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The Supreme Court, in a special hearing, suspended a Bombay High Court decision to discharge G.N. Saibaba, a 55-year-old wheelchair-bound academic, in a case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for alleged Maoist links.
A Bench of Justices M.R. Shah and Bela Trivedi remarked that generally “as far as terrorist activities are concerned, the brain plays a very important role. A brain for such activities is very dangerous”.
The oral comment was triggered when Mr. Saibaba’s lawyer, senior advocate R. Basant, referred to the State’s allegation that his client was the “brain” behind the alleged Maoist activities and his fellow accused were mere “foot soldiers”.
Mr. Basant said Mr. Saibaba was 90% physically disabled and had led a respectable life as a professor in the Delhi University.
A request to transfer Mr. Saibaba to house arrest in order to “preserve his health” failed for now. He will continue to remain in Nagpur Central Jail.
These requests are coming very frequently from naxals, especially urban naxals… ‘allow me house arrest’... In UAPA offences, accused have to be kept confined.
You don’t need to go somewhere to stab someone, you don’t need to go somewhere to shoot someone. House arrest is never an option,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, for Maharashtra, intervened.
States
6 varieties of neelakurinji identified in Santhanpara region of Western Ghats (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
As visitors keep pouring in to witness the blooming of neelakurinjion a vast area on the Kallippara hills at Santhanpara in Idukki, an expert team has identified six varieties of the plant across the region.
The team, comprising Jomy Augustine, an expert on neelakurinji, and E. Kunjikrishnan, an expert on the Western Ghats, recently identified the plant varieties. According to them, the flowers that are on bloom now belong to the Strobilantheskunthiana variety.
Alongside Strobilantheskunthiana, the types of neelakurinji flowers that have been identified from the hill ranges include Strobilanthesanamallaica, Strobilanthesheyneanus, Strobilanthespulnyensis, and Strobilanthesneoasper.
All these neelakurinji species are endemic to the Western Ghats and spread over nearly 200 acres of the Kallippara hills. In fact, the neelakurinji population here can be considered one of the biggest of the species after the protected areas of Munnar. A vast variety of medicinal plants too have been spotted on the hills.
The bloom reported at Kallippara belongs to the gregarious flowering (massive flowering at once) type, he says calling for collective efforts to protect the rich biodiversity hotspot on the Kallippara hills.
From the Mangaladevi ranges to Coorg in Karnataka, experts have identified nearly 100 populations of the Strobilantheskunthiana variety.
Idukki district biodiversity board management member Ashwathi V.S. says the board will take steps to protect neelakurinji at Kallippara as the area is revenue land.
To ensure protection, we need to pass a resolution in the local panchayat and submit it to the State biodiversity board. The board can also provide funds for the purpose.
Santhanpara panchayat secretary says the hills were the flowers are in bloom belong to Udumbanchola panchayat.
Job J. Neriamparampil, assistant wildlife warden of the Eravikulam National park, the biggest sanctuary of neelakurinji flowers, says isolated flowerings are being reported from other areas, including Bhadrakali Shola at Puthumala and Onamtheri inside the Eravikulam National park.
News
PM bats for use of regional languages in legal system to bring ease of justice (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
People’s faith in constitutional institutions gets strengthened when justice is seen to be delivered, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said even as he cited the delay in getting justice as one of the major challenges faced by the people of the country.
Mr. Modi stressed that new laws should be written in a clear manner and in regional languages to bring in “ease of justice”, so that even the poor can easily understand them and legal language doesn’t become a barrier for citizens.
He also urged the State governments to adopt a humane approach towards undertrial prisoners.The Prime Minister made these remarks while inaugurating the All India Conference of Law Ministers and Law Secretaries’ via video conference.
The two-day conference is being held at Ekta Nagar in Kevadia near the ‘Statue of Unity’ in Gujarat and is being attended by Union Law Minister KirenRijiju among others.
Delivering the inaugural address, Mr. Modi said that people should neither feel the absence of government nor its pressure and that is his government, in the last eight years, has scrapped more than 1,500 obsolete and irrelevant laws that were a relic of British rule and reduced as many as 32,000 compliances for the sake of “innovation and ease of living”.
When justice is seen to be delivered, then the faith of the countrymen in the constitutional institutions is strengthened. And when justice is delivered, the confidence of the common man goes up,” Mr. Modi said.
Laying stress on ensuring the ease of justice for the citizen, he said, “Delay in getting justice is one of the major challenges being faced by the people of our country.
But our judiciary is seriously working towards resolving this issue. In this AmritKaal, we will have to work together to tackle this.
