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  • Freedom of Speech – Defamation, Sedition, etc.

    India at 75 is ready for a sedition-less future

    op-ed snap | Polity | Mains Paper 2: Executive & Judiciary,Indian Constitution – historical underpinnings, evolution, features, amendments, significant provisions and basic structure

    Context

    Chief Justice of India N V Ramana has ignited a passionate debate during a preliminary hearing concerning whether “sedition” should be an offence at all, and how to prevent its misuse or abuse, were it to remain

    Issues with the sedition under Section 124A

    • Against fundamental right: The meandering meanings of expressions such as “disaffection” towards the government, “hatred”, “contempt” etc. constitute an unreasonable restriction on the fundamental right to free expression guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a).
    • Neither the framers of the Constitution nor the authors of the amended Article 19(2) included “sedition” as a ground for “reasonable restriction” to freedom of speech and expression.
    • Colonial past: CJI Ramana in preliminary hearings has pointedly asked the Attorney General whether “sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code is still required after 75 years of independence from colonial rule.
    • Prone to misuse: The lack of definition of terms used in the section leaves vide the scope for interpretation and thus rampant misuse and abuse.

    Way forward

    • Some law luminaries have found new stirrings of hope in the Supreme Court to strike it down.
    • Find means to prevent misuse and abuse: Alternative way,as the learned attorney general observed is to find constitutional ways and practical means to prevent the abuse and misuse of law.
    • Forbid rampant private complaints:  A most immediate step is to forbid rampant private complaints by citizens and authorise only very senior police officials to take appropriate action.

    Conclusion

    What Gandhiji said — the law may not be used to “manufacture affection” under pain of a penal sanction — was as true then as it remains now. It is high time to realise that the law of “sedition” must go, even when it may strictly not even exist!

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  • Foreign Policy Watch: India – EU

    EU’s vaccine travel pass discriminates against low-income countries

    op-ed snap | | Mains Paper 2: Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and agreements involving India

    Context

    The introduction of Covid-19 vaccines has opened up opportunities to help revive travel. However, it is important to carefully design policies that help revive travel demand.

    Vaccine certificates

    • Many countries like China and Israel have introduced vaccine certificates that ease the process of entering and travelling across the destination country for vaccinated travellers.
    • Can encourage discriminatory treatment: Though these certificates can ensure trade facilitation, they can potentially act as a trade barrier if they encourage discriminatory treatment.
    • The recent and the most contentious issue in this regard is the European Union’s “Green Pass” scheme.

    Issues with European Union’s Green Pass

    • Through this vaccine certificate, the European Commission intends to remove travel restrictions such as entry bans, quarantine obligations and testing.
    • Only 4 vaccines listed: The EU has listed only four vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for the pass: Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty, Moderna’s Spikevax, Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaxzevria and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen.
    • It makes travellers from countries administering alternate vaccines ineligible for certification.
    • When it was launched, the policy did not even allow AstraZeneca’s Indian-manufactured vaccine, Covishield.
    • Against COVAX policy: This goes against the policy of COVAX, which has categorically stated that such measures would effectively create a two-tier system and would negatively impact the growth of economies that are already suffering the most.
    • Discriminatory against low-income countries: Vaccine doses administered per 100 people is 1.4 for low-income countries as compared to 93.2 for high-income countries.
    • This makes travellers from low-income countries ineligible to avail these certificates.
    • As per estimates based on information from the WHO, countries not administering any of the EMA-approved vaccines account for at least 14 per cent of the vaccinated population.
    • These lie mostly in low and middle-income countries, including India.
    • Harms domestic sector: Nationals from many of these countries also serve in the hospitality industries in countries across the world, including Europe.
    • With this exclusion criteria, an indirect cost burden is put on their domestic service sectors that are already reeling due to the pandemic.
    • Against globalisation policy: With such discriminatory intervention, the EU policy does not go well with the globalisation policy of collective welfare.

    Steps to boost vaccine production

    • Covid vaccine makers across the world have created a platform, led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, to connect with key raw material suppliers needed for boosting production.
    • In a recent declaration, WTO members have agreed to review and eliminate unnecessary existing export restrictions on essential medical goods needed to combat the pandemic.

