 Good evening aspirants. Welcome to the Hindi news analysis by Shankara Ace Academy for the date 16th November 2019. These are the list of articles chosen for today's analysis. It has been given along with the page numbers of Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Trivandrum and Hyderabad editions. The link for the handwritten notes in the PDF format and the time snapping for the displayed articles is given in the description box below. And for the benefit of smartphone users, the time snapping is also provided in the comment section. Let us move on to our first news article analysis. This news article is about an important supreme code judgment on the Arsilar-Mithal insolvency case. The syllabus that can be linked to this discussion is given here for your reference. Before going into the article, let us understand the background of the supreme code judgment. For that we need to understand the basics of insolvency and bankruptcy code 2016. Now, in this insolvency is a financial state and bankruptcy is a legal procedure. Insolvency is a financial state where the liabilities of an individual or an organization exceed its asset and they are unable to raise enough cash to meet its obligations or debts when they are due for the payment of the debt. This insolvency leads to the state of default. The default can happen due to financial failure or business failure. So, a person who is facing insolvency needs to take corrective actions to rectify the situation so as to avoid possible bankruptcy. So, what is bankruptcy? Bankruptcy is the next state of insolvency where an individual or a firm is declared as incapable of paying up their debt at any time in the present as well as in the foreseeable future. This state is declared by the relevant authority under a specified law. Generally, failure of resolution process leads to bankruptcy. So, what is resolution? Resolution refers to a plan that is proposed by any authorized person or entity for enabling the overdue payments of a corporate debtor. This resolution will be through restructuring of the entity or even through partial payments of the debt. It will be done while allowing the corporate debtor to continue in the business. So, this is the meaning of insolvency, bankruptcy and resolution. Now, under insolvency and bankruptcy code of 2016, the adjudicating authority that is in relation to insolvency resolution and liquidation for corporate persons including the corporate debtors is the National Company Law Tribunal or in short NCLT. So, in 2017 the debt ridden SR steel was admitted by NCLT for insolvency proceeding under insolvency and bankruptcy code or in short IBC. After this NCLT appointed a resolution professional. The resolution professional has the duty to preserve and protect the assets of the corporate debtor. This also includes the continuation of business operations of the corporate debtor. The resolution professional also has to invite prospective lenders, investors or any other person to put forward any resolution plans for the debtor company. So, with respect to the debt ridden SR steel, Arsalar Mittal emerged as eligible for resolution. Now, the resolution plan that was proposed by Arsalar Mittal was accepted by the committee of creditors or in short COC. Now, the COC is constituted by the resolution professional for taking forward the decision of resolution. The COC comprises of all financial creditors of the corporate debtor. All the decisions of the committee of the creditors has to be taken by a vote of not less than 75 percentage of voting share of the financial creditors. But here the problem was that the resolution plan that was proposed by Arsalar Mittal was challenged by the SR Steel in the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal that is NCLAT. So, in its order, the NCLAT said that operational creditors and financial creditors should get equal treatment. Now, this verdict made the financial creditors or the lenders and the operational creditors or vendors as equal. It means that the amount realized through resolution process has to be shared equally between the financial creditors and operational creditors. Now, this decision was criticized. It is because the original insolvency and bankruptcy code aimed to give primacy or priority to financial creditors over operational creditors. So, who are these operational and financial creditors? A financial creditor is also known as a lender who is a person or an institution that lends money to the company for its functioning. For example, money borrowed against the payment of interest from a bank is a financial debt and the lender bank is a financial creditor. So, in this example, the bank is the financial creditor. Next, according to IBC, an operational creditor is also known as vendor who is a person to whom an operational debt is owed or who is a person to whom such a debt has been legally assigned. Now, in this operational debt is the claim that is made in respect of the provisions of goods and services including employment to the company. In simple terms, the operational creditor has offered goods and services to the company and the company owes them debt. This is the operational debt. So, the COC that is the committee of creditors moved the Supreme Court against this decision of NCLAT and the present judgment is based on this complaint only. So, with this background in mind, let us look into the news article. The article mentions that Supreme Court accepted Arsalar Mittal's offer to pay rupees 42,000 crore to the secured financial creditors of bankrupt SR Steel. Now, in this secured creditor is a creditor in favor of whom a security interest or collateral is created. It means the repayment of his money is secured through collateral. Now, in this we know that collateral is something that is pledged as a security for repayment of a loan and it will be forfeited or it is to be handed over if there is a default. For example, a valuable property is a collateral and against this