1. Coming, women-only courts for alternative dispute resolution
The Union government is set to launch an initiative under which women-only courts will be set up at the village-level as an alternative dispute resolution forum for issues such as domestic violence and property rights, and to counter the patriarchal system.
The scheme will be launched on a pilot basis in 50 villages each in Assam and Jammu and Kashmir in August and extended to the rest of the country over the next six months. Detailed standard operating procedures have been prepared for all the States, which will be released next week.
The Nari Adalat (women’s court) of each village will have seven to nine members – half of which would be the elected members of the gram panchayat while the other half will include teachers, doctors and social workers – who would be nominated by the villagers.
“This platform will leverage their potential as advisers and leaders within their communities, functioning as a pressure group,” a senior official in the Ministry of Women and Child Development told The Hindu.
The court will not only address individual cases of women and girls within the local community who require assistance or have grievances, but also raise awareness of government schemes and the legal rights and entitlements of women. The Nari Adalat will, however, not hold any legal status.
2. Lift ban on Internet services with safeguards, Manipur HC tells State
Some of the measures to be adhered include blocking of social media websites and VPNs, and enforcing physical monitoring.
The precautions, agreed to by an expert panel, include limiting the speed to 10 Mbps, securing undertakings from intended users that they will not do anything illegal, and subjecting users to ‘physical monitoring by the authority/officials concerned’
The Manipur High Court on Friday directed the Home Department of the Manipur government to lift the ban on providing Internet through Internet Lease Lines (ILLs) throughout the State to facilitate limited access to Internet services for the public, and to consider Fibre To The Home (FTTH) connections on a case-to-case basis, provided the safeguards put on record by an expert committee are complied with.
Some of the safeguards agreed to by the committee and put forth by the State government for Internet access to be restored include limiting the speed to 10 Mbps, securing undertakings from intended users that they will not do anything illegal, and subjecting the users to “physical monitoring by the authority/officials concerned”.
12-member panel
The directions came from a Division Bench of Justices Ahanthem Bimol Singh and A. Guneshwar Sharma that was hearing a batch of petitions seeking restoration of Internet services in Manipur, which has been under an Internet shutdown since May 3, when ethnic conflict broke out between the dominant Meitei people and the Scheduled Tribe Kuki-Zomi people.
The court said, “The State government, more particularly the Home Department, is directed to lift the ban on providing Internet service through Internet Lease Line (ILL) throughout the whole State after ensuring that all the stakeholders have complied with the safeguards given by the expert committee mentioned here in above.”
For both ILLs and FTTH connections, the 12-member expert committee formed by the High Court on June 27 submitted safeguards, which include setting up a dedicated leased line or FTTH line with static IP.
The measures to be adhered include, “Banning of Wi-Fi/ hotspots from any of the routers and systems, MAC binding at the system level or router, blocking of social media websites and VPNs at the local level, removing of any existing VPNs software from the system and prohibiting installation of new software by any user, and enforcing physical monitoring by the authority/ officials concerned.”
As for whitelisting mobile devices, the court directed the State government to conduct a physical trial as proposed during the hearing, in order to “find out the feasibility of providing Internet service to the whitelisted mobile phones without jeopardising the security of the State and the life and property of the citizen”.
A report in this regard has been called for by the court before the next date of hearing on July 25. In the hearing, the State government had said that it intends to conduct the physical trial and prepare a report within 15 days.
The review petitions against the March 27 order on the ST status for Meiteis and the appeal filed against it were adjourned this week. The appeal will be taken up on July 28.
3. Deliberations on to increase rate of permanent intake through Agnipath scheme
Young blood: The first batch of recruits under the Agnipath scheme undergo training in January. AFP
With the first batch of Agniveers joining the units and deployed on the ground, there are deliberations going on over increasing the intake size per batch from around 46,000 and the recruitment to permanent cadre from 25% to 50%.
