Ø With petitioners gently conveying to him that he recuse from the
Constitution Bench set up to decide the constitutionality of the National Judicial
Appointments Commission, Justice J.S. Khehar decided on Tuesday that the Bench
would determine once and for all the question whether members of the NJAC could
hear a challenge to the validity of the new judicial appointments law without
giving an impression of conflict of interest or bias. The NJAC challenge has been a non-starter, with petitioners, the second
time in a row, objecting to the choice of the lead judge on the Constitution
Bench. Instead of bowing out, Justice Khehar, leading the Bench, stood his
ground. He said the case could not hop from one Bench to the other, and it was
imperative to decide immediately on who should hear the case. Last week,
Justice Anil R. Dave, the lead judge, recused himself from the Bench. The
petitioners, one of them represented by counsel Fali Nariman, had protested
that as the third senior-most judge in the Supreme Court, Justice Dave was a
member of the NJAC by the law. This unwittingly put him in the position of a
judge sitting in his own cause. After Justice Dave’s recusal, the Bench was
reconstituted under Justice Khehar. And on its first hearing on Tuesday, he was
responding to submissions that as the fourth senior-most judge, he too was, in
all likelihood, set to be a member of the NJAC when Chief Justice of India H.L.
Dattu retired in December. This puts him in a position of conflict of interest,
it was alleged. Besides, Justice Khehar is in line for the post of Chief
Justice. “So, say there is a case on the land acquisition law before this
court. By your logic, no judge who owns land can hear it,” Justice Khehar
responded to submissions hinting at his recusal.
Ø In a move that comes soon after the tiger census in January showed an
overall rise in numbers of the big cat, the Centre is set to form three new
tiger reserves. In-principle approval has been accorded by the National
Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) for creation of reserves in Ratapani in
Madhya Pradesh, Sunabeda in Odisha and Guru Ghasidas in Chhattisgarh, Union Environment
Minister Prakash Javadekar informed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. Odisha is
among the States where the tiger population has dwindled. The NTCA also
accorded final approval to a proposal to declare Kudremukh National Park in
Karnataka and Rajaji National Park in Uttarakhand as tiger reserves. Seeking to
provide more protected spaces for the endangered species, State governments
have been asked to send conservation proposals for the following areas: Suhelwa
in Uttar Pradesh, Mhadei in Goa, Srivilliputtur Grizzled Squirrel Wildlife
Sanctuary/ Meghamalai Wildlife Sanctuary/ Varushanadu Valley in Tamil Nadu,
Dibang in Arunachal Pradesh and Cauvery-MM Hills in Karnataka. Punishments
for violation of tiger reserve rules and hunting or altering the boundaries of
tiger reserves have been enhanced. As per the Ministry’s country-level
assessment, India hosted an estimated 2226 tigers in 2014.
Ø In what could be seen as a setback to those opposing
burning of municipal solid wastes (MSW), the National Green Tribunal (NGT), New
Delhi, has permitted the States, including Karnataka, to use incinerator
technology for producing Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF), commonly known as
waste-to-energy. However, the Tribunal said no waste could be directly put into
the incinerators or for power generation, except the specifically permitted.
Only those wastes that are found unrecyclable after segregation should be put
into the incinerators. Also, the tribunal emphasised that it was “not putting
any absolute restriction on RDF being used as power generation fuel, but first
effort should be made for composting of wet waste”. The States are free to use
RDF for generating fuel with due care and caution by framing necessary
guidelines. Meanwhile, the Central Pollution Control Board and the Ministry of
Environment and Forests were directed to prescribe specific guidelines for
emissions from incinerators. The directions were issued on a case between
city-based MSW expert Almitra H. Patel vs. Union of India that was referred to
the NGT by the Supreme Court, which since 1996 had issued several directions on
management of MSW across the country. Based on this case, the Centre had
formulated the MSW (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000. The NGT also directed
dividing the State into clusters for locating sufficient number of incinerator
plants. Authorities were also asked to provide maximum space for plants to have
large storage and processing area for wastes; ensure green belt of higher
density around plants, and adopt new technologies.
Ø Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, was seriously wounded
in an air strike in western Iraq and is recovering, a media report said on
Tuesday.