valuable property a loan can be given. Now, in the Supreme Court judgment, the court upheld the decision of the committee of creditors to accept Arsalar's offer for takeover. Now, this judgment is so important because it set aside an earlier judgment of NCLAT. We have already seen that the NCLAT has decided to share the realized amount equally between financial creditors and operational creditors. But as per today's news, the Supreme Court judges observed that the principle of equality cannot be stretched to treat unequals equally. They have said that equitable treatment is to be accorded to each creditor depending upon the class to which the creditor belongs. That is, they may belong to secured or unsecured financial or operational creditor. Now, this simply means that secured creditors and financial creditors should be preferred over the unsecured creditor and operational creditor respectively. Now, this judgment seems rational because it is the financial creditors who provide the working capital to run the business whereas the operational creditors are the beneficiaries of the amounts that is lent by the financial creditor. Now, it is because operational creditors benefits only if the business runs, otherwise they will not have any benefit. So, financial creditors must have an upper hand because without them and without their working capital, the business cannot be run. In addition to this, the apex court also mentioned that corporate resolution is ultimately in the hands of the majority vote of COC, that is, Committee of Creditors. The court also noted that NCLAT cannot interfere in the business decision that is taken by the majority of the COC which is provided according to the law. So, we can conclude by saying that the judgment of Supreme Court is a step in the right direction as it has made a logical decision to treat different lenders according to their class. This decision is expected to increase investor's confidence in the insolvency and bankruptcy code. With this, we come to the end of this news article discussion. There is a practice question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the next news article discussion, this discussion is in continuation with the first news article which was about the Supreme Court judgment on the Arsilar Mittal Insolvency case. This discussion can be linked to the syllabus that is given here for your reference. This news article mentions that Supreme Court has increased the time limit for corporate resolution beyond 330 days which was mandated under IBC amendment act of 2019. So, let us discuss this provision in detail. Initially under section 12 of the parent act that is the insolvency and bankruptcy code of 2016, the time limit for completion of insolvency resolution process was mentioned. According to this section in this act, it said that the corporate insolvency resolution process shall be completed within a time period of 180 days from the date of admission of the application to initiate the process. This section also had a provision for the extension of resolution process beyond this 180 days and it can be extended for a maximum of another 90 days. But the IBC 2016 act was amended by the IBC amendment act of 2019. This amendment act amended several provisions of the parent act. It also made changes to this section 12. According to the amendment act, the insolvency resolution process has to be completed within 330 days from the insolvency commencement date. But now the present judgment is that the corporate resolution can go beyond 330 days. The news article mentions that if debts are not resolved and the bankrupt firm cannot be brought back to its feet that is if it does not recover from the financial problem within the mentioned time frame then the only option that is left is the liquidation of the firm's assets so as to pay the creditors. And according to the amendment act the mentioned time frame is the 330 days. See normally after successful resolution the debt-ridden company will continue to run but it will run under some other company that is like in the case of Arcelor, Mittal and SR Steel. But in the case of liquidation it is the process of bringing a business to an end and it will be done by selling the assets in the open market. So what is the relevance of this judgment? Normally parties to the litigation suffers the liquidation after the mentioned time frame that is after 330 days even for others default. For example, if there is some delay in legal proceedings but the delay was not because of the company then this will also lead to liquidation of that company and we know that India is known for delaying judicial proceedings. So now this judgment will solve this problem because the judgment said that the 330 day limit was no longer mandatory because it might lead to liquidation unnecessarily. The judgment also observed that the mandatory time limit is a violation of equal treatment before law under article 14 of Indian constitution and it is also a violation of the right to carry on business under article 19 clause 1 sub clause G of Indian constitution. We know that article 14 is with respect to equality before law and equal protection of law and this article 19 clause 1 sub clause G is with respect to right to practice any profession or to carry on any occupation, trade or business. So as a best possible solution to the problem Supreme Court has relaxed the mandatory nature of the time limit. See for an ordinary case the 330 day time limit might be sufficient but if the parties are able to prove that there is very little time left in the resolution process and the delay has been caused by delayed legal proceedings then more time should be given before going for the liquidation process. So in this way this judgment is really helpful for the companies that is all about this news article with this we come to the end of this news article discussion. Moving on to the next discussion in this discussion we will be seeing three news articles which