PERSONS MAY 2016

PERSONS MAY 2016

• AR Karve: Vice Admiral AR Karve took over charge as the Flag Officer Commander-in-Chief of Southern Naval Command from Vice Admiral Girish Luthra at Kochi on 29^th May.
  
• Duterte: The Philippine Parliament has officially declared Rodrigo Duterte to be the President-elect. Mr Duterte won a landslide victory in the Presidential election this month, taking about six million votes more than his closest competitor.
  
• Mohammed Alloush: The chief negotiator of Syria's main opposition umbrella group, Mohammed Alloush, has resigned over what he called the failure of peace talks. Mr Alloush, from the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said the talks had not brought a political deal or eased the plight of Syrians in besieged areas.
  
  The HNC suspended its involvement in the UN-brokered proximity negotiations with a Syrian government delegation in Geneva in April. No date has been set for a resumption. A nationwide truce between rebel and government forces brokered by the US and Russia is officially still in place, but is frequently violated.
  
• Ashok Lavasa: Senior IAS officer Ashok Lavasa was designated as the Finance Secretary. Lavasa, at present serving as the Expenditure Secretary, is a 1980 batch IAS officer of Haryana cadre.
  
  The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved designating Lavasa as Finance Secretary, an order issued by Department of Personnel and Training said.
  
• Bassi:Former Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi, who had a controversial tenure and frequent run-ins with the AAP government, was on 31^st May appointed a member of UPSC — a Constitutional post, with a five-year tenure.
  
  The Centre cleared the name of Mr. Bassi as member of the Union Public Service Commission, which conducts the civil services examination to select IAS and IPS officers among others. The Commission has a maximum strength of 10 members besides a Chairperson.
  
• Sarbanand Sonowal: In Assam, Sarbanand Sonowal has been elected as the BJP legislative party leader. The was elected to the post formally in a meeting held in Guwahati on 22nd May.
  
  Later Sarbananda Sonowal has resigned from the Council of Ministers. President Pranab Mukherjee accepted his resignation. Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office, Dr. Jitendra Singh will hold additional charge of Youth Affairs and Sports Ministry.
  
• Kiran Bedi: Former IPS officer Kiran Bedi will be the new Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry. President Pranab Mukherjee approved her appointment. Currently, Lieutenant Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands Ajay Kumar Singh is holding the additional charge of Puducherry.
  
• Saini: Lt General S K Saini assumed the office of commandant of the prestigious Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun on May 21. He was earlier a senior directing staff in National Defence College (NDC), New Delhi. Lt General Saini is an alumni of National Defence Academy (NDA) and IMA. In 1981, he was commissioned to the seventh battalion of the Jat regiment. In a career spanning 36 years, he has held many important posts.
  
• Jayalalitha: All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief J Jayalalithaa was sworn in as the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for a second consecutive term on 23rd May. Jayalalithaa is the first chief minister of Tamil Nadu to be re-elected in 32 years. The last was AIADMK's MG Ramachandran, in 1984.
  
  In the elections that were held in May, her party got 134 seats in the 232-seat state Assembly. The state recorded a voter turnout of 74.2% in the elections held on May 16.
  
• Sarbanand Sonowal: He was on 24th May sworn in as the first BJP Chief Minister of Assam. Governor P.B. Acharya administered the oath of office to Mr. Sonowal and 10 of his ministerial colleagues at a grand ceremony in Guwahati. With this, the BJP has formed its first government in North-east. Those who took the oath included Hemanta Biswas Sarma.
  
• Pinarayi Vijayan: CPI (M) leader Pinarayi Vijayan took oath as 12th Chief Minister of Kerala. The Kerala Governor Mr. Justice P. Sathasivam administered oath of secrecy to the Chief Minister and other 18 ministers.
  
• Mamata Banerjee: In West Bengal, Ms. Mamata Banerjee on 27th May sworn in as the Chief Minister of West Bengal for the second consecutive term, heading a 42-member ministry.
  
