📰 Supreme Court flags delay in appointment of judges
Bench seeks details on 213 names cleared by Supreme Court Collegium but pending with government.
•Two hundred and thirteen names recommended for appointment to various High Courts are pending with the government/Supreme Court Collegium, the Supreme Court said in a judicial order.
•At least the names on which the Supreme Court Collegium, the High Courts and the governments had agreed upon should be appointed within six months, the order said.
•“If recommendations of the High Court Collegium meet with the approval of the Supreme Court Collegium and the government, at least their appointments must take place within six months. This is not to say that in other cases the process should not be completed within six months,” a Bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and K.M. Joseph said in an order dated December 6 and made available on Tuesday.
•It emphasised that the appointments required “a continuous, collaborative and integrated process, where the government is an important consultee”.
•The order is significant, coming at a time when inordinate delays in the appointment of High Court judges and depleting numbers in the higher judiciary threaten to affect the justice delivery mechanism.
•The court has asked for a list with details of the 213 names, including when their files were forwarded to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the time taken by the Law Ministry to forward them to the PMO.
•On the Supreme Court collegium clearing the recommendees, the Union Law Ministry has to put up within three weeks the recommendations to the Prime Minister who would advise the President on the appointment. However, no time limit has been prescribed for action by the Prime Minister and the President.
•The Bench directed that the list, which has to be vetted by Attorney General K.K. Venugopal, to also have other details of the 213 pending names, including the date when each recommendation was made by the High Court collegium concerned; date when the recommendation was forwarded to the collegium after consulting with the State government by the Law Ministry; the time period between these two dates; the date when the collegium cleared the names; the time period, etc.
•The Bench observed in the order that the number of judges appointed to the High Courts has steadily dipped since 2017. Judicial appointments to High Courts have nearly halved in 2019 compared to 2017 and 2018.
•Only 65 judges have been appointed to High Courts in 2019. It was 115 in 2017 and 108 in 2018.
•The High Courts are functioning at nearly 50% of their sanctioned judicial strength. Of a total 1,079 judges sanctioned in the High Courts, there are 410 vacancies. Only 669 judges are working in the courts.
•In 2019, only 65 judges were stated to have been appointed to the High Courts as on 2.12.2019 as against 115 in 2017 and 108 in 2018.
•If the judicial strength in the High Courts continued to wither away, the Bench said, “we would have less High Court judges adoring to the Bench on January 1, 2020 than on January 1, 2018!”
•The Bench, in its seven-page order, noted that the various High Courts’ collegiums were yet to send recommendations for 197 vacancies.
•The Supreme Court said filling up vacancies in the subordinate judiciary while the High Courts grow thinner would only create a logjam of cases.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 has a sinister political logic — the first de jure attempt towards a Hindu Rashtra
•How a country defines who can become its citizens defines what that country is, because citizenship is really the right to have rights. For India, the choice was inexplicably made in 1950 when the Constitution was adopted, and Part II (concerning citizenship) provided citizenship based on domicile in the territory of India. In fact, under Article 6 of the Constitution, migrants from Pakistani territory to Indian territory were also given citizenship rights. Religion was conspicuous in this constitutional scheme, in its absence. The Constitution also recognises the power of Parliament to make provisions with respect to “acquisition and termination of citizenship”. Pursuant to this, Parliament had enacted the Citizenship Act, 1955; again, religion is not a relevant criteria under the 1955 Act.
•This position is now sought to be changed through the proposed Citizenship Amendment Bill, 2019 (CAB) that seeks to amend certain provisions of the 1955 Act.
•The obvious question on which much of the debate has so far focused on is whether in a country such as India, with a secular Constitution, certain religious groups can be preferred in acquisition of citizenship. Especially when secularism has been declared to be a basic feature of the Constitution in a multitude of judgments. But in addition to this basic question, a look at the proposed CAB shows that it is peppered with unconstitutionalities. The classification of countries and communities in the CAB is constitutionally suspect.
Country classification
•First to the countries. The basis of clubbing Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh together and thereby excluding other (neighbouring) countries is unclear. A common history is not a ground as Afghanistan was never a part of British India and always a separate country. Being a neighbour, geographically, is no ground too as Afghanistan does not share an actual land border with India. More importantly, why have countries such as Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar, which share a land border with India, been excluded?
