-The Hindu Six years ago, the Supreme Court struck down the provision as unconstitutional and a violation of free speech. The Supreme Court on Monday found it “distressing”, “shocking” and “terrible” that people were still booked and tried under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act even six years after the Supreme Court struck down the provision as unconstitutional and a violation of free speech. Section 66A had prescribed three years’ imprisonment if...

-NDTV.com Central Teams Rushed To 6 States Reporting Increased COVID-19 Cases New Delhi: The central government has sent six high-level multi-disciplinary public health teams to six states reporting a high number of COVID-19 cases. The teams will assist the states of  Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Manipur in COVID-19 control and containment measures, the Health Ministry said on Friday. These teams will gather a first-hand understanding of the challenges and issues...

-TheWire.in/ PARI In Bihar's villages, during the lockdown last year, teenage girls were married off to young male migrant workers who returned home. Many are now pregnant and anxious about what comes next. Both are 17, both are pregnant. Both of them collapse easily into giggles, sometimes forgetting parental instructions to keep their gaze down. And both are terrified of what comes next. Salima Parveen and Asma Khatun (names changed) were both in...

-TheWire.in COVID-19 struck like a bolt from the blue for the residents of Beed, who were already struggling with agrarian crisis, leaving them at the mercy of crumbling public health facilities. “I don’t know what finally caused her death but I know she did not get the attention she deserved.” Subash Kabade says this, describing his sister’s death. The night before his sister, Lata Survase, died in the Civil Hospital in Maharashtra’s Beed...

-TheWire.in Sainath dedicated the prize to his fellow journalists who are reporting from rural India and to PARI, the news website he founded in 2014. New Delhi: Renowned journalist P. Sainath was the recipients of the Fukuoka Grand Prize 2021, one of Japan’s top awards open to people from all Asian countries for “investigate[ing] impoverished farming villages in India, listen[ing] to voices from the rural population”. The Fukuoka Prize has three categories, Academic...