Daily Current Affairs including Static Notes - 1 MAY

💥AFSPA WILL CONTINUE IN NAGALAND: RIJIJU (GOVERNANCE)

Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju in response for demand to withdraw AFSPA from Nagaland said AFSPA, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act will continue in Nagaland as the “peace agreement” hasn’t been finalised there yet.

AFSPA has been implemented in Nagaland to contain the Naga Insurgency under NSCN demanding  ‘Greater Nagaland’ or Nagalim, to extend Nagaland’s borders by including Naga-dominated areas in neighbouring Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh and mynammar  to unite 1.2 million Nagas.

Following the withdrawal of AFSPA from Meghalaya recently Nagaland is the only State in the northeast, apart from eight police stations in Arunachal Pradesh, where ASFPA continues to be imposed by the Union Home Ministry.

👉About AFSPA

Armed Forces (Special Powers) Acts(AFSPA) are Acts of the Parliament of India that grant special powers to the Indian Armed Forces and the state and paramilitary forces in areas classified as “disturbed areas”.

It gives powers to the army, state and central police forces to shoot to kill, search houses and destroy any property that is “likely” to be used by insurgents in areas declared as “disturbed” by the home ministry.

AFSPA is invoked when a case of militancy or insurgency takes place and the territorial integrity of India is at risk. Once implemented security forces can “arrest a person without warrant”, who has committed or even “about to commit a cognizable offence” even based on “reasonable suspicion”.

It also provides security forces with legal immunity for their actions in disturbed areas.

While the armed forces and the government justify its need in order to combat militancy and insurgency, the Act has been associated with several human rights violations including fake encounters, rape, torture, abduction etc.

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POWER MINISTRY FEELS NO NEED TO CHANGE ELECTRIFICATION DEFINITION (GOVERNANCE)

Context

The Narendra Modi government had recently announced that the electrification of all inhabited villages in India has been completed.

While the announcement and achievement are significant, it is still largely symbolic and not substantive in nature as electrification of villages does not translate into electrification of households and is certainly no guarantee for power availability.

This claim has also lead to criticism from various quarters about the deficiencies in the definition of electrification. The main reason for this lies with the definition of electrification adopted.

👉What is the current definition?

As per the Union power ministry’s definition in place since October 1997, a village is deemed to be electrified if basic infrastructure such as a distribution transformer and distribution lines are in place in the inhabited locality, electricity is provided to public places like schools, panchayat office, health centres, dispensaries, community centres, and at least 10% of the households in the village are electrified.

👉Govt. stand

But in the wake of criticisms the government has maintained that since it was a definition of the past, it is not considering modifying the current definition of an electrified village.

And as for electrification of households data from the Ministry of Power and the Central Electricity Authority shows that so far 84.3% of households have been electrified. From State to State the number ranges from 47% to 100%, but on average about 83% of households are electrified.  And now the government is aiming at covering the last-mile connectivity of taking electricity to the household level with the Saubhagya scheme

However despite government defenses many deficiencies are found in the claims. Analysis revealed that while several villages were deemed to be electrified in the official data, the on-ground engineers had registered complaints that key components such as transmission wires had been stolen, leaving the village unelectrified.

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💥NASA MISSION TO THE ‘HEART’ OF MARS 

NASA is schedule to launch InSight, its first-ever mission to study the deep interior of Mars is on this week.

Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) is also the first planetary mission to take off from the West Coast of U.S.

👉InSight Mission

InSight is NASA’s Discovery Program mission that aims to place stationary lander equipped with seismometer and heat transfer probe on surface of Mars to study red planet’s early geological evolution. It is terrestrial planet explorer that will address one of most fundamental issues of planetary and solar system science. It will help in understanding processes that shaped rocky planets of inner solar system (including Earth) more than four billion years ago. The robotic lander will perform a radio science experiment to study internal structure of Mars by deploying seismometer and a burrowing heat probe. It will measure Mar’s vital signs such as pulse (seismology), temperature (heat flow probe) and reflexes (precision tracking). It will let scientists understand how different its crust, mantle and core are from Earth.

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💥TAKE OATH OF OFFICE IN GIVEN TIME: SC (POLITY)

A Supreme Court bench has urged elected representatives in states to take oath as legislators within a reasonable time. The court’s judgment focuses on elected representatives of local bodies and their swearing-in.

The court has also warned that the elected representatives should face serious consequences for not taking the oath of office within a specified time.

The judgment has been made on the premise that the Constitution attaches a great degree of solemnity to the oath of office. For example, Article 60 provides that before entering upon his office, the President shall make and subscribe the oath or affirmation, among others.

The bench also ordered to take measures to aid videography of the swearing in or oath taking so that no dispute arises in the future.

👉What and why of oaths      

The constitution specifically provides for different forms of oath for different functionaries of our political system, because functions and responsibilities of the President, the Legislators and the members of the judiciary are specific and different from each other. This has been done in keeping with the different designations, their functions, and the nature of power they enjoy and the dignity of the post. Oaths or affirmations binds the person to do his duties well and to be faithful to it.

An elected representative or minister or the likes belongs to political parties and he performs his duties in political ups and downs, so, he is required on oath to discharge his duties without fear or favour, affection or ill-will. He is very much required to keep secrecy of official matters. A judge is required to be honest to his post thus he swears to perform the duty without fear or favour, affection or ill-will.

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DENOTIFIED NOMADIC TRIBES MAY COME UNDER SC/ST ACT

The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment is considering a recommendation by a government panel on extending the Atrocities Act to members from Denotified Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes.

The grounds for this include that they are poorest of the poor, most marginalised and most downtrodden communities who are also subject to “social stigma, atrocity and exclusion”.

Mostly leading a nomadic life, travelling from village to village, living in makeshift tents, receiving no education and often subject to atrocities, especially against women, the conditions of denotified tribes is “worse” than SCs and STs

Taking into account all these realities The National Commission for Denotified Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes, chaired by Bhiku Ramji Idate had recommended a Constitutional amendment so that Scheduled NT/ DNT/ SNT can be added as a third category after Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the Act

👉About denotified tribes

After the revolt of 1857, the British needed to take a number of preventive steps to keep India in their clutches. A foolish officer of Law and Order Commission recommended that certain communities in India were professionally criminal and their occupation as well as religion was to commit crimes. On such recommendations, the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871 was enacted.

This extremely oppressive act notified certain communities as criminal tribes. First tribe that was notified under this act was Hur of Sindh. Gradually, as many as 198 tribes were brought in its ambit.

The act attracted criticism world over and gradually started getting repealed by the provincial governments. After independence, the Criminal Tribes Act was repealed in 1952. After the repeal, the tribal were denotified and thus were known as Denotified Tribes.

But revoking the CTA act did not end the misery of those who were affected by this act. The CTA act was replaced by Habitual Offenders Act 1952. The major difference between the previous act and new act was that the later targeted individuals and not communities. But on ground, the same procedure kept following

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