The Evening Wrap: INDIA protests suspension of Opposition MPs, Kharge says democracy under threat

The Opposition INDIA bloc on December 22 staged a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi against the suspension of 146 MPs from the two Houses of Parliament during the Winter session and called on people to unite to save democracy in the country. The protest, which was organised under the banner of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), was attended by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chief Rahul Gandhi and leaders of Left parties, DMK, NCP, SP, NC, TMC, JMM, RJD and other members of the Opposition coalition. Addressing the gathering, Kharge said the leaders of INDIA parties have come together as democracy is under threat under the BJP government. “When all unite, Narendra Modi won’t be able to do anything... The more you try to crush us, the more we will rise. We are fighting unitedly to save the country and democracy,” he said. Gandhi said Opposition members were suspended from the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha for demanding answers from Home Minister Amit Shah on the December 13 Parliament security breach issue. “The more hatred the BJP spreads, the more love and brotherhood INDIA parties will spread,” he said. “By shunting out 150 MPs from the Parliament, the government has shut out the voice of 60 per cent Indians,” he said. NCP leader Sharad Pawar, CPI-M’s Sitaram Yechury, CPI’s D Raja, JMM’s Mahua Maji, DMK’s Tiruchi Siva, RJD’s Manoj Kumar Jha, TMC’s Mausam Noor, NC’s Hasnain Masoodi, Revolutionary Socialist Party’s N K Premachandran and SP’s S T Hasan were among the leaders present at the protest. Bajrang Punia to return Padma Shri in protest over WFI chief election Olympic medallist grappler Bajrang Punia on Friday decided to return the Padma Shri award in protest over the election of Sanjay Singh, a Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh loyalist, as the president of Wrestling Federation of India (WFI). “I am returning my Padmashree award to the Prime Minister. This is just my letter to say. This is my statement,” read a post shared by the Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist wrestler on X, formerly Twitter. On Thursday, Sanjay Singh was elected as the president of the WFI after the panel led by the close aide of Brij Bhushan won 13 of the 15 posts. Sakshi Malik, Bajrang and Vinesh Phogat addressed a press conference after Sanjay Singh’s election in which Sakshi, a bronze medallist at the 2016 Rio Olympics, announced that she would quit the sport as a mark of protest. In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bajrang wrote: “Dear PM Ji, hope your health is well. You must be busy in many work but I am writing this to draw your attention to the wrestlers of the country. “You must be aware that the women wrestlers of the country started a protest in January this year against Brij Bhushan Singh accusing him of sexual harassment. I too joined their protest. The protest stopped after the government promised strong action.” Expressing his disappointment, the star wrestler added, “But there was no FIR against Brij Bhushan even after three months. We again took to the streets in April so that the police at least file an FIR against him. “There were 19 complainants in January but the number came down to 7 by April. This means Brij Bhushan exerted his influence on 12 women wrestlers.” Bajrang was stopped at the Kartavya Path by Delhi Police officials when he tried to reach the Parliament to meet PM Modi and hand over his letter in protest against Sanjay Singh’s election. Congress appeals to President Murmu to speak up against the exploitation of women wrestlers The Congress on Friday appealed to President Droupadi Murmu and other constitutional functionaries to “speak up” against the exploitation of women wrestlers and slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for making India’s daughters cry. The party mounted a scathing attack on the BJP over the election of Sanjay Singh as the new president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI). Singh is an aide of BJP MP and former WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, against whom women wrestlers had made serious allegations of sexual harassment. Following Sanjay Singh’s election on Thursday, Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik, who was the face of the wrestlers’ protest earlier this year, announced her retirement and broke down at a press conference. Congress general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala said at a press conference that the BJP’s policy was “to make your daughter cry” and “torment” them. “I ask Honorable President of India, who we respect immensely, to shed all inhibitions and speak up for the daughters of India. I also appeal to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha to speak for daughters of farmers and the way they have been insulted,” he said. Surjewala said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi must answer the “travesty of justice, subjugation of talent and the bulldozing of quality sports” in the country. “The announcement of the retirement of the country’s first woman wrestler to win an Olympic berth after the election of BJP MP Brij Bhushan’s assistant and ‘nominee’ Sanjay Singh is a ‘dark chapter’ in sports history.” The Congress leader said that the women wrestlers had sat at Jantar Mantar for 39 days and knocked on the doors of