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The Supreme Court Wednesday modified its 2022 order mandating a minimum 1-km eco-sensitive zone around national parks or wildlife sanctuaries, saying it would have prevented the government from building roads and other important infrastructure in those areas.
With the June 3, 2022 order sparking concerns about human habitations falling within the proposed ESZs, the Centre had approached the court seeking modification of some of the directions.
A bench of Justices B R Gavai, Vikram Nath and Sanjay Karol said the 2022 order will not be applicable to ESZs in respect to which draft and final notifications have been issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, and where proposals for such notifications have been received by the ministry.
It will also not be applicable where the national parks and sanctuaries are located on inter-state borders or share common boundaries.
Modifying its order, the court ruled: “If the direction…is continued, then no permanent structure would be permitted to come up for whatsoever purpose in the aforesaid ESZs.
As already pointed out from the aforesaid examples, hundreds of villages are situated within the ESZs in the country. If no permanent construction is to be permitted for any purpose, a villager who is desirous to reconstruct his house would not be permitted.
Similarly, if there is an extension in their family and some additional construction is required for accommodating the enlarged family, the same would also not be permitted.
Similarly, if the Government decides to construct schools, dispensaries, anganwadis, village stores, water tanks and other basic structures for improvement of the life of the villagers, the same would also not be permitted.
The effect of the order will be to prevent the State or the Central Government from constructing roads and provide other facilities to the villagers”.
Writing for the bench, Justice Gavai also said if the order is not modified, it will be impossible for the Forest Departments to conduct eco-development activities around national parks and sanctuaries.
MoEFCC provides financial assistance to the States under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme-Integrated Development of Wildlife Habitats, which includes assistance for eco-development activities.
Explained
Why Chhattisgarh, why now (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Internal Security)
Ten personnel of the Chhattisgarh Police’s District Reserve Guard (DRG) and the civilian driver of their vehicle were reported killed in an IED attack by Maoists in the state’s Dantewada district.
The attack took place more than two years after the April 2021 ambush by Maoists in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, in which 22 security forces personnel were killed.
The timing of the attack fits with the Maoist strategy of heightened military activity and more attacks on security forces every summer. The CPI(Maoist) carries out Tactical Counter Offensive Campaigns (TCOCs) between February and June every year, in which the focus of its military wing is to inflict casualties on security forces.
This period is chosen because with the onset of the monsoon in July, it becomes difficult to conduct offensive operations in the jungles.
There are overflowing nullahs that can’t be crossed. There is tall grass and shrubs everywhere, which reduce visibility. With the onset of the monsoon, both the Maoists and the security forces return to their camps,” a security establishment officer said.
The influence of Maoists and associated violence has been falling consistently in the country because of multiple factors, including a stronger push by security forces in Maoist strongholds, roads and civic amenities reaching the interiors to a greater extent than earlier, and a general disenchantment with the Maoist ideology among the youth, which has deprived the insurgent movement of new leadership.
According to the government, Maoist violence in the country has gone down by 77% since 2010. The number of resultant deaths (security forces + civilians) has come down by 90 % from the all-time high of 1,005 in 2010 to 98 in 2022, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has said.
The government has cut the number of districts declared to be Naxal-affected from over 200 in the early 2000s to just 90 now, and claims that the geographical spread of violence is actually restricted to just 45 districts.
The presence of Naxals is said to be minimal to zero in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha, Jharkhand, and Bihar, which were at one time their strongholds.
50 years of basic structure doctrine Only safeguard against majoritarian govt: Ramachandran (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
On the 50th year of the “basic structure” doctrine that restricts the power of Parliament to alter the fundamental features of the Constitution, senior advocate Raju Ramachandran said that the doctrine is the only safeguard against a majoritarian government.
Ramachandran, former Additional Solicitor General of India, was once a critic of the doctrine. Now a “qualified critic”, Ramachandran said changes to secularism, federalism and equality will be the next aspects tested against the basic structure doctrine.
Today, the basic structure doctrine, which I have earlier criticised on grounds of pure theory, is the only safeguard against amendments that could do away with the secular nature of the Constitution.
Also, with politics becoming increasingly presidential in style, the doctrine could stand in the way of a wholesale switchover to a presidential form of government.
You can call me a qualified chastened critic of the doctrine now. Let me explain that. In 2000, the era of strong majorities seemed to have decisively ended.
So in that context, I felt that the days of brute majoritarianism were over. Major constitutional decisions and major constitutional questions would henceforth be settled only through consensus and so, 50 years after the Constitution, the country should be given an opportunity to put the lessons of economics and politics into practice by amending the Constitution in whatever way the political class thought of it.
