TN Kuravan families allege torture and sexual assault by Andhra police

Entire families from the Kuravan tribe routinely face arrest and torture for crimes they are unconnected to, revealing the police’s reluctance to shed their prejudice against what were earlier called ‘criminal tribes’.

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/ground-report-tn-kuravan-families-allege-torture-and-sexual-assault-andhra-police-181742

#AndhraPradesh #kuravas #tribals #PoliceBrutality #APPolice #CasteDiscrimination #casteism #caste #torture #HumanRights #TamilNadu #kuravar #india

The police could not conduct a search operation on Friday night, however a search was carried out in the early hours of Saturday. Soon, blood stains were found on the ground by the police at the 7th mile on the footpath to Tirumala
#LeopardKillsSix #OldGirl #AndhraPradesh #Tirumala
https://www.news18.com/india/leopard-kills-six-year-old-girl-in-andhra-pradeshs-tirumala-8533442.html

The police case, filed by Umapathy Reddy, was registered late on Tuesday at Mudiveedu police station in Annamayya district, which also named other TDP leaders such as Devineni Uma, Amaranatha Reddy, Rambhopal Reddy and a dozen more in the descending order as accused
#TDPChief #First #Attack #YSRCPCadres #AndhraPradesh
https://www.news18.com/india/tdp-chief-named-first-accused-for-attack-on-ysrcp-cadres-in-andhra-pradesh-8530123.html

In another cross border love blossoming into marriage, a Sri Lankan woman, Shivakumari Vigneshwari 25, came to India to marry her Facebook friend of six years, Laxman, 28. The woman, who came on a tourist visa, married the man from Chittoor district.
#SriLankan #AndhraPradesh #MastIndia #MastodonIndians #India @mastodonindians
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/amaravati/lankan-woman-weds-man-from-chittoor/articleshow/102242277.cms

When he was still a child, his agriculturist father had once brought home Rs 50,000 - sale proceeds from his produce of tomatoes. With the cash safely stashed away in an almirah, the entire family would worship that piece of furniture daily. Little did Murali know then that the same crop would one day see him rake in crores in a matter of a little more than a month.
#AndhraPradesh
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/rs-4-crore-in-45-days-chittoor-farmer-lands-a-windfall-with-tomatoes-in-kolar/articleshow/102219218.cms

Every political party in Andhra Pradesh wants voters’ privacy protected, but why can’t they have it?

- Srinivas Kodali @digitaldutta

It was the YSRCP that first demanded the protection voters’ privacy in Andhra Pradesh during the 2019 elections. The demand was made in the backdrop of TDP members getting caught with the Seva Mitra app, containing colour photos and 360-degree profiles of voters.

The political tides have changed. Now, the Jana Sena Party is demanding “My Data, My Right”, protesting against the Andhra Pradesh government’s village volunteers collecting personal data. The TDP, too, has joined in, demanding an end to 360-degree profiling. Then what is the problem with the voters’ privacy?

It was the TDP government from 2014 to 2019 that pioneered 360-degree profiling in Andhra Pradesh.

Retired bureaucrat J Satyanarayana, who was the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) chairman and IT advisor to the Andhra Pradesh government, championed the cause of real-time governance and 360-degree profiling in the state.

But Andhra Pradesh was the second state to do the profiling.

Telangana had already started implementing it before Andhra Pradesh did with its Samagra Kutumba Survey and Integrated People Information Hub. Both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were the ground zero of these new experiments of pushing Aadhaar-based 360-degree profiling.

Imported model

This model of governance and push for Aadhaar is not native to India. It was primarily experimented in Estonia in Europe and later suggested to our bureaucrats to be adopted. The early experiment of the AP Smart Card project in 2006 under YS Rajasekhara Reddy was the precursor to the Aadhaar project, even before Nandan Nilekani adopted it to be enforced across the country.

United Andhra Pradesh was the laboratory to experiment with the implementation of new governance models and technologies because of globalisation and its IT sector’s place in global trade. The bureaucracy was open to experimenting with anything new in the population to be ahead in global supply chains.

There are many problems with Aadhaar-based 360-degree profiling and there has been large-scale opposition to it, resulting in the Supreme Court of India recognising the fundamental right to privacy.

The Aadhaar project itself was heavily restricted by the court, saying it should be used only for welfare. Yet, the government passed new laws and rules to push it, disregarding the Supreme Court judgements.

The nature of the Aadhaar project and 360-degree profiling allows the government to track citizens from birth to death. This was necessary for the government in a post-26/11 India, where the government wanted to know everyone in the country.

However, the threat to civil liberties was always on since this information can be misused, affecting electoral democracy.

The big player

The Aadhaar-Voter ID linking experiments in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh resulted in denying lakhs of voters the right to franchise in the 2018 Assembly elections in Telangana. It also resulted in Aadhaar profiles being used for electioneering at large.

Yet, these issues were ignored — and continue to be ignored and unacknowledged — because the Indian IT sector pushes towards a data economy. Everything from Aadhaar, UPI, Digital Locker, and CoWIN are being exported to other countries just the way they have been imported into India from Estonia.

Welfare was always used as an excuse to push technologies that the Indian IT sector could use to create a domestic IT economy. Even today, the biggest opposition to the Privacy and Data Protection Bill is from the Indian IT sector, not politicians.

At every level of the Aadhaar litigation, it was not only the government but the Indian IT sector also opposed a pushback.

A strict Data Protection Bill will address issues of government data collection and how data is affecting elections and electoral politics. But these have been ignored by allowing the government to have exceptions to collect as much data as it want to implement the rule of the law.

