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Political Notes |
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Reservation issue : Junior doctors end strike
After nearly a fortnight, junior government doctors in Delhi ended their strike, which had brought medical services in the national capital to a halt, after the Supreme Court made it clear that continuance of the strike will be treated as contempt of court. The apex court which had earlier asked the central gov¬ernment to explain the basis on which it would extend the pro¬posed 27 per cent reservation for other backward classes in institutions of higher education within eight weeks, had said that its immediate concern was on ending the hardships faced by the common people in need of health care. The medicos who had earlier taken an obstinate stand on not ending the strike, later relented during the week and went back to work.
Meanwhile, the Manmohan Singh Government has appointed former Karnataka Chief Minister Veerappa Moily as the chairman of the Oversight Committee which is to lay out a roadmap for the government’s plan for OBC quotas in central educational institu¬tions along with a commensurate increase in the seats for general category students. The 13-member Moily headed Oversight Commit¬tee will comprise secretaries from the Ministries of Human Re¬source Development, Health, Agriculture, Finance and others. The committee will also look into the requirement of increasing seats without reducing general category seats.
NALCO, NLC sale put off
Sucummbing to pressure from the Left parties, the Manmohan Singh Government has decided to postpone the sale of government stake in Neyveli Lignite Corporation to consider what it called a few other aspects. This was decided at the cabinet meeting on June 2.
Earlier, the Government had decided not to take up for the time being the question of disinvestment in National Aluminum Company. The CPI(M) had made it clear that the Government could go ahead with the proposed sale of NALCO only at the cost of a confrontation with the Left.
Cabinet Secretary gets a year’s extension
Cabinet Secretary B.K. Chaturvedi has been granted a year’s extension as the country’s top most civil servant till the middle of next year. Chaturvedi, an IAS officer of the 1966 batch, had taken over as Cabinet Secretary in June 2004. The announcement by the Government last week ended weeks of speculation over who was to succeed Chaturvedi.
Naxal landmine kills 12 CRPF men
Twelve jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were killed in the West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand in a landmine attack by Maoist rebels. Police immediately launched a combing operation to apprehend the Naxalites, but did not meet with success. This was the second attack on the police by the CPI (Maoist) cadres. In March this year, the militants had used a landmine explosion to kill four personnel of the state police in Palamu district.
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