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• Both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were adjourned sine die on Wednesday, bringing an end to the stormy Monsoon Session of Parliament, two days before its scheduled conclusion.
• Proceedings, since the start of the session on July 19, were continuously marred by ruckus and uproar with Opposition members stalling proceedings in both Houses demanding discussions on the Pegasus Project Report, farmers’ agitation, and other issues.
• Bill count: The Question Hour witnessed disruptions on most of the days. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said 13 bills were introduced and 20, including those from the Rajya Sabha, were passed during the Session. Some of the important ones were the Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Seventh Amendment) Bill, 2021, that will allow states to make their OBC lists, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Bill, 2021 and Appropriation Bills relating to Supplementary Grants for 2017-18 and 2020-21.
• How democratic? Most Bills were passed within minutes and without any discussions. The exception, however, was the Constitutional Amendment Bill, which saw orderly discussion during its passage in the Lower House as the Opposition paused their protests on August 10. The Congress also complained that Lok Sabha TV didn’t give adequate coverage to the Opposition and their protests in the House were completely blacked out.
• How productive? The Lok Sabha functioned for 21 hours and 14 minutes against the stipulated time of 96 hours during the Monsoon Session, Birla added, with business productivity at 22%. The Rajya Sabha recorded 28% productivity. A total of 17 sittings were held in the Upper House that functioned for 28 hours and 21 minutes.
• In comparison: Last year’s Monsoon Session (held amid Covid in September) saw 167% business productivity in Lok Sabha and 100.47% productivity in Rajya Sabha. The curtailed session due to the pandemic was the shortest but the most productive in two decades. At least 25 Bills were passed in the 18-day session, curtailed by eight days.
• In the Budget Session of Parliament held in February-March this year, the business productivity of Lok Sabha was 114%. The first part of the Budget session was productive with business being transacted even beyond midnight on certain days.

• Ten people were killed, 13 rescued and several others feared buried under debris after a landslide trapped a bus and other vehicles in Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur district on Wednesday, officials said.
• A video clip captured the horror of the moment. First, shooting stones fell down the mountainside into the river below, creating small splashes of water. Warning whistles were heard and then a big chunk of the mountain collapsed on National Highway 5 and into the river.
• Fighting to complete the operation before nightfall, rescue workers struggled to pull out survivors and bodies from the debris near Chaura village in Nigulsari area of Nichar tehsil. District administration officials, search and rescue team comprising members of local police, homeguards, NDRF, ITBP, quick response team (police) and medical teams were at the incident site.
• Hours after the landslide a little before noon, Kinnaur deputy commissioner Abid Hussain Sadiq said 10 bodies had been pulled out but there were others feared trapped. Eight of the dead were found trapped in a Tata Sumo taxi, according to state disaster management director Sudesh Kumar Mokhta.
• A Himachal Road Transport Corporation bus, which was on its way from Reckong Peo to Haridwar via Shimla, was still buried under the debris, Mokhta added.
• Earlier: On July 25, nine people were killed and three others injured in multiple landslides near Batseri on Sangla-Chitkul road in Kinnaur district. Two days later, at least eight people died, two were injured and two went missing in flash floods triggered by a cloudburst over the Tozing Nullah in Udaipur of Lahaul-Spiti district. Jal Shakti Minister Mahender Singh Thakur had informed the state Assembly last week that a total of 218 people have died and 12 were missing in Himachal this monsoon season.

• A parliamentary panel has expressed concerns over the withdrawal or non-implementation Centre’s flagship crop insurance scheme in as many as seven states, saying more such examples in subsequent years and “delay in settlement of claims” will defeat the very purpose for which the scheme was launched.
• The standing committee on agriculture, in its report tabled in Lok Sabha this week, said though most of the withdrawing states are implementing their own schemes, the government must look into the reasons for withdrawal or non-implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY).
• Punjab had never implemented the PMFBY, whereas Bihar and West Bengal had withdrawn from it in 2018 and 2019, respectively. On the other hand, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Telangana and Jharkhand did not implement the scheme last year, citing “financial constraints” and “low claim ratio during normal seasons” as the major reasons.
• The PMFBY was launched with effect from April 1, 2016 after rolling back earlier schemes. Its coverage was 30% of gross cropped area (GCA) in 2016-17 but decreased to 27% in 2018-19 and 25% in 2019-2020.
• The records, referred to by the panel, show that the coverage in terms of area insured under the PMFBY decreased from 567.2 lakh hectares (L Ha) in 2016-17 to 508.3 L Ha in 2017-18 and subsequently to 497.5 L Ha in 2019-20. Withdrawal of states from the scheme was cited by officials as one of the reasons for decrease in the scheme’s coverage.
• Flagging the issue of delay in claim settlement, the panel said, “The farmers avail the insurance under PMFBY with an expectation that it will help in mitigation of loss in time of distress. But delay in settlement of claims defeats the very purpose of the scheme.”

• Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai was on a sticky wicket after newly inducted tourism minister Anand Singh shut down his MLA office and even reportedly offered his resignation on Wednesday, in the first public expression of dissent over the cabinet allocation.
• Singh, one of the turncoat legislators who crossed over to BJP to bring down the Congress-JDS government, said he was “hurt” by the treatment meted out to him by the BJP. “While I continue to have faith in the party leadership, I do not know whether they continue to have faith in me,” the four-time MLA from Vijayanagara said.
• He received support from fellow turncoat and newly-inducted rural development and panchayat minister K.S Eshwarappa. “The BJP came to power after a great many sacrifices from a few Congress leaders. Our party and leaders recognised this,” said Eshwarappa.
• The cabinet allocation, which was finalised by BJP’s central command in Delhi, was a particularly difficult task as the party had to balance the demands by the turncoat leaders as well as its primary legislators. Add to this the pressure from former CM B.S. Yediyurappa and other regional factions of BJP.
• Earlier on Tuesday, hundreds of BJP cadres from Kodagu drove down to Bengaluru and protested at Freedom Park over the exclusion of Appachu Ranjan from the cabinet.
• New CM Bommai, for now, is defiant. “Singh and I have been friends for over 30 years, and I have complete faith in him that everything will be resolved” the CM said. “Even our central leaders are going to speak to him in this regard,” he added.

• Though Chandrayaan-2 mission lander crash landed on the Moon in 2019, its orbiter is deftly doing its job — one of its eight key scientific instruments has detected the “unambiguous presence of hydroxyl and water molecules” on the lunar surface. The findings will certainly give a heads-up to ISRO, which has scheduled the launch of its next lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3, next year.
• Indian researchers used the data obtained by the orbiter’s imaging infrared spectrometer (IIRS), meant to collect information from the Moon’s electromagnetic spectrum, to understand the lunar mineral composition. Three strips on the Moon’s surface were analysed by IIRS sensor for hydration presence.
• “The initial data analysis from IIRS clearly demonstrates the presence of widespread lunar hydration and unambiguous detection of OH and H₂O (water) signatures on the Moon,” said the findings of Indian researchers that were published in the Current Science journal. Plagioclase-rich rocks have been found to have higher OH or possibly H₂O molecules when compared to mare regions, which were found to have dominance of OH at higher surface temperatures, it said.
• The study, authored by scientists, including former ISRO chief AS Kiran Kumar, from Ahmedabad-based Space Applications Centre, Bengaluru-based UR Rao Satellite Centre and ISRO HQ, says the discovery is “significant for future planetary exploration for resource utilisation”.

• BJP leader and Supreme Court lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay was granted bail by a Delhi court on Thursday, a little over 24 hours after he was arrested in connection with Islamophobic slogans raised during a rally at Jantar Mantar in Delhi.
• “There is nothing on record to show that the alleged hate speech to promote enmity between different groups was done in the presence or at the behest of the applicant/accused,” the magistrate court said. It added: “Conspiracy is no doubt hatched behind closed doors, and the investigation is at a nascent stage. That, however, does not imply that liberty of a citizen be curtailed on mere assertions and apprehension.”
• Upadhyay and five others — identified as Deepak Singh, Vinod Sharma, Vineet Bajpai, Preet Singh and Deepak Kumar — were charged with promoting religious enmity and violating Covid-19 protocols established under the Delhi Disaster Management Authority Act. Upadhyay was earlier remanded to two days of judicial custody.
• During the hearing, Upadhyay’s lawyer argued that he had left the venue before the inflammatory slogans were raised. Opposing the bail plea, Delhi Police said, “there is no evidence as such that he left.” “Exactly what is the nexus, who gave the speeches? We are at a nascent stage of the investigation,” the police said.

• Taliban fighters could isolate Afghanistan’s capital in 30 days and possibly take it over in 90, the latest assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies says, news agency Reuters reports.
• The assessment of how long Kabul could stand was a result of the rapid gains the Taliban had been making around the country in the wake of the withdrawal of US and NATO forces. “But this is not a foregone conclusion,” the anonymous US official said.
• The Taliban now controls about 65% of the country. The militants took over three more provincial centres: capitals of Badakhshan and Baghlan provinces to the northeast and Farah province to the west. In Farah, Taliban fighters carrying M-16 rifles and driving American-made Humvees and Ford pickup trucks rolled through the streets of the capital, Associated Press reports.
• Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, meanwhile, is betting on tribal warlords to halt the Taliban surge. On Wednesday, Ghani flew into Mazar-i-Sharif to rally old warlords to the defence of the biggest city in northern Afghanistan. Late Tuesday, India had vacated its nationals and Indian staff at the consulate in the city after the Taliban made grounds in the nearby region.

• India is in talks to buy 50 million doses of the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. A Pfizer spokesperson said it was in talks with the government but declined to provide further details, Reuters reports.
• India had earlier waved off the precondition for local trials to approve vaccines cleared in the US, UK, EU and Japan, hoping to fast-track the launch of shots made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.
• But demands of indemnity — legal protection against lawsuits — by Pfizer and Moderna has been a hindrance. Even the vaccine doses the US has agreed to donate to India has not arrived due to this.
• In contrast, last Saturday, India granted emergency use approval for Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine. J&J, which has not demanded legal protection from lawsuits, has an agreement with Hyderabad-based Biological E to make the vaccine in India. Biological E has said it can make up to 1 billion doses of the vaccine.

Arvind Kejriwal. A Delhi court on Wednesday acquitted the Delhi chief minister and his deputy Manish Sisodia in a 2018 case of alleged assault on then chief secretary Anshu Prakash. Nine MLAs from the ruling Aam Aadmi Party have also been cleared by the special court. The court has, however, ordered framing of charges against two other AAP MLAs — Amanatullah Khan and Prakash Jarwal.