Counterview

Counterview Desk
In a statement, Ravi Kiran Jain, national president, and Dr V Suresh, national general secretary, People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) have expressed concern that, following the passing of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Parliament, religion will be the "key determinant for obtaining Indian citizenship", with "communal, anti-Muslim bias inbuilt" into it.

Counterview Desk
The National Campaign for Peoples Right to Information (NCPRI), in a letter to Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik, has sought "a thorough, timely and effective investigation" into the murder of Right to Information (RTI) activist Abhimanyu Panda, who was shot outside his house in Kandhamal on December 10, 2019 at 7:30am by two unidentified assailants.

By Rajiv Shah
A few days back, when I met Prof Krishna Kumar in Ahmedabad, a prominent scholar on education, whom I have considered over the last two decades more as the main brain behind Prof Yash Pal’s well-known report "Learning without Burden" (1993), I just couldn’t resist recalling my interactions with him as a BA (honours) English student in Kirori Mal College in Delhi. Prof Kumar was in Ahmedabad to deliver a lecture on why our education system was failing to succeed. It was an Umashakar Joshi memorial lecture.

By Shamsul Islam*
No other organization, in the present world, can beat Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in double-speak. In fact, what George Orwell termed as "doublespeak" would be an understatement in the case of RSS. The latest proof of this nasty case was provided by the Union Home Minister Amit Shah, de facto Prime Minister and senior RSS leader in the Lok Sabha (akin to the House of Commons in England) on December 9, 2019.

Counterview Desk
Senior IPS officer Abdur Rahman, IGP, Mumbai, resigned to register his civil protest against the passage of the Citizen's Amendment Bill (CAB) on December 11, the day CAB was passed in Parliament. In an open letter he had addressed to “brothers and sisters”, hours before CAB was voted in the Rajya Sabha, he said, "This Bill is against the religious pluralism of India. I request all justice loving people to oppose the bill in a democratic manner. It runs against the very basic feature of the Constitution.”

By Prafulla Samantra*
In the same week as the UN Climate Change Conference (COP25) summit, as world's leaders discuss climate change, in the industrial belt of Western Odisha, more than 40,000 trees were cut in Talabira forest on December 9 and 10 for establishing an open pit coalmine.