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Hindu father can adopt on sound evidence, says
SC Telgi case accused not to undergo
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Cong to take fresh look into dissidents’
demands
Left to have its own
front EC team to visit AP
again Private firms to get subsidy on LPG New norms for bottled water from today Sri Adi Granth installation God’s in his heaven and all’s right in
Rajasthan? MP urges Centre to lift sugar
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Hindu father can adopt on sound evidence, says
SC New Delhi, December 31 Holding that the adoption should be established on the basis of sound evidence, a Bench comprising Mr Justice Doraiswamy Raju and Mr Justice Arijit Pasayat, in a recent judgement, said a Hindu father could also adopt a son even when his surviving son had become an outcast or renounced the Hindu religion. “The position has not changed after the enactment of the Caste Disabilites Removal Act as the outcast son does not retain the religious capacity to perform the obsequial rites,” the court said, adding that “in case parties are governed by Mitakshra Law, additionally adoption can also be made if the natural son is a congenital lunatic or an idiot.” “The purpose of adoption is to ensure spiritual benefit for a man after his death and to his ancestors by offering of oblations and rice and libations of water to them periodically... but a condition precedent for a valid adoption is that he (the Hindu father) should be without any male issue living at the time of adoption,” Mr Justice Pasayat, writing the judgement for the Bench, said. The court further said though the ancient Hindu Law had recognised five kinds of adopted sons, only two types — the Dattaka and Kritrima — survived today. While Dattaka is prevalent throughout the country, Kritrima was confined to the Mithila region of Bihar, it said. “The primary object of adoption was to gratify the means of the ancestors by annual offerings and, therefore, it was considered necessary that the offerer should be as much as possible a reflection of a real descendent and had to look as much like a real son as possible and certainly not to be the one who would never have been a son,” the court held. The all-important ruling came in a judgement on a 40-year-old case pertaining to the succession rights of a adopted son, Kashi Nath, who was adopted by Thakurji Shri Gopalji temple’s priest Bela Bux in Jaipur in 1941. The intriguing part of the story is that the final decision on Kashi Nath’s adoption came after his death even though it was not in his favour. Rejecting Kashi Nath’s appeal against the Rajasthan High Court’s judgement, rejecting his second appeal against the lower courts’ order. The court of Civil Judge and Additional District Judge had dismissed his suit claiming the right of sucession as “pujari” of the temple after the death of Bela Bux in the early sixties. The apex court said there was no “consistency” about his claim regarding his adoption by Bela Bux and his wife Nangi, particularly regarding the time it was actually made. “When the evidence is not in line with the pleadings and is at variance with it, as is in this case in virtual self-contradiction, adverse inference has to be drawn and such evidence cannot be looked into or relied upon,” it said. The case had gone on in the courts of the Civil Judge, the Additional District Judge, the Rajasthan High Court and in the Supreme Court since the intial suit was filed by Kashi Nath in the early sixties. |
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Telgi case accused not to undergo
scientific tests Mumbai, December 31 Gote had challenged a special court’s order which allowed SIT to conduct P-300 brain-fingerprinting, lie-detector and narco-analysis tests on him and eight other accused including prime accused Abdul Karim Telgi. Hearing Gote’s petition, Mr Justice C.S. Dharmadhikari observed that the High Court had earlier posted to January 6 a similar petition filed by co-accused Ramachandra Rama Reddy. As Gote’s petition was on the same lines, his petition would be tagged on to Reddy’s and heard by a Division Bench, he said. Earlier, the High Court had allowed SIT to perform scientific tests on Telgi but restrained it from subjecting Reddy to such tests unless his petition challenging the December 15 order of a special court in this regard was heard and disposed of. Accordingly, Telgi underwent a lie-detector test at a forensic lab at Bangalore on December 19. Reddy had challenged the lower court order allowing the scientific tests on nine accused. The court had granted relief only to Reddy and posted the matter for admission on January 6 next. Gote, an MLA, is the second accused to challenge the order. —
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Cong to take fresh look into dissidents’
demands New Delhi, December 31 Punjab Agriculture Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, who had a fresh round of discussions with the Congress central leadership here today, wanted to know if the party high command had taken a decision about their demands. Authoritative sources said the AICC wanted to look into their demands afresh before taking any decision. Mrs Bhattal met Mr Ahmed Patel, political secretary to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, here this afternoon. Mrs Bhattal was not immediately available for comments and Punjab Bhavan sources said she had returned to Chandigarh. The Congress high command does not want to take any decision which might precipitate matters in Punjab and have a snowballing effect in Kerala and Maharashtra. The overbearing view in the AICC is that the problems the dissidents have with Capt Amarinder Singh should be resolved amicably as any change in leadership at this juncture might lead to a vertical split in the PPCC. The Congress high command had made it clear earlier that it was not going to take any decision under threat or coercion. |
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Left to have its own
front New Delhi, December 31 Ms Sonia Gandhi had met Mr Surjeet yesterday, after which he said her proposal for one front was not possible but they would join hands to fight against the BJP in the Lok Sabha poll. Now, efforts were on to form two fronts, one headed by the Congress and the other comprising Left parties and like-minded groups to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections, said Mr Surjeet. "The direction of both fronts will be the same but they will move separately," he said, adding: "The first issue before us is to defeat the BJP. Other issues can be worked out later". Mr Surjeet told the press conference that Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav had also promised his support in all efforts to defeat the BJP. "He (Yadav) is one with us on the question of defeating the BJP," he said adding that Mr Yadav made it clear that the BSP should not have any place in the front. |
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EC team to visit AP
