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High Court asks DDA to demolish Akshardham flyover cloverleaf
HC orders removal of squatters from road
64% voting in Panchayat polls amid clashes
NIOS to share credit with other boards to make exams more ‘humane’
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Realty rates rising in GDA colonies
Cracks in Secretariat building declared ‘minor’ in nature
Lawyers don’t fall under CP Act: State Consumer Commission
Frivolous PILs a nuisance: Chief Justice
Lathicharge as labourer’s death sparks agitation
HC orders action against MCD Licensing Inspector
HC stays allotment of 37 plots in Greater Noida
Kanshi Ram supporters seek Kalam’s intervention
‘Public Private Partnership must for Haryana welfare’
BSES workers dismissed for extortion
Man acquitted of rape after girl sides with him
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High Court asks DDA to demolish Akshardham flyover cloverleaf
New Delhi, October 21 A Division bench of Justices Ravinder Jian and R S Sodhi asked the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to submit a report by its technical committee by November 11, stating the time and money it would take to complete the project. Expressing anguish, the Judges said, “The court would pass an appropriate order on the next date of hearing on the faulty cloverleaf, which was executed to save a petrol pump. It is sheer wastage of public money due to the act of some negligent officials of the DDA”. The Court also asked the CRRI official to state in an affidavit the amount of funds required to rebuild the slip road. The IB Petroleum, which has a petrol pump at the mouth of the cloverleaf, filed an application for the impleadment in the case. The Counsel appearing for DDA said that the project was executed on the plan submitted by the public sector RITES. “‘RITES should be held responsible for the faulty plan,” he said. On the direction of the court, the RITES had prepared a modified plan to construct again the cloverleaf which had been impeding traffic bound for the Mayur Vihar and NOIDA. The Court also said action might be taken against the officials who truncated the plan to allegedly favour certain private persons. In May this year, the High Court had directed the CRRI to inspect the Akshardham flyover and submit a report specifying whether the cloverleaf was constructed in accordance with international specifications or not. The court had appointed scientist Subhash Chand as court officer and asked him to visit the spot to examine the lapses in constructing the flyover allegedly to extend favour to some “vested interests”. The DDA Counsel said that no rule was violated and the curve of the cloverleaf was made at 36 degree radius. The cloverleaf was made 36 degree radius instead of 60 degree radius to save a petrol pump on the high way and 69 buildings, said the counsel who had filed the petition. The Project Officer of the DDA, who designed, sanctioned and approved the project was also present in the court to explain the difficulties in executing the project. Due to the faulty construction of the approach road, the traffic had been held up at the approach, the Judges observed. The approach and the end of the clover-leaf should have been much broader for the smooth traffic of the vehicles towards NOIDA and Mayur Vihar Phase-I. “It is a serious matter and the guilty should be punished,” said the Judges. The main flyover was constructed by the DDA connecting the approach road of NOIDA to Yamuna bridge at Laxminagar.
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HC orders removal of squatters from road
New Delhi, October 21 A Division Bench of Justice Vijender Jain and Justice and Justice R S Sodhi said if it was not done, the DCP, ACP and SHO of the area concerned shall remain present in the court on October 28. The court asked the police and DDA to ensure that the squatters did not encroach upon public land within five km of the place they were evicted from. It also asked DDA to fence the 1.5 acre land secured from encroachers. The Bench pulled up the authorities for allowing squatting on road, particularly after the encroachers were evicted on court orders. “If this is the state of affairs in the Capital of the country, what will happen elsewhere,” a Division Bench of Justice Vijender Jain and Justice R S Sodhi observed. The demolition order was passed on a contempt petition filed by Retreat Cooperative Group Housing Society near which 128 ‘jhuggis’ were constructed on belonging to DDA and
PWD. Earlier, the court had on December 17 last year ordered removal of the ‘jhuggis’. While PWD removed 38 jhuggis from its land, DDA failed to implement the order forcing the petitioners to file a contempt petition. Petitioners’ counsel Pushkar Sood submitted that due to squatting on road, people were facing lots of problems.