• Narayana swamy: Former Union Minister and Congress General Secretary V Narayanasamy has been elected leader of the Congress Legislature Party to become next Chief Minister of Union Territory of Puducherry.
  
  Mr Narayanasamy represented Puducherry in Rajya Sabha for four terms and was elected to Lok Sabha in 2009. He served as Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office in UPA Government. Narayanasamy will have to face election within six months as he had not contested the May 16 Assembly Polls.
  
• Baciro Dja: Guinea Bissau President Jose Mario Vaz named Baciro Dja as Prime Minister, according to a presidential decree. Dja succeeds Carlos Correia, who was sacked earlier this month in a move that threatened to deepen political turmoil in the tiny West African nation. The ruling party said it would not support Dja, who held the same post briefly last year but was forced to resign when the supreme court ruled that the appointment was made without consulting all political parties and was therefore unconstitutional.
  
• Two Indian win in competition:Two Indian-American children have won the world's prestigious spelling bee contest, with one of them also becoming its youngest winner, as the community's complete dominance in the annual competition continued.
  
  Jairam Jagadeesh Hathwar, 13, and Nihar Saireddy Janga, 11, were declared co-champions of the Scripps National Spelling Bee today after a tense final with seven of the last 10 finalists being Indian-Americans. Fifth grader Nihar is from Texas, while seventh grader Jairam is from New York. Nihar has also become the youngest winner of the bee on record.
  
  Eighth grader Snehaa Ganesh Kumar from California, who had tied for fourth place last year, came third. The other four Indian-Americans among the finalists were Rutvik Gandhasri, Sreeniketh Vogoti, Jashun Paluru and Smirithi Upadhyayula.
  
  In the penultimate 24th round, Nihar spelled the word 'gesellschaft' correctly, while Jairam spelled the word 'Feldenkrais' correctly.
  
• Sandor Tarics: The oldest living Olympic champion Sandor Tarics, who was a member of Hungary's gold-medal winning waterpolo team at the 1936 Games, has died aged 102. Tarics was born in 1913 in Budapest, passed away at his home in San Francisco.
  
  A keen mathematician from an early age and an engineer by profession, Tarics left Hungary after the Communist Party takeover in 1948 and settled in San Francisco where he worked as a university professor. He later achieved fame for his work in earthquake research, and in particular his design of earthquake-proof building technologies.
  
  After the death in 2011 of Italian cyclist Attilio Pavesi, who won two Gold medals at the 1932 Games in Los Angeles, Tarics became the oldest living Olympic champion.
  
• Mukul Mudgal: In a major development for Indian football and judiciary, world governing body FIFA has appointed Justice Mukul Mudgal as deputy chairman of its governance committee.
   The former Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana, who headed the IPL spot-fixing probe, also involved in overseeing the conduct of international cricket matches and IPL games at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in Delhi, hinted that he would take up the offer.
  
  Portuguese Luis Miguel Maduro, who is a former European Court of Justice Advocate General, will head FIFA's governance committee. Mudgal and Maduro will also head FIFA's International Review Committee, which will assess all major decisions.
  
  Mexico City hosted the 66th FIFA Congress where newly elected president Gianni Infantino moved a slew of resolutions and promised massive reforms.
  
• Rakesh Kumar Mishra: he is a noted expert in the study of function of genes, has been appointed as the new Director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Mishra had joined CCMB in 2001 as a senior scientist after stints at the IISc, Bangalore, the University Of Bordeaux, France, Saint Louise University, USA and the University of Geneva, Switzerland for post-doctoral experience.
  An MSc from Allahabad University, Mishra's research interests include investigating evolutionarily conserved features of genome organisation, chromatin structure and epigenetic regulation of genes during embryonic development stages.
  
• Pinarayi Vijayan: Pinarayi Vijayan will be the next chief minister of Kerala. He was elected leader of the victorious Left Democratic Front (LDF) legislature party in Thiruvananthapuram on 20th May.
  The Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Kerala committee met in the presence of party chief Sitaram Yechury. It decided to nominate Vijayan as the next chief minister.
  
