Centre decides to fix jurisdiction of river boards.
The
Centre will determine the jurisdictions of the Krishna and Godavari river
management boards (KRMB and GRMB), Union Water Resources Minister Gajendra
Singh Shekhawat said on Tuesday.
He
was speaking after convening an apex council meeting involving the Centre,
Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, the second since 2016. The meeting is primarily
to resolve the conflict between the two States over executing irrigation
projects and sharing water from the Krishna and Godavari rivers.
The
key points on the agenda at Thursday’s meeting which was convened via
videoconference are: jurisdiction of the KRMB and GRMB, submission of Detailed
Project Reports (DPR) of new projects by the two governments for appraisal and
sanction by the apex council, establishing a mechanism to determine the share
of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in the Krishna and Godavari waters, and shifting
the headquarters of the Krishna River Management Board to Andhra Pradesh.
Regarding
the sharing of Godavari waters, both the States were asked to send in their
requests to the Centre so that it could refer them to the tribunal, a statement
from the Water Resources Ministry said.
NCERT
signs MoU to convert educational materials to sign language
A
historic Memorandum of Understanding was signed today between Indian Sign
Language Research and Training Center and NCERT to make education materials
accessible for Deaf children in their preferred format of communication, Indian
Sign Language.
•This
MoU was signed in the virtual presence of Indian Social Justice and Empowerment
Minister and Education Minister.
•The
signing of this MoU is said to be a historic step as availability of NCERT
textbooks in Indian Sign Language will ensure that Hearing Impaired children
can also now access educational resources in Indian Sign Language.
•It
will be a useful and much needed resource for Hearing Impaired students,
teachers, teacher educators and parents. This MoU is a step towards achieving
common goal of fulfilling needs of Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act,
2016 and New Education Policy, 2020.
Saansad
Aadarsh Gram Yojana.
As
the number of gram panchayats identified by Members of Parliament under the
Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) remains “far below” the target, the Centre
has directed State Govts.to ensure “diligent” Implementation of the scheme.
•
Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (SAGY) is a village development project launched by
Govt. of India in October 2014, under which each Member of Parliament will take
the responsibility of developing physical and institutional infrastructure in
three villages by 2019.
•
The goal is to develop three Adarsh Grams by March 2019, of which one would be
achieved by 2016. Thereafter, five such Adarsh Grams (one per year) will be
selected and developed by 2024.
Identification
of Gram Panchayat:
•
A Gram Panchayat would be the basic unit. It will have a population of
3000-5000 in plain areas and 1000-3000 in hilly, tribal and difficult areas. In
districts where this unit size is not available, Gram Panchayats approximating
the desirable population size may be chosen.
•
The MP would be free to identify a suitable Gram Panchayat for being developed
as Adarsh Gram, other than his/her own village or that of his/her spouse.
•
The MP will identify one Gram Panchayat to be taken up immediately, and two
others to be taken up a little later. Lok Sabha MP has to choose a Gram
Panchayat from within his/her constituency and Rajya Sabha MP a Gram Panchayat
from the rural area of a
district
of his/her choice in the State from which he/she is elected.
•
Nominated MPs may choose a Gram Panchayat from the rural area of any district
in the country. In the case of urban constituencies, (where there are no Gram
Panchayats), the MP will identify a Gram Panchayat from a nearby rural
constituency.
•
The Gram Panchayats once selected by members of Parliament (whose tenures have
ended on account of resignation or otherwise) would be continued as such under
SAGY irrespective of whether activities have already been initiated in the GP
under SAGY or not.
•
The Newly Elected MPs will have the option to select the GP of their choice and
two more subsequently by 2019.
Performance of
the Scheme:
•
A study Commissioned by the Rural Development Ministry and conducted as part of
the 5th common review mission observed that the SAGY has not made “any
perceptible impact” and the villages selected under it cannot be called “model
(adarsh) villages”.
•
Major reasons found by the commission were – :
✓ Low selection of
Panchayats
✓ Lack of Funds
✓ Limited Impact
✓ Poor Quality of Roads
and Infrastructure.
India-Myanmar
agree upon operationalization of Sittwe port.
India
and Myanmar have agreed to work towards the operationalization of the Sittwe
port in the Rakhine state in the first quarter of 2021. The announcement came
post conclusion of the two-day visit of Indian Army Chief General MM Naravane
and Foreign Secretary Harsh VardhanShringla to Myanmar.
