Etna burns on
nursing homes opening up vaccination centres,” said Dr Randeep Guleria, director, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi.
Guleria added that one of the options to consider could also be roping in major employers. “There is a lot of interest from industries with a large number of people working, they could also be involved provided the capacity to vaccinate exists in the organisation,” he added.
India began its vaccination campaign on January 16 at a time when the epidemic was receding in the country. This gave the country a unique headway to build up an immune capital and potentially avoid a second wave, which in other countries has wreaked havoc.
In the UK, for instance, the second wave began in early December and the country rolled out its vaccination programme around the same time. But the campaign was not fast enough to get ahead of the outbreak, and the country went on to experience its most devastating wave, which peaked three weeks later.
Hospitalisations and deaths have now been falling in the country, with officials attributing the improvement to vaccines and a lockdown.
In India, another expert said the country will still need to see how the process of vaccinating people in the general population pans out.
“The pace has to be picked up obviously and it will depend on factors such as vaccines opening up for general population beyond the essential services; and how many more Indian vaccines get regulatory approvals so that more cost-effective options open up,” said Dr K Srinath Reddy, founder, Public Health Foundation of India, while adding that the country may need to wait till April-may when there will be more vaccines approved. originator, and confer blocking powers to an inter-ministerial committee that forms the third tier and which will be headed by a joint secretary level officer from the ministry of information and broadcasting.
In effect, in addition to the IT ministry, this committee can also recommend blocks or take downs.
“Having two (separate) authorities to regulate and having powers to block are unlikely to bring them in conflict with each other,” Rahul Matthan, a partner at the law firm Trilegal, said. “Section 69A has been drafted in specific terms. Essentially you can give 10 people the power to block content as long the reason is clear.”
The first tier of the regulatory mechanism is grievance redressal by the company itself; and the second level involves a Press Council of India-like regulatory body that will be headed by a retired judge of a high court or the Supreme Court.
The ministry of I&B and electronics and information technology have been working to come up with a comprehensive framework to regulate content and intermediaries. OTT platforms such as Amazon Prime have come under fire for airing content that some claimed “hurt religious sentiments”. Social media companies such as Whatsapp and Twitter, meanwhile, have sparred with the state over an update in usage policy in case of the former, and non-compliance with take down orders in the case of the latter.
According to the rules, a significant social media intermediary may be defined on the basis of the number of users for which the government is yet to set a threshold. They also involve intermediaries appointing a chief compliance officer who will be responsible for ensuring compliance with the law and be held liable if the intermediary fails to observe due diligence while discharging its duties.
Another provision in the rules is asking social media intermediaries, which operate primarily in the area of messaging, to enable the identification of the first originator — an important requirement in the effort to tackle fake news.
The issue is a point of contention for social media companies, but according to Matthan they should be able to identify the first originator using metadata related to the message. “That will technically not violate end-to-end encryption. Theoretically, it is possible. Telcos at present are obliged to do this for text messages. This essentially concerns traceability.”
The rules also say that competent authorities, though an order, may demand pertinent information for the purposes of prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution or punishment of crimes. It, however, excludes the intermediary from having to disclose the content of the personal messages.the rules mandate the creation of a grievance redressal portal as the central repository for receiving and processing all grievances. They ask intermediaries to act on certain kinds of violations within 24 hours, and on all concerns of a complainant within 15 days.
The inter-ministerial committee that is at the apex of the regulatory framework will have representatives from the ministries of IT, information and broadcasting, home, law, external affairs, defence, and women and child development.
Matthan cautioned that the velocity and volume of complaints that the government may receive are likely to be much higher than expected.
“Scale is going to be a challenge,” he said. “There are going to be thousands of complaints. Moreover, take for instance copyright violations; one also has to understand the nuances of the law. An oversight board is not a bad move. For example, whether to take down [former US President Donald] Trump’s tweet should not have been a decision left to Twitter.” because they choose to disagree with the state policies. The offence of sedition cannot be invoked to minister to the wounded vanity of the government,” the court held in its 14-page order.
The court said difference of opinion, disagreement, divergence, dissent, or for that matter, even disapprobation, are recognised legitimate tools to infuse objectivity in state policies. “An aware and assertive citizenry, in contradistinction with an indifferent or docile citizenry, is indisputably a sign of a healthy and vibrant democracy,” the order said.
