NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday entertained the Union government’s plea for reconsideration of auction principle for natural resources enunciated in the 2G judgement after the Centre clarified that it was not seeking review of the court’s d
ecision to cancel 122 telecom licences.
A bench of Justices G S Singhvi and K S Radhakrishnan, which had on April 4 dismissed petitions by telecom companies seeking review of the judgment cancelling 122 licences linked to irregular allocation of 2G spectrum, agreed to hear the Centre’s petition for reconsideration of the judgement and limited it to the auction of annulled licences.
Additional solicitor general Indira Jaising clarified: “We do not seek to question the cancellation and as per the judgment we have a window till June 2 to rework the policy. The government wants to ensure the court that it is not questioning the operative part of the judgement.”
However, she said the government was concerned by the general guidelines that auction alone should be the method for allocation of natural resources and sought time for elaborate arguments on it.
The bench said it could understand that the primary anxiety of the Centre was possible applicability of auction principle for mining leases. Jaising asked: “That is one but what about other natural resources, for example water?”
When she sought time for presenting elaborate arguments by the Centre, the bench posted the review petition for hearing on May 1. However, the court was reluctant to add telecom companies as interveners in the Union Government’s review petition and issued notices to petitioners – NGO ‘Centre for Public Interest Litigation’ and Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy.
The June 2 deadline referred to by Jaising related to the apex court’s February 2 directive, saying cancellation of telecom licences would come to effect after four months. The court had directed the government to consider TRAI recommendations and “take appropriate decision within the next one month and fresh licenses be granted by auction”.
Jaisingh said the government was in the process of formulating the modalities for implementation of the judgment, but it wanted to express its reservations on the auction route suggested for allocation of every natural resource.
The first ground in the review petition said: “The finding of the judgment that the state is duty bound to conduct a public auction whenever it distributes natural resources is directly contrary to various legislations including the Mines and Mineral (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957, which grants a preferential right to persons who apply first or prior in point of time for a mining lease.”
It also said that the 2G judgment “failed to consider that the policy of grant of mining rights on a principle of first come first served had been in place since the enactment of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulations) Act, 1957.”
“It is respectfully submitted that if the 2G judgement is correct, a necessary consequence would be that the grant of mining rights under the Mines and Mineral Act, which was enacted as far back as 1957, after due deliberations in parliament qua a most valuable natural resource, would be liable to be held illegal,” it added.
Here’s how Zimbabwe’s blind cricket commentator Dean du Plessis bowls audiences
London, September 12 (ANI): He was born blind and has never seen a single match in his life, but has proved that all one requires to become a great cricket commentator is a mix of erudite descriptions of action, comprehensive knowledge of great players, faultless recall of statistics, and needle-sharp sense of timing and judgment.
Needless to say, Zimbabwean-born Dean du Plessis, 32, possesses all these attributes, and has been delivering commentaries on matches for nine years.
He has shared the commentary box in Tests, one-day, and Twenty20 tournaments involving all the Test-playing nations in worldwide radio broadcasts.
The commentators he has worked with include Tony Cozier, Geoffrey Boycott, Ravi Shastri, and Australia’s former spin bowler Bruce Yardley, who himself lost an eye.
In 2004, du Plessis and Yardley made the first ever team to deliver a commentary with a single eye between them.
It is du Plessis’s accentuated sense of hearing that makes up for being sightless.
He relies upon sounds heard via the stump microphones to tell who is bowling from the footfalls and grunts, a medium or fast delivery by the length of time between the bowler’s foot coming down, and the impact of the ball on the pitch.
He can tell whether a delivery was a yorker from the sound of the bat ramming down on the ball, whether a ball is on the off or on-side, and when it’s hit a pad rather than bat.
When the wicketkeeper’s voice goes flat, du Plessis tells him a draw is in the offing.
Though he can’t play the role in the commentary box of the anchor, du Plessis can tell from the crowd noise whether a ball has been gathered in a fielder’s hands or spilled.
“I have to work with the anchor. I am the guy who supplies, well, the colour,” Times Online quoted him as saying.
Andy Pycroft, the Zimbabwean opening batsman from 1979 to 2001, said: “The thing about Dean is the intuition. The public love to listen to him. If he has the right person at anchor to support him he is brilliant.”
Du Plessis hated the “blind cricket” he was taught to play with a plastic-wrapped volleyball at the blind school he attended.
At 14, while feeling bored one day, du Plessis tuned the radio in to a station devoted to ball-by-ball commentaries, and that was what was to change his life.
“There was a phenomenal noise in the background, 80,000 people in a stadium in India, people roaring. I realised it was cricket. I was fascinated,” du Plessis said.
He pushed his way into the commentary box at Harare Sports Club in 2001, and was allowed to try out with the microphone.
He never looked back. (ANI)