Centre to grant citizenship to minorities of Pak, B'desh, Afghan under Citizenship Act, 1955
New Delhi (PTI): The Centre has decided to grant Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and currently living in two districts of Gujarat under the Citizenship Act, 1955.
The move to grant citizenship under the Citizenship Act, 1955 and not the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA) bears significance.
The CAA also provides for granting Indian citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, but as the rules under the Act have not been framed by the government yet, no one so far could be granted citizenship under it.
According to a Union home ministry notification, those Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians residing in the districts of Anand and Mehsana in Gujarat will be allowed registration as a citizen of India under section 5 or will be granted certificate of naturalisation under section 6 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 and in accordance with the provisions of the Citizenship Rules, 2009.
Such people living in the two districts of Gujarat have to submit their applications online which will then be verified by the collector at the district level. The application and reports thereon shall be simultaneously made accessible online to the central government, the notification read.
The collector may make such inquiry as he considers necessary for ascertaining the suitability of the applicant and for that purpose forwards the application online to such agencies for verification and comments as may be required for completing such an inquiry, it said.
After completing the entire process, the collector, being satisfied with the suitability of the applicant, grants him or her the citizenship of India by registration or naturalisation and issues a certificate of registration or naturalisation, as the case may be, the notification said.
The Narendra Modi government wants to grant Indian nationality to persecuted non-Muslim migrants -- Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Parsis, and Christians -- from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan who had come to India till December 31, 2014.
There were massive protests in some parts of the country after the CAA was passed by Parliament in December 2019 and the subsequent presidential nod. Over a hundred people lost their lives during the protests.
However, the CAA has not been implemented so far as rules under it are yet to be framed.
According to the Manual on Parliamentary Work, the rules for any legislation should have been framed within six months of presidential assent or seek extension from the Committees on Subordinate Legislation in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
In January 2020, the home ministry notified that the Act would come into force from January 10, 2020, but it later requested the parliamentary committees in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha to give it some more time to implement rules as the country was going through its worst ever health crisis due to the Covid pandemic.
Last fortnight, the Union home ministry had been granted yet another extension by the Parliamentary Committees on Subordinate Legislation in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha to frame the rules of the CAA.
While the permission has been granted from the Rajya Sabha till December 31, 2022, the Lok Sabha has granted time till January 9, 2023.
This was the seventh extension given to the home ministry to frame the rules under the CAA.
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OpenAI launches GPTo, improving ChatGPT's text, visual and audio capabilities
San Francisco (AP/PTI): OpenAI's latest update to its artificial intelligence model can mimic human cadences in its verbal responses and can even try to detect people's moods.
The effect conjures up images of the 2013 Spike Jonze move “Her,” where the (human) main character falls in love with an artificially intelligent operating system, leading to some complications.
While few will find the new model seductive, OpenAI says it does works faster than previous versions and can reason across text, audio and video in real time.
GPT-4o, short for “omni,” will power OpenAI's popular ChatGPT chatbot, and will be available to users, including those who use the free version, in the coming weeks, the company announced during a short live-streamed update. CEO Sam Altman, who was not one of the presenters at the event, simply posted the word “her” on the social media site X.
During a demonstration with Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati and other executives, the AI bot chatted in real time, adding emotion — specifically “more drama” — to its voice as requested. It also helped walk through the steps needed to solve a simple math equation without first spitting out the answer, and assisted with a more complex software coding problem on a computer screen.
It also took a stab at extrapolating a person's emotional state by looking at a selfie video of their face (deciding he was happy since he was smiling) and translated English and Italian to show how it could help people who speak different languages have a conversation.
Gartner analyst Chirag Dekate said the update, which lasted less than 30 minutes, gave the impression OpenAI is playing catch-up to larger rivals.
“Many of the demos and capabilities showcased by OpenAI seemed familiar because we had seen advanced versions of these demos showcased by Google in their Gemini 1.5 pro launch,” Dekate said. “While Open AI had a first-mover advantage last year with ChatGPT and GPT3, when compared to their peers, especially Google, we now are seeing capability gaps emerge.”
Google plans to hold its I/O developer conference on Tuesday and Wednesday, where it is expected to unveil updates to its own Gemini, its AI model.
