Section 153A of the IPC

Section 153A of the IPC

• The Supreme Court granted interim bail to Pawan Khera, chairman of the media and publicity department of the All India Congress Committee, who had been arrested for alleged hate speech by Assam Police. Multiple FIRs registered against Khera across different states mentioned offences ranging from criminal conspiracy, imputations, assertions prejudicial to national-integration to promoting enmity between religions.

Section 153A: law

• Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) penalises “promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony”.
• This is punishable with imprisonment up to three years, or with fine, or with both.
• The provision was enacted in 1898 and was not in the original penal code. At the time of the amendment, promoting class hatred was a part of the English law of sedition, but was not included in the Indian law.

Tejas at foreign air exercise

• Home grown combat jet Tejas Light Combat Aircraft is set to participate in its maiden war game outside India as five such IAF jets will take to the skies at an international air exercise in the UAE between 27 February and 17 March 2023. An Indian Air Force contingent of 110 air warriors has arrived at Al Dhafra air base to participate in Exercise Desert Flag VIII.
• The IAF would be participating with five LCA Tejas and two C-17 Globemaster III aircraft.
• This is the first occasion when LCA Tejas will fly in an international exercise outside India, an IAF said in New Delhi on 25 February 2023.
• The gulf drill comes a year after the cancellation of last year’s Exercise Cobra Warrior in the UK, which was to be the first outing of the indigenous fighter jets outside the home. But the Royal Air Force exercise at Waddington was cancelled due to the Russia-Ukraine war.

New brain of ALMA telescope

• The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) 
• A radio telescope comprising 66 antennas located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile — is set to get software and hardware upgrades that will help it collect much more data and produce sharper images than ever before. The most significant modernisation made to ALMA will be the replacement of its correlator, a supercomputer that combines the input from individual antennas and allows astronomers to produce highly detailed images of celestial objects. Today, ALMA’s correlators are among the world’s fastest supercomputers.