MP GOVT AVOIDS FLOOR TEST ON MONDAYMadhya Pradesh governor Lalji Tandon on Monday gave the Kamal Nath stategovernment an ultimatum demanding that it prove its majority in a floor teston Tuesday.The letter further added that failure to conduct the floor test on Tuesdaywill be considered as the lack of majority for the Congress-led government."Conduct the floor test on 17 March, otherwise it will be considered thatyou actually don't have the majority in the state Assembly," the lettersaid.While the first day of the state budget session was adjourned till 26 Marchon Monday in view of the coronavirus outbreak, the BJP, led by former chiefminister Shivraj Singh Chouhan moved the Supreme Court demanding that thegovernment prove its majority within 48 hours.Many Congress MLAs entered the House wearing masks, the protective gearagainst the COVID-19 infection.However, Chouhan said, "Even corona won't save Kamal Nath's government. Hehas clearly lost his majority, so he avoided a trust vote today.”The Assembly’s session was to witness the chief minister seeking a trustvote, a week after 22 MLAs loyal to now BJP leader Jyotiraditya Scindiaresigned. The session began after an exchange of letters between Governorand CM.Nath said in his letter that it would be undemocratic to hold a floor testin the absence of the missing Congress MLAs, whom he alleged were being heldcaptive. He also wrote that the Governor's directive to hold a floor testwas out of the purview of his Constitutional rights and thatit "does not lie within the domain of the Governor to interfere with thefunctions of the Speaker".While Speaker NP Prajapati accepted the resignations of six rebel MLAs onSaturday, 16 other rebel MLAs requested him to accept their resignations,stating they cannot be present in person before him due to the "poor" lawand order situation in the state.The remaining MLAs of the Congress were brought to the Assembly in a busafter they returned from a resort in Jaipur where they were taken last weekin an attempt to avoid more defections.EX-CJI GOGOI’S GETS A RAJYA SABHA SEAT; MOVE RAISES EYEBROWSFormer Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, who headed benches that heardimportant and sensitive cases such as the Ayodhya land title dispute, theRafale case, the Assam NRC issue and the Sabarimala matter, was nominated toRajya Sabha by the government Monday.The nomination comes four months after his retirement on November 17, 2019.Gogoi is the second CJI to become a member of the Upper House. Former CJIRanganath Misra was nominated to Rajya Sabha by the Congress and served from1998 to 2004. Former Supreme Court judge Fathima Beevi was appointedGovernor of Tamil Nadu from 1997-2001. CJI P Sathasivam was also appointedGovernor of Kerala from 2014-2019. While Justice K Subba Rao contested thefourth Presidential elections, Justice Mohammad Hidayatullah became VicePresident from 1979 to 1984.Justice Gogoi’s nomination announcement drew sharp reactions. Congressspokesperson Randeep Surjewala, on his Twitter handle, juxtaposed the reportof the nomination with an article on India’s judiciary facing an increasinglack of trust by the public.Former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha too took to Twitter: “hope ex-cjiRanjan Gogoi would have the good sense to say ‘NO’ to the offer of RajyaSabha seat to him. Otherwise he will cause incalculable damage to thereputation of the judiciary.”Reacting sharply, Justice (retired) Madan B Lokur said: “There has beenspeculation for sometime now about what honorific would Justice Gogoi get.So, in that sense the nomination is not surprising, but what is surprisingis that it came so soon. This redefines the independence, impartiality andintegrity of the judiciary. Has the last bastion fallen?”INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS======================ANGER IN GERMANY AT REPORT TRUMP SEEKING EXCLUSIVE VACCINE DEALGerman ministers have reacted angrily following reports US president DonaldTrump offered a German medical company “large sums of money” for exclusiverights to a Covid-19 vaccine.