Between 2009 and February 2011, at least 14 people were charged with sedition in India London: The typical citizen could be forgiven for fearing that the world’s largest democracy is hurtling towards George Orwell’s 1984 rather than 2013. In late August the government’s department of telecommunications, citing the “communal tensions” around Assam, blocked more than 300 individual web addresses, including the Twitter profile pages of some journalists. It also ordered a limit...
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Is invoking the sedition law mere state folly or a sign that space for dissent is shrinking?-Sukumar Muralidharan
-The Economic Times "Sedition" is a legal construct from less enlightened times, when the sovereign power claimed a divine sanction and subjects were expected to live in awe and fear. So what is republican India doing, in its seventh decade, in bringing a charge of sedition against a self-publishing cartoonist with a propensity for scatology and lurid imagery? A convulsive attack of folly that the agencies of the Indian state have...
More »Aseem Trivedi's arrest shows an intolerant India
-Yahoo With the government trying to gag everything that criticises its policies or actions, the day is not far when India too will be seen as 'illiberal'. Bizarre. Affectionate. Eccentric. These are some of the adjectives that have been used to describe India, but never has the word 'intolerant' become a prefix to our nation. However, with the government trying to gag everything that criticises its policies or actions, the day is...
More »Arrest cops, politicians behind cartoonist Trivedi's ordeal, Justice Katju says
-PTI CHENNAI: Terming the arrest of cartoonist Aseem Trivedi in Mumbai a "serious Criminal offence", Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju on Monday said politicians and police officials behind it should be instead arrested and tried. "Because under Section 342 of the PIC, wrongful arrest and confinement are serious Criminal offences ... If you are arresting a person who has not committed a crime, then you are committing a crime. So,...
More »Total ban on child employment on cards -Mahendra Kumar Singh
-The Times of India The Union Cabinet on Tuesday is expected to clear the proposal to amend the anti-child labour law which proposes a complete ban on employment of children up to the age of 14 in any industry — hazardous or non-hazardous. According to the proposal, children between 14 and 18 years can be employed, but only in non-hazardous industries with property safety mechanism. As of now, the Child Labour (Prohibition and...
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