Daily Hindu Editorials

💥Death of a Judge💥 👉The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Judge Loya case bodes ill for India’s judiciary. On 19 April, the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in the case of Justice B H Loya’s death, which occurred on 1 December 2014. It concluded that the sessions court judge’s death was from natural causes. Considering the allegations and doubts raised from many quarters, including media reports about the sudden death, this verdict raises more questions. It was on 12 January 2018, the day on which the petition concerning Judge Loya’s case was first mentioned before the chief justice, that four senior-most judges took the unprecedented step of holding a press conference raising issue with the functioning of the chief justice and the allotment of cases by him. To a pointed question on whether the trigger was Judge Loya’s case, Justice Gogoi (one of the four) replied in the affirmative. In such a situation, to maintain transparency and objectivity, it was ...

👉Washed-out Parliament👈 👆Need for Anti-defection Reform The most recent budget session of Parliament was an almost total washout thanks to disruptions of many kinds. Almost no legislative business was transacted and viewers were treated to the ugly sight of the speaker of the Lok Sabha using her powers to “guillotine” debate on important issues of funding for ministries of the union government. Both, the opposition parties and the government will point fingers at each other, and they would both be right and wrong. The opposition did not seem to want to allow debate on government business to take place, while the government did not seem to particularly care if debate took place or not. Whatever the immediate causes for this sorry situation, the fact is that the washout of the budget session is part of a trend that has been evident in state legislative assemblies for a while. What is happening in Parliament is only a reflection of the larger dysfunction in th...

👉A Law unto Themselves👈 👉State bar councils need to rein in lawyers’ associations that obstruct the course of justice. The lawlessness of lawyers was demonstrated yet again when protesting members of the Kathua and Jammu bar associations tried to prevent the police from filing a charge sheet against the accused in the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl. This group of lawyers did not stop at their unsuccessful attempts, but went on to declare a strike, bringing the High Court of Jammu and Kashmir to a standstill. They openly appealed to civil society to observe 11 April as a bandh, and have reportedly been threatening the counsel of the Kathua rape victim’s family to stay away from the case. The high court has started functioning since, with the Supreme Court having taken suo motu cognisance of the lawyers’ obstructive behaviour and admonishing them. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in  Ex-Captain Harish Uppa l v  Union of India  (2...

👉Going South👈 The neglect of Andhra Pradesh and the power struggle there has created trouble for Modi’s  BJP . The jostle for political power in Andhra Pradesh has worsened the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) standing in the state and has exposed the Narendra Modi government’s feet of clay. The Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP), one of the oldest and largest allies of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), was forced to break away from the BJP when it failed to secure a Special Category Status (SCS) from its ally at the centre. For its failure to secure SCS for the state, the Naidu government now faces a significant political challenge from opposition leader Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy and film-star-turned-politician Pawan Kalyan, who supported Naidu and the BJP in the 2014 elections. Naidu’s main challenger, Jagan Reddy, launched a padayatra in early November 2017 on the lines of similar rallies by his ­father, Y S Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR). Suc...

👉Work without Wages👈 Delayed wage payments and inadequate wage revisions rob MGNREGA of its soul. Timely payment of wages is central to the rights-based realisation of minimum guaranteed income under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, which tracks the implementation of the act, found that 64%, 86%, and 99% of the orders for wages in February, March, and April, respectively, remained unprocessed. While non-payment or delays in payment are not new to MGNREGA, recent changes in the structure of wage payments have only worsened the problem. The Narendra Modi government, in order to ensure “leakage proof payment” through the National Electronic Fund Management System (NeFMS), ordered that payments happen through a fund transfer order (FTO). Payments through Aadhaar-seeded bank accounts were also introduced subsequently. While ensuring that wages reach workers without any leakages is laudable,...

‘Uncooperative’ Federalism The 15th Finance Commission’s Terms of Reference need moderation, or else states will lose fiscal powers. The Finance Commission is a constitutional body, an indepen­dent arbiter of resources between the union and the states. The core mandate of the commission is to divide union taxes in a way that enables the union and the states to perform their respective expenditure responsibilities defined in the 7th Schedule of the Constitution of India. Finance commissions in the past had performed this role admirably, and as an institution it earned tremendous respect among all stakeholders. One of the major strengths of India’s federal fiscal structure is an independent finance commission and the role it has played in strengthening federalism in this country. The commission’s mandate is defined by its “Terms of Reference” (ToR). The 15th Finance Commission’s (XV-FC) ToR have raised serious apprehensions among states. Apart from the controve...

Remember Asifa Bano Stop and ask, can depravity, brutality and injustice be justified by religion and politics? Asifa Bano is a name we should not forget. The brutal murder and serial rape of this eight-year-old Bakherwal–Gujjar girl living in a village 72 km from Jammu is horrific enough in all its detail. But, what has emerged since the police investigation led to the arrest of the alleged perpetrators of the crime is even worse, for it has exposed the fault lines in our society. How have we reached a point where the rape and murder of a child is used to fuel communal hatred and promote politically sanctioned impunity for criminals? The gruesome details about what happened to Asifa between 10 January, when she disappeared, to 17 January, when her brutalised young body was found, are terrifying because of what this represents in terms of human depravity. That a child could be abducted, drugged, confined in a temple, repeatedly beaten and raped, and then mu...