High Courts perform an intrinsic role as appellate courts and as courts of first instance in entertaining writ petitions under Article 226. They are often the first point of contact for citizens whose fundamental rights have been violated and are constantly in touch with ground realities in their jurisdictions. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the High Court of Delhi has shown commendable foresight in managing the public health crisis.
Two judges of the High Court, Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Rekha Palli, pulled up the central and the Delhi governments for abdicating their duties to citizens and stood as the true custodian of the rights of the people of Delhi. This division bench was constituted to take up matters related to Covid-19 and for the last two months has been industriously and on a daily basis trying to ensure that citizens are saved at any cost. There have been instances where they have been filled with anguish over the grim reality being faced by Delhi’s citizens.
The Delhi High Court on Tuesday issued notice on a plea, challenging the constitutional validity of the GNCTD Amendment Act, which has enhanced the powers of the Lt Governor in Delhi over the elected government.The petition challenged the Government of NCT of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which received the assent of the President on March 28, 2021, seeking a stay on the Amendment Act, in view of the prevailing pandemic conditions.KC Agarwal, Counsel for the petitioner, said that a similar petition has been filed, in which a notice has been issued.
He further submitted that he has filed this petition when the Act had not come into force.Read More…
CM Kejriwal has also affirmed the fact and described the national capital as a “gas chamber.” Chief Minister Kejriwal recently distributed breathing masks to school children and that is when he expressed his concern about the air pollution in Delhi.
Delhi School To Remain Closed Till Next Thursday As The Pollution Control Board Announced Public Health Emergency In Delhi
The pollution Control Board that has been assigned by Supreme Court has declared an emergency regarding public health in Delhi and NCR due to the growing air pollution in the area since Diwali.
The board is looking for solutions to improve the situation because a thick layer of smog has covered Delhi after people burst crackers on the Diwali Night.
CM asked the school authorities to stop all the activities including the sports and outdoor activities.
He has sent this request to protect the school children from the effects of air pollution in Delhi.
One of the most trending topics that have the people in India worried, is the talk about social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram being banned by the Government.Is this in fact true?
Is the Indian Government really going to take away the platforms which have proven to be a source of income for some, a source of entertainment, and a platform to connect to others?These are the questions that have the people of India quite worked up and worried.However, this doesn’t actually seem to be the case.
It is true, that these platforms, like WhatsApp, are going up against the Indian Government, but there has been no indication by the Indian Government for banning these platforms.What actually happened?About three months back, the Indian Government had issued new digital rules to be followed by platforms like WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook.
The terms of the new rules were something along the lines of:They are required to appoint a compliance officer in India.They are required to set up a grievance response mechanism.They are required to take down content within 36 hours of a legal order.They are required to use automated processes to take down offensive content.The government had given these firms till the 26th of May to comply with these rules, failure to do so would take away their protection from lawsuits and prosecutions.
According to the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, this would mean that these “significant social media intermediaries” or sites that are a host to a number of third-party posts, messages, and information, would not be allowed to claim legal immunity from the content posted on their sites.In light of these new rules, Google, to ensure the Indian Government of its continuous efforts to comply with the legal formalities, cited their “long history” of content that they have managed in accordance with a number of local laws.Facebook responded by saying that they “aim to comply” with the rules but at the same time they’ve asked to first discuss a few things that need to be addressed.Twitter on the other hand hasn’t responded to these new digital rules as it is currently already preoccupied being on the radar of the government and Delhi police for its “congress toolkit” tweet controversy.Sites like Koo, having around 6 million users, complied with the new rules last week itself.WhatsApp, the messaging service owned by Facebook, having nearly 400 million users in India filed a petition against the Indian Government on Tuesday.
The company said that the new digital laws put forward by the government would compel the company to violate the privacy of its users.The company made a statement saying, “Requiring messaging apps to ‘trace’ chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message sent on WhatsApp, which would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people’s right to privacy.”WhatsApp has strongly argued against the traceability of messages, as in order to do so would require them to break their encryption of people sending and receiving messages.
