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MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLES OF THE
DAY – 03/10/2024
srael’s ground incursion into Lebanon to battle Hezbollah left eight Israeli soldiers dead Wednesday, while the
I region braced for further escalation as Israel vowed to retaliate for Iran’s ballistic missile attack a day earlier. The
Israeli military said seven soldiers were killed in two separate attacks, without elaborating. Those deaths followed
an earlier announcement of the first Israeli combat death in Lebanon since the start of the incursion — a 22-year-old
captain in a commando brigade. Another seven soldiers, including a combat medic, were wounded. Together, the
assaults were some of the deadliest against Israeli forces in months. The announcements came on the eve of Rosh
Hashana, the Jewish new year. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said Iran’s attack on Israel
was “a big mistake”, and vowed to make Tehran “pay for it”. “Iran made a big mistake tonight and will pay for it,” he
said hours after the attack, and warned: “Whoever attacks us, we attack them.” Iran said on Wednesday that the attack
— its biggest assault on Israel — was over barring further provocation, but Israel and the U.S. promised to hit back.
“If it (Israel) wants to react, we will have a stronger response, this is what the Islamic Republic is committed to,”
President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a joint press conference with Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani,
in Doha.
Three bases targeted
Iran’s state news agency said three Israeli military bases had been targeted. Israel activated air defences against Iran’s
missiles. Most of Iran’s missiles were intercepted “by Israel and a defensive coalition led by the United States,” Israeli
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a video on X. U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that more sanctions
would be imposed on Iran, but he would not support
any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. He urged Israel
to act “proportionally.” “We’ll be discussing with the
Israelis whatthey’re going to do, but all seven of us (G-
7 nations) agree that they have a right to respond but
they should respond proportionally,” Mr. Biden told
presspersons. In Lebanon, Hezbollah said it repelled an
Israeli infiltration into the southtargeted an Israeli unit
with explosives and destroyed three Merkava tanks
with rockets as they advanced on Maroun alRas
village. The Israeli army said it staged two brief
incursions into Lebanon, warning residents to evacuate
more than 20 areas. Nearly 1,900 people have been
killed and more than 9,000 wounded in Lebanon in
almost a year of cross-border fighting, with the most in
the past two weeks, according to Lebanese government
statistics. More than a million people have been forced
to flee their homes.
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After hours of uncertainty, climate activist Sonam Wangchuk was allowed
to visit Rajghat on Wednesday evening. The activist and others were on a
march from Ladakh to the capital demanding inclusion of Ladakh in the
Sixth Schedule and restoration of Statehood. Following his visit, Mr.
Wangchuk said the Home Ministry has assured him an audience. The
activist, who said he has “demanded the restoration of democracy through
Statehood” in Ladakh, said, “Schedule 6 of the Constitution protects tribal
and local people, and gives them the authority regarding the management
and governance of Ladakh. I have been given this assurance by the Home
Ministry that in the days to come, I’ll get to meet India’s highest leadership,
the Prime Minister or the President or the Home Minister.” Mr. Wangchuk
was detained along with 120-odd others from Ladakh late on September 30 on the borders of Delhi.
Conservation message
“We had some trouble in reaching Delhi due to our detention but more than 150 of us reached... I am happy our
message of environmental conservation has reached many people,” said Mr. Wangchuk. Mr. Wangchuk reached
Rajghat around 10 p.m., after several delays in his visit, following which many protesters on hunger strike broke their
fast. Shortly after his exit from Rajghat, supporters sloganeered in favour of Sixth Schedule in protest. They were
dispersed by the police. A memorandum was submitted to the Home Ministry on behalf of Apex Body, Kargil
Development Authority and people of Ladakh.
ndia is “deeply concerned” about the escalating situation in the West Asian region after Iran fired hundreds of
I missiles that hit targets in and around capital Tel Aviv. A statement from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA)
urged that the conflict should not take a wider regional shape. “We are deeply concerned at the escalation of
security situation in West Asia and reiterate our call for restraint by all concerned and protection of civilians. It is
important that the conflict doesn’t take a wider regional dimension and
we urge that all issues be addressed through dialogue and diplomacy,”
the MEA said. The official response came hours after Iran launched
around 200 missiles at Israel that hit targets in Tel Aviv and other areas.
