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The Manipur government’s status report on 6,523 FIRs points to an “absolute breakdown of the constitutional machinery” in the State since ethnic violence broke out at the beginning of May, the Supreme Court said.
Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, heading a three-judge Bench, asked the Manipur government, represented by Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta.
The Supreme Court directed the Manipur Director General of Police to be personally present in the Court on August 7 at 2 p.m, adding that he should be in a position to answer the questions of the court.
The court said that, on prima facie analysis, the police investigation was “tardy”. There was a “considerable lapse of time” between the incidents and the registration of FIRs and recording of witness statements. Arrests were “few and far between”.
Patna High Court finds caste-based survey of Bihar govt. ‘perfectly valid’, allows resumption (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar got a boost on Tuesday with the Patna High Court dismissing all petitions filed against the decision of the Bihar government to conduct a caste-based survey.
Upholding the action of the State to be “perfectly valid”, a Division Bench of Chief Justice K.V. Chandran and Justice Partha Sarthy allowed the government to continue with the survey.
The Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janata Dal-led government had initiated the exercise in January after its demand for a nationwide caste census gathered little traction.
The Bihar survey, as well as the inaction on the caste census demand, are likely to become major political talking points in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls next year.
We find the action of the State to be perfectly valid, initiated with due competence, with the legitimate aim of providing ‘Development with Justice,’ as proclaimed in the address of both Houses.
It also said the actual survey, having passed the test of proportionality, did not violate the rights of privacy of the individual especially since it is “in the furtherance of a ‘compelling public interest’ which in effect is the ‘legitimate State interest’”.
The High Court had issued an interim stay on the ongoing survey and turned down a State government plea on May 9 to advance the hearing of the case from July 3. Later, the State government approached the Supreme Court to lift the stay, but the apex court refused.
From July 3 to July 7, a continuous hearing was held by the Chief Justice-led Bench and the verdict reserved for August 1. Earlier, Chief Justice Chandran had directed the State government to not share or use the data collected during this period.
Advocate Dinu Kumar, counsel for one of the petitioners, said that they would approach the Supreme Court against the High Court verdict.
States
GI tags given to crafts from Rajasthan, mangoes grown in Goa (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Seven products from across India including four from Rajasthan were given the Geographical Indication (GI) tag by the Geographical Indications Registry in Chennai.
The Jalesar Dhatu Shilp (metal craft), Goa Mankurad mango, Goan Bebinca, Udaipur Koftgari metal craft, Bikaner Kashidakari craft, Jodhpur Bandhej craft and Bikaner Usta Kala craft were the ones which got the tag.
The application for the Goa Mankurad mango was filed by All Goa Mango Growers Association, Panaji, Goa. The Portuguese named the mango as Malcorada meaning poor coloured and with time this word transformed to ‘Mankurad’ aamo. Aamo means mango in Konkani language.
For the Goan Bebinca, the application was filed by All Goa Bakers and Confectioners Association. Bebinca is a type of pudding and a traditional Indo-Portuguese dessert. It is also known as the Queen of Goan desserts.
At Jalesar in Etah district in Uttar Pradesh, which was the capital of Magadha King Jarasandha, over 1,200 small units are engaged in making Jalesar Dhatu Shilp. This place is known for making decorative metal craft as well as brassware.
Four different crafts from Rajasthan were given the GI tags. The Udaipur Koftgari metal craft was one among them.
According to details provided in the documents submitted to the GI office, the Udaipur Koftgari metal craftsmen practices the ancient art of Koftgari used in making ornamental weaponry.
The weapons are exquisitely ornamented by a complicated process of etching of design, heating and then cooling intertwined with the process of embedding gold and silver wire into the metal, pressing and flattening it to a smooth surface using moonstone and finally polishing.
The second product from Rajasthan was the Bikaner Kashidakari craft. Kashidakari work is done majorly on objects associated with marriage, especially gift items, and makes use of mirror work.
The Jodhpur bandhej craft is the Rajasthani art of tying and dyeing. It is the art of printing varied patterns on fabrics using the tie and dye method.
The Bikaner Usta Kala craft is also known as gold nakashi work or gold manauti work, due to the prominence of golden colour in an actual manner developed by gold in the previous period. Due to this, the craft has longevity.
Editorial
The dangers in the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The government is set to introduce the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill in Parliament. The final draft is shrouded in secrecy.
Last week, Opposition members walked out of a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee and submitted dissent notes, objecting to the adoption of a report on the DPDP Bill — they claimed that the Bill was neither shown to the members nor formally referred to the committee.
