar have been expelled from the Party.
जौनपुर जिले में सरकारी अधिकारियों की मिलीभगत से महिलाओं पर अत्याचार एवं अभद्र व्यवहार करने वाले सभी नेताओं एवं कार्यकर्ताओं को समाजवादी पार्टी निष्कासित करती है।सरकार से माँग है कि घटना में लिप्त सभी आरोपियों पर कार्रवाई की जाए।
Samajwadi Party can be seen putting blame on the State government alleging the support of government officials in the shameful incident. Deepchand Sonkar and three others are absconding while Shamsher Singh, one of the accused, has been arrested in the case as told by Station Officer.
Army Court Martial has recommended dismissal of a Major General who played a crucial role in one of the surgical strikes carried out by the Indian Army on sexual harassment charges.
As per Army Rules, the recommendation of the GCM would now be sent to higher authorities including Chief of Army Staff for confirmation. The officer had played a crucial role in one of the surgical strikes carried out by the Indian Army in the last few years.
The alleged incident took place two years back and he has been charged under section 354A of the IPC and Army Act 45 which is related to unbecoming conduct of officers in the force. The lawyer of the officer said they will be appealing against the order.
The officer was posted in the Northeast when the alleged incident took place in 2016. In the plea filed before the Armed Forces Tribunal, the officer has claimed he is a victim of factionalism within the Army which has allegedly arisen due to the appointment of the new Army Chief that year.
As reported in Jagran, author Balendu Dwivedi, reacting actor Naseeruddin Shah’s ‘rising intolerance‘ remarks, said that he does not agree with Naseeruddin’s statements. He said that if there was an environment of fear in the country why would Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen choose to live in India of all the countries in the world.
“I am not aware of the context in which Naseeruddin Shah, who is one of the best actors, made the statements about the atmosphere of fear in the country. But I keep travelling across the country for various programmes. And based on my experience I can claim that there is no atmosphere of fear among the people. Therefore, it is not possible for me to agree with Naseer Saheb’s statement,” he said.
While speaking at Indore Literature Festival Dwivedi said, “India is the only country which provides complete freedom to intellectuals. Otherwise, why would Taslima Nasreen choose to live in India of all the world”.
Naseeruddin Shah had recently stirred controversy when in a TV interview in reference to the Bulandsheher incident he said that the death of a cow was being given more importance than the death of a police officer. He had later clarified that he made the statements as a ‘worried Indian’. “I have said this before too, but I don’t know why this time I am being labelled as a traitor. It is very strange”, he had said.
After many speculations on the NDA alliance in Bihar, BJP President Amit Shah finally announced the seat sharing of allies in Bihar for upcoming Lok-Sabha elections. During the announcement, CM Nitish Kumar, RLD leaders Ram Vilas Paswan and his son Chirag Paswan were also present.
BJP President Amit Shah: BJP will fight at 17 seats, Janata Dal (United) at 17 and Lok Janshakti Party at 6 seats in Bihar in upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha elections pic.twitter.com/58hBFvCABr
CM Nitish Kumar’s JDU which re-joined NDA this year will fight on 17 seats out of 40. Lok Jansjkati Party (LJP) headed by Ram Vilas Paswan, will fight on 6 seats and also reportedly get one seat in Rajya Sabha. BJP will contest only on 17 seats, while it had won 22 seats in Bihar out of 30 they contested in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. However, it has not been decided what seats will go to which party.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar after announcing seat sharing for 2019 general elections: We are committed to development in Bihar. We are of the opinion that the Ram Mandir matter should be solved through a court decision. pic.twitter.com/bOvRDLhz1z
All eyes were set on LJP’s seat-share, as the party had expressed discontent towards NDA over the past few days. Party had demanded more share of seats after Rashtriya Lok Samata Party leader (RLSP) joined UPA alliance in Bihar along with RJD. However, after the announcement, he said that all the discontent and disagreement have been resolved and thanked Amit Shah and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, for resolving them.
The NDA alliance announcement in Bihar, was a response to the UPA alliance, made by Congress, RJD and Jitan Ram Manji’s Hindustan Ava Party, and Upendra Kushwaha’s RLSP who has recently defected from NDA.
According to a report by the New York Times, the economic corridor between China and Pakistan is turning into more of a military corridor, as both countries are jointly preparing aircraft and weapons in a confidential manner.
According to the report, just weeks after President Donald Trump announced the suspension of billions of dollars of security aid to Pakistan, the Pakistani and Chinese officials are putting the final touches on a confidential deal to expand Pakistan’s building of Chinese military jets, weaponry and other hardware.
