📰 Parliament proceedings | Roads to be freed of toll booths in a year: Nitin Gadkari
GPS-based system being put in place, Road Transport and Highways informs Lok Sabha.
•India will implement a GPS-based toll collection system and do away with all toll booths within a year, Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari informed the Lok Sabha on Thursday.
•He also shared details of the vehicle scrapping policy, first announced in the Union Budget for 2021-22, according to which the automobile industry in India will see a jump in turnover to ₹10 lakh crore from ₹4.5 lakh crore.
•Separately, the Minister also expressed concern over the number of accidents and asserted that road accidents had taken away more lives in 2020 compared with the COVID-19 pandemic.
•“I want to assure the House that within one year, all physical toll booths in the country will be removed. It means that toll collection will happen via GPS. The money will be collected based on GPS imaging [of vehicles],” Mr. Gadkari told the the Lok Sabha during Question Hour, responding to a question by Bahujan Samaj Party MP Danish Ali.
•He said 93% of vehicles pay toll using FASTag — a system that facilitates electronic payment of fee at toll plazas seamlessly — but the remaining 7% had still not adopted it despite paying double the toll. Since February 16, vehicles without FASTag are required to pay double toll fee at electronic toll plazas.
•The Minister said he had asked for a police inquiry into vehicles that don’t pay toll using FASTags and claimed that there were cases of toll theft and GST evasion if FASTags were not fitted in vehicles. He said that while new vehicles have FasTags fitted in them, the government would give free FASTags for older vehicles.
Scrapping policy
•The Minister also made a statement in the Lok Sabha on the government’s new scrapping policy which, he claimed, would reduce pollution, improve fuel efficiency, and increase government’s revenue collection from the sale of new vehicles.
•The new policy provides for fitness tests after the completion of 20 years in the case of privately owned vehicles and 15 years in the case of commercial vehicles. Any vehicle that fails the fitness test or does not manage renewal of its registration certificate may be declared as an End of Life Vehicle.
•All government vehicles and those owned by PSUs will be de-registered after 15 years.
•The government will implement the policy in a phased manner, Mr. Gadkari said. The policy will kick-in for government vehicles from April 1, 2022. Mandatory fitness testing for heavy commercial vehicles will start from April 1, 2023, and for all other categories of vehicles, including personal vehicles, it will start in phases from June 1, 2024 .
•In order to encourage vehicle owners to take their old vehicles to scrapping centres, the government has announced several incentives, including advisories to States to give up to 25% rebate in road tax for personal vehicles and up to 15% rebate for commercial vehicles. The government will also offer waiver of registration fees on the purchase of new vehicles.
•The Minister said the Union government would issue an advisory to auto makers to offer the incentive of a 5% rebate for those who buy a new vehicle after producing a scrapping certificate.
•The Ministry has proposed that commercial vehicles be de-registered after 15 years in case of failure to get the fitness certificate, and a private vehicle will be de-registered after 20 years if its fails fitness certification.
•There are 51 lakh light motor vehicles older than 20 years and 34 lakh light motor vehicles older than 15 years, the Minister said.
•Mr. Gadkari said that older vehicles pollute the environment 10 to 12 times more, and estimated that 17 lakh medium and heavy commercial vehicles were more than 15 years old and remained without a valid fitness certificate. As a disincentive, increased re-registration fees would be applicable for vehicles 15 years or older from the initial date registration.
•The Ministry has also issued rules for registration procedure for scrapping facilities, their powers, and scrapping procedure to be followed.
•The Minister said his Ministry would promote the setting up of a Registered Vehicle Scrapping Facility and claimed that prices of auto components would fall substantially with the recycling of metal and plastic parts.
•During the Question Hour, the Minister also reiterated the government’s commitment towards accident prevention and cited Tamil Nadu as a model State that brought down accidents by 52%. He urged Members of Parliament to ensure that districts under their constituencies should try to follow a ‘Zero Accident’ policy.
•“In the last one year, 1.5 lakh people died due to road accidents, which is more than the 1.46 lakh deaths due to COVID-19,” he said, noting that most of those who died were people in the age group of 18-35 years.
•“The move will revive the ailing commercial vehicle segment and also boost the State exchequer’s revenue on the sale of new vehicles,” said Vinkesh Gulati, president, Federation of Automobile Dealers’ Association.
