PERSONS SEPTEMBER 2016

PERSONS SEPTEMBER 2016

• Siva Kumar: The government has appointed S. Siva Kumar, professor at the Indian Law Institute in New Delhi, as a full-time Member of the 21st Law Commission of India.
  
  The Commission has several important references pending with it, including one on the viability of the Uniform Civil Code and amendments to the Advocates Act to effectively curb misconduct by lawyers. The mandate of the 21st Law Commission also includes recommending obsolete laws to be repealed.
  
  Mr. Siva Kumar, who is a recipient of the National Law Day Award in 2008, specialises in Administrative Law and Media Law. His area of interests include Constitutional Law, Human Rights, IPR, ADR and Clinical Legal Education. Hailing from Kerala, he is the author of several books on law.
  
• Riyadh Mathew: Riyadh Mathew, Director of Malayala Manorama, and Viveck Goenka, Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Express, were on 29th September unanimously elected Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively of PTI.
  
  Mr. Mathew, who is Senior Assistant Editor and member of the Manorama management, succeeds Hormusji N. Cama, Director of Bombay Samachar. Mr. Goenka succeeds Mr. Mathew as Vice-Chairman.
  
  Besides Mr. Mathew, Mr. Goenka and Mr. Cama, members of the PTI Board are K.N. Shanth Kumar (Deccan Herald ), Vineet Jain ( Times of India ), Mahendra Mohan Gupta ( Dainik Jagran ), Aveek Kumar Sarkar ( Anand Bazar Patrika ), N. Ravi ( The Hindu ) M.P. Veerandra Kumar ( Mathrubhumi ), Vijay Kumar Chopra (The Hind Samachar Ltd), R. Lakshmipathy ( Dinamalar ), Rajiv Verma (Hindustan Times ) and Independent Directors Justice R.C. Lahoti, Prof. Deepak Nayyar and Jimmy F Pochkhanawalla and Shyam Saran.
  
• Arundhathi Bhattacharya: The government on 1st October granted one year extension to Arundhati Bhattacharya as chairman of State Bank of India (SBI), a first in the history of the country’s biggest lender. At a time when SBI’s consolidation with its associate banks is underway, continuity in leadership is likely to help in smooth transition.
  
  Bhattacharya joined the bank in September 1977 as a probationary officer at the age of 22. She has held several positions during her 36-year career with the bank, including working in foreign exchange, treasury, retail operations, human resources and investment banking.
  
  Some of the key positions held by her were chief executive of SBI’s merchant banking arm — SBI Capital Markets; chief general manager in charge of new projects and her tenure at the bank’s New York office. She has been involved in the launch of several new businesses such as SBI General Insurance, SBI Custodial Services and the SBI Macquarie Infrastructure Fund. With clear signs of digital technology driving banking, Bhattacharya has pushed to design products for tech-savvy generation. Bhattacharya has been ranked as Asia’s second most powerful businesswomen by Forbes in 2016.
  
  
• Shimon Peres: Shimon Peres, who served twice as Israel's Prime Minister and once as President, has died on 28th September. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his role negotiating the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians a year earlier, a prize he shared with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was later assassinated, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
  
• Junaid Ahmad: Junaid Ahmad has become the World Bank's Country Director for India, replacing Onno Ruhl who served a four-year term based out of the national capital.
  Hailing from Bangladesh, Ahmad was Chief of Staff to the World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim before being elevated to the current position. India is the World Bank Group's largest client. As of June 2016, the bank's net commitments to India stood at USD 27 billion (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development USD 16 billion, International Development Association USD 11 billion) across 95 projects.
  
• Two Indians, one Indian-American among 17 UN Young Leaders
  Two Indians and an Indian-American are among the 17 people selected for the inaugural class of United Nations Young Leaders for Sustainable Development Goals. They are, Trisha Shetty, Ankit Kawatra and Indian-American Karan Jerath.
  UN has chosen them for their leadership and contribution to end poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change by 2030. 25-year old Trisha Shetty is the founder and CEO of 'SheSays', a platform she launched in 2015 to educate, rehabilitate and empower women to take direct action against sexual assault in India.
  Ankit Kawatra, aged 24, founded 'Feeding India' in 2014 to address the issues of hunger and food waste, particularly by distributing excess food from weddings and parties to the needy.
  
  19-year old Indian-American Karan Jerath invented a ground-breaking, subsea wellhead capping device that contains oil spills at the source as a solution in the aftermath of the BP deepwater horizon oil spill - the largest marine oilspill in US history, near his home in Texas.
  
