9 PM UPSC Current Affairs Articles 14 April 2025

Mains Oriented Articles

GS PAPER - 2

Supreme Court defines limits of Governor’s powers

Source: The post Supreme Court defines limits of Governor’s powers has been created, based on the article “A Governor’s conduct and a judgment of significance” published in “The Hindu” on 14 April 2025. Supreme Court defines limits of Governor’s powers.

UPSC Syllabus Topic: GS Paper2- Polity-Appointment to various Constitutional posts, powers, functions and responsibilities of various Constitutional Bodies.

Context: In The State of Tamil Nadu vs The Governor of Tamil Nadu, the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutional limits of gubernatorial authority. The case arose when the Tamil Nadu Governor delayed action on Bills passed by the State Assembly, prompting the Court to reaffirm democratic norms and constitutional constraints.

For detailed information on SC verdict on Governor’s assent to Bills read this article here

Tamil Nadu government approach the Supreme Court

1. Governor’s Inaction: The Tamil Nadu government approached the Supreme Court due to the Governor’s prolonged inaction on 12 Bills that were duly passed by the State Legislature.
2. Political Dispute: Among these Bills were key proposals to limit the Governor’s power to appoint Vice-Chancellors, stemming from a historical dispute over control between the Governor and the State government.
3. Legal Impasse: The Governor did not grant assent or reject the Bills but instead referred them to the President, delaying their implementation.
4. Democratic Principles: The state argued that such indefinite withholding of assent subverts the constitutional order and disrespects the democratic mandate of the State Legislature.

The Constitutional Role of the Governor

1. Not an Independent Authority: The Governor is not a Union representative or an independent authority but is the constitutional head of the State. As per Article 163, he must act on the aid and advice of the State Council of Ministers.
2. Limits under Article 200: Article 200 gives the Governor only three options:

• Assent to the Bill
• Withhold and return it for reconsideration
• Reserve it for the President’s consideration
  • The Supreme Court rejected a fourth option — withholding assent indefinitely (pocket veto) — as unconstitutional.

3. Judicial Review Permitted: Though Article 361 grants personal immunity to the Governor, the Court held that his actions can be challenged through judicial review.
4. Limited Discretion: The Governor may act without ministerial advice only in three cases:

• Under Second Proviso to Article 200, if the Bill affects High Court powers
• Under Article 31C, if the Bill seeks immunity from judicial review
• If the Bill violates constitutional values

Judicial Interpretation and Historical Context

1. Interpretation of Article 200: The Court ruled that the Governor must act on a Bill and cannot delay indefinitely. His options are limited to assenting, returning, or reserving the Bill.
2. Constitutional History: The original draft of Article 200 allowed the Governor to act “in his discretion.” But this phrase was deliberately removed during the Constituent Assembly debates, showing that the Governor must follow the advice of the elected government.
3. Example from Punjab Case: In State of Punjab vs Principal Secretary to the Governor of Punjab (2023), the Court held that pocket veto is not allowed under Article 200.
4. Example from Tamil Nadu: The Governor delayed 12 Bills, including ones on university appointments, and later referred 10 re-enacted Bills to the President without ministerial advice.
5. Final Step by Supreme Court: Using Article 142, the Court declared that the 10 re-presented Bills would be deemed assented on the date they were re-sent to the Governor. This was done to ensure complete justice.

What broader message does this verdict send?

1. Governors Must Follow Law: The Governor must act based on the advice of the State government. He is not a political authority but a constitutional figure.
2. Legislative Supremacy Upheld: The Court’s decision upheld the legislative will of the elected State Assembly, which had passed all 12 Bills.
3. Judicial Oversight Ensured: The verdict shows that Governor’s actions are not beyond judicial scrutiny, ensuring they remain within constitutional boundaries.

Question for practice:

Examine how the Supreme Court’s verdict in The State of Tamil Nadu vs The Governor of Tamil Nadu reinforces constitutional limits on gubernatorial powers and upholds democratic principles.

GS PAPER - 3

Transforming India into a Global Talent Hub

Source: The post Transforming India into a Global Talent Hub has been created, based on the article “India can use the legal migration route to leverage its demographic dividend” published in “Indian Express” on 14 April 2025. Transforming India into a Global Talent Hub.

UPSC Syllabus Topic: GS Paper3-Indian Economy and issues relating to Planning, Mobilization of Resources, Growth, Development and Employment

Context:  The world is facing a serious labour shortage, with high-income nations expected to lack 40–50 million workers by 2030 and 120–160 million by 2040. India, with its young and large workforce, is uniquely positioned to benefit. It can emerge as a global talent hub, generating employment and boosting its global influence.

