The Evening Wrap: Supreme Court declines interim relief in plea to extend FCRA licences

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to pass an interim order directing the government to extend the validity of licences of NGOs under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) which expired on September 30 last year, instead opting to pronounce its judgment first in a pending case challenging the very constitutionality of the amendments to the law on the flow of foreign funds into India. A Bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar was hearing a plea made by a U.S.–based organisation, Global Peace Initiative, represented by senior advocate Sanjay Hegde, which challenged the expiry of the FCRA licences of nearly 6,000 NGOs. The organisation urged the court to let these NGOs continue with their licences until further orders. Countering the plea, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the government had extended the licences of 11,594 NGOs which applied within time. Mehta further questioned the locus standi of the petitioner, asking how an organisation based in Houston was concerned with the FCRA licences in India. The court refused to intervene in the issue though it allowed the petitioner to approach the authorities with a representation which would be considered on its merits. The court said the petition would be taken up after it had pronounced its judgment in the pending Noel Harper versus Union of India case on the validity of the amendments made to the FCRA in 2020. The apex court had reserved its verdict on the question of validity of the amendments on November 9, last year. The government, through the Ministry of Home Affairs, had maintained that the NGOs had no fundamental right to receive “unbridled foreign contributions”. The petitioners had contended in court that the amendments were choking flow of foreign funds to NGOs engaged in philanthropic activities in India. During the hearing, the court had questioned the role of the Home Ministry in regulating foreign funding of NGOs. But the government had warned about how foreign funds could be used to finance activities detrimental to national security and interests. Mehta had referred to intelligence inputs which indicated that the money from abroad was used to feed activities meant to destabilise national peace and security. It was even going to the Naxals. “There is an element of national security, integrity of the nation involved here... Every transaction is watched by the MHA, from the very beginning,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had explained the MHA’s involvement. Mehta had justified that the amendments were introduced to “strengthen the mechanism, enhance transparency and accountability”. Prior to the amendments, he had claimed, only a miniscule portion of the foreign funds was actually used by the NGOs for their registered objectives. The Solicitor General had said the amendments were introduced to prevent NGOs from acting as ‘middlemen’ between foreign contributors and local, unregistered NGOs. However, on March 2020, in a separate judgment, the court had already declared that the Centre cannot brand an organisation ‘political’ and deprive it of its right to receive foreign funds for using “legitimate forms of dissent” like bandh, hartal, “road roko” or “jail bharo” to aid a public cause. “Support to public causes by resorting to legitimate means of dissent like bandh, hartal, etc, cannot deprive an organisation of its legitimate right of receiving foreign contribution… Any organisation which supports the cause of a group of citizens agitating for their rights without a political goal or objective cannot be penalised by being declared as an organisation of a political nature,” a Bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Deepak Gupta had observed in its 23-page judgment. This judgment in 2020 was based on a petition filed by the Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) challenging certain provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), 2010 and the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Rules of 2011, both of which gave the Centre “unguided and uncanalised power” to brand organisations ‘political’ and shut down their access to foreign funds. Supreme Court notice on parties’ promises of ‘irrational freebies’ before elections The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought responses from the Union government and the Election Commission of India (ECI) on the continued ‘tamasha’ of political parties promising or distributing ‘irrational freebies’ using public funds. A Bench of Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana, Justices A.S. Bopanna and Hima Kohli issued notice to the Centre and the top poll body on a petition filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, represented by senior advocate Vikas Singh, to issue stringent guidelines to deregister the errant political parties and seize their election symbols. “The ‘tamasha’ has been going on for decades. Promises always remain as promises. Most of them, except freebies, are not implemented,” the petition said and contended that the offer of these freebies amounted to bribery and undue influence. The court, however, drew a skeptical note about how Upadhyay, in his petition, named only a few, select political parties and States. Upadhyay said he did not mean to target only a few