 Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankarayesh Academy. Displayed our list of news articles selected for today's analysis and their page numbers in different editions of the newspaper. The link for the handwritten notes in the PDF format and the time stamping of the discussed articles are provided in the description and also in the comment section for the benefit of the viewers. Now let us move on to the analysis of the first news article. This news article is with reference to China-Bangladesh trade relations. The article also talks about Asia-Pacific trade agreement. So in this analysis, we will see in brief about this agreement. The syllabus relevant for the analysis of this news article is highlighted here for your reference. Recently, China has announced tariff exemption for 97% of exports from Bangladesh. This shows the aggressive economic diplomacy of China, particularly with Indian neighbors. Here, when we say economic diplomacy, we refer to a country that uses its economic might by offering loans, trade concessions, grants to countries so as to advance its economic, political and strategic goals. Strategically, it may tilt Bangladesh towards China and away from India and economically, in future, China may advance its economic goals through Belt and Road Initiative or through other initiatives. See, Bangladesh already receives Chinese tariff exemption for more than 3,000 items under the Asia-Pacific trade agreement. However, with the latest concessions arms by China, more than 8,000 goods from Bangladesh will now be exempted from Chinese tariffs. So now let us see about this Asia-Pacific trade agreement in brief. See, it is a preferential trading arrangement and this arrangement is designed to liberalize and to expand trade in goods progressively in the Asia and Pacific region. It is an initiative under UN ESCAP, that is United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, where it is the initiative for trade expansion through exchange of tariff concessions among developing member countries in this region of Asia-Pacific. See, UN ESCAP serves as United Nations regional hub to promote cooperation among countries to achieve inclusive and sustainable development. Now coming to this agreement, it is in place since the year 1975. Now coming to the participating countries, as of now there are 6 countries in which the agreement is implemented. This include India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, then South Korea, China and Law of People Democratic Republic. Recently, Mongolia has concluded bilateral negotiations on tariff concessions and therefore it is also expected to join soon to become the 7th member in this agreement. Now coming to the position of India, while India is a participating country here, it is also a founding member of this agreement. Now this agreement aims to promote, as we saw, economic development through adoption of mutually beneficial trade liberalization measures, trade concessions that contribute to intra-regional trade expansion and economic cooperation. Initially, this agreement was known as Bangkok Agreement. However, in 2005-2006, it was renamed as Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement. What serves as secretariat for this agreement? See, it is the trade investment and innovation division of UN ESCAP. That functions as the secretariat for this agreement. So, there are twin objectives or two objectives of APTA as we saw to promote and sustain mutual trade that to develop economic cooperation among contracting countries. In this context, let us also see in brief about SAFTA as well. SAFTA stands for South Asian Free Trade Area. See, it is the free trade arrangement of SARC countries or South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. The agreement came into force in 2006, succeeding 1993 SARC preferential trading arrangement. Coming to the signatory countries, all the eight countries of SARC are signatory countries- India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. In the prelims perspective, we know the common members among SAFTA and Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement. We can find that India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are the common members. So, with this, we come to the end of analysis of this news article. We saw about Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement, its objectives, participating countries, what it aims to achieve. And we also see two-three information about SAFTA as well. Now, let us move on to next news article. This editorial is with reference to 10th Schedule of Indian Constitution in connection with some members of Manipur Legislative Assembly. In this discussion, we will see the background of the Manipur issue. We will also see some loopholes that were originally present, later corrected. And then we will also see other existing loopholes as well. The syllabus relevant for the analysis of this editorial is highlighted here for your reference. For the past several months, we have been discussing 10th Schedule in the context of defection by legislators of Manipur State Legislative Assembly. Now, the background is that election for 11th Manipur Legislative Assembly was conducted in March 2017. However, this