India also advised its citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to Iran. In
an advisory, the MEA also urged Indian nationals residing in Iran to
remain vigilant and stay in contact with the Indian Embassy in Tehran.
According to official data, over 4,000 Indian nationals are residing in
Iran. Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip will turn a year old on
October 7, 2024 and Tuesday’s missile attacks by Iran has broadened
the conflict. The Indian embassy in Tel Aviv has called upon Indian
citizens in Israel to “exercise caution, avoid unnecessary travel within
the country and stay close to safety shelters”. “The Embassy is closely monitoring the situation and remains in regular
touch with the Israeli authorities,” the Indian embassy said. Israel has 30,000 Indian nationals who are part of Israel’s
work force as well as students and researchers. The Embassy of India in Tel Aviv has advised Indian citizens to contact
its 24x7 helpline in case of emergency. The numbers are: +972-547520711 and +972-543278392.
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Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) founder Sharad Pawar has urged the Supreme Court to direct nephew and
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar to apply for a new party symbol for his faction ahead of the State
Assembly elections. The elder Pawar said the undivided NCP’s traditional ‘clock’ symbol had been synonymous with
him for the past 25 years. The electorate identify the ‘clock’ with him, he argued. Following
the split in the NCP and the Election Commission’s declaration that the Ajit Pawar camp
was the ‘real’ NCP, the dispute over the ‘clock’ had reached the Supreme Court. The court
had in a March 19 order allowed Mr. Ajit Pawar to continue to use the ‘clock’ till the final
outcome of the pending proceedings. Consequently, the NCP patriarch had to fight the Lok
Sabha polls on a temporary party symbol of the ‘man blowing turha’. In his application,
the elder Pawar accused Mr. Ajit Pawar, represented by advocate Abhikalp Pratap Singh,
of misleading voters ahead of the Vidhan Sabha polls. He said the latter was creating
“immense confusion and dilemma with respect to who represents the NCP” and trying to
squeeze some leverage out of it. He requested the court to intervene to direct Mr. Ajit Pawar
to apply for a new symbol for the Vidhan Sabha polls in order to “ensure fairness and a level playing field by omitting
any confusion in the minds of the electorate in relation to the ‘clock’ symbol reserved for the Nationalist Congress
Party and the 25 year-long synonymity of the petitioner [Sharad Pawar] with it as its National President”. The
application, filed through advocate Abhishek Jebaraj, said the step was necessary to rule out the possibility of
respondent [Mr. Ajit Pawar] or any other bad faith actors intending to leverage upon the existing and apparent
confusion in the minds of the people.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said
that more than 12 crore toilets have been built and the
scope of toilet coverage reached 100% from
previously less than 40% in the country since the
launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) 10 years
ago. Addressing an event to mark the completion of
10 years of the SBM, Mr. Modi said that more than
60% of India’s population was compelled to defecate
in the open due to a lack of toilets until 10 years ago.
It was against human dignity and disrespectful
towards the country’s poor, Dalits, tribals, and
backward communities as well as detrimental to the
health and safety of women, the Prime Minister said.
Praising the efforts of safaimitras (sanitation
workers), celebrities, and nongovernmental
organisations in transforming the SBM into a huge public movement, he underlined the change in thinking brought
about by the Swachh Bharat Mission and gave the example of people involved in cleaning work who were looked
down upon earlier. “When the cleaners got respect, they too felt proud of their role in changing the country,” he said.
Mr. Modi called upon State governments to intensify their efforts by implementing cleanliness initiatives at the district,
block, village, and local levels and highlighted that projects worth about ₹10,000 crore related to cleanliness had been
started under it. The SBM or Clean India Mission was launched on October 2, 2014, to eliminate open defecation and
improve solid waste management.
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The National Disability Network (NDN), a cohort of organisations and federations of persons with disabilities, has
approached the Central government seeking inclusion of persons with disabilities without any income or age criteria
in the Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) health insurance scheme, which aims at
providing a health cover of ₹5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation to over 12 crore
poor and vulnerable families (approximately 55 crore beneficiaries) that form the bottom 40% of the Indian population.
The group noted that with very poor and inaccessible private and public insurance coverage and minimal financial
support from the government as well high premiums, the healthcare expenses are pushing individuals with disabilities
into heavy debts and poverty due to rising out-of-pocket expenditures.
