Centre drops plan to bring in changes to Forest Act of 1927 - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Centre drops plan to bring in changes to Forest Act of 1927.

The draft had mooted giving a wide range of powers to forest officers

The Union Environment Ministry on Friday withdrew a draft amendment that proposed updates to the Indian Forest Act, 1927. Activist groups and some State governments had protested this proposed law after it was mooted in March.
Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar told a press conference that the draft was withdrawn. “Let me clarify that this wasn’t a government draft, as such. We had just consolidated views from various States with a significant forest cover. Over a few months, we’ve learnt that this has led to wrong interpretations. So we are withdrawing the zero draft.”
Munda hails decision
Union Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda of the BJP, who was present at the press conference, “welcomed” the withdrawal. Mr. Munda is a former Chief Minister of Jharkhand, which has a significant tribal population and which will go to the polls next month.
The Indian Forest Act, 2019, was envisaged as an amendment to the Indian Forest Act, 1927, and an attempt to address contemporary challenges to the country’s forests. The draft law had been sent to key forest officers in the States for soliciting comments and objections.

It drew flak from activists as well as tribal welfare organisations.
Last month, the Mizoram government rejected the draft. “The proposal to amend the Indian Forest Act was rejected after a consultative meeting of all stakeholders, including representatives of political parties, civil society organisations and officials,” Mizoram’s Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change T.J. Lalnuntluanga had said.
“Forest-officer not below the rank of a Ranger shall have power to hold an inquiry into forest offences…and shall have the powers to search or issue a search warrant under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973…,” said a copy of the document. The Hindu had reported on this draft in March.
Siddhantha Das, Director-General, Forestry, told The Hindu that an amendment to the Forest Act was due. “We will revise it and look at it with fresh eyes. But we will definitely have an amended Act and have wider discussions.”
The legislation also proposes a forest development cess of up to 10% of the assessed value of mining products removed from forests, and water used for irrigation or in industries. This amount would be deposited in a special fund and used “exclusively for reforestation; forest protection and other ancillary purposes connected with tree planting, forest development and conservation,” the draft document noted.
“We welcome this withdrawal,” said a statement by activist collective, Campaign for Survival and Dignity. (Source: The Hindu)


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Centre drops plan to bring in changes to Forest Act of 1927.

Centre proposes new draft Code on Social Security - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Centre proposes new draft Code on Social Security.

It amalgamates eight laws, covering Employees’ Provident Fund, maternity benefits and compensation among others.

The Centre has proposed a new draft Code on Social Security that amalgamates eight laws — covering Employees’ Provident Fund, maternity benefits and compensation among others— that makes way for establishing funds for PF and pension as well as covering workers of the gig economy in social security schemes.

The draft code, which was published by the Labour and Employment Ministry this week, will be up for public comments till October 25, the Ministry said.
It proposes PF, pension and insurance funds that would be administered by a central board. Employees would also be able to opt for the National Pension Scheme if they want.
The draft code proposes schemes related to life and disability cover, health and maternity benefits and old-age protection for “gig workers and platform workers” as well as the unorganised sector.
As a part of its labour reform agenda, the government had proposed to combine 44 labour laws into four codes. After coming out with two codes — on wages, occupational safety, health and working conditions — it has not drafted the third.
The code also says no employer can knowingly employ a woman six weeks after a delivery, miscarriage or medical termination of pregnancy. The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, which is among the laws being subsumed by the code, had placed the six-week restriction for women after delivery or miscarriage, not mentioning medical termination.
As a part of its labour reform agenda, the government had proposed to combine 44 labour laws into four codes. After coming out with two codes — on wages and occupational safety, health and working conditions — it has not drafted the third. (Source: The Hindu)


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Centre proposes new draft Code on Social Security.

Centre and the World Bank sign 300 million dollar loan agreements for India Energy Efficiency Scale up Programme - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Centre and the World Bank sign 300 million dollar loan agreements for India Energy Efficiency Scale up Programme.

The programme will help scale up the deployment of energy saving measures in residential and public sectors, strengthen EESL's institutional capacity

The government, World Bank and state-owned EESL on Tuesday inked a $220 million loan agreement and $80 million guarantee pact to push energy efficiency programme in India.
To be implemented by EESL, the programme will help scale up the deployment of energy saving measures in residential and public sectors, strengthen EESL's institutional capacity, and enhance its access to commercial financing.
The $220 million loan, from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) to Energy Efficiency Services Ltd, has a 5-year grace period, and a maturity of 19 years.
"The Government of India, the EESL, and the World Bank on Tuesday signed a $220 million Loan Agreement and a $80 million Guarantee Agreement for the India Energy Efficiency Scale-Up Program," the joint statement by World Bank and EESL said.
The investments under the programme are expected to avoid lifetime greenhouse gas emissions of 170 million tons of CO2, and contribute to avoiding an estimated 10 GW of additional generation capacity.
This would be over 50 per cent of the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency target of 19.6 GW indicated in India's Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Accord.
"The programme will help tackle the financing, awareness, technical and capacity barriers faced by new energy efficiency programs and support the UJALA and SLNP programs of the Government of India," said Sameer Kumar Khare, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, said in the statement.
"This is one of the several steps being taken by the Government of India to meet its climate change commitments to reduce carbon intensity by 33-35 percent by 2030," he added.
The key components of the operation include: creating sustainable markets for LED lights and energy efficient ceiling fans; facilitating well-structured and scalable investments in public street lighting; developing sustainable business models for emerging market segments such as super-efficient air conditioning and agricultural water pumping systems; and strengthening the institutional capacity of EESL.
Under the Program, EESL will deploy 219 million LED bulbs and tube lights, 5.8 million ceiling fans, and 7.2 million street lights, which will be supplied by private sector manufacturers and suppliers.
Saurabh Kumar, Managing Director, EESL said in the statement, "This program provides us a valuable opportunity...while providing necessary impetus for replicating and magnifying our success across India with other energy efficiency technologies and programmes, and with other ESCOs and stakeholders across the spectrum."
As an integral part of the operation, the first-ever IBRD guarantee in India will help the EESL access new markets for commercial financing in line with the Bank's approach of maximizing finance for development. The guarantee is expected to leverage some $200 million in additional financing, to help EESL with its growing portfolio and future investment needs.
"India's energy efficiency market, estimated to be over $12 billion per year, continues to face implementation barriers, particularly in the residential and public sectors, which have some of the largest untapped potential for energy efficiency improvements.
"Building upon its experience of UJALA and SLNP, EESL is now expanding its initiatives to other energy efficiency measures," said Ashok Sarkar, Senior Energy Specialist and World Bank's Task Team Leader for the programme. (Source: The Business Standard)


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Centre and the World Bank sign 300 million dollar loan agreements for India Energy Efficiency Scale up Programme.

Centre leaves it to Supreme Court to decide on Section 377 - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Centre leaves it to Supreme Court to decide on Section 377.

We leave to the wisdom of the court to deal with the validity of Section 377 so far as it relates to consensual sexual acts between two adults, says ASG Tushar Mehta.

The government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that it would leave it to the wisdom of its judges to decide on the constitutional validity of Section 377 on the issue of criminalising homosexuality. A five-judge constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which is hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Supreme Court’s 2013 verdict that had re-criminalised consensual sex between two consenting adults of the same gender, was told by the Centre that it has no objection with the court dealing with the validity of this penal provision.
“We leave to the wisdom of the court to deal with the validity of Section 377 so far as it relates to consensual sexual acts between two adults,” additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta, representing the centre, told the bench at the outset of the crucial hearing which entered the second day.
The bench, comprising justices Rohinton Fali Nariman, A.M. Khanwilkar, D.Y. Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra, said it had already made it clear on Tuesday that only the constitutional validity of Section 377 will be dealt with by it.
The law officer said that if the right to chose sexual partner is declared a fundamental right, then somebody may come up and say that he or she wanted to marry a sibling, which would be contrary to the laws governing to marriages.
“We are not considering all these issues. One cannot judge these issues in vacuum,” the bench said. Section 377 refers to “unnatural offences” and says whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 10 years, and shall also be liable to pay a fine.
The Supreme Court had on Tuesday commenced the crucial hearing on a clutch of petitions seeking decriminalisation of consensual sex between two adults of the same gender. The apex court had in 2013 restored sexual relationship between persons of the same sex as a criminal offence by setting aside the 2009 Delhi high court judgement that had held as unconstitutional Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which makes such actions between two consenting adults of same sex as a penal offence.


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Centre leaves it to Supreme Court to decide on Section 377.

