(Current Affairs) National Events | November : 2017

::National Events::

Why the appointment of judges still pending asks SC

  • Over a year and 10 months after a Constitution Bench placed its faith in the government to iron out the dos and don'ts of judicial appointments to the Supreme Court and the high courts, the Centre is yet to deliver. Now, the court wants to know why.
  • A Bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit issued notice to the Attorney-General of India, the Centre's top law officer, to explain why the finalisation of the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and the high courts continues to “linger”.
  • The Supreme Court also wants Attorney General K.K. Venugopal to address it on the delay in appointment of “regular” Chief Justices to various high courts.
  • The apex court underlined that the “arrangement” of Acting Chief Justices in high courts should not continue for more than a month.
  • Six of the 24 high courts have been without regular Chief Justices for months.
  • In the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh High Court, Justice Ramesh Ranganathan has been Acting Chief Justice since July 30, 2016. Earlier this month, Justice H.G. Ramesh was appointed Acting Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court, taking the tally of high courts with Acting Chief Justices to seven.
  • The Bench posted the hearing for November 14 while appointing senior advocate K.V. Vishwanathan as amicus curiae. It recorded in a written order that it has been about two years since a five-judge Constitution Bench, in December 2015, tasked the Centre with the drafting and finalisation of the MoP.

Apex court judges to review orders of additional judges

  • The Supreme Court Collegium has decided that a committee of two apex court judges will evaluate the judgments of additional judges of high courts to decide their suitability to be made permanent.
  • The decision by the Collegium, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, assumes significance as the government had recently urged the Collegium to have a relook at its decision to end the practice of evaluating the judicial performance of additional judges.
  • A candidate is first appointed as additional judge of a High Court.
  • He or she serves a probationary period before being appointed a permanent judge.
  • On March 3, 2017, the Supreme Court Collegium had withdrawn a guideline issued in October 2010 by the then Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia for constitution of Judgment Committees by Chief Justices of High Courts for assessment/evaluation of judgments of Additional Judges of high courts for the purpose of determining their suitability for appointment as permanent judges.
  • Reviving the practice, Chief Justice Misra's Collegium, which met on October 26, unanimously found that there is indeed a “necessity” to assess the judgment of Additional Judges before they are made permanent.
  • The Collegium has, however, tweaked their predecessor’s guideline to ensure that “peers are not judged by peers” and appointed the panel.
    Using technology to track elephants
  • With 85 elephants criss-crossing villages across Odisha’s Keonjhar district, the forest department has put the Global Positioning System (GPS) to good use to caution people after tracking jumbo movement.
  • Large herds of elephants have strayed into human habitations as the paddy crop has started ripening in many areas of Keonjhar, which is contiguous to both Jharkhand and West Bengal. In the Champua forest range, there are 28 elephants that have mostly strayed from Jharkhand.
  • A desk had been set up to record the position of jumbos on a daily basis and a dedicated team comprising forest department field staffs and volunteers give exact jumbo locations through GPS.
  • A daily report is compiled on information received from the teams following the elephants. Based on the information, local villagers who are prone to elephant attacks are informed. Additional manpower is mobilised in villagers where elephant herds are present.
  • Keonjhar, where large-scale mining has disturbed elephant habitations, is one of the critical districts as far as man-elephant conflict is concerned. In the early 2000s, when elephants were beginning to run amok, people had a tough time coping with the animals. In many areas, people even constructed tree houses to protect themselves from elephant attacks.
  • In the past one-and-a-half decade, the forest department has organised itself creating a dedicated team of trackers for trailing elephants. With the help of villagers, they are now able to drive elephants away to the forests again. Loss of human lives has also come down with villagers keeping a safe distance from elephants.

SC directed DD to air programme on dangers of Blue Whale game

  • Declaring the Blue Whale online game a threat to life, the Supreme Court directed public broadcaster Doordarshan to conceive a cautionary and educational programme about the dangers of the online game which goads players, mostly students, to commit suicide.
  • A Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, gave the public broadcaster a week’s time to prepare the programme and air it on prime time for an appropriate duration, possibly not less than 10 minutes.
  • Suffice it to say that the Blue Whale game is dangerous to life. What endangers life has to be condemned and not allowed,” Chief Justice Misra observed.
  • DD, the court said, would script the programme in consultation with the Ministry of Home Affairs, Women and Child Welfare Department, HRD Ministry and Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and Technology.
  • The court also directed the competent authority in the government to see to it that private channels also telecast the programme.
  • The order came on a petition filed by Supreme Court advocate Sneha Kalita, asking the court to frame guidelines for regulating and monitoring the virtual digital online games and to take immediate measures to ban/ block sites linked to the Blue Whale game or any other forms of violent and immoral games.
  • The idea behind the programme is to make parents and children aware of the dangers of online games like Blue Whale. The message of the programme should be that children should not be trapped into the game.

