NEWS

The government is placing its largest order yet of Covid vaccines at 66 crore doses worth Rs 14,505 crore to procure Covishield and Covaxin shots that will help it to substantially meet the vaccine availability projections it had made in the Supreme Court.

The order is in line with the Centre’s estimate of 135 crore doses being available between August-December as stated in its affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on June 26. Apart from the order for 66 crore doses, the government has made an advance payment to reserve 30 crore doses of Hyderabad based Biological-E’s Corbevax vaccine, official sources said.

This means a total of 96 crore doses are expected to be available on account of government procurement during August-December. While the 96 crore doses comprises Centre’s share of 75% of the total manufactured doses, the private sector will also have another 22 crore doses of Covishield and Covaxin available during the period.

Newly appointed Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju has backed the need for institutional arbitration in the country as a form of alternate dispute resolution mechanism, stating it would help in promoting ease of doing business in the country.

Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, along with Minister of State for Law SP Singh Baghel, held a meeting with the Department of Legal Affairs and the Legislative Department on Thursday. The law minister said that institutional arbitration is the "need of the hour".

Kiren Rijiju expressed the need to set up the Arbitration Council of India (ACI) and the New Delhi International Arbitration Centre (NDIAC) to develop India as an international arbitration hub.

The Monsoon Session of Parliament beginning Monday may see fresh attempts to unite the opposition parties with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), an erstwhile ally of the BJP, getting regional parties to rally behind it to demand the repeal of contentious farm laws.

“The Shiromani Akali Dal will be seeking repeal of the farm laws in both the houses of Parliament. We have already got Shiv Sena, NCP, DMK, TMC and BSP on board to back the move. We are reaching out to the Left parties and other regional parties tomorrow,” SAD MP Naresh Gujral told The Indian Express.

“In the Lok Sabha, it will be in the form of an adjournment motion and in the Rajya Sabha we will find appropriate rules to censure the government for passing the black laws,” he said.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday quashed the Centre’s decision to fix a four-year tenure for members and chairpersons of tribunals and restored its earlier verdict by which their tenure was fixed at five years. A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta and S Ravindra Bhat, by majority, set aside various provisions of the ordinance brought by the Centre after the apex court passed a slew of directions on selection and appointment of chairpersons and members of tribunals. It said that Section 184(11) prescribing tenure of four years is contrary to the principles of separation of powers and independence of judiciary “The insertion of Section 184(11) prescribing a term of four years for the chairpersons and members of tribunals by giving retrospective effect to the provision from May 26, 2017 is clearly an attempt to override the declaration of law by this court.