Karnataka Bill mandates 50% quota for locals in management positions
CONTEXT:
- The Karnataka Cabinet has cleared a Bill mandating that industries, factories and other establishments appoint local candidates in 50% of management positions and 75% in non-management positions.
- The Karnataka State Employment of Local Candidates in the Industries, Factories and Other Establishments Bill, 2024, was cleared in the Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on July 15. It is expected to be tabled in the ongoing legislature session.
Content of the Act
- The Act defines a local candidate as a person “who is born in the State of Karnataka and who is domiciled in the State for a period of 15 years and who is capable of speaking, reading and writing Kannada in a legible way and has passed a required test conducted by the nodal agency”.
- Under the Act, candidates must have a secondary school certificate with Kannada as a language. If not, they should pass a Kannada proficiency test, as specified by the nodal agency notified by the government.
• If qualified or suitable local candidates are not available, the industries and establishments, in collaboration with the government, should take steps to train local candidates within three years.
Appointment of judges
CONTEXT:
- President Droupadi Murmu on Tuesday appointed Justices N. Kotiswar Singh and Justice R. Mahadevan as Supreme Court judges.
- A five-member Supreme Court Collegium, headed by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, had recommended their names in a resolution on July 11.
- The Centre notified the two appointments that would return the top court to its full sanctioned strength of 34 judges.
- Justice Singh is the first judge from Manipur to be appointed to the Supreme Court. The State has been witnessing traumatic months of ethnic violence.
Collegium system
- It is not rooted in the Constitution. Instead, it has evolved through judgments of the Supreme Court.
- Under the system, the Chief Justice of India (CJI), along with four senior- most Supreme Court judges, recommends the appointment and transfer of judges.
What Article 124 says?
- Supreme Court judges should be appointed by the President after consultation with such judges of the High Courts and the Supreme Court as the President may deem necessary. The CJI is to be consulted in all appointments except his or her own.
Judicial Case Pertaining to it:
- S P Gupta Vs Union of India, 1981 (First Judge Case): Supreme Court held that consultation in the process of appointing judges does not require concurrence, and instead only involves the exchange of views.
- Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association Vs Union of India, 1993 (Second Judge Case): The Supreme Court reversed it’s previous and altered the definition of consultation to mean concurrence.
- It was decided that the advice tendered by the CJI in regard to the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court is binding on the President.
- Further, the CJI is required to consult with two of his most senior colleagues before tendering such advice.
- Third Judge Case,1998: Supreme court stated that the consultation process to be adopted by the CJI requires ‘consultation of plurality judges’.
- The CJI should consult a collegium of four senior most judges of the Supreme
- Even if two judges give an adverse opinion, they should not send the recommendation to the government.
Criticism against the collegium system
- Lack of transparency: The collegium system is often criticized for its lack of transparency, as the reasons for the collegium’s decisions are not disclosed to the public.
- Judicial vacancies: It has struggled to keep up with the stagnant vacancies in the judiciary leading to the pendency of cases.
- Charges of nepotism: There have been allegations of nepotism and favouritism in the collegium system.
- Against the system of checks and balances: The collegium system violates the principle of checks and balances as it ensures the complete exclusion of the executive from the judicial appointment process, which leads to a lack of accountability.
- Lack of representation of women: The collegium system does not ensure adequate representation of women in the judiciary.
Strength in Supreme court
- The Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Act 1956, as originally enacted, provided for the maximum number of Judges(excluding the Chief Justice of India) to be 10.
- This number was increased to 13 by the Supreme Court (Number of Judges), Amendment Act, 1960, and to 17 by the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Act, 1977.
- The Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Act, 1986 augmented the strength of the Supreme Court Judges from 17 to 25 excluding the Chief Justice of India.
- Subsequently, the Supreme Court (Number of Judges) Amendment Act, 2009 further augmented the strength of the Supreme Court Judges, from 25 to 30.
- The sanctioned strength of Supreme Court of India has been increased from 30 to 33 (excluding the Chief Justice of India) w.e.f. 09.08.2019.
Erratic Rainfall
CONTEXT: Erratic rains make the goal of curbing inflation more challenging
Deficit Rain in India
- Prices of cereals, the largest constituent of the food basket, too offered little respite with the average retail price of rice and wheat running almost 10% and 6% higher than a year earlier, respectively.
- Also, IMD data as on July 14 reveal that countrywide precipitation since June 1 was still not only at a 2% deficit, but also spatially skewed.
- Eleven of India’s 36 meteorological sub-divisions were still classified ‘deficient’, meaning these regions had received 20%-59% lower rainfall than the long-period average.
- With some key food growing areas including Punjab seeing deficient rains, policymakers face an unenviable task in trying to slow the pace of inflation.
Trying Juvenile as Adults
CONTEX:
- In May, a speeding car, allegedly driven by a teenager, killed two young techies in Pune. As prescribed by the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, or the JJ Act, 2015, the adolescent was initially brought before the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB), which granted him bail under seemingly lenient conditions.
- The High Court noted that the JJ Act is “not only a beneficial legislation, but is also a remedial one.”
- The push by some to prosecute the adolescent as an adult raises broader questions about the power of the juvenile justice system to address severe offences like drunken driving and the demand for accountability in cases involving young offenders.
Juvenile Justice Act
- The JJ Act allows for the possibility of trying adolescents above 16 as adults if they are accused of committing a “heinous” offence.
- A “heinous” offence is one with a minimum punishment of seven years or more. Offences such as culpable homicide and causing death by negligence, which are common in drunken driving cases, are not “heinous” offences because they do not have a prescribed minimum punishment.
- The JJ Act, amended in 2021, now categorises an offence that has no minimum sentence but has a maximum sentence of more than seven years as a “serious offence” which, nonetheless, does not merit the transfer of a case to the adult criminal justice system.
- In any case, when an adolescent above 16 years of age is accused of a “heinous” offence, the JJB, a quasi-judicial body, conducts a preliminary assessment to determine if they should be tried as an adult.
- If it concludes that there is such a need, the adolescent is transferred to a sessions court, which independently assesses the suitability of trying the adolescent as an adult.
- Specifically in cases of deaths caused by motor accidents, innovative approaches have been attempted in Indonesia and the U.S. that enable offenders to face their victims and focus on personal accountability.
- In some jurisdictions, convicted drunk drivers are required to face a victim impact panel (VIP) of relatives of victims who express how the incident affected their lives.
