📰 Centre bans Yasin Malik-led JKLF under UAPA
He is under arrest and at present lodged in Jammu’s Kot Balwal jail.
•Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday banned separatist Yasin Malik’s Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) under the anti-terror law, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA). The move comes days after the Centre banned Jamat-e-Islami (JeI-J&K) under Section 3(1) of the UAPA.
•The JKLF was also banned under the same sections, which gives power to the Centre to declare any association as unlawful by notifying it in the Official Gazette.
•Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba told the media that murders of Kashmiri Pandits by the JKLF in 1989 triggered their exodus from the Valley. “Yasin Malik was the mastermind behind the purging of Kashmiri Pandits and is responsible for their genocide,” Mr. Gauba said.
•The decision followed a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
•Mr. Gauba said 37 FIRs have been registered by the J&K Police against the JKLF. “Two cases including in the murder of IAF personnel were registered by the CBI. The NIA has also registered a case, which is under investigation. It is evident from these that JKLF continues to be actively engaged in supporting and inciting secessionism and terrorism,” he said.
•Asked about the immediate trigger for the ban, Mr. Gauba said the activities of the outfit pose a serious threat to the security of the country and the “organisation has been actively and continuously encouraging, feelings of enmity and hatred against the lawfully established Government as well as armed rebellion.”
•JKLF is part of the Joint Resistance Leadership which includes the S.A.S. Geelani-led Hurriyat Conference. Mr. Malik is now in solitary confinement in a Jammu jail after he was booked under the Public Safety Act amid last month’s crackdown after the Pulwama terror attack where 40 CRPF personnel were killed.
•It was the first outfit to pick up arms in the Valley but joined the dialogue process in 2000 with the Centre when late Atal Bihari Bajpayee was the Prime Minister.
•Mr. Gauba said the JKLF was responsible for the murder of four Indian Air Force personnel and abduction of Dr. Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of the then Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. “This organisation is also responsible for illegal funnelling of funds for fomenting terrorism....actively involved in raising of funds and its distribution to Hurriyat cadres and stone-pelters to fuel unrest in the Kashmir Valley as well as for subversive activities,” Mr. Gauba said.
•The notification banning JKLF said the organisation is involved in anti-national and subversive activities intended to disrupt the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India.
•“JKLF-Y is in close touch with militant outfits and is supporting extremism and militancy in J&K and elsewhere,” it said.
Defeatism will hurt India’s interests more than the Taliban’s return to Kabul could
•As international talks with the Taliban leadership gain momentum, India’s foreign policy establishment has gone through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. After the initial denial that several countries, including the U.S., Russia, U.A.E., Qatar and Saudi Arabia, were engaging with Pakistan in order to bring senior Taliban leaders to the table in late 2017, India protested against being cut out of the talks. It then negotiated to join them, followed by expressions of deep misgiving over where the talks would lead. And finally this has given way to acceptance today that the talks have not only progressed, but are being given priority over every other process in Afghanistan.
Valid concerns
•The misgivings are well placed, and confirmed by the results of the last round of talks between U.S. Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban leaders in Doha (February 25-March 12). The talks appeared to be held on the Taliban’s terms, and at a venue of its choice. Therefore, while clear agreements have been forged on the withdrawal of foreign forces and on not allowing Afghan soil for use by foreign terror groups, agreements on a comprehensive ceasefire and an intra-Afghan dialogue, once considered the minimum “redlines” or starting point of engaging with the Taliban, have now been made the last priority.
•These talks have also broken the most important redline, that of being led by, or at least held with the full backing and knowledge of, the democratically-led government in Kabul. This became evident a few days ago. During a visit to Washington on March 14, Afghan National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib lashed out at Mr. Khalilzad for “delegitimising” the Ashraf Ghani government by carrying out talks in the dark.
•Another reason for New Delhi’s disquiet is that these talks continue without acknowledging a role for India, despite this being an expressly stated goal of Mr. Trump’s South Asia policy. This week, Mr. Khalilzad’s conference at the U.S. State Department to discuss “international support for the Afghan peace process, the role each party can play in bringing an end to the war, and progress to date in peace talks” included only special envoys from Russia, China and the European Union.
