Good afternoon. Welcome to Energy in America. I'm a guest host. My name is Ray Tsuchiyama, filling in for the usual J. Fadel. We have our guest today, a distinguished guest from Washington, D.C., via the wonders of Skype. His name is Lucien Puglia-Rissi, and he's president of the Washington, D.C. based Energy Policy Research Foundation, or EPRING. And it's a Beltway think tank on all things about energy in America and globally, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, South America. And we are two months of the new Trump administration, and right now the cherry blossoms are diminished by snow in the D.C. area. But we have Lucien to give us continuing insights to the evolving energy policies of the new administration and things coming up. There he is. Lucien, how are things in D.C.? Well, they're still a bit chaotic with the new administration, and the appointments are going much slower. I believe the reason for that is because I'm pretty sure even President Trump did not expect to win. And so they didn't have the usual cadre of well vetted personnel to move quickly into the position. So a big issue right now is the slow pace of appointments below the level of the cabinet. But we have the EPA head, Scott Pruitt, in place. Am I correct? Yes. And what has he been talking about? What are the topics that he's been kind of focusing on? And do you see any strategy or roadmap that the administration is embarking upon? So I think we can talk about, you know, I think we can go up to like a $50,000 foot, 50,000 foot level and look at the sort of basic view of the Trump administration. I think, and particularly some of the more eccentric strategists, you might say, that there was this belief that a combination of elites, bureaucrats, academics with too much power, the IAMD, which we call the International Association of Name Droppers, the Davos attending experts, that all these people have gotten together and they have tried to protect us from all the downside risks in the world. And when they did that, they took away all the upside potential. I'm not saying that's true necessarily. That is a kind of theme. And that theme then works it through the energy and environmental policy. And so for Administrator Pruitt, he's got two or three things on his agenda. One is a more differential or critical view towards climate research. Open it up if you like to a broader scientific review. Second, a more hard-nosed view on costs and benefits. The CAFE standards is the first one. Right. And we're going to discuss that more in detail later. I think a third one is a kind of regulatory reform. Are we operating in an environment where a very minute concern for every kind of risk is preventing us from doing everything from building roads to repairing bridges to building factories. Now, this is a kind of stark contrast and the real world is somewhere in between. But this is the debate we're going to see in the coming months. So we see the EPA progressing this area and you just mentioned something, the CAFE, which has been around since I think the oil crisis. Am I correct? Exactly. 1973. And it's a way to get the automakers. I mean we tried to force people to conserve gas but it didn't happen that much. So we're trying to go to the automakers to design, make, and sell vehicles with higher mileage emission standards, goals. So like lots of things in the government, the facts are always complicated. So let's just start with a simple story. If you look at the 1968 film called Bullet, Steve McQueen, you might not be old enough to remember. Steve McQueen drove a 1968 Mustang, GT, I think about 275 horsepower, four-speed. That car produced about one ton of criteria pollutants for a hundred thousand miles. And my criteria pollutants, I don't mean Venus gas emissions. I mean things like carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds. Today's Mustang across a hundred thousand miles produces about 10 pounds of criteria pollutants. So the first point to keep in mind is that the cars of today were enormously more efficient and cleaner than the cars of the past. So one debate is, are we on the cost curve of the law of diminishing returns such that we are opposing very high costs with little return? I think, and we did have, when they settled on this idea of moving the fuel efficiency from 20-something to 54.4 miles per gallon. Right, and that's for 2025, right? 2025. There was an agreement in 2008 that halfway through the process, we would do a mid-term review. Okay, we have a halfway through, and that's how the term, mid-term review stands for. Right, and this mid-term review would be partly based on a big study undertaken by the National Academy of Sciences, the Natural Resource Council. That study was issued in late 2016, and the agreement even told to me personally, because we do a lot of research in this area, by EPA, that that agreement would allow, that document and all the research would allow all the stakeholders to look at it between late 2016 until a decision would be made in 2018, early on in 2018, because much of the pathway was back loaded. So a lot of the achievement to get to the 54.1, and it may be a lesser number because the change of the fleet, but a lot of the heavy lifting took place in the last five years. President Obama did not wait for that review to complete. He says I've seen enough, and in a so-called midnight rule at nine days before he left the office of the presidency, he issued a final determination. So there's a huge amount of uproar now, but all the Trump administration done so far is restore the ex-ante conditions, which is we said we would have a year to do this review. I'm restoring that so all the stakeholders can look at it for the next year. Now, but going back to the analogy here of Steve McQueen, and I'm old enough to remember even Iacocca who, you know, unleashed Mustang in 64, 65, and was a revolutionary car, and Chrysler became at the forefront of this new design, and so forth, and my uncle, Maui, even had a 65 Mustang. So I remember that, and of course mileage back in the late 60s, and the bigger cars, and so forth, Camaro's, and so forth had barely 15 miles per gallon. But I'll be a devil's advocate. I mean we live in a world where the Microsofts, the Amazons, the eBay's, and Google's, and so forth, are, you know, are the leaders in an innovation economy. And you look at Intel, and you look at the power of computing, you know, and it's like logarithmic, how advances have been made in computing power and so forth. And of course there must be, have been, R&D for 20, 30, 40 years in Detroit. But if Henry Ford was alive today, he would open up, you know, SUV, and say, oh wow, it's the same principle, it's the same kind of engine that I've seen back in the 20s with a lot of electronics.  So my question is, why is it so hard to really make revolutionary steps in the car industry? So actually, that's a good question. I do think there are two issues. What do consumers want? If you actually, you know, if you think about it, when EPA did its original analysis, the technical advisory review, and the fundamental analysis of the CAFE standards, they justified the incremental cost of the more expensive cars by the fact that consumers would save enough so that it would be worth the extra cost. Now, put aside that public finance theory does not allow you to take account of private benefits. You're supposed to just count for the external benefits and costs. Consumers want a certain kind of vehicle. And the kind of vehicle they want depends upon a lot of factors, besides their family and how far they plan to travel, the comfort, how much money they have, and the cost of gasoline. And we are now in a period because the shale gas revolution and the oil revolution, the fact that we are producing from a ubiquitous resource called Source Rock, the long run price of oil is probably going to be very close to 50 or 55 dollars. It's right now 3840 for a barrel. And it's about 48. 48, 48 dollars. Okay. But about two or three years ago, it was over 100. Yes. Yes. Yes. And but you see, but you see low oil going out. I'm not worried about the long run price of oil. That leads me to a lot of discussions about Hawaii's utility sector, which we can talk about another time. Because as you know, we're paying about 32 cents per kilowatt hour. Yes. And that you're paying that because of your lots of reasons, including very high fixed costs for the because of a unusual view that renewables can be quite cheap. But you haven't solved the intermittency problem yet, which causes a lot of extra costs. Well, we're we're unusual. I don't agree. We're like experiment because we're an island. We're not part of a series of grids on a mainland where you can buy, you know, electricity or short and so forth. You don't have the dispatchable power you have is heavy fuel oil or oil. Right. Right. Yeah. It's all important. We burn it and then that's how it was made. And it's even worse on the neighbor islands. If it's 32 cents here, it's about four, six cents higher on Maui. And that's even higher on Molokai, even higher overnight. We've had this discussion. Maybe we're getting off track. Yes, I'm sorry. But I can talk to you about this in more detail. Okay. But coming back to think about Hawaii, this may not be the best place to put your climate. Okay. So but coming going back to cars and and so you you put out these factors in consumer preference and the market for cars. Right. So and I agree with you because I recently I went to my dealer. I have a Prius and I said, you know, and I want to trade it in. And then he says to me, my salesperson says, you know, I can give you below blue book. And I said, but it's a Prius. It's it's a, you know, I get a really good mileage. It's clean. It's a beautiful car. And he said that several years ago, he used to sell 40, 50 a month. Now he sells barely 15 because everybody for the same amount of money, they're buying, you know, SUVs and larger cars because the price of gasoline is not so high. Right. Relatively. And there's another issue in this public policy debate, debate. Two issues. One is if because consumer preferences are driving consumers to buy one kind of car and the government regulatory framer is causing them to produce a different mix of fleet. Right. The cost of the more gas guzzlers for a better term, the larger or bigger newer cars, they become more expensive. And so the rate at which the fleet, which the fleet turns over. Right. Because yes, we might sell 17 million new cars in a year, but we have 250 million in the fleet now. Well, we'll come back to that point and explore this question further after this short break for Think Tech Energy in America. Good afternoon, Howard Wigg, codegreenthinktechhawaii.com. I appear on Mondays at three o'clock and my gig is energy efficiency doing more with less. It's the most cost effective way that we in Hawaii are going to achieve 100% clean energy by the year 2045. I look forward to being with you. Aloha. Thanks for watching Think Tech Hawaii and look forward to seeing you at Education Matters on Tuesdays with me, Carol Mon Lee. Hey, everybody. It's me, Ian Davidson, host of a new show here at Think Tech called On The Go. What are you going to get during that show? I can't tell you. I can only tell you that it's going to be fun and it's going to be sometimes and I'm going to have a good time and I hope that you do too.  