CURRENT AFFAIRS
TOPICS :
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NHAI back to BOT model
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Tremors at Gujarat in quick succession
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Bail law
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INS Sindhudvaj
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A new marine organism recorded in east coast of India
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Heat waves and wildfires
NHAI back to BOT model
Context:
National highways Authority of India (NHAI) is going back to private investment, as a part of which, during present quarter, NHAI is planning to offer two highway upgradation projects to private players using the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model.
Models followed in Road construction projects:
From the past few years NHAI is has been offering projects under Hybrid Annuity Model (HAM), especially from the onset of pandemic.
HAM model:
- Under this model, cost of project is shared in a such way that government pays 40% of project cost as support to the private developer remaining 60% is to be arranged by the private developer.
- HAM is a mix of both EPC and BOT.
EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) model:
- In this model, government pays the full project cost, thereby insulating the contractor entirely from risk.
- The BOT model accounted for 96% of the projects in 2011-12 as the model was the preferred model for road projects. But this progressively reduced to nil.
- Later traditional Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) model was followed in road construction projects.
- HAM model was devised later EPC model.
BOT model:
- It is Public Private Partnership (PPP)
- Under this, a private player will be given concession to finance, build and operate a project for a specified time period (20 or 30 years concession period).
- In this period, the private developer gets back its investments made in the form of fees or tolls charged on customers using that facility.
- It involves a certain amount of financial risk.
Incentives under BOT model:
- Government decided to assess the revenue potential of project every 5 years during concession period as against 10 years as earlier.
- Which means that concession period is extended early in the tenure of contract, ensuring survey for the private company.
Positive sign:
- The PPP model is key to road asset development, for which BOT is central to attract private investments.
- The shift to EPC, HAM models post 2011 made to plug the funding gap. The return to BOT could be a big positive for the sector.
Highways construction:
- Highway construction is a priority sector.
- Ministry set a target of 18,000 km highways for this fiscal year.
- In 2021-22 about 10,457 km national highways were constructed against 13,327 km in 2020-21.
Tremors at Gujarat in quick succession
Context:
Tremor of 3.2 intensity strikes near the Sardar Sarovar dam.
It is the second occurrence in Gujarat in the past 25 days.
What are tremors:
- Tremors are involuntary movement (shaking or trembling) of the earth surface before the striking of earthquake.
- It can also be said that tremors are small magnitude of earthquakes.
- But in general, both earthquake and tremor are used interchangeably.
About the tremors at Gujarat:
- A tremor of intensity 2 on Richter scale, was recorded 30km away from Sardar Sarovar dam at kevadiya in south Gujarat.
- As per the Indian Seismological Research (ISR) at Gandhinagar epicentre of the tremor lay 30 km south- southwest from the dam.
- Epicentre: It is the point on earth’s surface vertically above the focus or hypocentre.
- Hypocentre: It is the point within the earth where the earthquake rupture initiates. It is also known as the focus
- Another tremor was felt 25 days before of intensity 3.1 on Richter scale which struck 12 km away from the dam on the Narmada River.
- It is to be noted that in Gujarat, the Kutch and Saurashtra regions are most active seismic zones. Earlier Narmada rift zone has experienced earthquakes of magnitude 5.4 at Baruch in 1970.
What are seismic zones?
- Seismic waves are the energy waves that propagate within or along the earth’s surface, these are the result of activities like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions.
- There are 4 types of seismic waves they are
- Primary waves (P-waves)
- Secondary waves (S-waves)
- Rayleigh waves (R-waves)
- Love waves (L-waves).
- Seismic waves are measured using the
- Seismic zones are regions that are potential of earthquake (seismically potential), based on the past history of occurrence of earthquakes.
Richter Scale:
- It is used to measure the magnitude of intensity of an earthquake.
- The magnitude of earthquake is the logarithm of the amplitude of waves measured by seismographs.
- In Richter scale, an increase in magnitude by one unit signifies a tenfold increase in the amplitude of the wave and 31 times of the energy released.
Bail law
Context:
Supreme Court has called on government to consider a special legislation on bail citing a pressing need for reforms.
What SC said:
- A 2-judge bench comprising of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice MM sundaresh issued certain clarifications to an older judgment delivered in 2021 on bail reform (Satender Kumar Antil vs CBI).
- SC highlighted referring to the state of jails in India, that arrest is a ‘draconian measure’ that needs to be used sparingly.
- Court has linked the idea of indiscriminate arrests to magistrates ignoring the rule of “bail, not jail’ to a colonial mindset.
Law on bail:
- There is no any separate dedicated law regarding bail, but some provisions related bail are in CrPC.
