RESET
🇱🇰 WHAT: Sri Lanka’s entire cabinet has resigned amid a worsening economic crisis.
🪑 Only President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the prime minister will continue on their previous posts.
🪙 Sri Lanka’s central bank governor, Ajith Cabraal, has also announced his resignation.
🕯 WHY: No official reason has been given. But the resignations come amid—
▪️Protestors defying a 36-hour national curfew over the weekend. 664 arrested till now.
—The national curfew was imposed after violent protests on March 30 by thousands outside Rajapaksa’s residence in Colombo.
▪️ A social media blackout over the weekend which spurred a rare show of dissent within the Rajapaksa family.
—Namal Rajapaksa, the outgoing minister of sport, used a virtual private network, or VPN, to tweet that the ban was “completely useless.”
▪️Crushing shortages of jobs, food, fuel, energy, paper, fertilisers, seeds, medicines and more.
🟥 Worst economic crisis since independence, critically low foreign reserves
📌 WHAT NOW: President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has invited the Opposition to accept ministerial portfolios and form a ‘Unity’ government to tackle the economic crisis.
👉 Provisionally, the President has named four Ministers on Monday “to ensure Parliament and other tasks can be conducted in a lawful manner until a full Cabinet can be sworn in”.
▪️Replacing his brother Basil Rajapaksa, the President named Ali Sabry, who was until yesterday the Minister of Justice, as the new Finance Minister. Previous ministers of Foreign Affairs, Education and Highways kept their positions.
🎥 EXPERT SPEAK: We asked well-known Sri Lankan lawyer and activist Bhavani Fonseka to break down how and when the seeds of the current crisis were sown. A must-watch!
REPEAT OFFENDER
❗️WHAT: The Delhi Police have taken suo motu cognisance of hate speech during an event called “Hindu mahapanchayat” in Delhi’s Burari area on Sunday, and have filed FIRs against the speakers.
📌 One of the accused: Yati Narsinghanand Giri, the head priest of Ghaziabad’s Dasna Devi temple.
🤬 ON THE RECORD: “In 20 years, 40% Hindus will be killed...If you want to secure your future, then be a man...And who is a man? One who holds weapons is a man.”—Excerpt from Narsinghanand’s speech at the event
— Narsinghanand is already an accused person in a hate speech case against Muslims, among other cases. He was arrested and released on bail recently after spending weeks in custody.
🎤 Other speakers at the event—which took place without police permission—included Suresh Chavhanke, the editor-in-chief of Sudarshan News and Preet Singh of Save India Foundation, the organisation behind the event.
🖊 AT THE EVENT, four journalists were assaulted by a mob, and another three were verbally abused.
🌙 Four of the attacked journalists were Muslims and were targeted allegedly after being asked about their religious identities.
🚨 Two FIRs have been filed by journalists.
A TIMELINE OF RECENT EVENTS
▪️ April 3: Scheduled no-confidence vote against PM Imran Khan dismissed by the Deputy Speaker based on a loose reading of Article 5 of Pakistan's constitution which says loyalty to the state is the duty of every citizen.
📌 CONTEXT: PM Khan claims he has proof of 'foreign conspiracy' to overthrow him, which can explain all the defection his ruling alliance has faced in recent weeks.
Based on this, the Deputy Speaker, in some ways, interpreted the vote against Khan itself as anti-state.
▪️ April 3: The President dissolved the National Assembly on Khan's request, after which the latter declared victory and called for fresh elections within 90 days.
🔍 WHAT NOW: The Supreme Court has taken suo motu cognisance of the dissolution even as the Opposition moved court. All actions and orders issued by the PM and President till a three-member bench hears all sides, starting April 5.
🇵🇰 FYI: Khan will continue as PM till a caretaker PM is chosen, even as he calls for nationwide protests against the "foreign conspiracy". Former Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed is likely to be the caretaker PM.
✊🏽 GOOD TO KNOW: After the Assembly was dissolved, an incensed Opposition held its own Parliament session and put to vote the no-confidence motion against Khan anyway. He lost this symbolic vote after 197 members voted against him.
📈 Oh, and the stock market crashed today, thanks to all the chaos.
TWO SIDES
📌 CONTEXT: The Supreme Court is hearing a petition challenging a recent Allahabad High Court order granting bail to Ashish Mishra, the prime accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence case.
🗓 REWIND: At the last hearing on March 30, the SC asked the UP government to file an appeal against Mishra’s bail, as recommended by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by former Punjab and Haryana High Court judge Rakesh Kumar Jain.
🎙 Then, the state government had said two things:
▪️Contrary to popular opinion, it had vehemently argued against bail for Mishra before the HC.
▪️It was not aware of any suggestions made by the SIT, including one to appeal bail.
❗️TODAY, the state government did a U-turn.
📣 It refused to file an appeal, accepting it had received the SIT’s recommendation to challenge the HC verdict since Mishra is an influential person, but were not “impressed” given how Mishra was a first-time offender and not a flight risk.
👩⚖️ WHAT NOW: The SC has reserved its order for now.
🚘 ICYMI: An SUV belonging to Ashish Mishra ran over people on October 3, 2021 during a protest in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri against the now-repealed three farm laws. Four farmers and a journalist were killed.
🚨 Mishra was arrested on Oct 9, and received bail on February 10, 2022. He has been out ever since.
#NEWSWORTHY SNIPPETS
🏦 The country's largest housing finance company HDFC Ltd will merge with the country's largest private sector lender HDFC Bank.
As per the proposed deal, HDFC Bank will be 100% owned by public shareholders and existing shareholders of HDFC will own 41% of the bank. Each shareholder will get 42 shares of HDFC bank for every 25 shares of HDFC.
⛽️ Fuel prices were hiked for the 12th time in two weeks today. Petrol now costs Rs 103.81 per litre in Delhi and Rs 118.83 per litre in Mumbai. A litre of diesel in Delhi and Mumbai now costs Rs Rs 95.07 and Rs 103.07 respectively.
❗️The Indian Army has initiated general court martial proceedings against Captain Bhupinder Singh for killing in a gunfight in South Kashmir’s Shopian district in 2020, in excess of the the powers vested to them under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, or AFSPA.
COVID-19 UPDATES
🦠 The WHO has flagged a new variant of the coronavirus, XE. It is mutant hybrid of two versions of Omicron—BA.1 and BA.2. Preliminary studies suggest XE is at least 10% more transmissible than BA.2, the dominant strain of the virus till now. BUT, there is no need to panic just yet. So far, only 600 cases have been reported across the world.
💉 Over the weekend, the WHO suspended Covaxin supply through all UN procurement agencies after a site visit in mid-March found Bharat Biotech's (BB) processes and facility lacking as per global standards for Good manufacturing Practices (GMP). Nothing changes tangibly, since BB has not been contracted by an UN agency till now for Covaxin doses. Its emergency use authorisation in India remains valid; supplies will continue.
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