This is just another one. Take a chance on it. See how you like it. Thanks for watching. We're back on this afternoon of Energy in America. We were talking via Skype to our guest in Washington, DC, who is in the middle of all kinds of policy alignments and also keeps his tab, his eye close to what's happening with consumers and cars and prices and so forth, Lucien Bagliadesi. And go ahead, Lucien. We were continuing about a couple of things. And one, you just said that there's evidence that people drive more in fuel-efficient cars. Yeah. So there's two issues to think about. And that's why I think this midterm review. So if you read the press, you feel that the Trump administration has somehow removed the regulatory program to reduce the CAFE standards to 2025. In fact, that is not the case. They've just restored the original review process, which was supposed to take place throughout 2017. So it's back on track. That's what you're saying. Back on the original track. So there are three or four issues that you need to think about. First, we need to talk about the health of the U.S. auto industry. U.S. auto industry, if you just take the production of automobiles and the dealerships, it's about a million people working. And it's about 3.5 percent of GNP. And even the National Academy talked or was concerned that if the technology uptake was not fast enough to meet the mileage standard, there would be something called stranded capital. Now, stranded capital is a buzzword for it's too costly. You're producing a structure that's not really working. I mean, you've got my capital structure is not producing the cars people want to buy.  That's so there's the health of the auto industry. And it's a legitimate concern. OK, it's something we should talk about. Second, it's not just the new cars we have to think about, but the fleet. The United States probably has somewhere around 250, 270 cars and light duty trucks in the fleet now. If the new cars become more expensive, the turnover of the fleet slows down. And if you think about something, what's more important, the efficiency of the new cars or the pace at which the fleet turns over and adopts more new cars, you have to think about that. And it's even more serious because it appears that to the extent that the cafe standards raises the price of the gas guzzlers or the least fuel efficient cars that are new, those least efficient cars, that quartile, actually, which has been studied carefully recently, people hang on to them, they become more valuable. And then third, third, a quick one, OK, is if people buy when people buy more efficient cars, they drive them more. That's called the rebound effect. So though all of those factors should allow us to be a very reasoned and careful approach on how we set the standard. So given those, well, ways in that you're saying that uptake could be affected by what you just said, those factors, that the goal is to replace the gas guzzlers with more efficient cars in a timely manner. So given all of that, and we know certain factors are in play with the psychology of consumers and also with with with with with money, you know, how to spend money wisely efficiently. Can the government or automakers get together to somehow develop incentives to do the right thing? So I think actually I think this is the problem. Right now, the whole debate is highly polarized. And so one of the things we ought to do is get all the stakeholders together and see if we if some kind of kind of global arrangement can be made up right now. Of course, you know, California has a special status right and can get a waiver, but that waiver actually was based more on local pollution concerns because air quality conditions in California had historically been quite severe, L.A. based and and other places. And that's a leader in in in some standards, right?  Yeah, but the interesting thing now is that the big fight is not over local air pollution, but GHG or greenhouse gas emissions, right? And so here it's hard to argue that's a local problem. That's a global problem. And we know from the modeling of the IPCC and others that even if you eliminated all emissions of greenhouse gases from the United States, it has no effect on predicted global temperatures or sea level rise, right? Well, we have continuing rise of cars in India and China and emerging markets. So the question is, should California be given a special waiver because somehow their leadership on this role will induce the Chinese and the Indians to behave differently? Maybe that's true. But that's the debate we ought to have. Right. Well, California does have, you know, I think a 45 million. It's a large population. It's a large population. Yeah, it is quite large. And the other interesting thing about California is that's where the most innovative designs for cars also take place. Am I correct? I don't know. We are, of course, you're talking about the electric car. So you're talking, are you talking about? All kinds of cars that California consumers, but I've seen where I think Nissan, other Ford and others have, have like outposts for their R&D looking at consumer preferences. That's actually true. There's a Mercedes has a facility, Audi has a facility. You're absolutely right. There's several advanced research facilities in California for automobiles. And so, but going back, Kevin, so you see this happening, this midterm review that should have happened is happening now. Right. It's just being restored. Yeah, so it's been restored to his rightful kind of pacing and so forth. So what do you think will happen? Will there be more? Do you foresee or your goal seems to be more of people getting together and really discussing how to, you know, create the right incentives or, or directions? You know, I think all the players, if it were me, if I were king of the United States, I would say, look, the, the order, if you think about, think about the politics for a second, right? You might notice that there were a lot of upset voters in the industrial heartland of the United States. That's correct. Yes. They're the ones that put to employer in those things. That's actually where they make the automobiles. Right. Why don't we start there and say, OK, is there a way we can sustain the health and the economic well-being of the employment and the profitability of the automobile industry and all the parts manufacturers in the U.S. And at the same time, move along a gradient, right, which gets California and more, let's say, environmentally conscious parts of the country satisfied that we're making enough progress. And by the way, making some modest tweaks to the standard might even allow the fleet to turn over a bit quicker, might allow us to do some other things. Maybe we should explore, even God forbid, an increase in the gasoline tax as an alternative strategy for some of this. In other words, we need to fund this corporate tax reform. So I think if we can get both sides to be a little less polarized over this and think about the fact that there are a lot of stakeholders who have a lot, you know, are really concerned about that. And in good faith, they're trying to do the right thing. I suspect we can make some progress on this. But this is Washington. It's not easy. But you're correct that if you go back to the election, you're absolutely right that a lot of the red states or the so-called Rust Belt states or states that had heavy manufacturing saw a very bleak future for themselves. And they saw a Silicon Valley world where they were being outpaced or, you know, kind of put placed aside. And that feeling of alienation came out that America does have a strong manufacturing base. And automobiles is really a part of it. It has been historically. Right. And I don't think it's just, and of course, I'm not a person who believes it's all caused by unfair trade. This is automation. This is shifting consumer preferences. This is, you know, inventory management. We just don't need as many people to produce the manufacturing the manufactured goods that we used to. Right. Right. No, it is a different world, you know. And of course, but the other thing that happened in the early days of the administration was the appearance of Prime Minister Abe to to see Trump. And and of course, there's has been great investment in Smyrna, Tennessee, and Indiana and Kentucky and so forth, of Honda and in Ohio and so forth, Nissan and Toyota in the United States. Do you see more of that happening in the Japanese? Absolutely. I think a major initiative I expect to see from the Japanese, including a personal initiative of Abe-san, is that he wants to see exports of liquefied natural gas expand from the US and for those supplies to move to the Pacific Rim, not just to Japan, but throughout other parts of the Pacific Rim in which Japan plans to take an active role with incentives, technical assistance and soft, soft money to try to encourage greater use of gas as a substitute for coal. So this is the interesting thing. And on one hand, you could argue that Trump is a very anti-climate person. On the other hand, if he succeeds in expanding the manufacturing base, gets more efficient automobiles, we expand natural gas and that gas, as it is doing now in Mexico, replacing heavy fuel oil and begins to replace coal. That can have a substantial improvement to the end. And we're coming to the end with a substantial improvement in our program. Thank you very much, Lucien in DC, for your time and comments.