•Finally, there is the uncertainty for Afghanistan’s future that these talks have wrought that worries India. When talks with the Taliban began, the objective was to try to mainstream the insurgents into the political process, and at least have a working ceasefire by the time presidential elections, scheduled for April 2019, were held. The reality is far from that. The Taliban continues to carry out terror attacks in Afghanistan even as its leadership talks with the U.S. Despite the Ministry of External Affairs issuing a statement on the importance of holding the presidential elections, the Afghan vote has been further postponed to September 28. This makes Mr. Ghani’s continuance more tenuous under the constitution, which could mean an interim government will be installed, something India has been opposed to as well.
•New Delhi is worried about the prospect of chaos and civil war, akin to the scene after the previous U.S. pullout in the early 1990s that cut India out and brought the Taliban to power in Kabul with Pakistan’s support. Despite the restricted room for manoeuvre, however, there are several steps New Delhi can and must take in the present scenario to ensure both its own relevance in Afghanistan and stability in the region.
Talks with Taliban
•To begin with, there is the question of talks with the Taliban, which India has thus far refused. In the recent past, the Modi government has shown some flexibility on the issue, by sending a “non-official” representation to the Moscow talks with the Taliban. After a visit to Delhi in January by Mr. Khalilzad, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat even suggested that India should “jump on the bandwagon” of engaging the Taliban.
•However, direct, open talks between India and the Taliban at this point would serve little purpose for either side. For India, it would mean casting aside a consistently held moral principle and speaking to a non-state actor that espouses terrorism. While backchannel talks between intelligence agencies and the Taliban have been conducted for years, recognising the Taliban as a legitimate interlocutor for India at this point would be a betrayal of India’s values without any visible gains. India’s policy for the past two decades is to deal with the government in Kabul, and this will hold it in good stead if the Taliban were to eventually be a part of the government there.
•The truth is, 2019 is not 1989, and much has changed inside Afghanistan as it has in the world outside. While Afghan security forces have suffered many losses in the past year, it is unlikely that the Taliban would today be able to overrun and hold Kabul or any other big Afghan city as it did before. It also seems inconceivable that a “full withdrawal” of U.S. troops will include giving up all the bases they hold at present. Given technology, social media and the progress in education in Afghanistan since 2001 (the number of secondary graduates rose from 10,000 to more than 300,000 in 2015), it is also unlikely that the Taliban will be able to control the hearts and minds of Afghans if it were to revert to its brutal ways. Nor could it run policies that endanger Indian interests in the country, given the special place India enjoys, amongst thousands of Afghans who have studied in India, youth and women supported by Indian development projects, and hundreds of military officers trained in the country.
•Every one of the 17 presidential tickets announced also has an “India-friendly” face on it, and India must leverage its influence across the spectrum. With presidential elections put off for the moment, India could work with these Afghan leaders to support a ‘Grand Jirga’ that ensures that the maximum number of representatives from across Afghanistan articulate their post-reconciliation vision.
•India is also host to a sizeable population of Afghans who live, work and study in the country, and an outreach is important. After all, when the Vladimir Putin government brought Taliban representatives and Afghan leaders to the table for the ‘Moscow process’, it was under the aegis of an association of Afghans resident in Russia. It was public support for talks with the Taliban that gave the reconciliation process legitimacy, and it is necessary that public opinion on issues like democracy, women’s rights, education and the media also be allowed to hold sway. The world must see Afghans as they see themselves, and not according to the often-skewed ideas generated at conferences on Afghanistan’s future that sometimes don’t even include an Afghan representation.
•Finally, both India and Pakistan have a shared responsibility in building a dialogue over Afghanistan post-reconciliation. It is necessary that officials on both sides find a way to sit across the table on Afghanistan some day.
Take the long view
•Despite all the many reasons for despondency, it is necessary that Indian strategists don’t lose sight of the bigger picture — India’s longstanding relationship with the people of Afghanistan. This is a relationship nurtured by every government in New Delhi, with more than $3 billion invested by India since 2001, which has reaped manifold returns in terms of goodwill and friendship across Afghanistan. Defeatism or a lack of ambition for the India-Afghanistan relationship at this juncture would be much more detrimental to India’s interests than anything the Taliban’s return to Afghanistan’s political centrestage can do.
📰 Indian Statistical Institute submits report on VVPAT to Election Commission
•The Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) on Friday submitted the recommendations of an expert committee on the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slip verification to the Election Commission.
•The report titled “Random Sampling For Testing of EVMs via VVPAT Slip Verification” was handed over to Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora and Election Commissioners Ashok Lavasa and Sushil Chandra. The Commission will examine the report to determine the course of action.