again New Delhi, December 31 A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting held here by the three-member Election Commission, led by Chief Election Commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh, with the Andhra Pradesh Chief Secretary and Chief Electoral Officer. The EC team is likely to visit all districts of the state between January 5 and 12 and submit its report to the three-member Bench for further action. The Commission had arrived at this decision based on a report submitted by an eight-member team that had visited the state last week. The report had found certain “deficiencies” in the electoral rolls. Thiruvananthapuram (PTI): Kerala Chief Minister A.K. Antony today wanted Chief Election Commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh to withdraw his reported remarks likening politicians to a “cancer” afflicting the body politics of the country. Talking to reporters after a Cabinet meeting, Mr Antony termed as “very unfortunate” the statement of the Chief Election Commissioner. However, unfazed by the raging controversy over his description of politicians as the “cancer” without cure, Mr Lyngdoh has stood by his remarks, saying that he was serious about what he had said. |
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Private firms to get subsidy on LPG New Delhi, December 31 “The Finance Ministry has agreed to give private LPG marketing companies (or parallel LPG marketers), a subsidy of Rs 45.17 per cylinder,” he told PTI here. Currently, the government provides state oil retailers - the IndianOil Corp, IBP, Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp, a subsidy of Rs 45.17 per LPG cylinder and Rs 1.64 per litre on Kerosene (amounting to Rs 4,700 crore annually). However, this subsidy is not enough to cover the cost of LPG. The difference between the cost and the retail price of LPG, after taking into account the subsidy of Rs 45.15, is around Rs 106 a cylinder. For the public sector units, the government has now put together an intricate system of cross-subsidisation by which the retailing firms and LPG producers share the under-recoveries. This mechanism will not be available to private companies. Chaturvedi said a notification for providing subsidy to private LPG marketing firms was likely to be issued by January end. “The entry of private firms will bring in competition in the LPG retailing,” he said, adding that the subsidy on LPG next fiscal will fall to Rs 22.58 per cylinder and completely eliminated the year after. Chaturvedi said the outgo on subsidy to parallel LPG marketers would be about Rs 60 crore annually. For PSUs, the subsidy on LPG during 2002-03 was Rs 3,691 crore while that on kerosene for Public Distribution System (PDS) Rs 3,018 crore. For the current fiscal, subsidy on domestic LPG will come down to Rs 2,772 crore following a three-year schedule for phasing out the entire subsidy, till March, 2005. Similarly, for PDS kerosene, the subsidy this fiscal would be Rs 1,947 crore. The Finance Ministry provided the state-run oil firms a subsidy of Rs 67.75 per cylinder on domestic LPG and Rs 2.45 a litre on kerosene in 2002-03. It has cut the subsidy on LPG to Rs 45.17 a cylinder and than on kerosene to Rs 1.63 a litre. The Finance Ministry proposes to further cut subsidy on LPG to Rs 22.58 a cylinder in 2004-05 and that on kerosene to 81 paise a litre and eliminating it altogether in the subsequent year. Besides, the Petroleum Ministry has proposed to the Cabinet for allowing private refiners like Reliance to sell directly to bulk customers after meeting the demand of state firms that sell cooking gas (LPG) at subsidised rates, Chaturvedi said. The proposal, if approved by the Cabinet, would allow country sole private sector refiner Reliance Industries Ltd as well as the state exploration firm the ONGC and gas transmission company Gail (India) Ltd to sell LPG directly to bulk buyers. —
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New norms for bottled water from today New Delhi, December 31 “The standards have been upgraded and we are ready to implement the new norms. Just as the existing standards the new ones will also be strictly implemented”, Consumer Affairs Minister Sharad Yadav told PTI. The Bureau of Indian Standards would be the nodal agency for implementing the standards. Nirmal Singh, BIS Director-General, said about six independent laboratories across the country had been given the approval to test bottled water samples to ensure the standards were implemented. These labs would give the test results to the BIS. Asked if more time would be given to the packaged water making companies to meet the new standards, he said, “These norms have been notified by the Health Ministry in whose purview falls the date from which they have to be implemented, and not the BIS” —
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Sri Adi Granth installation New Delhi, December 31 According to a Government statement, the committee will chalk out programmes for organising the anniversary celebrations. The committee has powers to co-opt members. —
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God’s in his heaven and all’s right in Rajasthan? JAIPUR: Governance may or may not be about pleasing the Gods but Rajasthan’s new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is taking no chances and has organised special prayers for the well-being of the desert state. Headed by Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia, and the government has undertaken three-day prayers that are being held in 155 places of worship across the state. The prayers concluded on Wednesday evening. “It is for the first time that such prayers are being held on government instructions,” said R.K. Sharma, a priest at a local temple. A government official said that the government had earlier identified 75 temples for holding the special prayers, but 80 more locations, including gurdwaras, churches and mosques, were added to the list. He said the ‘devasthan’, or temple affairs, department had sanctioned Rs 5,000 for each site. A total amount of Rs 775,000 is likely to be spent on the special prayers. And each place of worship has its own agenda. While ‘havans’, or sacrificial fires, are being organised in temples, Sikh gurdwaras are holding ‘langars’, or free community meals, churches are distributing money and mosques are undertaking charity work. This could well be the sign of things to come with the state’s new Chief Minister not only considered religious but also superstitious. She has reportedly delayed the expansion of her Cabinet and the first session of the state assembly because the period between December 15 and January 14 is considered inauspicious in the Hindu calendar. State Governor-designate Madan Lal Khurana is likely to agree. He has delayed his oath-taking till the end of the inauspicious period on Scindia’s advice. |
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urges Centre to lift sugar New Delhi, December 31 In a letter to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Mr Bhatia said the Centre was not lifting the levy sugar due to which the mills were not in a position to pay the growers. He said that the Centre must fulfil its obligation and lift the stock of sugar. —
TNS |
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