Analyzing the root cause of kala-azar

  • Researchers have stumbled upon tantalizing evidence of an unknown virus that may be responsible for the persistence of kala-azar or visceral leishmaniasis, a parasite infection that has spawned epidemics and sickened thousands of Indians for over a century.
  • It’s still early to pointedly blame the virus but its discovery portends a new kind of treatment regime and may aid attempts to eradicating the disease.
  • Historically, the parasite Leishmania donovani is believed to be responsible for the dreaded infection. People get infected when bitten by an insect called the sandfly, which harbours the disease-causing parasite.
  • A group of scientists from West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh said that another parasite may be involved. Another parasite called Leptomonas seymouri may also be present, according to Subhajit Biswas, one of the scientists involved in the study.
  • The researchers inferred this after they found the L seymouri and a virus called Lepsey NLV1 within it in 20 of 22 biological samples of patients who had a residual L donovani infection. They reported their findings in an online version of the peer-reviewedArchives of Virology.
  • Kala-azar is endemic to the Indian subcontinent in 119 districts in four countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal). India itself accounts for half the global burden of the disease. If untreated, kala-azar can kill within two years of the onset of the ailment, though the availability of a range of drugs has meant that less than one in 1,000 now succumbs to the disease.
  • However, scientists are still not clear how the parasites cause the infection and how they manage to hide within the body.

lack of Aadhaar’ shouldn’t deprive people of PDS benefits

  • The Centre has instructed the States not to deny PDS benefits to any person who does not have Aadhaar or has not linked the ration card to the 12-digit biometric identifier, and warned them of strict action for violations. It also asked the States not to delete eligible households from the list of beneficiaries for non-possession of Aadhaar.
  • The instruction was issued to all the States, after an 11-year-old Jharkhand girl allegedly died of starvation recently after she was denied PDS rations.
  • In the directive, the Union Food Ministry clarified that deletion from the ration card database could happen only after a proper verification of the ration card holder establishes “beyond reasonable doubt” that an entry pertaining to the said ration card holder is not genuine.
  • State field functionaries have been asked to ensure that beneficiaries are not turned away for non-possession of Aadhaar, and all exceptions in this regard are recorded in a separate logbook.
  • The States and the Union Territories will have to provide Aadhaarenrolment facilities to those without Aadhaar and link their Aadhaar numbers with ration cards, the Food Ministry said, warning of strict action for violation of the notification. As per the National Food Security Act, the States have been given time till December to link Aadhaar with ration cards.
  • However, the Centre told the Supreme Court that the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar for benefits of government schemes would be extended till March 31 next for those who do not have the biometric identification number. So far, 82% of the ration cards have been seeded with Aadhaar.
  • The Food Ministry’s directive mentions that until Aadhaar is assigned to the beneficiary, subsidisedfoodgrains will have to be given on production of ration card, enrolment slip and other stipulated documents.
  • Irrespective of whether all members of an eligible household have Aadhaar, full quantity of subsidisedfoodgrains or transfer of food subsidy on complaince with the requirements will have to be extended.
  • Even in the case of failure of biometric authentication due to a glitch or poor biometric quality, the beneficiary will have to be given the benefits on production of Aadhaar card along with the ration card.
  • All these cases — those without Aadhaar, Aadhaar not linked to the ration card, or failure of biometric authentication — will have to be recorded as “exceptions” by the fair price shop dealer.
  • As per the National Food Security Act, the States have been given time till December to link Aadhaar with ration cards.