•The reason stated in the ‘Statement of Objects and Reasons’ of the Bill is that these three countries constitutionally provide for a “state religion”; thus, the Bill is to protect “religious minorities” in these theocratic states. This reason does not hold water. Why then is Bhutan, which is a neighbour and constitutionally a religious state — the official religion being Vajrayana Buddhism — excluded from the list? In fact, Christians in Bhutan can only pray privately inside their homes. Many Bhutanese Christians in the border areas travel to India to pray in a church. Yet, they are not beneficiaries under CAB. Further, if religious persecution of “religious minorities” in the neighbourhood is the concern, then why has Sri Lanka, which is Buddhist majority and has a history where Tamil Hindus have been persecuted, been excluded? Why is also Myanmar, which has conducted a genocide against Muslim Rohingyas, many of who have been forced to take refuge in India, not been included? The CAB selection of only these three countries is manifestly arbitrary.
Focus on certain groups
•On the classification of individuals, the Bill provides benefits to sufferers of only one kind of persecution, i.e. religious persecution. This itself is a suspect category. Undoubtedly, the world abounds in religious persecution but it abounds equally, if not more, in political persecution. If the intent is to protect victims of persecution, there is no logic to restrict it only to religious persecution. Further, the assumption that religious persecution does not operate against co-religionists is also false. Taslima Nasreen of Bangladesh is a case in point. She or similarly placed persons will not get the benefit of the proposed amendment, even though she may have personally faced more religious persecution than many Bangladeshi Hindus. Similarly, Shias in Pakistan, a different sect of the same religion, also face severe persecution in Pakistan. The fact that atheists are missing from the list of beneficiaries is shocking.
•Restricting the benefits of “religious minority” to six religious groups (Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians) is equally questionable. Ahmadiyas in Pakistan are not recognised as Muslims there and are treated as belonging to a separate religion. In fact, because they are seen as a religion that has tried to change the meaning of Islam, they are more persecuted than even Christians or Hindus. If the avowed objective of CAB is to grant citizenship to migrants on the basis of religious persecution in their country of origin, the absence of Ahmadiyas from the list makes things clear.
•Article 14 of the Constitution of India, prevents the State from denying any “person” (as opposed to citizen) “equality before the law” or “equal protection of the laws” within the territory of India. From the serious incongruities of CAB, as explained above, it is not difficult to imagine, how it will not just deny equal protection of laws to similarly placed persons who come to India as “illegal migrants” but in fact grant citizenship to the less deserving at the cost of the more deserving.
•How else does one explain how a Rohingya who has saved himself from harm in Myanmar by crossing into India will not be entitled to be considered for citizenship, while a Hindu from Bangladesh, who is primarily an economic migrant and who may not have not faced any direct persecution in his life, will be entitled to be considered apparently on the ground of religious persecution? Similarly, why a Tamil from Jaffna who took a boat to escape the atrocities in Sri Lanka will continue be an “illegal migrant” and never be entitled to apply for citizenship by naturalisation? It is not difficult to imagine many other examples of this kind that reveal the manifestly arbitrary nature of CAB. There is also the reduction in the residential requirement for naturalisation — from 11 years to five. It is almost as if CAB in its provisions and impact is trying to give definitional illustrations of the word “arbitrary”.
•CAB is devoid of any constitutional logic, as explained above. But it does have a sinister political logic. By prioritising Hindus in matters of citizenship as per law, it seeks to make India a Hindu homeland, and is the first de jure attempt to make India a Hindu Rashtra. If India is to stay a country for Indians and not for Hindu Afghans, Hindu Pakistanis and Hindu Bangladeshis and eventually for Hindu Russians, Hindu Americans, CAB should not be passed in Parliament. If it is, the judiciary must call it out for what it is — a patently unconstitutional piece of legislation. Else, make no mistake, it is only the beginning and not the end of similar legal moves, which, with time, will bring an end to the Constitution as we know it.
📰 U.S., Saudi at bottom of climate class: report
CThey show ‘hardly any signs’ of reducing their greenhouse gas production
•The U.S. and Saudi Arabia are among major polluters showing “hardly any signs” of reducing their greenhouse gas production, a global assessment of countries’ emissions trajectories said on Tuesday at United Nations climate talks.
•The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) measures the emissions, renewable energy share and climate policies of 57 countries and the European Union.
•It found the U.S. ranks last, followed by Saudi Arabia and Australia, although several countries did report falls in emissions last year, largely due to an industry-wide fade out of coal.
•While climate performance varied greatly — even within the EU, with Sweden leading the way — the report found that none of the countries surveyed were currently on a path compatible with the Paris climate goals.
•The 2015 accord saw nations agree to work towards limiting global temperature rises to “well below” two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
•U.S. President Donald Trump says he plans to withdraw from the global plan to reduce emissions.
•China, the world’s largest single emitter, was found to have taken “medium action” due to its high investment in renewables.
