Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: PIL
Mains level: Issues with PIL
A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petitioner in the Supreme Court barely escaped having to pay ₹18 lakh for indulging in a “luxury litigation”.
What is the news?
- A Supreme Court Bench of Justice B.R. Gavai and Hima Kohli initially asked the litigant to pay ₹18 lakh, that is, ₹1 lakh for every one of the 18 minutes the case took up.
- However, the court later, in its order, slashed the amount to ₹2 lakh on the request of the litigant’s counsel.
Why did the apex court got disgusted?
- The bench criticized the highly derogatory practice of filing frivolous petitions encroaching valuable judicial time.
- This time can otherwise be utilised for addressing genuine concerns.
What is Public Interest Litigation (PIL)?
- PIL refers to litigation undertaken to secure public interest and demonstrates the availability of justice to socially-disadvantaged parties.
- It was introduced by Justice P. N. Bhagwati in 1979.
- It is the chief instrument through which judicial activism has flourished in India.
- It is suited to the principles enshrined in Article 39A[a] of the Constitution to protect and deliver prompt social justice with the help of law.
How was it introduced?
- PIL is a relaxation on the traditional rule of locus standi.
- Before 1980s the judiciary and the Supreme Court of India entertained litigation only from parties affected directly or indirectly by the defendant.
- It heard and decided cases only under its original and appellate jurisdictions.
- However, the Supreme Court began permitting cases on the grounds of PIL, which means that even people who are not directly involved in the case may bring matters of public interest to the court.
- It is the court’s privilege to entertain the application for the PIL.
Filing a PIL
Any citizen can file a public case by filing a petition:
- Under Art 32 of the Indian Constitution, in the Supreme Court
- Under Art 226 of the Indian Constitution, in the High Court
- Under 133 of the Criminal Procedure Code, in a Magistrate’s Court
Parties against whom PILs can be filed
- A PIL may be filed against state government, central government, municipal authority, private party.
- Also, private person may be included in PIL as ‘Respondent’, after concerned of state authority.
- g. a private factory in Mumbai which is causing pollution then PIL can be filed against the government of Mumbai, state pollution central board including that private factory of Mumbai.
Importance of PIL
- PIL gives a wider description to the fundamental rights to equality, life and personality, which is guaranteed under part III of the Constitution of India.
- It also functions as an effective instrument for changes in the society or social welfare.
- Through PIL, any public or person can seek remedy on behalf of the oppressed class by introducing a PIL.
Issues with PIL
- Off late, PILs have become a tool for publicity.
- People file frivolous petitions which result in the wastage of time of the courts.
- People have used them with a political agenda as well.
- They unnecessarily burden the judiciary.
- Even if the petition is eventually dismissed, the courts spend time and effort on them before dismissing them.
How do frivolous petitions waste time?
- At present, only judges have the power to dismiss a petition.
- The Registry of the SC or HC only ensures that the technical requirements of filing a petition are fulfilled.
- As a result of which petitions are admitted to the court irrespective of the merits of the case.
Way forward: Preventing frivolous PILs
The Supreme Court had issued eight directions in its Balwant Singh Chaufal Judgment to help constitutional courts separate genuine PIL petitions from the barmy ones:
- It had asked every High Court to frame its own rules to encourage bona fide PIL petitions and curb the motivated ones
- Verifying the credentials of the petitioner before entertaining the plea
- Checking the correctness of the contents
- Ensuring the petition involves issues of “larger public interest, gravity and urgency” which requires priority
- Ensuring there is no personal gain, or oblique motive behind the PIL
- Ensuring that it is aimed at redressal of genuine public harm or public injury
Conclusion
- PIL petitions have had a beneficial effect on the Indian jurisprudence and has alleviated the conditions of the citizens in general.
- Such petitions bring justice to people who are handicapped by ignorance, indigence, illiteracy.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
Mains level: E-waste management
Attero Recycling, one of India’s largest electronic waste management companies, is set to invest close to $1 billion in expanding their electronic waste recycling facilities in India.
E-waste Management: A tricky task
- E-waste management is a complicated process given the multitude of actors that are involved in the process.
- The major stakeholders in the value chain include importers, producers/manufacturers, retailers (businesses/government/others), consumers (individual households, businesses, government and others), traders, scrap dealers, dissemblers/dismantlers and recyclers.
- To critically assess each in the different stages of processing, it is important to understand the e-waste value chain.
- The process involves four stages: generation, collection, segregation and treatment/disposal.
India’s regulatory ecosystem
- Indian electronics sector boomed in the last decade.
- Increased production and penetration of imported electronics items led to an accelerated e-waste generation that necessitated regulatory control over the sector.
- India has Electronic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2011 in place since . Its scope was expanded in 2016 and 2018 through amendments.
Provisions of the 2011 Rules
- To streamline e-waste management, the Government introduced Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) whereby producers were required to collect and recycle electronic items.
- Since manufacturers were incurring the disposal cost, their designs would incorporate less toxic and easily recyclable materials, thereby reducing input material requirements.
Inherent flaws in Implementation
- Recycling: Less than five percent of the waste is treated through formal recycling facilities.
- Informal sector: The rest is handled by the informal sector with very little enforcement of environmental and occupational safety norms.
- Weak Regulations: A deeper analysis revealed that the EPR regulations in India were not quantified through collection or recycling targets as in other countries with better implementation framework and mechanisms.
- Lack of incentivization: In the absence of targets, producers had little incentive to ensure the collection of their used products.
