Rajya Sabha

Elections for 15 Rajya Sabha seats was recently held for three states which includes Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh.

• The term for Rajya Sabha MPs is 6 years and elections are held after every two years for 33% of the seats.
• The Constitution has not fixed the term of office of members of the Rajya Sabha and it was fixed by the Representation of the People Act (1951).
• The Members are elected by the elected members of the Assemblies of States and Union territories using the proportional representation system through the single transferable vote.
• This method is also used in electing the President of India, the Vice-President and members of State Legislative Councils.
• A Member need not be a domicile of the State from which he or she is elected to Rajya Sabha.
• He has to be an elector in a parliamentary constituency anywhere in India.
• Strength – The maximum strength of the house is 250, of which 238 are to be elected and 12 are to be nominated by the President of India.
• The president nominates 12 members to the Rajya Sabha from people who have special knowledge or practical experience in art, literature, science and social service.
• The state Uttar Pradesh has the maximum number of seats (31 seats).
• In total 8 members are elected from the Union territories (3 from Delhi, 1 from Puducherry and 4 from Jammu & Kashmir).
• Quotas/ preference vote – To be elected, a candidate must secure a specific number of votes known as quotas or preference vote.
• The quota is determined by dividing the total valid votes by the number of seats available plus one.
• In states with multiple seats, the initial quota is calculated by multiplying the number of MLAs by 100, as each MLA's vote is valued at 100.
• The voting process does not occur within the Rajya Sabha itself but rather in the respective state assemblies.
• The adoption of the open ballot system became standard after a 2006 Supreme Court judgment in the case of Kuldip Nayar (Vs) Union of India.

SWAYAM Plus Platform

The union Ministry of Education recently launched the ‘SWAYAM Plus’ platform to offer courses developed collaboratively with the industry.

• SWAYAM Plus aims to offer employability and professional development?focused programmes through collaboration with leading industry players such as L&T, Microsoft and CISCO.
• It primarily focuses on achieving the following:
  • Building an ecosystem for all stakeholders in professional and career development, including learners, course providers, industry, academia and strategic partners.
  • Enabling a mechanism that provides credit recognition for high?quality certifications and courses offered by the best industry and academia partners.
  • Reaching a large learner base by catering to learning across the country, with a focus on reaching learners from tier 2 and 3 towns and rural areas and
  • Offering employment focused courses, based on learner needs across chosen disciplines with options to learn through resources in vernacular languages.
• It will offer programmes in sectors such as:
  • Manufacturing, Energy, Computer Science and Engineering/IT/ITES,
  • Management Studies, Healthcare, Hospitality and Tourism besides Indian Knowledge Systems and others.
• It will be operated by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras).
• It also envisions bringing in features such as access to mentorship, scholarships, and job placements as value-added services in due course of time.
• SWAYAM – Is the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform providing educational opportunities for a vast number of learners, was launched by the Ministry of Education in 2017.

Whips

Recently Samajwadi Party Chief Whip Manoj Pandey resigns, fears of cross voting in Rajya Sabha polls.

• With respect to parliament, a whip is a written order that party members be present for an important vote, or that they vote only in a particular way.
• It can also refer to a designated official authorised by a party to issue a whip.
• In India, all parties can issue whips to their members.
• Duties – He is charged with the responsibility of ensuring the attendance of his party members in large numbers and securing their support in favor of or against a particular issue.
• The members are supposed to follow the directives given by the whip.
• Parties appoint a senior member from among their House contingents to issue whips — this member is called a chief whip, and he/ she is assisted by additional whips.
• Chief whip – A senior member appointed among their House to issue whips.
• Provisions – The office of ‘whip’ is mentioned neither in the Constitution of India nor in the Rules of the House nor in a Parliamentary Statute.
• It is based on the conventions of the parliamentary government.
• Types of whips – Whips can be of varying degrees of seriousness. The importance of a whip can be inferred from the number of times an order is underlined.
• A one-line whip, underlined once, is usually issued to inform party members of a vote, and allows them to abstain in case they decide not to follow the party line.
• A two-line whip directs them to be present during the vote.
• A three-line whip is the strongest, employed on important occasions such as the second reading of a Bill or a no-confidence motion and places an obligation on members to toe the party line.

Interception Orders

The IT Ministry has recently amended the provisions of the Information Technology (IT) Rules, 2009 to include the home secretary as the competent authority to delete Interception Orders.

• In 2018, the Ministry of Home Affairs authorised 10 agencies, including the Enforcement Directorate and the Intelligence Bureau, to snoop into communications in a statutory order. 
• Until now, the power to delete was with the security agency which had requested the surveillance either from the home ministry or a competent court.
• Recently the Union government has authorised the Home Secretary, both at the central and the state level to destroy interception orders.
• The IT Rules, 2009, specify the procedure and safeguards the government must follow for interception, monitoring, and decryption of information.
• Once a resource is classified as critical information infrastructure, the level of protection accorded to it is more.
• Any criminal profile created for any crime in India will be stored for 75 years under Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022.
• But all paperwork of state surveillance of journalists, activists and opposition leaders will disappear within 6 months.
• The computer resources related to National Investigation Agency is classified as critical information infrastructure.

Tuvalu

In recent times the potential disappearance of Tuvalu is increasing at an accelerated rate.

• Tuvalu is a country in the west-central Pacific Ocean.
• It occupies a strategic location approximately halfway between Hawaii and Australia.
• The Tuvaluans are Polynesian, and their language, Tuvaluan, is closely related to Samoan.
• The country is characterised by a ring-shaped coral reef encompassing a lagoon, adorned with islands with a reported population of around 12,000 residents.
• It holds the distinction of being the world's least visited country.
•  Despite its diminutive size, it stands as one of the smallest nations globally and has its own currency.
• Tuvalu is famed as one of the world's most enchanting island destinations.
• It not only receives the least number of visitors, but is also facing the unfortunate possibility of becoming inaccessible in the foreseeable future.
• The cause for concern is the potential disappearance of the nation at an accelerated rate.