Daily Current Affairs 20th and 21st October

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 (2013 Act)
2. PLETHORA 2 (PLT 2) 
3. Definition of land as forest
4. IMF Quotas
5. IPC
6. Anthrax
7. Facts for Prelims : Trilobites, Gale Crater,Unnati

1 . Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013 Act

Context : At one level it is a legal issue over the interpretation of a provision in the new land acquisition law of 2013. At another, it is a question of possible judicial bias warranting the withdrawal of a judge from the proceedings

Main Features of the 2013 Act

• Consent: For government projects, no consent is required while consent of 70 per cent of landowners is required for Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects and 80 per cent for private projects.
• Social Impact Assessment: In the case of a land acquisition (irrespective of the ownership of project), Social Impact Assessment is necessary unless and until there is an urgency. If the project is for irrigation, then Environmental Impact Assessment is required.
• Irrigated multi-cropped land: In case the land in question is irrigated multi-cropped, it cannot be acquired beyond a limit specified by the state government.
• Safeguards: State Governments have to set up dispute settlement Chairman and he should be a district judge or practising as a lawyer for 7 years. The Act also has provision for the establishment of Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Authority for speedy disposal of disputes.
• Return of land: If the project doesn’t start in 5 years, the land acquired under the Act has to be returned to the original owner or the land bank.
• The provisions of this Bill shall not apply to acquisitions under 16 existing legislations including the Special Economic Zones Act, 2005, the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, the Railways Act, 1989, etc.
• Compensation
  • Compensation varies with the market rates. In the case of rural area, it is four times the market rate and for an urban area, it is two times. Affected artisans, small traders, fisherman etc. by the land acquisition are given one-time payment even if they do not own any land.
  • There is also provision for rehabilitation and resettlement award which includes employment to one member of an affected family.
  • If Government acquires the lands for a private company, the said private company will be responsible for relief and rehabilitation of the affected people along with an additional rehabilitation package for SC/ST owners.
  • If such fertile land is acquired, the Government will have to develop an equal size of wasteland for agriculture purpose.
  • In case someone is not satisfied with an award under the Act, they can approach the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Authority.

About Section 24 (2)

• Under Section 24(2), land acquisition made under the old law of 1894 lapses if the award of compensation had been made five years before the new Act came into force, but has not been paid.
• In such cases, the process will have to be gone through afresh under the new Act, which mandates higher compensation.
• There are cases in which farmers and other land-owners have refused the compensation, leading to delay in the government taking possession.
• In this situation, the compensation amount is deposited in the government treasury.
• According to one interpretation, if this is done, the acquisition process is saved. Then again, others contend that such cases will fall under the new Act because compensation has not been paid to the land-owners, and the lapsing clause in Section 24 should be applied.

Supreme Court Judgement in previous cases

• In 2014, a three-judge Bench, comprising Justices R.M. Lodha, Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph, in Pune Municipal Corporation vs. Harakchand M. Solanki, ruled that the acquisition of a piece of land had “lapsed” because the compensation awarded had neither been paid to the landowners/persons interested nor deposited in the court.
• The same question arose in Indore Development Authority vs. Shailendra. Another three-judge Bench, comprising Justice Arun Mishra, A.K. Goel and M.M. Shantanagoudar, did not accept the earlier Bench’s view. The majority, consisting of the first two judges, ruled that the acquisition would not lapse merely because the compensation amount was not deposited in court, but was instead deposited in the treasury. It ruled that the past practice of more than a century, under which the amount was deposited in the treasury, was not taken into account by the earlier Bench. Some provisions and orders that allowed this practice were not placed before that Bench. Further, the land acquisition in that particular case had been quashed by a High Court in 2008. Since it was not a subsisting process, the question under Section 24(2), whether the acquisition lapsed because of non-payment of compensation or non-deposit in the court, did not arise at all. On these grounds, Justice Mishra and Justice Goel overruled the earlier judgment
• Later, when another case came up before a Bench on which Justices Lokur and Joseph were members, the fact that their earlier judgment had been overruled was brought to their notice. Lawyers appearing before them argued that Justice Mishra’s Bench, being of the same size of the one that rendered the earlier verdict, was bound by it, and ought not to have overruled it. In case, it disagreed with the earlier view, it could have referred the matter to a larger Bench.
• The court, then, put on hold all hearings involving Section 24(2). Later, the question was referred to a larger Bench for an authoritative judgment.

