Union Minister Fined Over Illegal Construction, Court Orders Demolition.
Union minister Narayan Rane’s bungalow in Juhu area made a lot of altercations which were illegal. The Bombay High Court directed BMC to demolish the illegal construction at Union minister Narayan Rane’s bungalow in Juhu area, noting that it violated the Floor Space Index (FSI) and Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) rules.
A division bench of Justices R D Dhanuka and Kamal Khata said the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) cannot be permitted to consider and allow the second application filed by a company run by the Rane family, seeking regularisation of the unauthorised construction as it would encourage “wholesale unauthorised constructions”.
The court directed the BMC to demolish the unauthorised parts within a period of two weeks and submit a compliance report to the court one week thereafter. The bench also imposed a cost of ₹ 10 lakh on Mr Rane and directed for the amount to be deposited towards the Maharashtra State Legal Services Authority within two weeks. Mr Rane’s advocate Shardul Singh sought that the court stay its order for six weeks so that he could approach the Supreme Court in appeal. The bench, however, rejected it.
The court dismissed the petition filed by Kaalkaa Real Estates, a company owned by Mr Rane’s family seeking directions to the BMC to decide their second application uninfluenced by the orders passed by the civic body earlier. The BMC had in June this year rejected the regularisation application, noting that there were violations in the construction.
The company filed a second application in July, saying it was seeking regularisation of a smaller portion as compared to what it had sought previously, and under new provisions of the Development Control and Promotion Regulation 2034.
In the elections of the gram Panchayats in Maharashtra the Eknath Shinde government and the opposition of Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government has claimed victory in the elections.
As the results were declared on Sunday of the elections of gram panchayat the voting took place 581 panchayat will be spread across 16 districts in the state and both the parties have claimed victory in the elections.
In the election BJP has claimed that it won 274 seats in gram panchayats and the Shinde faction of shiv sena won 41 seats in gram panchayats.
The opposition party of which includes Nationalist Congress Party, Congress and the Uddhav Thackeray Shiv Sena won 62,37 and 12 seats of gram panchayat.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde who is not a part of Shiv Sena rebellion and moved to the other party with alliance also said “We have more than 300 seats in gram panchayat and we will be contesting elections in other polls too”.
The Nationalist Congress Party president Jayant Patil the claims of BJP on the victory of gram panchayat elections said that Maha Vikas Aghadi has won more seats in the elections.
A massive earthquake of magnitude 7.7 jolted the southwestern coast of Mexico on Monday, killing at least one person. The quake hit after 1 p.m. EST with the epicentre located near the coastline of Michoacan state, agencies reported citing the US Geological Survey Data.
One person died in a shopping centre in Manzanillo in the western state of Colima after a fence fell, however, no known casualties or damage have yet been recorded in Mexico City, the city’s mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum said, agencies reported.
According to USGS, the quake struck about 37 kilometres southeast of the city of Aquila at a depth of about 15.1 kilometres, following which a Tsunami warning was issued immediately. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the tsunami threat has largely passed as the latest readings showed a decrease in wave heights.
Notably, the Mexican pacific coast is located in the so-called Ring of Fire which is also known as a seismically active zone that is often hit by powerful earthquakes.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday accused the BJP of making the elderly dependent by abolishing the old pension scheme.
He assured that the Congress, if elected to power in Gujarat, will restore the old pension scheme, saying it is the right of government employees who strengthen the nation.
“By abolishing the old pension, the BJP has made the elderly dependent from self reliant. The government employees who strengthen the country have a right: The old pension,” he said in a tweet in Hindi.
“We restored the old pension in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh. Now the Congress government will come in Gujarat and will bring the old pension,” Gandhi also said, using the hashtag #CongressDegiOldPension.
Senior Gujarat Congress leader Arjun Modhwadia had said on Monday that his party will implement the old pension scheme in Gujarat just like Congress governments have done in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan if it is voted to power in the Assembly polls.
Thousands of retired government employees in Gujarat recently held protests demanding the re-introduction of the old pension scheme.
The Gujarat Assembly elections are due in the next few months and the Congress is seeking to wrest power from the BJP in the state
After a majestic funeral service at Westminster Abbey, Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin was interred alongside her husband, late Prince Philip, at a private burial at St. George’s Chapel on Monday evening.
“The Queen was buried together with the Duke of Edinburgh, at The King George VI Memorial Chapel,” the Buckingham Palace stated on the official Royal Family website.
Earlier, the roughly 40-km route by road from Westminster Abbey in London, the site of a grand state funeral attended by thousands earlier in the day, to Windsor included the coffin processing by state gun carriage and then in the state hearse, a customised Jaguar, to the steps of the chapel.
Thousands lined the streets on the route of this final procession, which Buckingham Palace said had been drawn up with the public in mind, and the Order of Service for the Committal Service was discussed with the late monarch over a number of years.
