THE INDIAN EXPRESS:
- How do Foreigner’s Tribunals work?
These are a key player in the exercise to identify illegal immigrants in Assam, and in focus now ahead of the July 15 publication of the final National Register of Citizens (NRC). The Foreigners’ Tribunals — 100 existing and 200 more to be functional by September 1 — are quasi-judicial bodies meant to “furnish opinion on the question as to whether a person is or is not a foreigner within the meaning of Foreigners Act, 1946”. In 1964, the Centre passed the Foreigners’ (Tribunals) Order under provisions of Section 3 of the Act. The FTs get two kinds of cases: those against whom a “reference” has been made by border police, and those whose names in the electoral rolls have a D (Doubtful) against them.
Under what provision do Foreigners’ Tribunals pass ex parte orders?
Section 9 of the Foreigners Act says that “the onus of proving that such person is not a foreigner or is not a foreigner of such particular class or description, as the case may be, shall, not withstanding anything contained in the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, lie upon such person”.
Previously, under the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act, 1983, the onus of proving one’s nationality or otherwise lay on the complainant. In 2005 (Sarbananda Sonowal vs Union Of India), the Supreme Court struck down the IMDT Act and held that it “has created the biggest hurdle and is the main impediment or barrier in the identification and deportation of illegal migrants”.
What are the circumstances under which ex parte orders are passed?
In an affidavit in the Supreme Court in April this year, the Assam government said, “In foreigners’ cases, it is seen that when one comes to know that an investigation is being made regarding his citizenship status or that a reference has been made against him, he shifts to other unknown places and there remains no option before the Foreigners’ Tribunals but to decide the cases ex parte.” The affidavit adds that in some cases, the suspected foreigner “appears before the Foreigners’ Tribunals on receipt of the notice and even files written statements along with few copies of documents” but eventually stops appearing on later dates.
“However, it is seen that he remains absent for quite a long period and the cases are disposed of ex parte on the basis of the copies of documents and written statements filed by him. These are the few reasons for which large number of reference cases are disposed of ex parte by the Foreigners’ Tribunals,” the Assam government told the Supreme Court.
But why do the accused stop appearing?
Families of persons who have faced Foreigners’ Tribunals and their lawyers cited various reasons, a key one being that the notice often fails to reach the accused. “A notice is served, say, at the rented house of a construction labourer where has was staying when the border wing of the Assam Police had investigated him months earlier. The person does not stay there anymore and has moved to work at another construction site in another district, and he won’t get the notice and won’t know that he has to appear at the Tribunal,” said lawyer Aman Wadud, who has represented many alleged foreigners at Gauhati High Court and Foreigners’ Tribunals.
“In a vast majority of cases, police don’t serve the notice of the Tribunal upon the accused — as a result, these persons are declared foreigners without their knowledge,” Wadud alleged. “In some cases, despite receiving the notice, many don’t appear or stop after a few appearances because of poverty, illiteracy and complexity of the procedure. There are also cases where the accused didn’t appear because of wrong advice by lawyers.”
The government affidavit mentioned the issue of the way notices are served. It said that in many cases, the “proceedees evade and refuse to accept the notices and therefore the notices are served in the substituted manner as provided”. “On receipt of the report of such service submitted by the process server, the cases are disposed of ex parte,” it said.
Rule 3A of the Foreigners’ (Tribunal) Order, 1964, says that if a Tribunal has passed an ex parte order and if the person has “sufficient cause” for non-appearance, the person has to file an application within 30 days of the order. If that happens, the FT member can set aside the ex parte order and decide the case accordingly. This allows FT members to decline to accept an application if filed after 30 days. Lawyers also argue that if an ex parte order has been passed, it is highly unlikely that the person will get to know of it within 30 days.
Can an accused contest an ex parte order?
The government affidavit said: “The said order may be reviewed by the Foreigners’ Tribunal if sufficient reasons are shown by the proceedee for his absence or for having no knowledge about the cases, within the absence or for having no knowledge about such order.”
The provision for review derives from CrPC Order 9 Rule 13, which says that if one satisfies the court that the summons was not duly served, or that one was prevented by any sufficient cause from appearing when the suit was called on for hearing, the court can pass an order setting aside the ex parte order.