•“The policy will pave the way for the creation of an ecosystem of vehicular scrapping facilities and a market for recycled raw materials,” said Confederation of Indian Industry’s director general Chandrajit Banerjee.
Opposition slams government for handing over “control and ownership” to foreign investors
•The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday passed the Insurance Amendment Bill 2021 that increases the maximum foreign investment allowed in an insurance company from 49% to 74%, amid criticism from the Opposition parties on the clause enabling “control and ownership” by foreign investors.
•The Opposition parties unsuccessfully tried to stall the house demanding that the bill not be moved in a haste and instead be sent to a standing committee. They marched into the well of the House after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman moved the Bill. The House was adjourned four times, between 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., as the impasse continued.
•The debate started at 3:30 p.m., when the Opposition relented reluctantly to have a debate instead of continuing with the protests slamming the government for its obduracy.
•Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma opened the debate questioning the very justification and intent for such a bill. He said when the government has majority in both Houses why is it in a hurry to pass the bill ducking due parliamentary scrutiny that the Opposition is demanding. He said the insurance companies hold the people’s money in trust and that this Bill breaks it. He also accused the government of violating the assurance given in 2015 that “Indian ownership and control” will remain. The Bill, he said, has been brought with urgency, to divert attention from the high fiscal deficit and is in line with the government’s recent measures to privatise national assets.
•Mr. Sharma said, “We are not opposed to the policy of disinvestment, but is it disinvestment or leapfrogging towards privatisation and embarking on grand clearance sale of national assets built assiduously over the years.”
•He also flagged that the big insurance firms are not in shortage of capital and that the Bill differed from the government motto — “Atmanirbhar Bharat”.
•DMK MP Tiruchi Siva pointed out that none of the insurance firms have managed to get FDI even up to the present limit of 49% and questioned the justification to increase the limit.
•Replying to the debate, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman assured the House that the policy holder’s money will not leave Indian shores and have to be compulsorily invested here. She argued that more FDI would mean greater competition and thus better negotiated premiums for the end user.
•Many of the members had flagged that greater control of foreign firms would also mean that the policy of reservation will be undermined. Answering this query, Ms. Sitharaman pointed out that the public sector insurance firms employ only over seven lakh persons while the private sectors have more than 23 lakh employees and agents.
•The reservation policy will continue in the public sector firms, she said. She also said since the sector was opened up in 2000 by allowing 26% FDI, there has been a growth in the number of companies, insurance penetration and jobs. In 2015, the Narendra Modi government had brought another amendment hiking the FDI limit to 49%. “From 2015 onwards, in the last five years, ₹26,000 crore foreign investment has come in and 12 new insurance firms have opened up,” she said.
•Samajwadi Party MP Vishwambhar Nishad asked the government on how it will deal with a foreign firm not governed by Indian rules if it declares bankruptcy, sinking the savings of millions of Indians. “All the firms will have to maintain reserves to meet the policy insurance claims. So the citizens’ claims will be protected,” she said. She also pointed to Section 27 (e) of the Insurance Amendment Bill that says “No insurer shall directly or indirectly invest outside of India the funds of Indian policy holders.”
•Countering the key criticism by the Opposition parties on handing over “control and ownership” to foreign firms, Ms. Sitharaman said it comes with safeguards. The key management personnel will have to be Indians and therefore will be governed by the Indian laws.
•Many members at this point flagged the cases of Vijay Mallya, Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi who escaped defaulting on huge loans. “Let me tell you, Vijay Mallya, Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi are all coming back here, to face the law of the land,” Ms. Sitharaman said.
•There was no clear reply from the Minister on the urgency to bring this Bill, since many members pointed out that most of the companies have not met the existing threshold of 49%. “Members have asked, isn’t there enough money in this country? There are also enough borrowers. So enough is not enough,” she said.
•She also brushed away the criticism of not enough consultations with stakeholders before bringing in this Bill saying the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority had spoken to 60 firms and other private players.
