8-9 TH may 2012- INTERVIEW SPECIAL

INTERVIEW SPECIAL

ZARDARI VISITS INDIA

Dubbed as ‘Dargah Diplomacy’, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s day-long private visit to India to offer prayers at the Ajmer Sharif did help the two South Asian neighbours reduce mutual tension and consider practical ways to speedily settle some of the less contentious issues such as Sir Creek and Siachen.
Zardari and Manmohan Singh last met at the SCO Summit in Russia in June 2009.

HIGHLIGHTS:

India has unequivocally told the Pakistan that action must be initiated against JuD chief Hafiz Saeed and other perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attack.
Zardari raised issues such as Sir Creek, Siachen and Jammu and Kashmir and stressed the need for resolving them.
Mention of the liberalized visa regime that the two countries desire to usher in.

But for the first time, Islamabad indicated that it was seriously looking at the India-China model of bilateral relations wherein the two countries have put contentious issue on the backburner and made significant gains in their trade and commercial ties.

CPS AN INSTITUTION SANS PURPOSE

The post of Chief Parliamentary Secretary does not exist in the Constitution of India.
No state Act or statute authorises a Chief Minister to appoint a CPS.
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has decided to appoint 21 Chief Parliamentary Secretaries, which is a record in itself.

COURT RULING ON ISSUE OF CPS:

The Himachal Pradesh High Court had ruled in April 2005 that the appointment of a Chief Parliamentary Secretary was a “fraud on the Constitution”.
It observed that CPSs were not ministers under Article 164 of the Constitution and that the functions and responsibilities to be discharged by ministers could not be assigned to them.
The taxpayers’ money, therefore, cannot be justifiably spent on CPSs, who are given pay, perks and privileges available to state ministers.

THE CONSTITUTION (91st AMENDMENT ACT:

The Constitution (Ninety-first Amendment) Act, 2003, limits the size of a ministry to 10 per cent of the strength of the House.
Accordingly, Punjab has 18 ministers, including the Chief Minister. Chief Ministers violate the spirit of the 91st amendment by bringing in ministers through the back door in the garb of Chief Parliamentary Secretaries.

KHASI WITHDRAWN FROM UNESCO’S LANGUAGES IN DANGER LIST

The Khasi language of Meghalaya has been withdrawn from the UNESCO's Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger as it is now considered as "safe".
The language is spoken by some 900,000 people in the state and is no longer in danger, UNESCO declared on its website.
Khasi is spoken in the region of the Khasi and Jaintia hills and is also known as Khasia, Khassee, Cossyah or Kyi.
This language of the Mon-Khmer linguistic branch and its status was reassessed by the editorial board of the Atlas, which concluded that Khasi may be classified as "safe" on UNESCO's scale of language vitality.
To date, the Atlas lists 2473 languages in danger in the world, classified in five degrees of vitality: