Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

An outbreak of Shigella bacteria is believed to be the reason behind the recent incident of suspected food poisoning in Kasaragod district, where around 58 people fell ill and a young girl died after consuming food — specifically “shawarma” — from a eatery in Kerala.

• Shigella is one of the leading bacterial causes of diarrhea worldwide and is an intestinal infection caused by a family of bacteria.
• Some of the common symptoms of shigella infection are diarrhoea, abdominal pain, fever, vomiting, tiredness and blood in stool.

How it spreads?

• Shigella is generally transmitted through contaminated food or water, or through person-to-person contact.
• Shigellosis is primarily a disease of poor and crowded communities that do not have adequate sanitation or safe water.
• The bacteria, after entering the body through ingestion, attack the epithelial lining of the colon resulting in inflammation of the cells and subsequently the destruction of the cells in severe cases.
• Handwashing is said to reduce shigella transmission by 70%

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Prime Minister of India participated in the 2nd India-Nordic Summit on May 04, 2022

• The summit is being hosted by Denmark
• Prime Ministers of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Norway have also participated in the summit.

Background

• The 1st India-Nordic Summit took place in 2018 in Stockholm
• The 2018 India-Nordic Summit reiterated the six countries’ commitment to global security, economic growth, innovation and climate change.

Key Discussions

• It primarily focused on post-pandemic economic recovery, climate change, renewable energy and the evolving global security scenario.
• The issue of Indo-Pacific too was discussed at the meeting
• The Prime Minister also held separate bilateral meetings with his counterparts of Nordic countries
• With Finland the discussion focused on to expand cooperation in the fields of new and emerging technologies like AI, quantum computing, future mobile technologies, clean technologies and smart grids
• With Norway the discussion was to deepen engagement in areas like blue economy, renewable energy, and green hydrogen, solar and wind projects, green shipping, fisheries, water management, rainwater harvesting, space cooperation, long-term infrastructure investment, health and culture.
• Both Indian and Sweden PMs expressed satisfaction at the progress made by the Lead IT initiative.
• This was a India-Sweden joint global initiative to set up a Leadership Group on Industry Transition (LeadIT) in September 2019 at the UN Climate Action Summit to help guide the world’s heaviest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting industries towards the low-carbon economy. Its membership has now grown to 35 with 16 countries and 19 companies
• With Iceland leaders discussed ways to further strengthen economic cooperation, especially in the sectors of geothermal energy, blue economy, Arctic, renewable energy, fisheries, food processing, education including digital universities, and culture

On World Press Freedom Day, the World Press Freedom Index compiled by the Reporters Sans Frontières. India ranked 150 out of 180 countries in the world.

The Press Club of India (PCI) and the Indian Women Press Corps (IWPC) on Tuesday said attacks on press freedoms had seen an exponential rise and that India did not fare too well in this regard.

The incarceration of journalist under draconian laws for flimsy reasons, and on some occasions, faced threat to their lives as well from “self-styled” custodians of Law In the social media space.

The freedom of the press is Integral to the functioning of a vibrant democracy. The media has to come together to reclaim its role towards realisation of this objective

The State of Tamil Nadu has been witnessing a confrontation between the elected government and the State Governor on the question of giving assent to the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) Bill (linked to an all India pre-medical entrance test) passed by the State Assembly.

Giving assent to a Bill passed by the legislature is a normal constitutional act performed by the Governor. But of late, even such normal acts have become a source of confrontation between State governments and the Governors.

On the advice of Ministers

• The position of a Governor in the constitutional setup in India needs to be clearly understood in order to grasp the significance of the actions.
• The Governor is an appointee of the President, which means the Union government. Although Article 154(1) of the Constitution vests in the Governor the executive power of the State, he is required to exercise that power in accordance with the Constitution. In other words, the Governor can act only on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers. 

Governor is only a constitutional head and the executive power of

the State is exercised by the Council of Ministers. In Shamsher Singh

vs State of Punjab (1974), the Supreme Court had clearly affirmed

this position in the following words: “We declare the law of this branch of our Constitution to be that the President and Governor, custodians of all executives and other powers under various Articles, shall, by virtue of these provisions, exercise their formal constitutional powers only upon and in accordance with the advice of their Ministers save in a few well

known exceptional situations”.