parties and offered to make all political parties respondents in the petition. “This is no doubt a serious issue. The budget for freebies seems to go beyond the regular budget... sometimes it is not a level playing field for some parties... How can we manage or control this?” the CJI asked about the question of law involved in the issue. The court said it would start, for the time being, by issuing notice to the Centre and the ECI, which have been named respondents now. The court listed the case after four weeks. In the hearing, Singh submitted that parties, even in debt-ridden States, were promising/distributing these freebies to garner votes and to create an uneven playing field before the elections. Singh said the election commission’s guidelines on the freebies, issued after a Supreme Court judgment in the Subramaniam Balaji case, reported in 2013, were “toothless”. “Promise/distribution of irrational freebies from public fund before election unduly influences the voters, shakes the roots of free-fair election, disturbs level playing field, vitiates the purity of election process and also violates Articles 14, 162, 266(3) and 282,” the plea said. U.P. Assembly polls: Polarisation suits both BJP and SP to consolidate vote bases, says Priyanka Gandhi Alleging that polarisation suits both the BJP and the SP to consolidate their vote bases in Uttar Pradesh, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Tuesday said the ruling party may end up being the largest beneficiary of this divisive rhetoric and therefore people need to be given a choice of another kind of politics that doesn’t divide society on religious or caste lines. Citing that farm laws and the Lakhimpur Kheri incident caused “immense pain” to farmers, she also said the government’s “indifference’’ and “hostile” approach towards the farmers will play an important part in determining the outcome of the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh’s western belt. In an exclusive interview to PTI, Priyanka Gandhi said her party will take a call on whether to forge a post-poll alliance once the election results are out and if and when such a situation should arise. With her party going to the polls with a focus on women and announcing that it will give 40% of tickets to them, she said women are 50% of the population and if they consolidate into a political and electoral force by recognising their own value and strength in political terms, they can change the politics of our nation. Asked about the key issues in Uttar Pradesh polls and whether the farm bills and the Lakhimpur Kheri incident will have an impact, she said different political parties are highlighting different issues, some of these are divisive and intended to polarise the debate along religious or caste lines. “It is a reality of politics in UP that elections are fought and often won in this manner but I firmly believe that this has to change. Elections must be fought on issues of development — employment, job creation, health services, education -- these should be central to our discussion and debate,” she asserted. “The Congress in Uttar Pradesh is working on a positive and progressive agenda,” Priyanka Gandhi said, adding that “we have refused to engage in a negative discourse”. As far as the farm bills and the Lakhimpur Kheri incident are concerned, they have been a source of “immense pain” to farmers across the state but especially in western Uttar Pradesh, she said. “I do believe that the government’s indifference, its hostile and autocratic approach towards the farmers who were protesting and those who lost their lives, will play an important part in determining the outcome of the elections in the western belt,” Priyanka Gandhi said. On divisive rhetoric and how her party plans to counter polarisation, Priyanka Gandhi said she feels that at some level, whether it is the “polarising force” of the BJP or the Samajwadi Party (SP), it serves the same purpose — it suits both these parties as it consolidates their vote bases. “Ultimately, I feel the largest beneficiary of this polarisation may end up being the BJP. In order to stop the BJP actually, you need a party that changes the discourse rather than positing another pole for polarising it further,” she said, in an apparent swipe at the SP. The answer to this kind of politics lies in refocusing the agenda on development, she added. Her remarks come days after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath stated that the Assembly polls in the state will be about ‘80% vs 20%’, evoking a sharp response from the Opposition that accused him of attempting to polarise the electorate. Muslims constitute around 20% of the state’s population. BJP leaders have been accused of raising issues such as the Ram Temple and Kashi Vishwanath temple to polarise voters. The saffron party, in turn, has accused the Akhilesh Yadav-led party SP of invoking Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Pakistan to vitiate the discourse. Priyanka Gandhi said people are suffering and they have to be made to connect this suffering to the lack of governance. “Event management is not the same as effective governance. People have to be made to understand that, and demand good governance. Despite the crores it spends on advertising itself as one of the leading state governments in India, the truth is that the BJP government in UP does not know how to govern,” she alleged. In