“Germany is not for sale,” economy minister Peter Altmaier told broadcasterARD, reacting to a front page report in Welt am Sonntag newspaper headlined“Trump vs Berlin”.The newspaper reported Trump offered $1bn to Tübingen-basedbiopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure the vaccine “only for the UnitedStates”.The German government was reportedly offering its own financial incentivesfor the vaccine to stay in the country.The report prompted fury in Berlin. “German researchers are taking a leadingrole in developing medication and vaccines as part of global cooperationnetworks,” foreign minister Heiko Maas told the Funke Mediengruppe researchnetwork. “We cannot allow a situation where others want to exclusivelyacquire the results of their research,” said Maas, of the centre-left SPD.The German health minister, Jens Spahn, said a takeover of CureVac by theTrump administration was “off the table”. CureVac would only develop vaccine“for the whole world”, Spahn said, “not for individual countries”.Meanhwile, the first human trial to evaluate a candidate vaccine againstcoronavirus disease 2019 has begun in Seattle, US health officials saidMonday. "The first participant received the investigational vaccine today,"the US National Institutes of Health said in a statement.THE REST========WHY ICMR IS LIMITING TESTS FOR COVID-19As each country debates own testing strategy to combat Covid-19, the IndianCouncil for Medical Research (ICMR) has decided to monitor communitytransmission by random sampling rather than expanding testing. This decisionhas been taken to avoid “futile testing” as well as hospitalisation formildly symptomatic, positive patients, ICMR scientist Nivedita Gupta said,adding that the random surveillance strategy was used in China as well.“This has been sufficiently debated. Till date we have not documentedcommunity transmission. Why should we go on testing people who have nohistory of travel or any contact with an actual case?” Gupta said. “In thisprocess, in a huge country like India, I’m not able to test people whogenuinely may need testing because I’m wasting it on futile testing. Thoughwe are maintaining a stringent inventory, we also need to make sure that weare not in a situation where I exhaust all my capacity in futile testingand, tomorrow, if there is an upsurge in cases, I say that I have exhaustedall my (testing kits)… For the whole country, I cannot put in place(maximum) aggressive measures, because I have to be rational in a countrylike India.”India has conducted roughly 6,000 tests so far, lower than the US (8,000),Japan (9,600), France (12,000), the UK (13,000), and Italy (23,000). SouthKorea has conducted as many as 2 lakh, which experts see as the reason fortheir significantly declining numbers.The government currently has 1.5 lakh testing kits, with a capacity ofroughly 6,000 tests per day, and has ordered 1 million more. Gupta said theICMR is also in discussion with private facilities to provide testing, andthis could be in place in a week.Testing kits for coronavirus are manufactured mainly by American healthcarecompany Roche and some Chinese firms.The Health Ministry maintains that the country is at stage 2 - virus hasonly been detected among those connected to someone with a travel history.“Community transmission” means any transmission that cannot be sourced backto an imported case from a traveller, and is feared to be the next level ofCovid-19 spread.The ICMR’s Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme labs currently randomlytest 10 samples every week of patients with severe acute respiratory illnesspneumonia as well as influenza-like illnesses. Gupta also pointed that withthe incubation period between the infection and appearance of symptomsroughly two to 14 days, a negative test could end up giving a “false senseof security”. And, if that person would want to be tested again, it would bea waste.MUMBAI OFFICES CAN’T HAVE OVER 50% STAFFERS WORKING AT ONE GOAs the number of active cases rose to six in Mumbai, Chief Minister UddhavThackeray approved a proposal making it mandatory for offices to shift to arotational work schedule, ensuring that there is not more than 50 per centof the work force present in an office at any given time.The government has made an exception for establishments involved in thesupply of essential and emergency services, including Internet serviceproviders, banks, water supply, telephone services, rail and transportation,food and vegetables, groceries, hospitals, medical centres and medicalstores, among others. “The restrictions won’t apply to them,” said a seniorofficial.The move is aimed at reducing the number of commuters using trains and busesand also reducing crowd presence in business districts.The Maharashtra govt has also decided to ‘stamp’ all those people who havebeen sent to 100 per cent ‘home quarantine’ in view of the coronaviruspandemic The left hand of all persons shunted to 100 per cent homequarantine will be stamped to identify them easily if they mingle with thegeneral publicMajor temples in Maharashtra, including the Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbaiand Tuljabhavani temple at Osmanabad, have shut their doors to the publicwith immediate effect after reporting a surge in devotees over the lastweekend.DELHI OFFERS PAY AND USE QUARANTINE FACILITIES