is also about the Supreme Court judgment on the acquisition of SR steel by Arsalar Mittal. This discussion can be linked to the syllabus that is given here for your reference. As we have mentioned in the previous discussion Arsalar Mittal will be paying about rupees 42000 crore to the secured financial creditors of bankrupt SR steel and the financial creditors in this case are the banks like State Bank of India, Canada Bank, Punjab National Bank, ICSA Bank etc. The news article mentions that the payment will reach the respective banks in few days and this amount will be accounted on the profit side in the profit and loss account of the bank. Now this is expected to give a boost to the bank's profits in the third quarter which is from October to December and according to the news article the biggest beneficiary of this payment would be State Bank of India which will get around rupees 12000 crore. Then the next news article talks about the investor confidence. The article mentions that the Supreme Court judgment will increase the confidence of investors in the IBC process and the efficiency of the IBC. This is because this judgment clearly gave an upper hand to the secured and financial creditors over the unsecured and operational creditors as we discussed in the first discussion. Hence investors who are the financial creditors will be more confident to invest because now they are assured by the insolvency and bankruptcy code. So even if the company in which they have invested goes bankrupt then also a large part of the invested amount can be claimed by the financial creditors through resolution. So because of this we can hope that this will lead to more investment and it will fuel the Indian economy. Then there is another news article which talks about the position of committee of creditors. As we have discussed Supreme Court has upheld the commercial wisdom of committee of creditors that is COC to accept Arsalaam Mittal's offer for the takeover of SR Steel. Now this simply means that Supreme Court has accepted that committee of creditors or COC is the right body to take decisions over resolution process and as we saw earlier the judgment also set aside an earlier judgment of NCLAT which earlier decided to share the amount realized equally between the financial creditors and operational creditors. Now after this judgment from now onwards COC's decisions on resolution will have more acceptance so there will be less challenges to COC's orders. Hence the overall litigation period will come down. Now this will result in a rapid resolution process under the insolvency and bankruptcy court. Then another big achievement is the exclusive upper hand given to the financial creditors over the operational creditors. Now this will put an end to the litigation which was based on the treatment of different classes of creditors. Now this type of litigation added burden to the overall litigation and it further delayed the resolution process. But now exclusively the upper hand is given to the financial creditors. So this type of litigation can be avoided and all this would result in achieving the objectives of IBC in its true spirit and it will in turn result in the rapid resolution process under the IBC. Hence this will prevent the company from going into liquidation process. So these are the information that you should know with respect to the Supreme Court judgment on the acquisition of SS Steel by Arsalar Mittal. With this we come to the end of this discussion. This discussion is based on e-codes and income tax appellate tribunal. The syllabus that is displayed here can be linked to this discussion. The news article talks about ITAT that is income tax appellate tribunal and also about e-codes and how these e-codes would facilitate PD delivery of justice. So first let us see about income tax appellate tribunal or in short ITAT. This ITAT is a quasi-judicial institution. It was set up in January 1941. In this quasi-judicial means the institution will have some of the powers that is similar to normal codes of law and these powers will include issuing summons for the examination of witnesses and documents then receiving evidence on affidavits and the institution will also have authority to enforce its orders. Now this ITAT functions under the Department of Legal Affairs in the Ministry of Law and Justice. This ITAT consists of a president, vice president and other members and they are all appointed by the central government. In their 1941 ITAT was started with six members which constituted three benches. One at Delhi, one at Kolkata and one in Mumbai and after that the number of benches have progressively increased and presently ITAT has 63 benches including Chennai all over India. This ITAT specializes in dealing with appeals under the Direct Taxes Act like the Income Tax Act. The orders passed by the ITAT are final but one can appeal against the orders of ITAT in the high court if a substantial question of law arises for determination. Further, ITAT draws inspiration from its motto which is nishpaksh sulab sattvar nyaya. In this nishpaksh means impartial or neutral, sulab means easy, sattvar means speedy, nyaya means justice. So its motto is impartial, easy and speedy justice. ITAT stands out for its uniqueness for imparting justice to the litigants. This is done by an inexpensive, easily accessible forum that is free from technicality. ITAT is also known for its expert knowledge on the subject of direct taxes besides rendering expeditions justice that is speedy justice. So over a period of time this ITAT has emerged as one of the effective tribunal and even this tribunal is referred to as the mother tribunal because it is the oldest tribunal in the country. So after the success of ITAT government has constituted similar appellate tribunals for indirect taxes also and these appellate tribunals are customs, excise, service tax, appellate tribunal that is in short CES TAT and then central administrative tribunal or CAT and then railway