CHANDIGARH:  Hectic lobbying for cabinet berths are underway in Himachal Pradesh. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Thursday said that the cabinet will be formed after the upcoming assembly session.

Sukhu, along with all newly-elected MLAs of the Congress, met party chief Mallikarjun Kharge at his residence here. This was his first visit to the national capital after being elected as chief minister.
Interacting with media persons after the meeting, Sukhu said, “The Himachal Cabinet will be formed soon and you will be informed accordingly.”

“The cabinet will be formed after the Vidhan Sabha session.” He added that as he was accompanied by state Congress president Pratibha Singh and all elected MLAs, including deputy chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri. During his meeting with legislators, Kharge told them to remain united and asked them to share power with all party workers.

He also urged them to remain connected with the grassroots level and serve the people of Himachal Pradesh earnestly. Kharge told the party leadership in the state to fill up all vacancies in the government and make appointments in the boards and corporations soon.

The Congress chief asked the chief minister to share power with party workers so that they also feel the ownership of the government and work more closely with public, sources said. The party will ensure that there is equitable share of power in the hill state between various factions, they added.

Terming the meeting as a courtesy meeting, Sukhu said, “We had come to thank the Congress president as he had campaigned for us in Himachal elections. All 40 MLAs and PCC chief Pratibha Singh has come and thanked Kharge ji on how he extended the party’s support.” “Kharge ji told us to serve the people of Himachal with our hearts and thanked the people of Himachal for electing a Congress government,” 

BENGALURU:  Rishi Atul Rajpopat (27), PhD scholar from St John’s College, Cambridge, just solved a 2,500-year-old grammar problem in the ancient Sanskrit texts written by 5th-century BC scholar and philologist Panini, that had perplexed traditional and modern researchers all these centuries. A major implication of his breakthrough is that now the algorithm that runs Panini’s grammar can potentially teach this grammar to computers.

Mumbai-born Rajpopat’s PhD thesis, published on Wednesday in the journal Apollo — University of Cambridge Repository and titled ‘In Panini We Trust: Discovering the Algorithm for Rule Conflict Resolution in the Ashtadhyadyi’, has decoded a two-and-a-half-millennia-old algorithm which for the first time has made it possible to accurately use Panini’s ‘language machine’ in his famous Ashtadhyayi.

Rajpopat said Panini’s Ashtadhyayi has around 4,000 rules (sutras) that describe the structure of Sanskrit. “He has given one metarule (a rule that governs the application of other rules) — ‘1.4.2 vipratisedhe param karyam’ — to help us decide which rule should be applied in the event of ‘rule conflict’. But the problem in the last 2,500 years has been that scholars misinterpreted this metarule and added more metarules with grammatically incorrect results,” he explained. Often, two or more of Panini’s rules are simultaneously applicable at the same step, leaving scholars to agonise over which one to choose.

 
“Because of the misunderstanding and misinterpretation by traditional scholars, we were getting grammatically incorrect forms. My dissertation is on the understanding that ‘param’ (in ‘1.4.2 vipratisedhe param karyam’) meant, between rules applicable to the left and right sides of a word, that the user of the grammar should choose the rule applicable to the right side and not the serial order thereafter. I spent a lot of time with a lot of derivatives before I came to the conclusion, because Panini’s algorithms produce grammatically correct words and sentences without errors. His grammar is self-sufficient. I did not add any metarule to understand the master (Panini),” said the researcher.
Rajpopat said once he decoded Panini and his “language machine”, it became easy to feed in the base and suffix words and watch them turn into grammatically correct words and sentences through a step-by-step process.

“Computer scientists working on natural language processing gave up on rule-based approaches over 50 years ago… So teaching computers how to combine the speaker’s intention with Panini’s rule-based grammar to produce human speech would be a major milestone in the history of human interaction with machines, as well as in India’s intellectual history,” he said about the potential of teaching Sanskrit grammar to computers.

“Panini had an extraordinary mind and he built a machine unrivalled in human history. He didn’t expect us to add new ideas to his rules. The more we fiddle with Panini’s grammar, the more it eludes us,” he said.

Speaking about his journey as a research scholar, Rajpopat said he was a student of mathematics.
“I was always into patterns, problem solving, coding, numbers etc. I did my graduation in economics but for postgraduation, I wanted to take up a subject I loved. During one of my visits to a Navaratri pandal, I was informed about a retired professor in Mumbai, who taught Panini’s grammar. I approached her and joined her classes,” he narrated. Rajpopat did his Masters at Oxford, and met his supervisor at Cambridge, Professor of Sanskrit, Vincenzo Vergiani, who motivated and mentored him during his research.

Rajpopat’s research may now mean that Panini’s grammar can be taught to computers for the first time.
“I learnt that asking the right questions is a skill. One has to be obsessed about one’s work. The role of a teacher cannot be undervalued,” he said.

“What the Cambridge scholar (Rishi Rajpopat) seems to have done is to discover that a new interpretation of the word ‘Param’ (in Ashtadhyayi) can result in more natural derivations and without having to add many rules for exceptions that arise with the earlier interpretations… His new interpretation is that the word ‘Param’ in the metarule is applicable in the part that is on the “right side” of the word, not the rule that comes later in the Ashtadhyayi.

