UP lady cop who stood up against BJP leaders, shunted out

Jan 22: India's ranking in the latest global Democracy Index has dropped 10 places to the 51st spot out of 167 owing to violent protests and threats to civil liberties challenging freedoms across the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has been criticized by rights groups and western governments after shutting off the internet and mobile phone networks and detaining opposition politicians in Kashmir.

Modi’s government has also responded harshly to ongoing protests against a controversial, religion-based citizenship law. Muslims have said their neighborhoods have been targeted, while the central government has attempted to ban protests and urged TV news channels not to broadcast “anti-national” content. Some leaders in Modi’s ruling party called for “revenge” against protesters. India’s score in 2019 was its worst ranking since the EIU’s records began in 2006, and has fallen gradually since Modi was elected in 2014.

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2019 Democracy Index, which provides an annual comparative analysis of political systems across 165 countries and two territories, said the past year was the bleakest for democracies since the research firm began compiling the list in 2006.

“The 2019 result is even worse than that recorded in 2010, in the wake of the global economic and financial crisis,” the research group said in releasing the report on Wednesday.

The average global score slipped to 5.44 out of a possible 10 -- from 5.48 in 2018 -- driven mainly by “sharp regressions” in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa. Apart from coup-prone Thailand, which improved its score after holding an election last year, there were also notable declines in Asia after a tumultuous period of protests and new measures restricting freedom across the region’s democracies.

Asia Declines

Hong Kong, meanwhile, fell three places to rank 75th out of 167 as more than seven months of violent and disruptive protests rocked the Asian financial hub. An aggressive police response early in the unrest, when protests were mostly peaceful, led to a “marked decline in confidence in government -- the main factor behind the decline in the territory’s score in our 2019 index,” the group said.

In Singapore, which ranked alongside Hong Kong at 75th, a new “fake news” law led to a deteriorating score on civil liberties.

“The government claims that the law was enacted simply to prevent the dissemination of false news, but it threatens freedom of expression in Singapore, as it can be used to curtail political debate and silence critics of the government,” EIU analysts said.

China’s score fell to just 2.26 in the EIU’s ranking, placing it near the bottom of the list at 153, as discrimination against minorities, repression and surveillance of the population intensified. Still, in China “the majority of the population is unconvinced that democracy would benefit the economy, and support for democratic ideals is absent,” the EIU said.

Mar 7: Two Malayalam news channels, Asianet News and Media One, which were banned by the information and broadcasting ministry for their coverage of the recent violence in Delhi on Friday evening, were allowed to resume telecasting on Saturday morning.

While Asianet News appeared to have begun operations around 7am on Saturday, Media One was screening content by 9.30am.

The ministry of information and broadcasting had imposed a 48-hour ban on Asianet News and Media One for their coverage of the Delhi violence for 48 hours from 7.30pm on Friday. Both Asianet News and Media One were barred under Rule 6(1 c) and Rule 6(1e) of the Cable Television Networks Act, 1994.

The ministry of information and broadcasting alleged Asianet News and Media One were "biased" and critical of the RSS and Delhi Police.

The ban on Asianet News and Media One triggered a torrent of criticism of the move. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor asked how "Malayalam channels inflame communal passions in Delhi?" and alleged some English news channels were continuing "their brazen distortions" with impunity.

In a statement issued on Friday after the ban, Media One termed the move "unfortunate and condemnable" and called it a "blatant attack against free and fair reporting". Media One called it "an order to stop free and fair journalism".

New Delhi, May 6: Taking a cue from states, the Centre announced one of the steepest hikes in duties on petrol and diesel in the recent past, by raising it by Rs 10 and Rs 13 per litre, respectively, in a notification issued late on Tuesday.

Retail prices, however, will see no change as the price hike will be absorbed by oil marketing companies against the fall in crude prices.

Road and infrastructure cess was hiked by Rs 8 for petrol and diesel and the special additional excise duty (SAED) was hiked by Rs 2 per litre and Rs 5 per litre, respectively. While the road cess will only go into the Centre’s coffers, the hike on account of SAED will be passed on to states via devolution at 42 per cent. Hence, the states will get only Rs 0.84 per litre in case of petrol and Rs 2.1 in case of diesel.

The decision comes after several states increased the value added tax (VAT) on petrol and diesel making use of the lower price regime. The Delhi government on Tuesday increased VAT on petrol and diesel to 30 per cent each, from 27 and 16.75, respectively. As a result, the price of petrol in Delhi increased by Rs 1.67 to Rs 71.26 a litre and diesel by Rs 7.10 to Rs 69.29 in Delhi on Tuesday.

Amid falling international crude oil prices, the Centre introduced an enabling provision in March to raise excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 8 per litre in the Finance Act. The government had on March 14 raised excise duty on petrol and diesel by? 3 per litre each, which was to help raise an additional ?39,000 crore in revenue annually.

This duty hike included Rs 2 a litre increase in SAED and Rs 1 in road and infrastructure cess. It raised SAED to Rs 10 for petrol and Rs 4 for diesel. The limit has now been increased to Rs 18 a litre in case of petrol and Rs 12 in case of diesel by way of amendment of the Eighth Schedule of the Finance Act.

Economists said the move would impact retail inflation by over half a percentage point at least. “With lower consumption, there was loss of revenue for Centre and states, who earn Rs 6 trillion annually or Rs 50,000 crore monthly from fuel. Amid lockdown in April, the collection must have come down to just Rs 5,000 crore, and this will hold for May.

This means that Centre and states have lost 20 per cent of annual revenue from fuel. Hence, they have hiked duties to recover losses,” said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist, CARE Ratings. He added that the hike will impact inflation by at least 0.6-0.7 percentage points.

According to industry experts, an estimate of the additional government revenue cannot be made as the consumption of petrol and diesel has dropped to 40 per cent of what it was before the lockdown. The duty hike comes following a drop in international crude oil prices in April, owing to lower consumption figures globally. At 11.50 pm on Tuesday, Brent was priced at $30.67 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was seen at $24.36 a barrel. On Monday, the Indian basket of crude oil was priced at $23.38 a barrel, after touching a 15-year low last month.