Energy Trilemma: In order to build a strong basis for prosperity and competitiveness, India must balance the three core dimensions of the energy trilemma: affordability and access, energy security and environmental sustainability.

Gas-based economy implies gas as the main commercial energy source in the energy mix of an economy.The reforms aim to provide a standard procedure for the sale of natural gas in a transparent and competitive manner to discover market price by issuing guidelines for sale by the contractor through e-bidding.This will bring uniformity in the bidding process across the various contractual regimes and policies to avoid ambiguity and contribute towards ease of doing business. Components of the policy The objective of the policy is to prescribe standard procedure to discover market price of gas to be sold in the market by gas producers, through a transparent and competitive process.It would permit affiliates to participate in bidding process for sale of gas and allow marketing freedom to certain Field Development Plans (FDPs) where Production Sharing Contracts already provide pricing freedom.

Various govt. initiatives India’s quest to increase the share of natural gas in the overall energy mix hinges crucially on two factors: (1) Development of pipelines and (2) Hassle free exploration. In this regard, the govt. has taken several measures. The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Licensing Policy (HELP) is a policy indicating the new contractual and fiscal model for the award of hydrocarbon acreages towards exploration and production (E&P).The govt. has envisaged developing and expanding the National Gas Grid. At present about 16,788 Km natural gas pipeline is operational and about 14,239 Km gas pipelines are being developed.The Pradhan Mantri Urja Ganga (PMUG) pipeline project currently under will provide connectivity to another flagship project, the North-East Gas Grid.The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, which aims to provide free cooking gas connections to poor families is also a roaring success.Moreover, India is constantly moving to revive the 1,814 kilometre-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) transnational gas pipeline which is in shamble for years.

The Code prohibits strikes and lock-outs in all industrial establishments without notice. No unit shall go on strike in breach of contract without giving notice 60 days before the strike, or within 14 days of giving such a notice, or before the expiry of any date given in the notice for the strike. Further, there should be no strike during any conciliation proceedings, or within seven days of the conclusion of such proceedings; or during proceedings before an industrial tribunal or 60 days after their conclusion or during arbitration proceedings. Similar restrictions have been given on the employer from announcing a lock-out. The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, had placed such restrictions on announcing strikes only in respect of public utility services. However, the present Code extends it to all establishments. Even the Standing Committee on Labour had favoured limiting these provisions to public utilities.

The provisions that require the prior permission of the government for lay-off, retrenchment and closure are made applicable to only establishments that had employed 300 or more workers on an average per working day in the preceding 12 months. The Code also allows the government to raise this threshold by notification. A lay-off would be deemed illegal if it is effected without permission or is done despite refusal of permission, but it will not be so if the employee had been offered alternative employment that does not require any special skill or cause undue hardship. The Code prescribes notice period, or payment in lieu of notice period, and prior government permission before retrenchment of anyone who has been in continuous service for a year or more. Such a prior permission requirement is in place also for closure of a unit, with the application to be filed 90 days prior to the intended closure.

Where there is more than one trade union in an establishment, the sole negotiating union status will be given to the one that has 51% of the employees as its members. It has been brought down from the 75% requirement in the 2019 version. Where no union qualifies under this criterion, the employer must constitute a ‘negotiating council’ consisting of representatives drawn from the various unions, with only those with at least 20% of employees as its members.

The Industrial Relations Code combines the features of three erstwhile laws — the Trade Unions Act, 1926, the Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act, 1946, and the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. It defines ‘workers’ to include, besides all persons employed in a skilled or unskilled, manual, technical, operational and clerical capacity, supervisory staff drawing up to ₹18,000 a month as salary. It introduces ‘fixed term employment’, giving employers the flexibility to hire workers based on requirement through a written contract. Fixed term employees should be treated on a par with permanent workers in terms of hours of work, wages, allowances and other benefits, including statutory benefits such as gratuity.

n the case of Bachan Singh, the Supreme Court formulated a sentencing framework to be followed for imposing death penalty.•It required the weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances relating to both the circumstances of the offence and the offender, to decide whether a person should be sentenced to death or given life imprisonment.•According to the Bachan Singh judgment, for a case to be eligible for the deathsentence, the aggravating circumstances must outweigh the mitigating circumstances.

What is collective conscience?Collective consciousness (sometimes collective conscience or conscious) is a fundamental sociological concept that refers to the set of shared beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and knowledge that are common to a social group or society.Evolution of collective conscience:‘Collective conscience of society’ as a ground to justify death penalty was first used by the Supreme Court in the 1983 judgment of Machhi Singh v. State of Punjab.In that case, the court held that when “collective conscience of society is shocked, it will expect the holders of the judicial power centre to inflict death penalty”.It was, however, most famously used by the top court in its 2005 judgment in the Parliament attack case in which it awarded capital punishment to convict, Afzal Guru.Collective conscience found its most recent endorsement in the 2017 judgment of the Supreme Court in the December 2012 Delhi gang rape case of Mukesh v. State of NCT of Delhi.

Out of the 43 cases in Delhi in which death sentence was handed down between 2000 and 2015, trial courts invoked the impact of the crime on society’s collective consciencein 31 cases (72%) as grounds to send convicts to death row

The shock and impact of a crime on the collective conscience of societywas a major reason cited by trial courts in Delhi while imposing death sentence on convicts.•The study also revealed blatant non-compliance by the trial courts with the sentencing framework laid down by the Supreme Court in its 1980 judgment in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab,where a

It is a report by research organization Project 39A of National Law University, Delhi.In the study, the organisation analysed 215 judgments from three states, 43 from Delhi, 90 from Maharashtra and 82 from Madhya Pradesh, in which trial courts imposed death sentence between 2000 and 2015.

CDMA differs from GSM and TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) by its use of spread spectrum techniques for transmitting voice or data over the air. Rather than dividing the radio frequency spectrum into separate user channels by frequency slices or time slots, spread spectrum technology separates users by assigning them digital codes within the same broad spectrum. Advantages of CDMA include higher user capacity and immunity from interference by other signals. GSM is a digital mobile telephone system that is widely used in Europe and other parts of the world.

A backdoor is usually a secret method of bypassing normal authentication or encryption in a computer system, a product, or an embedded device, etc.[23] Companies may also willingly or unwillingly introduce backdoors to their software that help subvert key negotiation or bypass encryption altogether. In 2013, information leaked by Edward Snowden showed that Skype had a backdoor which allowed Microsoft to hand over their users' messages to the NSA despite the fact that those messages were officially end-to-end encrypted.