Daily Current Affairs : 29th April

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Video Assistant Referee
2. Mechanism in place to examine allegations of misconduct against members of the higher judiciary
3. Bharati Script
4. Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana
5. BCIM Corridor
6. Current State of Cyber Crime Report 2019
7. Saffir – Simpson Wind Scale
8. Shoebox satellite
9. Facts for Prelims – Dakshayani Velayudhan, Neglected & Orphan Diseases, Quantum Thermometer

1 . Video Assistant Referee

Context : : The Video Assistant Referee (VAR), a system of using video replays to assist on-field decision-making in football, was formally approved by the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the body which defines the rules of the game, back in 2016

How does it work?

• The use of VAR is limited to four situations — whether a goal should stand or be ruled out because of potential violations, penalties, straight red cards and cases of mistaken identity.
• A VAR team will communicate with the on-field referee when it spots a “clear” error.
• Alternatively, the referee may ask for a review himself and receive input to make an objective decision (like an offside call) or choose to watch the footage of the incident on a screen by the side of the pitch before arriving at a subjective decision (like judging a foul).

Source : Hindu

2 . Mechanism in place to examine allegations of misconduct against members of the higher judiciary

Context : The allegations made by a former Supreme Court employee against the Chief Justice of India have brought the focus on the mechanism that exists to examine charges of misconduct against members of the higher judiciary.

How are allegations of misconduct against judges of High Courts and the Supreme Court dealt with?

• Allegations of misconduct against serving judges of the superior judiciary, that is, the various high courts and the Supreme Court, are dealt with through an ‘in-house procedure’.
• Two purposes are served by the adoption of an internal procedure to deal with such complaints: when the allegations are examined by the judge’s peers, outside agencies are kept out, and the independence of the judiciary is maintained.
• Second, awareness about the existence of a mechanism to examine such complaints will preserve the faith of the people in the impartiality and independence of the judicial process.
• The in-house procedure envisages that false and frivolous allegations can be rejected at an early stage and only those that are not baseless, and may require a deeper probe, are taken up for inquiry.

What is the origin of the ‘in-house’ procedure?

• The idea of self-regulation as a method by which allegations of misconduct against judges can be approached came up first in a 1995 case concerning the then Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court.
• The Chief Justice resigned amidst an uproar caused by reports that he had been paid unjustifiably high amounts by a publisher. In a case relating to this allegation, the Supreme Court outlined the procedure that may be adopted in such situations.
• Until then, misconduct on the part of superior court judges was perceived as something that only Parliament could deal with through the procedure for removal of judges given in the Constitution.
• However, the court made a distinction between ‘impeachable behaviour’ and bad behaviour.
• The Full Court passed a resolution that an ‘in-house procedure’ would be adopted for action against judges for acts of commission or omission that go against accepted values of judicial life.

How does the in-house procedure work? What are the various steps?

• When a complaint is received against a High Court judge, the Chief Justice concerned has to examine it. If it is frivolous or concerns a judicial matter, she may just file the complaint and inform the Chief Justice of India. If she considers it serious, she should get a response from the judge concerned. If she is satisfied with the response and feels no further action is required, she may close the matter and keep the CJI informed.
• However, if the CJI feels a deeper probe is needed, she should send the complaint as well as the judge’s response to the CJI, with her own comments, for further action. The procedure is the same if the CJI receives the complaint directly. The comments of the high court Chief Justice, the judge concerned and the complaint would be considered by the CJI.
• If a deeper probe is required, a three-member committee, comprising two Chief Justices from other High Courts and one High Court judge, has to be formed. The committee will hold a fact-finding inquiry at which the judge concerned would be entitled to appear. It is not a formal judicial proceeding and does not involve lawyers or examination or cross-examination of witnesses.
• If the charge is against a high court Chief Justice, the same procedure of getting the person’s response is followed by the CJI. If a deeper probe is deemed necessary, a three-member committee comprising a Supreme Court judge and two Chief Justices of other High Courts will be formed.
• If the charge is against a Supreme Court judge, the committee would comprise three Supreme Court judges. There is no separate provision in the in-house procedure to deal with complaints against the CJI.