the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and Parliament to demand justice. “Instead of giving justice, the BJP government crushed them with the shoes of Delhi Police and dragged them on the streets,” Surjewala said. Listen to today’s episode of the In Focus podcast How can gene editing help cure diseases? This month, there’s been a lot of excitement in the medical world over the approval given to treatments for diseases that based on genome editing. What’s this all about? In 2020, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was given to two women scientists, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna for their discovery of what is essentially a genetic scissors, a tool that allows scientists to cut specific sites of a human being’s DNA, or to edit it, by making minor changes. This tool, known as the CRISPR/Cas9 system, opened up opportunities to treat certain genetic or inherited disorders. Two of these are blood disorders, beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease, up until now could only be cured through bone marrow transplants. Now, they can potentially be cured by editing the patient’s own genes. So what exactly does genome editing involve? Can its potential be expanded to treat far more diseases, and what lies ahead in this field? What are the concerns surrouding this - could there be unintended consequences to genetic modifications? Dr. Vinod Scaria explains. Gaza aid resolution: U.N. again delays vote; U.S. backs it, others want stronger text The UN Security Council on December 21 again delayed a vote on a watered-down resolution to deliver desperately needed aid to Gaza — a revision backed by the United States, while other countries support a stronger text that would include the now eliminated call for the urgent suspension of hostilities between Israel and Hamas. The revised draft resolution was discussed behind closed doors for over an hour by council members not long after it was circulated. Because there were significant changes, many said they needed to consult their capitals before a vote, which is now expected on December 22. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters after the consultations that the United States backs the new text, and if it is put to a vote the U.S. will support it. The circulation of the new draft culminated a week and a half of high-level negotiations that at times involved US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Arab and Western counterparts. In a sign of intense US efforts, President Joe Biden said Wednesday that diplomats at the U.N. were engaged in negotiations on “a resolution that we may be able to agree to.” The vote, initially scheduled for Monday, has been delayed every day since then. Thomas-Greenfield denied that the resolution is watered down, saying, “The draft resolution is a very strong resolution that is fully supported by the Arab group that provides them what they feel is needed to get humanitarian assistance on the ground.” But the key provision with teeth was eliminated — a call for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Instead, it calls “for urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” The steps are not defined, but diplomats said if adopted this would mark the council’s first reference to a cessation of hostilities. On a key sticking point concerning aid deliveries, the new draft eliminates a previous request for the U.N. “to exclusively monitor all humanitarian relief consignments to Gaza provided through land, sea and air routes” by outside parties to confirm their humanitarian nature. It substitutes a request to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to appoint “a senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator with responsibility for facilitating, coordinating, monitoring and verifying” whether relief deliveries to Gaza that are not from the parties to the conflict are humanitarian goods. It asks the coordinator to establish a “mechanism” to expedite aid and demands that the parties to the conflict — Israel and Hamas — cooperate with the coordinator. Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. negotiated the new draft with the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council that sponsored the resolution, and with Egypt, which borders Gaza. This bypassed the 13 other council members, several of whom objected to being left out, according to diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity because the consultations were private. The U.S. ambassador said the revised resolution “will support the priority that Egypt has in ensuring that we put a mechanism on the ground that will support humanitarian assistance.” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has said Gaza faces “a humanitarian catastrophe” and a total collapse of the humanitarian support system would lead to “a complete breakdown of public order and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt.” According to a report released Thursday by 23 U.N. and humanitarian agencies, Gaza’s entire 2.2 million population is in a food crisis or worse and 576,600 are at the “catastrophic” starvation level. With supplies to Gaza cut off except for a small trickle, the U.N. World Food Program has said 90% of the population is regularly going without food for a full day. Nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, since the war started. In Brief:Macron to be Republic Day chief guest French President Emmanuel Macron has been invited as the Republic Day chief guest, an official