The Latest: Top stories of the day
1. Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union President Kanhaiya Kumar's bail plea in the sedition case against him will get an extraordinary hearing in the Supreme Court today.
2. The Supreme Court has paved the way for a new government to be formed in Arunachal Pradesh.
3. The Haryana government has blocked mobile services in Rohtak after a protest by the Jat community to seek reservations stirred tensions.

The Big Story: Kanhaiya case

JNU Students' Union President Kanhaiya Kumar is set to appear in an extraordinary bail hearing on Friday morning, directly before the Supreme Court, because of what his lawyers claim are a threat to his life made evident by the violence around his previous two appearances in the magisterial court. Meanwhile, a week after the First Information Report was lodged naming him in the alleged sedition case, the Delhi Police have yet to find evidence against the JNUSU president.

Worse, it emerged that doctored videos had been going around – and even aired on news television – that showed Kumar yelling anti-national slogans. Indeed, over the last few days, leaks from the Home Ministry have suggested that the Delhi Police might have jumped the gun in arresting Kumar, who has not been shown to have raised any seditious slogans.

Police Commissioner BS Bassi has all along claimed to have had "adequate evidence" to prosecute Kumar for sedition. Despite this, on Wednesday, after the JNUSU president wrote a letter reaffirming his belief in the Indian constitution, Bassi said that the young man should be "given a chance" and that the police would not oppose a bail plea.

Kumar's entire case might be the best proof of how thin this entire anti-national edifice, on which the Bharatiya Janata Party intends to spend the next three days campaigning, actually is. If the police don't actually have evidence against Kumar, it calls into question the way they have been acting from the very beginning: going onto campus, arresting students without cause and tarring the names of others. If Kanhaiya Kumar isn't at fault in this episode, will the ones who put him in jail be put to task?

Advertisement

The Big Scroll:
Fact check: The video of Kanhaiya Kumar shouting for 'azadi' – it’s doctored, Shoaib Daniyal writes. This time Delhi's 'Naxals' faced the brunt but will JNU be forgotten just like the Adivasis, asks Jyoti Punwani.

Politicking & Policying
1. Vice Chancellors of all central universities agreed to "prominently and proudly" fly the national flag on campus to instill nationalism in their students.
2. The government is considering setting up a 'bad' bank that will specifically deal with Non-Performing Assets to help clean up the balance sheets of other over-stressed banks.
3. India's telecom regulator said that content provided through closed intranets will not be governed by the order prohibiting differential pricing.
4. Chhattisgarh Police have been harassing and intimidating a legal aid group that was working to help locals fight state abuses.
5. The Bharatiya Janata Party's hopes of including the Asom Gana Parishad in its alliance for the upcoming Assam polls has suffered a setback, with the AGP saying it will go it alone.

Punditry
1. Siddharth Varadarajan writes in the Wire that the JNU sedition case is a time for Indians to stand up and be counted.
2. Why we need to listen to what Rohith Vemula and Kanhaiya Kumar say, writes Ajay Gudavarthy in the Indian Express.
3. Spurious nationalism begets a spurious democracy, writes Sudeep Chakravarti in Mint.

Don't Miss
Omkar Goswami reminds us of the lessons of 1933 and 1975.

It is important to appreciate how quickly civilised nations can sink to evil. Because I treasure India’s civil liberties and the constitutional right to free speech, because I feel that these are being increasingly trampled upon by politically-organised rabble. I write this because I believe that such acts are either being silently witnessed and assented to, or lustily cheered, because I fear that once we cross the Rubicon, we will be in a frightening territory of a State-sponsored “might is right”, “jiski laathi uski bhains” [he who owns the stick owns the buffalo] type of society.