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Attorney General R Venkataramani has told the Supreme Court, which will start hearing petitions challenging the electoral bonds scheme from October 31, that the citizens’ right to know is subject to reasonable restrictions.
A five-judge Supreme Court Constitution Bench presided by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud will hear petitions challenging the 2018 Electoral Bonds Scheme on October 31. The bench will also comprise Justice Sanjeev Khanna, B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
The top court is seized of four petitions — by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms, CPI(M), Congress leader Jaya Thakur and a PIL by one Spandan Biswal — in the matter.
There can be no general right to know anything and everything without being subjected to reasonable restrictions”, Venkataramani, “The right to know as necessary for expression can be for specific ends or purposes and not otherwise”.
Editorial
A statesmanship vaccum (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
It has been 24 days since the barbaric Hamas attack on Israel. Two hundred-odd hostages are still captive. This has been followed by an unprecedented slaughter by Israel of innocent Palestinians in Gaza with the prospect of worse to come.
But amidst this carnage and heightened political risk of a wider conflict, there is not one significant world leader who is acting in a way that is not morally myopic or politically ill-judged.
Go down the list. The Biden administration’s support for Israel is not surprising. But its embrace of Netanyahu, its utter lack of self-reflection on how we came to this pass, its lack of sincere interest in any political solution, its shocking “Othering” of the humanity of Palestinians — both by consistently casting doubt on Palestinian casualty figures and ruthlessly accepting collateral damage — is deeply alienating.
In response to a question of whether wars in Ukraine and Israel were more than the US could take on at the same time, President Biden replied, “We are the United States, for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the world, not in the world but the history of the world.”
Ideas Page
To clear the air (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
A recent report of the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI), published by Michael Greenstone from the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago (EPIC), estimated that Indians were losing 5.3 years of life expectancy on average due to the health effects of air pollution.
The estimate for Delhi was worse, with life lost estimated to be 11.9 years. Apart from the impact on early death, high levels of disability and chronic illness are the penalties that polluted air levies for our folly of fouling the environment.
Delhi features at the top or near the top of the world’s most polluted cities, with Wuhan and Lahore sometimes relieving us of the dubious distinction of wearing the carbon crown.
However, Delhi is not alone among the Indian cities. In a 2022 list of the 50 most polluted cities put out by IQAir, a Swiss air quality information platform, 39 of them are Indian.
Rural areas too are not free of pollution, as dust from unpaved roads and smoke from burnt biomass fuels meet fossil fuel emissions of vehicular intrusions from encroaching modernity.
Explained
Issues in electoral bonds case (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud is expected to hear a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the Centre’s electoral bonds scheme on Tuesday.
Notified on January 2, 2018, the scheme introduced instruments through which anyone in the country could donate money to political parties anonymously. This is not the first time the scheme has ended up before the top court since its inception in 2017.
First announced during the Union Budget session in 2017, “electoral bonds” are interest-free “bearer instruments”, which means that they are payable to the bearer on demand, similar to a promissory note.
Essentially, electoral bonds allow Indian citizens or a body incorporated in India to purchase bonds, enabling anonymous donations to political parties.
10 years of China’s BRI: Taking stock of Xi’s transnational infra projects (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
This year marks a decade since China’s ambitious infrastructure funding project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), was first outlined by President Xi Jinping.
Spanning from Africa to Asia and seeing investments worth billions of dollars, it has also come under criticism over the years about how sustainable these debts may be.
Gulshan Sachdeva, who is a Professor at the Centre for European Studies and Coordinator of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, explains some key aspects of the project and where it stands now.
President Xi Jinping announced the Silk Road Economic ‘Belt’ during his visits to Kazakhstan in 2013. The ‘Belt’ plan was to revitalise a series of trading and infrastructure routes between Asia and Europe. Connectivity through Central Asia was a key element of the initiative.
World
Mideast must consider a two state solution after the war: Biden (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
As the 3-week-old Israel-Hamas war enters what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says could be a “long and difficult” new stage, President Joe Biden is calling on Israeli and Arab leaders to think hard about their eventual postwar reality.
It’s one, he argues, where finally finding agreement on a long-sought two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict should be a priority.
“There’s no going back to the status quo as it stood on Oct. 6,” Biden told reporters, referring to the day before Hamas militants attacked Israel and set off the latest war.
The White House says Biden conveyed the same message directly to Netanyahu during a telephone call this past week.
“It also means that when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next, and in our view it has to be a two-state solution,” Biden said.
Economy
India seeks formal talks at WTO for reforms in dispute resolution body (Page no. 19)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
With the World Trade Organsation’s (WTO) ministerial conference just four months away, India has pressed for early start of formal talks on getting the dispute settlement system at the world body functioning again.
The US, whose actions led to the whole dispute settlement system becoming non-functional, has now started engaging on the issue of Dispute Settlement Body’s reforms in informal ways.
The informal setting poses challenges to participation of other members of the WTO who have limited presence of ambassadors at the trade regulating body.
Other logistics challenges including something as mundane as not having enough translators is also hampering broader participation in informal discussions.