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Twenty-seven years after a Women’s Reservation Bill was first introduced in Parliament, the Lok Sabha passed such a Bill with near unanimity, to amend the Constitution and provide one-third reservation to women in the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies.
The Bill will now be taken up by the Rajya Sabha for passage in the remaining two days of the Special Session of Parliament and might require approval from half of the States.
Calling it “historic legislation”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi thanked the members. “I thank MPs across party lines who voted in support of this Bill,” he said in a post on X.
With 454 members of the Lok Sabha supporting the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty Eighth) Bill 2023, the constitutional requirement of a “two-thirds majority of the members present and voting” was easily met.
Only two members, the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s Asaduddin Owaisi and Syed Imtiyaz Jaleel, opposed the Bill.
The eight-hour debate saw MPs from the Treasury and Opposition benches, led by the Congress, engage in a battle over who should get credit for the landmark Bill, as well as over the contentious issue of a separate quota for women from Other Backward Classes (OBCs).
India issues a tit-for-tat travel advisory for Canada (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Citing “politically condoned violence”, India issued a travel advisory for all Indian nationals in Canada, including students, urging them to register with Indian missions.
The announcement from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) came hours after media reports suggested that Canada has issued a travel advisory, especially for Jammu and Kashmir. However, the High Commission of Canada later clarified to The Hindu that the advisory has been in place since the summer of 2021.
In view of growing anti-India activities and politically condoned hate crimes and criminal violence in Canada, all Indian nationals there and those contemplating travel are urged to exercise utmost caution.
Our High Commission/Consulates General will continue to be in contact with the Canadian authorities to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the Indian community.
The ongoing India-Canada spat began after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, while speaking in the House of Commons on Monday, blamed Indian agents for the murder of Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia in June.
The bilateral relations have also been affected by the ongoing online activities by Sikhs for Justice leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannu, who has launched a campaign saying “Indo Hindus Leave Canada”.
Without mentioning the campaign, the MEA advisory said, “Recently, threats have particularly targeted Indian diplomats and sections of the Indian community who oppose the anti-India agenda.”
Census and delimitation work after LS poll, says Shah (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that irrespective of the Opposition’s support, the women’s reservation Bill will be implemented only after 2029.
According to the 128th Constitutional Amendment Bill, 2023, or the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, reservation of one-third of seats for women in Lok Sabha and State Assemblies shall come into effect after an exercise of delimitation is undertaken based on figures from the first Census that is conducted after the Act is enacted.
Mr. Shah said in the Lok Sabha that the Census and the delimitation exercise will be conducted immediately after the general election.
However, he did not specify the dates for the delayed Census that has remained under ambiguity since 2021 despite the apparatus being ready.
The last Census was held in 2011. The Centre initially attributed the COVID-19 pandemic for postponing the exercise that was to start in two phases in 2020 and conclude by March 31, 2021.
States
ICMR nod to conduct Truenat test to detect Nipah (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
Kerala has been accorded sanction by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) to use Truenat test to diagnose Nipah. Hospitals with BSL 2 level labs can perform the test. The standard operating procedure for the same will be prepared.
This means that NiV diagnostics can be performed by more labs in the State. Samples found to be positive for NiV through Truenat can be sent to the labs in Kozhikode or Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospitals or to Institute of Advanced Virology in the capital, she said, while addressing the media here.
The State was able to contain Nipah effectively and limit its spread because of the efficient work done by the Kozhikode district surveillance team.
Study throws light on how gravitational instabilities affect evolution of galaxies (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
A study conducted by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) could help understand how gravitational instabilities are connected to galaxy evolution.
K. Aditya, a post-doctoral fellow at the IIA, tried to explore how gravitational instabilities are connected with star formation, gas fraction, timescale for growth of gravitational instabilities and finally, the observed morphology.
“They then compared the star formation rate, gas fraction, and timescale for the growth of gravitational instabilities of nearby galaxies and investigated the stability levels of a sample of 175 galaxies taken from the Spitzer Photometry and Accurate Rotation Curves (SPARC) database.
This helped them trace the role of dark matter in regulating the stability levels of the galaxies and understand if stars and gas can self-regulate the stability levels.
The DST added that they found that spiral galaxies like the Milky Way exhibit a higher median star formation rate, lower stability, lower gas fraction, and a smaller timescale for the growth of gravitational instabilities.
This indicates that gravitational instabilities in spirals rapidly convert a substantial amount of gas into stars, depleting the gas reservoirs.
It added that the study, which compared the stability levels in the nearby galaxies with those observed at high redshift, which are precursors to the galaxies in the local universe, could help understand how gravitational instabilities are connected to galaxy evolution.
