Current Affairs - Appointment & Resignation

• Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan has been appointed as the Chairman of the international body Stop TB Partnership Board.
• He was appointed in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the movement to eradicate Tuberculosis from India by 2025.
• Dr Harsh Vardhan will serve a three-year term, commencing from July this year.
• The Stop TB Partnership is a unique international body with the power to align actors all over the world in the fight against TB.
• Established in the year 2000, the ‘Stop TB Partnership’ is mandated to eliminate Tuberculosis as a public health problem.

• Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan has been nominated a member on the GAVI Board by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.
• He will represent India for two years starting from 2021 to 2023.
• The GAVI Board oversees the operations of the Vaccine Alliance and monitors programme implementation.

The President of India, in exercise of the power conferred by clause (1) of Article 217 of the Constitution of India, appointed the following Judges as Chief Justices of the High Courts :

• Dr. Justice S. Muralidhar: Chief Justice of Odisha High Court
• Kumari Justice Hima Kohli: Chief Justice of Telangana
• Justice Pankaj Mithal: Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court
• Justice Sanjib Banerjee: Chief Justice of Madras High Court

• To look into the human rights issue and suggest means to better the track record of the force, Indian Army has appointed Maj Gen Gautam Chauhan as the first Additional Director General Human Rights.
• He will work under the India Army Vice Chief Lieutenant General SK Saini.

• The Centre has cleared the appointment of Information Commissioner Yashvardhan K. Sinha as the new head of the Central Information Commission.
• His predecessor Bimal Julka had completed his tenure as Chief Information Commissioner on August 26, after which the appellate body had been headless.
• While the sanctioned strength of information commissioners in the central appellate body for RTI is 10, at present, with the latest appointments, it has six commissioners.

About CIC

• The Central Information Commission is a Statutory Body, set up under the Right to Information Act in 2005.
• The commission includes one chief information commissioner and not more than ten information commissioners who are appointed by the President of India on the recommendation of a committee consisting of the Prime Minister as Chairperson, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and a Union Cabinet Minister to be nominated by the Prime Minister.
• CIC hold the office for a term of 5 years from date on which he enters upon his office or till he attains the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier.
• CIC is not eligible for reappointment.

• Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, who was next in the line to head the poll panel, has been appointed as vice president for Private Sector Operations and Public-Private Partnerships at the Asian Development Bank.
• Lavasa would be only the second election commissioner to step down from the poll panel before completion of his term. The last time an election commissioner put in his papers was in 1973 when chief election commissioner Nagendra Singh was appointed a judge in the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
• Lavasa succeeds Diwakar Gupta whose term ends on August 31.
• Lavasa, would be in line to be appointed as the chief election commissioner when Sunil Arora completes his term if the government sticks to the tradition of appointing the senior-most commissioner to the top post. There is, however, no rule that requires the President to stick to this convention.

• Indian-origin, Chandrikapersad ‘Chan’ Santokhi has been elected the president of South American country “Suriname”. He will succeed Desi Bouterse, a former military strongman.
• Suriname is a former Dutch colony where people of Indian descent make up the largest ethnic group comprising 27.4 per cent of the population.

• The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has appointed Hemang Amin as its interim chief executive officer (CEO). He will replace Rahul Johri who recently resigned.

• The Results of Singapore’s General Election 2020 were announced and the ruling Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s People’s Action Party(PAP) won the election winning 83 seats out of 93 contested and Lee Hsien Loong was reinstated as the third Prime Minister of Singapore.
• He is the son of Singapore’s founding Leader, Lee Kuan Yew, first Prime Minister of Singapore who transformed the nation in his 31 year rule.
  

• Former Corporate Affairs Secretary Injeti Srinivas has been appointed as the first chairman of International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA), a unified authority for regulating all financial services, to be headquartered in Gujarat's Gandhinagar.
• The IFSCA will regulate all financial services in international financial services centres (IFSCs) established under the Special Economic Zones Act, 2005.
• Currently, banking, capital markets and insurance sectors in IFSC are regulated by multiple regulators, including the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI).

Composition of IFSCA

• The authority, that came into effect from April 27, 2020, can have eight members and a chairman.
• One member (ex-officio) each will be nominated by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), according to the International Financial Services Centres Act, 2019.
• Two members (ex-officio), from amongst the officials of the ministry dealing with finance, to be nominated by the central government and two other members to be appointed by the central government on the recommendation of a selection committee, according to the law.