Dr. Ambedkar explained the position of the Governor in the Constituent Assembly as follows: “The Governor under the Constitution has no functions which he can discharge by himself: no functions at all.”

The Sarkaria Commission restates this position in its report, “it is a well-recognized principle that so long as the council of ministers enjoys [the] confidence of the Assembly its advice in these matters, unless patently unconstitutional, must be deemed as binding on the governor”. In 2016, a five-judge constitution Bench of the Supreme Court (the Nabam Rebia case) reaffirmed the above position on the governors’ powers in our constitutional setup.

Article 200 of the Constitution provides for four alternative courses of action for a Governor when a Bill after being passed by the legislature is presented to him for his assent. 

• Assent of the Governor or the President is necessary for a Bill to become law. 
• The Governor can give his assent straightaway or withhold his assent.
• He may also reserve it for the consideration of the President, in which case the assent is given or withheld by the President. 
• The fourth option is to return the Bill to the legislature with the request that it may reconsider the Bill or any particular provision of the Bill. 
• The Governor can also suggest any new amendment to the Bill.

In this case the Governor of Tamil Nadu returned the NEET Bill to the Assembly for reconsideration of the Bill. Accordingly, the Assembly held a special session in the first week of February and passed it again and presented it to the Governor for his assent. He has not assented to the Bill so far.

But sitting on the Bill after the Assembly has passed it again and sent it to him is impermissible under the Constitution. Article 200 (proviso) clearly says that when the Assembly reconsiders the Bill on the recommendations of the Governor and presents it to him, he shall not withhold assent. The Constitution makers could never have intended that the Governor could sit on a Bill passed by the legislature for as long as he wants and take advantage of the absence of any specific time frame.

The words used in Article 200 “… it shall be presented to the governor and the governor shall declare….” indicates that the Constitution requires the Governor to act without delay upon the presentation of the Bill.

In Article 200, it is clear that the Constitution does not permit the Governor to sit on a Bill after the Assembly re-submits it to him after reconsideration.

An undemocratic option

Giving assent to a Bill passed by the legislature is a part of the legislative process and not of the executive power. But the Constitution has by providing for definite options made it obligatory for the Governor to exercise any of those options without delay. Withholding of assent, though an option, is not normally exercised by Governors because it will be an extremely unpopular step.

In the United Kingdom it is unconstitutional for the monarch to refuse

to assent to a Bill passed by Parliament. Similarly, in Australia, refusal of assent to a Bill by the crown is considered repugnant to the federal system.

In our constitutional system, the Governor or the President is not personally responsible for their acts. It is the elected government that is responsible. Under Article 361, the President or a Governor is not answerable to any court for anything done in the exercise and performance of their powers and duties. But when a Governor does not take any decision on a Bill which is put up for his assent, he is not acting in exercise and performance of the duties cast upon him.

Maharashtra Cabinet approved the ‘Maharashtra Gene Bank’, a first-of-its-kind project in India. To conserve genetic resources in Maharashtra including marine diversity, seeds of local crops, and animal diversity. In the next five years, an amount of Rs 172.39 crores will be spent on these seven focus areas.

What are the seven focus areas?

The ‘Maharashtra Gene Bank Project’ will work on seven themes:

• Marine biodiversity
• Local crop/seed varieties
• Indigenous cattle breeds
• Freshwater biodiversity
• Grassland, scrubland, and animal grazing land biodiversity
• Conservation and management plans for areas under forest right
• Rejuvenation of forest areas.

The project will be implemented by the Maharashtra State Biodiversity Board (MSBB) and will be overseen by committees under the chief secretary and the principal secretary (forests). The MSBB will coordinate with institutions like the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) Goa to document and conserve rare and endangered marine species.

What are the major activities under the project?

• Indigenous knowledge resources will be tapped.
• The species and the knowledge of local communities will be well documented.
• Genetic and molecular samples will be preserved and their breeders will be supported.
• To preserve crop biodiversity, the government will encourage genome carriers who conserve seeds of local crop varieties and create seed banks.

President Joe Biden called upon American voters on Tuesday to defend the “fundamental” right to abortion after a leaked draft suggested that the Supreme Court is poised to strike down the long-standing decision in the 1973 Roe v Wade case protecting a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

The United States Supreme Court has decided by an internal majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, the court’s landmark 1973 judgment  that made abortion a constitutional right.