The
Indian delegation also presented 3000 vials of Remdesivir to the State
Counsellor Aung San SuuKyi, as a symbol of cooperation between the countries to
fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both
sides agreed to further strengthen their partnership in borderd security
connectivity projects, capacity building, power and energy. They also agreed to
deepen the economic and trade ties, further facilitate people to people and
cultural exchanges and broad-base their defense exchanges across all the three
services.
India
announced a grant of two million US Dollars for the construction of the border
haat bridge at Byanyu/Sarsichauk in Chin State that will provide increased
economic connectivity between Mizoram and Myanmar.
India
and U.S to work for stability of Indo-Pacific region.
External
Affairs Minister of India Jaishankar met Secretary of State of the United
States Mike Pompeo today ahead of his joint meeting with the Foreign Ministers
of QUAD countries slated to be held later in the day.
•Jaishankar
was on a two-day visit to Tokyo, Japan which began today. Jaishankar, in a
tweet message, has said that he is pleased to see the progress of Indo-US
partnership in many fields.
•
Both the countries will work together for stability and prosperity in the Indo-
Pacific. The Foreign Ministers of India, United States, Australia and Japan are
likely to discuss the post-COVID-19 international order and the need for a
coordinated response to the various challenges emerging from the pandemic.
•They
will also discuss regional issues and collectively affirm the importance of
maintaining a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific.Jaishankar will be also
meeting his Japanese and Australian counterpart for a bilateral consultation.
The Ministers are expected to discuss bilateral and regional issues of mutual
interest.
•AIR
correspondent reports, the meeting of Foreign Ministers of India, United
States, Australia and Japan holds high significance amid the global
pandemic.This is the second time the four foreign ministers will be meeting
after their first such meeting last year on the sidelines of the United Nations
meet.
Rating
agency forecasts tough times for banks.
Fitch
Ratings on Tuesday said Indian banks face a tough operating environment in the
near term as stressed loans and write-offs increase due to the economic fallout
of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Indian
banks face a tough operating environment in the near term, as stressed loans
and write-offs increase as a result of the economic fallout from the
coronavirus pandemic, but a swift economic recovery will be critical to
limiting loan losses in what is likely to be a protracted period of weakness in
the asset-quality cycle,” Fitch Ratings said.
Banks
have been permitted by the Reserve Bank of India to undertake a one-time
restructuring exercise of loans affected by the pandemic, which will provide
relief in terms of bad loan recognition and provisioning, Fitch said.
“However,
the exercise could leave the sector saddled with a high bad loan burden over
the next few years if restructured loans do not perform according to agreed
milestones,” it added. Fitch said the central bank’s data showed that Indian
banks wrote off almost $85 billion over FY14-FY19.
Centre
dedicated 42 CNG stations and 3 city gate stations.
India's
Petroleum and Natural Gas dedicated 42 CNG stations and three City Gate
Stations of Torrent Gas to the service of the community through video
conference.
•Torrent
Gas has the authorization to lay City Gas Distribution network in 32 Districts
across 7 States and one Union Territory. These CNG stations are located across
various states, including 14 in Uttar Pradesh, 8 in Maharashtra, 6 in Gujarat,
4 in Punjab and 5 each in Telangana and Rajasthan.
•
GoI has visualized that consumers, as per their purchasing capacity and their
choice of fuel, should be able to buy any type of fuel from the retail outlet-
be it petrol, diesel, CNG, LNG or
electric charging. He also said that the Government wants to supply fuel through the mobile dispensers so that consumers can get the fuel at their doorstep, as per their convenience.
•India
is going to become the largest energy consumer in the world in the coming
years.
In
the Solar energy sector, India has already become the role model. Mr Pradhan
said that an investment of more than four lakh crore rupees is being made in
the gas infrastructure which includes laying of pipelines, terminals and gas
fields.
National
Butterfly Campaign .
Citizen
campaign to drum up support for identifying a national butterfly has gained
Momentum with close to half a lakh people joining the Movement from across the
country.
•
Spearheaded by butterfly researchers, scientists and enthusiasts, the National
Butterfly Campaign has revived focus on the relevance of butterflies in
enhancing biodiversity.
•
Several countries, including Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia and Bhutan, have
national butterflies.
•
India is yet to designate a national butterfly despite being home to over 1,300
species belonging to six butterfly families.