What are the possible outcomes from the inquiry committee?

• If it finds that there is substance in the allegations, the committee can either hold that the misconduct is serious enough to warrant removal from office, or that it is not so serious as to warrant removal.
• In the former case, it will call for initiation of proceedings to remove the judge. The judge concerned would be advised to resign or take voluntary retirement. If the judge is unwilling to quit, the Chief Justice of the High Court concerned would be advised to withdraw judicial work from him, and the President of India and the Prime Minister would be informed of the situation.
• Such an action may clear the way for Parliament to begin the political process for impeachment.
• In case, the committee finds substance in the allegation, but it is not grave enough to warrant removal from office, the judge concerned would be advised accordingly, and the committee’s report will be placed on record.

Source : Hindu

3 . Bharati Script

Context : Taking a cue from European languages, several of which have the same (Roman letter–based) script, Srinivasa Chakravathy’s team at IIT Madras has, over the last decade, developed a unified script for nine Indian languages, named the Bharati script

About Bharati Script

• Bharati is being proposed as a common script for India. The Roman script is used as a common script for many European languages (English, French, German, Italian etc.), which facilitates communication across nations that speak and write those languages.
• Likewise a common script for the entire country is hoped to bring down many communication barriers in India.

Importance

• The scripts of Indian languages pose a problem for such a character recognition because the vowel and consonant-modifier components are attached to the main consonant part. This difficulty is removed in the Bharati script which can be easily read. “In Bharati characters, these different components are segmentable by design.
• The scripts that have been integrated include Devnagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil. English and Urdu have not been integrated so far

Recent additions to the Bharati Script

• The team has now gone a step further since developing the script: it has developed a method for reading documents in Bharati script using a multi-lingual optical character recognition (OCR) scheme.
• The team has also created a finger-spelling method that can be used to generate a sign language for hearing-impaired persons. In collaboration with TCS Mumbai, the researchers have found a way for persons with hearing disability to generate signatures using this finger-spelling technique.

About Optical Character Recognition Scheme

• Optical character recognition schemes involve first separating (or segmenting) the document into text and non-text. The text is then segmented into paragraphs, sentences words and letters.
• Each letter has to be recognised as a character in some recognisable format such as ASCII or Unicode. The letter has various components such as the basic consonant, consonant modifiers, vowels etc.

Source : Hindu

4 . Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana

Context : Public sector banks stand to earn as much as Rs. 5,000 crore due to the increasing quantum of deposits placed in Jan Dhan accounts, and can vastly monetise this resource once they start implementing advanced analytics and begin lending to these customers, according to industry players and analysts.

About PMJDY

• Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) is National Mission for Financial Inclusion to ensure access to financial services, namely, Banking/ Savings & Deposit Accounts, Remittance, Credit, Insurance, Pension in an affordable manner.
• Account can be opened in any bank branch or Business Correspondent (Bank Mitr) outlet. Accounts opened under PMJDY are being opened with Zero balance.
• However, if the account-holder wishes to get cheque book, he/she will have to fulfill minimum balance criteria.

Special Benefits under PMJDY Scheme

• Interest on deposit.
• Accidental insurance cover of Rs. 1.00 lac
• No minimum balance required.
• The scheme provide life cover of Rs. 30,000/- payable on death of the beneficiary, subject to fulfillment of the eligibility condition.
• Easy Transfer of money across India
• Beneficiaries of Government Schemes will get Direct Benefit Transfer in these accounts.
• After satisfactory operation of the account for 6 months, an overdraft facility will be permitted
• Access to Pension, insurance products.
• The Claim under Personal Accidental Insurance under PMJDY shall be payable if the Rupay Card holder have performed minimum one successful financial or non-financial customer induced transaction at any Bank Branch, Bank Mitra, ATM, POS, E-COM etc. Channel both Intra and Inter-bank i.e. on-us (Bank Customer/rupay card holder transacting at same Bank channels) and off-us (Bank Customer/Rupay card holder transacting at other Bank Channels) within 90 days prior to date of accident including accident date will be included as eligible transactions under the Rupay Insurance Program 2016-2017.
• Overdraft facility upto Rs.5000/- is available in only one account per household, preferably lady of the household.

