PERSONS SEPTEMBER 2014

PERSONS SEPTEMBER 2014

• Dattu: Justice HL Dattu was on 28th September sworn in as the Chief Justice of India. He was administered the oath of office by President Pranab Mukherjee. He is the 42nd Chief Justice of India and will be at the helms of the Indian judiciary till December 2, 2015. He succeeds Chief Justice RM Lodha who demitted office September 27.
  
  Before being elevated as the judge of the apex court Dec 17, 2008, Chief Justice Dattu was the Chief Justice of the Kerala high court.
  
  He was appointed a judge of the Karnataka high court December 18, 1995. Thereafter, he was elevated as Chief Justice of Chhattisgarh high court February 12, 2007. Three months later May 18, 2007, he was transferred to head the Kerala high court.
  
  Chief Justice Dattu appeared as government counsel in the Karnataka high court for the sales tax department from 1983 to 1990, government advocate from 1990 to 1993, standing counsel for the income tax department from 1992 to 1993 and a senior standing counsel for the IT department from 1993 to 1995.
  
• Syed Muazzem Ali: The retired diplomat and former Foreign Secretary, Syed Muazzem Ali, has been appointed the new Bangladesh High Commissioner to India. Mr. Ali will replace Tariq A. Karim, who has been in office for the past five years.
  
• Jeff Bezos: Jeff Bezos, founder of amazon.com, said India was the fastest growing market in the world and his company will launch all its products. He is in India to mark the company’s more than a year old operations
  
• Tapan Singhel: Indo-German Chamber of Commerce (IGCC) has a new President in Tapan Singhel. Singhel, who is Managing Director and CEO of Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, was earlier Vice-President of the IGCC in 2013-14. The Indo-German Chamber provides business solutions to companies which are planning to do business with India or Germany.
  
• Rajiv: President Pranab Mukherjee has authorised Vigilance Commissioner Rajiv to act as Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) until a regular appointment is made. Rajiv, former Director-General, Central Industrial Security Force, took over the responsibility on September 29, a day after Pradeep Kumar completed his tenure. Mr. Kumar took over as the CVC in July 2011.Since the Supreme Court is hearing a case alleging lack of transparency in the appointments in the Central Vigilance Commission, the Attorney-General had earlier this month informed the court that the government would not make any appointments till the case was decided.
  
• CVC: Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) is an apex Indian governmental body created in 1964 to address governmental corruption. It has the status of an autonomous body, free of control from any executive authority, charged with monitoring all vigilance activity under the Central Government of India, and advising various authorities in central Government organizations in planning, executing, reviewing and reforming their vigilance work.
  
  It was set up by the Government of India in February, 1964 on the recommendations of the Committee on Prevention of Corruption, headed by Shri K. Santhanam, to advise and guide Central Government agencies in the field of vigilance. Nittoor Srinivasa Rau, was selected as the first Chief Vigilance Commissioner of India.
  
• Jens Stoltenberg: Former two-term Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has become on 1st October NATO’s Secretary-General, the 13th in the trans-Atlantic organisation’s 65-year existence. Mr. Stoltenberg was unanimously chosen as by NATO’s policy-making North Atlantic Council in March, a pick that won swift if tentative approval from Mr. Putin, who had dealt with him when he headed a left-of-centre government in Norway.
  
• Martin Perl: Martin Perl, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist from Stanford University who discovered a subatomic particle known as the tau lepton, has died. The university said the retired professor, one of two American scientists who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1995
  
  At the time Perl discovered the tau lepton, many physicists doubted the particle that would turn out to be a heavyweight cousin of the electron existed. He eventually proved them wrong using a new kind of accelerator in which electrons and positrons course in opposite directions and collide.
  
• Chanda Kochhar: As many as eight Indian women, led by ICICI Bank chief Chanda Kochhar, have made it to the Fortune list of 25 most powerful women "shaping the new world order" in the Asia-Pacific region. Kochhar, ranked highest among Indian women, has been ranked second across the region, while three others -- SBI's Arundhati Bhattacharya (4th), HPCL's Nishi Vasudeva (5th) and Axis Bank's Shikha Sharma (10th) -- have also made it to the top-10. The list is topped by Australian banking major Westpac's chief Gail Kelly.
  
  Other Indians on the top-25 list include Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (19th), National Stock Exchange CEO Chitra Ramkrishna (22nd), HSBC's Naina Lal Kidwai (23rd) and TAFE Chairman and CEO Mallika Srinivasan (25th).
  