    Way forward

    • Cooperate on vaccine production: To achieve the desired goal, countries need to cooperate on vaccine production to accelerate the global vaccination process.
    • Remove restrictions and trade barriers: Accelerating global vaccine production makes lifting trade barriers on raw materials for vaccine production critical.
    • The two relevant bodies, WHO and WTO, should also work together to sort out selective criteria for international movement.

    Conclusion

    Developed countries should refrain from discriminatory international travel policies against low-income countries and focus on increasing vaccine production to close the vaccination gap at the global level.

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  • Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code

    First group insolvency proceeding points to larger weakness in IBC

    op-ed snap | Economics | Mains Paper 3: Indian Economy

    Context

    National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) stayed the approval granted by the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to the resolution plan for the Videocon Group.

    Concerns with resolution plan

    • Resolution plan submitted by Twinstar Technologies, provided for payment of Rs 2,962 crore — a mere 4.15 per cent of Videocon’s total admitted debt of Rs 64,838 crore.
    • Payment of debt not in fair and equitable manner:  Under the IBC (Section 30(2)(b)), the resolution plan must provide for payment of debts amongst creditors in a “fair and equitable” manner.
    • However, in the plan submitted by Twinstar, unsecured assenting financial creditors and operational creditors are getting a paltry 0.62 per cent and 0.72 per cent of their admitted dues.
    • Even the secured assenting and dissenting financial creditors had to settle for only 4.9 per cent and 4.56 per cent of their respective dues.
    • Confidentiality obligation concerns: Twinstar’s bid of Rs 2,962 crore is close to the liquidation value of the Videocon Group estimated at Rs 2,568 crore, thereby raising legitimate suspicion and concern over the confidentiality of the resolution process.
    • The I&B Regulations, 2016 state that the resolution professional must maintain the confidentiality of the fair market value and liquidation value of the corporate debtor and can only disclose the same to the CoC members after the resolutions plan have been submitted.
    • Time delay: Status-quo ante has been restored until the next date of hearing by which time more than three years would have passed since the Videocon group was admitted into insolvency proceedings.
    • This is way beyond the statutory timeline of 330 days.

    Confidentiality rules need to be revised

    • The CoC members must, on receipt of the information, issue an undertaking of confidentiality.
    • But no such obligation falls on the resolution professional.
    • Further, Section 29(2) of the code provides that the resolution professional must disclose all “relevant information” to the resolution applicant and it is for the resolution applicant to ensure compliance with confidentiality obligations.
    • Again, there is no such duty imposed on the resolution professional.
    • Even under Section 25 of the code, titled “Duties of resolution professional”, the specific duty to maintain confidentiality of sensitive information is absent.
    • Clearly, the current regime does not have much deterrence value so as to ensure solemn adherence to confidentiality.

    Conclusion

    Videocon was one of the first test cases to examine the prospects of insolvency jurisprudence in India and the first one, for group insolvency proceedings.  However, almost four years and a 95 per cent haircut later, the call for an immediate course correction couldn’t be louder.

    Back2Basics: Operational creditor and financial creditors

    • When a corporate defaulter is brought under the resolution process (Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process or CIRP), there can be two types of creditors to whom the corporate should give back money –
    • (1) the entities who gave loans or funds to the corporate.
    • (2) the entities from whom the corporate bought inputs and other services.
    • The financial creditors are basically entities (lenders like banks) that have provided funds to the corporate.
    • Their relationship with the entity is a pure financial contract, such as a loan or debt security.
    • On the other hand, business and other entities that have provided inputs and other materials and services and to whom the defaulted corporate owes a debt are called as operational creditors.
    • Both have claims on the defaulted corporate or the defaulted corporate owe payments to both these categories.
    • Rights for these categories under the resolution process are also different.
    • The IBC gives a clear preference to the claims of the financial creditors over the operational creditors through several procedures.

    Haircut

    • A haircut is the difference between the loan amount and the actual value of the asset used as collateral.
    • It reflects the lender’s perception of the risk of fall in the value of assets.
    • But in the context of loan recoveries, it is the difference between the actual dues from a borrower and the amount he settles with the bank.