Not many lawyers, however, use this provision, according to the former Tribunal member. A Guwahati-based lawyer said many lawyers do not apply for a review because the accused has to appear before the Tribunal to file his appeal, and “if the order is not set aside that day, then he or she will be arrested”. Because of the risk of arrest, some lawyers, in fact, advise their clients to not appear on the final day of their case.
What happens if an exparte order does not come up for review, or a review fails?
If police can track the person after the order, he or she will be arrested and put into a detention camp. If not, the person will be an ‘untraced foreigner’. Many ‘declared foreigners’ appeal in the High Court and then the Supreme Court against an order by the FT. There are many in Assam’s six detention camps — as a result of both ex parte and contested orders —whose appeals are pending in higher courts.
- What the change of power in Greece signals?
Sunday’s national elections have ended Alexis Tsipras’ tenure as the prime minister of Greece. The firebrand leader of the left-wing Syriza (an acronym for The Coalition of the Radical Left) party conceded defeat after Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ centre-right New Democracy party won a resounding mandate, cornering nearly 40 per cent of the vote and reaching a comfortable majority of 158 seats in the 300-seat strong house. Tsipras, who came to power in 2015, half expected electoral losses after the setback in the European Parliament elections in May, and advanced the national elections due in October in a bid to minimise damage. However, his successor has a tough road ahead as the problems plaguing Greece have no easy solutions.
Why did Syriza lose?
In many ways, the party’s performance was intrinsically linked to the declining appeal of its charismatic leader, Tsipras. Although it is true that under his leadership, Greece has slowly stepped back from the brink of a grave financial crisis, yet, over the years, Tsipras steadily moved away from his radical beginnings – including holding a referendum to ask whether Greeks wanted to move out of the eurozone. During his tenure, he moved closer to the political centre inside the country and became closely aligned to the same eurozone countries and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund that he opposed during his mercurial rise four years ago. In the end, it was his core constituency of voters that seem to have abandoned him as they grew disenchanted and impatient with his rule.
What were the key issues in the election?
The first major issue is the poor health of the Greek economy. The onerous demands placed by the bailout provided by the IMF and eurozone countries has had a crippling effect on government spending. Each year there have been cuts in government spending adversely affecting pensions and healthcare benefits etc. On top of that, the government has also slapped high taxes – both on income and property. By itself, an economic growth rate of 2 per cent has not been enough to generate enough jobs and income and alleviate the misery even as taxation has broken the back of the middle class and businesses. Predictably, unemployment has soared to 18 per cent — an unusually high figure for a eurozone economy.
What has exacerbated the discontent among Greeks already reeling under a decade-long economic distress has been the issue of hundreds of thousands of migrants coming into the country from Syria and other bordering nations. The country has been increasingly divided over how to treat the immigrants especially when Greeks themselves do not have access to basic healthcare and living conditions.
Does the new PM have the answers?
Not really. Mitsotakis, who is the son of a former Greek PM, and has been educated in Harvard and Stanford, seems to have benefited from the voter’s anger against Tsipras. As a personality, the understated and soft-spoken Mitsotakis is quite different from his predecessor. However, much like his predecessor who moved towards the political centre from the left, Mitsotakis has been steadily moving towards the centre from the right. Many of views do not exactly mirror those of other right-wing leaders. For instance, he reportedly supports LGBT rights and a less harsh approach on migration. Retaining the support of those who have moved towards him, either away from the far-right Golden Dawn party or from the centre-left Syriza, would be a key challenge.
Similarly, on the economy, although Mitsotakis has come to power promising lower taxes and more prosperity, yet given the fact that Greece is obligated to stringent fiscal limits, which, in turn, requires the government to limit its spending and boost its revenues, there is very little that Mitsotakis can do to turn things around in a hurry.
- Where to plant a trillion of trees to save the planet
Restoration of forests has long been seen as a potential measure to combat climate change. The latest special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that an increase of 1 billion hectares of forest will be necessary to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2050. What has so far been unclear, however, is how much of this tree cover might be actually possible in the existing conditions on the planet.
Now, researchers have quantified how much land around the world is available for reforestation, as well as the extent of carbon emissions these would prevent from being released into the atmosphere. Trees, which absorb carbon dioxide, are a natural sink for the gas emitted into the atmosphere. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, trees absorb about 25% of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, while the oceans absorb another 25%. The half that remains in the atmosphere contributes to global warming.
