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The Supreme Court said it would look into a request to take up for urgent hearing, petitions challenging the remission granted to 11 convicts in the BilkisBano case.
This was said after advocate Aparna Bhat mentioned one of these petitions before a bench headed by Chief Justice of India N V Ramana. The plea has been filed by three petitioners, including CPIM(M) leader Subhashini Ali and independent journalist RevatiLaul. A second petition has also been filed by Trinamool Congress MP MahuaMoitra.
When the issue was raised in court Tuesday, the CJI asked if the release was by virtue of a Supreme Court order, to which Bhat said the apex court had by an order given the Gujarat government the discretion to take a decision.
Senior Advocate KapilSibal said the challenge was on the principles of remission. The Gujarat government on August 15 released 11 convicts in the BilkisBano murder and gangrape case of 2002 under its remission and premature release policy after one of the convicts, Radheshyam Shah, moved the Supreme Court. Shah, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment by a CBI court in Mumbai in 2008, had completed 15 years and 4 months in jail.
Bilkis was gangraped and her three-year-old daughter Saleha was among 14 killed by a mob on March 3, 2002, in Limkheda taluka of Dahod district. Bilkis was pregnant at the time.
Reacting to the release of the convicts, Bilkis had said she was “bereft of words” and “still numb”.Today, I can only say this — how can justice for any woman end like this? I trusted the highest courts in our land.
I trusted the system and I was slowly learning to live with my trauma. The release of these convicts has taken from me my peace and shaken my faith in justice,” she had said in a statement.
The 11 convicts who were set free were JaswantNai, GovindNai, Shailesh Bhatt, Radhyesham Shah, Bipin Chandra Joshi, KesarbhaiVohania, Pradeep Mordhiya, BakabhaiVohania, RajubhaiSoni, Mitesh Bhatt and Ramesh Chandana.
Govt. and Politics
SC strikes down provision of jail term in 1988 benami law (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Supreme Court held as unconstitutional a provision in the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 1988, that prescribed jail term for entering into benami transactions.
A bench of Chief Justice of India N V Ramana and Justices Krishna Murari and HimaKohli also held that the Act which was amended in 2016 can only be applied prospectively and quashed all prosecutions or confiscation proceedings before the amended Act came into force.
Section 3(3) of the 2016 amendment enhanced the three-year imprisonment to seven years and fine of up to 25% of the fair market value of the property, a provision that remains untouched.
“Concerned authorities cannot initiate or continue criminal prosecution or confiscation proceedings for transactions entered into prior to the coming into force of the 2016 Act, viz., 25.10.2016. As a consequence of the above declaration, all such prosecutions or confiscation proceedings shall stand quashed.
The bench also expressed concern on certain findings in the SC’s recent judgement upholding the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, allowing authorities to take possession of property before trial in exceptional cases saying it leaves the scope for arbitrary application.
It said “having perused the said judgement, we are of the opinion that the aforesaid ratio requires further expounding in an appropriate case, without which, much scope is left for arbitrary application.
The ruling came on an appeal by the Centre challenging a December 2019 decision by the Calcutta High Court which held that the 2016 Act does not have any express provision allowing its retrospective application.
The Centre had argued that under the 1988 Act, there was no machinery or procedure in place to effectuate proceedings against benami transactions and that the Amendment Act was only brought in to remedy this procedural deficiency.
Rejecting the argument, the SC said “the 2016 Amendment Act was not merely procedural, rather, prescribed substantive provisions”.
Though it held the punitive provision in the 1988 Act unconstitutional, the court said that this will not affect the civil consequences contemplated under the Act.
It also held as unconstitutional, the provision in the 1988 Act regarding forfeiture of benami properties, and added that the provision in the 2016 amended Act on the same can only be applied prospectively.
The court turned down the Centre’s argument that such confiscation under the 1988 Act was civil in nature and hence will not attract any violation of fundamental rights under Article 20(1).
