Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Contempt of Court
Mains level: Contempt of Court and associated issues
Contempt of court, as a concept is back in the news after the proceeding by the Supreme Court of India, on its own motion, against a senior Delhi-based advocate-activist.
Try this question for mains:
Q.What is Contempt of Court? Discuss, how free speech can lead to the contempt of courts?
What is Contempt of Court?
- It seeks to protect judicial institutions from motivated attacks and unwarranted criticism, and as a legal mechanism to punish those who lower its authority.
How did the concept of contempt come into being?
- The concept of contempt of court is several centuries old.
- In England, it is a common law principle that seeks to protect the judicial power of the king, initially exercised by him, and later by a panel of judges who acted in his name.
- Violation of the judges’ orders was considered an affront to the king himself.
- Over time, any kind of disobedience to judges, or obstruction of the implementation of their directives, or comments and actions that showed disrespect towards them came to be punishable.
What is the statutory basis for contempt of court?
- There were pre-Independence laws of contempt in India. Besides the early High Courts, the courts of some princely states also had such laws.
- When the Constitution was adopted, contempt of court was made one of the restrictions on freedom of speech and expression.
- Separately, Article 129 of the Constitution conferred on the Supreme Court the power to punish contempt of itself.
- Article 215 conferred a corresponding power on the High Courts.
- The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, gives statutory backing to the idea.
What are the kinds of contempt of court?
The law codifying contempt classifies it as civil and criminal.
- Civil contempt is fairly simple. It is committed when someone willfully disobeys a court order or wilfully breaches an undertaking given to the court. However, Criminal contempt is more complex.
- It consists of three forms: (a) words, written or spoken, signs and actions that “scandalise” or “tend to scandalise” or “lower” or “tends to lower” the authority of any court (b) prejudices or interferes with any judicial proceeding and (c) interferes with or obstructs the administration of justice.
- The rationale for this provision is that courts must be protected from tendentious attacks that lower its authority, defame its public image and make the public lose faith in its impartiality.
- The punishment for contempt of court is simple imprisonment for a term up to six months and/or a fine of up to ₹. 2,000.
What does not account to contempt?
- Fair and accurate reporting of judicial proceedings will not amount to contempt of court.
- Nor is any fair criticism on the merits of a judicial order after a case is heard and disposed of.
Is truth a defence against a contempt charge?
- For many years, the truth was seldom considered a defence against a charge of contempt.
- There was an impression that the judiciary tended to hide any misconduct among its individual members in the name of protecting the image of the institution.
- The Act was amended in 2006 to introduce truth as a valid defence if it was in the public interest and was invoked in a bonafide
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Asiatic Society William Jones
Mains level: Linguistic study of ancient India
This newscard is an excerpt from the original article published in the Indian Express.
Try this PYQ from CSP 2016:
Q.Who of the following had first deciphered the edicts of Emperor Ashoka?
(a) Georg Buhier
(b) James Prinsep
(c) Max Muller
(d) William Jones
William Jones
- William Jones was appointed as a judge on the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal,
- In the next couple of years, Jones established himself as an authority on ancient Indian language and culture, a field of study that was hitherto untouched.
- He is particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among European and Indo-Aryan languages, which he coined as Indo-European.
- He is also credited for establishing the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the year 1784.
His linguistic studies
- Jones’ was the first to suggest that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin languages had a common root and that indeed they may all be further related, in turn, to Gothic and the Celtic languages, as well as to Persian.
- He also suggested that Sanskrit ‘was introduced to India by conquerors from other kingdoms in some very remote age’ displacing ‘the pure Hindi’ of north India
- His claim rested on the evidence of several Sanskrit words that had similarities with Greek and Latin.
Some examples of his propositions
- As he studied the languages further, it became clearer that apart from Greek and Latin, Sanskrit words could be found in most other European languages.
- For instance, the Sanskrit word for ‘three’, that is ‘trayas’, is similar to the Latin ‘tres’ and the Greek ‘treis’. Similarly, the Sanskrit for ‘snake’, is ‘sarpa’, which shares a phonetic link with ‘serpens’ in Latin.
- For instance, ‘mata’ or mother in Sanskrit, is ‘mutter’ in German. ‘Dan’ or ‘to give’ in Sanskrit is ‘donor’ in Spanish.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Galapagos Islands
Mains level: Not Much
Chinese ships are frequently entering Ecuador’s waters for commercial fishing near the Galapagos Islands.
