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The Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) upheld the decision of the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) asking Karnataka to release 3,000 cubic feet per second (cusecs) to Tamil Nadu till October 15.
It also told Karnataka to make good the shortfall of 0.71 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) that arose during the 15-day period that ended on September 27. The CWRC took its decision at its meeting on September 26.
However, the Siddaramaiah-led Karnataka government has decided to file review petitions before the Supreme Court and CWMA on Saturday. It has also decided to form an advisory panel to collect data and provide advice to the government on the issue.
As for Tamil Nadu, the officiating Principal Secretary for Water Resources, K. Manivasan, attended the meeting online, while Cauvery Technical Cell chairperson R. Subramanian was personally present in New Delhi.
As in the past, there was an intense exchange of views between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. While the former wanted continuous release of water and demanded 12,500 cusecs, the latter referred to difficulties in continuing with the supply.
‘Age of consent under POCSO must stay’ panel Law panel against lowering age of consent under POCSO Act (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The government should not tinker with the age of consent — currently 18 years — under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the Law Commission said in a report made public.
Instead, it advised the introduction of “guided judicial discretion” while sentencing in cases that involve the tacit approval of children in the 16 to 18 years age bracket.
The 22nd Law Commission, headed by Justice (Retired) Ritu Raj Awasthi, submitted its report (no. 283) to the Law Ministry on September 27.
In the report, the Law panel noted that certain amendments would be required in the POCSO Act, 2012 to remedy the situation in cases involving tacit approval, though not consent under law, on the part of children aged between 16 and 18 years.
The panel said that reducing the age of consent would have a direct and negative bearing on the fight against child marriage and child trafficking; it also advised the courts to tread with caution even in cases related to “adolescent love”, where criminal intention may be missing.
Editorial
Push for more women, this time in the police (Page no.)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
In a few years from now, women lawmakers will form at least 33% of all lawmakers in India. The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023 has been passed by both Houses of Parliament.
This Bill provides for one-third of total seats in the House of the People, the Legislative Assembly of every State and the Legislative Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi to be reserved for women for 15 years.
Additionally, this reservation will also extend to seats reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies.
The representation of women Members of Parliament in the current Lok Sabha is about 14.4%, compared to 4.9% in the first Lok Sabha in 1952.
The purpose of this amendment is to increase women’s participation in policymaking. However, as the amendment has caveats, experts are of the view that the earliest this amendment can be implemented is the general election of 2029, provided Census 2021, which is pending, is taken up soon and the process of delimitation is carried out without delay.
Otherwise, implementation will be delayed till the general election of 2034. While there is no direct link between the number of legislators and the strength of law enforcement agencies, the number of women in these gives a fair idea about how representative these institutions are of the society they represent.
Most States have a policy to fill up 30% or 33% of the vacant posts (of direct recruitment) with women in their police forces through horizontal reservation — i.e., if the minimum reserved vacant posts are not filled up in each category of the SC, ST, Other Backward Classes and un-reserved with women on merit, women candidates are pushed up in the list to make up for the gap. The reservation for women in the State armed police forces is restricted to 10% in some States. Women are gen
Global dispute settlement, India and appellate review (Page no.)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
The recently concluded G-20 Declaration, among its many commitments, reiterated the need to pursue reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to improve all its functions and conduct proactive discussions “to ensure a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system accessible to all members by 2024”.
The WTO’s dispute settlement system, conceived as a two-tier panel cum appellate body structure, has been dysfunctional since 2019, because the United States has blocked the appointment of appellate body members.
Hailed as the crown jewel of the WTO, the dispute settlement system, with the scope for appellate review and mechanisms to enforce rulings, has issued over 493 rulings since its establishment in 1995.
To put this in context, the International Court of Justice has dealt with only around 190 cases since 1947. The appellate body has been crucial in ensuring coherence and predictability in rulings, ensuring confidence in the WTO dispute settlement process.
While the commitment expressed in the G-20 Declaration is heartening, whether it will have an appellate process or just be a one-stage panel process, given Washington’s continued opposition to an appellate review process, remains to be seen.
The U.S. seems inclined towards the dejudicialisation of international trade law — an approach whereby countries take back control from international courts and tribunals.
However, as with adjudication in national courts, the appellate review process at the international level serves as an essential check on the interpretation and application of law and ensures consistency.
News
Law panel working on mechanism for simultaneous polls (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The Law Commission is working on a formula to synchronise all Assembly polls by extending or reducing the tenure so that all State elections can be held along with Lok Sabha polls from 2029 onwards.
As the government has already set up a high-level panel to explore simultaneous polls for Lok Sabha, State Assemblies and local bodies, the Law Commission may also be asked to include the third tier of elections along with its current mandate for national and State-level polls.
The sources said the panel is devising a mechanism to ensure a common electoral roll for Lok Sabha, Assemblies and local bodies to reduce cost and use of manpower for undertaking an almost identical exercise which is carried out now by the Election Commission and various State Election Commissions.
