This weeks newsletter from Monojit Majumdar, the Explained editor.
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| Dear Express Explained reader, Almost a decade after the Supreme Court struck down the NJAC Act as unconstitutional, momentum is building up for what could be a fresh attempt at changing the way judges of the higher judiciary are appointed in India. The discovery of bundles of seemingly unaccounted-for cash at the official residence of a High Court judge in Delhi has revived the debate, the first cue having been given by Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar. Apurva Vishwanath wrote two excellent explainers around the controversy this week: one recalling the NJAC story, the formulation and passage of the Bill in 2014 and the reasoning given by the Supreme Court to strike it down, and the other on how the judiciary’s “in-house inquiry” into the discovery of the currency at the premises of the judge will proceed. This is an important development that is very likely to gain momentum in the coming weeks and months, so do read. There is another legal explainer that I would like to flag to you today. Earlier this month, Allahabad High Court scaled down the charge against two men who had molested a girl child in a rural area in Uttar Pradesh after finding that their actions amounted only to a “preparation” to commit rape, and not to an “attempt” to rape. The order has since been stayed by the Supreme Court, which also criticised its “total insensitivity and inhuman approach”, but there is, in fact, a distinction that the judiciary has established in the past between preparing to commit a crime and ultimately getting around to attempting it, with the former being seen as a set of actions that precedes the latter. Ajoy Sinha Karpuram wrote about it this week. If you are active on social media, you may have noticed the ongoing craze about creating “Ghibli-style” portraits using ChatGPT’s new tool that can create images in the style of Japan’s Studio Ghibli, the animation studio co-founded by the great Hayao Miyazaki. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has since been criticised for alleged copyright violation and for disregarding Miyazaki’s own strong views on allowing AI-generated art to undermine the talent and imagination of human artists. Anagha Jayakumar and Arjun Sengupta told the story of Miyazaki, his art, and Studio Ghibli. Thank you for reading The Indian Express Explained. There is a large body of explanatory journalism, on a wide range of topics, on our website, and I hope you will check it out soon if you haven’t already. Also, many of our best explainers are now behind a paywall, so I hope you will subscribe. Sincerely, Monojit | | | |
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