  The two Indian new entrants are Bhattacharya and Vasudeva. Among Indians, Bhattacharya is ranked second after Kochhar and is the first woman to hold the three-year post at SBI, who oversees a 208-year-old institution with $400 billion in assets and 218,000 employees dispersed among 16,000 bank branches across India.
  
  On the other hand, Vasudeva, 58, became the first woman to head an Indian oil company and is "and one of only four women to helm a Global Fortune 500 firm in the Asia-Pacific region". NSE's Ramakrishna is the only woman on the list heading a stock exchange.
  
  Meanwhile, PepsiCo's India-born CEO Indra Nooyi has been ranked third among world's most powerful business woman by Fortune in its worldwide list. Nooyi is only Indian-origin woman on this year's global list, which has been topped by IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty and General Motors CEO Mary Barra.
  
• Ketan Desai: Former Medical Council of India Chief Ketan Desai was appointed as President of World Medical Association for 2016.
  
• Rizwan Akhtar: Lieutenant General Rizwan Akhtar is the next chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Pakistan
  
• Debroy: To steer restructuring of the Railway Board, Indian Railways has set up a committee under Bibek Debroy, economist and professor, Centre for Policy Research. The committee will recommend steps to mobilize resources for major projects and help set up a Rail Tariff Authority.
  
  Other members of the panel include former Cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar; Gurcharan Das former chairman and managing director of Procter & Gamble; Partha Mukopadhyay, senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research; Ravi Narain, former managing director of the National Stock Exchange; and a nominee from the Department of Economic Affairs, finance ministry.
  
  Other committees and proposals in railways
  • The Rakesh Mohan committee of 2001 sought corporatization of the railways, with separate freight and passenger operations
  • Sam Pitroda committee of 2012 sought reorganization of the Railway Board, with separate members for passenger, freight, technology and business development
  • Pitroda report called for scrapping the position of chairman of the Railway Board and replacing it with a chief executive officer
  • Other key suggestions of the Pitroda panel included appointment of an ombudsman for all private-public partnership projects
  
  
• Sulaiman Abu Ghaith: Osama bin Laden's son-in-law was sentenced on 23rd September to life in prison for acting as al Qaeda's spokesman after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was the highest-ranking al Qaeda figure to face trial on U.S. soil since the attacks. The Kuwaiti cleric became the voice of al Qaeda recruitment videos after the 2001 attacks. He testified at trial that his role was strictly religious. Abu Ghaith was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who said he saw "no remorse whatsoever" from the 48-year-old imam.
  
  Abu Ghaith was convicted in March on conspiracy charges that he answered Osama bin Laden's request in the hours after the attacks to speak on the widely circulated videos used to recruit new followers willing to go on suicide missions like the 19 who hijacked four commercial jets on Sept. 11.
  
• Gautam Khaitan: Enforcement Directorate on 23rd August carried out its first arrest in the money laundering probe in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland chopper deal, taking into custody Gautam Khaitan, an ex-board member of an accused company.
  Chopper scam:
  In early 2013, an Indian parliamentary investigation began into allegations of bribery and corruption involving several senior officials and helicopter manufacturer AgustaWestland surrounding the purchase of a new fleet of helicopters. The scandal has been referred to as the Chopper scam or Choppergate by elements of the media and popular press.
  
  Several Indian politicians and military officials have been accused of accepting bribes from AgustaWestland in order to win the INR36 billion (US$590 million) Indian contract for the supply of 12 AgustaWestland AW101 helicopters; these helicopters are intended to perform VVIP duties for the President of India and other important state officials. Ahmed Patel political secretary to Congress President Sonia Gandhi is alleged by Italian prosecutors to have received kickbacks from the deal. A note dating back to March 15, 2008 presented in the Italian court also indicates that Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi is the driving force behind the VIP chopper purchase. And it further asks middleman Peter Hulett to target key advisors to Sonia Gandhi and lists the names of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Ahmed Patel, Pranab Mukherjee, M. Veerappa Moily, Oscar Fernandez, M. K. Narayanan, Vinay Singh. The note also contains the bribes to be paid out divided as, "AF" €6 Million, "BUR" €8.4 Million, "Pol" €6 Million and "AP" €3 Million. On 25 March 2013, the then India's Defence Minister A.K. Antony confirmed corruption allegations
  
• Mukesh Ambani:
  For the first time, the 100 richest tycoons in India are all billionaires with Mukesh Ambani topping the league for the eighth consecutive year, according to Forbes. With a net worth of USD 23.6 billion, up USD 2.6 billion from last year, RIL Chief Mukesh Ambani topped the list for the eighth consecutive year.
  
