Ep 30: Data protection draft bill, Chharanagar police raid and more

The latest episode of Reporters Without Orders features our jugaad host Amit Bhardwaj along with Rohin Verma, two-time Ramnath Goenka awardee Rahul Kotiyal, and Aroon Deep from medianama.com.The panel discusses the Data Protection draft bill where Aroon explains how the draft bill will enable the users to give and withdraw consent for informational data on them. “The only reason this bill exists right now because the Supreme Court essentially nudged the government to setup data protection framework in the first place,” says Aroon. He added that India lacked the legal framework for informational privacy. “What is going to change with this bill is that the information collection won’t happen in darkness. Every data controller will be accountable for what it collects, whether it has got consent from you for the data it has collected,” he further adds. The panel weighs in to add that due to lack of internet literacy in the country, these legislations will make the least difference on the ground.The panel discusses Rohin’s exclusive report for Newslaundry Hindi which lists out 15 children shelter homes in Bihar where cases of alleged sexual and physical harassment were found by the audit report done by the TISS. “Accused Brajesh Thakur (in the Muzaffarpur children shelter home rape cases) was arrested by the police very late. Despite the arrest, he got admitted in the hospital for 15 days,” says Rohin. He points out the laxity displayed by the district administrations and the police in the cases pointed out by the TISS report. The administration of only three districts has acted on the findings of the TISS report that too after months. “Those running these shelter homes are not ordinary people. For instance, Nari Gunjan, in Patna, is run by Sudha Varghese. She is a Padma Shree awardee. Serious mismanagement was found in the centre run by her, and yet there is no action against it,” he added citing the reasons for a possible delay in the police action in these cases. Amit and Rahul discuss how the local media and civil society in Bihar has failed to outrage in the wake of the Muzaffarpur rapes reported at the children shelter home. Rahul points out the society in general often fail to outrage in the sexual abuse cases where the victims belong to weaker economic and social classes – as it happened with the Muzaffarpur shelter home rape victims.The panel also discusses how the stories related to the police raid and alleged assault of residents of Ahmedabad’s Chharanagar locality, where Chharas - a Denotified Tribes (DNT) lives, went under-reported. Amit also adds that TV media largely under-reported or ignored the stories concerning Delhi Lokayukta giving a clean chit to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in the case based on allegations levelled by rebel AAP lawmaker Kapil Mishra.

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