Karnataka Medical Council's elections to be held on January 23
Bengaluru: Karnataka Medical Council, the statutory body established under the Karnataka Medical Registration Act 1961 and tasked with registering the medical professionals who have earned the qualifications of MBBS/MD/MS/ MCh/DM or similar, and also with regulating the ethical behaviour of these registered practitioners will go for polling to elect the new office bearers of the body, on January 23 after a long fought legal battle.
The last elections to the Council were held in August 2011 through postal ballot and were therefore due in August 2016, after 5 years. But the KMC did not initiate the election process and the same was challenged in a writ petition (48880/2016) at the Karnataka High Court, Bengaluru. The High Court ordered in Dec 2018 to hold the elections within 2 months. However, the Council did not do so and a Contempt of Court petition (CCC1466/2019) was filed in August 2019 and the High Court ordered to conduct the elections on January 23, 2020.
However, the Registrar of KMC prepared a voters list of only 42000 practitioners, as against the total registrations of more than 128000. This was again brought before the High Court and on January 10, 2020, (IA1/2020 on WP40580/2017) the High Court ordered that the Returning Officer, the Joint Registrar of Co-Operative Societies, is empowered to prepare the voters list considering all the objections raised by the registered doctors.
But another petition before the Kalburgi Bench of Karnataka High Court on Jan 17, 2020 succeeded in getting this list prepared by the returning officer cancelled. The aggrieved doctors had to file another petition before the Kalaburgi Bench on January 20 and the Hon'ble High Court has now restored the papers to the returning officer to prepare the voters list, taking into consideration all the objections. With this order, the way is now cleared for the elections, with most of the registered practitioners getting back their right to vote.
The cases were argued successfully on behalf of the petitioner doctors by Sri Dore Raj at the Kalaburgi Bench and Sri Basavaraj S at the Bengaluru Bench. These petitions are landmarks in the struggle to ensure democracy and justice in a statutory body that dispenses justice to common people as well as doctors.
This is the first time the elections are being held by direct ballot and conducted by the Dept of Co-operative Societies. Booths have been set up in all the districts and arrangements are being made to ensure free and fair elections. The voting will be held between 7am and 6pm on Jan 23, 2020. The details of voter’s lists and polling booths are available at http://kmcelecyion2020ro.in
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SC to hear on May 4 PIL seeking stringent guidelines for issuing Aadhaar to adolescents, adults
New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Monday a plea seeking a direction to the Unique Identification Authority of India to issue new Aadhaar cards only to citizens up to the age of six years, and frame stringent guidelines for its issuance to adolescents and adults to stop infiltrators from masquerading as Indian citizens.
As per the apex court's causelist of May 4, the plea would come up for hearing before a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi.
The Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay has also sought a direction to the authorities to install display boards at common service centres stating that the 12-digit unique identification number is only a "proof of identity" and not a proof of citizenship, address or date of birth.
Besides all the states and Union Territories, the plea has made the UIDAI -- which is the authority that issues Aadhaar -- and the Union ministries of home, law and justice, and electronics and information technology as parties.
The plea, filed through advocate Ashwani Dubey, said Aadhaar, originally intended as a proof of identity, has increasingly become a "foundational document" enabling individuals to obtain other identification documents, such as ration cards, domicile certificates and voter identity cards.
"The UIDAI has issued 144 crore Aadhaar and 99 percent Indians have been enrolled. Therefore, the petitioner is filing this writ petition as a PIL under Article 32, seeking a direction to UIDAI to issue new Aadhaar to children only and frame new stringent guidelines for adolescents and adults, so as to stop infiltrators from getting it and masquerading as Indian citizens," the plea said.
It said the need to file the plea arose when the petitioner came to know the manner in which infiltrators are able to procure Aadhaar through a verification process that is weak and can be easily manipulated.
"Foreigners apply for Aadhaar under the 'foreign' category. But infiltrators apply for Aadhaar under the 'Indian citizen' category and get it easily made. Thereafter, they obtain a ration card, birth and domicile certificate, driving licence, et cetera, essentially becoming indistinguishable from Indian citizens…," it said.
Besides seeking other directions, the plea has raised legal questions, including whether the Aadhaar Act 2016 has become "temporally unreasonable" for failing to keep up with the legislative intent of distinguishing foreigners from Indian citizens.
It said the alleged misuse of Aadhaar undermines targeted welfare delivery and leads to diversion of public resources.
