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Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud on Monday announced in open court that the Supreme Court would appoint an all-woman committee of three former High Court judges, headed by Justice Gita Mittal, former Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court, to provide a “healing touch” in violence-torn Manipur.
Justice Shalini Phansalkar Joshi, a retired Bombay High Court judge, and Justice Asha Menon, a former Delhi High Court judge, will be the members of the committee.
This will be a broad-based committee which will be constituted to supervise, intervene and monitor relief and rehabilitation, restoration of homesteads, religious places of worships, better relief work, etc.
He said the court intended to appoint the retired Maharashtra-cadre IPS officer Dattatray Padsalgikar, who had served in the National Investigation Agency, the Intelligence Bureau, and in Nagaland, to monitor the overall investigation of cases registered during the violence. Over 6,500 first information reports (FIRs) have been registered from May to July in Manipur.
The Manipur government, represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, said it has transferred 11 FIRs concerning sexual violence committed against women, including the Thoubal sexual violence incident, to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
As for the other cases, which would remain with the Manipur Police, the State government said it had formed 42 special investigation teams (SIT).
The top court, however, said it wanted eyes from outside the State to keep an eye on the State Police investigation into these cases, which include serious offences such as murder and arson.
States
Chhattisgarh Cabinet paves way for 32% tribal quota in education (Page no. 4)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
In a move aimed at allaying the concerns of tribals in Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh ahead of elections, the State Cabinet on Monday decided that the admission process in educational institutions would be completed under the “existing” system of 58% reservation [12% for SCs, 32% for STs and 14% for OBCs or the 12-32-14 roster] instead of the [pre-March 2012] 16-20-14 (50%) roster.
The latest decision by the Cabinet on the sensitive and complex issue of reservation – that has witnessed several politico-legal twists and turns in the past one decade – relies on a Supreme Court interim order dated May 1 and a formal legal opinion tendered by the Advocate General on August 3.
As per this interim [SC] order, Cabinet has decided to conduct the admission process in the educational institutions of the state under the pre-existing reservation system.
The apex court in its May order allowed 58% quota to continue in jobs and promotions in the State subject to the final outcome of an SLP filed by the government challenging the September 2022 Chhattisgarh High Court decision striking down two legislations increasing the quota.
Nearly a week later, on May 9, a government circular said that entrance examinations should be conducted without mentioning reservation provision in the advertisements, and quota would be provided as per the reservation provision applicable in the State [at the time of the admission], adding to the confusion.
As the admissions process began, at least one government institution, Raipur’s Hidayatullah National Law University, admitted the students in early July under the 16-20-14 roster.
Alleging that this allowed for only 17 ST students to be admitted in place of 27, rights groups held protests against the lack of clarity and “tribal rights being trampled upon”.
Editorial
China’s worldview, its postulates and a reality check (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Chinese leaders, especially current paramount leader, Xi Jinping, constantly refer to ‘changes unseen in a Century’, implying that the decline of the West-promoted ‘rules based order’ is inevitable, and that a new Chinese-promoted world order is set to prevail.
Implicit also is that a Chinese-driven world is better suited to a world defined by disorder, asymmetry and fragmentation.
‘Changes unseen in a Century’ is one of the underlying principles of ‘Xi Jinping Thought’. This presupposes that the struggle for future dominance revolves around not merely military security but also technological, cultural, as also biological aspects, and that given China’s rise, accelerated by technology and shaped by its economic strength and demographic potential, its success is inevitable.
The current crop of Chinese leaders believes that ongoing threats to China, however, remain and that the main threat comes from the United States.
They hew to the view that growing polarisation within U.S. society and loss of power across the globe were impacting U.S. attitudes, causing tensions between the U.S. and China.
In turn, it had led to a marked shift in U.S. attitudes; from an earlier policy of ‘engagement and partial containment’ to one of all-out competition with China, for global influence.
The war in Ukraine, talk of an increasing divide between democracies and autocracies, the forging of new security partnerships such as the AUKUS (Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S.) and the Quad ( Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.) were all symptoms of this malaise.
China also had increased concerns that the Ukraine war could lead the U.S. to be more assertive on Taiwan. Beijing’s riposte has been to enlarge its Global Security Initiative (GDI) and further expand the China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
Chinese scholars further believe that the world has currently entered an era of ‘Polycentric Competition and Cooperation’.
Neither the right to privacy nor the right to information (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
Personal data bill will boost digital economy, says Nasscom. This industry response to the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill 2023 that was introduced in Parliament reveals the real purpose of the Bill — legalising data mining rather than safeguarding the right to privacy.
The right to privacy was reaffirmed by a nine-judge Constitutional bench of the Supreme Court in 2017. It set an international benchmark and illustrated the new challenges to the right to privacy posed by the digital age.
The DPDP Bill 2023, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha last week, is an outcome of the debate around the right to privacy.
The right to information provides us access to government documents to ensure transparency and accountability of the government.
Enacted as a law, the Right to Information Act (RTI) 2005 has played a critical role in deepening democratic practices.
The much-awaited DPDP Bill 2023 ends up undermining our right to information, without doing much to protect our right to privacy.
In a crucial way, the two rights complement each other. Broadly speaking, the right to information seeks to make the government transparent to us, while the right to privacy is meant to protect us from government (and increasingly, private) intrusions into our lives.
Yet, there are some tensions between the right to information and the right to privacy. For example, under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), mandatory disclosure provisions are meant to ensure that workers can monitor expenditure and also facilitate public scrutiny through social audits.
