Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties
Why in news?
- The Centre has issued revised guidelines for mutual legal assistance in criminal matters with other nations as part of the government’s policy of zero tolerance for crime and its endeavour to fast track the dispensation of justice.
News summary
- India has Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties, MLAT with 42 countries and is signatory to various International Conventions for cooperation in criminal matters. Home Ministry is the designated central authority for the country.
- Under the MLAT, a country can request for obtaining evidence for criminal investigations and prosecutions. The evidence includes witness statements or the service of documents among others.
- Home Ministry said, by incorporating various legal and technological developments in recent years, it aims to make the documentation more compliant with international requirements.
Revised guidelines:
- The revised guidelines provide step-by-step guidance to the investigation agencies for drafting and processing letters rogatory or mutual legal assistance requests and service of summons, notices and other judicial documents.
- The guidelines have taken into account the concerns raised by various courts for prompt and timely responses in service of documents to person residing abroad.
- These revised guidelines have provision for service of documents to authorities of foreign country preferably within ten days of receipt of request in respect of offences committed against women and children.
Natural gas supplies in Northeast
Why in news?
- The Government has approved the Viability Gap Funding, VGF of 5 thousand, 559 crore rupees to Indradhanush Gas Grid Limited to build Natural Gas Pipeline Grid covering 8 North Eastern states.
- Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, CCEA approved the capital grant in New Delhi. This is second such funding by the government for the gas pipeline project.
News summary
- The total cost of the grid is 9 thousand 256 crore rupees and sanctioned VGF amount will cover 60 percent cost of the project.
- The 1,656-km pipeline will connect Guwahati in Assam to major cities in the region such as Itanagar, Dimapur, Kohima, Imphal, Aizawl, and Agartala.
- The Capital Grant will provide natural gas supplies to various types of consumers and would help in substituting liquid fuels.
- The government said that the pipeline grid would ensure reliability and uninterrupted natural gas supplies to the consumers which otherwise gets severely affected due to various reasons in this part of the country.
Goldilocks zone
Why in news?
- NASA reported the discovery of an Earth-size planet, named TOI 700 d, orbiting its star in the “habitable zone”.
News summary
- TOI 700 d was found by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, which it launched in 2018. Very few such Earth-size planets have been found so far, including some by NASA’s Kepler mission, and this one is the first such discovery by TESS.
- TOI 700 d measures 20% larger than Earth. It orbits its star once every 37 days and receives an amount of energy that is equivalent to 86% of the energy that the Sun provides to Earth.
- The star, TOI 700, is an “M dwarf” located just over 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado, is roughly 40% of our Sun’s mass and size, and has about half its surface temperature.
About:
- A habitable zone, also called the “Goldilocks zone”, is the area around a star where it is not too hot and not too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface of surrounding planets.
Ashfaqullah Khan
Why in news
- The Uttar Pradesh cabinet Tuesday approved a proposal to set aside Rs 234 crore for a zoological garden spread across 121 acres in Gorakhpur, to be named after the freedom fighter and revolutionary Shaheed Ashfaqullah Khan.
Who was Ashfaqullah Khan?
- Khan was a freedom fighter who, along with Ram Prasad Bismil, was sentenced to death for the Kakori train robbery, commonly referred to as the Kakori conspiracy of 1925.
- Khan was born on October 22, 1900, in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He grew up at a time when Mahatma Gandhi had launched the non-cooperation movement and urged Indians not to pay taxes to the government or co-operate with the British.
- Within about 1.5 years of the movement’s launch, in February 1922, the Chauri Chaura incident took place in Gorakhpur — a large number of non-cooperation protestors clashed with the police and set the police station on fire, killing roughly 22 policemen. Opposed to violence, Gandhi called off the movement.
Hindustan Socialist Republican Association:
- In the mid-1920s, Khan and Bismil went on to found the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), with the aim of winning freedom for the country through an armed revolution.