Daily Current Affairs

Govt. panel to study simultaneous polls to LS, State Assemblies (GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)

Why in news?

• The Centre has once again initiated discussions on the 'One Nation One Election' policy in India, a topic that has been on the agenda for several years.
• The Union government has formed a committee under the headship of former President of India Ram Nath Kovind, to look into the feasibility of simultaneous elections to State Assemblies and the Lok Sabha.

 

Background:

• The implementation of the 'One Nation One Election' proposal is expected to present significant challenges due to the democratic, constitutional, and structural alterations necessary for its enactment.
• Modifying the Constitution through legislative implementation is complex and time-consuming. But it is not impossible, going by the 105 constitutional amendments made until now.
• Most recently, the Constitution was amended in August 2021 when three Articles were altered to restore state governments' authority to identify socially and educationally backward Other Backward Classes (OBCs).

 

Constitutional amendments required:

• To make the 'One Nation One Election' policy a reality, the Parliament will have to revise the following listed constitutional and legal provisions to enable simultaneous elections across India.
• Such amendments should adhere to Article 368 of the Indian Constitution that outlines the rule for amendments.

• Article 83: specifies the duration of Parliament sessions for both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. It further provides guidelines on what steps to follow regarding the functioning of Parliament during the Proclamation of Emergency.
• Article 172: This Article ensures that each State Legislature functions for a period of five years, unless dissolved earlier. In the event of an emergency, Parliament can extend the period of the House's operation for not more than one year. Article 172 also deals with dissolution of the Legislative Council.
• Article 85: By way of a proclamation and notification to the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, the President of India has the constitutional authority under Article 85(2)(b) to dissolve the Lok Sabha.
• Article 174: Article 174(2)(b) gives the governor of a state the power to dissolve the legislature. The Governor may do so through a proclamation and a notification to the Speaker of the state legislature.
• Article 356: In the case of emergencies enacted under Article 356, the President can dissolve the legislative assembly prematurely.
• Article 75:  According to Article 75(3), the Council of Ministers is directly and collectively accountable to the Lok Sabha. Their power is contingent upon the confidence of the Lok Sabha, and a votary motion can disband it.
• Article 164: Article 164(2) stipulates that the Council of Ministers at the State level is accountable to the State's Legislative Assembly and their power is dependent on the support of the Legislative Assembly.
• Article 324: Article 324 empowers the Election Commission to oversee, direct, and control elections to the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Councils.
• Tenth Schedule:  The Tenth Schedule deals with the Anti-Defection Law, which includes grounds on which an MP or MLA can be disqualified.
• The Representation of People Act, 1951: The Representation of People Act, 1951, passed by the Parliament, delineates the complete methodology of election proceedings in India, supplementing the powers granted to the Election Commission.

 

Simultaneous elections in other nations:

• India seems to be moving towards holding elections simultaneously for the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies. If India makes that happen, it will be only the fourth country in the world to hold polls simultaneously.
• The other three countries that hold simultaneous elections are Belgium, Sweden and South Africa. The fact that Sweden holds elections for county and municipal councils concurrently with general elections (Riksdag elections) every four years is not commonly known.
• General elections for the Riksdag, regional or county council assemblies, and municipal councils are held in Sweden every four years. The polls are usually held in September. All these elections in Sweden take place on the same day.
• Sweden has a proportional electoral system, which means that political parties are assigned a number of seats in the elected assembly based on their share of the vote.
• In Belgium, Federal Parliament elections are held every five years, in sync with European elections, which impact regional elections.

 

Nepal’s Simultaneous Elections in 2017

• Nepal has the experience of holding national and state elections simultaneously once in 2017.
• On August 21, 2017, the Nepal government ordered the holding of national and state elections across the country simultaneously.
• This was to be Nepal's first election after the country adopted a new Constitution in 2015.
• But the Election Commission of Nepal raised concerns about the difficulty of organising such concurrent elections across the country. The government then went for a two-phase election with a gap period.

 

The South Africa Case Study

• Area-wise, Belgium, Nepal and Sweden are smaller countries, and holding simultaneous polls there isn’t that big a logistical challenge. A better example, though not exactly proportionate to the Indian scale, therefore, would be South Africa.
• India is seventh biggest in terms of area, whereas South Africa is the 24th.
• Provincial and national elections are held simultaneously every five years in South Africa. The African country has nine provinces.
• Separate voting papers are provided to voters to cast ballots for the national and provincial legislatures.
• South Africa's electoral system is based on a proportional representation (PR) framework for choosing members of parliament and provincial legislatures.
• The national Parliament has 400 MPs, but the makeup of the nine provincial legislatures varies, ranging from 30 to 90 seats depending on the population of the province.
• The execution of these elections is entrusted to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).
• South Africa’s electoral process, however, is very different from India’s.
• Before the elections, political parties draw up a list of candidates for each of the legislatures they wish to contest. For the national assembly, parties can submit half their candidates on a national list and half on provincial lists.
• When the poll results are announced, the IEC works out how many people from each party list should take up seats in the legislature.