Editorial
Taking a giant leap for a new ethics in outer space (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The itch to get there first and fast is human. Being competitive is part of the human’s survival instincts. The urge to plant one’s flag there before the other flag-bearer does is human too. It is part of the human’s political instincts.
Some 11 decades ago, in 1910-12, both itch and urge were quivering in the northern hemisphere. Robert Scott, a 43-year-old British naval officer, was preparing a daring expedition to the South Pole.
Around the same time, a Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, about four years younger, was planning a bold ice-drift to the North Pole. On learning of dubious but loud claims by two Americans Frederick Cook and Robert Peary, Amundsen lost interest in that destination; it had been reached.
But the South Pole beckoned. While others had fringed that continent of ice, no human foot had stood on the southern-most point of the earth.
Scott and Amundsen knew of each other’s target and goal. But observing due courtesies alright, they raced to it. Scott and his men with dogs and horses, Amundsen with his dogs and sledges.
Amundsen and his five companions, with 16 surviving dogs, got there on December 14, 1911, 34 days before Scott and his team of five did.
Planting the Norwegian flag there, Amundsen felt fulfilled, as he should have. He named their South Pole camp Polheim, meaning Pole-home, in Norsk.
And he renamed the Antarctic Plateau as King Haakon VII’s Plateau, after his monarch. Scott and his team were to perish on the pole, having been caught in foul weather.
Vietnam, key piece of America’s Indo-Pacific puzzle (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
In international relations, strategic turnarounds are not uncommon, and are in fact embedded in the very tapestry of anarchical structural realities.
Yet, even by those standards, the immediacy and scale of the volte-face in relations between the United States and Vietnam since the Cold War has been remarkable.
On September 10, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, Nguyen Phu Trong, and the U.S. President, Joe Biden, met in Vietnam during Mr. Biden’s visit, marking a new phase in the bilateral relationship between the two countries.
The standout from this meeting was the elevation of U.S.-Vietnam relations to a U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership from a U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership forged in 2013 between Vietnam President Truong Tan Sang and U.S. President Barack Obama.
Given the complex history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam during the Cold War, this elevation marks a significant step up. Vietnam’s strategic restraint notwithstanding, motivations for an upgrade in bilateral relationship have existed on either side, at least since 2013, if not before.
Vietnam’s reservations about entering into a strategic partnership with the U.S. have both contemporary and historical relevance.
The geopolitics involving China’s growing belligerence in the Pacific theatre, felt most palpably in the waters surrounding Vietnam and the broader South China Sea, has proven to be a first order deterrent for Vietnam’s great power engagements.
On the other hand, the historical legacy of Vietnam’s contested relations with the U.S. during the Vietnam War, an axile relationship with the communist states China and the Soviet Union, culminating in the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Soviet Union in 1978, had together imparted a direction diametrically opposite to U.S. interests.
Opinion
Three years of the Abraham Accords (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
This week marks an important milestone for West Asia and North Africa: three years since the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, under the auspices of the U.S. government.
Three months later, in December 2020, Morocco joined the process, signing a normalisation agreement with Israel.
The catalyst that enabled these historic accords was the decision by the parties to promote a stable future for West Asia.
The agreements have ushered in a new era of normalisation and peace that not only connects governments but also brings people together, despite the differences in their language, religious beliefs, cultures and more.
The Abraham Accords have also opened up exciting opportunities for India and its thriving business community, which maintains strong relations and active engagement with our nations.
So far, the Abraham Accords have offered a mere glimpse into the full potential of regional cooperation. Even so, the scope of trade between Israel and other West Asian countries increased 74% between 2021 and 2022.
Another example is tourism, mostly non-existent in the past, which has skyrocketed. In 2021, visits from Israel to the UAE increased by 172%. Meanwhile, the number of Israelis flying to Bahrain since the establishment of direct flights has increased exponentially.
The enhanced regional connectivity has also brought significant benefits to the people of India. The vibrant Indian diaspora in the Gulf now has the convenience of direct flights between the UAE and Israel, as well as between Israel and Bahrain.
Indian students are enjoying increased ease of travel, gaining improved access to our universities and the opportunity to explore international study programmes.
Women’s share in assemblies less than 10% in 20 states (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
The BJP government tabled the Women’s Reservation Bill as the first order of business in the new Parliament House on Tuesday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the Bill a historic decision and said that he had been chosen by god for the noble task of giving rights to women.
First introduced in 1996 in the Lok Sabha by the H.D. Deve Gowda-led United Front government, the Bill did not get the approval of the House. It was reintroduced many times subsequently but failed to pass muster and lapsed with the dissolution of Houses.
