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22
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January 2011

1. Army court orders loss of 2-year seniority for Lt Gen Rath
An Army Court Martial ordered a two-year seniority loss, 15 years of loss of service for pension and severe
reprimand for Lt Gen P K Rath, a day after finding him guilty in Sukna land scam."To t ake rank and
precedence as if appointment as substantiating Lt Gen bore dated May 24, 2010, forfeiture of 15 years
service for pensionary benefits and severely reprimand," General Court Martial (GCM) Presiding Officer Lt
Gen I J Singh said in his verdict. The two-year loss of seniorty would mean that the officer who took the
three-star rank in May 2008, would be now considered as being promoted as Lt Gen from May 2010 only. He
has one more year of service left.

2. Court summons CAG as witness in plea to prosecute Raja
A Delhi court has summoned Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai and Director CAG to appear as
witnesses on a complaint by Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy seeking prosecution of former Telecom
Minister A Raja in the 2G spectrum allocation scam. Special CBI Judge Pradip Chaddah sought presence of
the top auditor and the official, R P Singh, in the court on February 5 to depose as witnesses. The order
came on a private complaint by Swamy seeking registration of a criminal case against Raja for his alleged
role in the scam, which, according to the CAG, caused a presumptive loss of 1.76 lakh crore to the
exchequer.

3. Food Bill: NAC, Rangarajan panel still at loggerheads
The differences between the National Advisory Committee, headed by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, and
the C Rangarajan Committee appointed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Food Security Bill continue
to persist with the former remaining firm on its recommendation of giving legal entitlement of food at
subsidised price to 75 per cent households. The Rangarajan panel had termed it as non-feasible on the
basis of the present availability of foodgrains in the country. In the first part of the draft National Food
Security Bill unveiled by the NAC, the council continued with its earlier recommendations of providing 35 kg
of rice/wheat/millet per household a month at Rs 3/2/1 to the Priority Category which constituted 46 per cent
households in rural areas and 28 per cent in urban areas.

4. SC seeks opinion of Centre, NCSC, Minority panel
With the issue of reservation to Dalit Christians and Muslims raising vital constitutional issues, the Supreme
Court framed questions of law and sought a response from the Centre, National Commission for Scheduled
Castes and National Commission for Minorities within a month. Hearing a PIL filed by Centre for Public
Interest Litigation wherein the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950 is under challenge, the Bench of
Chief Justice SH Kapadia, Justices KS Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar framed three questions of law
dealing with the constitutional validity of the 1950 order providing SC reservation to Hindus, Buddhists and
Sikhs only.

5. 2 sq km ONGC oil spill off Mumbai coast
In the second crisis of its kind in less than a year, a major crude oil leakage from ONGCs Mumbai Uran
Trunk (MUT) pipeline led to an oil spillage spread over 2 sqkm around the Bassein oil and gas field off the
city coast. The Coast Guard personnel, who assessed gravity of the oil spill in the affected area, said in the
evening that there was immediate threat to the Mumbai coast. A joint assessment by the ONGC officials,
backed by a Coast Guard-instituted Dornier aircraft survey, revealed that 25 to 30,000 barrels of crude oil
had spilled into the sea from the ONGCs BPD platform, located 40 km west of the Mumbai harbour.

6. Jaipur Literature Festival begins on spirited note
Over 400 Indian writers from 23 countries are participating in the 6th Jaipur Literature Festival . Slated to be
the third largest literary festival in the world, the five-day-long affair would host whos who from Indian literary
field and debate their works. The authors would also participate in discussions on their works. The festival is
being held at Diggi Palace, a heritage site, which during all these years has become synonymous with this
literary mega event.









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January 2011

7. Life term for Dara Singh upheld
The Supreme Court upheld an Orissa High Court judgment that commuted the death sentence a trial court
awarded to Dara Singh to life term. He burnt to death Australian Christian missionary Graham Stuart Staines
and his minor sons Philip Staines and Timothy Staines on the night of January 22, 1999 at Manoharpur.
Dismissing the Central Bureau of Investigation's plea to enhance the life sentence, a Ben ch of Justices P.
Sathasivam and B.S. Chauhan held that this was not one of the rarest of rare cases in which the death
sentence should be awarded to the accused.

