
SC lifts veil on Collegium recommendations : Decisions to be uploaded on Supreme Court website
NEWS : Supreme Court Collegium, headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, decided to go public with all its recommendations on judicial appointments and transfer.
THE BACKGROUND :Facts to be aware off ( MAINS AND PRELIMS PERSPECTIVE ) WHAT IS COLLEGIUM SYSTEM : Collegium is a body responsible for appointment and transfer of judges consisting of Chief Justice and 4 senior most Judges.
ORIGIN : It is neither a body constituted by law of Parliament nor Constitution of India. This system is evolved through judgments of the Supreme Court which are collectively known as Three Judges Cases.
S. P. Gupta v. Union of India - 1982 (also known as the Judges' Transfer case)
Supreme Court Advocates-on Record Association vs Union of India - 1993
In re Special Reference 1
THE FLAW : These recommendations were kept top secret and there came room for corruption and arbitrariness
THE 99TH CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AND NJAC BILL: The Parliament passed the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Bill, 2014 to scrap the collegiums system of appointment of Judges.
SC MOVE : Supreme Court struck down this Bill as unconstitutional
But there was dire need for reforms in Collegium system : thus this step for transparency was made by SC.
HOW ? The recommendations will be uploaded on the Supreme Court's official website.
WILL MERE DISPLAY WOULD SEEK TRANSPARENCY ? They will “indicate” the reasons for which it has decided to recommend or reject names for appointment, transfer or elevation to the High Courts and the Supreme Court.
WILL SC DO THAT ? As a start, the Supreme Court has already posted online under the heading “Collegium Resolutions”.
India’s greenhouse gas emissions up by 4.7% in 2016- Reported by Dutch environmental assessment agency
THE ISSUE : Most major GHG emitters in the world ( USA , China), the emission figures have gone down, barring India and Indonesia.
THE STATS : The Dutch strategic agency’s report shows that emissions in the U.S. saw a fall of 2%, the Russian Federation 2.1%, Brazil 6.1%, China 0.3%, and, within the European Union, the United Kingdom 6.4%. BASIS : The report’s data is based on the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) produced by the European Union.
WHY INDIA’S EMISSION DOES NOT FALL ?
A sign of growth- “India’s rising emissions are only a sign of development,”
The wrong calculation : EDGAR database that this report looks at emissions from 1990 onward but CO2 emissions have a 100-year residence period in the atmosphere. So, if you include the cumulative emissions data from before 1990, every developed nation will outnumber India.
FACTS FOR PRELIMS FACT 1 : NASA TO SEND MAN TO MARS : NASA has been directed to develop a plan for an innovative and sustainable programme of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system.
FACT 2 : GST COUNCIL TO REDUCE BURDEN ON SMALL BUSSINESS : Some relief are the eventual setting up of an e-wallet for input tax credits for exporters, and the option for small businesses to file returns and pay taxes only once a quarter.