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  • Minority Issues – SC, ST, Dalits, OBC, Reservations, etc.

    Explained: Creamy Layer in OBCs

    | Polity | Mains Paper 2: Indian Constitution – historical underpinnings, evolution, features, amendments, significant provisions and basic structure

    A proposal to revise the criteria for defining the “creamy layer” among OBCs has been pending for years, and MPs have raised the issue during the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament.

    What is the Creamy Layer?

    • Creamy Layer is a concept that sets a threshold within which OBC reservation benefits are applicable.
    • While there is a 27% quota for OBCs in government jobs and higher educational institutions, those falling within the “creamy layer” cannot get the benefits of this quota.

    Basis of Creamy Layer

    • It is based on the recommendation of the Second Backward Classes Commission (Mandal Commission).
    • The government in 1990 had notified 27% reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs) in vacancies in civil posts and services that are to be filled on direct recruitment.
    • After this was challenged, the Supreme Court in the Indira Sawhney case (1992) upheld 27% reservation for OBCs, subject to exclusion of the creamy layer.

    How is it determined?

    • Following the order in Indra Sawhney, an expert committee headed by Justice (retired) R N Prasad was constituted for fixing the criteria for determining the creamy layer.
    • In 1993, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) listed out various categories of people of certain rank/status/income whose children cannot avail the benefit of OBC reservation.
    1. For those not in government, the current threshold is an income of Rs 8 lakh per year.
    2. For children of government employees, the threshold is based on their parents’ rank and not income.
    3. For instance, an individual is considered to fall within the creamy layer if either of his or her parents is in a constitutional post; if either parent has been directly recruited in Group-A; or if both parents are in Group-B services.
    4. If the parents enter Group-A through promotion before the age of 40, their children will be in the creamy layer.
    5. Children of a Colonel or higher-ranked officer in the Army, and children of officers of similar ranks in the Navy and Air Force, too, come under the creamy layer.
    6. Income from salaries or agricultural land is not clubbed while determining the creamy layer (2004).

    What is happening now?

    • MPs have raised questions about the pending proposal for revising the criteria.
    • They have asked whether the provision of a creamy layer for government services only for OBC candidates is rational and justified.

    Has it ever been revised?

    • Other than the income limit, the current definition of the creamy layer remains the same as the DoPT had spelled out in 1993 and 2004.
    • The income limit has been revised over the years.
    • No other orders for the definition of the creamy layer have been issued.
    • While the DoPT had stipulated that it would be revised every three years, the first revision since 1993 (Rs 1 lakh per year) happened only in 2004 (Rs 2.50 lakh), 2008 (Rs 4.50 lakh), 2013 (Rs 6 lakh), and 2017 (Rs 8 lakh).
    • It is now more than three years since the last revision.

    What does the government propose to do about the revision?

    • A draft Cabinet note has stated that the creamy layer will be determined on all income, including salary calculated for income tax, but not agriculture income.
    • The government is considering a consensus on Rs 12 lakh but salary and agriculture income are also being added to the gross annual income.

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  • Visualizing the Himalaya with other coordinates

    | International Relations | Mains Paper 2: India & Its Neighborhood – Relations

    A conceptual audit of questions related to geopolitics and security concerns while talking or thinking about the Himalaya is perhaps long overdue.

    About the Himalayas

    • The Himalayas are a mountain range in South and East Asia separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau.
    • The range has many of Earth’s highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest, at the border between Nepal and China.
    • Lifted by the subduction of the Indian tectonic plate under the Eurasian Plate, the Himalayan Mountain range runs west-northwest to east-southeast in an arc 2,400 km.
    • It consists of parallel mountain ranges: the Sivalik Hills on the south; the Lower Himalayan Range; the Great Himalayas, which is the highest and central range; and the Tibetan Himalayas on the north.
    • The Karakoram are generally considered separate from the Himalayas.