Good afternoon one and all and it's one of the rare occasions when we have webinars on a topic back to back so that we can have a deeper look into that and the fact that yesterday's webinar touched more than 10,000 views in a particular day. It creates history on the platform of Beyond Law CLC. We have not been able to touch 10,000 views in a on the Facebook page and so we are so happy that just as N Kumar when he gave the insights on the topic of examination of witnesses civil trial and the arbitration act and as yesterday as yesterday just as N Kumar a former judge of Karnataka High Court and the president of Karnataka Judicial Academy had taken us what according to him was a bird eye view but we felt that we were largely enriched by the way he took to the entire gap of the first part and today when we take examination of witnesses of civil trial and the arbitration act as usual he would first take us the manner or like yesterday he appraised us that as to how the documents etc would be read into evidence how they are marked and how they are exhibited what is the manner and what is the subtle differences between the under the civil trials as well as the arbitration act without taking much time since people know about just N Kumar who had connected yesterday on the Facebook as on the platform and even otherwise he's such a popular person that everyone knows about him I would request just as N Kumar of the yesterday from the yesterday's webinar on the topic so kindly unmute yourself yes right good afternoon yesterday we saw how oral evidence is to be used today let us see how documentary evidence is to be used in a civil trial as all of you know in the amendment to the civil procedure court all the documents on which the plaintiff relies on are to be filed along with the plight all the documents on which the defendant relies on are to be filed along with the written state they are permitted to file copies along with the previous but once the previous are over issues order 13 of the civil procedure court expects the parties to produce all the original documents before the court and if the document remains that has to be filed along with the academic which is filed by way of examination in chief by that stage all evidence is before the court the doctor no document is permitted to be produced unless a special case is made out for production therefore once the trial has begun all the documents are on record now the party has filed an affidavit by way of examining chief and in examination chief expected to say is what he would have said by way of oral evidence now as for the documents are concerned what is the mode in which you produce documents and you get it marked is the documents are received by the court now make it clear here when we talk about examination in chief and oral evidence and documentary evidence oral evidence as I pointed out to you yesterday the directive of what the witness has seen what the witness has heard what the witness has perceived and if it is a specialized professional evidence evidence of experts obviously is oral evidence now there are cases where a particular issue is to be proved not only by oral evidence sometimes it can't be proved by oral evidence it has to be proved by documentary evidence for example if I dispute to the title the property is involved in the amount of oral evidence is not a substitute for documentary evidence it is the documents of title which are to be if a suit for specific performance based on agreement of say it is the agreement of say which is to be produced likewise documentary evidence is produced but in the affidavit what one should not do is this say for example a suit for specific performance based on an agreement written agreement of sale what the party can say by oral evidence is the defendant has agreed to sell the property to me under an agreement of sale data so and so for a consideration of the so and so but once the agreement is reduced into writing the affidavit should not contain the terms of the contract it is prohibited therefore what they have to produce is the document itself therefore the affidavit should say that agreement of sale is produced and it will be marked as exhibit p1 and then that agreement is to be tender in evidence with the court and use a tick mark you should not go on repeating the content of the affidavit it is not permissible and such a thing should be so therefore when we have to produce documents in support of our case the next question would be the proof of contents of documents section 61 of the evidence act categorically states the contents of the documents may be proved either by primary or second oral evidence has to be direct document evidence should be by producing the primary evidence or by secondary evidence what do you mean by a primary evidence sections 62 define the primary evidence means the document itself produced for the inspection of the court if your case is based on a document the law says to produce that document itself so that the court will look into the document and then comes to the conclusion to which it has to come now if that primary evidence is not available the law provides for what is known as secondary evidence that is secondary evidence means the certified copies under the provisions of the evidence act copies of the original taken out in a mechanical process you know what is also Xerox copies coder parts of the documents and replica of the documents of the original these are all called secondary evidence the document itself the original document itself is the primary evidence if for any reason the original document is not available then the same thing could be proved by producing secondary evidence which is nothing but a replica of the original now this is about production of primary and secondary evidence now coming to the proof of documents by primary evidence section 64 of the evidence act says the document itself must be proved that the document must be proved by primary evidence except in cases here in October mentioned and then section 65 speaks about how and when secondary evidence could be used that is when the original document is in the opposite party he refuses to produce original is lost original is destroyed original is not in the position of the party who want to rely on if you make out a case for reason for not producing the primary evidence the court will permit you to leave secondary evidence there's a lot of confusion about this how do you make out a case a simple way of making out a case is the witness should enter the witness box the party should enter the witness box and he should stay before the court on hold either the primary evidence is not in his position primary evidence in the position of the opposite party he has called upon him by a notice to produce which he has not produced if the original is lost if the original is destroyed it's called laying the foundation laying the foundation for producing the second evidence so with after laying the foundation saying why the document cannot be produced then in law he's permitted to produce what is known as the second evidence and it is acceptable so this is a procedure which is followed in almost all courts proof of the documents as I said the document itself is approved and once the document is before the court the court will be in a position to look into the documents now the question is documents are produced along with the police it is a record it doesn't form part of evidence the party may produce it to court on a second thought he may not rely on the evidence at all therefore he will not tender that document in evidence so production into court is the first stage then through the witness that document is to be tendered in evidence where the document is tendered in evidence then the opposite party will have a right to object to the production that is receipt of the document by the court that is regarded objection regarding marking if there is no objection the document is marked the document is marked means that is a ministerial act it is a ministerial act but before the document is marked the court has to apply consciously it is judicial mind and receive the document and then mark and merely because the document is marked it does not mean the document is approved after the document is marked if the document is in dispute then the party who is marking the document has to leave evidence to prove the contents of the document this is the procedure production that is the document in evidence marking of the document and then proof of it is a part and parcel of the civil procedure court order 30 rule 3 categorically states rejection of irrelevant and inadmissible documents the court may at any stage of the suit may reject any document which it considers irrelevant or otherwise inadmissible recording the grounds of such rejection therefore the court has the power to reject the document which are tendered in evidence if the document is not rejected in that fashion what is that the court is expected to do when do you say the document is issued in evidence rule 4 provides there shall be endorsed on every document which has been admitted in evidence in the suit following particulars namely the number right to the suit the name of the person produces the document the date on which it was produced and a statement of its having been so admitted and the endorsement should be signed an initial with the judge normally there will be a stamp which contains all these particulars it is a particular but it is a judge who consciously applies his judicial mind and affixes signature and then only it can be said the document is admitted in evidence so therefore this marking of a document and admitting the document in evidence is a very crucial aspect in a civil trial only if the document is admitted in evidence then the court can look into the document otherwise it cannot the civil procedure court also says when a document is produced if the other side raises an objection regarding marking of the document on the ground that it is insufficiently stamped the court has to apply its mind then and there and find out whether the document is sufficiently stamped or not if the document is not sufficiently stamped on a 13 rule 8 of the civil procedure court provides that the court has to impound the document court has to impound the document now as far as importing of documents are concerned they are exhaustively dealt with under the stamp act we will come to that little later so therefore one should be very clear merely by producing the document into court it has not become evidence you know they become a part of the record only when you want to rely on the document the document is to be tended in evidence it should be admitted in evidence in proof of admission it is marked in evidence and thereafter the document in this court the party has to abuse evidence in proof of the document that's where the again the world evidence in respect of documentary evidence comes in now that is where the witnesses play a big role even in proof of a document though the document itself is produced if the document is destroyed that document is approved by oral evidence how do you prove oral evidence document and who are the type of witnesses who are normally examined in civil trial now the first type of witnesses who are examined in the case is the party themselves we saw yesterday parties have to step into the witness box first and give evidence and through them the documents are marked even though the document is marked he may not be the competent witness to prove the document therefore to prove the document the parties may examine witnesses in the witnesses we have two types of witnesses private witnesses and official witnesses it's whereas private witnesses who speak about the documents are concerned are persons who are present at the time of execution of the document persons who have affixed the signature as witnesses of the document persons in fact who has written the document author of the document so they're all persons who are examined when the document is disputed to prove the case of the plaintiff if the person was present at the time of document he will step into the witness box and say I saw with my eyes the document was written in my presence after the document was written it was read over after it was read over the executant signed it witnesses signed it there's another mode of proving the document if the document is witnesses those witnesses are examined who will also come before the court and say I was present at the time of writing of the document so once again with sections so once I wrote the document then the executant signed it and then we have signed it that is oral evidence in proof of document evidence here one distinction has to be noted every document doesn't require attestation but there are documents which are compulsorily attestable what are those number one will is a document which requires compulsory attestation mortgage deed is a document which requires compulsory attestation gift deed is a document which requires attestation now if a document requires attestation and if the document is distributed section 68 of the evidence acts says you must examine one attesting witness at least who is alive in proof of the due execution