Parties using farmers to hold rallies: Tikait

GHAZIABAD: Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait on Saturday said at the UP Gate that none of the political parties has the “courage” to take out rallies on their own and have to invoke the farmers’ protest for holding meetings.

Tikait has been holding rallies and panchayats in different states around the national Capital. He was at UP Gate addressing farmers on the future course of agitation.

“They will have to invoke the name of farmers. Paap kiya hai sab ne (all have committed sin). They will have hold their meetings (rallies) on the name of farmers. Parties forming governments will have to become the face of farmers and have to work for the cause of farmers. They will have to include farmers in their manifestoes. Otherwise, we will not sit quite as farmers have become aware. We will go across the country,” Tikait said

Of late, many political parties have held rallies and others have proposed their rallies, particularly in UP ahead of upcoming panchayat polls in the state.

Tikait so far has conducted various rallies to garner support in states like Haryana, Rajasthan and UP. The BKU has also released his schedule of rallies for the month of March. The schedule includes his rallies in UP, Rajasthan, Haryana, Karnataka, and Madhya Pradesh.

NEW DELHI: The new rules for social media intermediaries, over the top platforms (such as Netflix and Hotstar) and digital news media publishers have been cleared as a “subordinate legislation”. A subordinate legislation is a power invoked by the government to ratify new rules.

“Subordinate legislation is the legislation made by an authority subordinate to the legislature… Most of the enactments provide for the powers for making rules, regulations, bye-laws or other statutory instruments which are exercised by the specified subordinate authorities. Such legislation is to be made within the framework of the powers so delegated by the legislature and is, therefore, known as delegated or subordinate legislation,” the Rajya Sabha Website sates.

These rules do not necessarily have to be debated by Parliament; they only have to be placed at floor of the house. The central government has invoked section 87 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, to issue the new guidelines. The sweeping changes will impact all sectors and while increasing accountability of the platforms, they also give the ministry of information and broadcasting take down powers, which until now has only rested with the ministry of electronics and information technology.

Experts say that the move is an executive overreach and the take down powers for websites have no legislative basis. According to them, the ambit of section 69(A) only extends to government agencies and intermediaries.