Batting First

K Parasaran

Senior advocate K Parasaran started his arguments Monday on behalf of the state of Rajasthan, defending the National Judicial Appointments Commission. He started by saying that he is the fourth lawyer batting for the new law to appoint judges in the higher judiciary. Justice J S Khehar, who is heading the Constitution Bench, replied that Parasaran, also a Rajya Sabha MP, will always be the first batsman, owing to his vast experience. “You were there in all the cases on this subject since 1970s. You are also there in the Parliament when discussions happened. So you will always remain the first batsman for us on this topic,” he said.

Edit Credit
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Monday attended the release of the book, Education of Muslims: An Islamic Perspective of Knowledge and Education — Indian Context, edited by former NCERT director J S Rajput. Incidentally, Rajput was NCERT director during the previous NDA regime and had faced accusations of attempting to “saffronise” school curriculum.

Twitter Break
British High Commissioner James Bevan, who is quite active on social media, was quiet all through Sunday following the controversy involving Sushma Swaraj and Lalit Modi. But on Monday, he was back on Twitter, as he retweeted the British foreign minister’s tweet about the celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. Interestingly, the principles of Magna Carta pertain to equality before the law and limits to the arbitrary exercise of power.

Stepping Back
Congress leader and former MoS for Defence Bhanwar Jitendra Singh went to Jantar Mantar, where ex-servicemen are protesting for the one rank, one pension policy, but made a hasty retreat soon after he reached. Ex-servicemen had earlier asked senior Congress leader and former Punjab CM Amarinder Singh not to join their protest. It is learnt that bodies representing ex-servicemen don’t want to rub the NDA government the wrong way by allowing Congress leaders at the protest.