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With a month left for the retirement of Chief Justice of India U ULalit on November 8, the government initiated the process for the appointment of the next CJI, asking the incumbent to recommend his successor.
Union Minister for Law and Justice KirenRijiju has written to CJI Lalit, seeking his views on appointing the next CJI.
As per the MoP on appointment of Chief Justice of India and Supreme Court Judges, today the Hon’ble Minister of Law and Justice sent a letter to the Hon’ble Chief Justice of India for sending his recommendations for appointment of his successor.
As per the Memorandum of Procedure governing the appointment of members of the higher judiciary, “appointment to the office of the Chief Justice of India should be of the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court considered fit to hold the office”.
Justice D Y Chandrachud is the second most senior judge of the Supreme Court. If appointed, he will have a tenure of two years until November 10, 2024.
The MoP stipulates that the Law Minister would, at an “appropriate time,” seek the recommendation of the outgoing CJI for the appointment of the next CJI.
Under this process, after receipt of the recommendation of the CJI, the Law Minister puts it before the Prime Minister who advises the President in the matter of appointment.This process is conventionally done a month before the retirement of the incumbent CJI.
After the recommendation process, once a new CJI is designated, as per convention, the Collegium headed by the outgoing CJI also freezes.
The Supreme Court will reconvene on October 10 after its Dussehra vacation – it is likely the last opportunity for the CJI Lalit-led Collegium to make recommendations.
Currently, there is division within the five-member Collegium over the CJI’s proposal to recommend four new judges to the Supreme Court through “circulation” or a written note.
Ex-CJI named head of panel on SC status for Dalit converts (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
The centre has appointed a three-member commission, headed by former Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan, to consider the possibility of granting SC status to “new persons who have historically belonged to the Scheduled Castes’’ but have converted to religions other than Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism.
According to a notification issued Thursday by the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, the commission will also include retired IAS officer Dr Ravinder Kumar Jain and UGC member Prof (Dr) Sushma Yadav as members. The commission will have to submit its report to the Ministry in two years.
The Indian Express had first reported on September 19 about the Government’s move to set up a national commission to study the social, economic and educational status of members of SCs who have converted mainly to Islam and Christianity.
The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, stipulates that no person professing a religion different from Hinduism, Sikhism or Buddhism can be deemed to be a member of a Scheduled Caste. The original order under which only Hindus were classified was later amended to include Sikhs and Buddhists.
The new commission has been set up at a time when the Supreme Court is hearing a PIL filed by the National Council of Dalit Christians (NCDC), which has been fighting for SC status since 2020 — there have been numerous other cases filed in the apex court on the matter since 2004. In August, the Supreme Court had directed the Centre to submit its current position on the issue.
The contention of Dalit Christian and Muslim organisations has been that these communities continue to face discrimination. On Thursday, these organisations criticised the latest move by the Centre as a “delaying tactic’’.
The commission will also examine the implications of any decision in this matter on existing SCs, and the changes they go through on converting to other religions in terms of customs, traditions, social and other discrimination, and deprivation.
The Social Justice Ministry said “certain groups’’ have raised the question of revisiting the “existing definition of Scheduled Castes by according the status to new persons who belong to other religions beyond those permitted through Presidential Orders”.
The Ministry said that whereas there is a demand for inclusion by certain sections, representatives of existing Scheduled Castes have “objected to such granting of Scheduled Caste status to new persons’’.
RBI to launch e-rupee pilot soon, can be based on token or account (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Friday indicated that it will soon commence limited pilot launches of the much-awaited e-rupee, or central bank digital currency (CBDC), for specific use cases.
E-rupee is akin to sovereign paper currency but takes a different form, exchangeable at par with the existing currency and will be accepted as a medium of payment, legal tender and a safe store of value.The digital rupee would appear as a liability on a central bank’s balance sheet, the RBI said in a concept note.
Currently, we are at the forefront of a watershed movement in the evolution of currency that will decisively change the very nature of money and its functions.According to the RBI, e-rupee can be structured as ‘token based’ or ‘account-based’.
A token-based CBDC is a bearer instrument like banknotes, meaning whosoever holds the tokens at a given point in time would be presumed to own them.
