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US company Intuitive Machines first lunar lander has touched down on the moon, marking the first American spacecraft to land on the lunar surface in more than 50 years.
The spacecraft was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Thursday last week from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission, codenamed IM-1, marks Intuitive Machines’ first robotic flight to the moon’s surface, Xinhua news agency reported.
The scientific objectives of the mission include studies of plume-surface interactions, radio astronomy, and space weather interactions with the lunar surface.
Front Page
Assam hits the road to UCC, ends Muslim marriage law (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Assam Cabinet decided night to repeal the Assam Muslim Marriage and Divorce Registration Act, 1935, taking the first step towards a Uniform Civil Code in the state, a fortnight after the Uttarakhand Assembly became the first in the country to show the green light to the UCC.
Announcing the Assam Cabinet decision on doing away with what he called a “colonial Act”, Minister Jayanta Malla Baruah said it was “a very important step in the journey towards a Uniform Civil Code” in the state.
According to the 2011 Census, Muslims constitute 34% of Assam’s population, standing at 1.06 crore out of a total population of 3.12 crore.
A little after midnight, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, in a social media post, said, “On 23.22024, the Assam cabinet made a significant decision to repeal the age-old Assam Muslim Marriages & Divorces Registration Act.
This Act contained provisions allowing marriage registration even if the bride and groom had not reached the legal ages of 18 and 21, as required by law. This move marks another significant step towards prohibiting child marriages in Assam.
Express Network
SC bench airs concern about conflicting orders in a forest related matter (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
A Supreme Court bench, presided by Justice B R Gavai, expressed concern over the possibility of conflicting orders after a bench presided by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud heard a matter related to forest land that was also being heard by it and had passed orders.
Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, however, clarified that it was only an interim order by which the CJI court had directed that the SC should be approached first for any relief.
On February 19, hearing a petition challenging the amendments made in 2023 to the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 (FCA), the CJI-led bench directed that the “broad and all-encompassing” definition of forest, as laid down in the Supreme Court’s 1996 judgement in the T N Godavarman case, be followed until a consolidated record of all kinds of forests across the country is prepared.
The interim order also said that “any proposal for the establishment of zoo/safaris referred to in the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, owned by the government or any authority in forest areas other than protected areas shall not be finally approved save and except with the prior permission of” the court.
Which law gives legitimacy to child born outside formal marriage, asks top court (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court sought to know which law gives legitimacy to children born outside a formal marriage, be it void or voidable.
A voidable marriage is one that can be rendered invalid by the husband or wife through a decree, while a void marriage is invalid at the very inception.
A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Augustine George Masih sought to know the existing law which gives legitimacy to children born outside marriage while hearing a batch of pleas challenging various provisions and rules of Surrogacy (regulations) Rules, 2022 and Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulations) (ART) Act of 2021.
The bench disposed of a number of petitions in view of the Centre’s February 21 notification amending the Surrogacy Rules 2022 and allowing married couples to use an egg or sperm of a donor in case one of the partners is suffering from a medical condition.
Editorial
Best of luck, CBSE (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
We are in a time when the virus of rote learning, the pathology of MCQ-centric standardised tests, the “success manuals” sold by coaching factories and the psychology of fear associated with board examinations have polluted the entire culture of school education.
In this context, the fact that the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is experimenting with the possibility of “open-book” examinations (OBE) in order to resist this rot, and encourage “higher-order thinking” among students is welcome.
It is a refreshing idea, particularly in an environment in which board examinations in many parts of the country cannot be imagined without the use of the surveillance machinery amid the all-pervading fear of mass copying, or leaked question papers.
Reports suggest that the CBSE, to begin with, intends to experiment with open-book examinations in select schools for classes 9 to 12, particularly for subjects like English, Science, Mathematics and Biology.
Although there is no immediate plan to adopt the OBE format for the Board examination, the experiment is a step forward.
Ideas Page
Design of a subsidy (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Increasing LPG usage of low-income households is central to India’s energy transition. A revised version of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), launched in August 2021, aimed to provide LPG access to an additional 10 million low-income households with one-time subsidies for a cooking stove and gas refill.
The government has marked this programme as a flagship but it has also recognised that poor households are not using as much gas as expected.
Before PMUY, 87 per cent of rural households used biomass to cook since biomass fuels like wood, charcoal, or dung are cheap or free. Since 2016, this proportion has come down significantly, but most rural households are still using biomass. Specifically, usage of LPG refills in PMUY families is only about half of that of non-PMUY homes.
India’s LPG refill subsidy policy has evolved rapidly: From a universal subsidy pegged to the market price pre-Covid, followed by no LPG refill subsidy in 2021, to a reintroduction of a fixed refill subsidy for only PMUY households in May 2022.
The Pratyaksh Hanstantrit Labh (PAHAL) scheme for direct benefit transfer helped reduce the leakage of subsidised gas cylinders to the black market that had occurred when all households were eligible for heavy subsidies and diversion was rampant.
Explained
Door gametes are allowed: What new rule on surrogacy says (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Centre amended the surrogacy Rules to allow couples to use donor eggs or donor sperm for surrogacy. This overturned a previous amendment made in March 2023 that banned the use of donor gametes.
The new notification states: “In case when the District Medical Board certifies that either husband or wife constituting the intending couple suffers from medical condition necessitating use of donor gamete, then surrogacy using donor gamete is allowed.”
While the relaxation is for “intending couple”, the notification said that if a divorced or widowed woman opts for surrogacy, the egg has to come from the mother:
Single woman (widow or divorcee) undergoing surrogacy must use self-eggs and donor sperms to avail surrogacy procedure.
Prior to the March 2023 notification — which insisted on the use of both eggs and sperm from the intending couple — surrogacy rules allowed the use of donor eggs, but not sperm.
The March 2023 notification was challenged in the Supreme Court by a woman with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) Syndrome, a rare congenital disorder that affects the reproductive system and can cause infertility.
Economy
RBI to NPCI : Consider paytm request for UPI Transactions (Page no. 19)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked the National Payment Council of India (NPCI) to examine the request of One97 Communications’ (OCL), which owns Paytm, to become a Third-Party Application Provider (TPAP) for continued Unified Payments Interface operation of the Paytm application.
A TPAP approval is mandatory to provide UPI-based payment transactions to customers. Currently, all UPI transactions on the Paytm app are being routed through Paytm Payments Bank (PPBL), an associate company of OCL, which is registered as TPAP.
As the RBI has asked the PPBL to shut its operations by March 15, 2024, there will be no TPAP registration for the Paytm app to be able to provide UPI payment services.
A Third-Party Application Provider is an entity that provides the UPI compliant app(s) to the end-user customers to facilitate UPI-based payment transactions. These applications could be mobile wallets, merchant apps, or any other platform that utilises UPI for payments.