Ajit Jogi caste controversy case adjourned
Former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi’s petition, challenging the decision of High Power Caste Scrutiny Committee (HPCSC) to cancel his caste certificate, had been adjourned by Bilaspur High Court.
Earlier, the Chhattisgarh High Court division bench, consisting Chief Justice T.B. Radhakrishnan and Justice Sharad Kumar Gupta, had refused grant stay on the order of HPCSC. The HPCSC had, last month, canceled the caste certificate of Jogi on the grounds that he was not a tribal from kanwar community.
The controversy over Jogi's caste began about three decades ago in Madhya Pradesh when he quit IAS and got elected to the Rajya Sabha as a Congress member. Though he never used his caste certificate to get into IAS, he has been using his caste identity to contest elections. No one raised any objection about his caste till 1986, when he was in government service. After he entered the Rajya Sabha, the first case over his caste was filed in the Indore bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The petition was dismissed within a year.
The matter was again brought up in 2001 by the BJP when Jogi was appointed first chief minister of Chhattisgarh. He was the CM for three years between November 2000 to November 2003 when the Congress lost to the saffron party in the state.
Last year, Jogi was expelled from Congress party for anti-party activities. He had floated a new regional party even as his wife and son continues to be MLAs in the Congress.
CM Raman Singh completes 5,000 days in office
Chhattisgarh government is all set to celebrate 5,000 days of Raman Singh as chief minister of the state. On August 14, various programmes will be organised in the state to mark the occasion. Singh released a poster for the occasion on Thursday at his official residence.
A special essay competition titled ‘5,000 days of Chhattisgarh’s development and increasing trust’ and slogan competition on ‘Chhattisgarh of my dreams’, will be conducted in all the schools and colleges of the state.
Schools to scrap no-detention policy
Chhattisgarh government has decided to do away with the policy of no-detention in all primary schools across the state. Earlier, the states of Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand had decided to scarp this policy of passing all students in elementary schools. From the academic year 2017-18, Chhattisgarh will also adopt the policy of conducting exams.
Since the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009, all states, including Chhattisgarh, had adopted the no-detention policy. Under this, school authorities used to promote children to class IX directly without failing them in any class. This was affecting the quality of education across the schools.
