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Days after the Supreme Court expressed “serious concern” about Governors not acting on Bills, Tamil Nadu Governor R N Ravi on Thursday returned 10 pending Bills to the state government.
The DMK-led government, which has had public disagreements with Ravi several times over the past year, has called a special Assembly session.
One of the important Bills Ravi has returned is on the power of the state government to appoint university vice-chancellors.
The Bills, passed between January and April this year, cover a range of issues from anti-corruption measures and the early release of prisoners to filling vacancies in the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission.
Speaker M Appavu said these Bills would be taken up during the special Assembly session and there would be no discussions on the Supreme Court’s observations, Governor or President.
The special session will be held under Assembly Rule 26. Once the Assembly passes these Bills again, the Governor is bound to approve them.
Appavu cited the examples of the Bill prohibiting online gambling and the draft legislation on the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), which were also initially returned by the Governor.
Govt & Politics
India to host 2nd voice of Global South Summit today (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India will host the 2nd Voice of Global South Summit in a virtual format, in what will be the second time since January this year.
The second summit will start with an Inaugural Leaders’ Session chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the morning.
The Ministry of External Affairs said that India had hosted the inaugural Voice of Global South Summit (VOGSS) on 12-13 January 2023 virtually.
This unique initiative brought together 125 countries of the Global South to share their perspectives and priorities on a common platform.
Throughout its G20 Presidency, the MEA said India has “worked to ensure that the concerns of the Global South receive due cognisance and that the priorities of the Global South were duly factored in finding solutions to the most pressing global challenges”.
Express Network
New IT platform to track medicines end to end (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
The integrated IT platform that apex drug regulator the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization has been working on to bring in transparency and uniformity in all its processes — and create confidence in domestic and international markets — will be able to track products right from the stage of procuring raw material, to supply chain, and finally patterns of consumption categorised by quantity, area, and season.
Apart from manufacturers, distributors and retailers will also need to upload their invoices on the portal for this end-to-end tracking to become possible.
According to a document detailing the requirements, the portal will create provisions to capture information from various stakeholders routinely “similar to ITR returns and GST filing”.
The government has called for software service providers to develop the system. Once operational, all other portals used by drug regulators will be discontinued. The portal will become a single window for all drug regulatory activities.
India for cessation of fight between Myanmar forces, anti – junta groups (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India called for cessation of fighting between Myanmar’s military and anti-junta groups near the Indo-Myanmar border that has triggered an influx of Myanmar refugees to Mizoram.
Hostilities have been mounting between Myanmar’s anti-junta groups and government forces in several key towns and regions near the border with India in the last few weeks, fuelling concerns in the Indian military establishment about the possible spillover effect.
MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi expressed deep concerns over the incidents of violence close to the Indo-Myanmar border.
As a result of the fighting, in the Rihkhawdar area in Chin State, opposite Zowkhathar in Mizoram on the India-Myanmar border, there has been movement of Myanmar nationals to the Indian side.
We are deeply concerned with such incidents close to our border. Our position on the ongoing situation in Myanmar is very clear – we want cessation of the violence and resolution of the situation through constructive dialogue. He said India is for the return of peace and stability in Myanmar.
Editorial
Gesture Politics (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 1, History)
Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary was celebrated on November 15 as Janjatiya Gaurav Diwas, and this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the tribal freedom fighter’s birthplace to pay tribute.
On the occasion, PM Modi launched the Viksit Bharat Sankalp Yatra — to ensure the last-mile delivery of government services and schemes.
He launched the PM Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan, a programme to empower and protect the most marginalised among the tribes, the Particularly Vulnerable Tribes. He also unveiled projects worth around Rs 7,200 crore related to coal, petroleum, railways, roads, education.
Tribal communities, no doubt, take great pride in their traditions, culture, and history, including historical icons. The BJP has aptly acknowledged this aspect of the tribal psyche and has translated it into an important agenda of politics and to showcase government action and interventions.
Accordingly, a lot of resources are earmarked for tribal research institutes, museums, research fellowships, residential education, etc.
This gives an additional edge to the BJP as a champion of the tribal cause, as such issues have remained outside the agenda of other political parties and have thus remained unattended to and unaddressed.
Ideas Page
Her knock on closed doors (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
A recent study of over 4 lakh FIRs in Haryana has found that from filing FIRs to getting convictions, the legal process is stacked against women.