Advantages to Project Proponents and Land owners

• A ruling that old acquisitions lapse for non-deposit of compensation will be more beneficial to land-owners and farmers as they stand to get higher compensation and rehabilitation and resettlement measures.
• On the other hand, project proponents feel such an interpretation would mean that those who refused to take compensation, even after it had been fixed and the money deposited in the government treasury, would be taking advantage of their own wrong.

Current Issue

• Current five-member Bench is headed by Justice Mishra.
• Some lawyers and parties commented that it was improper for the judge to hear this matter because he had already taken a firm view in favour of one interpretation.
• Senior lawyer Shyam Divan demanded Justice Mishra’s recusal in open court, invoking the principle that even the apprehension of bias on the part of a judge was enough to ask for his withdrawal from a case.
• The judge, however, rejected the idea categorically, contending that a “lobby” was against his hearing the case.
• In oral observations, he said there was nothing to suggest that he would be unwilling to be persuaded by new arguments to take a fresh view of the legal questions. Also, he said this question has arisen in many cases, and many judges now in the Supreme Court would have dealt with it as High Court judges.
• However, arguments on the issue of bias and the principles of recusal went on for two weeks, and the court has reserved its order on this question.

Recusal of a Judge

• The Constitution vests a lot of power and certain amount of immunity in judges. Fairness and impartiality are the fundamental qualities to be possessed by a judge. In India, for the vast majority of cases, there are no reports of having been heard by a partial and unfair judge but there are instances where the contrary happens.
• Once it appears to the judge that he cannot deliver justice in an impartial manner, ethically he is expected to recuse.
• The right to recuse is given to the discretion of the judges.
• In one of the landmark cases, Ashok Kumar Yadav v. State of Haryana, the Supreme Court tried to explain the reasons behind recusal. Rather than leaving it to the absolute discretion of the judges, the likelihood of bias was focused on. If there is a reasonable chance for the judge to be biased, the judge is supposed to recuse himself. This stems up from the principle laid down by Lord Hewart CJ in the case of R v Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy “Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done”. In general, the Indian judiciary has followed this principle and even in case of recusal, the judiciary has recommended itself to follow this.

2 . PLETHORA 2 (PLT 2) 

Context : An international team of researchers lead by Prof. Kalika Prasad, from the School of Biology at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Thiruvananthapuram has pointed out that a protein called PLETHORA 2 (PLT 2) was the essential ingredient for primary and lateral root regeneration.

Key Findings

• Researchers studied a road-side plant of the mustard family and noticed that within eight hours of cutting its root tip, a high build-up of the protein at the site of damage.
• Using real-time live imaging the team was able to track the behaviour of the protein and found that the protein was distributed in the form of a gradient with the highest concentration in the root tip.
• The team also noted that the entire plant root was not competent to regenerate and it was confined only to the tip of the root.
• They then demonstrated that by delivering the PLT2 protein, regeneration can be triggered even from non-competent root cells, which have long ago ceased to divide.
• They add that the protein works only at the right dose and exposure beyond the threshold was found to reduce the regeneration potential.

Agricultural benefits

• This regeneration is of immense importance to agronomically important plant species like carrot, radish or beetroot, in which the edible part is the primary root.
• Similar to other plants, these crops encounter damage to their primary root tips during growth and PLT2 protein can enable quick regeneration in such cases
• During the early stages of plant growth, the plant relies only on the primary root and any damage if not regenerated will halt the further growth of the root, which can prove very detrimental to the plant. The newly identified protein can be used to address these issues.
• Aerial organs such as leaves and stems often encounter injuries and their quick repair is essential for the survival of plants. Interestingly, members of the PLETHORA proteins are known to repair such damages and allow the plant to restore their growth.