assembly election produced an inconclusive result because none of the political parties secured majority. Manipur Legislative Assembly has 60 seats, so to have majority, a political party has to secure 31 seats to form the government. But none of the political parties were able to secure a majority. Even the two main national political parties got seats less than 30. For example, Indian National Congress 28 seats, BJP 21 seats. In this scenario, for unknown reasons, the governor of Manipur invited the group which was led by BJP to form the government in the state when one Congress MLA met the government along with BJP in connection with forming government. When BJP formed government, 7 more members who were elected on Congress ticket, they defected to BJP or they switched it to BJP. But we know that switching sides after winning election from one political party, it amounts to defection according to paragraph 21A of 10th Schedule. We have discussed these aspects on 9th June 2020 Hindu News Analysis also. So, totally, there are 8 defectors from the side of Congress. Note that the first defector was disqualified in the month of March after the intervention of Supreme Court. We discussed about this elaborately in our Hindu News Analysis on 22nd January. Recently, Congress has moved to the Manipur High Court because the petitions for disqualification of remaining 7 defectors were not yet decided by the speaker of Manipur Legislative Assembly. Therefore, the High Court directed the speaker to dispose the cases at the earliest or the soonest. But this was to be done after the election of the seat to the Rajesh Saba. For the state of Manipur, there is only one seat in Rajesh Saba. This election was scheduled yesterday and till the completion of election, High Court banned the 7 MLAs from entering the assembly. That is, the High Court asked the speaker to dispose the cases related to disqualification after the election to the seat of Rajesh Saba. But what actually happened was, yesterday that is on 19th June 2020, in the morning itself, the speaker heard and disposed cases related to 3 defectors or 3 members of the House. And according to the author, they were exonerated or relieved from the accusation or allegation of defection so that they can vote during election to the Rajesh Saba seat. So, even though the High Court directive suggested otherwise, that is not to dispose the case before the election to the seat of Rajesh Saba, the speaker disposed the case before the election to the seat of Rajesh Saba. And this also has been followed only for 3 MLAs out of the 7 members. It is said that the other 4 defectors have now decided to return to the Congress on whose ticket they got elected. So, the reason given by the author for this is that if the remaining 4 defectors' case also would have been disposed of yesterday, then they would have been also qualified for voting in the election to the Rajesh Saba seat. From the Congress side, this would have given a tough competition to BJP or in fact, as some circles say that even BJP could have lost the Rajesh Saba seat. So, we can see the decisions of the speaker of Manipur Legislative Assembly. We could observe that there is some kind of favor towards the ruling coalition of Manipur. So therefore, it is extremely likely that High Court would intervene in this regard. It would intervene on the Rajesh Saba election and also on selective disposal of disqualification cases and also about the speaker's overruling of High Court's directive. So, from this discussion, we can observe that the provisions of 10th Schedule is twisted according to the whims and fancies of the ruling coalition. And these events reflect the sad state of democracy in our country. More importantly, the 10th Schedule is exploited using its loop holes. So, what are these loop holes? First, let us see the loop holes that were present in the original 10th Schedule which were later corrected by the 91st Constitutional Amendment. See, 10th Schedule was introduced in the year 1985 by 52nd Constitutional Amendment Act. Later, the law was toughened in the year 2003 by the 91st Constitutional Amendment Act. This is because the 91st Amendment omitted paragraph 3 of the 10th Schedule. Now, paragraph 3 mentioned that disqualification on the ground of defection not to apply in the case of split. The provision provided that no member will be disqualified from the membership of the House, where a member makes a claim that she and any other members of her Legislature party constitute a group that represents a faction arising as a result of a split in her original political party. And such group consists of at least one-third of members of a particular concerned Legislature party. In this case also, she along with the members cannot be disqualified even if they voluntarily give up membership of original political party. So, this amounted to bulk defection of members or lot of members switching sides and this led to destabilization of state governments. So, the 10th Schedule was criticized on the ground that it allowed bulk defection while declaring individual defection as illegal under the paragraph 2 of 10th Schedule. So, this loophole of paragraph 3 with reference to split was removed by the 91st Constitutional Amendment Act as the split provision was removed from the 10th Schedule. Now, the next loophole was paragraph 7 of 10th Schedule. It provided for bar of jurisdiction of courts that is no court can have any jurisdiction in respect of any matter connected with disqualification of a member under this 10th Schedule. Now, it means that the paragraph did not allow room for judicial review of cases of defection. So, in Kikoto Holohon v. Satchelu and others in 1993 case law, Supreme Court held that this paragraph 7 is ultra-wires the Constitution. That is, it overwrites the authority of the Constitution. Therefore, it declared paragraph 7 as invalid. But this provision continues to be a part of 10th Schedule even though declared invalid by the Supreme Court as Constitution has not been amended to omit it from the 10th Schedule. So, these two loopholes, one was corrected by an amendment while the other was corrected by the Supreme Court. Now, let's see some of the existing loopholes. If you see paragraph 6 under class 1, it provides that if any question arises as to whether a member has become subject to disqualification then the question shall be referred to the preceding officer of the house and her decision shall be final. And paragraph 6-2 mentions that all proceedings under paragraph 6-1 in relation to question to disqualification of a member shall be deemed to be proceedings in parliament or legislature of a state within the meaning of article 122 or article 212. See, article 122 restricts the courts from inquiring into proceedings of parliament. It mentions that the validity of any proceedings in parliament shall not be called in question on the ground of any alleged irregularity of procedure. The same immunity is given to state legislatures under article 212. So, in Kihota Holohun case, Supreme Court held that the finality clause given in paragraph 6-1 does not exclude the extraordinary jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under article 136 and it does not exclude the extraordinary jurisdiction of high courts under articles 226 and 227. That is, in other words, the Supreme Court can intervene if the speaker's decision is alleged that it is illegal or is of perverse or irrational nature. Then another major loophole that is pointed out is the adjudicating power of defecting MLAs which has been given to the presiding officer. But presiding officer belongs to a political party, therefore the judgment of the presiding officer may not be impartial. So, it gives rise to decision of presiding officer being partial. As we could observe in the case of Manipur Legislative Assembly, we could have observed such things in other legislative assemblies as well. So, in this regard, Supreme Court has earlier asked parliament in January to amend the constitution so as to substitute the presiding officer with a permanent tribunal which shall be independent and which shall be extra legislative body. That is, it will not have any member from the legislature and such a tribunal can be headed by a retired Supreme Court judge or retired Chief Justice of High Court which will ensure that disqualification disputes are decided swiftly and also more importantly impartially in pursuit of proper functioning of democracy. Now, there is one another loophole as well that is, the 10 schedule did not specify a timeline for the speaker to decide on the matters of disqualification of members with reference to defection. So, these are some of the existing loopholes in the 10 schedule. With this, we come to the end of analysis of this editorial article. We saw about the background of the issue in Manipur. Then we saw previously present loopholes and we concluded with seeing some of the existing loopholes. Now, let's move on to the next article. This news article is with reference to National Disaster Response Fund. The news article states that Finance Ministry has given approval to allow individuals and institutions to contribute directly to this National Disaster Response Fund. On 17th June 2020, Supreme Court asked the Center to respond to a petition which asked that the contributions made to PM Care Fund should be transferred to this NDRF. We discussed about this PM Care Fund on our 18th June news analysis. Today, let us see with reference to NDRF, statutory provisions associated with it, how it is financed and how it is used. NDRF is a financial mechanism set up at the national level through Disaster Management Act of 2005. This mechanism is to meet the rescue and relief expenditure during any notified disaster. And as we know recently, the Government of India has included COVID-19 also in the list of notified disasters. At the level of states, there is a response fund called as State Disaster Response Fund. Now, this SDRF is constituted under section 48 class 1 of Disaster Management Act of 2005. Therefore, it is a statutory fund and NDRF is also a statutory fund which is constituted under section 46 of Disaster Management Act. Now, NDRF is constituted to meet any threatening disaster situation or disaster. However, funds will also go to SDRF from NDRF if funds are inadequate in SDRF. The National Disaster Response Fund is credited by grants through budget provisions of parliament. And section 46 of the Act also states that grants can also be made by persons or institutions as well. However, provisions or facilitating mechanisms or enabling arrangements for carrying out such donations by institutions or persons were not yet made by central government. That is what is mentioned in the news article. But now the government has said that checks may be drawn by a donor in the name of PAO Secretary of Ministry of Home Affairs and other arrangements for donation into NDRF are being made. In addition to this, NDRF is also funded through national calamity contingency duty. This duty is imposed on some specified goods like tobacco, tobacco products, petroleum products etc. Now, we should note that funds under NDRF are located in public account of government of India under the head Rousseau funds not bearing interest. Now, Rousseau funds not bearing interest refers to the fact that government of India is not liable to pay any interest for these funds from consolidated funds or that is government is not liable to pay interest using tax payers money. And accounts of NDRF are audited by Comptroller and Auditor General of India. Now, with respect to usage of this fund, we should note that this amount is generally to meet expenses for emergency response, relief and rehabilitation. Now, with reference to mitigation, there is a separate fund which is envisioned under the Disaster Management Act called as National Disaster Mitigation Fund. Now, with reference to allocation of funds to SDRF, it is decided by Finance Commission. The contribution usually made by the center and states is in 75s to 25 basis. However, for special category states, central government's contribution is 90s to 10. So, these are some of the information with reference to NDRF. Now, let's move on to next article. This news article mentions that Indian officials including representatives from enforcement agencies, they have attended 32nd Special Plenary Meeting of Eurasian Group. This is Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism or in short, EAG. In this context, let us see about this Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism. See, it is a financial action task force style regional body shortly called as FSRB. These FSRBs are bodies that are established for the purpose of spreading or disseminating international standards which are related to combating money laundering or combating financing of terrorism or proliferation of international standards related to these throughout the world. The main task of these FSRBs is to set up systems to combat money laundering, to combat financing of terrorism and to proliferate such systems in their respective jurisdiction or respective regions. And financial action task force and these FATF style regional bodies, they are interdependent partners. There are nine FATF style regional bodies. One among them is Eurasian Group. Now, this Eurasian Group was created for countries of Eurasian region which are not so far included in existing FATF style regional bodies. The group is intended to play an important role in reducing threat of international terrorism and in ensuring the transparency, reliability and security of financial systems of various countries. And they also play a very important role in integrating states into international infrastructure of combating money laundering and terrorism financing. So, the primary goal of Eurasian Group is to ensure effective interaction and cooperation at the regional level and integration of Eurasian Group member states into international system of anti money laundering and combating financing of terrorism mechanisms. These are done in accordance with the recommendations of financial action task force and international AML CFT standards. Now, the initiative to establish Eurasian Group was first announced by Russia at the plenary meeting of FATF in 2003. You can connect this information with the fact that Eurasian Group is based at Moscow of Russia. It was established in 2004 by six founding countries, Belarus, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. This group was later expanded. It included Uzbekistan in the very next year, that is in 2005. Turkmenistan and India was included in the year 2010. India and Turkmenistan, they were earlier observers in this group. So, right now if you see, it consists of nine member countries. Of these countries, India, China and Russia, they are members of both Eurasian Group and also financial action task force. Note that India is also a member in Asia Pacific Group on money laundering called as APG as well. Also know that there are 15 countries and 23 international and regional organizations having observer status with this Eurasian Group. And among the FATF style regional bodies, Eurasian Group is the largest in terms of coverage and population of its member states. One more important fact is that Eurasian Economic Group in 2010, it became an associate member of financial action task force. In addition, you also note that IMF and World Bank, they are just observers in financial action task force. So, these are some of the information with reference to the analysis of this news article. We saw about what are FATF style regional bodies, what is Eurasian Group, who proposed this idea, where the organization is based and other