    Identity of Himalayas: Only as a frontier

    • We have been examining the Himalaya mainly through the coordinates of geopolitics and security while relegating others as either irrelevant or incompatible.
    • In a certain sense, our intellectual concerns over the Himalaya have been largely shaped by the assumption of fear, suspicion, rivalry, invasion, encroachment and pugnacity.
    • If during colonial times it was Russophobia, then now it is Sinophobia or Pakistan phobia that in fact determines our concerns over the Himalayas.
    • Ironically it is the Delhi-Beijing-Islamabad triad, and not the mountain per se, that defines our concerns about the Himalayas.

    A national Himalaya

    • Border issues has given birth to the political compulsion of territorializing the Himalaya on a par with the imperatives of nationalism.
    • Thus the attempt to create a national Himalaya by each of the five nations (Nepal, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, and Tibet/China) fall within this transnational landmass called the Himalaya.

    India and the Himalayas

    • India’s understanding of the Himalayas is informed by a certain kind of realism, as it continues to remain as space largely defined in terms of sovereign territoriality.
    • It may be perceived that such an alternative conceptualization of Himalayas is not only possible but also necessary.

    Various initiatives

    • National Mission on Himalayan Studies: It is a classic case in point that provides funds for research and technological innovations, but creating policies only for the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR).

    A historical logjam of territorialization

    • The Himalayas territorialization bears a colonial legacy which also sets up its post-colonial destiny as played out within the dynamics of nation-states.
    • The arbitration of relationships between and among the five nation-states falling within the Himalayan landmass has failed to transcend.
    • The lines of peoplehood and the national border never coincided; thus, it was bound to give birth to tensions while working out projects predicated upon national sovereignty.
    • Given this historical logjam, what we can only expect is the escalation of territorial disputes as the immediate fallout.

    Borders and their differences

    • It needs to be recognized that political borders and cultural borders are not the same things.
    • Political borders are to be considered as space-making strategies of modern nation-states that do not necessarily coincide with cultural borders.
    • It needs to be realized that the domain of non-traditional security (cases of ecological devastation, climate change) is equally important.

    Conclusion

    • The Himalaya is a naturally evolved phenomenon should be understood through frameworks that have grown from within the Himalaya.
    • Viewing the Himalayas as a space of political power is a violent choice, which actually enriched ultra-sensitivity towards territorial claims and border management.

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  • ISRO Missions and Discoveries

    [pib] Near-Surface Shear Layer (NSSL) of Sun

    PIB | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Awareness in various sc and tech fields

    Indian astronomers have found a theoretical explanation for the existence of the Near-Surface Shear Layer (NSSL) of the Sun for the first time.

    What is a Near-Surface Shear Layer?

    • It was long known the Sun’s equator spins faster than the poles.
    • However, a peek into the internal rotation of the Sun using sound waves revealed the existence of an intriguing layer where the rotation profile of the Sun changes sharply.
    • The layer is called as a near-surface shear layer (NSSL), and it exists very close to the solar surface, where there is an outward decrease in angular velocity.

    What have researchers found?

    • They have used an equation called the thermal wind balance equation to explain how the slight difference in temperature between solar poles and equator, called thermal wind term.
    • It is balanced by the centrifugal force appearing due to solar differential rotation.
    • They have noted that if this condition is true near the solar surface, it can explain the existence of NSSL, which is inferred in helioseismology (technique of using sound waves to peek inside the Sun) based observation.

    Why study NSSL?

    • Understanding NSSL is crucial for the study of several solar phenomena like sunspot formation, solar cycle, and it will also help in understanding such phenomena in other stars.

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  • Promoting Science and Technology – Missions,Policies & Schemes

    [pib] What are PRIDE Guidelines?

    PIB | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Awareness in various sc and tech fields

    The Union Ministry for Science & Technology has released “Biotech-PRIDE (Promotion of Research and Innovation through Data Exchange) Guidelines” developed by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT).

    Biotech-PRIDE

    • These guidelines aim at providing a well-defined framework and guiding principle to facilitate and enable sharing and exchange of biological knowledge, information and data.
    • They will facilitate this and enable the exchange of information to promote research and innovation in different research groups across the country.
    • They will be implemented through the Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC) at Regional Centre for Biotechnology supported by the Department of Biotechnology.

