CURRENT AFFAIRS
17 December 2020
NATIONAL NEWS:
A) Supreme Court proposes forming a panel to help resolve farmers’ protests.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday said talks between the Centre and farmer leaders on the controversial agricultural laws have broken no ground and are bound to fail. A Bench led by Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde proposed setting up a committee of farmer leaders from across the country, including the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), which has been at the forefront of the protests, and representatives of the Central government. The Committee can talk and resolve this issue. Secure the names of some farmers’ unions who want to join. It should include BKU and other farmer leaders. They should be drawn from across the country. It affects all and this will soon become a national issue, Chief Justice Bobde said. Reacting to the development, former minister and senior Shiromani Akali Dal leader Daljit Singh Cheema alleged that the Central government was depending on motivated pleas in the Supreme Court to forcibly lift the congregation of peaceful farmers from the borders of Delhi. Such pleas only highlight the failure of the NDA government. Instead of doing this the government could have arrived at a solution in Parliament by discussing the issue threadbare and repealing the three agricultural acts, he said. The Bench scheduled the case for urgent hearing on December 17. December 18 is the last day before we close for vacations, Chief Justice Bobde said. Thousands of farmers from various parts of the country, mainly from Punjab and Haryana, have braved the onset of winter and blocked the entry points to the National Capital since late November.
B) British foreign secretary says he ‘discussed’ farmers’ protests with Jaishankar.
Agricultural reforms are India’s internal matter but the protests here are part of British politics too, said the visiting British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who discussed the ongoing farmer protests at Delhi’s borders during talks with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. Raab, who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, said the U.K. respected India’s heritage of protests and debates, and was watching the situation closely. UK government respect the fact that the reforms going through the Indian system here are domestic reforms, he said, in response to a question that whether the protests had come up in bilateral talks in Delhi. Indian politics is in some sense, because of the Indian diaspora in Britain, U.K.’s politics, Raab emphasised, in an interaction with journalists. India had a vibrant heritage of peaceful protests and vigorous debate, which the UK has watched with interest, he observed. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) did not refer to the issue in its press statement on the meeting between the India-U.K. Foreign Ministers on Tuesday. Nor did it respond to a request for a comment on Raab’s remarks. Earlier in the month, the MEA spokesperson had said that remarks by foreign leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other foreign politicians, on the farmers protests were ill-informed and unwarranted, and the matter was an internal issue for India. Raab, however, said that since members of the Indian diaspora had joined protests in the U.K. over the farm Bills, this was now an issue in British politics as well. Over the past two weeks, 36 British Members of Parliament, mostly from the Opposition Labour Party, had written to Raab, asking him to raise the issue of the new agricultural laws, which they called a death warrant for farmers.
C) No element in Bajrang Dal’s content that necessitates ban: Facebook India head.
Facebook’s India head Ajit Mohan deposed before a parliamentary panel on Wednesday and said that the social media company’s fact-checking team had so far found no such element that necessitated a ban on the Bajrang Dal, sources said. Mohan deposed before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, chaired by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor. The panel had called him on the issue of citizens’ data safety. Mohan was accompanied by Shivnath Thukral, the public policy director of Facebook. Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, along with Tharoor, questioned Mohan about a recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report suggesting that the social media giant was reluctant to ban the Bajrang Dal from its platform due to financial reasons and concerns over the safety of its staff, sources said. The WSJ report suggested that despite an internal assessment calling for a ban on the Bajrang Dal, Facebook did not crack down on the Hindu nationalist group due to these reasons. BJP MP Nishikant Dubey then asked if the Bajrang Dal content was not found to be in violation of its social media policies, then why did Facebook not deny the WSJ report and term it as fake.
D) Kerala local body elections: LDF headed for emphatic victory.
The counting of votes polled in the 2020 local body elections in Kerala is on at 244 centres across the State, with trends projecting an emphatic victory for the Left Democratic Front (LDF). While the BJP-led NDA scored some significant political points in different parts of the state, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) registered a decent performance. The results of the three-tier local body polls in the State are likely a template for the Assembly polls due in another four months. The local body elections were conducted in three phases on December 8, 10 and 14.
