Daily Current Affairs

Toward legalizing same-sex marriage (GS Paper 2, Governance)

Why in news?

• Recently, a Supreme Court Bench led by Chief Justice of India issued notices to the Centre and the Attorney General of India, seeking their response to two petitions filed by gay couples to allow solemnisation of same-sex marriage under the Special Marriage Act, (SMA) 1954.

 

What do the petitions say?

• The SMA provides a civil form of marriage for couples who cannot marry under their personal law, and both the recent pleas seek to recognise same-sex marriage in relation to this Act and not personal laws.

 

SMA “ultra vires” the Constitution:

• The first petition was filed by two men, Supriyo Chakraborty and Abhay Dang, who have been a couple for 10 years. Their petition argued that the SMA was “ultra vires” the Constitution “to the extent it discriminates between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples”.
• It stated that the Act denied same-sex couples both “legal rights as well as the social recognition and status” that came from marriage.
• About 15 legislations which guaranteed the rights of wages, gratuity, adoption, surrogacy and so on were not available to LGBTQ+ citizens. The petitioners emphasised that the SMA “ought to apply to a marriage between any two persons, regardless of their gender identity and sexual orientation”.

 

Other petition:

• The other petition was filed by a same-sex couple of 17 years — Parth Phiroze Mehrotra and Uday Raj Anand.
• Their counsel argued that the recognition of same-sex marriage was only a “sequel” or a continuation of the Navtej Singh Johar judgment of 2018 (decriminalising homosexuality) and the Puttaswamy judgment of 2017 (affirming the Right to Privacy as a fundamental right).
• Their plea pointed out that while Section 4 of the SMA permitted the solemnisation of marriage between any two persons, a subsequent section placed restrictions.
• It said: “The use, in Section 4(c) of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’, as well as the use of gendered language such as the terms ‘husband/wife’ and ‘bride/bridegroom’ in other sections of the Act, limit the access to marriage to a couple comprising one ‘male’ and one ‘female’.”

 

Have similar petitions been filed?

• There are currently a total of nine petitions pending before the High Court of Delhi and Kerala, seeking to recognise same-sex marriages under Acts such as the SMA, the Foreign Marriage Act and codified personal laws.
• The Supreme Court Bench transferred the various pending issues before High Courts to itself.

 

Navtej Singh Johar judgment of 2018:

• In the landmark Navtej Johar judgment of 2018, the five-judge Supreme Court Bench, had decriminalised homosexuality and unanimously held that the criminalisation of private consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex under the more than 150-year-old Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was unconstitutional.
• It had stated that a person’s bodily autonomy be constitutionally protected and that sharing intimacy in private with a person of choice formed a part of the individual’s right to privacy.
• CJI Chandrachud had also emphasised that the case was not solely about striking down Section 377 but also about the rights of the LGBTQ+ community.

 

NALSA vs Union of India judgment (2014):

• In the NALSA vs Union of India judgment (2014), the Court had said that non-binary individuals were protected under the Constitution and fundamental rights such as equality, non-discrimination, life, freedom and so on could not be restricted to those who were biologically male or female. The Court made a distinction between Biological sex and Psychological sex.

Global position:

• A total of 32 countries around the world have legalised same-sex marriages, some through legislation while others through judicial pronouncements.
• Many countries first recognised same-sex civil unions as the escalatory step to recognise homosexual marriage.
• Civil unions or partnerships are similar arrangements as marriages which provide legal recognition of unmarried couples of the same or opposite sex in order to grant them some of the rights that come with marriage — such as inheritance, medical benefits, employee benefits to spouses, managing joint taxes and finances, and in some cases even adoption.
• The Netherlands was the first country in 2001 to legalise same-sex marriage by amending one line in its civil marriage law.
• In some countries, the decriminalisation of homosexuality was not followed for years by the recognition of same-sex marriage, for instance, in the U.S. the former happened in 2003 while the latter in 2015.

 

Bihar’s unique Har Ghar Gangajal scheme

(GS Paper 2, Governance)

Why in news?

• Recently, the Bihar Chief Minister launched the ambitious Har Ghar Gangajal scheme, under which piped Ganga water will be supplied to every household, at Rajgir in Nalanda district.
• The scheme will harvest the excess water in the Ganga during the monsoon flooding season, to be treated, stored, and piped to Rajgir, Gaya, and Bodhgaya, regions that have for long depended on tankers of drinking water from adjoining districts to see them through the hot, dry season.

Har Ghar Gangajal scheme:

• Har Ghar Gangajal is part of the Bihar government’s Jal, Jeevan, Hariyali scheme.

