3. BJP five times richer than Congress

• The BJP’s income surged by nearly 50% even as the Indian National Congress saw a 25% decline, according to the annual audit report for 2019-20 published by the Election Commission.
• The ruling party earned Rs 3,623 crore in 2019-20, which was over five times the income of Congress — Rs 682 crore — and thrice the combined income of the six national parties in the opposition: Congress, Trinamool Congress, NCP, BSP, CPIM and CPI. Other parties: Trinamool Rs 143.67 crore; CPM Rs 158.62 crore, BSP Rs 58.25 crore, NCP Rs 85.58 crore; and CPI at Rs 6.58 crore.
• Over 70%, or Rs 2,555 crore, of BJP’s declared earnings came through electoral bonds.
• BJP’s total expenditure rose 64% to Rs 1,651 crore from Rs 1,005 crore over the same period. Rs 1,352.92 crore was spent on elections — the period included the general elections. Rs 400 crore was spent on advertisements — Rs 249 crore on electronic media and Rs 47.38 on print media.
• Regional parties: TRS declared an income of Rs 130.46 crore for 2019-20; YSR Congress Party Rs 92.73 crore; TDP Rs 91.5 crore; BJD Rs 90.35 crore; and AIADMK Rs 89 crore.

• The Union ministry of defence, in a written reply to Rajya Sabha, said that it has had no transaction with the NSO Group, the Israeli firm that sells the Pegasus spyware. “Ministry of Defence has not had any transaction with NSO Group Technologies,” minister of state for defence Ajay Bhatt said in response to CPI(M)’s V Sivadasan’s question if “the government” had any such transaction with the spyware maker.
• It’s the first time the government has responded to pointed questions over the Pegasus snooping row. The Opposition had mounted a scathing attack on the government during the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament, asking it to have a full-fledged debate on the issue.
• A massive controversy had erupted last month over allegations of government surveillance targeting various prominent individuals — including Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, Modi Cabinet ministers Prahlad Singh Patel and Ashwini Vaishnaw, businessman Anil Ambani, a former CBI chief, and at least 40 journalists.
• It is, however, not established that all the phones were hacked. Amnesty’s Security Lab had analysed 67 phones, and found 23 were successfully attacked and 14 showed signs of an attempted hack. These included phones of Indian political strategist Prashant Kishor and journalists Siddharth Varadarajan.
• Vaishnaw had earlier said there was no “unauthorised surveillance”, adding the allegations levelled just ahead of the Monsoon Session were aimed at maligning Indian democracy.
• The Supreme Court is currently hearing a petition on the matter filed by senior journalists and the Editors Guild of India among others.
• Also in Parliament: The Opposition announced that it will join the discussion on the 127th Constitutional amendment Bill to restore power of states to identify and maintain the state lists of OBCs, making a temporary and selective break in its disruption of Parliament over the Pegasus snooping controversy.

• Earth’s climate is getting so hot that temperatures in about a decade will probably blow past a level of warming that world leaders have sought to prevent, per a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released on Monday. The United Nations has called it a “code red for humanity”.
• How bad? Nearly all countries have signed up to the 2015 Paris Climate Accord that aims to limit global warming to 2°C and ideally no more than 1.5°C by 2100, compared with the late 19th century.
• But the report’s authors looked at five emissions scenarios and concluded that all of them will result in the world crossing the 1.5°C threshold in the 2030s — sooner than in previous predictions. Three of those scenarios will also see temperatures rise 2°C above the pre-industrial average.
• Who’s to blame? Almost all of the warming that has occurred since pre-industrial times was due to the release of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Much of that is the result of humans burning fossil fuels — coal, oil, wood and natural gas. Only a fraction of the temperature rise recorded since the 19th century have come from natural forces.
• Dire consequences: The report projects that global warming at the end of the century will range between about 1.3 to 5.7°C, relative to 1850-1900 levels, depending on greenhouse gas emissions.
• Sea levels are projected to increase, under intermediate- to high-emissions scenarios, by between at least 1.5 ft to more than 3.5 ft by the end of the century. A rise of 7 ft by the year 2100, or even 16 ft by 2150, “cannot be ruled out”.
• For India: Though the report has not assessed the city-specific details while projecting impacts on urban areas in future, the prediction of faster sea-level rise may cause coastal flooding in low lying areas of India’s coastline of 7,517 km dotted with big port cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, Kochi, Kolkata, Surat and Visakhapatnam. More here.