of that document what do you mean by attested it is defined in the transfer of property act and also as hindu succession act indian succession act with reference to wins now when you need evidence regarding attestation it is not that the person enters the witness box and says I saw them executing the document attestation has a particular connotation in the eye of law what is that only when you know that then you can lead evidence in support of that attestation and attesting witness what that he should speak is very important attestation means the document is written executing fully being conscious and aware of the contents signs the document pro he is the executant with the will he's a testator if it's a gift he's a donor if he's a mortgage he's a mortgage off he affects the signals when they say this requires attestation the attesting witness should say if he was present at the time of execution he should say I saw the executant sign the document the definition of attestation shows executant may sign or he may put a mark or if he is not capable of putting a marker a sign he may authorize somebody to sign on his behalf therefore that is execution and the attesting witness should identify the signature it is not the law that the attesting witness should be present when the executant sign the document if he's present well and good if he's not present attestation means the executant should tell the attesting witness that it is his signature it is his mark he has got somebody signed it after the executant tells the attesting witness then in proof of execution he signs the document though the presence of the attesting witness is not necessary when the document is executed the presence of the executant is a must when the attesting witness attests the document attestation means two witnesses should attest the document it is not the law that both the witnesses attesting witness should be present at that time but both should have acknowledgement from the executant that it is his signature if he was not present at the time of execution and if he was present at the execution he can say in my presence it is done so when you are filing an affidavit by way of examination in G you must bear in mind the requirements of attestation he's barely coming to the witness box and saying I have cited is not proof of attestation and if such evidence is given in the end of the day of appraisal evidence the court may say even though an attesting witness is executed attestation is not proved insofar as views are concerned section 68 is very clear there is nothing like a declaration by the court that the will is proved by concern but if all an attesting witness one attesting witness should be compulsorily examined to prove the attestation of a bill otherwise the will is not so when you are preparing an affidavit though you have produced a document if the document is in this book that disputed document execution and attestation is to be proved by water evidence so knowing clearly the law on the point what are the requirements which will constitute due execution due attestation that evidence should be set out in the affidavit file in support of the examination machine otherwise though the document is there though the attesting witness is examined the evidence will be of no consequence so therefore this attesting witness they form a class by themselves if they have to be examined these aspects have to be kept in mind and their evidence should be led in the fashion then we have experts evidence if the case involves some technical aspects engineering aspects medical aspects we examine experts in the field they are not ordinary witnesses they are coming and because of their learning they are assisting the court and they are giving evidence of course they are cross-examined so they are called as experts then there is another type of experts that is handwriting is disputed LTM is disputed then it is sent for scientific investigation a commission is appointed expert in the field is appointed he gives evidence then called as commissioners report if the parties agreed to the commission's report automatically it becomes a part of the recording it becomes evidence but if any of the party has a grievance he does not accept them then what he is expected to do is he should call upon that party to enter the witness box and he has a right to cross-examine there is an examination in chief of an expert because his report is the examine chief any person who is agreed by or who doesn't agree what he has said he can enter as the witness to enter the witness box and he can be examined exhaustively that about though it is a court appointment the commissioner is an expert in the field the law is well settled the expert's evidence is not conclusive the court for a good reason may not act on that but in normal circumstances as the court doesn't have the expertise it gives you way to the evidence of these experts and they are called as experts and also the persons who are appointed as commissioners who come and give evidence then we have another type of evidence we summon government officials who are in possession of government documents to produce document and to give evidence they are not strictly speaking the witnesses of anybody they are all government officials in discharge of their functions they are for performance in the next in the course of the performance of their duties certain documents are coming to existence and the other side discursive and therefore it is open to the parties to summon them to produce those government documents and also give evidence in support of the case they are called as official witnesses and when a document is in the hand written or when it is typed and it is distributed normally the person who signed the document who has written the document who has typed on the document whom we call it as crime he is also examined to prove the authenticity of the document therefore in witnesses party himself is the witness attesting witnesses to a document or witnesses in cases where document is compulsorily attestable those attesting witnesses are a necessary witnesses to be examined in the case technical matters scientific matters in medical jurisprudence you examine experts in the field they are called experts and when the court appoints commissioners for investigation and submitting a report they are also in a way experts they come and give evidence and when officials are summoned to produce documents and give it as they are called as official witnesses and when the document is in writing type the persons who prepare the document they are also summoned to examine witnesses like this among the witnesses we have several categories so the question is is that evidence relevant to prove the case is that evidence relevant to prove the document which is in this group and it is an opposite of the evidence the court will come to the conclusion one way or the other earlier if the party is unable to get a witness the law provides for taking our summons and he will he will come and then he is examined now amendment has been affected to effect if a party is willing to go and give evidence even without even without summons he can be summoned but unfortunately when a person comes without the summons much of the time is wasted it is cross examination whether it is summons why did you come a two sisters you have come he has one over you see all this doesn't know now the law says if you want to examine a witness if that witness is willing to come get him if the witness is not willing to come except to the process of court take out summons to the court and examine him so either the it doesn't make any difference ultimately what he has said whether he has stood the test of cross examination is the criteria and not whether he has come on his own or whether he has come through the court process so therefore witnesses are of several times and each one has a particular road to play in a civil court civil trial and suddenly it is the ultimately the court which will weigh their evidence and come to the conclusion one way or another whether that case is true or not true now this is the examination of witnesses to prove the documents now i said when the document is thought to be produced the opposite party has a right to object now earlier the law was whenever an objection is taken to the marketing of the document admissibility of the document the court had to decide it then and then itself and you should pass a considered order because the orders were passed that was challenged in the higher court under the court granted state the entire trial came to a standstill that was the reason for delay in this photo of cases this was the parliament is concerned they amended extensively section 115 of the civil procedure court making the scope of revision of these orders to the minimum but the more important thing is supreme court in the year 2000 taking note of the condition in which these things happened in our country has passed the law i would say it is a judgment rendered by the court of the article 141 which is the law of the land which is holding the feeling what they said was where an admissible in a document is distributed the document is to be marked subject to objection and an objection needs to be heard along with the case on various they don't need to pass any order market subject to objection personal is objecting you know always find out in the course of argument that document should be laid upon therefore this abstraction to the course of trial was taken but it was the two exceptions the two exceptions are one objection regarding stamp duty objection regarding registration they said these two issues are concerned that must be decided then and then itself the reason is is for a stamp duty is concerned then one of the major source of income for the extra card you cannot go on a marking documents and postpone the collection of tax therefore every state act for what should be done when a document which is to be charged the duty is not charged in fact the state acts define what do you mean by chargeable what do you mean by duly stamp what do you mean by instrument so an instrument should be duly stacked that means it is charged up to that document so if a document is not properly stamped what is the procedure to be followed throughout the country the law is the same though each state has a stamp act the provisions in parametry we are with each other now for example take our karnataka stamp act with this with section 33 it deals with what is known as examination and importing of instruments what they say is every person having by law or consent of parties to receive evidence court is an authority which is empowered to receive evidence if such a document is produced before him and is that instrument is chargeable in his opinion with duty and if it is produced or comes in the performance of his function shall if it appears to him the instrument is not duly stamped impound the same impound the same therefore a statutorily duty is cast on a civil court to impound the document which is produced before it as evidence if the document is not duly stamped there is no concession there is no exception whether the opposite party raises objection or not the duty is on the court to look into the document find out whether the document is duly stamped or not and if it is not duly stamped impound the document and the duty is cast upon the court to collect duty and 10 times penalty so it is a stat duty conferred on court now an aspect which requires the state is if a lawyer is not present then the document is standard in evidence opposite law court is not diligent but therefore an insufficiently document stamp document is marked in evidence what would be the effect the effect of such a thing is no instrument chargeable with duty shall be admitted in evidence for any purpose by any person having my law or consent of parties authority to this evidence and shall be acted upon register authenticated by any such person when the document is not duly stamped it is a scrap of paper it has no value it is no evidence at all but somehow the document is marked unintentionally without properly applying its mind then the section says once the document is marked which is insufficiently stamped then objection to this marking cannot be taken up in that proceedings or even in the proceedings like appeal second appeal or revision that is where an instrument has been admitted in evidence such admission shall not be called in question at any stage of the same so or proceeding on the ground and the instrument has not due to this time and this is a law declared by the supreme court also but that doesn't mean that the court cannot import the document and recover the stamp duty so therefore in a civil trial where document evidence is written upon the advocates on the opposite side should be very careful they should not be absent when the documents are produced in evidence even the court should be careful otherwise a valuable right of a defendant may be seriously hampered if documents which are insufficiently stamped or admitted evidence thereby valuable rights of the defendants are taken away now once the document is insufficiently stamped it is tender evidence and the court impounds the document