Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 31 JULY 2019

::NATIONAL::

The Supreme Court on Tuesday orally remarked that excessive quota may impact the right to equal opportunity guaranteed under the Constitution.
The Bench is examining whether to refer to a Constitution Bench a batch of petitions challenging the validity of a constitutional amendment providing 10% economic quota in government jobs and educational institutions.
Senior advocate Rajeev Dhavan made a strong pitch for referring the issue to a Constitution Bench. He argued that economic reservation violated the 50% reservation ceiling limit fixed by a nine-judge Bench in the IndraSawhney case. Further, the 1992 judgment had barred reservation solely on economic criterion.
In a 6:3 majority verdict, the Supreme Court, in the IndraSawhney case, had held that “a backward class cannot be determined only and exclusively with reference to economic criterion. It may be a consideration or basis along with and in addition to social backwardness, but it can never be the sole criterion.”

Parliament has passed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2019 or Triple Talaq bill, with the RajyaSabha approving it last evening. 99 members voted in favour of the bill while 84 against it. The LokSabha has already passed the bill.
The bill seeks to declare the practice of instant Triple Talaq as void and illegal and makes it a cognizable offence. It also provides allowance to women victims and their dependent children. The offence is made compoundable with the permission of the Magistrate at the instance of the married Muslim woman upon whom talaq is pronounced.
The RajyaSabha also rejected the Opposition’s resolution referring the bill to Select Committee for further scrutiny. Parties, including Congress, DMK, TMC, Left and NCP voted against the bill while JD(U), AIADMK, TDP, TRS and BSP staged a walkout and did not participate in voting.
Replying to the debate on the bill, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, it has been brought to protect the rights of Muslim women and not to target any particular community. He said, the offence has been made compoundable and bailable.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in its first ever audit of the Goods and Services Tax, has said the government had failed to try out the system before its rollout, leading to inadequate compliance mechanisms, and lower tax revenues. The report was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.
The report pointed out that the keystone of the tax system, the invoice matching system, had not yet been put in place even two years after the GST rollout. It added that compliance in terms of the number of returns filed had been falling month after month, and that the government had not been following the rules set out regarding the transfer of revenue to the States.
“The complexity of the return mechanism and the technical glitches resulted in rollback of invoice-matching, rendering the system prone to ITC [Input Tax Credit] frauds,” the CAG said. “Without invoice matching and auto generation of refunds, assessments, etc. on the whole, the envisaged GST tax compliance system is non-functional.”
The CAG said the extent of the changes that have to now be undertaken, as well as the suspension of key aspects of the GST system such as the invoice matching mechanism, show that there was inadequate coordination between the Department of Revenue, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs and the GST Network, “as well as failure to try out the system adequately before roll out”.

NITI Aayog's flagship initiative, the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) will launch a new programme for Community Innovation in New Delhi today. The new initiative aims to encourage the spirit of innovation in the country.
It will be jointly inaugurated by Union Ministers Ramesh PokhriyalNishank and DharmendraPradhan. Speaking about it, AIM Mission Director, R Ramanan, said, the purpose of the programme is to make innovation eco-system socially inclusive as well as to ensure equitable distribution of infrastructure for innovation across the country.
He stressed that the new programme has been specifically designed for underserved, unserved regions of Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, Smart Cities, Aspirational districts, North-East, Jammu and Kashmir as well as rural and tribal regions of the country.

The U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock urged the Security Council yesterday to take action to end the "bloody onslaught" in Syria's last opposition-held stronghold, warning that continued violence could create the worst humanitarian disaster of the 21st century.
Mr Lowcock told council members they have ignored previous pleas to stop the bombing and shelling in Idlib province by Syrian and Russian warplanes.

India is one of the world's largest shark fishing nations and Maharashtra and Gujarat together contribute more than 50% of the harvest. But recently there has been a drop in the size of the sharks and their numbers. This has affected the fisheries sector and traders.
A new study by researchers from India, Australia and UAE has tried to identify the local drivers of this decline.
Overfishing is one of the main reasons. The study published in May in Ambio adds that in India there is a high domestic demand for shark meat. “This study helped break the common perception that the sharks are caught for fin and exported. We found that for most of the fisherfolk, sharks were a non-target catch and was just an additional income. Few fishermen told us that they have sold large sharks for even ₹30,000 to ₹50,000,” says DivyaKarnad,an expert.
In 2013, The Ministry of Environment & Forests had brought out a policy called “Fins Naturally Attached” to prevent finning of sharks. But this did not bring about a major impact as there was still demand for whole sharks.
Also, the Indian Wildlife Act of 1972 has proved inadequate in protecting this species. Due to various efforts by the Government, only the whale shark numbers have made a revival.
The paper adds that the Indian Wildlife Act needs an urgent revival so that all endangered and critically endangered species in our waters get the required attention.