• Centre appoints 3 scholars to RBI monetary policy panel
  The Centre on 22^nd September appointed three academicians as members to the Monetary Policy Committee, which will set interest rates.
  The appointees are Chetan Ghate, Professor, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI); Pami Dua, Director, Delhi School of Economics (DSE); and Ravindra Dholakia, Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A). The appointments will be for four years
  A PhD from Claremont Graduate School, California, Ghate is a macro-economist and part of the Economics and Planning Unit at the ISI.
  He has earlier been a member of the RBI’s Technical Advisory Committee and was also part of the committee on anchoring monetary policy to consumer price inflation.
  Dua, a PhD from the London School of Economics, was previously professor (economics) at DSE and visiting faculty fellow, Yale University. She has served as an expert on RBI advisory groups on leading indicators and liquidity and served as a member of two committees set up by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.
  Dholakia, a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, has 38 years’ teaching experience. He has served on many government panels, including the Public Expenditure Management (2009-10) and the Sixth Pay Commission.
  
  The other three members of the six-member panel that will set interest rates will be from the RBI. Apart from RBI Governor Urjit Patel, who will chair the committee, the other members are R Gandhi, Deputy Governor, who holds the charge of monetary policy; and Michael Patra, Executive Director.
  
• Mukesh Ambani: Industrialist Mukesh Ambani was named India's richest person for a ninth year in a row with a sharp increase in networth to USD 22.7 billion, while Sun Pharma's Dilip Shanghvi was ranked a distant second with a wealth of USD 16.9 billion.
  The Hinduja Family moved up to the third position (USD 15.2 billion) on the annual Forbes list of India's 100 Richest People. Wipro's Azim Premji slipped one place to fourth with a net worth of USD 15 billion.
  Patanjali Ayurved's Acharya Balkrishna, known as a close associate of yoga guru Ramdev, has made a surprise entry at the 48th position with a net worth of USD 2.5 billion on the list compiled by the American business magazine known for its rich lists.
  Forbes said the combined net worth of India's 100 wealthiest is USD 381 billion (nearly Rs 25.5 lakh crore), a rise of 10 per cent from USD 345 billion in 2015.
  
  Besides, there are six newcomers including serial entrepreneurs and brothers Bhavin and Divyank Turakhia (95th, USD 1.3 billion), who sold their ad tech firm Media.Net for USD 900 million to a consortium of Chinese investors.
  
• Reoti Saran Sharma: Well known Hindi and Urdu writer Reoti Saran Sharma died in New Delhi on 23^rdSeptember. He was a Pioneer in radio plays in All India Radio and was conferred with Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 2007 for his contribution to theatre. He was also awarded Sahitya Kala Parishad and Ghalib Award.
  
• Navtej Sharma: India’s High Commissioner to U.K. Navtej Sarna was appointed on 22^ndSeptember as Ambassador to the U.S. He was among the longest-serving spokespersons of the MEA. He had held the post between 2002 and 2008.
  The government has also appointed 1988-batch IFS officer Taranjit Singh Sandhu as the next High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. He will replace Yash Sinha. In Washington, Mr. Sarna’s main task will be to ensure continuity in India-U.S. relations when a new dispensation takes charge.
  Mr. Sarna has authored many fiction and non-fiction books, with the most recent beingSecond Thoughts: On Books, Authors and the Writerly Life released in 2015. He was also India’s Ambassador to Israel from 2008 to 2012.
  
  Mr. Yash Sinha, tipped to be Indian High Commissioner to the U.K., is a seasoned diplomat and, in his career of 35 years, he has handled important assignments at the MEA and in Indian missions in South Asia, the Middle East, Europe and South America.
  
• Arun Goyal: Senior IAS officer Arun Goyal has been appointed Additional Secretary in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council. The Council headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is mandated to decide on tax rate exempted goods and the threshold limit. As per an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training said, the Appointments Committee of Cabinet has approved Mr. Goyal's appointment against the newly created post.
  Mr Goyal, is a 1985 batch IAS officer of Union Territory cadre, is at present working as Additional Secretary, Project Monitoring Group, Cabinet Secretariat.
  The Union Cabinet had recently approved appointment of the Secretary (Revenue) as the ex-officio Secretary to the GST council and inclusion of the chairperson, Central Board of Excise and Customs, as a permanent invitee. The Cabinet had also approved creation of one post of Additional Secretary and four posts of Commissioner in the secretariat.
  
