National Current Affairs – UPSC/IAS Exams- 26th November 2019

by Mentors4ias · November 26, 2019

Review Petition

Topic: Polity and Governance

In News: Petitioners plan to seek review of the recently delivered Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi and telecom revenue verdicts, while the Supreme Court this month agreed to review its Sabarimala verdict and refused to do so in the Rafale case.

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A judgment of the Supreme Court becomes the law of the land, according to the Constitution. It is final because it provides certainty for deciding future cases.
However, the Constitution itself gives, under Article 137, the Supreme Court the power to review any of its judgments or orders. This departure from the Supreme Court’s final authority is entertained under specific, narrow grounds.
So, when a review takes place, the law is that it is allowed not to take fresh stock of the case but to correct grave errors that have resulted in the miscarriage of justice.

On what grounds can a petitioner seek a review of an SC verdict?

In a 2013 ruling, the Supreme Court itself laid down three grounds for seeking a review of a verdict

The discovery of new and important matter or evidence which, after the exercise of due diligence, was not within the knowledge of the petitioner or could not be produced by him;
Mistake or error apparent on the face of the record;
Any other sufficient reason. In subsequent rulings, the court specified that “any sufficient reason” means a reason that is analogous to the other two grounds.

Who can file a review petition?

It is not necessary that only parties to a case can seek a review of the judgment on it. As per the Civil Procedure Code and the Supreme Court Rules, any person aggrieved by a ruling can seek a review.

Procedure the court uses to consider a review petition:

The rules state that review petitions would ordinarily be entertained without oral arguments by lawyers. It is heard “through circulation” by the judges in their chambers.
Review petitions are also heard, as far as practicable, by the same combination of judges who delivered the order or judgment that is sought to be reviewed.
If a judge has retired or is unavailable, a replacement is made keeping in mind the seniority of judges.
In exceptional cases, the court allows an oral hearing. In a 2014 case, the Supreme Court held that review petitions in all death penalty cases will be heard in open court by a Bench of three judges.
As per 1996 rules framed by the Supreme Court:
A review petition must be filed within 30 days of the date of judgment or order. While a judgment is the final decision in a case, an order is an interim ruling that is subject to its final verdict.
In certain circumstances, the court can condone a delay in filing the review petition if the petitioner can establish strong reasons that justify the delay.

What if a review petition fails?

In Roopa Hurra v Ashok Hurra (2002), the court itself evolved the concept of a curative petition, which can be heard after a review is dismissed to prevent abuse of its process. A curative petition is also entertained on very narrow grounds like a review petition, and is generally not granted an oral hearing.

Source: Indian Express

Turtle conservation through Weaving

Topic: Environment and Ecology

In News: Conservationists are utilising on Assam’s cultural icon Gamosas, white cotton towel with its characteristic red border to carry forward the message of turtle conservation, by weaving turtle images.

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About 800 women were motivated to join the conservation programme because restrictions on fishing had hit their husbands’ livelihoods.
Biswanath Wildlife Division has high biodiversity and become a part of Kaziranga National Park.
This was beneficial to species that depended on the river, but affected the income of the fishing communities drastically.
Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) which strive for the conservation efforts of turtles will sell the Kaso Sakhi-branded gamosa and other handloom products for generating revenue.
The profit generated would be put into the group’s bank account and a part of the money would also go towards conservation of rare turtles such as the Assam Roofed Turtle.

Source: Hindu

Rural Poverty – dimensional changes in in the last five years

Topic: Economy

In News: Rural poverty in India has been the subject of discussion in recent times. Various data shows improvement in the sector.

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Many acknowledge the role of pro-poor public welfare programs over the last five years for the betterment of various indicators of rural households.
There is sharp decline in chronic poverty as also multi-dimensional poverty between 2005-06 to 2015-16. Indicators like nutrition, child mortality, years of schooling, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, and assets determine multi-dimensional poverty.
The performance between 2015-16 to now has improved further due to the pro-poor public welfare thrust.

Government Efforts on improvement of Poverty Scenario:

Inflation rates have been very low, and inflation on agricultural produce even lower during the last five years.
Availability of Rs 2 per kg wheat and Rs 3 per kg rice has become a reality across the country under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), which was under implementation only in 11 states five years ago.
The public subsidy for the NFSA is as high as Rs 1.76 lakh crore every year. This means that 75 per cent rural households that get NFSA foodgrains are able to buy at much below the market price.
Last five years have been a period when public welfare programmes like rural housing, rural toilets, LPG connections under Ujjwala, electricity connections to households under Saubhagya, enrollment for bank account, accident and life insurance, have all happened on a larger scale.
Pro-poor welfare programmes often involve households contributing from their side. This is quite large in the case of rural housing (NIPFP study, 2018) as even poor households make aspirational homes, pulling together all their savings/borrowings for it.
Likewise, Swachh Bharat Mission toilets, enrolment in Ujjwala, Saubhagya, or in accident and life insurance, also draws on incomes/savings. It is bound to affect demand for goods purchased by the poor, in the short run.
The allocation for rural development programmes has gone up considerably from Rs 50,162 crore in 2012-13 to Rs 1.18 lakh crore in 2019-20. Add to this the state shares, which have increased to 60:40 instead of 75:25 or 100 per cent (in the case of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana) from the central government for non-Himalayan states.
The 14th Finance Commission’s grants to gram panchayats have been released on an unprecedented scale. The annual releases are over three to four times the previous grants. Extra budgetary resources (EBRs) have also been mobilised for the housing programme.

