Daily Currentaffairs: 21 Sept 2020

Tables of contents

1. INS Viraat

2.Officials Secrets Act

3.E-Gram Swaraj Portal

4.CRISPR Covid-19 Test

5. SPICe+ 

1.INS Viraat

Recently, INS Viraat, the decommissioned aircraft carrier of the Indian Navy, has begun its last journey from Mumbai’s Naval Dockyard to Alang in Gujarat, where it will be dismantled.

About INS Viraat

• It is the second Centaur-class aircraft carrier which was in service for 30 years before being decommissioned in March 2017.

• It served in the British Navy as HMS Hermes for 25 years from 1959 to 1984 and commissioned in Indian Navy in 1987.

• It played a major role in Operation Jupiter in 1989 during the Sri Lankan Peacekeeping operation.

• The ship was also deployed during Operation Parakram (2001-02) following the terror attack on the Indian Parliament.

• It has participated in various international joint exercises like Exercise Malabar (USA), Exercise Varuna (French), Naseem-Al-Bahar (Oman Navy).

• It holds the world record as mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records for being the longest-serving warship of the world.

• The ship’s Motto was the Sanskrit phrase ‘Jalamev Yashya, Balamev Tasya’ which means ‘who controls the sea is the powerful’.

Source: The Hindu

2.Officials Secrets Act

Recently, the Delhi police has arrested a strategic affairs analyst and two others under the Official Secrets Act (OSA).

Background of Officials Secrets Act

• The OSA has its roots in the British colonial era with the Indian Official Secrets Act (Act XIV), 1889 being the original version.

• It was brought in with the main objective of muzzling the voice of a large number of newspapers that had come up in several languages and were opposing the British Raj’s policies.

• It was amended and made more stringent in the form of Indian Official Secrets Act, 1904, during Lord Curzon’s tenure as Viceroy of India.

Key Features of the Officials Secrets Act

• The Indian Official Secrets Act (Act No XIX of 1923) was extended to all matters of secrecy and confidentiality in governance in the country.

• It broadly deals with two aspects i.e. spying or espionage, covered under Section 3, and disclosure of other secret information of the government, under Section 5.

  • The secret information can be any official code, password, sketch, plan, model, article, note, document, or information.

• Under Section 5, both the person communicating the information and the person receiving the information can be punished.

• The OSA itself does not say what a “secret” document is but the Ministry or Department follows the Manual of Departmental Security Instructions, 1994 for classifying the document.

• It is the government’s discretion to decide what falls under the ambit of a “secret” document to be charged under OSA.

• The law, applicable to government servants and citizens, provides the framework for dealing with espionage, sedition, and other potential threats to the integrity of the nation.

Primacy between Right to Information (RTI) and Official Secrets Act (OSA)

• Section 22 of the RTI Act provides for its primacy vis-a-vis provisions of other laws, including OSA which gives the RTI Act an overriding effect, notwithstanding anything inconsistent with the provisions of OSA.

• If there is any inconsistency in OSA with regard to furnishing of information, it will be superseded by the RTI Act.

• If the government classifies a document as “secret” under OSA Clause 6, that document can be kept outside the ambit of the RTI Act, and the government can invoke Sections 8 or 9.

Effort to Change Provisions of OSA

Law Commission

• In 1971, the Law Commission became the first official body to make an observation regarding OSA.

• The report on ‘Offences Against National Security’ observed that “it agrees with the contention” that “merely because a circular is marked secret or confidential, it should not attract the provisions of the Act if the publication thereof is in the interest of the public and no question of national emergency and interest of the State as such arises”.

Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC)

• In 2006, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) recommended that OSA be repealed, and replaced with a chapter in the National Security Act containing provisions relating to official secrets.

• It observed that OSA was incongruous with the regime of transparency in a democratic society.

• The ARC referred to the 1971 Law Commission report that had called for an “Umbrella Act” to be passed to bring together all laws relating to national security.

Source: The Indian Express

3.E-Gram Swaraj Portal

Recently, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj has developed the E-Gram Swaraj Portal.

About E-Gram Swaraj Portal

• It is a unified tool having the vision to strengthen digitalization in Panchayats for the purpose of empowering rural India.

• It unifies the planning, accounting and monitoring functions of Gram Panchayats.

• It’s combination with the Area Profiler application, Local Government Directory (LGD) and the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) renders easier reporting and tracking of Gram Panchayats' activities.

• It provides a single-window for capturing Panchayat information with the complete Profile of the Panchayat, details of Panchayat finances, asset details, activities taken up through Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP), Panchayat information from other Ministries/ Departments such as Census 2011, SECC data, Mission Antyodaya survey report etc.

Source: PIB

4.CRISPR Covid-19 Test

Recently, an accurate and low-cost paper-based test strip to detect Covid-19 in less than 30 minutes has been approved for commercial launch by the Drugs Controller General of India.

About CRISPR Covid-19 Test

• It is developed by a research team led by Debojyoti Chakraborty and Souvik Maiti of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Tata Group.

  • The test has been named ‘Feluda’ who is a fictional private detective from West Bengal created by renowned writer and filmmaker Satyajit Ray.

• Feluda, the acronym for FNCAS9 Editor Linked Uniform Detection Assay, uses indigenously developed CRISPR gene-editing technology to identify and target the genetic material of SARS-CoV2.

• The Tata CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) test, powered by CSIR-IGIB (Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology) FELUDA, has met high-quality benchmarks.

• The Tata CRISPR test is the world’s first diagnostic test to deploy a specially adapted Cas9 protein to successfully detect the virus causing Covid-19.

Working of Feluda COVID-19 test

• The Feluda test is similar to a pregnancy test strip that will just change colour upon detection of the virus and can be used in a simple pathological lab.

• The Cas9 protein is barcoded to interact with the SARS-CoV2 sequence in the patient’s genetic material.

• The Cas9-SARS-CoV2 complex is then put on the paper strip, where using two lines (one control, one test) makes it possible to determine if the test sample was infected with Covid-19.

CRISPR technology

 

The CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a gene editing technology and finds its use in correcting genetic defects and treating and preventing the spread of diseases.

 

The CRISPR technology can detect specific sequences of DNA within a gene and uses an enzyme functioning as molecular scissors to snip it.

 

It also allows researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene function.

 

The United States had granted emergency-use approval of the world’s first CRISPR-based test for Covid-19, developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

Source: The Indian Express

5.SPICe+

The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has notified and deployed a web-form namely ‘SPICe+’.

About SPICe+

• It stands for Simplified Proforma for Incorporating a Company Electronically Plus.

• It is an initiative of Ministry of Corporate Affairs as part of the Government of India’s Ease of Doing Business (EoDB).

• It is said to dedicate 10 services via 3 central government ministries and departments (Ministry of Labour & Department of Revenue in the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Corporate Affairs).

• It is an application form for incorporating/registering a company with MCA.

• • The company means any kind of firm may it be a Private limited company, Public Limited Company, One Person Company, Nidhi Company, Section 8 Company or Producer Company.

• The registration for EPFO and ESIC shall be mandatory for all new companies to be incorporated through SPICe+.

Source: PIB

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