Government amends rules, increases post-retirement allowances to CJI, SC judges (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The Centre amended service rules for Supreme Court judges by making additional post-retirement allowances, including a rent-free Type-VII accommodation in Delhi for a retired Chief Justice of India (CJI) for six months after demitting office and protocol courtesies at airports for SC judges.
The rules were amended under Supreme Court Judges (Salaries and Conditions of Service) Act, 1958. The changes come into effect immediately.
This comes two days before CJI N V Ramana demits office on August 26.Provided that a retired Chief Justice shall be entitled to a rent-free Type-VII accommodation at Delhi (other than the designated official residence) for a period of six month from the date of retirement,” the amendment states.
The CJI currently occupies a bungalow on Krishna Menon Marg and another bungalow next door is the CJI’s secretariat.
The new rules also allow a chauffeur and a secretarial assistant equivalent to the level of branch officer in the Supreme Court for one year after retirement for retired SC judges, including the CJI. Both retired judges and retired CJIs will be entitled to round-the-clock security cover for residence and round-the-clock personal security guard for a year from the date of retirement.
On protocol, the amended rules state that “a retired Chief Justice or a retired Judge shall be entitled to protocol to extend courtesies at ceremonial lounges at airports.”
In March 2021, a month before then CJI S A Bobde demitted office, the government had amended the rules, increasing tax-free lifetime payment towards secretarial staff and orderly for a retired CJI from Rs 25,000 to 75,000 and for SC judges from Rs 14,000 to Rs 39,000.
The Editorial Page
Pakistan’s shifting red lines (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
There has been a sharp escalation in the level of political turmoil in Pakistan. In particular, the tensions between former prime minister Imran Khan and his erstwhile mentors in the Pakistan army have crested, with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader facing imminent arrest under the country’s anti-terrorism laws on charges of intimidating the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary following the arrest and alleged torture, in police custody, of his chief of staff, Shahbaz Gill. Gill’s remarks on a prominent television channel have been interpreted by the Army as a thinly-disguised call to mutiny.
When Khan was installed as PM following a flawed election, widely perceived as having been manipulated in his favour by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), political commentators saw the development as the culmination of a “political engineering” project going back to the days of the late Lt. General Hamid Gul, who headed the ISI in the early 1990s.
The objective of this murky project was to foist on Pakistan a supposedly “clean” political leader, untainted by the charges of corruption that had dogged both the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), which alternated in power during the decade, and whose political beliefs would be more in consonance with the hardline Islamic ideology espoused by the army.
Others, however, more realistically assessed that for all the initial optimism expressed by Khan’s supporters about the army and the civilian dispensation being on the “same page”, this state of bonhomie might not last long, with Pakistan’s economy entering a sharp downward spiral and the PM remaining fixated on exacting revenge against his political opponents rather than focussing on the more pressing tasks of providing good governance.
While the “novice” PM was initially content to be deferential to the military on matters of national security, his natural propensity for exercising a leadership role in all spheres soon manifested.
The inescapable conclusion that followed was that it was only a matter of time before the military leadership began viewing its former protégé as a liability and distancing itself from him.
That Imran Khan hastened his government’s demise by his irrational insistence on retaining Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed as the ISI chief, when the latter was due to be moved out of the ISI on a routine posting as a corps commander, an essential rite of passage for all aspirants to the post of Chief of Army Staff, is well known.
Other factors such as Khan’s reflexive anti-Americanism, his angry denunciations, with scant evidence to back his claims, of a US plot to destabilise his government and his public eulogisation of global terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden whom he described as a “martyr,” contributed to the army’s disenchantment with him.
The Idea Page
A wellness wish for 2047 (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
India at 100 to me is an equitable country, built on firm access to high-quality education and healthcare.I could add gender parity, employment opportunities for all, reduced or no corruption — both small and large-scale — removing caste barriers, vibrant agriculture and animal husbandry and industries focused on quality. All these contribute to equity in several ways. But these are areas best left to other experts.