NITI Aayog meet: Centre firm on 2011 as base year for Finance Commission - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

NITI Aayog meet: Centre firm on 2011 as base year for Finance Commission.

PM aims at pushing GDP growth to double digits, but says it is a challenge.

The Centre on Sunday stood by the controversial terms of reference (ToR) of the 15th Finance Commission, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi endorsing its suggestion that the Census 2011 should be one of the parameters for devolving funds to states.
He, however, urged states to identify parameters or indices through which performance in other fields could be rewarded so that no one feels left out.
Modi’s assertion came at the day-long fourth meeting of the NITI Aayog Governing Council, attended by the chief ministers of 23 states and a Union Territory.
After the economy grew at a seven-quarter high rate of 7.7 per cent during January-March 2017-18, Modi is now aiming at pushing growth to double digits even as he said it would be a challenging thing to do. However, the draft development agenda of the Aayog was not placed for approval because it would be finalised in the next one month.
The chief ministers of Delhi, Odisha, Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, and Tripura did not attend the meeting.
Four North-Eastern states (Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, and Tripura) were not represented because their chief ministers were occupied with flood relief, on which the Prime Minister assured all help.
On the controversial ToRs of the finance commission, Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar said Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was of the view that children born should not be denied their rights, and the Prime Minister endorsed the opinion.
“The overwhelming sentiment was that those who are already now with us, those who are already born, they have to be taken care of, so current population parameter must be used for allocating funds by the Finance Commission,” Kumar said.
Some states such as Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh raised the issue of the controversial ToRs of the 15th Finance Commission. The ToRs say that the base year will be 2011, but states, particularly those of south India, want it to be 1971, as has been the practice for years.
Tamil Nadu sought revision in this ToR.
Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami alleged successive Finance Commissions treated Tamil Nadu unfairly and while the 14th Finance Commission increased the overall devolution of taxes to the states from 32 per cent to 42 per cent, it reduced inter-se shares of the state in the divisible pool from 4.969 per cent to 4.023 per cent. As a result, Tamil Nadu suffered an annual resource loss of Rs 60 billion.
Modi, however, said in the current financial year, states were receiving from the Centre more than Rs 11 trillion, which is an increase of about Rs 6 trillion over what they got in the last year of the previous government.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu also raised the issue of the ToR.
Modi urged the chief ministers to “give fresh ideas” to the 15th Finance Commission for incentivising outcome-based allocations and expenditure corrections, amid demands by some states to revisit the panel's terms of reference.
He assured the gathering that suggestions made during the meeting would be “seriously considered”.
Modi said the Indian economy had grown at a healthy rate of 7.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2017-18.
“The challenge now is to take this growth rate to double digits, for which more steps have to be taken,” he said.
Modi stressed the world expected India to become a $5 trillion economy soon.
The Prime Minister urged chief ministers to find ways through which the Centre’s main flagship programme for rural India, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, could be properly linked with both pre-harvesting activities such as building or repairing dams, bunds and other irrigation structures and also post-harvest activities such as transportation and storage of crops, and processing.
For this, a high-powered committee of chief ministers under Chouhan has been constituted.
“The ToRs of this panel will be released in the next few weeks,” Kumar said.
The chief ministers of Bihar, Gujarat, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh are part of the panel. (Source: The Times of India)


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NITI Aayog meet: Centre firm on 2011 as base year for Finance Commission.

Centre accused of ‘illegally’ denying details on RTI Act - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis.

Centre accused of ‘illegally’ denying details on RTI Act.

An activist has accused the government of “illegally” withholding information about amendments proposed to the Right to Information Act, 2005, after her plea seeking details about the procedure followed was turned down.

RTI activist Anjali Bharadwaj wrote to the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) last month demanding to know when were the amendments to the Act proposed and forwarded to the Union Cabinet. She sought details about the consultative process followed by the government before bringing the amendments and wanted to know whether the government had placed the draft of the revised legislation in the public domain. She demanded a copy of the draft law.
In response, the DoPT refused to provide any details. “The matter regarding amendments in the RTI Act, 2005 is under consideration and has not reached finality. As per section 8(i)(i) of the RTI Act, 2005, information requested by you cannot be supplied at this stage,” the DoPT wrote to Ms. Bharadwaj last week.
The clause cited exempts the government from giving information about Cabinet papers, including records of deliberations of the Council of Ministers, Secretaries and other officers.
“The government has confirmed that it is planning to amend the RTI Act but has illegally refused to share details of the amendment Bill,” said Ms. Bharadwaj.
She objected to the government declining to share details of the consultation process as it was not an exercise restricted to the Cabinet or government officials but involved the wider community and was not exempt under the section of the RTI Act cited by the DoPT. (Source: The Hindu)


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Centre accused of ‘illegally’ denying details on RTI Act.