This comes as the services, especially the Army, look to make up for the shortage in personnel that has accumulated over the past three years. The matter is under deliberation and there is no decision yet, a senior defence official said. There was no recruitment during the COVID-19 period and around 60,000 soldiers retire from the Army every year.
On June 14, 2022, the government announced the Agnipath scheme for recruitment of soldiers into the armed forces for four years, doing away with the earlier process and the age bracket for new recruits was fixed at 17-and-a-half to 21 .
Following massive protests, the Defence Ministry announced a one-time upper age limit relaxation in the recruitment process for 2022 to 23 citing that it was not possible to undertake recruitment during the past two years due to the pandemic.
In the first intake, the Army inducted 40,000 Agniveers in two batches — the first batch in December 2022 and the second in February 2023. All recruitment will now be through the Agnipath scheme.
The overall intake has been capped at 1.75 lakh till 2026 and Agniveers on completion of four years will get an opportunity to join regular cadre and up to 25% would be selected through another recruitment process.
However, officials noted that with no recruitment for two years and further recruitment limited to 1.75 lakh, it would create a significant number of vacancies after a few years.
In another development, the services are also debating imposing any criteria for trainees who leave during training.
As of now, there is no restriction or criteria and several trainees have left midway as they received better opportunities, the official said.
The government has said the Agnipath scheme would bring down the average age of the armed forces from 32 to 26, in line with the age profile of major Armies worldwide.
4. States fail to get top grade in school education
While Chandigarh and Punjab were the top performers in school education for 2021-22, none of the States or Union Territories was able to achieve the highest grade, Daksh, in the annual survey released by the Union government.
The Education Ministry’s Performance Grading Index (PGI) released on Friday had 10 grades with Daksh being the top (scoring above 940 out of 1,000 points) and Akanshi-3 at the bottom (up to 460 points). None of the States managed to achieve the top five grades in the rankings. Chandigarh and Punjab, despite being top-ranked, could only secure the sixth-highest grade of Prachesta-2, closely followed by Gujarat, Kerala, Maharashtra, Delhi, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu at Prachesta-3. Thirteen States including Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, West Bengal, and Madhya Pradesh have been categorised as Akankshi-1 States, where room for improvement is substantial.
Further down are 12 States, including the northeastern States of Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, Assam and Bihar, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh. Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Mizoram under Akankshi-3.
Since 2017-18, the Ministry has released five annual reports that provide insights on status of school education in States and Union Territories. The key domains are learning outcomes and quality, access, infrastructure and facilities, equity and governance processes of schools based on five parameters.
The first parameter relates to ‘learning outcomes’— how children do in language, maths, science, social science and so on. The second is ‘access to education’ which includes net enrolment ratio, retention, transition from primary to upper primary level and secondary, and mainstreaming of out-of-school children. The third parameter, infrastructure, encompasses availability of science labs, computer labs, book banks, vocational education subject, supply of mid-day meal, functional drinking water facility, availability of uniforms and free textbooks.
The fourth parameter, ‘equity’, considers student performances between minorities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and those of general category. It relates to whether schools have ramps, disabled-friendly toilets and so on. The last parameter, ‘educational governance and management’, includes digital capture of daily attendance, percentage of single-teacher primary schools, vacancies in educational posts, inspections and teacher evaluation.
The States can take domain-wise action to improve their score, the report said.
5. Drug resistant fungus found in hospitalised stray dogs
Live cultures of Candida auris, an emerging fungus that presents a serious global health threat and is resistant to most antifungal agents, have been isolated and documented in the ear canals of hospitalised stray dogs in the capital.
Candida auris is a multidrug-resistant oval-shaped fungus causing life-threatening outbreaks, often in healthcare settings.
Overall, four of the 87 dogs (4.5%) contained evidence of C. auris infection or colonisation in their ear and on the surface of their skin, said a study. The study was conducted by scientists from Delhi University and Canada’s McMaster University and published in the Journal of Fungi.