source said on December 22. The French President’s office confirmed that Macron will attend the Republic Day celebration in New Delhi. Macron would be the sixth French leader to grace the prestigious occasion, people familiar with the matter said on December 22. Earlier, India had invited U.S. President Joe Biden to be the Republic Day chief guest but he expressed inability to travel to New Delhi in January. The reasons for Biden’s decision are believed to be influenced by the State of the Union address in late January or early February, his re-election bid, and Washington’s increasing focus on the Hamas-Israel conflict. Delhi court grants police 60 more days to complete NewsClick probe A Delhi court on December 22 granted the city police 60 more days to complete its probe in the case lodged under anti-terror law UAPA over allegations that news portal NewsClick received money to spread pro-China propaganda in India. Special Judge Hardeep Kaur also extended the judicial custody of the news portal’s founder and Editor-in-Chief Prabir Purkayastha and Human Resources department head Amit Chakravarty till January 20. The court passed the order on a plea moved by the Delhi Police that sought more time to complete the investigation. The Special Cell of Delhi Police had arrested Purkayastha and Chakravarty on October 3. Commercial LPG rate cut by ₹39.50 per 19-kg cylinder Commercial cooking gas (LPG) prices were on December 22 cut by ₹39.50 per 19-kg cylinder in line with softening international benchmarks. However, the price of domestic LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas) — used in household kitchens for cooking purposes — remained unchanged at ₹903 per 14.2-kg cylinder. Commercial LPG — used in various establishments such as hotels and restaurants — will now cost ₹1,757 per 19-kg cylinder in New Delhi as against ₹1,796.50, oil firms said in a price notification. State-owned oil firms last hiked the price of commercial LPG by ₹21 on December 1. Commercial LPG will now cost ₹1,710 per 19-kg cylinder in Mumbai, ₹1,868.50 in Kolkata, and ₹1,929 in Chennai. Rates differ from state to state based on incidence of local taxation. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 22 December 2023 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( INDIA bloc protests suspension of Opposition MPs, Kharge says democracy under threat The Opposition INDIA bloc on December 22 [staged a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi]( against the suspension of 146 MPs from the two Houses of Parliament during the Winter session and called on people to unite to save democracy in the country. The protest, which was organised under the banner of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), was attended by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chief Rahul Gandhi and leaders of Left parties, DMK, NCP, SP, NC, TMC, JMM, RJD and other members of the Opposition coalition. Addressing the gathering, Kharge said the leaders of INDIA parties have come together as democracy is under threat under the BJP government. “When all unite, Narendra Modi won’t be able to do anything... The more you try to crush us, the more we will rise. We are fighting unitedly to save the country and democracy,” he said. Gandhi said Opposition members were suspended from the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha for demanding answers from Home Minister Amit Shah on the December 13 Parliament security breach issue. “The more hatred the BJP spreads, the more love and brotherhood INDIA parties will spread,” he said. “By shunting out 150 MPs from the Parliament, the government has shut out the voice of 60 per cent Indians,” he said. NCP leader Sharad Pawar, CPI-M’s Sitaram Yechury, CPI’s D Raja, JMM’s Mahua Maji, DMK’s Tiruchi Siva, RJD’s Manoj Kumar Jha, TMC’s Mausam Noor, NC’s Hasnain Masoodi, Revolutionary Socialist Party’s N K Premachandran and SP’s S T Hasan were among the leaders present at the protest. Bajrang Punia to return Padma Shri in protest over WFI chief election Olympic medallist grappler [Bajrang Punia on Friday decided to return the Padma Shri award]( in protest over the election of Sanjay Singh, a Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh loyalist, as the president of Wrestling Federation of India (WFI). “I am returning my Padmashree award to the Prime Minister. This is just my letter to say. This is my statement,” read a post shared by the Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist wrestler on X, formerly Twitter. On Thursday, Sanjay Singh was elected as the president of the WFI after the panel led by the close aide of Brij Bhushan won 13 of the 15 posts. Sakshi Malik, Bajrang and Vinesh Phogat addressed a press conference after Sanjay Singh’s election in which Sakshi, a bronze medallist at the 2016 Rio Olympics, announced that she would quit the sport as a mark of protest. In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bajrang wrote: “Dear PM Ji, hope your health is well. You must be busy in many work but I am writing this to draw your attention to the wrestlers of the country. “You must be aware that the women wrestlers of the country started a protest in January this year against Brij Bhushan Singh accusing him of sexual harassment. I too joined their protest. The protest stopped after the government promised strong action.” Expressing his disappointment, the star wrestler added, “But there was no FIR against Brij Bhushan even after three months. We again took to the streets in