QBullet: Govt Drafts Data Protection Bill; PM Modi Meets Xi, Putin
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1. Aadhaar to Web: Govt Gets Roadmap for New Law to Protect Citizen’s Data
Stating that citizens must come at the top, the Srikrishna Committee Friday submitted the draft of a data protection Bill containing sweeping recommendations, including amendments to at least 50 laws such as Aadhaar and RTI, setting up a regulator and imposing strict terms for storage.
The draft comes after a year of deliberations by the panel headed by former Supreme Court judge, Justice B N Srikrishna, and at a time when a Constitution Bench of the apex court has reserved its judgment on a clutch of petitions challenging the validity of the Aadhaar unique ID system.
The draft sets the stage for a Data Protection Act, which the government will begin working on while keeping the committee’s recommendations as a basis, Union Minister of Law & Justice and Electronics & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
(Source: The Indian Express)
2. Imran Short of Majority, Eyes Support from Smaller Parties
Cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) emerged as the largest party in the National Assembly on Friday from this week’s general election, but will have to lean on smaller parties and independents for support to form the next government.
The PTI won 115 of the 270 seats to which elections were held on Wednesday, followed by jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) with 62 seats and former President Asif Ali Zardar’s Pakistan Peoples Party with 43, according to the Election Commission, which declared the results for 261 seats on Friday. Independents won 12 seats.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
3. Pak Regime Change Offers New Hope for Ties: Envoy
With Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) certain to form the new government, Pakistan has described the election outcome as a moment of hope and opportunity in Indo-Pak relations which needed to be seized and not squandered.
In an exclusive interaction with TOI, Pakistan high commissioner Sohail
Mahmood said the need to replace “old lenses” and to rethink the entrenched narratives of the past, cannot be stressed enough.
Mahmood’s comments follow Khan’s India outreach in his victory speech, in which he, while underlining the significance of the Kashmir issue for Pakistan, had said that Pakistan was prepared to take two steps forward if India took one for normalisation of ties.
(Source: The Times of India)
4. Do Not Delay Appointments, Raise Age of Retirement to 70: SC Judge
Supreme Court judge Justice Kurian Joseph Friday urged the government not to delay appointment of judges of the apex court and High Courts, and raise the retirement age of judges to 70.
“One request to the government: government must avoid delay in making appointments,” Justice Joseph told a ‘Conference on National Initiative to Reduce Pendency and Delay in Judicial System’. He said “once the High Court Collegium sends names to the government, there should not be (delay of) more than three months” and in the case of the Supreme Court, it should not be delayed beyond two weeks.
This, he said, will “go a long way in so far as optimum utilisation of resources is concerned”.
(Source: The Indian Express)
5. Modi Meets Xi, Putin to Give Ties Further Boost
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated commitment to directing their militaries to improve communication and ensure peace and tranquillity along the border, in what was their third bilateral meeting in the past three months.
The two met in Johannesburg on Thursday and agreed to maintain the momentum in ties which have seen several high-level visits from both sides in the past few months.
Modi also met Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Wideranging and productive talks with President Putin. India’s friendship with Russia is deeprooted and our countries will continue working together in multiple sectors. @Kremlin-Russia,” Modi tweeted.
(Source: The Times of India)
6. PNB Has Claim on Nirav’s US Assets, Rules Court in NY
A bankruptcy court in New York has recognised the claim of Punjab National Bank on the proceeds of any asset of Nirav Modi that is sold there and ordered summons to be issued for examination of the fugitive diamantaire and four of his associates.
The two rulings in the Nirav case came late on Thursday night. The government is seeing this as a positive development and it comes just a day after a court in the UK tightened the noose around another fugitive, Vijay Mallya, also wanted for defrauding banks.
“We have managed to establish the ownership pattern and we are ready with our future course of action,” said a source.
(Source: The Times of India)
7. HRD: As Many Women in BSc as Men; Women Dominate MSc as Well
For the first time, there are as many women as there are men in undergraduate science programmes and their dominance at the masters level is at the highest ever. These are among the findings of the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) unveiled Friday by HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar.
Pure science courses at the undergraduate level, till five years ago, had 95 female students for every 100 men but according to the latest AISHE edition, last year, there were 100 women for every 100 male students in the Bachelor of Science or BSc programmes (see box). In absolute numbers, in 2017-18, BSc had 48.19 lakh students enrolled, of which 50.7 percent were men and 49.3 percent women.
(Source: The Indian Express)
8. ‘Patience Running Out’, Paswan’s LJP Warns Ally BJP on Dalit Issue
The original provisions of the Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act must be restored through an executive order or ordinance and Supreme Court justice AK Goel, one of the two judges who delivered a recent judgment on the law, should be removed as chief of the national green tribunal, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader Chirag Paswan said on Friday.
The LJP, with six Lok Sabha MPs, is an ally of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre.
Chirag Paswan, the son of Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan, said concerns had arisen over Dalit issues and the “patience” of many LJP leaders was “running thin”. He, however, stopped short of a direct threat of withdrawal of support to the BJP and said, “We will cross the bridge when it comes.”
(Source: Hindustan Times)
9. Monsoon Fury May Abate in Delhi-NCR by Sunday
Delhi recorded its second heaviest spell of monsoon rain this season, as the downpour that started on Thursday pounded the city through the night and into Friday before letting up at noon. Heavy rain also lashed other parts of the National Capital Region (NCR) centred on Delhi, such as Ghaziabad and Noida.
In Uttar Pradesh, meanwhile, 33 people were killed and about two dozen injured as heavy rain wreaked havoc in different parts of the state, state relief commissioner Sanjay Kumar said on Friday.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
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