How they worked it out
The study, by researchers with the Crowther Lab of ETH Zurich university, has been published in the journal Science. On the basis of nearly 80,000 images from around the world, they calculated that around 0.9 billion hectares of land would be suitable for reforestation. “We are trying to restore a trillion trees,” Thomas Crowther, co-author of the paper and founder of the Crowther Lab, told The Indian Express by email. If an area of 0.9 billion hectares is indeed reforested, the researchers calculated, it could ultimately capture two-thirds of human-made carbon emissions.
“One aspect was of particular importance to us as we did the calculations: we excluded cities or agricultural areas from the total restoration potential as these areas are needed for human life,” lead author Jean-François Bastin said in a statement.
Earth’s continuous tree cover is currently 2.8 billion hectares, and the researchers calculated that the land available could support 4.4 billion hectares, or an additional 1.6 billion hectares. Out of this, 0.9 billion hectares — an area the size of the US — fulfil the criterion of not being used by humans, according to the paper.
These new forests, once mature, could store 205 billion tonnes of carbon, the researchers calculated. That is about two-thirds of the 300 billion tonnes of carbon that has been released into the atmosphere as a result of human activity since the industrial age.
“But we must act quickly, as new forests will take decades to mature and achieve their full potential as a source of natural carbon storage,” Crowther said.
Where’s that land
In India, there is room for an estimated 9.93 million extra hectares of forest, Crowther told The Indian Express. India’s existing forest cover makes up 7,08,273 sq km (about 70.83 million hectares) and tree cover another 93,815 sq km (9.38 million hectares), according to the Environment and Forest Ministry’s ‘State of Forest Report 2017’.
The study found that the six countries with the greatest reforestation potential are Russia (151 million hectares); the US (103 million hectares); Canada (78.4 million hectares); Australia (58 million hectares); Brazil (49.7 million hectares); and China (40.2 million hectares).
Criticism
In a post on the website of Legal Planet, a joint initiative of University of California’s Berkeley and Los Angeles law faculties, Jesse Reynolds of UCLA described the new research as “misleading, if not false, as well as potentially dangerous”.
Among various arguments, Reynolds noted that the authors do not consider how such reforestation might come about when the land proposed to be reforested is owned and managed by many private persons, companies, nongovernmental organisations, and governments. Reynolds also found the authors’ estimate of carbon removal per area “remarkably high”.
He said the research will likely be used to “argue that we can rely more on reforestation to reduce climate change, potentially displacing efforts toward other responses [including] emission cuts”.
- 2 in 3 schools have electricity; 5 North east states in bottom 10:
Less than two-thirds (63.14%) of the country’s schools have electricity connections, according to data from the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) for 2017-18 (provisional) tabled in Lok Sabha on Monday.
All schools in three Union Territories — Chandigarh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Lakshadweep — have a connection, followed by the states and UTs of Delhi (99.93%), Gujarat (99.91%), Puducherry, Tamil Nadu (99.55%), Punjab (99.55%), Goa (99.54%) and Daman & Diu (98.6%). At the other extreme are three Northeastern states — Assam (24.28%), Meghalaya (26.34%) and Tripura (31.11%). Two other Northeastern states — Arunachal Pradesh (37.5%) and Manipur (42.08%) — are in the bottom 10 (see bar graph).
The ministry reply said that under the erstwhile Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) until 2017-18 and the present Samagra Shiksha (effective from 2018-19), 1,95,519 government elementary schools have been provided internal electrification until March 2019. The ministry provided state-wise figures for the last three years.
THE HINDU
- India needs to anticipate the promising impact of the African continental Free Trade Area:
The 12th Extra-Ordinary Summit of the African Union (AU) which concluded on July 8 at Niamey, the capital of the Niger Republic, saw 54 of 55 of its member states signing the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) for goods and services. Of these countries, 27 have already ratified it. Actual cross-border free trade could start by July 2020 with an elimination of custom duties on 90% of the tariff-lines. If taken to its logical conclusion, this audacious project would eventually create an African Common Market of 1.2 billion people and a GDP of over $3.4 billion — the metrics are comparable to India’s. The AfCFTA would be world’s largest FTA, and in a world dependent on African markets and commodities, it would have global impact.
