Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill 2012

Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill 2012

The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill has been cleared by Loksabha. It would be tabled in Rajyasabha in budget session. It makes it imperative for us to study this bill in detail.  This bill tries to lay down enforceable standards of conduct for judges. It also requires judges to declare details of their and their family members' assets and liabilities.  Importantly, it creates mechanisms to allow any person to complain against judges on grounds of misbehaviour or incapacity was introduced in the Lok Sabha last year with amendments.

History of Bill

The first judicial accountability bill was tabled at Cabinet meeting in 2010 when it was known as “The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010. The Bill provided for:

1.      A mechanism for enquiring into complaints against the Judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts

2.      Laying down judicial standards

3.      Declaration of the assets and liabilities of  the Judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts

Implications of Bill

The Bill seeks to replace the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 while retaining its basic features. 
The enactment of the Bill will address the growing concerns regarding the need to ensure greater accountability of the higher judiciary by bringing in more transparency and would further strengthen the credibility and independence of the judiciary.

Revised Bill

Fresh amendments include:

• Restraining judges from making "unwarranted comments" against conduct of any Constitutional authority.
• According to the revised bill, in case any judge who makes oral comments against other constitutional authorities and individuals, would render himself/ herself liable for "judicial misconduct."
• The Bill seeks to set up a mechanism to enquire into complaints against judges of the Supreme Court or High Courts. It was aimed at striking a “balance” between maximising judicial independence and laying down accountability at the same time for members of the higher judiciary. At present there is no legal provision for dealing with complaints filed by the public against the Judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts.

 A National Level Oversight Committee which shall be a five member committee headed by a retired Chief Justice of India has been provided by the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill. The revised bill contains 8 chapters and 59 clauses. The chapters included in this bill are:

1. Introduction-Preliminary
2.  Judicial standards to be followed by judges.
3.  Declaration of assets and liabilities by judges.
4. Declaration of assets and liabilities by judges
5. Scrutiny panel.
6. Oversight committee and Investigative committee their staffing and other clauses
7. Procedure for presentation of an address for removal of a judge.
8. Offences and penalties.

Highlights of the Bill are:  The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010 requires judges to declare their assets, lays down judicial standards, and establishes processes for removal of judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts. Judges will be required to declare their assets and liabilities, and also that of their spouse and children. The Bill establishes the National Judicial Oversight Committee, the Complaints Scrutiny Panel and an investigation committee.  Any person can make a complaint against a judge to the Oversight Committee on grounds of ‘misbehaviour’. A motion for removal of a judge on grounds of misbehaviour can also be moved in Parliament.  Such a motion will be referred for further inquiry to the Oversight Committee. Complaints and inquiries against judges will be confidential and frivolous complaints will be penalised. The Oversight Committee may issue advisories or warnings to judges, and also recommend their removal to the President. Controversies Surrounding the Bill The main opposition to this bill is that it may encroach upon the right of courts to comprehend the constitution because of the so-called gag clause, which prevents judges from making “unwarranted” oral observations against constitutional authorities, and has raised judicial hackles. Questions have been raised about the propriety, indeed constitutionality, of having non-judicial members in the Oversight Committee, which deals with complaints about judges. Doubts have been raised about the effectiveness of Scrutiny Panels, which vet and filter out frivolous complaints, peopled by members of the same court as the one complained about.

Economics Basics: Part 3 : FOREX FLUCTUATION CRISIS

Dear all, as explained in the last post (http://sscprep.blogspot.in/2012/09/economics-basics-part-2-rupee-vs-dollar.html) the fluctuation of currency with respect to foreign currency has deep and profound effect on the economy of a country. I would explain it by certain recent examples as we experienced.

Appreciation of Home Currency Against Foreign Currency

Now, as you know appreciation causes the currency to be dearer and expensive. If home currency in our case its rupee appreciates against foreign say dollar then what would it have effect on two important entities:

Let current dollar price is 1$=50 rupees

1. On exporters: Exporters export their lot in dollars. Say I export 1 kg of my material at 1$. I am earning 50 rupees after selling my lot. Now say rupee appreciates against dollar thus 1 dollar would buy less rupee. Say now  1$ = Rs45 after appreciation of rupee. If I sell my lot after appreciation of  rupee I am losing 5 Rs. had it not appreciated. And thus my profit margin has decreased if I incur same amount of cost in procuring that material.

Thus, appreciation of currency causes loss to exporters. Thus appreciation of rupee causes loss to TCS, Infosys that outsource and thus technically export services.  

