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In a setback to the Centre’s case against Khalistan separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the Interpol has rejected India’s second request to issue a Red Corner Notice on terror charges against the Canada-based founder and legal advisor of pro-Khalistan outfit Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), stating that Indian authorities failed to provide sufficient information to support their case.
Sources said the Interpol also flagged that UAPA, under which the red corner was asked for, has been criticised for being “misused” to target minority groups and rights activists without “respecting” their right to due process and a fair trial.
The sources, however, said Interpol acknowledged that Pannun is a “high-profile Sikh separatist” and that SFJ is a group that calls for an independent Khalistan.
Yet, they said, it concluded that Pannun’s activities have a “clear political dimension”, which cannot be the subject of a Red Corner Notice according to Interpol’s Constitution.
Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files conveyed its decision to India in August after ruling on an application filed by Pannun on India’s request and after evaluating the response from Indian authorities.
During a session held in June-end, sources said, the Commission concluded that “insufficient information” has been provided by India’s National Central Bureau (NCB) to show the “terrorist nature of the crime” and Pannun’s “possible active and meaningful involvement in terrorist activities”.
The NCB functions under the CBI, and processes and coordinates Red Corner Notice requests for Indian law enforcement agencies. In Pannun’s case, the request for a Red Corner Notice was made on May 21, 2021, by the NCB on behalf of the National Investigation Agency (NIA). The SJF has been banned by India.
The Indian Express asked the NIA about the Interpol move but the agency spokesperson was unavailable for comment.
In its submission to the Interpol Commission on Pannun’s application, sources said, India cited an arrest warrant issued against Pannun by a Special NIA Court in Mohali on February 3, 2021.
Detailing the case, it stated that the NIA’s investigation “established” that Pannun “recruited”, “radicalised” and “tasked” other accused through an associate identified as Nihal Singh alias Fateh Singh on social media platforms to carry out “terror acts”.
According to sources, India told the Commission that these acts included “killing of prominent Indian leaders, burning of business installations, procuring weapons for carrying out terror acts” and “recruitment” in their “terror gang”.
These acts, India is learnt to have submitted, were “funded from abroad” by Pannun “through his proxies” by various modes of money transfer.
CJI names Justice Chandrachud, most senior judge, as successor (Page no. 3)
(GS Paper 2, Polity and Governance)
Clearing the decks for the appointment of the 50th Chief Justice of India, CJI U ULalit recommended the name of Justice D Y Chandrachud, the second most senior judge of the Supreme Court, as his successor.
If approved by the government, Justice Chandrachud will have a tenure of two years as CJI. His father, Y V Chandrachud, too served as the CJI and had a stint of over 7 years.
At a gathering of Supreme Court judges Tuesday morning, CJI Lalit, who is due to retire on November 8, handed over a copy of the recommendation letter to Justice Chandrachud.
Last week, the government had written to the CJI, requesting him to name his successor. The oath-taking for the next CJI will take place on November 9.
CJI Lalit is serving a tenure of under three months in office. Justice Chandrachud will be in office for two years — until November 10, 2024.
A law graduate from Delhi University, Justice Chandrachud went on to obtain his LL.M degree and a Doctor of Juridical Science from the Harvard Law School.
He practised law at the Supreme Court and the Bombay High Court and was designated a Senior Advocate by the Bombay High Court in June 1998.
He served as Additional Solicitor General from 1998 until he was appointed as a judge of the Bombay High Court on March 29, 2000. He was also Director of the Maharashtra Judicial Academy.
Justice Chandrachud took over as Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court on October 31, 2013, and was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court on May 13, 2016.
During his tenure in the Supreme Court, Justice Chandrachud penned some very important judgments.In the landmark ruling on Justice K S Puttaswamy (retd) &Another vs Union of India & Others, a nine-judge bench that included him recognised privacy as a fundamental right.
Subsequently, as part of a five-judge bench, he dealt with the constitutional validity of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016. While the majority upheld the Act, Justice Chandrachud held it had been passed unconstitutionally as a Money Bill.
Govt. and Politics
Shah in JP village:Nitish with congress in his lust for power (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 1, Significant Personalities)
Taking a swipe at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, a former NDA ally, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said that those who claim to be followers of socialist icon Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly called JP, are sitting with the Congress in their “lust for power”.
Addressing a crowd on the occasion of 120th birth anniversary of JP, Shah said, without naming Nitish, “One who has changed political alliance five times is CM of Bihar.
