NCLT, ITAT get new members

Click here to read about the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act and National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) vs NCLAT.

• The government has appointed 31 people as judicial, technical and accountant members at the NCLT and the ITAT, amid the Supreme Court flagging concerns about vacancies in various tribunals.
• Click here to read about the Administrative tribunals in India.
• The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) deals with matters mainly related to companies law and insolvency law, while the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) deals with income tax matters.
• The appointments also come at a time when the Supreme Court has flagged concerns, saying the Centre was “emasculating” tribunals by not appointing officials to the quasi-judicial bodies that are facing a staff crunch.
• There are around 250 posts lying vacant at various key tribunals and appellate tribunals such as the NCLT, the DRT, the TDSAT and the SAT.
• As many as eight judicial and 10 technical members have been appointed to the NCLT while 13 judicial and seven accountant members have been appointed to the ITAT, according to separate communications issued by the Department of Personnel and Training on September 11 based on decisions taken by the Appointments Committee of Cabinet.
• Andhra Pradesh High Court judge Justice Telaprolu Rajani, Bombay High Court retired judge Justice Pradeep Narhari Deshmukh, Madras High Court retired judge Justice S. Ramathilagam and District Court judge Deep Chandra Joshi are among those appointed as the judicial members to the NCLT.
• The newly appointed technical members include Principal Commissioner of Income Tax Ajai Das Mehrotra, retired NHPC Chairman and Managing Director Balraj Joshi, retired Ministry of Panchayati Raj Secretary Rahul Prasad Bhatnagar, retired Principal Director General of Income Tax Subrata Kumar Dash, retired Department of Consumer Affairs Secretary Avinash K Srivastava and retired SBI Chief General Manager Shree Prakash Singh.
• The appointments will be for five years from the date of assumption of charge or till attaining the age of 65 or until further orders.
• Six judicial members have been appointed to the ITAT. They are advocates Sonjoy Sarma, S. Seethalakshmi and T.R. Senthil Kumar, Additional District and Sessions judges Shatin Goyal and Anubhav Sharma, and Law Officer in SBI Manmohan Das.
• Besides, there are seven accountant members.
• The appointments in the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal were for four years.

Major overhaul in the B.Sc Nursing Syllabus

• The B.Sc. nursing programme in the country has undergone its first major overhaul after 1947, making it a competency-based curriculum.
• To be implemented from January 2022, the revised curriculum has been standardised, updated and aimed at bringing in uniformity in nursing education across India.
• Medical ethics has been introduced for the first time.
• The new system now adopts a credit-based semester pattern with more emphasis on acquiring competency in each area of study. Also, forensic nursing and nursing informatics have been introduced in the syllabus.
• Unfortunately the revised curriculum did not include disability rights as well as disability competencies.
• It still includes the pejorative expressions ‘handicapped’, ‘mentally challenged’ and ‘physically challenged’. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act mandates inclusion of disability rights in the higher education. The curriculum also excludes gender expression and identity components which the Transgender Persons Act mandates be included.
• The new curriculum’s simulation-based training is given importance in the practical component of the course.
• The new system has also brought in mandatory modules for each specialisation and the student has to pass in all mandatory modules placed within courses. The pass mark for each module is 50%.
• As per the new norms, colleges of nursing should mandatorily have 100-bed parent or own hospitals.
• The trustee/ member/ director of the trust or society or company should not allow the hospital to be treated as the parent/ affiliated hospital to any other nursing institution and the arrangement will be in place for a minimum of 30 years. The beds of a parent hospital shall be in one unitary hospital, that is, in the same building or campus.
• The revised rules also state that no institution or university can modify the syllabi prescribed by the Council for a course or programme. However they can add units or subjects if required.
• “It is mandatory that an institution shall have its own building within two years of its establishment,” the revised rules state.

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