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Radioactive leak: 6 DU profs chargesheeted
Hospital seeks Rs
50,000 to accept nurse’s resignation; HC issues notice
MCD flays CM’s remark on rural roads
Ramlila Maidan to get a facelift
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DUSU polls: Freebies to woo voters
DTU gets new students’ union
Delhi to have climate institute
Kathak queen Sitara Devi still youthful at 91
Hot Friday in Delhi, rains likely today
Delhi roads full of ‘live bombs’: Court
3 held for selling fake cosmetics
Shobhit murder case: Reward money doubled
Minor abducted, gangraped
4-yr term for mowing down three
3 held for kidnapping, torturing girl
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Radioactive leak: 6 DU profs chargesheeted
New Delhi, September 2 The chargesheet, filed before Metropolitan Magistrate Lovleen, covers Delhi University teachers, including the then Head of Chemistry Department, VS Parmar, and the then Dean of Sciences, Roop Lal. Besides them, Rakesh Kumar, Ramesh Chandra Rastogi, Ashok Prasad and Rita Kakkar have also been chargesheeted under various penal provisions dealing with causing death by rash and negligent acts and causing grievous hurt. The court is likely to take cognisance of the probe report on September 21. The irradiator was sold in the scrap market in violation of the rules of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) which says any chemical product emitting radiations cannot be auctioned and disposed of without following mandatory regulations, the chargesheet said. One person died and seven people were critically injured in April last year after they were exposed to radiation when they cut open a Cobalt-60 irradiator at Mayapuri scrap market here. The irradiator was traced to the university’s chemistry department. The police said two committees, comprising university professors, were set up before the irradiator was decided to be auctioned. The first committee was set up to find out which material was of no use to the university and can be sold and the second committee was formed to auction the waste products, the chargesheet said. The six accused professors were part of those committees and had recommended the auctioning, it said. — PTI
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Hospital seeks Rs 50,000 to accept nurse’s resignation; HC issues notice
New Delhi, September 2 Justice S. Muralidhar issued notice to the Delhi government's ministry of health and family welfare and the nurse's employer, Max Super Specialty Hospital, seeking their response by December 5. Petitioner Sneha Susan Ninan, 27, a Keralite, was suffering from severe backache. Doctors had advised her complete bed rest, said Ninan's counsel Jose Abraham. "Ninan approached her employer to tender her resignation letter to go back to her home town for treatment. But the hospital asked for Rs 50,000 for accepting her resignation and releasing her original certificates. The petitioner was not in a position to pay this money to the respondent hospital," Abraham said. It is a usual practice of private hospitals in Delhi, including Max, to keep the original certificates and compel nurses to work for years, "which is illegal and against the principles of the Constitution of India," the petition said. "The ministry concerned cannot run away from its responsibility to ensure the welfare of the nurses working in various hospitals," said Abraham. Ninan had joined the hospital on March 5 and her request was refused on July 22. The court had, in a similar petition in July, asked the Delhi government to consider framing guidelines for all private hospitals, restraining them from retaining the original certificates of the nurses. -- IANS
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MCD flays CM’s remark on rural roads
New Delhi, September 2 Standing Committee chairman Yogender Chandolia and the Leader of the House Subhash Arya said that the Chief Minister has levelled baseless allegations against the MCD, ignoring the basic facts. They said that the condition of rural roads is not satisfactory as the civic agency has not been receiving proper funds from the government. "If the roads in rural areas are in bad shape, the Delhi government is solely responsible for that. We are not given funds to carry out developmental works in these areas. The Delhi government has formed Rural Development Board, usurping the rights of the MCD. The MCD's Rural Committee has been made ineffective," said Arya. The BJP leaders said that the total length of roads in Delhi is 30,923 km, of which the MCD looks after 88 per cent--27,139 km length of roads. It gets Rs 75 crore for carrying out their maintenance, said the leaders. "On the other hand, PWD of the Delhi government controls only 2,350 kms of roads, but it is provided a fund of Rs 206 crore. As per the audit report, the maintenance of PWD roads per km is approximately 15 to 43 times more," said Arya. "As per the provisions of DMC Act, it is MCD's discretionary function to carry out development works in rural areas. But, the Delhi government is providing funds to Rural Development Board instead of MCD for developing these areas," said Chandolia. About 42 wards of the MCD out of a total of 272 wards fall under rural areas and as per the provisions of the DMC Act, the MCD carries out development works in these areas. The MCD has provided Rs 50 lakh to every ward in rural areas of the city.
