Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 26 December 2016
:: National ::
To reduce road congestion six cities to get ferry services
In a move that promises to reduce congestion on roads, six cities along the river Ganga including Varanasi, Kolkata and Patna are going to get passenger ferry services.
The Inland Waterways Authority of India, Ministry of Shipping has recently entered into a contract with a joint venture of Infrastructure
Architecture Lab of MIT, U.S. and Thompson Design Group, Boston, U.S. for identifying suitable locations for construction of 18 ferry terminals in six cities of Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Munghyr, Kolkata and Haldia.
The consultants will prepare Detailed ProjectReport and tender documents for the 18 terminals.
This venture has earlier worked on similar transport solutions for Governors Island (172 acre island in the heart of New York Harbour in U.S.), Navy Pier, Chicago, and Bufalo Bayou, Texas.
The consultants will identify the best locations along the river and carry out technical and financial feasibility of the ferry services.
Stampede in Sabarimala
As many as 31 persons were injured, 12 of them seriously, in a minor stampede at Malikappuram at Sabarimala Sannidhanam on the eve of the annual Mandalam festival.
The stampede occurred immediately after the deep-aradhana at the hill shrine around 6.40 p.m. when an iron railing collapsed as a huge crowd of devotees on the northern side of the Lower Tirumuttom near Malikappuram.
It had been waiting for about seven hours to enter the Ayyappa Temple premises (Tirumuttom) through the Northern Gate, surged forward.
SC says criminal justice system should be sympathetic to sexual abuse victims
The time has come for criminal justice system to mould a survivor-centric approach in dealing with cases of sexual violence, especially for victims of child abuse for whom the trauma will scar them for life, the Supreme Court observed.
A Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and A.M. Sapre said the criminal justice system needed significant reforms to institutionalise a more sympathetic approach in which the sexual abuse survivor was the focus.
The court was restoring the conviction of a man found guilty of raping his nine-year old niece in 2009. He was sent to jail for 12 years. The court found, in this case, positive proof and a credible sequence of events linking the man to the crime.
The verdict, based on the appeal filed by the HP govt, dismissed the defence's argument that there was a delay in filing the FIR in the rape case, which they claimed was fabricated.
Moreover, it added that “a decision to lodge FIR be-comes more difficult and harder when the accused happens to be a family member.”
Justices Sikri and Sapre also observed that in many cases rape by family members was not reported to the police by the victim or her immediate family, fearing social stigma.