Daily News Mail - News of 18/04/2015

Kasturirangan report: Cabinet seeks exemption for villages and private lands

• The Cabinet on April 17 decided to recommend to the Centre to exempt the villages and private lands, — barring those in Reserved and Protected forests, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks —- from the jurisdiction of the proposed Ecologically Sensitive Areas under the Kasturirangan report on the conservation of Western Ghats. 
• Briefing presspersons after the Cabinet meeting, Law Minister T.B. Jayachandra said these villages and private lands were spread across 40 taluks in the Western Ghats. The recommendation of the Cabinet would be submitted to the Centre in the form of comments by April 30, he said.
• While the Cabinet had accepted the report’s recommendation for a complete ban on mining in the proposed ESAs, it favoured regulation of quarrying and sand activities. Similarly, it favoured “regulation” rather than a “ban” on expansion of townships and built-up area of individual buildings beyond prescribed size. It also decided to adhere to the norm of not allowing new thermal plants and expansion of existing ones in the ESA, he said.

Normal monsoon predicted

• The southwest monsoon this year will be normal, with many parts of north India expected to receive good rainfall while parts of south India may experience weak precipitation, Skymet, a private weather forecasting agency has predicted.
• The El-Nino is also unlikely to affect the monsoon as it its impact will reduce after summer. Monsoon is also expected to arrive on May 27 in Kerala, four days before its normal date.
• “There seems to be weakness in Tamil Nadu, Rayalseema, south interior Karnataka, east Madhya Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh. Good amounts of rainfall is expected in Punjab, Haryana, west Uttar Pradesh and over the west coast,” the forecasting agency said.
• It has forecast the monsoon at 102 per cent of the long period average (LPA) of 887 mm for the four-month period from June to September.

SC moved against making Sathasivam NHRC chief

• The Supreme Court will look into a petition alleging that the Centre is illegally considering the former Chief Justice of India and Kerala Governor, P. Sathasivam(40th CJI), as the sole candidate for chairperson of the National Human Right Commission.
• The post is due to fall vacant in May, with the exit of the incumbent, Justice K.G. Balakrishnan. The statute requires a former Chief Justice of India to hold it.
• The petition, filed by the Bar Association of India, was mentioned before a Bench led by Chief Justice H.L. Dattu(42nd CJI). “Let us see,” he responded to the request to take up the petition made by senior advocates S.P. Singh and Adish C. Aggarwala on April 17.
• The petition said the Centre had ignored “proper procedure” while considering Justice Sathasivam to lead the top human rights body. It said the Centre had already obtained the consent of Justice Sathasivam without considering the other eligible former Chief Justices of India, including Justice R.M. Lodha(41st CJI), Justice Altamas Kabir(39th CJI) and Justice S.H. Kapadia(38th CJI).
• It alleged that undue preference was being shown to one candidate, who, if selected, would bring to the fore a sense of conflict of interest as Justice Sathasivam is now part of the executive arm. “He is no longer eligible to be appointed NHRC Chairperson. It is submitted that one cannot associate with politics/politicians and still possess the purity of a judge...On the shift from the position of Governor to chairperson of the Commission, he will continue to be seen as a representative of the ruling political party. He will always owe a debt of gratitude to the government for having appointed him Governor,” the petition said.

P Sathasivam, Governor of Kerala and was 

40th Chief Justice of India

India is below Bhutan in broadband reach: TRAI

• India is ranked below Bhutan and Sri Lanka in terms of broadband penetration and the multi-layered structure involved in the decision making for the sector needs to be overhauled, telecom regulator TRAI said on April 17.
• “India ranks 125th in the world for fixed broadband penetration. Some of our neighbours such as Bhutan and Sri Lanka are ahead of us. We need to seriously think about it,” TRAI Chairman Rahul Khullar said while sharing details of recommendations on the subject of ‘Delivering Broadband Quickly’.
• To promote the use of fixed-line broadband, TRAI also proposed that the licence fee on the revenues earned from fixed line should be exempted for 5 years.
• In the wireless or mobile broadband segment, India is ranked at 113th with a penetration of 3.2 per 100 inhabitants.
• The regulator also suggested the need to revamp government bodies involved in decision making that impact spread of broadband including that of Wireless Planning Commission (WPC) — custodian of spectrum at Department of Telecom.
TRAI said WPC should be converted into an independent body by de-linking it from DoT and suggested that it could be converted into a statutory body reporting to Parliament or any other existing statutory body.
• The regulator has said that multi-layered structure for decision making, for National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN), was not suitable and structure needs immediate overhaul.
• NOFN project aims to spread broadband across 2.5 lakh village panchayats by 2016 but has missed its target of completing roll out in first 50,000 panchayats by March 2015.
• TRAI has also called for an audit of spectrum held by all the bodies.

National Optical Fibre Network

The National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) is a project initiated in 2011 and funded by Universal Service Obligation Fund to provide broadband connectivity to over two lakh (200,000) Gram panchayats of India at a cost of Rs.20,000 crore ($4 billion).Government of India has given approval of the project on 25-10-2011. The project provides internet access using existing optical fiber and extending it to the Gram panchayats. The project was intended to enable the government of India to provide e-services and e-applications nationally. A special purpose vehicle Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) was created as a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) under the Companies Act of 1956 for the execution of the project. The project will be funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) and was estimated to be completed by 2013.[1] The GPON order for BBNL to connect 200,000 villages is awarded to United Telecoms Limited (UTL).