The Law Commission’s report on simultaneous polls is not ready as some issues are yet to be settled. For synchronising various Assembly polls to ensure both State and Lok Sabha elections are held together from 2029 onwards, the Commission under Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi may suggest reducing or enhancing the tenure of Legislative Assemblies.
Ruixiang Zhang to receive SASTRA Ramanujan Prize (Page no. 10)
(Miscellaneous)
The 2023 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize will be awarded to Ruixiang Zhang of the University of California, Berkeley. This annual $10,000 prize is for outstanding contributions by individuals in areas of mathematics influenced by Indian mathematics great Ramanujan (in a broad sense).
The prize will be awarded at an International Conference in Number Theory on December 20-22 at SASTRA University in Kumbakonam, Ramanujan’s hometown.
Mr. Zhang received his BS degree in mathematics from Peking University in 2012 and his PhD in mathematics at Princeton University in 2017.
After working at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the University of Wisconsin, since 2021, he has been an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
His fundamental work spans analytic number theory, combinatorics, Euclidean harmonic analysis, and geometry.
Building on his doctoral thesis, he and Shaoming Guo proved a generalisation of the main conjecture in Vinogradov’s mean value theorem, which is concerned with the sums of numbers raised to a certain power.
World
Ahead of Maldives run-off poll, India ties remain key issue (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Maldivian President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s close ties with India dominated the campaign trail on the eve of Saturday’s election run-off in the island nation, with frontrunner and Opposition candidate Mohamed Muizzu promising to “safeguard the country’s independence and sovereignty”.
The first round of the presidential polls in the Maldives was held on September 9, 2023, but all candidates failed to garner the required vote share of over 50%, leading to a run-off.
The Opposition coalition People’s National Congress-Progressive Party of Maldives’s candidate Mohamed Muizzu secured the highest vote share of 46.06% while incumbent Mr. Solih trailed behind him with 39.05 % of the ballot.
Meanwhile, Maldivians will also get to decide if they want to switch to a parliamentary system of governance, in a referendum scheduled next month. New Delhi will closely watch the poll outcome on Friday to see if its ties with Male will see continuity.
Mr. Muizzu’s renewed poll promise on the Maldives’s “independence” — apart from enhanced housing and economic growth — is a direct attack on Mr. Solih’s ‘India first’ foreign policy and takes off from the Opposition’s ‘India Out’ campaign spearheaded by former President Abdulla Yameen.
Business
Hot, dry August lifts core sector growth to a 14-month high (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Output at the eight core infrastructure sectors rose by a combined 12.1% in August, the fastest pace in 14 months, with five reporting double-digit growth, spurring hopes of a healthy uptick in industrial production last month.
This was the second straight month that all eight sectors, which constitute about 40% of the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), recorded an uptick, after a 14-month streak of uneven trends.
Provisional core sector output measured by the Index of Core Industries (ICI) rose 2.5% over July’s level, the first uptick in three months. The core sectors collectively grew 8.4% in July, when IIP growth hit a five-month high of 5.7.
Cement output grew 18.9%, the largest uptick since November 2022. Deficient rains also lifted coal production and electricity generation, which grew 17.9% and 14.9%, respectively, their fastest rates of expansion in 14 months.
A truant monsoon helped to push up core sector growth to a robust 12.1% in August 2023,” said Aditi Nayar, chief economist at rating firm ICRA.
Given the uptick in the core sector growth, as well as healthy performance of high frequency indicators such as auto output, GST e-way bills, rail freight, etc., we forecast the IIP to expand by 9%-11% in August.
Steel production rose 10.9%, the slowest pace in a 10-month streak of double-digit growth, while natural gas output grew 10%, the most since February 2022. Refinery products expanded by 9.5%, also the highest pace in 14 months.
Crude oil output grew 2.1% for the second successive month after a contractionary streak between May 2022 and June 2023.
However, output levels were 0.6% below July. Coal and steel were the other sectors to record a sequential decline, dropping 1.5% and 0.8%, respectively.
Fiscal deficit hits 36% of FY target in Aug. (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
India’s fiscal deficit for the first five months of the financial year was ₹6.43 lakh crore, 36% of the estimate for the whole year, official data showed on Friday.
April-August net tax revenues were ₹8.04 lakh crore, or 34.5% of the annual estimate, higher than ₹7 lakh crore in the same period last year, according to the data.
Corporate tax collections rose more than 15% to ₹2.39 lakh crore in April-August, the data showed.
Total expenditure in the period was ₹16.72 lakh crore, or 37.1% of the annual goal, higher than the ₹13.90 lakh crore in the same period last year.
In the first five months of the financial year, government capital expenditure or spending on building infrastructure was ₹3.74 lakh crore, or 37.4% of the annual target, higher than ₹2.52 lakh crore in the same period a year earlier.
India aims to narrow its fiscal deficit to 5.9% of GDP in the current fiscal year.