02.12.2006

• Cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu convicted
• Punjab & Haryana High Court found him guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder of Gurnam Singh in Patiala on December 27, 1988.
• He along with an associate Rupinder Singh Sandhu reportedly beat up Gurnam Singh; who later succumbed to the injuries.
• Sadhu Yadav, MP and the brother in law of Lalu Prasad Yadav (our Union Railway Minister) was denied bail by Supreme Court.
• He was facing charges of tampering documents at the Patna district transport office with regard to transfer of a vehicle in his name. A case was registered against him for frgery and cheating. The allegation is that that the MP had falsely claimed that he had received Rs. 6 lks from sale of an Opel Astra car to one Bhagwan Lal Jha, the father of Santosh Jha – the alleged kingpin in the flood relief scam.
• Some more info on the Shibu Soren saga
• Though it was established years ago that he took bribe for voting against the no-confidence motion against P.V. Narasimha Rao government, Article 105 of the Constitution provided him with immunity from being prosecuted on charges of corruption. It was one of those rare cases wherein the Supreme Court held that the bribe taker is innocent not because evidence was lacking, but because the Constitution provided him with immunity from being sent up for trial.
• For those of you who are interested, I recommend reading the full article that appeared in ET today here.
• Creamy layer issue to the fore again
• A parliamentary panel has suggested that the non-creamy layer section, or the more needy among the OBCs be given priority while seeking admissions in government aided higher educational institutions.
• The panel further noted that the Supreme Court’s observations regarding the exclusion of the creamy layer within the SCs and STs from the purview of reservation was only for public employment and promotion.
• Baglihar dispute and escalating costs
• I have given some info on an earlier occasion about this. Refer it here.
• The contents of the report submitted by the World Bank nominated neutral expert Prof. Ramond Lafitte, which are slowly getting publicized include the following suggestions:
• Raising the power intake cill by 3 meters
• Reduction of the dam level by 1.5 meters
• Construction of a parapet wall of 1.2 meters
• It is the first of the above suggestions which results in a fundamental alteration to the design and is likely to lead to a delay of another two years for a project which already has cost Rs. 5,200 cr so far and is likely to cost another Rs. 1000 cr. All for generating 450 MW of power. It translates to about 13.77 cr per MW. Normally in power sector, a capital cost of Rs. 4 cr to 5 cr. per MW is considered normal.
• Some more trivia on the Indian airline industry
• What is the male counterpart of an air-hostess called? Purser.
• Between all the 10 different airlines operating in the country, they have about 292 aircraft now. They have ordered for an additional 480 aircraft.
• The domestic airlines carried around 51 mln passengers and 23 mln international passengers this year.
• One more regulator!!! This time for textbooks
• As suggested by the CABE (Central Advisory Board of Education), headed by historian Zoya Hasan, the HRD ministry is contemplating appointing another regulator to check whether the textbooks used outside the government system are in line with constitutional modalities and are not defamatory towards any community or spur communalism.
• The regulator will not examines textbooks produced by NCERT and SCERT.
• Citizens can register their complaints with the regulator.
• Comments on Ambedkar statue desecration and dalit violence
• In an excellent masterpiece of an editorial, today ET made some observations that are worth remembering, as they are imbued with a sense of reason and purpose.
• While pulling no punches for initiating action against the perpetrators of mass violence and destructors of public property, the editorial called for the response to be accompanied by a serious introspection on why certain groups are forced to resort to violence.
• Any act of political violence that upsets public order underscores the perpetrator’s lack of stake in the system. Yes I can’t agree more. This is our political system’s abject failure that even after 60 years of independence we have not been able to create a feeling among the dalits that they have a stake in the system.
• It is time our political class realized their cynical and tokenist politics of caste based quotas has created a small new elite from among the subalterns even as it has left the inequitable socio-economic structure of power intact. Dalit violence is just the obverse of such ideology of bad faith.
• RBI having a relook at the banks’ market exposure norms
• At present banks cannot have an aggregate exposure of more than 5% of their toal outstanding advances as on March 31 of the previous year.
• Within this overall limit, their exposure by way of investments in shares, convertible bonds, debentures and units of equity-oriented mutual funds etc., is further restricted to 20% of the net worth.
• RBI is thinking of relaxing these limits. It proposes to restrict banks’ aggregate capital market exposure to 40% of their respective net worth on a solo and consolidated basis. Further the consolidated bank’s direct capital market exposure is not to exceed 20% of its consolidated net worth.
• Don't miss the excellent comparison made between John Maynard Keynes and Martin Friedman in today's Discover-It blog. Read it here.