3 . Definition of land as forest

Definition of Forest

• The freedom to define land, not already classified as forests by the Centre or state records, as forest has been the prerogative of the States since 1996 and stems from a Supreme Court order called the Godavarman judgement.
• The 1996 Supreme Court judgement expanded the definition of forest to include lands that were already notified by the Centre as forests, that appear in government records as forests as well as those that fell in the “dictionary definition” of forest.
• The latter clause allows the States to evolve their own criteria and define tracts of land as forest, and these would then be bound by forest conservation laws.

Issues in the definition

• Not all States have submitted such criteria. Forests defined under this criteriaconstituted about 1% of the country’s forests and once so defined would be known as ‘deemed forests.’
• An all-encompassing definition of ‘forest’ wasn’t possible for India because the country had 16 different kinds of forest. A tract of grassland in one State might qualify in one region as forest, but not in another. However, once a State applied a criteria, it couldn’t be reversed.
• The onus on the States to define forests is also significant, because the States often claim that they are helpless in preventing encroachment because a patch of land in question hadn’t been notified as forest.

What the FAC clarified

• As per the FAC States need not take the Centre’s approval to define what constitutes unclassified land as forest

About FAC

• The Forest Advisory Committee is a key statutory body which considers questions on the diversion of forest land for non-forest uses such as mining, industrial projects, townships and advises the government on the issue of granting forest clearances.
• While its role is advisory, the It comprises official members, including the top bosses of the forest bureaucracy and three independent experts, who are the non-official members. The decision to balance the Committee with a mix of official and independent experts was arrived at after a long drawn out stand off between the ministry, the Central Empowered Committee and the Supreme Court.

4 . IMF Quotas

Context : International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to maintain its funding at $ 1 trillion but postponed changes to its voting structure.

About the deal

• The deal is a compromise with the U.S., the Fund’s largest shareholder, which has resisted changes to the organisation’s voting structure as well as increases in its permanent resource base.
• Deal will allow an extension of non-permanent, supplementary sources of funds — such as the New Arrangement to Borrow (NAB), a renewable funding mechanism that has existed since 1998, and bilateral borrowings from countries — the IMF had entered into after the 2008 financial crisis to increase its lending ability.
• The agreement extended the bilateral borrowing facility by a year —to the end of 2020 — and a potential doubling of the NAB.
• Agreed package will leave IMF quotas (the primary source of IMF funds), which determine voting shares, unchanged.

About IMF Quotas

• Quota subscriptions are central to the IMF’s financial resources. Each member country of the IMF is assigned a quota, based broadly on its relative position in the world economy. A member country’s quota determines its maximum financial commitment to the IMF, its voting power, and has a bearing on its access to IMF financing.
• When a country joins the IMF, it is assigned an initial quota in the same range as the quotas of existing members of broadly comparable economic size and characteristics. The IMF uses a quota formula to help assess a member’s relative position.
• The current quota formula is a weighted average of GDP (weight of 50 percent), openness (30 percent), economic variability (15 percent), and international reserves (5 percent).
• For this purpose, GDP is measured through a blend of GDP—based on market exchange rates (weight of 60 percent) and on PPP exchange rates (40 percent). The formula also includes a “compression factor” that reduces the dispersion in calculated quota shares across members.

