Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
Although some states differed on the valuation norms and tax levy on online gaming and casinos, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, in its 51st meeting via videoconferencing, decided to levy 28 per cent tax at face value at entry level.
The Council, however, gave some relief by deciding not to impose the tax levy on the amount entered into games/bets out of winnings of previous games/bets in online money gaming or on total value of each bet placed, as would be the case in casinos.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the decision was not taken with consensus, as had happened at the time of the GST change on lottery, with some states registering dissent but most states asking for early implementation of the decision taken at the last Council meeting.
In its previous meeting on July 11, the GST Council had decided to levy a uniform 28 per cent tax on full face value for online gaming, casinos and horse racing.
The new tax levy is now expected to be effective from October 1. A review would be undertaken after six months of the implementation, Sitharaman.
The valuation may be done based on the amount paid or payable or deposited with the supplier by or on behalf of the player, excluding the amount entered into games bets out of winnings of previous games and bets, and not on the total value of each bets placed (GST will be on) entry (level) whatever they pay to get chips and not what they pay in each game.
Adopt WHO – standard good manufacturing practices: Govt sets deadline for pharmas (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
Following recent incidents of several countries reporting deaths allegedly linked to “contaminated” India-manufactured drugs, the government has set a deadline for mandatory implementation of the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) which were revised in 2018, bringing them on par with World Health Organisation (WHO) standards.
Companies with a turnover of over Rs 250 crore will have to implement the revised GMP within six months, while medium and small-scale enterprises with turnover of less than Rs 250 crore will have to implement it within a year.
The decision is important as only 2,000 of the 10,500 manufacturing units in the country were found to be compliant with the global WHO-GMP standards.
The move comes after a risk-based inspection of 162 such units and 14 testing labs found several deficiencies, including absence of testing of raw materials before use, absence of quality failure investigation of its products, faulty design of manufacturing and testing areas.
According to officials, this will lead to at least 11 specific changes in the manufacturing process on the ground, including introduction of a pharmaceutical quality system, quality risk management, product quality review, and validation of equipment.
In Parliament
RS passes Jan Vishwas, forest & mining bills (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Rajya Sabha Wednesday passed three Bills — Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill — even as the Opposition walked out seeking a debate on the Manipur violence issue.
The Rajya Sabha passed the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Bill, 2023, that seeks to promote ease of business by decriminalising minor offences through amendments in 183 provisions of 42 Acts.
The Bill, which was cleared by the Lok Sabha on July 27, was passed by a voice vote in the Upper House.
The Bill converts many fines to penalties, so that court prosecution would not be necessary to administer punishments and removes imprisonment as a punishment for several offences. All offences under the Post Office Act of 1898 are being removed.
Introducing the bill in Rajya Sabha, Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said it will promote the ease of doing business, and said a working group has been formed to take this forward.
The working group has representatives from industry associations, business chambers, legal professionals, legal experts and representatives from seven ministries as well as from the National Housing Bank (NHB), National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB).
The Bill seeks to amend 183 provisions of 42 Acts administered by 19 ministries with the aim of reducing compliance burden on individuals and businesses.
Among Acts which will be amended through the Bill are the Press and Registration of Books Act, the Boilers Act, the Indian Forest Act, the Drugs and Cosmetics Act.
Express Network
Jharkhand set to bring anti-cheating Bill: proposes up to life term, Rs 10 cr fine (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Jharkhand government is set to table The Jharkhand Competitive Examination (Measure for Control and Prevention of Unfair Means in Recruitment) Bill, 2023, in an effort to crack down on use of unfair means and irregularities in examinations and plug incidents of question paper ‘leaks’.
Among others, the draft Bill, which is likely to be tabled in the ongoing monsoon session of the Assembly, proposes imprisonment of up to life and a fine of up to Rs 10 crore for people involved in the examination process — such as those involved in printing question papers and employees of examination authorities.
Sources said a key purpose of the Bill is to ensure examinations for government jobs are conducted in a time-bound manner.
The draft Bill, it is learnt, says that an examinee, if caught cheating or making another examinee cheat, could be sentenced for a period up to three years in jail along with a fine. For second-time offenders, the jail term could go up to seven years.