    Creating a national repository: Bio-Grid

    • Other existing datasets/ data centres will be bridged to this IBDC which will be called Bio-Grid.
    • This Bio-Grid will be a National Repository for biological knowledge, information and data.
    • It will be responsible for enabling its exchange, developing measures for safety, standards and quality for datasets and establishing detailed modalities for accessing data.

     Why need such guidelines?

    • India ranks number 4 amongst the top 20 countries contributing biological databases.
    • The Government invests a large number of public funds for biosciences to gain deep insights into intricate biological mechanisms and other processes and for translation.

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  • Winning the battle against trafficking

    | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Laws, Institutions & Bodies Constituted For The Vulnerable Sections

    Context

    July 30 is United Nations World Day against Trafficking in Persons. It is also a time to reflect on India’s human trafficking crisis.

    What are factors increasing vulnerability?

    • Between April 2020 and June 2021, an estimated 9,000 children have been rescued after being trafficked for labour, according to a child rights non-governmental organisation (NGO).
    • Economic distress due to pandemic: The pandemic has resulted in the loss of income and economic crisis.
    • Loss of parental care: It has also caused, in some instances, loss of parental care due to death, illness or separation.
    • Relaxing of legal provision: These factors are compounded by an erosion of some of the checks against child labour and child marriage provided by law, as well as the scrutiny of schools and society.
    • Child marriages are also rampant — over 10,000 cases were tracked between April and August 2020.
    • Internet access: The increase in Internet access in current times has also led to cyber-trafficking.
    • A recent report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on the effects of the pandemic on trafficking echoes these findings.

    Challenges in dealing with the issue

    • Lack of national-level data: The Government admitted in Parliament as recently as March 2021 that it does not maintain any national-level data specific to cyber trafficking cases.
    • India does not meet the minimum standards: India is still classified by the U.S. Department of State as a Tier-2 country in its  report on global human trafficking.
    • This means that the Government does not fully meet the minimum standards under U.S. and international law for eliminating trafficking, but is making significant efforts to comply.
    • Lack of implementation: The Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) are specialised district task forces comprising police and government officials.
    • In 2010, it was envisioned that 330 AHTUs would be set up.
    • RTI responses in August 2020 showed that about 225 AHTUs had been set up, but only on paper.

    Way forward

    • AHTU: If properly staffed and funded, AHTUs could provide crucial ground-level data on the methods and patterns of traffickers.
    • This, in turn, can strengthen community-based awareness and vigilance activities.
    • Incentivise education and provide safe employment: Global practices such as in Nigeria, Africa, should be encouraged in India, in consonance with a larger framework to protect women and children by incentivising education and creating safe employment opportunities.
    • Implementation of laws: There is no shortage of anti-trafficking policy in India.
    • Where the system is found lacking is in the implementation of the laws.
    • Take preventive action: The failure of existing institutional mechanisms to foresee the present crisis should spur the Government and other stakeholders to take preventive action now.

    Discussion needed on the provision of draft anti-trafficking Bill

    • Significant discussion is required on the provisions of the Bill, particularly with respect to bringing in the National Investigation Agency and increasing the punishment for offences, including the death penalty.
    • Ensure effective functioning of AHTUs: The draft Bill also provides for AHTUs/committees at the national, State and district levels, but as noted, their effective functioning cannot be taken for granted.
    • Challenges faced by prosecutors and judges: There were 140 acquittals and only 38 convictions in 2019, according to government data.
    • This points to a failure of investigation and cannot be solved by the draft Bill’s provision that accused traffickers must be presumed guilty unless they can prove the contrary.
    • Case management: Trials can drag on for years, with victims sometimes withdrawing their complaints after being intimidated by traffickers.
    • Proper case management must be introduced to give meaning to the “fast track” courts.
    • Compensation and counselling: Other problems include the low number of beneficiaries of monetary compensation and the lack of consistent access to psychological counselling.
    • Parts of the draft Bill recognise the importance of rehabilitation, but implementation is key.

    Conclusion

    Effective implementation of the legal provision and discussion on the various provisions of the draft law is required to deal with the menace of trafficking in persons.

