PERSONS JANUARY 2014

PERSONS JANUARY 2014

• Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh---- Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh on 31 January took charge as the Regional Director for WHO South-East Asia Region. She retired as Advisor, International Health in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Dr Singh was elected as the Regional Director, South East Asian Regional Organisation (SEARO) in September 2013 after a gap of 44 years. India had occupied the post from 1948 – 1968, but since 1968 India has not occupied the post of the Regional Director of SEARO. Dr Singh is an acknowledged public health specialist and administrator with vast experience and recognition in public health and the UN system. The South East Asian Regional Organisation (SEARO) is one of the six regions of WHO with its HQ in New Delhi, India. SEARO has 11 countries, namely, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Timor Leste and DPR Korea.
  
• Michael Rogers ---- U.S. President Barack Obama has nominated Vice-Admiral Michael Rogers, a Navy cyber-warfare specialist, to be the next Director of the National Security Agency (NSA). Mr. Rogers will take over from the current NSA Director Keith Alexander, who is set to step down in March. Mr. Hagel also announced the NSA’s new Deputy Director would be its current Chief Operating Officer, Rick Ledgett.
  
• Smt Aruna M Bahuguna, IPS---- The Union Government appointed IPS Aruna Bahuguna as chief of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy, Hyderabad. The Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC) issued the orders for the appointment on 20 January 2014. Aruna Bahuguna is the first woman to be appointed as the chief of the National Police Academy. She is the 28th chief of the academy and will be at its helm till February 2017.She will replace the incumbent IPS Subhas Goswami who was appointed as the Director General of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) in November 2013.Aruna Bahuguna is a 1979 batch IPS officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre and has served in various positions in Andhra Pradesh Police. Currently, Aruna Bahuguna is the Special Director-General of Country’s largest paramilitary force, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). She was the first woman to be posted as the Special Director General of CRPF.
  
• Sunanda Pushkar(52)---- The wife of the Union Minister Sashi Tharoor on 17th January 2014 was found dead in a luxury Leela Palace hotel room in Delhi. Her body was found by Tharoor after his return from the AICC meet. As per the police, the dead body of the Pushkar was found in suspicious circumstances in the room and believes that it is a case of suicide. The private secretary of the Minister said that Tharoor and Pushkar were staying in the hotel from 16 January 2014 following the ongoing painting work at their home. Sunanda Pushkar was an entrepreneur and married Shashi Tharoor in 2010. She was a sales director in the Dubai-based TECOM Investments, and a co-owner of Rendezvous Sports WorldEarlier, reports emerged about the text and tweet messages between Tharoor and a Pakistani journalist. This raised a controversy over an alleged extra-marital affair of Tharoor with the Pakistani journalist. This controversy was a burning hot topic on the social media, whereas, Sunanda tweeted two days back that everything between Tharoor and her was fine and the death came after a day of the tweet.
  
• Anjali Devi (86) ---- Veteran actor Anjali Devi died of a cardiac arrest in Chennai on 13th January. One of the earliest stars of the black and white era in South India and a contemporary of the likes of Kannamba, Krishnaveni, Bhanumathi, Sowcar Janaki and Savithri, the actor was known for her bold portrayals and held her own in both glamorous roles, when she played the vamp, or even the pious roles in mythological features.Her first film Gollabhama by director C. Pulliah created a bit of a stir. Her portrayal as Goddess Sita opposite veteran actor and former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao in Lava Kusha in the year 1963 had led to a huge euphoria.She also did glamorous roles in Anarkali (1955) in which she played the lead role of Anarkali with Akkineni Nageswara Rao as Salim. This film along with Suvarna Sundari (1957), Chenchu Laxmi(1958) and Jayabheri earned her best actress awards. She also won the Raghupati Venkaiah award for lifetime service to Telugu film industry in 2005 and the prestigious ANR national award in 2008.
  
• Suchitra Sen (82) ---- Famous Bengali actress Suchitra Sen died in Kolkota on 17 January 2014. She was famously known as the Greta Garbo of Bengali cinema and had worked in more than 60 films, the most memorable being Aandhi in hindi and Deep Jwele Jai in Bengali. For Aandhi she was nominated for the Filmfare Best Actress Award.The other memorable films in Bengali include Saat Paake Bandha, Agnipariksha, Saptapadi and Deep Jwele Jai.In 1963, Suchitra Sen became the first Indian actress to win an international award. She had received the Silver Prize for Best Actress at the Moscow Film Festival for Saptapadi. In 2012, Suchitra Sen received the Banga Bibhushan award from the government of West Bengal.
  
