Passage 1
Himachal assembly speaker on February 29 disqualified six rebel Congress MLAs under the anti-defection law two days after they voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate in Rajya Sabha polls.
Those disqualified are lawmakers Rajinder Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Chaitanya Sharma and Devender Bhutto.
The decision is seen as Congress’s attempt to quell rebellion within the party ever since cross-voting by these six MLAs prompted BJP to engineer the collapse of Congress’s Himachal Pradesh government.
Lawyers representing these disqualified MLAs called the move illegal and are likely to challenge it in the high court. Congress, meanwhile, said that the move would be vital in keeping its remaining flock together.
Before disqualifying these six MLAs, CM invited all remaining 34 MLAs of the party for a breakfast meeting at his office-residence in Shimla to ensure that there is no further defection in the party. While not all MLAs reached in time for breakfast, Congress claimed that the government was stable and that all remaining MLAs stand solid with the party.
Source – https://thewire.in/politics/himachal-congress-bjp-sukhu-rebel
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Driven by a desire to squelch critical voices, Nicaragua’s President and his entourage have committed systematic human rights violations “tantamount to crimes against humanity,” a group of UN-mandated experts said on Thursday.
“Violations, abuses and crimes have been perpetrated not only to dismantle active opposition efforts, but also to eliminate critical voices and dissuade, in the long term, any new organisation and initiative of social mobilisation,” said the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua.
The body is an independent group with a mandate from the HRC to investigate abuses committed in the Central American country since 2018, when anti-government protests left more than 300 dead in clashes with the armed forces. More than 100,000 people fled into exile.
Nicaragua has jailed hundreds of real and perceived opponents since then and shuttered more than 3,500 religious and other NGOs— often also seizing their assets. Managua views the 2018 protests as part of an attempted coup promoted by Washington, and claims they were funded by NGOs.
Source- https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/