matters associated with EAG. Now, let's move on to the next article. This news article talks about Prime Minister, Street Vendors, Atma Nirbarnathi or PM Swarnathi scheme. A special micro-credit facility scheme launched by Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. She intends to provide affordable working capital loan for street vendors to resume their livelihood activities with the easing of lockdown. The news article states that under the scheme, street vendors are likely to start getting small loans or micro-credit facility from the month of July 2020. In this regard, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has signed a memorandum of understanding with Small Industries Development Bank of India. While SIDB is going to be the implementing agency, the lending institutions shall include scheduled commercial banks, regional rural banks, small finance banks, cooperative banks, even non-banking financial companies, micro-finance institutions and self-help group banks also. The scheme is set to target around 50 lakh street vendors who had been vending on or before 24th March this year in urban areas. The duration of the scheme is till March 2022. One special feature is that street vendors from Peri-Urban or rural areas are also included as beneficiaries under this urban livelihoods program. Such a kind of involvement or inclusion is said to be the first time in an urban livelihoods program. Under the scheme, vendors can avail initial working capital loan of up to Rs. 10,000. This amount is repayable in a period of one year in monthly installments. On timely or early repayment of the loan, an interest subsidy of 7% per annum will be credited to the bank accounts of beneficiaries. This is to be done through direct benefit transfer on quarterly basis. Additional benefits are also given if street vendors execute required number of digital transactions. In this regard, know that there is to be an online portal and a mobile application to ensure speedy implementation of the scheme. The IT platform is to help in integrating the vendors into a formal financial system. This platform will integrate the mobile application or the web portal with Udayamitra portal of CIDB for credit management. The platform will also be integrated with Paisa portal of Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs so as to administer interest subsidy automatically. The Udayamitra portal of CIDB is an interactive portal. It facilitates MSMEs in accessing financial and non-financial service needs. Paisa portal, term Paisa stands for Portal for Affordable Credit and Interest Subvention Access. This was launched under Dindaya Lankyodhya Yojana, National Urban Liability Mission. As the name suggests, it eases the process of credit approval and in accessing the interest subvention. These platforms are enabling measures taken and this you can connect with one of the objectives of the scheme as we saw. Rewarding digital transactions that is monthly cashback incentive will be given on digital transactions. So these are some of the important points with reference to this Prime Minister swanidhi scheme for street vendors. This news article states that the CBSE is likely to decide on when to conduct pending board examinations by 22nd June 2020. Exams were suspended because of COVID-19 and Supreme Court has given a deadline of June 23 to CBSE to communicate its decision on new examination schedule. In this context, let us discuss some important aspects with reference to CBSE. Now coming to history of CBSE, the precursor to CBSE was UP Board of High School and Intermediate Education. This Board was set up in 1921. It was renamed as Central Board of Secondary Education in the year 1952 and its jurisdiction was extended all over India and even abroad. CBSE is under the control of Government of India and it gives affiliation to public and private schools that are approved by Government of India. The Board has more than 21,000 schools in India and more than 200 schools outside India under its control. That is why we say that its jurisdiction was extended even abroad. Now coming to the organizational structure of CBSE, it functions under the overall supervision of controlling authority which is the Secretary of Ministry of HRD. Or simply it comes under Ministry of Human Resources Development. There is a governing body for this Board and this body will take decision on various issues based on the recommendations given by various statutory committees under different laws. There is a chairperson of this CBSE who will also be the Chief Executive of this Board and 14 heads of different departments assist the chairperson of CBSE. All of them including the chairperson or appointed by Secretary of HRD Ministry. Now with reference to matters relating to administration, accounts, granting affiliation to schools, a secretary to CBSE is also there who is responsible for these matters. Now let us come into the exams that are conducted by CBSE. See it conducts final examinations for Class 10 and Class 12 every year, usually in the month of March. And till 2018, CBSE was conducting competitive exams like joint entrance exam, NEET, UG, then UGC NET etc. But from 2019, these exams are being conducted by national testing agency. Now coming to