 

Challenges in India:

• Apart from the debates around the pros and cons, there are multiple logistical challenges in conducting polls simultaneously for the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies.
• Though they might be conducted in multiple phases, simultaneous elections would need manpower to be deployed around the same time at a stretch. It would also require greater numbers of electronic voting machines (EVMs) and voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines.
• Also, complexities could arise if any state government collapses or gets dissolved before their scheduled five-year term.

 

Earlier experience of India:

• India began its electoral endeavour in 1951 with simultaneous elections. Independent India's first elections were held between October 25, 1951, and February 21, 1952, an exercise for over 100 days.
• However, as states were restructured and assemblies were prematurely disbanded, this set-up fell apart. Nonetheless, simultaneous elections were held in 76% of the states in 1957, and 67% in 1962 and 1967.
• The continuity of this synchronized electoral cycle was shattered in Kerala in July 1959, when the Central government dismissed the Communist Party-led government under E M S Namboodiripad. As a result, state elections were held in February 1960, within three years of the last assembly poll.
• By 1972, the synchronized election trend had been broken, as no state election coincided with the general election for the Lok Sabha.
• However, assembly polls in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim are concurrently held with the Lok Sabha elections.

 

Way Forward:

• The idea and practice of holding elections to the state assemblies and the Parliament is not new in India’s case. But the challenges are many.
• And if India indeed opts for ‘one nation, one election’, the world’s biggest democracy will set another unique example.

Aditya L-1 launched

(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)

Why in news?

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched its first space mission to study the sun, Aditya-L1, on September 2.
• The spacecraft lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota following a textbook launch aboard the PSLV-XL rocket at 11:50 am IST.
• It has now embarked on a journey that will last approximately four months before it reaches its destination, the Lagrange point 1 (L1).

How did the Aditya L-1 go into space?

• The solar probe was carried into space by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) in ‘XL’ configuration. PSLV is one of the most reliable and versatile workhorse rockets of ISRO.
• Previous missions like Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 and Mangalyaan in 2013 were also launched using PSLV. The rocket is most powerful in the ‘XL’ configuration as it is equipped with six extended strap-on boosters  therefore, can carry heavier payloads.
• PSLV-XL can lift 1,750 kg of payloads to the sun-synchronous polar orbit and much more, 3,800 kg to a lower Earth orbit (normally located at an altitude of less than 1,000 km but could be as low as 160 km above the planet). As Aditya L-1 weighs 1,472 kg, it was launched aboard PSLV.
• Chandrayaan-3 took off aboard LVM3, the most powerful rocket of ISRO, because it was more than two times heavier than the solar probe. 

 

What is the Aditya L-1 mission?

• The PSLV will initially place the Aditya L-1 in a lower Earth orbit. Subsequently, the spacecraft’s orbit around the Earth will be raised multiple times before it is put on a path to a halo orbit around the L1 Lagrange point.
• The spacecraft will finally be stationed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth.

 

What are the objectives of the Aditya L-1?

• To study the upper atmospheric layers of the Sun called chromosphere and corona. While the corona is the outermost layer, the chromosphere is just below it.
• To examine coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun’s corona.
• To analyse the corona’s magnetic field and the driver of the space weather.
• To understand why the Sun’s not-so-bright corona is a million degree Celsius hot when the temperature on the surface of the Sun is just about 5,500 degree Celsius.
• To help scientists know the reasons behind the acceleration of particles on the Sun, which leads to the solar wind, the constant flow of particles from the Sun.

 

What is space weather?

• Space weather refers to changing environmental conditions in space. It is mainly influenced by activity on the Sun’s surface.
• The solar wind, magnetic field, as well as solar events like CME affect the nature of space.

 

What are the payloads?

• There are essentially seven payloads on the Aditya L-1.
• The main one is the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VLEC) to study the solar corona from the lowermost part upwards.
• The Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) will capture the UV image of the solar photosphere and chromosphere. It will examine the variation in light energy emitted.
• Meanwhile, the Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS) and High Energy L1 Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS) will analyse X-ray flares.
• The Aditya Solar wind Particle Experiment (ASPEX) and Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA) have been built to study the solar wind and energetic ions.

