The Bombay High Court directed Maharashtra government to probe the legality of a decision taken by the authorities to release water from Gangapur dam for ‘shahi snan’ (royal bath) at the Kumbh Mela in Nashik this year.
Giving the directions to the state’s Chief Secretary, a division bench of Justices A S Oka and V L Achiliya said the decision to release one TMC (thousand million cubic) water from the dam was contrary to a policy of the government which categorises its priority list as regards supply of water.
As per the policy, supply of water for drinking purposes comes first and supply for such ‘shahi snaan’ comes in the last at fourth category.
The bench was hearing a Public Interest Litigation filed by H M Desarda, a professor from Pune, seeking quashing of the state government’s decision to release one TMC water for every ‘shahi snaan’, saying the state was reeling under a drought-like situation.
The court was earlier told that for the royal bath on September 13, the government released two TMC water from the Gangapur dam.
The bench had then restrained the government from releasing the water from the Gangapur dam henceforth for the purpose of ‘shahi snan’. The court was today told that the water was still released for the last royal bath held on September 25.
The Bombay High Court asked the Central and Western Railway authorities to adopt crowd management techniques to ensure a smooth ride for suburban railway passengers, including elderly commuters.
“Consider introducing an ‘all standing’ boggie in suburban trains to accommodate the crowd… at least do it on a pilot project to check the results,” a bench of Justice Naresh Patil and Justice S B Shukhre said.
The court had taken suo moto cognisance of a letter written by a senior citizen, A B Thakkar, in 2009 and converted it into a PIL.
Thakkar contended that entering a jam-packed train during peak hours was a nightmarish experience for the elderly.
The bench also suggested the railways consider having double decker suburban trains to help crowd management during peak hours.
The Judges further asked the state government to consider appointing a private agency to carry out a survey to analyse the movement of passengers during peak and non-peak hours to come up with ways to improve crowd management.
The railways informed the court that around 38,000 senior citizens travel daily on suburban trains. The railways have, after court orders, reserved 14 seats in a compartment for the elderly.
Justice Patil also suggested to the railways to consider having space for senior citizens in ladies special trains as it is difficult for senior citizens to board the train otherwise.
The bench, however, going back on the issue of overcrowding, asked “during peak hours, can a senior citizen enter the compartment? If not, then how can he or she even be able to reach to his/her seat?”
The court gave the railways time till November 18 to respond to the suggestions made by the bench.
Denying allegations that clay particles were found in chikki (a sweet snack) being supplied to students of state-run schools, Maharashtra government told the Bombay High Court that a laboratory test of its sample did not reveal presence of any such inedible material.
“No clay particles were found in a sample sent to a reputed government lab in Ghaziabad,” state government counsel Srihari Aney said during the hearing of a petition which alleged that sub-standard chikkis were being supplied to students in government-run schools.
A bench of Justices V M Kanade and Anuja Prabhudessai was hearing a public interest litigation filed by Sandeep Ahire and others seeking an inquiry by a retired high court judge into the alleged Rs. 206-crore chikki scam for which Women and Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde had come under fire.
Meanwhile, the bench extended till November 17 its interim order restraining the state government from distributing chikki to school students following complaints over its quality.
The government counsel informed the court that at present there was no stock of chikki left for distribution to the students and also that the date of the seized chikki stock had expired, hence it could not be used any more.
The government filed an affidavit in reply to the PIL stating the procedures required to be followed for procurement of Chikki from the suppliers and also whether the purchase was made through auction or otherwise.
The high court had last month asked the government not to make payments to the contractors who had supplied the chikki for free distribution to students of Anganwadis (primary schools in tribal areas).
The state had informed the court that the government had already stopped payments to the contractors.
The state justified the capability of the manufacturer to supply chikki on a large scale and said the snack was still being supplied in schools run by municipal corporation in Navi Mumbai, Pune Zilla Parishad and other private bodies. This showed the quality of chikki was not sub-standard or else they would not be purchased by these institutions.
Pankaja Munde has been accused of irregularities in procurement of items worth Rs. 206 crore, including chikki. It has also been alleged that the chikki, meant to be distributed to tribal students, had traces of clay.
Even though differences exist between Sena and BJP but there is no threat to their coalition as it will survive.
Nationalist Congress Party Chief Sharad Pawar said that even though there were reports about Shiv Sena severing ties with BJP, Sena will continue its alliance with saffron party. Pawar ruled out offering support to BJP if Sena pulls out from the government.
Sharad Pawar said, “Even though differences exist between Sena and BJP but there is no threat to their coalition as it will survive.”
He further said, “At a time when the state is reeling under the drought situation both Shiv Sena and BJP are involved in a game of one-upmanship. Both these parties are challenging each other to quit the government.”
NCP chief clarified that, “If Shiv Sena withdraws its support from the BJP led NDA government in the state then my party will not support BJP here to form a government. We won’t offer inside or outside support to the government.”
Pawar criticised the state government for its failure to ban Sanatan Sanstha. He condemned the stand taken by Shiv Sena to disrupt the Pakistani artists Ghulam Ali concert and former Pakistan foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri’s book launch event. The NCP president was unhappy with the centre and state government for its failure to provide financial assistance to drought hit farmers. He said that the government is least bothered about resolving the problems faced by farmers as many of them have committed suicide due to crop failure.
According to him, the Food Security Act has not been effectively implemented in the state. He appealed to farmers to refrain from committing suicide. The NCP will organise a rally in the state to create awareness about the drought situation prevailing in the state. He urged everyone to come forward for offering assistance to drought affected farmers. Pawar attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his remarks about the Dadri incident. He said that Modi had cheated the farmers. Pawar said writers have returned the Sahitya Academy Award to protest against a growing climate of intolerance under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.
“The schemes announced by the state government for providing relief to drought hit farmers exist only on paper. Even though the government had announced that it will pay fees of the farmers’ children but it has not implemented it. Farmers are yet to get benefit out of the crop insurance scheme. We have already urged the state government to waive crop loan of farmers” he added.
The results of the Bihar elections will be very crucial in determining what happens next and how soon. If the BJP loses in Bihar it will give confidence to Uddhav Thackeray and Aditya Thackeray that the Modi magic has waned and that the BJP will no longer be able to win the same number of seats as it won the last time in Maharashtra. Shiv Sena has decided to go it alone in the forthcoming Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation election and not have any tie-up with the BJP. Shiv Sena is all set to contest all 122 seats alone. The KDMC elections are to be held on November 1.
According to the survey conducted, reports suggest that Indians are the world’s most depressed human beings. Many youngsters and almost all age groups people are addicted to anti-depression apps on their cell phone. You can even see people are stressed out on the streets of Mumbai. Anti-depression market at present is the biggest market in medical scenario. Lifestyle is one of the main reasons among other issue responsible for this psychological problem. According to a World Health Organization-sponsored study, while around 9% of people in India reported having an extended period of depression within their lifetime, nearly 36% suffered from what is called Major Depressive Episode (MDE). MDE is characterised by sadness, loss of interest or pleasure, feelings of guilt or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, low energy and poor concentration, besides feeling depressed.
The study, published in the BMC Medicine journal and based on interviews of more than 89,000 people in 18 different countries by 20 different researchers, says depression affects nearly 121 million people worldwide. It is the second contributor to shorter lifespan for individuals in the 15 – 44 age group.
The percentage of respondents, who had lifetime MDE was higher in high-income (28.1%) than in low to middle-income (19.8%) countries. When it came to lifetime prevalence rates of depression, France (21%) and the US (19.2%) reported the highest rates of depression. Women are twice as likely to suffer depression as men and the loss of a partner, whether from death or divorce, was a main factor, the study reveals.
WHO ranks depression as the fourth leading cause of disability worldwide and projects that by 2020, it will be the second leading cause. Depressions are on arising from day-to-day activities. However, MDE is much more serious. This is the feeling of tremendous helplessness, and worthlessness. Planned suicide is highest among those suffering from MDE. Those suffering from MDE don’t have the strength to conduct day-to-day chores and become dysfunctional. Increased stress, lonely lives and the falling apart of the social support systems, like joint families is a major cause of growing depression among Indians. The study says, average lifetime and 12-month prevalence estimates of MDE were 14.6% and 5.5% in the 10 high-income and 11.1% and 5.9% in the eight low to middle-income countries. The average age of onset ascertained retrospectively was 25.7 in the high-income and 24 in low to middle-income countries.
People are going for meditation, medical help and many even depend on mobile apps, but there is no proof that 85% of the depression apps currently approved in the UK for patients to manage their condition actually work, researchers say.