As per the 128th Constitutional Amendment Bill, 2023, or the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, a third of the seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies is proposed to be reserved for women.
However, the amendment to the Constitution comes with a caveat that it can be implemented only after a delimitation exercise — scheduled to be held in 2026 — has been completed, using data from the latest Census conducted after the passage of the Bill. This effectively pushes the earliest year of implementation to the 2029 general election.
After implementation, there should be at least 181 (approximately 33.3% of seats) women members in the Lower House. At present there are 82 women in the Lok Sabha which amounts to 15% of its members.
The share of women parliamentarians has never exceeded the 15% mark in over 70 years of India’s electoral history. When considered as a share of total candidates who participated in the 2019 general election, their share is even lower at 9%.
The share of women candidates has never exceeded the 9% mark ever. The share of women members in the Lok Sabha over time.
News
U.S. considering Modi’s invite to Biden to be chief guest at Republic Day, says envoy (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited U.S. President Joe Biden to be chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations on January 26 next year, U.S. Ambassador Eric Garcetti said.
While the U.S. Congress would be in session at the time, Mr. Garcetti said that the invitation is under consideration.
Mr. Biden is due to visit India in 2024 for the Quad Summit, and reports have suggested that the government is coordinating with Japanese and Australian governments to try and schedule the Indo-Pacific Quadrilateral grouping’s meeting at the same time.
During their bilateral talks on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, Prime Minister Modi invited President Biden to visit for January 26.
He did not mention the Quad Summit during the meeting, as that has to be coordinated between [all four countries],” Mr. Garcetti said speaking to journalists during an event hosted by the Ananta Centre, where he spoke about “Navigating the future: a post-G20 dialogue on India-U.S. bilateral relations”.
This is the third time the Modi government has issued an invitation to the U.S. President for the Republic Day parade, an honour that normally goes to a different country each year.
In 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama became the first American President to officiate at Republic Day, while in 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump turned down the invitation for January 2019, due to scheduling difficulties in the U.S. Congress.
Mr. Garcetti’s comments came even as External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar heads to New York, where he is likely to hold a meeting with Quad Ministers on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting.
Sources said that U.S.-India Defence and Foreign Ministers’ “2+2” is also being scheduled in November in Delhi this year, which will set the stage for the visit by Mr. Biden in January.
Constitution Bench to examine validity of extending quota (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
A Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud decided to examine if clockwork extensions granted to reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the Lok Sabha and the Assemblies were constitutionally valid.
Originally, the Constituent Assembly had meant reservation for SC/STs only for a period of 10 years from the commencement of the Constitution in 1950.
However, Article 334 of the Constitution, which dealt with the time period to cease reserving seats for SC/STs and Anglo-Indians, was amended multiple times over the decades.
The deadline to stop the reservation was extended by 10 years or so. Starting with the Constitution (8th Amendment) Act in 1969 and all the way up to the Constitution (104th Amendment) Act in 2019, the deadline was stretched over and over again.
The 2019 Act terminated the reservation for the Anglo-Indian community and fixed 2030 as the deadline to end the reservation for SC/STs in the Lok Sabha and Legislative Assemblies. By 2030, the SC/ST communities would have enjoyed reservation for 80 years since the adoption of the Constitution.
The Constitution Bench decided to examine whether Parliament can use its constituent power to repeatedly amend Article 334 merely in order to keep reservation of seats for the SC/ST communities in the Lok Sabha and the Legislative Assemblies of the States alive.
Whether the exercise of the constituent power of amendment to extend the period prescribed for the expiration of reservation under Article 334 of the Constitution is constitutionally valid.
The court clarified that it would be examining the validity of the 104th Constitution Amendment Act of 2019 only to the extent of its application to the SC/ST communities, and would not go into the termination of quota for the Anglo-Indian community after 70 years of enjoying the benefit.
SC to hear challenge to Section 6A of Citizenship Act on Oct. 17 (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
A Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud decided to hear from October 17 a series of petitions challenging the constitutionality of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955.
Section 6A is a special provision inserted into the 1955 Act in furtherance of a Memorandum of Settlement called the ‘Assam Accord’ signed on August 15, 1985 by the then Rajiv Gandhi government with the leaders of the Assam Movement to preserve and protect the Assamese culture, heritage, linguistic and social identity.
The Union government insisted that the Section is valid and urged the court to dismiss the petitions, filed after nearly 40 years since its enactment.
Under Section 6A, foreigners who had entered Assam before January 1, 1966, and been “ordinarily resident” in the State, would have all the rights and obligations of Indian citizens.