•In view of demands from various political parties to increase the percentage of the VVPAT slip counted during elections, the Commission had engaged the ISI to analyse and scientifically examine the issue of matching the slips with the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) results.
•The expert committee which carried out the exercise included Prof. Abhay G. Bhatt, Head ISI (Delhi Centre); Prof. Rajeeva L. Karandikar, Director of the Chennai Mathematical Institute; and Onkar Prosad Ghosh, Deputy Director-General (Social Statistics Division) of the Central Statistics Office, MOSPI, who was nominated by the National Sample Survey Office Director-General.
•“Before finalising its report, the expert committee had wide-ranging consultations with other experts in the field of statistics and examined suggestions received from other groups,” said the EC in a statement.
•The report comes ahead of the March 25 hearing in the Supreme Court on a joint petition filed by 23 Opposition parties demanding the random verification of at least 50% EVM results through VVPAT slips in every Assembly segment or constituency. In the last hearing, the court had issued a notice to the Election Commission seeking its response to the petition.
•VVPAT slips are currently matched with EVM results at one randomly selected polling booth in each Assembly constituency.
📰 Italy set to become first G7 country to join ‘Belt and Road’
Chinese President Xi meets Italian counterpart Mattarella
•Italy and China want to revive the spirit of the ancient Silk Road by deepening their trade and investment ties, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Friday during a trip to Rome that has raised eyebrows in Washington.
•Mr. Xi is set to sign a deal on Saturday that will see Italy become the first member of the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialised nations to join China’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure project (BRI), which is inspired by historic, centuries-old trade routes.
•“We want to revitalise the ancient Silk Road in order to better share the fruits of humanity’s progress,” Mr. Xi said following talks with Italian President Sergio Mattarella. Speaking through a translator, Mr. Xi said the two countries should enhance cooperation in infrastructure, ports, logistics and maritime transport.
•Besides the BRI accord, various deals worth up to €7 billion ($7.9 billion) are expected to be agreed, including agreements opening up the northern ports of Trieste and Genoa to Chinese containers.
•Italy's populist government is eager for such initiatives to get underway swiftly as it battles to revitalise a sickly economy, which has slipped into its third recession in a decade.
•Underscoring the warming bilateral ties, Italy offered Xi an extravagant welcome, with a cavalry phalanx escorting his limousine into the courtyard of the presidential palace -- the sort of entry normally reserved for royalty.
•He will later attend a state dinner in his honour, where Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli will sing for the 170 guests.
•Italy's decision to get closer to Beijing has caused concern amongst its Western allies -- notably in Washington, where the White House National Security Council urged Rome not to give ”legitimacy to China's infrastructure vanity project”.
•Critics of the BRI say it is designed to bolster China's political and military influence, bringing little reward to other nations, and warn that it could be used to spread technologies capable of spying on Western interests.
Human Rights
•In an effort to allay such fears, Rome moved hastily this week to protect its telecoms sector from foreign predators, and the Italian president stressed on Friday that any deals had to be to advantageous to both countries.
•“The Silk Road must be a two-way street and not only trade must travel along it, but also talent, ideas and knowledge,” Mattarella said, with Xi standing alongside him.
•The two men promised to bolster cultural connections, saying they would twin Italian and Chinese UNESCO heritage sites.
•Mattarella also stressed the importance of safeguarding human rights but did not go into specific details. The U.S. State Department earlier this month slammed rights violations in China, saying the sort of abuses it had inflicted on its Muslim minorities had not been seen “since the 1930s.”
•China denied the accusation as groundless and prejudiced.
•Italy's rapprochement with Beijing has come as U.S. President Donald Trump wages a trade war with China, accusing the world's second-largest economy of unfair trade practices.
•Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon is in Rome and called on the Italian government to rethink its position.
•“I beseech the people of Italy to look at China's predatory economic model before signing any deals,” he told reporters. ”The Chinese have a rapacious appetite for global domination.”
•After leaving Italy on Sunday, Xi will travel to Monte Carlo and then on to Paris, where he will hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
📰 Coming, a law to empower forest staff
Draft sent to key State forest officers for comments; not made public yet
•A proposed legislation accords significant powers to India’s forest officers — including the power issue search warrants, enter and investigate lands within their jurisdictions, and to provide indemnity to forest officers using arms to prevent forest-related offences.