April so that the police at least file an FIR against him. “There were 19 complainants in January but the number came down to 7 by April. This means Brij Bhushan exerted his influence on 12 women wrestlers.” Bajrang was stopped at the Kartavya Path by Delhi Police officials when he tried to reach the Parliament to meet PM Modi and hand over his letter in protest against Sanjay Singh’s election. Congress appeals to President Murmu to speak up against the exploitation of women wrestlers The Congress on Friday appealed to President Droupadi Murmu and other constitutional functionaries [to “speak up” against the exploitation of women wrestlers]( and slammed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for making India’s daughters cry. The party mounted a scathing attack on the BJP over the election of Sanjay Singh as the new president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI). Singh is an aide of BJP MP and former WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, against whom women wrestlers had made serious allegations of sexual harassment. Following Sanjay Singh’s election on Thursday, Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik, who was the face of the wrestlers’ protest earlier this year, announced her retirement and broke down at a press conference. Congress general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala said at a press conference that the BJP’s policy was “to make your daughter cry” and “torment” them. “I ask Honorable President of India, who we respect immensely, to shed all inhibitions and speak up for the daughters of India. I also appeal to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and Chairman of the Rajya Sabha to speak for daughters of farmers and the way they have been insulted,” he said. Surjewala said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi must answer the “travesty of justice, subjugation of talent and the bulldozing of quality sports” in the country. “The announcement of the retirement of the country’s first woman wrestler to win an Olympic berth after the election of BJP MP Brij Bhushan’s assistant and ‘nominee’ Sanjay Singh is a ‘dark chapter’ in sports history.” The Congress leader said that the women wrestlers had sat at Jantar Mantar for 39 days and knocked on the doors of the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and Parliament to demand justice. “Instead of giving justice, the BJP government crushed them with the shoes of Delhi Police and dragged them on the streets,” Surjewala said. Listen to today’s episode of the In Focus podcast How can gene editing help cure diseases? This month, there’s been a lot of excitement in the medical world over the approval given to treatments for diseases that based on genome editing. What’s this all about? In 2020, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was given to two women scientists, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna for their discovery of what is essentially a genetic scissors, a tool that allows scientists to cut specific sites of a human being’s DNA, or to edit it, by making minor changes. This tool, known as the CRISPR/Cas9 system, opened up opportunities to treat certain genetic or inherited disorders. Two of these are blood disorders, beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease, up until now could only be cured through bone marrow transplants. Now, they can potentially be cured by editing the patient’s own genes. So what exactly does genome editing involve? Can its potential be expanded to treat far more diseases, and what lies ahead in this field? What are the concerns surrouding this - could there be unintended consequences to genetic modifications? [Dr. Vinod Scaria explains](. Gaza aid resolution: U.N. again delays vote; U.S. backs it, others want stronger text The UN Security Council on December 21 again [delayed a vote on a watered-down resolution]( to deliver desperately needed aid to Gaza — a revision backed by the United States, while other countries support a stronger text that would include the now eliminated call for the urgent suspension of hostilities between Israel and Hamas. The revised draft resolution was discussed behind closed doors for over an hour by council members not long after it was circulated. Because there were significant changes, many said they needed to consult their capitals before a vote, which is now expected on December 22. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters after the consultations that the United States backs the new text, and if it is put to a vote the U.S. will support it. The circulation of the new draft culminated a week and a half of high-level negotiations that at times involved US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Arab and Western counterparts. In a sign of intense US efforts, President Joe Biden said Wednesday that diplomats at the U.N. were engaged in negotiations on “a resolution that we may be able to agree to.” The vote, initially scheduled for Monday, has been delayed every day since then. Thomas-Greenfield denied that the resolution is watered down, saying, “The draft resolution is a very strong resolution that is fully supported by the Arab group that provides them what they feel is needed to get humanitarian assistance on the ground.” But the key provision with teeth was eliminated — a call for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Instead, it calls “for urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” The steps are not defined, but