New Delhi: A list of ‘favourites’ for the Nobel Peace Prize, compiled by TIME magazine, has in it Alt News co-founders and fact-checkers Mohammed Zubair and Pratik Sinha.TIME’s article notes that the list is based on “nominations that were made public via Norwegian lawmakers, predictions from bookmakers, and picks from the Peace Research Institute Oslo.”Meanwhile, the shortlist released by the director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) has in it activist Harsh Mander and his campaign, the Karwan-e-Mohabbat.The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday, October 7. A committee of Norwegian lawmakers will pick the eventual winner.Zubair and SinhaTIME’s entry for Zubair and Sinha notes, that the two have “relentlessly been battling misinformation in India, where the Hindu nationalist BJP party has been accused of frequently stoking discrimination against Muslims.”The magazine says that the two have “methodologically debunked rumours and fake news circulating on social media and called out hate speech.”It also mentions Zubair’s arrest earlier this year and the condemnation the state’s action saw by the Editors Guild of India and the global body, the Committee to Protect Journalists. Numerous cases had been slapped against Zubair in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, triggered first by an anonymous Twitter complaint against a film still Zubair had uploaded years ago.On July 20, the Supreme Court court had ordered Zubair’s release on interim bail in all the FIRs against him, refusing to ban him from tweeting and saying “exercise of the power of arrest must be pursued sparingly”.“The machinery of criminal justice has been relentlessly employed against the petitioner (Zubair),” said the bench.ManderIn PRIO director Henrik Urdal’s shortlist, Harsh Mander and his Karwan-e-Mohabbat campaign to combat hate share space with Belarusian opposition politician Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the International Court of Justice; Uyghur activist Ilham Tohti, and Hong Kong activists Agnes Chow and Nathan Law; and Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) and the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS).Urdal’s list also mentions Zubair and Sinha as “other worthy candidates for a prize focused on combating religious extremism and intolerance in India.”In his entry for Mander, Urdal writes:“Religious extremism helps justify discrimination and violence, and stokes tensions between groups that can result in armed conflict. Making a significant contribution to fighting religious extremism and promoting interreligious dialogue is therefore a compelling rationale for being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. A worthy recipient of such a prize is Harsh Mander, along with the campaign he launched in 2017, Karwan-e-Mohabbat (“Caravan of Love”).”Urdal also notes that India’s proud Gandhian traditions of religious tolerance and pluralism are now “under strain” under Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist administration.“The situation for Muslims in India has become increasingly difficult and the country has seen numerous incidents of religiously motivated violence,” the PRIO notes.It adds that Mander responded to the violence with an important effort.“Responding to this violence, author, activist and director of the Center for Equity Studies in New Delhi, Harsh Mander, launched Karwan-e-Mohabbat, a campaign supporting and showing solidarity with the victims of hate crimes. Mander is an important voice for religious tolerance and dialogue, and his campaign an important rallying point for those who oppose interreligious conflict and violence.”