A Bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan will shortly hear a plea by Former CJ of Andhra Pradesh HC Justice V. Eshwaraiah against an order passed by HC directing for an investigation into his private telephone conversation regarding charges of misconduct against sitting SC judge.

Delhi High Court is hearing a petition by Elsevier against Sci-Hub and LibGen seeking restraining orders on publication of articles which infringe the copyright of Elsevier.

LibGen is unrepresented before the court today as well.

Sr. Adv. Amit Sibal submits that these rogue websites call themselves pirate websites who do not concern themselves with copyrights.

Sibal: I have gone through the application of Sci-Hub, and it states that they are aware of copyright laws, but find them "oppressive".

#SciHub #LibGen

Sibal: A majority of the material we produce is available on subscription basis, while some material is available publicly.

[WEBINAR]
Topic- Keys to Governance: Independence of Judiciary
The Webinar is being organized by India International Centre and D.S. Borker Memorial Foundation.
-Thursday 07 at 6:00PM-

Key Speakers:
1. Rtd. Justice Madan B Lokur, Former SC Judge
2. Tarunabh Khaitan, Vice Dean Faculty of Law, Oxford University
3. Maneka Guruswamy, Senior Advocate
4. N Ram, Former Editor in Chief, The Hindu
Moderator: Suhas Borker, Managing Trustee, DS Borker Memorial Foundation

The webinar has started.
Critical questions to be addressed in the webinar:
1. Is the SC performing its functions to defend the constitution satisfactorily?
2. Has the SC become an executive court?
3. Does the collegiums system ensure independence of judiciary?

4. Are post retirement benefits for judges compromising our judicial system?
5. Is there a need to increase the retirement age of judges?
6. Should there be a bar for restricting the post retirement jobs to judges?

7. How do you keep the government of the day at bay from exercising interference on the court?

On a petition against the withdrawal ceiling of Rs. 5 lakh from deposits in the PMC Bank, @RBI submits yet again that the ceiling has already been raised from Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 5 lakhs but allowing further withdrawals will result in "a run on the Bank."

The petitioner cites various instances of depositors in desperate need of funds suffering due to the withdrawal ceiling.

Chief Justice DN Patel had shown an inclination towards adjourning the matter, however, the petitioner is emphasizing his case through various factual instances.

CJ: If you raise these grounds, then everybody is in need of money. Nobody is saying that you don't have the need for the money. But please understand what the counsel for @RBI is saying, that if this is allowed, then many people may not get any money.

CJ: Somebody may have put their retirement money, someone may have put some other funds, but you are a counsel, and not a petitioner, kindly understand what the @RBI is pleading.

Supreme Court hears the writ petition filed by CPI Rajya Sabha MP Binoy Viswam @BinoyViswam1 seeking data protection measures for Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

Krishnan Venugopal for Binoy Viswam : The system of Whatsapp is not secure. Whatsapp is using the platform of the messenger service to allow payments.

#SupremeCourt

Krishnan Venugopal refers to the 'Pegasus' issue to argue that Whatsapp's system is not safe and secure.

#SupremeCourt

Krishnan Venugopal : Another issue is data localization. Problem with whatsapp, amazon & google is that when they allow payment to happen, data goes abroad. RBI justifies this process by saying that it is fine for data of Indians to go abroad without any formal protection.

Krishnan Venugopal : Critical financial data is allowed to be accessed by companies abroad and RBI justifies it. This is violation of Privacy judgment as my data is being grossly misused as these companies then collect this data and use it for advertisement purposes.

Breaking: Bombay High Court Bans Propagation For Sales Of Item Claiming Miraculous or Supernatural Powers via Television Advertisement 

TV channel, telecasting such advertisement, would be liable under the provisions of the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013: #BombayHC

The Petitioner, through his plea, stated that he came across advertisements on TV channels which were propagating that there were special, miraculous and supernatural properties/qualities in Hanuman Chalisa Yantra, which the advertiser was selling.

The claim of the seller like after achieving Siddhi, special power, the 'Baba' has created Yantra leads to inference that the seller claims that the Baba has power of 'black' magic.

"It can be said that atleast basic education is available to everybody in this State. Though these things are there, the scientific temper and the spirit of inquiry and reform are not yet developed.