West Bengal, parents demand reopening of schools, colleges A campaign is on in West Bengal in favour of reopening of educational institutions, with many angry parents demanding to know why it is always the students who are made to sit home whenever pandemic–related restrictions are imposed. Schools and colleges, which had reopened late last year, were to resume classes on January 2 after winter vacations but were shut again after the Omicron-driven third wave caused an explosion in the number of COVID-19 cases. As of now, they are to remain shut till January 31 but there is no official word yet on whether they will reopen after that date. The campaign is reflecting online, with demands for re–opening of institutions being made under the hashtag #openschoolcollegeuniversities. “There was a time when the closure was a necessity. But now that we are trying to normalise ourselves, why are students being made to stay home?” asked Sunetra Mitra, a professor of history at the Ramakrishna Sarada Mission Vivekananda Vidyabhavan in Kolkata. “You see the young people go everywhere — on vacations, to malls, to restaurants, to pandals — to seem to be going everywhere except to their schools or colleges.” “Also, it is not possible for a vast majority of students to afford online classes. How many of them actually have access to a smartphone or laptop? Such students are eventually dropping out. In fact [with prolonged closure of educational institutions], we are creating an entire generation of dropouts. There seems to be a deliberate attempt to destroy the fabric of education,” said Prof. Mitra, who is the mother of a college-going daughter. Slogans in Bengali, such as “No more Google/Zoom, give us back the classroom” are being shared online. Many of the parents demanding the return of offline education happen to be teachers themselves, who are unable to understand why classrooms need to be shut when much bigger gatherings of adults are permitted. “The longer schools and colleges remain closed and the more we rely on apps, the very idea of the institution is going to be rendered useless, which in turn will severely impact the education system,” said college teacher Saubhik Bandyopadhyay, father of a teenager. “Technology is important, it can complement education, but it cannot replace classroom teaching.” Bandyopadhyay, who recently wrote in the letters-to-the-editor column of a leading Bengali daily calling for resumption of offline classes, said closure of educational institutions was necessary two years ago because no one was prepared for a pandemic “but now schools and colleges must reopen with COVID protocols in place”. “Closure is not a solution. The biggest disadvantage of online teaching is I cannot see the faces of my students. I have no idea how receptive they are. The online mode also compromises on the assessment during exams — meritorious students are at a great disadvantage,” Bandyopadhyay said. Pfizer starts Omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine trial Pfizer and its partner BioNTech have begun enrolment for a clinical trial to test the safety and immune response of their Omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine in adults aged up to 55, the companies said in a statement on January 25. Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla has previously said that the pharmaceutical giant could be ready to file for regulatory approval of the shot by March. The company’s head of vaccine research Kathrin Jansen said in a statement that while current data showed that boosters against the original COVID-19 strain continued to protect against severe outcomes with Omicron, the company was acting out of caution. “We recognise the need to be prepared in the event this protection wanes over time and to potentially help address Omicron and new variants in the future,” she said. Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech, added that the protection of the original vaccine against mild and moderate COVID-19 appeared to wane rapidly against Omicron. “This study is part of our science-based approach to develop a variant-based vaccine.” The trial will involve 1,420 people aged 18-55. A spokesperson for Pfizer said that it did not include people older than 55 because the goal of the study was to examine the immune response of participants dosed, rather than estimate vaccine efficacy. The trial is taking place across the United States and South Africa, and the first participant was dosed in North Carolina. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first COVID-19 shot to be authorised in the West, in December 2020. Because it is based on messenger RNA technology, it is relatively easy to update to reflect the genetic code of new variants. Several countries have begun to emerge from their latest waves driven by Omicron, the most transmissible strain to date, even though global new cases are still rising. The coronavirus has killed some 5.6 million people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019. Covid Watch: Numbers and Developments The number of reported coronavirus cases from India stood at 3,98,02,910 at the time of publishing this newsletter, with the death toll at 4,90,478. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. [logo] The Evening Wrap 25 JANUARY 2022 [The Hindu logo] Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. [[Arrow]Open in browser]( [[Mail icon]More newsletters]( Supreme Court declines interim relief in plea to extend validity of expired FCRA licences of NGOs The Supreme Court on Tuesday [declined to pass an interim order directing the government to extend the validity of licences of NGOs]( under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) which expired on September 30 last year, instead opting to pronounce its judgment first in a pending case challenging the very constitutionality of the amendments to the law on the flow of foreign funds into India. A Bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar was hearing a plea made by a U.S.–based organisation, Global Peace Initiative, represented by senior advocate Sanjay Hegde, which challenged the expiry of the FCRA licences of nearly 6,000 NGOs. The organisation urged the court to let these NGOs continue with their licences until further orders. Countering the plea, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the government had extended the licences of 11,594 NGOs which applied within time. Mehta further questioned the locus standi of the petitioner, asking how an organisation based in Houston was concerned with the FCRA licences in India. The court refused to intervene in the issue though it allowed the petitioner to approach the authorities with a representation which would be considered on its merits. The court said the petition would be taken up after it had pronounced its judgment in the pending Noel Harper versus Union of India case on the validity of the amendments made to the FCRA in 2020. The apex court had reserved its verdict on the question of validity of the amendments on November 9, last year. The government, through the Ministry of Home Affairs, had maintained that the NGOs had no fundamental right to receive “unbridled foreign contributions”. The petitioners had contended in court that the amendments were choking flow of foreign funds to NGOs engaged in philanthropic activities in India. During the hearing, the court had questioned the role of the Home Ministry in regulating foreign funding of NGOs. But the government had warned about how foreign funds could be used to finance activities detrimental to national security and interests. Mehta had referred to intelligence inputs which indicated that the money from abroad was used to feed activities meant to destabilise national peace and security. It was even going to the Naxals. “There is an element of national security, integrity of the nation involved here... Every transaction is watched by the MHA, from the very beginning,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had explained the MHA’s involvement. Mehta had justified that the amendments were introduced to “strengthen the mechanism, enhance transparency and accountability”. Prior to the amendments, he had claimed, only a miniscule portion of the foreign funds was actually used by the NGOs for their registered objectives. The Solicitor General had said the amendments were introduced to prevent NGOs from acting as ‘middlemen’ between foreign contributors and local, unregistered NGOs. However, on March 2020, in a separate judgment, the court had already declared that the Centre cannot brand an organisation ‘political’ and deprive it of its right to receive foreign funds for using “legitimate forms of dissent” like bandh, hartal, “road roko” or “jail bharo” to aid a public cause. “Support to public causes by resorting to legitimate means of dissent like bandh, hartal, etc, cannot deprive an organisation of its legitimate right of receiving foreign contribution… Any organisation which supports the cause of a group of citizens agitating for their rights without a political goal or objective cannot be penalised by being declared as an organisation of a political nature,” a Bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao and Deepak Gupta had observed in its 23-page judgment. This judgment in 2020 was based on a petition filed by the Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) challenging certain provisions of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), 2010 and the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Rules of 2011, both of which gave the Centre “unguided and uncanalised power” to brand organisations ‘political’ and shut down their access to foreign funds. [underlineimg] Supreme Court notice on parties’ promises of ‘irrational freebies’ before elections The Supreme Court on Tuesday [sought responses from the Union government and the Election Commission of India (ECI)]( on the continued ‘tamasha’ of political parties promising or distributing ‘irrational freebies’ using public funds. A Bench of Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana, Justices A.S. Bopanna and Hima Kohli issued notice to the Centre and the top poll body on a petition filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, represented by senior advocate Vikas Singh, to issue stringent guidelines to deregister the errant political parties and seize their election symbols. “The ‘tamasha’ has been going on for decades. Promises always remain as promises. Most of them, except freebies, are not implemented,” the petition said and contended that the offer of these freebies amounted to bribery and undue influence. The court, however, drew a skeptical note about how Upadhyay, in his petition, named only a few, select political parties and States. Upadhyay said he did not mean to target