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Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 18 October 2015

:: Miscellaneous ::

Monsanto India JV Sues 8 Domestic Seed Firms

Monsanto India's joint venture firm - MMB - has moved court against eight domestic seed companies for refusing to pay over Rs 400-crore 'trait fee' for using its Bollgard Bt technology in the cotton hybrids, a top company official said.
The due amounts are mainly on sales of genetically modified cotton seeds - incorporating the patented technology - during the 2015 kharif planting season, Monsanto India CEO Shilpa Divekar Nirula said.
Monsanto partnered Mahyco to form an equal joint venture company MMB for sub-licensing the Bollgard II and Bollgard technologies to Indian seed companies.
These seed firms are selling hybrid cotton seeds using this technology for last 10 years.
She said eight seed companies - Prabhat Agri Biotech, Ajeet Seeds Ltd, Kaveri Seed, Ankur Seeds, Nuziveedu Seeds, Green Gold Seeds, Ram Agrigenetics and Amar Bio Tech - have refused to pay the dues, citing the state governments' price control order on cotton seeds.
She charged that these seed companies have "breached the contracts" agreed mutually between the two parties and also attacked the Seed Association for "trying to project the bilaterial dispute as an industry issue".
Currently, MMB receives a trait fee of Rs 122.96 per packet for Bollgard I and Rs 183.46 per packet for Bollgard II technologies, inclusive of service tax.
The trait fee has been constant for the last four years, the company said. Cotton seed prices are fixed in the range of Rs 830-1,000 per packet (450 grams) in different states.

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:: Sports ::

BCCI to invite bids for new IPL teams to replace CSK, Rajasthan Royals

The ninth edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is set to see two new teams take the field after the BCCI on Sunday said it will float a tender and invite bids for new franchises to replace the Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals for the next two years of the popular twenty20 tournament.
The BCCI said that it will implement in toto the interim report of the Supreme Court-appointed Justice Lodha committee, which recommends the suspension of the owners of both CSK and RR for two seasons following a betting scandal.
The two suspended franchises will return for the 2018 edition, the cricket board said after a working committee meeting in Mumbai on Sunday. The decision to draft in two-new teams for two years means that the IPL would remain an eight-team league.
The names and composition of the two new teams are not known. However, following the Lodha Committee’s recommendations in July, several leading business figures and corporate houses had expressed their interest in bidding for the franchises.
According to media reports, they included Gautam Adani (Adani Group), Venugopal Dhoot (Videocon Group), Harsh Goenka (RPG Group), PVP Ventures and the JSW Group.
The BCCI also announced that Vivo Mobile India, the Indian arm of Guangdong-based Chinese mobile communications firm Vivo Electronics Ltd will replace PepsiCo as the title sponsor of the IPL for the next two seasons.
Vivo, as per a BCCI media release, is to give the bank guarantee in the next ten days.” The move comes after PepsiCo confirmed its intention to exit the title sponsorship of the IPL earlier this month, citing concerns over the BCCI’s handling of the IPL betting and spot-fixing controversy and its aftermath.
In 2012, PepsiCo paid Rs.396.8 crore or $71.77 million for the IPL’s title sponsorship between 2013 and 2017.
As per the contract, PepsiCo paid Rs. 206 crore for the first three years and was supposed to pay Rs. 190 crore for the remainder of the five-year deal. PepsiCo has paid the BCCI a bank guarantee of Rs. 78 crore.
In a detailed e-mail response to queries about the project, the BCCI said, “The BCCI has certain standard operating procedures (SOPs) but considering the scale of its operations, a need was felt to have the SOPs vetted by an outside agency to make them more exhaustive.”