The Editors Guild of India (EGI) on Monday told the Supreme Court that its team had visited Manipur on the Army’s invitation to make an “objective assessment” of the “unethical and ex parte reporting” by the vernacular media.
“We did not volunteer to go there. It is the Army that requested us. We got a letter from the Army,” senior advocate Kapil Sibal, for the EGI, submitted before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud.
The Chief Justice was puzzled why the Army wanted the EGI to go to Manipur. “They wanted us to make an objective assessment of what is happening on the ground… We published our report on September 2. On September 3 night, we were prosecuted for offences under the Indian Penal Code. The Chief Minister also makes statements against us… How can we be prosecuted for publication of a report,” Sibal asked the court.
The Chief Justice pointed out to Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for the Manipur government, that this was a case in which the entire First Information Report (FIR) was based on a report by the EGI.
“It is a report after all. The basic question he [Sibal] is arguing is they have only done a report that may be a matter of their [EGI’s] subjective opinion… This is not a case of somebody on the ground having committed an offence… They have published a report,” the Chief Justice differentiated.
The Chief Justice further decided to examine Sibal’s request to allow the EGI to approach the Delhi High Court, instead of the Manipur High Court, with a plea to quash the FIRs. The court scheduled the case on September 15 for hearing on this point. Meanwhile, it extended its September 6 order protecting the journalists from arrest.
During the hearing, the Chief Justice asked Mehta whether the State would make a statement agreeing to a transfer of the case to the Delhi High Court as a one-off measure.
“We will not quash the FIRs here… but we will examine whether such a plea could be heard by the Delhi High Court,” Chief Justice Chandrachud said. Mehta initially objected to the transfer of the case to Delhi, saying the EGI was trying to make it into a “national, political issue”. He asked why the petitioners were insisting on Delhi, and not States neighbouring Manipur.
He said the Manipur High Court was functioning regularly and allowed virtual hearing of cases. He said mentions about the Chief Minister was a deliberate ploy to make it political.
Sibal countered that going to Manipur would be “hazardous” for his clients. He referred to how the property of two lawyers, who had appeared for Professor Kham Khan Suan Hausing, was vandalised recently in Manipur.
“Allow us to prosecute the matter here in Delhi,” Sibal urged.
The FIRs have accused EGI president Seema Mustafa, Sanjay Kapoor, Seema Guha and Bharat Bhushan of offences under several provisions of the Indian Penal Code, including defamation, defiling places of worship, criminal conspiracy, etc. The complaints, based on which the FIRs were registered, accused the EGI report of “incorrect and false statements”.
The EGI had maintained that its report was prepared by the fact-finding team after extensive travelling and interviews with victims and eyewitnesses between August 7 and 10.
It had voiced serious apprehensions about the right to free speech and personal liberty of the journalists after hearing Manipur Chief Minister Biren Singh’s statements on September 4 in a press conference following the release of the report.
“The Chief Minister said in a press conference he had personally held that the EGI was stoking passions and making provocative statements... Consider the particular dimensions now with the Chief Minister saying this...” senior advocate Shyam Divan, also for the EGI, had submitted in a hearing on September 6.
SC holds its 2014 verdict invalidating prior sanction before probing corruption against senior govt. officials has retrospective effect
A five-judge Bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul said the provision in question, Section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act, the statute that governs the CBI, was void from the very day of its insertion on September 11, 2003.
The 106-page judgment held that Section 6A violated fundamental rights, and “once a law is declared to be unconstitutional, being violative of Part-III (fundamental rights) of the Constitution, then it would be held to be void ab initio, still born, unenforceable and non est”.
This means that senior government officials involved in corruption cases even before the date of the Supreme Court judgment invalidating the need for prior sanction would no longer be able to avail the protection of prior sanction.
“Declaration made by the Constitution Bench judgment in Dr. Subramanian Swamy case [of 2014] will have retrospective operation. Section 6A of the DSPE Act is not in force from the day of its insertion, ie, September 11, 2003,” Justice Vikram Nath, who authored the judgment, for the five-judge Bench held.
Justice Nath also held that Article 20(1), which mandated that a person should only be convicted under a law which was in force at the time of the crime, had “no applicability or relevance to the validity or invalidity of Section 6A of the DSPE Act”.
Section 6A of the DSPE Act, while it had existed, gave officers of the rank of joint secretary and above immunity from even facing a preliminary inquiry by the CBI. In 2014, a Constitution Bench had declared the legal provision a violation of the right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution.
“Corruption is an enemy of [the] nation and tracking down a corrupt public servant, however high he may be, and punishing such person is a necessary mandate under the PC [Prevention of Corruption] Act, 1988. The status or position of a public servant does not qualify the person from exemption from equal treatment. The decision-making power does not segregate corrupt officers into two classes as they are common crime-doers and have to be tracked down by the same process of inquiry and investigation,” the 2014 judgment said.
It had found the dichotomy within Section 6A, of protecting one class of officers, directly destructive and contrary to the objectives and reason of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
“The provision in Section 6A impedes tracking down the corrupt senior bureaucrats… The protection under Section 6A has propensity of shielding the corrupt,” the Bench had concluded.
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Is India ready for Controlled Human Infection Studies?
How do we understand how an infection affects the human body? And how do we go about the process of finding safe and effective drugs and vaccines for the many diseases that abound? One way scientists do this is through Controlled Human Infection Studies or CHIS, also known as human challenge studies. This involves deliberately exposing a volunteer to a disease-causing germ, in a controlled environment. This is done to understand the various facets of the infection and disease, and also to speed up the process of finding a cure. India has so far stayed away from such studies, because of the many ethical issues involved: the deliberate harm caused and the potential risk of exploitation since volunteers are paid for their participation, though they have been carried out in other countries. Last month however, the country’s premier medical research body, the Indian Council of Medical Research, released a consensus policy document, arguing the case to bring in human infection studies into our country.
