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India and the US were prime movers behind the UN Democracy Fund in 2005, when they were negotiating the civilian nuclear co-operation deal. As Joint Secretary (Americas) at the time, S Jaishankar was a lead negotiator.
That India, a founding member of UNDEF, has no objections to the Fund giving grants to NGOs funded by George Soros, while he is put on the watchlist in India underlines a contradiction that’s not new.
The imperatives of the Modi government’s high table diplomacy and its domestic political ideology diverge noticeably, requiring Delhi to deploy a soft touch in the former while playing hardball at home for domestic audiences.
This was evident during the Nupur Sharma blasphemy row last year. In UNDEF, India shares more common ground with Soros than it would care to admit.
Multiple Wikileaks US cables from the early 2000s reveal that a crucial part of the India-US conversation at the time revolved around how the world’s largest democracy and the world’s oldest democracy could collaborate to spread democratic ideals across the world.
AAP gets national party tag; but NCP, TMC, CPI lose status (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
IN A boost for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year, the Election Commission (EC) recognised it as a national party.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Communist Party of India (CPI), however, lost their national party status.
The EC’s decision was based on a review of the parties’ poll performances — the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls and 21 state assembly polls since 2014. Besides other benefits, the status of a national party ensures that the party’s symbol is reserved for its candidates across the country, and it gets land for an office in the national capital.
The country now has six national parties — BJP, Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), CPI(M), National People’s Party (NPP) and AAP.
Acting under the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968, which stipulates the criteria for recognition as a national or state party, the EC’s order said AAP had fulfilled the requirement of being a recognised state party in four or more states.
According to Paragraph 6C of the order, amended with effect from January 1, 2014, a party will continue to be a national or state party if it fulfils the criteria laid down in Paragraphs 6A and 6B in the “next election”, after the one in which it “got recognition”.
Centre asks IWPC to vacate bungalow, pay Rs 18.88 lakh for ‘unauthorised occupation’ (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry on Monday asked the Indian Women’s Press Corps (IWPC) to vacate the government bungalow that had been allotted to it earlier and pay Rs 18.88 lakh as damages for “unauthorised occupation” past the deadline of July 31, 2022.
The IWPC, which is a forum for women journalists, began in 1994 and has been functioning out of 5, Windsor Place.
Last May, the Directorate of Estates under the Ministry had issued notices to the IWPC and the Foreign Correspondents Club to vacate the premises allotted to them by July 31 as their allotment had not been extended by the government.
In a letter to the IWPC president, the Directorate of Estates on Monday said IWPC had been requested to find alternate premises and vacate the bungalow by July 31, 2022. “However, the house has not been vacated by you till date,” it read.
A total of Rs 18,88,333 is payable as damages for unauthorised occupation of the house w.e.f. 01.08.2022 to 10.04.2023. It is requested to pay the damages and vacate the house at the earliest failing which eviction proceedings shall be initiated against you under the Public Premises (eviction of unauthorised occupants), Act, 1971.
Govt & Politics
Gadkari inspects work on Zojila tunnel (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Infrastructure)
Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari on Monday inspected Zojila tunnel, which will establish all-weather connectivity between the Union Territories of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir.
Gadkari visited the project site along with J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and members of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on Road Transport and Highways.
As of now, 38 per cent of the work on the Tunnel, said to be Asia’s longest, has been completed. Speaking to reporters at Z Morh, Gadkari said, “From a strategic point of view, this is important.
This area will be developed so people do not have to migrate. This is going to increase employment potential in this region as well.
As part of the project, 19 tunnels are being constructed at a cost of Rs 25,000 crore — the construction of a 3.14-km-long tunnel and approach road, at a cost of Rs 6,800 crore, is in progress at Zojila.
A 7.57 metres high horseshoe-shaped single-tube, two-lane tunnel, which will pass under the Zojila Pass between Ganderbal district in Kashmir and Drass town in Kargil district of Ladakh is also under construction.
Editorial
Ministry of Truth (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
On April 6, a new power of censorship was born with a gazette notification. The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MEITY) created the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2023 [IT Rules, 2023].
It authorises a “fact check unit of the central government” to identify, “fake or false or misleading” information in respect of, “any business of the central government”.
This Orwellian department will scrutinise any online comments, news reports or opinions about government officials and ministries and then notify online intermediaries for its censorship.