•
As part of identifying butterfly species that could make it to the coveted
status, the National Butterfly Campaign Consortium prepared a long-list of 50
butterflies that was further trimmed to seven.
•
A country-wide online poll that commenced on September 11 to identify the
most-favoured butterfly species has currently generated 42,090 votes, with
Maharashtra recording thehighest number — 16,210. Several people have also cast
their votes in West Bengal (3,029) and Karnataka (2,435), while 786 from Kerala
have also Joined the Campaign.
Key
Contenders:
•
Krishna Peacock (Papilio krishna), Indian Jezebel or Common Jezebel (Delias
eucharis), Orange Oakleaf (Kallima inachus), Five-bar Swordtail (Graphium
antiphates), Indian Nawab, Yellow
Virus
researchers to receive nobel prize for medicine.
Two
Americans and a Briton won the 2020 Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for
identifying the Hepatitis C virus, in work spanning decades that has helped to
limit the spread of the fatal disease and develop antiviral drugs to cure it.
•The
discoveries by scientists Harvey J. Alter, Charles M. Rice and Briton Michael
Houghton meant there was now a chance of eradicating the Hepatitis C virus.
•The
three share the 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.1 million) award for discovering
and proving that a blood -borne virus could cause Hepatitis C, which afflicts
more than 70 million people and causes about 4,00,000 deaths each year.
•This
virus, belonging to the Flavivirus family, was named Hepatitis C.Its
identification made it possible to develop tests to screen bloodbank supplies
and greatly reduce the spread of the disease, which can cause cirrhosis and
liver cancer.
•The
final piece of the jigsaw puzzle came when Dr. Rice, then at Washington
University in St. Louis, was able to use genetic engineering to generate a
version of the Hepatitis C virus and demonstrate that it alone could cause
symptoms in a chimpanzee comparable to an infection in humans.
Focus on UPSC Mains:
Six
states want 6k sq. km to be Taken Off Western Ghats Eco Zone.
The
National Green Tribunal (NGT) has expressed concern after six states asked the
Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change to whittle down the size of
eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) under the ecologically fragile Western Ghats by
6,386.65 sq km.
Eco-Sensitive Zones (ESZ):
•
Areas around protected areas to prevent ecological damage caused due to
developmental activities around National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries.
•
MoEFCC can designate any area as ESZ.
•
Environment Protection Act, 1986 does not mention the word Eco-sensitive Zones.
•
Act says that central government can prohibit or restrict the location of
industries & carrying on certain operations on basis of considerations
like:
✓ Biological Diversity
of an Area,
✓ Maximum allowable
limits of concentration of pollutants for an area,
✓ Environmentally
compatible land use, and
✓ Proximity to Protected
Areas.
•
This clause have been used by govt. to ESZ or Ecologically Fragile Areas (EFA)
& No Development Zones.
•
MoEFCC has approved guidelines laying down criteria for declaring ESAs, include:
✓ Species Based
(Endemism, Rarity etc),
✓ Ecosystem Based
(Sacred Groves, Frontier Forests etc.,) and
✓ Geomorphologic Feature
based (Uninhabited Islands, Origins of Rivers etc).
Western Ghats:
•
The Western Ghats are also known as Sahyadri.
•
Western Ghats is a treasure trove of biodiversity and source of major rivers,
including Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery.
•
The hills of this area run parallel to the western coast of the Indian
peninsula and span Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
•
The area is an important biological landscape and hosts a variety of endemic
species of Flora and Fauna.
•
Alongside such biodiversity, the Ghats also support about 50 million people.
•
The range runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau and
separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain ‘Konkan’ along the Arabian
Sea.
•
The range starts near the Songadh town of Gujarat and ends at Marunthuvazh
Malai, near the Southern Tip of India.
•
The Western Ghats are older than the Himalayas.
•
It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the world’s ten hottest
biodiversity hotspots. At least 325 globally threatened species occur in the
Western Ghats.
•
They influence Indian monsoon weather patterns by intercepting the rain-laden
monsoon winds that sweep in from the south-west during late summer.
Kasturirangan Committee:
•
The Kasturirangan committee was headed by Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan, former
chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation.
•
This committee’s report watered down the focus on preserving the environment
and recommended that only 37% of the Western Ghats region be classified as an
ESA.