Education and health are foundational to every society. Examples of India’s capabilities in these areas are easy to find. Indian education produces global CEOs and Indian private healthcare systems have been providing services to medical tourists from many parts of the world. But these are exceptions and not the rule. Moreover, equity has no place in such outliers.
Foundational education must begin at an early stage at home, and then in schools, before we get to institutions of higher learning.
Education that allows all children to achieve their full cognitive potential starts with parents understanding the importance of verbal engagement and sensorimotor stimulation and moves to schools that have trained, competent and engaged teachers. In both nuclear and non-nuclear families, socioeconomic status determines the amount and quality of the interactions children have in their early life — this translates to significant developmental advantages depending on the household into which a child is born.
The school environment can mitigate socioeconomic deprivation to an extent. For that to happen, schools have to be functional. The functionality of schools comes not from buildings and administrative structures, but the quality and commitment of teachers.
The transformational power of education for children who come from deprived environments can only operate at scale if schools and teachers know what is possible and do all they can to become agents of change.
Such change cannot be effected overnight or through mandates and government orders. Whether it is in learning from tribal cultures or adapting reasoning exercises to the environment, school education and assessment cannot rely entirely on a one-size-fits-all approach of a standardised curriculum and limited assessment of knowledge and competencies.
The counterarguments — India is a large country, standardisationis needed across states, the government lacks resources, and the timelines for change are too long — cannot be ignored.
But these arguments ignore the foundational role of schooling in not just societal development, but equity, gender parity and a host of other consequential shifts.
Only point scoring no debate (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
“If you take credit for the rains, be prepared to take the blame for the drought” is a maxim that Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman would do well to imbibe.
For the average Indian family of five, cooking a simple dal, tomatoes, onion, garlic, ginger, salt and oil on an LPG gas stove costs roughly Rs 51 today. It would have cost them only Rs 36 in 2019, Rs 38 in 2014 and Rs 28 in 2009.
In her speech in the recently concluded session of Parliament, the FM pleaded helplessness about such a steep increase in costs for the Indian family and blamed it on external factors such as the Ukraine war, global inflation etc.
But when such costs declined from 2014 to 2019, the FM never missed an opportunity to take full credit for herself and her government and equally, castigated the then UPA government for high inflation between 2009 and 2014.
The truth is much simpler. Crude oil (Indian basket) went up from an average price per barrel of $80 in 2009 to $106 in 2014, came down to $70 in 2019 and has climbed back up to $101 now.
The rise and fall in the cost of a dal dinner for the Indian family is synchronous with global crude oil costs, regardless of which government is in power. While levels of inflation may change, the trend of domestic prices is tightly correlated to global crude oil costs.
Similarly, the FM gloated in Parliament about how India will be the world’s fastest-growing economy this year but when India’s economy was among the world’s worst in 2020, she famously blamed it on an “act of God”, the Covid-19 pandemic. If India’s economy is growing fast this year, it’s the same “God” who deserves credit, since it’s nature’s law that when something falls sharply, it will also rebound sharply.
Fleeing foreign investors have triggered a collapse in the value of the rupee. The FM and her cheerleaders’ defence is that the rupee is not falling, only the dollar is gaining or that other currencies have fallen even more, akin to a defeated sportsman’s laughable excuse that he did not lose, only his opponent won.
But when foreign inflows were strong in previous years, in a heartbeat the FM proclaimed that the same foreign investors were flocking to India enamoured of the Modi government.
The reality is that a weaker rupee makes a dal dinner much more expensive for the average Indian family and it is of no solace to them that the Bangladeshi or the Sri Lankan family is paying even more for their dal.
ExplainedPage
Jupiter like never seen before, through the Webb telescope (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s latest and most powerful telescope, has captured new images of our solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter, presenting it in a never before seen light.