📰 Supreme Court to hear on March 24 plea against sale of electoral bonds
NGO seeks stay on scheme ahead of Assembly elections in key States
•Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde agreed with advocate Prashant Bhushan on Thursday to urgently hear a plea by NGO Association for Democratic Reforms to stay the sale of a new set of electoral bonds on April 1, before Assembly elections in crucial States such as West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
•Responding to an urgent mentioning made by Mr. Bhushan via video conferencing, Chief Justice Bobde said the matter would require a detailed hearing and posted the case for March 24.
•Mr. Bhushan said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Election Commission had both said the sale of electoral bonds had become an avenue for shell corporations and entities to park illicit money and even proceeds of bribes with political parties.
•“Every time there is an election, the sale is opened. Every time this happens, we have moved the Supreme Court to stay it,” Mr. Bhushan submitted.
•“But hasn’t stay been refused earlier?” Chief Justice Bobde asked.
•“Not so, but parties had been asked to submit records in sealed cover... But a proper stay has to be considered. There are two documents from the RBI and the Election Commission that say the electoral bonds scheme is detrimental to democracy,” Mr. Bhushan replied.
•Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed the Chief Justice that Attorney General K.K. Venugopal would be appearing in the case.
•“His submissions in the Maratha quota case will start today [March 18] and he may finish it by Wednesday [March 24],” Mr. Mehta said.
•“Surely, he will find time in a matter like this!” Chief Justice Bobde retorted.
NGO’s arguments
•The NGO, also represented by advocate Neha Rathi, has voiced serious apprehensions that the sale of electoral bonds before elections in poll-bound States would “further increase illegal and illicit funding of political parties through shell companies”.
•Its application reminded the court that both the central bank and the poll panel had objected to the electoral bond scheme.
•“Data obtained through RTI has shown that illegal sale windows have been opened in the past to benefit certain political parties... There is a serious apprehension that any further sale of electoral bonds before the upcoming State elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam would further increase illegal and illicit funding of political parties through shell companies,” the NGO submitted.
•It said the scheme had “opened doors to unlimited political donations, even from foreign companies, thereby legitimising electoral corruption at a huge scale, while at the same time ensuring complete non-transparency in political funding”.
Govt.’s view
•The government notified the scheme on January 2, 2018. It defended the scheme in court, saying it allowed anonymity to political donors to protect them from “political victimisation”.
•The Ministry of Finance’s affidavit in the top court had dismissed the Election Commission’s version that the invisibility afforded to benefactors was a “retrogade step” and would wreck transparency in political funding.
•The government affidavit had said the shroud of secrecy was a product of “well thought-out policy considerations”.
•It said the earlier system of cash donations had raised a “concern among the donors that, with their identity revealed, there would be competitive pressure from different political parties receiving donation”.
📰 U.S. Senator asks Lloyd Austin to raise concerns about eroding democratic values during visit to India
In a letter, Bob Menendez asks the Secretary of Defence to raise India’s planned purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system.
•Saying the Indian government is moving away from democratic values, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Menendez has written to U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin asking him to raise concerns about democracy and India’s purchase of the S-400 Russian missile defence system during his visit to New Delhi. Mr. Austin is expected to meet Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and senior national security officials between March 19 and 21 when he is in New Delhi.
•“I would like to see the U.S.-India partnership grow, but we must acknowledge that the partnership is strongest when based on shared democratic values and the Indian government has been trending away from those values,” Mr. Menendez says in the letter dated March 17.
•“I also expect that you will raise the administration’s opposition to India’s reportedly planned purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system,” he writes.
•Among his concerns, Mr. Menendez cites a crackdown on journalists and critics of the government, its handling of the farmer protests and the use of sedition laws and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).
'Deteriorating democracy'
•“The Indian government’s ongoing crackdown on farmers peacefully protesting new farming laws and corresponding intimidation of journalists and government critics only underscores the deteriorating situation of democracy,” Mr. Menendez says.
•“Moreover, in recent years, rising anti-Muslim sentiment and related government actions like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, the suppression of political dialogue and arrest of political opponents following the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir, and the use of sedition laws to persecute political opponents have resulted in the U.S. human rights group Freedom House stripping India of its ‘Free’ status in its yearly global survey,” he says.
•India’s purchase of S-400 for just under $5.5 billion could attract sanctions under a 2017 law: the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). The Trump administration’s repeated message was that sanction waivers are not automatic and decided on a case by case basis. Congress forced the Trump administration’s hand in December last year by requiring it to sanction Turkey for purchasing the S-400. In 2018, China was sanctioned for purchase of Russian equipment.
