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The Supreme Court agreed to hear urgently a petition filed by the Telangana government against Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan for creating a “constitutional impasse” by refusing to act on several Bills passed by the State legislature.
Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud assured senior advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for the State, that the case would be listed on March 20.
Mr. Dave submitted that the Bills have been pending since September 14, 2022, awaiting the assent of the Governor.
In a parliamentary democracy, the Governor has no discretion to delay necessary assent as required on the Bills. Any refusal on the part of the Governor, including delay, will defeat parliamentary democracy and will of the people.
Several Bills are stuck, Mr. Dave pointed out during the mentioning of the case before the CJI Bench for early listing.
Maharashtra extends flagship health scheme to disputed border villages (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
With Karnataka heading into an Assembly election months from now, the Maharashtra government has decided to implement its flagship health insurance scheme in all 865 disputed villages falling under the jurisdiction of its southern neighbour.
While the political impact of the recent decision on the election-bound State is yet to emerge, the roll-out of the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Jan Arogya Yojana (MJPJAY) will set the Maharashtra exchequer back by ₹54 crore.
We are ready to bear the expense to provide quality life to the Marathi-speaking as well as non-Marathi-speaking families living in the 865 villages which are now in Karnataka’s control. Soon, several other schemes will be made available to the residents of those villages.
Since 1966, Maharashtra has claimed administrative rights over 865 villages in Bidar, Belagavi (Belgaum), Karwar (Uttara Kannada) and Kalaburagi (Gulbarga) districts.
Even as the inter-State dispute awaits Supreme Court adjudication, both the Karnataka and Maharashtra governments seize any opportunity to provide “basic facilities” to the residents of the border villages.
The decades-old dispute had flared up in November last year after leaders of both the States issued statements asserting their intention to secure the contentious areas.
Editorial
Saudi-Iranian ‘normalisation’, challenges in West Asia (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Saudi Arabia and Iran, represented by their national security advisers, signed an agreement in Beijing, China, to re-establish diplomatic ties, respect each other’s sovereignty and maintain non-interference in the other’s domestic affairs.
The agreement also reinstates two previous accords: one on security cooperation signed in 2001 and the other, going back to 1998, dealing with economic, technical, scientific and cultural ties.
This agreement ends seven years of diplomatic estrangement between the two Gulf neighbours. During this period, they have confronted each other in proxy wars in Syria and Yemen, carried out media campaigns of extraordinary mutual hostility, often on sectarian basis, and have on occasion come close to direct conflict, particularly in 2019 when suspected Iranian agents attacked Saudi oil facilities.
China’s Foreign Affairs head, Wang Yi, who brokered the agreement, described it as a “victory for dialogue, a victory for peace”.
The Saudi Foreign Minister said his country “favoured political solutions and dialogue”, while his Iranian counterpart affirmed that his country was pursuing “the preparation of more regional steps”. The accord has been welcomed across West Asia.
There had been meetings of Saudi and Iranian officials in Baghdad and Muscat in 2021 and 2022, but perhaps little progress had been made in addressing issues that divide the two countries — the wars in Syria and Yemen, and Saudi concerns relating to Iran’s mobilisation of Shia communities in the region against the Arab states.
However, these interactions had confirmed that the Arab states were prepared to pursue their interests without United States involvement.
This was largely the result of increasing regional disenchantment with the U.S. as a security-provider, alongside strong messages from Washington that it was less enthusiastic about being the regional security-guarantor. The U.S.’s military failures in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to its loss of credibility among its regional allies.
Inertia, intervention (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The Supreme Court’s decision to refer to a Constitution Bench the issue of granting legal recognition to same-sex marriages can be seen as an important step towards ensuring gender equality, despite apprehension that it is encroaching on the legislative domain.
Petitioners before the Court view the idea of giving of legal status for marriages between people belonging to the same sex as a natural consequence of the 2018 judgment decriminalising homosexuality.
The government, however, contends that there is no need to depart from the heteronormative understanding of marriage. And even if there ought to be such a change, it must come from the legislature.
The question before the Court is whether it should interpret provisions of marriage laws in India, especially the Special Marriage Act, 1954, as permitting marital unions between same-sex couples.
The Act allows the solemnisation of a marriage between any two persons and is used by those who are unable to register their marriages under their respective personal laws.
The Union government has argued that the decriminalisation of consensual relations between adults of the same sex has removed the stigma attached to homosexuality, but has not conferred the right of marriage.