IN 3 HOTELS NEAR AIRPORTThe Delhi government on Monday said it is offering pay and use quarantinefacilities in three premier hotels in the Aerocity near the airport forpeople amid the fear of coronavirus spread.Kejriwal informed that while the government quarantine facilities areavailable, the Delhi government has also arranged three hotels -- RedFox,IBIS and Lemon Tree -- situated near the Indira Gandhi International Airportas the pay and use quarantine facilities."Those who need to use these hotels will need to pay. These hotels in Delhican be booked for the mandatory '14-day quarantine' for travellers reachingDelhi from abroad. The bills will have to be paid by the guests who wantluxurious isolation during the quarantine," the Chief Minister said. He saidmany people coming from abroad who are being quarantined "require high-endfacilities".Meanwhile, hours after CM announced that “a gathering of more than 50 peoplewill not be allowed in Delhi” in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak,Shaheen Bagh protesters released a statement where they indicated they would“continue the protest.” At the press conference on Monday, when asked aboutShaheen Bagh, the CM said that “this also applies to people protesting”.At 9.15 pm Monday, the Twitter handle of the Shaheen Bagh protest released astatement: “Alongside our fight, we are keeping a close watch on thedevelopments of the coronavirus pandemic. Legal and medical experts are indialogue with us at the moment to find the best ways forward for ourprotest.”DoT MOVES SC TO OFFER TELECOM FIRMS 20-YEAR WINDOW FOR PAYMENT OF AGR DUESWithin days of the Union Cabinet taking up a relief proposal for thebattered telecom industry, the government has submitted a plea to theSupreme Court seeking significant concessions for telcos, changing thecontours of the long-winding dispute over what constitutes adjusted grossrevenue (AGR) and the associated liabilities of the operators. The move bythe Department of Telecommunications (DoT), seeking a 20-year staggeredpayment of the operators’ dues linked to AGR along with a waiver of interestand penalty, has brought cheer to the sector, especially Vodafone Idea whichhas been on the brink of a collapse, executives and analysts said. This alsoimplies that the government would receive a fraction of its earlierestimates of Rs 1.47 trillion as AGR-linked dues from the telecom industry.SENSEX DIPS ANOTHER 2,713 POINTSResuming its free fall, the BSE Sensex plunged over 2,713 points on Monday,tracking a selloff in Asian peers as the coronavirus pandemic continued towreak havoc on markets.Dalal Street was buzzing with speculation of an inter-meeting rate cut bythe RBI after Governor Shakitkanta Das called a press conference at 1600hours amid widespread calls for a rate cut following similar steps by theworld’s leading central banks.The rupee depreciated 55 paise to 74.31 per US dollar (intra-day).The 30-share BSE index settled 2,713.41 points or 7.96 per cent lower at31,390.07.Likewise, the broader NSE Nifty gave up the 9,200 level, slumping 757.80points or 7.61 per cent to close at 9,197.40.Reacting to the shutdown taking place globally due to coronavirus scare,mood of the market remained dampened as credit pressures intensified onIndia Inc, he added.Elsewhere in Asia, bourses in Shanghai dropped 3.40 per cent, Hong Kong 4.03per cent, Seoul 3.19 per cent and Tokyo cracked 2.46 per cent.Markets in Europe crashed up to 8 per cent in early trade.Meanwhile, Brent crude oil futures melted 7.53 per cent to USD 31.30 perbarrel.INDICATORSSensex 31,390 (-2713), Nifty 9,197 (-758), Trading Value NSE (Rs.crores)49,833Nasdaq 6,905 (-970) Dow 20,189 (-2,997), S&P 2,386 (-325)US$-Rs. 74.01 GBP-Rs. 90.99, Euro-Rs. 82.54, UAE Dhm-Rs.20.14, Can$-Rs.53.15, Aus$- Rs. 45.45GBP 0.81 /US$, Euro 0.89 /US$, Jap.Yen 106.23 /US$, Aus$ 1.62 /US$, Sing1.41 /US$, Bang Taka 83.47 /US$, Can$ 1.39 /US$, Mal Ring 4.30 /US$,Pak Re 157.64 /US$, Phil Peso 51.41 /US$, Russian Rouble 74.05 /US$, NZ$1.65 /US$, Thai Baht 32.00 /US$, Ukraine Hryvnia 26.14 /US$, Norway NOK10.22 /US$Bitcoin - USD 4,998Dollar Index 98.14 Brent Crude 30.41 BDI 631Gold world Spot Price USD/aoz 1,495 India (Rs. per gm 24k/22k) 4,120 /4,020, Silver (Rs. Per KG) 43,200THOUGHT FOR THE DAYThrough perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined tobe certain failure. - Benjamin DisraeliOFF TRACKBrandon, at a New Year's party, turns to his friend, Justin, and asks for acigarette."I thought you made a New Year's resolution to quit smoking," Justinresponds."I'm in the process of quitting," replies Brandon with a grin. "Right now, Iam in the middle of phase one.""Phase one?" wonders Justin."Yeah," laughs Brandon, "I've quit buying."