Make law panel suggestions binding, says HC

Make law panel suggestions binding, says HC

Sureshkumar.K@timesgroup.com

Chennai:07.09.2021

Consider making the Law Commission of India a statutory body or give it a constitutional status so that its recommendations would be binding on the government, the Madras high court has told the Centre.

Suggesting a suitable constitutional amendment in this regard, a division bench of Justice N Kirubakaran and Justice B Pugalendhi also directed the Centre to appoint chairman and members to the law commission within three months.

The court passed the order on a plea moved by K Pushpavanam of Madurai seeking a direction to the Centre to propose a comprehensive legislation in the field of ‘Torts and State Liability’ as per the directions of the Supreme Court in MCD V Uphaar Tragedy Victims Assn case and Vadodara Municipal Corporation case.

Allowing the plea, the bench said: “What is the use of constitutional courts in passing judgments, giving recommendations for enacting laws, when they are not actually acted upon by the legislature? What is the use of having a law commission without its recommendation being acted upon?”

Though the separation of powers between Judiciary, Executive and Legislature has not been specifically spelled out in the Constitution, it is maintained without crossing their respective boundaries. However, the way in which things are moving, it is very difficult to maintain the limits or the boundaries as the legislature fails consistently to take notice of many of the court’s suggestions, which have been in the interest of the society to enact laws, the judges said.

“It is still worse with regard to acceptance of recommendations of the law commission, which after getting inputs from various stakeholders and discussions on various issues, were made to the government to enact law. They are neither accepted nor acted upon and are kept in cold storage for decades together,” the court added.

One such recommendation was made by the first law commission as early as in 1956 recommending to the Centre to enact a law covering the field of liability of state in tort. Pointing out several such instances, the court said: “If that is the position, this court is of the opinion that restraint shown by courts in exceeding its jurisdiction to encroach upon the field of legislature should be given up.”

PM urges healthcare workers to minimize vaccine wastage

PM urges healthcare workers to minimize vaccine wastage

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi/Shimla:07.09.2021

Stressing that the government is focusing on swiftly ramping up Covid vaccination coverage across the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday urged healthcare workers to reduce wastage of jabs as it can help save 10% of expenditure on inoculation.

The PM was interacting with healthcare workers and beneficiaries of Covid vaccination programme of Himachal Pradesh, which has inoculated 100% of its adult population with at least the first dose. He also emphasized the need to achieve similar coverage of the second dose. “Using the Covid vaccine carefully can reduce the expenses of vaccination by 10%,” Modi said. Himachal chief minister Jai Ram Thakur and BJP president J P Nadda were also present at the event.

Referring to the landmark achievement of administering of more than one crore vaccines in a single day, twice in the last week of August, the PM lauded the efforts of health workers, doctors, medical professionals and teachers. “India is creating a record by administering1.25 crore vaccines every day. The number of vaccines administered in a single day by India is more than the entire population of several countries,” he said.

Full report on www.toi.in

Covid-19 drug Tocilizumab’s biosimilar version gets emergency use authorisation

New Delhi:

In a move that is expected to boost India’s battle against Covid-19, the drug regulator has granted emergency use authorisation to Hetero’s biosimilar version of Tocilizumab for treatment of critically ill Covid-19 patients in India.

Hetero announced that the drug would be available from September-end under brand name Tocira. Hetero’s Tocira 400mg/20ml is the biosimilar version of Roche’s Actemra/ RoActemra. The drug is currently distributed by Cipla in India under license from Roche. TNN

Online nuptials can be registered under Special Marriage Act: HC

Online nuptials can be registered under Special Marriage Act: HC

Kochi:07.09.2021

Weddings under the Special Marriage Act can be registered without insisting on physical presence of the parties, the Kerala high court said on Monday.

However, the challenge was identification of both the parties by the marriage officer and one of the options for that was the use of technology like facial recognition or biometrics, the court said. Noting that the court does not have the expertise to work out modalities for use of technology for such matters, a bench of Justices A Muhamed Mustaque and Kauser Edappagath impleaded the department of information technology and the ministry of external affairs as parties in the matter.

The bench directed the central government’s lawyer to seek instructions on policies on facial recognition and other data tools for identification of the parties.

The court was hearing a batch of pleas referred to it by a single judge on whether a wedding under the said Act could be solemnised/registered online via video conference without insisting on the physical presence of the bride and the groom.

The single judge, Justice P B Suresh Kumar, was of the view that parties to an intended marriage can certainly be permitted to solemnise it through exchange of words through video conference.

