Eight Congress MPs were suspended from the Lok Sabha for the remainder of the Budget session after they allegedly tore papers and threw them at the speaker’s chair. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju moved the resolution, which was adopted by the House.

The suspended MPs are Hibi Eden, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, Manickam Tagore, Gurjeet Singh Aujla, Chamala Kiran Kumar Reddy, Prashant Padole, S Venkataraman and Dean Kuriakose. The Lok Sabha was adjourned for the day amid a ruckus.

The protest by the Opposition followed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi being prevented from quoting an excerpt from former Army chief Manoj Mukund Naravane’s unpublished memoir about the political decision-making during the 2020 border tensions between India and China, during the debate in the House.

Congress MPs protested after the chair called on other members to speak before Gandhi had completed his speech. Read on.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi asked in the Lok Sabha why he was being stopped from discussing the excerpt from Naravane’s unpublished book. Gandhi said that he was willing to not quote a magazine article about the excerpts, but added that he should be allowed to speak about its contents that are related to national security.

Accusing Gandhi of misleading the Lok Sabha, Rijiju said that Gandhi cannot again quote the excerpts that Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla had on Monday refused to allow.

Since Monday, MPs from the Bharatiya Janata Party have been objecting to the Congress leader speaking on the matter, arguing that he was quoting from a book that has not yet been released. Read on.

The Supreme Court criticised WhatsApp and its parent company Meta for what it described as the messaging platform’s “take it or leave it” privacy policy. The policy appeared to enable data theft and WhatsApp cannot expect to get away with violating the right to privacy of Indian users, the court observed verbally.

The court was hearing appeals filed by WhatsApp against a National Company Law Appellate Tribunal order upholding a Rs 213 crore penalty imposed by the Competition Commission of India on the platform for its 2021 privacy policy.

WhatsApp had informed users in January 2021 that they needed to accept the updated terms and conditions to continue using the platform. While the previous policy allowed users to opt out of sharing data with the platform’s parent company, the update had made it mandatory.

The bench flagged the unavailability of a clear option for a user to opt out of such a policy. Read on.

The number of districts affected by “Left-wing extremism” has reduced to eight from eleven in October, the Union home ministry said. The districts affected by Maoist violence in 2018 were 126.

Bijapur, Dantewada, Gariyaband, Kanker, Narayanpur and Sukma in Chhattisgarh, West Singhbhum in Jharkhand, and Kandhamal in Odisha are the districts that are still affected.

Three districts – Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur – remain in the “most affected” category, the ministry said.

The Union government has vowed to end Maoism by March 31, 2026. Read on.

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