NATIONAL NEWS
A) Centre unveils new COVID recovery package, expands credit relief
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday announced fresh relief measures for the economy, the first such package after the second Covid-19 wave. The measures focused largely on extending loan guarantees and concessional credit for pandemic-hit sectors, and investments to ramp up healthcare capacities. The government pegged the total financial implications of the package, which included the reiteration of some steps that were announced earlier, such as the provision of food grains to the poor till November and higher fertiliser subsidies, at ₹6,28,993 crore. Economists, however, noted that the elements of direct stimulus in the package and its upfront fiscal costs in 2021-22 are likely to be limited. More stimulus steps may be needed to shore up the economy through the rest of the year, they said. Calling the measures an effort to stimulate growth, exports and employment as well as provide relief to COVID-affected sectors, Sitharaman announced an expansion of the existing Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) by ₹1.5 lakh crore. She also announced a new ₹7,500 crore scheme to guarantee loans up to ₹1.25 lakh to small borrowers through micro-finance institutions. She also unveiled a fresh loan guarantee facility of ₹1.1 lakh crore for healthcare investments in non-metropolitan areas and sectors such as tourism. A separate ₹23,220 crore has been allocated for public health with a focus on paediatric care, which will also be utilised for increasing ICU beds, oxygen supply and augmenting medical care professionals for the short term by recruiting final year students and interns. Indirect support for exports worth ₹1.21 lakh crore over the next five years, free one-month visas for five lakh tourists, new seed varieties for farmers and additional outlays over the next two years to expand broadband to all Gram Panchayats, were also included in the package. The existing sop to spur employment, where the government bears EPF contributions for new employees earning less than ₹15,000 a month for two years, has been extended till March 31, 2022. Setting aside the guarantee schemes and the announcements that had already been made earlier, the step-up in the fiscal outgo within 2021-22 based on the fresh announcements is estimated at around ₹60,000 crore, said Aditi Nayar, rating agency ICRA’s chief economist. Economist DK Srivastava reckoned that the additional burden on the 2021-22 Budget from the ‘three direct stimulus initiatives’ providing free foodgrains, incremental health projects’ spending, and rural connectivity would be ₹1,18,390 crore or about 0.5% of estimated GDP for 2021-22.
B) No scientific data to show Delta plus variant reduces vaccine efficacy, says COVID Task Force chief
Amid rising concerns over the Delta plus variant of the virus, COVID Task Force chief V.K. Paul, who is also a Niti Aayog member, today said that there was no scientific data to establish that the new variant is highly transmissible or reduces vaccine efficacy. Speaking about the Delta plus variant, Paul said scientific knowledge about it is still at an early stage. The so-called Delta plus variant exhibits an additional mutation in the Delta variant and since this is a new variant, scientific knowledge is still in the early stage. Whether this additional mutation in the Delta variant is associated with increased transmissibility or excess severity of disease, or any adverse effect on vaccine efficacy is currently not established and we should wait for this information to emerge. And we should wait for these aspects to be studied systematically, he pointed out. Regarding the effectiveness of Covaxin and Covishield against the Delta variant of the coronavirus, Paul said that based on the scientific evaluation by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), both vaccines are effective against the coronavirus, including the Delta variant, which is presently the predominant variant in the country. When asked if India is close to giving indemnity to foreign vaccine makers like Pfizer and Moderna, Paul said the issue has multiple dimensions and it is not wise to give a timeline for such issues. The discussion for paving the way for internationally developed vaccines to India is going on. The issue has multiple dimensions and we are trying to find an agreed way forward at the earliest. We are trying to expedite the progress in every possible way, he said.
C) Delhi HC seeks Centre’s response to Alt News’s plea challenging new IT rules
The Delhi High Court on Monday sought a response from the Central government on a petition by Alt News, an online fact-checking website, challenging the constitutional validity of the new Information Technology (IT) rules that seek to regulate digital news media. The court is already seized of similar pleas by major online news portals such as The Wire, The News Minute, and the Quint Digital Media Ltd. A vacation bench of Justices C. Hari Shankar and Subramonium Prasad, however, declined to pass any interim order on a fresh application filed by The Wire and Quint, which claimed that the Union government was threatening to take coercive action against online news outlets. The court has put the fresh applications for hearing next week when it reopens after the summer vacation. You have challenged the [IT] rules. You have made an interim application for their stay. That application has come up before the regular bench on at least two occasions. The action they [Centre] are now taking is implementation of those rules, the vacation bench remarked. Now the notice that has been sent to you is only by way of implementation of the rules, because there is no stay, the court said while declining to pass any order. Senior advocate Nitya Ramakrihnan, for the online news outlets, contended that they were forced to approach the court now as the government was threatening to take coercive action. It is our case that in a matter which is ex facie unconstitutional i.e. when the Central government sits in judgments over content of news media, any coercive steps which is proposed to be taken, I [online news outlets] can approach the court, Ramakrihnan argued. The last coercive step they were threatening was on June 18. They are saying ‘consequences will follow’ in their letter. Until then, we were engaging with them, she said, while stressing that notices were sent to the Centre by the court on their application for the stay of the IT rules. By this letter, they are forcing us into a disciplinary regime of the Central government. Until now, they were engaging with us only in correspondence. On June 18, they say ‘you comply or else’, she added.