Try this question from CSP 2018:
Q.Which one of the following can one comes across if one travels through the Strait of Malacca?
(a) Bali
(b) Brunei
(c) Java
(d) Singapore
The Galapagos Islands
- Renowned worldwide for its unique species, the islands host a wide array of aquatic wildlife, including marine iguanas, fur seals, and waved albatrosses.
- The giant tortoises found here – ‘Galápagos’ in old Spanish– give the islands its name.
- Ecuador made a part of the Galapagos a wildlife sanctuary in 1935, and the sanctuary became the Galapagos National Park in 1959.
- In 1978, the islands became UNESCO’s first World Heritage Site.
- It was here that the British naturalist Charles Darwin made key observations in 1835 that shaped his theory of evolution. Darwin described the islands as a “world in itself”.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Dhole and thier significance
Mains level: Wildlife conservation and various policy efforts
Karnataka, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh rank high in the conservation of dhole in India, according to a new study.
Dhole
- The dhole is a canid native to Central, South, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.
- India perhaps supports the largest number of dholes, with key populations found in three landscapes — Western Ghats, Central India and Northeast India.
- It is a highly social animal, living in large clans without rigid dominance hierarchies and containing multiple breeding females.
- It is listed as ‘Endangered’ by the IUCN as populations are decreasing and are estimated at fewer than 2,500 adults.
- Factors contributing to this decline include habitat loss, loss of prey, competition with other species, persecution due to livestock predation and disease transfer from domestic dogs.
Their significance
- Dholes play an important role as apex predators in forest ecosystems.
- Besides the tiger, the dhole is the only large carnivore in India that is under IUCN’s ‘endangered’ category.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Hoolock Gibbons
Mains level: Wildlife conservation and various policy efforts
Hoolock Gibbons, the only species of apes found in India, are threatened with extinction in the Ukhrul and Kamjong districts of Manipur, a report has claimed.
Try this PYQ from CSP2013:
Q.Consider the following pairs:
Protected area:: Well-known for
- Bhitarkanika, Orissa:: Salt Water Crocodile
- Desert National Park, Rajasthan:: Great Indian Bustard
- Eravikulam, Kerala:: Hoolock Gibbon
Which of the above pairs is/are correctly matched?
(a) 1 only
(b) 1 and 2 only
(c) 2 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
Hoolock Gibbons
- The two districts used to be covered with dense, tropical rainforests, which provided ideal tree canopies for the arboreal, brachiating ape species.
- Rampant deforestation for timber, forest fires and indiscriminate hunting had led to the decline in their population.
- Without the tree canopies, the gibbons cannot swing from branch to branch and stake out their territories.
- They also cannot adapt to living on the ground and cannot bear the high temperatures brought about by the loss of green cover.
Conservation status (a/c to WWF India)
- The gibbon has a much wider range, as it is found in all the states of the north-east, restricted between the south of the Brahmaputra River and east of the Dibang River.
- Outside India, it is found in eastern Bangladesh and north-west Myanmar.
- The eastern hoolock gibbon inhabits specific pockets of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam in India, and southern China and north-east Myanmar.
- Of the two, the western hoolock is listed as Endangered in the IUCN Redlist, while the eastern hoolock is listed as Vulnerable.
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Bharat Air Fibre Services
Mains level: Digital India
The Union Ministry of Communications has inaugurated “Bharat Air Fibre Services” at Akola in Maharashtra.
Try this PYQ from CSP 2018:
Q: Which of the following is/are the aim/aims of “Digital India” plan of the Government of India?
- Formation of India’s own Internet companies like china did.
- Established a policy framework to encourage overseas multinational corporations that collect big data to build their large data centers within our national geographical boundaries.
- Connect many of our villages to the internet and bring WiFi to many of our schools, public places and major tourist centers.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 3 only
(c) 2 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3
Bharat Air Fibre Services
- The Bharat Air Fibre services are introduced by BSNL as part of Digital India initiates by the GoI.
- It aims to provide Wireless Connectivity in the range of 20 KMs from the BSNL Locations.
- It provides internet connectivity upto 100 Mbps speed.
- It is completely wireless and offers broadband up to 10Mbps up to a distance of 5 Kms.
- These services are special and different from other operators as BSNL is providing unlimited free voice calling.
- Customers at remote places also will be benefitted as BSNL comes with the cheapest services with the support of Telecom Infrastructure Partners (TIPs).
Get an IAS/IPS ranker as your 1: 1 personal mentor for UPSC 2024
Attend Now