And that the state is entitled to limit its recognition to marriages involving heterosexual couples. There is no discrimination, it claims, in keeping same-sex couples out of the definition of marriage.
Opinion
Europe picks up more arms even as global weapon imports drop (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, International Reports)
European countries increased imports of major weaponry by 47% between 2013-17 and 2018-2022 even as the global volume of international arms transfers fell by 5.1%.
If only those European states in the U.S.-led NATO alliance are considered, the increase in arms imports was 65% in the same period.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year has prompted European countries to rush to bolster their defenses. “Even as arms transfers have declined globally, those to Europe have risen sharply due to the tensions between Russia and most other European states,” Pieter D. Wezeman, Senior Researcher with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), said in a statement. SIPRI defines major arms as aircraft, warships, tanks, artillery, missiles and various heavy defence systems.
Arms imports of select European nations using SIPRI’s Trend Indicator Values (TIVs) expressed in millions. It shows the import data for five time periods: 1998-2002, 2003-2007, 2008-2012, 2013-2017 and 2018-2022.
The SIPRI TIV is a measure of the volume of international transfers of major arms. The TIV is based on the known unit production costs of a core set of weapons and is intended to represent the transfer of military resources rather than the financial value of the transfer.
This data is intended to provide a common unit to allow the measurement of trends in the flow of arms to particular countries and regions over time.
In many European countries such as the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, France, Belgium, Serbia, Belarus and Lithuania, the arms imports in 2018-2022 is the highest across all periods considered.
In other nations such as the U.K., Poland, Romania, Germany and Sweden, arms imports in the latest period are at least higher than the previous five-year period (2013-2017).
Explainer
Why is WhatsApp threatening to leave the U.K.? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
During a visit to the U.K. last week, WhatsApp’s head Will Cathcart said that WhatsApp would not comply with the country’s proposed Online Safety Bill (OSB) which will in effect outlaw end-to-end (E2E) encryption. Mr. Cathcart said that it was the first time a “liberal democracy” was attempting to block a “secure product”.
E2E encryption ensures that a message can only be decrypted by the intended recipient using a secure decryption key that is unique to each sender-recipient pair and to each of their messages.
Decryption, even by the messaging service provider, is impossible. Even if the platform’s servers are compromised, without the intended recipient’s decryption key, only a garbled string of characters will be available.
Over the last few years, E2E encryption has been steadily gaining ground. It is offered by default on WhatsApp, Signal, Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime and is an option on Meta’s Messenger and Telegram.
The Online Safety Bill is a proposed British legislation that seeks to improve online safety by placing certain “duty of care” obligations on online platforms.
Most of the criticism is directed against clause 110 of the OSB which empowers the British telecommunications regulator, the Office of Communications, to issue notices to most kinds of internet service providers, including private messaging apps and search engines, to identify and take down terrorism content that is communicated “publicly” and Child Sex Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) content that is communicated “publicly or privately”, and to prevent such content from being communicated in the first place.
Although the OSB does not mandate removal of E2E encryption, it would de facto mean breaking it as messaging apps would have to scan all messages that are sent on their platform to flag and take down terrorist and CSEA content.
Since the clause also requires the platforms to “prevent” terrorism and CSEA content from being communicated using the platforms, it would mean that WhatsApp would have to implement a client-side scanning mechanism to scan content on users’ devices before it is even encrypted.
For this, they would need to rely on algorithms that are not very sophisticated and do not understand context. For instance, in 2021, Google automatically blocked a father’s account in San Francisco and reported him to the local police because he had shot videos of his toddler son’s infection in intimate areas to share with his son’s doctor during the pandemic.
Why do landfills catch fire during summers? (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The Kochi landfill site around Brahmapuram that caught fire earlier this month is a stark reminder that Indian cities need to be prepared for more such incidents as summer approaches.
Preventing such fires require long-term measures, including thorough and sustained interventions from municipalities.
India’s municipalities have been collecting more than 95% of the waste generated in cities but the efficiency of waste-processing is 30-40% at best.
Municipal solid waste consists of about 60% biodegradable material, 25% non-biodegradable material and 15% inert materials, like silt and stone.
Municipalities are expected to process the wet and dry waste separately and to have the recovered by-products recycled. Unfortunately, the rate of processing in India’s cities is far lower than the rate of waste generation, so unprocessed waste remains in open landfills for long periods of time.
This openly disposed waste includes flammable material like low-quality plastics, which have a relatively higher calorific value of about 2,500-3,000 kcal/kg, and rags and clothes.
