NL Hafta

This week’s Hafta features host Manisha Pande, Madhu Trehan, Mehraj Lone and Raman Kirpal. Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava, Contributing Editor with Business Standard joins in as a special guest. Manisha kicks off the discussion by asking Sambhav why we don’t hear as many land conflict cases now. Sambhav reasons that we only hear of the long-pending cases because the economy, construction sector, infrastructure have slowed down in recent years. “A lot of big projects are not coming up because of the shape of the economy that we are in right now and have been in the past few years”, he adds. They move on to discuss the manner in which the top courts are responding to cases in recent times. Madhu says, “I think one should address that the country is facing huge cynicism of every institution whether it’s CBI, RBI, educational institutions or the Supreme Court.” Speaking on media’s coverage of the Ayodhya dispute’s final hearing, Manisha talks about how media houses painted the common practice of shredding papers in the court as blasphemy against the Hindu religion. Raman was quick to point out how the CJI himself said that the evidence provided (map) was not relevant to the bench so he himself asked Rajeev Dhavan to tear it up if he wanted to. The panel also discussed the outright violation of News Broadcast Standards Authority’ s guidelines by TV channels on the very day it was published. They also discuss the “vendetta politics” that has been doing the rounds in the current political scenario as opposition leaders are being questioned for their involvement in multi-crore scams, and much more.