Lack of awareness
The group further said the health insurance services provided by private and government insurance companies don’t
serve the purpose. Further, there exists an acute lack of awareness for government insurance schemes, including
Ayushman Bharat and other schemes. The group also added that to bridge the health equity gap, insurance cover for
persons with disability becomes indispensable for their holistic developmen.
Political strategist-cum-activist Prashant Kishor announced the launch of his political party, Jan Suraaj Party, at Patna
in Bihar on Wednesday. Mr. Kishor said the party would contest all 243 seats in the Assembly election due next year.
It would also contest the byelections in four constituencies in the State later this year. The activist named Manoj Bharti
as the working president of the party. “Name of Jan Suraaj Party has
been approved by Election Commission. ‘Human First’ will be our
ideology and we want to make Bihar a State where people from
Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana and Punjab come in search of work,”
Mr. Kishor said. He reiterated that after coming to power in Bihar, his
party would end prohibition “within an hour to save ₹20,000 crore
annually and to spend that money to better the education system in the
State”. “Bihar needs ₹5 lakh crore in next 10 years to have best
educational system in the country and our party would use prohibition
tax money for implementation of new educational system in the
Bihar,” he said. The party’s slogan would be “Vote for your children’s
education and employment”, he said. For farmer’s welfare, Mr. Kishor said he would “replace land survey with land
reforms and free labour of those engaged under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme
who get ₹10,000 a month. On his role, Mr. Kishor reiterated that he would continue undertaking padayatra across
Bihar until people were out of the mire of poverty
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday launched the Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan, a package
for basic scheme saturation in tribal-majority villages across 550 districts, at an event in Jharkhand’s Hazaribag district,
where he also laid the foundation stones for a host of other projects intended to benefit tribal people across the country.
The package, originally coined as the PM Janjatiya Unnat Gram Abhiyan (PMJUGA), was cleared by the Union
Cabinet last month as an umbrella package to implement existing schemes in 63,000 Scheduled Tribe-majority
villages. There are 25 interventions planned under the package. An outlay of ₹79,156 crore, to be spent over five years,
has been cleared by the Union Cabinet. The Central share will be ₹56,333 crore and the share of respective States will
be ₹22,823 crore.
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O
n September 20, 2024, Justice A.S. Chandurkar of the Bombay High Court broke a tie that emanated out of a
previously split verdict and delivered a ruling in defence of the right to free speech. He declared
unconstitutional an amendment made to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital
Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules). This law, had it been allowed to stand, would have
given the Union government an Orwellian carte blanche to decide for us how any news about
its operations ought to be carried on the Internet. The provision in question, Rule 3(1)(b)(v),
casts an onerous obligation on intermediaries — companies that facilitate the use of the
Internet, ranging from our service providers to social media platforms. If the Union
government’s “Fact Check Unit” (FCU), which had been created under the amendment,
identified any reporting on the government’s business as fake, false, or misleading,
intermediaries were required to make reasonable efforts not to host, display, upload, or publish
such information. Should they choose to ignore a directive they stood to lose their “safe
harbour” —an immunity from liability which is integral to the design of the Information
Technology (IT) Act, 2000 and the protections it offers both to businesses and to the larger
public’s right to free expression. There can be little doubt that fake and misleading information
on the Internet is a problem. Its proliferation, given the medium’s influence, ought to be a matter of serious public
concern. To that end, the state has a legitimate interest in ensuring that it finds solutions towards its tackling. But any
measure that it takes has to be found within the Constitution’s boundaries.