• Amazon and the N R Narayana Murthy promoted Catamaran Ventures will end their seven year old joint venture, Cloudtail India and not renew it when it’s up for renewal in May 2022.
• The move comes on a day when the Supreme Court (SC), upholding the Karnataka High Court order, ticked off both Amazon and Flipkart, telling them that it expected “big organisations” like themselves to “voluntarily go for enquiry” being conducted by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and that it saw “no ground to interfere” with the high court’s order. The SC however, gave some leeway to both ecommerce companies by allowing them a time of four weeks in which to submit to the enquiry
• The enquiry relates to a complaint filed by the Delhi Vyapar Mahasangh, an umbrella organisation for retailers, which alleged that both Flipkart and Amazon were favouring some select vendors, including exercising indirect control over their operations, especially for launch of cellphones.
• Under Indian laws, foreign companies or their subsidiaries running a marketplace can not be an equity partner in any of the vendors or sellers on their portal, nor have any control over their inventory. Amazon, which had a 49% stake in Cloudtail India initially, had reduced it to 24% in 2019, as per RBI norms. It had also likewise reduced its stake in another seller, Appario Retail.
• Both companies, in their plea to stop the enquiry, had alleged that CCI did not have enough evidence of any wrongdoing on their part and as such no probe was needed. While Flipkart called CCI’s enquiry comprising 32 questions as “invasive”, alleging that the information sought was “sensitive in nature”, Amazon too termed the enquiry — stalled since last year — as seeking information that was “sensitive” and that too, “within a deadline as short as 15 days.”

• In a curious move, the Union health ministry on Monday said that it will “allow foreign nationals residing in India to get registered on CoWin portal to take Covid-19 vaccine” using their passport as an identity document for registration. This, even as India has administered a little over 51 crore doses and is struggling to reach the 1 crore doses a day mark amidst a continuing vaccine shortage.
• Justifying the rationale for its decision, the ministry said that since “a significant number of foreign nationals are living in India, especially in large metropolitan areas” where the risk of infection from “Covid-19 is high due to higher population density”, it was imperative “to vaccinate all eligible persons.”
• India has been trying to ramp up its vaccine supply, which has improved incrementally, leading to situations where vaccines are either being rationed, such as in Delhi where the government reserved 80% of Covishield’s and 60% of Covaxin’s doses for those needing their second shot or vaccination centres have had to be shut down, such as in Pune last week as the city ran out of Covishield stocks.
• Adding to that is the concern raised by Hyderabad-based physicist Dr Vipin Srivastava, who had predicted the third wave of Covid-19. According to him, “the number of new Covid-19 cases in 24 hours is exceeding the number of recovered cases in the same 24 hours” indicating that the pandemic is again taking a turn for the worse.
• Basing his hypothesis on the daily death load (DDL), Srivastava said that the DDL in the 15-day period between July 24 and August 7 had turned positive on 10 occasions, with seven of those occasions occurring in the last 10 days of that period. That, he added, indicated a worsening scenario for the third wave — official figures notwithstanding.

• The parliament on Monday passed the Tribunals Reforms Bill, 2021, which seeks to abolish as many as nine appellate tribunals, including the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT), even as the union government rejected opposition allegations that the bill undermines the judiciary. The bill was cleared by a division of vote in the Rajya Sabha; it was approved by Lok Sabha on August 3.
• The bill seeks to dissolve tribunals including the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal, Airports Appellate Tribunal, Authority for Advance Rulings, Intellectual Property Appellate Board and Plant Varieties Protection Appellate Tribunal, and transfer their functions, such as adjudication of appeals, to other existing judicial bodies.
• The union government introduced the bill to replace an ordinance it had enforced this April. This despite the Supreme Court striking down certain provisions in the ordinance. Those provisions have been retained in the bill, LiveLaw reports.
• Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government “fully respects” the independence of the judiciary but said the primacy of the legislature to make laws is as important.
• Tribunals are established under specific laws to fast-track adjudication of appeals in the field. But the government says data from the last three years show that the tribunals in several sectors have not necessarily led to faster justice delivery. Through the Finance Act, 2017, it had abolished or merged seven tribunals, reducing the total number of tribunals from 26 to 19.
• But the union government has also been slow in filling vacancies in many tribunals, prompting the Supreme Court judge-led statutory selection committees to stop recommending names for the tribunals till the government clears the 100 names already recommended.

• A free trade agreement between Australia and India would signal the “democratic world’s tilt away from China,” Australia’s special envoy on trade and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott (in pic with Modi; file photo) wrote in an opinion piece published in The Australian on Monday. The “answer to almost every question about China is India,” Abbot wrote in the piece headlined, “India sensible substitute for belligerent China”.
• Abbott visited New Delhi last week as Australia’s special trade envoy for India as Canberra pushes for a trade deal that has remained stuck since 2015.
• The deal: Called the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), India and Australia began negotiating on the deal in 2011 but differences over agriculture produce (a major Australia export) and services (India’s strength) and the focus on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) meant little progress was made after 2015.
• The change: India has since walked out of the RCEP, citing concerns it would increase imports from China, with which it already has a trade deficit. Australia, meanwhile, has realised that China, its large trade partners, does not shy away from using trade tariffs to respond to political pressures. India and Australia, as Quad members, have also strengthened their strategic ties.
• But… a free trade agreement is not a given. Canberra is keen on a reduction in tariff on fruits, dairy, agriculture and processed food items. Dairy and agricultural produce are politically sensitive, and considering the upcoming elections, New Delhi will be wary.

Lion. Today is World Lion Day. Observed across the globe on August 10 every year, it aims to raise awareness and educate people about the species and issues concerning its conservation. World Lion Day was the brainchild of co-founders Dereck and Beverly Joubert, a husband-and-wife team with a passion for big cats. They began the initiative in 2013, bringing together both National Geographic and the Big Cat Initiative under a single banner to protect the remaining big cats living in the wild.