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64% voting in Panchayat polls amid clashes
Greater Noida, October 21 Voters had started queuing up at Ward No. 10, 12, and 13 at 7 am yesterday at the polling booths for electing 77 to 86 members for the area Panchayat and 4 Zila Panchayat. Ward No.11 had recorded only 20 per cent polling by 11 am in Bilaspur, Dehat, Kanarsi, Chahula, Mehmoodpur and Girarpur and for Ward No.10 in Navada, Salempur, Atai Ladpura, Kasna, etc. By the afternoon, 70 to 80 per cent voters had cast their votes and by the evening about 65 per cent voting had been recorded at almost all the booths. Two groups had clashed in Lalra, Mehmoodpur, Makhanpur, Khander and in Emlya for area Panchayat voting. Heavy police and PAC jawans had been deployed in the area. SSP Piyush Mordia, SP City Soumitra Yadav, CO Sewak Ram Yadav and CO Sarvanand and SDM Sadar Satya Prakash Patel had all toured the area which had been divided into five zones and 19 sectors each of which were put in the charge of a zonal magistrate. There were still many untoward incidents causing tension in several villages. A voter in Chahula village had his name entered twice in the voters’ list. This led to a lot of tension. The authorities had termed 13 polling centres out of 98 as super sensitive and 23 as sensitive. Four special zonal magistrates had also been deployed. Besides 19 sector magistrates, seven police officers, 151 SIs, 225 head constables and 1,199 constables, apart from PAC and home guards had been deployed which ensured peaceful and fair voting.
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NIOS to share credit with other boards to make exams more ‘humane’
New Delhi, October 21 This initiative is part of an attempt being made to change the image of the NIOS as an inferior alternative to the formal education system. In a significant move to bolster the NIOS, these 24 education boards, including the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), have agreed to share their resources and grant equivalence to students from NIOS. “We had invited the boards to promote cooperation between the formal and the non-formal modes of education. For us to grow and be able to cater to a larger mass of people, it is necessary for the other boards to collaborate with us,” said the Secretary, NIOS, Mr Dinesh Singh Bist. Listing the steps being taken to bridge the divide between formal and distance education, Bist said, “according to the agreement these boards will share their resources with us and will grant equivalence to our subjects and course material”. Officials are hopeful that allowing the sharing of credits will prove to be an impetus to popularise distance education. “For instance if a CBSE student fails in two subjects out of the total five, we will allow him to take the examination in the remaining three without having to repeat the other two. At the end of the successful completion of all five subjects, the student will be given a certification from both the boards,” explained Bist. “We want the others boards to reciprocate this arrangement, but as of now we are yet to firm up things,” he added. Referring to the equivalence clause, he said, “we publish and create our own study material, which is sometimes considered inferior by the other boards, we have now agreed that our course material and the subjects will be treated at par with the formal system”. Through the sharing of resources with the boards, NIOS hopes to strengthen their outreach programme. “There are at present six crore out of school children, NIOS aspires to reach out to a larger section of students and to be able to do that we need the support of these education boards in their respective states,” pointed out Mr Bist. Lamenting that despite being the forerunners in the area of examination reforms, the NIOS is still considered an inferior system of education, Mr Bist said, “even the NCF (National Curriculum Framework) has acknowledged that NIOS with its flexibility of time and place is more humane way of certification.”
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Realty rates rising in GDA colonies
Ghaziabad, October 21 The saturation in Gurgaon has helped shift the influx of realtors and buyers to this west UP district. Thanks to these recent developments, a commercial plot in Indirapuram was auctioned at an unprecedented rate of nearly Rs 72,000 per square metre, which was more than double the rate of Rs 34,000 per square metre prevalent about two months ago on which a commercial plot was auctioned in Kaushambi. Of three other plots auctioned along the highest bid, the final bid for the one that went cheapest was Rs 43,100 per square meter, which is still higher than the last highest bid at Kaushambi. According to GDA Vice-Chairman D.P. Singh, the spurt in the city’s property rates due to modern development schemes will further push up the values of land in the city. These include about a dozen more flyovers likely to come up in about two or three years, an expressway from the Meerut Road triple-crossing to Pratap Vihar and the broadening of the road from Maharajpur to Dabur to 10 lanes. The flyovers to be taken up first are those at ALT Centre, and the Chowdhary More Triple Crossing in Ghaziabad city. A Swarna Jayanti Park is coming up in Indirapuram, on the lines of Delhi’s India Habitat Centre, to be built on 16 acres. Underpasses are also to come up at Pratap Vihar and Hindon. With all this likely to take shape soon and two flyovers already complete, Mr D.P. Singh said, “An uptrend in the city’s land prices was to be expected.” Earlier, in GDAs land auction last month, plot number ‘C’ of 321.49 square metres, in Abhay Khand 3, went at the rate of Rs 71,600 per square metre setting up a record of sorts in the history of Ghaziabad and GDA.