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  • Cyber Security – CERTs, Policy, etc

    The epoch of cyberweapons

    op-ed snap | Science Tech | Mains Paper 3: Cyber Security

    Context

    The controversy over the use of Pegasus spyware for snooping highlights the threats posed by cyber-weapons.

    The emergence of the cyber weapons epoch

    • Cyberattacks on institutions such as banks and on critical infrastructure have proliferated to an alarming extent, signaling the emergence of the cyber weapon epoch.
    • Privacy has been eroded and the Internet has become a powerful weapon in the hands of those seeking to exploit its various facets.
    • Fifth dimension of warfare: Cyber is often touted as the fifth dimension of warfare — in addition to land, sea, air and space.

    The domain of everyday life

    • Cyber, as the domain of military and national security, also co-exists with cyber as a domain of everyday life.
    • The war is no longer out there.
    • It is now directly inside one’s drawing-room, with cyberweapons becoming the weapon of choice.
    • Israelis today dominate the cyber domain along with the Chinese, Russians, Koreans and, of course, the Americans.
    • The linkage between sabotage and intrusive surveillance is but a short step.

    Cyberattacks during the past decades

    •  Beginning with the 2007 devastating cyberattack on Estonia’s critical infrastructure, this was followed by the Stuxnet worm attack a few years later on Iran’s nuclear facility.
    • The Shamoon virus attack on Saudi Aramco occurred in 2012.
    • In 2016, a cyberattack occurred on Ukraine’s State power grid; in 2017 there was a Ransomware attack (NotPetya) which affected machines in as many as 64 countries.
    • United Kingdom’s National Health Service fell prey to the Wannacry attack the same year.
    • The series of attacks happened this year on Ireland’s Health Care System and in the United States such as ‘SolarWinds’, the cyber attack on Colonial Pipeline and JBS, etc.

    What are the threats posed by cyberattacks?

    • Cyberweapons carry untold capacity to distort systems and structures — civilian or military.
    • Cyberweapons also interfere with democratic processes, aggravate domestic divisions and, above all, unleash forces over which established institutions or even governments have little control.
    • As more and more devices are connected to networks, the cyber threat is only bound to intensify, both in the short and the medium term.
    • What is especially terrifying is that instruments of everyday use can be infected or infiltrated without any direct involvement of the target.
    • The possibilities for misuse are immense and involve far graver consequences to an individual, an establishment, or the nation.
    • It is not difficult to envisage that from wholesale espionage, this would become something far more sinister such as sabotage.

    Way forward

    • Deeper understanding:  Dealing with ‘zero day’ vulnerabilities require far more thought and introspection than merely creating special firewalls or special phones that are ‘detached’ from the Internet.
    • Recognising the mindset: What is needed is a deeper understanding of not only cyber technologies, but also recognising the mindsets of those who employ spyware of the Pegasus variety, and those at the helm of companies such as the NSO.
    • Short-term remedies are unlikely to achieve desired results.
    • No use of AI: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often seen as a kind of panacea for many of the current problems and ills, but all advances in technology tend to be a double-edged sword.
    • If truth be told, AI could in turn make all information warfare — including cyber related — almost impossible to detect, deflect or prevent, at least at the current stage of development of AI tools.

    Conclusion

    All this suggests that security in the era of ever-expanding cyberweapons could become an ever-receding horizon.

    Back2Basics: Zero-day vulnerability

    • The term “zero-day” refers to a newly discovered software vulnerability.
    • Because the developer has just learned of the flaw, it also means an official patch or update to fix the issue hasn’t been released.
    • So, “zero-day” refers to the fact that the developers have “zero days” to fix the problem that has just been exposed — and perhaps already exploited by hackers.

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  • Police Reforms – SC directives, NPC, other committees reports

    One nation, one police is a reform that is long overdue

    op-ed snap | Governance | Mains Paper 2: Federalism,Governance, Transparency & Accountability, Citizens Charters

    Context

    Police reforms are still an unfinished task, fifteen years after the Supreme Court gave directives in the Prakash Singh case in 2006.