For detailed information on The war for digital talent: India can emerge as a global hub for it read this article here

Global Labour Crisis: A Major Opportunity for India

1. Projected Labour Shortages: Advanced economies face growing shortages in sectors like healthcare, engineering, teaching, and industrial work.
2. India’s Demographic Advantage: India has a large young population ready for global employment. However, only 1.3% of Indians migrate abroad, compared to Mexico (8.6%), Philippines (5.1%), and Bangladesh (4.3%).
3. Economic Benefits: Indian migrants already send $125 billion annually in remittances, accounting for 3% of GDP—higher than any single export sector.
4. Poverty Reduction Impact: A study of 71 low-income countries shows that a 10% rise in remittances can reduce poverty by 3.5%.
5. Untapped Potential: India can significantly expand its global workforce with proper training, global alignment, and structured migration policies.

Seven Steps to Build India’s Global Workforce Footprint

1. Build an Institutional Framework: India should strengthen the migration department under the Ministry of External Affairs. It must identify destination markets, negotiate agreements, and ensure skill-demand matching. States should support recruitment and protect workers. Indian embassies should set up migration support desks abroad. The Philippines model, with central, regional, and overseas offices, can guide India.
2. Align Skills with Global Standards: Integrate foreign languages and international skill standards into Indian education. Promote joint certifications and mutual recognition agreements with destination countries to make Indian workers globally job-ready.
3. Ease Financial Burden on Migrants: The cost of migration ranges from ₹1–2 lakh for GCC countries to ₹5–10 lakh for Europe. India should adopt the Philippines’ ESA-pay model, where employers or licensed agencies bear the major pre-departure costs such as visas, travel, and training.
4. Negotiate Stronger Bilateral Agreements: India should pursue government-to-government agreements to remove bureaucratic visa barriers, ensure recognition of Indian qualifications, and facilitate socio-cultural integration.
5. Create a Mobility Industry Body: A national mobility body can represent the overseas recruitment sector, promote ethical recruitment standards, align training with international benchmarks, and coordinate government-private sector collaboration.
6. Ensure Social Welfare in Host Countries: India must ensure that migrants get fair wages, timely salaries, decent housing, healthcare access, legal aid, and protection against exploitation. These align with ILO migrant welfare guidelines.
7. Support Returning Migrants: Returned workers carry global skills and experience. India should help reintegrate them into the domestic economy to enhance local development.

Migration Strategy Enhances India’s Global Role

1. Boost in Remittances will support India’s economy.
2. Legal Migration Pathways will reduce dependence on unsafe and illegal routes.
3. India’s Reputation as a responsible, skilled workforce provider will grow.
4. Cultural and Economic Ties with partner nations will deepen.
5. Returning Migrants can contribute significantly to economic progress.

Conclusion

With a robust migration strategy, India can convert its demographic dividend into global leadership. A focus on responsible, structured migration will not only increase remittances but also create jobs, strengthen diplomacy, and raise India’s global standing.

Question for practice:

Examine how India can leverage the global labour shortage to position itself as a global talent hub.

India must protect its disappearing traditional seeds

Source: The post India must protect its disappearing traditional seeds has been created, based on the article “Saving traditional varieties of seeds” published in “The Hindu” on 14 April 2025. India must protect its disappearing traditional seeds.

UPSC Syllabus Topic: GS Paper3- Agriculture

Context: India is witnessing the steady disappearance of its traditional seed varieties. These are being replaced by hybrid crops like wheat and rice. This shift is caused by farming practices, policies, and market preferences. It is happening at a time when biodiversity and climate resilience are more important than ever. The article explores the causes and solutions to this urgent problem.

For detailed information on Pillars for development of Indian Agriculture read this article here

Reasons for Disappearing Traditional Seeds

1. Market Demand and Consumer Preferences: Most consumers prefer high-yield crops such as wheat and rice. These dominate supermarket shelves and government food schemes. Traditional grains like millets, pulses, and indigenous rice are ignored. As demand falls, farmers stop growing them.
2. Weak Seed Conservation System: Hybrid seeds are mass-produced and sold. Traditional seeds depend on community sharing and local conservation. India lacks well-funded and accessible seed banks to protect them.
3. Policy Focus on High-Yield Varieties: For decades, government policies have promoted high-yield crops to boost food security. This led to reduced biodiversity and lower nutritional value. Though initiatives like the Odisha Millet Mission are trying to help, most subsidies and procurement systems still favour a narrow range of crops.
4. R&D Neglect of Biodiversity: Research and development mostly focus on increasing yields of a few crops. There is little effort to improve or conserve climate-resilient traditional varieties. This limits the ability to respond to climate risks.