• The report essentially split the Ghats into two landscapes – cultural and ecological, with the percentage of ecological landscape standing at 37%.
•
The report removed the system of gradation recommended by the Gadgil
commission.
•
Instead, the former banked on an existing system of ‘red’, ‘orange’ and ‘green’
categorization of activities according to their polluting effects.
•
Kasturirangan recommended that ‘red’ category industries (like mining and
quarrying) be banned, ‘orange’ ones (like food processing, hotels and
restaurants, automobile servicing) be regulated and ‘green’ (like processing of
grains, apparel-making) be allowed to function as usual. With respect to
activities like sand-mining and Quarrying, which fall in the ‘red’ category,
the Kasturirangan report provided some relief: existing operations would be
allowed to continue until their lease expired but that the lease would not be
renewed.
•
However, conservationists had issues with the dilutions of the Gadgil report.
Because only 37% of the Western Ghats were to be regarded as an ESA, the threat
posed to the region by developmental activities like hydropower projects
remained because they could be setup in the remaining 63%, and still fragment
and degrade the landscape.
•
The Kasturirangan report was submitted to the environment ministry in 2013 and
was quickly met with resistance from politicians as well as members of local
communities.
Polygraph
and Narcoanalysis tests
The
Uttar Pradesh government has recently decided to conduct polygraph and
narcoanalysis tests of the accused and all Involved Police Personnel as part of
the investigation into the Alleged gangrape and murder of a 19-year old in
Hathras last month.
About Polygraph or Lie Detector
Test:
•
It is a procedure that measures and records several physiological indicators
such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while a
person is asked and answers a series of Questions.
•
A Numerical value is assigned to each response to conclude whether the person
is telling the Truth, is Deceiving, or is Uncertain.
•
It is similar to Polygraph was first done in the 19th century by the Italian
criminologist Cesare Lombroso, who used a machine to measure changes in the
blood pressure of criminal suspects during interrogation.
About Narcoanalysis Test:
•
It involves the injection of a drug, sodium pentothal, which induces a hypnotic
or sedated state in which the subject’s imagination is neutralized, and they
are expected to divulge information that is true.
•
Its drug is also referred to as truth serum, was used in larger doses as anesthesia
during surgery, and is said to have been used during World War II for
intelligence operations.
•The
investigating agencies have sought to employ these tests in the
investigation,and are sometimes seen as being a softer alternative to torture
or “third degree” to extract the truth from suspects. Brain Mapping Test or
P-300 test is the activity of the brain of a suspect is measured during
interrogation to find out whether he is concealing Any Information.
Limitations:
•
None of these methods has been proven scientifically to have a 100% success
rate, and remain contentious in the medical field as well.
•
The consequences of such tests on individuals from weaker sections of society
who are unaware of their fundamental rights and unable to afford legal advice
can be adverse.
•
It may involve future abuse, harassment, and surveillance, even leakage of the
video material to the Press for a trial by the media.
•
In the Selvi vs State of Karnataka & Anr case (2010), the Supreme Court
ruled that no lie detector tests should be administered without the consent of
the accused.
•
Also, those who volunteer must have access to a lawyer and have the physical,
emotional, and legal implications of the test explained to them by police and
the lawyer.
•
The results of the tests cannot be considered to be "confessions",
but any information or material subsequently discovered with the help of such a
voluntarily-taken test can be admitted as evidence
•
The SC cited Article 20 (3) or Right against self-incrimination which states
that no accused can be compelled to be a witness against himself.
•
In the D.K. Basu vs. State of West Bengal case, 1997, the SC ruled that
involuntary administration of the polygraph and narcos test will amount to
cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in the context of Article 21 or the
Right to Life and Liberty.
•
It may also be violative of the Right to Privacy which is a part of the Right
to Life.
•
The Indian Evidence Act, 1871 does not admit the results of these tests as
evidence.
•
The National Human Rights Commission in 1999 adopted a set of guidelines
relating to the administration of the Polygraph Test which included consent,
recording of the test, etc.
Way Ahead:
•
The government should encourage the use of scientific techniques in the
otherwise long investigative procedures and trials but should also come up with
strict rules for their use in a decent, and Consensual Manner.
•
These methods cannot be used as incriminating evidence or confessions due to
their limited Reliability and scientific proofs. They can be used as useful
tools to solve Complicated Cases as Investigative Tools.
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