News in Short

• Supreme court has set May 10 as the date to hear arguments about the plea challenging the constitutional validity of Section 124 A of the Indian Penal Code that deals with sedition.
• The Bench has asked the Centre to file its counter affidavit on the matter by May 9 and both the petitioner and the Central government were asked to submit their arguments.
• A bench headed by Chief Justice NV Ramana was hearing two writ petitions filed by former retired army official S G Vombatkere and the Editors Guild of India.

• The BCCI has banned journalist BoriaMajumdar for two years for “threatening and intimidating” India wicketkeeper WriddhimanSaha.
• The ban includes not getting press accreditation for any matches in India, an embargo on interviewing centrally contracted players and no access to any of the cricket board’s and state units’ facilities.
• The incident occurred after Saha was dropped from the Test team for the home series against Sri Lanka.

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raised the Repo rate by 40 basis points to 4.40 per cent and the cash reserve ratio (CRR) by 50 basis points to 4.50 per cent to bring down inflation.
• The Monetary Policy Committee decided to retain the accommodative monetary policy. The sudden RBI move is expected to push up interest rates in the banking system.
• Equated monthly instalments (EMIs) on home, vehicle and other personal and corporate loans are likely to go up. Deposit rates, mainly fixed term rates, are also set to rise.

• The Jammu and Kashmir delimitation commission signed the final order for the delimitation of the union territory.
• The panel was tasked to redraw the boundaries of assembly and parliamentary constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir. The move would pave way for the much-awaited assembly polls in the Valley.
• Since the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh in August 2019, the commission has proposed increasing the number of seats in the union territory from 83 to 90.

• Olympian discus thrower Kamalpreet Kaur has been provisionally suspended by Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) for testing positive for a banned substance.
• Kamalpreet was suspended for the presence/use of prohibited substance stanozolol in her sample, a breach of the World Athletics anti-doping rules.
• Kaur had made it to the Tokyo Olympics final, finishing sixth with a throw of 63.7m.