Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 12 May 2016
:: National ::
Apex court passed guidelines to Union and State for tackling the drought
In a scathing 53-page verdict on the “lack of will” shown by the Centre and States in combating drought and saving lives, the Supreme Court pronounced the Centre guilty of “washing its hands of” a national disaster.
It also pulled up Gujarat, Bihar and Haryana for adopting an “ostrich-like attitude” towards declaring drought and driving their own people to suicide, starvation and mass migration.
A Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and N.V. Ramana issued a slew of directions on tackling the drought situation on a petition filed by the NGO Swaraj Abhiyan.
Among the steps it suggested were taking the help of the National Disaster Response Force and a Disaster Mitigation Fund.
The PIL plea had alleged that parts of 12 States, such as Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, Haryana and Chhattisgarh, were hit by drought.
The court found that the total population in the districts affected by drought is about 33 crore.
“Can we afford to ignore the plight of such a large population,” the Supreme Court asked the government. It accused the Centre of taking refuge in the concept of “federalism” to pass the buck to the States.
“The ostensible purpose of introducing this concept [of federalism] is to enable the Union of India to wash its hands of in matters concerning drought declaration and to give enough elbow room to a State government to decide whether to declare a drought or not,” the Bench observed.
Meanwhile, States such as Bihar, Gujarat and Haryana, the court observed, were not even willing to acknowledge a drought.
Their failure to declare drought has robbed the poor of their fundamental right to dignity of life, the court held.
Low conviction rate under the Protection of women and domestic violence act
The government told the Rajya Sabhathat “some times” provisions of the Domestic Violence and Anti-Dowry Acts were misused and several NGOs had also given reports supporting it.
MoS (Home) said that only 13 persons were convicted out of the 639 charge sheeted in 2014 under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005.
After the reply of the Minister in question hour, Samajwadi Party member Javed Ali Khan raised the issue of misuse of the Act, a contention which was resented by women members vehemently but was supported by Vijay Goel (BJP).
Mr. Rijiju told the House that the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) started collecting data on the Act only since 2014.
According to the reply, 426 cases were registered under the Act in 2014, of which charge sheet was filed in 312 cases. Conviction happened in just nine cases. Trial was completed in 19.1 per cent cases.
Of the 693 persons arrested in these cases, 639 were charge-sheeted. Only 13 were convicted.
The Minister said that in many cases, the husband and wife reach a compromise at a later stage and that the offences under the Act were of “civil” nature.
Parliamentary standing committee favours bringing national space law early (Register and Login to read Full News..)
Fragment of world’s oldest known ground edge axe found in Australia (Register and Login to read Full News..)
:: International ::
Trail for impeachment of Dilma Rousseff began
Brazil’s Senate opened debate ahead of a vote on suspending President Dilma Rousseff and launching an impeachment trial.
Debate was expected to last all day with a vote during the night or early hours of 12th May. A simple majority in the 81 member Senate would be enough to trigger Ms. Rousseff’s six-month suspension pending judgment, in which a two thirds majority would force her from the office of President permanently.
Ms. Rousseff’s government lawyer lodged a last-ditch appeal with the Supreme Court to block the vote, but the court had not even responded before Senators sat down in their futuristic building in the capital Brasilia.
Tension in Bangladesh after Jamaat leader hanging (Register and Login to read Full News..)
:: Science and Technology ::
Kepler mission has announced the largest collection of exoplanets
NASA’s Kepler mission has announced the largest collection of exoplanets ever discovered after it verified 1,284 new planets outside the solar system.
Of the nearly 5,000 planet candidates found to date, more than 3,200 now have been verified, and 2,325 of these were discovered by Kepler.