  In Chennai, J Jayalalithaa was elected the leader of the AIADMK legislative party and is slated to take oath on 22nd May. In Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee was on 27th May unanimously elected as the leader of the Trinamool Congress legislature party.
  
• Rafiq Shaikh: Constable Rafiq Shaikh (31) of Aurangabad rural police reached the top of the world — Mount Everest — on 19th May. After failing in the previous two attempts, Shaikh finally managed to scale the highest peak in the world and created history by becoming the first policeman from Maharashtra to do so.
  According to the Aurangabad police, Shaikh who always aspired to be a mountaineer, had completed his basic, advance and rescue operations training of mountaineering before making his first attempt to scale Everest. Earler, Shaikh scaled more than seven peaks of the Himalayas like the Sitidhar, the Tamit, the Dhauladhar, Kanchenjanga and others.
  
  Shaikh's earlier attempts at Mt Everest in 2014 and 2015 failed due to bad weather. However, making up his mind for the next expedition, Shaikh left form Aurangabad to Mumbai on April 30 and from Mumbai he reached Kathmandu on May 5. After reaching the base camp he began his march toward Mt Everest with other mountaineer colleagues on May 15.
  
  At one instance, the team was forced to extend their stay for 15 hours due to bad weather. After getting the clearances from the weather and meteorological department to proceed ahead, Shaikh on 19th May morning hoisted the tri-colour and the Maharashtra police flag on Mt Everest.
  
  As soon as the news of Shaikh's success of scaling the 8,848 metre summit reached, his family and Aurangabad police started the celebrations.
  
• Ahmet Davutoglu: Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has announced his resignation, paving the way for the country's president to pursue a tighter grip on power.
  Davutoglu, who had fallen out with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced he was stepping aside following a meeting with executives of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which has dominated Turkish politics since 2002. The decision is not effective immediately.
  
  The party will hold an emergency convention May 22 to select a new party leader who would also replace the premier.
  
• Pranav Pandya: The Home Ministry on 4th May said President Pranab Mukherjee had nominated Pranav Pandya, head of the All World Gayatri Pariwar, as a member of the Rajya Sabha. His is the seventh name to be announced, filling the last vacancy among nominated berths.
  
  A total of 12 MPs are nominated to the Rajya Sabha from various fields of public life. Seven of these seats had fallen vacant recently. The government had, on April 22, announced six names in this nominated category. Mumbai-born Dr. Pandya, an MD in medicine, is director of the All World Gayatri Pariwar that claims to be a modern adoption of Vedic values and has its headquarters in Haridwar.
  
• Sunil Lamba: Vice-Admiral Sunil Lanba will be the next chief of the Indian Navy. He will take over on 31st of this month following the retirement of Navy Chief Admiral R K Dhowan. Presently he is serving as Flag Officer Commanding in chief in the Western Naval command in Mumbai. He will be the 23rd chief of Indian Navy.
  
• Enda Kenny: Enda Kenny has been re-elected as Irish Prime Minister, 70 days after a general election which had produced no outright winner. He held the role of acting Irish Prime Minister over the past 10 weeks as talks took place between parties and independents on how to form a new government.
  
  His Fine Gael party won the most seats in the election but fell short of the quota needed to rule without support. It is now expected that Mr Kenny will lead a minority Fine Gael government.
  
  He has made history in the Irish Parliament by becoming the first Fine Gael Irish Prime Minister to be re-elected to the office. He was re-appointed with 59 votes in favour and 49 votes against.
  
  However, it was the fourth attempt to appoint a new Prime Minister since the general election of Friday 26 February returned a hung Irish Parliament, in which no party won enough seats to govern without support from rivals.
  
• Sadiq Khan: Sadiq Khan has been elected the new Mayor of London - boosting Labour after it slumped in Scotland's elections. Mr Khan is the city's first Muslim mayor, after beating Tory Zac Goldsmith by 1,310,143 votes to 994,614.