THE HINDU – CURRENT NOTE 11 March
Supreme Court issues bailable warrants against Justice Karnan
•A seven-judge Bench, comprising the seniormost judges of the Supreme Court, issued a bailable warrant against sitting Calcutta HC judge C.S. Karnan to secure his presence in the Supreme Court on March 31 in a suo motu contempt case against him for denigrating the judicial institution.
•The Bench, led by Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar, on Friday directed the Director General of Police, West Bengal, to personally serve the warrant on Justice Karnan. Justices Misra, J. Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B. Lokur, P.C. Ghose and Kurian Joseph are the others on the Bench.
•Later, addressing a press conference at his residence in Kolkata, Justice Karnan said that “it is [the Supreme Court’s order] a motivated, ridiculous and illegal order.” He urged the President to “recall the bailable warrant” and directed Secretaries-General of both Houses of Parliament to place the facts before the Speaker for a thorough probe.
‘Targeted for being SC’
•He alleged that he was being targeted by the Supreme Court because he belongs to a Scheduled Caste community. Justice Karnan also directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to initiate a probe against the seven Supreme Court judges, including Chief Justice Khehar.
•In a letter to the Prime Minister, Justice Karnan had allegedly accused several sitting and retired High Court and Supreme Court judges of corruption.
•Chief Justice Khehar informed Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi that Justice Karnan had sent a fax message to the Supreme Court Registry on March 8, seeking a meeting with the CJI and other Supreme Court judges.
•In its order issuing the warrant, the Bench said this fax message did not qualify as a response to the contempt notice issued to him.
•The Bench said that despite almost a month being given to him, Justice Karnan did not deem it necessary to enter appearance personally or through a counsel before the Supreme Court in response to the contempt notice.
•“The letter dated March 8, 2017, cannot be treated as a response by Justice C.S. Karnan. In view of the above position in the matter, we seek the presence of Justice C.S. Karnan by issuing bailable warrant with the sum of ₹10,000 in the nature of a personal bond to the satisfaction of the arresting officer,” the Bench ordered.
•During the hearing in the Supreme Court, Mr. Rohatgi submitted that there are reports that an order has been passed by Justice Karnan admitting a petition filed by a lawyer in the Calcutta HC seeking enquiry into the allegations in the suicide note of former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul.
•The August 2016 note of Pul had made corruption allegations against sitting Supreme Court and HC judges.
•In the said order, Mr. Rohatgi submitted that Justice Karnan had agreed with the petitioner-lawyer that the seven-judge Bench’s decision to strip him of judicial and administrative powers in the light of the contempt proceedings was void.
•Mr. Rohatgi submitted that he had enquired with the Registrar of the Calcutta HC, who though confirming reports about the existence of such an order nevertheless denied seeing it.
•The AG said the order in question remains unsigned.
•Chief Justice Khehar at one point dismissed such reports of an order by Justice Karnan as a “prank.”
•In the last hearing on February 13, the Supreme Court had briefly toyed with the option of issuing a bailable warrant against Justice Karnan, but chose to wait for another three weeks for the judge to explain his defiance of a judicial direction to be present in court.
•The seven-judge Bench said that Justice Karnan had not indicated a reason for his non-appearance in a letter he wrote to the Registrar General of the Supreme Court on February 10 after contempt notice was issued against him on February 8. Nor did the judge deem it necessary to file any application in the criminal contempt case against him.
•Last month the Supreme Court issued a contempt of court notice against Justice Karnan for allegedly degrading the judicial institution.
‘Lost’ Chandrayaan-1 found orbiting Moon by NASA
•India’s first lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, which was considered lost, is still orbiting the moon, NASA scientists have found by using a new ground-based radar technique.
•The ISRO lost communication with Chandrayaan-1 on August 29, 2009, almost a year after it was launched on October 22, 2008.
•Now, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California have located the spacecraft still circling some 200 km above the lunar surface. “We have been able to detect NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-1 in lunar orbit with a ground-based radar,” said Marina Brozovic, a radar scientist at JPL and principal investigator for the test project.
•“Finding LRO was relatively easy, as we were working with the mission’s navigators and had precise orbit data... Finding Chandrayaan-1 required a bit more detective work because the last contact with the spacecraft was in August of 2009,” said Brozovic. Chandrayaan-1 is very small and cuboid in shape, about 1.5 metres in length on each side. Although the interplanetary radar has been used to observe small asteroids several million miles from the earth, researchers were not certain that an object of this size could be detected as far away as the moon.
•To find a spacecraft 380,000 km away, JPL’s team used NASA’s 70-metre antenna at NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California to send out a powerful beam of microwaves towards the moon. Then the radar echoes bounced back from lunar orbit were received by the 100-metre Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.
•Finding a derelict spacecraft at lunar distance that has not been tracked for years is tricky because the moon is riddled with mascons (regions with higher-than-average gravitational pull) that can dramatically affect a spacecraft’s orbit over time, and even cause it to have crashed into the moon.
•JPL’s orbital calculations indicated that Chandrayaan-1 is still circling some 200 km above the lunar surface, but it was generally considered “lost.”
•However, with Chandrayaan-1, the radar team utilised the fact that this spacecraft is in the polar orbit around the moon, so it would always cross above the lunar poles on each orbit.