only a few parties and offered to make all political parties respondents in the petition. “This is no doubt a serious issue. The budget for freebies seems to go beyond the regular budget... sometimes it is not a level playing field for some parties... How can we manage or control this?” the CJI asked about the question of law involved in the issue. The court said it would start, for the time being, by issuing notice to the Centre and the ECI, which have been named respondents now. The court listed the case after four weeks. In the hearing, Singh submitted that parties, even in debt-ridden States, were promising/distributing these freebies to garner votes and to create an uneven playing field before the elections. Singh said the election commission’s guidelines on the freebies, issued after a Supreme Court judgment in the Subramaniam Balaji case, reported in 2013, were “toothless”. “Promise/distribution of irrational freebies from public fund before election unduly influences the voters, shakes the roots of free-fair election, disturbs level playing field, vitiates the purity of election process and also violates Articles 14, 162, 266(3) and 282,” the plea said. [underlineimg] U.P. Assembly polls: Polarisation suits both BJP and SP to consolidate vote bases, says Priyanka Gandhi [Alleging that polarisation suits both the BJP and the SP to consolidate their vote bases]( in Uttar Pradesh, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Tuesday said the ruling party may end up being the largest beneficiary of this divisive rhetoric and therefore people need to be given a choice of another kind of politics that doesn’t divide society on religious or caste lines. Citing that farm laws and the Lakhimpur Kheri incident caused “immense pain” to farmers, she also said the government’s “indifference’’ and “hostile” approach towards the farmers will play an important part in determining the outcome of the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh’s western belt. [Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. File]  In an exclusive interview to PTI, Priyanka Gandhi said her party will take a call on whether to forge a post-poll alliance once the election results are out and if and when such a situation should arise. With her party going to the polls with a focus on women and announcing that it will give 40% of tickets to them, she said women are 50% of the population and if they consolidate into a political and electoral force by recognising their own value and strength in political terms, they can change the politics of our nation. Asked about the key issues in Uttar Pradesh polls and whether the farm bills and the Lakhimpur Kheri incident will have an impact, she said different political parties are highlighting different issues, some of these are divisive and intended to polarise the debate along religious or caste lines. “It is a reality of politics in UP that elections are fought and often won in this manner but I firmly believe that this has to change. Elections must be fought on issues of development — employment, job creation, health services, education -- these should be central to our discussion and debate,” she asserted. “The Congress in Uttar Pradesh is working on a positive and progressive agenda,” Priyanka Gandhi said, adding that “we have refused to engage in a negative discourse”. As far as the farm bills and the Lakhimpur Kheri incident are concerned, they have been a source of “immense pain” to farmers across the state but especially in western Uttar Pradesh, she said. “I do believe that the government’s indifference, its hostile and autocratic approach towards the farmers who were protesting and those who lost their lives, will play an important part in determining the outcome of the elections in the western belt,” Priyanka Gandhi said. On divisive rhetoric and how her party plans to counter polarisation, Priyanka Gandhi said she feels that at some level, whether it is the “polarising force” of the BJP or the Samajwadi Party (SP), it serves the same purpose — it suits both these parties as it consolidates their vote bases. “Ultimately, I feel the largest beneficiary of this polarisation may end up being the BJP. In order to stop the BJP actually, you need a party that changes the discourse rather than positing another pole for polarising it further,” she said, in an apparent swipe at the SP. The answer to this kind of politics lies in refocusing the agenda on development, she added. Her remarks come days after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath stated that the Assembly polls in the state will be about ‘80% vs 20%’, evoking a sharp response from the Opposition that accused him of attempting to polarise the electorate. Muslims constitute around 20% of the state’s population. BJP leaders have been accused of raising issues such as the Ram Temple and Kashi Vishwanath temple to polarise voters. The saffron party, in turn, has accused the Akhilesh Yadav-led party SP of invoking Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Pakistan to vitiate the discourse. Priyanka Gandhi said people are suffering and they have to be made to connect this suffering to the lack of governance. “Event management is not the same as effective governance. People have to be made to understand that, and demand good governance. Despite the crores it spends on advertising itself as one of the leading state governments in