Conservation and Revival Efforts

1. Role of Civil Society Organisations: Groups like MSSRF’s Tribal Agrobiodiversity Centre have been preserving indigenous crops for over 30 years. A recent national consultation in Odisha created a roadmap for sustainable and inclusive seed systems.
2. Participatory Plant Breeding: Farmers should be partners in breeding programmes. Working with scientists, they can enhance traditional seeds while keeping their resilience and cultural value.
3. Strengthening Community Seed Banks: India must build a wide network of local seed banks. These should be well-funded and easily accessible to help farmers conserve valuable varieties.

Policy and Market Interventions Needed

1. Financial and Institutional Support: The government must support processing, marketing, and cultivation of traditional crops. Expanding Minimum Support Prices and including these crops in schools, hospitals, and ration shops will encourage their growth.
2. Consumer Awareness Campaigns: Changing food habits is key. Campaigns must promote the health and environmental benefits of traditional foods. Rising demand will drive production.

Conclusion

India can build a food system that is productive, sustainable, and resilient. This requires joint national efforts, farmer support, seed conservation, and public awareness. Traditional seeds are vital for India’s future.

Question for practice:

Discuss why traditional seed varieties are disappearing in India and what steps can be taken to conserve them.

Prelims Oriented Articles (Factly)

Carbon Tax

News: India and 62 other countries voted in favour of the world’s first-ever global carbon tax imposed on the shipping industry by the United Nations’ shipping agency. Carbon Tax.

About Carbon Tax

• A carbon tax is a type of penalty that businesses must pay for excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
• The tax is usually levied per ton of greenhouse gas emissions
• Objective: The tax is designed to encourage such businesses to reduce their output of greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide.
• The carbon tax is a type of Pigouvian tax.

Types of carbon tax

• Emissions-based tax: It is levied directly on the quantity of GHG emissions produced by an entity. ​
• Goods-based tax: It is applied to goods or services that are carbon-intensive, such as gasoline or coal. The tax is based on the estimated emissions associated with the production and use of these goods.
• Cap-and-trade system: It is a market-based approach to reducing GHG emissions, where a government sets a limit (cap) on total emissions and allows companies to buy, sell, or trade emission permits within that cap.
• Carbon tariff: Also known as carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), it is an eco-tariff on embedded carbon, aiming to prevent carbon leakage from nations without a carbon price.

About International Maritime Organization (IMO)

• It is a specialized agency of the United Nations that is responsible for measures to improve the safety and security of international shipping and prevent marine pollution from ships.
• It has an integral role in meeting the targets set out in UN SDG 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
• Members: IMO currently has 176 member states. In addition, there are three associate members: Hong Kong, Macao, and the Faroe Islands.
• Structure: It consist of the assembly, representing the member states, and a council (an executive body, appoints secretary-general) elected by the members at two-year intervals.
• Headquarter: London, U.K.

Some of Important Treaties under IMO

• International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS)
• International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW)
• International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL)

Beijing India Report 2024

News: The Beijing India Report, 2024 was submitted on the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), highlighting the achievements and future course to be taken by India to achieve gender equality. Beijing India Report 2024.

About Beijing India Report 2024

• It is a bilateral analysis conducted by Chinese think tanks, assessing India’s economic, technological, and geopolitical trajectory, focusing on areas like semiconductor manufacturing and Indo-Pacific strategy.
• It highlights China’s strategic interest in India’s growth and attempts to recalibrate bilateral ties amid border tensions and trade imbalances ($100 billion in 2023).
• The report marks three decades since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration, reflecting on India’s progress in gender equality. However, it identifies a significant gap in integrating gender considerations into climate policies, particularly affecting rural women.
• This oversight presents an opportunity to enhance gender-responsive climate action in India.

About Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

• It is the world’s most comprehensive, visionary plan ever created to achieve the equal rights of ALL women and girls, outlining an action plan for gender equality across 12 dimensions such as education, health, economics and politics.
• It was agreed to by 189 governments in 1995, at the Fourth World Conference on Women.
• Importance of India: It has helped India focus attention on gender perspectives in policies, pass the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act and the POSH Act, and push for the economic empowerment of women.

BatEchoMon

News: India’s first automated bat monitoring and detection system BatEchoMon launched marking a new chapter in bat research.

About Bat Echolocation Monitoring (BatEchoMon)

• It is India’s first automated bat monitoring system.
• It is an autonomous system capable of detecting and analysing bat calls in real-time.
• It is programmed to activate automatically at sunset, when bats begin flying and continuously listens and analyses audio.

