 Hello everyone and welcome to NewsClick, I'm Anushka and I'm Ronald and here are the major headlines of the day. Not appropriate to order an inquiry, says SC on Rafal Review, please. Sabhimala case to get examined by a larger bench, teachers and students protest against NEP, Uttarakhand students protest against fee high, West Bengal government fails to increase salaries, primary teachers continue protests, ceasefire in Gaza, Donald Trump's public impeachments, hearing begins. Here's our first story. Rafal, the anchor of the political tussle between the Modi government and the opposition is back in the news again. The Supreme Court today gave a clean chit to the Narendra Modi government on the purchase of the Rafal fighter jets from French company Dassault Aviation. The bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Goghoy rejected the plea for registration of an FIR by the CBI for alleged commission of cognizable offence in the deal. The rejection of the revue petitions tantamounts to the apex throat giving clean chit to the Modi government for the second time. Let's see what senior journalist Paranjai Guha Thakurtha has to say about the issue. The judgment of the Supreme Court of India on the Rafal deal was along expected lines. A three judge bench led by the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Goghoy and including Justice Sanjay Kishankal and Justice K.M. Joseph dismissed the revue petition that had been filed by petitioners Yashwansena, Arun Shuri and Prashant Bhushan. But what is very, very important is if you look, if you read carefully through those 107 pages, the main judgment which has been written by Sanjay Kishankal and is much shorter, it is just 16 pages whereas the separate judgment by Justice K.M. Joseph is all of 91 pages. Though he agrees with the conclusion, there are many, many questions that remain unanswered. All three judges agreed that the report that the first judgment which was about 11 months earlier on the 14th of December 2018, on that day the same three judges had again dismissed the petitioners petition and at that point of time you see the point that had been made that in a note given in a sealed cover it seemed that the government had put out factually incorrect information. It has stated that the report of the controller and auditor general of India had been examined by the parliamentary committee which is the public accounts committee and a redacted version of this document would be placed before parliament. But wait, the government realized its mistake and I should say the government made an application to change the judgment of the Supreme Court and said there were certain grammatical errors, there was something in the past tense and something should have been in the present tense and the judges unquestioningly accepted the application made by the government. This is interesting. One part of the judgment is very interesting and predictably it has made I mean political parties on both sides have gone to town on it and that pertains to Rahul Gandhi's unconditional apology for linking his slogan Chokhidha Chor Hai with something that the Supreme Court allegedly said. Now the Supreme Court said very clearly no you cannot attribute statements of this kind to the Supreme Court and it was magnanimous to accept Rahul Gandhi's unconditional apology and gave him a little sort of big brotherly or fatherly stricture and said don't do it again in future be careful. But what's interesting is the three judges of the Supreme Court the honorable judges they did not get into a whole lot of issues the procedures. The procedures that resulted in the number of aircraft being purchased coming down from 126 to 36 the fact that an agreement that had been negotiated and was supposedly 95% complete was jettisoned completely in favor of a new agreement where the prime minister apparently took a unilateral decision without consulting his then defense minister Manohar Parikar Ibegopattin and the cabinet committee on security not to mention the Indian Air Force. Now the Supreme Court has gone into none of these issues these procedural issues so to say and it hasn't gone into the technical issues saying it doesn't have it doesn't have the way with all to get into it though in fact the Supreme Court had in fact asked the senior officer of the Indian Air Force and asked him to depose before it. Now the Supreme Court has not dealt with the dissenting views of the contract negotiating committee. It has not gone into allegations of interference by the prime minister's office in the decision making process it has not gone into the whole pricing issue whether it was a sovereign guarantee or not under the circumstances under which Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group a company in the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group which had been incorporated a little while before it got the offsets contract which is essentially a contract to manufacture the Rafale aircraft in India. So it didn't get into all that it said we won't want to depend on media reports including reports of the former president of France François Hollande saying that the reason why dissolved aviation which manufacture the Rafale aircraft give this contract to this not so well known company in the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group because and this is what former president François Hollande has said too because the government of India wanted it. Now the Supreme Court has gone into none of these issues and predictably on both sides there's a lot of shouting the Bharti Janta Party and the Godi media are shouting that the government has been vindicated the government's position has been vindicated but the Congress surprisingly took a very very aggressive position and it said and if you look at the conclusion if you read carefully the last few paragraphs of the judgment given by Justice K.M. Joseph in particular Para 86 it doesn't preclude the Central Bureau of Investigation from registering a first information report but what the roadblock that comes into the way is the amendment to the prevention of corruption act in the form of the insertion of section 17A which requires the CBI to take the prior permission of the government. So the Congress has said why don't we why don't you put together a joint parliamentary committee why why why do you why why is if Mr Modi is absolutely clean why why is he fearing an investigation by the CBI and and it's again raised the question of the circumstances under which the then director of the CBI Alok Varma was deposed in a quote-unquote midnight coup soon after he met the petitioners in this case the short point is time alone will tell whether the Rafale scandal would be dead as a political issue or whether it continue to engage the attention of the people because after all this was the first major defense contract signed by the then newly