This seems to reduce the number of exceptions and hence be easier to explain and understand. Note that this observation has to be validated by scholars of Sanskrit after a close reading of the thesis and its applicability to the whole corpus of Sanskrit. Also, note that the structure of Ashtadhyayi is more or less the same except when it comes to selecting the next rule when there is contention in the contexts discussed earlier. However, the contribution is significant as this issue has occupied the great grammarians for the past two-three millennia.”– Prof K Gopinath, Senior Professor, Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Department, Plaksha University, Mohali (formerly with Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru)

NEW DELHI: Union law minister Kiren Rijiju on Thursday kept up his attack on the collegium system, blaming it for high judicial vacancies, saying the issue will keep cropping up until the procedure of appointment of judges is changed.

He also took a critical view of the Supreme Court taking up all bail applications and “frivolous PILs”, claiming it will add to its burden, which drew sharp comments from legal eagles.

On the collegium system, he said in the Rajya Sabha, “The government has no right to find new names for appointment of judges except the names that have been recommended by the collegium…. I have requested Supreme Court and high court judges to ensure that names of quality judges are sent, and that they include names of women and those belonging to various castes.”

The minister recalled that in 2015, Parliament passed the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act to reform the system to appoint judges. But the SC struck it down some months later.

Till September 9, the government had appointed 165 HC judges, the highest in a calendar year so far. “Government has recently referred back 20 names to Supreme Court Collegium recommended for appointment as High Court judges….Against 331 vacancies, at present, 147 proposals received from High Courts are at various stages of processing between the Government and the Supreme Court Collegium,” he said.

Reacting to Rijiju’s comment on bail applications, Congress MP Manish Tewari said, “Obviously Law Minister Kiren Rijiju had other pressing preoccupations in Law School other than Law. He perhaps has never read Justice Krishna Iyer’s seminal treatise – bail not jail is the rule.” “Forget NJAC, Govt wants to micromanage judiciary: cut vacations, no priority to bail, et al. What next?” senior advocate Salman Khurshid wondered.

CHANDIGARH:  A day after being sworn in as the chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, Congress leader Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu on Monday said the transparency act will be brought into the state soon, for which a blueprint will be prepared. The act will see the elected representatives having to disclose their sources of income and assets every year. 

Assuming charge at the secretariat in Simla on Monday, accompanied by Deputy CM Mukesh Agnihotri, Sukhu said, “We will bring in the transparency act so that MLAs and other elected representatives disclose their assets annually, besides revealing the source of their income. The blueprint of the act will be prepared so that people get a corruption-free administration.”

Sukhu added that as soon as the state Cabinet is formed, all the guarantees promised to the people before the elections will be fulfilled in the first meeting itself, as directed by Rajya Sabha MP and AICC in-charge of the state, Rajeev Shukla. “But we first need to understand the entire situation so that we can take decisions in accordance with the ground realities,” the CM said.

When asked about the formation of the Cabinet, Sukhu said it will happen the moment the party’s high command gives the go-ahead. The Cabinet will be a blend of experience and youth and will comprise professionals and people from all regions so that everyone gets due representation. Sukhu dismissed talks of differences within the party over government formation, saying that there will be perfect coordination between the government and the party. State Congress president Pratibha Singh will soon hold consultations with all the MLAs, he added.

Sukhu also presided over the Congress Legislative Party meeting, after which he said that it was decided that all the MLAs and their family members would have to pay the same room tariff in Himachal Bhawan and other state guest houses as is being charged from the general public. He also promised to give top priority to the redressal of public grievances.

Sukhu also brought attention to the restoration of the foundation stone plaque of Atal Tunnel, Rohtang, which was laid by Sonia Gandhi when she was the chairperson of the National Advisory Council on June 28, 2010. Calling the missing plaque an insult to democracy, Sukhu said it must be restored at the earliest.

Promising Transparency

Aims to ensure a corruption-free government

Under the proposed act, MLAs and other elected representatives will have to disclose their assets annually

They will have to reveal the source of income

Blueprint of the act to be prepared soon

NEW DELHI:  A day after Bihar Chief Minister revoked talks about consolidation of the opposition parties to fight the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Samajwadi Party (SP) President Akhilesh Yadav also jumped into the bandwagon signalling the possibility of parties burying the hatchet to put up a united face

“A continuous exercise is underway to form an alternative for 2024. Nitishji, Mamataji and KCR Sahab are working for it. An alternative is needed with inflation at its peak,” said Yadav. While the chorus of opposition unity has gained momentum, it is no secret that Nitish Kumar, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) are aspirants for the Prime Minister post in the event of defeating BJP in the next general election. During a conference of his party on Sunday, Nitish Kumar dismissed the possibility of a third front in 2024 and said that there will be a ‘main front to fight the BJP at the national level. He was referring to the efforts of Mamata Banerjee and KCR in the past to forge a third front minus the Congress against BJP.  

The posturing of JD (U) and SP leaders are significant in the wake of the recent Assembly bypoll election results, say analysts. While BJP secured a record-breaking win in Gujarat, it lost Himachal Pradesh to the Congress. Out of the six by-polls held in five states, BJP and the Congress won two seats each while one each went to BJD and RLD. Analysts say that the opposition parties are getting their act together before it is too late.

Ever since JD (U) supremo Nitish Kumar walked out of alliance with the BJP in Bihar, he has been at the forefront of bringing disparate parties together to put up a united front against the BJP.  The renewed talks of Opposition Unity also come in the backdrop of leaders from TMC and AAP attending a meeting of the Opposition parties ahead of the Parliament session.