Law panel working on mechanism for simultaneous polls (GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Why in news?
- The Law Commission is working on a formula to synchronise all Assembly polls by extending or reducing the tenure so that all State elections can be held along with Lok Sabha polls from 2029 onwards.
- As the government has already set up a high-level panel to explore simultaneous polls for Lok Sabha, State Assemblies and local bodies, the Law Commission may also be asked to include the third tier of elections along with its current mandate for national and State-level polls.
Common electoral roll:
- The panel is devising a mechanism to ensure a common electoral roll for Lok Sabha, Assemblies and local bodies to reduce cost and use of manpower for undertaking an almost identical exercise which is carried out now by the Election Commission and various State Election Commissions.
- The Commission under Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi may suggest reducing or enhancing the tenure of Legislative Assemblies.
- A mechanism is being devised to ensure that once Lok Sabha and Assembly polls are synchronised, voters go to the polling booth only once to cast their ballot for both elections.
- As of now, the mandate of the Commission is to suggest ways to hold Assembly and Lok Sabha polls together.
Committee under former President:
- The high-level committee under former President Ram Nath Kovind has been tasked with recommending how Lok Sabha, Assembly and local body polls (panchayat, municipalities, zila parishad) can be held together.
- A suggestion the law panel can make is to hold the three-tier polls in two phases in one year. In the first phase, Lok Sabha and Assembly polls can be held; in the second phase, local body polls can be organised.
Ruixiang Zhang to receive SASTRA Ramanujan Prize
(Miscellaneous)
Why in news?
- The 2023 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize will be awarded to Ruixiang Zhang of the University of California, Berkeley.
- This annual $10,000 prize is for outstanding contributions by individuals in areas of mathematics influenced by Indian mathematics great Ramanujan (in a broad sense).
About Ruixiang Zhang:
- He received his BS degree in mathematics from Peking University in 2012 and his PhD in mathematics at Princeton University in 2017.
- After working at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the University of Wisconsin, since 2021, he has been an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
- His fundamental work spans analytic number theory, combinatorics, Euclidean harmonic analysis, and geometry.
- Building on his doctoral thesis, he and Shaoming Guo proved a generalisation of the main conjecture in Vinogradov’s mean value theorem, which is concerned with the sums of numbers raised to a certain power.
Way Forward:
- The prize will be awarded at an International Conference in Number Theory on December 20-22 at SASTRA University in Kumbakonam, Ramanujan’s hometown.
China’s cross-sea bullet trains will link five cities in Fujian
(GS Paper 3, Infrastructure)
Why in news?
- China recently opened its first cross-sea bullet train, linking major cities in the southeastern Fujian province.
Details:
- The bullet trains or high-speed rail (HSR) as they are called in China will travel at the same 350 km/hr speed as other trains on the network.
- The new track, which links five cities in Fujian, including capital Fuzhou and business-hub Xiamen, includes portions along a cross-sea bridge, running right across the strait from Taiwan.
- The over-sea segment covers around 20 km of the total 277 km route.
China’s HSR network:
- China’s HSR network is already the world’s largest. A further 2,500 km will be added to the network in 2023, taking the total length to 44,500 km, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported, with plans to reach 50,000 km of HSR by 2025. The first route, connecting Beijing and Tianjin, went online in 2008.
- The latest phase of expansion is covering China’s remote and sprawing western regions, with new tracks being opened in Tibet, Xinjiang and Sichuan.
Damselfly species found in Western Ghats
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Why in news?
- A new damselfly species has been discovered in Kerala’s southern Western Ghats.
- Researchers from MIT-World Peace University in Pune named the insect ‘Armageddon reedtail’ or protosticta armageddonia, to draw attention to the global decline of insect populations due to rampant habitat loss and climate change.
‘Ecological armageddon’
- The term ‘ecological armageddon’ is used to describe the devastating decline of insect populations around the world.
- This phenomenon, also called insect apocalypse, affects entire ecosystems because insects pollinate, cycle nutrients and provide food for other animals.
Armageddon reedtail:
- The species was discovered northeast of Thiruvananthapuram.
- It has a captivating dark brown to black body with vibrant greenish-blue eyes, and half of its eight abdominal segments are marked with delicate pale blue markings.
- Its only habitat is primary montane streams, where it thrives beneath dense canopy cover.
- The new species is distinct from other damselflies.
Way Forward:
- The forests of the Western Ghats are changing rapidly due to rampant development and habitat loss.
- Experts are using discovery of Armageddon Reedtail as a powerful call to action for world leaders, urging them to address the urgent issues of global warming and its catastrophic impact on biodiversity.