In summer, the biodegradable fraction composts much faster, increasing the temperature of the heap to beyond 70-80°C. A higher temperature coupled with flammable materials is the perfect situation for a landfill to catch fire. Some fires go on for months.
News
RBI has permitted banks from 18 countries to trade in rupee: Centre (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Banks from 18 countries have been permitted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to open special vostro rupee accounts (SVRAs) for settling payments in Indian rupees, the government told the Rajya Sabha.
In response to a question from Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP, Union Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Kishanrao Karad said the SVRAs could be set up by banks of partner countries by approaching authorised dealer (AD) banks in India that may get permission from the RBI after the due procedure.
Mr. Karad informed that as per records, the RBI had granted approval to “domestic and foreign AD Banks in 60 cases for opening SRVAs of banks from 18 nations — Botswana, Fiji, Germany, Guyana, Israel, Kenya, Malaysia, Mauritius, Myanmar, New Zealand, Oman, Russia, the Seychelles, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda and the United Kingdom”.
Of the 18 countries mentioned in Mr. Karad’s response, Russia has been vocal in using trade in local currency for the overall process of “de-dollarisation”. But India has been supporting the idea of trade in local currency mainly to boost exports.
The process of SVRAs began in July 2022 when the RBI announced that, “it has been decided to put in place an additional arrangement for invoicing, payment, and settlement of exports/imports in Indian rupees.
The announcement came against the backdrop of the commodities crisis triggered by the Western sanctions against Russia after President Vladimir Putin launched the “special military operation” against Ukraine in February 2022. Trade in local currencies have been mooted as a solution to avoid the current wave of wartime international sanctions that are hampering supply chains and global trade flows.
In the past one year, India has finalised trade pacts with partner countries such as the UAE and Australia and begun negotiation with others such as the U.K. and the EU while making inroads for the national currency in bilateral and global trade.
House panel on Tribal Affairs apprehensive about PM¬PVTG outlay without population data (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Welfare Schemes)
Weeks after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a ₹15,000-crore expenditure outlay for the Prime Minister’s Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PM-PVTG) Development Mission, the Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment expressed disappointment that such a massive budgetary allocation had been planned when even the Ministry of Tribal Affairs does not have data on PVTG populations in several States and Union Territories.
The House panel, headed by BJP MP Rama Devi, in its report on the Demands for Grants of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, said, “The Committee are rather apprehensive on the enhanced budgetary allocation for PVTGs and its utilisation by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs as data on population of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) in several States/U.Ts is still not available with them.”
The panel noted that Ministry officials informed members that for PVTGs, an annual expenditure of ₹5,000 crore had been planned — to be spent over the next three years.
The officials also said that the States and Union Territories had been asked to carry out baseline surveys and that this exercise was now under verification process.
The Committee feel that this should have been done earlier because they strongly believe that in the absence of correct details of the population of PVTGs, the financial allocation for the Scheme may not bear the desired results.
The House panel also noted that an evaluation study had revealed that PVTG data are absent in many States and UTs, including for Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which the panel members recently visited, and where six of seven Scheduled Tribes groups fall under the PVTG categorisation.
The panel also pointed out that the government had been able to spend just ₹6.48 crore for the development of PVTGs in 2022-23, out of an initial allocation of ₹252 crore, and said that estimates had to be reduced significantly in the financial years 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23.
World
Australia to buy U.S. nuclear submarines under AUKUS (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Australia has unveiled plans to buy up to five U.S. nuclear-powered submarines, then build a new model with U.S. and British technology under an ambitious plan to bulk up Western muscle across the Asia-Pacific in the face of a rising China.
The announcement came at an event at a San Diego, California, naval base where U.S. President Joe Biden hosted Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
With a U.S. Virginia-class nuclear submarine moored behind the trio’s podium, Mr. Biden said the U.S. had “safeguarded stability in the Indo-Pacific for decades” and that the submarine alliance would bolster “the prospect of peace for decades to come.”
As Mr. Biden stressed, Australia, which joined a newly formed alliance known as AUKUS with Washington and London 18 months ago, will not be getting nuclear weapons.
However, acquiring stealthy submarines powered by nuclear reactors puts Australia in an elite club and at the forefront of U.S.-led efforts to push back against Chinese military expansion.
Mr. Albanese said the deal represents the biggest single investment in Australia’s defence capability “in all of our history.”
The submarines are expected to be equipped with cruise missiles that can strike foes from long distances, offering a potent deterrent to would-be attackers.
Mr. Albanese predicted that the wider economic impact at home would be akin to the introduction of the automobile industry in the country after World War II.