SC criticizes for the CEC’s brief terms, Rani Lakshmibai, Sukhatal Lake and Nainital Lake, Global Employabaility University ranking
SC criticizes for the CECs’ brief terms
The tenures of Chief Election Commissioners (CECs), which “slid” from over eight years in the 1950s to just a few hundred days after 2004, showed that the government only gives the independence of the Election Commissioners “lip-service,” according to the Supreme Court.
- Successive administrations have “selected” individuals who they knew would “never ever” serve the entire six-year term required by the Election Commission (Conditions of Service of Election Commissioners and Transaction of Business) Act of 1991, especially after 2004.
- According to Section 4 of the 1991 Act, a CEC and Election Commissioners’ terms are six years long or until they reach age 65, whichever comes first.
- This tendency is extremely, very, very concerning! The decline in picking up those people whose dates of birth the government obviously knows started specifically after 2004.
- They (the government) know that these people would never, ever get anything close to six years.
- The CECs’ rights under Article 324, such as removal by impeachment, would only be useful if they served out their entire term.
- The judge demanded an explanation from the administration as to why “no checks and balances” had been applied to the situation. He cited the constitutional procedures used to nominate election officials in nations like Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom.
- A number of petitions for functional independence for election commissioners are being heard by the Constitution Bench.
- The court is explicitly looking into the issue of creating an “independent, neutral system” for the selection of Election Commissioners that is not under the jurisdiction of the executive branch.
FLASHBACK:
- The Election Commission of India, a body with constitutional authority to oversee free and fair elections for the President and Vice-President, as well as for state and national legislatures, is headed by the Chief Election Commissioner of India.
- Article 324 of the Indian Constitution gives the Election Commission of India this authority.
- Once the Chief Election Commissioner has been nominated by the president, it is exceedingly challenging to remove him from office since two-thirds of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha must present and vote against him for disorderly behaviour or improper actions.
Rani Lakshmibai
The Prime Minister of India has remembered Rani Lakshmibai on her Jayanti and said that her courage and monumental contribution to our nation can never be forgotten.
About Rani Lakshmibai:

- The Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi, was an Indian queen of the Maratha princely state of Jhansi in North India currently present in Jhansi district in Uttar Pradesh, India.
- She was one of the leading figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and became a symbol of resistance to the British Raj for Indian nationalists.
- When growing up with Nana Sahib and Tatya Tope, she got training in martial arts, sword fighting and horse riding and became proficient in them. She was more independent than other girls of her age, due to her unconventional upbringing.
- In 1853, when the Maharaja of Jhansi died, the East India Company took advantage of the situation and applied the Doctrine of Lapse to annex Jhansi.
- The Lakshmibai fought bravely against the British and gave a tough fight to Sir Hugh Rose so as to save her empire from annexation. She died fighting on the battlefield on June 17, 1858.
- When the Indian National Army started its first female unit (in 1943), it was named after the valiant queen of Jhansi.
About Doctrine of Lapse:
- It was an annexation policy followed widely by Lord Dalhousie when he was India’s Governor-General from 1848 to 1856.
- According to this, any princely state that was under the direct or indirect control of the East India Company where the ruler did not have a legal male heir would be annexed by the company.
- As per this, any adopted son of the Indian ruler could not be proclaimed as heir to the kingdom.
- By applying the doctrine of lapse, Dalhousie annexed the States of: Satara (1848 A.D.), Jaitpur, and Sambalpur (1849 A.D.), Baghat (1850 A.D.), Udaipur (1852 A.D.), Jhansi (1853 A.D.), and Nagpur (1854 A.D.)

Sukhatal Lake and Nainital Lake
Hearing a suo motu Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on preservation of Sukhatal Lake in Nainital, the Uttarakhand High Court recently directed the State to stop all construction activities on the lakebed and posted the matter for further hearing.
About Sukha Tal Lake:
- Sukha Tal cocooned in Mallital was earlier a part of the pristine Nainital Lake. Sukha Tal or Suka Tal literally suggests dry lake which is located half a km from the picturesque lake of Nainital.
- It is a fresh water lake surrounded by the dense pine and oak forests.
- It is believed that Sukhatal is a feeder lake for Naini Lake, as it acts as upstream storage for Naini Lake during monsoon by holding the runoff from catchment of water that would have otherwise flown out, thereby increasing erosion and silt deposition in Naini Lake.
About Naini Tal Lake:
- Nainital Lake, notably known as Naini Lake is the main attraction of Nainital town as well of Uttarakhand. Bounded by panoramic seven hills, Nainital Lake is a much loved spot among romantic travellers around the planet.
- This lake was found long back in 1839 by P.Baron and is at an altitude of 2,000 meters above sea level which makes it one of the most visited lakes in India.
- At the foot of the Kumaon Hills in the Indian state of Uttarakhand lies a stunning hill-station called Nainital surrounded by a number of hills; Mount Ayarpatha, Mount Naina and Mount Deopatha being the most important ones.