Beijing is currently aiming at manufacturing JF-17 Thunder jets with Pakistan, which will reach completion soon. The Jets are getting manufactured at Pakistan’s military-run Kamra Aeronautical Complex in Punjab Province. In addition to this, China is also working on the Beidou Satellite Navigation System with Islamabad. It is an alternate navigation system that China is developing to replace America’s Global Positioning System or GPS. Beidou can be used for civilian and also for military navigation. It can tactically aid Pakistan in launching missiles and aircraft with precision.
Chinese Language in road signs in Pakistan, a sign of things to come
This way, according to Ney York Times Report, China is also transforming Pakistan into a military showcase to woo other Muslim countries into buying Chinese technology replacing USA ones.
“In Pakistan, China has found an amenable ally with much to recommend it: shared borders and a long history of cooperation; a hedge in South Asia against India; a large market for arms sales and trade with potential for growth; a wealth of natural resources,” the report said.
The report also directs attention to the Gwadar port, which can be harnessed by China to counter USA and India’s presence in the Arabian Sea.
“Military analysts predict that China could use Gwadar to expand the naval footprint of its attack submarines, after agreeing in 2015 to sell eight submarines to Pakistan in a deal worth up to $6 billion. China could use the equipment it sells to the South Asian country to refuel its own submarines, extending its navy’s global reach.”
The report adds that Gwadar Port also grants Beijing a strategic position to counter against India and the United States to the point of naval blockades, if anytime tensions at sea escalate.
Time and again, USA has warned countries like Pakistan of China’s dept-trap diplomacy. Vice-President Mike Pence had said that China’s seizure of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port is a strategic development in expanding China’s naval out-reach.
Sri Lanka had to hand-over its strategic port of Hambantota on a 99-year lease to China after it found it difficult to repay loans taken under the former PM Rajapaksa. This also raised concerns for India, as Hambantota can be used by China to eye Southern Parts of our country.
“Just ask Sri Lanka, which took on massive debt to let Chinese state companies build a port of questionable commercial value, it may soon become a forward military base for China’s growing blue-water navy.” Pence had said.
All the military projects undertaken by China and Pakistan are designated as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which is a $1 trillion chain of infrastructure development programs stretching across some 70 countries. China is investing $62 billion in developing China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
The US and other economic watchdogs have also warned countries getting involved with China’s BRI, as being a China’s aim of spreading its neo-colonial tentacles. A similar fate was witnessed by Greece after it handed one of their busiest Port Piraeus to China.
China has vehemently rejected the allegations of New York Times and reiterated that OBOR initiative is purely for economic intent.
On 31st October, Washington Post (WaPo) had published a report titled ‘Rising Hate in India’ based on shockingly biased and faulty data compiled by IndiaSpend.com. Many pointed out how WaPo was furthering a partisan agenda.
Swati Goel Sharma, a journalist associated with Swarajya magazine, called out the selective data on communal violence in India, used by IndiaSpend. She demonstrated, with painstaking detail, how the data used by IndiaSpend was full of bias and cherrypicked to suit a particular narrative.
When Swati called out Washington Post on Twitter, she was referred to as a ‘troll’.
“I haven’t done an exhaustive study of the data but stumbled across this” said every troll, ever ?? https://t.co/1i44Hkmj9f
After prevaricating for days, IndiaSpend tried to explain their bias and responded to the acts of omissions and commissions Swati had pointed out. However, this attempt ended up exposing IndiaSpend further.
Swati, on Twitter, gave a point-by-point rebuttal of IndiaSpend’s attempted explanation, which showed how this supposed data-driven journalism attempt was nothing but a propagandist approach to further a communal agenda.
I hv been asked to respond to @FactCheckIndia‘s “response” to my report. Fact is, they only gave reasons for not picking 26/35 cases that I pointed to
Anyway, here’s a thread on their ‘response’ & how they alter their definition of hate crime when victim’s religion isnt suitable https://t.co/inRtd3jJ4S
Swati points out that in April 2018, when 38-year old Dalit man Vidharam Katheria was bludgeoned to death by a group of Muslim men over a family dispute, it was not included in IndiaSpend’s ‘hate tracker’ because there was no ‘evidence’ the crime was motivated due to victim’s religion. However, in September 2018 when one Azhar Khan was beaten up for fishing near a temple, it gets included as a hate crime even though the motive were nowhere religious. Additionally, as per IndiaSpend’s data, the perpetrators of the crime was unknown.
In January 2018, the severed head of one Palakuri Ramesh Goud was found on a flagpost near a mosque, in an area thickly populated by Muslims. His body was traced about a kilometre away. This does not get included in the ‘hate tracker’ because ‘police did not find any communal angle to crime’. However, when Junaid was killed over seat dispute in train, it gets included in ‘hate crime’ despite the fact that the court had given a verdict that it was not a hate crime.
In August this year, one Babu Khan was beaten up in a mosque for participating in the Kanwar Yatra. But it was not included in ‘hate tracker’ because the religion of victim as well as perpetrators is Muslim. However, when a Dalit man was allegedly slapped and harassed for converting to Islam by Hindus, it is still a hate crime.
These are just three examples. Swati’s entire thread gives a point-to-point rebuttal exposing IndiaSpend’s anti-Hindu bias which it camouflages under the veil of neutrality.
This is not the only time propaganda websites have shown their anti-Hindu bias in their supposed objective analysis. We had earlier reported how Hindustan Times had also launched a biased ‘hate tracker’ which had similar biased reporting and factual flaws. IndiaSpend’s ‘fact-checker’ website also launched a ‘tracker’ which tried to track ‘cow-related’ crimes‘. That data was also equally flawed and biased.
Abhishek Banerjee, a columnist with OpIndia, had written about how IndiaSpend have regularly indulged in peddling this narrative. They had earlier filed a report how 87 people had died in cow-related violence since 2010, of which 97% of the crimes happened after Modi came to power. The above ‘interactive fact-check’ map is an extension of the same report’. As can be seen even then that their ‘research’ was based on ‘Google search’ with particular keywords.
Vinod Dua, a left-wing propagandist accused of sexually harassing a filmmaker has come back with another set of fake news to pursue propaganda against Union Minister Nitin Gadkari and the NDA by doctoring one of Gadkari’s interviews.
On December 21, HW News, where Vinod Dua joined recently, published an exclusive interview with Union Minister Nitin Gadkari. In the interview, Gadkari talked about how hundreds of projects were stalled when he took over the charge of the ministry, and how he revived the projects with various measures.
Vinod Dua used Gadkari’s comments in the interview in episode 7 of his video blog titled The Vinod Dua Show to suggest that Gadkari was blaming his own government for stalled projects. Dua’s show contains a clip of the interview where Gadkari is blaming the government, but does not say which government. Dua goes on to say that this proves growing dissent in the BJP, and suggests after Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha, Shatrughan Sinha etc, now people from RSS like Nitin Gadkari are also speaking against the government.
According to Dua, Gadkari, who is now Ministry of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation, stated that there were 403 stalled projects concerning the department and 75% of those projects were stalled due to the policies of the government.
But now it has emerged that Dua used a carefully edited portion of Gadkari’s interview to create an impression of a rift in BJP. Dua carefully edits the video to claim that the ‘government’ which Gadkari referred to was the present NDA government led by Narendra Modi.
Responding to Vinod Dua’s comments, Nitin Gadkari’s office posted the full video of that portion of the interview, where it is clearly seen that Nitin Gadkari was indeed talking about mismanagement during UPA government. The original clip exposes Vinod Dua’s propaganda as Gadkari in his interview goes on to say that it was UPA government’s policy paralysis which had affected the completion of the projects. Gadkari in his interview clearly states that the UPA government had not issued any environmental clearances to various infrastructure projects. In the interview, Gadkari also added that how he addressed the issue of stalled projects and reduced NPAs after taking charge of the department contrary to Dua’s claims of increase of stalled projects during NDA government.
After the rebuttal by Nitin Gadkari, episode 7 of Nitin Gadkari has been removed from both HW news website and Youtube where the show is hosted. The link to the page on the website returns a 404 error.
Google search shows the link to the now deleted episode 7 of Vinod Dua’s show
The full interview of Gadkari is still there on the HW News website, which clearly shows that he was blaming UPA government. Despite that, Vinod Dua chose to use an edited portion of the interview to build a fake narrative about a fictitious rift in the party.
Vinod Dua’s attempt to discredit the NDA government led by Prime Minister Modi by using a doctored video is not surprising as Dua has a track record of resorting to this sort of unethical and shoddy journalism to target the BJP. Vinod Dua, who was earlier associated with another left-wing propaganda news website The Wire had successfully managed to peddle their false narratives without being held accountable.
Vinod Dua has also been accused of sexually harassing and molesting a filmmaker Nishtha Jain. After Nishitha Jain accused Dua, another lady filmmaker Sunita Thakur had come forward and accused Dua of inappropriate behaviour.
Despite these allegations, Dua had continued to publish videos for propaganda website The Wire and Dua had described the allegations of sexual harassment on himself as ‘keechad‘ (mud) virtually claiming that women coming out with their accounts of sexual harassment were indulging in mudslinging.