•On July 2 last year, the team pointed Goldstone and Green Bank at a location 160 km above the moon’s north pole and waited to see whether the lost spacecraft crossed the radar beam. Chandrayaan-1 was predicted to complete one orbit around the moon every two hours and eight minutes. Something that had a radar signature of a small spacecraft did cross the beam twice during four hours of observations, and the timings between detections matched the time it would take Chandrayaan-1 to complete one orbit and return to the same position above the moon’s pole.
•The team used data from the return signal to estimate its velocity and the distance to the target. This information was then used to update the orbital predictions for Chandrayaan-1.
•Chandrayaan operated for 312 days, as against the intended two years.
Four States come together for elephant census
•In what will probably be the first such attempt, the States of Odisha, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have decided to conduct a synchronised elephant census between May 9 and 12. The four States together have the maximum number of human-elephant conflict-prone regions in India.
•A decision to this effect was taken by senior Forest Department officials of the four States during a regional workshop on Friday.
•The States will conduct the census based on an identical set of rules — using the direct and indirect counting methods. The dates have been chosen specifically as the sighting of elephants is expected to be easier on the night of May 10 — a full moon night.
•The direct counting method is based on sighting of elephants while the indirect method uses the ‘dung decay’ formula, in which the the analysis of elephant dung is used to estimate the population. The second method has already been used by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
•As per the 2015 census, Odisha has 1,954 elephants while Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal had approximately 700, 275 and 130 elephants, respectively.
•“Earlier, field officials were deputed inside a forest area for direct counting. It was expected that the entire area would be covered. But, that is not possible because of many reasons. As a result, the population was underestimated in some places while duplication was reported elsewhere,” said S. S. Srivastava, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests of Odisha.
Enemy Property Bill passed amid Opposition walkout
•The Rajya Sabha passed the The Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2016 on Friday, in the sixth attempt after ordinances were passed to keep the Bill alive, following fierce objections by the Opposition parties.
•As the government introduced the Bill for consideration in the Rajya Sabha, the entire Opposition walked out. The government’s determination to pass the Bill was evident as 10 Union Ministers were present in the House to ensure that it was passed.
•Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who was supposed to reply to the debate on the Bill, did not say much observing that the Leader of the House Arun Jaitley had already explained it in detail.
•The 49-year-old law was amended to guard against claims of succession or transfer of properties left by people who migrated to Pakistan and China.
Slow progress in roads along China border: CAG
•For the Indian military, the disaster of 1962 did not end with the humiliation by China in the war. In a strategic blunder thereafter, the government decided not to develop its infrastructure along the China border. It took more than four decades for the decision to be reversed.
•In 2007, the government decided to aggressively develop infrastructure along the border with China, in a late and desperate measure to catch up. A CAG report tabled in Parliament on Friday, however, has burst the myth about the ambitious catch up, painting a picture of targets not met and huge cost escalations.
•Of the 61 India-China Border Roads scheduled to be completed by 2012, only 22 had been completed as late as March 2016 with massive cost overruns.
•“All 61 India China Border Roads (ICBR) included in Border Roads Development Board (BRDB) programme were planned to be completed by 2012. However, only 15 roads had been completed by 2012. Out of the balance 46 roads, only 7 roads were completed by March 2016, extending the Planned Date of Completion (PDC) of balance roads up to the year 2021,” the CAG report said.
•This means 22 roads or 36% had only been completed up to March 2016 despite incurring an expenditure of ₹4536 crore or 98% against the estimated cost of ₹4644 crore for 61 ICBRs, the report observed.
Partial cover: More needs to be done on the mother and child front
•The enhancement of paid maternity leave for women in the organised sector to 26 weeks from 12 is a progressive step, one that should lead to closer scrutiny of the difficulties faced by unorganised workers who fall beyond the scope of any worthwhile labour welfare measures. It is wholly welcome that such a benefit is being introduced with an amendment to the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, in line with several expert recommendations including that of the World Health Organisation, which recommends exclusive breastfeeding of children for the first 24 weeks. Giving some benefits to adoptive mothers and women who get children using embryo transfers as well signals India is in step with social changes. Positive though it is, the amended law is expected to cover only 1.8 million women, a small subset of women in the workforce. For many poor millions in the unorganised sector, the only support available is a small conditional cash benefit of ₹6,000 during pregnancy and lactation offered under the Maternity Benefit Programme. The reported move to restrict even this meagre benefit to the first child for budgetary reasons is retrograde and must be given up. If, as Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya has said, the Centre is giving organised sector women workers a humble gift, why has the damage done through the Budget not been reversed?
•Providing benefits for women and children is a societal responsibility which can be funded in a large country through a combination of general taxation and contributory payments from those who have the means. Health care should be treated as a right and deliveries handled without cost to women; the income guarantees during the 26-week period can be ensured through a universal social insurance system. Such a policy would harmonise the varying maternity benefit provisions found in different laws that govern labour at present. There would also be no discrimination against women in recruitment by employers who currently have to factor in benefit payments. Conversely, women would not suffer loss of income simply because they cannot remain in employment after childbirth. Beneficiaries covered by the latest amendment must be protected from discrimination through clear provisions. Mandating creche facilities to help women workers under the changed law is a forward-looking move, but it will work well only with a good oversight mechanism. Women’s empowerment can be achieved through universal initiatives, not by imposing conditionalities to avail benefits. Access to welfare support has become even more critical as workers migrate frequently due to economic changes. The twin imperatives are, therefore, to create more jobs for women in a diversified economy, and to provide social opportunity through maternal and child welfare measures.
