Governance Community

The Republic Day celebrations will now begin every year from January 23 instead of January 24 to include the birth anniversary of freedom fighter Subash Chandra Bose, government sources said on January 15. This is in line with the Narendra Modi government’s focus on commemorating important aspects of India’s history and culture, they said, noting it had earlier started celebrating Bose’s birth anniversary as “Parakram Divas”. Other such days, observance of which have become a yearly affair, are August 14 as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day, October 31 as National Unity Day (birth anniversary of Sardar Patel), November 15 as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas (Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary), November 26 as Constitution Day and December 26 as Veer Baal Divas (a tribute to the four sons of Guru Gobind Singh), sources added. The Centre has drawn up plans to promote sites across the country associated with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Last year, in October, news agency PTI had reported that the Tourism Ministry was planning curated tours as part of events to commemorate the anniversary of the formation of the Azad Hind government, the provisional government that was announced by Bose on October 21, 1943. “Identification of such sites has been done and will include multiple routes. We have prepared curated itineraries that cover destinations connected to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The itineraries will be given to tour operators to promote sites related to Netaji,” an official was quoted as saying by PTI. Source: PTI

Chennai: The third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic has arrived in the country with new super spreader variants. As various state governments are imposing restrictions in their respective states in the light of the rising cases, the Tamil Nadu government has issued an order to postpone the semester exams of all state universities. According to newly issued order on Monday, the semester exams will now be scheduled after January 20, 2022. Higher education minister K Ponmudy said the revised schedule for semester exams will be decided only after the situation calms down. He also added that the decision to postpone exams is not only for state universities it applied to all the deemed universities in the state as well. “Colleges have completed their syllabus for the previous semester. I request the students to prepare for the exams. The mode of exams will be decided later depending on the COVID situation.” According to the previous decision, the government had planned offline examination for students in the state after January 20, 2022. Now, keeping in mind the drastic spike in COVID cases, the government has decided to postpone the exams and has issued study holidays for students. Source: The Times of India

Mumbai: As the Omicron and COVID-19 cases are rising across the state, there are suspicions amongst the people that malls and theatres will be shut down for some time to curb the spread. For now, state minister Amit Deshmukh has told the people that there is no need to shut these places down at the moment. To relay the numbers across, Omicron has spread extensively spanning several districts of Maharashtra, accounting for as many as 797 cases so far. Besides, COVID cases are also rising across the state. Yesterday, the state saw 26,000 cases, while its Omicron variant breached the 100-mark, though deaths plummeted to a single-digit figure. Deshmukh told ANI, “At present, we don’t think that cinema halls or malls need to be closed. But if something is to be done in the larger public interest, State Cabinet will discuss these things & the CM will take a final call.” He told further, ““No consideration of lockdown as of now. Maharashtra government will consider a lockdown or lockdown-like restrictions after medical oxygen demand for the state goes beyond 800 metric tonnes/ day or more than 40% of Covid beds in hospitals are occupied.” Source: India.com

The Union government on Thursday extended the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) and declared Nagaland as “disturbed area” for six more months with immediate effect from 30th December, 2021. The deliberate move was taken days after the union government had constituted a high-level committee to scrutinise the probability of the revocation of the highly controversial AFSPA law from the entire Nagaland. “The Central government is of the opinion that the area comprising the whole of the State of Nagaland is in such a disturbed and dangerous condition that the use of armed forces in aid of the civil power is necessary”, notified by the Ministry. Albeit, in exercise of powers conferred under Section 4 of the Act, “The Central government hereby declares that the whole of the State of Nagaland to be ‘disturbed area’ for a period of six months with effect from 30th December, 2021, for the purpose of the said Act.” The High level committee has been constituted presumably in order to alleviate the exacerbating situation in Nagaland after an ambush by the AFSPA, security forces went  outrageously wrong in Nagaland on December 4 which resulted in the death of 14 Civilians in Mon which let went everyone berserk and the terrible killings of innocent miners has been denounced by national political parties, and the state government. The AFSPA gives unbridled power to security forces to kill anyone acting in contravention of law, and arrest anyone without any prior warrant and have immunity from prosecution. Protests for the withdrawal of the AFSPA have been going on in several districts of Nagaland after the tragic incident provoked anger and indignation.

Bangalore: The Karnataka Legislative assembly has passed the anti-conversion bill amidst heavy opposition from the Congress leaders. As per the process, it will now be sent to the council for approval. In the earlier discussions, Law Minister J C Madhuswamy had a tiff with the former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition Siddharamaiah, Madhuswamy had alleged that the bill was conceived during the latter’s tenure. The Karnataka Right to Freedom of Religion Bill, 2021 is commonly known as the anti-conversion Bill. It has several provisions such as, maximum punishment of 10 years of imprisonment for forcible conversion of persons from Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe communities, minors and women, to another religion. Even as the House was debating the passage of the bill, news broke that a church in Karnataka’s Chikkaballapur district was vandalised by miscreants early Thursday morning. Source: The article has been published by the Indian Express with a few edits by the ArdorComm News Network Team  

Delhi: The whole nation is grieving the loss of the first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat. He died in a IAF helicopter crash in Tamil Nadu along with his wife. With a heavy heart, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh made a statement today in the Lok Sabha as well as the Rajya Sabha. He briefed the members about the crash of the military chopper which was carrying Gen Bipin Rawat and 13 others.  “Indian Air Force (IAF) has ordered a tri-service inquiry into the military chopper crash. The investigation will be led by Air Marshal Manavendra Singh. The inquiry team reached Wellington yesterday itself and started the investigation,” Rajnath Singh said in Lok Sabha. Group Captain Varun, the sole survivor of the crash, is on life support, he said.   Along with him, Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid his final respects to CDS Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and other 11 armed forces personnel who lost their lives yesterday in the unfortunate crash.  Yesterday, at the Palam air base, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met families of Gen Bipin Rawat and the other 11 armed forces personnel who lost their lives in the crash.  Source: Business Standard, ANI