 

What are the Lagrange points?

• There are five Lagrange points, L1 to L5, between any two-celestial body systems.
• At these positions, the gravitational pull of the celestial bodies equals the centripetal force required to keep a smaller third body in orbit.

• The points can be used as ‘parking spots’ for spacecraft in space to remain in a fixed position with minimal fuel consumption. They have been named after Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813), who was the first one to find the positions.
• So, between the Earth and the Sun, a satellite can occupy any of five Lagrangian points.
• Of the five Lagrange points, three are unstable and two are stable.
• The unstable Lagrange points; labelled L1, L2, and L3  lie along the line connecting the two large masses. The stable Lagrange points labelled L4 and L5 form the apex of two equilateral triangles.
• The L4 and L5 are also called Trojan points and celestial bodies like asteroids are found here.

 

Why will the probe go around L1?

• It’s because L1 gets a continuous and unhindered view of the Sun.
• L2 is located behind the Earth, and thus obstructs the view of the Sun, while L3 is behind the Sun which is not a great position to communicate with Earth.
• L4 and L5 are good and stable locations but are much farther from Earth compared to L1, which is directly between the Sun and the Earth.
• The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft (SOHO) is also stationed at a halo orbit around the L1 point of the Earth-Sun system.
• The spacecraft has been operational since 1996 and has discovered more than 400 comets, studied the outer layers of the Sun and examined solar winds.

 

Why study the Sun from space?

• The Sun “emits radiation/light in nearly all wavelengths along with various energetic particles and magnetic fields. The atmosphere of the Earth as well as its magnetic field acts as a protective shield and blocks a number of harmful wavelength radiations including particles and fields.
• This means studying the Sun from Earth can’t provide a complete picture and it becomes crucial to observations from outside the planet’s atmosphere i.e., from space.

 

India will be losing groundwater three times faster in 2041-2080, finds study

 (GS Paper 3, Environment)

Why in news?

• The rate of depletion of groundwater in India during 2041-2080 will be thrice the current rate with global warming, according to a new report. 
• As the country becomes warmer, people will draw more water from underground, leading to faster depletion. 
• The situation can occur despite the projected increases in precipitation and possible decreases in irrigation use as groundwater table fall.

 

Key observation:

• Across climate change scenarios, the researchers found that their estimate of groundwater level (GWL) declines from 2041 to 2080 is 3.26 times current depletion rates on average (from 1.62-4.45 times) depending on the climate model and Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenario.
• RCPs are a method for capturing those assumptions within a set of scenarios. The conditions of each scenario are used in the process of modelling possible future climate evolution.

 

Impact of warming temperatures:

• Using historical data on groundwater levels, climate and crop water stress, the study researchers found that farmers have adapted to warming temperatures by intensifying groundwater withdrawals, substantially accelerating groundwater depletion rates in India.
• The study findings revealed that warming temperatures have accelerated groundwater depletion as farmers have increased the amount of irrigation used to meet growing crop water demand. 
• While increasing irrigation use successfully minimises the negative impacts of warming temperatures on crop water stress, the resulting groundwater depletion can reduce farmers’ abilities to irrigate over decadal time scales. 
• This previously unquantified cost of adapting to warming temperatures will likely further threaten India’s food and water security over the coming decades. 

 

Expansion of area:

• Warming-induced groundwater pumping will also likely increase the area facing groundwater overexploitation in the future. Currently, most overexploitation of aquifers is concentrated in the northwest and south India, but the study results further suggest overexploitation may expand to include aquifers in the southwest, the southern peninsula, and central India by 2050.
• Such an expansion, is of concern because south and central India have hard rock aquifers that are more difficult to recharge and have less storage capacity against the alluvial aquifers found in northwest India.

 

Recommendations:

• To reduce groundwater overexploitation, they recommended that effective policies are needed for rationing the power supply, metering electricity usage, regional water resource development and allocation, rewarding farmers that invest in groundwater recharge and reducing or removing energy subsidies. 
• In addition, groundwater-saving interventions such as the use of efficient irrigation technologies (drip or sprinkler irrigation), cultivation of less water-intensive crops and supplemental irrigation through canals may also be needed.
• While challenges remain in implementing new regulations and interventions across the hundreds of millions of households that face groundwater depletion, without such measures, the study results suggest that groundwater depletion rates will likely accelerate under climate change. 
• Targeting water-saving policies and interventions to these regions before substantial groundwater depletion occurs could help farmers maintain their ability to irrigate and cope with warming temperatures over the coming decades.