E) JEE Main to be held four times.
Four sessions of JEE Main will be held in 2021 in February, March, April and May to ensure that it does not interfere with board exams of different states, which would be held in a staggered manner on account of a Covid-19-disrupted academic calendar, Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said on Wednesday. The first session of the engineering entrance examination will be held from February 23-26. Students will be allowed to attempt all four times if they wish, with the best score being used. The pattern of the exam has also been changed to accommodate Covid-19-driven changes to the syllabus. The CBSE reduced its syllabus for Class 12 board exams by 30%, and other state boards have also reduced their syllabus due to the lockdown. Therefore, the JEE-Main question paper will now have greater choice. In an online interaction with students last week, the Minister had announced that the government is considering the possibility of holding the JEE three or four times a year, and a proposal is being evaluated on reducing the number of questions that students can attempt in JEE (Main) 2021. The Minister has already clarified that there will be no change in the syllabus for medical entrance exam NEET or engineering entrance exam JEE-Main in 2021.
F) Covid Watch: Numbers and Developments.
The number of coronavirus cases reported from India stood at 99,42,134 with the death toll at 1,44,509. Covaxin, Bharat Biotech’s Covid-19 vaccine, has been found to be well tolerated with no serious adverse events, and produced robust immune responses, as per interim findings from Phase-I trials. The World Health Organisation said Wednesday that a team of international experts would travel to China next month to help investigate the animal origins of Covid-19. Meanwhile, the Tamil Nadu government has granted permission to hold public and political meetings, religious gatherings, sports and cultural events with 50% capacity in open places from December 19.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) Russia denies role of FSB in opposition leader’s poisoning.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday denied recent media investigations that alleged the country’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had followed and poisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny. All this news is funny to read. But the manner in which this news is presented says only one thing: that our Western partners lack any ethical standards, Mr. Lavrov said. Several European labs in September concluded that Navalny, 44, was poisoned after he fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow in August before being transported by medical aircraft to Berlin. A joint investigation published earlier this week by several media outlets claimed FSB chemical weapons experts had followed Mr. Navalny for years, including on the day he was poisoned. The investigative website Bellingcat together with CNN, Russian site The Insider and Germany’s Der Spiegel on Monday published names and photos of the alleged men who tailed Mr. NavaIny. Their investigation said the men are specialists in nerve agents and toxins, including the Soviet-designed poison Novichok, which European countries said was used against Mr. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent Kremlin critic. During a visit to the Croatian capital Zagreb, Mr. Lavrov said the media reports prove Western countries’ lack of any skills for normal diplomatic work and an unwillingness to comply with international legal norms when it comes to establishing facts. The joint report does not establish any direct contact between Mr. Navalny and the named agents and Russia has flatly denied any role in the Kremlin critic’s illness.
B) Erdogan says U.S. sanctions an attack on Turkey’s sovereignty.
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that U.S. sanctions imposed on Turkey over its purchase of Russian defence systems were an attack on Ankara’s sovereign rights aimed at deterring its defence industry, a move which he said was bound to fail. On Monday, Washington imposed the sanctions targeting NATO member Turkey’s Defence Industry Directorate (SSB), its chief Ismail Demir and three other employees over its acquisition of Russian S-400 missile defence systems. In his first public comments on the move, Mr. Erdogan said that problems stemming from the sanctions would be overcome and vowed to ramp up efforts towards an independent defence industry, while criticising Washington for sanctioning a NATO ally. The real goal is to block the advances our country started in the defence industry recently and to once again render us absolutely dependent on them, he added. Surely there will be problems, but each problem will push open a door for us for a solution. Washington says the S-400s pose a threat to its F-35 fighter jets and to NATO’s broader defence systems. Turkey rejects this and says S-400s will not be integrated into NATO. On Wednesday, Erdogan repeated that the US. concerns had no technical basis.
He added that Ankara still produced close to 1,000 parts for the F-35 jets, despite being removed from the programme over the S-400 purchase. Turkey had also been due to buy more than 100F-35 jets.