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Ramlila Maidan to get a facelift
New Delhi, September 2 Jagdish
Mamgain, chairman of the MCD works committee, has asked the commissioner, KS
Mehra, to prepare a plan for the improvement and beautification of Ramlila
Maidan, which comes under the civic agency. He said during Hazare's protest, the MCD charged Rs 5,000 per day as rent for the ground and a one-time payment of Rs 1,000 as sanitation charge. "Against Rs 1,000, the MCD has to arrange hundreds of employees and spend lakhs of rupees on maintenance," he said, asking the commissioner to prepare a redevelopment plan and a management system for Ramlila Maidan immediately. He felt the need for the construction of drains, public convenience and boundary walls at the
maidan. -- PTI |
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DUSU polls: Freebies to woo voters
New Delhi, September 2
From classroom campaigning to publicity on social networking websites, the parties are leaving no stone unturned to maximise visibility of their candidates. From luring students into expensive gifts to defaming the candidates of the other parties, the election drama at the university is at its peak. While the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has been actively visible in the university in the light of the anti-corruption movement over the past one month, the NSUI has been laying low this time around. However, with the campaigning beginning today, contenders of both of the parties are putting in all their efforts. Both the ABVP and the NSUI called a press meeting today and introduced all its candidates for the student union. Many candidates are not even shying away from distributing freebies to students. "We have been seeing political groups coming in all day at our college. While some offer movie tickets. Others offer cosmetics. That's their way of campaigning. It's rare that one talks about their agenda in detail," said a student of Dayal Singh College. While girls are being wooed by cosmetics, crates of liquor have been appearing in abundance at boys' hostels now. However, the parties are smart enough not to campaigning like this openly. They tie up with touts in respective colleges who do the campaigning for them. Going by the code of conduct of the DU elections, expenses should not exceed Rs 5,000 per candidate. Requesting anonymity, some former office-bearers of the DUSU said even by reserved estimates, parties like NSUI and ABVP were spending anywhere between Rs 4 and Rs 6 lakh on campaigning. However, these expenses were made in a way that they were indirect and could not be accounted to a particular party. What's more is that certain rumors have been doing the rounds in DU. Candidates are involved in mud-slinging. Even today member of the NSUI said an FIR being lodged against an ABVP candidate. However, when asked for confirmation from the ABVP, the state secretary said, "Anyone can file an FIR. It's not such a big deal. The FIR is against the joint secretary candidate Deepak Bansal. However, there is no chargesheet. He isn't been proven guilty of anything yet. There is no question of losing his nomination as of now," said Rohit Chahal, party state secretary. Even yesterday, a candidate of the NSUI filed a "verbal" complaint against the party members forcing her to withdraw her candidature. By the end of the day, she finally did, but refused to comment on the matter.
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DTU gets new students’ union
New Delhi, September 2 Professor PR Chadha, the election officer at DTU, said, "We had completely peaceful elections today for the students' association and 62% votes were polled for the election of office-bearers. Earlier, the students of each class of UG and PG had unanimously elected their representatives. The system of election here is a little different from that of other universities. The office-bearers were elected by the electoral college comprising 105 class representatives from various disciplines at UG and PG levels, including the BTech (Evening) and MBA programme of the university." After being elected president, Chaman Singh Charnawat said, "The students have shown their faith in me and I will do my utmost to represent their problems to the administration. I will be taking up a number of student-related issues. We need better hostels, classrooms and laboratories. I will also be working with the students to build awareness about corruption." Vice-chancellor PB Sharma said, "Students' association elections reflect the general health of the university. We have had a peaceful ballot here and students have maintained complete discipline in both their campaigning and the elections." Rashmi Mishra, a student, said, "We are thrilled to have a students' union at DTU. Both the elections for the representatives and office-bearers went off smoothly."