Tougher consumer protection law in shaping

  • A new consumer protection law is on the anvil to crack down on misleading advertisements and simplify the grievance redressal mechanism, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was speaking at the inauguration of a two-day international conference on Consumer Protection for East, South, Southeast and Asian nations.
  • Mr. Modi said India’s consumer protection traditions dated back 2,500 years. Laws existed even in the Vedic period to prevent unfair trade practices and adulteration of products, he said.
  • Extolling the virtues of the new Goods and Services Tax (GST), Mr. Modi said it was one of the key consumer-friendly reforms that his government had introduced. The GST would benefit consumers in the long run as prices would come down because of competition among manufacturers, he said.
  • Consumers can no longer be cheated as they can see on receipts the tax they are paying, Mr. Modi said.
  • The new law will replace the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, and is in line with the revised UN guidelines on consumer protection. It is currently with the Cabinet Secretariat and will be placed before the Cabinet for consideration soon, the Prime Minister said.
  • Stringent provisions are proposed against misleading advertisements. A Central Consumer Protection Authority with executive powers will be constituted for quick remedial action,” Mr Modi added.
  • Prime Minister said protection of consumer interests is a priority of his government and is part of his resolution for New India. He listed the new Real Estate law, new Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Act, the Ujjwala scheme and direct benefit transfers as steps taken to empower consumers in the last three years.
  • The Real Estate Regulatory Act, for example, Mr Modi said will protect home buyers from the builders’ monopoly. The builders will no longer able to cheat them by diverting funds of certain project to another. There will be a robust grievance redressal mechanism, he said.

Deadline extended for mandatory linking of Aadhaar, bank accounts

  • The government has proposed extending the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts and mobile phones from December 31, 2017 to March 31, 2018, but only for those who are “willing to enrol for Aadhaar.”
  • The proposal was contained in a one-page note that was passed on to a Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra. The note, however, insisted that those who already have Aadhaar will be “required” to sync their numbers with SIM cards, bank accounts, PAN and “other schemes where Section 7 (Aadhaar Act) notifications have been issued.”
  • The government’s suggestion created such a furore in the court that Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra had to ask the government to re-think its proposal and make linking voluntary for Aadhaar holders.
  • The court asked Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, for the Centre, whether it can give an assurance that no “coercive action” would be taken against those who do not want to link their bank accounts and mobile phones with Aadhaar.
  • “The way Aadhaar is spreading is unconstitutional. Now those who have Aadhaar are vulnerable. There have been reports of accounts being wiped out after linking with Aadhaar. People who have Aadhaar do not want to link. They have to share their one-time password...,” Mr. Divan said.
  • He submitted that the petitions challenging Aadhaar had been “crying for a hearing” in the Supreme Court since 2014.
  • Mr. Divan said the government’s attitude discriminated among those willing to enrol for Aadhaar, others without Aadhaar, and finally, a sizeable section of the population who have Aadhaar but are apprehensive about linking their bank accounts and mobile phones to it.
  • Mr. Venugopal said the government-appointed Expert Committee on Data Protection Law, headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice B. Sri Krishna, had started working towards a robust data protection regime in accordance with a suggestion made by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud in his majority judgement for the nine-judge Constitution Bench that upheld privacy as a fundamental right on August 24.
  • Mr. Venugopal said a final form of the law would be available by February 2018, and hence the proposal for a three-month extension in the Aadhaar linking deadline.
  • The deadline for linking Aadhaar had earlier been extended from September 30, 2016 to December 31, 2017.

Ichthyosaurs’ fossil found

  • A near-complete Jurassic-era fossil of an intriguing animal that looks like a mashup of a dolphin and lizard, and lived during the twilight of the dinosaurs, has been unearthed in Kutch, Gujarat.
  • Ichthyosaurs, or ‘fish- lizards’ in Greek, were large reptiles that lived at the same time as dinosaurs. While many ichthyosaur fossils have been found in North America and Europe, the fossil record in the Southern Hemisphere has mostly been limited to South America and Australia.
  • Guntupalli Prasad, a geologist at the University of Delhi, said when a fossil bone from the animal’s skeleton was first found by an Indo-German research team in Kutch in 2016, they suspected it to be a dinosaur. “But the bone was too long and later the whole skeleton was unearthed. It’s the first Jurassic ichthyosaur found in India,” he told The Hindu .
  • The 5.5 metre-long skeleton is thought to belong to the Ophthalmosauridae family, which likely lived between 165 and 90 million years ago, when the arid Kutch was a sea.
  • The remains were found among fossils of ammonites and squid-like belemnites, and the way the creature’s teeth were worn out suggest it ate animals with thick, bony coverings, the team of scientists report in the October 25 edition of PLOS ONE .
  • Earlier too, researchers have discovered evidence of ichthyosaurs in prehistoric India. Remnants were reported from Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu in 2016 but these were only fossils of teeth and part of the vertebra. In Kutch, the team reported the finding of vertebral column, ribs, neural spines and a part of the snout. Some isolated teeth, vertebrae, jaw fragments, and other bone fragments were found scattered around the excavation site.