Components and working

• Aside from a recording device, it includes components that can record, store, process, and analyse species-wise bat activity on the fly.
• An Audiomoth, a popular low-cost ultrasonic detector, has been configured to work as an ultrasonic microphone.
• Other auxiliary components in the device include a solar panel plus battery and a WiFi communication unit for power supply and data transmission, respectively.
  • In the absence of the sun, the device can last for up to eight days.

Mk-II (A) Laser- Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) system (Sahastra Shakti)

News: India has successfully conducted its first trial of a high-powered laser weapon, MK-II(A), using directed energy to neutralise an aerial target. Mk-II (A) Laser- Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) system (Sahastra Shakti).

About Mk-II (A) Laser- Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) system (Sahastra Shakti)

• It is an indigenously designed and developed 30-kilowatt laser-based weapon system that can disable, degrade or destroy small remotely piloted aircraft, swarm drones, missiles and sensors.
• Developed by: DRDO’s Centre for High Energy Systems and Sciences (CHESS), Hyderabad along with other labs, academic institutions and Indian industries.
• Working: Once detected by its radar or by its inbuilt Electro Optic (EO) system, laser-DEW can engage targets at the speed of light and use an intense laser beam to cut through the target, leading to structural failure or more impactful results if the warhead is targeted.
• Advantages: Unlike traditional kinetic weapons, laser systems offer instantaneous engagement, precision targeting, low per-shot cost, reduce dependence on costly ammunition, limit collateral damage and are particularly suited to countering low-cost drone swarms — an increasingly common threat.
• Significance: India joins an elite group of nations—including the United States, Russia, and China—that possess operational high-power laser weapon technology.

Long-Range Glide Bomb ‘Gaurav’

News: DRDO conducts successful Release Trials of Long-Range Glide Bomb ‘Gaurav’ from Su-30 MKI aircraft.

About Long-Range Glide Bomb ‘Gaurav’

• It is a 1,000 kg class glide bomb.
• Developed by: DRDO’s Research Centre Imarat, Hyderabad and Armament Research and Development Establishment with the support of development-cum-production partners — Adani Defence Systems and Technologies, Bharat Forge and various MSMEs.
• It uses a highly accurate hybrid navigation system, combining data from the Global Positioning System (GPS) with onboard guidance to steer precisely towards its target after release.
• The tests demonstrated a range close to 100 km with pin-point accuracy.
• Gaurav was first tested in August 2023.

Ramgarh Lake

News: The Ramgarh Dam near Jaipur, which once served as a crucial source of water for the Rajasthan capital, is currently undergoing a survey to identify and remove encroachments and obstructions in its catchment area. Ramgarh Lake.

About Ramgarh Lake

• It is a man-made water body located near Jamwa Ramgarh, approximately 30 kilometers from Jaipur in Rajasthan, India.
• It hosted the rowing events during the 1982 Asian Games, underlining its prominence in Indian sports history.
• The lake last received water in 1999 and has remained dry since the year 2000.
• Due to the rich biodiversity in the area, the Government of India declared it a Wildlife Sanctuary in 1982.
• Historical Significance: Ramgarh was once a royal hunting ground for the Maharajas of Jaipur. The region has since evolved into a heritage site with significant cultural importance.
• Another major attraction near the lake is the shrine of Jamwa Mata, situated downhill from the lake. This temple was established by Rao Dulherao of the Kachhwaha clan of Jaipur.

Phawngpui National Park

News: Recently, forest fires had erupted in several parts of Mizoram’s Phawngpui National Park.

About Phawngpui National Park

• It is located in Mizoram.  It is named after Phawngpui Mountain, the highest peak in Mizoram, and is also popularly known as Phawngpui Blue Mountain National Park.
• The Kolodyne River marks the eastern boundary of the park.
• Vegetation: The park consists of Tropical Evergreen Forests and Subtropical Montane Forests.
• Flora: Its slopes and ridges are adorned with various species of rhododendrons. Other important flora includes oak (Quercus), Bauhinia variegata, Pinus kesiya, and numerous orchids. Unique plant species like solitary Daphnia flowers, theopathic basils, and rare bamboo groves are also found here.
• Fauna: Tiger, Leopard, Clouded Leopard, Malayan Sun Bear, Himalayan Black Bear, Indian Bison, Sambar, Goral, and Serow. Hoolock Gibbon, Common Langur, Stump-tailed Macaque, and Slow Loris, Golden Cat, Jungle Cat, Leopard Cat, Marble Cat, Barking Deer and Binturong are found in the park.
• The park is recognized as an Important Bird Area (IBA) for its rich avian diversity and presence of globally threatened bird species such as Blyth’s Tragopan and Mrs. Hume’s Pheasant, both listed as Vulnerable.