2. On Importers: Importers import their lot and pay money in forign currency generally dollar. Say I am importing 1 Litre of crude oil at 1$. I am paying 50 rupees for a litre. Now if Rupee appreciates then I am paying 45 rupees and not 50. Thus I am saving Rs. 5. This would increase my profit margin if I sell the material in India at same price as before.

Thus, appreciation of currency gives profit to importers.Thus appreciation of rupee gives respite to Oil Marketing companies like IOCL,GAIL etc.

Depreciation of Home Currency Against Foreign Currency

Now, as you know Depreciation causes the currency to become cheaper. If home currency in our case its rupee depreciates against foreign say dollar then what would it have effect on two important entities:

Let current dollar price is 1$=50 rupees

1. On exporters: Exporters export their lot in dollars. Say I export 1 kg of my material at 1$. I am earning 50 rupees after selling my lot. Now say rupee depreciates against dollar that is becomes cheaper and thus 1 dollar would buy more rupee. Say now  1$ = Rs55 after depreciation of rupee. If I sell my lot after Depreciation of rupee I am gaining 5 Rs. And thus my profit margin has increased if I incur same amount of cost in procuring that material.

Thus, depreciation of currency benefits exporters. Thus Depreciation of rupee causes benefit to TCS, Infosys that outsource and thus technically export services.  

2. On Importers: Importers import their lot and pay money in foreign currency generally dollar. Say I am importing 1 Litre of crude oil at 1$. I am paying 50 rupees for a litre. Now if Rupee depreciates then I am paying 55 rupees and not 50. Thus I am losing Rs. 5. This would decrease my profit margin if I sell the material in India at same price as before.

Thus, Depreciation of currency makes losses to importers. Thus, depreciation of rupee gives troubles to Oil Marketing companies like IOCL,GAIL etc.

This explains even when the price of crude oil was decreasing still the oil companies were making loss as they were selling oil at subsidized rates but giving more money in terms of rupee thus making losses.

Economics Basics: Part 2 : Rupee Vs Dollar

There, there. Petrol prices are going to come down by 1 or 2 rupees. That's good isn't it. But have you ever wondered why there is so much fluctuation in the price of the petroleum products. Well, simple reason as i discussed in last post (http://sscprep.blogspot.in/2012/09/economics-concepts-basics-part-1.html) its the same demand supply imbalance. As demand decreases price decreases and vice-versa is also true. Similarly if supply increases price goes down while it goes up if supply decreases. Common example the vegetables like carrot, fruits like mango which are cheap in winter and summer respectively and although you can get them anytime in the year their prices are higher on other occasions as supply is very little.

Applying this concept on currency, the higher the demand for any currency more expensive and dearer would it become and the lower the demand more cheap it will be. Thus when people start asking for Dollars it becomes dearer and rupee goes down and if demand for rupee is high the rupee would rally against dollar as dollar is not in demand.

Appreciation of currency: It means that the currency is in demand and thus would be dearer and expensive.So, if rupee appreciates against dollar that means rupee has increased and thus there would be less rupee in 1 dollar.

Depreciation of currency: It means that currency is losing and is not in much demand thus is cheaper. SO, if rupee depreciates against dollar it means now 1 dollar would buy you more rupees.

Lets take a simple example. Let today 1$ = Rs. 50.

Case 1 :Now if rupee appreciates by 1% it means that rupee has gained and thus dollar would be cheaper and hence it would buy less no. of rupees i.e. 1% less. So now 1$ =Rs. 49.50

Case 2 :Now if rupee depreciates by 1% it means rupee lost and thus 1 $ would buy more rupees i.e. 1% more. So now 1$ = Rs. 50.5

Same can happen with any currency, and thus the rates of exchange are based on the demand for that currency in that market. Now $ is generally used as standard as it is the most respected currency and is one of the most stable. Although now China is influencing other BRICS to use their own currency in business.

In next article I would discuss effect of this fluctuation on Indian economy and Oil companies.

Economics Concepts : BASICS Part 1

This post deals with the basic economic concepts asked in GK or interviews. This is the basic thing that everybody should know. I would update it with other things provided you suggest me what to add or what you want to know?

First of all the father of economics and microeconomics is Adam smith, while father of macroeconomics is John M. Keynes.

Now, I would give you a view of a basic curve in economics commonly known as supply demand curve.

Here the downward sloping  curve represents the demand curve, while the upward going curve is supply curve.

Demand curve: As follows from the graph at high price quantity demanded is low and as price decreases quantity demanded is increased. Thus demand increases with lowering of price.

Supply Curve : it represents the supply at particular point price.

The equilibrium is attained by the point where supply and demand equate themselves i.e. where they intersect. This price point is fixed as the price of the item and the quantity at this point price is called economic quantity.

