NEW DELHI, Nov 4:
The Supreme Court Wednesday disposed of the plea which raised the issue of pendency of disqualification proceedings against some Congress MLAs, who had joined the BJP and were appointed as ministers in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan Government in Madhya Pradesh, after being told that the matter has become infructuous as bypolls have been held in the state.
A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde was informed by senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for petitioner Congress MLA Vinay Saxena, about bypolls on 28 Assembly constituencies in Madhya Pradesh which were held on Tuesday.
Sibal expressed anguish over the delay in hearing of disqualification matters and said, “Now the delay from March to November has rendered the matter infructuous.”
He told the bench, also comprising Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, that such matters get adjourned which lead to the cases becoming infructuous and similar matters from Tamil Nadu and Goa have not been heard for months.
“Now this plea has become infructuous. Such matters become infructuous as time is sought by counsel. Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu matters are all languishing. These are serious matters,” Sibal said, adding, “I am expressing my deep anguish in not dealing with such cases with some kind of urgency”.
He said the Tamil Nadu matter is “languishing for almost three and half years” and it would finally become infructuous. The bench said, “But time is sought on all the sides. Anyways, we will bear it in mind and reject such requests for adjournment.”
The CJI said: “The request for adjournment on grounds of filing replies and other such grounds are made. We will keep this in mind in future.”
On September 22, the apex court had asked the Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker to apprise it as to when he would decide the disqualification petitions against 22 Congress MLAs who switched sides to the ruling BJP in the state.
On August 17, the top court had sought response from the office of the speaker on the plea of Saxena which had contended that Congress MLAs, who have resigned to join BJP, cannot be appointed as ministers in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan Government, during the pendency of their disqualification proceedings.
The plea had said that as per the apex court verdict in Manipur case, the disqualification proceedings have to be decided within a period of three months by the speaker.
It had said that during the pendency of these disqualification applications, 12 out of 22 Congress MLAs who have resigned to join BJP have been appointed as ministers in the state government.
The plea said the disqualification petitions have been pending against the rebel MLAs since March 12 but no proceedings have been initiated till now and the delay will amount to virtually defeating the very purpose of anti-defection law.
On June 2, Chouhan carried out a major expansion of his cabinet, including 28 new members, a dozen of them former Congress MLAs whose rebellion contributed to the collapse of Kamal Nath led Congress Government in the state. (PTI)

BOSTON, Nov 4:
Researchers have found that a subset of COVID-19 patients who recover faster have a persistent antibody response against the novel coronavirus, an advance which sheds more light on the functioning of the immune system and may aid in the development of vaccines against the disease.
The scientists, including those from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the US, examined patients who had recovered from mild to moderate COVID-19 and found that while antibodies against the virus declined in most people over time, some individuals sustained their production several months following infection.
According to the researchers, previous studies had provided conflicting accounts about whether people recovering quickly from the viral infection can sustain potentially-protective antibodies or not.
The results of the current study, published in the journal Cell, noted that these antibody “sustainers” had a shorter course of symptoms, suggesting that some individuals who recover from COVID-19 faster may be mounting a more effective and durable immune response to the virus.
“We’ve found a subset of individuals that heal quickly while sustaining virus-specific antibody levels after COVID-19,” said Duane Wesemann, a co-author of the study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
In the research, the scientists recruited and enrolled 92 people in the Boston area in the US who had recovered from COVID-19 between March and June of 2020.
Five of the individuals were hospitalised but all others recovered at home, the study noted.
The researchers collected and analysed blood samples monthly, measuring a range of antibodies, including immunoglobulin-G (IgG), against the novel coronavirus. They split the cohort into two groups — those that sustain virus-specific IgG levels over several weeks, and those that lose them — and analysed these groups and potential connections they had to the clinical data.
The study found that IgG levels against the virus tended to decline substantially in most individuals over the course of three to four months.
However, the antibody production remained stable or enhanced in about 20 per cent of individuals over the same time period.
According to the scientists, these “sustainers” had symptoms for a significantly shorter period of time compared to “decayers” — average of 10 days versus 16 days.
They said the sustainers also had differences in memory T cell populations and B cells — two types of immune cells that can play a key role in immune memory and protection. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Nov 4:
India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati on Wednesday entered into an MoU with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to launch 51 direct-to-home (DTH) education TV channels.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between Prasar Bharati and Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-Informatics under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology aims to bring quality educational programmes to every household, including those in rural and remote areas, the Government said in a statement.
“Under the ambit of this MoU, 51 DTH education TV channels comprising Swaymprabha (22 channels) (M/o Education), e-Vidya for classes 1 to 12 (12 channels) of NCERT, Vande Gujarat (Govt. Of Gujarat) (16 channels) and DigiShala under M/o Electronics and IT (1 channel) shall be available as DD co-branded channels to all DD FreeDish viewers. This move aims to bring quality educational programmes to every household, including those in rural and remote areas,” it said.
The services will be available free of cost for all the viewers 24×7, in line with Government’s commitment towards skill development and providing quality education to the last person in the country, it said. “This Government initiative will go a long way in achieving Government’s goal of providing education to all,” the statement said. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Nov 4:
The national capital witnessed another cold morning on Wednesday, with the minimum temperature settling at 10.6 degrees Celsius, four notches below normal.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said the temperature met the criteria for “cold wave” on Tuesday but not Wednesday.
For the plains, the IMD declares a cold wave when the minimum temperature is 10 degrees Celsius or below and is 4.5 notches less than normal for two consecutive days.
On Tuesday, the minimum temperature had dropped to 10 degrees Celsius, the lowest in the season so far. It was less than that of Dalhousie (10.9 degrees Celsius), Dharamshala (10.6) and Mandi (10.2) in Himachal Pradesh and Mussoorie (10.4) in Uttarakhand.
Kuldeep Srivastava, the head of the regional forecasting center of IMD, said a similar situation is expected to prevail for another four to five days.
He said the month of November this year is expected to be the coldest in the last four to five years.
Normally, the Safdarjung Observatory, which provides representative data for the city, records a minimum of 14.8 degrees Celsius in the first week of November.
The mercury dips to 11-12 degrees Celsius by the last week of November, according to IMD officials.
The senior IMD scientist said the minimum temperature is expected to be recorded in single digits in the next three to four days.
Delhi has been witnessing a trend of low minimum temperatures due to the absence of cloud cover, he said.
Clouds trap some of the outgoing infrared radiation and radiate it back downward, warming the ground.
Also, there has been snowfall in the higher reaches of Himachal Pradesh in the last three to four days, so cold winds from that region have started affecting Delhi’s weather, he said. (PTI)