By Rajiv Shah    In a surprise move, a new report by Greenpeace India, the environmental NGO whose Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) license was controversially  cancelled  in December 2016, followed by an Enforcement Directorate (ED)  freezing  its bank accounts in October 2018, has showered praise on a scheme to solarize agriculture launched in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, Gujarat.

By  A  Representative In a letter to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, top National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) activists led by Medha Patkar have regretted that an official from his department refused to take the plea of 3800 applicant-farmers, who are affected by frequent flooding of the Kosi river. NAPM said, Manoj Kumar, deputy secretary in his office, returned the pleas to the Kisan Navnirman Manch (KNM), who had come to deliver these saying nothing would come of this even if they ran around for 3800 years, calling the representatives brokers, and insisting that each of the applicants should come individually. Reminding Kumar that he calls himself a socialist and a Gandhian, NAPM said, it was tragic that despite this the farmers' pleas were not received, which goes against the spirit of democracy, adding, this is contrary to his own stance of showing sensitivity towards the farmers affected by the problem of silt because of the Farakka barrage. The prob...

Ashok Gehlot Counterview Desk People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), one of India's top human rights organizations, taking strong exception to "false FIRs" and "fabricated charge-sheets " against late Pehlu Khan and all other dairy farmers booked for cow smuggling, has said latest FIRs show, the present government, led by senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot, has still not bothered to enquire into false cases or in any of the lynchings that took place since 2015.

Pompeo with S Jaishankar, India's foreign minister  Counterview Desk Is the United States all set to make the alleged lack of religious freedom in India a major plank during future negotiations? Not only has US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo touched upon this  during his recent visit to New Delhi, insisting upon the need to "speak out strongly" in favour religious freedom. 

United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) chair Tony Perkins, responding to the "reported murder" of Tabrez Ansari by a mob in Jharkhand, has called upon the Government of India to take "concrete actions that will prevent this kind of violence and intimidation by a thorough investigation of Ansari’s murder as well as the local police’s handling of the case." Insiting that "lack of accountability will only encourage those who believe they can target religious minorities with impunity", the top USCIRF official recalled that the perpetrators of the brutal murder "forced Ansari to say Hindu chants as they beat him for hours. Ansari later died from the injuries he suffered due to this horrific attack." USCIRF said, the statement comes close on the heels of its recent Annual Report, released in April, criticising https://www.uscirf.gov/reports-briefs/annual-report/2019-annual-report India "for engaging in or tolerating...

By Adv Masood Peshimam Those on campaign trail to justify persecution and atrocities never want any opposition to arise against them. Efforts are made to ensure that any murmur of protest against those who unleash incidents of violence against the weak and the feeble is nipped in the bud. Not without reason, Muslims find themselves as political orphans in India today. Today, they are tasting the bitter fruits of a hostile social and political climate.

By Sandeep Pandey, B Ramakrishna Raju* It appears that finally it is here. Soon after Union minister for railways Piyush Goyal said in a press conference that there are no plans to privatise Railways, either now or ever, it has been revealed that government is thinking of inviting private operators to run passenger trains on low congestion and tourist routes.

Counterview Desk  The Khedut Ekta Manch – Gujarat (KEMG), a non-profit farmers’ organization based in Ahmedabad, in a representation to the High Court-appointed committee to study the impact of limestone mining in Bhavnagar district, Gujarat, has that there are “very serious issues" would emerge in the wake of the decision to sanction of mining lease in the area "without the prior informed consent of thousands of families and people, who are to be divested of their livelihoods.”

By  A  Representative A whopping additional 1,02,462 people have been excluded from the National Register of Citizens (NRC), released on June 26. Explaining the exclusion, the NRC authority said, “The persons whose names appear in the Additional Draft Exclusion list are those persons whose names were included in the draft NRC published on July 30, 2018, but have been subsequently found ineligible." The reasons , according to NCR, are, (1) they were found to be "Declared Foreigner (DF) or Doubtful Voter(DV) or persons with cases pending at Foreigners Tribunals (PFT), or (2) they were found to be "ineligible while appearing as witnesses in hearings held for disposal of Claims and Objections", or (3) they were found to be ineligible "during the process of verification carried out by the Local Registrars of Citizen Registration." The human rights site, Sabrang India regrets , many of the additional people excluded are over and above the names appearing in the ...

Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar Counterview Desk Commenting on the Prime Minister's recent speech in Parliament, top Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar and her colleagues* have said that Narendra Modi's statement on Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) on Narmada river is "rootless and proofless", insisting, the Madhya Pradesh government’s stand on the issue, of inability to provide more water to the dam, is "rational and realistic".

