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A seven-judge Bench of the Supreme Court declared that parliamentary privilege or immunity will not protect legislators who take bribes to vote or speak in Parliament or State Legislative Assemblies from criminal prosecution.
Privileges and immunities are not gateways to claim exemptions from the general law of the land... Corruption and bribery of members of the legislature erode the foundation of Indian parliamentary democracy.
The unanimous verdict authored by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud overruled a 25-year-old majority view of the Supreme Court, laid down in the JMM bribery case judgment of 1998, that lawmakers who took bribes were immune from prosecution for corruption if they go ahead and vote or speak in the House as agreed.
The seven-judge Bench said the majority on the five-judge Bench in the JMM bribery case had erred. The court did not want to perpetuate the grave error.
Representative democracy was at stake. Chief Justice Chandrachud clarified that the offence of bribery was complete the moment the corruption money was accepted.
Delhi budget: Atishi announces monthly assistance of ₹1,000 for women above 18 (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Delhi Finance Minister Atishi on Monday announced the launch of ‘Mukhyamantri Mahila Samman Yojana’ under which women above 18 will be given ₹1,000 monthly from the fiscal year 2024-25.
Presenting the budget for the financial year 2024-25 in the Delhi Assembly with an outlay of ₹76,000 crore, Ms. Atishi said more than 50 lakh women will benefit from the scheme, which will help them fulfil their needs without being dependent on anyone. She announced an allocation of ₹2,000 crore for the same.
For a woman to become eligible under the scheme, she should be a Delhi voter, should not be availing benefits under any other government scheme and should not be an income taxpayer, the Finance Minister said in her maiden budget speech.
Editorial
The quick transformation of Russia-North Korea ties (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
In the middle of a series of actions that are fuelling tensions in the Korean peninsula, including the abandoning of the decades-long unification goal with Seoul, Pyongyang is quickly deepening its ties with Russia.
The pace and the depth appear to have gained momentum since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 which led to a strain in most of Moscow’s international ties.
It gathered further fuel during the visit, in July 2023, of a delegation from Russia led by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to Pyongyang, which was followed soon after by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s subsequent visit to Moscow in September 2023.
The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is expected to visit Pyongyang once again in 2024, with both countries preparing for a summit between the two leaders where “very good” deals are expected to be signed.
With 2023 having been a year in which bilateral ties were fast-tracked, Russia’s Ambassador to North Korea, Alexander Matsegora, anticipates 2024 to be a breakthrough year for the two countries.
Just last month, Mr. Putin gifted the North Korean leader a luxury Russian-made car, a type that is used by Mr. Putin himself.
Opinion
A vaccine that prevents six cancers (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
January was observed as Cervical Cancer Awareness Month. Additionally, every year, March 4 is observed as International HPV Awareness Day.
Protecting women’s health includes protecting the cervix, the lower-most part of the uterus. With HPV vaccination, we can prevent cervical cancers that can seriously affect a woman’s health.
As the fourth most common cancer among women worldwide, cervical cancer claims the lives of more than 3,00,000 women every year, or one life every two minutes.
Nine out of 10 women dying of cervical cancer live in lower- and middle-income countries. In India, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer after breast cancer.
Given the country’s population size, about 500 million women above the age of 15 are at risk of cervical cancer. If there is no action taken, the number of cases and deaths from cervical cancer are projected to rise significantly in the future.
With the current population growth rate, the absolute number of new cases of cervical cancer for all ages in India in 2040 is estimated to be 1,91,347 — an increase of 54% over the number of new cases reported in 2020.
Over 1,000 Indians crossed into U.K. illegally in 2023 (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
In 2023, more than 1,000 Indians risked their lives to reach the U.K. by crossing the English Channel from Europe in inflatable small boats, searching for jobs and seeking asylum.
The number of Indians who took this dangerous journey has surged in recent years. In 2023, the number more than doubled from the previous year.
The share of illegal migrants from India aged 18-29 has shot up in recent years; they formed close to 60% of the total number of illegal Indian migrants in 2023.
In parallel, the number of Indians applying for asylum in the U.K. has also surged in recent years, crossing the 5,000-mark for the first time in 2023.