elected Modi government. Time alone will tell how controversial the Rafale deal will become in the time to come or whether the Bharti Janta party and the Narendra Modi government will succeed in completely ensuring that issue this particular issue does not gain greater public traction. Speaking of another ruling by the Supreme Court today a five judge bench led by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogai referred the petition seeking review of its previous judgment in the Sabarimala case to a larger bench. The Supreme Court was hearing the review pleas which were filed after the apex code verdict of September 28th last year in which it had lifted the ban that prevented women and girls from entering the Sabarimala temple in Kaila. Calling it an attempt to revive the debate surrounding religion and faith the apex court agreed to refer all the religious issues to a larger bench which includes issue of Muslim women's entry to mosque cases on female genital mutilation on the Daudi-Bohra community among others along with the Sabarimala matter. The decision was not unanimous with justices RF Nariman and D. Y. Chandrachud noting their dissenting view in the case. The reactions of the political fronts to the Supreme Court verdict speaks volume about their idea over the issues surrounding women rights in the nation while BJP and Congress both welcome the decisions. Things took a much serious turn when a senior BJP leader went on to warn of severe repercussions if women were to enter the Sabarimala temple. Let's not forget Kaila had been drugged by the violent protests spearheaded by right-wing outfits and BJP itself in 2018 when the LTF government decided to implement the September 28 verdict. Moving to our next report, hundreds of teachers, students and employees from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University and Ambedkar University massed today on the streets in New Delhi to oppose the national education policy. The protesters argued that the provisions of NEP will not only make education costly and deprive students from the marginalized sections but will directly result in the destruction of the very foundations of the public education in India. Take a look at NewsClips Ground report by a correspondent Ravi Kaushal where he interacts with the protesting students and teachers. I will tell you as a joke that for the I.V. League you will have to become I.V. You can't become I.V. in India. So, seriously, if we talk about it, then our education system, India's education system, after India's independence, the meaning of the education system was that we should prepare an education system that will make our country's situation, our country's problems, our country's people, an organic way of education. As soon as you are talking about implementing a model from the outside, no matter how good it is, it is in its place. You can directly import it and bring it here. The problems here are different, the resources here are different, a lot of things are different here. By looking at it, it means that you don't have any brains to take such a policy. This is being privatized. We are trying to get it out of our hands. Because they are trying to make our MNCs benefit. So, we are thinking how do we get it out of our hands? So, we want to get it out of our hands. This is wrong because we come from the middle class family. Our only job is to study. We study and reach to such an audience that we can also make some changes. But when studies are so expensive, how will we study? See, my biggest apprehension comes from the fact that, first of all, there is no regulation. They are talking about a new regulatory framework. But public institutions like Delhi University or, I mean, in India, a majority of the people who are getting higher education are dependent upon public institutions. Now, they are replacing the way in which public institutions have been regulated by what they call these BOGs. These are completely corporate, privatized bodies consisting of trusts of people from the industry who are going to be asked to request it to take over the erstwhile public funded colleges, institutions, and universities. And they are going to run the show. The government is not going to offer any standard measure of inputs. Next, we have students of various private medical colleges from Uttarakhand who held a press conference in New Delhi to talk about an arbitrary hike in their fees from 80,000 to 2,15,000 per year. The students have been protesting against this height for more than a month. Though the hike was reversed by the single and double benches of the high court, the private colleges continue to strong arm students to pay the increased fees or about studies. News click spoke to the protesting students. Take a look. We have been given a court order. We have been sitting on the hunger strike in order to convince the protesters. The politicians who have been accused of this have been accused of this. We had to go down on the hunger strike to convince them. On the 19th of October, we were sitting on the hunger strike. The police came at night and we were beaten up by this police. It was at 1.30 pm. At 1.30 pm, we were beaten up. That is why we have asked for our support. We have been told that how did you make the white court red? Today, we have the Delhi Aims with us. We have the JNU with us. The student power is with us. We have Mola Najat with us. How long will this go on? He is playing with the future of almost 3,500 IROVD students. We have to see who is behind this. Who is running the management of IROVD? One is Patanjali IROVD science organization. Baba Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna is behind it. One is Himalaya IROVD college. The other one is Arushi Nishank. He is the daughter of Manav Sansaadhan and the second one is Doon Institute. He is associated with Ayush Mantri and his son. One of the private institutions is running by the president. There are 80 medical colleges now. They are struggling like this all over the country. The private colleges have increased the fees. They did not have any infrastructure but have started a degree. They have become a nexus of private colleges that no one believes in. Now moving to West Bengal for our next story. Thousands of primary teachers in the state become the latest victim of the Mamta Banerjee-led TMC government's apathy. Thousands of primary teachers are up in arms against the state government since November 11 demanding an increase in their monthly salaries. The teachers have alleged that primary school teachers working in government schools in other states get a much higher salary than them. It is important to mention that this is not the first time when the primary teachers in West Bengal have raised the issue of meager salaries being paid to them. The teachers earlier had launched an indefinite hunger strike in the month of July this year which lasted