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Delhi to have climate institute
New Delhi, September 2 Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit told the legislative assembly yesterday that the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Combating Climate Change will be set up. It will come up on the campus of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Integrated Rural Energy Planning and Development which is at presently underutilised. "The new institute will have a reputed faculty to impart training and chalk out a number of strategies to curb the effects of climate change which are being faced by the world," Dikshit added. Dikshit informed the House that the government was also looking for a technology to generate energy from waste. She said her government was taking concrete steps to curb air pollution and for that an air ambience fund had been created by imposing a fee of Rs 0.25 per litre of diesel sale in Delhi. An amount of Rs 30.56 crore was collected under the air ambience fund in the financial year 2009-10. -- IANS
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Kathak queen Sitara Devi still youthful at 91
New Delhi, September 2 Dressed in pink chiffon, glittering gold jewellery and shining vermillion 'bindi' on her gently wrinkled brow, Sitara Devi was forceful in the defence of purity of kathak. "Aab kathak hota hi kahan hain (there is no kathak now). No one dances the pure kathak. The dancers perform whatever they think is right in the name of kathak," Sitara Devi said here this evening at the ceremony at the India Habitat Centre. Her petite frame may have been confined to a wheelchair but the spirit still remains fiery. "Most people don't know kathak. They dance for easy livelihoods," the danseuse said. "I am happy. It feels great to meet so many people. You have showered respect, praise and goodwill on me. A committed dancer is feted only when she devotes her life to dance and achieves fame. 'Tab bahut tarif hoti hain' (Then you get a lot of praise)," Sitara Devi told IANS. However, she has no message for youngsters. "Young dancers, I really don't know. What can you wish for them," she said, a wee wistful. Born in 1920 in Kolkata, Sitara Devi draws from the themes, poetry and choreography collected by her father in her choreographies. She also integrates from the environment around her - whether it is a town or a village. The characters around her come live in her dance. "By training, I am just a 'kathakar' of Krishna-leela (tales of Krishna)," the danseuse said. Kathak, which literally means 'katha', was a narrative drama which evolved out of the Krishna temples of Indian hinterland to scale the pinnacle of glory in the Muslim courts. Sitara Devi's roots are inextricably woven to the tradition of 'kathakars', the early Kathak dancers. She was born as Dhannolakshmi to a family of Brahmin 'kathakar' Sukhdev Maharaj. She chose school and dance over an early wedding, as was the norm of the 1920s. Her father, a Vaishnavite Brahmin scholar and kathak exponent, sent her to a local school where young Dhanno impressed her teachers and the local media with her performance in a dance drama, "Savitri Satyavan". When her father learnt of it, he re-christened her as Sitara or the star and placed her under the care of her older sister for kathak training. By the time Sitara Devi turned 11, the family moved to Mumbai, where she impressed Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore with a three-hour solo recital. Tagore offered her a "shawl and Rs 50" which Sitara Devi refused and sought his blessings instead to become a great dancer. Over the next six decades, she became a kathak legend and was a pioneering force in bringing the genre to Bollywood. Sitara Devi married director K. Asif of "Mughal-e-Azam" fame and then Pratap Barot. According to Sangeet Natak Akademi vice-chairperson Shanta Sarabjit Singh, "Sitara Devi is a vital force who stood for zest and vigour in Indian dance." "I recommended her name for the Legend of India honour and I am glad they accepted it," Singh said. Reminiscing his first brush with Sitara Devi, ICCR director-general Suresh Goel said: "I met her for the first time at a concert at Kamani theatre in 1979 where she was dancing a duet with Yamini Krishnamurthy. She was down with flu but she remained on stage for hours. She was wonderful..." -- IANS
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Hot Friday in Delhi, rains likely today
New Delhi, September 2 The humidity levels wavered between a high of 84 and a low of 55 per cent, he added. The maximum and minimum temperatures on Saturday will hover between 35 degrees Celsius and 28 degrees Celsius, said the official. The city has so far received 392.7 mm of rainfall this monsoon, 27 per cent below average for the season. -- IANS |
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Delhi roads full of ‘live bombs’: Court
New Delhi, September 2 The court said rash and negligent driving, more particularly of commercial vehicles, had become a menace on Delhi roads and many precious and innocent lives were being lost day in and day out. "It appears that the vehicles are moving around on the Delhi roads like live bombs which may explode at any place, at any point of time, endangering other road users," Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat said while convicting the erring bus driver Parvesh Kumar. According to the prosecution, Haryana resident Kumar, while driving his RTV rashly on September 9, 2006, morning at Dwarka, had hit a cyclist who sustained grievous injuries and later died in the hospital. A police constable, who witnessed the incident, told the court during the trial of the case that it was green signal for cyclists at the traffic intersection and red signal for other vehicles, but Kumar jumped the traffic light and hit the victim from the opposite direction. Kumar approached the Sessions court challenging the trial court's order which had sentenced him to six months in jail and imposed a fine of Rs 2,500 on him. Kumar had sought his release on probation pleading that the accident was caused by some other car, which was ahead of his RTV, but its driver fled the spot after the accident. But rejecting his plea, the court said: "Traffic rules are being flouted with impunity by such irresponsible drivers who have turned Delhi roads into deadly spots. One way of curbing this menace is not to show any sympathy to persons like Kumar who drive their vehicle so rashly," ASJ Bhat said. "In view of the same, I am not inclined to release him on probation," he added.