Centre to start measuring ‘green GDP’ of States - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis

Centre to start measuring ‘green GDP’ of States.

Figures will be used to calculate land acquisition costs, climate mitigation funds

India’s environmental diversity and riches are universally recognised but have never been quantified. Starting this year, the government will begin a five-year exercise to compute district-level data of the country’s environmental wealth. The numbers will eventually be used to calculate every State’s ‘green’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The metric will help with a range of policy decisions, such as compensation to be paid during land acquisition, calculation of funds required for climate mitigation, and so on.
“This is the first time such a national environment survey is being undertaken,” said Anandi Subramanian, Senior Economic Adviser, Union Environment Ministry.
A pilot project is set to begin this September in 54 districts. Land will be demarcated into “grids” with about 15-20 grids per district. These will capture the diversity in the State’s geography, farmland, wildlife, and emissions pattern, and will be used to compute a value, she added.
“If, for instance, there’s a no-go zone, we need to calculate what its economic impact is,” she told The Hindu on the sidelines of a conference to mark World Environment Day on June 5.
Ms. Subramanian didn’t specify the budget for the exercise but said that the funds for the pilot project “were already available.”
Much of the data required for the inventory would be sourced from datasets that already exist with other government ministries.
The government has also launched a ‘green skilling’ programme under which youth, particularly school dropouts, would be trained in a range of ‘green jobs’— as operators of scientific instruments used to measure environmental quality, as field staff in nature parks, and as tourist guides. Some of the labour required for the survey would also be sourced from the green-skilled workforce. (Source: The Hindu)


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Centre to start measuring ‘green GDP’ of States.

At the centre of our galaxy, there’s a black hole party - Pragnya IAS Academy - News Analysis

At the centre of our galaxy, there’s a black hole party.

Researchers said data from the NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory allowed them to detect a dozen black holes surrounding Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our spiral-shaped galaxy.

Black holes are hanging out at the centre of our galaxy by the thousands, according to scientists who have detected a bunch of them in the neighbourhood of a supermassive black hole already known to reside at the heart of the Milky Way.
Researchers said data from the NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory allowed them to detect a dozen black holes surrounding Sagittarius A*, the mammoth black hole at the centre of our spiral-shaped galaxy.
Black holes, which come in a variety of sizes, are extraordinarily dense entities with gravity so powerful that not even light can escape. Based on these findings, the scientists estimated that up to 10,000 black holes dwell within about 3 light years of Sagittarius A*.
“That’s a crowd,” Columbia University astrophysicist Chuck Hailey, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature, said on Thursday.
Sagittarius A*, boasting 4 million times the mass of our sun, is located 26,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).
The findings, which confirm decades-old predictions, provide insight into a fundamental aspect of galaxies.
“Since our galaxy is very average, it tells us that the universe is teeming with black holes orbiting near their supermassive black holes, because most galaxies have supermassive black holes,” Hailey said.
The newly detected black holes, all produced by the collapse of massive dying stars, are rare ones that captured and bound themselves to a passing star, forming what is called a stellar binary.
Black holes in isolation are hard to find, but the X-ray signatures of stellar binaries allowed their detection.
“Black holes can form farther out from the centre of the galaxy. They gravitationally interact with stars, cosmic collisions so to speak, and lose energy,” Hailey said.
“As they lose energy, they sink to the centre of the galaxy, the same way heavy sediment sinks faster than light sedimentin water. They get captured by the gravity of the supermassive black hole, catch a star, and voila, you have something we can see X-rays from.”
Supermassive black holes arise relatively soon after their galaxies are formed, devouring enormous amounts of gas, dust and stars to achieve colossal size. Hailey said, “As one black hole grows to such huge size, even if it was not originally in the exact centre, it will sink into the centre of the galaxy.” (Source: Livemint)


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At the centre of our galaxy, there’s a black hole party.