  Ambani was followed by Dilip Shanghvi, who got richer this year by USD 4.1 billion. Shanghvi is the new No. 2, after he displaced steel baron Lakshmi Mittal (USD 15.8 billion), who slipped to the fifth place.
  
  Wipro's Azim Premji moved up one notch to the number three position as his net wealth increased to USD 16.4 billion from USD 13.8 billion previously. Pallonji Mistry, patriarch of construction giant Shapoorji Pallonji Group which is the biggest shareholder in Tata Sons with a new worth of USD 15.9 billion, was placed in the fourth place.
  
  The biggest dollar gainer is ports magnate Gautam Adani, who jumped 11 spots to 11th rank in the list, adding nearly USD 4.5 billion to his wealth which reached USD 7.1 billion on soaring share prices.
  
  Others in the top 10 include NRI businessmen Hinduja Brothers who were at the sixth position with a net worth of USD 13.3 billion, followed by Shiv Nadar (7th, USD 12.5 billion), Godrej family (8th, USD 11.6 billion), Kumar Birla (9th, USD 9.2 billion) and Sunil Mittal & family (10th, USD 7.8 billion).
  
  As many as 85 of the 89 who returned to the top 100 from last year are wealthier, and several are billionaires for the first time. Mallya, who has been declared as 'wilful defaulter' by lenders following huge debts on his Kingfisher Airlines, is missing from the Forbes latest list of 100 richest released today. He was ranked at 84th position in 2013, with a net worth of USD 800 million.
  
• Eric Holder: Eric Holder, the United States’ first black attorney general, announced his retirement on 25th June.
  
• B. Muthuraman: Vice-Chairman of Tata Steel Muthuraman, has stepped down from the board of Tata Steel after a stint of 48 years. Joining Tata Steel as a graduate trainee in 1966, Muthuraman rose to the rank of Vice-Chairman after holding fort as Managing Director for eight year. Established in 1907 as Asia’s first integrated private sector steel company, Tata Steel now is the world’s second-most geographically diversified steel producer, with a turnover of Rs 1.51-lakh crore
  
• GK Pillai: The board of Tata International, the global trading and distribution company, has announced the appointment of GK Pillai as Chairman of the company with effect from September 26. He succeeds B Muthuraman
  
  GK Pillai is a distinguished alumnus of IIT Madras. He belongs to the Kerala cadre of the Indian Administrative Service (1972 batch) and has held various positions in his cadre and at the centre.
  
  Pillai is the former Union Home Secretary, Union Commerce Secretary and Secretary of the Department of Justice in the Ministry of Law and Justice. As Special Secretary in the Commerce Ministry, he was India's Chief negotiator at the WTO.
  
  He has also represented the State and Union Government on delegations to the US, EU, Argentina, Brazil, DRC, Singapore, Japan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Canada, Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, the UK, Thailand and Slovenia.
  
• Suresh Prabhu: Suresh Prabhu on 23rd September 2014 was appointed as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Sherpa for the Group of 20 annual Summit 2014. He was selected by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The G-20 annual summit will be held in Brisbane from 15 November to 16 November 2014.
  
• Victoria Beckham: Victoria Beckham has been made a UNAIDS International Goodwill Ambassador. The announcement came in New York on 25th September.
  
• David Haines: The militant group that calls itself the Islamic State has released a video that purportedly shows the beheading of British aid worker David Haines. The authenticity of the video, which appeared online on 13th September, has not been independently confirmed by NPR.
  
• Kireet Joshi: Eminent educationist and former education adviser to the Union government Kireet Joshi passed away on 14th September
  • Joshi was selected for the Indian Administrative Services in 1955
  • He resigned his job the same year in order to study and practise the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo at Puducherry.
  • He was appointed as the Registrar of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in 1958.
  • In 1976 the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appointed him as the educational adviser to the Government of India.
  • He was instrumental in redesigning and redrafting of the Bill for Vishwa Bharati University, Shantiniketan.
  • He is also credited with seeding the idea of the Indira Gandhi National Open University as also of Pondicherry University.
  • In 1981 Mr. Joshi was appointed Secretary of Auroville International Advisory Council.
  • He served as the Educational Adviser to the Gujarat Chief Minister from 2008 to 2010.
• Mashelkar: Scientist Raghunath Anant Mashelkar, former director general of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, has been named the chair of an expert panel to recommend best technologies for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Swachh Bharat" national sanitation campaign.
  