claims tribunal then foreign exchange appellate board etc. Now if you see the news article it mentions that e-court launched at Chennai Bench of ITAT. Now when this e-courts means using of digital tools to facilitate tribunal proceedings. So in this context a fully equipped separate courtroom with seamless conferencing facilities has been set up at the Chennai Bench of ITAT. So this will enable the tribunal to hear cases from other places like Madurai and Coimbatore and the cases can be heard by sitting in Chennai and this will be done through video conferencing. So this whole e-court system is aimed at delivering justice at the doorstep. Therefore e-courts would facilitate speedy delivery of justice. So in this news article we have discussed about ITAT and its functions as well as how e-courts would facilitate speedy delivery of justice system. With this we come to the end of this news article discussion that is spread practice question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the next news article discussion, this discussion is based on this editorial which is about the recent BRICS summit and the joint statement that was issued by the five countries in the 11th BRICS summit. This 11th summit was held on November 13th and 14th. Now in this summit a joint statement was issued by the BRICS countries which is called as Brasilia declaration. It is because the statement was issued in the Brasilia city of Brazil which is the capital of Brazil. The syllabus that is relevant for this analysis is given here for your reference. If you see this editorial in the opening remarks the author mentions three recent developments in the economy at the global level. First is that the storm clouds are gathering over the world economy. This statement means the world economy is going through troubles. Now this could be because of a weak international order which means certain countries are not abiding to internationally agreed rules. This could be also because of weakening support for world trade and investment or also because of the great power or superpower competition between some countries. One example for this could be the increasing US-China trade wars and the other example could be unilateral decisions of USA in the international arena etc. We have been seeing that US has been continuously asserting that it will come out of various formerly agreed commitments and international organizations. US is saying that it will come out of world trade organization if its demands are not accepted. Now this was the first development in the economy at the global level. Now secondly the author mentions that the trading arrangements are in this area that is there is no order in trading arrangements or the trading arrangements are in a mess. Here we may say some examples such as US removing India from the beneficiary list of its generalized system of preferences program that is the GSP program. Then another example could be the inability of the RCEP countries to address the concerns of India. Then another example can be USA reverting from its agreed commitments in various trade deals. Then thirdly author mentions that there are questions over the relevance of world trade organization. Author is mentioning this as a point because of some of the failures in the WTO regime. In the present WTO regime there are threats to equitable distribution of trade benefits. For example in one of our recent classes we saw that USA has presented papers to the world trade organization with a demand. USA has asked WTO that India has to be removed from the developing country status. Either this or the benefits enjoyed by India because of the developing nation status has to be stopped. So this was the demand of USA to the WTO. Now we know that according to World Bank the per capita GDP in US is 30 times more than the per capita GDP in India and still US is making this claim. Now this is the state of economic affairs at the global level. Well this is the case at the global level. The author comments that the time is opportune or it is favorable or convenient for five nations in the world. These are called the BRICS nations. This is because the group has adapted according to the changing times and it has proved its resilience. This is despite the fact that at times some countries of the grouping have undergone certain difficulties. Here the author discusses about the relative state of economy of five countries in the group. More importantly, two countries have shown a reasonable and remarkable growth within the grouping. These two countries are India and China. See the group as a whole has shown resilience though two countries have shown sluggish growth or very slow growth and one country is undergoing a sanction laden slowdown. Now here sluggish growth is seen among Brazil and South Africa and Russia is undergoing slowdown because of sanctions from USA. Here sanctions refer to the trade restrictions or conditions that is imposed by USA to affect or to harm Russia. Now one of the ways how US is doing this is by forcing the countries that are dependent on USA to not to carry out any trade relations with Russia. And here by mentioning resilience, the author means that these countries have been or they will be able to recover the present difficulties. Then next in the editorial, the author also discusses about the joint statement or the Brazilian declaration of BRICS nations. In this joint statement, the five countries have asked all the WTO members to avoid unilateral and protectionist measures that goes against the spirit and the rules of WTO. In this you have to note one point. Normally BRICS countries support multilateralism. This means multiple countries come together and establish overall rule based international order. So this means they oppose one country dictating terms and conditions on its own. So that is why they have asked WTO members to avoid unilateral and protectionist measures. Next the BRICS countries have repeated their commitment to the