Patna University turns 100

  • Patna University, established at a time when not a single girl student was studying in any college of the newly created province of Bihar, completed 100 glorious years.
  • It was on October 1, 1917, that the Patna University Act passed by the then Imperial Legislative Council, came into effect, turning the long-cherished dream of the province into a reality.
  • The administration of the country’s seventh oldest university has lined up a host of events this year as part of the centenary celebrations, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to formally launch later this month here.
  • Since the establishment of the university is closely linked with the creation of the new province of Bihar in 1912, its story is also the story of modern Bihar, both being inspirational.
  • The university indeed scripted a new destiny for the province, shaping both academic and cultural life of the students, and in a short passage of time assumed the aura enjoyed by Oxford and Cambridge universities.
  • And the iconic buildings of the university, sitting handsomely on the banks of river Ganga, evoke a parallel with the famed British universities.
    AIR planning to launch services to other countries
  • All India Radio is planning to launch services in several countries such as Japan, Germany, Canada, South Africa and the Maldives and some in the Russian Commonwealth.
  • Its aim is to supplement the government’s diplomatic efforts and outreach to the Indian diaspora, an official said.

Sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh have requested government not to increase the prices

  • Sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh have requested the State government not to increase the prices at which sugarcane is purchased from farmers this year.
  • In a letter written to the Chief Secretary UPSMA said that any increase in cane prices would hit them hard “as the cane industry has been going through losses for last three consecutive years”
  • The request comes days after distressed farmers of the State alleged that the present rate of Rs. 305 per quintal of cane was much lower than the total input cost that goes into the farming of cane in U.P.
  • Farmers have waged a campaign to increase the State Advised Price (SAP) to Rs. 400 per quintal.Uttar Pradesh became the highest producer of sugar last year, contributing close to 42% of the total sugar production in India.
  • To push forth its request, the UPSMA reminded the Chief Secretary that CM had, on several occasions, said that increasing the procurement rate for sugarcane was not the solution to the problems of the industry.
  • Last year, the Samajwadi Party (SP) government increased the SAP of sugarcane by Rs. 25 and fixed it at Rs. 305 per quintal.
  • The UPSMA also urged the government to give the mills the option of paying sugarcane prices in two installments, and decreasing the commission paid to cooperative societies to Rs. 2 per quintal from the present Rs. 7.65.
  • The cane crushing season is expected to start from October.The letter said that “sugarcane prices in U.P. are undoubtedly higher as compared to other major sugar-producing States”.

Chinese envoy said time for India and China to start a new chapter

  • Chinese envoy to India Luo Zhaohui has said it was time for India and China to turn the old page and start a new chapter, stressing that the countries have made a lot of progress at the bilateral level.
  • Chinese President Xi Jinping met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS Summit in Xiamen earlier this month, and the two leaders sent a clear message of “reconciliation” and “cooperation”, he said.
  • The Chinese envoy was speaking on the 68th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
  • The Chinese envoy added that the speed of Chinese high-speed trains from Beijing to Shanghai was increased from 300 kmph to 350 kmph two weeks ago.
  • “We have started the feasibility study of hyperloop trains at the speed of 1,000 to 4,000 kmph,” he said.He said the high-speed trains were one of the four latest innovations made by China.

"Indian Railways decided to amend “a 150-year old convention”

  • The Indian Railways decided to amend “a 150-year old convention” to treat expenditure on foot over bridges as a “highest priority” safety item with no budget restriction and not as a passenger amenity.
  • Earlier only the first foot over bridge at a station was considered essential. The subsequent ones were seen as passenger amenities.
  • General Managers of all railway zones have been delegated powers to decide expenditure on safety-related issues.
  • “They shall intimate Financial Commissioner (FC) within a week of sanction for provision, and FC shall confirm the same within 15 days,” the Railway Ministry said in a statement.
  • Adding that in case of any disagreement over spending, the FC will put up the matter before the Railway Board.
  • The Railways will finalise the plan for additional escalators at Mumbai sub-urban railway stations with 15 days and the same exercise will be conducted at a pan-India level for all high traffic stations.

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