As the order was read out, a visibly elated Ravi had tears in her eyes. She shook hands with two relatives in court. She was released from Tihar jail late at night. In Bengaluru, her family and friends hailed the news. “I’m feeling a sense of relief, and I’m very happy. The trust I had in the judiciary of our country has increased,” said Manjula, her mother.
Ravi, a part of the Indian wing of Fridays for Future, a global climate change movement founded by Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, was arrested on February 13 and charged with sedition, criminal conspiracy and inciting to riot. Police said Ravi, along with two other activists, created the toolkit to spread misinformation and incite unrest as part of a global conspiracy. The arrest triggered widespread outrage.
On Tuesday, the court rejected the police’s argument and said it couldn’t be presumed on “surmises or conjectures” that Ravi supported secessionist tendencies or violence, simply because she shared a platform with people who gathered to oppose the farm laws.
“The right to dissent is firmly enshrined under Article 19 of the Constitution. In my considered opinion, the freedom of speech and expression includes the right to seek a global audience. There are no geographical barriers on communication. A citizen has the fundamental rights to use the best means of imparting and receiving communication, as long as the same is permissible under the four corners of law and as such have access to audience abroad,” the court said.
The court directed Ravi to continue to cooperate with ongoing investigations, join the probe as and when summoned by the investigating officer and not leave the country without the permission of the court.
The judge said the creation of a Whatsapp group or editing a toolkit was not an offence. “Further, since the link with the said toolkit or PJF has not been found to be objectionable, mere deletion of the Whatsapp chat to destroy the evidence linking her with the toolkit and PJF, also becomes meaningless,” the court said.
The court held the January 26 tractor rally was permitted by Delhi Police and therefore there was nothing wrong in co-accused Shantanu Muluk, a Pune-based engineer, in reaching Delhi to attend the event. Muluk, and another accused, Mumbai-based lawyer Nikita Jacob, are out on pre-arrest bail.
The court said Ravi was interrogated by Delhi Police’s Special Cell for five days and placing any further restraint on her liberty on the basis of general accusation would neither be logical nor legal. The judge also cited passages from the Rig Veda and said the Indian civilization was never averse to diverse ideas.
“This 5,000-year-old civilisation of ours has never been averse to ideas from varied quarters. Even our founding father accorded due respect to the divergence of opinion by recognising the freedom of speech and expression as an inviolable fundamental right,” the court said.
The court said except for a bare assertion, no evidence was brought on record to support the contention that any violence took place at any Indian embassy after the alleged “sinister designs” of the accused and co-accused.
Talking about the toolkit, which the police said was part of a global conspiracy to defame India, the judge said he was shown two hyperlinks with links to two websites where he couldn’t find anything objectionable. He also rejected the public prosecutor’s argument that the material in the second website was “seditious” in nature.
“The imputations maybe false, exaggerated or even with a mischievous intent but the same cannot be sitgmatised being seditious unless they have tendency to foment violence,” the judge said.
He also said that the police are in the process of collecting more evidence and so they cannot be allowed to further “restrict the liberty of a citizen on the basis of propitious anticipations”.
The court noted the submission of additional solicitor general SV Raju for the police that more than 100 persons allegedly involved in the violence were arrested and interrogated by Delhi Police but no evidence was found linking Ravi to the clashes.
Activists called the order historic. “It is a historic and constitutional moment ...this is the way the judiciary is supposed to work,” environmental activist Leo Saldanha said. detained over half-a-dozen suspects from the area and are questioning them.
Shahjahanpur’s superintendent of police S Anand said: “The sisters, residents of Kant area of the district, were found in a field with serious injuries on their bodies. The younger girl was declared dead at hospital while the other one is admitted in intensive care. Her condition is stable.”
Anand said the girls, students of a nearby madrasa, left their homes on Monday morning and went to attend their lessons. They left the madrasa at around 1 pm but did not return home. Their family members informed the police at around 6 pm.
“A search team was formed by the police. Additional force from other police stations was also called in. The younger girl was found at around 8 pm in a field beside a road, at a distance of around a kilometre from their home. The elder girl was found three hours later at some distance from where the younger one was found,” said the SP.
“The younger girl was found with blood oozing out of her mouth. Her head and neck were also injured. We are waiting for the post mortem report of the body,” he said
“The elder girl also had injuries on her neck. It appears that someone tried to strangulate her. However, her condition is now stable and she is recovering in hospital,” the SP added.