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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Nitish Diminish

Nitish Diminish

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published Published on Jan 25, 2021   modified Modified on Jan 25, 2021

-The Indian Express

Bihar order against criticism of government online is against governance. The Chief Minister must scrap it.

The Bihar government’s decision to designate “objectionable and indecent” comments made online against the state government or its ministers, MLAs, MPs and officials as cyber-crime is one more example of elected governments abusing their power to buy themselves a Teflon shield against criticism, dissent and accountability. In November last year, the Kerala government had brought in an amendment making “threatening or abusive” posts punishable by a jail term, but withdrew it after an uproar against the unconstitutional move. Bihar is now sallying down the same path of undemocratic excess. A circular issued by the Bihar police’s economic offences unit, the nodal agency for action against cyber-crime, asks principal secretaries and secretaries of various departments to bring instances of such “objectionable” posts to its notice so that action can be taken under provisions of the IT Act and the Indian Penal Code.

This gag order suggests that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar perceives the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed to his state’s citizens as minor, dispensable hazards of democracy. It is not. In his last three terms, Nitish Kumar’s focus on the tangibles of development, from roads to law and order, education of girls and empowerment of women, had earned him the calling card of “Sushashan Babu”. But by shutting down uncomfortable, even angry and unruly, criticism against his government and its administrators, the JD(U) leader risks putting the enterprise of his much-touted “good governance” in peril. Unlike autocracies, democracies work by casting the net of experiences and objections wide, by refusing to believe in the vanity projects of one-man or one-woman or one-party solutions.

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The Indian Express, 25 January, 2021, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/nitish-kumar-bihar-it-act-elections-7160157/


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