sabrangindia | SabrangIndia https://sabrangindia.in/content-author/sabrangindia-6-19148/ News Related to Human Rights Wed, 18 Mar 2020 13:12:46 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://sabrangindia.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Favicon_0.png sabrangindia | SabrangIndia https://sabrangindia.in/content-author/sabrangindia-6-19148/ 32 32 More than 1,000 women write to state govt’s asking to de-link NPR from Census https://sabrangindia.in/more-1000-women-write-state-govts-asking-de-link-npr-census/ Wed, 18 Mar 2020 13:12:46 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2020/03/18/more-1000-women-write-state-govts-asking-de-link-npr-census/ The letter penned by activists, academics and anganwadi workers among women from other fields say that women face highest risk of exclusion from NRC which is preceded by the NPR

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WomenImage Courtesy: thewire.in

The announcement of the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC) has sparked women-led protests throughout India.

It has become widely known that the CAA-NPR-NRC together will affect minorities, especially the women, who due to financial dependence on the patriarch, coupled with practices like early marriage, lack of education and no identity documents in their name, face the risk of exclusion from the NRC which is set to be preceded by the NPR.

To bring this threat to light, more than a 1,000 women from across India have penned a letter to State Chief Ministers asking them to de-link the NPR from the Census house listing.

The women from across India present at the conference asked the CMs of every state to de-link the NPR and the Census and send out enumerators only with the house-listing schedule. They said that while many state governments have issued resolutions against the CAA-NPR-NRC, unless each state government issues executive orders to de-link the NPR and Census immediately, the resolutions will only remain a statement of expressions.

While two states, Kerala and West Bengal have issued executive orders staying the roll out of the NPR, Rajasthan and Jharkhand have ordered only the roll out of the Census from April 1, 2020.

Prominent human rights activists like Annie Raja, Farah Naqvi, Anjali Bhardwaj, Vani Subramanian, Meera Sanghmitra, Mariam Dhawle and Poonam Kaushik released a letter at Delhi’s Press Club that was sent to every Chief Minister in the country by over one thousand signatories – anganwadi workers, doctors, lawyers, academics, writers, activists, etc. from more than 20 states – on the morning of Tuesday, March 17, 2020.

The letter said, “We write to you as Indian women who are opposed to the National Population Register (NPR). Women constitute nearly 50% of India’s population, and this opposition is based on clear evidence from our own lives.”

Speaking at the Press Conference, Annie Raja said that, “Women often do not have land or property in their names, have lower literacy rates, and leave their natal homes upon marriage with no documents in tow. In Assam, a vast majority of the 19 lakh, left out of the NRC, are women. That is the reality.”

Farah Naqvi said, “All women, irrespective of caste and religious community, will be affected by this new NPR-NRIC citizenship regime that puts our citizenship to test in a totally arbitrary and frightening manner.”

She added that women and children from adivasi communities, dalit women, muslim women, migrant labourers, small farmers, the landless, domestic workers, sex workers and transgender persons, asked to ‘prove’ citizenship, will all be at grave risk of being disenfranchised, if the NPR and NRC are taken up.

Calling Home Minister Amit Shah’s announcement about nobody being marked as a “doubtful citizen” during NPR as not holding any legal sanctity, Anjali Bhardwaj said that the Section 14A of the Citizenship Act and the 2003 rules in fact gave the local registrars the power to mark citizens as “doubtful”. Clause 4-4 of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003, gives arbitrary powers to the local registrar, the lowest-rung officer in the bureaucracy, to declare anyone a doubtful citizen.

The NPR is seemingly the first step to the NRC, Sabrang India has reported earlier. The Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003, mandated the creation of an NPR (National Population Register) to function as the mother database for the NRC.

The list of questions in the NPR too show that it is just a tool to extract citizenship related information from respondents. The questions about the parents’ place of birth and the mention of “nationality recorded is as declared by the respondent. This does not confer any right to Indian Citizenship”, only go to show the government’s conceited efforts to gather information for citizenship purposes.

Also, according to the government if answering such questions is voluntary, but according to the Section 8 of the Census Act 1948, it is mandatory to answer Census questions, thereby it now being mandatory to answer NPR questions. Also, the Home Minister has earlier said that no documents would be asked for the NPR, but the NPR instruction manual has provisions to ask for Aadhar Card, Voter ID, etc. “if available”.

Because the manual specifies, “if available” and not “optional”, what about women who voluntarily decide to not reveal this data even it is available? And what happens to women who do not answer the given questions because they genuinely don’t know the answers for it?

The letter said that it was now the responsibility of the state governments to prevent this attack on India’s most marginal and demanded that it safeguard citizens and ensure that no punitive action is taken against anyone engaging in a boycott of NPR.

Related:

Census Vs. NPR, is the GOI deliberately confusing the citizen?
Will any official notification back Amit Shah’s assurances on NPR?