WTO. Though WTO original promoter has threatened that it will come out of World Trade Organization. The original promoter is none other than USA. Recently USA has stated unilaterally that it will leave WTO if certain demands are not accepted by WTO or concerned nations. Then after this the BRICS nations have also presented a vision for rules based transparent non-discriminatory open free and inclusive international trade. Now these could be the characteristics of international trade. It has to be rule based. It should be transparent. One aspect in this could be rules of origin for tagging of products. Then the international trade should be non-discriminatory. It has to be open, free and inclusive. Then the joint statement has also appreciated the BRICS led new development bank and it has also appreciated the BRICS business council. Both these platforms in BRICS has played an important role in ensuring that BRICS countries maintain to be the major drivers of global growth in the last 10 years. Know that even now the BRICS countries represent close to one third or 33 percentage of global output. We have seen recently the matters pertaining to new development bank on our 14th number 2019 news analysis. The link is given in the description box and also in the comment section. Please have a look at that video. One of the special features of new development bank is that all the members of BRICS are having equal shareholding and also equal voting rights in new development bank. Now this is not the case with one of the important global financial institutions that is the International Monetary Fund or IMF. Even the BRICS joint statement has asked to reform the quota system and voting rights in IMF. The joint statement has called to strengthen and reform the multilateral system that is to reform United Nations, to reform WTO, to reform IMF and other international organizations. Now how it has to be reformed? These institutions have to be made more inclusive, more democratic and more representative. Particularly this reform should include greater participation of emerging markets and developing countries in international decision making. So these are some of the points from the joint statement. Next the author mentions about the one thing that failed the vision of cooperation or interdependence between five countries. This is with respect to trade among and between the countries. See though 40% of world's population is found in these countries, the trade among the five countries contributes to just 15% of world trade. So the author calls for greater connectivity and more trade among BRICS nations. Once this happens, this will naturally allow the BRICS countries to claim their rightful space in the world economy. Then once the contribution of intra BRICS trade that is the trade between the BRICS nations reaches a significant level, then these countries could provide the leadership and energy that the global economic order urgently requires. Next the author also mentions few points with respect to India. Author mentions that India is undergoing two challenges. One is the economic crisis. Second is the trouble trading ties with several nations. This is author's personal opinion that India's trade ties are at trouble with several nations. Now we know that at present India may not be in good trade terms with 15 RCEP nations and we have trade tensions with USA and we are under pressure from USA not to have certain aspects of trade with Iran and Russia and we could not get a waiver from USA. With respect to Iran, we are prevented by USA in buying oil and with respect to Russia, US threatens India not to purchase the S-400 Trim of Missile System. So this is what the author is mentioning as troubled trading ties with several nations. Then finally the author also talks about India's failure to resolve issues to join the regional comprehensive economic partnership that is RCEP. Now this has raised certain questions in terms of trade. These questions are about whether India is reversing its market liberalization and reversing from being open to trade. In this author's point is that India should have joined RCEP after resolving its concerns on various matters. But we know that the majority in RCEP negotiations did not mind about India's deep concerns with respect to its farmers and micro, medium and small industries and even some other parameters. So these are the some of the comments mentioned by the author regarding recent developments in the economy at the global level and also at the national level. With this we come to the end of this editorial discussion. The respect practice question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the next news article discussion. This news article is with reference to the consumer expenditure survey results of 2017-18. The syllabus that can be linked to this discussion is given here for your reference. By consumer expenditure survey results, we mean the results of all India's survey on household consumption expenditure. This survey was carried out by the national statistical office which is under the ministry of statistics and program implementation. This national statistical office carried out this survey during the period July 2017 to June 2018. Usually the consumer expenditure survey is conducted at an interval of once in five years. That is, the survey will be conducted at quinquennial intervals. So the last survey on consumer expenditure was conducted during the period July 2011 to June 2012. This consumer expenditure survey generates estimates of household monthly per capita consumer expenditure. It also generates estimates about the distribution of households and persons over the classes or categories of monthly per capita consumer expenditure. This survey is designed to collect information regarding expenditure on consumption of goods and services that are consumed by households. This survey includes both food items and non-food items. The survey is important because the results of