14 August 2024, The Hindu
L-G overrides CM’s choice, picks Gahlot over Atishi to hoist Tricolour on I-Day
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GS 2: Issues and challenges pertaining to the federal structure
- Overriding Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s choice, Lieutenant-Governor V.K. Saxena on Tuesday nominated Delhi Home Minister Kailash Gahlot to hoist the Tricolour at the Delhi government’s Independence Day programme.
- “The Lieutenant-Governor is pleased to nominate Minister (Home), GNCTD, Kailash Gahlot, to unfurl the national flag at the State-level Independence Day celebrations at Chhatrasaal Stadium.
- Necessary arrangements may be made accordingly,” Mr. Saxena’s Secretary Ashish Kundra said in a communication to Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar.
SC seeks response to Sharjeel Imam’s plea to club sedition FIRs, transfer trial to Delhi
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GS 2: Functioning of the Executive and the Judiciary
- The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought responses from Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh to a plea by former JNU student Sharjeel Imam to club sedition FIRs registered against him in these States and transfer the trial to Delhi.
- A three-judge Bench headed by Justice Sanjiv Khanna listed the case after four weeks.
Kerala HC upholds SIC order to release Hema panel report, gives a week’s time
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GS 1: Role of women and women’s organization
- The Kerala High Court on Tuesday (August 13, 2024) dismissed a writ petition challenging the State Information Commission’s (SIC) order directing the Kerala government to make public the Justice K. Hema Committee report on women’s working conditions in the Malayalam film industry with limited redactions.
- The committee, headed by former Kerala High Court judge K. Hema, was constituted in the wake of the sexual assault of an actor in 2017.
- The committee submitted its report to the Kerala government on December 31, 2019.
- However, it has not been made public on the grounds that it contains sensitive information.
- The SIC’s order came on applications filed under the RTI Act.
Identify illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, orders Jharkhand HC
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GS 3: Security challenges and their management in border areas
- The Jharkhand High Court on Tuesday (August 13, 2024) issued a directive to the Hemant Soren government to identify illegal immigrants from Bangladesh residing in the Santhal Parganas region of the State.
- A Division Bench of acting Chief Justice Sujit Narayan Prasad and Justice Arun Kumar Rai directed the government while hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by activist Daniel Danish on illegal immigration.
The shock-effects of South Asian tumult
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GS 2: India and its neighborhood- relations
- From the start of this decade, India has received one shock after another in its neighbourhood.
- If in 2021, it was the coup in Myanmar and the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, in 2022 there was the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan from office in Pakistan and riots that pushed Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of the country in Sri Lanka.
- Since then there have been some other events — the dramatic electoral change in the Maldives, that pushed the more India-friendly Solih government out, while a similar effect in Nepal wrought by coalitions collapsing, has brought the less India-friendly Oli government in.
- With Bangladesh, the shock of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s dramatic departure and her arrival in India is all the more palpable, because of how heavily New Delhi invested in the Hasina government.
- It has now been left scrambling to reach out to her successors.
- If the last few years are a trend, then what are the lessons for India that can help insulate it from the spill-over effects of radical shifts in South Asia, and escape similar consequences for itself?
Step Down
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GS 4: Ethical concerns and dilemmas in government and private institutions
- Not since the Harshad Mehta scam of 1992 has India’s securities regulations and oversight come under such scrutiny.
- The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), which was established as a statutory body that year — it was constituted as a non-statutory body in April 1988 through a resolution of the Government of India — now faces allegations of bias and conflict of interest right at the top.
- The stakes are much higher with the Indian stock market now a $5.3 trillion financial powerhouse.
- Over the years, SEBI has put in place robust systems of checks and balances that have constantly evolved to ensure that India’s securities market and financial system gained the reputation of being one of the most reliable globally.
- However, the accusations of a conflict of interest levelled by New York-based short-seller Hindenburg Research against SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch in the conduct of the ongoing investigations against the Adani Group, the Ahmedabad-based global infrastructure to FMCG major, for alleged stock price manipulation and corporate malfeasances, have cast a shadow on the statutory regulatory body.
- The main conflict concerns investments made by Ms. Buch and her husband Dhaval Buch in obscure offshore funds based in two tax havens, Bermuda and Mauritius, where Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani’s brother Vinod Adani had allegedly also made investments.
