Above the Fold: Top stories of the day
1. The first day of the monsoon session saw Parliament at a stalemate. The government was ready for debate while the Opposition demanded that BJP ministers Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Chouhan resign first.
2. The Union cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is considering an amendment to the land bill that would allow states to formulate their own laws on land acquisition.
3. BJP MP Tarun Vijay's demand that army personnel be granted land in Jammu and Kashmir has angered the PDP, currently heading the coalition in the state.
The Big Story: The example of Yakub Memon
As the Supreme Court rejects the curative petition against his death penalty, hope drains away for Yakub Memon. The accused in the 1993 Mumbai blast case is to be hanged on July 30, according to reports. Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, who had led the proceedings against Memon in the TADA court as well as the prosecution of 26/11 accused Ajmal Kasab, said the dismissal of the curative petition was "historic" and would send a "strong signal" to those who commit acts of terror. So Yakub Memon is to be made an example of.
What sort of example does it set, exactly? Yakub, accused of funding the terrorists responsible for the blasts, is the brother of Tiger Memon, a prime accused in the case who eludes the authorities till date. The courts have sent to his death a man who, by his own account, left the relative safety of Karachi to give himself up to Indian authorities and cooperate with them. Yakub spent 21 years in prison, eight of them on death row. Considerations of the time spent in confinement do not seem to have weighed with the courts. The case also prompts the question, how do courts define "rarest of the rare" while handing out death sentences? Between 2001and 2011, 1,445 people were given death penalties by Indian courts, an average of about 132 prisoners per year. Not exactly a rare occurrence.
Ajmal Kasab's hanging was the 56th in independent India, and courts as well as a large section of public opinion have shown an alarming ease with the idea of the death sentence. This despite the fact that doubts have been raised about the case against Dhananjay Chatterjee, hanged in 2004 for raping and murdering a girl in Kolkata. Last year, when the Supreme Court commuted the sentence of 15 death row prisoners, because of the long time taken to decide on their mercy petitions, it was a moment of hope. Indian courts appeared to be stepping towards healthy doubt about the death penalty, questioning the idea that the state has the power to forfeit an individual's basic right to life. If Yakub Memon is hanged, however, we will have taken several steps back. We will have chosen to remain a society that demands blood for blood.
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's biggest stories
This tendency of dealing with curative petitions without any oral hearing, defeats the very purpose of such petitions, some lawyers maintain. Even in a case that involved a matter of life and death, the time allotted for the curative petition in Supreme Court was five minutes. The Supreme Court's upholding the death sentence for the man who surrendered, hoping to clear his name in the Mumbai bomb blasts case, also draws our attention to the miscarriage of justice in the preceding riots, Jyoti Punwani had argued.
Politicking and Policying
1. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asserted in a rally on Tuesday that the CPI(M) had been "taken care of". Next stop, Delhi, where the BJP was sowing the seeds of communalism, according to Banerjee.
2. The AAP government in Delhi is calling for a special session on crimes against women.
3. According to data collated by the Union home ministry, communal clashes in the first half of 2015 have gone up by 24% from the same period last year.
Punditry
1. Shiv Visvananthan writes in the Hindu that in the spat between Rajiv Malhotra and his Western critics, the rituals of scholarly debate were abandoned.
2. Writing in the Indian Express, Abhijit Sen points out that the Socio Economic Caste Census could help welfare out of the binary trap of above poverty line and below poverty line.
3. Where is the right wing Amartya Sen, asks Sagarika Ghose in the Times of India.
Don't Miss
Smruti Koppikar on how Maharashtra's farmers must deal with a government who wants to make them debt free but will not submit to a debt waiver.
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1. The first day of the monsoon session saw Parliament at a stalemate. The government was ready for debate while the Opposition demanded that BJP ministers Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Chouhan resign first.
2. The Union cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is considering an amendment to the land bill that would allow states to formulate their own laws on land acquisition.