By A Representative The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has said that the statement given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Parliament on Sardar Sarovar dam is “false”, pointing out, though the Sardar Sarovar Dam was meant to provide drinking and irrigation water to farmers, especially in the dry areas of Kutch, Saurashtra and Rajasthan, this is not happening. Blaming the Congress for the delay in building the Sardar Sarovar dam, Modi had said, “Sardar Sarovar Dam was the brainchild of Sardar Patel. But, work on this dam kept getting delayed. As Gujarat chief minister, I had to sit on hunger strike for this project. After the NDA came to power, the pace of work increased significantly and it is benefiting many people." Refusing to buy the argument, NBA said, instead of farmers, as many as 481 companies are being supplied water and will be future beneficiaries. In the name of satisfying farmers’ needs, the Gujarat government wants to fill up the dam up to 139 meters, which is the ful...

A civil society protest to save the jungles Counterview Desk Two top rights groups with presence in several countries, including India, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have said that the “criminal case” against the Lawyers Collective, a Delhi-based high profile NGO with some of the most well-known Supreme Court advocates as its office bearers, is the latest example of how the foreign funding law is being used by the Indian authorities to “harass outspoken rights groups”. 

By Shantanu Basu* June 25, 1975, 1400 hours: St Columba’s, Delhi, was on summer vacation. Its swimming pool was however, open, and I had the 1400-1600 hours slot. I would cycle from Shahjahan Road to school (GPO), about 5 km away. Traffic was far lower those days and cycling was very safe. As I wound my way down India Gate, Ashok Road, Windsor Circle, et al, traffic seemed to have disappeared from roads altogether.

By Sheshu Babu "People have always been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self- deception in politics", wrote VI Lenin in "State and Revolution", a treatise leader of the Russian Revolution wrote in 1917. With the spread of authoritarian tendencies of rulers almost in every part of the world, a revision of Lenin's approach may give some idea of how to deal with the situation. 

Vishnu Pandya A little over a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi  criticized  BJP candidate from Bhopal Pragya Thakur for calling Nathuram Godse a patriot saying he would never forgive her for the remark, a top Sangh Parivar ideologue, known to close to Modi in Gujarat, has supported her, saying her statement should be seen “within a context.” Thakur won from Bhopal by more than 3.5 lakh votes defeating her nearest rival, veteran Congressman and ex-Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh.

By  A  Representative An Ahmedabad discussion on the New Education Policy (NEP), the draft of which recently released by the Government of India, reached the drastic conclusion that, if implemented, it will “reduce” the number of schools in villages and towns, directly impact minorities, Dalits, Adivasis and other marginalized sections. Asserting that it seeks to hand over eduction to capitalists, participants in the discussion – who included representatives from the Right to Education (RTE) Forum Gujarat, Students’ Federation of India (SFI), and Minority Coordination Committee (MCC) – the discussion ended with burning of copies of the draft NEP. MCC convener Mujahid Nafees, who also represented the RTE Forum, said that the government has failed to implement the RTE Act, and the draft NEP talk of doubling the budgetary allocation for education is an “eyewash.” Pointing towards the draft mentioning the need to relax RTE norms in private schools, Nafees said, the overall quality...

Indira Gandhi, Balasaheb Deoras By Shamsul Islam* National Emergency was imposed on the country by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on June 25-26, 1975, and it lasted for 19 months. This period is considered as ''dark times' for Indian democratic polity. Indira Gandhi claimed that due to Jaiprakash Narayan's call to the armed forces to disobey the 'illegal' orders of Congress rulers had created a situation of anarchy and there was danger to the existence of Indian Republic so there was no alternative but to impose Emergency under article 352 of the Constitution.

Counterview Desk The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST), a civic transport and electricity provider public body based in Mumbai, was originally set up in 1873 as a tramway company called Bombay Tramway Company Limited. The company set up a captive thermal power station at Wadi Bunder in November 1905 to generate electricity for its trams and supply electricity to the city, and re-branded itself to Bombay Electric Supply & Tramways (BEST) Company.

By Darshini Mahadevia* Ren,u Desai** Urban development and planning, two important pillars of India’s economic growth and development pathway, were given importance in the ‘New Urban Agenda’ adopted at the Habitat III conference in 2016 to help achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 – safe, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities. India’s urban development journey over the last two decades has coincided with increasing marginalisation, exclusion, conflict, and everyday violence in the cities. This violence has gone unnoticed and unanalysed in the urban planning and policy-making world. The economic reforms of 1991 increased urban inequalities, which have worsened through inequitable urban planning. As an instrument of planning, the Master Plan has also deemed many areas of the city to be illegal and, as a result, the Indian state has engineered the “elite capture” of urban spaces. It has also subverted pro-poor provisions of Master Plans. The poor thus find spaces in the ci...