The Bill, it is learnt, proposes that in case of other people involved in the examination process — such as those in a printing press that prints question papers, service providers, an employee of the examination authority concerned or those at coaching centres, among others — found involved in conspiracy of irregularities can be prosecuted with imprisonment not less than 10 years, which may extend to life imprisonment, and a fine of up to Rs 10 crore.
To prevent suicides, IIT-M to get facial recognition system (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
In the forthcoming academic year starting August, IIT Madras will introduce two practices as part of its suicide prevention initiative — a face recognition attendance management system to identify students absent for prolonged periods of time and an app that will let parents have regular interactions with their children.
The institute saw four cases of suicides between February to July 2023. These efforts the institute says, will be part of its larger suicide prevention approach.
V Kamakoti, the director of IIT Madras, said the automated attendance system will deploy face-recognition devices and added that the data science programmes running at the institute would help in processing this data.
Saying the initiatives would not “intrude on anybody’s privacy,” Kamakoti said, “Attendance in class, mess, gym among all will be maintained. We will just consolidate that data to see patterns.”
We are already taking attendance in some of those places. Now, it is just a matter of consolidating it with the automated process instead of the traditional register attendance.
The director said the approaches were developed keeping in mind the patterns in the cases of the last few suicides.
Editorial
Shutdown is no cure (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
In 2018, India attained the top global rank and has since retained the pole position for the highest number of internet shutdowns.
Being a world leader in an authoritarian exercise has not only brought shame to Indians but also caused deep and certain injury.
There is also concern about protracted periods of deprivation. Not too long ago, there was a mobile data blackout in Jammu and Kashmir for 550 days, which finally ended on February 4, 2021.
Will the ongoing ban in Manipur, now running for more than 80 days from May 3, 2023, eclipse it? There is worry and talk of reform. It has led to an administrative consensus for the middle ground of “limited internet shutdowns”.
This idea holds a seductive appeal for officials of the Department of Telecom, legislators in the standing committee on IT, and judges in the Supreme Court and our high courts. Even ordinary Indians will agree that allowing the good and banning the bad is a reasonable measure to contain riots and security threats. In its simplicity lies its appeal, as does its danger.
Ideas Page
The twain must meet (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The BJP’s defeat in the recent Karnataka assembly elections has made the north/south divide in India more obvious in political terms. The party holding office at the Centre does not govern any state below the Vindhyas.
While congratulating the Congress on its victory in the assembly elections, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin said the “landmass of the Dravidian family stands clear of the BJP”.
The Congress’s victory can indeed be seen as an outcome of the sharpening north-south divide in terms of culture, the politics of language, economic development and social transformation.
Despite English being criticised as a colonial inheritance and an instrumental knowledge in several quarters, the language remains a vehicle for emancipation for many.
The south recognised this aspect of English, while several states in the north tried to abolish the use of the language. By all accounts, English medium education provides advantages in securing jobs, acquiring skills and entering the service-driven modern economy.
According to NSSO education survey (2018), English is the medium of teaching till Class 12 in a high percentage of schools in south India — 63 per cent in Telangana, 60.7 per cent in Kerala, 59 per cent in Andhra Pradesh, 44 per cent in Tamil Nadu and 35 per cent in Karnataka.
This figure for Bihar, in contrast, is 6 per cent and for UP, it is 14 per cent. In western India, Maharashtra tilts towards the southern way of educating children (29 per cent prefer the English medium), while Gujarat (12.8 per cent) follows the northern states.
Explained
As Art 370 hearings begin, question of the temporary provision (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court (August 2) began hearing the constitutional challenge to the 2019 abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir.
Outlining the genesis of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who began arguments for the petitioners, spoke on why Article 370 is commonly referred to as a “temporary provision”.
Article 370 is in Part XXI of the Constitution, titled “Temporary, Transitional and Special Provisions”. Article 370 is titled “Temporary provisions with respect to the State of Jammu and Kashmir”.
370(3) reads: “Notwithstanding anything in the foregoing provisions of this article, the President may, by public notification, declare that this article shall cease to be operative or shall be operative only with such exceptions and modifications and from such date as he may specify: Provided that the recommendation of the Constituent Assembly of the State referred to in Clause (2) shall be necessary before the President issues such a notification.”
