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The people of Jammu and Kashmir, who have not had any Assembly representation since 2018, will cease to have any electoral representation at the grassroots level.
The five-year term of almost 30,000 local representatives is set to expire on that date, and there is no clarity on when the next election to municipal bodies and panchayats will be held, as the Union government has decided to first conduct a delimitation exercise.
Panchayat elections were last held in the erstwhile State of J&K in late 2018. A total of 27,281 panches (panchayat members) and sarpanches (village headmen) were elected, and took the oath of office on January 10, 2019. There are 12,776 vacant sarpanch and panch seats in J&K.
On December 28, 2023, the Panchayati Raj Department sent letters to all block development officers in J&K, directing them to submit detailed proposals to redraw the boundaries of municipal wards and panch constituencies in such a way that each will have an equal number of electors, as far as possible.
Hasina to return as PM as her party sweeps Bangladesh polls (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured a record fourth straight term as her Awami League party won two-thirds of the seats in the general elections marred by sporadic violence and a boycott by the main Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies.
Ms. Hasina’s party won 200 seats in the 300-seat parliament while counting is under way after the day-long voting.
We can call the Awami League the winner with the already available results but the final announcement will be made after the end of the counting of votes in the rest of the constituencies,” an election commission spokesman told presspersons.
Ms. Hasina won the Gopalganj-3 seat for the eighth time since 1986. She bagged 2,49,965 votes while her nearest rival M. Nizam Uddin Lashkar from the Bangladesh Supreme Party secured just 469.
Editorial
Structured negotiation as a boost for disability rights (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
Structured negotiation is a collaborative and solution-driven dispute resolution technique which is increasingly being used as an alternative to litigation.
It typically involves inviting the defaulting service provider to the negotiation table and impressing upon them the benefits of complying with social welfare legislations.
While its utility pervades sectors, structured negotiation has been most effective in settling disability rights cases in the United States, a development that one of us, Ms. Feingold, has played no small part in ensuring.
So far, structured negotiation has been successful in addressing the issues relating to inaccessible automated teller machines, point of sale devices, pedestrian signals and Service provider websites.
It has convinced Walmart, CVS and Caremark to create accessible prescription bottles for blind or low vision customers.
It has also been able to drive institutional reform by facilitating strategies for creating more accessible voting machines and websites.
Text & Context
Rise in child marriages in West Bengal (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
A recent study on child marriage in India published in the Lancet noted the overall decrease in child marriage across the country but pointed out that four States, mainly Bihar (16.7%), West Bengal (15.2%), Uttar Pradesh (12.5%), and Maharashtra (8.2%) accounted for more than half of the total headcount burden of child marriages in girls.
The paper titled ‘Prevalence of girl and boy child marriage across States and Union Territories in India, 1993–2021: a repeated cross-sectional study’ highlights that one in five girls are still married below legal age in India.
The publication states that while some States have achieved dramatic decreases in prevalence and headcount for child marriage in girls, “other states have struggled, such as West Bengal”.
The largest absolute increase in headcount was observed in West Bengal, representing an increase of 32.3% in headcount (difference n=500346 ).
West Bengal saw the largest absolute increase with over 5,00,000 more girls getting married as children,” the paper said.
Child marriage, particularly girl child marriage, has posed a challenge for policy-makers in West Bengal for decades. The National Family Health Survey-5 carried out in 2019-20, points out that the women aged 20-24 years who were married before the age of 18 years in West Bengal remains one of the highest in the country at 41.6%.
The percentage was the same during the National Family Health Survey- 4. The all-India figure of women aged 20-24 years getting married before they turn 18 is pegged at 23.3%.
News
In a first, IAF C-130 with Garud commandos makes night landing at Kargil (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
In a first, a C-130 Super Hercules tactical transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force made a night landing at the Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) in Kargil close to the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan along with a team of Garud special forces.
In a first, an IAF C-130J aircraft recently carried out a night landing at the Kargil airstrip. Employing terrain masking en route, the exercise also dovetailed a training mission of the Garuds,” the IAF said in a social media post.
Earlier, transport aircraft landed here during daytime, one official said. Explaining the significance, the official said the ALG was located at an altitude of around 10,000 feet and was a restricted airstrip with a unidirectional approach surrounded by rough terrain.
It does not have night-landing facilities. This demonstrates the capability to carry out specialised missions round the clock in this area.
The Kargil ALG is also significant because this is the only airstrip in this area critical for any exigency. In Jammu and Kashmir, the IAF has full-fledged airfields at Srinagar, Awantipora, Udhampur and Jammu. In Ladakh, the IAF has airfields at Leh and Thoise and ALGs at Nyoma, Fukche and Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO).
IITs open doors for students studying in Tier-2, Tier-3 town colleges (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, Education)
Studying in an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is usually considered aspirational for students from colleges in Tier-2 or -3 towns. Five IITs — Ropar, Guwahati, Mandi, Patna and Kanpur — are now set to change this notion.
For the academic year 2024-25, students studying in such colleges can also get an IIT tag by opting for a minor specialisation, a diploma or a Bachelor’s or a Master’s degree, which will be offered in partnership with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and these IITs, NSDC Chief Executive Officer Ved Mani Tiwari.
IITs have opened their doors to those who want to pursue a short-term skilling programme through Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas schemes or an Industrial Training Institute (ITI) student who will like to pursue a certificate or diploma programme from the IITs. All the skilling programmes will be facilitated via Skill India Digital platform.
The courses will work on a credit-based system, where a minor specialisation from the IIT will entail taking 10 to 18 credits.
While the core degree will be awarded by the instituting university to which the college is affiliated, there will be a mention of minor specialisation from IIT.
World
Regulators across the world order inspections on Boeing MAX-9 planes (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Airlines and safety bodies around the world grounded some versions of the Boeing 737 MAX-9 jets pending inspections, with dozens of flights cancelled over the weekend after a panel blew out of one of the planes over the western U.S. State of Oregon.
The Federal Aviation Administration in the U.S. “is requiring immediate inspections of certain Boeing 737 MAX-9 planes before they can return to flight. It added that around 171 aircraft worldwide would be affected, with each inspection taking four to eight hours.
Alaska and United Airlines fly the largest number of MAX-9 planes, while Turkish Airlines has a smaller fleet. As of Sunday, all three airlines had grounded their jets for inspection. Boeing has so far delivered about 218 of the 737 MAX planes worldwide.
Aeromexico said it was grounding all of its 737 MAX-9 planes while inspections were carried out, and Turkish Airlines announced that it would also suspend flights of five MAX-9 planes for checks.
Science
IIT-Delhi team makes first hi-res landslide risk map for India (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
In late 2023, torrential rain during the northeast monsoon triggered heavy floods and landslides in multiple States in North India, killing hundreds of people.
Given the number of fatalities due to landslides in India, a national landslide susceptibility map can help identify the most dangerous areas and help allocate resources for mitigation strategies better.
Unfortunately, India didn’t have a landslide susceptibility map at the scale of the whole country then – so Manabendra Saharia, an assistant professor in the civil engineering department and head of the HydroSense Lab at IIT Delhi, wanted to make one.
Landslides are a unique and deadly problem in India. Unlike floods, they’re less widespread and harder to track and study with satellites.
Landslides happen in very localised areas and affect only about 1-2% of the country. As a result, there is much less data of sufficient quality for typical machine-learning models to work with.