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Rules for the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), the Bill for which was cleared by Parliament in December 2019, will be notified much before the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections, sources in the government said.
The Bill, which sought to fast-track Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians — but not Muslims — who migrated to India owing to religious persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, was passed by Lok Sabha on December 9, 2019, and Rajya Sabha two days later. It received the President’s assent on December 12, 2019.
Soon after the passage of the law, widespread protests broke out across the country. The rules for implementation of the Act were never notified and the government sought repeated extensions for framing the rules.
Another eye in sky, on ground: India is now part of world’s largest telescope project (Page no.1)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Even as ISRO launched a unique observatory to study X-rays and black holes in deep space and the stage is being set to construct the third node of the LIGO in Maharashtra, scientists in India will now also be part of the international mega-science project, the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO),that will function as the world’s largest radio telescope.
The SKAO is not a single telescope but an array of thousands of antennas, to be installed in remote radio-quiet locations in South Africa and Australia, that will operate as one large unit meant to observe and study celestial phenomena.
India, through the Pune-based National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) and some other institutions, has been involved in the development of SKA since its inception in the 1990s.
Considering the multinational collaboration, SKAO was established as an intergovernmental organisation in 2021 following years of negotiation in which India, too, participated.
Countries have to sign, and ratify, the SKAO convention to formally become members. The Government’s approval for joining the project, with a financial sanction of Rs 1,250 crore, is the first step towards the ratification.
Govt & Politics
Plea challenges new law on appointment of CEC’s, ECs (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Amid a political row over dropping the Chief Justice of India (CJI) from a panel empowered to choose the chief election commissioner and election commissioners, an advocate has moved the Supreme Court, seeking quashing of the new law that accords the central government sweeping powers to to make appointments to the poll body.
The plea filed by advocate Gopal Singh has sought the apex court’s direction to implement an “independent and transparent system of selection, constituting a neutral and independent selection committee for appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners (CEC and ECs)”.
While dropping the CJI from the selection committee, the new law said “Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioners shall be appointed by the President on the recommendation of a Selection Committee consisting of—(a) the Prime Minister—Chairperson; (b) the Leader of Opposition in the House of the People—Member; (c) a Union Cabinet Minister to be nominated by the Prime Minister—Member.”
The opposition has accused the Modi government of having defied the Supreme Court by dropping the CJI from the selection panel.
Editorial
Voting with their visas (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
There is a sense that only those who pay money or are well-connected get government jobs, lamented the man from Mehsana speaking to a journalist tracking the recent news of the flight of 303 Indians to Nicaragua.
There are no well-paying private jobs. So it is better to be in some menial job in Canada or the US and earn well than stay here in India and struggle forever.
Many enterprising Indians have left the shores of Gujarat over the centuries in search of fortune and opportunity.
India of the 2020s is, however, making them leave in desperation. From November 2022 to September 2023. This compares with 19,883 Indians caught trying to illegally sneak into the United States in 2019-20, and 63,927 in 2021-22.
“Gujarat’s development journey has received tremendous praise both across India and the world” — claimed an April 2014 article titled ‘The Gujarat Model’ on the website narendramodi.in.
Under Narendra Modi’s leadership Gujarat was known for its development oriented governance where the people were made active partners and stakeholders in the development journey.” Clearly, something has gone wrong this past decade.
Ideas Page
Why the west endures (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The military stalemate in Ukraine, the widening war in the Middle East, and the Chinese assertiveness in Asia would suggest that the US-led West is on the back foot around the world.
The intensifying political polarisation in the US and the prospect of the return of Donald Trump as the President in the 2024 elections reinforces the sense of a West in terminal decline.
There is no holding back the triumphalism among many sections of the “Eastern” political elites that see the current setbacks to the West as a seminal moment in world politics.
For them, it is about the long-awaited end to four centuries of Western dominance. The endless self-flagellation in the West about its collective failures and a sense of panic about the rise of the rest reinforce the sense of a new dawn in global order. India is not immune to this infectious exuberance.
Sceptics, however, dismiss the talk of Western decline. India, in particular, whose relations with the West have never been as good as they are today, has no reason to wish for its decline.
Nor would Delhi want China to replace the US as the dominant power in Asia. Delhi today sees the West as a critical partner in propelling India’s rise and securing itself against some major national security challenges. However, the question of decline must be addressed in objective terms.
Express Network
Govt plans to end free movement regime along international border with Myanmar (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
The Free Movement Regime (FMR), which allows people residing on either side of the India-Myanmar border to venture 16 km into each other’s territory without visa, will end soon.
The Centre has decided to start the tendering for an advanced smart fencing system for the entire India-Myanmar border, sources said.
We are going to end the FMR along the Indo-Myanmar border soon. We are going to put fencing along the entire border. The fencing will be completed in the next four-and-half years. Anyone coming through will have to get a visa.
The idea is to not only to stop the misuse of the FMR, which is used by insurgent groups to carry out attacks on the Indian side and flee towards Myanmar, but also put a brake on the influx of illegal immigrants, drugs and gold smuggling.
Earlier in September 2023, Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh had urged the Centre to permanently wind up the FMR along the Indo-Myanmar border to curb “illegal immigration”.
He had also said the state was working towards a National Register of Citizens, and fencing of the border with Myanmar. Manipur shares around 390 km of porous border with Myanmar, of which only about 10 km is fenced.
Economy
RBI proposed easing of norms for dividend payout by banks (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed to give permission for banks having net non-performing assets (NPAs) ratio of less than 6 per cent to declare dividends.
Currently, banks need to have a NNPA ratio of up to 7 per cent to become eligible for declaration of dividends.
The net NPA ratio, for the financial year for which the dividend is proposed, should be less than six per cent,” the RBI said in the draft guidelines on dividend declaration.
The guidelines have been reviewed in the light of implementation of Basel III standards, the revision of the prompt corrective action (PCA) framework, and the introduction of differentiated banks, the RBI said.
The central bank has proposed that the new guidelines should come into effect from FY25 onwards.
The RBI said a commercial bank should have a minimum total capital adequacy of 11.5 per cent to be eligible for declaring dividend, while the same for a small finance bank and payment banks has been set at 15 per cent, and 9 per cent for local area banks and regional rural banks.
Explained
Why Nobel laureate Yunus got a jail term (Page no. 14)
(Miscellaneous)
Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus (January 1) was sentenced to six months in jail by a court in Bangladesh for violating the country’s labour laws.
The 83-year-old, credited with pioneering the system of micro-finance loans to help impoverished people, was granted bail pending appeal.
While Yunus called the judgement “contrary to all legal precedent and logic”, his supporters said the case was politically motivated. The professor shares a frosty relationship with Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who once accused him of “sucking blood” from the poor.
Currently, Yunus is facing a wide array of other charges involving alleged corruption and fund embezzlement.
Born in 1940 in Chittagong, Yunus received his PhD in economics from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, USA, in 1969 and subsequently, became an assistant professor at Middle Tennessee State University.
After Bangladesh was formed in 1972, he returned to his homeland and was appointed head of the economics department at Chittagong University.