Hurdles and optimism
However, there are three main reasons to be sceptical about the viability of the AfCFTA. First, the African Union (founded as the Organisation of African Unity in 1963) has been largely ineffective in dealing with the continent’s myriad problems such as decolonisation, underdevelopment, Islamic terrorism and the Arab Spring. The AU’s grand plans, including the Muammar Qadhafi-funded Africa Unity project, have been spectacular flops. It is, therefore, natural to take the AfCFTA, the AU’s most ambitious project so far, with a ladleful of salt. Second, serious political, organisational and logistical challenges to the AfCFTA notwithstanding, the national economies in Africa are generally weak with a low manufacturing base. They also lack competitiveness and mutual complementarity. Only a sixth of Africa’s current total trade is within the continent. Third, the AfCFTA seems to be countercyclical to the ongoing global protectionist trends as seen in the U.S.-China trade conflict, Brexit and the stalemates at the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. World trade is likely to grow only by 2.6% in 2019, a quarter of last year’s figure. Commodity prices are stagnant and globalisation is often being reversed. With Africa accounting for only 3% of global trade, can the AfCFTA defy the contrarian global tendencies?
Still, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic. Given the strong global headwinds including a cooling Chinese ardour for Africa, greater collective self-reliance through African economic integration makes eminent sense. Further, the AfCFTA can build upon the experience of the continent’s five regional economic blocks. While the AU Commission is not famous for efficient planning, it has prepared an extensive road map towards the AfCFTA with preliminary work on steps such as incremental tariff reduction, elimination of non-tariff barriers, supply chains and dispute settlement. In December 2018, it organised the first Intra-African Trade Fair in Cairo with 1,086 exhibitors signing $32 billion in business deals. A new breed of African transnational corporations such as Dangote, MTN, Ecobank and Jumia have continental ambitions. Indeed, the logistical and financial networks across the continent are poor and customs formalities are foreboding, but these can be eventually overcome with stronger political will. Moreover, vigorous “informal” trade across porous national borders is already a fact of African life.
Thus, by adopting the AfCFTA, African leaders are only following the economic logic. Looking into the future, a recent UN projection showed that nearly half the world’s population growth between now and 2050 would come from sub-Saharan Africa, the population of which would double to nearly two billion. This surge in consumer base would make the proposed AfCFTA even more important.
From the Indian angle
Africa is already an important economic partner for India with total annual merchandise trade estimated at $70 billion or nearly a tenth of our global trade. India is Africa’s third largest trading partner. While India’s global exports have been largely stagnant, those to Africa have surged. For instance, exports to Nigeria in 2018-19 grew by over 33% over the previous year. Africa still has unfulfilled demand for Indian commodities, especially foodstuff, finished products (automobiles, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods) and services such as IT/IT-Enabled Service, health care and education, skilling, expertise in management and banking, financial services and insurance.
India needs to anticipate the AfCFTA’s likely impact on its interests and try to influence and leverage it to enhance India-African economic ties. In principle, African economies becoming more formalised and transparent would be in India’s interest. While local manufactured items and services may ultimately compete with Indian exports, Indian firms can co-produce them in Africa. If handled in a proactive manner, the AfCFTA is likely to open new opportunities for Indian stakeholders in fast-moving consumer goods manufacturing, connectivity projects and the creation of a financial backbone. India donated $15 million to Niger to fund the Niamey AU Summit. As the next step, New Delhi can help the AU Commission prepare the requisite architecture, such as common external tariffs, competition policy, intellectual property rights, and natural persons’ movement. It can also identify various African transnational corporations which are destined to play a greater role in a future continental common market and engage with them strategically. The cross-linkages of a three million strong Indian diaspora spread across Africa can also be very valuable.
Finally, once the AfCFTA is accepted as beneficial game changer, the African elite could perhaps contemplate crossing another Rubicon: an India-African FTA.
Before Africa was “discovered” by the West, it had a thriving overland trade. Large camel caravans ferried commodities such as ivory, gold, mineral salt, precious stones and slaves across prosperous trading centres such as Timbuktu, Ghana, Kano, Burnu, Agadez, Edo, Zinder, Ghat, Addis Ababa, Dar es Salaam and Cairo. Subsequent colonialism and mercantilism destroyed internal trade routes, replacing them with an ecosystem in which Africans had better links with their foreign “mentors” than among themselves. By the AfCFTA, the Africans are only trying to correct this historic distortion.