As an NGO working in Mumbai with women and child victims of sexual and domestic violence, we resonate with this experience.
Women who come to Majlis face grave domestic violence: Physical violence, including beatings with an object, banging their head on the wall, choking, strangulation, kicking, etc; economic abuse like not giving money, forcefully taking away earnings, asking the woman to get more money from her parents, etc; verbal abuse, including humiliation using filthy language, and emotional abuse, taunting a woman about her looks, education, cooking skills, etc; sexual violence, including non-consensual and forced sex, and beatings if a woman resists. One of our clients was burned and kicked in her genitals because she refused to have sex.
World
UNSC adopts resolution calling for pauses in Gaza, Israel says no (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The UN Security Council has approved a resolution calling for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip after four failed attempts to respond to the Israel-Hamas war.
The vote was 12-0 with the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia abstaining. The final draft watered down language from a demand to a call for humanitarian pauses.
It also watered down a demand for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups." The resolution makes no mention of a ceasefire.
It also doesn't refer to Hamas' surprise attack on Israel on October 7, during which the militants killed around 1,200 people and took some 240 others hostage.
Nor does it cite Israel's retaliatory airstrikes and ground offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which Gaza's health ministry says has killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children.
Russia proposed an amendment to the resolution before the vote that would have called for durable humanitarian pauses leading to a cease-fire. But it was rejected by a vote of 5-1 with nine abstentions because it failed to get the minimum nine yes votes.
But the resolution, sponsored by Malta, did bring the 15 members of the UN's most powerful body together in a first response to the ongoing war that is having catastrophic humanitarian consequences in Gaza.
Xi, Biden meet, agree to resume military contact, set up hotline (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to restore some military-to-military communications between their armed forces as the two leaders met for hours on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.
Both sides pledged cooperation that would bring the U.S and China closer to resuming regular talks under what’s known as the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement, which until 2020 had been used to improve safety in the air and on the sea.
A senior U.S. official said the military communication agreements mean that U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin can meet with his Chinese counterpart once that person is named. The official spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting.
Economy
India – EU close to settling $600mn WTO dispute (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India is close to resolving its most contentious trade dispute, involving information communications technology (ICT) products, with its second largest trade partner, the European Union (EU).
This comes on the heels of India settling all seven trade disputes at the World Trade Organization (WTO) with its largest trade partner, the US.
Brussels had dragged New Delhi to the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism in 2019 challenging its levying of import duty on a wide range of ICT products including mobile phones and components, base stations, integrated circuits and optical instruments claiming that the duty was inconsistent with global trade norms and was hurting €600 million worth of its tech exports to India.
The dispute assumes significance as it was feared to affect India’s efforts to boost electronic products manufacturing — a strategic sector in which India is trying to cut its reliance on China.
An adverse final ruling could have also meant disruption of the flagship production-led incentive (PLI) scheme due to the rolling back of duties.
Explained
India and the US China truce (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
As the leaders of the United States and China try and arrest the steady downslide in bilateral relations, India has little reason to worry about a structural shift in the most consequential great power relationship in the world today.
Since the variations in the US-China relationship affect all major powers and regions, there has been global interest in this week’s summit between the US President Joe Biden and the Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
Biden and Xi met for four hours on Wednesday, talking, having lunch, and taking a stroll in a garden at a Californian country estate.
The meeting did not resolve any substantive issues between the countries, but both the leaders struck a broadly conciliatory tone afterward.
While there are always concerns in India about a ‘G-2’ or a Sino-American collaboration in Asia, the San Francisco summit was about organising a truce in a conflictual relationship rather than restoring the kind of strategic partnership that seemed possible at the turn of the century.
Crime of adultery (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Costitution)
The Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs has suggested that adultery should be re-instituted as a crime in the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, the proposed law to replace the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860.
The Parliamentary Committee adopted reports on the three Bills meant to replace the IPC, The Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1973, and The Indian Evidence Act, 1872, last week.
The panel headed by BJP Rajya Sabha member Brij Lal, which examined the Bills after they were introduced in Parliament this August, suggested more than 50 changes and flagged several errors in them.
Until 2018, the IPC contained Section 497, which defined adultery as a criminal offence that attracted up to five years in prison, or a fine, or both. However, only men could be punished under Section 497, not women. The section read:
Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery.