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Mullaperiyar row
Protests continue unabated in TN district bordering Kerala
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Kolkata fire: 2 more AMRI officials held
Govt embarrassed in Rajya Sabha
UP gets time till April for civic body poll
Suspended Gujarat IAS officer gets bail
Apex court allows endosulfan export to exhaust stocks
SC refuses to interfere with Kerala ex-minister’s release
HC relief to Naidu in DA case
Mumbai’s ‘dabbawalas’
now eye ballot boxes
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TN, Kerala adding fuel to fire, says apex court
Asks both states to show restraint, sanity & sensitiveness
New Delhi, December 13 A five-judge Constitution Bench, headed by Justice DK Jain, asked Tamil Nadu to ensure that the water level in the dam does not exceed 136 feet but declined to entertain Kerala's plea for reducing the level to 120 feet. It also asked the Centre to clarify its position on Tamil Nadu's plea for deployment of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) to protect the dam from possible vandalism. "Both the parties instead of dousing the fire are adding fuel to it. There has to be sanity and sensitiveness," the Bench observed, while referring to the hostile atmosphere prevailing in the two states on the issue of the century-old dam. The Tamil Nadu Government, on December 1, had moved the apex court accusing the Kerala Government of whipping up a "fear psychosis" on the Mullaperiyar row and sought the court's direction to restrain the state from making any controversial statement on the issue. — PTI
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Protests continue unabated in TN district bordering Kerala
Theni (TN), December 13 For the second straight day, the police had to lathicharge hundreds of demonstrators marching towards Kerala when they assembled at the border town of Gudalur. The situation on the Kerala side, however, remained calm. In Theni district, bus traffic came to a stand still, shops and business establishments and educational institutions in various places remained closed while the agitation protesting Kerala's demand for a new dam across Mullaperiyar also hit farm work in cardamom estates on both sides of the border. Road traffic between the two states remained affected at Bodi Mettu and Cumbum Mettu in Tamil Nadu and Kumily in Kerala, forcing devotees proceeding to the famous hill shrine of Lord Ayyappa to go on foot, officials said. The police said bus services were stopped in the district after eight buses were damaged in stone pelting. A bakery was set on fire in Andipatti area. All educational institutes in the district have been closed. PM Manmohan Singh today told Congress leaders from Tamil Nadu that he was "very much worried" over incidents of violence in border areas in the state. "The PM told us that he wanted officials of both states to meet first. He also noted that Tamil Nadu boycotted last week's meeting and assured us that further steps would be taken," Virudhunagar MP Manicka Tagore said. — PTI
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Kolkata fire: 2 more AMRI officials held
Kolkata, December 13 "Today, we have arrested S Upadhyay, senior vice-president and the hospital's safety committee chairman and Sanjib Pal, Administrative Officer of the hospital," Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Damayanti Sen said. The duo has been charged with not informing the fire brigade about the fire in time despite being present on the hospital premises. With the detention of Upadhyay and Pal, nine members of the AMRI management have been arrested, including owner SK Todi and his son Ravi Todi. Meanwhile, AMRI Hospital employees attempted to heckle and attack Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee when she made a surprise visit to the institute today to protest her decision to shut down the hospital after Friday’s fire that killed 91 persons. The Chief Minister alleged that the protest was masterminded and orchestrated by the hospital authorities. The police had to lathicharge the protesting employees to control them. Police Commissioner RK Panchnanda also suspended a senior police man on duty at the hospital during the demonstration.
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10 years of Parliament attack
New Delhi, December 13 Kamlesh was posted near a screening machine at Gate Number 12 when an Ambassador car (DL 3C J 1527) drove up to the gate on the Vijay Chowk side. Kamlesh, who had joined the CRPF in 1994, walked up to the car and immediately realised something was amiss. She immediately ran back to shut the iron gates. The terrorists opened fire and 11 of those bullets pierced Kamlesh’s stomach. The mother of two girls was killed on the spot. The attack had commenced. Kamlesh’s alertness prevented a human bomb among the terrorists from blowing up. Some 43 days after the attack, Kamlesh was posthumously awarded the nation's highest peacetime award, the Ashok Chakra. Today, the families of security personnel, including Kamlesh’s daughter, demanded that attack convict Afzal Guru be hanged soon. Bipin Adana, 23, the son of Delhi Police head constable Vijendra Singh, who was killed in the attack, said: “Till the time Guru is hanged, there will be no honour for martyrs of the attack.”
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Govt embarrassed in Rajya Sabha
New Delhi, December 13 As soon as Sibal got up to introduce the legislation, several Opposition members were on their feet, saying he could not place it in the House. “The minister can’t place this bill on account of conflict of interest,’’ Shivanand Tiwari of the JD (U) said. Tiwari also claimed that the bill had ramifications for the legal firm run by the minister’s son in which, he said, Sibal has some 80 per cent stakes. He cited rule number 294 of Parliament’s Ethics Committee to substantiate his point. Mysoora Reddy of the Telugu Desam and Venkaiah Naidu and Prakash Javadekar of the BJP also raised objections. The members contended that the minister had pecuniary interest in the matter. Deputy Chairman K Rehman Khan pleaded with the members to at least allow Sibal to make a clarification, but they refused to do so. Parliamentary Affairs Minister P K Bansal then got up to refute the charge against his Cabinet colleague. His (Sibal's) son is independent as a lawyer. This is not in good taste. This is rather unparliamentary.’’ As the din continued, the Chair was forced to adjourn the House for 15 minutes. When the House reassembled, the Opposition again refused to budge, saying it would not allow Sibal to place the legislation. Subsequently, the House was adjourned for the day. The bill seeks to amend the Copyright Act, 1957 to fine-tune it with relevant international treaties and to introduce a system of statutory licensing to protect the owners of literary or musical works.
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India has capacity to overcome slowdown: Pranab
New Delhi, December 13 Pranab said the country’s economy had the capacity and resilience to overcome the crisis, which was primarily due to eurozone crisis from which India had no way of remaining unaffected. However, also reminding Opposition of its responsibilities during such times, he said political parties should also demonstrate that Parliament and other institutions function so that investors’ confidence returns in the economy. Expressing disappointment over frequent disruptions in Parliament, Pranab said for the economy to recover it had to be demonstrated that Parliament and other institutions can function without disturbance. “It is wrong to say that there is no decision making ability in the government. We have been taking many crucial decisions and initiated programmes. Indian electorate has given us some increased mandate but a limited one. Politicians are sometimes mass criticised but we can not afford to have the luxury to go for elections in 12 months. Let us not institutionalise instability,” he said, replying to a discussion on the Appropriation Bill in the Rajya Sabha. Hitting back at Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley, Pranab reminded him how coalition governments functioned before the Congress-led UPA came to power around 2004. “Actions are being taken... Sometimes there may be some set backs... Running coalition is not an easy job, the FM said as he went on tell Jaitley of problems BJP faced while running the NDA formation. “There was not only one NDA government. It lost by one vote not because of Opposition but because one of the allies had pulled out,” Mukherjee said. Pranab’s remarks come a day after government data revealed negative industrial production for October, minus 5.1 per cent as against 1.9 per cent in September, while the rupee crossed all time low of Rs 53 to a dollar just a couple of days after opposition over FDI in retail forced the Congress-led UPA to put the decision on hold. He said concerns about the weak index of industrial production (IIP) data were genuine. “We could bounce back in the last recessions. We have the resilience, capacity, we have to enlist the capacity and ensure that all potential forces of production, and our enterprising skill are put in place,” he assured. Countering the perception that there was a paralysis in decision making process, he said the government had taken a number of decisions which include national manufacturing policy, incentives to small industries and package to debt-ridden handloom weavers. As many as 73,000 villages will be brought into banking network with the help of technology by March 31, he added.
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UP gets time till April for civic body poll
New Delhi, December 13 A three-member Bench headed by Justice Altamas Kabir passed an order setting the time schedule for the election to the urban local bodies — municipalities and municipal corporations —after hearing the state government’s plea. Under the SC schedule, the state government has been directed to complete the caste-wise, ward-wise delimitation exercise by February 11, 2012. The state election commission would have to issue the notification for the election within a week thereafter. The polling is supposed to be held 45 days after the notification is issued. So, in this case, the voting is possible only in April. The Bench, which included Justices SS Nijjar and J Chelameswar, passed the order on a petition filed by the BSP government, challenging the December 5 order of the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court. The HC had directed the state to facilitate the notification within ten days. Solicitor General Rohinton Nariman, appearing for UP, said the state was not in a position to comply with the HC order as the delimitation exercise itself would take 45 days. The local body elections were to have been completed last month, when the five-year term of the existing bodies expired. But the state government was trying to avoid it before the Assembly poll as the BSP, which did not have a strong base in urban areas, feared that the results would have a bearing on the contest for power at the state-level. Precisely for this reason, the state government had even changed the rules to prevent the contest in the local body polls on party symbols. This was, however, quashed by the HC in May, prompting the state to challenge this also in the Supreme Court.
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Suspended Gujarat IAS officer gets bail
New Delhi, December 13 A Bench comprising Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Prasad Desai ordered the release of Sharma, who is in judicial custody since January 6 this year for his alleged involvement in a land scam in the earthquake-hit Bhuj city, after securing a bond for Rs 5 lakh and two sureties of the like amount. Senior counsel Ranjit Kumar, arguing for the state government, pleaded for expunging the allegations against Modi in Sharma’s bail petitions as the Chief Minister was not a party to the case. The Bench refused to remove the allegations, but passed an order clarifying that it was not taking cognizance of these remarks and as such would stay away from making any comment on them. Sharma was Collector of Bhuj district from May 2003 to June 2006. The state government has filed five FIRs since 2008. He alleged that he had been framed in these cases as his younger brother, Kuldip Sharma, the senior-most IPS officer from the state cadre, had exposed the alleged role of Modi in the 2002 communal riots. Also, Modi apprehended that the arrested IAS officer was in possession of a video on the CM’s personal life and making it public would damage his reputation. The Bench granted bail to Sharma in two of the cases after the suspended IAS officer provided an undertaking to the court that he would make himself available for police investigations and the trial. The apex court also placed a number of conditions on Sharma, asking him to report to the Deputy Superintendent of Police of the crime investigation department (CID) at Gandhinagar every Monday. If he traveled to Delhi for some reason, he should report to the Resident Commissioner at Gujarat Bhavan. His passport would be returned to him only after the disposal of all the five cases. The Bench allowed the state government to alert all the ports and airports to prevent Sharma from fleeing the country, but rejected the state’s plea for alerting the Interpol as well. Sharma was not an international criminal for alerting the Interpol, the court clarified.
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Apex court allows endosulfan export to exhaust stocks
New Delhi, December 13 In a verdict, a three-Judge Bench headed by Chief Justice SH Kapadia asked the state-owned Hindustan Insecticide Limited to handle exports. At the last hearing, the Bench had made it clear that it would not like the “poison” to remain in the country. If some countries were willing to import the insecticide, it was for them to bother about the deadly side effects of the pesticide, the court had clarified. On May 13, the SC had clamped a total ban on the manufacture, sale and use of endosulfan on a PIL filed by the CPM’s youth wing, the Democratic Youth Federation of India, alleging that the insecticide had crippled several people in Kerala where it was used on large-scale. Several developed countries have already banned the use of endosulfan after studies confirmed its lethal effects on people. Following the sudden SC ban, the manufacturers were left with huge unsold stock of the pesticide and were not even in a position to discard it just like other products in view of the damage it would cause to the environment. The court found that export was the only solution for diluting the stocks.
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SC refuses to interfere with Kerala ex-minister’s release
New Delhi, December 13 While the SC had endorsed the one-year sentence on March 9 this year, rejecting Pillai’s review petition, the Congress-led UDF government in the state let him out on November 1 when the state celebrated its Foundation Day. The state granted him remission of sentence along with 2,068 prisoners to mark the day. Achuthanandan’s counsel, senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, contended that even when Pillai was in jail, he was allowed to keep a cell phone and most of the time he was on parole, undergoing treatment at a five-star hospital. Also, the state government should not be allowed to minimise the effect of the sentence awarded by the apex court, he said. A Bench comprising Justices P Sathasivam and BS Chauhan, however, maintained that the state governments had the power under Article 161 to grant remission. Once the SC rendered its judgment, it was not possible for it to monitor the implementation. The other constitutional authorities were expected to implement the verdicts, it reasoned.
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Hyderabad, December 13 A division bench comprising justices G Rohini and Asutosh Mohanto kept in abeyance the order earlier passed by the previous division bench's order to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the allegations levelled by Pulivendula MLA Y S Vijayamma, the widow of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, against Naidu and others for amassing allegedly disproportionate assets. The court, which proposed to hear all the
parties uninterruptedly, posted the matter for further hearing tomorrow. Justice Rohini said voluminous material has been placed by both the parties in the writ petition and all of them required to be
heard extensively. — PTI
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Sukhoi-30 crashes near Pune, pilots eject safely "Both the pilots flying the aircraft ejected in time and landed safely. They have been evacuated and taken to the base for medical attention," IAF spokesperson Wing Commander Gerard Galway said. The aircraft, which was on a routine mission, had taken off from Lohegaon airbase at 1245 hours. It crashed at 1310 hours, he said. "A Court of Inquiry (CoI) has been ordered to ascertain the cause of the crash and an IAF team has been rushed to the site of the wreckage," he said in New Delhi. He said the aircraft lost contact with the base after apparently developing a technical problem, but the pilots managed to eject out safely in time. No casualty was reported on the ground, he said. Pune Collector Vikas Deshmukh said the plane caught fire after crashing at an open forest department land. Fire tenders from the vicinity had been rushed to the spot, he said. This is the third crash of the Russian-origin Su-30 fighter planes since they were inducted into the IAF in 1997. Today's crash is the eighth mishap involving IAF fighter aircraft this year. Seven MiG series aircraft had crashed earlier this year. Before the SU-30 accident, a MiG-21 Bison had crashed in Sirsa in Haryana on December 2. During last three years, the IAF has lost 30 fighter aircraft and 10 helicopters in various crashes. As many as 26 defence personnel, including 13 pilots, have lost their lives in these crashes along with six civilians on the ground. The first crash involving a Sukhoi-30 MKI aircraft took place near Jaisalmer district in Rajasthan in 2009, 12 years after its induction in the IAF. That fighter aircraft, which was flown by Wing Commanders S V Munje and P S Narah, was returning to its base in Pune after completing a mission in Pokhran Firing Range near Jaisalmer. While bailing out of the crashing aircraft, the parachute of Munje functioned properly but that of Narah failed to open, killing him on the spot. The second accident involving air-superiority SU-30 fighter aircraft took place in December 2009 near Indian Army's Chandan firing range in Jaisalmer district, south-west of the Pokhran range. The plane was on a routine training sortie when it lost contact with the base. No one was hurt in this accident as both the pilots managed to eject safely.
— PTI
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Mumbai’s ‘dabbawalas’ now eye ballot boxes
Representatives of the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers' Association, as the body is called, met senior leaders of the Shiv Sena recently and the party has promised to field one candidate from among the 'dabbawalas' in the forthcoming civic elections. "We met senior leaders of the Shiv Sena and they have told us that one candidate from our group will be fielded in the Mumbai municipal elections," said Raghunath Medge, president of the association. According to Medge, the tiffin suppliers have decided to enter the electoral fray after successive civic administrations refused to accede to their basic demands, says their leader. "For years we have been demanding that the municipality allow us place outside railway stations to park our bicycles and sort tiffin boxes before onward despatch," says Medge. The tiffin suppliers need to sort the lunch boxes twice a day - in the morning when these are sent to offices in South Mumbai and in the evening on the return trip to residences of office-goers.
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SP workers try to block Rahul’s convoy; 15 detained Aligarh, December 13 “Around 50 to 60 members of SP attempted to block cavalcade of Rahul Gandhi while he was proceeding towards Badaun after landing at Dhanipur airport," Senior Superintendent of Police Satyendra Veer Singh said. He said that about 15 SP activists were detained as they tried to breach the security cordon of Gandhi, who is an SPG protectee. The Congress leader is scheduled to address a public meeting in Gunnaur assembly segment in Bhimnagar district. Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party district president Ashok Yadav said the youths, who attempted to block the cavalcade of Gandhi, had staged the demonstration on their own.
— PTI
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Urging for "sanity and sensitiveness", the Supreme Court today asked both Tamil Nadu and Kerala to maintain restraint on their statements on the Mullaperiyar dam
row.
10 years of
Parliament attack
Pune, December 13
Mumbai, December 13