the law provides for payment of the deficient stamp duty and 10 times the penalty if the party tending the evidence produces the stamp duty and also produces a penalty then a document which is initially inadmissible becomes inadmissible and once the stamp duty is paid penalty is paid the court is expected to look into the document and decide the rights of the parties so therefore there is no bar from the court to look into the same document similarly objection regarding registration that is contained in section 49 of the registration act no document required by section 17 of the registration act will be if it is not registered will effectively immobile property comprised there or received as evidence of any transaction affecting such property or conferencing power unless it has been registered so there's an objection again to be taken at the time of marking of the document the only difference between the stamp objection and registration objection is even if a document which compulsory requires to be registered is admitted in evidence though not registered because of the operation of law or it makes no difference unless the document is registered there is no transfer of interest in the property that document has no value that cannot be looked into but the proviso to the provision says but the document can be looked into for what is known as collateral purposes this is the subject matter of lot of judgments in civil transfer what do you mean by a collateral purpose collateral purpose means if the purpose for which you are looking into the document if the law does not require it to be registered then you can look into it take for example a partition under Indian law a partition can be wore it need not be in writing however a partition is reduced into writing but not really stand not register then objected to objected to the ground that it is not registered even the document can be marked but the terms of the document cannot be gone into the collateral purpose which it can be looked into is as law does not require a partition should be in writing it may be a proof of partition in the family but what property went to which chair cannot be looked into under the dot so therefore the difference between the stamp act and the registration act is under the stamp act the document cannot be looked into unless duty and penalty is paid is over as registration is cancelled even if an unregistered document is registered no interest passes but it can be looked into for collateral purposes so this is the difference which one should keep in mind when we are talking about documents production of document and proof of documents therefore mere mark of a document is not proof of document you have to prove the document if it is disputed the examining witnesses who are well acquainted with the facts of the case and as I said the purpose for which the person is examined now the question is this is what happens in the civil court what is the procedure in so far as arbitration cases are concerned because section 19 of the arbitration acts says the arbitral tribunal shall not be bound by the court of civil procedure or the Indian evidence act what are the effects is there any different procedure provided under the arbitration act for production of documents for examination of witnesses is the question now I would say please this is the language of the arbitration act it says arbitral tribunal shall not be bound that's all if the arbitral tribunal want to follow the civil procedure court there is no problem if the arbitral tribunal want to ignore it nobody can find fault with this having said that this is very important the power of the arbitral tribunal under subsection 3 that is first the party is given the right to choose the procedure to be followed in trial another arbitration act section 19 2 if the parties do not agree to a particular procedure the arbitral tribunal can decide the procedure what is the arbitral tribunal decide the procedure it may follow the civil procedure court or if they decide to follow his own procedure subsection 4 of section 19 makes it very clear whatever may be the procedure the tribunal is going to follow during trial the power of the arbitral tribunal under subsection 3 includes the power to determine the admissibility relevancy or materiality and weight of any evidence as I could see I do not find any law which is better than the evidence act about which we are all very familiar therefore arbitral tribunals do rely on substantially the provisions of the evidence act even in a trial before an arbitral tribunal if a document which is insufficiently stamped is sought to be produced under the opposite party objects the tribunal is bound to apply its mind and find out whether the document is newly stamped or not because stamp access any authority court public authority any authority which includes an arbitration court is bound to apply its mind and find out whether the document is sufficiently stamped or not and if it is not stamped follow the procedure prescribed under the stamp bag similarly if a document requires registration and it is not registered certainly the substance of the provisions of the registration act are reflected and the arbitral tribunal is bound to look into these aspects so therefore I do not find any marked difference between the production of documents decision regarding admissibility marking on rejection of documents both in the arbitral cases and in the civil court the procedure followed is one and the same now as well the witnesses are concerned there is a some difference as I said in the civil court exam in chief is by way of a affidavit and cross examination is done in the case of appealable cases the answer given by the witness is taken as it is in the case of non-appealable cases the court can summarize the evidence and record it in arbitration cases what exactly happens is the parties agree the evidence in chief is filed by an affidavit there's no difference in so far as cross examination is concerned they say it is an international case question is taken and answer is taken question is taken and answer is taken unless the party say let us record the evidence in the way it is recorded in court otherwise normally in arbitration proceedings they advocate push a question in cross examination question is taken the witness gives an answer that is taken that is the mode in which evidence is recorded in arbitration cases yet another factor which makes a difference between arbitral tribunal of the civil court in the civil court the judge who is presiding over that particular court is not an expert in any field except the law if any questions involving technical knowledge engineering medicine is involved normally a commission is appointed his report is sought for and then the court looks into the report and decides the case but in the case of arbitration if any technical aspects are involved engineering is involved medicine is involved accountancy is involved in the constitution of the arbitral tribunal itself you can have an expert normally in building contracts there will be two arbiters appointed by the parties who are engineers or architects or experts in the field and the presiding arbitrator would be a judge so that the presiding arbitrator takes care of little matters the two experts in the field looks into the technical aspects or scientific aspects and all of them should be able to produce a reasonably good award that is lacking in the civil court civil courts have to depend upon experts by appointing them as commissioners act on the report after you've opened the parties to cross examine them in tribunal the difference is you can express themselves on the tribunal they become part of the tribunal and they would be in a better position appreciate these scientific matters technical matters and decide these disputes in a satisfactory manner that's the difference would be a civil court trial and a difference in the arbitration proceedings now after the proof of documents is concerned the law is the same I do not see any difference but that is the most important aspect if a document is approved in a manner known to law even though it need not be too technical in essence the document is to be proved in a manner known to law and without the proof of document they no party can say I have proved my case so therefore though the arbitral tribunal has the freedom to ignore the civil position ignore the provisions of the evidence act in someone's substance they do follow these procedures maybe some technical aspects here and there they may be ignored but otherwise the difference is the same even as far as exams and witnesses are concerned in arbitration cases after which are fine until and again they are subject to cross examination and I told you the way in which the evidence is recorded and ultimately by looking into both world of government evidence the case is decided by the London arbitration there's not ever much difference in that now another aspect which requires careful consideration is why are we constituting commercial course why are we parties now preferring alternative dispute resolution mechanics the one and the only reason given was that is a inordinate delay in disposal of cases in the civil court so then what is the procedure prescribed in the civil court which is different from the arbitration act as well as the commercial course act here I'm sorry to say though steps were taken by the parliament as far back as the year 1976 by amending order 17 of the civil procedure court but no effort is made to give effect to the set provisions I take this opportunity to bring it to the notice of the members of the bar what the law is and then you decide for yourself what actually transpires in court and for no fault of the CPC CPC is blamed for delaying disposal of cases order 17 rule 1 speaks about granting adjournments everybody reads only that provision they're not looking to the other provisions at all the court may sufficient causes shown at any stage of the suit grant time to the parties to any of them and the front end to them adjourn the hearing of the suit for reasons to be recorded in writing the world for reasons to be recorded writing was not there earlier now it is introduced making it obligatory for the court to give reasons why he is adjourning the case but invariably in most of the cases no reasons are given but they say by amendment no such adjournment should be granted more than three times to a party during hearing of the suit so each party is entitled to only three adjournments and what is more important is today the court in every such case where the case is adjourned the court shall say day for the further hearing of the suit and shall make such order as to cause occasion with the adjournment or such higher cost as the court did with there cannot be an adjournment without imposing cost but invariably in court adjournments are granted without cost and then the very purpose of these amendments are frustrated now that is more important is there's a proviso added in 1976 about how a civil trial should go on in a civil court now let us see how the law says civil trials should take place in the civil court then we will compare it with arbitration act then we will compare it with the recent commercial course act and find out which is better which is faster the proviso to order 17 to 1 categorically states when the hearing of the suit has commenced that is issues of frame witness is put in the witness box when the hearing of the suit has commenced it shall be continued from day today it shall be continued from day today until all the witnesses in attendance have been examined all the witnesses in attendance have been examined unless the court finds for exceptional reasons to be recorded by it the adjournment of the hearing beyond the following day is necessary so what does it mean once the case is ready for trial plaintiff has entered the witness box he should be ready with the witnesses and the evidence should go on day today if the evidence is not over on the day it should be conducted on the next day but for some reason if you are not able to take up the case next day and if it is to be taken up day after next day court has to give reasons why it has been done there is no question of adjourning beyond a week even if you want to adjourn beyond 24 hours there should be an exceptional case and the court should give reasons this is what is expected of a civil court by way of the 76 then did not stop there no adjournment should be granted at the request of a party except where the circumstances are beyond the control of that party only when the circumstances beyond the control of the party adjournment is to be granted otherwise no adjournment and the most important thing is this the fact that the leader of a party is engaged in another court shall not be a ground for adjournment shall not be a ground for adjournment it is in statute book from 1976 of today what's happening in the trial courts each senior lawyer has got half a dozen juniors for what purpose only to go and submit to the court that the senior is engaged in another court and he wants time a procedure which is completely prohibited as well as a court please see the language used the fact that the leader