    Integrated schemes in different facilities

    • The Government of India has lately been talking of “One Nation, One Ration Card”, “One Nation, One Registry”, “One Nation, One Gas Grid”, and even “One Nation, One Election”.
    • These ideas would contribute to an integrated scheme in different facilities and networks across the country.
    • The attempt at uniformity should, however, take cognisance of local factors and special features.

    Issue of different states passing different Police Act

    • Every state is legislating a different Police Act, purportedly in compliance with the Supreme Court’s directions on police reforms given on September 22, 2006.
    • We are in the process of having “one nation, many police acts”.
    • Circumventing the Prakash Singh judgement: The objective behind these laws is to give legislative cover to the existing arrangement and thereby circumvent the judicial directions given in the Prakash Singh judgement in 2006.
    •  Eighteen states have already passed Police Acts.
    • Absence of central guidelines: Several states have, in the absence of any central guidance or directive, passed their own Police Acts, blatantly violating the Supreme Court’s directions.
    • No action by judiciary: The Supreme Court has, for inexplicable reasons, not issued a contempt notice to any of the states for non-compliance of its directions on police reforms.

    Way forward

    1) The Centre should legislate a Model Police Act

    • Article 252 of the Constitution gives Parliament the power to legislate for two or more states by consent.
    • Soon after the Supreme Court’s directions on police reforms, the Police Act Drafting Committee of the Ministry of Home Affairs came out with the Model Police Act, 2006.
    • The Government of India should have enacted a law based on this Model Police Act with such changes as it may have found necessary, and the states should have mutatis mutandis ( making necessary alterations while not affecting the main point at issue) adopted it.
    • The least that the Government of India could have done was to legislate for the UTs and then prevailed upon the states to pass similar legislation.
    • Enacting a law in the states could have been incentivised by linking their passage with the modernisation grants made available to the states.

    2) Need for the spirit of cooperative federalism

    • In recent times, we saw the unseemly spectacle of the Mumbai police commissioner accusing the state home minister of using the police as an instrument for extortion.
    • In West Bengal, the police have been a mute spectator to the post-election violence.
    • The Centre, through a fiat, gave protection to all the MLAs of the BJP.
    • Normally, any such arrangement should have been in consultation and with the involvement of the state government. 
    • Cooperative federalism: The best option would be for the central and state governments to respect each other’s turf in a spirit of cooperative federalism.

    3)Need for a fresh look at the distribution of power

    • If the central and state governments cannot respect each other’s turf, it would perhaps be necessary to have a fresh look at the distribution of powers in the seventh schedule of the Constitution.

    Conclusion

    Police reforms on the lines of judicial directives given by the Supreme Court is the need of the hour. The centre needs to act first and nudge the states toward a uniform police structure throughout the country.

    Back2Basics: Supreme Court Directive on Police Reforms

    1) Limit political control

    • Constitute a State Security Commission to:
    • Ensure that the state government does not exercise unwarranted influence or pressure on the police.
    • Lay down broad policy guidelines.
    • Evaluate the performance of the state police.

    2. Appointments based on merit

    • Ensure that the Director-General of Police is appointed through a merit–based, transparent process, and secures a minimum tenure of 2 years.

    3. Fix minimum tenure

    • Ensure that other police officers on operational duties (including Superintendents of Police in charge of a district and Station House Officers in charge of a police station) are also provided a minimum tenure of 2 years.

    4. Separate police functions

    • Separate the functions of investigation and maintaining law and order.

    5. Set up fair and transparent systems

    • Set up a Police Establishment Board to decide and make recommendations on transfers, postings, promotions and other service-related matters of police officers of and below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police.

    6. Establish a Police Complaints Authority in each state

    • At the state level, there should be a Police Complaints Authority to look into public complaints against police officers of and above the rank of Superintendent of Police in cases of serious misconduct, including custodial death, grievous hurt or rape in police custody.
    • At the district level, the Police Complaints Authority should be set up to inquire into public complaints against the police personnel of and up to the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police in cases of serious misconduct.

    7. Set up a selection commission

    • A National Security Commission needs to be set up at the union level to prepare a panel for selection and placement of chiefs of the Central Police Organizations with a minimum tenure of 2 years.

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