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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England sticking with Key, McCullum and Stokes despite Ashes humbling
London (AP): England is not sacking anybody following the 4-1 Ashes loss in Australia.
A review of the tour by the England and Wales Cricket Board, announced within hours of the final match in January, was concluded on Monday. Firing people would “be the easy thing to do,” ECB chief executive Richard Gould said but he insisted, "This is not the time to throw everything out."
Managing director Rob Key, coach Brendon McCullum and captain Ben Stokes kept their jobs after the best England side to go to Australia in 14 years lost the Ashes in 11 days with two games to spare.
“Moving people on can sometimes be the easy thing to do. That's not the route that we're going to take,” Gould said. “I've seen the driving ambition and determination that we're lucky enough to have within our leadership group to take the lessons from the Ashes and move forward.”
Gould previously was the chief executive of Bristol City soccer club and said the ECB would not follow the same route as soccer's hire-and-fire culture.
“Cricket is a very unique sport in that it takes a team of leadership ... it's not like football where there's a single point of failure or success with a manager," he said. He added the ECB would not “select or deselect management based on a popularity campaign.”
The main criticisms of England's tour were poor preparation, player misbehavior, and selection mistakes.
At a press conference at Lord's, Gould and Key said McCullum and Stokes have not had a “bust up,” they did not want McCullum to “completely change” but “to evolve,” the behavior of some players was “unprofessional,” there will be more consequences for underperforming, and a commitment to “better long-term planning” ahead of major test series.
Some changes were already implemented for the Twenty20 World Cup, where England reached the semifinals. Gould implied that performance saved McCullum.
Key acknowledged that England supporters would be disappointed to see the management team go unpunished.
“I know people want punishment and that people then should be sacked for that,” Key said. “That doesn't mean we don't feel like we've gone through some serious pain: Brendon, myself, Ben. It's been as tough a time as I think I've had.”
