NEWS

Bhupesh Baghel will continue as Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh “for the time being” and the proposal to replace him with T S Singh Deo, in line with the formula of rotational chief ministership agreed upon by the two in 2018, was “not a closed chapter,” sources in the Congress said Friday after Baghel met Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for more than three hours amid an unprecedented show of strength by him in New Delhi.

The Congress leadership, sources said, was miffed with the Chief Minister for bringing over 40 MLAs including ministers — one of them claimed they totalled 51 — to New Delhi to demonstrate his support despite a clear direction from the high command not to do so. The Congress has 70 MLAs in the 90-member Assembly. Baghel was told to send back the MLAs immediately, sources said. Neither Gandhi nor AICC general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal met the MLAs.

With the President set to issue warrants of appointment for nine, including senior advocate P S Narasimha, as judges of the Supreme Court, the lone direct appointee from the bar in this batch would be the third in this category to become Chief Justice of India.

Justice S M Sikri was the first to head the judiciary after being appointed directly from the bar. Sitting SC Judge U U Lalit would succeed present CJI N V Ramana, who retires on August 26 next year. In our report published in the August 26 edition of TOI, we erroneously said that Narasimha would be the first one from the bar appointed as SC Judge who would go on to become the CJI.

Narasimha is the ninth from the bar to be directly appointed as SC Judge. Earlier ones are: Sikri, S C Roy, Kuldip Singh, N Santosh Hegde, R F Nariman, Lalit, L N Rao and Indu Malhotra. Justice Sikri was appointed as a SC Judge on February 3, 1964 and became the CJI on January 22, 1971. He had a tenure of 27 months and retired on April 25, 1973.

CPI(M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami on Friday filed a plea in the Supreme Court for early hearing of writ petitions filed in 2019 seeking to declare presidential orders from August 5 and August 6 as well as the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act “unconstitutional, void and inoperative.”

The petition submitted Friday notes that despite challenges to the Presidential orders of August 5 and 6, “the Central government has, inter alia, taken the following reversible actions...”

Stating that in view of these actions being taken by the Centre, the plea said the challenge to the constitutional validity “ought to be heard on an expedited basis, otherwise the petition itself would be rendered infructuous” and the applicant would be left without remedy.

President Ram Nath Kovind will address the special session of the Himachal Pradesh assembly on 17 September to commemorate the golden jubilee celebrations of statehood.

A notification in this regard was issued by Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar on Thursday.

“The Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar under Article 174 of Indian Constitution has convened a special session of HP assembly on 17 September to commemorate 50 years of statehood of the state,” state assembly secretary Yashpal Sharma said.

It is worth mentioning here that Himachal was given the status of 18th state of Indian Union on 25 January 1971 and the state government is organizing various programmes to celebrate 50th statehood year.