Daily News Mail - News of 14/04/2015

Today is 125th Birthday Anniversary of Dr. B.R.Ambedakar

Govt. notifies NJAC, puts an end to collegium

• Acting on its words in the Supreme Court that “the judges’ job is to judge cases and not to appoint their brother judges,” the Union government on april 13 notified the National Judicial Appointments Commission law and effectively brought to an end the two-decades-old collegium system of appointing judges.
• The notification brings into immediate effect the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014, and the 99th Constitution Amendment Act.
• Now, the political class and civil society have an equal voice, along with the judiciary, in the appointment and transfer of judges in the highest judiciary.
• The notification comes hardly 48 hours before a five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court was to hear a batch of petitions challenging the constitutionality of the NJAC law on April 15.
• But the notification was made possible by the Supreme Court itself on April 7.
• While referring the petitions to a larger Bench, the court had refused to pass a stay order on the law coming into force.

Australian Minister upbeat on clearing snags in n-deal

• The Australian government is confident of resolving issues over the civil nuclear deal when officials meet next week, said visiting Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
• “Given that the United States and Canada have come to an understanding with India that satisfies their requirements, I don’t see why Australia cannot,” Ms. Bishop told journalists during a closed-door interaction in Delhi.
• The Foreign Minister also said she hoped the framework for uranium trade could be concluded in 2015.
• India and Australia signed the civil nuclear deal in September 2014, which would have enabled Australia to supply uranium to India, once the treaty was ratified by Australian parliament. However, the deal has run into opposition at the parliamentary committee level in Canberra, where the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has yet to submit its report on the deal. In February this year, the committee held several hearings with nuclear experts opposed to the deal because of India’s refusal to sign the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty).
• However, Ms. Bishop said her government was confident of its numbers in the House of Representatives, and said her ruling Liberal party “expected” that the opposition Labour party would support the deal in the Senate, where it has the numbers.
• Ms. Bishop will meet External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday as part of the annual strategic framework.

Retail inflation drops to 5.17 % in March

• Easing of food prices, mainly milk and vegetables, pulled down the March retail inflation to a three-month low of 5.17%. It was 8.25% in March last year. The retail inflation as measured by Consumer Price Index was 5.37% in February, and 5.19% in January.
• The easing prices of milk, vegetables and fruits brought down the CFPI (consumer food price index) to 6.14% in March from 6.79%t recorded in February.
• Inflation declined for ‘cereals and products’, although it was up in the case of protein rich items like ‘meat and fish’, as per the government data released on Monday.
• The rate of price rise in the food and beverages segment as a whole was 6.2% in March, lower than 6.76% in the previous month.
• The CPI-based retail inflation has been calculated with a new base year of 2012.
• Inflation in the fuel and light segment was 5.07% last month, up from 4.72% in February.
• In the housing segment, inflation was 4.77% last month, as compared to 4.98%. For the rural segment, the overall retail inflation was 5.58% in March and 4.75% for urban centres. 

Report on Net neutrality next month

• Union Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on April 13 that the government has set up a six-member committee comprising Telecom Ministry officials to examine various aspects of Net neutrality. Mr Prasad, who has in the past backed Net neutrality, said the panel would submit its report by the second week of May.
• “Internet to become entirely global should have a link to local and when we talk of digital inclusion it must be available to the underprivileged and on the margins,” Mr. Prasad said.
• While the debate on Net neutrality has been going on at the global level for a long time, in India it was triggered when the country’s largest operator Airtel in December announced plans to start charging customers for VoIP services, such as Skype and Viber.
• The debate gained national momentum when telecom regulator TRAI came out with a consultation paper inviting user comments on the subject. In reply to this, over one lakh emails were sent to the authority through the website savetheinternet.in.
• People from all sections of society, including politicians, corporate leaders and actors, have come out in support of the campaign.
• Topics such as #SavetheInternet, #Netneutrality have been trending on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
• Airtel recently announced another initiative, Airtel Zero, an open marketing platform that allows customers to access a variety of mobile applications for free, with the data charges being paid by start-ups and large companies. This too is considered to be against the principle of Net neutrality.
• In fact, Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal received a lot of flak for supporting Airtel Zero on Twitter. He later clarified that he is not against Net neutrality.