Mr. Modi stated that villages have been resorting alternative dispute resolution mechanism for a long time and it can be adopted at State level as well.
Speaking about the importance of use of regional languages in the legal system, “Obscurity of law creates complexity. If law is comprehensible to the common man, it will have a different impact”.
When justice is seen to be delivered, then the faith of the countrymen in the constitutional institutions is strengthened
Centre considering Sri Lanka's proposal to translocate gaurs (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Environment)
Close on the heels of the project that translocated cheetahs from Namibia, the Indian government is considering a proposal from Colombo to export a number of gaurs, or Indian bisons, to Sri Lanka to revive the population of gavaras that have been extinct in the island since the end of the 17th century.
If the project is cleared, it would be the first such agreement between India and Sri Lanka, and part of a global trend of “wildlife or zoological diplomacy”, say experts.
Sources said the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), which received the request in August, has now forwarded it to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), “seeking comments” on the proposal to transport at least six specimens, including a bull and three to five cows.
According to the written proposal, the Sri Lankan Department of Zoological Gardens would then carry out “captive breeding a herd of about a dozen specimens over a five-year period before trial reintroduction to the wild could take place in accordance with [internationally mandated] guidelines for reintroductions”.
The suggestion for the proposal came from world-renowned Sri Lankan conservationist Rohan Pethiyagoda, who was awarded the Linnean medal 2022 (U.K. -based equivalent of the Nobel prize for zoology) for his work on restoring fresh water and forest biodiversity.
As a scientific and cultural collaboration between our two countries, I felt this could be an immensely valuable initiative. But I know it is fraught with difficulties,” said Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India MilindaMoragoda who handed over the preliminary request on the basis of Mr. Pethiyagoda’s suggestion.
India is without a doubt Sri Lanka’s closest friend, supporter and trading partner. We have a shared history, shared cultural identity, and shared gene. We even got Buddhism, on whose traditions we derive our national values, from India.
Experts say that while “zoological diplomacy” had been practised worldwide, they draw a distinction between “gifts or loans” of animals in captivity to translocation and reintroduction of a species, particularly between neighbouring countries with similar eco-systems.
For example, American bison herds were supplemented with animals from Canada after the U.S. herds were almost all wiped out, The U.K. has recently introduced the European bison (Wisent) after an estimated 10,000 years in June 2022(its extinct relative the Steppe Bison was believed to have lived there many centuries ago).
Israel has for decades pursued reintroductions, including of Persian fallow deer. Arabian oryx and other species have been released into the Negev desert, and South Africa has recently used the export of cheetahs to other African countries as a diplomatic tool during the post-apartheid era. More recently, Cambodia has requested translocating tigers from India, which is under consideration.
Science
Neutralising antibody against multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
The discovery of monoclonal antibodies have come a long way since they were first made using the hybridoma technology in 1975.
Now more cutting-edge platforms are available that can clone and express antibody genes from the cells that make the antibodies (B cells) in a high-throughput manner and are in use both for basic research and translational purpose.
Very recently labs in India started to establish these human monoclonal antibody platforms to tackle public health concerns specific to India.
During the height of the pandemic, as an exemplary example of national and international collaboration, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) partnered with Department of Biotechnology (DBT), International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, and Emory Vaccine Centre, Atlanta, to spearhead a discovery of a human monoclonal towards SARS-CoV-2.
This led to the generation of a large number of human monoclonal antibodies that were specific to SARS-CoV-2. Our search eventually narrowed down to one antibody (clone 002-S21F2) that was potently and broadly neutralising across various SARS-CoV-2 variants and Omicron sub-lineages.
The earlier monoclonal therapies that were approved for emergency use in other countries primarily functioned by blocking the interaction of the virus through its receptor binding domain (RBD) with the host cell receptor (ACE2).
The virus makes new mutations in its receptor binding domain (RBD), which is a critical part of the virus for binding to the host cell.
Hence, as the virus evolved, it acquired mutations precisely in this region, and each variant was decorated with a different set of mutations which allowed the virus to evade many of these antibody-based therapeutics.
In contrast, our antibody clone retains its potency and broad activity because the antibody binds to a region that is outside the main RBD-ACE2 motif. The SARS-CoV-2 spike trimer is like a flower with three petals.
This flower is in closed or down conformation and more like a bud; the virus has many of these on its surface. When it wants to infect the host cells, it opens up or as we call it the three RBD's go in the 'up confirmation'.
However, our antibody (002-S21F2) binds in such a way that it does not allow this 'closed to open'/'down to up' alteration to happen efficiently, and thus the virus is now incapable of infecting the host cell.
