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NEET 2017: CBSE moves Supreme Court for stay of HC order against revealing results

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

The Supreme Court said it would on 12 June hear the matter which concerns the fate of around 12 lakh aspirants for MBBS and BDS courses. Photo: Mint

The Supreme Court said it would on 12 June hear the matter which concerns the fate of around 12 lakh aspirants for MBBS and BDS courses. Photo: Mint

New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking an immediate stay on the Madras High Court order restraining the publication of results of National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test (NEET) 2017 for admission to MBBS and BDS courses across the country.

The high court had on 24 May granted interim stay on the publication of NEET results on a batch of pleas alleging that a uniform question paper was not given in the examination and there was a vast difference between the ones in English and in Tamil.

The CBSE mentioned the matter before a vacation bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan and Deepak Gupta and said that due to the high court’s order, the entire schedule of counselling and subsequent admission for medical courses through NEET has gone “haywire”.

Additional solicitor general (ASG) Maninder Singh, representing the CBSE, told the bench that NEET 2017 was conducted by the board and around 12 lakh candidates have appeared in it. The apex court said it would hear on 12 June the matter which concerns the fate of around 12 lakh aspirants for MBBS and BDS courses. Around 10.5 lakh students have given the exam in either Hindi or English while around 1.25 lakh to 1.50 lakh students have appeared in eight vernacular languages.

Singh told the apex court that a number of pleas have been filed in various high courts in NEET-related matters and high courts have entertained these petitions despite the apex court’s order that no other court shall hear such matters. He also sought transfer of petitions from various high courts to the apex court which concerns the NEET for the academic year 2017-18.

Singh said challenge to the different sets of questions in vernacular languages were on wrong assumptions that they were difficult as the experts had examined that they were different from those in English or Hindi medium but the level of difficulty cannot be said to be different. He said that questions were different to keep the larger interest protected on the ground that if there was a leakage of a set of paper in a vernacular language, the majority of students would be protected as candidates appearing in any particular language were less than those opting for English or Hindi.

The high court had also directed the Medical Council of India, the director of CBSE and the Union health ministry to file counter affidavits on these pleas pending before it. The petitioners before the high court have demanded that the NEET 2017 be cancelled and a fresh exam with a uniform question paper be conducted.

They have claimed that different sets of question paper had been used at various places, though a common syllabus had been announced. In Tamil Nadu, the question papers were different for those who opted English and Tamil and the one in Tamil was easier, they have claimed.

[“Source-ndtv”]

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Internet

Supreme Court Backs Ban That Virtually Outlaws Cryptocurrencies in India

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Supreme Court Backs Ban That Virtually Outlaws Cryptocurrencies in India

HIGHLIGHTS

  • SC refused to overturn RBI ban on dealing in cryptocurrencies
  • India is going a step further in cracking down on peer-to-peer money
  • Abu Dhabi, South Korea are creating rules to allow secure crypto-trading

India’s top court refused to overturn a central bank ban on lenders from dealing in cryptocurrencies, a move that effectively outlaws the nascent industry in Asia’s third-largest economy.

A bench headed, by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, said the Reserve Bank of India’s directive prohibiting banks, financial institutions and other regulated institutions from providing any services related to virtual currencies will remain implemented. In a circular dated April 6 and effective since then, the regulator gave banks three months to exit operations.

India is going a step further than most countries in cracking down on peer-to-peer money. While the central bank – the nation’s main financial regulator – is defending its turf for managing electronic money and also trying to cut off an avenue for crimes using digital coins, many nations such as Abu Dhabi and South Korea are creating rules to allow more secure crypto trading.

In the legal challenge before India’s Supreme Court, the central bank told the top court that Bitcoinscannot be treated as currency under India’s existing law that mandates coins to be made of metal or exist in physical form and stamped by the government. The court directed RBI to consider representations by cryptocurrency platform providers.

In India, the finance ministry has yet to make a final ruling on a formal ban, but the recent volatility in cryptocurrency markets has only emboldened policymakers around the world to take a more sceptical view of the trade. Investors and technology platform providers for cryptocurrencies are worried as uncertainty looms over future of digital currencies.

“Nobody is able to price the risk currently. The minute you have clarity on exchanges and whether digital currencies can be used as a medium of exchange or payment, or if it is a commodity, there will be less speculation and much more stability in pricing,” said G.V. Anand Bhushan, a partner at law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co.

The top court was hearing a public-interest litigation, akin to class-action lawsuit, filed by advocate Dwaipayan Bhowmick seeking regulations on use of cryptocurrencies. Start-ups providing virtual currency trading platforms, like Flintstone Technologies and Kali Digital Ecosystems, had appealed to various high courts and challenged the central bank’s ban on banks from providing services to users, holders and traders of virtual currencies.

A European Parliament-commissioned study on the issue came to the conclusion this month that regulators should not ban virtual currencies.

“Given their global, trans-border character, it is recommended to harmonise such regulations across jurisdictions,” the report by the Center for Social and Economic Research concluded. “Investment in VCs should be taxed similarly to investment in other financial assets.”
[“Source-gadgets.ndtv”]

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Tech Update

UPDATE 1-Tech companies urge U.S. Supreme Court to boost cellphone privacy

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

WASHINGTON, Aug 15 (Reuters) – More than a dozen high technology companies and the biggest wireless operator in the United States, Verizon Communications Inc, have called on the U.S. Supreme Court to make it harder for government officials to access individuals’ sensitive cellphone data.

The companies filed a 44-page brief with the court on Monday night in a high-profile dispute over whether police should have to get a warrant before obtaining data that could reveal a cellphone user’s whereabouts.

Signed by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names, including Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Snap and Alphabet’s Google, the brief said that as individuals’ data is increasingly collected through digital devices, greater privacy protections are needed under the law.

“That users rely on technology companies to process their data for limited purposes does not mean that they expect their intimate data to be monitored by the government without a warrant,” the brief said.

The justices agreed last June to hear an appeal by Timothy Carpenter, who was convicted in 2013 in a series of armed robberies of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores in Ohio and Michigan. Federal prosecutors helped place him near several of the robberies using “cell site location information” obtained from his wireless carrier.

Carpenter claims that without a warrant from a court, such data amounts to an unreasonable search and seizure under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. But last year a federal appeals court upheld his convictions, finding that no warrant was required.

Carpenter’s case will be argued before the court some time after its new term begins in October.

The case comes amid growing scrutiny of the surveillance practices of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies and concern among lawmakers across the political spectrum about civil liberties and police evading warrant requirements.

Nathan Freed Wessler, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing Carpenter, said the companies’ brief represented a “robust defense of their customers’ privacy rights in the digital age.”

Verizon’s participation in the brief was important, he added, given that it receives, like other wireless carriers, thousands of requests for cellphone location records every year from law enforcement. The requests are routinely granted.

The U.S. Department of Justice, which is defending current law enforcement procedures in the case, declined to comment on Tuesday.

Civil liberties lawyers have said police need “probable cause,” and therefore a warrant, to avoid constitutionally unreasonable searches.

In their brief, the companies said the Supreme Court should clarify that when it comes to digital data that can reveal personal information, people should not lose protections against government intrusion “simply by choosing to use those technologies.” (Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)

[“Source-businessinsider”]

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