Ø Basheer Stanekzai, manager of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, has said
that the country holds Indian players in high esteem and is looking for help
from the Indian side. Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, during his
visit to India next week, is most likely to seek a home ground for
national team in India.
Ø The Supreme Court on Tuesday adjourned to July the hearing on the
anticipatory bail plea of activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband accused of
embezzling funds for a museum at Ahmedabad’s Gulbarg Society devastated in the
2002 post-Godhra riots. A recently constituted Bench led by Justice Anil
R. Dave posted the matter after the summer vacation following a plea by the
Gujarat government that it wanted to file an affidavit indicating the progress
made in the investigation into Ms. Setalvad’s trusts.
Ø The BJP-led NDA government has dropped the names of former Prime
Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi from two awards for propagating Hindi.
According to a Home Ministry order, the ‘Indira Gandhi Rajbhasha Puraskar’ and
‘Rajiv Gandhi Rashtriya Gyan-Vigyan Maulik Pustak Lekhan Puraskar’, launched
more than two decades ago, have given way for ‘Rajbhasha Kirti Puraskar’ and
‘Rajbhasha Gaurav Puraskar’.
Ø The newly constituted Task Force on Inter-Linking Rivers will look
afresh at all the proposed links to evaluate their feasibility, particularly in
maintaining a balance between environment and development. Links that are found
unfeasible will be abandoned. Speaking exclusively to The
Hindu ,
task force chairman B.N. Navalawala said the panel would work out a “mechanism”
that will bring “benefits” to the surplus States when they shared waters with
deficit regions. “The programme will not be imposed on States and persuasion
was important. Intra-basin transfer of waters was equally important. The
rainfall distribution in the country, even within a State, was uneven. To
start with, the Ken-Betwa link between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh would
be taken up. That would be followed by the Daman Ganga-Pinjar Par-Tapi-Narmada
links between Maharashtra and Gujarat. For the remaining links, efforts
would have to be made to win over Kerala, Odisha and Karnataka who were opposed
to the programme. Dr. Navalawala, a former Water Resources Secretary,
said the starting point of transferring waters to the southern regions would be
the Godavari.
Ø Japan’s state-of-the-art maglev train clocked a new world
speed record Tuesday in a test run near Mount Fuji, breaking the 600-kmph mark,
as Tokyo races to sell the technology abroad. The seven-car maglev (short for
magnetic levitation) train hit a top speed of 603 kmph, and managed nearly 11
seconds at over 600 kmph, Central Japan Railway said. The new record came less
than a week after the company recorded a top speed of 590 kmph, breaking its
own 2003 record of 581 kmph.
Ø China on Tuesday catapulted itself as Pakistan’s unrivalled partner,
riding on a string of mega deals, mainly focussed on developing the
Gwadar-Kashgar economic corridor — a passage that would allow Beijing strategic
access to the Indian Ocean. Visiting
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif signed
agreements worth $28 billion, which nearly equals the amount that Islamabad has
received in a decade from the United States in support of its war in
Afghanistan. The bulk of this amount is being spent on the development
of the 3,000 km China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which will host roads,
railways, energy pipelines and industrial parks. Pakistan says China will
invest up to $37 billion in energy projects that would generate 6400MW
of power. Concessional loans will fund infrastructure projects worth $10
billion. China wants to develop the corridor as one of the arteries that head
out of its restive province of Xinjiang, which can then access the markets of
South Asia, West Asia and Africa. This is possible on account of Gwadar’s
location on the tri-junction of these lucrative geographic zones. China is also
investing heavily in Xinjiang as a gateway to Central Asia and Europe as part
of the Eurasian Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB), President Xi’s signature “belt
and road” initiative. Though CPEC will pass through a lawless,
insurgency-prone zone, Pakistan has promised to counter it by deciding to
deploy a Special Security Division, consisting of nine battalions of the Army
and six battalions of the civilian forces. These troops are meant to ensure the
safety of the Chinese workers who are expected to arrive in strength in the
area. During the visit, Mr. Xi met the chiefs of Pakistan’s armed
forces, but there was no official word on Tuesday about the widely anticipated
$6 billion submarine deal that the two countries were expected to finalise
during his stay.
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