In Roe v. Wade(1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992).  In both judgments said that women have the right to terminate pregnancies up to the point of foetal viability.

Over the years, relying on these two rulings, American lower courts and even the Supreme Court have blocked several state laws that restricted abortions before foetal viability.

Foetal viability

Foetal viability, that is, the time after which a foetus can survive outside the womb,isused as a criteria for allowing abortions— a woman’s right

To abort is restricted  after foetal  viability  is determined.

Foetal viability was around 28 weeks (7 months) at the time of the Roe judgment; experts now agree that advances in medicine have brought the threshold down to 23 or 24 weeks (6 months or a little less), and newer studies show this could be further pegged at   22 weeks. An average pregnancy lasts about        40 weeks.

Foetal viability is often seen as the point at which the rights of the woman can be separated from the rights of the unborn foetus. The length of a pregnancy is commonly calculated from the start of a person’s most re- cent menstrual period. Since many people identify pregnancy only after the sixth week, pre-viability timelines leave women with very little time and opportunity to make a decision to abort.

Abortion laws across the world rely on this metric but those opposing abortions argue that this is an arbitrary time frame that legislation and the court in Roe adopted.

In India, elsewhere

India’s Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 allows abortion until 20 weeks of pregnancy. Through an amendment in 2021, the ceiling for abortions was raised to 24 weeks, but only for special categories of pregnant women such as rape or incest survivors, that too, with the approval of two registered doctors. In case of foetal disability, there is no limit to the timeline for abortion, but that is allowed by a medical board of specialist doctors set up by the governments of states and union territories. In approximately 16 countries around the world, abortion is entirely prohibited and even criminalized. But several Catholic majority nations such as Ireland and Mexico have decriminalize abortion in the last decade.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 2

Supreme Court said, “ Legislators, not judges, have to determine whether a cooling-off period is required for government officials before they join politics and contest elections after retirement.”

A Bench stated  in a writ petition seeking a direction to the legislature to frame a law imposing a cooling-off period for retired bureaucrats with political ambitions.

The petitioner, Vivek Krishna, said the need to give time to cool off after retirement was necessary owing to a high probability that civil servants, while in service, may do favours for certain parties with an eye on a political future or a high position.

The Bench, in a recent four-page order, categorically said that civil servants would be liable for stringent action in case of any such breach in ethical standards under the All India Services (Conduct) Rules of 1968.

Work ethic 

The Bench  said, “There can be no doubt that civil servants should maintain the highest ethical standards of integrity and honesty, political neutrality, fairness and impartiality in the discharge of duties, 

A civil servants, “courtesy, accountability and transparency, integrity, impartiality, neutrality, transparency and honesty are non-negotiable”.

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

The indigenous Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System (ATAGS) developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) jointly with the private industry successfully completing the validation trials towards meeting the specifications of the Army. 

The week-long Preliminary Service Quality Requirements (PSQR) validation retrials were conducted at the Pokhran field firing ranges.

The ATAGS is a 155mm, 52- calibre heavy artillery gun jointly developed by Armament Research and Development Establishment (ARDE), the Pune-based laboratory of DRDO, in partnership with Bharat Forge and Tata Group. 

In August 2018, the Defence Acquisition Council had accorded approval for the purchase of 150 of these guns at an approximate cost of ₹3,365 crore which would be split between the two companies. The Army has a requirement of 1,580 artillery guns in this category. The ATAGS has demonstrated a range of over 45 km, and an official termed it as the “most consistent and accurate gun in the world”.

At the 39th Conference of Chief Ministers and Chief Justice the matter discussed about early release of 3.5 lakh undertrial prisoners languishing in jails for years,

Need for:

As much as 76% of inmates are undertrials, which is the highest in 25 years. These are poor people, dalits, poverty stricken people who are unable to furnish bail bonds and continue to rot in jails for years without their cases being taken up.

Reasons for the Delay in Justice:

• Overburdened judiciary is a major reason for the delay in justice.

• Police and prison officials often fail to fulfill their roles, leading to long delays in trials.