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Cracks in Secretariat building declared
New Delhi, October 21 The PWD Superintendent Engineer, Mr Mohan Joshi, who was the project manager of the Players’ Building, said that the seismological advisor to the Union Government and National Institute of Disaster Management Fellow, Mr A. S. Arya, and a building expert from IIT Delhi examined the cracks yesterday and said that they were all hairline ones and in no way threatened the Secretariat building. These cracks were not structural but usual minor plaster or thermal ones that could be repaired during routine maintenance works, he said. Most of the cracks were found to be old while some of them could have come to surface because of the quake, he added. Cracks become dangerous when they are more than 1/8 of an inch or 1/16 of an inch depending on the place they are found, or if they are diagonal or cross shaped, Mr Joshi said. In fact all buildings in North India that have experienced quakes measuring 4 or more on the Richter Scale should be checked for cracks and accordingly repaired and strengthened, he suggested. The Players’ Building, which houses the secretariat, was constructed on Yamuna river’s alluvial soil in 1980 for sportspersons during the 1982 Asiad in the Capital. However, it remained unoccupied for 20 years before the Delhi Government shifted into it in 2001. This also happens to be one of the five important buildings that were in the process of being retrofitted to withstand tremors as part of a pilot project in cooperation with US Government.
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Lawyers don’t fall under CP Act: State Consumer Commission
New Delhi, October 21 “Engagements of a lawyer arises out of a contract and a vakalatnama is signed by the parties and it does not mean that it casts statutory obligations under the Act upon an advocate to perform certain functions by way of service,” observed the commission comprising president Justice J D
Kapoor and member Mahesh Chandra. Elaborating further, Justice Kapoor said, “if the services rendered by a lawyer are brought within the services contemplated by the Consumer Protection Act, then every client will file a complaint by taking a plea that his counsel had assured success and since he lost the case, he is guilty of
deficiency in service”. The order came on an appeal filed by Anisur Rehman wherein he sought compensation against his advocate Sagheer Ahmed alleging that his counsel failed to appear in one of his case even after taking the fees in advance. Dismissing the appeal, the
Commission distinguished lawyers from the doctors and said “legal profession is such a profession which is quite different from medical profession and it involves a lot of arguments and counter arguments and it is not like operating a person with scissors and knife or admitting a person who may suffer from illness”. The commission felt that there are different forums like Bar Council of India and Bar Associations for initiating action against a lawyer and a civil suit can also be filed.
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Frivolous PILs a nuisance: Chief Justice
New Delhi, October 21 “PILs have become a nuisance. Ninety five per cent of PILs are frivolous. We are not able to discharge our normal judicial function due to this kind of litigation,” a Division Bench headed by Chief Justice Markandeya observed dismissing a PIL filed by People for Social Reforms seeking ban on import of poultry products. “It is disturbing the delicate balance of power between the three organs of the state devised under the Constitution. The time has come to check frivolous PILs,” the Chief Justice said. The petitioner had sought a complete ban on import of poultry products in India in view of the spread of bird flu in some countries. Demanding a blanket ban on the import of poultry products in India, the NGO had challenged a government notification which banned such import only from the countries affected by the avian flu.
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Lathicharge as labourer’s death sparks agitation
Noida, October 21 The agitators were demanding compensation for the victim’s family. After lathicharge, police sent the body for autopsy. The woman’s mother lodged an FIR against the tractor driver. Police said Pushpa Devi of Pyali village had come for cutting the grass on Thursday morning as usual and was returning at 4 pm in a tractor trolley packed with other labourers. Driver Naresh was driving the vehicle very fast. Pushpa Devi fell down from the trolley suddenly and its rear wheels crushed her to death on the spot. Hundreds of villagers rushed to the spot on hearing the news of her death. They placed her body at the NTPC Colony gate and blocked the entry. Dadri Dy DM Ghanshyam Singh CO police, Treveni Singh tried to pacify the protestors who kept demanding compensation for Pushpa Devi’s death.
