Daily Current Affairs : 26th July

Topics Covered

1. POCSO Court
2. Wombat
3. Census data on Migration
4. Earth Parking Orbit
5. Namdapha National Park

1 . POCSO Court

Context : The Supreme Court directed the setting up of special courts in each district across the country that had over a 100 cases of child abuse and sexual assault pending trial under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

Details of the Supreme Court Order

• A Bench led by the Chief Justice of India directed the courts to be set up within 60 days.
• They will be established under a Central scheme and fully funded by the Centre.
• This means the Centre would fund everything from the payment of the presiding officers, staff and support persons to the court’s child-friendly infrastructure.
• The court, though it deferred any orders for the establishment of exclusive forensic laboratories for POCSO cases, ordered the directors of the existing ones to deal with POCSO case evidence promptly to cause no delay in the probe or trial of such cases.

About POCSO

• In order to effectively address the heinous crimes of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children through less ambiguous and more stringent legal provisions, the Ministry of Women and Child Development championed the introduction of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012.
• The Act defines a child as any person below eighteen years of age, and regards the best interests and well-being of the child as being of paramount importance at every stage, to ensure the healthy physical, emotional, intellectual and social development of the child.
• It defines different forms of sexual abuse, including penetrative and non-penetrative assault, as well as sexual harassment and pornography, and deems a sexual assault to be “aggravated” under certain circumstances, such as when the abused child is mentally ill or when the abuse is committed by a person in a position of trust or authority vis-à-vis the child, like a family member, police officer, teacher, or doctor.
• People who traffic children for sexual purposes are also punishable under the provisions relating to abetment in the Act. The Act prescribes stringent punishment graded as per the gravity of the offence, with a maximum term of rigorous imprisonment for life, and fine.
• Recently Union Cabinet has approved the Amendments in the Protection of Children from Sexual   Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. It will make punishment more stringent for committing sexual crimes against children including death penalty. The amendments also provide for levy of fines and imprisonment to curb child pornography.

2 . Wombat

Context : Scientists in Australia have found the skeleton of a “giant wombat” which lived some two million years ago. The animal was widespread across Australia about 50,000 years ago, when it is believed the first indigenous people lived.

About Wombats

• Wombats are small marsupials. They are built for digging, with short legs, compact heads, short broad feet and strong claws. Like kangaroos, koalas and other marsupials, they have a pouch. But a wombat’s pouch is backwards.
• All wombats are nocturnal and spend their nights foraging for food or digging.
• Wombats are herbivores, which means they only eat vegetation. Some common meals for a wombat include roots, grasses, scrub, herbs and bark.
• All wombat species live in Australia and Tasmania in mountains, forests and grasslands.
• According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), only one type of wombat is critically endangered. The Northern hairy-nosed wombat has gained this distinction because it can only be found in a very small location known as Epping Forest National Park.

3 . Census Data on Migration

Context : Census 2011 data on migration released last week show Maharashtra had more migrants from Madhya Pradesh than from Bihar, and Gujarat had almost double the number of migrants from Rajasthan than from Bihar.

Definition of Migrant as per the data

• As per the census when a person is enumerated in Census at a different place than his/her place of birth, she/he is considered a ‘migrant’

Background

• Migration data began to be collected with the Census of 1872, but was not very detailed until 1961. Changes introduced in 1961 continued until 2001; in the Census of 2011, a more detailed format for collecting information on migrants was adopted.

Key highlights of the Census numbers

• Of the 5.74 crore migrants in Maharashtra, 27.55 lakh reported their last place of residence to be Uttar Pradesh; 5.68 lakh said Bihar. Internal migration from within Maharashtra had the lion’s share of migrants: 4.79 crore.
• UP, from where people travel to all over India in search of work, itself was host to 5.65 crore migrants. As many as 5.20 crore were, however, internal migrants; among the 40.62 lakh from other Indian states, 10.73 lakh were from Bihar.
• The number of migrants in Punjab from other states was 24.88 lakh, a relatively large percentage of its total 1.37 crore migrant population. Of these, 6.50 lakh reported their previous residence to be in UP; 3.53 lakh said Bihar.
• Over 42% of the 39.16 lakh ‘outsiders’ (from other states) in Gujarat (out of the total migrant population of 2.69 crore) were made up by migrants from UP (9.29 lakh) and Rajasthan (7.47 lakh), the data show.
• In Assam, where illegal migrations from Bangladesh has long been an issue, Census 2011 recorded 64,117 people who said their last place of residence was in the neighbouring country. This was a little more than half of the total number of migrants (1,10,314) from outside India in the state. Among the 4.96 lakh migrants from other Indian states in Assam, those from Bihar had the largest stare (1.47 lakh, or nearly 30%).

Main Reasons for Migration

• Marriage and employment are the major reasons for migration

4 . Earth Parking Orbit

About Parking Orbit

• A parking orbit is a temporary orbit used during the launch of a satellite or other space probe.
• A launch vehicle boosts into the parking orbit, then coasts for a while, then fires again to enter the final desired trajectory.
• The alternative to a parking orbit is direct injection, where the rocket fires continuously (except during staging) until its fuel is exhausted, ending with the payload on the final trajectory.

Need of a Parking Orbit

• To reach the Moon or a planet at a desired time, the spacecraft must be launched within a limited range of times known as the launch window.
• Using a preliminary parking orbit before final injection can widen this window from seconds or minutes, to several hours.

5 . Namdapha National Park

About Namdapha National Park

• Namdapha National Park is the largest protected area in the Eastern Himalaya biodiversity hotspot and is located in Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast India.
• It is also the third largest national park in India in terms of area. It is located in the Eastern Himalayan sub-region and is recognized as one of the richest areas in biodiversity in India.
• The park harbours the northernmost lowland evergreen rainforests in the world at 27°N latitude. The area is also known for extensive Dipterocarp forests.
• The diverse vegetation and habitats of Namdapha grooms diverse species of animals and birds.
• It is only park in the World to have the four Feline species of big cat namely the Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and Clouded Leopard and numbers of Lesser cats.
• A number of primate species are seen in the park, such as Assamese macaque, pig-tailed macaque, stump-tailed macaque and number of the distinctive Hoolock Gibbons (Hylobates Hoolock), highly endangered and only ‘ape’ species found in India dwells in this impenetrable virgin forest.