A commonly held view is that since the Article itself provides for the process through which it can be declared inoperative, it is a temporary provision and that the framers of the Constitution never intended for the special provision to be a permanent feature.
How Aadhaar is seeking to use Al to tackle bank payments fraud (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
As more frauds related to the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS) come to the fore, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), has turned to artificial intelligence-based systems in a bid to limit the cases — this includes developing technologies around fingerprinting and facial recognition.
Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad told Parliament on Monday (July 31) that to prevent AePS frauds by the use of spoofed fingerprints during Aadhaar authentication, the UIDAI has rolled out an in-house Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning technology-based Finger Minutiae Record – Finger Image Record (FMR-FIR) modality which is able to check the liveness of a fingerprint to detect the use of cloned fingerprint during the authentication process.
In May this year, Airtel Payments Bank collaborated with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to roll out a facial recognition-based authentication measure for such transactions. The technology has been developed in-house by the UIDAI.
Economy
Greater control for centre, censorship provision likely (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Despite proposing to set up a data protection board, the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDP Bill) could also allow the government to direct any entity to furnish information “as it may call for,” allowing the Centre greater control over the law.
The final version of the Bill could also further India’s online censorship regime – it is expected to propose that entities that have been penalised on at least two instances for violating norms can be blocked by the central government, The Indian Express has learnt.
The draft DPDP Bill, 2023, is scheduled to be tabled in Parliament on Thursday in what would be India’s second attempt at framing a privacy legislation, six years after the Supreme Court declared privacy as a fundamental right.
The Bill, if enacted as law, will be a crucial legislation for the country, which is the largest market for some of the biggest tech companies in the world.
The final version of the Bill is learnt to have retained the contents of the original version of the legislation proposed last November, including those that were red flagged by privacy experts.
Wide-ranging exemptions for the central government and its agencies, remain unchanged. The central government will have the right to exempt “any instrumentality of the state” from adverse consequences citing national security, relations with foreign governments, and maintenance of public order among other things.
It is also expected to state that if an entity is penalised in more than two instances, the central government– after hearing the entity – can decide to block their platform in the country.
This could add to the pre-existing online censorship regime administered under Section 69 (A) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The Bill, while laying down stringent consent norms for entities’ collecting personal data of individuals, also allows for a leeway for certain “legitimate uses,” both by the government itself, and private entities.
How Fitch rating action will impact India, other mkts? (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Global credit rating agency Fitch has downgraded US Sovereign rating from AAA to AA+ citing expected fiscal deterioration over next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden and steady deterioration in governance over the last 20 years.
As expected, the White House and the US treasury have been highly critical of this downgrade. We strongly disagree with this decision. The ratings model used by Fitch declined under President Trump and then improved under President Biden, and it defies reality to downgrade the United States at a moment when President Biden has delivered the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world.
While the US stock markets ignored the downgrade, the domestic stock markets tanked over 1 per cent on Wednesday as investors turned cautious following the credit rating downgrade of the United States by Fitch Ratings, and continued outflows from foreign portfolio investors.
The BSE Sensex shed 676.53 points, or 1.02 per cent, to close at 65,782.78. The 30-share index fell by 1,028 points during intraday trades. The broader Nifty ended at 19,526.55, down 207 points, or 1.05 per cent.
The rating downgrade of the US reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance relative to ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’-rated peers over the last two decades that has manifested in repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions, according to Fitch.
World
'Airspace violation': Poland informs NATO, summons Belarus envoy who denies charge (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Poland will send additional troops and military hardware to its eastern border after two Belarusian helicopters reportedly crossed into the NATO country's airspace.
There was a violation of Polish airspace by two Belarusian helicopters that were training near the border," the Polish Defense Ministry said in a statement. Belarus dismissed the alleged violation as "far-fetched."
Accusations of a violation of the Polish border by Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters of the Belarusian Air Force and Air Defense Forces are far-fetched and made by the Polish military and political leadership to justify the build-up of forces and means at the Belarusian border.
Poland had inititially denied the incursion but then later said a "violation took place in the Bialowieza area at a very low altitude, hampering detection by radar systems.
Minsk had informed Warsaw it intended to conduct training exercises in the area prior to the incident.
Some Polish residents in the area had reported sighting Belarus helicopters overhead earlier in the day and posted photos and videos thereof on social media.