Importance of Quotas

• Subscriptions : A member’s quota subscription determines the maximum amount of financial resources the member is obliged to provide to the IMF. A member must pay its subscription in full upon joining the IMF: up to 25 percent must be paid in SDRs or foreign currencies acceptable to the IMF (such as the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi, the Japanese yen, or the British pound sterling), while the rest is paid in the member’s own currency.
• Voting power : The quota largely determines a member’s voting power in IMF decisions. Each IMF member’s votes are comprised of basic votes plus one additional vote for each SDR100,000 of quota. The 2008 reforms fixed the number of basic votes at 5.502 percent of total votes. The current share of basic votes in total votes represents close to a tripling of their share prior to the implementation of the 2008 reforms.
• Access to financing : The amount of financing a member can obtain from the IMF (its access limit) is based on its quota. For example, under Stand-By and Extended Arrangements, a member can borrow up to 145 percent of its quota annually and 435 percent cumulatively. However, access may be higher in exceptional circumstances.
• SDR Allocations : Quotas determine a member’s share in a general allocation of SDRs.

Quota Review

• The IMF’s Board of Governors conducts general quota reviews at regular intervals (no more than five years).
• Any changes in quotas must be approved by an 85 percent majority of the total voting power, and a member’s own quota cannot be changed without its consent.
• Two main issues addressed in a general quota review are the size of an overall quota increase and the distribution of the increase among the members.  

Quota Reforms

• Higher IMF quota simply means more voting rights and borrowing permissions under IMF. But it is unfortunate that formula is designed in such a way that USA itself has 17.46% quota which is higher than cumulative of several countries.
• Some countries are over represented in the IMF and that’s why emerging countries are against this quota scheme of IMF.
• Some IMF members have become frustrated with the pace of governance reforms, as the balance of economic and geopolitical power has shifted, becoming more dispersed across the world, particularly with the emergence of China and India — among the world’s largest and fastest growing economies.
• India’s quota is 2.76% and China’s is 6.41%, while the U.S.’s quota is 17.46 % (translates to a vote share of 16.52%) giving it a unique veto power over crucial decisions at the IMF, many of which require a supermajority of 85%.
• The U.S. has resisted diluting its share, wary that it will benefit countries such as China.
• Quotas are supposed to be reviewed every five years although these reviews can be delayed — as was the case with the 14th review. That process, completed in 2010, needed approval of the U.S. Congress, and it was not closed out till early 2016. The review’s outcomes included a doubling of the quota total and a shift in some voting rights to under-represented and emerging market countries. India’s vote share increased marginally.

5 . Indian Penal Code

Context : The Home Ministry is all set to overhaul the Indian Penal Code (IPC) designed by the British. A senior government official said rebooting the code introduced by the British in 1860 was necessary as it is primarily based on the spirit of “master and servant.”

Historical Background Position of Law

• Indian history reveals that since from ancient times the position of the law of crime was already in existence. The ancient Hindu law as laid down in Smritis, the code of Manu and Yajnavalka the commentaries by Narada, Vyas, Brahaspati and Katyayana gives detailed study on account of law of wrongs, both civil and criminal.
• Manu has described the entire scheme of civil and criminal law he also classified offences like an assault, defamation, theft, robbery trespass.
• In Indian Criminal justice system has no scope for private vengeance or retaliation. In the authoritative text of Dharma-shastras the administrative of justice in which the king who looked after his subject and maintained Dharma in his kingdom.
• The only King was empowered to punish the offenders and his duty is to maintain and uphold the law in society. In the Hindu Dharma Shastra the Hindu law of crime, especially the law of Prayaschitta or punishment is of importance.
• The Manu smritis is an important complete code dealing with the laws, custom and usages of the day. At the times of Yagnavalka and Brihspathi the rigorous punishment was lessened and even the soften fine even for the ordinary offences the ordinary punishment was given. The Hindus had well developed and systematic Criminal law in India.
• In the Kautilya’s Arthashatra which define different form of criminal law violations during his time. From above it is clear the Hindu rulers followed the criminal law and procedure for dispensation of Criminal justice

Medieval Period

• After the conquest of the Muslims who invade and conquer a large part of Indian territory and impose these own laws rules and regulation for administrating Criminal justice to regulate the society.
• Those who popularly known as Moghul who always follows the Mohammedan law of crime which totally based on Quran.
• These the Quranic criminal law was inadequate. They are supplemented by Sunna. Hence certain modification were made in Sunna i.e. rule of conduct.
• Here Hidaya which describe principles of Muslim Criminal law for collection of case law the Fatwa-i-alamgiri.