Approval from the National Health Service (NHS) may falsely reassure patients, many of whom are opting to fund their own treatment in the ace of overstretched mental health services and the associated lengthy waits, researchers said. Until such time as evidence is forthcoming on clinical effectiveness of these apps, and they have been properly evaluated. In reactive online and app based treatments for mental health are becoming popular and accessible as a result of the growing use of smartphones, researchers said. These options need to be “scientifically credible, peer reviewed and evidence based” and should match a validated performance criterion.
Drastic changes in daily life over the past century are fueling the growing burden of chronic diseases, including atherosclerosis, hormone-related and gastrointestinal cancers, osteoporosis, and type 2 diabetes mellitus. They are commonly called “diseases of modernism.” As the leading cause of morbidity and mortality, diseases of modernity are the greatest threat to public health in the developed world. If the mismatch between contemporary and historic lifestyles adequately explains increasing lifetime risk of depression in the modern-industrialized world, then depression should be considered a disease of modernity as well.
Depression is certainly not new, though its prevalence throughout human history is unknown. One in 10 Indians are depressed. Depression is one of the biggest public health challenges because of its high incidence. Research worldwide, including India, suggests that at least one in five women and one in 10 men suffers from major depressive disorder at some time in their lifetime.
The neighbour who slams the front door every time, the co-worker who constantly fails to meet deadlines, the teacher whose scathing words never fail to reduce some students to tears every day, the rebellious teenager who smokes despite knowing it’s injurious to health, the friend who is obsessed with alcohol could all have a common cause of depression. Insecurity and intolerance are biggest symptoms of depressions. The vast economic disparity amongst the different sections of population in India is one of the reasons for this problem. No amount of “common-sense” counselling or threat or derision by seniors or colleagues will help a depressed patient. Expert counselling helps in mild cases. Depression happens only in persons having adverse balance of some specific hormones. They only get affected by stress/targets. That is why, medicines work better by restoring hormones balance. This is the time; we need to address these issues more aggressively to save this country from mental illness and less tolerance.
Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had sought American assistance and wrote to the then US President John F Kennedy to provide India fighter jets to stem the Chinese aggression during the 1962 Sino-India war, according to a new book.
The main objective of Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, to attack India in 1962 was to “humiliate” Mr. Nehru who was emerging as a leader of the third world, the book said.
“India’s implementation of the Forward Policy served as a major provocation to China in September 1962,” Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official, wrote the book titled ‘JFK’s Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA and the Sino-Indian War’.
“Mao’s focus was on Nehru, but a defeat of India would also be a setback for two of Mao’s enemies: (Nikita) Khrushchev and Kennedy,” Mr. Riedel wrote.
As India was losing its territory to China fast and suffering heavy casualty, Mr. Nehru in a letter to US President Kennedy in November 1962 said India needed “air transport and jet fighters to stem the Chinese tide of aggression.”
“A lot more effort, both from us and from our friends will be required.”
Mr. Nehru wrote another letter to Mr. Kennedy in quick succession, Mr. Riedel writes. Mr. Nehru’s letter was hand delivered by the then Indian Ambassador to the US K Nehru to President Kennedy on November 19.
“Nehru was thus asking Kennedy to join the war against China by partnering in an air war to defeat the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army of China). It was a momentous request that the Indian Prime Minister was making. Just a decade after American forces had reached a cease-fire with the Chinese Community Forces in Korea, India was asking JFK to join a new war against Community China,” Mr. Riedel wrote in his book.
Ahead of Mr. Nehru’s letter, the then US Ambassador to India Galbraith sent a telegram to the White House giving the President Kennedy an advance notice that such a request was coming from Mr. Nehru.
In the letter, Mr. Nehru asked for 12 squadrons of US air forces, Mr. Riedel told the Washington audience during the preview of the book at an event organised by the Brookings Institute -a top American think-tank.
“A minimum of 12 squadrons of supersonic all weather fighters are essential. We have no modern radar cover in the country. The United States Air Force personnel will have to man these fighters and radar installations while our personnel are being trained,” Mr. Nehru wrote in the letter, which has been quoted by Mr. Riedel in the book.
In addition, Mr. Nehru also requested “two squadron of B-47 Bombers” to strike in Tibet, the author says quoting the letter.
In the letter, Mr. Nehru assured Mr. Kennedy that these bombers would not be used against Pakistan, but only for “resistance against the Chinese”.
The stakes were “not merely the survival of India”, Mr. Nehru told Mr. Kennedy “but the survival of free and independent Governments in the whole of this subcontinent or in Asia”.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to entertain a plea seeking a direction that a three-judge bench should hear the petitions on enforcement of a prohibition on slaughter of cow and beef sale in the state in Jammu instead of Srinagar bench of Jammu and Kashmir High Court.