Those who had entered the State between January 1, 1966 and March 25, 1971 would have the same rights and obligations, except that they would not be able to vote for 10 years.
World
Karabakh operation halted: Azerbaijan (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Azerbaijan and Armenian forces reached a ceasefire agreement to end two days of fighting in the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region that has been a flashpoint for decades.
An hour after the truce was announced, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said the intensity of the hostilities in the region “has decreased drastically”.
Azerbaijani authorities said they had halted the military operation launched a day earlier once separatist officials said they were laying down arms.
Both sides in the conflict agreed to talks on Thursday on the “reintegration” of the region into Azerbaijan. That, in addition to guarantees to lay down arms, was widely viewed as a victory for Baku.
Azerbaijan unleashed heavy artillery fire on Armenian positions in Nagorno-Karabakh — a mountainous region that is part of Azerbaijan and came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces during a separatist war in the 1990s.
Scores of people were reportedly killed and wounded in the latest fighting. The hostilities also exacerbated an already grim humanitarian situation for residents who have suffered food and medicine shortages for months as Azerbaijan instituted a blockade of the road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
The escalation raised concerns that a full-scale war in the region could resume between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which have been locked in a struggle over the region since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The most recent heavy fighting occurred over six weeks in 2020, when Azerbaijan retook parts of the region and areas around it that were lost in the earlier separatist war.
The conflict has long drawn in powerful regional players, including Russia and Turkiye. While Turkiye threw its weight behind Azerbaijan, Russia has taken on a mediating role and brokered the armistice that ended the 2020 fighting.
Its contingent of peacekeepers, in fact, are charged with monitoring that truce, and both sides said on Wednesday that they helped reach the current agreement.
Business
ADB lowers India GDP growth outlook for this fiscal to 6.3% (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) pared its forecast for India’s economic growth in the current fiscal year to 6.3%, from 6.4% estimated earlier, citing the impact of declining exports and erratic rainfall patterns that could hit farm output.
The ADB’s economists also raised their inflation forecast for the year to 5.5%, from 5% estimated in April, and retained their real GDP growth projection for 2024-25 at 6.7%, on expectations that private investment and industrial output would increase.
Noting that the economy displayed robust growth of 7.8% in the first quarter of this fiscal year despite global uncertainties, the Bank said it expects growth to be propelled by “robust domestic consumption as consumer confidence improves, and by investment including large increases” in government capital expenditure through the rest of this fiscal and the next year.
However, as slowing exports could foment headwinds for the economy, and erratic rainfall patterns are likely to undermine agricultural output, the growth forecast for this year is revised down marginally to 6.3%.
“Monsoon rainfall under the influence of a developing El Niño has led to erratic weather patterns, including flooding in certain regions and deficient rains, particularly in August.
The erratic rainfall patterns have resulted in damage to the rice crop in particular and lower sowing for pulses in the kharif season,” the multilateral lender pointed out, adding that it had slashed its farm sector growth outlook for the year by almost one percentage point.
Science
Oldest yet fossils of a plant-eating dinosaur found in Rajasthan (Page no. 21)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
In a paper published recently in Scientific Reports, scientists from IIT Roorkee have characterised dinosaur fossils from the Middle Jurassic period, found in the Thar desert near the Jaisalmer Basin by the Geological Survey of India.
They discovered that they had uncovered remains of a sauropod dinosaur, which is the same clade as the long-necked herbivores in Jurassic Park – only these happened to be the oldest known fossils of this particular kind of sauropod.
Belonging to the family Dicraeosauridae and from the superfamily Diplodocoidea, these fossils are the first dicraeosaurid sauropods to have been found in India. And at 167 million years old, they are the oldest known diplodocoid fossils in the world.
The scientists named the dinosaur Tharosaurus indicus, with Tharo deriving from the Thar desert; saurus from the Greek ‘sauros’, or lizard; and indicus from its Indian origin. The fossils were found by Triparna Ghosh, Pragya Pandey, and Krishna Kumar from the Geological Survey of India.
The most fascinating feature about sauropods is their size,” said Debajit Datta, a postdoctoral researcher in Sunil Bajpai’s group at IIT Roorkee and one of the lead authors of the paper. “They can grow more than a hundred feet. There are many sauropod groups that are even longer than the blue whale.”
However, members of the Dicraeosauridae family of sauropods – to which Tharasaurus belongs – were not nearly as large.
This family was unique: its members were smaller and had shorter necks and tails compared to the other long-necked sauropods.
Sauropods first appeared on the earth during the Jurassic period, about 200 million years ago. They were one of the most dominant clades of dinosaurs, surviving until the late Cretaceous period 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs went extinct.