Daily Current Affairs : 6th April 2022

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

  1. Electoral Bond Scheme
  2. Weapons of mass destruction
  3. Recombinant Variant
  4. Facts for Prelims

1 . Electoral Bond Scheme


Context : Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana told advocate Prashant Bhushan that the court had wanted to take up a long-pending challenge against the government’s electoral bonds scheme, but the COVID-19 pandemic played spoilsport in the matter. Mr. Bhushan, who represents the petitioner Association for Democratic Reforms, informed the CJI that the case had been pending for a year without a hearing.

Background of the case

  • The Finance Acts, 2016 and 2017, passed as money bills set the stage for introduction of the scheme in 2018. Political parties were given the chance to raise funds from corporations, Indian and foreign. The donor details remain anonymous, as per the scheme.
  • The Association for Democratic Reforms and CPI-M challenged the scheme’s opaque nature. The petitions have been pending since 2019.

About Electoral Bonds

  • An electoral bond is like a promissory note that can be bought by any Indian citizen or company incorporated in India from select branches of State Bank of India.
  • The citizen or corporate can then donate the same to any eligible political party of his/her choice.
  • The bonds are similar to bank notes that are payable to the bearer on demand and are free of interest.
  • An individual or party will be allowed to purchase these bonds digitally or through cheque. 

When was electoral bond introduced

  • The electoral bonds were introduced with the Finance Bill (2017). On January 29, 2018 the Narendra Modi-led NDA government notified the Electoral Bond Scheme 2018. 

How to use electoral bonds

  • The bonds will be issued in multiples of Rs 1,000, Rs 10,000, Rs 100,000 and Rs 1 crore (the range of a bond is between Rs 1,000 to Rs 1 crore).
  • These will be available at some branches of SBI. A donor with a KYC-compliant account can purchase the bonds and can then donate them to the party or individual of their choice.
  • Bonds can be encashed by an eligible political party only through their bank accounts with the authorised bank. The electoral bond will be valid only for fifteen days. 
  • The bonds do not have the name of the donor or the receiving political party, and only carry a unique hidden alphanumeric serial number as an in-built security feature

When are the bonds available for purchase

  • The electoral bonds are available for purchase for 10 days in the beginning of every quarter.
  • The first 10 days of January, April, July and October has been specified by the government for purchase of electoral bonds.
  • An additional period of 30 days shall be specified by the government in the year of Lok Sabha elections. 

Electoral bonds: Conditions 

  • Any party that is registered under section 29A of the Representation of the Peoples Act, 1951 (43 of 1951) and has secured at least one per cent of the votes polled in the most recent General elections or Assembly elections is eligible to receive electoral bonds.
  • The party will be allotted a verified account by the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the electoral bond transactions can be made only through this account. 
  • The electoral bonds will not bear the name of the donor. Thus, the political party might not be aware of the donor’s identity. 

Are electoral bonds taxable

  • In February 2017, the then finance minister Arun Jaitley said that the donations would be tax deductible. Hence, a donor will get a deduction and the recipient, or the political party, will get tax exemption, provided returns are filed by the political party. 

Reasons for introduction of electoral Bonds

  • Electoral bonds were being introduced to ensure that all the donations made to a party would be accounted for in the balance sheets without exposing the donor details to the public. 
  • The government said that electoral bonds would keep a tab on the use of black money for funding elections. In the absence of electoral bonds, donors would have no option but to donate by cash after siphoning off money from their businesses, the government

Controversy over electoral bond

  • Experts are of the view that if the electoral bonds scheme had been introduced to bring about greater transparency, the government must not restrain from allowing details of such donations to be made public. 
  • Experts and several politicians say that since neither the purchaser of the bond nor the political party receiving the donation is required to disclose the donor’s identity, the shareholders of a corporation will remain unaware of the company’s contribution.
  • Voters, too, will have no idea of how, and through whom, a political party has been funded. 
  • Opponents of the electoral bond scheme argue that since the identity of the donor has been kept anonymous, it could lead to an influx of black money.
  • Some others allege that the scheme was designed to help big corporate houses donate money without their identity being revealed.
  • According to civil rights societies, the concept of donor “anonymity” threatens the very spirit of democracy. The Congress party said that the donations made through electoral bonds were equivalent to money laundering.

Restrictions that were done away with after the introduction of the electoral bond scheme 

  • Earlier, no foreign company could donate to any political party under the Companies Act
  • A firm could donate a maximum of 7.5 per cent of its average three year net profit as political donations according to Section 182 of the Companies Act 
  • As per the same section of the Act, companies had to disclose details of their political donations in their annual statement of accounts. The government moved an amendment in the Finance Bill to ensure that this proviso would not be applicable to companies in case of electoral bonds. Thus, Indian, foreign and even shell companies can now donate to political parties without having to inform anyone of the contribution. 

