5 April 2024, The Hindu
Govt. to record parents’ religion to register births
(Page No 1)
(GS Paper 2, Development and Management of Social Service)
- When registering the birth of a child, parents will now be required to separately record the religion of the father and mother, according to Model Rules drafted by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
- These Rules will have to be adopted and notified by the State governments before they are implemented.
- Earlier, only the family’s religion was recorded in birth registers.
- The proposed “Form No.1-Birth Report” will expand the column requiring a tick mark selection “for religion” of the child to now also state the “religion of father” and “religion of mother”.
- Similar changes have been made for parents of an adopted child.
- Under the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2023, passed by Parliament on August 11 last year, the birth and death database will be maintained at the national level and may be used to update the National Population Register (NPR), electoral rolls, Aadhaar number, ration card, passport, driving licence, property registration, and such other databases as may be notified.
No need for more talks on ‘resolved’ Katchatheevu issue, says Sri Lanka
(Page No 2)
(GS Paper 2, IR)
- Sri Lanka sees no reason for re-opening talks on Katchatheevu that India gave up 50 years ago, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry has said, in the first official reaction yet to the recent remarks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on the island.
- “This is a problem discussed and resolved 50 years ago and there is no necessity to have further discussions on this,” Mr. Sabry told a local news television channel on Wednesday.
- Earlier, Colombo-based official sources told The Hindu that the Ranil Wickremesinghe administration refrained from commenting on the development, as it was a clash between two political parties in the run-up to elections.
Revisit these sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita
(Page No 8)
(GS Paper 2, Separation of Powers)
- The central government has notified July 1, 2024 as the day on which the recently enacted three criminal laws will come into effect.
- Section 106(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, which provides for a maximum 10 years of imprisonment in the case of a fatal accident if the accused person escapes without reporting to the police or a magistrate, has been put on hold.
- The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) press statement of January 2 said that the decision to implement Section 106(2) would be taken up after discussions with the All India Motor Transport Congress.
- This was prompted by a strike by truck drivers who alleged that the provision was too harsh.
- Besides the pending decision with regard to Section 106(2), it will be pertinent for the central government to reconsider a few more provisions of the BNS. These are “petty organised crime” defined under Section 112, “theft” defined under Section 303(2) and two sub-sections of Section 143 pertaining to human trafficking.
Overkill
(Page No 8)
(GS Paper 2, Representation of People's Act)
- The introduction and use of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), an adjunct system attached to the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM), and the provision of counting VVPAT tallies from five random polling booths in every Assembly constituency to be matched with the EVM vote-count, have not assuaged critics of the use of EVMs in Indian elections.
- Some suggest the fact that the process could be more transparent if a machine audit trail of all the commands that are executed is maintained in the system, beyond just the votes recorded in the EVM’s ballot unit and the printed slips in the VVPATs, allowing for an audit to rule out any malicious code.
- This could indeed make the system more robust and be considered as an upgrade to the existing machines.
- Others suggest that the use of VVPATs has introduced potential vulnerabilities that did not exist with the standalone nature of EVMs and the technical and administrative safeguards that undergirded the legacy system.
- This too could be addressed by reworking the safeguards to ensure that the VVPAT-combined systems are as secure and foolproof as the standalone EVMs were.
- But incomprehensible is the critique from many, including political parties such as the Congress, that only a 100% recount of all VVPATs would suffice, instead of the current method of sampling the number of recounts, in order to have full transparency.
- The Supreme Court of India has now listed a series of petitions related to this demand.
On global indices measuring democracy
(Page No 10)
(GS Paper 2, Indian Constitution)
- The V-Dem Institute’s recent democracy index termed India as “one of the worst autocratisers”.
- Similar indices have downgraded India’s democratic standing in recent years — India is only ‘partly free’ (Freedom House), is home to a “flawed democracy” (The Economist Intelligence Unit) and is better classified as an “electoral autocracy.”
- The Indian Government has however refuted these assessments.
- It now plans to release its own democracy index, which, according to Al Jazeera, will help India “counter recent downgrades in ratings and severe criticisms by international groups”.
- A major criticism is that there is a degree of subjectivity that tugs at the indices’ credibility and precision.
How are symbols allotted to political parties?
(Page No 10)
(GS Paper 2, Representation of people's Act)
- The Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) that secured 1.09% and 0.99% votes in 2019 and 2021 has been denied a common symbol (Pot).
- The VCK was declined allotment of a common symbol as it had failed to secure 1% of votes polled in the elections to the State Legislative Assembly in 2021.
- Rule 10B of the Symbols Order provides that the concession of a common free symbol shall be available to a ‘registered unrecognised party’ for two general elections.
- A party is recognised as a ‘national’ or ‘state’ party under the provisions of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 (Symbols Order) by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
- The criteria for recognition at the State level consists of (a) winning one Lok Sabha seat for every 25 seats or 3% of Legislative Assembly seats or (b) winning one Lok Sabha or two Assembly seats along with 6% of votes polled or (c) securing 8% of votes polled in a general election.
- Symbols are allotted to political parties and contesting candidates as per the provisions of the Symbols Order by ECI.
- In the largest democracy where a sizeable population is still illiterate, symbols play a crucial role in the voting process.
- A recognised political party has a reserved symbol that is not allotted to any other candidate in any constituency.
- For registered but unrecognised political parties, one of the free symbols is allotted as a common symbol during an election if that party contests in two Lok Sabha constituencies or in 5% of seats to the Assembly of a State as the case may be.
‘Median cancer diagnosis age in India is lower than in West’
(Page No 14)
(GS Paper 2, Development and Management of Social Service)
- The median age for cancer diagnosis in India is lower when compared with the U.S., the U.K., and China, said a report released by Apollo Hospitals.
- According to the hospital’s data, the average age of diagnosis of breast cancer in India is 52 against 63 in the U.S. and the U.K., while for lung cancer it is 59 as opposed to around 70 in the West.
- The fourth edition of Apollo Hospitals’ “Health of the Nation” report, which looks at trends in non-communicable diseases (NCD) based on the hospital’s data, has highlighted the huge burden of cancers among the country’s younger population and risk posed by low cancer-screening rates.
Govt. body hikes prices of essential medicines again, says ‘it’s miniscule’
(Page No 20)
(GS Paper 2, Development and Management of Social Service)
- An increase in the prices of essential medicines came into force on April 1, earlier this week.
- The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) enforced an increase in the Maximum Retail Price (MRP) this year of 0.00551 percent for scheduled formulations (of drugs) from the beginning of the fiscal year 2024–25.
- The Department of Pharmaceuticals issued its annual list of revised ceiling prices for 923 scheduled drug formulations and revised retail prices for 65 formulations, with the ceiling rates coming into effect on April 1.
- The price revision, according to the Central Government, is in line with the change in the Wholesale Price Index (WPI).
- “Based on the WPI data provided by the office of the Economic Advisor, Department of Industry and Internal Trade, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the annual change in WPI works out to (+) 0.00551% during the calendar year 2023 over the corresponding period in 2022,” said the notice by the NPPA.