But even then I had argued that the basic structure doctrine, in spite of its conceptual inelegance, had served a purpose in the context of the Emergency, Mrs [Indira] Gandhi’s election case.
It reminded a still-fledgling democracy of the perils of brute majoritarianism and those days were over. But 23 years after that critique of mine, we seem to be back to the era of overwhelming majorities.
And so it seems that that doctrine acts as a protection. And I’m sure you will agree with me that 23 years is a long enough period in a person’s life for him to say that he’s lived a bit, he’s learnt a bit.
It is counter-majoritarian in nature and that power is exercised, after all, by unelected judges. That is something which the judges also need to caution themselves about and I must say, to their credit, considering the few instances where they have interfered, that this is at the back of their minds when they apply the doctrine.
So considering that, the court has been very restrained and if the court takes the view that the independence of the judiciary and its powers of judicial review are non-negotiable, no one can seriously have a problem with it.
Economy
Google, Meta, Apple on the radar in EU’s online content rules. What are they? (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, International Agreement)
The European Union (EU) has confirmed the names of 19 platforms that will be subject to its landmark online content rules. Five subsidiaries of Google’s parent Alphabet, two Meta units, two Microsoft businesses, Apple’s AppStore, Twitter, and Alibaba’s AliExpress are among the entities that the EU has identified.
The rules notified under the Digital Services Act (DSA), aim at overhauling the EU’s social media and e-commerce rules, and at tightly regulating the way big technology platforms moderate user content.
The first lot of entities identified by the EU for the strictest level of regulation under the DSA include 1) Alibaba AliExpress, 2) Amazon Store, 3) Apple AppStore, 4) Microsoft Bing, 5) Booking.com, 6) Facebook, 7) Google Play, 8) Google Maps, 9) Google Search, 10) Google Shopping, 11) Instagram, 12) LinkedIn, 13) Pinterest, 14) Snapchat, 15) TikTok, 16) Twitter, 17) Wikipedia, 18) YouTube, and 19) Zalando.
Faster removals and provisions to challenge: As part of the overhaul, social media companies will have to add “new procedures for faster removal” of content deemed illegal or harmful.
They will also have to explain to users how their content takedown policy works. The DSA allows users to challenge takedown decisions made by platforms, and to seek out-of-court settlements.
Bigger platforms have greater responsibility: The legislation does not subscribe to a one-size fits all approach, and places increased accountability on the Big Tech companies.
Under the DSA, ‘Very Large Online Platforms’ (VLOPs) and ‘Very Large Online Search Engines’ (VLOSEs) — that is, platforms having more than 45 million users in the EU, will have more stringent requirements.
Direct supervision by the European Commission: These requirements and their enforcement will be centrally supervised by the European Commission itself — an important way to ensure that companies do not sidestep the legislation at the member-state level.
More transparency on how algorithms work: VLOPs and VLOSEs will face transparency measures and scrutiny of how their algorithms work, and will be required to conduct systemic risk analysis and reduction to drive accountability about the society impacts of their products.
VLOPs must allow regulators to access their data to assess compliance and allow researchers to access their data to identify systemic risks of illegal or harmful content.
India, EFTA countries discuss resumption of talks for trade pact (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The long-stalled negotiations for a free trade agreement between India and the EFTA, a bloc of four European countries including Switzerland, are expected to resume this month.
However, the place of the meeting is yet to be decided but both the sides have agreed to resume the negotiations from end of this month.
In June, India and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) had agreed to resolve the outstanding issues for resumption of the negotiations for the proposed Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA).
A meeting between the chief negotiators was held in New Delhi to take stock of the ongoing negotiations. Both sides have expressed willingness for early resumption of negotiations and concluding a balanced agreement in a time -bound manner.
The trade pact talks had started in October 2008. So far, 13 rounds of negotiations have been held at the level of chief negotiators. The four EFTA members are – Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.
The last round of negotiations was held in November 2013 and thereafter the negotiations have remained suspended. The proposed pact covers trade in goods and services, market access for investments, protection of intellectual property and public procurement.
Negotiations were stuck on some issues related with intellectual property rights. EFTA wants India to commit more in IPR. They were also demanding for data exclusivity, which India is completely opposed to.
Data exclusivity provides protection to the technical data generated by innovator companies to prove the usefulness of their products.
In pharmaceutical sector, drug companies generate the data through expensive global clinical trials to prove the efficacy and safety of their new medicine. Switzerland has huge interest in this sector.
By gaining exclusive rights over this data, innovator companies can prevent their competitors from obtaining marketing licence for low-cost versions during the tenure of this exclusivity.