The people will decide whether they want BJP, which follows the ideals of JP, or those who have strayed from the path shown by JP in their lust for power.
Shah unveiled a 15-foot statue of the socialist icon and inaugurated the building of “Jayprabha national memorial” at his birthplace. The memorial, built at a cost of Rs 4.7 crore, retains the main part of JP’s ancestral house.
Shah said, “JP had given the slogan Total Revolution but the Congress never tried to realise it. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made that slogan successful.” He maintained that Modi has “lived up to that slogan by integrating Sarvodaya with Antyodaya”.
As part of his opposition to the Emergency declared in 1975, JP had given the call for “Total Revolution” against the then Indira Gandhi government.
Forty-three years after his death, both BJP and leaders of the erstwhile Janata parivar leave no stone unturned to appropriate the legacy of Lok Narayan Jayaprakash Narayan.
The BJP wants to outdo Nitish Kumar in terms of symbolism by constructing a national memorial, while the Nitish-led state government has been able to set up a library. The BJP wants to co-opt JP's legacy at the expense of Nitish and Lalu Prasad, who claim to be true followers of his socialist ideology.
Addressing a rally, Shah said, “The decision to install JP’s statue was taken by the (Union) Cabinet at the Prime Minister’s initiative.
Punjab’s AAP government sought resumption of trade ties with Pakistan (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
The AamAadmi Party-led Punjab government has demanded resumption of trade with Pakistan, which was suspended by Islamabad on August 7, 2019 – two days after the government decided to abrogate Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).
The demand was raised by Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal, Punjab Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, during the National Conference of State Agriculture & Horticulture Ministers in Bengaluru on July 14-15 this year.
The minutes of the conference — organised by the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and held under the chairmanship of Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar – were circulated to all Agriculture Production Commissioners (APCs), principal secretaries and directors of agriculture of all states and Union territories recently.
The records of the discussions show that among various issues, Dhaliwal raised the demand for resumption of bilateral trade with Pakistan.
He requested that the trade with Pakistan should be reopened,” state the records. Besides Punjab, no other state raised this demand, according to the records.
The records further show that the Punjab government’s demand for resumption of trade with Pakistan was included n the list of “action points emerging out of the discussion with the state governments” prepared after the conference.
This list of “action points” has also been circulated, along with the minutes of the conference. Dhaliwal’s other requests like providing support in agriculture input in border areas (14,000 acres), allocation of Rs 1,000 crore for cold storage for vegetables, financial support for stopping stubble burning, farm loan waiver, funds for agriculture university and financial assistance for improving groundwater levels have also been included in the action points.
Normal bilateral trade between India and Pakistan remains suspended for over three years now. In the wake of India’s decision to abrogate Article 370 in J&K on August 5, 2019, Pakistan, as part of its “unilateral measures”, had suspended bilateral trade with India on August 7, 2019. It later softened its stand, allowing trade in a limited number of items.
Earlier, India had withdrawn the Most Favoured Nation status to Pakistan on February 15, 2019, a day after the terror attack in Pulwama in which 40 security personnel were killed. India also hiked customs duty on exports from Pakistan to 200 per cent on February 16, 2019.
Idea Page
Misdiagnosis of NPA (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Indian banking system faced a significant challenge after 2011 with an increasing quantum of non-performing assets (NPAs).
By the late 2000s, NPAs (as a percentage of gross advances) had decreased to less than 3.5 per cent. The downward trend, however, did not continue as NPAs began to rise in 2011 and peaked at 11.18 per cent in the fiscal year that ended in 2018.
As expected, this rise occurred with the deterioration of the balance sheets of non-financial firms, and this twin balance sheet crisis contributed significantly to the deceleration of growth in the late 2010s.
It has been argued as a problem that the problem relates to public sector banks because they have a disproportionate share of NPAs.
Poor management and governance issues in such banks stemming from government ownership have been cited as the major causes of the crisis.
But government ownership does not explain the improvement in performance that public sector banks saw throughout the 2000s.
It is improbable that governance improved suddenly and dwindled subsequently. Moreover, most of these NPAs arose due to defaults by private sector non-financial firms, making it even more difficult to accept the blame that’s been put on governance issues. Since this narrative is simple and easier to communicate, it has stymied systematic scientific research in the area.