The photographs published on Monday have captured a new view of the planet, presenting in detail its massive storms, colourful auroras, faint rings and two small moons — Amalthea and Adrastea.
While most of us are familiar with the yellow and reddish-brown gas giant, the telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera, with its specialized infrared filters, has shown Jupiter encompassed in blue, green, white, yellow and orange hues.
Since infrared light is not visible to the human eye, the images were artificially coloured to match those on the visible spectrum, so that the planet’s distinctive features could stand out, according to NASA.
Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot, a storm so big that it could swallow Earth, appeared bright white in the image, since it was reflecting a lot of sunlight, the space agency stated.
A NASA blog post quoted Heidi Hammel, interdisciplinary scientist for the James Webb telescope, as saying: “The brightness here indicates high altitude — so the Great Red Spot has high-altitude hazes, as does the equatorial region. The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms.
NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Telescope was developed with the assistance of the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
It was launched to space on December 25, 2021 and is currently observing from Lagrange point 2, approximately 1.5 million km beyond Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The telescope released its first image on July 11 2022.
The incredible images taken by the James Webb telescope don’t arrive on Earth as we currently see them, according to NASA’s blog post.
Instead, scientists receive raw data about the brightness of the light captured on Webb’s detectors, which is then processed and translated into images by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Webb’s mission and science operations centre.
How Google tech that flags child child sexual abuse material works (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Issues related to children)
Could naked images of your children on your Google Photos ensure you lose account access? That’s what appears to have happened in the case of a parent in San Francisco, and another in Texas.
Both parents lost access to their Google accounts after the system flagged private images of their children as child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The story, reported by The New York Times, highlights the complicated terrains around user privacy and CSAM tracking that companies like Google deploy.
According to The NYT story, a father in San Francisco had taken a picture of his son’s genitalia to send to a doctor. He was using an Android phone, and the picture also got backed up to his Google Photos account.
But Google’s system flagged this as CSAM, and his account access was suspended. The father also faced a police investigation. This is because if and when Google’s systems detect CSAM they also make a “CyberTipline” report to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US.
The NCMEC can then involve law enforcement agencies. A similar tale unfolded with another father in Texas. While police cleared both parents, Google has not given them their access back.
This is not the first time this issue of Google automatically scanning photos and detecting CSAM has been reported.
In 2020, Forbes reported how a warrant was issued against an artist based in Kansas after Google identified some of his art works as CSAM.
According to Google’s own transparency report, it sent close to 458,178 reports about CSAM to the NCMEC in the US and reported over 3.2 million pieces of content during the period of June to December, 2021. Also, 140,868 accounts were disabled during the same period.
Google states that it relies on “automated detection and human review, in addition to relying on reports submitted by our users and third parties, such as NGOs, to detect, remove, and report CSAM on our platforms.”
But it is primarily using two main technologies to scan and tag CSAM. This applies to photos, videos, and files you might upload on Google Drive, Google Photos, etc. Remember, your Google account is linked to all these services.
The first technology is hash matching, and this includes YouTube’s CSAI (Child Sexual Abuse Imagery) match technology.
CSAI Match is technology deployed on YouTube to fight videos of child abuse, and can spot “re-uploads of previously identified child sexual abuse material in videos,” according to Google.
This particular API can also be used by other NGOs, companies to find CSAM by matching it against Google’s databases. Basically, every time Google detects an image potentially identified as CSAM, it is assigned a hash or numeric value, and then it is matched against an earlier hash from an existing database.
Google is not the only one using this hash matching technology. Companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Apple also deploy similar techniques.
Europe’s great drought (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Disaster Management)
European media has been full of dramatic pictures of drying, exposed riverbeds. Some of Europe’s biggest rivers — Rhine, Po, Loire, Danube — which are usually formidable waterways, are unable to support even mid-sized boats.