• Justice A.K. Ganguly--- Former Supreme Court judge, Justice A.K. Ganguly, who has been accused of sexual assault by a law intern, resigned on 5th January from the West Bengal Human Rights Commission (WBHRC). Earlier, Justice Ganguly had distanced himself from public interest litigation (PIL) petition that was filed in the Supreme Court supporting him. The PIL was filed by Delhi-based doctor M Padma Narayan Singh in the Supreme Court, seeking a direction to restrain the government from taking any action against Justice Ganguly. But the Supreme Court rejected the petition.
  
  The petitioner had also sought a quashing of the report in which a three-member panel of Supreme Court judges indicted Justice Ganguly for unwelcome behaviour against the woman law intern. The three-judge Supreme Court committee probing the complaint filed by the law intern against Justice Ganguly said that there was prima facie evidence. The three-judge panel, which heard testimonies, submitted its report to the Chief Justice of India, P. Sathasivam, naming Justice Ganguly as the accused. It is the first time that the Supreme Court has set up an internal inquiry into sexual harassment allegations against a presiding or former judge. Justice Ganguly is the Chairman of Human Rights Commission in West Bengal and has presided over numerous cases involving crimes against women during his career as a judge.
  
  
   
   
   
   
• Arup Raha---- A veteran fighter pilot, on 31 December, took over as the 24th chief of the Indian Air Force succeeding Air Chief Marshal N A K Browne. In a brief ceremony, Raha, 59, assumed the charge of the air force from Browne in presence of senior officers, including new Vice Chief of Air Staff Air Marshal R K Sharma and Deputy Chief Air Marshal S Sukumar.
  
  Born on December 26, 1954, he will remain the IAF chief for three years. Soon after taking over, Air Chief Marshal Raha, in his message to the 1.75 lakh-strong force, said the IAF is on a trajectory of modernization and is transforming into a strategic aerospace power with full spectrum capability.
  
  Commissioned on December 14, 1974 in the fighter stream of the IAF, Raha has held various command, staff and instructional appointments in his 39-year-old career. He has also served as Air Attache at the Embassy of India in Ukraine. Besides various technical courses, Raha has done Strategic Nuclear Orientation Course and Junior Commanders' course.
  
• T.C. Narendran (69)---- Internationally known insect taxonomist and recipient of the E.K. Janaki Ammal National Award of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, died of a heart attack here on 31 December. An Emeritus Professor, he is survived by wife and two children. He was currently working as coordinator of the All India Coordinated Project on Taxonomy and Capacity Building (Hymenoptera) at the Zoological Survey of India. His research contributions to the science of taxonomy have been substantial in realizing the fauna diversity of the parasitic hymenoptera not only of the Indian region but also of other places outside the country.
  
  He was instrumental in stimulating interest in study of, and research in, taxonomy and pursued research at prestigious research stations such as the Natural History Museum, London; and the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, U.S. He discovered and described 1,043 new species of insects, which represent nearly 1.7 per cent of the insect diversity known from India, and published 380 research papers. Prof. Narendra was also recipient of the Swadeshi Shastrapuraskaram in 2008; Ernst Mayr grant of Harvard University; and Royal Society, London, grant for research at Natural History Museum, London. A life fellow of the Indian Academy of Entomology, Chennai, Prof. Narendran’s peers have honoured him by naming 25 taxa after him.
  
• Suresh Das ----The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research is set to get a new head Suresh Das, with its Director-General Samir K. Brahmachari demitting office on 31st December. Prof. Brahmachari attained superannuation on December 31, 2011, but his services were extended by two years. Official sources said a selection committee recommended the name of Suresh Das, Director of the CSIR’s National Institute for Inter-Disciplinary Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, to succeed him.
  
  -R. Chandrashekhar----The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), Indian IT industry’s trade body, announced on 5 January that former telecom secretary R Chandrashekhar has formally taken over as the president of the organization,succeeding Som Mittal who served between 2007 and 2013. Chandrashekhar comes at a time when the $108 billion plus Indian IT industry, with over $76 billion in exports, is showing steady signs of recovery, especially from its largest market – the United States. However, the new president will face certain daunting challenges from the regulatory front, especially on the new proposed visa regime in the US, which may put formidable obstacles for the Indian IT industry. This is the first time that Nasscom has appointed a former bureaucrat as the president.
  
• General Bikram Singh--- Army Chief General Bikram Singh on 30 December, took over as the new Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee (CoSC) to succeed Indian Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal NAK Browne, who is superannuating on December 31, 2013. The baton of the CoSC was handed over to General Singh by the outgoing IAF Chief in a ceremony attended by Admiral DK Joshi and a host of senior military commanders from the three services. General Singh will have a brief tenure of around seven months as the CoSC as he is expected to retire in July 2014.