this survey are used for rebasing of the GDP and other macroeconomic indicators. This means the survey will be used in arriving at a new base year for the calculation of GDP and other indicators such as index of industrial production, CPI, etc. Now today's news is that the central government has decided not to release the consumer expenditure survey results of 2017 to 2018. For this, the government has given a reason that there are issues over the quality of data collected in the survey. This means that the survey will not be released. Meanwhile, the government is also examining the feasibility of conducting the next consumer expenditure survey in 2020 to 2021 and 2021 to 2022. So it is expected that the government may carry out the next survey after incorporating all data quality refinements in the survey process. Now this is the stand of the central government but some of the media reports are saying that the survey is not released because of some adverse findings. So if this survey is released, it may affect the image of the government among the public. Now based on some of the draft data of the survey, some reports are saying that the consumer demand has declined in 2017 to 2018 for the first time in at least in last 40 years. So what is the problem if there is a decline of consumer demand? If there is a decline, this means that people after knowing the decline may not spend money for consumption of goods and services. People may think that if they spend, they may not have money with them. They may not involve in production of goods and investment because if goods are produced, people will not buy due to lack of demand. So at the end of the day, the produced goods will get waste and also the investment that went into production will be wasted. Now this means that there will be an overall fall in the economic activity and this is what we call as slowdown in the economy. Now as a result of decline in consumption by households or because of decline in consumer demand, the GDP growth will also fall. So these are the consequences if there is a decline of consumer demand. Now the government sources mentioned that the survey was questioned for its ability to capture consumption of social services by households. This concern was raised particularly about the consumption of health and educational services. Now one other question is that whether people are not spending enough for education and health? Now we may not get answer to this question because the survey will not be released. Actually the government examined these concerns on education and health services that is given by the survey. After examining, government referred this matter to a committee of experts. This committee of experts have noted that there are some discrepancies in the survey and the committee has recommended a refinement in the survey methodology and it has recommended to improve the data quality aspects of the survey. In addition to this, the advisory committee on national accounts statistics has also separately recommended that the survey data from the year 2017 to 18 is not appropriate to be considered for GDP rebasing. So as a result of all these, the consumer expenditure survey results of 2017 to 18 will not be published and not releasing this survey will be seen from the lens of transparency and accountability by the stakeholders. So with this, we come to the end of this news article discussion. The displayed practice question will be discussed in the last session. Moving on to the last discussion for the day, this news article is with reference to the draft amendment bill that was released by the government in March, April this year. The draft amendment was to amend the Indian Forest Act of 1927. The syllabus that is relevant for this analysis is given here for your reference. This year in the months of March and April, central government has proposed to amend the Indian Forest Act of 1927 and it has released a draft bill for that purpose. The bill contained provisions such as arresting a person without warrant if the person is alleged or accused to be an encroacher. Then the bill also stated that the forest officials can use firearms in case there is a violation of the legal provisions. Then the draft also included a new category of forest which is known as production forest. According to the draft, these are the forests to produce timber, pulp, pulpwood, firewood, non-timber forest produce, etc. There are concerns that this new category was proposed to corporatize or privatize forests and this was to be done by handing over to private operators for the production of pulp or pulpwood, timber and other products. In addition to this, a section was also included to suspend the right to collect the forest produce which was granted to the Adiwasi communities who were residing in the forests. Now, this created a sense of fear among the Adiwasi communities about their livelihood and their relationship with the environment. Then the draft also mentioned that the government can acquire or grab the right of forest dwellers. This will be done if the rights are inconsistent with the conservation of a reserved forest. It was felt that the definition of inconsistent was not clearly defined in the draft so it can be misused. So, these are some of the proposed changes to the Indian Forest Act of 1927. But huge criticism has been put forward by various forest right activists and environmentalists. We have discussed these matters and the various issues along with the proposed changes in April 2019 on our April 20th and 22nd in the news analysis video. So, for more information on this matter, you may have a look at the videos on April 20 and 22nd. The link is given in the description box and also in the comment section. Now, today's news is that the government has decided not to proceed for amending the act as it was planned earlier. In fact, government has withdrawn the draft amendment bill itself and the development is that government will amend the Indian