Delhi Rap For Ford
New Delhi reacted strongly to US President Gerald Ford’s statement and said it was “amazing that the President of the United States has chosen to comment on the internals affairs of a friendly country without due appreciation of the issues involved”. Ford had commented on the Emergency as “a very sad development”.
Basic Equality
Equality in elections is absolutely basic to a democracy, and any abridgment of it affects an essential feature of the Constitution, Shanti Bhushan, counsel for Raj Narain, MP, argued in the PM’s election case in the Supreme Court. Challenging the 39th Amendment, which has put the PM’s election outside court scrutiny, Bhushan said there could be no discrimination in election matters on grounds of status.
Counsel submitted that the amendment had also destroyed other basic constitutional features like the concept of free and fair elections, rule of law, and political justice.
Press Restructuring
Information and Broadcasting Minister V.C. Shukla said press censorship would end with the revocation of Emergency, but the government wanted to restructure the press so that there was no confrontation in future between the two.
100 Dead
About 100 persons were feared drowned when a boat capsized in the swollen Rapti river in Pharenda tehsil in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Rembrandt Damaged The front page carried a photograph of the lower section of Rembrandt’s masterpiece, The Night Watch, after an
attacker slashed the canvas more than a dozen times and carved out a 12-inch strip from it.
