August 21
State may not meet rice output target this year
The State is unlikely to meet the rice production target set for this year due to the flood fury, with the agriculture department estimating that the shortfall could be to the tune of 6 lakh metric tonnes.
Agriculture minister Atul Bora said the target for rice production this year was 62 lakh metric tonnes, but as the floods have severely hit the sali paddy, the State is likely to suffer a shortfall of around 6 lakh metric tonnes.
In the year 2015-16, rice production of Assam was 53 lakh metric tonnes.
Around 6.29 lakh farmer families in 4,717 villages have been hit in the flood this year so far. Sali paddy production in 1.73 lakh hectares has been affected in this year’s deluge, besides vegetables in 10,692 hectares, jute in over 7,000 hectares, etc. A total of 3.08 lakh hectares of crop land have been affected so far in the floods, he said.
District agriculture officers have been asked to compile a list of farmers who have been affected by the floods. The government will pay a compensation through DBT (direct benefit transfer) system to the farmers and the money will be deposited in the bank accounts of the farmers.
Soon Assam will have flood warning system
State Water Resources Minister Keshab Mahanta said that there had been 26 breaches on embankments in 15 districts during the recent floods, with the maximum number of ten breaches occurring in Majuli.
A state-of-the-art flood monitoring and flood warning system would soon be put in place for effective flood forewarning in the State. The system would have two control rooms – one at the Brahmaputra Board and the other at the water resources department.
A total of 70 vulnerable points on embankments had been identified across the State and those would be addressed soon. Five breaches that had occurred during the first wave of floods had already been repaired, he added.
‘Champions of Change’ Initiative Organised by NITI Aayog
The Prime Minister interacted with Young Entrepreneurs at the “Champions of Change” initiative organised by NITI Aayog at Pravasi Bharatiya Kendra.
- Six groups of Young Entrepreneurs made presentations before the PM on themes such as – Soft Power: Incredible India 2.0; Education and Skill Development; Health and Nutrition; Energizing a sustainable tomorrow; and Digital India; New India by 2022.
- The Prime Minister described the “Champions of Change” initiative as one effort to bring together diverse strengths for the benefit of the nation and society.
First Regional Centre of NDB Opens in South Africa
The first regional centre of the New Development Bank, set up by India and other BRICS nations, was officially opened in Johannesburg by South African President Jacob Zuma and the banks Indian head K V Kamath.
FACTFILE: New Development Bank (NDB)
- The New Development Bank (NDB), formerly referred to as the BRICS Development Bank, is a multilateral development bank established by the BRICS Nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
- The initial authorised capital of the bank is USD 100 billion and initial subscribed capital of the NDB is $50 bln divided into paid-in shares ($10 bln) and callable shares ($40 bln).
- The idea for setting up NDB was proposed by India at the 4th BRICS summit in 2012 held in New Delhi. The creation of a NDB was the main theme of the meeting.
- The bank is headquartered in Shanghai, China.
August 22
Supreme Court strikes down ‘triple talaq’
In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court today put the curtains down on a 1,400-year-old practice of ‘triple talaq’ among Muslims and set it aside on several grounds including that it was against the basic tenets of the Holy Quran and violated the Islamic law Shariat.
A five-judge Constitution bench, by a majority of 3:2 in which the Chief Justice JS Khehar was in minority, said in a one line order: “In view of the different opinions recorded by a majority of 3:2, the practice of talaq-e-biddat – triple talaq is set aside.”
The three separate judgements totalling 395 pages, written for the majority by Justices Kurian Joseph and RF Nariman, did not concur with the minority view of the CJI and Justice SA Nazeer that ‘triple talaq’ was a part of religious practice and the government should step in and come out with a law.
The three judges, Justices Joseph, Nariman and UU Lalit, expressly disagreed with the CJI and Justice Nazeer on the key issue whether triple talaq was fundamental to Islam.
The verdict was immediately welcomed by the government, political parties, activists and the petitioners, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailing it as “historic” and saying it has granted equality to Muslim women.
