NEW DELHI: Fresh controversy over alleged use of spyware Pegasus for snooping purposes may have scratched open a old malaise that has festered due to successive governments irresistible desire for illegal interception of telephones for decades despite the Supreme Court in 1996 laying down unambiguous and stringent guidelines to curb unauthorised surveillance.
From the 1970s, the SC has taken up many cases of telephone tapping. The Second Press Commission, set up by Morarji Desai government in 1978, in its report had referred to this malaise and said, not infrequently, the Press in general and its editorial echelons in particular have to suffer from the tapping of telephones.
It is the third day of Ramzan. Farida and her husband have just broken their fast. They offer their visitor from Delhi an assortment of
jol khabar (teatime snacks) served in delicate bone china crockery. There is an air of genteel calm in their drawing room. The polished red oxide cement floor, the ebony and glass showcase filled with silver enamelled artefacts, the unflashy furniture and the understated carpets, evoke an old-world charm far removed from the raucous din of Park Circus a stone’s throw away.
Farida’s husband – let us call him Farooq – traces his ancestry to Avadh but has lived in Calcutta all his life. It is a city he loves without reservation, a city where his religion or his language never made him feel alien. On the first day of Ramzan, he tells us, a Hindu Punjabi neighbour sent a platter of food for iftar. The next day, haleem came from the home of a Sikh friend. This year’s Ramzan is special – their younger daughter will keep the first roza of
Barpeta, India – It has been nearly a year since 12-year-old Ayesha Siddiqa has been confined to her house in India’s northeastern state of Assam due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Her school in Gomafulbaru in the Barpeta district offered online classes, but the grade 6 student could not attend, as her parents cannot afford a smartphone.
Siddiqa lives with her parents and younger brother in a char – a remote riverine island formed by siltation of the Brahmaputra river that cuts through the state of nearly 30 million. Her father Abed Ali, 45, and mother Gulbahar Nesa grow rice on rented farmland, but struggle to make ends meet.
Express News Service
CHENNAI: Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami’s pre-poll gesture to drop cases against people who were involved in the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) protests may have come as a relief to the minority community, but for most of them, pandemic-driven unemployment will still be the burning issue in this year’s Assembly elections.
As many of them wait patiently for the court procedure to takes its course, they feel that though the CAA movement had coagulated their opinions, they are more concerned about how the new government will focus on offering a favourable climate for employment.
Echoing their opinion, an Arabic professor, KMA Ahmed Zubair, said due to lack of opportunities here, middle-aged persons and youngsters migrated to countries in West Asia to take up unskilled and semi-skilled jobs, while a section of Muslims from Ilayangudi (Sivaganga), Kayilpattinam (Thoothukudi), and Keelakari (Ramanathapuram) went to work in road-side eateries in Ma