NEWS

The Supreme Court on Monday observed that “a regulated economy is a critical facet of ensuring a balance between private business interests and the State’s role in ensuring a just polity for its citizens.” It added that the court “must be circumspect that the rights and freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution do not become a weapon in the arsenal of private businesses to disable regulation enacted in the public interest.”

A bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud, Vikram Nath and B V Nagarathna said this while dismissing an appeal against a Madhya Pradesh High Court order upholding the Reserve Bank of India’s January 2020 guidelines on Merchandising Trade Transactions (MTT), under which permission was denied to a businessman for an international MTT contract for sale of PPE (personal protective equipment) products by a supplier in China to a buyer in the United States.

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has leased out eight airports under Public-Private Partnership (PPP), of which seven airports are managed by Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL), Minister of State for Civil Aviation Gen VK Singh (retd) said in the Rajya Sabha today.

"So far, Airports Authority of India (AAI) has leased out eight airports namely, Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru for Operations, Management and Development under Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Out of these, seven airports viz. Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Mangaluru are managed by M/s Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL)," Gen Singh (retd) said in a written response to Rajyasabha member K Somaprasad.

The indefinite postponement of the 12 Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is a setback for developing countries as critical issues that affect them hang in the balance. An important one is the fate of a Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights Waiver proposal floated by India and South Africa when a new variant, Omicron, is fast spreading amidst considerable inequity in the access to vaccines for low-income countries. There is no doubt that a faster rollout of vaccines will help fight the Covid-19 pandemic that has so far afflicted 250-million-plus people globally. While 54.6% of the world's population has received at least one dose of vaccine, mostly in developed countries, only 6% of people in low-income countries have received at least one jab, according to Our World in Data.

India and South Africa's proposal seeks to address the shortfall in production and availability of vaccines for the Global South. A temporary waiver of IPR protection enables countries to use compulsory licences without the consent of the patent holder to produce and export low-cost Covid-19 vaccines and medicines to countries that cannot manufacture them. This proposal has garnered the critical support of more than 100 countries at the WTO, while developed countries in the EU, the UK and Switzerland have blocked it.

The Centre has taken a serious view of government officials taking political help while seeking inter-cadre transfers, and has issued a memorandum underlining that it is a violation of the existing rules and can invite disciplinary action.

In an office memorandum issued on December 3, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) stated that government officials have been putting in numerous inter-cadre transfer requests to attached or outstation offices of various ministries and departments on personal or medical grounds.