• In the Rs 4,000-crore first phase of the project,  giant pumps will lift Ganga water from Hathidah near Mokama and supply it to about 7.5 lakh homes in the state’s main tourism destinations of Rajgir, Bodhgaya, and Gaya.
• The water will be stored in reservoirs in Rajgir and Gaya before being channelled to three treatment-and-purification plants, from where it will be supplied to the public.
• The water will travel more than 150 km through pipes from Hathidah, and will use a network of existing, renovated, and new connections to reach every beneficiary household.
• According to estimates made by the government, the scheme will provide every individual beneficiary with 135 litres of Ganga water every day for drinking and domestic use.
• During the second phase of the project, which is expected to be launched sometime next year, Ganga water will be taken to Nawada.

 

The need for the scheme:

• The area around Rajgir (in Nalanda district), which was the nucleus of the ancient kingdom of Magadh and is associated with the founders of both Buddhism and Jainism, is rocky and water-deficient.
• Over the years, unplanned and indiscriminate use of groundwater has depleted subterranean reservoirs, lowered the water table, and affected the quality of the water in Gaya and Rajgir.
• The bulk of the urban water supply continues to be through tube wells. A study by the Bihar Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) showed the average groundwater level in Gaya district had plunged from 30.30 feet in July 2021 to 41.50 feet in July 2022.
•  Data from the Central Ground Water Board’s Year Book for Bihar show the water table in Gaya and Rajgir fell by between 2 and 4 metres between 2014-15 and 2020-21.
• Handpumps have been going dry at many places in the region.

Significance of Har Ghar Gangajal scheme:

• The government expects the Har Ghar Gangajal scheme to also help alleviate distress from the annual flooding of the banks of the Ganga.
• Over the years, heavy silting in the riverbed affecting especially Mokama, Hathidah, Barh, and Lakhisarai and the release of water from dams upstream in Nepal have resulted in the Ganga spilling over even when the monsoon rainfall over Bihar has not been exceptionally heavy.
• It is expected that the diversion of Ganga water during the monsoon season will help to reduce the impact of flooding along the banks of the river.
• The government has assured that the water for the scheme would be lifted only during the four months of the monsoon when the Ganga has excess water; therefore, the diversion will not lead to depletion of the river, disturbance in its natural flow, or potential changes in its course.
• The government plans to build 13 more reservoirs in Gaya and Rajgir to store diverted floodwaters in the coming years.

 

Working of the system:

• The project has been described as a “lift-store-tame-treat-supply” system. Hyderabad-based Megha Engineering & Infrastructures Limited (MEIL) has been working on the project since 2019.
• A 447-metre approach channel has been constructed in Hathidah on the right bank of the Ganga near the Rajendra Bridge, through which water is taken to an intake-well-cum-pumphouse, which is powered by a dedicated electricity substation with a 7500 KVA transformer, and two smaller 250 KVA transformers.
• State-of-the-art online filters have been installed near the intake well to ensure silt-free water enters the pump and pipeline, and there is no erosion in the riverbed.
• The 151-km pipeline network will use a railway overbridge and four bridges.
• A water treatment plant with a capacity of 186.5 million litres per day (MLD) at Manpur in Gaya will supply to Gaya and Bodh Gaya.
• The three storage reservoirs are at Tetar, Rajgir, and Gaya with live capacities of 18.633 million cubic metres (MCM), 9.915 MCM, and 0.938 MCM respectively. Besides Manpur, a smaller water treatment plant of capacity 24 MLD has been built in Rajgir.

 

Bluebugging

(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)

Context:

• The apps that let users connect smartphones or laptops to wireless earplugs can record conversations, and are vulnerable to hacks. Even the most secure smartphones like iPhones are vulnerable to such attacks.
• Any app with access to Bluetooth can record users’ conversations with Siri and audio from the iOS keyboard dictation feature.
• Through a process called bluebugging, a hacker can gain unauthorised access to these apps and devices and control them as per their wish.

What is bluebugging?

• It is a form of hacking that lets attackers access a device through its discoverable Bluetooth connection.
• Once a device or phone is bluebugged, a hacker can listen to the calls, read and send messages and steal and modify contacts.
• It started out as a threat for laptops with Bluetooth capability. Later hackers used the technique to target mobile phones and other devices.

 

How does bluebugging hack devices?

• Bluebugging attacks work by exploiting Bluetooth-enabled devices. The device’s Bluetooth must be in discoverable mode, which is the default setting on most devices. The hacker then tries to pair with the device via Bluetooth.
• Once a connection is established, hackers can use brute force attacks to bypass authentication. They can install malware in the compromised device to gain unauthorised access to it.
• Bluebugging can happen whenever a Bluetooth enabled device is within a 10-metre radius of the hacker. However, hackers can use booster antennas to widen the attack range.

 

How can one prevent bluebugging?

• Turning off Bluetooth and disconnecting paired Bluetooth devices when not in use, updating the device’s system software to the latest version, limited use of public Wi-Fi and using VPN as an additional security measure are some of the ways to prevent bluebugging.
• Most devices make Bluetooth discoverable by default, leaving your devices susceptible to unsolicited connections.
• Modern anti-virus softwares can also help thwart such attacks.
• The new-age antivirus softwares are helping users to detect strange and spam-like content by filtering, blocking and consistently reminding people to be alert.