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PERSONS IN NEWS - March 2019

Mar 2019

Jun 21, 2019

Sajid Javid Eliminated

Sajid Javid, son of an immigrant bus driver who had made it to the last four in the race to be the UK's next Prime Minister, was eliminated after he polled the least number of votes (34), while favourite Boris Johnson topped the list.
The fourth round of voting by Conservative MPs to select the next party leader and the man to replace Theresa May in Downing Street has now left only three in the fray: Johnson (with 157 votes), environment secretary Michael Gove (61) and foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt (59).
Javid became the first Asian and non-white politician to come close to becoming the Prime Minister in a multicultural country, where the number of non-white MPs elected to the House of Commons has been growing in recent elections.
The loss notwithstanding, Javid 's 4th position places him well for future leadership contests.

Ram Vilas Paswan to File Nomination Rajya Sabha

Union Minister and chief of the Lok Janashakti Party Ram Vilas Paswan would file nomination for Rajya Sabha as an NDA candidate in Patna.
Mr. Paswan currently holds the reins of the Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution Ministry.

Jun 20, 2019

Three People Worth more Than $100 Billion Each

Bernard Arnault, Europe's richest person, joined Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates in the world's most exclusive wealth club with a fortune of at least $100 billion.
Arnault, chairman of LVMH, entered the ranks of centibillionaires as the luxury-goods maker climbed 2.9% to a record 368.80 euros a share. His net worth increased almost $32 billion in 2019, the most on the 500-member Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Arnault's fortune of $100.4 billion now equals more than 3% of France's economy.

Names for HCs of Telangana and Himachal

The government cleared the appointments of Justice R. S. Chauhan as Chief Justice of the Telangana High Court and Justice V. Ramasubramanium as the Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court even as it continues to overlook the Supreme Court Collegium's recommendation to appoint Bombay High Court judge, Justice A. A. Kureshi, as the Chief Justice of Madhya Pradesh High Court.
The collegium comprising three senior most judges of the top court had in May this year (2019) recommended names of four judges for appointment as Chief Justices in various High Courts.
Justice D. N. Patel was recommended for the post of Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Justice R. S. Chauhan for CJ of the Telangana High Court, Justice V. Ramasubramanium for CJ of the Himachal Pradesh High Court and Justice AA Kureshi for CJ of the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

Jun 19, 2019

Boris Tops Vote for Next UK PM

Favourite Boris Johnson retained the top spot in the second round of the first phase of the two-phase election to decide the next party leader and the United Kingdom's next Prime Minister to replace Theresa May.
Of the six candidates in the fray after the first round, Johnson polled 126 votes. Since the minimum votes needed to remain in the race was 33, Dominic Raab, who polled the least number of votes (30), was eliminated.
Conservative MPs (313) would vote in further rounds, when those with the least votes are eliminated, until two remain. The party's 1.2 lakh members would then vote on the two, to decide the next leader, who will also take over as the next Prime Minster.
The five candidates going forward to the next vote are: Johnson (126 votes), Jeremy Hunt (46 votes), Michael Gove (41 votes), Sajid Javid (33 votes) and Rory Stewart (37 votes).

Leader of Congress in LS

Five-time MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury would be leader of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha. Chowdhury was entrusted with the post after a meeting of the parliamentary core committee at the residence of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi.
The Congress wrote to the office of the secretary general of the Lok Sabha, naming Chowdhury, who represents Berhampore in West Bengal, the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha. It also named Kerala MP K. Suresh as the chief whip of Congress parliamentary party.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government decided not to give the Congress the status of the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha because the party's tally of 52 seats fell short of the requisite number of 55, or 10% of the House's strength of 543, dictated by Parliamentary customs.

Jun 18, 2019

Rudra Dalmia to head Paytm Mall

Paytm Mall has appointed Rudra Dalmia as executive director to head the online-to-offline (O2O) marketplace backed by investors like Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and Japan's SoftBank Vision Fund.
Dalmia, who joined as a senior vice president (finance), will also join the company's board.
The development comes as Paytm Mall COO Amit Sinha is reportedly leaving the company after over a decade.

Mohamed Morsi Dies in Court

Mohamed Morsi, a bespectacled and portly Muslim Brotherhood foot-soldier elevated from obscurity to become Egypt's first freely elected civilian president, has died. He was 67. He collapsed and died while attending a court hearing.
A former opposition lawmaker, Morsi was elected to the country's top office in June 2012, less than 18 months after joining a jail break amid the chaos of a mass uprising that swept away the three-decade rule of Hosni Mubarak.
While he sought to project himself as the "voice for all Egyptians," that aspiration was divorced from the reality of his Islamist credentials.
He spent much of his year-long presidency unable to emerge from the shadow of top Brotherhood officials, who were viewed as the nation's real power brokers.
His fall was as crushing as his rise to power was stratospheric. Ousted by his army chief-the future PresidentAbdel-FattahEl-Sisi-Morsi languished in prison after being convicted for conspiring with foreign militants in the prison breakout as well as passing state secrets to Qatar.

Gloria Vanderbilt Dead at 95

American heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, a designer and artist who became one of the most chronicled socialites of her era, died after a battle with stomach cancer, her son announced. She was 95 years old.
The great-great granddaughter of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, she was thrust into the spotlight as the "poor little rich girl" at the centre of a sensational custody battle in the 1930s, before finding fame in her own right for her line of designer blue jeans and it-girl fashion.

Nadda BJP's New Working President

Former union health minister Jagat Prakash Nadda will be the new working president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as announced by defence minister Rajnath Singh.
A second time Rajya Sabha member from Himachal Pradesh, Nadda will be formally elected as the chief of the ruling party after the party's membership drive and organisational elections are over by December-January.
This is the first time that the BJP has appointed a working president. Amit Shah will continue as the BJP president till Nadda is formally elected to the post.
The BJP will launch its membership drive from July 6 with an aim to enroll at least 2.20 crore new members over and above its exiting cadre base of 11 crore.
Once the membership drive is over, the BJP will hold its internal election as the mandal, district and state level. The election of the BJP president can take place only after organisational elections are complete in 50% of the states.
Nadda moved to the national politics in 2010 as the party's national general secretary after the RSS appointed Nagpur leader Nitin Gadkari as the president of the BJP in 2009.
Nadda made his entry to the Rajya Sabha in 2012 and was appointed a minister in the Narendra Modi government in the first expansion of the council of ministers in November 2014.
He held the crucial health ministry since then. Nadda was not part of the council of ministers in Modi's second stint as the prime minister, and it was seen as a precursor to the organizational responsibility that was to be assigned to him.
He was in contention for the BJP president's post in 2014 after Rajnath Singh became the home minister.
However, he lost to Amit Shah who was Modi's choice for the BJP president then.

Jun 17, 2019

New Chief of Pak's ISI

Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed has been named the new chief of Pakistan's powerful spy agency ISI.
He replaces Lt Gen Asim Munir, who was appointed as ISI chief only in October 2018 after the retirement of his predecessor Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar.
It was not clear what prompted the change in appointments as the director general of the spy agency usually serves for three years.
On April 12, the Pakistan Army promoted then-major general Hameed to the rank of lieutenant general and appointed him adjutant general at the General Headquarters (GHQ) later.
He was previously serving as the head of the counter-intelligence wing of the ISI.
The army announced a number of changes to postings of its top generals. Lt Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza has been appointed as adjutant general at GHQ.
Lt Gen Aamir Abbasi has been named as quarter master at GHQ. Lt Gen Moazzam Ejaz has been named engineer-in-chief at GHQ.

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