•The Indian Forest Act, 2019 is envisaged as an amendment to the Indian Forest Act, 1927 and is an attempt to address contemporary challenges to India’s forests. The draft law has been sent to key forest officers in the States for soliciting comments and objections until June 7, says an accompanying note by the Union Environment Ministry.
•“…Amendment proposed to provide indemnity to Forest-officer using arms etc, to prevent the forest offence…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…” says a copy of the document which hasn’t been made public yet, “…Any Forest-officer not below the rank of a Forester may, at any time enter and inspect any land within his area of jurisdiction…”
•Officials at the Union Environment Ministry said that the draft was “preliminary,” “extremely pro-people” and explicitly provided for traditional forest dwellers to jointly manage forests with officers. “Several of these provisions exist in the State Forest Acts…however, we need a strong law to increase our forest cover from about 24% now to 33% [a stated directive of government policy],” Siddhantha Das, Director-General, Forestry, told The Hindu.
•“Village forests”, according to the proposed Act, may be forestland or wasteland, which is the property of the government and would be jointly managed by the community through the Joint Forest Management Committee or Gram Sabha.
•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.
•Independent experts said that the proposed law would lead to conflicts during implementation, particularly when seen in the context of the Forest Rights Act, 2006.
•“In effect, the aim is to strengthen the forest bureaucracy in terms of deciding on how to decide on [title claims] over forest land, what parts to declare [off-limits] for conservation, checking encroachments, etc.,” said Kanchi Kohli, researcher at the New Delhi-based think tank, the Centre for Policy Research, who has perused the draft, “However, things have dramatically changed since 1927…[with] new laws, greater rights accorded to forest dwellers by the Constitution. So how will the provisions of the new Act be implemented?”
•On February 28, the Supreme Court stayed its own controversial order of Feb 13, directing State governments to evict nearly a million forest dwellers who couldn’t prove their title claims to forest land. This was after it emerged that several States had high rejection rates and due process in checking claims wasn’t always followed.
📰 The Kerala alert: drawing attention to the little-known West Nile Virus
There needs to be greater surveillance across India for the West Nile Virus
•The death of a child in Kerala’s Malappuram district has drawn attention to the epidemiology of the little-known West Nile Virus in India. Though awareness is low, the virus is endemic to several States. The first documented WNV case in Kerala was in Alappuzha in 2011, with the numbers then growing. However, official records do not reflect this, given the difficulty of diagnosing WNV in its acute phase. This microbe is serologically similar to the Japanese Encephalitis virus, which means a go-to test, ELISA, often fails to differentiate JE antibodies from WNV antibodies. More tests are typically needed to confirm WNV, and while the results appear in journals, they don’t always make it to State surveillance systems. This is why, though a 2014 Journal of Clinical Virology paper identified the 2011 Alappuzha outbreak as WNV, with around six deaths, Kerala’s health department is calling the Malappuram death the State’s first. The confirmation triggered an alert, but it doesn’t mean Kerala did not have WNV deaths before.
•Nevertheless, the alert is a welcome move. It means that State health authorities will look harder for the disease. Historically, wherever Indian researchers have looked for the WNV, they have found it. The first sign of its presence came from positive antibody tests among residents of Bombay in 1952. Thereafter, it began showing up in encephalitis patients in many of the places it was tested for, including Maharashtra, Assam and Madhya Pradesh. In Malappuram too, the rapid diagnosis was driven by heightened surveillance in Kerala following the 2018 Nipah outbreak. Patient samples were sent to the Manipal Centre for Virus Research, which deployed the Plaque Reduction Neutralisation Test, more specific than ELISA. If more States used such diagnostics, it would help determine just how widespread WNV is in India. There is a good chance the virus is a significant cause of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome, the infamous basket of illnesses with no known aetiology that affect over 10,000 Indians each year. Still, WNV rarely kills. In less than 1% of infections, the virus travels to the brain, triggering potentially fatal encephalitis. Otherwise, it merely causes a mild flu-like illness. This could change. Viruses are known to adapt for both greater virulence and more efficient transmission. Urbanisation and land-use changes are bringing the virus’s zoonotic hosts, such as birds, in more frequent contact with humans. Given increased mobility, viruses can hitch a ride to new regions via infected humans and vectors. All this makes the WNV a formidable foe. India’s best defence is better surveillance, which will help doctors reach patients early to prevent complications. Kerala could not prevent the death in Malappuram, but other States should adopt its model of heightened surveillance.