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Decoding hate:“Hinduhate-pride” mushrooms on Twitter post CAA https://sabrangindia.in/decoding-hate/decoding-hatehinduhate-pride-mushrooms-twitter-post-caa/ Wed, 18 Dec 2019 14:13:33 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/decoding-hate/decoding-hatehinduhate-pride-mushrooms-twitter-post-caa/ Hate ruled twitter even as widespread ground level protests swept the country against the Citizenship Amendment Act; the most prominent ones being the students’ protests in Assam and Delhi and Mumbai University! IITs and IIMs also demonstrated and the country spoke in one voice expressing solidarity with students of Jamia and AMU. Even as twitter gives space to “Hindu Hate”, social media is rife with posts speaking against the contentious Act and how it is discriminatory along religious lines.

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Our take: The major worry about this law was that it will introduce a definite line of divide between the two religions, that was once drawn out by the British who ruled over India for over 150 years which ultimately culminated into a fateful partition of the country.These worries have been proved right by right wing extremists on social media posting content disseminating hate with the intention to increase animosity against the Muslim community, pointing towards a perilous state of affairs in the near future itself if the law is enforced.

A few recent tweets reflecting “Hindu hate-pride” that reeks in the new law and has prompted such tweets from right wing rationalists:

https://twitter.com/AgrahriBjp/status/1207130140821643266

Chowkidar

Chowkidar

(You have burnt buses and trains! Tomorrow when you get the “Godhra Returns” don’t say Modi is a demon!)

https://twitter.com/AgrahriBjp/status/1206984132888162304

Chowkidar

(First the slogan was, we’ll construct a temple there, now the slogan is we’ll awaken Hindus and construct a Hindu nation!)

https://twitter.com/AgrahriBjp/status/1206964905804328960

Chowkidar

(Whatever Muslims do to prove their loyalty, they are traitors and always will be traitors)

https://twitter.com/AgrahriBjp/status/1206943069431484417

Chowkidar

https://twitter.com/SonuZood/status/1207236055268651008

(Anything is possible if Shah is there, in two days all will be quiet; either through speech or the bullet!)

Chowkidar

(Anger is not about CAB but the breaking of the Hindu nation dream? Jai Sri Ram!)

https://twitter.com/SonuZood/status/1207175784734941184

Chowkidar

(Are you people born traitors or trained to become traitors at Madrassahs, give your opinion?)

https://twitter.com/SonuZood/status/1206840330479255552

Chowkidar

(We’ll hurl the lathis at the right places! Try and demonstrate in Uttar Pradesh!)

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Delhi High Court revokes suspensions of JNU Professors removed arbitrarily https://sabrangindia.in/delhi-high-court-revokes-suspensions-jnu-professors-removed-arbitrarily/ Fri, 27 Apr 2018 13:20:31 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2018/04/27/delhi-high-court-revokes-suspensions-jnu-professors-removed-arbitrarily/ JNU faculty breathed a sigh of relief today as the Delhi High Court passed an interim order to revoke the (arbitrary) suspension of faculties from different Centres. The court was presiding over a petition jointly filed by Kavita Singh, Dean of School for Arts and Aesthetics, Udaya Kumar, Chairperson of Centre for English studies, B. Sarangi, Chairperson […]

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JNU faculty breathed a sigh of relief today as the Delhi High Court passed an interim order to revoke the (arbitrary) suspension of faculties from different Centres. The court was presiding over a petition jointly filed by Kavita Singh, Dean of School for Arts and Aesthetics, Udaya Kumar, Chairperson of Centre for English studies, B. Sarangi, Chairperson of Centre for French and Francophone Studies, Sucheta Mahajan, Chairperson, Centre for Historical Studies and one more professor from Centre for Political Science. All their suspensions will be revoked and they will be reinstated at their respective positions. The next Court date is on May 11, in which the Court is expected to pass a detailed order.
 
Commenting on the development, Kavita Singh said, “It is a huge relief granted to us. We welcome this decision of the Court. We were exercising our conscience and didn’t engage in any disruptive activities. We are grateful for the court’s decision and look forward to the next hearing and a detailed order”

Through the petition, the petitioners contested the legality of the decision regarding their suspension, as well as the decision on attendance by the 144th AC meeting held on 1 December 2017. 
 
Earlier, through a shocking order in March, the JNU VC removed at least seven Deans/Chairpersons in a seemingly arbitrary manner for ““not complying with or refusing to implement the mandatory attendance system” in their respective Schools/Centres. Previously, the university said that it planned to set up an enquiry committee to look into the cases which didn’t fulfil the newly introduced mandatory attendance criteria.
The new rule had met with fierce opposition from both students and faculty previously.

The order for expulsion was issued to the chairpersons of the Centre for French and Francophone Studies; Centre for Linguistics; Centre for Historical Studies; Centre for Economic studies & Planning; Centre for Comparative Politics and Political Thought; and the Centre for English Studies. Similar order was also issued to the Dean of the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Kavita Singh on Wednesday. The order signed by the Section Officer (Academic), A D Bahuguna said, “The Executive Council in its 272nd meeting held on March 13 confirmed the decision taken in the 271st (emergency) meeting of the EC on resolution number 08 of the 144th (A) meeting of the Academic Council, held on Dec 1, 2017 regarding compulsory attendance in all regular courses, and authorised the Vice-Chancellor to replace the existing Deans of Schools/Chairpersons of Centres who have not complied with, or refused to, implement the attendance system in the university, with the Acting Deans/Chairpersons.”
 

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