In November 2022, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) publicly circulated a draft of the Bill for consultation. It was fraught with problems.
While campaigns and concerned citizens shared their suggestions, MeitY focused primarily on consulting industry and big tech companies on a law that will have vast ramifications for the information regime in India, and will impact every citizen of the country.
It is imperative that the data protection law does not suffer from the infirmities that the previous draft had and safeguards peoples’ fundamental rights, i.e., both the right to information and the right to privacy.
The Data Protection Bill of 2022 includes a provision to amend the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which has empowered millions of Indian citizens since its enactment in 2005.
To effectively hold their governments accountable in a democracy, people need access to information, including various categories of personal data.
For example, the Supreme Court of India has held that citizens have a right to know the names of wilful defaulters and details of the Non Performing Assets (NPAs) of public sector banks. Democracies routinely ensure public disclosure of voters’ lists with names, addresses and other personal data to enable public scrutiny and prevent electoral fraud.
Experience of the use of the RTI Act in India has shown that if people, especially the poor and marginalised, are to have any hope of obtaining the benefits of government schemes and welfare programmes, they must have access to relevant, granular information.
For instance, the Public Distribution System (PDS) Control Order recognises the need for putting out the details of ration card holders and records of ration shops in the public domain to enable public scrutiny and social audits of the PDS.
Opinion
The IIM Bill is a bold move (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
In 2017, Parliament passed the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) Act. The Act, which hugely expanded the autonomy already enjoyed by the IIMs, contains an important clause.
It requires the Board of Governors (BoG) of the IIMs to commission an independent review of the institutes at least once every three years and place the report in the public domain.
Six years on, very few of the 20 IIMs have done so. Among the top four IIMs, only the review report of IIM Bangalore is available on the website.
This act of omission gives us an indication as to why the government thought fit to table the IIM (Amendment) Bill in Parliament last week.
No government can take kindly to non-compliance with an Act of Parliament. The 2023 Bill seeks to take back from the IIMs the powers that the government ceded in 2017.
The government seems to have judged that a dangerous governance vacuum has been created in the IIM system in the years since it relinquished control over these institutes.
The 2017 legislation was an extraordinary act of self-abnegation by the government. All key appointments — of the chairperson and board members, the director and the chairperson of the Coordination Forum of the IIMs — were left to the BoG. The government reduced the presence of the Central and State governments on the Board from four members to two.
The 2023 Bill seeks to undo many of the provisions of the earlier Act. It creates the post of Visitor, the President of India.
The Visitor will appoint the chairperson of the BoG, one nominee on the selection committee for the director, and the chairperson of the Coordination Forum for the IIMs. He or she will also approve all director appointments.
The Visitor can initiate any review of or inquiry into the affairs of an institute and remove the director on his or her own.
Media reports suggest that the government has been unhappy with the IIMs for their lack of responsiveness to queries and suggestions in recent years. But there is more to the about-turn.
Explainer
What can amended Forest (Conservation) Act change? (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The controversial Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill 2023, passed by the Lok Sabha with limited debate, awaits discussion in the Rajya Sabha.
The bill aims to restrict conservation scope, exempt border lands for strategic projects, and allow some non-forest activities. The Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in March.
Thereafter, it was referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) comprising 32 members from both Houses of Parliament and across party lines.
The Bill stipulates that only those lands that were notified as ‘forest’ under the Indian Forest Act 1927, any other relevant law or were recorded as ‘forests’ in government records will be acknowledged as ‘forests’ under this Act as well.
This revision stands in stark contrast to the wide applicability of the extant Act at present. A Supreme Court judgement in 1996 had reiterated such a broad application.
It said, that a ‘forest’ includes all land recorded as such in government records regardless of ownership as well as “deemed forests”, which are not officially classified as ‘forests’ but satisfy the dictionary meaning of the word: any large area with significant tree cover and undergrowth.
The court had also asked States to undertake an exercise to identify and notify their own deemed forests. But even after almost 30 years, many States are yet to complete this exercise and in some cases, we don’t know how scientific the process of identification was.
As such, the amendment opens up all land that hasn’t been officially classified as ‘forests’ to commercial activity. It also removes the checks and balances the Act currently includes, in the form of forest clearance permissions and the informed consent of the local community.
The Bill seeks to exempt linear infrastructure projects like roads and highways from seeking forest clearance permissions if they are located within 100 km of the national border.