- In fact, the name of the town, Nainital, which can be decoded to ‘Lake of the Eye’ with ‘Naina’ meaning ‘eye’ and ‘tal’ meaning ‘lake’, originated from this lake’s name.
- Legend has it that the three sages Atri, Pulaha and Pulastya had visited the town and could not find any water and so they dug up land for a lake and filled the hollow area with water brought from Lake Mansarovar in Tibet. That is why a dip in this lake is measured very holy, the same to a dip in the sacred Mansarovar Lake.
- Naini Lake has two parts namely Mallital and Tallital. Northern division is called as Mallital while Southern division known as Tallital.
Global Employability University Ranking
A total of seven Indian institutes have featured in this year’s Global Employability University Ranking and Survey (GEURS) report, released by the Times Higher Education (THE). Three Indian institutions were included in the top 100 — IIT-Delhi has secured the 29th position in the ranking followed by IISc Bangalore and 58th rank, and IIT Bombay at 72nd rank.
More about the news:
- Other institutes from India, The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, IIT-Kharagpur, Amity University and Bangalore University have also secured spots in the top 250.
- This year, there are a total of six universities are from the US, two from the UK, one from Japan and one from Singapore featured in the top 100. However, 44 countries and regions are represented in the ranking including China, France, India, Spain, South Korea, Germany and Israel.
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) earned the top rank in this year’s ranking, the same as last year. MIT was followed byCalifornia Institute of Technology and Harvard University at the second and third rank. The top three ranks have been held by these three institutes in the same order for the second time in arow.
- University of Cambridge and Stanford University have also retained their position of fourth and fifth respectively.
- The University of Oxford has risen from eighth to sixth. The University of Tokyo from Japan, however, has slipped from sixth to seventh this year.
- Universities in mainland China are seeing a steady rise throughout the ranking due to strengths in graduate skills and work experience.
- Spain is the highest climber of the last two years in the Europe continent. However, Florida Institute of Technology is the highest climber this year, climbing 85 places to 76.
GEURS (Global Employability University Ranking)
- First released in 2010, the GEURS ranking is produced by Emerging and is, for employability, currently the most consulted rankingby employers worldwide.
- The annual GEURS employability ranking specifically addresses prospective students’ need to identify the universities that offer the best prospects for future employment.
- It is the only university ranking based solely on the point of view of employers.
Earth has its own temperature regulating mechanism
Earth has its own stabilising mechanism that can keep global temperatures within a steady, habitable range, helping bring climate back from the brink. Scientists have long suspected that silicate weathering plays a major role in regulating the Earth’s carbon cycle.
What is Silicate weathering?
- “Silicate weathering” is a geological process by which the slow and steady weathering of silicate rocks involves chemical reactions that ultimately draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into ocean sediments, trapping the gas in rocks.
- The mechanism of silicate weathering could provide a geologically constant force in keeping carbon dioxide – and global temperatures – in check. But there has never been direct evidence for the continual operation of such a feedback, until now.
- The results, produced by scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), US, are the first to use actual data to confirm the existence of a stabilising feedback, the mechanism of which is likely silicate weathering.
- Scientists have previously seen hints of a climate-stabilising effect in the Earth’s carbon cycle – Chemical analyses of ancient rocks have shown that the flux, or the flow, of carbon in and out of Earth’s surface environment has remained relatively balanced, even through dramatic swings in global temperature.
- Models of silicate weathering predict that the process should have some stabilising effect on the global climate. And finally, the fact of the Earth’s enduring habitability points to some inherent, geologic check on extreme temperature swings.
World’s most expensive drug approved
US regulators approved CSL Behring’s haemophilia B gene therapy, a one-off infusion that frees patients from regular treatments but costs $3.5 million a dose, making it the most expensive medicine in the world.
More about the news:
- By administering, CSL Behring’s Hemgenix just once, it cut the number of bleeding events expected over the course of a year by 54%, a key study of the therapy found.
- It also freed 94% of patients from time-consuming and costly infusions of Factor IX, which is currently used to control the potentially deadly condition.
- Haemophilia patients constantly live in fear of bleeds. A gene therapy product will be appealing to some”, because it can dramatically improve a range of devastating conditions by fixing their underlying causes.
- Traditional haemophilia treatment infuses missing proteins, called clotting factors that the body needs to form clots and stop bleeding. Hemgenix works by delivering a gene that can produce the missing clotting factors into the liver, where it starts working to make the Factor IX protein.
Haemophilia in India
- It is an inherited condition that causes bleeding for a long time after injury or surgery and painful swelling of the joints either after injury or even without injury.
- “Inherited” means that the disease is passed from parents to children through their genes.
- It is due to a deficiency of clotting factor, this results in increased bleeding. There are two types of Haemophilia A (clotting factor VIII deficiency), which is more common and occurs in about 1 in 5,000 births.
- Haemophilia B (factor IX deficiency) is less common and occurs in around 1 in about 20,000 births. India with nearly two lakh cases is estimated to have the second highest number.
- According to Hemophilia Foundation of India, the umbrella body for registration, only 20,000 registered patients for haemophilia in the country.