8. New V-C for Allahabad
A.K. Singh, of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, has been appointed as the new Vice -
Chancellor (VC) of the historic Allahabad University. His name was approved by the President Pratibha Patil
in her capacity as Visitor of all Central Universities. A formal notification has been issued by the Ministry of
Human Resource Development.

9 .Shunglu panel releases OC salaries
The High Level Committee appointed by the Union Government under V.K. Shunglu, former Comptroller and
Auditor General of India, to look into the affairs of the Commonwealth Games, has released a list of 2100
persons appointed by the Organising Committee (OC). The panel received several representations and
information that several of the persons appointed were paid salaries not commensurate with their
qualifications, and that some of them were relatives/acquaintances of VIPs or office-bearers of the OC.

10. Iran, 6 world powers begin N-talks
Iran and six world powers sought to find common ground at talks jeopardised by Tehrans refusal to discuss
demands that it curb nuclear activities that could manufacture the fissile core of nuclear warheads. The two
sides sat down with no sign that they were ready to budge from widely differing positions revealed after a first
round of talks in Geneva. While the six would like to kick start talks focused at freezing Irans uranium
enrichment program, Tehran has repeatedly said that activity is not up for discussion. Instead, Iranian
officials are pushing an agenda that covers just about everything except its nuclear program: global
disarmament, Israels suspected nuclear arsenal, and Tehrans concerns about US military bases in Iraq and
elsewhere in the region.

11. Nepal political parties seek more time to form Govt
Nepals deadlock parties decided to seek five more days to form a national consensus Government as
President Ram Baran Yadavs deadline to end the over six months long political deadlock expired. The top
leaders of three main political parties the main Opposition UCPN (Maoist) and the two ruling alliance
partners CPN (UML) and the Nepali Congress agreed to ask the President for five move days to form a
national consensus Government.

12. FTA with EU only by year-end
Although negotiations on the much-awaited India-European Union (EU) Free Trade Agreement (FTA) are
likely to be concluded by sum mer this year, the formal signing will only happen by the end of this year at the
India-EU summit. Delegation of European Union Ambassador Daniele Smadja said negotiations on the
ticklish issues like temporary mobility of skilled professionals and services besides intellectual property rights
were likely to be concluded by summer and then the agreement would have to be summated to member
States of EU for ratification.

13. Airbus arm in race to supply mid-air refuelling aircraft to IAF
Airbus Military, the military aircraft-producing wing of Airbus, which is a consortium supported by several
governments in Europe, has announced that is in the race to supply six mid-air refuelling transport aircraft to
the Indian Air Force (IAF). Didier Vernet, Head, Market Development, Airbus Military, said, We are in
competition with the Russian-made IL -78 to supply the Airbus A330 multi -role tanker transport (MRTT).









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14. RBI favours subsidiary structure for foreign banks
The Reserve Bank came out with a discussion paper suggesting that foreign banks should be incentivised to
operate in India as wholly-owned subsidiaries, as against the current system of having presence through
branch network. Under the wholly-owned subsidiary (WOS) form, a foreign bank will have to operate as a
locally incorporated legal entity and will be subject to the domestic laws such as the Companies Act and the
Banking Regulation Act. At present, there are 34 foreign banks operating in India, with five major banks,
including StanChart, HSBC, C itibank and Deutsche, accounting for over 70 per cent of the total asset size.

15. Kurien leads IT business
Wipro Chairman Azim Premji announced the appointment of T. K. Kurien as the Chief Executive Officer of
the company's Information Technology business, replacing joint chief executives Girish Paranjpe and Suresh
Vaswani. The joint CEO structure is one of the key factors that successfully helped us navigate the worst
economic crisis. The change in environment requires a simpler organisational structure, Mr. Premji said.