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The Varanasi District Court allowed Hindu prayers to be offered inside the Vyas Ka Tekhana (sealed basement area) of the Gyanvapi mosque complex. The court directed the district administration to make arrangements to start the puja within seven days.
The Anjuman Intezamia Committee of Gyanvapi Masjid will challenge the order in the Allahabad High Court, according to the committee’s counsel, Merajuddin Siddiqui.
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which is advising the committee, called the court’s decision “totally unacceptable”, drawing parallels to the opening of the locks at the Babri Masjid in 1986.
“It seems after establishment of Ram Mandir at the site of the Babri Masjid, many other mosques are being targeted, no matter how old they might be,” Board spokesperson S.Q.R. Ilyas.
The order permitting prayers came on the last working day of judge Ajay Krishna Vishwesha, who has been hearing multiple pleas related to worship rights in the mosque.
Editorial
What makes the India-France ‘strategic partnership’ tick (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The French President, Emmanuel Macron, was the chief guest at India’s Republic Day this year, making it his third visit to India, after his 2018 state visit and last year for the G-20 summit hosted by India.
Coming within six months of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit on July 14, 2023, as the chief guest at France’s Bastille Day, it is clear that the two countries do share a ‘Strategic Partnership’ that is special.
It is no secret that United States President Joseph Biden had been invited initially and his visit was to be followed by a Quad summit that had been accepted by the Australian and Japanese leaders when Mr. Biden declared his inability to travel.
The fact that Mr. Macron stepped in readily highlights the personal ties that he and Mr. Modi have established, and the importance they attribute to the relationship.
Opinion
Finding light in Myanmar’s darkness (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Three years after an illegal military coup deprived Myanmar of limited democracy, the nation continues to fight its inner demons.
Dubbed the ‘sick man of Southeast Asia’, it sees no light at the end of the tunnel as its military regime, the political class, and ethnic organisations persist with the violent conflict. This civil war has little hope of a clear victory for anyone.
Myanmar is a large multi-ethnic nation, located in a strategically significant neighbourhood. What happens in the country impacts its five neighbours: China, Laos, Thailand, Bangladesh, and India.
Its fundamental tragedy lies in the historical reality that neither before nor during British colonial rule did it complete the task of nation-building — the crafting of a unified polity where its Bamar majority and a mixture of ethnic and religious minorities could live peacefully. Decades of military rule complicated the situation and the latest coup compounded it.
Text & Context
Rising tensions in the Korean peninsula (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
There has been a notable uptick in provocative moves by North Korea and the subsequent rebuttals by South Korea and its allies.
North Korea has rescinded its national objective of Korean reunification and has formally categorised South Korea as an adversarial state. The country has also ramped up the frequency and diversity of its missile tests, expanding its strategic capabilities.
These actions were responded to by South Korea through joint military drills with the U.S. and Japan. The ongoing developments in the Korean peninsula have raised serious concerns about the deterioration of the international security environment and a deepening of major power rivalry.
The Korean peninsula was divided into two by the end of World War II, after imperial Japan who occupied the territory was defeated.
The North went under the ambit of the Soviet Union and the South under the U.S., resulting in the creation of two ideologically different regimes which mirrored either sides of the Cold War divide.
The Korean war (1950-53) broke out as a result of the North’s attempt to take over the South — the first “hot war” of the Cold War. Decades after the cessation of active conflict and the end of the Cold War, the two countries are still divided over ideology and geopolitical leanings — the North being an authoritarian dynastic regime allied with China and Russia, and the South being a liberal democracy allied with the U.S.
However, one of the biggest issues in the contemporary geopolitics of the Korean peninsula has been the question of North Korea’s de-nuclearisation.
Various efforts were made by the international community to stop and reverse North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
The great Indian Internet shutdown: how access to the World Wide Web is curtailed (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Supreme Court of India held that access to information via the Internet is a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution.
This was in the case of Anuradha Bhasin vs Union of India, where the top court also ruled that any restriction on Internet access by the Government must be temporary, limited in scope, lawful, necessary and proportionate.
The Court reiterated that the Government’s orders restricting Internet access are subject to review by Courts.
The expectation was that this decision would limit the instances of Internet suspension to only those exceptional situations where there is a public emergency or a threat to public safety — the legislatively mandated prerequisites for restricting Internet access.
