Parliament news

The amendment also proposes to simplify and rationalise procedures in an attempt to modernise the country8217;s patents law.

Constitutional Amendment Bill
The Cabinet today approved a Constitutional Amendment Bill to provide flexibility to state governments to revert to three-tierinstead of the present five-tier panchayat raj system.

Under the five-tier system introduced through a constitutional amendment in 1994, there had to be elections for six panchayat functionaries ward members, sarpanches, mandal parishad territorial constituency, mandal president, zilla parishad territorial constituency and zilla chairpersons.

In the earlier three-tier system, only four panchayat functionaries are elected ward member, sarpanches, mandal president and zilla chairpersons.

With the constitutional amendment, election of two panchayat functionaries mandal parishad territorial constituency and zilla parishad need not be held by bringing in necessary legislative measures by state governments, sources said.

National trust for handicapped
Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed a bill seeking to set up a National Trust for welfare of handicapped people with a one-time Government contribution of Rs 100 crore to its corpus.

The proposed trust would address the concerns of those personsafflicted by autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and multiple disabilities. It is empowered to receive grants and donations and would help strengthen families of those suffering from these disabilities.

Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Maneka Gandhi said the trust would be promotive, proactive and protectionist in nature. It will support programmes which promote independence, facilitating guardianship where necessary, and address the concern of those special persons with no family support. The Minister regretted that the disabled were not getting a fair deal from society and even job reservations meant for them were being denied to them.

A legislation would be brought to provide for job reservation for disabled persons in the private sector also. She said the Government was in the process of setting up private employment exchanges through NGOs where disabled persons would be enrolled and given specialised training for a particular job.

The Minister said her Ministry, by way ofincentives, is giving rewards to officers who had accommodated maximum number of disabled persons in their establishments.