Petition and response
The petitioners in the Bombay High Court argued that the introduction of Rule 3(1)(b)(v) indubitably breached those
walls of protection. The state, through the amendment, effectively appropriated the power to determine what
information was fake or misleading. It did so in a manner that maintained no fidelity to the slew of restrictions that the
Constitution otherwise permits on free speech. What is more, the state, they added, had failed to so much as
acknowledge that there existed other, less intrusive measures that could have been adopted to counter the problem. In
response, the Union government made two primary arguments. First, it argued that the law was anything but coercive,
and that an intermediary was by no means compelled to act on the FCU’s instructions. To the contrary, intermediaries
were always at liberty to contest a loss of safe harbour in appropriate proceedings. Second, no person enjoyed a licence
to spread fake or misleading information and there was no constitutional protection that could be accorded to untrue
speech. Therefore, according to the state, the Rule fell well within the government’s powers to regulate online
expression. The judges on a Division Bench of the High Court had come to differing conclusions on the Rule’s validity
in January. Justice G.S. Patel found the provision ultra vires. In his reading, the Rule was vague and overbroad; was
disproportionate to its avowed objective; and imposed on intermediaries a chilling effect that had a direct bearing on
a citizen’s right to equal treatment and free speech. Justice Neela Gokhale disagreed. She concluded that the
intermediary’s loss of safe harbour provided no direct threat to a citizen’s right to freedom of expression. The tie-
breaking opinion rejected the Union government’s defence of the Rule. In doing so, it deferred to Justice Patel’s
opinion on the importance of safe harbour and the chilling effect that the Rule was likely to have on intermediaries.
Intermediaries and safe harbour
Section 79 of the IT Act, right from its inception, contained an exemption, releasing intermediaries from liability for
any third party information hosted by them so long as they discharged due diligence in observing their duties under
the law. This safe harbour would, however, be lost if the intermediary had “actual knowledge”, or received any
communication, among others, from a government agency, that their resource was being used to commit an unlawful
act. The logic here was simple enough: to allow entities such as Facebook, X, and WhatsApp to act free from the
responsibilities vested in traditional publishers. After all, these platforms merely hosted and transmitted material and
did not by themselves act as writers or producers of that content. Therefore, if they were to face liability for what
others posted on their sites, the threat of prosecution would be so severe as to effectively incapacitate the Internet’s
very working. This basic foundational reason for safe harbour immunity also worked parallelly in promoting free
speech on the Internet. Often, the intermediaries themselves do not have any direct interest in the information
disseminated by users on their platform. But should they cede to external pressure, it is the users’ right to free
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expression that is at stake. In the case of Rule 3(1)(b)(v), were the FCU to write to an intermediary pointing out that
some information about the central government on its portal was fake, the company’s choice would have been limited.
It could have either taken down the information flagged, or it could have stood up for the user’s right to free speech,
sacrificing, in the process, its own safe harbour. Here, as Justice Patel wrote, the intermediary faced a Hobson’s choice.
“No intermediary is quixotic enough to take up cudgels for free speech. Compromising one particular chunk of content
is a small price to pay; better the user content is thrown under the bus than having the bus run over the entire business.”
The government’s second argument was easier to dismiss. No doubt, the traditional idea that the right to free speech
ought to be built on a notion of a marketplace of ideas — where one believes that an open clash of views would lead
to the correct, truthful opinion coming out — has its limitations. Free speech, properly understood, depends on a
number of attendant requirements. Its exercise can be hampered, among other things, by a person’s access to resources,
economic and social conditions, and varying equations of power and authority.
Free speech and restrictions
But insofar as our jurisprudence on free speech has been built on any doctrine it is this: it is not up
to anyone, least of all the state, to determine what kinds of expression ought to be tolerated. The only
restrictions available are those explicitly contained in Article 19(2) of the Constitution, which
includes matters such as defamation, public order, friendly relations with foreign states and the
security and integrity of India. Our guarantee of free speech, contained in Article 19(1)(a), can be
traced to both instrumental and intrinsic values. The first, for example, because an uninhibited
discussion of ideas, is likely to lead to better politics. The second because free speech matters not
only for the results it produces but also for the recognition it accords to citizens as equal moral
beings. That is, that our dignity and our autonomy as human beings depends on our ability to exercise
a right to free conscience and free thought. Neither of these justifications advocate absolutism. There
are legitimate grounds on which free speech can be reasonably constrained. Those grounds, in our
case, are contained in Article 19(2). There is here no clause sanctioning a limitation on speech that
is false, misleading, or untrue. Yet, through the Rule, the government seized a power to act as the
ultimate arbiter on what manner of information about its own actions ought to be seen as constituting the truth. In
doing so, it failed to locate itself within any of the permissible categories expressly stipulated under the Constitution.
Therefore, the law, as the Bombay High Court has correctly recognised, is nothing but patent censorship. Condoning
it would undermine principles that are ingrained in the cornerstone of our democracy.
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