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HC orders action against MCD Licensing Inspector
New Delhi, October 21 Hearing separate applications filed by two kiosk owners near Uphaar Cinema in Green Park Extension area of South Delhi, Jaichand instructed MCD counsel Vinay Sabharwal that the kiosks were not obstructing the vehicular or pedestrian traffic and the latter accordingly made his submission. However, when the Bench sought to know the name of the official, Jaichand blatantly denied having given any such instruction to Sabharwal. The court took a serious view of the matter observing that it was on the conduct of these officials that the execution of directions of the court and the MCD depended. Later, Jaichand apologised to the court for his conduct but the Bench did not change the order. The court also dismissed the two applications in view of the fact that the applicants had gone to the Supreme Court which dismissed their SLP against the High Court order. Earlier, the Bench had directed the MCD and city police to remove all squatters — licensed or unlicensed — from Green Park Extension area of South Delhi. The court said only PCOs and taxi stands could be allowed to operate on footpaths and not others.
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HC stays allotment of 37 plots in Greater Noida
Greater Noida, October 21 The court has also ordered the authority to file an affidavit in the matter and order an inquiry in the said allotment. The two-member bench of Justice Sushil Harkoti and Justice Sanjay Mehra has pronounced this decision in the case filed by Sunita Rani and others through their advocate Amit Khemka. The court has asked the Greater Noida authority the basis of cancelling these plots. Greater Noida authority had come up with an ambitious residential scheme of 376 plots last year and a draw for these plots was held on January 17 and 18 this year. During the draw for 38 plots, a man was caught red-handed with a fake chit. After this GNIDA had cancelled the 37 plots and held a redraw on January 18. These 37 applicants had gone to the court. On October 5, GNIDA Chairman Rakesh Bahadur had cancelled the allotment of 37 plots. The successful allottees had again taken the matter to court. The High Court had ordered Greater Noida authority not to issue allotment letters by October 25 to all applicants who had been successful on January 17 and 18. The court had also asked the authority to make the video recording of draw held on January 18 for 37 plots.
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Kanshi Ram supporters seek Kalam’s intervention
New Delhi, October 21 In a memorandum to the President, Mr Heera Lal
Jawaddi, general secretary of the Punjab unit of the Sangarsh Committee, alleged that BSP leader Mayawati had kept Mr Kanshi Ram “under confinement on the pretext of his being ill” and supporters of the BSP founder were not being allowed to meet
him. — TNS
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‘Public Private Partnership must for Haryana welfare’
Gurgaon, October 21 According to the spokesperson of the CII here today, Mr Arora mentioned that a Kundli-Manesar-Pawal expressway, setting up of three model townships, power projects in Yamuna Nagar, Faridabad and Hissar, Special Economic Zones (SEZs), opening up of transport hubs and a petrochemical hub in Panipat, were some of the initiatives lined up by the government of Haryana. Speaking on the issues of conveyance deed and fire safety, he clarified that a special drive would be launched to clear the pending cases of conveyance deed. He mentioned that the contract of fire station in Udyog Vihar has been given to the National Fire Engineering Institute, Nagpur. He also informed that the “State Management Procedure” adopted recently by the state is encouraging entrepreneurship and preventing speculation of activities. In his address, Mr Jayant Davar, Chairman, CII Haryana State Council, said it was encouraging to note that Haryana would soon come with its first labour policy. He also raised some points hampering the growth of the industry, which included the issues of external development charges (EDC), execution of conveyance deed, maintenance charges, leasing fees, etc.
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BSES workers dismissed for extortion
New Delhi, October 21 The BSES vigilance team apprehended two individuals, identified as Ravi Kumar and Naresh Kumar, employees of M/s Flexione, in Shakarpur with certain official documents. During interrogation, they confessed their involvement in the extortion racket. The individuals confessed to threatening consumers to pay around Rs 400-500 in exchange for favorable reports in cases relating to temporary/permanent disconnection.
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Man acquitted of rape after girl sides with him
New Delhi, October 21 Additional Session Judge Narottam Kaushal dismissed charges of kidnapping and rape against Sumeet holding that “the alleged victim did not support the prosecution case and stated that she had gone of her own free will and was not enticed by him”. “Neither did she depose that the accused had misbehaved or misconducted with her,” the court further observed. The prosecution examined 12 witnesses. However, even the medical evidence was found insufficient to convict Sumeet. The girl’s mother, who worked as a domestic help in Pushp Vihar, South Delhi, reported to the police that her daughter was missing on September 29, 2004.
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