Now since supply generally remains constant the demand drives the price if demand is increased the demand curve shifts upwards as you demand more at any price point. Thus it would shift upward and hit supply curve at upper point thus price is increased. If demand is lessened then it shifts downwards and price of item decreases.

In next post i would discuss appreciation of currency and downslide of rupee against dollar which is most expected question this year for interviews.

Nexavar - A Case for Patented products

As, I discussed about Patents in my last post, http://sscprep.blogspot.in/2012/09/patent-vs-copyrights.html  a new event took place in Mar 2012 and I presume it would be a hot selling cake in coming exams of FCI, CHSL in the GK section. This event was announcement by NATCO to produce the generic of Nexavar a patented drug of Bayer Pharmaceuticals. 

For new guys Generic drugs means the me too drugs produced by the companies that have same components and their composition as in the parent drug but are manufactured by the different companies who had no role in developing it. Since parent drug is formed after nearly 20-25 years of research the companies to extract the cost they incurred and to get profit, get patents which disallows any other company to produce that drug. After the expiry of patent this drug comes in public domain and other manufacturers can produce that drug. Since nearly all raw material is same the generic drugs are a perfect substitute for the patented drugs. Moreover they cost nearly 1/100 times of original drug.

What Happened in this case

In a first-of-its-kind move, a government agency has invoked the compulsory licensing (CL) provision of the Patents Act to allow Hyderabad-based Natco Pharma to sell its generic version of German multinational Bayer’s patent-protected cancer medicine, Nexavar (sorafenib tosylate), at a fraction of the cost of the latter drug in India.

Repercussion

This is likely to prove controversial, since almost 90 per cent of all patent-protected pharmaceutical products are imported. This will thwart the plans of foreign drug giants. although this will prove to be a relief for the poor population of India as they would get the medicine at nearly 120 Rs. for which they had to give nearly 10000

Patent Vs Copyrights

While writing previous post I used many sites and of course, I have given credit to them still, I pondered upon the thought that what if I had used the material without citing them. This happens many a times in our Indian cinema and we better know it as Plagiarism. 

More recently Apple sued Samsung in US for adopting similar physical attributes and hardware.
Click for more

What can a person do when his material/work is used by other without his prior permission.

On this context were built two important concepts and laws on Intellectual Property Rights and is governed by WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) that grants the patents:

1. Patents

2. Copyrights

3. Trademarks (will discuss it later)

Lets understand it in simple terms. While patents are usually on material, process and object the copyrights are associated with publications, books, music etc. Let’s delve ourselves deep into the world of copyrights and Patents

Patent 

A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the Patent and Trademark Office. The term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed.

Copyright

Copyright is a form of protection provided to the authors of "original works of authorship" including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, both published and unpublished.

Copyright versus patent

The common view on copyright versus patenting is that copyright protects the expression of an idea, while a patent protects the idea itself.

Thus a same story told by different people in different expression or say using same idea but different dialogues would not infringe copyright, but an invention like Android platform can’t be duplicated as its patented. Similarly applications on android and apple are copyrighted not patented as you can have two different calculators showing same answer using same coding but as a whole the expression is different.

Source:http://homepages.cwi.nl/~paulk/patents/invention/node9.html

http://www.lawmart.com/forms/difference.htm

1G, 2G , 3G, 4G how many G

 2G scam was of about 24000 crores. Reallocation gave revenue of near about 14000 cr to GOI. But what is this 2G, 3G etc. I would try to explain it in layman's term. First of all G here denotes Generation. Generation of the telephony services. Now who sets the directions and guidelines for the generations. It is done by ITU or international telecommunication union.

I would just enumerate the basic differences over here between these different generations:

In simple  words1. 1G was to send voice one way, 2G for text and voice 2 way,2.5 G used GPRS and thus Data also used to be sent by this, 3G basically for data, video along with audio and 4G would be able to send any form of data2.The speed of sending data has increased with each generation with 4G boasting up of data transfer rate of above 100mbps .3. The next thing that separates all the generations is the frequency over which they work. For 1G its 150MhZ analog, from 2G onwards its digital, with 2 G operating at 900 and 1800MHz popularly known as bands, 3G working on above 2000MHz bands and 4G working at variable frequencies.

This chart would provide the basic structure of  different generations of telephony.I will discuss CDMA GSM and difference between them in other post. Along with it my next focus would be on 4G also as it was recently in news

Source: http://bpastudio.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/471/hout/3G.htm

http://www.coolpctips.com/2011/03/mobile-generations-1g-to-4g/