CBSE school curriculum, it prescribes NCRT textbooks for classes 9 to 12. Now with reference to NCRT, it is an autonomous organization set up by government of India. NCRT assists central and state governments on policies related to improvement in school education. While CBSE is a governing body that affiliates or gives accreditation to schools. NCRT publishes model textbooks whereas CBSE prescribes NCRT textbooks for usage. These are some of the important information and also know that both CBSE and NCRT are non-statutory entities. With this we come to the end of analysis of this news article. Now let us move on to next article. This news article states that Glenmark Pharmaceuticals has received approval to manufacture and sell oral antiviral drug called as Favipiravir. This is for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 patients in the country. This is the result of faith trial, which is a new randomized open label study carried out by Glenmark. We discussed about this faith trial in detail in our Hindu news analysis on 27 May 2020. In this context we should also know about solidarity trial of World Health Organization about which we discussed on 11 May 2020. Now let us move on to the next part of our discussion. We have come to the last session, the practice questions discussion session. This question is with reference to Eurasian group. The question reads, consider the following statements with reference to Eurasian group on combating money laundry and financing of terrorism recently seen in news. It is an FATF style regional body. It is an associate member of FATF. India and China are its founding countries. Which of the statements given above are correct? First two statements are correct. Third statement is incorrect. Though India at present is a member in Eurasian group, it is not one of its founding members. So eliminate option C and D. Correct answer is option B, one and two only. This question is with reference to National Disaster Response Fund. Three statements are given. Which of the statements given above are correct? There is no legal provision under the Disaster Management Act 2006 for individual grants to credit NDRF. This statement is incorrect because section 46 provides for grants that may be made by any person or institution for the purpose of disaster management. That can be credited into this National Disaster Response Fund. Second statement NDRF amount is spent mainly for meeting the expenses of disaster mitigation. This statement is incorrect because NDRF amount is mainly spent to meet the expenses for emergency response relief rehabilitation. So as to handle any threatening disaster situation. With reference to mitigation, the Disaster Management Act is a separate fund called as National Disaster Mitigation Fund. So second statement is also incorrect. Third statement NDRF is classified in public account of Government of India. This statement is correct. Therefore only third statement is correct. Correct answer option C, three only. This question is with reference to Asia Pacific Trade Agreement. The question reads which of the following countries are members or participating countries of both Asia Pacific Trade Agreement and South Asian Free Trade Area. India, China, Laos, Bangladesh, South Korea. We can observe that three countries are in both these frameworks. They are India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In the given options we can see India and Bangladesh. So the correct answer is option B, one and four only. This question is with reference to Prime Minister Swanidhi scheme. Which of the following correctly describes the PM Swanidhi scheme. A scheme aiming to reduce the demand for physical gold thereby keeping a tab on gold imports and utilizing resources effectively. A saving scheme to provide monthly pension for traders and self-employed persons on attainment of age of 60 years. A special micro-credit facility scheme to provide affordable loans to street vendors and to enable them to resume livelihood activities with the easing of lockdown. Correct answer for this question is option C. The full form of Swanidhi is Prime Minister street vendor Atma Nirbharnidhi. This question is with reference to Central Board of Secondary Education. First statement, CBSE functions under Ministry of Human Resource Development. Second statement, at present it is given the responsibility to conduct competitive examinations like joint entrance exam, NEET exam etc. See first statement is correct, second statement is incorrect as these exams are now handled by National Testing Agency. Correct answer option A, one only. Now see this main question under GS2. The loop holes in the 10 schedule are exploited by the political parties to form the government. In the light of this statement discussed the shortcomings of the schedule by giving suitable examples. We have discussed various loop holes present in the 10 schedule that gives opportunities for political parties to deviate from the expected norm of anti defection. While we discussed today with reference to Manipur Legislative Assembly, we can give various examples like how it was handled earlier during Karnataka State Legislative Assembly. You can write answers for this question and post in the comment section.