Sanctions on the cards
•While India is not a treaty ally of the U.S. and is increasing its purchase of U.S. arms — mitigating circumstances as per U.S. law — the Menendez letter suggests that sanctions are still — at least in theory — an option as India is expected to take delivery of the S-400 later this year.
•It reads: “India’s planned purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system is also a matter of concern. I recognize that India is not a U.S. treaty ally and has historical ties with the Soviet and Russian militaries. However, if India chooses to go forward with its purchase of the S-400, that act will clearly constitute a significant, and therefore sanctionable, transaction with the Russian defense sector under Section 231 of CAATSA.”
•Mr. Menendez says the U.S. should seek to partner India on issues such as climate change and China but while doing so, it cannot let its “democratic values fall away”.
📰 Supreme Court forbids courts from making gender stereotypical comments
It sets aside MP High Court ‘rakhi’ order and issues slew of directions.
•The Supreme Court on Wednesday forbade judges from making gender stereotypical comments like “’good women are sexually chaste”, women who drink and smoke ‘ask’ for sexual advances or presume that a sexually active woman consented to rape while hearing cases of sexual offence.
•A Bench of Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and S. Ravindra Bhat stopped judges from trying to mandate marriage or compromise between a molestor and his victim. The Bench, in a judgment, proscribed judges from granting bail to suspected sexual offenders on the condition that they perform “community service” or apologise to their victims. The Supreme Court forbade the accused from getting in touch with the survivor.
•The court said the victim should be immediately notified if the accused is given bail in a sexual offence case. She should be given a copy of the bail order within 48 hours.
•The 24-page verdict, authored by Justice Bhat, set aside a Madhya Pradesh High Court order granting bail to a suspected molestor provided he visits his victim at her home and ‘allows’ her to tie a rakhi on him.
•“Using rakhi tying as a condition for bail, transforms a molester into a brother, by a judicial mandate,” Justice Bhat wrote.
•In a scathing verdict, Justice Bhat said judgments and orders continue to reflect “entrenched paternalistic and misogynistic attitudes” even after 70 years as a Republic. “A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view,” Justice Bhat quoted Henrik Ibsen in exasperation.
•The Supreme Court said the law does not countenance a scenario where a victim can potentially be traumatised many times over and be led to accept or condone a serious offence.
•“Even a solitary instance of such order or utterance in court reflects adversely on the entire judicial system of the country, undermining the guarantee to fair justice to all, and especially to victims of sexual violence [of any kind from the most aggravated to the so-called minor offences],” Justice Bhat observed.
•The Supreme Court held that judges should avoid under all circumstances from using reasoning/language which diminishes a sexual offence and tends to trivialise the survivor. The court gave several examples of such crassly stereotypical expressions like “women are physically weak and need protection”; “men are the head of the household”; “motherhood is the duty and role of every woman”; “being alone at night or wearing certain clothes make women responsible for being attacked”; “women are emotional and often overreact or dramatize events”; “lack of evidence of physical harm in a sexual offence case leads to an inference of consent by the woman”, etc.
•Justice Bhat noted how the stereotype of the ideal sexual assault victim disqualifies several accounts of lived experiences of sexual assault.
•“Rape myths undermine the credibility of those women who are seen to deviate too far from stereotyped notions of chastity, resistance to rape, having visible physical injuries, behaving a certain way, reporting the offence immediately, etc,” Justice Bhat observed.
•“Outlaw behaviours” like stalking, eve-teasing, shades of verbal and physical assault, and harassment are typically characterised as “minor offences” and even romanticised. These crimes are indulgently viewed through prisms like “boys will be boys” and condoned.
•Judges should not fall into the trap of stereotyping. A judge’s address is not limited to the parties in a case but extends to the broader legal community of other lawyers, judges, legal academics, law students and indeed the public at large, Justice Bhat warned.
