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BCCI revamp

Two years after accepting the Justice R.M. Lodha Committee’s recommendations, the Supreme Court has now extended some concessions to those aggrieved by the rigorous rules.
Chief Justice Dipak Misra suggests that it is a pragmatic modification rather than a significant climbdown.
Office-bearer: 3+3 year term then 3 years cooling off period.
Associations that had contributed significantly to Indian cricket need not be stripped of their full membership.
Gujarat 3
Maharashtra 3

Exclusionary state

In India, you do not have to be excluded from the National Register of Citizens to experience a sense of loss of territory, identity, belongingness and livelihood.
A large chunk of migrant labourers’ shelter and work are deemed “illegal” within Indian cities.
2011 Census: 139 million moved within and across States
Sometimes these labourers are exploited, required to work below subsistence levels, and reside in subhuman conditions, which is then perceived as encroachment.

Housing and Land Rights Network

Smart Cities Mission: ₹2,039 billion to convert 99 Indian cities into smart cities. A mere 8% of the intended projects have been completed so far in the past three years.
Many smart city proposals identify slums as a “threat” , totally failing to account for migrant labour in the schemes.
Forced evictions and shelter demolitions in 32 out of the 99 proposed smart cities so far.
Politically, inter-State migrants do not matter at all anyway because their votes do not count in the destination city.
The state’s role in ensuring equality, basic dignity, livelihood and providing minimum social security to its people must be upheld before all other priorities.
The national obsession with bringing order to international boundaries could also be applied within nation states, cities and neighbourhoods.

Undoing a legacy of injustice

In 1871, the colonial regime passed the notorious Criminal Tribes Act.
The colonial administrators were particularly concerned about nomadic and itinerant communities, which by virtue of their movements and lifestyle were difficult to track, surveil, control, and tax.
Independence brought with it many changes, but also much continuity.
What does the Begging Act do? It criminalises begging. It gives the police the power to arrest individuals without a warrant.
From its first word to the last, the Begging Act reflects a vicious logic.
It gives magistrates the power to commit them to a “certified institution” (read: a detention centre) for up to three years on the commission of the first “offence”, and up to 10 years upon the second “offence”.
It strips them of their privacy and dignity by compelling them to allow themselves to be fingerprinted.
Certified institutions have absolute power over detainees, including the power of punishment, and the power to exact “manual work”.
It also reflects the lawmakers’ desire to erase from public spaces people who look or act differently, and whose presence is perceived to be a bother and a nuisance.
For these people, the constitutional guarantees of pluralism and inclusiveness do not exist.
Just before the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the Delhi government was engaged in combing operations to take beggars off the street, lest their presence embarrass the nation in the eyes of foreigners.
Bench of the Delhi High Court presided over by the Chief Justice, held that the Begging Act violated Article 14 (equality before law) and Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty) of the Constitution.
More importantly, it also held that under Article 21 of the Constitution, it was the state’s responsibility to provide the basic necessities for survival — food, clothing, shelter — to all its citizens.
Poverty was the result of the state’s inability — or unwillingness — to discharge these obligations.

The inexorable wheels of justice

For centuries, religious faith and the principles it enunciated were the “law” that regulated society. • But in a democracy with the Constitution as a guiding force, it is natural that the new order would challenge the old, and the litigative battles that we see in court today are the struggles between that old order and the new in the path of human evolution.
The Tirupathi case: Fiat justitia ruat caelum which means as you know, ‘Let justice be done even though the heavens fall’.
Therefore, even before the adoption of the Constitution, our legal history is replete with interesting cases of religious faith versus the law.

Person in News

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
Nobel prize in 2001
India trilogy — An Area of Darkness (1964), A Wounded Civilisation (1977), A Million Mutinies Now (1990)

Front Page

Centre comes to Kerala’s aid
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday conducted an aerial survey of flood-ravaged Kerala and announced an immediate relief of ₹100 crore as the State braced for another spell of heavy rain after a fresh low pressure area developed in the Bay of Bengal.
State authorities said the death toll in the recent monsoon rain rose to 38 and more than 1,00,000 people had been shifted to 1,026 relief camps.
The Union Minister’s announcement of aid came as the first response to the State’s plea for ₹1,220 crore from the National Disaster Response Fund. The Centre had earlier sanctioned ₹80 crore and another ₹18.24 crore assistance to the State.
It was the worst floods the State had experienced since 1924.
Offering all support, Mr. Singh said the government would consider the demands for additional relief assistance after a detailed evaluation by an inter-ministerial team.
More men from the National Disaster Response Force would be deployed in Kerala, if required, he added.

Ahead of ‘Khalistan rally’, India announces Guru fete

Hours ahead of the pro-Khalistan rally in London, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj announced on Sunday that all Indian diplomatic missions would celebrate the 550th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikh faith Guru Nanak.
Last month, India issued a démarche over the ‘Khalistani rally, ’ intended to drum up support for a non-binding referendum on a Sikh homeland in 2020.
The Khalistan rally was organised by the Sikhs for Justice and supporters from outfits across the U.K. participated in it. Around 200 people attended the counter-rally held on the other side of the Square.

CJI changes subject-wise roster in SC

The Chief Justice of India has changed the subject-wise roster for judges in the Supreme Court to categorise cases for Justice R. Banumathi, who now heads a Bench.
The change follows the recent appointment of Justices Indira Banerjee, Vineet Saran and K.M. Joseph in the Supreme Court, taking the judicial strength to 25 of a total sanctioned strength of 31.
While not touching the roster for other judges, the Bench headed by Justice Banumathi would hear a host of cases on family law issues, labour, civil cases, public premises eviction, land law, etc.
The subject-wise roster was first implemented from February 5 this year after a press conference by four seniormost Supreme Court judges over “selective” allocation of cases to certain Benches by recent CJIs .

Submarine training lax, says CAG

No facility exists for training Navy crew on various aspects of damage control and firefighting in a submarine, the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) has observed in a report. This is among a series of deficiencies in training noted by the federal auditor.
In April 2014, INS Satavahana, the dedicated school for imparting all facets of submarine training, submitted a proposal to the submarine headquarters, indicating the requirement of a simulator to train in damage control and firefighting. “The proposal has, however, not yet been approved by the competent authority,” the CAG said in the report tabled in Parliament last week.
“Thus, even after identifying the requirement of a critical training facility and recommendations by a Board, which investigated a major submarine accident, there is undue delay in procurement and installation of the same,” the report noted.
Training in damage control and firefighting assumes even greater importance as India inducts nuclear submarines into its fleet.

Use Aadhaar freely, without fear: UIDAI

After TRAI chief’s Aadhaar dare ignited a debate on the security of the 12-digit number, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is planning a user outreach to sensitise people to the dos and don’ts of sharing their biometric identifier.
The UIDAI intends to draw a parallel between the Aadhaar number and other personal information such as PAN (Permanent Account Number) and bank account number to caution users against placing such details in the public domain, particularly on digital platforms.
Mere knowledge of Aadhaar cannot harm an individual or be misused for impersonation, as it is fortified with additional security layers such as biometrics and one-time password authentication, it says.