After row...

Congress leader Kharge wrote a dissenting note while voting against Verma’s removal, saying there were no grounds to penalise him.

Verma quit on Friday without spending even a day at work as director general of fire services, civil defence and home guards, using his resignation letter to complain that he had been denied “natural justice” by the highlevel panel that removed him based on a report by the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).

Hours after the report on justice Sikri’s nomination to CSAT, political leaders and law experts questioned the move by the government. Congress treasurer Ahmed Patel tweeted: “The government has a lot of explaining to do.” Karnataka Congress chief Dinesh Gundu Rao also criticised the government. “With Judges, post retirement, accepting positions as governors of states and other plum positions, their neutrality is now becoming seriously questionable. Did this influence the Hon’ble Justice Sikri decision making in the Alok Verma case?” he tweeted.

Eminent lawyer Indira Jaising said: “Justice Sikri should have disclosed this before he sat on the committee as the nominee of the Chief Justice of India, the decision is vitiated for this reason also, and the post requires “high moral character”? Where is the constitutional morality?”

According to the website’s report, Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote to CJI Gogoi last month, apprising him of the external affairs ministry’s decision to nominate justice Sikri to the post and seeking his consent. CJI Gogoi replied to the government in the affirmative after checking with justice Sikri, the report added.

To be sure, last May, justice Sikri had led a Supreme Court bench that ordered an immediate floor test in Karnataka after the assembly election resulted in a fractured mandate, cancelling the 15-day window given by the governor to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP, the singlelargest party, had staked claim to form the government in the state. The day-old BS Yeddyurappa government later resigned in the absence of a majority, paving the way for a Congress-janata Dal (Secular) coalition to come to power.

Infighting in the country’s premier investigating agency came into public focus last year after Verma and CBI special director Rakesh Asthana engaged in an unprecedented feud in which they traded allegations of corruption against each other. The two were divested of their responsibilities later. Verma was stripped of his powers as CBI director and sent on forced leave by the government later on October 23, reinstated conditionally by the Supreme Court on January 9 this year, and two days later ousted from the agency and reassigned to the new job by the three-member committee. He later resigned from the new post, weeks before his tenure was set to end on January 31. the prestigious business schools, the alumni are expected to guide the decisions of the boards.

Another eminent alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad, Sachit Jain, the vice chairman and managing director of the Vardhaman group, is on the board of IIM Amritsar.

Sridevi Raghavan from Kozhikhode is a senior vice president of HDFC. She is also a member of the board for IIM Kozhikhode. Sanhjay Mukherjee, an IPS officer who graduated from IIM Calcutta, is on the school’s board.

“Some of the members of the newly constituted boards have also been repeated, especially in the older IIMS,” a senior HRD ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

“However, many have been appointed for the first time. The IIM boards are star-studded. And they will be more so when the positions marked specially for eminent members are filled up,” the official added.

Following the passage of the IIM Act 2017, the HRD ministry in consultation with the law and justice ministry, initiated the process of re-constitution of boards for the IIMS. The process is underway. language closer to students, the exposure was basic. Today, with the language gaining more significance, schools need to upgrade teaching and take it beyond classrooms.” The school conducts regular training sessions for its teachers too.

And, the efforts are paying off. Students said the coaching helped them gain confidence to speak English fluently with their peers. Rutika Wadekar, a Class 5 student from Parle Tilak said, “I used to be afraid to speak in English at public gatherings, but after studying the language beyond textbooks for two years, I am able to easily converse with my friends and even those older to me.”