of a party is engaged in another court shall not be a ground for adjournment in spite of this mandate of law even today in courts cases are adjourned on the ground then the senior is end up in another court then where the illness of a leader or is leveled to conduct the case for any reason other than he's being engaged in another court he's put forward as a ground for adjournment the court shall not grant the adjournment unless it is satisfied that the party applying for adjournment could not have engaged another leader in time that means the illness if it is settled party is not able to make alternative arrangements then a case for adjournment is spent off but if the party had sufficient time to make alternative adjournment on the ground that the council is not well and for any reason is unable to come to court then that is not a ground for adjournment so a stringent provisions are introduced under order 17 for adjournment to the cases even the illness of a council is not a party the party for a council has other work is that a ground for a party and this room is followed only in breach further they go to the extent of saying where a witness is present in court but a party or a speeder is not present or the party or a speeder though present in court is not ready to examine the cross exam in the witness the court may if it thinks we record the statement of the witness and pass such orders as it thinks with dispensing with the examinee chief or cross-examine the witness as the case may be by the party or a speeder not present or not ready as a foresaid so therefore court has been given power sometimes if so happens witness is present you'll be telling my lawyer will come the party will come court says they will not say don't wait for them put him in the witness box examine him leave him so the whole object was to ensure a speedy track once the evidence is commenced it should end with the judgment in the case there should not be adjournment for months and years it happens to me this is what is contained in the civil procedure code as well as regular course of concern so in 1996 we've got the arbitration act arbitration act did not speak about this now in the 2015 a provision is introduced in the arbitration act virtually copying this provision from the civil procedure code now it says the arbitral tribunal shall as far as possible hold oral hearings for the presentation of evidence or for oral argument on a day-to-day basis and not granted adjournment unless sufficient cause is made out and may impose cause including exemplary cause a party seeking adjournment without any sufficient cause so this provision in the civil procedure code finds now a place in the arbitration act by way of 2015 amendment so day-to-day trial is the order only in exceptional cases adjournment would be given if adjournment is given cost is to be imposed and the trial should go on day-to-day basis now coming to the commercial course side we have another extreme proposition after the readings are complete documents are produced interrogate is a rover documents are admitted and disputed affidavits are fired issues are framed the case is posted for trial the case is posted for a day on which day the court man it's called a court management hearing on that day the court has to put this off the trial on what day evidence affidavits has to be filed on what day cross-examines to be done on what day the argument is to be filed on what day oral argument is to be done and the law clearly says from the date of the case management hearing the conclusion of the trial and argument should be within six months it can't be beyond six months this is what today we have by way of 2015 amendment to the CPC in so far as commercial courts are concerned so virtually the way that trial is to be conducted whether it is a civil court whether it's a commercial court whether it's an arbitration court is one of the same the emphasis is on speedy disposal of cases emphasis on day-to-day trial emphasis is to disregard these adjournments and if adjournments are sought so that the opposite party which inconvenience by the adjournment is duly compensated this is the someone's substance of the procedural law in so far as civil trial is concerned whether it is in court not in commercial courts that's where we stand today so with this background whatever the lawmakers can do according to which they have done it if you are not able to follow this procedure prescribed are we admitting that we are incapable of doing or is it a case of not changing your mental attitude in my view we are capable but we are yet to readjust our priorities and there is difficulty the day the lawyers change their mental attitudes the day judges the attitudes the law which is in India is more than sufficient for speedy disposal of cases and our law is in no way inferior to any other law in any other jurisdiction it is our inability to implement this in letter and spirit which has given an impression as though the Indian legal system do not provide for a speedy disposal of cases by appeal to the members of the legal fraternity is now lawyers are a part of assisting the country in the economic vote India is trying to become a economic superpower now it is well recognized a strong sound judicial system is assigned for non for economic growth and it is here today the judges and the lawyers have a road to play not only the judicial administration but also in the economic growth of the country I will stop here and let me have some questions that those can be as usual the work cannot express the way you have hammered the point in the right perspective this is by Anubha he it is in commercial suit the contract is not stamped at all most clauses and agreements are in email can the petitioner still mark the photocopy of the contract the question is when you are marking the documents which are received by email now it is well understood section 65 v makes it very clear an appointment is sufficient to say this is what I received in email and it becomes admissible evidence but if it requires to be stamped it has to be stamped but for stamping all other documents are received by email could be marked in evidence by just filing an appointment under section 65 b of the evidence okay and this is by Radesha Moria how collateral purpose documents are used in the case of unregistered instruments yes that's what I told you unless the document is registered there is no transfer of interest in the property if transfer of interest in the subject matter of the suit by producing an unregistered document one cannot succeed but the document can be used for collateral purposes means the purposes for which if a document is coming to existence that does not require registration it could be looked into that's why I gave you an example of partition now for example today section 17 one capital A is introduced in the registration act making it compulsory for registration of an agreement of sale for the purpose of section 53 capital A if the document is not registered that the document cannot be used for the purpose of 53A but the document can be used for the purpose of finding out whether there was a contract for sale or not so to find out whether it's contract for sale it is a collateral purpose if you want benefit under 53A it requires this because the agreement of sale need not be in writing under law it can be oral also yes this is by uh standard clause both plaintiffs counsel and defendant counsels uh did not appear in the court but the plaintiffs appeared in the court whether the judge can object the plaintiff not to come to the court without the lawyer and won the plaintiff normally when a party has engaged the counsel he should speak through his counsel both the party and lawyer both come to you but when the advocate is not there only party is there if he is decent no judge will say if he is mischievous to get it on they say go and let you on lawyer there is nothing like a law is all how a court manages his court uh this is by Siri Kantheshwar is it necessary for the plaintiff to enter the witness box and get the documents marked as exhibits in a partition suit with the plaintiffs when the defendants have admitted the plead uh the pleadings in view of order 12 that's what i said after the pleadings are completed issues are framed either all the issues the bad enough group may be on the plaintiff or some of the issues on the plaintiff some of the issues of the defendant if the defendant admits the case of the plaintiff and please discharge then there is no necessity for the plaintiff to enter the witness box in the defendant phase to prove his defense suit is to be degree therefore the right to begin in such cases is on the defendant order 18 rule 1 is very clear right to begin normally on the plaintiff when the defendant has admitted the case and he has set up a particular defense to defeat the right of the plaintiff the right to begin is on the defendant he can enter the witness box that's saying uh how can we exhibit an electronic evidence and evidence when original copy of such document is lost that's what i said success now everything involves on 65 and the cross examination of that original if you did not with you the law says secondary evidence and all this evidence ultimately the court has to apply its mind and as i say it accepts you somehow you are only at the stage of production and what best you can do you can do it and ultimately the court will decide whether that particular fact is proved or not madhuri if a document is wrongly exhibited then there is no provision of de-exhibiting cpc so what can be done in such a case if your document is wrongly admitted which requires stamp duty exhibited exhibited that's correct document is exhibited but the document is not unique stamp in the same proceedings or in the higher proceeding that objection cannot be taken if it is not a cost of stamp duty some other thing wrongly done the court will ignore it is all the court is a forward to reject at any point of time or normally what they do they will not act upon the law dharamraj due to non-appearance of plaintiff and his counsel court has passed a dismissal order in such case what further steps should be taken normal dismissal order dismiss for default order is passed after 9 to 9 provides for filing an application for setting aside the order of dismissal and restoring the suit by showing sufficient cost for non-appearance of the party and the counsel and the day the case was dismissed for deport but a suffrage suit is not maintainable he has to file an application and get it restored this is manju can the court allow the alleged will to be marked by the subscribe though attesting witnesses are alive what is the validity of the will mark the production of a will anybody can do normally the proponent of the will has to produce the will neither the evidence of the proponent nor evidence of the strike is proof of will the evidence act is very clear if a document requires to be attested and attested if the document is not disputed accept the will you can produce a certified copy and go ahead but in the case of will original will is to be produced and one attesting witness must be examined any amount of evidence from other sources is of no use if no attesting witness is examined will is not proof thank you sir we don't have any other questions and as usual today also the session is doing extremely well on the facebook and we are all on behalf of the participants of beyond on the panel of beyond law plc as well as on the facebook we are quite thankful for giving us the insights in the three different sessions lot of doubts which were there in the mind of our participant stands to the spirit and those who were actually hearing it for the first time I would not say it was a doubt it was insightful session for all of them on behalf of all the participants we are thankful and tomorrow's session would be taking cue that since you were in the judicial academy we took another person as they say in a relay race to give the pattern from one directed to the another tomorrow we will have the chairman from the deli judicial academy you must be knowing him professor dr. bt call a former chairman of the deli judicial academy culpable homicide and a murder a bird's eye view but do stay connected with us tomorrow though the time is going to be 5 p.m everyone stay safe stay blessed and thank you sir and jai hind to all the participants stay safe and stay home thank you thank you thank you for the opportunity thank you


And a 25-year-old Mileyan woman has given birth to nine babies. Two more than doctors had detected during scans. Halima Cisei gave birth to the non-nucleates in Morocco. Miley's government flew her there for specialist care. A woman who had eight babies in the U.S. in 2009 holds the Guinness World Record for the most children delivered at a single birth to survive. Two sets of non-nucleates have previously been recorded, one born to a woman in Australia in 1971. And another to a woman in Malaysia in 1999, but none of the babies survived more than a few days. World Record holder Nadia Suleiman's oxoplets have grown up and are now 12 years old. She conceived them through vitro fertilization. Get notified about fresh news updates.