However, he referred the matter to a larger bench as two other judges of the court had ruled that solemnisation of marriages under the said Act via videoconference would dilute the provisions of the Act and that physical presence of both parties was mandatory. Appearing to agree with the view of Justice Kumar and the contentions of the petitioners, the bench on Monday said, “We have no hesitation to hold that a marriage under SMA can be registered without insisting on physical presence of the parties before the marriage officer. However, the marriage officer must be in a position to identify the parties. But the manner in which such identification can be made online is a concern for us.” PTI

‘PHYSICAL PRESENCE NOT MANDATORY’

CBI arrests 4 more in JEE (Mains) exam manipulation racket

CBI arrests 4 more in JEE (Mains) exam manipulation racket

New Delhi:07.09.2021

The CBI has arrested four more people in connection with their investigation into the case of alleged manipulation of JEE (Mains) 2021 examination. Earlier, the agency had arrested seven suspects in the case.

The arrests include an assistant professor, Sandeep Gupta, of a private engineering college in Sonipat and three other staffers posted there. The other suspects have neen identified as Arvind Saini and Kuldeep Garg who work as lab technicians and Tulsi Ram, a peon at the same college.

As per the initial probe, at least thirty candidates are believed to have availed the services of the gang till now. Cops are now looking for a Bangalore-based suspect who used to arrange for “expert solvers” in the scam. These solvers took remote access of the computer which was assigned to their students at different colleges and then solved the paper for them in order to get them a higher rank. TNN

Heavy rain triggers landslide on Salem-Yercaud ghat road

Heavy rain triggers landslide on Salem-Yercaud ghat road

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Salem:07.09.2021

A huge boulder rolled on to the Salem-Yercaud ghat road following a heavy raintriggered landslide on late Sunday evening. Workers from the state highway department were pressed into service to clear the boulder.

Continuous heavy downpour triggered the landslide near Vazhavadhi, a village on Salem-Yercaud road via Kuppanur route on late Sunday evening. Police officials at the Kuppanur check post stopped vehicular traffic on the stretch after they were notified about the landslide by the locals. After clearing the stretch, the highway department allowed all vehicles to Yercaud from Monday morning. An official from the state highway department said traffic was not affected due to the landslide.

“At the same time, the road may be weakened due to soil erosion,” the official said.

He said that they were allowing bikes and cars on the ghat road at present. “We have advised all the drivers to drive slowly when they pass the ghat road including the landslide area,” the official added.

According to an official from the meteorological department, Yercaud received continuous rain for the last few days. “Shervaroy hills received 78mm of rain on Thursday, 127mm on Friday, 21mm on Saturday and 18mm on Sunday,” the official said.

NATURE’S FURY: Continuous heavy downpour triggered the landslide near Vazhavadhi

City university wins AICTE clean & smart campus award 2020

City university wins AICTE clean & smart campus award 2020

Chennai:07.09.2021

SRM Institute of Science and Technology (SRMIST), Kattankulathur, received the first prize in AICTE national level clean and smart campus award 2020 — a campus first step towards sustainability. The certificate of excellence was presented by Union minister of education Dharmendra Pradhan to university vicechancellor C Muthamizhchelvan. Department of networking and communications assistant professor P Supraja was given the Visvesvaraya Best Teacher Award 2021 in recognition of her teaching excellence in technical education. TNN

Docus should allow both parents’ names: HC

Docus should allow both parents’ names: HC

Sureshkumar.K@timesgroup.com

Chennai:07.09.2021

Remarking that it would be appropriate if columns are provided to include names of either or both parents of a child applying for official documents, the Madras high court has issued notice to the Union and state governments on a PIL. The petitioner also wanted the court to direct the government to permit single parents to include their name alone in such documents.

When the plea came up for hearing on Monday, the first bench of chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice P D Audikesavalu said: “It may be more appropriate if the column or columns in the printed forms permit either or both (parents) as per the wishes of the applicant.” It then adjourned the hearing to November 1.

The petitioner, B Ramkumar Adityan, said children should be able to use the names of either their mother or father. Citing the steady and sizable increase in the number of single-parent adoptions in the past 30 years, he said challenges for single parent adoption had greatly reduced. Many factors may have encouraged this drift. “One such factor can be the growing acceptance of one parent families due to divorce or separation and unmarried single women raising a child on their own. Other factors such as increasing literacy and financial independence of women may have also fairly contributed in making single parent adoption popular,” he said.

But still several public and private institutions and almost all documents in all departments such as affidavits, deeds, oaths, schools, banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, licences, registrations, permits, identity cards, orders, records, legal documents, official documents, court documents and applications of any nature continue to issue forms that require the father’s name alone and require the father to sign off as the guardian, he said.

It would be appropriate if columns are provided to include names of either or both parents of a child applying for official documents, the Madras high court observed and issued notice to the Union and state governments on a PIL