CPI (M) LEADER BRINDA KARAT URGES CJI TO WITHDRAW RAPE CASE COMMENTS
NEW DELHI: CPI-M politburo member Brinda Karat requested Chief Justice of India SA Bobde to “withdraw” his comments during a hearing of a rape case on Monday, when a bench headed by him asked a rape accused whether he was ready to marry the complainant.
In a letter to the CJI, Karat said “questions, words and actions have serious implications” in granting of bail in cases of rape of minors.
“Are you willing to marry her?” the bench, led by the CJI, asked the accused who is an employee at an electricity board in Maharashtra, and who approached the court for bail in the rape case. “Will you marry her? If you are willing to marry, we will consider this (petition)…or else you will go to jail and lose your job,” it added.
The bench, also comprising justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, added that the court was not forcing the accused but was only asking about his willingness.
“Is her suffering, her trauma of no consequence, of no value?” Karat asked in the letter.
“Rape victims are not robots whose thoughts and feelings are under remote control of others. Regardless of what her parents may have wanted the girl had reportedly refused the suggestion of marriage,” she said.
“By such questions put to a rapist the message given is that a rapist can escape jail if after the crime he “agrees” to marry his victim whether she wants to or not. There is a prevailing retrograde social approach that the victim of rape is a “bad” woman and if the rapist marries her, she gains respectability .... Comments of the apex court should not give the impression of supporting such approaches,” she said.
NEW DELHI: Parliament integrated its two TV channels for the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha to create Sansad TV—A new platform that will continue to live telecast house proceedings and also pack news and current affairs programme in Hindi and English.
Officials said that the Rajya Sabha TV establishment—that runs from a rented public property adjacent to the Talkatora stadium, will be merged with the LSTV’S infrastructure to create the new entity.
Former textiles secretary Ravi Capoor has been appointed as the CEO of the new entity for a period of one year on a contract basis, an internal order of the Lok Sabha secretariat said.
The plan was proposed by an expert committee headed by Prasar Bharati CEO Surya Prakash in 2019 and aims at cutting costs, streamlining management of the channel and rejig the content to make it a more attractive product for viewers and advertisers. Both LS and RS TV were profit-making entities and the channels bagged advertisements primarily from public sector giants and central ministries.
According to the new plan, Sansad TV will have two platforms or channels to ensure
smooth telecast of live proceedings of the two Houses.
“During the recess, the options would be to run current affairs channels in English and Hindi or just shut down one channel and run programmes on the other,” said a senior official involved in the plan.
“The integrated plan would be a major cost-saving exercise as the RSTV shells out ₹10-12 crore on rent alone for its office and studio on the Talkatora Road,” said a senior official of the Rajya Sabha.
The new address for the Sansad TV will be a small bungalow at Mahadev Road that also houses kennel for eight sniffer dogs of the Parliament security service. The Lok Sabha TV also has a studio in the Parliament library building and a feed centre on the first floor of Parliament building. These existing infrastructures would be enough, officials believe, to run Sansad TV.