SC bans all commercial activities around Taj Mahal (GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Why in news?
- The Supreme Court of India in its latest order has imposed a complete ban on all commercial activities within a 500-metre radius from the peripheral the Taj Mahal in Agra.
- The Supreme Court has directed the Agra Development Authority to ensure compliance.
Petition before the SC:
- The order of the apex court came while hearing an application seeking direction to the authorities to prohibit commercial activities within the 500-metre radius of the historic mausoleum.
- The application was filed by a group of shop owners who had been allotted an area outside the 500-metre radius to run their businesses.
- They told the court that illegal business activities are being carried out near the Taj Mahal which is in gross violation of the previous orders of the SC.
Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ):
- The Supreme Court is seized of the matter filed in 1984 related to the protection and preservation of the Taj Mahal, built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal in 1631, and its surroundings.
- Environmentalist MC Mehta had filed the plea pertaining to the protection of the Taj Mahal, the fragile ecosystem surrounding it, and construction in the Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ), an “eco-sensitive area” having four world heritage sites including the Taj Mahal.
- The mausoleum is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- The TTZ, established on December 30, 1996, to protect the Taj Mahal from pollution through an order of the Supreme Court, is a 10,400 sq km area spread across the districts of Agra, Firozabad, Mathura, Hathras and Etah in Uttar Pradesh and Bharatpur district of Rajasthan.
Recent order:
- The 500m-radius of the monument is a no-construction zone, besides strict regulations on vehicular movement.
- There is also a ban on the burning of wood near the monument and municipal solid waste and agriculture waste in the entire area.
NASA successfully crashes Dart spacecraft into asteroid Dimorphos
(GS Paper 3, Science and Tech)
Why in news?
- NASA’s DART spacecraft successfully crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos.
- The DART mission intentionally crashed on an asteroid to test a unique defence technology.
- The crash is aimed at giving Earth a defence tool against future asteroids headed our way.
What is DART?
- The DART stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test.
- DART, launched by a SpaceX rocket in November 2021, made most of its voyage under the guidance of NASA's flight directors, with control handed over to an autonomous on-board navigation system in the final hours of the journey.
- The DART spacecraft developed by the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, was the size of a vending machine.
Key Highlights:
- TheDARTspacecraft, slammed into an innocuous asteroid at 22,500 kph, causing a gigantic slam to occur at 9.6 million kilometres away.
- The $325 million mission was the first attempt to move any natural object in space.
- Dimorphos, the name of the 160-metre asteroid, means "twin" in Greek. It is actually a moonlet of Didymos, a rapidly spinning and five times larger asteroid.
- The spectacle was observed through telescopes from Earth and space pointed towards the same location in the sky. The primary goal of the collision was to change the asteroid's orbit.
Lethal near-Earth objects:
- As per NASA, much fewer than half of the projected 25,000 near-Earth objects in the lethal 140-metre range were found.
- As it stands, less than one per cent of millions of smaller asteroids have the potential to cause widespread destruction.
Restoring Thamirabarani River
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Why in news?
- The district administration of Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu along with Bengaluru-based non-profit Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) are using what they term as a ‘hyper local’ approach to restore one of south Asia’s oldest rivers, the Thamirabarani.
- Recently, the first phase of a Detailed Project Report (DPR) prepared by ATREE on World Rivers Day (September 25) was launched. The restoration project is calledTamiraSES.
Uniqueness of Thamiraparani River:
- It is the only perennial river in Tamil Nadu.
- It originates in the Pothigai Hills of the Western Ghats in Tirunelveli district.
- The river flows through Tirunelveli and then neighbouringThoothukudi and ends in the Gulf of Mannar at Punakayil. It thus originates and ends in the same state.
- The river supports wildlife such as the Nilgiri marten, slender loris, lion-tailed macaque, white spotted bush frog, galaxy frog, Sri Lankan Atlas moth and the great hornbill.
Historical value:
- Besides the ecosystem services it provides, the river also hashistorical value for the people of the state. It is mentioned extensively in Sangam Era literature.
- A study published in 2021 found that paddy and soil discovered in an urn during an archeological excavation near the river in Thoothukudi district’s Sivakalai were at least 3,200 years old.
Threats:
- While the Thamirabarani landscape, in general, appears water-rich, it faced severe drought in 2016 despite the diverse water storage systems in place. In 2021, in a contrasting situation, Thamirabarani was in spate, but did not lead to any major disaster in the region.
- Settlements have been on the rise which has led to the shrinkage of agricultural land and water bodies.
The project:
- The TamiraSES project aims to restore the Social Ecological Systems of Tamiraparani riverriverscapefrom head-waters to the estuary to enable conditions for native biodiversity to thrive and maintain and enhance multiple ecosystem services to local stakeholders.
- Five social ecological observatories will set up as part of first phase of the project. These will serve as pilots to scale up from the learnings from these sites.
What’s next?
- The first phase of the project would be restricted to the borders of Tirunelveli.
- The project was an experiment since most river restoration projects nationally or globally relied on technical or nature-based solutions. But this project was all about community engagement.It is a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach.