Writing the majority judgement, Justice Joseph said “I find it extremely difficult to agree with the CJI that the practice of triple talaq has to be considered integral to religious denomination in question and that the same is part of their personal law.” This view was shared by Justices Nariman and Lalit who were part of the majority.
Referring to the verses of the Holy Quran, Justice Joseph said, “They are clear and unambiguous as far as talaq is concerned. The Holy Quran has attributed sanctity and permanence to matrimony.
“However, in extremely unavoidable situations, talaq is permissible. But an attempt for reconciliation, and if it succeeds, then revocation, are the Quranic essential steps before talaq attains finality.
“In triple talaq, this door is closed. Hence, triple talaq is against the basic tenets of the Holy Quran and consequently, it violates Shariat.”
Justice RF Nariman, whose views were concurred with by Justice UU Lalit, was in agreement with Justice Joseph saying “this form of Talaq must, therefore, be held to be violative of the fundamental right contained under Article 14 (right to equality) of the Constitution of India.”
Arunachal Pradesh adopts national policy for Tibetans in exile
Arunachal Pradesh has adopted a rehabilitation policy which deals with matters concerning land lease, extending Central and State benefits to Tibetans residing in the State.
In a letter to Lobsang Sangay, the president of Central Tibetan administration (CTA) in Dharamshala, which is the global headquarters for the 1,50,000 Tibetans living across 40 countries of the world, the Chief Minsiter of Arunachal Pradesh Pema Khandu expressed his happiness for making the decision.
At the cabinet meeting convened by him on August 12, 2017, a decision was made to adopt and extend the Tibetan Rehabilitation Policy 2014 in the State of Arunachal Pradesh.
The Chief Minister had further mentioned that Arunachal Pradesh houses the fourth-largest number of Tibetans in India. It has four Tibetan settlements – Tezu, Miao, Tuting and Tenzingang.
“Sankalp Se Sidhi” program on 75th Anniversary of Quit India Movement
“Sankalp Se Sidhi” program being organized across the country to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Quit India Movement.
“Sankalp Se Sidhi” program is being organized across the country to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Quit India Movement. On this occasion, the Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Ministry has planned to organize the Sankalp Se Sidhi program at 578 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs), 29 ICAR institutes/SAUs and 53 ATMAs during 19-30 August 2017.
- The programs comprise of Kisan Film having message of Hon’ble PM to double farmers’ income by year 2022, followed by pledge for Sankalp Se Sidhi, lecture by agriculture experts and address of the chief guest.
ONGC board approves HPCL takeover of 51.11% stake
The board of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp, ONGC, has given ‘in-principle’ approval to acquire government’s 51.11 per cent stake in Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd.
The ONGC board at its meeting constituted a committee of directors to examine various aspects of the acquisition and to provide its recommendations to the board of directors.
FACTFILE: Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) is an Indian multinational oil and gas company headquartered in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India.
- It is India’s largest oil and gas exploration and production company. It produces around 77% of India’s crude oil (equivalent to around 30% of the country’s total demand) and around 62% of its natural gas.
- ONGC has been ranked 449th in the Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s biggest corporations for the year 2015.
- It is ranked 17th among the Top 250 Global Energy Companies by Platts.
FACTFILE: Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) is an Indian state-owned oil and natural gas company with its headquarters at Mumbai, Maharashtra.
- It has about 25% market-share in India among public-sector companies (PSUs) and a strong marketing infrastructure. The Government of India owns 51.11% shares in HPCL and others are distributed amongst financial institutes, public and other investors.
- The company is ranked 367th on the Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s biggest corporations as of 2016.
August 23
Unicode standard for Assamese in the offing
In what has been described as a historic occasion for Assam, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has formally accepted the proposal of a separate Assamese code chart submitted by the Assam government.
The Government of Assam proposal will be submitted to the International Standard Organization for consideration and acceptance as international standard.
This has paved the way for sanction of Unicode standards for Assamese script. Till now, Assamese script does not have its separate identity in the digital world and shares the Bengali codes.
Though BIS does not provide the Unicode, it is a member of the ISO that provides Unicode.