  
• JP Rajkhowa: The President has directed JP Rajkhowa to be removed as Governor of Arunachal Pradesh. The decision comes after Home Minister Rajnath Singh had met the President regarding continuation of Rajkhowa in the Governor's post. Rajkhowa was at the centre of controversy when the Supreme Court restored the state government in Arunachal Pradesh in July, 2016 after it was dismissed under the Governor's order in December, 2015
  
• Jeff Weiner: The Chief Executive Officer of the social networking site LinkedIn Jeff Weiner on 13th September called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi. The Prime Minister discussed skill development and opportunities for Indian youth with Weiner.
  
  The CEO of the professional networking site, founded in 2002, appreciated the Prime Minister's official NM mobile app and its potential to engage with citizens.
  
• Arundhathi and Chanda Kochhar:India's top women bankers, State Bank of India's (SBI) chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, ICICI head Chanda Kochhar and Axis Bank chief executive Shikha Sharma, are among the '50 most powerful women' based outside the US, according to a list by Fortune, which is topped by Banco Santander's boss Ana Botín.
  
  Bhattacharya, 60, is ranked second on the list, while Kochhar comes at the fifth spot and Sharma on the 19th position in the Fortune's '50 most powerful women international' list, which has ranked the women based outside the US.
  
  Botín, group executive chairman of Banco Santander, Eurozone's largest bank by market value, repeats as No. 1, in a time of economic and political volatility for all. The 2016 list spans 19 countries.
  
  ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO Kochhar, 54, is regarded even by rival bankers as a "visionary", Fortune said.
  
  Sharma, 57, has grown Axis Bank from an under-represented bank to the nation's fastest growing private sector lender, with revenue up 15 per cent to $7.9 billion in 2015 and nearly 3,000 branches across 1,800 cities and towns, Fortune said.
  
• Jim Yong Kim: World Bank President Jim Yong Kim effectively won a second five year term after nominations to lead the global development bank closed on 14th September with no other candidates proposed.
  
  The World Bank executive board said in a statement that, following official procedures, it would formally meet with Kim as a candidate with the expectation of completing the selection process by the 2016 Annual Meetings, which take place on 7th to 9th of October.
  
  Kim, a Korean-American medical doctor who has focused the World Bank on programs to reduce extreme poverty, earned solid backing for a second term from the United States, France, Germany, China, and other major shareholders of the bank.
  
• Mother Teresa: Mother Teresa is now Saint Teresa of Calcutta following canonization by Pope Francis in Vatican City. The canonization comes on the eve of her 19th death anniversary. She will now be known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Mother Teresa died on September 5, 1997.
  
  On October 19, 2003, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She was conferred with the country's highest award Bharat Ratna.
  
  Minister of State for Communications Manoj Sinha on 4th September released a special postage stamp to mark Mother Teresa’s canonization as a saint at The Vatican. The postage stamp was released at Divine Child High School in Andheri in Mumbai to commemorate the event being celebrated globally.
  
• Urjit Patel: Urjit Patel on 6th September formally took over as the 24th governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from Raghuram Rajan, after signing the ceremonial scroll of the central bank's board. Patel's appointment was effective September 4, but the scroll signing ceremony had to be delayed till Tuesday as the central bank was closed on 4th and 5th September
  
  Upon Patel's elevation, the portfolios of the three deputy governors were rejigged. Most of the departments that Patel used to handle, including the critical monetary policy department, forecasting and modelling unit, department of economic policy & research, and financial markets regulation department, market intelligence, were handed over to R Gandhi. S S Mundra and N S Vishwanathan also got charge of three additional departments.
  
  Therefore, the three members from the RBI in the six-member monetary policy committee would be RBI governor Patel, deputy governor R. Gandhi and executive director Michael Patra, whose inclusion in MPC was earlier announced by RBI. The rest three members in the committee will be government appointed.
  
• Satyanarayana: Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on 8th September administered the oath of office to former IT Secretary J Satyanarayana as part-time Chairman of UIDAI but said the post will not have Cabinet rank. The part-time Chairman, who will have tenure of three years, will hold power limited to provisions defined under the Aadhaar Act 2016.
  
  The UIDAI has generated 105.11 crore Aadhaar numbers as on September 7 and as of 2015 census, Aadhaar covers 98 per cent of adult population and 82 per cent of the total population. About 50 lakh people are accessing their biometrics on daily basis for various purposes.