CURRENT AFFAIRS

Last month in parliament, the Standing Committee on External Affairs presented a report on ‘India and bilateral investment treaties (BITs).This report is momentous as it comes a decade after India lost the first investment treaty claim in 2011 (White Industries v. India)

The Chief Justice of India (CJI), N.V. Ramana, while speaking at the India-Singapore Mediation Summit in July 2021 had said that mediation should be made mandatory as a first step in dispute resolution and that a law should be framed in this regard.

At the COP26 summit, Glasgow, India’s pledge to set a net zero target by 2070 which has highlighted the importance of forests as an undisputed mechanism to help mitigate the challenges of climate change.

At the recently concluded COP26 in Glasgow, India proclaimed on the global stage that by 2030, it would elevate its renewable power capacity to 500 GW from 150 GW today, and that it would meet 50% of its energy requirements from renewable energy.

A  recent speech by Justice S. Abdul Nazeer of the Supreme Court of India  on the continued neglect of the teachings of the great legal giants of ancient India such as Manu, Kautilya, Yajnavalkya, etc. has evoked vibrant discourse in legal and political circles.

The performance of the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY)  scheme has been found deficient which necessitating urgent need for improvement especially when the novel coronavirus pandemic has resulted in economic shocks for 260 lakh women who deliver on an average a child each year in India.

As of April 30, 2020, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs had received 42,50,602 claims (individual and community) under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) , of which titles were distributed to 46% of the applicants.

Last year, India’s withdrawal from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) was a major victory for the farmer’s organisations, trade unions, associations of small and medium industrial producers and civil society groups, which had organised widespread agitations against the free trade agreement.

India has imposed an anti-dumping duty on five Chinese products, including certain aluminium goods and some chemicals, for five years to guard local manufacturers from cheap imports from the neighbouring country.

Recently, the Environment Ministry published draft regulations on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) which according to many experts, disregard the commitments made by the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016; the Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2016; and the Swachh Bharat Mission..