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A day after a serious security breach saw two men with smoke cans jumping into the Lok Sabha chamber from the visitors’ gallery in Parliament, the issue snowballed into a full-blown confrontation between the Opposition and the government after Opposition MPs pressed for a statement from Union Home Minister Amit Shah followed by a discussion on the breach.
This led to acrimonious scenes, multiple adjournments and resulted in the suspension of 14 MPs – 13 in Lok Sabha and one in Rajya Sabha – for the remaining part of the Winter Session.
The initial announcement on the suspensions had the name of another Lok Sabha member, DMK’s S R Parthiban, who said later that he was not even in the House. A circular later on the suspensions did not include Parthiban.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said Parthiban’s name was withdrawn from the list of the Lok Sabha members suspended earlier in the day as there was a mistake on the part of the staff in identifying the member.
After troop removal demand, Maldives ending with India on Water survey (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
Barely a month after asking India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives, the government of President Mohamed Muizzu, whose party rode to power on an ‘India Out’ poll campaign, has decided not to renew the previous government’s agreement with India on a hydrographic survey of the island nation’s waters.
The agreement, signed on June 8, 2019 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Maldives at the invitation of then President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, allowed India to conduct a hydrographic survey of the Maldivian territorial waters, study and chart reefs, lagoons, coastlines, ocean currents and tide levels.
This is the first bilateral pact that the newly-elected Maldives government, which took charge in November, is officially terminating.
At a press conference Thursday, Mohamed Firuzul Abdul Khaleel, Undersecretary for Public Policy at the Maldives President’s Office, said the Muizzu government has decided against renewing the hydrography agreement which expires on June 7, 2024.
In Parliament
ISRO to launch chandrayaan -4 to bring back samples from Moon in 4 yrs: Somnath (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has planned to launch Chandrayaan-4 to bring back samples from the Moon in four years, said its chairperson S Somanath while elaborating on the space agency’s Vision 2047.
The first module of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station — India’s planned space station — that will be capable of conducting experiments with the help of robots will be launched by 2028.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had previously called on the space agency to set up a space station by 2035 and send a man to the Moon by 2040.
While these missions may seem far off, an experiment crucial for sustained human spaceflight will be “launched in the next three to four months.
The SPADEX experiment will demonstrate autonomous docking capability. Docking is a process where two spacecrafts are aligned in a precise orbit and joined together.
Editorial
A nature of the future (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) concluded a day late on December 13.
The battle over words and phrases was won, but not the war on climate change. This emerges starkly from the first global stocktake which was presented to the conference. It is the first such five-year review mandated by the Paris Agreement of 2015. Its conclusions are depressing.
Where do we stand currently in tackling what is universally recognised as an existential threat to human and even planetary survival?
We agree that our actions must be informed by the best available science. That science in the form of the latest assessment reports of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), included in the stocktake, says that the current nationally determined contributions (NDCs) conveyed by the states parties to the UNFCCC, if fully implemented, will only result in a meagre 2 per cent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as against 2019.
Whereas, a 50 per cent chance of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050 requires the peaking of global emissions by 2025 — only two years from now — and their reduction by 43 per cent by 2030 and by 60 per cent by 2035.
The gap is enormous and it would be a leap of faith to imagine that these minimal targets will be achieved. We are already at 1.1 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperature compared to the pre-industrial period.
Ideas Page
Reservation is oxygen (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 1, Social Issues)
In the article, ‘Time to end reservations’ Tavleen Singh begins by saying that her stance on reservation will invite controversy. But in the service of speaking plainly, she throws down the gauntlet and declares that all reservation should “go”.
The writer’s rather glib categorisation of the discussion that she believes would follow her statement as “controversy” is symptomatic of the crude reductiveness that most mentions of reservation are subject to.
Dismissing the discourse that affirmative action generates as controversy belittles the journeys of resilience and struggle made possible for most by the reservation policy.
A friend in JNU, who hailed from Bodoland, told me how for most of her community, it took generations to be able to board a train and make a three-day journey from Kokrajhar to New Delhi to study.
For most of us who are from reserved categories, acquiring the capabilities to access reservation requires us to break through generations of trauma and institutional handicaps that mark our place and that of our communities in society.
Reservations guaranteed by the Indian Constitution allow institutional spaces to acknowledge and accommodate the fact that we as a people are chronically disadvantaged — they aren’t “freebies”.
Economy
Costlier vegetable drive Nov WPI inflation to 8 month high (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
After staying in the deflationary zone for seven straight months, the wholesale Price Index (WPI) turned to positive territory in November at 0.26%, as food prices picked up sharply during the month.
The WPI food inflation rose to a three-month high of 4.69% in November from 1.07% in October, driven by a surge in prices of key vegetables, mainly onions. The wholesale inflation rate in onions spiked to a 44-month high of 101.24% in November, which pushed vegetables inflation to a three-month high of 10.44%.
Vegetables had played a crucial role in pushing CPI inflation to a three-month high of 5.55% in November as well.
Explained
Art 370 verdict and the world (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Constitution)
The Supreme Court’s seal of approval this week on the constitutional changes in Jammu and Kashmir evoked no major international reactions except from the usual suspects.
Pakistan refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the Indian Constitution over Jammu and Kashmir.
China said it did not recognise the “so-called union territory of Ladakh set up unilaterally and illegally by India”, and the western section of the China-India border has always belonged to China.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) reiterated its call to reverse “all illegal and unilateral measures taken since 5 August 2019 aimed at changing the internationally recognised disputed status of the territory”.
New Delhi responded that the OIC speaks at the “behest of a serial violator of human rights and an unrepentant promoter of cross-border terrorism” — a clear reference to Pakistan.
Allahabad HC allows survey of Mathura idgah: Current plea, age old dispute (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2, Judicary)
Putting the focus back on the Sri Krishna Janmabhoomi-Shahi Idgah Masjid dispute, the Allahabad High Court allowed an application seeking the appointment of a commission to inspect the mosque complex.
The Hindu petitioners believe the mosque, built on the orders of Emperor Aurangzeb in 1670, was constructed atop the birthplace of Lord Krishna in Mathura.
It lies adjacent to the Krishna Janmasthal Temple, visited by millions of Hindu devotees each year. Here is what you need to know about the latest plea, and the long standing dispute.
The latest application, filed under Order 26 Rule 9 CPC, is part of a petition (353/2023) filed by eight people including “next friend” of Bhagwan Shree Krishna Virajman.