What does the Supreme Court have to say on electoral bonds

  • Supreme Court asked all the political parties to submit details of donations received through electoral bonds to the ECI.
  • It also asked the Finance Ministry to reduce window of purchasing electoral bonds from 10 days to five days. The apex court is yet to fix a date for hearing other pleas against the electoral bonds. 

On what grounds has the scheme been challenged in court?

  • The petitioners have stated that the Electoral Bonds Scheme has “opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate donations to political parties and anonymous financing by Indian as well as foreign companies which can have serious repercussions on the Indian democracy”.
  • The scheme, they have said, has “removed the caps on campaign donations by companies and have legalised anonymous donations”. This poses a “serious danger to the autonomy of the country and are bound to adversely affect electoral transparency, encourage corrupt practices in politics, and have made the unholy nexus between politics and corporate houses more opaque and treacherous and is bound to be misused by special interest groups and corporate lobbyists”.

The petitioners have raised four major objections:

  • Ordinary citizens will not be able to know who is donating how much money to which political party, and the bonds “increase the anonymity of political donations”.
  • The requirement to disclose in the profit and loss account the name of the political party to which a donation has been made, has also been removed.
  • With the removal of the 7.5% cap on the net profits of the last three years of a company, corporate funding has increased manifold, as there is now no limit to how much a company, including loss-making ones, can donate. This opens up the possibility of companies being brought into existence by unscrupulous elements primarily for routing funds to political parties through anonymous and opaque instruments like electoral bonds.
  • The contribution received by any eligible political party in the form of electoral bonds will be exempt from income-tax as per Section 13A of the Income Tax Act

What does the Election Commission think of electoral bonds?

  • In its affidavit to the Supreme Court filed the EC said that “any donation received by a political party through an electoral bond has been taken out of the ambit of reporting under the Contribution Report”, and if information on the money received through such bonds is not reported, “it cannot be ascertained whether the political party has taken any donation in violation of provisions” of the Representation of the People Act, which “prohibits the political parties from taking donations from government companies and foreign sources
  • The Commission also flagged the issue of laws being changed to allow political parties to receive contributions from foreign companies, which would “allow unchecked foreign funding of political parties in India which could lead to Indian policies being influenced by foreign companies”.
  • In its affidavit to the Supreme Court filed on March 25, the EC said that it had written to the Union Ministry of Law and Justice in April 2017 that “certain provisions of the Finance Act, 2017 and corresponding amendments carried out in the Income-Tax Act, the Representation of the People Act, and the Companies Act will have serious repercussions/ impact on the transparency aspect of political finance/ funding of political parties

What are the government’s arguments on these issues?

  • The government has been defending the scheme on the ground that it limits the use of cash in political funding, thus bringing more transparency, and provides a shield to donors by granting them anonymity.
  • It told the Supreme Court in its affidavit that the introduction of the scheme “has brought in a marked shift from the old electoral system which suffered from many lacunas” as “massive amounts of political donations were being made in cash, by individuals/corporates, using illicit means of funding” and identity of the donors was not known and “the ‘system’ was wholly opaque and ensured complete anonymity”.
  • It argued that “all payments made for the issuance of the electoral bonds are accepted only by means of a demand draft, cheque or through the Electronic Clearing System or direct debit to the buyers’ account”; “no black money can, therefore, be used for the purchase of these bonds”.
  • The goverment underlined that buyers must comply with KYC requirements, and the beneficiary political party has to “disclose the receipt of this money and must account for the same”. Also, limiting the time for which the bond is valid “ensures that the bonds do not become a parallel currency”.
  • According to the government, “non-disclosure of the identity of the donor is the core objective of the scheme, in order to safeguard the donor from political victimisation”, and “the records of the purchaser are always available in the banking channel and may be retrieved as and when required by enforcement agencies”.

 Reserve Bank of India on electoral bonds scheme 

  • RBI was critical of the scheme. The central bank had warned the government that the bonds would “undermine the faith in Indian banknotes and encourage money laundering.

2 . Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Amendment Bill 


Context : External Affairs Minister (EAM) S. Jaishankar introduced a Bill in the Lok Sabha that seeks to ban funding of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and empowers the Centre to freeze and seize financial assets of people involved in such activities.

About Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Amendment Bill 

  • Bill seeks to amend The Weapons of Mass Destruction and their Delivery Systems (Prohibition of Unlawful Activities) Act, 2005, to provide against the financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems in line with India’s international obligations.
  • The 2005 Act prohibited the manufacturing, transport, and transfer of weapons of mass destruction, and their means of delivery.
  • According to the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Bill, the need to amend the Act has arisen from the fact that “in recent times, regulations relating to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems by international organisations have expanded”, and “the United Nations Security Council’s targeted financial sanctions and the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force have mandated against financing of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems”.