Amid the debate over the fate of cryptocurrencies in the country, a government document has recommended the setting up of a national blockchain framework for using it in e-governance by adopting the emerging technology. “This document provides an insight on strategies and recommendations for creating a trusted digital platform using Blockchain Technology (BCT), facilitating trusted service delivery to citizens and businesses and also make India a global leader in terms of research and development and harnessing the benefits of this emerging technology,” according to the National Strategy on Blockchain towards enabling trusted digital platforms report prepared by the ministry of electronics and information technology (Meity). It said that the potential of BCT may be explored in the proposed public digital platforms in various sectors like agriculture, health, energy and others for meeting enhanced security requirements. The report said that integration of the National Blockchain Framework with online Electronic Signatures (e-Sign), ePramaan and DigiLocker would be an added advantage. It said globally several countries have launched platforms and services using blockchain technology and many vendors are offering blockchain-as-a-service to customers. It cited examples from China, UAE, the US, Brazil, Chile, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland and its use by companies such as LG, Samsung, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. Initially, the National Blockchain Framework would be used for e-governance domain. Transition would be made to incorporate various use cases beyond e-governance and the National Blockchain Framework would be open for relevant stakeholders. Government would define the policies and guidelines, the report said. Source: TOI

  The gross GST revenue collected within the month of November 2021 was ₹1,31,526 crore, the second highest ever since introduction of GST, second only thereto in April 2021. For the second straight in November, gross GST collection crossed ₹1.30 lakh crore. The revenues for the month of November 2021 are 25% above the GST revenues in the same month last year and 27% over 2019-20. Of the entire GST collections in November, CGST was ₹23,978 crore, SGST ₹31,127 crore, IGST is ₹66,815 crore (including ₹32,165 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is ₹9,606 crore (including ₹653 crore collected on import of goods). “The GST revenues for November 2021 have been the second highest ever since introduction of GST, second only to that in April 2021, which related to year-end revenues and higher than last month’s collection, which also included the impact of returns required to be filed quarterly. this is considerably in line with the trend in economic recovery,” the government said in a statement. The government has settled ₹27,273 crore to CGST and ₹22,655 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement. the entire revenue of centre and also the States after regular settlements in the month of November 2021 is ₹ 51251 crore for CGST and ₹ 53,782 crore for the SGST. Centre has also released ₹ 17,000 crore to States/UTs towards GST compensation on 3rd November. “The recent trend of high GST revenues has been a result of various policy and administrative measures that have been taken in the past to enhance compliance. Central tax enforcement agencies, along side the State counterparts have detected large tax evasion cases, mainly cases relating to fake invoices, with the help of various IT tools developed by GSTN that use the return, invoice and e-way bill data to find suspicious taxpayers,” the govt. said. “A large number of initiatives undertaken in the last one year like, enhancement of system capacity, nudging non-filers after last date of filing of returns, auto-population of returns, blocking of e-way bills and passing of input tax credit for non-filers has led to consistent improvement in the filing of returns over the last few months,” it added. Source: Mint

Delhi: The rise in the level of toxicity in Yamuna has been the topic of discussion recently amongst the residents and the governance stakeholders in Delhi. On Thursday, Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced the formation of a Yamuna Cleaning Cell (YCC) to monitor and expedite the inter-departmental discussions regarding the cleaning of the Yamuna River. Kejriwal announced that the YCC will be headed by the chief executive officer of the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) and will have the representatives of all the necessary departments. Kejriwal’s tweet said, “In order to expedite inter-departmental decision making and execution, we formed a Yamuna Cleaning Cell (YCC) today, headed by CEO, DJB and representatives of all concerned depts. This will expedite Yamuna cleaning process.” Recently, during the last week, Kejriwal had announced six-point action plan to clean the heavily polluted Yamuna River in the city. According to his statement, the work will be completed by February 2025. The action plan includes: New sewer treatment plants Raising the capacity of the existing ones Sewer connection of slum clusters Rehabilitation of old sewer systems Source: Business Standard

The Union Cabinet led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 24 approved the proposal to withdraw three controversial farm laws that triggered year-long protests by thousands of farmers. After the Cabinet nod, the government will now introduce “The Farm Laws Repeal Bill, 2021” in Parliament during the Winter Session beginning on November 29. “Today, the Union Cabinet led by PM completed formalities to repeal the three Farm Laws. During the upcoming Winter Session of Parliament, it will be our priority to take back these three laws,” Union Minister Anurag Thakur said in a news conference. The Union Ministry of Agriculture has finalised this Bill after holding consultations with the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), according to reports. Prime Minister Modi supervised the Cabinet meeting which took up other issues as well. The Repeal Bill seeks to repeal the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmer’s (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance, Farm Services Act, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020. The move comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced last week that the Centre has decided to repeal the three farm laws. “While apologizing to the nation, I want to say with a sincere and pure heart that maybe something was lacking in our efforts that we could not explain the truth to some of our farmer brothers,” the Prime Minister said in his address to the nation on June 19, marking Guru Purab festival. The laws can be withdrawn only by the passage of Repeal Bills in Parliament. The Centre will have to seek permission from both Houses of Parliament to proceed with their repeal before its approval by the President of India, as is the process in legislation enacted by Parliament. The government has to pass a Bill in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha before its approval by the President of India, as is the process in legislation enacted by Parliament. The Farm Laws Repeal Bill, 2021 is one of the 26 Bills listed by the government in its agenda for the Winter Session of the Parliament. Source: ANI