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Justice U ULalit took oath as the 49th Chief Justice of India (CJI). President DroupadiMurmu administered the oath of office to Justice Lalit at the swearing-in ceremony held in the Durbar Hall of RashtrapatiBhavan.
The new CJI has a short tenure and will hold office till November 8, 2022. He succeeds Chief Justice N V Ramana who retired Friday.
Speaking at a farewell event organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association for Chief Justice Ramana, Justice Lalit laid out his priorities, saying he “will strive hard to make the process of listing cases as simple as transparent as possible”, make mentioning – where lawyers bring urgent matters to the notice of the court – easier, and strive to ensure that there is at least one Constitution bench functioning throughout the year.
He was elevated directly to the Supreme Court from the Bar in August 2014 – only the sixth lawyer to be so honoured.
Enrolling as an advocate in June 1983, CJI Lalit has been a key part of the country’s jurisprudential journey in the last couple of decades, initially as a lawyer and then as judge. His father U R Lalit was an additional judge of the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court.
He has also been part of several important rulings in the SC. CJI Lalit headed the bench that last month sentenced Vijay Mallya, who was found guilty of contempt of court in 2017, to four months’ imprisonment and fine of Rs 2,000. He also headed the bench that convicted the fugitive businessman for contempt in May 2017.
A bench presided by him underscored the importance of mitigating circumstances while dealing with death penalty convicts.
In a Madhya Pradesh case involving a man sentenced to death for the gangrape of a child, the bench gave credence to the role of a “mitigation investigator” in going into the background of the convict.
The court also initiated a suomotu case to streamline the process of consideration of mitigating circumstances in such matters.
It said that “every circumstance which has the potential of being a mitigating circumstance, while considering whether a death sentence be imposed or not, must necessarily be considered by the court”.
Express Network
Subsidisedfertilizer under‘Bharat’ brandfrom Oct: Mandaviya (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
All subsidisedfertilisers, including Urea and DAP (Diammonium phosphate), will be sold from October under a single brand name — “Bharat” — as part of the Centre’s ‘One Nation, One Fertiliser’ initiative, Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said.
Mandaviya said the initiative is aimed at ensuring timely supply of fertiliser to farmers, bringing uniformity in supply, and reducing subsidy burden in terms of higher freight charges.
As of now, there is a crisscross movement of fertiliser due to brand preference in different parts of the country, he said.
Mandaviya said fertiliser manufactured by Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) and KrishakBharati Cooperative Limited (KRIBHCO) in Uttar Pradesh are sent to Rajasthan, while nutrients made by Chambal Fertilisers are sold in UP. Similarly, IFFCO/KRIBHCO fertiliser from UP are sold in Madhya Pradesh, and those manufactured by National Fertilizers Limited in MP are sold in UP.
“One Nation, One Fertiliser will stop crisscross movement of fertiliser for longer distances. It will reduce logistics cost and also ensure availability throughout the year.
Besides, it also results in higher “average lead” (distance of a fertiliser bag from source to destination), which the government aims to bring down the average lead was 900-1000 km before 2019, which came down to 850-900 km in 2019-20, and 700-750 km in 2020-21. Now the government aims to bring down the average lead below 500 km by implementing the One Nation, One Fertiliser initiative.
This will save freight subsidy, which is in the range of Rs 6,000 crore to Rs 9,000 crore, the minister said. He said the average subsidy for movement of 1 lakh metric tonnes of fertiliser has come down from Rs 19.03 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 11.59 crore in 2020-21.
The One Nation, One Fertiliser initiative is part of the Centre’s fertiliser subsidy scheme PradhanmantriBhartiyaJanurvarakPariyojna (PMBJP).
As part of this, the government also plans to set up Pradhan MantriKisanSamridhi Kendra (PMKSK), which will serve as a one-stop centre for farmers to access services such as soil health tests.
Sharing details of the subsidy, Mandaviya said the government’s current subsidy accounts for 80 per cent of the price of a urea bag, 65 per cent of DAP bag, 55 per cent of NPK [Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous(P) and Potassium (K)] and 31 per cent of MoP (Muriate of Potash).
Economy
Needformorefrequent labourdatabygovtflagged,withfocusonrural(Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The Centre is learnt to have held discussions at the highest level to look into the delay in frequency of the release of government employment-unemployment data, with one of the main concerns pertaining to the time lag in the release of the official Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) as against privately-conducted surveys such as the one brought out by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).
In recent meetings held at the Cabinet Secretariat attended by statistical department and Union Labour Ministry representatives, discussions converged on the need to improve the frequency of the labour market data, especially in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
There was a meeting held in the Cabinet Secretariat. PLFS is taken out by the statistical department and they have to follow international norms.
There is also more scrutiny: whether random sampling is happening or not, urban-rural population parameters, agriculture-industry proportion, and so there are limitations. We have asked to increase the frequency (of the official data release).
The person further said that the discussions have been held in the context that any delay in the release of the government data on employment-unemployment tends to raise questions about its credibility, even as PLFS data is more robust than the privately-conducted surveys.
PLFS is a much more robust survey. In the private surveys, there is a greater skew towards urban areas and the methodology is also different, you have to keep changing the set otherwise biases creep in.
The National Statistical Office (NSO) under the Ministry of Statistics of Programme and Implementation (MoSPI) conducts the PLFS for rural and urban areas. Labour data for rural areas is published annually, while that for urban areas is released every quarter.
There is a gap of at least a year in the release of the annual PLFS report. In recent times, PLFS for 2020-21 (July-June) was released in June 2022, while the PLFS for 2019-20 was released in July 2021 and that for 2018-19 was released in June 2020.
On the other hand, Mumbai-based CMIE comes out with more frequent data for unemployment on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis.
In its latest report presented to Parliament in August, the Standing Committee on Finance too flagged the time lag in the release of the PLFS, citing that the quarterly PLFS for July-September 2020 was released in August 2021, for October-December 2020 in September 2021 and for January-March 2021 in November 2021.