GS Analyst
Daily Current Affairs

The Supreme Court is considering the issue of whether Muslim women can file petitions under Section 125 of the CrPC seeking maintenance from their former husbands, in light of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, following observations during a hearing on an appeal regarding maintenance payments.

Key-issues discussed

• The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986,enacted in the aftermath of the Shah Bano case judgment, does not say that a divorced Muslim woman cannot file a petition under Section 125 of the CrPC, 1973, seeking maintenance from her former husband.
• The Court reserved decision on the question as to which of these two laws would prevail.

Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986,

• The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986 Act ("Act") is a special law in the nature of beneficial legislation, which provides way more than what Section 125 CrPC contemplates.
• Besides maintenance, Section 3 of the Act also deals with mehr, dower and return of property.
• Under the Act, a "reasonable and fair" provision is also made for the divorced woman's entire life, but the same is not contemplated under Section 125 CrPC.
• Moreover, if the divorced woman has sufficient means, she cannot file for maintenance under Section 125 CrPC, however, that is the case with Section 3 of the Act.

The crux of the issue

• The crux of the issue lies in the case of Shah Bano Begum.
• The Supreme Court gave a historic verdict in the Mohamed Ahmed Khan vs Shah Bano Begum case in 1985, stating that Section 125 of the CrPC, viewed as a secular provision, applies to Muslim women as well.
• However, some considered the decision an attack on religious personal laws.
• The uproar resulted in the enactment of the Muslim Women Act, 1986, limiting the right to maintenance of Muslim women after divorce to 90 days.

The Army is converting its Headquarters Uttar Bharat (HQ UB) area into a full-fledged operational corps — a move that will shift its focus towards operations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) from its current responsibility of peacetime duties.

What is a corps?

• A corps is a military structure that includes elements of all arms and services, equipped with sufficient reserves for operations within its area of responsibility.
• Typically, a corps is organised to manage three divisions, though this can vary based on operational needs, with each division consisting of 15,000 to 18,000 soldiers.

About HQ UB

• Based in Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly, the HQ UB oversees peacetime activities and training facilities in Uttarakhand and western Uttar Pradesh, as well as the LAC sections adjacent to Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, known as the central theatre.
• Previously, the UB area had a single brigade and several scout battalions for patrolling key border regions.
• However, in response to recurring confrontations with Chinese forces at certain points along the LAC and a strategic emphasis on dominating the border, the formation was gradually upgraded and its combat capability increased by putting three independent brigades and an infantry division based in Uttarakhand under it.
• The formation is currently referred to as Combatised UB Area.
  • While a combatised area HQ has fighting elements, a traditional corps has additional artillery brigades, engineering brigades and other logistics components.

Impact of the move

• It will enhance its operational capabilities along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
• The newly reconstituted corps will have all the troops and equipment from other arms and services such as artillery, engineers and aviation, among others, under its direct command to successfully conduct operations in the central theatre.
• The establishment of this corps is expected to strengthen border infrastructure development, combat logistics, and serve as a centralised agency for addressing security challenges in the region.

The Centre had proposed to buy three pulses, maize and cotton from farmers at the minimum support price for five years. However, the farmers’ groups reject Centre’s MSP proposal.

What was the proposal?

• The Centre had offered that cooperative societies such as the National Cooperative Consumers Federation and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India will buy pulses – arhar, tur and urad – and maize from the farmers at a minimum support price for the next five years.
• It also proposed that the Cotton Corporation of India will buy cotton crops at minimum support price.

What farmers are seeking?

• They are primarily seeking a law guaranteeing a minimum support price for agricultural commodities and the implementation of the MS Swaminathan Commission Report’s wider recommendations on farming in India.

The Supreme Court passed an interim order directing that States and Union Territories must act as per the definition of "forest" laid down in the 1996 judgment in T.N Godavarman Thirumalpad v. Union of India while the process of identifying land recorded as forests in Government records is going on as per the 2023 amendment to Forest (Conservation) Act.

• The Supreme Court Bench was hearing a batch of writ petitions challenging the 2023 amendments to the Forest Conservation Act.
• The petitioners contended that the expansive definition of 'forest' given in the Godavarman judgment has been narrowed by Section 1A inserted by the 2023 amendment, according to which a land has to be either notified as a forest or specifically recorded as a forest in a government record to qualify as a "forest".
• Whereas, as per the Godavarman judgment, 'forest' has to be understood in terms of its dictionary meaning.

Key-highlights of SC’s Judgment

• The Court was told that the narrowing of the definition would leave out nearly 1.99 lakh square kilometers of forest land from the ambit of 'forest'.

• Out of the total of 713,000 sq km of forests in the country, an area of 197,159 sq km with tree cover (not forming part of declared forests in government records) would stand excluded from the recorded forest areas (RFA), if the 2023 law’s definition is taken into account, as compared to the definition in Godavarman ruling.
• For now, states and Union territories need to go by the dictionary definition of the word forest to determine whether any work can be approved on any land.

Classification of Forest

• The Forest Survey of India (FSI) classifies forest cover into 4 classes:
• Very Dense Forest:All lands with tree cover (including mangrove cover) of canopy density of 70% and above.
• Moderately dense forest:All lands with tree cover (including mangrove cover) of canopy density between 40% and 70%.
• Open forests:All lands with tree cover (including mangrove cover) of canopy density between 10% and 40%.
• Scrubs:All forest lands with poor tree growth mainly of small or stunted trees having canopy density less than 10%.
• Indian Forest Act of 1878 classifies Forests into Reserved, Protected, and Village Forests:
• Reserved forests: They constitute more than half of the total forest area of India. It has a certain degree of protection. They are protected by the respective state governments unlike wildlife sanctuaries and national parks which are supervised by the Government of India.
• Protected forests: They are of two types- Demarcated and Undemarcated. They have a limited amount of protection. These are looked after by the government but certain activitieslike hunting, grazing, or timber collecting are allowed to people who live on the boundaries of forests and are partially or wholly dependent on the forest resources for livelihood, provided they don’t cause severe damage to the forests.
• Village forests: They are protected and managed by village communitieswhich are assigned by the state governments.

What are the Issues With current Forest cover Data?

• Inclusion of Plantations in Forest Data: Loss of natural forests remains invisible due to inclusion of plantations, orchards, urban housings as dense forests.
  • The SFR 2021, for example, reports 12.37% dense forest by including random green patches.
• Compensatory Afforestation: The applicants for diverting forest land in a hilly or mountainous state with green cover covering more than two-thirds of its geographical area, or in a state/UT with forest cover covering more than one-third of its geographical area, will be able to take up compensatory afforestation in other states/UTs where the cover is less than 20%.
• Allows Private Plantations: The rules make a provision for private parties to cultivate plantations and sell them as land to companies who need to meet compensatory afforestation targets.
  • Prior to the updated rules, state bodies would forward documents to the FAC that would also include information on the status of whether the forest rights of locals in the area were settled.
• Allows building in Forests: Right to construct structures for bonafide purposes including forest protection measures and residential units (up to an area of 250 sq. meters as one-time relaxation).

Astronomers have discovered what may be the brightest object in the universe, a quasar with a black hole at its heart growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a sun a day.

Key-highlights of the findings:

• Scientists have spotted a quasar powered by the fastest growing black holeever discovered.
  • The black hole powering this distant quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than sun.
• The light from the celestial object travelled for more than 12bn years to reach Earth.
• The record-breaking quasar shines 500 trillion times brighter than sun.
• Though the quasar resembles a mere dot in images.
• The rotating disk around the quasar's black hole—the luminous swirling gas and other matter from gobbled-up stars—is like a cosmic hurricane.

Important scientific terms

• Black Hole: A black hole is formed when stars collapse, leading to a space in the universe with an escape velocity — the speed at which an object must travel to override a planet or an object’s gravitational force. The light cannot go out because the gravity inside a black hole is very strongas a result of a lot of matter being squeezed into a small space.
• Quasars: Quasars are tremendously active supermassive black holesmillions to billions of times more massive than Sun, usually residing at centers of galaxies. They devour matter drawn to them by their immense gravitational pull and unleash torrents of radiation including jets of high-energy particles, while a glowing disk of matter spins around them.

Personality in News

Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974)

The centennial anniversary of Satyendra Nath Bose's groundbreaking discovery in physics, which laid the foundation for quantum theory, is being celebrated, highlighting the pivotal contribution of an often-overlooked Indian scientist in reshaping the field of physics.

Satyendra Nath Bose:

• Satyendra Nath Bose was an outstanding Indian physicist specialising in quantum mechanics.
• He is of course most remembered for his excellent role played in the class of particles ‘bosons’,which were named after him by Paul Dirac to commemorate his work in the field.
• He is known for his work in Quantum Physics.
• He is famous for "Bose-Einstein Theory"and a kind of particle in an atom has been named after his name Boson.
• Bose adapted a lecture at the University of Dhaka on the theory of radiation and the ultraviolet catastrophe into a short article called “Planck’s Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta”and sent it to Albert Einstein.
• Einstein agreed with him, translated Bose’s paper “Planck’s Law and Hypothesis of Light Quanta” into German, and had it published in Zeitschrift für Physik under Bose’s name, in 1924.
• This formed the basis of the Bose-Einstein Statistics.
• His theoretical paper became one of the most important findings in quantum theory.

Recognition:

• In 1937, Rabindranath Tagore dedicated his only book on science, Visva–Parichay, to Satyendra Nath Bose.
• For his tremendous contribution to physics, Bose was honoured with the second-highest civilian award in the country, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954.
• He was also appointed as National Professor, the highest honour in India for scholars.
• Bose went on to serve as president of many scientific institutions, including the Indian Physical Society, National Institute of Science, Indian Science Congress and the Indian Statistical Institute.
• He was also an adviser to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and later became a Fellow of the Royal Society.
• In honor of Bose’s legacy, any particle that conforms with his statistics today is known as a Many scientific breakthroughs have come from his work including the discovery of the particle accelerator and the God particle.

Science & Technology

iOncology AI for cancer detection

To exploit the power of AI in healthcare, AIIMS, New Delhi, in collaboration with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Pune, has launched an AI platform, iOncology.ai, for facilitating early detection of Cancer.

About

• The AI system runs on deep learning models capable of analysing complex medical data with "unprecedented accuracy and efficiency".
• It was trained using a data set of 500,000 radiological and histopathological images from 1,500 cases of breast and ovarian cancers, the two most common types of cancer. 

Cancer

• Cancer is globally estimated to be the most fatal disease than those from cardiovascular (Lancet, 2019) in high-income countries (HICs), and middle-income countries (MICs).
• According to the Global Cancer Observatory (GLOBOCAN) estimates, there were 19.3 million incident cancer cases worldwide for the year 2020.
• India ranked third after China and the United States of America.

Science & Technology

Protein Structure

John Jumper, Breakthrough Prize laureate, has been developing novel methods to apply artificial intelligence and and machine learning to protein biology.

What are protein structure?

• Proteins are the end products of the decoding process that starts with the information in cellular DNA. 
• The building blocks of proteins are amino acids, which are small organic molecules that consist of an alpha (central) carbon atom linked to an amino group, a carboxyl group, a hydrogen atom, and a variable component called a side chain.
• Protein structure is the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms in an amino acid-chain molecule.