The present draft of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022, is not good enough to protect the citizens’ rights and it is just a rubber stamp on all government projects. A Data Protection Bill respecting the Supreme Court’s verdict on Aadhaar and the fundamental right to privacy would not allow 360-degree profiling. The draft Bill envisages it.

The political opposition seen in Andhra Pradesh is necessary to make people understand the dangers of information and with successive pushbacks, the people may realise the larger problem irrespective of whose politics prevail. But notwithstanding the opposition to these systems, as long as they are not opposed nationally, they will remain the same way.

Wanted: Global demand

The TDP’s plan to draw the attention of Home Minister Amit Shah to the issue of 360-degree profiling in Andhra Pradesh is useless when the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) itself wants 360-degree profiling databases like NATGRID, CCTNS, and ICJS for surveilling the citizens.

Indians already have a fundamental right to privacy, but who will implement it when the governments at both the Centre and state support Aadhaar? No court can implement its order or get these systems changed unless there is a change in the technical architecture of the Aadhaar system.

For the moment, this will happen only if there is a global demand from countries that want to buy Aadhaar, to change its code and architecture to respect individual privacy. No matter how much Indians demand privacy, the current technical and governance setup does not allow any political party to change what is already built.

The MHA is introducing a Bill for amending the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, in the ongoing Parliament session. The Bill seeks to link all major government databases at the Centre and state to build the National Population Register using Aadhaar as a unique ID. The Bill puts into law the idea of 360-degree profiling and allows the MHA to track citizens from birth to death, something that has been widely experimented with and accepted in Andhra Pradesh.

No amount of opposition will change the 360-degree profiling even though everyone knows it is bad. Every political party in power will continue to push it and oppose it when in Opposition. This is how the Indian state functions: Aadhaar is now part of statecraft.

[This article is published under Creative Commons Attribution – No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0). The article may be reproduced without permission].

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#AndhraPradesh #privacy #PersonalData #DataProtection #aadhaar #UIDAI #UPI #CoWin #DigiLocker # #360degreeProfiling #TDP #JanaSena #SrinivasKodali #india

"Had wide-ranging discussions with Pawan Kalyan, President of the Jana Sena Party, regarding the growth and development of #AndhraPradesh and the welfare of its people, tweets #BJP national president #JPNadda

Under the leadership of PM #NarendraModi, the NDA government has… https://t.co/nc7TzKssxN https://t.co/CpizrUUELs #press

The processing of #ArakuValley coffee will soon be done in #AndhraPradesh, and the Girijan Cooperative Corporation (GCC) can claim it to be a ‘Make in A.P.’ product once its plans materialise.
https://trib.al/mfXIXWz #press

#AndhraPradesh | Fire erupts from an underground gas pipeline in #Sivakodu, Dr. BR Ambedkar Konaseema district; no casualties reported in the incident till now. #press

#WATCH | #Sriharikota, #AndhraPradesh | #Chandrayaan3 mission director Mohan Kumar says, "...This is the seventh successive flight of LVM 3, definitely every flight will add confidence and reliability number will also go up. This vehicle in its human-rated version will take the… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1679866781916368899 #press

‘Robbers’ kill #AndhraPradesh farmer who made ‘millions’ selling #tomatoes http://toi.in/EWwBWY/a24gk #press

Watch | Over 200 schools students arrive at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, #AndhraPradesh to watch the launch of #Chandrayaan3 (ANI)

"...I feel very confident, I want to become an astronaut like Kalpana Chawla. I am excited..," says a student, Subhashini

"A very… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1679745002287628290 #press

BJP national general secretary Daggubati Purandeswari, who took over as the president of #AndhraPradesh BJP unit, refused to commit on an alliance with the Telugu Desam Party in the forthcoming assembly elections

(@asrao2009 reports)
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/top-brass-to-decide-on-alliances-says-andhra-bjp-chief-101689275657430.html #press

Establishment of a state-of the-art research centre at Palasa has rekindled hopes of people, amidst rise in the cases of mysterious kidney disease, that has crippled thousands in Uddanam area of #AndhraPradesh

(@asrao2009 reports)
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/stateoftheart-research-centre-gives-hope-to-hyderabad-amidst-mysterious-kidney-disease-outbreak-in-andhra-pradesh-101689275718424.html #press

#AndhraPradesh | Union Minister #NitinGadkari, along with his family, took part in 'Thomala Seva' and offered prayers to Lord Venkateswara at Sri Venkateswara Swami Temple in Tirumala earlier this morning

(ANI visuals) #press

Just in | Department of Consumer Affairs has decided to procure tomatoes from #AndhraPradesh, #Karnataka and #Maharashtra for distribution in major consumption centres to check price rise, reports @jigeesham #press

Seven people, including five women and a minor girl, were killed and 18 others sustained injuries after a state-run bus which they were travelling in fell into an irrigation canal in #AndhraPradesh’s Prakasam district

https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/others/tragic-accident-7-killed-18-injured-as-state-run-bus-plunges-into-canal-in-andhra-pradesh-101689063062359.html #press

Previously, only 85% of the seats were reserved for local Telangana students, while the remaining 15% were unreserved, allowing students from neighboring #AndhraPradesh state also to compete

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/telangana-scraps-15-non-reserved-seats-in-36-med-colleges-to-continue-in-20-others-101688586146621.html #press

According to news agency ANI, locals rushed to the accident site to rescue the students and accused the driver of negligence which led to the mishap
#AndhraPradesh #SchoolBus #Palnadu
https://www.news18.com/india/andhra-pradesh-15-students-injured-after-school-bus-overturns-in-palnadu-8260213.html

Chief Minister of #AndhraPradesh, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy met PM #NarendraModi in Delhi today.

Track latest updates - https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/breaking-news-july-5-2023-latest-news-updates-india-world-top-news-101688514165326.html

(ANI) #press