CURRENT AFFAIRS
30 September 2020
NATIONAL NEWS:
A) Amnesty International halts India operations.
On 29 September, Amnesty International India (AII) has said that the government had frozen all its bank accounts, leading to all of its work in the country coming to a halt. The freezing of accounts was the latest in the witch-hunt of human rights organizations. The continuing crackdown on Amnesty International India over the last 2 years and the complete freezing of bank accounts is not accidental. The constant harassment by the government agencies including the Enforcement Directorate is a result of the unequivocal calls for transparency in the government, more recently for accountability of the Delhi Police and the Government of India regarding the grave human rights violation in the Delhi riots and Jammu & Kashmir. For a movement that has done nothing but raises its voices against injustice, this latest attack is akin to freezing dissent. Reacting to Amnesty’s statement, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that human rights cannot be an excuse for defying the law of the land. In a statement, the MHA said that the stand was taken and the statements made by Amnesty International are unfortunate, exaggerated, and far from the truth.
B) 60 million Indians may have been exposed to coronavirus: ICMR survey.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) on 29 September has released the results of the second serosurvey, conducted in the same 700 villages and (urban) wards from 70 districts across 21 states that were covered in the first. The survey was held between August 17 and September 22. According to the survey results, around 7% of the adult population of India, or 60 million people, may have been exposed to the coronavirus. This is roughly a 10-fold jump from the first serosurvey, where scientists said that 0.73% of adults or about 6.4 million across the country were likely infected. During the first survey, it emerged that there were 82-130 infections for every confirmed COVID positive case. That number has dropped to 26-32 infections, which according to by ICMR Director-General, Dr. Balram Bhargava, was the result of a ramp-up of testing and early case detection. The average prevalence in major cities in India ranged from 50% in Mumbai to 29% in New Delhi, 22% in Chennai, and 7.8% in Indore. The serosurvey, because it aims to capture national prevalence, samples many more from rural India than cities to reflect the population spread in India. On May 3, there were 49,720 confirmed cases in India, and by September 1, this had risen to 3.7 million cases a 74-fold increase. Sero-surveys are conducted by drawing blood samples and checking for a specific class of antibodies called IgG that appear within two weeks of infection. Because it is still unclear how long antibodies to the coronavirus detectably persist in the body, their presence only indicates past exposure and not a presence of the virus.
C) Hathras gang-rape victim dies in Delhi hospital.
A 19-year-old Dalit girl was sexually assaulted and tortured by 4 upper caste men in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district 2 weeks ago and was succumbed to injuries at Delhi’s Safdarjang hospital in the early hours of 29 September. The incident took place on September 14 when the girl went to collect animal fodder from the field. She was allegedly gang-raped and later strangulated with her dupatta. The demonstrators shout slogans during a protest inside the premises of Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi on September 29, 2020, after the death of a rape victim from Uttar Pradesh. She was shifted to Delhi from the JN Medical College of Aligarh on 28 September at the request of her father. Members of the Azad Samaj Party alleged that the administration delayed referring her to Delhi and that the facilities in Aligarh were inadequate. Hathras police have arrested the 4 accused Sandip, Ramu, Lavkush, and Ravi on charges of attempt to murder and gang rape. SSP Vikrant Vir had transferred the SHO of Chandpa police station to police lines for failing to act promptly in the case.
D) Supreme Court asks the J&K administration how long it can detain Mehbooba Mufti.
On 29 September, the Supreme Court has asked the Jammu and Kashmir administration to clarify how long they intend to detain former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti under the Public Safety Act. Two issues should be dealt: What is the maximum period for which a person can be detained, and how long do you propose to continue the detention, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, heading a Bench, addressed Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and listed the case for October 15. The court was hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by Mufti’s daughter, Ilija, represented by advocates Nitya Ramakrishnan and S. Prasanna. Mufti was detained on August 5 last year following the scrapping of provisions of Article 370 that had accorded special status to the erstwhile State. Ilija said that the grounds of her mother’s detention were vague, stale, and have no rational nexus with disturbance to public order. They are based on extraneous material”. She contended that her mother had no access to any form of public speech and expression, and there was no reason or material to show that she would act in a manner prejudicial to the maintenance of public order.
E) RBI reschedules the Monetary Policy Committee meeting.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced a rescheduling of its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting which was scheduled to take place from September 29 to October 1. The terms of 3 external members on the 6-member MPC ended last month, and the government is yet to name their replacements. The rules of the panel require at least 4 members to be present at the meeting. The RBI is for waiting for the government to appoint the new external members to the committee. Reacting to the development, former finance minister P Chidambaram put out a series of tweets slamming the government for negligence. How much the government and the PM care for the economy are illustrated by the fact that the Monetary Policy Committee will be defunct tomorrow. Consequently, RBI cannot hold a meeting of the MPC ahead of its monetary policy announcement and has been forced to postpone the meeting. This is unprecedented.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
A) India rejects China’s LAC claim, Beijing questions Ladakh’s status.
On 29 September, India and China had to exchange sharp statements by blaming each other for the continuing border tensions. New Delhi described the Line of Actual Control (LAC) of China side claims as untenable and Beijing said that they did not recognize the Union Territory of Ladakh. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that India has never accepted the so-called unilaterally defined 1959 Line of Actual Control (LAC). The LAC of 1959 was first referenced in a letter from then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai to Jawaharlal Nehru which was an idea rejected then by Nehru and subsequently never accepted by India. A South Block official said that China had, this summer, gone even beyond this 1959 claim line. While they don’t recognize the 1959 claim line, even going by their own 1959 line which runs near Patrolling Point (PP) 14, the clash in Galwan Valley happened approximately 800 metres west of PP14. So they are violating their own claims. The position of India that it never accepted the 1959 line was consistent and well known, including to the Chinese side by adding that in previous bilateral border agreements both sides had committed to clarification and confirmation of the LAC to reach a common understanding of the alignment of the LAC. Both the countries have agreed not to add troops to an already tense LAC following the sixth round of talks between Corp Commanders on September 21, but there has not yet been agreement on disengagement and returning to the status quo prior to May’s transgressions by China.
B) Apple vendors may invest $900 million in India.
3 of Apple Inc.’s top contract manufacturers plan to invest a total of nearly $900 million in India in the next 5 years to tap into a new production-linked incentive plan. Foxconn, Wistron, and Pegatron all plan to make investments under the scheme. The $6.65 billion production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme offers firms cash incentives on any increase in sales as compared with 2019-20 levels of locally-made smartphones over the next five years. The scheme aims to make India an export manufacturing hub. Foxconn has applied to invest about ₹4,000 crores, while Wistron and Pegatron have committed to invest close to ₹1,300 crores and ₹1,200 crores respectively under the scheme. It is unclear whether all of the investment will go into making Apple devices, but industry insiders said much of it would be focused on expanding the manufacturing of the iPhone.