British Period

• The British ruler has started certain reforms from time to time as per the need and rule for the benefit for their own purpose.
• The courts were established under Royal charter. The criminal law reform during the year 1828 to 1834 was done.
• The Criminal law in Madras Presidency which was similar to that of Bengal and such Mohammedan law of crimes.
• The Presidency of Madras was subordinate to Governor general in council at fort William (Calcutta, now Kolkata) by the Regulating Act of 1773.
• The Elphinstone code of 1827 introduce a uniform scheme of criminal law
• After six years in 1833 an Act was passed providing for the enactment of laws and the first law commission was appointed with the law member of the Governor general in council. Lord Macaulay as its President made uniform Penal code applicable in all country.
• When Thomas Babington Macaulay drafted it in the 1830s, it was an exceptional piece of work. It replaced numerous, mostly religious, criminal laws. Macaulay proposed a uniform criminal code that was both clear and comprehensive and would serve as a model for codifying criminal law back home in England. What made it revolutionary at that time was that it treated Europeans and Indians as equal under the law, revealing the influence of classical liberalism that was taking shape in Britain in the early 19th century.

Post Independence

• The Indian penal Code which was basically a colonial legislation it was as the main penal law of the country even after Indian Independence in 1947
• IPC has been amended more than 75 times, no comprehensive revision has been undertaken in spite of the 42nd report of the law commission in 1971 recommending it 

Need of Reforms

• Indian state is not the master of the citizen. This means shifting the balance of power towards the citizen and making individual liberty the default setting.
• It must discard a conservative patriarchal approach and affirm gender equality.
• It must incorporate entire classes of crimes that just didn’t exist in 1860, from “white collar crime”, to cyber crime to those emerging from networked societies.
• Scheme of chapters and classification of offences should be reworked. Offences like criminal conspiracy, sedition, offences against coin and stamps etc. must be abolished or replaced
• Chapters of the IPC are overloaded at several places. Classification of offences must be done in a manner conducive to management of crimes in the future.

6 . Anthrax

Context : Veterinarians have confirmed anthrax as the cause of death of two Asiatic water buffaloes in central Assam’s Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary, which has the highest concentration of one-horned rhinos in the world and is often called ‘Mini Kaziranga’ due to similar landscape and vegetation.

What is anthrax?

• Anthrax is a serious infectious disease caused by gram-positive, rod-shaped bacteria known as Bacillus anthracis.
• Anthrax can be found naturally in soil and commonly affects domestic and wild animals around the world.
• People can get sick with anthrax if they come in contact with infected animals or contaminated animal products. Contact with anthrax can cause severe illness in both humans and animals.
• Anthrax is not contagious

How do animals get infected with anthrax?

• Domestic and wild animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, antelope, and deer can become infected when they breathe in or ingest spores in contaminated soil, plants, or water.

How do people get infected with anthrax?

• People get infected with anthrax when spores get into the body. When anthrax spores get inside the body, they can be “activated.” When they become active, the bacteria can multiply, spread out in the body, produce toxins (poisons), and cause severe illness.
• This can happen when people breathe in spores, eat food or drink water that is contaminated with spores, or get spores in a cut or scrape in the skin.

7 . Facts for Prelims

Trilobites

• Trilobites are a group of extinct marine arachnomorph arthropods that form the class Trilobita. Trilobites form one of the earliest-known groups of arthropods.

Gale Crater

• Gale is a crater, and probable dry lake, on Mars

Unnati

• The project, called Unnati, is aimed at training unskilled MGNREGA workers so that they can move from distress employment to full-time jobs
• The programme (Unnati) is meant to train one adult member (between 18 and 45 years) per house household, who has completed 100 days of work under MGNREGA in the previous financial year.
• The candidate undergoing training will be paid stipend for a maximum period of 100 days, and for one programme per household, as per the prevailing wages in the state concerned.”