Explainer
India’s mining policy shift (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Parliament passed the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2023, in a bid to attract private sector investment in the exploration of critical and deep-seated minerals in the country.
The Bill puts six minerals, including lithium — used in electric vehicle batteries and other energy storage solutions — into a list of “critical and strategic” minerals.
The exploration and mining of these six minerals, previously classified as atomic minerals, were restricted to government-owned entities.
A variety of minerals, besides those used in creating fuel, are crucial to a country’s manufacturing, infrastructure, and advancement.
Moreover, the clean energy transitions of countries including India, seeking to meet their net-zero emission goals, are contingent on the availability of critical minerals such as lithium, which has also been called ‘white gold’, and others including cobalt, graphite, and rare earth elements (REEs).
These are also crucial for the manufacture of semiconductors used in smart electronics; defence and aerospace equipment; telecommunication technologies and so on.
The lack of availability of such minerals or the concentration of their extraction or processing in a few geographical locations leads to import dependency, supply chain vulnerabilities, and even disruption of their supplies.
For instance, China has majority ownership of cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined.
China also has by far the largest amount of reserves of REEs of any country in the world, followed by Vietnam, Brazil and Russia.
Major economies including the U.S., U.K., and the European Union in the recent past have moved to secure supply-chain resilience for such minerals and to reduce reliance for their availability on countries like China.
Text
Generative AI startup bubble: a cause for worry or opportunity? (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
A month ago, generative AI startup Typeface raised $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion. Around the same time, French startup Mistral AI received $113 million funding without a working product in sight.
Separately, media reports revealed open-source platform Hugging Face raised $200 million at a $4 billion valuation.
Such multi-million dollar deals reveal a rare spot of joy for venture capitalists facing a dwindling startup market. While interest in startups building AI products has grown among VCs in the light of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, some see a bubble in the making.
Generative AI is in a bubble. And this time the wrong assumption is that generative AI is either the product or the innovation.
Our primary interest is in hardware infra and data assets - we don’t feel the other 3 layers are particularly conducive to small-cheque, seed-stage investing.
There is genuine interest coupled with wariness, Bahl explained stating, “There’s a lot of froth, and misrepresentation. Like one couldn’t make a cup of chai without using blockchain two years ago, it seems one can’t do that without Gen AI now.
So yes, there is a huge bubble in the making and in two years many people will look back and lament their impetuousness once more.”
While any startup venture is plagued with failures, in the case of Gen AI-focused startups, the failure rate will be even higher as a large number of founders and investors are participating in the AI ecosystem.
News
Rajya Sabha clears Delhi services Bill, backed by 131 MPs (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Rajya Sabha passed the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, four days after the Lok Sabha cleared the Bill.
According to the Centre, the Bill is for the “maintenance of democratic and administrative balance in the governance” of the National Capital Territory of Delhi.
The Bill was passed with 131 members voting in favour and 102 voting against it. Apart from the NDA constituents, the Bill got the support of the BJD and YSRCP members.
The House also voted against the amendments moved by the Opposition and a proposal to send it to a select committee. Deputy Chairman Harivansh, who presided over the voting, also ordered a probe into claims by a few members that their names had been included in the proposed select committee without consent.
Replying to the debate on the Bill, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said the aim of the Bill was to ensure corruption-free, pro-people governance in Delhi.
The Centre had the right to draft laws for all Union Territories. “So, services will also be included in this. Parliament has the right to amend and nullify the Acts passed by the Assembly and added that the Congress was opposing the Act created by it to appease the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). He said the real target of the AAP was not the BJP, but the Congress.
Amid concerns, Lok Sabha passes Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Lok Sabha on Monday passed the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023 by voice vote, amid continuous slogan shouting by the Opposition.
The Bill sets out requirements for companies collecting data online, with exceptions for the government and law enforcement agencies.
The Bill, now headed to the Rajya Sabha, also amends the Right to Information Act, 2005 to remove public interest exemptions on disclosing personal information.
Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, in his remarks, dismissed concerns around wide government exemptions, surveillance, and the amendment of the RTI Act.
If there is a natural disaster or earthquake, should we worry about … consent notices, or focus on people’s safety. The RTI Act currently allows public authorities to disclose personal information, such as officials’ salaries, when it is in public interest.
The Bill would remove these caveats and completely disallow disclosing personal information.
TDP member Jayadev Galla said the government had too much influence over the proposed Data Protection Board, with decision-making powers on appointments and short terms of service.
This, he said, citing a 2019 Supreme Court judgment, may reduce the independence of the Board. Mr. Galla otherwise supported the Bill.
Business
Pending GST appeals surged in Q1 (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Ahead of the much-awaited formation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Appellate Tribunals, the number of pending appeals from taxpayers over central GST levies has risen sharply to more than 14,000 by the end of the first quarter of 2023-24, 20% higher than such pending cases as on March 31 this year.
The GST Council had cleared the way for the setting up of GST Appellate Tribunals across the country at its meeting on July 11, and the government had indicated it would aim to make the first set of tribunals operational sometime between November 2023 and January 2024.
Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said the plan is to establish the State benches in a phased manner based on the request of States. Mr. Chaudhary also shared details of the number of GST appeals related to central GST authorities that are pending at various levels.
As per the data, these pending appeals stood at 5,499 cases as of March 31, 2021, which rose to 9,759 by the end of the next fiscal. As of June 30 this year, the total number of appeals from tax payers pending with central GST authorities stood at 14,227.
Tax experts suggested this rise may be linked to the two-month GST compliance drive undertaken by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs since May, and taxpayers opting to wait for the tribunals to kick off rather than approach the High Courts.