Daily Briefing: Farm protester dies at Haryana-Punjab border, remembering Fali Nariman

Shubhkaran Singh, a youth from Balloh village in Bathinda district, became the first casualty in the ongoing ‘Dilli Chalo’ farmers protest. The 22-year-old died of a head injury at the Khanauri border between Punjab and Haryana, where security personnel used teargas shells — and according to farmers, even rubber bullets — to quell the crowds. The death of the youth prompted farmer leaders to put the protest march on hold until Friday.

Remembering Fali S Nariman

“My client is the independence of the judiciary,” eminent jurist Fali Nariman once said, when asked by a five-judge Supreme Court bench who he was representing. The bench was hearing the challenge against the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) in 2015. The court ultimately struck down the constitutional amendment — a ruling that ended up being among Nariman’s biggest imprints on the Constitution.

A few hours before Nariman passed away, his trusted lieutenant for nearly 40 years, Subhash Sharma, was reading to him from a 1952 speech of Paramahansa Yogananda. “Paramhansa used to think Mahatma Gandhi was a prophet…for me, Nariman was a prophet,” Sharma said, recalling his long association with Nariman.

“The passing of Fali S Nariman represents the end of an era,” writes Senior Advocate Indira Jaising in our opinion section today. “The thinking of generations of lawyers has been shaped by the cases he argued.”

From the Front page

Samajwadi Party and the Congress — partners in the INDIA bloc — have finally reached a seat-sharing pact for Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The decision comes after weeks of tense negotiations and hard bargaining.

The Karnataka government is framing rules that would mandate multinational companies (MNCs) to display details of Kannadigas employed by them. While the state government has formed a committee to discuss rules to ensure that Kannadigas are preferred for employment, the BJP has flagged that such rules could be misused to harass companies in the state.

This year, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) would run a pilot-run of open book examinations (OBE) in a few schools for certain subjects to ascertain if OBE should be adopted across all schools for Classes 9 to 12.

Must Read

A data breach that impacted the systems of the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) in 2018 exposing the personal data of millions of Indians was found to have been “repackaged” by a Chinese cyber agency, as per a preliminary probe by New Delhi’s cybersecurity agency, The Indian Express has learnt. The data was part of a big trove of information that was leaked on Github as part of documents relating to Chinese cyber agencies.

Allegations of sexual exploitation and land grabbing against a TMC strongman — who has been absconding ever since an ED raid at his home — has made Sandeshkhali the centre of BJP-TMC politics. What is happening at this small island of West Bengal? Read our explainer.

And Finally…

Delhi Confidential: The latest gaffe by BJP’s Kerala unit has left the central leadership fuming. A theme song, made for a rally led by the state party president, has a line calling for “throwing out the corruption-infested Central government”.

In today’s episode of the ‘3 Things’ podcast, we talk about the previously unknown factor that might be affecting India’s air pollution, the controversial money Bill that helped the passage of electoral bonds scheme, and the death of a farmer during the ‘Dilli Chalo’ protest.

Until tomorrow

Sonal Gupta and Rahel Philipose

Business as Usual by EP Unny