Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 20 July 2017
::National::
Right to privacy is not a absolute right says SC
Right to privacy is not absolute and cannot prevent the state from making laws imposing reasonable restrictions on citizens, the Supreme Court observed.
The court said ‘right to privacy’ is in fact too ‘amorphous’ a term. To recognise privacy as a definite right, it has to first define it.
But this would be nearly impossible as an element of privacy pervades all the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution.
“How do we define privacy? What are its contents... Its contours? How can the state regulate privacy? What obligations do the state have to protect a person’s privacy?” Justice Chandrachud asked the petitioners.
The court said that an attempt to define the right to privacy may cause more harm than good. An exhaustive cataloguing by the court of what all constitutes privacy may limit the right itself, Justice Chandrachud observed.
Justice Chandrachud is part of a nine-judge Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar examining a reference on the question whether privacy is sacred, fundamental and an inviolable right under the Constitution.
Attorney-General K.K. Venugopal has already submitted in the Supreme Court that right to privacy is merely a common law right and the Constitution makers “consciously avoided” making it a part of the fundamental rights.
The decision of the nine-judge Bench on whether privacy is a fundamental right or not will be pivotal to the petitioners’ challenge that Aadhaar, which mandates citizens to part with their biometrics, is unconstitutional.
In the day-long hearing before a packed courtroom, the Bench questioned the petitioners’ plea that right to privacy is non-negotiable. “If people have put themselves in the public realm using technology, is that not a surrender of their right to privacy?” Justice Chandrachud asked.
The court’s questions came even as petitioners banked on Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s statement in Parliament that privacy is ‘probably’ a fundamental right and ‘part of individual liberty’.
But Justice Chandrachud observed that right to privacy cannot be linked to data protection. He said this is the age of ‘big data’, and instead of focussing on privacy, steps need to be taken to give statutory recognition to data protection.
Senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, who opened the arguments for the petitioners, responded that the constitutional right to privacy does not mean mere protection from the state’s ingress.
China always has zero tolerance towards sovereignity issues
China’s insistence on the withdrawal of Indian troops from the Doklam plateau as a precondition for negotiations is consistent with its position on Tibet, Taiwan or the South China Sea — areas of hyper-sensitivity where
Beijing perceives that its “territorial sovereignty” is at stake.
Chinese Foreign Ministry over the past week has adopted a similar unbending position on Tibet, embodied in the proposed visit of the Dalai Lama to Botswana, as well as the moves by the United States to reopen naval port calls with Taiwan.
Predictably, Indonesia’s cartographic dalliance, by renaming a portion of the South China Sea as North Natuna Sea, has also drawn Beijing’s ire.
Asked to comment on Botswana’s invitation to Dalai Lama next month, the Chinese Foreign Ministry warned that the government in Gaborone must “correct” its decision.
Last year, Mongolia’s decision to welcome the Dalai Lama in Ulan Bator resulted in Bejing’s decision to impose stringent trade restrictions on its unequal neighbour.
China perceives any encouragement to the Dalai Lama by foreign powers or military or political support to Taiwan as a challenge to its “One China” policy — a clear and unambiguous no-go area.
Consequently, Beijing had frowned on remarks by Pema Khandu, Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh questioning the One-China policy during the Dalai Lama’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh in April.
China slammed the US, following the passage of the NDAA by the House of Congress, which asks the U.S. Defence Secretary to look into the feasibility of re-establishing port calls between the U.S. and Taiwanese navies.
China has also raised the red flag on Indonesia’s decision to issue a new official map renaming a part of the South China Sea (SCS) as the North Natuna Sea.
Government plans to introduce a universal social security network for workers
Union government plans to introduce a universal social security network for workers in both the informal and formal sectors. The scheme will be rolled out in a phased manner.
Govt said that after demonetisation, the Ministry had started an enrolment campaign, and from January 1 to June 30, the government brought in an amnesty scheme for employers who were earlier not part of the Provident Fund regime.
During the exercise, the workers employed from April 2009 to December 2016 were also included. More than 1.3 crore new workers were brought under the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) regime.
Mr. Dattatreya said 20 lakh new employees were included as part of the amnesty scheme and 80 lakh contract labourers, including construction workers and those engaged by the public sector units at the Centre and the States, were also registered.
The Labour Minister said the EPF security network currently covered 4.8 crore contributory members and had a corpus of over Rs. 10.43 lakh crore.
However, some members including Sanjay Seth and Naresh Agarwal (SP) were not satisfied with the Minister’s reply to a question about a proposal to lower the employee’s and the employer’s contribution from the present 12% to 10%.
Ananda Bhaskar Rapolu raised the issue of IT sector employees, stating that there was no superannuation fund in the country and EPF alone was the support for the employees who were retiring or getting terminated.
Mr. Dattatreya said the law might confine to wages of those who had got a ceiling of Rs. 15,000, for that EPFO eligibility would be there.
Apart from that, the government would provide social security to IT workers and also IT employers. Loan, PF, Pension, everything would be protected under wages’ safeguards.
Govt said it was sensitive towards the problem of suicides among the farmers
The government said it was sensitive towards the problem of suicides among the farmers as the Opposition slammed it over the issue in the Lok Sabha.
Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh insisted that the number of suicides by the farmers have come down in the last two comparative years of 2015 and 2016.
Citing figures of the National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB), he said in 2015, the number of suicide cases was 12,602 which declined to 11,458 in the successive year.
In an apparent attack on the previous government, he said that farmers’ plight would not have worsened had the earlier dispensations taken the right steps.