This day was inevitable. Indian Muslims always lived in La La Land. They bad mouthed real well wishers & slept with the enemy who never considered them as part of them. In Gulf, Indian Muslims were busy with Javed Akhtar & Sonu Nigam. Never interacted with South Asian diaspora

Now when Indian Muslims are thrown to wolves it’s Pakistani & Bangladeshi Muslims with whom they kept distance are the only ones feeling their pain. None of the people who they invited for Eid Milan. Qawali & Mushaira are there for them. Such people invoke wrath upon themselves

Indian Muslims never spoke for Kashmiri Muslims. Distancing from separatist was understandable but we never even bothered to highlight their human rights violation & rapes carried out by forces. We could have sent them humanitarian help we didn’t. Our silence made us complicit.

When Sania Mirza married Shoaib Malik it was something legal. A Muslim married another Muslim. Entire Hindutva media went after her. They launched a witch-hunt for months. No Indian Muslim stood by her. All were silent. Now days come when Muslims are arrested for marrying a Hindu

Indian Muslims particularly the elite downplayed communalism in India by saying it will pass or Hindu majority is good. Fringe are bad. They misguiding others. Muslims were always others. Indians were happy to see Muslims sing & dance & eat their food but never considered as own

Some thoughts/excerpts on "I could not be #Hindu" by a former #RSS sevak/worker Bhanwar Meghwanshi, a #Dalit.

The book is really worth reading, just like #Ambedkar's "Annihilation of #Caste".

It is a unique 'testimony' to the RSS's #casteism.

Thread
1/23

Bhanwar has realised, in the end, that establishment of #RSS was also a partly reaction to the rise of #Dalit politics under the aegis of #Ambedkar whose first anti-caste mobilisations (including the Mahad satyagraha and temple entry movements).

2/23

In fact, Deendayal Upadhyaya defended '#casteism' even more explicitly, in Integral Humanism, a text that is still considered as its ideological charter by the RSS and BJP and other RW fringe groups.

Bhanwar experienced this as well.

3/23

4/23

Bhanwar, like so many other Swayamsevaks, joined the RSS at a very young age, mostly to exercise and play traditional games. But he was gradually presented the history and the culture of his society in a manner which made him proud of being a Hindu and angry because...

....of the decline of the sons of the (sacred) soil of Hindustan – which was largely attributed by his teachers to the “Muslim invasions”.

These “gurus” were pracharaks who were almost venerated by the young swayamsevaks.

5/23

The insidious thing about how people gaslight Hindus about the erasure of our ancestors' oppression is that they often do it in soft and civil(izing) tones. And it always comes from people who seem to otherwise care about oppression, people who are "well read" and "progressive".

Theirs is a quiet violence, clear and flowing as if it were beautiful and natural and peaceful, even as it corrodes and expands the edges of the hollowness created by lies. Silencing is a kind of acid.

Move on, I had been told for years. The past is in the past.

Except how do people move on from something they are either never told to study or told to never study? How do they move on from a past that is far worse than what they’ve been told (or not told)? How do they move on from a past that keeps reinventing itself today?

Sometimes when I speak of the erasure of Hindu persecution, I am gently, smugly corrected (it is always done civilly), "Indu, the information is there. No one is trying to hide it."

(That's how gaslighting works, right? It is arrogant and maddening and untethered to reality.)

Because the FACT is that’s not true at all. There are innumerable, insidious, systemic ways that people are hiding the truth. Ways that are supported and sustained by institutions, by scholars, by media conglomerates, by Hindu (American) politicians, proud internet trolls...

[FACT CHECK]

The @nytimes recently published an article about the Turkish occupation of Afrin, calling it a ‘safe zone’. The article contains several inaccuracies about the situation on the ground, outlined

The Afrin canton has seen virtually no combat during the Syrian Civil War. Religious minorities were protected under the AANES and its predecessors in this overwhelmingly Kurdish region. An estimated 316,000 internally-displaced Syrians - both Kurdish and Arab - fled to Afrin.

The invasion’s raison d'être does not hold up to scrutiny. Turkey accused the PYD/YPG forces in Afrin of launching “more than 700 attacks” against Turkish cities. However, upon further investigation, only 15 confirmed incidents of cross-border attacks from Afrin emerged.

Over half of Afrin’s majority-Kurdish population were forcefully displaced by Turkey’s invasion and prevented from returning. Around 400,000 Syrian Arabs were settled in the region. Currently, Arabs and Turkmen make up around 75% of the population…

...Together with Turkey’s erasure of the Kurdish language and culture in occupied Afrin, this amounts to a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing and a prosecutable crime against humanity.