About Weapons of Mass Destruction

  • The expression “weapon of mass destruction” (WMD) is usually considered to have been used first by the leader of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1937 to refer to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town of Guernica by German and Italian fascists in support of General Franco during the Spanish Civil War.
  • While there is no single, authoritative definition of a WMD in international law, the expression is usually understood to cover nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons. According to the United States Department of Homeland Security, “A weapon of mass destruction is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, or other device that is intended to harm a large number of people.”

India’s 2005 WMD Act defines:

  • “Biological weapons” as “microbial or other biological agents, or toxins…of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes; and weapons, equipment or delivery systems specially designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict”; and
  • “Chemical weapons” as “toxic chemicals and their precursors” except where used for peaceful, protective, and certain specified military and law enforcement purposes; “munitions and devices specifically designed to cause death or other harm through the toxic properties of those toxic chemicals”; and any equipment specifically designed for use in connection with the employment of these munitions and devices.

Control over use of WMDs

  • The use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons is regulated by a number of international treaties and agreements.
  • Geneva Protocol, 1925, banned the use of chemical and biological weapons
  • Biological Weapons Convention, 1972, and Chemical Weapons Convention, 1992, which put comprehensive bans on the biological and chemical weapons respectively.
  • India has signed and ratified both the 1972 and 1992 treaties. There are very few non-signatory countries to these treaties, even though several countries have been accused of non-compliance.
  • The use and proliferation of nuclear weapons is regulated by treaties such as Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

3 . XE Recombinant


Context : The World Health Organization (WHO) has flagged the emergence of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus — the XE recombinant. The WHO further added that the recombinant virus was detected in the U.K. on January 19 and over 600 sequences have been reported and confirmed since.

How are variants created?

  • SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is an RNA virus which evolves by accumulating genetic errors in its genome. These errors are produced when the virus infects a person and makes copies of itself inside the host’s cells.
  • These errors (otherwise called mutations) are therefore a by-product of replication of SARS-CoV-2 inside the cell and may be carried forward as the virus continues to infect people. When viruses having a specific set of errors or mutations infect a number of people, this forms a cluster of infections descending from a common parental virus genome and is known as a lineage or a variant of the virus.
  • The PANGO network, an open global consortium of researchers from across the world, provides a system for naming different lineages of SARS-CoV-2. These variants or lineages are widely followed by epidemiologists for tracking the evolution of SARS-CoV-2.

What is a recombinant variant?

  • Apart from the errors in the virus genome, another process through which a virus increases its genetic diversity is recombination. Recombination occurs when, in extremely rare situations, two different lineages of the virus co-infect the same cell in the host and exchange fragments of their individual genomes which generates a descendent variant having mutations that occurred in both the original lineages of the virus. Recombination of lineages happens in a variety of other viruses, including those that cause influenza, as well as other coronaviruses.
  • Such recombination events occur typically in situations where two or more lineages of SARS-CoV-2 may be co-circulating in a certain region during the same time period. This co-circulation of lineages provides an opportunity for recombination to occur between these two lineages of SARS-CoV-2.

How many recombinant viruses have been detected?

  • While recombination events are not frequently observed for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, multiple recombinant lineages have been designated during the pandemic. The recombinant lineages are annotated by PANGO with an ‘X’ followed by an alphabet which indicates the order of discovery. Some previously detected and designated lineages include XA, a recombinant of B.1.1.7 (Alpha) and B.1.177 detected in the U.K., lineage XB detected in the U.S., and lineage XC detected in Japan, which is a recombinant of B.1.1.7 (Alpha) and AY.29 sublineage of Delta.
  • Three new recombinant lineages of SARS-CoV-2 have been recently designated by the PANGO network and are being monitored — XD, XE, and XF.
  • Lineages XD and XF are a combination of lineages AY.4 (a sublineage of Delta) and BA.1 (Omicron), while lineage XE is a combination of Omicron lineages BA.1 and BA.2. Lineage XD, which has the Spike gene of Omicron inserted into a Delta genome, was first detected in France and Denmark.

What are the methods through which recombinants are identified?

  • Identifying and tracking recombinant lineages for SARS-CoV-2 is a challenging task. This would require specialised tools and the availability of primary (or raw) data for genome sequences as similar variant combinations could also arise from inadvertent errors in sequencing or analysis as well as contamination of sequencing experiments.
  • A cluster of recombinant genomes can be designated a lineage name by the PANGO network if it can be confirmed that samples in the cluster have a common origin and descend from two individual lineages of SARS-CoV-2.
  • Additionally, there should be at least 5 genomes in the public domain belonging to the cluster, indicating an ongoing transmission of the lineage. Furthermore, screening the sequencing data of these samples should show no signs of contamination and meet the definition of a recombinant.

4 . Facts for Prelims


Meteoroids and Meteors

  • Meteoroids are objects in space that range in size from dust grains to small asteroids. Think of them as “space rocks.”
  • When meteoroids enter Earth’s atmosphere (or that of another planet, like Mars) at high speed and burn up, the fireballs or “shooting stars” are called meteors.
  • When a meteoroid survives a trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite.

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