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Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his government’s decision to confer the Bharat Ratna on former Prime Ministers Chaudhary Charan Singh and P V Narasimha Rao, and agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan who led India’s Green Revolution.
This was the third announcement on Bharat Ratnas within a fortnight — the two earlier decisions were on honouring Karpoori Thakur and his social justice legacy, and L K Advani who played a key role in the rise of the BJP and the Ram temple movement.
Announcing the highest civilian honour for Rao, Charan Singh and Swaminathan, Modi hailed their many contributions to the country.
He mentioned that Rao’s tenure as Prime Minister was marked by significant measures that opened India to global markets, fostering a new era of economic development.
The government said that Rao’s contributions to India’s foreign policy, language and education sectors underscore his multifaceted legacy as a leader who not only steered India through critical transformations but also enriched its cultural and intellectual heritage.
Meet HAPS: India’s very own UAV that can fly 20 km high and float for months (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
THE NATIONAL Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) in Bengaluru has successfully completed the first test of a solar-powered “pseudo satellite”, a new age unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can significantly increase India’s surveillance and monitoring capabilities in the border areas.
The high-altitude pseudo satellite vehicle, or HAPS, can fly at altitudes of 18-20 km from the ground, almost double the heights attained by commercial airplanes, and, thanks to its ability to generate solar power, can remain in air for months, even years, offering it advantages of a satellite.
But because it does not require a rocket to get into space, the cost of operating HAPS is several times lower than that of a satellite that is usually placed at least 200 km from the earth.
HAPS is a still-developing technology, and the successful test flight last week puts India among a very small group of countries currently experimenting with this technology.
The test flight, carried out in the Challakere testing range in Chitradurga district of Karnataka, saw the scaled-down 23-kg prototype with a wing-span of about 12 metres, remain in air for about eight and a half hours, achieving an altitude of about 3 km from the ground.
In Parliament
RS passes bill to curb exam malpractices paper leaks (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Rajya Sabha on Friday passed the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Bill, 2024. The law which aims to curb irregularities in public examinations was passed by the Lok Sabha on February 6.
Union Minister for Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions Jitendra Singh, replying to the debate on the Bill said the legislation will protect students who are the “architects of new India and who will also be determining the face of India in 2047.”
Singh also said that the “first-of-its-kind in history” law will not penalise bonafide students.
The Bill penalises any person or persons resorting to unfair means with a minimum imprisonment of three years which may extend to five years and with fine up to Rs 10 lakh.
The law also prescribes a higher sentence ranging from three to ten years if a company providing services for the exam is involved.
For organised rackets involved in unfair means, the Bill prescribes a minimum sentence of five years which can extend up to ten years with a fine of up to Rs 1 crore.
Unfair means under the proposed law is defined to include leakage of question paper or answer key, tampering with answer sheets including Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) response sheets, manipulation in seating arrangements, allocation of dates and shifts for the candidates among others.
BCI Powers should be restricted to eligibility for practicing panel (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Calling for reforms in the role of the Bar Council of India (BCI), a Parliamentary panel report said that the apex legal education regulator should be restricted to granting “basic eligibility for practising at the Bar”.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law And Justice panel, headed by Sushil Kumar Modi, tabled its report titled “Strengthening Legal Education in View of Emerging Challenges Before The Legal Profession” in the Rajya Sabha.
Calling for measures to give priority to “quality over quantity”, it said: “Many stakeholders have also raised serious concern about the manner in which the BCI has used the power to inspect law colleges and grant them recognition which has led to a reckless proliferation of substandard law colleges in the country.”
The BCI, the panel said, does not have “power nor expertise” to make the desired changes in legal education and recommended an “independent authority” for postgraduate legal programmes to make them relevant beyond courtrooms.
Accordingly, the Committee recommends that the BCI’s powers to regulate legal education should be limited to the extent of acquiring basic eligibility for practising at the Bar.
Govt & Politics
Can preamble be amended without altering date, asks SC (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court on Friday wondered if the Preamble to the Constitution could have been amended while retaining the date when the Constitution was adopted.
It was referring to insertion of the words “socialist” and “secular” into the Preamble by the 42nd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1976. Although the change came 27 years after the Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly, the Preamble retained the date “November 26, 1949”.
The last part of the Preamble states, “… In our constituent assembly, this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution.”
The query came as a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta took up a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy questioning the legality of the insertion of the two words by way of the constitutional amendment in 1976.
The PIL contends that the Preamble comes with a specific date and, thus, could not be amended without discussion.
Editorial
A very flawed code (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
On the surface, Uttarakhand’s UCC Bill (herewith U-UCC), passed without public consultation or debate, appears to be a progressive document on some counts, such as succession/inheritance, even while being deeply problematic on other counts, such as its clauses on “live in” relationships. But, delving deeper, even the inheritance rules have serious flaws and silences.
The U-UCC has simplified inheritance rules to make them gender equal on all counts, doing away with prior distinctions between separate and coparcenary joint family property (JFP) in Hindu law, and the unequal shares for women under Muslim law. It thus deceptively appears to be the kind of “gender equal” code that many women’s rights scholars and activists have been suggesting.
Ideas Page
He who rules the sea (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Angus Maddison, renowned British historian, in his monumental work The World Economy: Historical Statistics (2003), argued that India had been the largest economy in the world in the first millennium with a share of almost 33 per cent of the world’s GDP.
It began to decline with external invasions and colonisation and touched a low point during the British era in the 18th and 19th century.
Some economists concluded that this record performance of the Indian economy in the first millennium, closely followed by China during the same period, was due to its population size.
However, what many didn’t take into account was the domination of Indian rulers over the oceans around them at that time.
“He who rules on the sea will shortly rule on the land also,” Hayreddin Barbarossa, admiral of the Ottoman Navy was famously quoted as telling emperor Suleiman.
It perfectly applied to India of the first millennium, when the dominant Hindu rulers had developed powerful merchant and military navies and conquered the oceans around the peninsula.
They established trade with the Arab lands in the West and ventured into South China Sea territories, crossing the Malayan Peninsula in the East.
Economy
FinMin banks mull over SOP to return funds to cyberfraud victims (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The finance Ministry discussed plans with banks to develop a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to help the latter return money to customers siphoned off in cyber financial frauds.
The review meeting on issues related to cybersecurity and financial frauds, which was chaired by Department of Financial Services (DFS) Secretary Vivek Joshi, also discussed phasing out the use of regular 10-digit numbers and using a specific series such as ‘140xxx’ for commercial/ promotional activities by banks and financial institutions.
“If a fraud takes place, the money trail can be traced and established but currently there is no SOP to return the money to the consumer. We are working on SOP for banks to return the money to the victim.
Discussions were held for onboarding banks and financial institutions to the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS) platform through API integration, a release by the Finance Ministry said.
The ministry is also looking to integrate the CFCFRMS platform with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal to centralise efforts and support collaboration between police, banks, and financial institutions for preventing financial frauds.
World
Maldives key partner in ensuring free, secure Indo – Pacific region: US (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Describing the Maldives as a key partner in ensuring a free, open, secure, and prosperous Indo-Pacific region, the United States said it is committed to strengthening cooperation with the South Asian island nation.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Donald Lu was in the Maldives recently for talks with its new leadership and the civil society.
The United States is committed to strengthening cooperation with Maldives, a key partner in ensuring a free, open, secure, and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.