Most importantly, the difference in the business models of public and private sector banks has not received due attention. At the beginning of the 2010s, public sector banks had significantly higher exposure (per cent of total loans) to commodity-sensitive sectors such as iron and steel and textiles compared to private sector banks. A careful examination of the data gives overwhelming evidence that a large fraction of the difference between NPAs in the public and private sector banks arose due to differences in their business models.
Explained Page
Principle of seniority and next CJI Chandrachud’s ‘5+1’ collegium (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
Chief Justice of India (CJI) U ULalit has written to the government recommending his successor in the post, and as per the convention of seniority, Justice D Y Chandrachud will take over as the next CJI on November 9.
During Justice Chandrachud’s two-year tenure, the collegium he will head will potentially make as many as 18 recommendations for appointment of judges to the Supreme Court. It will be an unusual collegium: instead of five members, it will have six. This is how.
The collegium system of appointing judges evolved through three significant verdicts of the Supreme Court, known as the First, Second, and Third Judges Cases.
The Constitution of India does not mention the collegium system; however, these three cases established that the collegium headed by the Chief Justice of India will have primacy in the appointment of judges to the higher judiciary.
The Supreme Court collegium is headed by the CJI and comprises four other senior-most judges of the court. This collegium makes recommendations to the government for appointment of judges to the SC and of Chief Justices of High Courts, and the transfers of HC judges.
A separate three-member collegium, headed by the CJI and comprising the two senior-most judges of the SC makes recommendations for appointment of judges to HCs.
First Judges Case: In S P Gupta v Union of India (1981), a seven-judge Bench gave the Executive the last word on the appointment of judges. Interpreting Articles 124(2) and 217(1) of the Constitution, which deal with the appointments of judges to the SC and the HCs respectively, the SC ruled that the government can disagree with the CJI for “cogent reasons”.
Second Judges Case: In 1993, a nine-judge Bench examined the correctness of the 1981 verdict, and reversed it. The ruling held that the word “consultation” actually meant “concurrence” of the CJI.
It also said that the CJI would make decisions along with two senior-most judges of the court, who would form the collegium.
Third Judges Case: In 1998, a reference was made by then President K R Narayanan seeking the SC’s opinion in its advisory jurisdiction on whether the primacy given to the CJI on appointments was legally sound.
The SC reiterated its decision of 1993, but brought more senior judges to the collegium, increasing its strength from three to five judges.
The lingering monsoon (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 1, Geography)
Incessant rain over Delhi and several other parts of North and Northwest India over the last few days provide further evidence of the shifting patterns in monsoon activity over the Indian subcontinent.
Not only has monsoon rainfall become more erratic — fewer rainy days but more intense rain — the monsoon season, earlier confined neatly to the four-month June-September period, is clearly spilling over into October now.
This has been officially recognised. Three years ago, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had revised the expected dates of onset and withdrawal of the monsoon for several regions of the country.
The withdrawal dates for North, Northwest and Central India were pushed back by one to two weeks to account for the trends witnessed over the last 50 years.
Thus, the October rainfall over North India of the kind that happened over the last few days should no longer surprise anyone. It should in fact, be increasingly seen as the norm rather than an exception.
People will have to get used to it. These are not freak events. We are likely to see these happening in the coming years as well”, Ministry of Earth Sciences, said about the October rainfall over North and Northwest India.
Delhi and its surrounding areas had received pretty good rainfall in October 2021 as well — so much so that Delhi had its fourth wettest October of the last 120 years.
Considering the huge amounts of rain that have fallen in the first 10 days of this month — eight times more than the normal — this October could turn out to be even wetter than last year’s.
In any case, rainfall in October — after the traditional date of withdrawal of the southwest monsoon — isn’t entirely unheard of.
It has happened in several previous years as well. But the rain in those years was mostly caused by different, often local, atmospheric phenomena.
What is being witnessed in more recent years is a clear prolongation of the monsoon season. As such, the nature of rainfall is very different — it is not a short-duration heavy downpour, but sustained rain over a few days.
Iranian Kurds (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, International Relations)
Nationwide protests over the death of a young Iranian Kurdish woman in the custody of Iran’s morality police have been at their most intense in the northwestern areas where the majority of the country’s 10 million Kurds live.
The protests, now in their fourth week as demonstrators defy a crackdown by security forces, pose the biggest challenge to Iran’s clerical rulers in years.
The demonstrations began in reaction to the death of 22-year-old MahsaAmini and then spread to every one of Iran’s 31 provinces.