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3 held for selling fake cosmetics
New Delhi, September 2 The police arrested Sandeep Talwar (32), Sonia Gulati (55) and Moti Lal (50) and seized counterfeit cosmetics worth more than Rs 20 lakh from their possession. On September 1, the police conducted a raid at Talwar's shop and seized cosmetics with trademarks of Revlon, Ponds and Dove. Talwar was arrested. Raid was also conducted at A-37, Vidya Vihar, Hastsal, Uttam Nagar, and arrested Gulati and Lal, who were involved in the manufacturing and packaging of cosmetics of Lakme Radiance Compact of the Hindustan Unilever Limited Company. "A huge quantity of empty packaging material with two dye machines with trademarks of Lakme and Dove for the manufacturing of counterfeit products has been seized from them," said a senior police official. |
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Shobhit murder case: Reward money doubled
New Delhi, September 2 A cash reward of Rs 50,000 was announced on May 23 to anyone providing leads to his assailants. Modi, a second year information technology student at Manav Rachna University in Faridabad and an alumnus of Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, was stabbed to death near Vasant Kunj's C-block here. The police has so far interrogated hundreds of people, including his friends and girlfriend. -- IANS |
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Minor abducted, gangraped
New Delhi, September 2 According to the police, the incident was reported two days after the assaulters allegedly forcefully picked up the girl while she was strolling near her house at Nawada. The men then raped her at a nearby under-construction building. He added that the terrified girl kept quiet for two days before telling her mother about the incident. One of the accused has been arrested. |
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4-yr term for mowing down three
New Delhi, September 2 The court also ordered the driver, Naveen Jain, a resident of Keshav Puram in north-west Delhi to pay a compensation of over Rs 4 lakh to victims' kin and convicted him on the charge of killing them unintentionally. "Convict (Jain) had driven his car in a dangerous manner in highly intoxicated condition. The loss of life cannot be compensated in any manner," Additional Sessions Judge Sanjay Kumar said while ordering Jain to compensate his victims who fell prey to his drunken driving on the night of May 27-28, 2009. "This is a fit case where compensation may be given to the dependents of the deceased and injured persons," the court said and asked Jain to pay Rs 1 lakh each to the kin of the three people who died in the accident, Rs 50,000 each to the two seriously injured persons and Rs 25,000 to one who sustained simple injuries. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 16,000 on him. According to the prosecution, the accident took place when Jain was driving his car in an inebriated condition and ran over a pavement at the Sabzi Mandi road in Kanhiya Nagar where several slum-dwellers were sleeping. It said Jain's speeding car jumped on to the pavement and after mowing down the three and injuring three others hit an iron pole before coming to a halt. The accident claimed the lives of three persons, Deepak and Chander Pal and a 12-year-old Guddu while the child's father Lala Ram and Harender received serious injuries and one Jitender sustained few injuries, the prosecution added. The court took into account the statement of Guddu's mother Sukh Devi who was witness to the incident. She deposed that due to the hot weather, she, along with her family members and other slum dwellers, was lying on the pavement that night, when a car came towards them and first hit her son Guddu, who died on the spot, and then ran over the other victims, including her husband, who was seriously injured. - PTI
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3 held for kidnapping, torturing girl
Noida, September 2 The girl, who had gone missing on April 30, had burn marks on her face and other parts of the body. Her tongue was also chopped off. She was locked in a room at Bhangel from where she managed to escape last night and reached Sector 10, but fell unconscious. The police has arrested three persons,
Sudhenshu, Rita and Poonam, in this case. - PTI |
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