Counterview Desk The Jharkhand Janadhikar Manch (JJM), a civil rights network, on Monday sponsored a protest against the police action against the Adivasi victims of the lynching which took on April 10, 2019, in Jurmu village of Dumri block in Gumla district of Jharkhand. The incident led the death of Prakash Lakda, aged 50.

Gujarat CM overseeing Sabarmati riverfront clean-up drive on June 5, 2019 Counterview Desk   In a fresh letter to the secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Government of India, senior Gujarat environmentalists Rohit Prajapati and Krishnakant of the Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS) have taken strong objection to the recent clean-up drive of the about 11.3 km stretch of Sabarmati riverbed undertaken by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), terming it as “swimming pool type clean-up.” The river’s total length is 371 km.

By RK Misra* Insidious are the ways authorities function, preaching one thing, practicing quite another. Administrative muscle-flexing to suit political goals was on display when the BJP-led Vijay Rupani government in Gujarat banned the export of livestock days ahead of Eid. Even the Narendra Modi-led government expressed its intent to confirm it countrywide, but stopped short of doing so.

By  A  Representative In an open Facebook post addressed to police officials, Shweta Bhatt, wife of former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment in a three decades old alleged custodial death by the Jamnagar sessions court, has warned that what has happened to her husband today may happen to them tomorrow. Even as thanking all the officers who “individually reached out” to her to support the fight for Sanjiv Bhatt, Shweta Bhatt says, as for those “who are either too afraid to take a stand or who are working at the pleasure and the behest of this extremist political regime”, their “silence and inaction is permitting the establishment of a very dangerous precedent.” She adds, “If you think by staying silent or by working at their behest, either under pressure or fear, you are safe… then think again. You are some of the finest and brightest minds of the country, you know more than anyone; today it’s Sanjiv and his family, tomorrow it can be you and...

An explicit anti-Dalit, anti-reservation FB post By Rajiv Shah A recent American civil society research has found that 40% of India's casteist posts on Facebook (FB) have anti-reservation slant. Asserting that the reservation policy in India is similar to affirmative action in the United States, the research study, titled "Facebook India: Towards The Tipping Point of Violence Caste and Religious Hate Speech", says, this type of hate content on FB is mainly directed against Dalits and Adivasis.

By Christophe Z Guilmoto* Much ink has already been spilled on the 2019 general elections in India. The sheer scale of the triumph of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the defeat of the Indian National Congress (INC) has impressed commentators as the NDA, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), gained 353 seats among the total of 542 seats in the Lok Sabha (the Indian parliament). The NDA has secured seats in almost all Indian state and the BJP clearly ceased to be the strictly north Indian party it once was .

By Rajiv Shah  A just-released  report  has asserted that India's ranking in the Global Peace Index (GPI) is 141st among 163 countries, deteriorating by four ranks in a year. Ranking 163 countries by providing a score to each, the report, prepared by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), headquartered in Sydney, Australia, has found India to be one of the least peaceful nations in the region.

By  A  Representative Several civil rights organizations have decided to hold a day-long consultation on forest rights movements and the way forward in New Delhi July 2, 2019 against the backdrop of the fear that lakhs of forest dwellers may again be on the verge of an “existential crisis” after July 10, the date till which the Supreme Court gave a reprieve on February 23 for its controversial February 13 order, directing state governments to evict them if their claims under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) have been rejected. The consultation will be held to press upon Central and state governments to implement FRA “effectively and unconditionally” in all forest regions, including Critical Forest Areas, even as working out a plan for a united struggle with the “collective initiative” of diverse forest rights organisations/groups and supporters in different walks of life, including journalists, lawyers, researchers, social action groups and others. The consultation proposes to begi...

Counterview Desk In a statement, Ravi Kiran Jain* and Dr V Suresh** of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) have said the CBI’s FIR against the Lawyers’ Collective and senior advocate Anand Grover is an undisguised attempt to silence not just the top human rights organization but is also meant to “serve as a lesson to all others who dare to challenge the Central Government.” Calling the FIR “motivated, vengeful and vituperative act”, PUCL said the Lawyers’ Collective, which has for 38 years of its existence has taken up cases related with domestic violence, human rights, labour and womens’ rights, adding, among the important ones are the “Naz case on rights of the LGBTQ community, the Novartis case, the Sabarimala case, the triple talaaq case and the Sohrabuddin case, in which current Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah was involved.” Demanding immediate withdrawal of the FIR, PUCL said, “The case lodged against the organization smacks of vendetta for its exceptiona...