3. BJP MP Tarun Vijay's demand that army personnel be granted land in Jammu and Kashmir has angered the PDP, currently heading the coalition in the state.
The Big Story: The example of Yakub Memon
As the Supreme Court rejects the curative petition against his death penalty, hope drains away for Yakub Memon. The accused in the 1993 Mumbai blast case is to be hanged on July 30, according to reports. Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, who had led the proceedings against Memon in the TADA court as well as the prosecution of 26/11 accused Ajmal Kasab, said the dismissal of the curative petition was "historic" and would send a "strong signal" to those who commit acts of terror. So Yakub Memon is to be made an example of.
What sort of example does it set, exactly? Yakub, accused of funding the terrorists responsible for the blasts, is the brother of Tiger Memon, a prime accused in the case who eludes the authorities till date. The courts have sent to his death a man who, by his own account, left the relative safety of Karachi to give himself up to Indian authorities and cooperate with them. Yakub spent 21 years in prison, eight of them on death row. Considerations of the time spent in confinement do not seem to have weighed with the courts. The case also prompts the question, how do courts define "rarest of the rare" while handing out death sentences? Between 2001and 2011, 1,445 people were given death penalties by Indian courts, an average of about 132 prisoners per year. Not exactly a rare occurrence.
Ajmal Kasab's hanging was the 56th in independent India, and courts as well as a large section of public opinion have shown an alarming ease with the idea of the death sentence. This despite the fact that doubts have been raised about the case against Dhananjay Chatterjee, hanged in 2004 for raping and murdering a girl in Kolkata. Last year, when the Supreme Court commuted the sentence of 15 death row prisoners, because of the long time taken to decide on their mercy petitions, it was a moment of hope. Indian courts appeared to be stepping towards healthy doubt about the death penalty, questioning the idea that the state has the power to forfeit an individual's basic right to life. If Yakub Memon is hanged, however, we will have taken several steps back. We will have chosen to remain a society that demands blood for blood.
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's biggest stories
This tendency of dealing with curative petitions without any oral hearing, defeats the very purpose of such petitions, some lawyers maintain. Even in a case that involved a matter of life and death, the time allotted for the curative petition in Supreme Court was five minutes. The Supreme Court's upholding the death sentence for the man who surrendered, hoping to clear his name in the Mumbai bomb blasts case, also draws our attention to the miscarriage of justice in the preceding riots, Jyoti Punwani had argued.
Politicking and Policying
1. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asserted in a rally on Tuesday that the CPI(M) had been "taken care of". Next stop, Delhi, where the BJP was sowing the seeds of communalism, according to Banerjee.
2. The AAP government in Delhi is calling for a special session on crimes against women.
3. According to data collated by the Union home ministry, communal clashes in the first half of 2015 have gone up by 24% from the same period last year.
Punditry
1. Shiv Visvananthan writes in the Hindu that in the spat between Rajiv Malhotra and his Western critics, the rituals of scholarly debate were abandoned.
2. Writing in the Indian Express, Abhijit Sen points out that the Socio Economic Caste Census could help welfare out of the binary trap of above poverty line and below poverty line.
3. Where is the right wing Amartya Sen, asks Sagarika Ghose in the Times of India.
Don't Miss
Smruti Koppikar on how Maharashtra's farmers must deal with a government who wants to make them debt free but will not submit to a debt waiver.
"Set against the rapidly rising incidence of farmer suicide in both Vidarbha and Marathwada regions, the escalating demand for debt waivers seems appropriate. But the fact that the Congress and NCP are raising the demand makes it cynical. Between 1999 and 2014, while they were in power, the state’s farm crisis worsened and farmers’ condition deteriorated.
Now, as farmers become convenient fodder for politicians to score brownie points and indulge in a game of one-upmanship, Maharashtra’s farmers are trapped between the debt-waiver and debt-free approach to resolving the crisis. Should they be debt-free? That’s a no-brainer. Will a debt waiver at this juncture save some of them from going over the edge? That’s a no-brainer too."