An account can be opened by presenting an officially valid document.

• the passport,
• the driving licence,
• the Permanent Account Number (PAN) Card,
• the Voter’s Identity Card issued by Election Commission of India,
• job card issued by NREGA duly signed by an officer of the State Government,
• the letter issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India containing details of name, address and Aadhaar number, or
• any other document as notified by the Central Government in consultation with the Regulator: 

Small Accounts

• Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has further clarified that those persons who do not have any of the ‘officially valid documents’ can open “Small Accounts” with banks.
• A “Small Account” can be opened on the basis of a self-attested photograph and putting his/her signatures or thumb print in the presence of officials of the bank.
• Such accounts have limitations regarding the aggregate credits (not more than Rupees one lakh in a year), aggregate withdrawals (nor more than Rupees ten thousand in a month) and balance in the accounts (not more than Rupees fifty thousand at any point of time).
• These accounts would be valid normally for a period of twelve months. Thereafter, such accounts would be allowed to continue for a further period of twelve more months, if the account-holder provides a document showing that he/she has applied for any of the Officially Valid Document, within 12 months of opening the small account.

Source : Hindu

5 . BCIM Corridor

Context : India’s decision to skip the Belt and Road Forum (BRF) may have led to the exclusion of the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) economic corridor from the list of projects covered by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) umbrella.

About the Belt and Road Forum

• The forum will be a platform for working out action plans for implementation of the initiative in the areas of infrastructure, energy and resources, production capacity, trade and investment and identification of major projects
• It is also intended to be an opportunity for the signing of cooperation agreements with countries and international organizations in the areas of financial cooperation mechanism; a cooperation platform for science, technology and environmental protection; and enhanced exchanges and training of talent and financing agreements for backing projects
• The Purpose of the forum is to build a more open and efficient international cooperation platform; a closer, stronger partnership network; and to push for a more just, reasonable and balanced international governance system.

About the Issue

• Chinese Foreign Ministry website has not listed the BCIM as a project covered by the BRI — the giant connectivity initiative speared by China to revive the ancient Silk Road across Eurasia and Africa.
• South Asia is covered by three major undertakings — the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC); the Nepal-China Trans-Himalayan Multi-dimensional Connectivity Network, including Nepal-China cross-border railway; and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
• Citing “sovereignty” concerns, India, for the second time, did not participate in the BRF, as the CPEC passes through Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK).

About BCIM Corridor

• BCIM is a proposed Economic corridor between Bangladesh -China-India-Myanmar
• The 2,800-km BCIM corridor proposes to link Kunming in China’s Yunnan province with Kolkata, passing though nodes such as Mandalay in Myanmar and Dhaka in Bangladesh before heading to Kolkata.

Source : Hindu

6 . Current State of Cyber Crime Report 2019

Context : In a sign that platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp are emerging as new public square for criminal deception, a study has found that social media fraud increased 43% in 2018.

About the Report

• Current State of Cybercrime — 2019 was released by RSA Security.
• As per the report Cybercriminals are increasingly relying on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other legitimate social media and messaging platforms to communicate with each other and sell stolen identities, credit card numbers and other ill-gotten gains.
• According to the researchers, fraud in the mobile channel has grown significantly over the past several years, with 70% of artifice originating in the mobile channel in 2018.
• In particular, fraud from mobile apps increased 680% between 2015 and 2018, said the study, adding that the use of rogue mobile applications to defraud consumers was on the rise

Source : Hindu

7 . Saffir Simpson Wind Scale

Context : Cyclone Fani’ would have reached the status of ‘category three’ storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of classifying storms internationally.