Counterview Desk Following the Jamnagar sessions court ordering life imprisonment to former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt for his alleged involvement in three decades old custodial death case, his wife Shweta Bhatt has said that he has been sentenced for a “for a crime he did not commit”, even as criticizing the Indian Police Service (IPS) Association, Gujarat, for not standing up for him.

The Right to Food Campaign (RFT), Jharkhand, prepared detailed reports on the starvation death of two more persons in the state, Motka Manjhi and Ramachandra Munda. Text of the reports: Motka Manjhi: On 3rd June 2019 a fact-finding team consisting of Mr. Ashrfi Nand Prasad, Mr Prathyush S, both from Right to Food Campaign (RTF), Mr. Sushanto Soren (Lokmanch Dumka), Adv. Samyul Soren and Mr. Kaushal Kumar from People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) visited Gram Oopar Rangini, Panchayat Asanjhor, post Asanjhor, Jama Dumka of Late Motka Manjhi, who died on 22nd May 2019. During the visit the team met the widow and two sons of the diseased. The team also met the close relatives, friends and neighbours of late Motka Manjhi. From the visit we understood that Motka Manjhi was a Malpaharia tribe (one of the PVTGs) and died on 22nd May 2019. According to his wife and relatives, Motka had never complained about any illness or ailments and was not under any treatment. His death was of sudden....

By  A  Representative Two more starvation deaths have occurred in Jharkhand recently, one in Jama (Dumka district) and one in Mahuadanr (Latehar district). In both cases, the victims were pensioners but did not receive any pension payment since January 2019. Had pensions been paid on time, Motka Manjhi and Ramachandra Munda would perhaps be alive today, says a fact-finding report by the Right to Food Campaign (RFC), Jharkhand. Enquiries from the welfare office in Latehar district revealed that no pensions have been paid in the entire district after January 2019. The reason, the fact-finding team was told, is that the required financial allotments had not been made by the state government. “Reports from other districts suggest that this is the situation in many other districts as well, if not in the entire state”, RFC said in a statement. “On November 28, 2001, the Supreme Court directed the central and state governments to ensure that social security pensions are promptly pa...

Nava Thakuria* Indian supporters for a free Tibet have urged the Government of India to confer Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian honour, on the Tibetan spiritual leader, the 14th Dalai Lama, for his “immense contributions” in creating goodwill for India in the last six decades. A declaration, adopted at the 6th All-India Tibet Support Groups’ Conference held on June 15 and 16 in Dharamshala township of Himachal Pradesh, said that the Nobel laureate continues to be a holy ambassador of Indian culture enriched with non-violence, compassion and religious harmony.

By Mohan Guruswamy* Kashmir is the northernmost geographical region of South Asia. Until the mid-19th century, the term "Kashmir" denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range. The name Kashmir derives from the Sanskrit Kashyapmeru. The Greeks knew it as Kaspeiria. Herodotus called it Kaspatyros.

By Pankti Jog* The Gujarat state assembly recently passed a new law which would "govern" the working condition of shops and establishments. One of the most talked about provisions of the Act is, it allow shops and establishments across Gujarat to function 24 hours.

Indira Jaising, Anand Grover Counterview Desk The Lawyers Collective (LC), an NGO claiming to promote human rights issues, has expressed surprise at the latest move by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to register an FIR against the Lawyers Collective (LC), its president Anand Grover and unknown office bearers for alleged violation of the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA).

Rajesh, Nanjibhai Sondharva By  A  Representative Will the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) go in for a “thorough inquiry” into the recent murder of 19-year old Rajesh Sondharva a resident of Manekwada village in Rajkot district of Gujarat? As claimed by well-known right to information (RTI) activist Venkatesh Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Commission (CHRI), following his complaint , NHRC has decided “register a case” in the matter.

Rajesh Sondharva By Venkatesh Nayak* Readers may remember recent news reports of the alleged murder of 19-year old Rajesh @ Raju Sondharva a resident of Manekwada village in Rajkot district of Gujarat. Rajesh who belongs to the Dalit community was fighting for justice in a criminal case involving the murder of his father, the Late Nanjibhai Meghabhai Sondharva. In March 2018, Nanjibhai was allegedly murdered for exposing corruption in the construction of a road in his village through his RTI interventions. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has recently registered my complaint pressing for a thorough inquiry into the murder of Rajesh Sondharva. Last year, based on my complaint, the NHRC had sought reports of action taken by the Rajkot Police to investigate the circumstances leading to Nanjibhai’s murder. However the NHRC closed its inquiry into my complaint after the murder case was committed for trial. According to media reports, Rajesh was attacked because he was trying to d...