GSAT-7, first Navy satellite, launched

• GSAT-7, India’s first full-fledged military communications satellite launched from the Kourou spaceport of French Guiana in South America.
• The multiple-band spacecraft will be used exclusively by the Navy to shore up secure, real-time communications among its warships, submarines, aircraft and land systems.
• GSAT-7/ INSAT-4F is said to significantly improve the country’s maritime security and intelligence gathering in a wide swathe on the eastern and western flanks of the Indian Ocean region.
• Around 2014-15, ISRO is expected to launch the second naval satellite,
• The 2,650-kg GSAT-7 is the last of ISRO’s seven fourth-generation satellites. Its foreign launch cost has been put at Rs. 480 crore, with the satellite costing Rs. 185 crore.
• Part funded by the Navy, it is built to meet the Navy’s a long-term modernisation plan that includes use of satellites and information technology.
• According to satellite communication experts, the UHF band is being used for the first time in an INSAT and will boost communication and intelligence network across a wide region.
• The premium S band will enable communication from mobile platforms like ships. The Ku band allows high-density data transmission, including voice and video. A special ground infrastructure has also been created.
• For European launch company Arianespace, this was the 17th ISRO satellite since 1981.

RISHTA helps to shape the lives of these women

• The Research and Intervention for Sexual Health: Theory to Action (RISHTA) project focussed attention on the symptom of vaginal discharge and established a Women’s Health Clinic in June 2009 in the Urban Health Clinic serving a low income community inhabited largely by Muslims.

• Every woman recruited into the project — 1125 of them — was asked to provide a medical history, to undergo an internal examination, and test for sexually transmitted infections (STI) before being given treatment.

• RISHTA used a multi-level approach with a view that bringing about changes in women’s attitudes must be accompanied by positive change in the marital relationship and community norms that perpetuate gender inequitable attitudes.
• The approach incorporated counselling on marital relations with women and group meetings of couples. It also included a community education component to target gender inequitable norms.
• Vaginal discharge is the leading symptom for which women in India and South Asia seek care.

• There is evidence to prove that women seeking treatment for this is particularly high among the poor, representing a physical, emotional and financial burden for low-income families.

• From a biomedical perspective, vaginal discharge is most likely to be a normal, non-pathological, biochemical process influenced by diet and hormone levels and the menstrual cycle.

• In the medical literature, this condition has been attributed to frequent or early onset of sexual activity, sexual intercourse during menstruation, use of hormones and oral contraceptives, antibiotic medication, insertion of vaginal agents for birth control, complications with sterilisation, lack of personal hygiene and reproductive tract infection.

• The National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) has provided guidelines for syndromic treatment based on reported gynaecological symptoms including white discharge.
• RISHTA — implemented by the International Centre for Research on Women and its collaborating partners — subsequently asked every woman who came to the clinic complaining of white discharge about any related events or life situations that she faced, including financial problems, difficult communication or conflict with husband, problem with extended family, experience of coercive or forced sex or other physical or psychological abuse, poor self image, restrictions on the woman’s behaviour and husband’s extramarital sex or alcohol or other substance use.

Restoring the Supreme Court’s exclusivity

• The Supreme Court of India is perceived by the lay public as the most potent institution in the Constitution by its appellate authority over all courts and tribunals and by its striking orders correcting and supervising government actions.
• In the public euphoria over this functioning of the Supreme Court, there is no awareness that the Supreme Court has radically changed its character and stature which was prescribed by the makers of the Constitution.
• When the Supreme Court was established in 1950, the Constitution conferred on it limited but important functions of deciding cases involving fundamental rights, cases of Constitutional importance and substantial questions of law of general importance.
• The Supreme Court was given a residuary power to grant special leave to appeal, in its discretion from any judgment of any Court or Tribunal (Article 136 of the Constitution) sparingly and in exceptional cases.

• The Supreme Court was not to be the apex court to decide ordinary disputes between litigants. Only exceptionally, such disputes between litigants would be decided by the Court.

• The lower courts and the High Courts were considered as generally competent and adequate for the dispensation of justice between litigants.

• Consistently with this restricted jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, the Constitution provided that the Supreme Court, like Supreme Courts in other jurisdictions, would be a small, compact court of the Chief Justice and not more than seven judges unless Parliament otherwise provided.

• Further, as substantial questions relating to the interpretation of the Constitution were of the utmost importance, the Constitution provided that such questions should be decided by large benches of judges and the minimum number of judges who were to sit for deciding such questions should be five.

• From 1950 to about 1990, the Supreme Court generally retained this character comparable to the character of Supreme Courts in other jurisdictions.

• Special leave to appeal from a decision of a High Court or tribunal was sparingly given in the discretion of the Court. The composition of the Court was of benches of three judges, and five judges and, exceptionally, benches of seven judges and even 13 judges, as in the famous case of Kesavananda Bharati , decided important cases.

• Today, all this has changed. The Supreme Court of India has lost its original character by a vast self-enlargement of its jurisdiction making itself a general court of appeal by routinely entertaining special leave petitions between litigants which do not involve important constitutional issues or issues of law of general importance.

• Up to June 2013, 35,439 special leave petitions which do not involve such issues are pending in the Court.

• Public Interest Litigation (PIL), which was laudably innovated by the Supreme Court in 1970 to redress the rights of disadvantaged sections of the society, has been converted into litigation for correcting government actions from corruption scams to banning tinted glasses on automobiles.

• Writ petitions to enforce fundamental rights under Article 32 of the Constitution are less than one per cent of the petitions annually admitted by the Court.

• Cases of constitutional and national importance have been sidelined and not heard for years.

• The last major Constitutional case with a bench of nine judges was decided in 2007 in I.R. Coelho vs. State of Tamil Nadu which considered Parliament’s power to amend the Constitution by including statutes in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution.

• Important Constitutional cases referred to nine judges such as the scope of Interstate Trade, Commerce & Intercourse, the right of States to tax minerals have not been heard for several years. At least five cases for consideration by seven judges, and 36 cases for consideration by a bench of five judges are pending for several years. Only 15 cases were decided by five judges between 2011 to 2013.

Bench strength

• With the increasing load of appeals from High Court decisions the number of judges have had to be increased periodically from eight judges in 1950 when the Constitution came into force to 31 in 2008.
• Presently, the Supreme Court is composed of one bench of the Chief Justice’s Court of three judges and 13 or 14 benches of two judges in 13 or 14 courtrooms sitting regularly day after day.

• In no Supreme Court of other jurisdictions are there benches of 13 to 14 courts of two judges each as the Indian Supreme Court now has. Supreme Courts of other jurisdictions such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and South Africa sit either en banc , i.e. of its full strength, or in large benches of five or more judges considering the importance of the case, as such a large composition of judges is considered fitting for deciding important cases in the highest court.

Sources: Various News Paper