What exactly will these studies involve? Do they have any benefits over regular clinical trials? After the world saw the sudden explosion of Covid-19, is there a need for deeper, faster studies of infectious diseases especially with resistance to many drugs increasing? Does India have a robust-enough regulatory system to oversee such trials and to ensure transparency and accountability?
‘One nation, one election’ campaign aims to postpone elections in five States: Prashant Bhushan
Renowned Supreme Court lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan alleged that the Central government has been campaigning for the “One nation, one election” (ONOE) only to postpone upcoming Assembly elections in five States.
The Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram are due later this year.
“ONOE cannot be implemented in a Parliamentary democracy like India because in our system a government can fall in midterm when it loses majority and a fresh government forms,” Bhushan told reporters in Bhubaneswar on Sunday.
However, if the ‘one nation, one election’ os implemented, in such a situation, Presidential rule will be imposed, which is against democracy, he claimed.
“That means we are switching from democratic system to a presidential rule system. So it will be a total violation of parliamentary democracy. In my view, the government clearly knew about this and they also know that several amendments in the Constitution are required to switch to the Presidential rule system”, Bhushan said.
He said the present government does not have the majority in Rajya Sabha. The government knew about all these facts. Still, they floated the balloon (one nation, one election) with only one objective -- to postpone the State elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram, which are due later this year.
“The BJP government is fearing defeat in upcoming Assembly elections in these five States. So, they are going to postpone the Assembly polls till the general election in 2024 in the name of ONOE. And, President Rule will be imposed in the States,” he claimed.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to visit Russia to meet with Putin
Russia and North Korea confirmed on September 11 that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will visit Russia in a highly anticipated meeting with President Vladimir Putin that has sparked Western concerns about a potential arms deal for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
A brief statement on the Kremlin’s website said Kim’s visit is at Putin’s invitation and would take place “in the coming days.” The visit also was reported by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, which said the leaders would meet — without specifying when and where.
Associated Press journalists near the North Korea-Russia frontier saw a green train with yellow trim — similar to the train used by Kim during previous foreign trips — at a station on the North Korean side of a border river.
It was unclear whether Kim was on the train, which was seen moving back and forth between the station and the approach to the bridge that connects the countries. It had not crossed the bridge as of 7 p.m. (1000 GMT).
Citing unidentified South Korean government sources, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the train likely left the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on Sunday evening and that a Kim-Putin meeting is possible as early as Tuesday. Japan’s Kyodo news agency cited Russian officials as saying Kim was possibly heading for Russia in his personal train.
South Korea’s Presidential Office, Defense Ministry and National Intelligence Service didn’t immediately confirm those details.
U.S. officials released intelligence last week that North Korea and Russia were arranging a meeting between their leaders that would take place within this month as they expand their cooperation in the face of deepening confrontations with the United States. A possible venue for the meeting is the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, where Putin arrived Monday to attend an international forum that runs through Wednesday, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
The city was also the site of Putin’s first meeting with Mr. Kim in 2019. According to U.S. officials, Putin could focus on securing more supplies of North Korean artillery and other ammunition to refill declining reserves as he seeks to defuse a Ukrainian counteroffensive and show that he’s capable of grinding out a long war of attrition.
That could potentially put more pressure on the United States and its partners to pursue negotiations as concerns over a protracted conflict grow despite their huge shipments of advanced weaponry to Ukraine in the past 17 months. North Korea has possibly tens of millions of artillery shells and rockets based on Soviet designs that could potentially give a huge boost to the Russian army, analysts say.
In exchange, Kim could seek badly needed energy and food aid and advanced weapons technologies, including those related to intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-capable ballistic missile submarines and military reconnaissance satellites, analysts say.
There are concerns that potential Russian technology transfers would increase the threat posed by Kim’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles that are designed to target the U.S., South Korea, and Japan.
After a complicated, hot-and-cold relationship for decades, Russia and North Korea have been drawing closer since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The bond has been driven by Putin’s need for war help and Kim’s efforts to boost the visibility of his partnerships with traditional allies Moscow and Beijing as he tries to break out of diplomatic isolation and have North Korea be part of a united front against Washington.
While using the distraction caused by the Ukraine conflict to ramp up its weapons development, North Korea has repeatedly blamed Washington for the crisis in Ukraine, claiming the West’s “hegemonic policy” justified a Russian offensive in Ukraine to protect itself.
North Korea is the only nation besides Russia and Syria to recognize the independence of two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine — Donetsk and Luhansk — and it has also hinted at an interest in sending construction workers to those areas to help with rebuilding efforts.
In Brief:
Benchmark Sensex jumped by 528 points to regain the 67,000 level while Nifty scaled the record 20,000 mark for the first time as robust buying by domestic investors helped equity markets extend the winning run to the seventh straight session on September 11. The 30-share BSE Sensex regained the 67,000 level. The benchmark jumped 528.17 points or 0.79% to settle at 67,127.08. During the day, it rallied 573.22 points or 0.86% to 67,172.13. The Nifty hit its all-time high of 20,008.15, a gain of 188.2 points or 0.94%, in day trading. The 50-issue barometer closed just below the 20,000 mark at 19,996.35, reflecting gains of 176.40 points or 0.89%.
Evening Wrap will return tomorrow.
