NATIONAL MAY 2010

NATIONAL MAY 2010

• The Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court in its judgement upheld the intrinsic constitutional validity of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) and the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT). 
• The United Progressive Alliance government decided to set up a Group of Ministers (GOM) on the issue of caste enumeration in Census 2011. The GOM would work out the modalities of doing a caste headcount along with Census 2011 while looking into the issue of the practicality of such census. 
• The Central Board of Secondary Education launched worldwide, its self-designed international curriculum (CBSE-i) at Dubai's Indian High School (IHS) that aims to compete with its western counterparts to produce the global citizen of tomorrow. 
• World Telecom Development Conference was held in Hyderabad. 
• The Chief Justice and all the other judges of Himachal High Court have declared their assets and properties. 
• An Air India Express plane IX-812 from Dubai overshot the table-top runway at the Mangalore airport and plunged over a cliff into a wooded valley, killing 158 persons. 
• Cyclonic storm Laila which brought heavy losses to farmers crossed the Andhra Pradesh coast near Bapatla in Prakasam district. 
• Under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Rules, 2008, the depiction of new and more stringent pictorial warnings on tobacco products has been deferred by six months to December 1 from the earlier scheduled date of June 1 by the government of India. 
• President Pratibha Devisingh Patil signed an ordinance empowering the government to dissolve the Medical Council of India, a regulatory body responsible for maintaining standards of medical education. The government created a seven-member Board of Governors that took over the functioning of the 30-member executive council, the highest decision-making body of the MCI. The Board of Governors is chaired by Dr. S.K. Sarin, Department of Gastroenterology, and G.B. Pant Hospital. 
• The Union Health Ministry is all set to bring in an ordinance to supercede the regulatory body and appoint in its place a Board of Governors. In place of the present MCI team, the government intends to appoint seven eminent medical practitioners and health experts to do the job that the MCI is performing at present. The government would have no role in the new set-up. 
• The Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by the former CBI Director, R.K. Raghavan, which investigated Zakia Jaffry's complaint that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and 62 others orchestrated the 2002 riots, submitted its report to the Supreme Court. 
• The Union Cabinet accorded in-principle approval for the setting up of an autonomous defence university in Gurgaon district of Haryana at a cost of about Rs. 300 crore on a 200-acre campus that is expected to provide inputs to strategic policy making. It will be set up under an Act of Parliament.
• The Bihar government signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the objective of accelerating State-wide improvements in maternal, newborn and child health.
• A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional validity of Articles 243 D (6) and243 T (6), providing for reservation of seats in any panchayat or offices of Chairpersons in panchayats and municipalities in favour of backward classes.
• According to a decision taken by the Maharashtra government all students up to Class VIII would be given promotion to the next class even if they did not perform well in examinations.
• The Visva-Bharati University at santiniketan celebrated the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore.
• The Supreme Court in its judgement holding that gas is a national asset and the Centre's pricing policy will prevail over any private agreement, has directed Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) of the Mukesh Ambani group to initiate renegotiations with Reliance Natural Resources Ltd. (RNRL) of the Anil Ambani group for fixing the price of gas to be supplied to RNRL.The bench thus rejected RNRL's claim that it was entitled to get 28 mscmd of gas from the KG Basin at $2.34 mBtu in terms of a 2005 Memorandum of Understanding between Anil and Mukesh without any price approval by the government.
• A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court held that a Governor cannot be removed on the ground that he/she is out of sync with the policies and ideologies of the Union government or the party in power at the Centre. Nor can he/she be removed on the ground that the Union government has lost confidence in him/her. The bench gave this ruling in a petition filed by the former Member of Parliament, B.P. Singhal.
• The Lok Sabha Speaker made the following appointments for various parliamentary committees Murli Manohar Joshi as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee for 2010-11, Congress MP from Goa Francisco Sardinha as the chairman of the Committee on Estimates, V. Kishore Chandra S. Deo as the chairman of the Committee on Public Undertakings, Gobinda Chandra Naskar as the chairman of the Committee on the Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
• The Supreme Court held that the Members of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) Scheme, under which every MP is allotted Rs. 2 crore a year for constituency development was nothing unconstitutional. It held that the scheme falls within the meaning of ‘public purpose' aimed at fulfillment of the development and welfare of the State as reflected in the Directive Principles of State Policy.
• The Rajya Sabha passed a Bill proposing to create a 78-member Legislative Council for Tamil Nadu, 24 years after it was abolished.
• Parliament approved the increase in the gratuity limit for employees from Rs.3.5 lakh to Rs.10 lakh under the Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Bill, 2010.
• The Supreme Court held unconstitutional and violation of the ‘right to privacy' the use of narco analysis, brain-mapping and polygraph tests on accused, suspects and witnesses without their consent.
• The tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, his Gujarat counterpart Narendra Modi and Union Minister for Water Resources Pawan Kumar Bansal to prepare detailed project reports on linking of rivers that will benefit both the states.
• The Lok Sabha passed the Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Bill, 2010 which raises the ceiling of gratuity for employees in private sector to Rs.10 lakh from Rs.3.5 lakh. The Lok Sabha also passed the Employees' State Insurance (Amendment) Bill, 2009, to provide for medicare to workers in the unorganised sector, especially those below the poverty line (BPL).
• A special sessions court judge M.L. Tahaliyani pronounced Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunman of the November 26, 2008 Mumbai terror attacks along with nine other terrorists and 20 co-conspirators in Pakistan, guilty of waging war against India.
• The two day National Consultation for Second Generation Reforms in Legal Education was held in Delhi.