for 18 days. The state's TMC government at that time had agreed to meet their demands made by the protesters following which the hunger strike was called off. However, three months down the line the government still has not published the notification of an increased salary. To give you a perspective, the existing great pay of a trained primary teacher in West Bengal stands only at Rs. 2600 whereas for the same job in other states the pay scale is Rs. 4200. Today has marked the fourth day of the protests of the primary teachers and till now none of the official from the state government has approached them or even made attempts to talk to them. Now for our international stories let's move to Anushka. Israel and Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian militant group, have agreed to an Egypt-brokered ceasefire. Musam Al-Brahim, the group's spokesperson, said that the ceasefire goes into effect from 5.30am local time. This comes after two days of intense fighting over Israel's targeted assassination of an Islamic Jihadi military commander and his wife in an air strike on their house in Gaza in the late hours of Monday. 34 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed by Israeli air and drone strikes since Tuesday morning with 97 others including 30 children suffering injuries ever since the violent clashes erupted between Israel and the Islamic Jihad. In response the Islamic Jihad fired close to 400 rockets towards Israel resulting in non-stop warning sirens in parts of Nadan and southern Israel including as far as Tel Aviv, alerting people about the incoming rockets. Schools and public institutions have been forced to close down both in Gaza and in Israel. People too, both in Gaza and Israel, are not stepping out of their homes to avoid being caught in the violence. At least 63 Israelis were wounded by the rocket fire from Gaza and were being treated in various Israeli hospitals. Israeli authorities had also put in place restrictions on citizens which forbade all non-essential workers to go outdoors and cancel schools as soon as the fighting began. Following news of the ceasefire Israeli authorities relaxed the restrictions it had placed on citizens in the southern border areas adding that people can go to work provided there is a bomb shelter close to their work. In Gaza too, normal life and public activities started to resume even though Israeli drones could still be heard overhead. Moving to our next story the public hearings in Donald Trump's impeachment inquiry began yesterday. Two key witnesses came forward with their testimony on U.S. President Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. William Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs testified for over five hours. Taylor in his testimony said that he was concerned when he found out that the White House was withholding security funds amounting to nearly 400 million dollars to Ukraine. The evidence for this came from a whistleblower who had submitted that Trump asked Zelensky to initiate corruption proceedings against Joe Biden's son in a phone call in July in exchange for the security funds. Former Vice President Joe Biden is considered as a potential rival to Trump in the upcoming 2020 elections. However, the first day of the public proceedings did not present much in terms of new or strong evidence against Trump. Republicans rubbish most of the testimonies as being hearsay and second hand information. Many have also pointed to the fact that the mainstream media is playing up these hearings and the Democrat version of events while trying to bury or sideline the damning evidence that does exist against Biden and his son. In another story from the U.S., police tried to detain Cote Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin on dubious charges of assault. Cote Pink is an anti-war group based in the U.S. They were also part of the Embassy Protection Collective, a group of activists and movements that was invited to stay in the Venezuelan embassy by the Venezuelan government in April this year. This was after diplomatic relations between U.S. and Venezuela broke and Venezuelan diplomats had to vacate the embassy. The Embassy Protection Collective took up residence in the embassy in order to protect it from occupation by supporters of Juan Guaido, who is USA's main man in these operations and was leading the coup attempts against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. In the demonstrations that occurred outside the Venezuelan embassy, many right-wing pro-Guaido Venezuelans had assaulted Maduro supporters. In all of this, Medea Benjamin faced this arrest attempt yesterday without a warrant and on belated charges. She was accused of assaulting Congressman Debbie Wasserman Schultz months after the alleged incident occurred. The police also insisted that they had footage of the incident but on reviewing it they chose not to proceed with the arrest. Prior to Medea, journalist Max Blumenthal was arrested on similar dubious charges last month. He was released after spending a weekend in jail. Now over to Australia, reports about the fourth death comes in as the bushfires ravage the eastern coast of Australia. The continent nation is facing one of its biggest ever bushfire crisis. Nearly 120 fires have spread across the eastern coast spanning two states. The fires have so far killed four people and gutted over 300 houses. The states of Queensland and New South Wales that are affected by the fires have sent out crisis warning to nearly 500,000, that's five lakh residents in the two states calling them to prepare and evacuate if necessary. It's also estimated that the fires have gutted nearly a million hectares of land in New South Wales alone. The state government in New South Wales has already called it the most dangerous bushfire week in the nation's history and given out the catastrophe alert as firestorms begin to be reported in several parts of the state. Residents in the state of western Australia have also been warned of the fires expanding into their bushlands. While the source of the ongoing bushfires are yet to be ascertained, a multitude of factors have been speculated for the crisis. While the police are now investigating a possible arson by a teenager in Queensland, meteorologists and climate activists have pointed to the fact that Australia since 2017 has recorded some of its hottest years, which was paralleled by a spike in bushfire incidents. Others have pointed to the underfunded emergency services like the fire department being already stretched to its limit even before the fires began. Under the current Liberal National Coalition government of Scott Morrison that has considerably bought down budgetary allocation for the services. That's all we have time for in today's episode of The Daily Roundup. Visit our website newsclick.in, Facebook page and our YouTube for more stories. Thank you.