Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 28 August 2017

::National::

All about Article 35A of the Constitution

• Article 35A is a provision incorporated in the Constitution giving the Jammu and Kashmir Legislature a carte blanche to decide who all are ‘permanent residents’ of the State.
• It confers on them special rights and privileges in public sector jobs, acquisition of property in the State, scholarships and other public aid and welfare.
• The provision mandates that no act of the legislature coming under it can be challenged for violating the Constitution or any other law of the land.
• Article 35A was incorporated into the Constitution in 1954 by an order of the then President Rajendra Prasad on the advice of the Jawaharlal Nehru Cabinet.
• The controversial Constitution Order of 1954 followed the 1952 Delhi Agreement entered into between Nehru and the then Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Sheikh Abdullah, which extended Indian citizenship to the ‘State subjects’ of Jammu and Kashmir.
• The Presidential Order was issued under Article 370 (1) (d) of the Constitution. This provision allows the President to make certain “exceptions and modifications” to the Constitution for the benefit of ‘State subjects’ of Jammu and Kashmir.
• So Article 35A was added to the Constitution as a testimony of the special consideration the Indian government accorded to the ‘permanent residents’ of Jammu and Kashmir.
• The parliamentary route of lawmaking was bypassed when the President incorporated Article 35A into the Constitution. Article 368 (i) of the Constitution empowers only Parliament to amend the Constitution.
• A five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court in its March 1961 judgment in Puranlal Lakhanpal vs. The President of India discusses the President’s powers under Article 370 to ‘modify’ the Constitution.
• Though the court observes that the President may modify an existing provision in the Constitution under Article 370, the judgment is silent as to whether the President can, without the Parliament’s knowledge, introduce a new Article. This question remains open.
• A writ petition filed by NGO We the Citizens challenges the validity of both Article 35A and Article 370.
• It argues that four representatives from Kashmir were part of the Constituent Assembly involved in the drafting of the Constitution and the State of Jammu and Kashmir was never accorded any special status in the Constitution.
• Article 370 was only a ‘temporary provision’ to help bring normality in Jammu and Kashmir and strengthen democracy in that State, it contends. The Constitution-makers did not intend Article 370 to be a tool to bring permanent amendments, like Article 35A, in the Constitution.
• Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal has called for a debate in the Supreme Court on the sensitive subject.
• Recently, a Supreme Court Bench, led by Justice Dipak Misra, tagged the Khanna petition with the We the Citizens case, which has been referred to a three-judge Bench.
• The court has indicated that the validity of Articles 35A and 370 may ultimately be decided by a Constitution Bench.

GJM announced its decision to participate in talks with West Bengal government

• The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) announced its decision to participate in talks with the West Bengal government on the ongoing impasse in Darjeeling.
• A five-member delegation of the party, led by assistant general secretary Benoy Tamang, will attend the meeting on August 29.
• This is the first time since the beginning of the agitation in the second week of June that the GJM has announced its decision to join talks with the State government.
• Ms. Banerjee gave a call for the meeting after receiving a letter from the Gorkha National Liberation front (GNLF). Though Ms. Banerjee had not referred to the GJM, she said an invite would be extended to all parties in the hills.
• So far the GNLF, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), Jan Andolan party (JAP) and the Gorkha Rastriya Nirman Manch (GRNM) have received invitation from the State government.
• In the past eight days, six small intensity blasts have been reported in the Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts.

India discussed with Qatar the welfare of its citizens in the wake of its disputes

• India discussed with Qatar the welfare of its citizens in the wake of its lingering disputes with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain.
• In wide-ranging talks between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, the two sides also discussed ways to deepen co-operation in energy, trade and investment.
• External Affairs Ministry said bilateral issues, including welfare of the more than six lakh workers, were discussed. Official sources said expanding co-operation in energy, trade and investment were also discussed.
• In June, the four nations had announced cutting diplomatic ties and closing all connectivity links with Qatar, alleging that it supported terrorism. Qatar had rejected the charges.
• India had asked countries in the region to resolve the crisis through constructive dialogue and well-established international principles of mutual respect.
• India’s ties with Qatar have intensified in the last few years. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al-Thani visited New Delhi in December during which India had expressed keenness in investing in hydrocarbon projects in the Gulf nation.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Qatari counterpart had also discussed enhancing cooperation in defence and security and agreed on joint action to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing.

::International::

Islamabad in a tight spot after new Afghanistan policy of US

• The new Afghan strategy announced by U.S. President Donald Trump, which attacked Pakistan for providing safe havens to terrorists and offered India a greater role in Afghanistan, has put Islamabad in a tight spot.
• The political and military leaderships, usually divided on every governing issue, have come on “one page” to strongly condemn Mr. Trump’s remarks.
• Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi called for a joint session of Parliament to discuss the issue. He also chaired a National Security Committee meeting, which rejected President Trump’s Afghan strategy, and stated that Indian policies were inimical to peace in the region.
• Pakistan fought two wars for the U.S. in Afghanistan, both under military regimes. In the 1980s, during General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s rule, the military went into covert operations in Afghanistan, along with the CIA, to fight the Soviet Red Army.
• Pakistan’s policy towards Afghanistan and India has historically been dominated by the military. After the Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the U.S. lost interest in the country.
• But not Pakistan. Former military chief General Aslam Beg and former Inter-Service Intelligence chief Hameed Gul came up with a plan to make Afghanistan its proxy through jihadist organisations.
• The Americans know that to put pressure on Pakistan, all they need to do is to take a pro-India line.
• Greater role the Trump administration is offering India in South Asia could prompt Pakistan to rethink its decades-old policy.
• Yet, Pakistan is left with no choice but to continue to fight the war in Afghanistan, said the official. “If the U.S. is angry, Pakistan has got a new master and financier — China.”

United States proxy war in Africa goes through Germany

• While the world is focussing on Donald Trump’s foreign policy plans in Afghanistan and West Asia, the U.S. is continuing, without much media scrutiny, its proxy wars in Africa.
• Recently, it became evident that the U.S. military’s newest ally in the region could be the genocidal regime of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan. This is not surprising. In fact, the U.S. has already allied with dozens of dictatorial regimes and militias on the African continent.
• All of them are part of the ongoing shadow war in the region, including regular air strikes by drones or conventional jets, and secret operations of commando units on the ground.
• The heart of U.S. secret wars in Africa lies in Stuttgart, Germany, where AFRICOM (the United States Africa Command) has been based since 2007.
• The Kelley Barracks in Stuttgart-Moehringen is known as AFRICOM’s command centre with 1,500 personnel, including military and U.S. federal civilian employees.
• In October 2016, it was reported that AFRICOM was expanding its drone warfare in Africa when military personnel and unmanned aerial vehicles were transferred to a base in Tunisia.
• In 2016, U.S. drones carried out 14 strikes in Somalia, killing up to 292 people, including five civilians. Libya, another war-torn African country, was bombed by the U.S. 496 times last year.
• The U.S. has drone bases in Niger and Djibouti as well, while the American shadow wars are being fought in almost 50 African nations.
• Most of these operations are planned in and coordinated from Stuttgart, but not many locals seem to be aware of it.
• The German government itself doesn’t appear to be bothered much about AFRICOM’s activities. When it was revealed that illegal drone operations were taking place from German soil, Berlin’s reaction was practically non-existent.
• Not just the AFRICOM in Stuttgart is involved in these wars but also the Ramstein Air Base in southwestern Germany, which is considered the “heart of U.S. drone warfare”.

::Business and Economy::

MNRE says guidelines for solar power to reduce risk and increasing affordability

• The Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) has said its guidelines for tariff-based bidding for procuring solar power will reduce risk, enhance transparency and increase affordability.
• The MNRE had issued the new guidelines for tariff based competitive bidding process on August 3.
• The guidelines have been issued under the provisions of Section 63 of the Electricity Act, 2003 for long term procurement from grid-connected Solar PV Power Projects of 5 MW and above, through competitive bidding.
• Besides, it said, the move would help protect consumer interests through affordable power.
• It will also provide standardisation and uniformity in processes and a risk-sharing framework between various stakeholders involved in the solar PV power procurement, it said.
• This will also help reduce off-taker risk and encourage investments, enhance bankability of the Projects and improve profitability for the investors.
• Some of the salient features of the the new norms include generation compensation for off-take constraints for reducing off-take risks. The ‘must-run’ status for solar projects has been stressed upon.
• Besides, to ensure lower tariffs, minimum PPA (power purchase agreement) tenure has been kept at 25 years. Moreover, unilateral termination or amendment of PPA is not allowed.

Darjeeling tea prices sore up due to ongoing dispute

• Amid flickering hopes of a resolution to the impasse in Darjeeling, tea exporters and packers are scrambling to mop up whatever teas are being offered at the tea auctions here and prices have breached the Rs. 1,000 per kg mark at three consecutive weekly sales.
• The industry has been apprehensive that even if the deadlock, which has exceeded 60 days, was broken and estates were to open by September, production would not commence before October, when the onset of winter would limit output. About 75% of the year’s crop is as good as lost, they said.
• Auction prices of this prime brew had averaged about Rs. 300 per kg between 2012 and 2016, according to official statistics.
• Offerings, however, were low, falling from 17,000 kg in end-July to 8,700 kg in this week’s sale, according to J. Kalyan Sundaram, secretary general, CTTA. He said that 8,400 kg were sold at an average price of Rs. 1,164.5 a kg.
• This was mainly picked up by 2-3 exporters. According to statistics from the Indian Tea Association, in 2016, India exported 6 million kg out of production of 8 million kg.
• Demanding Statehood, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has enforced a shutdown in Darjeeling since June 15. While there appear to be some signs of talks between the State government and other parties, the GJM has persisted with its demands.
• The Darjeeling Tea Association has estimated a revenue loss of Rs. 400 crore to the industry.
• It also said that the loss of second flush teas producing the unique muscatel flavour would have a cascading effect on an industry which is tottering under the impact of climate change, ageing bushes and high production costs.

::Science and Tech::

New perspective about the cosmos

• Information is a quantity that springs up very naturally in the study of the universe as it is tied up with gravity.
• For example, the information available to an observer looking at a black hole from far is limited by the event horizon of the black hole, beyond which even light cannot escape— so the information inside the black hole is not available to them.
• Their approach, moreover, explains two fundamental puzzles in cosmology — one related to the early universe and one to its present state — and, in fact, connects the two. Their theory is just published online in the journal Physics Letters B.
• From the observation of distant galaxies, it is known that the universe is expanding at a faster rate than it is expected to. This is explained by invoking the presence of “dark energy”.
• But for this to work, the cosmological constant, which is a term that appears in the gravitational field equations, has to be very small and have a positive value. Explaining why this constant is required to have a tiny positive value is an important puzzle in cosmology.
• The authors argue that the total cosmic information transferred from the early, quantum gravitational phase to the late, classical phase must be equal to four times pi.
• This allows them to relate the size of the seed fluctuations to the cosmological constant, thereby tying together the early universe with the present.

Click Here for Old Current Affairs Archive

This is a Part of Online Coaching Programme for UPSC Exam

Buy Printed Study Material for UPSC PRELIMS EXAM

Join Test Series for IAS (Pre.) Exam