The Assam government had submitted to the BIS that Assamese is a historically evolved script with its own set of characters and symbols representing written texts. But the non-inclusion of this in Unicode and ISO standards has triggered problems in using the language in computers.
During the initial days of digital standards for the Indian languages in the first Indian Script Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) released by the BIS in December 1991, a clear mention was made of the Assamese script. The ISCII document released by the BIS clearly mentioned that the northern scripts are Devanagari, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Bengali and Assamese, while the southern scripts are Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil.
FACTFILE : Assamese Language
- Assamese Language is an Eastern Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in the Indian state of Assam.
- It is the easternmost Indo-Aryan language and by extension the easternmost indigenous Indo-European language
- It is spoken by over 15 million native speakers.
- Nagamese, an Assamese-based Creole language is widely used in Nagaland and parts of Assam. Nefamese is an Assamese-based pidgin used in Arunachal Pradesh. Small pockets of Assamese speakers can be found in Bangladesh
- In the past, it was the court language of the Ahom kingdom from the 17th century.
FACTFILE : Unicode
- Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems.
- The latest version contains a repertoire of 136,755 characters covering 139 modern and historic scripts, as well as multiple symbol sets.
- The Unicode Standard is maintained in conjunction with ISO/IEC 10646, and both are code-for-code identical.
‘Creamy layer’ income bar for OBC raised
The Union cabinet increased the ‘creamy layer’ ceiling for the other backward classes (OBC) category to Rs 8 lakh per annum from the existing Rs 6 lakh for the Central government jobs, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said here.
Briefing reporters on the decisions taken by the Union cabinet, he said those in the OBC category earning up to Rs 8 lakh per annum would now get the reservation benefits.
Chief Minister seeks revival of State paper mills
Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal sought sanction of Rs 1,800 crore for revival of the paper mills at Jagiroad and Panchgram in Assam, besides relief to two lakh bamboo farmers in the Brahmaputra and Barak valleys.
CM had met principal secretary to the Prime Minister, Nripendra Mishra and raised a host of issues, including revival of Nagaon Paper Mill of Jagiroad, Cachar Paper Mill of Panchgram and Ashok Paper Mill of Jogighopa.
“Under the Open Defecation Free (ODF) scheme, we have requested the Centre to fund construction of 15 lakh new latrines in Assam,” Sonowal said, adding the milestones achieved by the State in the implementation of Swacch Bharat Mission since the new government came to power were also discussed in the meeting with Mishra.
Cabinet gives in principle nod for bank mergers
In the context of massive accumulation of bad loans by state-run banks, the Union Cabinet gave an “in principle” approval for their consolidation by merging some of the public sector lenders.
“The Cabinet approved the constitution of an alternate mechanism that will oversee proposals with regard to consolidation of banks, which will come from the PSBs (public sector banks),” Arun Jaitley told following the Cabinet meeting.
“As of today, there are 20 PSBs plus the State Bank of India (SBI),” he said, adding that the SBI had recently concluded the merger with its associate banks and become a larger consolidated entity.
“If any other PSB board gives a consolidation proposal, to oversee that proposal an alternative mechanism will be in place to give in principle approval for the proposal of the banks for a scheme of amalgamation,” Jaitley said. “The decision regarding creating strong and competitive banks will be solely based on commercial considerations,” he added.
Such an alternative mechanism “enables quick facilitation of decisions”.
Consolidation increases the entity’s commercial strength, the ability to absorb market shocks.
It facilitate the creation of strong and competitive banks in public sector space to meet the credit needs of a growing economy, absorb shocks and have the capacity to raise resources without depending unduly on the state exchequer.
NITI Aayog Launched Mentor India Campaign
NITI Aayog launched the Mentor India Campaign, a strategic nation building initiative to engage leaders who can guide and mentor students at more than 900 Atal Tinkering Labs, established across the country as a part of the Atal Innovation Mission. CEO NITI Aayog, Shri Amitabh Kant unveiled the online nationwide initiative in the capital.
