11 April 2024, The Indian EXPRESS
Grave injustice, flags apex court, gives Rs 8,000 cr relief to DMRC
Page no-1
GS2- Structure, Organization and Functioning of the Judiciary
- The Supreme Court on Wednesday set aside its 2021 judgment that upheld the 2017 arbitral award asking Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to pay Rs 2,782.33 crore with interest to Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL) promoted by the Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Infrastructure in connection with the construction of the Airport Metro Express Line project in the national capital.
- Allowing a curative petition filed by the DMRC, a three-judge bench presided by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud said that the order of the Delhi High Court division bench that set aside the arbitral award partly was a “well considered decision” and “there was no valid basis for” the Supreme Court to interfere.
- The Supreme Court said it “erred in interfering with the decision of the Division Bench” of the high court.
Allowing curative plea, how Supreme Court pushes the envelope
Page no-1
GS2- Structure, Organization and Functioning of the Judiciary
- Setting aside the 2017 arbitral award that required the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) to pay nearly Rs 8000 crore to Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Infrastructure, the Supreme Court has expanded the scope of its “extraordinary powers” to intervene beyond constitutionally prescribed processes.
- A curative writ petition, that the Supreme Court has invoked in reviving the 2019 Delhi High Court judgment that partially set aside the Delhi Metro arbitration award, is a sparingly used judicial innovation to correct a “grave miscarriage of justice”.
- Constitutionally, a final ruling of the Supreme Court can only be questioned in a review petition, that, too, on narrow procedural grounds.
Nari Shakti lessons from Japan
Page no-9
GS2- Welfare Schemes for Vulnerable Sections of the population by the Centre and States and the Performance of these Schemes
- Change, they say, begins from the top. And in one of Asia’s richest economies, it began with a commitment to gender equality from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2014.
- Even as Japan was grappling with falling fertility rates, a declining population, and stagnant growth, a series of reforms on “womenomics” were introduced as part of the “Abenomics” era. And today, they are showing results.
11 of 18 IISc subjects see drops in QS ranking
Page no-10
GS2- Issues Relating to Development and Management of Social Sector/Services relating to Education
- In the latest edition of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject released on Wednesday, several programmes offered by the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) saw a significant drop from last year.
- The chemistry programme at India’s most prominent Institute of Eminence (IoE) fell 31 places, from 77th to 108th.
- The institute’s physics and astronomy programme was ranked 134 this year, down from 110 the previous year.
- In a similar vein, the institute’s mathematics rankings dropped by 18 spots, ending up at 134 from 116th in 2023.
World trade to rebound in 2024, grow 2.6%: WTO
Page no- 11
GS2- Important International Institutions, agencies and fora - their Structure, Mandate
- Global trade volumes are expected to get back to the growth phase this year as consumption demand picks up in advanced economies after a tough 2023 which saw a contraction in cross border shipments, according to the World Trade Outlook of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on Wednesday.
- The WTO, however, lowered its forecast for growth in 2024 of world merchandise trade volumes to 2.6 per cent from 3.3 per cent it had projected in October last year as the impact of factors responsible for contraction in 2023 are still being felt.
Why the ‘God particle’, theorised by Peter Higgs, matters
Page no-12
GS3- Science and Technology- Developments and their Applications and Effects in Everyday Life
- It required nearly 50 years, and the world’s biggest and most complex machine, to detect the Higgs boson in 2012.
- An elementary particle like electrons, quark, photons or neutrinos, the Higgs boson, is known to impart mass to every other particle.
- Its existence was predicted in the 1960s, but it was found only in 2012 through elaborate experiments carried out at the Large Hadron Collider, located on the border of France and Switzerland, the world’s biggest and most expensive machine till then.
- The discovery of the Higgs boson completed what is known as the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which describes all the fundamental particles, like electrons and protons, and the forces, like electromagnetism, gravitation or nuclear forces, that build up the material part of the world.
Curative relief for Delhi Metro
Page no-12
GS2- Structure, Organization and Functioning of the Judiciary
- The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) will not have to pay nearly Rs 8000 crore to the Delhi Airport Metro Express Private Limited (DAMEPL), an Anil-Ambani owned Reliance Infrastructure company, which was awarded by a 2017 arbitral award.
- The ruling overturned the Supreme Court’s September 2021 judgment that upheld the arbitral award.
- A month after the 2021 judgment, the court had dismissed a plea seeking a review — the final step in the appeal process after which a ruling of the highest court attains finality.
A time standard for Moon’s surface: what is it and why is it needed?
Page no-12
GS3- Awareness in the fields of Space
- Last week, the US White House officially directed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to create a time standard for the moon, which different international bodies and private companies can use to coordinate their activities on the lunar surface.
- In a memo, the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) told the space agency to work with other parts of the US government to finalise the strategy by the end of 2026 for establishing what it called a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC), according to Reuters, which first reported about the project.