- CrPC doesn’t define bail, it only categorises the offences as bailable and non-bailable.
- In bailable offences, under section 436 bail is treated as a right hence, police or court whoever has custody is bound to release the accused following the furnishing of a bail bond with or without the surety.
- For non bailable offences, a magistrate has the discretion to decide whether to grant bail to the accused except in cases of the “offences punishable with death or life imprisonment”.
- There is a provision mandating the court granting bail in cases where accused is below 16, sick, or woman.
SC guidelines:
Bail Act: SC noted that despite the modifications over the time, CrPC continues to retain its pre independent form.
- Also stated that unwarranted arrests are curtailing the liberty. Hence, to streamline the process court asked the centre to consider introducing enactment of a “Bail Act”.
Indiscriminate arrests: the court emphasised that even for cognisable offences, arrest is not mandatory it should be necessitated.
Necessary grounds such as,
- to prevent committing any further offense, for proper investigation or to prevent tampering with the evidence.
- One can also be arrested to prevent such person from making threat, inducement to any person according to the facts, so as to dissuade him from disclosing said facts to either police or to the court.
- Also, arrest can be made when the person’s presence required to produce before the court and the same cannot be assured.
Bail application: Court emphasised that there need not be any insistence on separate bail application while considering application under section 88, 170, 204, and 209 of the code.
- These are the sections that deals with various stages of trail that a magistrate can decide on release of accused.
SC Direction to States: SC has directed sates and UTs for facilitating standing orders to comply with the orders avoid indiscriminate arrests.
- This will eventually look after unwarranted arrests and the clogging of applications before the courts.
UK law on bail:
- In UK, bail act of 1976 governs the procedure of bail granting.
- It aims to reduce the number of inmates to prevent clogging by recognising bail as general right.
- It works on the presumption that an accused should be given bail unless there is reason to refuse it.
INS Sindhudvaj
Context:
- The navy ‘s kilo class submarine INS Sindhudvaj is decommissioned from service at Visakhapatnam.
About INS Sindhudvaj:
- It was commissioned into the NAVY in June 1987. It served for 35years.
- INS sindhudvaj is one of the 10 kilo class submarines, which are acquired by India from Russia in period 1986-2000.
- INS Sindhudvaj is the only submarine to be awarded Chief of Naval Staff (CNS) rolling trophy for innovation by PM Modi.
NAVY’s subsurface fleet at present,
- 7 kilo class submarines,
- four German HDW submarines,
- four French scorpene submarines, and
- an indigenous nuclear ballistic missile submarine INS Arihant.
A new marine organism recorded in east coast of India
Context:
a new marine organism is recorded in rushikonda beach at Visakhapatnam.
About the organism:
- It is a polyclad flatworm Psuedoceros galanthesis. It is recorded for the first time in Andhra and East coast mainland.
- It is also the first record of the entire order of polycldida in the East coast.
- The flatworms usually seen in nearshore areas in tropical land and subtropical areas.
- prey: they’re predatory in nature and feed on marine organisms like sponges, ascidians, crabs and other smaller organisms.
- Role: their role is vital as predators in coral reefs and other shallow water marine eco systems.
- Physical features: it has body in blue in colour and it is about 3cm in length.
- They have two folds on either side which are called pseudo tentacles with around 12 eye spots on each fold that are used to sense light.
- General habitat: these can be generally found at rocky as well as intertidal regions.
Heat waves and wildfires
Context:
Europe is battling intense wildfires with countries like Spain, Greece and France struggling to stop the fires and contain the damage.
These countries are facing worst of Europe’s extraordinary heat wave that has seen temperatures rising to record highs.
Heatwave:
- Heatwave is a period of abnormally increased temperature more than normal maximum temperature that occurs during the summer season.
- As per World Metrological organisation (WMO), heatwave is defined as five or more consecutive days with daily maximum temperatures higher than that of the normal average maximum temperature by 50C or more.
Causes:
- Heatwaves are caused by a system of high pressure for two or more days in a region. During that period, air from upper levels of atmosphere is pulled down towards the ground resulting in compression of air and further increases the temperature.
- As a result of Climate change the global average temperatures have increased, this increase contributes to the increase in temperatures during heatwave.
Wildfires:
- Wild fire is defined as unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation.
- Wildfires are often caused by human activity or a natural phenomenon such as lightning. In more than half of the fires the it is unknown how it started.
- Wildfires fuelled by extremely dry conditions, drought like conditions and during high winds. In case of Europe these conditions were facilitated by the heatwave.
UPSC Civil Services Daily Current Affairs 18th July 2022
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