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Showing posts from November, 2020

UAPA- Tool To Shut Dissent in India

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  The death of Stan Swamy, the Jesuit priest and activist, India’s oldest political prisoner who died in jail, waiting for bail for nine months, at the age of 84 has brought the spotlight back on the Unlawful Activity Prevention Act (UAPA), the primarily counter-terror Law in India.  The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) 1967 is the  primary counter-law in India. The terror law has come under sharp scrutiny recently with various courts finding application of the UAPA (arbitrary). About The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA)  Passed in 1967, the law aims at effective prevention of Unlawful activities in India. The ACT assigns absolute power to the central government, by way of which if the Centre (deems) an activity as unlawful then it may by way of an official Gazette, declare it so.  It has death penalty and life imprisonment as highest punishments. Under UAPA, both India and foreign nationals can be charged. It will be applicable to the offenders in the same manner, ev
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Love Jihad: Reality or Diversion

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Amongst so many challenges India is facing, Five Bharatiya Janata Party ruled states have decided that one of their top priorities is to pass a law based on a theory aimed at preventing inter-faith marriages.  The leader of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Assam and Karnataka have promised to introduced strict legal provisions to prevent “Love Jihad” a conspiratorial delusion that imagines, a vast, Country-wide plot by Muslim Men to dupe unsuspecting Hindu Women into marriage with the aim of converting them to Islam.  The idea of “Love Jihad"  had itself comes from what was once a fringe conspiracy theory among Christian and Hindu groups in Kerala that spread around the country thanks to misinformation networks, often picking stray incidents and weaving them into a grand narrative. The theory plays into older right-wing Hindu anxieties about the virility of Muslim men, the purported susceptibility of Hindu women and baseless fears about wholesale demographic change that w
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Air Pollution

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Introduction to Air Pollution:  Air pollution has been a topic of discussion in almost all the seminars on nature. Air pollution if   stated in simple terms is the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful for living beings. Air pollution is prevalent in varying amounts throughout the world with  some places having such polluted air that it is almost fatal to live. Now Air pollution has no one source and also doesn’t have a simple solution. It has been caused by a multitude of events and also requires quite complex and tedious methods for its reduction. Air Pollution is now  considered as one of the most prominent health hazards in nature due to its presence in all parts  of the world. Earlier, it was thought that air pollution exclusively harms the respiratory organs  but when air pollution research advanced further, it was realized that air pollution can also cause  a multitude of Cardiovascular diseases and neuroglial, reproductive and immune system  disorders. Air P
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Dying Secularism

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Gandhi’s notion of Secularism--- sarva-dharma-sambhav (equal treatment for all religion) --- is fundamentally different from the textbook definition of the term Secularism.Considering Modis aversion for the the word 'secularism', which he has ridiculed many a time, as well as his subscription to Gandhian values, which he has routinely expressed, it is only logical to wonder whether Modis version of Secularism will also resemble that of Gandhi’s. Now that he has inaugurated a Hindu temple, should one except to see him next at the inauguration of a Christian Church or a Muslim Mosque? Nothing can be more Gandhian than that, after all!    India, unlike the United States, does not define secular as being separate from or without any religious or spiritual basis. Under the constitution, all religions are treated as equal and protected from discrimination. secular means the separation of church and state and therefore the separation of religion from politics, religion continues to
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Cinematograph(amendment)bill 2021: Step towards protection of people or Control over them?

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  A group of Filmmakers, academics, researchers, programmer's, technicians, lawyers and Civil Society have raised concerns at the proposed " Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill 2021" which among other things, seeks to confer power on the Central Government to revoke a film Censor Certificate.   As many as 1430 persons including eminent members of the film community like Vijay Krishna Acharya, Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar, Vetri Maaran, Shabana Axmi and others have written an open letter to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry against the Bill. They have said that the move has the potential to "endanger freedom of expression and democratic dissent". What the Amendment Bill seeks to do?   — Key Provisions of the Bill -:   ●        Revision of the certification- This provision will give the Centre 'revisionary power' and enables it to '' re-examine '' films already cleared by the Central Board of Film Certificate (CBFC).
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Delhi's Federalism Under Control

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The Centre has introduced the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2021, reviving the dispute on the distribution of the power between the elected government and Lieutenant Governor (LG). The issue, which was at the heart of ruling party AAP and frequent clash with the BJP led Centre during of its first term. The dispute was taken up by the Constitution bench of Supreme Court, which tilted the scales in the favor of the elected government through its 4 July 2018 verdict. The Bill has been criticized by the ruling Aam Aadmi  Party in Delhi as an attempt to curtail the power of the elected government. Taking to Twitter, Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal said the Bill, which '' seeks to drastically curtail powers of elected government '', is '' against the Supreme Court judgement. Meanwhile, experts have cautioned that the amendment could face constitutional and legal hurdles as it collides with various power of the De
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UAPA- Tool To Shut Dissent in India

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  The death of Stan Swamy, the Jesuit priest and activist, India’s oldest political prisoner who died in jail, waiting for bail for nine months, at the age of 84 has brought the spotlight back on the Unlawful Activity Prevention Act (UAPA), the primarily counter-terror Law in India.  The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) 1967 is the  primary counter-law in India. The terror law has come under sharp scrutiny recently with various courts finding application of the UAPA (arbitrary). About The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA)  Passed in 1967, the law aims at effective prevention of Unlawful activities in India. The ACT assigns absolute power to the central government, by way of which if the Centre (deems) an activity as unlawful then it may by way of an official Gazette, declare it so.  It has death penalty and life imprisonment as highest punishments. Under UAPA, both India and foreign nationals can be charged. It will be applicable to the offenders in the same manner, ev
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Petrol Price Hike : Horrors of the Past Return

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 The fuel prices in the country have been on an upward trend since ever since the declaration of assembly election in five states on May 2 2021, after oil marketing companies (OMCs) resumed their price increases in May 2021. In many states, the petrol prices have already crossed Rs 100/Liter and many states, they are inching closer to that mark. There was a total of 16 prices hike in the month of June - the same as in May 2021.   Petrol/ Diesel Pricing in India The major things on which petrol prices depends are: 1. Cost of refined crude oil 2 . Price to dealer, dealers commission and Excise duty (Central Gov), VAT (State Gov) 3. Price paid by Customer The price of fuel is governed by the international market. WTI crude oil comes from USA while Brent crude comes from Europe’s North Sea. OPEC basket comes from middle Eastern countries and Africa. Oil prices at international market at present (per barrel): -                a) WTI crude: $73.75                b) Brent crude: $75.51  
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