• Arsh Shah Dilbagi: A teenager from Haryana, Arsh Shah Dilbagi has invented a device to help patients of the dreaded ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease speak through their breath. His project is now among 15 shortlisted for the Google Science Fair Award 2014. He is a student of Class 12 in one of the three DAV Public Schools in Panipat city of Haryana, has invented “Talk”, an innovative augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device to tackle the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) disease. ALS is a neuro-degenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.
  
  Hundreds of thousands of projects were submitted throughout the world as there was no fee to participate in the Google Science Fair. Ninety projects were shortlisted by the judges for further consideration, and of the 90, five projects were from India.
  
• Subbarami Reddy: Congress MP T. Subbarami Reddy, a former Union Minister, has been appointed Chairman of the Committee on Subordinate Legislation of the Rajya Sabha. As an important Parliamentary Committee which was first constituted in the 1960s, it reviews all rules, regulations, by-laws, schemes and other statutory instruments issued by various Ministries.
  
• T.S. Raju: The Public Sector Enterprises Selection Board, on 15th September, named T. Suvarna Raju as the next Chairman of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. R. K. Tyagi, present Chairman, is due to superannuate at the end of January 2015. Mr. Raju is at present Director (Design & Development).
  
• Basu: The International Economic Association (IEA) has appointed Kaushik Basu, who is Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of World Bank, as president-elect of the association. A WB Chief Economist is appointed for a 4 year term. In Kaushik Basu's case, to take up the WB job, he took leave from Cornell University where he is Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies.
  
• Shankar Barua: Former director general of Assam Police Shankar Barua, who was being investigated by the CBI for his alleged involvement in the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam, shot himself with his licensed revolver at his home on 17th September. Barua, a 1974 batch IPS officer, had retired from service in 2012. He was 63. The CBI had raided Barua's home on August 28. CBI sleuths had also taken Barua to his bank and examined his account and bank papers.
  
• Indra Nooyi: PepsiCo Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Indra Nooyi has been ranked the third most powerful businesswoman by the Fortune magazine. She is the only India-origin woman on ‘The most powerful women in business 2014’ list topped by IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty and General Motors CEO Mary Barra.
  
• Verma: President Barack Obama nominated former State Department official Richard Verma as U.S. ambassador to India on 19th September. Verma, an Indian-American, served as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs at the State Department in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011. He is currently a senior counselor at Steptoe & Johnson law firm and the Albright Stonebridge Group, a business advisory company, led by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
  
• Mandolin Srinivas: Child prodigy-turned master musician Mandolin U. Shrinivas passed away on 19th September.
  
• Amit Mathew: Amit Mathew, Resident Editor and Director of Malayala Manorama, has been unanimously elected as Chairman of Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) for 2014-15. Shashidhar Sinha, CEO-India, IPG Mediabrands, representing Advertising Agencies on the Council, has been unanimously elected as Deputy Chairman.
  
• Alok Shetty: The 28-year-old Indian architect Alok Shetty has been named ‘young leader of tomorrow’ by Time magazine for his pioneering work in designing affordable flood-proof houses for slum-dwellers. Time said Shetty is “building hope in India” as an architect who is “finding simple solutions to complex problems’’.
  
  Shetty, working with the Bangalore-based non-profit Parinaam Foundation, is designing homes for hundreds of slum-dwellers whose makeshift houses flood during the heavy rains and become breeding grounds for diseases like malaria. He has been working in Bangalore’s LRDE slum, which lies next to one of the southern Indian city’s sprawling technology parks and is home to some 2,000 people.
  
  He designs flood-proof houses, costing $300, out of discarded scaffolding, bamboo and wood. The houses are affordable and easy to set up as it takes only four hours to erect and dismantle them.
  
• John Key: He is again reelected as Prime Minister of New Zealand. He won in recently conducted general election. John Phillip Key is the 38th Prime Minister of New Zealand, in office since 2008. He has led the New Zealand National Party since 2006
  
• T.N. Suresh Kumar: T.N. Suresh Kumar, a senior scientist working with the ISRO’s Master Control Facility in Hassan, has become the first Indian to visit the stratosphere – the second layer of the Earth’s atmosphere. He made it to an altitude of 17,100 meters on August 15 in a MIG-29 from Sokol Airbase near Nizhny Novgorod in Russia paying a hefty fee of around Rs. 15 lakh from his savings.
  The flight reached a maximum speed of 1,850 km per hour, reaching the stratosphere in 48 minutes. With this, Mr. Kumar becomes the 259th person and the first Indian to take the flight ever since the Country of Tourism Ltd., an agency conducting space travel in Russia, started the journey called ‘Edge of Space’ six years ago.
  