The death of the ethnic Kurd raised tensions between the establishment and Iran’s Kurdish minority, which human rights groups say have been long oppressed by Iran’s leadership. The Islamic Republic denies persecuting Kurds.
Tehran has blamed Kurdish dissident groups and foreign enemies for fomenting some of the protests, and its armed forces responded to the turmoil by striking Iranian Kurdish opposition groups inside neighbouring Iraq.
The elite Revolutionary Guards have put down unrest in the Kurdish community for decades, and the country’s judiciary has sentenced many activists to long jail terms or death.
Here are some facts about Iran’s Kurds, part of a community that is spread across several Middle East countries and one of the world’s largest people without a state.
Minority Kurds, mainly Sunni Muslims in Shi’ite-dominated Iran, speak a language related to Farsi and live mostly in a mountainous region straddling the borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
Kurdish nationalism stirred in the 1890s when the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which imposed a settlement and colonial carve-up of Turkey after World War One, promised Kurds independence. Three years later, Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk tore up that accord.
The Treaty of Lausanne, ratified in 1924, divided the Kurds among the new nations of the Middle East.Kurdish separatism in Iran first bubbled to the surface with the 1946 Republic of Mahabad, a Soviet-backed state stretching over Iran’s border with Turkey and Iraq. It lasted one year before the central government wrested back control.
Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution touched off bloodshed in its Kurdistan region with heavy clashes between the Shi’ite revolutionaries and the Kurdish Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) which fought for independence.
Economy
IMF cuts India’s FY23 growth forecast to 6.8% (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 2/3, International Institutions /Economy)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday trimmed its FY23 growth forecast for India by 60 basis points from its July projection of 7.4 per cent to 6.8 per cent, its steepest cut for any major economy barring the US.
IMF’s move follows the World Bank slashing its FY23 growth projection for India to 6.5 per cent last week, from 7.5 per cent predicted earlier.
Most other agencies, too, have been lowering their India forecast in recent weeks. The Reserve Bank of India also recently cut its projection modestly from 7.2 per cent to 7 per cent.
The IMF stated that the move reflects “a weaker-than-expected outturn” in the June quarter and “more subdued external demand”, indicating that exports will be hit. However, it retained its FY24 growth forecast at 6.1 per cent.
The IMF has kept unchanged its 2022 growth projection for the global economy at 3.2 per cent but scaled down the 2023 projection by 20 basis points from the July forecast to 2.7 per cent.
In its latest World Economic Outlook, the multilateral body said: “As storm clouds gather, policymakers need to keep a steady hand.
The global economy continues to face steep challenges, shaped by the lingering effects of three powerful forces: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a cost-of-living crisis caused by persistent and broadening inflation pressures, and the slowdown in China.”
The revised forecasts for India follow weaker-than-expected 13.5 per cent growth in the June quarter and growing external headwinds, particularly the tightening of interest rates by key central banks. Nevertheless, India will continue to remain the world’s fastest-growing economy.
ONDC beta testing likely in Delhi: How does the system work? (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which is a government-backed project aimed at enabling small merchants and mom-and-pop stores in parts of the country to access processes and technologies that are typically deployed by large e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart, is expected to extend beta testing in Delhi after having commenced services in Bengaluru.
It is an initiative aimed at promoting open networks for all aspects of exchange of goods and services over digital or electronic networks.
ONDC is to be based on open-sourced methodology, using open specifications and open network protocols independent of any specific platform. It is being developed as a counter to the current stranglehold of two big players in the Indian e-commerce market, which is largely dictated by Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart.
In May this year, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) went live with a test run of ONDC in cities like Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Bhopal, and Shillong where it plans to onboard 150 sellers. On September 30, the services launched across 16 pin codes in Bengaluru.
According to reports, ONDC is expected to expand beta testing into areas with strong delivery and logistics footprint of its network participants, as well as the capacities of these logistics players that can be deployed. Further, the segments to be launched initially are expected to be electronics, home decoration and fashion.
The ONDC platform lies in the middle of the interfaces hosting the buyers and the sellers. So far, the buyer side interface is being hosted by Paytm, whereas the seller side interface is being hosted by other players like GoFrugal, etc.
When a buyer searches for an item on the Paytm app, from where ONDC has gone live, the app will connect to the ONDC platform, which will connect it to seller side interfaces that will list all the companies from where you can buy the particular item.
On ONDC, there will be several other backend partners such as logistics service providers, enterprise resource planners, e-commerce store hosting service providers, etc.