Thank you for listening to this presentation, Estrates. Before we start, a few words about myself. I'm working as a software maintenance engineer at Red Hat since four years, remotely from Global in the French Alps. My area of expertise is everything dealing with user space, which is something like 1,000 package distributed by Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I daily use Estrates to troubleshoot customers' problems, in particular when it deals with slownesses. For example, connecting using SSH taking 10 seconds or more. Hanks of commands, for example, DF for PS just hanging for no obvious reason, or just unexpected inactivity of services. For example, S is not reading logs from the journal or from files. Estrates is my favorite tool for this kind of issue. Let's go to the agenda. First, I will briefly introduce Estrates and the option I like to use. Then go through some very limited technical details, which are really necessary to understand. I assume here that you have some knowledge of system programming in C or Python programming. I will then tell you when Estrates may be of some help and why not, depending on the problem to troubleshoot. I will go through some Estrates output analysis and, finally, I will present you six examples of Estrates usage. Estrates is a tool that prints system calls executed by the process being monitored. It prints both system calls arguments and return value. There are several options available, including the option to inject false. But this is not the subject of this talk. So one I use by default are shown below in red. Minus F to flow of children, minus TTT to print nice human readable timestamps, and times when the C is called. Minus V to show structures unabbreviated. It's the kind of verbose mode. Minus S with a value, usually 1k, to record up to 1k characters in strings. Estrates is all about C schools. In brief, C schools are a way for a user process to interact with the kernel. Every time a user process needs to access a resource, for example, a file or a socket, it needs to use a C school. However, the application developer usually doesn't call C school directly. But through the corresponding gdc function, we usually expect very similar functional arguments. For example, the application programmer will use open, which maps to C is open. The difference is the gdc function does more and more checking and is platform independent. Most of gdc functions are mapped to C schools in a one-to-one manner, expect a few, such as for and v for that map to clone on Rails 7 and later. Hence, getting information on C schools is very similar to checking the corresponding gdc function man page in section 2. To get the list of C schools for your system, check the C schools man page in section 2. Let's know how the brief overview of how Estrates works. Estrates uses the P-Trace C school interface, which basically sets breakpoint in C schools of the callee. See the man page in section 2 for details. Once in place, every time a C school is entered, the process stops and Estrates is notified. Estrates collects the information about the C schools, then tells the process to continue. Upon C school returning, again the process stops and Estrates is notified. Estrates collects a return value of the C school and computes the time spent and tells the process to continue. Finally, Estrates prints the collected data to standard error or more usually to a file in music using the minus O option. The consequences of using P-Trace are multiple. Firstly, the process being monitored is sterilized. Every time P-Trace stops the process, all the threads stops as well. Secondly, if it slows down and the monitor process execution by a factor of 10 or more. Thirdly, you cannot have multiple programs monitoring the same process. For example, you cannot have gdv and Estrates attached to the same process. And finally, later we'll see that output of Estrates can be quite difficult to read. Now let's see when Estrates will help. Estrates will help whenever C schools are involved. When a command is hanging or is executing slowly when a process seems to hang waiting for something on the network. Additionally, you can do much more. It's very helpful when you want to understand what a program does. For example, you can see which files are being opened, written, which libraries are being loaded, et cetera. You can also observe the communication between processes. For example, you can monitor system CTL and system D and see how they talk to each other to do some kind of reverse engineering. This is something I frequently do when having to handle an issue with a program I don't know anything about. It's usually easier than checking directly the source code. Finally, with the help of the source code, you can usually determine more easily which error condition happened and made the program fail. This isn't an exhaustive list. There are also cases where Estrates won't help you, but sometimes it can still give you some hints about the root cause. It won't help you much if a program is hanging in a C school and the C school never returns for the corner. Here you will have to use kernel tools such as traceCMD or system tab. Note, however, that still Estrates gave you a hint that the issue is within the kernel somehow. When a program doesn't call C schools and does computation on spins on the CPU, Estrates is definitely of no help. Using P stack or G core is more appropriate. Another scenario where it won't help much is when the issue is due to a race condition. For example, start-up of services, race together and lead to errors. Still, if you Estrates both services and see that the issue goes away, you can then guess that the root cause is slightly a race condition which doesn't show up because Estrates throws down the processes too much. When a program doesn't call, you need to use GDB. Finally, when a program exits with no obvious reason, for example, with no error message at all, Estrates won't help much. Still, checking the failing C schools can give you some hints from time to time. It really depends on what the program does. To conclude this part, this is a recommended option for troubleshooting. To Estrates a program and its children, use Estrates minus FTTT, VYY, and a decent string buffer of 1K. 1K should be sufficient. You can reduce this to 200 bytes. If Estrates will be long running and the program being monitored has a lot of C school activity, for example, reading, writing a lot on the network of two files. When attaching to existing processes using minus P, don't forget that existing children won't be monitored. You need to attach to the existing children as well. Finally, when monitoring a command that becomes root, for example, sudo some command, you need to have Estrates minus root. I will show you later a convenient way to monitor sudo. This is required or else, once the process becomes root, you will lose permissions to monitor it. In this part of the presentation, I will now have a quick look at what Estrates produces. First, when monitoring a single process, then when the monitor process has multiple threads or multiple process are monitored simultaneously. I will also talk about some C school errors and give you some more information about signals. Below is how the Estrates output looks like when using my standard options. First, you have the PID, which isn't the PID itself but the thread ID. For the main thread, it's the same. You then have a timestamp in human readable form, typically our minutes, seconds and microseconds. Then you have the C school name open, for example, as the C school parameters. Upon C school returning, Estrates will print an equal sign and the result with additional details in case of error. Finally, Estrates prints the time span in the C school. If you are using VIM, you can enable colorization using set phi type equal Estrates. Let's see the example below. This is an Estrates of Estrates log, main thread being 1086. Here, we see that Estrates is calling the policy school on an array of five descriptors. The array contains only one five descriptor, which has number three. And it is an anonymous iNode, so here it's not a file on the file system. Poll is used to wait for data on five descriptors. Here, Estrates log is interested in incoming data, poll in. It returns after 900 milliseconds, with return value zero, which means timeout. Later, we see Estrates log does a read on that same file descriptor, the read failed, and erno was set to e again, which happens when read would block and the file descriptor is configured to not block. This means that Estrates log needs to read again and wait for an incoming event. The last line, we see it read on the file descriptor again and this was a success. There were 32 bytes returned by read and these bytes are shown in the buffer passed to read here, a second argument. Basically here, it read some data about the journal. The last parameter to read is the size of the buffer and we see from here it was set to 272. As you can see, Estrates shows us a lot of potentially useful data. This was the easy case, when only one process is monitored and there is only one thread. When it's not the case, we'll have a lot of unfinished resume lines as shown below. This happens because Estrates prints timestamps in growing order. Let's see what we have here. We have PID 1088, which is a thread of Estrates log, enters the few text is called. Few text is a fast log from user space. While the few text was being grabbed, MainStrain1086 did a poll. On next line, while the MainStrain is doing the poll, we see the few text is all returned, and we see few text resumed. Later again, the poll sees called return and apparently there was nothing on the file descriptor free on the second line here. This can be hard to read. To help you, usually you will filter on a specific PID using a grep command and stick to that PID. For example, with Estates log, if you are interested in the MainStrain only, you can just filter out all the rest. As you could see in the previous slide, we had read, return, and error, here again. Is having a sees call return and error really an issue? Well, it depends. You need to understand the program internals. They are well-known benign pathologies. For example, E again in int, E restart sees are supposed to happen normally. You can check the main page of the sees call failing with this kind of error. Read, for example, will return E again if it's in non-blocking mode. It's then up to the application developer to handle this kind of error and likely retry the sees call. When you have a new end, which means no such file directory, it's usually not an issue, but typically when it's a library linker that produces it. The library linker will search, for example, for ld.sodoc preload, which doesn't exist by default. When executing a program foo bash foo, for example, bash will search for the program in values location in your path. USR local bin, USR has been, then USR been. So it's expected to return in or end when stating the location and the file doesn't exist. Similarly, the linker will try to open libraries in values location and you will see in or end if the library doesn't exist in that location. When you get hyper, which is permission denied, there is likely an issue, but while it depends on how the program effectively works. Finally, a stress can show you information about signals. Whenever a signal is received, S3S records it in a line starting with dash dash dash. There is one exception. It's with sick kill, which cannot be code. So you will instead have a plus plus plus line and see that the process got killed by the signal as shown below. If the process received a signal from another process, for example, sick term below, you will see who sends the signal. Here, PID1. In this example, I told ACS log to stop for executing system CTL stop ACS log, which resulted in system D, PID1, to send a sick term signal to ACS log. Sometimes the signal is sent by the kernel. Usually this will make the process die. In that case here, you will see the process exit with the plus plus plus killed by. And this example here, we see the kernels send a six sec V reason being an issue accessing memory. This typically happens when the process tries to dereference an invalid pointer. Here it was the null pointer. Let's move to the last part of the presentation. Examples. I collected six examples of real use cases to show you the various techniques to troubleshoot. In the first example, we'll be dealing with a command slowness. The customer was complaining that executing DF would take 20 seconds or more, whereas usually the execution is immediate. I hence requested to collect an S trace of the slow command. Checking the S trace, we can see that the first line is exact VE, which means execute the command in argument. Checking the exact VE function prototype, we can see three arguments. First, the binary name, then the argument passed, including as first argument the program name, which is used when the program wants to appear as another program. And finally, we have the arguments as last arguments, the environment. The example we see is that the environment contains LD library pass, which is used to load libraries from non-standard pass first, prior to using standard location, USR Lib64, for example. After the exact VE, we see the library linker try to load standard libraries such as LibC from various locations. First, the ones specified in LD library pass. The library is not found here, which is expected, that's not an issue. The issue here is more with the time spent to read the custom location. 