D) 10-month gap between AstraZeneca doses delivers highest antibody boost: Oxford study
Two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine administered 44-45 weeks apart generated nearly four times the level of antibodies than when the doses were given 8-12 weeks apart, says a report by the Oxford Vaccine Group, the developers of the vaccine, on Monday. Antibody levels remained elevated for nearly a year and a third booster dose of the vaccine, given to a subset of volunteers, also significantly boosted antibody levels to twice that after a second dose. A single dose of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, with a second dose given after a prolonged period, may, therefore, be an effective strategy when vaccine supplies are scarce in the short term. A third dose results in a further increase in immune responses, including greater neutralisation of variant SARS-CoV-2 viruses, and could be used to increase vaccine efficacy against variants in vulnerable populations, the authors report in a pre-print publication. This means the study is yet to peer-reviewed. Covishield, which is the India-made version of the AstraZeneca vaccine, is now the mainstay of India’s vaccination programme, comprising nearly 88% of the 32 crore doses administered so far. Though the dosage interval of the vaccine was initially designed as between 4-6 weeks, a supply crunch in May, as well UK data on the vaccine’s efficacy administered 8-12 weeks apart weighed on Indian experts to recommend a 12-16 week interval between two doses of the vaccine.
E) Centre extends tenure of Attorney General K.K. Venugopal by a year
The government has extended the tenure of Attorney General K.K. Venugopal by a year. Venugopal will continue as the government’s top law officer till June 30, 2022. This is the second time the Centre has extended his tenure. Venugopal, who was appointed Attorney General in July 2017, received his first extension of term in 2020. The 89-year-old took over as the 15th Attorney General after senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi demitted office citing personal reasons. Venugopal, who had served as Additional Solicitor General in the Morarji Desai government, is a doyen of the Supreme Court Bar and an authority in Constitutional Law. He had recently represented the Union of India in a case which led to the cancellation of Class 12 exams due to the pandemic and the framing of an internal assessment scheme for the CBSE and the ICSE to evaluate the marks of students. Venugopal would be at the helm of the government’s legal defence in several sensitive cases pending in the Supreme Court, which includes the challenge to the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and the Citizenship Amendment Act.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) Blinken, Lapid to meet in Rome to reset U.S .- Israel ties.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid will meet in Rome on Sunday as their new governments look to turn the page on former President Donald Trump and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose close alliance aggravated partisan divisions within both countries. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett are focused on pragmatic diplomacy rather than dramatic initiatives that risk fomenting opposition at home or distracting from other priorities. That means aiming for smaller achievements, such as shoring up the informal cease-fire that ended last month’s war with Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers and replenishing Israel’s Iron Dome defence system. A major push to revive the long dormant peace process between Israel and the Palestinians could unsettle the delicate balance. Nobody thinks it’s a good idea to start charging through on a major new peace initiative, said Ilan Goldenberg, a Mideast security expert at the nonprofit Center for a New American Security. But there are things you can do quietly under the radar, on the ground, to improve the situation. That approach – of managing the conflict rather than trying to solve it – may succeed in papering over domestic divisions. But it also maintains a status quo that the Palestinians find increasingly oppressive and hopeless, and which has fueled countless cycles of unrest.
B) U.K.’s Hancock quits over breach of COVID-19 rules.
U.K. Health Secretary Matt Hancock resigned on Saturday following revelations he broke government coronavirus restrictions during an affair with a close aide, with former Finance Minister Sajid Javid taking up the role. The frontman for Britain’s response to the pandemic, particularly the nationwide vaccine roll-out, quit in a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. We owe it to people who have sacrificed so much in this pandemic to be honest when we have let them down as I have done by breaching the guidance, he wrote. The last thing I would want is for my private life to distract attention from the single-minded focus that is leading us out of this crisis. Mr. Johnson had initially stood by his Health Secretary after Mr. Hancock admitted breaking COVID-19 social distancing rules, when at the same time he was urging the public to stick by the measures. Opposition parties have accused the government of hypocrisy over breaches of lockdown rules which have seen many members of the public slapped with fines. Mr. Hancock conceded he had let the public down after The Sun newspaper published a security camera still obtained apparently from a whistleblower showing him kissing the aide. Labour party said the government needed to answer questions about the undisclosed appointment of the aide, former lobbyist Gina Coladangelo, to Hancock’s top advisory team. Both she and Hancock are married, and first met at university.
C) Twitter appoints US employee as new grievance officer, in violation of Centre’s new IT rules
A day after Twitter’s interim resident grievance officer for India stepped down, the social media giant has appointed its Global Legal Policy Director Jeremy Kessel as the new grievance officer. The appointment, though in keeping with the Indian government’s new rules for social networking websites to have a grievance officer, is in violation of the mandate of only appointing an Indian national to the position. The appointment comes a day after the resignation of Dharmendra Chatur, who was recently appointed as interim resident grievance officer for India by Twitter on May 31. The resignation had left Twitter without the Centre-mandated officer to address complaints from Indian subscribers. The social media company’s website no longer displays his name, as required under Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021. Twitter declined to comment on the development. The development comes at a time when the micro-blogging platform has been engaged in a tussle with the Indian government over the new social media rules. The government has slammed Twitter for deliberate defiance and failure to comply with the country’s new IT rules. The new rules, which came into effect on May 25, mandate social media companies to establish a grievance redressal mechanism for resolving complaints from the users or victims.