•India, for the first time, ranks among the top 10 in this year’s Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) presented on Tuesday at the COP25 climate summit here.
•The current levels of per capita emissions and energy use in India, ranked 9th in the “high category”, are still comparatively low and, along with ambitious 2030 targets, result in high ratings for the green house gas emissions and energy use categories, said the report released here in the Spanish capital.
•However, despite an overall high rating for its Climate Policy performance, experts point out that the Indian government has yet to develop a roadmap for the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies that would consequently reduce the country’s high dependence on coal.
•However, the index warned that Beijing could slump to the bottom rungs if it follows through on its plan to continue building coal-fired power plants.
•Ursula Hagen from the environmental watchdog Germanwatch, who co-authored the accompanying report, said both the U.S. and China were “at a crossroads” on climate.
•“The index shows signs of a global turnaround in emissions, including declining coal consumption. However, several large countries are still trying to resist this trend - above all the USA,” she said.
•“Much will depend on further developments in China and the elections in the USA.”
•Delegates are gathered at the COP 25 in Madrid to devise ways of putting the Paris plan in action, but key sticking points remain over emissions trading schemes and how the fight against climate change is funded.
•“This science based assessment shows again that in particular the large climate polluters do hardly anything for the transformational shift we need,” said Stephan Singer from the Climate Action Network.
•He said nations need to implement “deep emissions reductions to curtail the run to potentially irreversible climate change”.
📰 India proposes extended deadline for commitments at climate summit
‘Developed countries have not met Kyoto Protocol targets’ , Prakash Javadekar tells UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
•India on Tuesday proposed that developed countries make good commitments on providing finance to developing countries by 2023, instead of 2020.
•“It is time for reflection and assessment as we near the end of the pre-2020 period. Has the developed world delivered on its promises? Unfortunately, annexed [developed] countries have not met their Kyoto Protocol targets... I propose that we have three more years to fulfill the pre-2020 commitments till the global stock take takes places for bridging emission gaps,” Union Environment Minister, Prakash Javadekar said in Madrid, Spain, on Tuesday. He was stating India’s position at the 25th Session of the Conference of Parties under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP25), currently under way.
•Developed countries were to have given a trillion dollars, but barely 2% of it had materialised, he claimed. “The world that benefited from carbon emissions that made them developed, must repay,” he said.
•According to Mr. Javadekar, India is on its way to achieving voluntary targets it has set for itself to curb emissions. It has reduced emissions intensity of GDP by 21% and is “on track” to achieve the goal of 35% emissions reduction as promised in Paris, he said.
•Among India’s key demands is that the UN COP agree on a framework whereby carbon credits accumulated as part of provisions of the Kyoto Protocol be carried over after 2020, and that the loss and damage suffered by developing countries — including India — due to the vagaries of climate change be made good by Western developed countries by finance.
•The Kyoto Protocol was an agreement in 1997 that allowed industries in developing countries to gain carbon credits by investing in emission-reduction technologies. These credits could be traded in specialised markets in Western exchanges. India has accumulated millions of such credits but their value has crashed. Several countries who had committed to the Kyoto Protocol had opted out and there were controversies about whether the credits truly reflected emission reductions.
Paris Agreement
•The 2015 Paris Agreement commits countries to strive to keep emissions to prevent a greater than a degree rise by the end of this century from present levels. This would require countries to commit to new targets by 2020, take stock and announce to the world their progress every five years. Developed countries have proposed new targets but India, Brazil, China, who have accumulated credits, are insistent that credits accumulated be honoured.
•Before 2020, countries had committed to a “rulebook”, that would specify how the Paris Agreement would be implemented. Much of it had been finalised in Katowice, Poland, in 2018. The COP underway in Madrid is expected to tie-up all loose ends this year. The conference is scheduled to conclude on Dec 13.
📰 Lok Sabha passes bill extending SC/ST quota in State legislatures
MPs call for continuing nomination of Anglo-Indians.
•Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Sixth Amendment) Bill, 2019, which continues the reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes for another 10 years, upto January 25, 2030.
•Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad noted that the quota in legislatures was required to build a new political leadership of the two communities. The Bill was passed with 352 members in favour and none against. The reservation for SCs, STs and Anglo-Indians given for the past 70 years in Lok Sabha and State Assemblies was due to end on January 25, 2020.
•The reservation for Anglo-Indians in the form of “nomination” is set to expire on January 25 next year as the Bill does not extend the facility to the community. The Minister in his reply said doors are not shut and the matter would be considered.
•Speaking during the discussion, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the Minister should move an Amendment to the Bill to the effect of extending the SC/ST reservation for 10 years but should have been more considerate of Anglo-Indians.