440 milliseconds, which is definitely not expected. Later, more libraries are loaded and similar snowness happens, explaining why DF was so slow executing in the end. From the analysis, we know that there is something wrong reading this custom pass. This is all we can see with this phrase here. So next step was to check what was going on in the kernel and particularly for this file system. For the short story, the root cause was some invalid mount options for that pass, hosted on a cluster file system, which was creating this slowness. And the second example, we'll be dealing with SSH slowness. It was taking 25 seconds to connect to the remote system. When it comes to SSH, a stressing SSH itself is usually useless because most of the work is done on the SSH D side. SSH just encrypts what the user types and decrypts what is sent back by the backend. Typically, standard output answer error. So here you need to stress SSH D. There are two ways to do that. Either attach to main SSH D demon listening on port 22 or spawn a dedicated SSH D demon on some alternate port. Say 8022, which will be used for testing the connection to the system. The second method is preferred, but not always possible. Typically because it requires letting the firewall accept the connection on the custom port. If running SSH D on the alternate port is not possible, just attach to main SSH D as shown below. Then you connect using SSH, you experience the 25 second slowness before getting the prompt and you exit and you control C to stop a stress. If running SSH D on the alternate port, spawn it with minus DDD to let it handle only one single connection. Then you connect using SSH on the alternate port and exit once you get the prompt and SSH D will also exit. Now we have the stress to analyze. First check for accept this call, which is used to accept an incoming connection. Here we see that the connection was made by 182, 168, 1221 from port 60740. Note that when it's tracing the regular SSH D demon, other users may be connecting to the system at the time you make the test. Hence you need to find out which connections you are interested in. There may be multiple accept scores. You then need to check for a clone C score, which is used to force the SSH D child that will handle your connection. Here we have PID 23918 that will handle the connection. We need to filter on that PID. The child will spawn all the children, but these are usually not interesting. To filter on this PID, use the frame grab command. Note that when using the recommended way, SSH D on the alternate port, there is no clone C since SSH D directly handles the incoming connection. So there is no need to filter anything. It's easier. Let's see the output of the filtered S trace. At some point in time, you will see a send message on the UNIX socket, which is here a debuts request to system de-logging D that creates session. Later, we see a receive message on the socket, which fails with E again, because the socket is non-blocking. Finally, we see a poll on the UNIX socket, which ends up in timeout after 25 seconds. Then process continues and we get a prompt. From above, we see that the issue is with the debuts socket. In UNIX, SSH D waited up to 25 seconds to have the session created, but this never happened. The code is part of PAM system D, not SSH D itself. This means that system de-logging D, responsible for creating the user session, is not functional somehow. For the short story, the root cause was system de-logging D process being in a dead loop. In this third example, the customer was complaining that executing sudo su command call was slow. Because the command will execute as root, you need to use S trace as root. Hence, you cannot use S trace sudo, blah, blah, blah. Instead, you will illustrate the terminal running the sudo command. First, you get the PID of the bash that will run the command using equal dollar dollar. In that example, the PID was one, two, three, four. Then from another terminal running as root, execute S trace and attach to one, two, three, four. And of course, follow children using minus F flag. Finally, execute from the user terminal the sudo su command that is slow executing. And you then get a nice S trace with everything needed to dig more into it. In this fourth example, the customer was complaining that executing a script in the terminal was working fine, but not through cron. The easy way to debug this is to S trace the cron daemon. So you just need to attach to existing cron daemon, which has PID recorded usually in run cron d.pid. Then wait for the script to execute through cron. Stop S trace. Then filter on the PID of the script that executed and dig into the S trace. For the short story, the root cause was an invalid Excel Linux context on a file that the script was attempting to read and resulted in permission denied. This happened because when executing the script as a user, the Excel Linux context was unconfined. Whereas under cron, the Excel Linux context was limited. In this fifth example, the customer was complaining that executing is daemon manually was working, but not at the system d service. Similar to SSH, S tracing system CTL command is usually useless because system CTL just sends an order to system d that will do the job itself. Hence, it's wise to S trace system d and children instead. So just attach to PID one. Then start the failing service. This is the, for example, and finally stop S trace once the service failed. Again, you need to filter what you are interested in too. Similarly to SSHD, system d will first accept the connection from system CTL. This is done through the accept for syscall. Then you will have some clones. When executing a service, system d will spawn one child per exact start pre or exact start command. In the case of syslog, there is no exact start pre command, but only exact start command. So you just need to find which PID executes syslog itself. Here we have 24480. Because syslog has threads, you then need to collect all the children spawned by the main thread 24480 recursively. This can be achieved using the frame grep pipe grep command below, which will return you PIDs of children.  You can then dig into the filtered S trace easily. The final example is how to S trace the boot itself. It's experimental and they break your system. Sometimes issues happen during the boot. For example, when there are race condition between services, all services require implicitly a device that didn't show up yet and is not mentioned in the service unit file. Again, we need here to S trace system d as soon as possible. This can be achieved using the following S trace system d service unit, which is also available on my public product space for convenience. Due to some deadlock issues, you cannot attach before system d UDFD executed. Once the service unit has been created, reload system d and enable the service. Then boot your system with additional flags S trace, but also enforcing equals zero. Otherwise, S trace wouldn't be able to monitor children of system d due to not executing in an unconfined context, but the context of system d, which is in it T and restricted. Note that your boot will slow down a lot because basically S trace will monitor almost every single service being executed and children. Once you reach the prompt and see your failing service, just stop the S trace service and dig it to the produce S trace in search run. I have a final slide that I would like to share. It's about S Linux integration in upstream S trace. I'm convinced that showing S Linux context monitor processes are running as maybe very useful when issues are related to S Linux. I've hence proposed a pull request to upstream with reference below. Unfortunately, my pull request is stuck waiting for final reviews from S trace powered developers. I don't manage to get traction on this since several months. In info, I'm pinging the mailing list regularly. Anyway, this pull request introduces a new SC Linux, SC context, sorry, option. With this option, you will see in which context the process is running as, as shown in the example below. This example is system D spawning SC log as a service. Initially, the child of system D, one, two, six, two, three, five, execute as in it T, the context of system D. Then, when exact V executes because SC log D program is labelled with system D exec T, as shown in the S trace here, we have the process change context to system D T. Same PID, different context. That's super convenient and likely very useful. For now, this patch S trace is available on my public reddit space. There is one build per reddit or federal release. So thank you for having listened to my presentation. If you have questions, don't hesitate to come back to me.


Senator Gotswila Pabio says ministries, departments and agencies have failed to appear to defend their imports of the 204 and 2026 medium-term expenditure framework and fiscal strategy paper risk being sacked by President Paula Tinibu. Senator Pabio decried alleged frivolous expenditures by MDAs, particularly the government-owned enterprises. So we have the Consulate Program as expected. We have all found support to the Consulate Energy Encampment and they are all to be appropriated for. They have been and keep, been and spent. They have been a good idea. There are some government-owned agencies that are allowed by the excellent regulations which cannot override constitutional provision to be transparent and then return what they like to the Consulate Energy Encampment. We as the Senate and as the 10th Assembly, to myself as chairman of the National Assembly of the 10th Assembly, we look into those, look into those legislations and see where they tend to conclude the constitution. It's a ground norm. Think about those things and ensure that we have more revenue that we need for our obligations of government, not just a land to build, to build and spend and at the end, think about what they call excess. So those agencies don't be worried who are prepared for you or the duty to you, but we will not allow you for those expenses. Henceforth, we must obey the 19th Constitution. Any law that is in God's system with any provision of revolutions and is not unbought to the extent of that. Earlier at the opening session, Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Sani Musa, who acknowledged the complex and challenging economic situation said that 2024-2026, MTF and FSB document represents a critical road map that charts the economic and finance course of the country for upcoming years. Also on the first day of the public hearing, the Senate's Joint Committee resolved to continue with investigation targeted at blocking revenue leakages and curtailing frivolous expenditures by MDAs. An investigative hearing on the limitations of all revenue generating agencies of government to the consolidated revenue account of the Federation, as well as the payment of this first term duty, I mean, 1% term duty on all contracts excluded and executed in all MDAs. I want to assure you that the 10th National Assembly will carry on with the investigation targeted at blocking revenue leakages, curtailing frivolous expenditures by MDAs and also we will be doing this to boost the revenues of the government in the face of doing the revenues from traditional revenue source of crude oil.