PERSONS JULY 2010

PERSONS JULY 2010

• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development heading by Sumitra Mahajan while approving the Constitution (110thAmendment) Bill, 2009,submitted its report in both Houses of Parliament. The Bill is aimed at enhancing reservation of seats for women to 50 per cent of total number of offices in the Panchayats. 
• President Pratibha Patil appointed Election Commissioner (EC) Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi as the next Chief Election Commissioner (CEC). 
• Gururaj ‘Desh' Deshpande, entrepreneur, philanthropist and Chairman of Tejas Networks, USA, had been appointed Co-Chairman of the U.S. National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE) by the Obama administration. 
• Milon Kumar Banerjee(80), the former Attorney-General of India, passed away. Mr. Banerjee, as Attorney-General, had the rare honour of being called upon to address the Parliament regarding the powers of the Election Commission on August 5, 1993, a request that had not been made to the Attorney-General for decades, and the Padma Awards case, where he argued before the Supreme Court that these awards were not titles and as such were not violative of Article 18 of the Constitution. 
• The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) appointed D.R.S. Chaudhary, Additional Secretary, IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh as its official spokesperson. 
• Noted academician Gita Gopinath has been named professor of economics at the prestigious Harvard University, becoming the first Indian-origin woman professor in the institution's history. 
• Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has signed a marketing deal with an Indian sports management company Rhiti worth $42 million over two years. The deal, the richest in Indian cricket history, surpasses batting superstar Sachin Tendulkar's $40million three-year contract with sports management firm Iconix in 2006. 
• The 22-year-old Patna-born Tathagat Avtar Tulsi is all set to become the country's youngest faculty at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Powai in Mumbai. In 2003,Tulsi was named as one of the world's “seven most gifted youngsters” by Time magazine. 
• Lieutenant General Chander Prakash has been appointed the Force Commander for the U.N. peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) by United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon. 
• The U.S. government had appointed Preeta D. Bansal to serve as the Vice-Chair of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the U.S. (ACUS). 
• Indian-American, Nisha Desai Biswal has been nominated by the U.S government to the post of Assistant Administrator for Asia in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).