diplomats said if adopted this would mark the council’s first reference to a cessation of hostilities. On a key sticking point concerning aid deliveries, the new draft eliminates a previous request for the U.N. “to exclusively monitor all humanitarian relief consignments to Gaza provided through land, sea and air routes” by outside parties to confirm their humanitarian nature. It substitutes a request to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to appoint “a senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator with responsibility for facilitating, coordinating, monitoring and verifying” whether relief deliveries to Gaza that are not from the parties to the conflict are humanitarian goods. It asks the coordinator to establish a “mechanism” to expedite aid and demands that the parties to the conflict — Israel and Hamas — cooperate with the coordinator. Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. negotiated the new draft with the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council that sponsored the resolution, and with Egypt, which borders Gaza. This bypassed the 13 other council members, several of whom objected to being left out, according to diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity because the consultations were private. The U.S. ambassador said the revised resolution “will support the priority that Egypt has in ensuring that we put a mechanism on the ground that will support humanitarian assistance.” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has said Gaza faces “a humanitarian catastrophe” and a total collapse of the humanitarian support system would lead to “a complete breakdown of public order and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt.” According to a report released Thursday by 23 U.N. and humanitarian agencies, Gaza’s entire 2.2 million population is in a food crisis or worse and 576,600 are at the “catastrophic” starvation level. With supplies to Gaza cut off except for a small trickle, the U.N. World Food Program has said 90% of the population is regularly going without food for a full day. Nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, since the war started. In Brief: Macron to be Republic Day chief guest French President [Emmanuel Macron has been invited as the Republic Day chief guest]( an official source said on December 22. The French President’s office confirmed that Macron will attend the Republic Day celebration in New Delhi. Macron would be the sixth French leader to grace the prestigious occasion, people familiar with the matter said on December 22. Earlier, India had invited U.S. President Joe Biden to be the Republic Day chief guest but he expressed inability to travel to New Delhi in January. The reasons for Biden’s decision are believed to be influenced by the State of the Union address in late January or early February, his re-election bid, and Washington’s increasing focus on the Hamas-Israel conflict. Delhi court grants police 60 more days to complete NewsClick probe A Delhi court on December 22 granted the city police [60 more days to complete its probe]( in the case lodged under anti-terror law UAPA over allegations that news portal NewsClick received money to spread pro-China propaganda in India. Special Judge Hardeep Kaur also extended the judicial custody of the news portal’s founder and Editor-in-Chief Prabir Purkayastha and Human Resources department head Amit Chakravarty till January 20. The court passed the order on a plea moved by the Delhi Police that sought more time to complete the investigation. The Special Cell of Delhi Police had arrested Purkayastha and Chakravarty on October 3. Commercial LPG rate cut by ₹39.50 per 19-kg cylinder Commercial cooking gas (LPG) prices were on December 22 [cut by ₹39.50 per 19-kg cylinder]( in line with softening international benchmarks. However, the price of domestic LPG (Liquified Petroleum Gas) — used in household kitchens for cooking purposes — remained unchanged at ₹903 per 14.2-kg cylinder. Commercial LPG — used in various establishments such as hotels and restaurants — will now cost ₹1,757 per 19-kg cylinder in New Delhi as against ₹1,796.50, oil firms said in a price notification. State-owned oil firms last hiked the price of commercial LPG by ₹21 on December 1. Commercial LPG will now cost ₹1,710 per 19-kg cylinder in Mumbai, ₹1,868.50 in Kolkata, and ₹1,929 in Chennai. Rates differ from state to state based on incidence of local taxation. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. Today’s Top Picks [[When massive disaster was taking place in Tamil Nadu, CM Stalin was in Delhi with ‘the INDI Alliance’, says Sitharaman] When massive disaster was taking place in Tamil Nadu, CM Stalin was in Delhi with ‘the INDI Alliance’, says Sitharaman]( [[BJP MP Pratap Simha's statement recorded in Parliament security breach case: Pralhad Joshi] BJP MP Pratap Simha's statement recorded in Parliament security breach case: Pralhad Joshi]( [[Video of Siddaramaiah in ultra-luxury jet goes viral, draws sharp reaction from BJP] Video of Siddaramaiah in ultra-luxury jet goes viral, draws sharp reaction from BJP]( [[How Mammootty rewrote the rules of stardom yet again in 2023] How Mammootty rewrote the rules of stardom yet again in 2023]( Copyright @ 2023, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. If you are facing any trouble in viewing this newsletter, please [try here]( Manage your newsletter subscription preferences [here]( If you do not wish to receive such emails [go here](