Mentor India is aimed at maximizing the impact of Atal Tinkering Labs, possibly the biggest disruption in formal education globally. The idea is to engage leaders who will nurture and guide students in the Atal Tinkering Labs. These labs are non-prescriptive by nature, and mentors are expected to be enablers rather than instructors.
NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission is among one of the flagship programs of the Government of India to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the country to set up the Atal Tinkering Labs across the country.
FDI Jumps 37% to 10.4 Billion USD During April-June 2017
Foreign direct investment, FDI, into the country grew by 37 per cent to 10(point) 4 billion US Dollar during the first quarter of the current fiscal. According to the figures of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, DIPP, India had received around eight billion FDI US Dollar during the same period last year.
The main sectors which attracted the highest foreign inflows include services, telecom, trading, computer hardware and software and automobile.
Bulk of the FDI came in from Singapore, Mauritius, the Netherlands and Japan.
A strong inflow of foreign investments will help improve the country’s balance of payments situation and strengthen the rupee value against other global currencies, especially the US dollar.
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August 24
SC declares right to privacy as fundamental right
In a landmark verdict, the right to privacy was today declared a fundamental right under the Constitution by the Supreme Court, which said “privacy is the constitutional core of human dignity”.
The judgement, which will have a bearing on the lives of all Indians, said that “the right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and as a part of the freedoms guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution.”
The top court also ruled that like other fundamental rights, the right to privacy was not absolute and any encroachment will have to withstand the touchstone of permissible restrictions.
A nine-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar, which delivered as many as six concurring verdicts, overruled the contrary apex court verdicts delivered in 1950 and 1962 in the M P Sharma and the Kharak Singh cases holding that right to privacy was not part of the Constitution.
However, the top court gave a ray of hope to embattled government, whose Aadhaar scheme is under intense scrutiny over privacy infringements, said, “We commend to the Union Government the need to examine and put into place a robust regime for data protection.
“The creation of such a regime requires a careful and sensitive balance between individual interests and legitimate concerns of the state. The legitimate aims of the state would include for instance protecting national security, preventing and investigating crime, encouraging innovation and the spread of knowledge, and preventing the dissipation of social welfare benefits”.
Noted jurist Soli Sorabjee said “no fundamental right is absolute. It is always subject to reasonable restrictions”.
The bench said that right to privacy was protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and rather, it can be traced to entire Part III as and as a part of all the fundamental rights.
The judgement said that privacy included at its core the preservation of personal intimacies, the sanctity of family life, marriage, procreation, the home and sexual orientation.
“Privacy also connotes a right to be left alone. Privacy safeguards individual autonomy and recognises the ability of the individual to control vital aspects of his or her life.
No registration record of bulk of 1966-71 migrants
Nearly 60 per cent of the Bangladeshi nationals who had settled in Assam (India) between January 1, 1966 and March 25, 1971 have not registered themselves with the Foreigner Regional Registration Offices (FRROs), a provision mandated by the law of the land.
The rule says that anyone who had entered the State before 1971 but after 1966 and has been detected as foreigners by the Foreigners Tribunals, would have to get himself or herself registered with the FRROs within 180 days, failing which the person concerned should be taken into custody and deported.
Records suggest that of the nearly 40,000 foreigners who entered India between 1966 and 1971, only 14,843 of them have so far registered themselves with the respective FRROs, while over 19,000 of them continues to defy the laid down norms.
Cabinet Approves New Central Sector Scheme – “PMKSY”
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has approved the renaming of the new Central Sector Scheme – SAMPADA (Scheme for Agro-Marine Processing and Development of Agro-Processing Clusters) as “Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana (PMKSY)” for the period of 2016-20 coterminous with the 14th Finance Commission cycle.
The objective of PMKSY is to supplement agriculture, modernize processing and decrease Agri-Waste.
Impact:-
- The implementation of PMKSY will result in creation of modern infrastructure with efficient supply chain management from farm gate to retail outlet.
- It will provide a big boost to the growth of food processing sector in the country.
- It will help in providing better prices to farmers and is a big step towards doubling of farmers’ income.
- It will create huge employment opportunities especially in the rural areas.