“Yesterday night, I had a talk with the learned Chief Justice and he is not expecting any problem whatsoever,” a bench comprising Chief Justice HL Dattu and Justice Arun Mishra said.
The observation of the bench came when the counsel for the petitioner, who had filed the PIL before the Jammu bench of the high court, said that there could be a law and order problem if matters are heard and decided at Srinagar bench.
As the bench expressed its view, the petitioner Parimoksh Seth sought permission to withdraw his fresh plea and sought a liberty to move the apex court again in case he felt aggrieved by any subsequent order of high court. The plea was allowed.
Earlier, the apex court had suspended for two months a controversial court order for enforcing a legal bar on the sale of beef in Jammu and Kashmir while asking the Chief Justice of J-K High Court to set up a three-judge bench to decide on two conflicting orders on the issue.
Bihar’s former deputy chief minister and BJP leader Sushil Modi on Wednesday declined to wear a Muslim skull cap offered by a member of the party’s ally HAM in the upcoming state polls citing the humid climate.
At an election meeting in Tekari assembly constituency in Gaya district, Shakila Bano, a woman leader of former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awami Morcha (HAM), offered a skull cap to Modi.
“I offered Modi a skull cap but he politely refused to wear citing humid climate,” a party worker close to Bano quoted her as saying.
“She was upset after Modi refused to accept her offer in front of the people who had gathered for the election rally,” the worker added.
HAM’s candidate Anil Kumar is contesting polls from Tekari.
A few years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the then chief minister of Gujarat had refused to wear a skull cap offered by a Muslim cleric in Ahmedabad.
The Indian Navy on Wednesday ruled out combat role for women for the time being citing government rules but has pitched for inducting them as pilots for its fleet of maritime reconnaissance aircraft.
Navy Chief Admiral R K Dhowan said the force was proud of its women officers and that their induction started in 1992.
He pointed out that women serve in the Navy in various fields – from air traffic controllers to observers on board aircraft, training, legal and even overseeing various aspects relating to construction of ships among others.
“Therefore, it would be unfair to say we are lagging behind anybody,” he said addressing a press conference on the International Fleet Review scheduled in February next year in Visakhapatnam.
He was asked if the Navy has any plans to induct women in combat roles as many of the Navies coming in for the International Fleet Review will have women officers onboard their ships.
He said the Navy has looked into how to increase the participation of women in other arenas of Naval way of life.
“We are looking and we have taken up the issue to the Ministry of Defence as a proposal which is still under consideration to see how women pilots can be allowed in our maritime reconnaissance aircraft. That is something which is under consideration. Government will have to take a view,” he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday broke his silence on the incidents that stirred controversies of late, saying the Bharatiya Janata Party does not support such events.
Talking to a newspaper, the PM described the lynching of a man in Dadri and cancellation of a concert by Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali in Mumbai as unfortunate.
PM Modi told, “The Dadri incident or opposition to the Pakistani singer is undesirable and unfortunate. But what is the central government’s relation with these incidents”.
“Such incidents took place in the past too. The BJP has always opposed pseudo secularism. The Opposition is raking up the issue again in the garb of such incidents. This debate can be resolved through dialogue and discussion. The BJP never supports such incidents.”
The Opposition is accusing the BJP of communalism but aren’t they playing politics of polarisation, asked the PM.
Modi claimed those parties were resorting to such propaganda which did not want the development of minorities and look at them as vote bank.
A man was brutally killed in Bisada village in Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, not far from the Indian capital, on suspicion that he consumed beef after killing a cow last month.
Around 10 days after the Dadri lunching, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, without taking any names or even alluding to the killing, had urged people to follow President Pranab Mukherjee’s appeal on upholding core civilisational values of diversity, tolerance and plurality.
In another incident, BJP’s ally Shiv Sena opposed Pakistani ghazal singer Ghulam Ali’s concert in Mumbai.
The Opposition had been demanding that the PM should break his silence on these issues.
Nationalist Congress Party Chief Sharad Pawar said that even though there were reports about Shiv Sena severing ties with BJP, Sena will continue its alliance with saffron party. Pawar ruled out offering support to BJP if Sena pulls out from the government.
Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had sought American assistance and wrote to the then US President John F Kennedy to provide India fighter jets to stem the Chinese aggression during the 1962 Sino-India war, according to a new book.