Forest Act of 1927. But it will be done after having wider consultations with various stakeholders. With this, we come to the end of this news article discussion. Now, we have come to the last session which is the practice questions discussion session. This first question is with respect to income tax appellate tribunal. The first statement states it specializes in dealing with appeals under the direct taxes acts like income tax act of 1961. Now, this statement is correct. This is the specialty of ITAT and also remember that the orders passed by ITAT are final. But one can appeal against the orders of ITAT in the high court. The second statement states it is referred to as mother tribunal being the oldest tribunal in the country. Now, this statement is also correct. This ITAT is a quasi judicial institution which was set up in 1941 and it is the oldest tribunal in the country. So, it is referred to as mother tribunal. So, this statement is also correct. Now, the third statement states it functions under Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Now, since this tribunal deals with income tax, you should not think it comes under Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Rather, this comes under the Department of Legal Affairs which is under the Ministry of Law and Justice because it is an appellate tribunal which has powers similar to normal courts of law. And these powers include issuing summons for the examination of witnesses and documents, then receiving evidence on affidavits and having authority to enforce its orders. So, this statement is wrong. The question asks for the correct statement. So, the final correct answer to this question is option B 1 and 2. Now, this question is based on insolvency and bankruptcy code. The first statement states the adjudicating authority in matters of insolvency resolution and liquidation for corporate debtors is the respective high codes. Now, this statement is wrong because according to insolvency and bankruptcy code of 2016, the adjudicating authority is the National Company Law Tribunal or in short NCLT. Now, when this question the question asks for the not correct statements that is the wrong statements. So, here statement 1 is wrong. So, the final answers should contain statement 1. So, either the answer should be option A or D. Now, the next statement states a financial creditor is a person or an institution that lends working capital to the company for its functioning. Now, yes this statement is correct. A financial creditor is also known as a lender who is a person or an institution that lends money to the company for its functioning. For example, money borrowed against the payment of interest from a bank is a financial debt and the lender bank is a financial creditor. So, here the bank is the financial creditor. So, this means this statement is correct, but the question asks for the incorrect statements or the wrong statements. So, the answer should not contain statement 2. So, we can eliminate A, B and C. So, the final correct answer to this question is only 1 and 3. Now, this third statement is wrong because the committee of creditors comprise of all financial creditors of the corporate debtor. So, that is why this statement is wrong. This next question is with reference to the summits of BRICS grouping. The question asks in which of the following order the annual summits of BRICS grouping have taken place since 2014 till 2018. Now, to answer this question you should know in which place the summits took place in each year. In the year 2014, it took place in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza. Then in the year 2015, it took place in Russia, in the Ufa city. Then in the year 2016, it took place in India, in the Binalam city of Goa state. Then in the year 2017, it took place in China, in the Xiamen city. Then in the year 2018, it took place in South Africa, in Johannesburg. Then in the year 2019, that is this year, we know that it took place in Brazil, in the capital of Brazil, which is Brasilia. And in these options, we know that B stands for Brazil, R stands for Russia, I stands for India and C stands for China and S stands for South Africa. Now, we have to see in what order these summits took place. 2014 is B for Brazil, then R for Russia, then I for India, then C for China, then S for South Africa till 2018. So, the order should be BRICS, that is BRICS. So, the correct answer to this question is option D, BRICS. Now, this next question is with reference to all India survey on household consumption expenditure, that is the consumer expenditure survey. The first statement states it is conducted by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. This is correct because the survey is conducted by the National Statistical Office, which functions under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. So, this is correct. And here the question asks for the correct statement. So, we can eliminate option A and B because it does not have a statement 1. Then the second statement states it is usually conducted by and nearly. Now, this is wrong because this survey is conducted once in five years. So, the word for conducting a survey once in five years is quinquiniel. Biennial means once in two years. Now, this statement is wrong. So, we can eliminate option D also. So, the final correct answer to this question is option C1 only. Now, this third statement is incorrect because it states it does not include data for consumption pertaining to non-food items or articles. That is wrong. This survey includes both food items and non-food items and the survey is designed to collect information regarding expenditure on consumption of goods and services that are consumed by households. With this, we have come to the end of today's Hindi News Analysis. If you like the video, don't forget to like, comment and share. And do subscribe to Shankar IAS Academy YouTube channel for more updates related to civil service examination preparation.