   
• Swetha: Chennai girl Swetha P Jain has won the 2014 Kaspersky Global Think Test Championship title. The champion, a medical student by qualification was among the 35,000 contestants, who had signed up for the Global Think Test challenge.
  It is a series of online brain teasers, games and puzzles launched by Kaspersky Lab and Mensa in early August this year. The Lab has, in a release said that Swetha got the highest score in the shortest time to emerge winner. The day of the event was September 6 and the prize money $25000 in cash.
  
• Manas Kohli: Bangalore student Manas Kohli is a world topper in Computer Studies in the Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) examination. It's the world's most popular international qualification for students between 14 and 16 years old.
  
• Mahant Avaidyanath: Former Lawmaker Mahant Avaidyanath, who had been in the forefront of the BJP’s movement for Ram Temple in Ayodhya, died in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.
  
• Narendra Ambwani: Narendra Ambwani on 12 September 2014 elected as Chairman of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI). He succeeded Partha Rakshit. Narendra Ambwani is the Director of Agro Tech Foods Ltd.
  
• Manas Kohli: Bangalore student Manas Kohli became a world topper in Computer Studies in the Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) examination. It's the world's most popular international qualification for students between 14 and 16 years old. A student of the International School Bangalore, Manas secured the highest marks in the world in Computer Studies and is the India topper in Chemistry.
  
• U C Nahta: The government has appointed U C Nahta as member of Competition Commission of India (CCI) for a five years. He was a Director in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
  
• Ian Paisley: Ian Paisley, passed away on 12th September, he devoted his life to compromise with Catholics in Northern Ireland and he has become a pivotal peacemaker in his twilight years
  
• Subhash Chandra Garg: Union Government announced the appointment of Subhash Chandra Garg as Executive Director of the World Bank for three years. He will replace M N Prasad in October.
  
• Bapu: Renowned Telugu filmmaker Sattiraju Lakshmi Narayana aka Bapu died.Born Dec 15, 1933, Bapu started his career as a cartoonist for Telugu newspaper Andhra Patrika. His filmmaking career started with 1960 Telugu film “Sakshi”, whose story and dialogues were by his best friend Mullapudi Venkata Ramana.
  
  Bapu and Ramana worked together in several memorable Telugu films such as “Mutyala Muggu”, “Mister Pellam”, “Pelli Pusthakam” and “Seetha Kalyanam”. Bapu’s last directorial was 2011 Telugu mythological drama “Sri Rama Rajyam”. In his over four-decade-long career, Bapu directed 51 films. He was honoured with the Padma Shri in 2013. He won the national awards twice and the Andhra Pradesh state Nandi Awards six times.
  
• Vahanvati: Former attorney general of India Goolamhussein Essaji Vahanvati, passed away on 2nd September. He was the 13th advocate general of India. He was appointed in 2009. Former foreign secretary A.P. Vnekateswaran passes away
  
  Attorney General of India:
  The Attorney General for India is the Indian government's chief legal advisor, and its primary lawyer in the Supreme Court of India.
  
  He is appointed by the President of India under Constitution of IndiaPart Article 76 and holds office during the pleasure of the President. He must be a person qualified to be appointed as a Judge of the Supreme Court.
  
  The 14th and current Attorney General is Mukul Rohatgi, who was appointed by the Pranab Mukherjee the President of India. He has been formally appointed as Attorney General of India with effect from 12 June 2014 and shall have a tenure of 3 years
  
• A.P. Venkateswaran: Former Foreign Secretary A.P. Venkateswaran (85) passed away on 2nd September. Venkateswaran was chairman of the Asia Centre, which is engaged in organising interaction and discussions on issues pertaining to Asian countries. He had made headlines when he resigned from his post in January 1987, after he was snubbed by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
  
• H.L. Dattu: President Pranab Mukherjee has cleared the appointment of Justice H.L. Dattu, the senior-most judge in the Supreme Court, as the 42nd Chief Justice of India.
  
• N Chandrasekaran: Tata Consultancy Services has reappointed N Chandrasekaran as Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director for a five year term. The appointment is effective from October 6, 2014. Chandrasekaran was earlier appointed as CEO and MD for a period of five years from October 06, 2009 to October 05, 2014, the company said in a BSE filing.
  
• Dr Baldev Raj: Dr Baldev Raj, on 5th September assumed responsibilities as the director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, a premier multi-disciplinary institution.