As of July 2022, 105 countries were exploring CBDC, a number that covers 95% of global GDP. Ten countries have launched CBDC, the first of which was the Bahamian Sand Dollar in 2020 and the latest was Jamaica’s JAM-DEX.
In contrast, an account-based system would require maintenance of record of balances and transactions of all holders of the CBDC and indicate the ownership of the monetary balances.
In a token-based CBDC, the person receiving a token will verify that his ownership of the token is genuine, whereas in an account-based CBDC, an intermediary verifies the identity of an account holder.
Considering the features offered by both the forms of CBDCs, a token-based CBDC is viewed as a preferred mode for CBDC-R as it would be closer to physical cash, while account-based CBDC may be considered for CBDC-W.
It said CBDC-W could also be explored for the wholesale market for asset classes which are OTC and bilaterally or settled outside CCP arrangements – CPs and CDs and access to retail for buying assets such as G-secs, CPs/CDs, primary auctions etc bypassing the bank account route.
In the case of g-secs, if assets are also tokenised, this could be extended to non-residents to investment in domestic asset classes.
The RBI has been opposing private cryptocurrencies, stating that they are a threat to India’s macroeconomic and financial stability.
Express Network
India: Rights of people of Xinjiang must be respected (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Rights of the people of the autonomous region in China’s Xinjiang should be “respected and guaranteed”, India said on Friday in what is being viewed as its first clear comment on the situation in the neighbouring country.
This comes a day after India abstained from voting on a resolution at the United Nations High Commission that called for a debate on concerns over the human rights situation in Xinjiang.
“The human rights of the people of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region should be respected and guaranteed. We hope that the relevant party will address the situation objectively and properly,” ArindamBagchi.
On India’s abstention, Bagchi said it was in line with long-held practice in India’s foreign policy to not vote on country-specific resolutions.
The comments came amid the continuing border row between India and China in eastern Ladakh. “India remains committed to upholding all human rights.
India’s vote is in line with its long held position that country specific resolutions are never helpful. India favours a dialogue to deal with such issues.
Bagchi said India has taken note of assessment of human rights concerns in Xinjiang by the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR).
On India’s conflict with China vis-à-vis the border, India said the situation at eastern Ladakh has not returned to the stage of full normalcy as some steps are yet to be taken for it. “Some steps are required for full normalcy.
We have not reached there,” Bagchi said, responding to the comments of Chinese envoy Sun Weidong, when he claimed that the situation in eastern Ladakh is “overall stable”.
The MEA spokesman said India has been maintaining that it expects disengagement followed by de-escalation for the return of normalcy on the border, which could pave the way for normal ties between the two neighbouring countries.
On other issues, Bagchi said that six Indian prisoners, who completed their jail terms, died in Pakistan in the last nine months and India has raised the “alarming” issue with Islamabad.
All the six, interestingly, had completed their sentences, but what we would say, were illegally detained by Pakistan
Explained Page
Nobel statement as war rages (Page no. 9)
(Miscellaneous)
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2022, awarded to a jailed Belarus civil rights activist, and a rights organisation each in Russia and Ukraine, puts the focus on Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its eighth month.
The common thread among the winners of the Prize is that they stand, directly or indirectly, against Russia or an ally of Russia.
The Nobel Committee’s choice of the winners made a statement — and it came, as Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, noted, on the 70th birthday of President Vladimir Putin.
Ales Bialiatski, who is in jail since 2021, is a vocal critic of Putin’s ally, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus. Memorial, the Russian civil rights group, was shut down by Putin, and Center for Civil Liberties is a Ukrainian rights organisation that is documenting alleged war crimes by Russia in Ukraine.
The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries. They have for many years promoted the right to criticise power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens.
They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said “[t]hrough their consistent efforts in favour of humanist values, anti-militarism and principles of law, this year’s laureates have revitalised and honoured Alfred Nobel’s vision of peace and fraternity between nations — a vision most needed in the world today”.
In 1995, Bialiatski founded the Belarus human rights group Viasna (Spring) which, according to a fund-raising page on patreon.com, “defends human rights, promotes human rights and exposes violations”.
Bialiatski has “devoted his life to promoting democracy and peaceful development in his home country”, Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
The 60-year-old activist was first jailed in 2011 for evading taxes, a charge that he has denied. He was released in 2014, before being arrested again in 2021 during mass public protests in Minsk against elections that opposition activists said had kept Lukashenko in power the previous year.
