M A I N   N E W S

SC gives 4 weeks
Closure of polluting units in Delhi

NEW DELHI, Dec 7 (PTI) — In an omnibus order, the Supreme Court today ordered the closure of all polluting industrial units functioning in the residential and non-conforming areas of the national Capital within four weeks.

A three-judge Bench headed by Justice B.N. Kirpal said this order would be implemented under the supervision of Nodal Agency created in the Union Urban Development Ministry with the cooperation of the Delhi Government, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA).

Making the order sacrosanct, the Bench comprising Justice Kirpal, Justice Doraiswamy Raju and Justice Brijesh Kumar said the action of the Nodal Agency to implement the order would not be affected by any stay or injunction granted by any court.

This direction was given by the court even as it reserved its verdict on the contempt notices it had issued to Delhi Chief Secretary P.S. Bhatnagar and MCD Commissioner S.P. Aggarwal on the ground that repeated orders of the court from 1996 to close and relocate industries had not been obeyed.

The Bench said though “it is not making any orders on other industries functioning in the non-conforming and residential areas, it does not mean the authorities will sit back and relax.”

24 hurt in Kupwara blast

BARAMULA, Dec 7 (UNI, PTI) — Twenty four persons were injured when militants exploded a grenade near the taxi stand in Kupwara this afternoon while two persons were killed elsewhere in North Kashmir since last evening, official sources said today.

A Special Task Force jawan was among those injured when the grenade, lobbed towards a security picket, missed it and exploded on the roadside in the frontier district. The injured were admitted to different hospitals.

Sources said Farooq Ahmad, a surrendered militant, who was shot at by militants at Kreeri near Pattan recently, died in hospital late last night. Another person, Nazir Ahmad, who was injured in a blast near Tehsil road in Sopore also succumbed to his injuries in hospital.

Official sources said, the explosive device was hurled by suspected militants near the Kupwara bus stand.

The condition of seven of them, including SPO Ghulam Hassan Lone, was stated to be “critical”, the sources said.

Pak firing in Siachen on rise
From M.L. Kak
Tribune News Service

JAMMU, Dec 7 — Even after Islamabad’s announcement that its troops have been asked to observe “maximum restraint” on the LoC, the level of firing in the Siachen glacier in eastern Ladakh, which has been the scene of many a bloody armed duel between the two sides, has increased.

Senior Army authorities at the Northern Command said that the “pattern of Pakistani firing has not changed substantially. The level of firing has, in fact, increased in certain cases in the glacier.”

The authorities, however, admitted that after the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee’s announcement of cessation of operations by the security forces and following Islamabad’s call for maximum restraint, “firing has practically stopped from both the sides in the Leh-Kargil sectors.”

On the LoC in Kashmir valley, a week after Mr Vajpayee’s announcement, the firing level went down to 45 per cent. The Pakistani troops are “firing about seven per cent of what they used to fire a week before the announcement”.

However, the Pakistani troops, the authorities claimed, were “slow in exercising restraint on the LoC in Poonch, Rajouri and Mendhar” border belts in Jammu sector. “There has been a steady decline in the firing from small arms in command theatre. It was reduced to 65 per cent in the first week of the Prime Minister’s announcement and now stood at 27 per cent of the pre-ceasefire days”.

The Army authorities have stated that to implement Mr Vajpayee’s announcement of cessation of operations in letter and spirit, the Indian troops “stop firing on the Pakistani troops even in retaliation to the shelling from across the border”.