NEWS

The Centre has told the Supreme Court that it has made 84 appointments in six tribunals including ITAT and NCLT and no recommendations of the Search cum Selection Committees (SCSC) is pending with it presently. The assertions made by the Centre, in its affidavit filed on September 14, assumes significance in view of the fact that the top court on Wednesday expressed strong displeasure over non-filling of vacancies at the tribunals and on "cherry picking" of names in some of the appointments made recently after being nudged.

A special bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana asked the Centre to fill up vacancies in next two weeks with an assurance that since then it was holding its hands on pleas seeking initiation of contempt and filling up of posts.

Stressing the need to preserve and promote Hindi and all other regional Indian languages at the same time, Union home minister Amit Shah on Tuesday said Hindi is a "friend" and not a competitor of other regional languages.

"Hindi must be promoted in co-existence with other regional languages," Shah said in his address at the Hindi Diwas celebrations here. He said India must preserve its local languages for generations to come by making them flexible, functional and useful to all.

Shah suggested that just like September 14 is an annual occasion to reassess and review efforts to promote Hindi, a similar and simultaneous exercise should be undertaken to promote all local languages. He underlined the role of 'swabhasha', along with 'swadeshi' and 'swaraj', in the freedom struggle, and said this would be one of the key themes of the year-long 'Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav' celebrations to mark the 75th anniversary of Independence. He appealed to parents and elders to speak to the young in their mother tongue, whatever be the medium of instruction in their schools, to keep them connected to their roots and familiar with their culture, traditions and history.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said it is the country's misfortune that generations were not made aware of sacrifices of national heroes, citing example Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh, in whose name a university will come up in Aligarh.

The PM said this after laying the foundation stone of the university.

Modi also paid tributes to former UP CM Kalyan Singh, saying he would have felt happy after seeing the progress of Aligarh.

"Today, I am feeling the absence of the great son of soil, Kalyan Singh. Had he been alive, he would have felt happy seeing the new identity of Aligarh in terms of a node of the UP Defence Industrial Corridor and Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh State University. Wherever his soul is, it would be blessing us," Modi said.

Dealing with a bunch of petitions raising the contentious issue of reservation in promotion, the Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would not reopen norms settled in its earlier judgments that had ordered exclusion of the creamy layer, quantifiable data on adequacy of representation of backward classes in government posts and safeguarding administrative efficiency.

This clarification came repeatedly from a bench of Justices L N Rao, Saniv Khanna and B R Gavai while taking up 132 petitions, which challenged various state legislations attempting to brush aside the mandate of three constitutional bench judgments - Indra Sawhney (which in 1992 stipulated exclusion of the creamy layer to OBCs and capped quota at 50%), M Nagaraj (which in 2006 called for quantifiable data to justify the extent of reservation in promotion with a mandate that quota must not dilute administrative efficiency) and Jarnail Singh (which in 2018 ruled out reconsideration of Nagraj and extended creamy layer exclusion for SC/ST employees in promotion).