About Saffir Simpson Wind Scale

• The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a 1 to 5 rating based on a hurricane’s sustained wind speed. This scale estimates potential property damage.
• Hurricanes reaching Category 3 and higher are considered major hurricanes because of their potential for significant loss of life and damage.
• Category 1 and 2 storms are still dangerous, however, and require preventative measures. In the western North Pacific, the term “super typhoon” is used for tropical cyclones with sustained winds exceeding 150 mph.

Wind Scale Category and Potential Damage

• Category One Hurricane (Sustained winds 74-95 mph, 64-82 kt, or 119-153 km/h) – Very dangerous winds will produce some damage
• Category Two Hurricane (Sustained winds 96-110 mph, 83-95 kt, or 154-177 km/h) – Extremely dangerous winds will cause extensive damage
• Category Three Hurricane (Sustained winds 111-129 mph, 96-112 kt, or 178-208 km/h) – Devastating damage will occur
• Category Four Hurricane (Sustained winds 130-156 mph, 113-136 kt, or 209-251 km/h). Catastrophic damage will occur
• Category Five Hurricane (Sustained winds 157 mph or higher, 137 kt or higher, or 252 km/h or higher). Catastrophic damage will occur

Source : Hindu

8 . Shoebox satellite

About Shoebox Satellite

• Shoebox satellites are tiny, inexpensive satellites. They are called shoebox because of their size as they weigh less than 10 kg and are expected to see an explosion in demand in the next few years.
• Apart from the Chinese, American scientists have been developing such satellites. One of these, called RainCube (Radar in a CubeSat), sponsored by NASA, was launched into low-Earth orbit from the International Space Station in July 2018. It is an experiment for weather forecast using very small instruments to capture and send back images. The small satellite is a prototype for a possible fleet of RainCubes that could one day help monitor severe storms, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Library says on its website.
• The expected demand of shoebox satellites is for services ranging from high-speed internet for aircraft to universities conducting experiments.

Source : Indian Express

9 . Facts for Prelims

Dakshayani Velayudhan

• Dakshayani Velayudhan was India’s first SC woman graduate
• In 1945 Dakshayani was nominated to the Cochin Legislative Council by the government of the State.
• She was the lone Dalit woman member of the Constituent Assembly
• As the first Dalit woman MLA, the Kerala government has constituted the ‘Dakshayani Velayudhan Award’ which will be given to women who contributed in empowering other women in the state

Source : Indian Express

Neglected Diseases

• Neglected diseases are mostly tropical infectious diseases, and the market size for drugs for such diseases is small due to their limited geographical incidence.
• To highlight the common problem of lack of innovation for drugs, diagnostics and vaccines for this basket of diseases, WHO started addressing these as neglected diseases from late 1980s.
• Some examples of neglected diseases are malaria, tuberculosis, leishmaniasis (kala azar), dengue, leprosy, lymphatic filariasis and diarrhoeal diseases.
• These diseases face an innovation deficit as they are neglected in R&D efforts of the pharmaceutical industry. 

Orphan Diseases

• Several rare diseases that affect the developed markets are called “orphan diseases.” These are called orphans because the pharmaceutical industry does not find it profitable to develop and market products intended for only a small number of patients suffering from rare diseases.
• Orphan diseases comprise both rare diseases and neglected diseases. They are orphans of research focus, market interest and even public health policies.

Quantum Thermometer

• Researchers at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, have developed an ultrasensitive quantum thermometer using graphene quantum dots. The thermometer can precisely measure a wide range of temperature: 27 degree C to –196 degree C.
• The thermometer has high sensitivity when measuring different temperatures and can measure very minute (micro Kelvin) changes in temperature
• The device can find widespread applications in cryogenic temperature sensing. Since the sensor has high sensitivity and ability to measure minute changes in temperature, it will be useful in the pharmaceutical industry, healthcare to measure the incubation temperature of biological cells and molecules and the automobile industry to measure the ignition temperature within the engine