India, the truth is that the BJP government in UP does not know how to govern,” she alleged. [underlineimg] In West Bengal, parents demand reopening of schools, colleges [A campaign is on in West Bengal in favour of reopening of educational institutions]( with many angry parents demanding to know why it is always the students who are made to sit home whenever pandemic–related restrictions are imposed. Schools and colleges, which had reopened late last year, were to resume classes on January 2 after winter vacations but were shut again after the Omicron-driven third wave caused an explosion in the number of COVID-19 cases. As of now, they are to remain shut till January 31 but there is no official word yet on whether they will reopen after that date. The campaign is reflecting online, with demands for re–opening of institutions being made under the hashtag #openschoolcollegeuniversities. “There was a time when the closure was a necessity. But now that we are trying to normalise ourselves, why are students being made to stay home?” asked Sunetra Mitra, a professor of history at the Ramakrishna Sarada Mission Vivekananda Vidyabhavan in Kolkata. “You see the young people go everywhere — on vacations, to malls, to restaurants, to pandals — to seem to be going everywhere except to their schools or colleges.” “Also, it is not possible for a vast majority of students to afford online classes. How many of them actually have access to a smartphone or laptop? Such students are eventually dropping out. In fact [with prolonged closure of educational institutions], we are creating an entire generation of dropouts. There seems to be a deliberate attempt to destroy the fabric of education,” said Prof. Mitra, who is the mother of a college-going daughter. Slogans in Bengali, such as “No more Google/Zoom, give us back the classroom” are being shared online. Many of the parents demanding the return of offline education happen to be teachers themselves, who are unable to understand why classrooms need to be shut when much bigger gatherings of adults are permitted. “The longer schools and colleges remain closed and the more we rely on apps, the very idea of the institution is going to be rendered useless, which in turn will severely impact the education system,” said college teacher Saubhik Bandyopadhyay, father of a teenager. “Technology is important, it can complement education, but it cannot replace classroom teaching.” Bandyopadhyay, who recently wrote in the letters-to-the-editor column of a leading Bengali daily calling for resumption of offline classes, said closure of educational institutions was necessary two years ago because no one was prepared for a pandemic “but now schools and colleges must reopen with COVID protocols in place”. “Closure is not a solution. The biggest disadvantage of online teaching is I cannot see the faces of my students. I have no idea how receptive they are. The online mode also compromises on the assessment during exams — meritorious students are at a great disadvantage,” Bandyopadhyay said. [underlineimg] Pfizer starts Omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine trial Pfizer and its partner BioNTech have [begun enrolment for a clinical trial to test the safety and immune response of their Omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine]( in adults aged up to 55, the companies said in a statement on January 25. Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla has previously said that the pharmaceutical giant could be ready to file for regulatory approval of the shot by March. The company’s head of vaccine research Kathrin Jansen said in a statement that while current data showed that boosters against the original COVID-19 strain continued to protect against severe outcomes with Omicron, the company was acting out of caution. “We recognise the need to be prepared in the event this protection wanes over time and to potentially help address Omicron and new variants in the future,” she said. Ugur Sahin, CEO of BioNTech, added that the protection of the original vaccine against mild and moderate COVID-19 appeared to wane rapidly against Omicron. [Combo photo shows logos Pfizer and BioNTech.]  “This study is part of our science-based approach to develop a variant-based vaccine.” The trial will involve 1,420 people aged 18-55. A spokesperson for Pfizer said that it did not include people older than 55 because the goal of the study was to examine the immune response of participants dosed, rather than estimate vaccine efficacy. The trial is taking place across the United States and South Africa, and the first participant was dosed in North Carolina. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first COVID-19 shot to be authorised in the West, in December 2020. Because it is based on messenger RNA technology, it is relatively easy to update to reflect the genetic code of new variants. Several countries have begun to emerge from their latest waves driven by Omicron, the most transmissible strain to date, even though global new cases are still rising. The coronavirus has killed some 5.6 million people since the outbreak emerged in China in December 2019. [underlineimg] Covid Watch: Numbers and Developments The [number of reported coronavirus cases from India]( stood at 3,98,02,910 at the time of publishing this newsletter, with the death toll at 4,90,478. 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