In an interview given to Reuters in November 2021, Lukashenko, the first and only President of Belarus since it became an independent country, described himself as the “last dictator of Europe”.
A close ally of Putin, Lukashenko has since the beginning of the war offered his country’s territory to Russian troops for launching attacks into Ukraine.
AtmaNirbhar in defence: In Indo-Pacific,india and others (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
India ranks fourth among 12 Indo-Pacific nations in self-reliant arms production capabilities, according to a study released this month by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a widely respected independent resource on global security. China tops the list, Japan is second, South Korea is in third place, and Pakistan is at number 8.
The study, which measures self-reliance until 2020, is based on three indicators of self reliance in each country:
Arms procurement — imports, licensed and domestic production as a proportion of the government’s total procurement of major conventional arms;
Arms industry — the study presents the five largest arms companies in each country, where data are available, ranked by sales of arms and military services in 2020 to both domestic and export customers;
Uncrewed maritime vehicles, the sea equivalent of drones — covering both uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) and uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs), meant to provide a qualitative understanding of how countries are engaging domestic research institutes and firms to produce such cutting edge systems.
The study’s choice of maritime domain was because the Indo-Pacific region is a “maritime theatre”, and most of its flashpoints involve navies.
The 12 countries in the study were selected because they have the highest military spending in the region — Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
According to the study, understanding and determining the extent of self-reliance in the Indo-Pacific region, which has several ongoing flashpoints, is crucial for trust and confidence-building among states.
This region has also seen a growing allocation by states for defence procurement. Eighteen arms manufacturing companies based in the region were ranked among the world’s largest arms companies in 2020.
In a region where tensions among neighbours are rising, this report contributes to transparency with regards to levels of self-reliance in domestic arms production, allowing for an independent assessment of the region’s respective arms industries.
Editorial Page
People in poor places (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 1, Population related issues)
Chile’s recent rejection of a draft utopian constitution — it made free housing the job of government, gave glaciers constitutional rights, legislated digital disconnection, and would have exploded government debt — was an act of considerable civic maturity.
The verdict creates optimism about the wisdom of crowds over the madness of mobs. The “Nirvana Fallacy” — a concept that compares existing, pragmatic and second-best solutions to idealistic, imperfect, and unrealistic ones — is a form of perfectionism that led to the economic decisions causing the current pain in Punjab, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Mexico, and Bolivia.
We agree that a modern state is a welfare state, but if borrowing for spending could make countries rich, then no country would be poor. State governments must sustainably create high-paying jobs by raising the productivity of five places — three are of them are not geographic.
There are no poor people, only people in poor places. An electrician moving from Kanpur to Bangalore gets three times more salary; on moving from Bangalore to Switzerland, she earns 20 times more.
The higher salaries reflect the higher productivity of the electrician’s customers in Bangalore (if every Indian lived in Bangalore, India’s GDP would be more than China’s) and Switzerland (their nine million people produce more GDP than India’s 220 million farmers).
The paper Place Premium by Harvard economist Lant Pritchett suggested global wage differences for identical workers are a policy-induced price distortion.
Extending his thinking to India, the country’s wage differentials reflect massive productivity differences between five areas — states, cities, sectors, firms, and skills. Let’s dive deeper.
States: In the next decade, more people will die than be born in Karnataka. In the next 20 years, six states in South and West India will account for almost 35 per cent of GDP growth but only 5 per cent of population growth because economic complexity breeds higher wages.
Economic complexity is like a game of scrabble — to win, you must make more, and longer words — and the government provides vowels while the private sector offers letters. States that provide more vowels — it’s unviable for employers to provide public goods — will attract more high-paying jobs.
Economy
Credit guarantee scheme for startups notified; loans up to Rs 10 cr collateral-free (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The government has notified a credit guarantee scheme for start-ups (CGSS) under which lenders will extend collateral-free loans up to Rs 10 crore to each eligible borrower.
Loans or debt facilities sanctioned to an eligible startup on or after October 6 can be covered under the scheme, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) said in a notification.
The loans will be backed by sovereign guarantee. The move is aimed at supporting startups that are hit hard by the pandemic and are now going to be impacted further by the rising interest rate scenario when liquidity is unlikely to be easily available to new entrepreneurs.