Unfortunately, these promises have remained unfulfilled. The year following the decision, India saw more instances of Internet shutdown than the year preceding it. India’s Internet restrictions also accounted for more than 70% of the total loss to the global economy in 2020, and India remains infamous as the Internet shutdown capital of the world.
News
Bombay HC delivers split verdict on validity of Centre’s fact-checking rule (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
A Division Bench of the Bombay High Court delivered a split verdict in a petition that challenged the Union government’s Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023, which empower the Centre to establish a fact-checking unit to identify “fake, false and misleading information” on social media platforms about the government’s business.
Justices Gautam Patel and Neela Gokhale pronounced the verdict on the four petitions filed by satirist Kunal Kamra, the Editors’ Guild of India, the Association of Indian Magazines, and the News Broadcasters and Digital Association (NBDA).
While Justice Patel ruled in favour of the petitioners, Justice Neela Gokhale disagreed and upheld the amendment. The case will now be placed before a third judge by the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court.
There is a disagreement between us. We have passed separate judgments with divergent views. We were not able to concur.
Business
Core sector output growth slowed to a 14-month low in December (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Output growth of India’s eight core sectors slumped to a 14-month low of 3.8% in December, compared with an 8.3% pace a year earlier and revised growth of 7.9% in November 2023.
Electricity generation, which has a 20% weightage in the Index of Core Industries (ICI), slipped to an eight-month low of 0.6%, while crude oil output shrank for the second successive month by 1%, the sharpest slippage since June 2023.
Yet, the ICI released by the Commerce and Industry Ministry on Wednesday, was 5.9% above November’s levels, and marked a nine-month peak in actual output levels. Coal production grew 10.6%, the slowest year-on-year uptick in six months, but output was at its highest level since April 2023.
Refinery products and steel output also hit their highest levels since April, despite annualised growth rates slowing sharply — with the former rising at a nine-month low pace of 2.6%, while steel grew at a 14-month-low rate of 5.9%.
World
Maldives turns to Sri Lanka for medical evacuation support (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The Maldives has sought Sri Lanka’s assistance in medical evacuation services — mainly to transport patients to Colombo in air ambulances — amid a persisting strain with India.
Maldivian Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation Mohamed Ameen met his Sri Lankan counterpart Nimal Siripala de Silva in Colombo and said on social media platform ‘X’, that Sri Lanka has agreed to help the Maldives with medical evacuation.
We have specifically agreed upon creating a framework for immediate approval process between the Maldives and Sri Lanka on urgent requirements, specifically on med-evac flights,” Mr. Ameen said in his post.
They [Maldives] will use their air ambulances, this is to help keep this channel open and easy for any emergency medical treatment that Maldivians might need in Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka and India are among the Maldives’s closest neighbours, and Maldivians have always had close ties in Colombo, a city they frequent.
Xi accepts credentials from Taliban envoy (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
China on Wednesday defended its President Xi Jinping receiving the credentials from the official of the Taliban-headed interim government in Afghanistan, saying it is a “normal diplomatic arrangement” and urged the international community not to exclude the Afghan militant group even though it is yet to respond to global concerns.
Mr. Xi received the credentials of Ambassadors from several countries, including from Bilal Karimi, the Taliban-appointed Afghan Ambassador in what was termed the first diplomatic recognition of the Taliban government in Kabul, which is yet to get official recognition internationally.
Science
Scientists fuse brain-like tissue with electronics to make computer (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Scientists have fused brain-like tissue with electronics to make an ‘organoid neural network’ that can recognise voices and solve a complex mathematical problem.
Their invention extends neuromorphic computing — the practice of modelling computers after the human brain — to a new level by directly including brain tissue in a computer.
The system was developed by a team of researchers from Indiana University, Bloomington; the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre, Cincinnati; and the University of Florida, Gainesville. Their findings were published on December 11.
The study marks a significant advance in multiple areas of science and engineering. “It opens possibilities at the intersection of tissue engineering, electrophysiology, and neural computation,” Thomas Hartung, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, in the U.S.
The work comes against the backdrop of the staggering rise of artificial intelligence (AI), itself founded on the development of artificial neural networks — brain-like networks of neurons except they’re made with silicon chips — that can process large datasets that conventional computers struggle with.