Such intermediaries will not only include online social media companies but also service providers across a plump layer of the tech stack including ISPs and file hosting companies. To ensure accuracy, only facts will be stated, and the decision on citizen interest will be left to the reader.
It is a fact that new it rules used its subordinate rule-making power under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, to create the IT Rules, 2023.
This power is meant to fill in details within the legislative intent and directions of the Supreme Court. The Shreya Singhal judgment of the Supreme Court established that Section 79 and the IT Rules require intermediaries to have actual knowledge from a court order or be notified by the appropriate government in relation to the unlawful acts — these are reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of the Constitution.
However, Article 19(2) does not contain the phrases “fake or false or misleading”. The IT Rules may be read under broader classifications such as public order, security of the state, and morality.
Nevertheless, any inaccurate or inaccurate statement will not automatically become “fake or false or misleading,” and not all classes of “fake or false or misleading” fit within reasonable restrictions, creating an unconstitutional power for government censorship.
An improper forum (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The historic introduction of a unified, one-nation, one Goods and Services Tax at a midnight session of Parliament was through a complex web of central and state laws.
The Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 also created a GST Tribunal. It was unfortunate that the composition and structure of this tribunal were contrary to settled principles laid down by several Supreme Court decisions.
Consequently, this tribunal was held to be unconstitutional by the Madras High Court in Revenue Bar Association v Union of India (2019).
No appeal was filed by the Union of India for a considerable time, presumably because the statutory provisions were patently unconstitutional. The result was that there has been no GST Tribunal for the last five years.
Tribunals are part of the justice delivery system and are created as specialised fora to reduce the workload of courts. Sadly, the new provisions creating a GST Tribunal were inserted on the last day and the amended Finance Bill, 2023 was passed without any discussion or debate as the proceedings were disrupted.
The new tribunal is equally unconstitutional and several provisions are in the teeth of binding precedents laid down by the Supreme Court in no less than seven cases: Sampath Kumar (1987), L Chandrakumar (1997) and Madras Bar Association (2010, 2014, 2015, 2020, 2021). It is regrettable that laws continue to be drafted and enacted in deliberate contravention of Supreme Court judgments.
Explained
El Niño and Monsoon (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 1, Geography)
India has had four consecutive years of good monsoons and overall rainfall from 2019 to 2022. In these four years, the country as a whole received an average area-weighted rainfall of 1,268 millimetres (mm) annually and 933.1 mm over the four-month southwest monsoon season (June-September).
By contrast, the preceding five years from 2014 to 2018 – roughly coinciding with the first term of the Narendra Modi government – registered an average annual rainfall of just 1,072.1 mm and 812.4 mm during the southwest monsoon.
The surplus precipitation – more than the “normal” or historical long period annual average of 1,160.1 mm and 868.6 mm for the monsoon season – during the last four years has helped deliver higher agricultural growth, relative to the previous period that recorded poor rain in three (2014, 2015 and 2018) out of the five years (see the table below).
According to the national accounts data, the farm sector has grown by an average of 4.3% per year during 2019-20 to 2022-23 (the Modi government’s second term), as against 3.2% during 2014-15 to 2018-19.
Bill banning online gambling gets Tamil Nadu Guv’s nod despite Centre’s new gaming rules (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Hours after Tamil Nadu’s legislative assembly passed a resolution against its Governor RN Ravi for indefinitely withholding assent to several bills, he gave his assent to the state government’s Bill banning online gambling.
Stakeholders from the online gaming sector – who were earlier miffed with the Bill – have said that they will mount a legal challenge against it after it is notified.
The state’s assembly had passed the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Online Gambling and Regulation of Online Games Ordinance, 2022 last October.
However, in early March, the Governor had returned the ordinance for consideration once again. But a few weeks later, the assembly readopted the Bill and sent it to Raj Bhavan once again.
On Monday, Tamil Nadu’s legislative assembly passed a resolution against the Governor for allegedly blocking Bills passed by the assembly.
Chief Minister MK Stalin expressed deep regret over Ravi’s actions and urged the Union Government and the President to prescribe a specific time limit for governors to provide assent to Bills passed by the state legislatures.
The Bill prohibits online gambling and online games of chance played for money or other stakes. While it specifically names Rummy and Poker as games of chance, the can go much wider in scope – it defines online games of chance as those where both an element of chance and skill are involved, and the element of chance dominates over the element of skill; games are presented as games of chance; the element of chance can only be eliminated by superlative skill; or games involve cards, dice, or wheel which work on random event generators.