📰 Aadhaar as a hurdle: On authentication failures and welfare delivery
Inefficiencies in the Aadhaar project should not come in the way of welfare delivery
•The Supreme Court, on Wednesday, did the right thing by terming as serious the allegation by a petitioner that three crore ration cards were cancelled for not being linked with the Aadhaar database and that these were connected to reported starvation deaths in some States. The unique identification scheme has been in existence for more than a decade and recent data has estimated that nearly 90% of India’s projected population has been assigned the Aadhaar number. Following the Court’s judgment in 2018, upholding the Aadhaar programme as a reasonable restriction on individual privacy to fulfil welfare requirements and dignity — a 4-1 majority Bench had also rejected a review petition in January 2021 — questions about the scheme’s validity for public purposes have been put to rest. But that has not meant that concerns about the failures in the use of the identity verification project have been allayed. These include inefficiencies in biometric authentication and updating, linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts, and the use of the Aadhaar payment bridge. With benefits under the PDS, the NREGA and LPG subsidy, among other essentials, requiring individuals to have the Aadhaar number, inefficiencies and failures have led to inconvenience and suffering for the poor. There are reports that show failures in authentication having led to delays in the disbursal of benefits and, in many cases, in their denial due to cancellation of legitimate beneficiary names. The government had promised that exemption mechanisms that would allow for overriding such failures will help beneficiaries still avail subsidies and benefits despite system failures. That has been the response by the government to the recent petition as well, but reports from States such as Jharkhand from 2017, for example, suggest that there have been starvation deaths because of the denial of benefits and subsidies.
•Biometric authentication failures are but expected of a large scale and technology-intensive project such as the UID. Despite being designed to store finger and iris scans of most users, doubts about the success rates of authentication and the generation of “false negatives” have always persisted, more so for labourers and tribal people. Those engaged in manual and hard labour, for example, are susceptible to fingerprint changes over time. In practice, beneficiaries have tended to use Aadhaar cards as identity markers but there have been instances of people losing cards and being denied benefits. Given the scale of the problem, the central and State governments would do well to allow alternative identification so that genuine beneficiaries are not denied due subsidies. The question of fraud can still be addressed by the use of other verification cards and by decentralised disbursal of services at the panchayat level.
📰 For a reset: On U.S.-China meeting in Alaska
There is no hope of a sudden improvement in U.S.-China ties, but the Alaska meet is a start
•As top diplomats from the U.S. and China begin their meeting in Alaska, there is no question that their conversation will be a difficult one. The meeting, between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Yang Jiechi, CCP Politburo member and Director, Central Foreign Affairs Commission, accompanied by U.S. NSA Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi, comes on the back of tensions that spiralled during the Trump administration around trade tariffs, 5G telecommunication, tech espionage, Chinese maritime actions and U.S. sanctions on China, and further exacerbated over the pandemic, which Mr. Trump called the “China virus”. Biden administration officials have said that they will bring up China’s crackdown in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, Chinese aggression against U.S. allies and partners, in particular pressure on Australia over trade bans, aggression against Japan in the Senkaku islands and even the PLA’s incursions over the LAC, which China considers bilateral issues. Mr. Blinken prefaced the Alaska meet with visits to Seoul and Tokyo where he promised an American “pushback” to China, and he goes into the talks with the backing of the recent summit-level Quad conversations, with a commitment to ensuring a free Indo-Pacific. For its part, China is seeking a reversal of Trump-era policies, and structured dialogue to take forward ties from the point they have reached, arguably their lowest since the Nixon era. In particular, China wants an end to the U.S.’s trade sanctions, restrictions on American firms manufacturing in China and visa bans, and a reopening of its consulate in Houston.
•Clearly, the scene is set for an extended airing of grievances, and expectations are low of any breakthrough, but the fact that the meeting is happening at all sends the signal that both sides are prepared to engage each other. Mr. Blinken’s formulation that the U.S. will be “competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be and adversarial when it must be” with China, chalks up climate change, the COVID-19 challenge and global economic recovery as areas of possible discussion. Research quoted by the World Economic Forum predicted that the U.S.-China tariff war itself could cost the world $600 billion. Afghanistan is another area where the U.S. and China have held three meetings last year as part of the “Troika” with Russia, and a common peace strategy could be another helpful conversation. The two sides are expected to discuss a possible summit meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. While New Delhi has a litany of its own grievances with Beijing, it too would benefit if a “Cold War” between the U.S. and China is averted, much like the rest of the world that has found itself akin to the proverbial grass when two elephants fight.