Hints of the corporatisation of science research in India
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GS 2: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation
- During the inaugural address of the 107th Science Congress in Bengaluru in January 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reflected on the government’s take on how science should be conducted in India. It was conveyed to young researchers in his usual aphoristic manner of speaking: “innovate, patent, produce, prosper”.
- By expressing it in a maxim, the Prime Minister was hinting at the birthing of a new policy on knowledge production under his leadership.
- Over several years, the current ruling regime has been directing laboratories and other research centres to earn their revenue from external sources by marketing their expertise and investing the surplus to develop technologies for national missions.
- This policy position can be traced to the ‘Dehradun Declaration’ prepared by the directors of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research labs in 2015, where it was decided to market patents as a means to self-finance research.
- In other words, this was a call for the corporatisation of science research — a process of converting any state-owned entity into a market commodity and being able to follow the business model to support itself, rather than relying on public support.
- Science institutes are now encouraged to develop research centres registered as Section 8 companies, wherein private companies or shareholders can invest money.
The problem of landslides in Kerala
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GS 1: Important Geophysical phenomena’s
- Nearly a fortnight after two landslides gouged out the face of the Vellarimala hill in Wayanad’s Meppadi panchayat, killing more than 230 people in the foothills, the search continues for the missing, estimated to be more than 130 people.
- This is a tragedy of epic proportions for Kerala, which has been battered by extreme weather events ever since the great flood of 2018.
- That year, 341 major landslides were reported in the State. Landslides have become a major hazard every monsoon since then, with Wayanad, Idukki, Malappuram, Kasaragod, and Kozhikode districts marked as, and proving to be, highly susceptible to deadly landslides.
- About 75 people died in overnight landslides at Kavalappara in Malappuram and Puthumala in Wayanad, situated six kilometres apart across the hills, in 2019.
- Puthumala is barely a few kilometres down the hill from the Chooralmala and Mundakkai wards of Meppadi panchayat, which bore the brunt of the landslides on July 30 this year.
An overview of governance in Delhi
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GS 2: issues and challenges pertaining to the federal structure
- The Supreme Court has ruled that the Lieutenant Governor (LG) of the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi can nominate 10 aldermen to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on his own without the aid and advice of its council of ministers.
- This has added to the friction between the Union government, the Delhi government and the local government.
No gathering of people reported along Bangladesh border in 3 days, says BSF
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GS 3: Role of external state and non-state actors in creating challenges to internal security
- The Border Security Force (BSF) has held 83 flag meetings with Border Guards Bangladesh in the past three days, in conformity with the directions of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), to monitor the current situation in the neighbouring country, the BSF said on Tuesday (August 13, 2024).
- A senior BSF official told The Hindu that in the past three days, no gathering of people had been reported along the eastern border.
- From August 5-9, four such instances were reported from the north Bengal border.
- The first meeting of the five-member committee constituted by the MHA to communicate with the Bangladesh authorities “to ensure the safety and security of Indian nationals, Hindus, and other minority communities living there” was held on August 10.
Egg or sperm donor has no legal right on child: Bombay HC
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GS 2: Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services
- The Bombay High Court on Tuesday (August 13, 2024) held that merely donating eggs or sperm does not give legal entitlement to the donor to claim that she is the biological parent of the child.
- Pronouncing the verdict that was reserved on August 2, 2024, single Bench judge, Justice Milind Jadhav dismissed an argument of a woman (petitioner’s sister), who had volunteered to donate her oocyte (eggs) for her sister and brother-in-law who couldn’t conceive naturally and said the sister had no legitimate right to claim that she was the biological parent of the twins.
With no remedy for Hindenburg, SEBI looks the other way
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GS 2: Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability
- Having responded to Hindenburg Research’s latest report, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch and her spouse Dhaval Buch have landed in a situation wherein they can hardly do anything against the shortseller who is not within the country’s legal ambit.
- Considering this fact, they are believed to have been advised to ignore the allegations and refrain from getting engaged with the shortseller, which is seen changing its goalpost.
Sri Lanka Tamil party seeks governance structure based on a federal framework
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GS 2: issues and challenges pertaining to the federal structure
- The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), a prominent political party representing Tamils of Sri Lanka’s north and east, has said it would consider backing a presidential aspirant who agrees to its demand for a governance structure based on a federal model.
- The party’s position, which reiterates its long-standing demand for a just political solution to the civil war-scarred country’s Tamil question, comes ahead of Sri Lanka’s presidential polls scheduled to be held on September 21.
- It reflects one position from within the island’s visibly divided Tamil polity.