• Most of the undertrials come from disadvantaged social groups. Lack of resources constricts their ability to seek out lawyers and hostile police and prison authorities are rarely of help — despite a 1980 Supreme Court ruling that Article 21 of the Constitution entitles prisoners to a fair and speedy trial as part of their fundamental right to life and liberty.

• The understaffed judiciary compounds the problem. Section 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedures mandates that judges can extend a detainee’s custody for a period of 15 days at a time. For that to happen, the detainees have to be produced regularly before the courts. This rarely happens; proceedings don’t take place in time and the undertrials are shuttled from court to court.

What needs to be done?

Keeping in view the human rights of the prisoners, it is essential that they are given reasonable space and facilities in jails.

• An undertrial review committee, comprising the District Judge, District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police, should be set up in each district. The onus of constituting such a panel for every district should be put on the National Legal Services Authority, acting in coordination with the State Legal Services Authority.
• The legal services authorities in various States must play a principal role in inculcating awareness among prisoners about their rights, especially provisions that entitle them to freedom.
• The real solution, however, does not lie merely in the early release of prisoners on bail, but in expediting the trial process.

Observations made by the Supreme Court in May 2021:

In its judgement, the Supreme Court (SC) of India had ordered the interim release of eligible prisoners in view of the uncontrolled second surge in the raging Covid-19 pandemic.

Key observations:

• Emphasised the need to adhere to the norms it had laid down in Arnesh Kumar vs State of Bihar (2014) case. Under this case, the police were asked not to effect unnecessary arrests, especially in cases that involve jail terms less than seven years.
• Authorities in all districts in the country to give effect to Section 436A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Cr.P.C). Under the Section 436A of the Cr.P.C, the undertrials who have completed half of the maximum prison term prescribed for the offence may be released on personal bond.
• Suggested the legislature to consider the idea of placing convicts under house arrest to avoid overcrowding of prisons. The occupancy rate in prisons climbed to 118.5% in 2019. Moreover, a very large sum of the budget is used for the maintenance of prisons.

Under-trial Population:

India’s under-trial population remains among the highest in the world and more than half of all undertrials were detained for less than six months in 2016.

• The 2016 NCRB report highlights that at the end of 2016, there were 4,33,033 people in prison, of whom 68% were undertrials.
• This suggests that the high proportion of undertrials in the overall prison population may be the result of unnecessary arrests and ineffective legal aid during remand hearings.

A recent audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has pointed out illegal construction and violations of environmental norms in two Ramsar sites in West Bengal, the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW) and the Sunderbans.

What’s the issue?

There were illegal constructions in the EKW and Coastal Regulation Zone area in Sunderbans. However, such violations even in these ecologically fragile areas were rarely found to have been penalised; on a couple of rare occasions, (when) they were done, it was in compliance with the Kolkata High Court’s orders.

What do the rules say?

CRZ notification disallows construction of residential buildings in the No Development Zone.

Issues and challenges:

• Small patches of mangroves are being lost gradually and quietly due to their indiscriminate destruction for either coastal development or short-term gains.
• These patches are observed to be enriched habitats of several rare and threatened flora and fauna.
• The continued loss of shoreline mangrove ecosystems has created fragmented and fragile mangrove habitats for rare taxa and framed barriers to their movement and dispersal.
• This irreversible loss of biodiversity is often neglected, which could never be compensated with any ‘cut the established and plant the new’ theory.

About Indian Sundarbans:

• Covers 4,200 sq. km and includes the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve of 2,585 sq. km — home to about 96 royal Bengal tigers (as per the last census in 2020).
• It is a world heritage site and a Ramsar site (a wetland site designated to be of international importance).
• It is also home to a large number of “rare and globally threatened species, such as the critically endangered northern river terrapin (Batagur baska), the endangered Irrawaddy dolphin (Orcaella brevirostris), and the vulnerable fishing cat (Prionailurus viverrinus).”
• Two of the world’s four horseshoe crab species, and eight of India’s 12 species of kingfisher are also found here. Recent studies claim that the Indian Sundarban is home to 2,626 faunal species and 90% of the country’s mangrove varieties.

About EKW:

The EKW, a unique peri-urban ecosystem that lies on the eastern fringes of Kolkata, covers an area of about 12,500 hectares. It is spread over 37 mouzas of the State’s South and North 24 Parganas districts.