As water levels have fallen, remains of sunken ships and ominously named hunger stones — rocks engraved by previous generations during earlier periods of extraordinary dryness — have come out of erstwhile depths.
The drought has been billed as the worst in 500 years. It is being said that never has a European summer been so dry since 1540, when a year-long drought killed tens of thousands of people.
The dry spell this year follows a record-breaking heatwave that saw temperatures in many countries rise to historic highs.
The impact has been debilitating. Water transport has suffered badly, and is having cascading effects.
Power production has been hit, leading to electricity shortages and a further increase in energy prices already pushed high by the war in Ukraine. Food is sharply more expensive in many countries, and drinking water is being rationed in some regions.
Earlier European droughts — such as those in 2003, 2010, and 2018 — too were compared to the 1540 event. Much like now, the 2018 drought was described as the “worst in 500 years”.
But last week, a senior scientist at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre said this year could turn out to be worse than 2018, though data were still being analysed.
“We haven’t analysed fully the event because it is still ongoing, but based on my experience I think that this is perhaps even more extreme than 2018,” senior researcher Andrea Toreti said. “Just to give you an idea, the 2018 drought was so extreme that looking back at least the last 500 years, there were no other events similar to the drought of 2018, but this year I think it is really worse than 2018.”
The “worst in 500 years” description may be still not settled, but the impacts of this event are expected to be far worse than anything experienced in the recent past.
Europe has been facing large scale climatic anomalies for over six months — precipitation has been far less than usual, while temperatures have soared to unprecedented levels. And this has come on top of the massive energy and food-supply implications of the Ukraine war.
Apart from agriculture and drinking water supplies, the most visible impact has been the disruption in Europe’s waterways. Europe depends heavily on its rivers to move cargo in an economical manner, including coal to power plants. With water levels down to less than a metre in some stretches, most large ships have been rendered unusable.
Why fisherfolk in Kerala are protesting Adani’s under-construction Vizhinjam port (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Infrastructure)
The week-long ongoing protests against the construction of the Adani Group’s Vizhinjam International Transhipment Deepwater Multipurpose Seaport in Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram intensified on Monday (August 22), with fisherfolk laying siege to the port from the sea and land.
The fishing community under the leadership of the Catholic Archdiocese of Thiruvananthapuram has said the protests will continue until all their demands are met. At talks between Fisheries Minister V Abdurahiman and representatives of the archdiocese on August 19, the government agreed to most of the fisherfolk’s demands, but no breakthrough was achieved.
On Tuesday (August 23), Chief Minister PinarayiVijayan told the Assembly that the protest in some areas seemed “orchestrated”.
The government, he said, was ready for talks, and wanted to resolve the concerns faced by the fishing community — however, it could not agree to halting the project.
The biggest demand of the protesters is that the construction of the Rs 7,525-crore deepwater port and container transhipment terminal at Vizhinjam on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram should be stopped and a proper environmental impact study should be carried out.
The community has also put forward six other demands: (i) rehabilitation of families who lost their homes to sea erosion, (ii) effective steps to mitigate coastal erosion, (iii) financial assistance to fisherfolk on days weather warnings are issued, (iv) compensation to families of those who lose their lives in fishing accidents, (v) subsidised kerosene, and (vi) a mechanism to dredge the Muthalappozhi fishing harbour in Anchuthengu in Thiruvananthapuram district.
The government has conceded all demands except providing a kerosene subsidy, and halting the construction of the port. It has agreed to find accommodation for relocated families before Onam (which begins at the end of this month).
RethinPulluvila, a representative of Pulluvila ward and a member of the coastal community, said they have been raising these demands for long.
We had protested outside the secretariat, but did not get a response,” he said, adding the protests would continue until all demands were met and implemented.
A J Vijayan, a member of the Coastal Area Protection Forum who has been opposing the project from the beginning, said the protests were widening as awareness among the fishing community increased, and they experienced the impact of the project on their day-to-day life.