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Dear Reader,
In May 2022, India's Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with the UAE came into force. The Agreement was designed to improve market access, lower tariffs, simplify customs procedures and usher in rules-based competition. An initiative undertaken in good faith to augment and expand bilateral trade.
However, The Reporters' Collective finds that traders used a loophole in the Agreement to import gold at significantly lower tariffs, labelling it ‘platinum alloy’, resulting in India losing Rs.1,700 crore in revenue since 2022. The story, based on publicly available data and "internal government records", reveals how "bungling" by officials allowed importers to bypass the high import duty and restrictions on gold, resulting in a "surge in gold imports disguised as platinum.”
Two weeks ago, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India upheld the constitutionality of Section A of the Citizenship Act of 1955. The Court upheld the provision inserted in 1985 granting citizenship to anyone who entered Assam from Bangladesh before 25th March 1971 as enshrined in the ‘Assam Accord’ in 1985 — an agreement between the Indian government and groups protesting the “largescale migration of illegal foreigners” into the state.
While four judges, including the Chief Justice of India, upheld Section 6A, Justice J B Pardiwala recorded the lone dissent on the grounds of 'temporal unreasonableness' — 'rendered unreasonable due to the passage of time, even if it was constitutional and valid when enacted'. The Supreme Court Observer explains what temporal unreasonableness means and the history of its invocation in the past.
The coming year will see the 20th anniversary of the Right to Information Act (RTI). However, the reason for a celebration is absent in Jammu and Kashmir. With the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, all laws, at least 890 central ones, would have extended to Jammu and Kashmir by default, including the RTI. But, as Article 14 reports, they have not, in practice.
Despite the Supreme Court of India mandating in March 2023 that all states set up an RTI online portal within three months, Jammu and Kashmir is yet to do so. Ironically, the state was ranked at the top in the country for e-services in 2023, but that inexplicably does not include RTI in its portfolio. This absence means the filings, tracking, and responses of applications are physical, defying the Act's accent on transparency, timely information and accountability.
In Kerala, where water is seemingly plentiful, more than twenty-five houses in the Kozhikode district built under the 'LIFE Scheme'—to provide safe and dignified houses to the homeless in the state—have not had access to water for more than a year now. The provision for water through the Jal Jeevan Mission is stuck as land acquisition and the lack of three-phase electricity has hampered progress. TrueCopy Think reports from the Aduvattu area in the Mayoor Panchayat.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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