As this region is not precisely within the RBD-ACE2 binding motif, it is not currently a mutational hotspot and thus is conserved across most variants, the Omicron sub-lineages included.
Learning from new life forms(Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
The Geological era that we live in is called the anthropocene. This is because of the global impact that humans and their activities have made after they evolved. A notable effect of changes seen in the anthropocene has been a rapid increase in the rate of extinction of other species.
However, skeptics of climate change keep pointing to the large discrepancies in the extinction rates published by various researchers.
The online magazine, Yale Environment 360, has reported a range of 24 to 150 species lost per day. Either of these numbers is alarming. A total of about 1,000 species of animals have been actually documented to have gone extinct in the last 400 years.
We do not have a reasonably complete inventory of the animals and plants on our planet. New species are still being found and documented. For instance, a report in The Hindu dated March 3, 2021, described five new frogs from the Western Ghats.
In India, a few groups (at the IISc Bengaluru, University of Delhi, Kerala Forest Research Institute, etc.) have made stellar contributions to lists of new discoveries.
Finding new species can be a painstaking work. Many new species are found in biodiversity hotspots that are heaven for snakes and mosquitos, but are not very hospitable to humans.
Scientists from the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), Kolkata found a new species of shrew on the island of Narcondam, a part of the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and named it crociduranarcondamica ( Scientific Reports , 2021). This shrew is found nowhere else.
Narcondam is a small island and has a dormant volcano. Nearly all of it is densely forested.Shrews earned an undeserving, ill-tempered reputation in a work of Shakespeare. But the animal itself is rather secretive.
They are small in size; our own recent discovery being about 10 cm long. Their hearts can beat at 1,000 times per minute.
Of what potential use could such discoveries be? A few shrew species are venomous, which is highly unusual for a mammal. A few studies, not very detailed, have indicated that this venom contains chemical entities of interest to health professionals.
The accelerated extinction of life forms has led to major initiatives to sequence as many species as possible. There is a hope that with scientific advances, we may have ‘Jurassic Park’ scenarios where at least some extinct life forms are brought back to life.
At a more prosaic level, comparing genomes can provide clues for the betterment of human health. A regularly updated Wikipedia list of completely sequenced genomes lists 100 bird species and 150 mammals. Many more are needed.
It is, therefore, heartening to know that the laboratories of the ZSI have published the mitochondrial genome sequence of another rare mammal endemic to the Nicobar Islands — the Nicobar treeshrew.
Explained (FAQ)
Why did bank bailout research get the Nobel? (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
On October 10, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences unveiled the names of the winners of the SverigesRiksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2022.
Three economists were jointly bestowed the honour of the final set of Nobel laureates to be announced this year: former U.S. Federal Reserve chairperson Ben S. Bernanke, a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig, both of whom are doctorates from Yale University.
Diamond is professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, while Dybvig is Banking and Finance professor at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Nobel in Economics has been awarded to Bernanke, Diamond and Dybvig for their “research on banks and financial crises” undertaken in the early 1980s which have formed the foundations of what constitutes most modern banking research.
Their analyses nearly four decades ago, still inform efforts to emphasise the vitality of banks to keep the economy functioning smoothly, the possible mechanisms to make them more robust amid crises periods, and how bank collapses can fuel a larger financial crisis that can rattle economies.
Moreover, their work went beyond the realm of just theory and has had significant practical import in regulating financial markets and pre-empting or coping with crises.
The laureates’ insights have improved our ability to avoid both serious crises and expensive bailouts,” said Tore Ellingsen, Chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences.
Bernanke, who was the U.S. Federal Reserve chief from 2006 to 2014, had analysed the worst modern economic crisis — the Great Depression of the 1930s that began in the U.S. but bludgeoned economies across the world for several years — in a 1983 article.
He turned conventional thinking of the time on its head by arguing that bank failures in the 1930s were not just a result of the Depression but, in fact, a contributing factor to the lingering scars on economic activity.
Apart from the obvious impact of collapsing banks on its depositors’ fortunes, he argued that critical borrower profiles were lost when banks imploded, thus hindering the ability to channelise savings to investments that could have revived the economy faster.
What triggered the U.K.’s economic crisis? (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
British Prime Minister Liz Truss fired Chancellor of the Exchequer KwasiKwarteng and dropped parts of their economic package that had been announced to tackle burgeoning inflation and sooth market turbulence.
The U.K. economy has veered dangerously toward free fall in recent weeks as Ms. Truss and Mr. Kwarteng fumbled their way through defining a clear economic strategy, while persisting with their stated goal of spurring economic growth in the post-Brexit scenario.