News
Panel submits report on sub-categorisation of OBCs after 6 years (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
The Justice G. Rohini Commission for the sub-categorisation of Other Backward Classes (OBC) caste groups on Monday submitted its report to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, nearly six years after the Union government first assigned the task to it — a task that was initially meant to be finished in 12 weeks.
The commission’s report was submitted on the last day of its functioning on Monday, after it had received up to 14 extensions from the government in the past six years.
At first, the government said that the COVID-19 pandemic had slowed down its working. However, after the second wave, the government has been saying that the commission has been working at finalising its report.
The government had formed the commission in 2017, to be headed by former Delhi High Court Chief Justice, Justice G. Rohini. The commission also had as a member J.K. Bajaj from the Centre for Policy Studies, along with others.
The commission was asked to examine the extent to which reservation and other benefits for OBCs are concentrated among some dominant caste groups.
Based on this, the commission was then tasked with suggesting a breakdown of the over 2,600 caste groups on the Central OBC list so that these benefits could be equitably redistributed.
According to sources, the commission has suggested breaking the caste groups into broad categories, with the dominant castes [with most access to benefits] getting the smallest share of the 27% reservation, and the historically crowded-out caste groups getting the largest share of the reservation pie.
Now that the commission’s report is with the Social Justice Ministry, the government is expected to hold deliberations on the recommendations contained in it.
Lok Sabha passes Bill on birth registration (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Lok Sabha passed the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, 2023 that paves the way for digital birth certificates which will be a single document to be used for admission to educational institutions, applications for driving licences, government jobs, passports or Aadhaar, voter enrolment, and registration of marriage, and others.
Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said that all States had consented to the provisions of the legislation that was also put up for consultation in public domain.
NPR, first collected in 2010 and updated in 2015 through door-to-door enumeration, already has a database of 119 crore residents.
Opposing the Bill, AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi said in the Lok Sabha that the bill is “backdoor NRC.” He said the Bill violates right to privacy of citizens and the Government does not believe in transparency.
Government introduces Delhi services Bill in the Lok Sabha amid vociferous protests (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Amid vociferous protests by the Opposition members, the Union government introduced a contentious Bill in the Lok Sabha to replace the Ordinance over control of Delhi services.
In the post-lunch session, the government managed to pass the Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Bill, the Offshore Areas Mineral (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, and the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order Amendment Bill after a brief discussion.
The introduction of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023, which gives the Delhi Lieutenant-Governor the final say on the transfer and posting of officials of the Delhi government, evoked sharp responses.
While the Opposition termed it a “murder of democracy”, Home Minister Amit Shah hit back calling the charges “politically motivated”.
The Bill, which seeks to reverse the effect of a May 11 Supreme Court verdict that gave the Delhi government control over administrative services, was introduced by Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai on behalf of Mr. Shah.
Supporting the Aam Admi Party (AAP), Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the Bill was an “outrageous infringement” of the powers of the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government. Trinamool member Saugata Roy added that the Bill was brought only to overturn the Supreme Court order.
Through a May 19 Ordinance, the Centre had created an authority for the transfer and posting of Group-A officers in Delhi.
World
‘Indian grant to be used in education, healthcare in Sri Lanka’s estate areas’ (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The recently announced Indian grant of ₹75 crore, for development projects targeting Sri Lanka’s Malaiyaha [hill country] Tamils, will be used primarily for the education and health sectors in the island’s long-neglected tea estate areas, according to Jeevan Thondaman, Minister of Water Supply and Estate Infrastructure Development.
We want to use this grant for transformative change rather than aesthetic change in the lives of the Indian Origin Tamil community here.
It is important that we create conditions for long-term impact,” said the 28-year-old Cabinet Minister, who is also the General Secretary of the Ceylon Workers’ Congress, the party of his late great grandfather Savumiamoorthy Thondaman, the iconic plantation Tamil leader and trade unionist.
Minister Thondaman outlined the government’s plan for upgrading old creches in the estates into early childhood development centres, converting virtually defunct medical dispensaries into cluster hospitals to provide better healthcare for workers, and setting up a university.
The grant, amounting to roughly $9 million, was among the announcements made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s visit to New Delhi on July 21. It adds to India’s relatively recent engagement in Sri Lanka’s hill country.
The Indian Origin Tamils or Malaiyaha Tamils, as some in the community prefer to identify, has a population of over a million, out of which about 1.5 lakh continue to work and reside in the tea estates, two centuries after their south Indian ancestors were brought down by the British as labourers.
Highlighting the acute economic deprivation in the areas, Mr. Thondaman said: “If you look at malnutrition or stunted growth, it is the highest among the children in the estate areas.