Current scenario and issues in e-waste recycling
- Crude and Scrappage: As of today, some 95% of e-waste is managed by the informal sector which operates under inferior working conditions and relies on crude techniques for dismantling and recycling.
- Infrastructure lacunae: Another important issue is the lack of sufficient metal processing infrastructure which is why recyclers have to export materials to global smelters.
- Price competencies: As aggregators are mostly informal, they demand up-front cash payments.
- Bloomed informal network: The informal network is well-established and rests on social capital ties that PROs have yet to establish and are hence insulated from reaching the viable number of aggregators.
- Policy failure: Policy changes have tried repeatedly to formalize the sector, but issues of implementation persist on the ground.
Way forward
- Effective design: Since India is highly deficient in precious mineral resources, there is a need for a well-designed, robust and regulated e-waste recovery regime that would generate jobs and wealth.
- Consumer responsibility: The consumers must responsibly consume the product for its useful life and then weigh between the chances of repair or disposal with utmost consciousness towards the environment.
- Recyclable products: On the supply side, e-waste can be reduced when producers design electronic products that are safer, and more durable, repairable and recyclable.
- Reuse: Manufacturers must reuse the recyclable materials and not mine rare elements unnecessarily to meet new production.
- Commercial recycling: Rather than hoping that informal recyclers become formal it would be more feasible for companies and the state to design programs ensure e-waste easily makes its way to proper recyclers.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: ESZ
Mains level: Read the attached story
The Supreme Court has directed that every protected forest, national park and wildlife sanctuary across the country should have a mandatory eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) of a minimum one km starting from their demarcated boundaries.
Why such move?
- The purpose of declaring ESZs around national parks, forests and sanctuaries is to create some kind of a “shock absorber” for the protected areas.
- These zones would act as a transition zone from areas of high protection to those involving lesser protection.
What are the Eco-sensitive Zones (ESZs)?
- Eco-Sensitive Zones (ESZs) or Ecologically Fragile Areas (EFAs) are areas notified by the MoEFCC around Protected Areas, National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries.
- The purpose of declaring ESZs is to create some kind of “shock absorbers” to the protected areas by regulating and managing the activities around such areas.
- They also act as a transition zone from areas of high protection to areas involving lesser protection.
How are they demarcated?
- The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986 does not mention the word “Eco-Sensitive Zones”.
- However, Section 3(2)(v) of the Act, says that Central Government can restrict areas in which any industries, operations or processes or class of industries, operations or processes shall be carried out or shall not, subject to certain safeguards.
- Besides Rule 5(1) of the Environment (Protection) Rules, 1986 states that central government can prohibit or restrict the location of industries and carrying on certain operations or processes on the basis of certain considerations.
- The same criteria have been used by the government to declare No Development Zones (NDZs).
Defining its boundaries
- An ESZ could go up to 10 kilometres around a protected area as provided in the Wildlife Conservation Strategy, 2002.
- Moreover, in the case where sensitive corridors, connectivity and ecologically important patches, crucial for landscape linkage, are beyond 10 km width, these should be included in the ESZs.
- Further, even in the context of a particular Protected Area, the distribution of an area of ESZ and the extent of regulation may not be uniform all around and it could be of variable width and extent.
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Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: D2M Technology
Mains level: Telecom sector reforms
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and India’s public service broadcaster Prasar Bharati are exploring ‘direct-to-mobile’ (D2M) broadcasting.
What is D2M Technology?
- The technology is based on the convergence of broadband and broadcast, using which mobile phones can receive terrestrial digital TV.
- It would be similar to how people listen to FM radio on their phones, where a receiver within the phone can tap into radio frequencies.
- Using D2M, multimedia content can also be beamed to phones directly.
Benefits of D2M
- It allows broadcasting video and other forms of multimedia content directly to mobile phones, without needing an active internet connection.
- It promises to improve consumption of broadband and utilisation of spectrum.
Why need D2M?
- The idea behind the technology is that it can possibly be used to directly broadcast content related to citizen-centric information.
- It can be further used to counter fake news, issue emergency alerts and offer assistance in disaster management, among other things.
- Apart from that, it can be used to broadcast live news, sports etc. on mobile phones.
- More so, the content should stream without any buffering whatsoever while not consuming any internet data.
What could be the consumer and business impact of this?
- For consumers, a technology like this would mean that they would be able to access multimedia content from Video on Demand (VoD) or Over The Top (OTT) content platforms.
- This will be without having to exhaust their mobile data, and more importantly, at a nominal rate.
- The technology will also allow people from rural areas, with limited or no internet access, to watch video content.
- For businesses, one of the key benefits of the technology is that it can enable telecom service providers to offload video traffic from their mobile network onto the broadcast network.
- It thus helps them to decongest valuable mobile spectrum.
- This will also improve usage of mobile spectrum and free up bandwidth which will help reduce call drops, increase data speeds etc.
What is the government doing to facilitate D2M technology?
- The DoT has set up a committee to study the feasibility of a spectrum band for offering broadcast services directly to users’ smartphones.
- Band 526-582 MHz is envisaged to work in coordination with both mobile and broadcast services.
- DoT has set up a committee to study this band.
- At the moment, this band is used by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting across the country for TV transmitters.
What are the possible challenges to the technology’s rollout?
- Bringing key stakeholders like mobile operators onboard will be the biggest challenge in launching D2M technology on a wide scale.
- A mass roll out of the technology will entail changes in infrastructure and some regulatory changes.
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