Their troubles began shortly after September 6 when Ms. Truss took over from her predecessor, Boris Johnson, who left Downing Street under a cloud after an internal party rebellion over his involvement in the “party-gate” scandal.
At the time she vowed to make the Conservative Party respectable and electable again. Yet even as she entered office, her Cabinet stared at a looming energy crisis partly driven by the instability stemming from energy supply disruptions associated with Russia’s Ukraine war.
While she appeared to act decisively in early September to assure British families, struggling to pay their gas bills, of an energy price guarantee and subsequent cost savings, it was her broader plan to cut income tax for the highest earners in the U.K. and to scrap a corporate tax hike that was in the firing line.
Her now infamous mini budget of September 23 outlining these proposals caused such a turbulence in the markets that the Bank of England (BoE) was compelled to step in to help the pensions industry survive skyrocketing government borrowing costs, a crashing pound and soaring mortgage rates.
Ms. Truss fired Mr. Kwarteng and replaced him with Jeremy Hunt, a former Minister under ex-Prime Ministers Theresa May and David Cameron, who was incidentally a leading supporter of Ms. Truss’s rival for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak. Some see this as Ms. Truss’s attempt to bring her opponents within the party to her side before she faces a rebellion of the sort that unseated Mr. Johnson.
The Truss Cabinet has primarily been criticised for what Mr. Sunak has called the “fantasy island economics” of slashing revenue sources without adequately funding the large fiscal hole that such a give-away would create.
The recent proposals have also been attacked as the wrong priority given the more immediate concern surrounding runaway inflationary trends triggered by global commodity price fluctuations, convulsions in the energy market and the supply side constraints of a post-Brexit economic structure.
The first policy that the Truss-Kwarteng duo came up with to kick-start the U.K. economy was a plan to abolish the 45% top rate of income tax for people on incomes of £1,50,000 or higher.
A second policy in a similar vein was the proposal to scrap a planned increase in corporate tax from 19% to 25% starting next April. Together, the two measures amounted to £45 billion in unfunded tax cuts.
The issues in the Collegium’s functioning (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
A meeting of the Supreme Court Collegium, comprising the Chief Justice of India (CJI), and four senior-most judges, which was called for September 30 but did not take place, was subsequently “closed without there being any further deliberation”.
What prevented further deliberations was the fact that the Union Law Minister, by a letter dated October 7, requested Chief Justice U.U. Lalit to nominate his successor, as the latter’s tenure ends on November 8, 2022.
The postponement of the meeting and its subsequent closure has invited attention to the manner in which the Collegium functions.
The Collegium system, one in which a group of the senior-most judges make appointments to the higher judiciary, has been in practice for nearly three decades.
Its importance lies in the fact that its opinion has primacy in the matter of appointments to the high courts and the Supreme Court, as well as transfers. Its legal basis is found in a series of three judgments — usually referred to as the ‘Judges Cases’ — concerning the higher judiciary. Its manner of functioning has been laid down in the form of a ‘Memorandum of Procedure’.
The Constitution says a Supreme Court judge is appointed by the President in consultation with the Chief Justice of India.
In the ‘First Judges Case’, the court held that the consultation with the CJI should be “full and effective”.
The Second Judges case introduced the collegium system in 1993. It ruled that the CJI would have to consult a collegium of his two senior-most judges in the apex court on judicial appointments.
The ‘Third Judges Case’ case in 1998, which was a Presidential reference, expanded the collegium to its present composition of the CJI and four of his senior-most judges.
The Collegium’s functioning has been criticised for being opaque. Its resolutions and recommendations are hosted on the Supreme Court’s website, giving relevant information about its decisions.
However, the nature of the deliberations and whether there are any internal differences of opinion on the suitability of a particular candidate are unknown.
It functions mainly through the system of adopting resolutions and sending them to the Union Law Ministry for further action.
If a proposal for appointment of a judge is returned for reconsideration, the Collegium may either drop it or reiterate it. When the Collegium reiterates its decision after reconsideration, it is binding on the government.
The meeting had to be postponed because on that day, a member of the Collegium, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who will be the next Chief Justice of India, was preoccupied with his list of cases well beyond court hours.
Subsequently, a difference of opinion has been acknowledged over the manner in which the deliberations were to go on. While Chief Justice Lalit wanted to circulate the files pertaining to some recommendations for appointment to the Supreme Court, two judges in the Collegium, Justice Chandrachud and Justice Abdul Nazeer, did not favour any decision through circulation. They preferred deliberations in person.