[Parliament Watch] Press freedom, potential fourth wave of COVID-19, wilful defaulters

This Tuesday and Wednesday, during the ongoing Budget Session of Parliament, questions ranging from COVID-19 fourth wave predictions to a drop in media freedom rankings were answered. .NCP Member of Parliament from Lakshadweep Mohammed Faizal asked if the government was aware of India dropping in the rankings of the World Press Freedom Index. Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur in his reply in the Lok Sabha stated, "The World Press Freedom Index is published by a foreign Non-Government-Organization, “Reporters Without Borders”. The Government does not subscribe to its views and country rankings and does not agree to the conclusions drawn by this organisation for various reasons including very low sample size, little or no weightage to fundamentals of democracy, adoption of a methodology which is questionable and non-transparent, lack of clear definition of press freedom etc.".The reply went on to state that the Central government attaches highest importance to the safety and security of every citizen of the country, including journalists..To a question by Jharkhand BJP Member of Parliament Sunil Kumar Singh on the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Union Home Minister of State Nityanand Rai in the Lok Sabha replied,"Since its inception, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has registered 103 cases of terror financing, in which 786 accused have been arrested. Charge-sheets have been filed in 92 cases against 865 accused persons. Conviction have been secured in 16 cases, whereby 97 accused persons have been convicted. The conviction rate in terror financing cases investigated by the NIA is 94.11%.".BJP Member of Parliament from Uttar Pradesh Brijlal asked a question in the Rajya Sabha about the steps to be taken in view of an IIT-Kanpur study predicting a fourth wave of the pandemic.Union Minister of State for Health & Family Welfare Dr Bharati Pawar stated that the Institute clarified that it has not forecast the fourth wave, but prepared a mathematical model predicting the possibility of the same, which is at the pre-print stage without peer review. "Modelling studies are based on certain set of inputs either based on real world scenarios, or approximations of those inputs that are not available (which may vary in accuracy according to the technique used). Often these studies involve, taking a relatively small actual sample and extrapolate the result to the entire population. While this may achieve near accurate results for a small homogenous country/region, such techniques have failed repeatedly to give reliable results for a large, diverse population," the reply added. .To a question by Sushmita Dev, Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament of the Trinamool Congress from West Bengal, the Union Home Ministry replied that 100 foreigners' tribunals are currently functional in Assam. The total number of cases currently pending in these as on December 31, 2021 was 1,23,829, the reply revealed, adding that the total number of cases referred to the Foreigners Tribunals was 4,35,282, out of which 3,09,048 were disposed of.The reply also revealed data on the number of cases disposed by the tribunals over the last seven years..Dr Santanu Sen, Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament asked a question on detection of wilful defaulters. Union Minister of State for Finance Dr Bhagwat Karad in reply shared the data of such persons with respect to public and private sector banks.