Reasons for Improvement in Financial Resources:

Works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have continued to be in demand even though the wage rates fixed every year on the basis of the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labour (CPI-AL) have grown modestly on account of the cheap price of foodgrains.
Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihood Mission (DAY-NRLM) programme under which over Rs 2,12,000 crore has been provided as loans in the last five years.
Interestingly, NPA has come down from over 7 per cent in 2013-14 to barely 2.2 per cent in 2018-19, clearly establishing that DAY-NRLM SHG women borrow and return on time.
Significant and diverse livelihoods have been generated through such loans leading to higher incomes, more productive assets, and larger number of village enterprises (IRMA study on DAY-NRLM, 2018).
The improvement in rural road connectivity has also been a significant development of this period, leading to 97 per cent eligible and feasible habitations as per the 2001 Census getting all weather road connectivity.
Significant increase in individual beneficiary schemes like farm ponds, dug wells, animal sheds, vermi-composting etc under the MGNREGS which have all gone into creating durable assets and providing opportunities for higher incomes (IEG study, 2018).
More than 18 lakh individual farm ponds, 10 lakh vermi-compost, 7 lakh animal sheds, etc have come up in this period. Over 15 million hectares of land has benefited from water conservation works.

Conclusion:

The larger labour force available for the MGNREGA reflects the unwillingness of a rural household with better infrastructure to go in for a distress migration with very low incomes in urban areas.
While a lot more needs to be done to improve livelihoods in rural areas, the last five years have witnessed an unprecedented pace in improving the ease of living of very poor households through public welfare programmes reaching them through better identification through the Socio Economic Census (SECC 2011), IT/DBT, geo-tagging, improved financial management and governance reforms.

Model Mains Question: Comment on Government’s Efforts on reducing the number of multidimensional poor across India.

Source: Indian Express

‘Milan 2020’

Topic: Defense Sector Cooperation

In News: Indian Navy will be hosting military drill called ‘Milan 2020’ at Visakhapatnam in March 2020 which will witness the participation of several countries.

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The MILAN series of biennial exercises commenced in 1995. It was conducted at Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) until last year, is being conducted for the first time on mainland at Eastern Naval Command(ENC) with increased scope and complexity of the Exercise.
The government pursues cooperation initiatives with friendly foreign countries, including in Indian Ocean Region (IOR), through structured interactions such as Empowered Steering Group and Staff Talks.
The areas of cooperation include capacity building, training, operational exercise marine domain awareness, hydrography, technical assistance.
41 nations from South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe that share defence cooperation with India have been invited for the drill.
These include- Indonesia, Maldives, Australia, Somalia, Kenya, Mozambique, Sudan, Qatar, Thailand, Malaysia, , Egypt, France, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Myanmar, New Zealand, USA, Israel, Tanzania, Comoros, Seychelles Brunei, Philippines, Japan, UK, Madagascar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Mauritius, Cambodia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Kuwait, Iran, Russia, Djibouti, Bahrain, UAE, Eritrea and Bangladesh.

Source: Hindu

Reservation for Disabled in Panchayats

Topic: Social Justice

In News: The Chhattisgarh Cabinet has approved an amendment to the State Panchayati Raj Act, 1993, which makes mandatory the presence of a person with disabilities in all panchayats across the state.

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If differently abled members are not elected through the electoral process, then one member, either male or female, would be nominated by the government.
Chhattisgarh will be the only State to have Persons with Disabilities (PwD) as members in all panchayats. It needs to be noted that there is no such quota for the disabled community in the elections to the central, state legislative assemblies and Panchayats (in general).
The State government would also nominate two such members, one male and one female, to Janpads and Zilla Panchayats.

Provisions for Disabled in india:

Article 41 of the Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP) states that State shall make effective provision for securing right to work, to education and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement, within the limits of its economic capacity and development.
The subject of ‘relief of the disabled and unemployable’ is constituted in the State List of the Seventh Schedule of the constitution.
The Right of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 provides reservation of 4% in government jobs and 5% in higher education institutes.

Source: Hindu

Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS)

Topic: International Affairs

In News: The Plenary meeting of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) was hosted by India recently.

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The Kimberley Process is an international certification scheme that regulates trade in rough diamonds. It aims to prevent the flow of conflict diamonds, while helping to protect legitimate trade in rough diamonds.
In 1998, certain rebel movements in Africa (Sierra Leone, Angola, D.R. of Congo, Liberia) were selling, among other things, illegally obtained diamonds known as conflict diamonds to fund their wars against legitimate governments.
With a view to find ways to stop trade in conflict diamonds, world’s diamond industry, United Nations, Governments and leading NGOs came together and the KPCS came to into effect from 1st January, 2003 and evolved into an effective mechanism for stopping the trade in conflict diamonds.
The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) outlines the rules that govern the trade in rough diamonds. The KPCS has developed a set of minimum requirements that each participant must meet.
The KP is not an international organization. It has no permanent offices or permanent staff. It relies on the contributions under the principle of ‘burden-sharing’ of participants, supported by industry and civil society observers.
Neither can the KP be considered as an international agreement from a legal perspective, as it is implemented through the national legislations of its participants.
The Kimberley Process (KP) participants are states and regional economic integration organizations that are eligible to trade in rough diamonds.
India is a founding member of KP.
India has been actively involved in the development of KP as an important protocol in trade of diamonds which has ensured that 99.8% of the diamonds in the world are conflict free.