Notably, the number of Indians crossing into the U.S. illegally has also surged recently, with close to 1 lakh people doing so in 2023.
Text & Context
The status of India’s nuclear programme (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
On March 4, Prime Minister Narendra Modi witnessed the start of the process of core-loading the indigenous Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at the Madras Atomic Power Station in Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu. A statement from his office called the occasion “a historic milestone in India’s nuclear power programme”.
The PFBR is a machine that produces more nuclear fuel than it consumes. Its core-loading event is being hailed as a “milestone” because operationalisation of the PFBR will mark the start of stage II of India’s three-stage nuclear power programme.
News
Allow MPs, MLAs to speak without fear of harassment in House, says SC (Page no. 10)
A Constitution Bench said the Parliament and State legislatures would lose their representative character in a democratic polity if MPs and MLAs are not able to attend the House and speak their minds in the exercise of their duties as members without fear of being harassed by the executive or any agencies.
“The freedom of elected legislators to discuss and debate matters of the moment on the floor of the House is a key component of a deliberative democracy in a parliamentary form of government.
The ability of legislators to conduct their functions in an environment which protects their freedom to do so without being overawed by coercion or fear is constitutionally secured.
As citizens, legislators have a fundamental right to the freedom of speech and expression,” Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud observed.
Tired of spam or fraud calls? File a plaint on Chakshu (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on Monday launched Chakshu, a platform for telecom users to report fraud or spam callers.
The facility, will allow citizens to “proactively report suspected fraud communication”, the DoT said in its announcement.
The platform will allow users to report frauds related to bank account, payment wallet, SIM, gas connection, electricity connection, KYC update, expiry, deactivation, impersonation as government official or relative, and sextortion.
The Digital Intelligence Platform was also launched, which would be a non-public data-sharing resource for “Telecom Service Providers, law enforcement agencies, banks and financial institutions, social media platforms, identity document issuing authorities, and so on”, the DoT said.
World
Shehbaz Sharif takes oath as Pakistan’s Prime Minister (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Shehbaz Sharif took the oath as Prime Minister of Pakistan, assuming the cash-strapped country’s reins for a second time, nearly a month after an inconclusive election marred by allegations of vote rigging.
President Arif Alvi administered the oath to Mr. Shehbaz, the 24th elected Prime Minister in a ceremony held at the Aiwan-i-Sadr, the presidential palace.
The ceremony was attended by the three services chiefs, senior officials and diplomats.
Business
RBI tasks NBBL to ensure net banking is interoperable in 2024 (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in a bid to speed up settlement of funds for merchants, has tasked NPCI Bharat BillPay Ltd. (NBBL) to implement an interoperable system for Internet Banking and expects the system to be introduced in the current calendar year.
Internet Banking is a preferred channel for payments like income tax, insurance premium, mutual fund payments and e-commerce.
At present, such transactions processed through Payment Aggregators (PAs) are not interoperable, i.e., a bank is required to separately integrate with each PA of different online merchants.
As a result, if a customer wants to make payment from his bank account to a certain merchant, the merchant’s PA and customer’s bank must have an arrangement.
Science
‘3 degrees to year-long droughts in Himalayas’ (Page no. 20)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
About 90% of the Himalayan region will experience drought lasting over a year if the world warms by 3 degrees C, according to anew research.
The findings, published in the journal Climatic Change, show 80% of the increased human exposure to heat stress in India can be avoided by adhering to the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C.
Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the U.K. quantified how risks to human and natural systems increase at a national scale as the level of global warming increases.
A collection of eight studies — focusing on India, Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Ghana — found the risks of drought, flooding, declines in crop yields, and loss of biodiversity and natural capital greatly increase for each additional degree of warming.
It added that in India, pollination was reduced by half at 3-4 degrees versus reduction by a quarter at 1.5 degrees.
The team also reported large increases in the exposure of agricultural land to drought with 3 degrees of warming: more than 50% of the agricultural land in each of the countries was projected to be exposed to severe droughts longer than a year over a 30-year period.
Economic damages associated with sea-level rise were also projected to increase in coastal nations, but more slowly if warming was limited to 1.5degrees C.