“We have come together to commit into the hands of God the soul of his servant Queen Elizabeth, said the Dean of Windsor, who led the service.
“In the midst of our rapidly changing and frequently troubled world, her calm and dignified presence has given us confidence to face the future, as she did, with courage and with hope. As, with grateful hearts, we reflect on these and all the many other ways in which her long life has been a blessing to us, we pray that God will give us grace to honour her memory by following her example, and that, with our sister Elizabeth, at the last, we shall know the joys of life eternal, he said.
Much of the music at the Committal Service has been composed by Sir William Harris, who served as the Organist at St. George’s Chapel between 1933 and 1961 and much of the Queen’s childhood. The young Princess Elizabeth is said to have often visited the Organ Loft to watch him play, and it is believed he taught her to play the piano.
Prior to the final hymn, the Imperial State Crown, the orb and the sceptre known as the Instruments of State were removed from the coffin by the Crown Jeweller and, with the Bargemaster and Serjeants-at-Arms, passed to the Dean who placed them on the Altar. At the end of the final Hymn, King Charles III placed the Queen’s Company Camp Colour of the Grenadier Guards on the coffin.
At the same time, the Lord Chamberlain the most senior officer of the royal household made the ceremonial gesture to “break” his Wand of Office and place it on the coffin. This, the palace said, is to create a symmetry with the three Instruments of State that have been removed. The Camp Colour and the broken wand are both to be buried with the coffin.
The coffin was then lowered into the Royal Vault as the Dean of Windsor read from ‘Psalm 103′ which includes the traditional line, Go forth upon thy journey from this world, O Christian soul’. The Sovereign’s Piper played a Lament entitled A Salute to the Royal Fendersmith’ as the final fade away music.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, pronounced the final blessing which was followed by the singing of the national anthem, God Save The King’, marking the conclusion of the Committal Service and the public aspect of the funeral service.
The King and senior members of the royal family then departed for the private burial ceremony, which saw the Queen’s coffin buried with that of her late husband, Prince Philip, in the King George VI Memorial Chapel an enclave at the historic chapel on the late monarch’s Windsor estate.
The funeral service for Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was conducted at the same chapel in April last year. Other members of Queen Elizabeth II’s family also lie buried there, including her mother also Elizabeth, father King George VI, and sister Princess Margaret.
New evidences suggest Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut may have played a crucial role in siphoning off proceeds of crime (POC) in the case pertaining to alleged financial irregularities in a housing project in suburban Mumbai, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has claimed in its supplementary charge-sheet.
The ED also claimed the Sena leader (60), currently in jail, along with other officials associated with the redevelopment of Patra Chawl (chawls are rows of tenements/tiny apartments), was present at a meeting called by the then-chief minister in 2007 to discuss the financial implication of the multi-crore project.
The anti-money laundering agency arrested the Rajya Sabha member on August 1 in connection with alleged financial irregularities in the redevelopment of Patra Chawl in suburban Goregaon. It had last week filed a supplementary charge-sheet naming Sanjay Raut as an accused in the case.
The ED probe pertains to alleged financial irregularities in the redevelopment of Patra Chawl and related property transactions involving his wife and alleged associates.
Siddharth Nagar, popularly known as Patra Chawl, is an area located in Goregaon, a northern Mumbai suburb. It housed nearly 672 homes spread over 47 acres of land.
In 2008, the Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority (MHDA) handed over the project of redeveloping the chawl to Guru Ashish Construction Pvt Ltd (GACPL), a sister company of HDIL (Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd). GACPL was supposed to build 672 flats for people there and apartments for state housing agency MHDA and sell the remaining land to private developers for the private company’s own development works.
The company neither redeveloped the chawl nor built any flats that was to be handed over to MHADA and sold land parcels and the Floor Space Index (FSI) to other builders for Rs 1,034 crore. GACPL instead launched its own project called ‘The Meadows’ and took booking amounts totalling Rs 138 crore from flat buyers.
FSI is the maximum area that can be constructed on a plot of land. For instance, if one has 1,000 square feet of land on which wants to build a residential/commercial building and the FSI in that locality is 1.5, then he can build up to 1,500 sq ft of covered structures on the plot.
The ED claimed Pravin Raut, a close associate of Sanjay Raut, and other directors of GACPL misled MHADA and also the Maharashtra government, and sold the FSI to other real estate developers for Rs 901.79 crore and never completed the project they were handed over.
The central agency said though on paper an agreement was executed for the interest of three parties, only interest of Wadhwans (HDIL promoters Rakesh and Sarang Wadhawan) were protected as a result of which generated benefits of around Rs 1,000 crore were diverted in a systematic manner to their group companies instead of utilizing the same for the chawl project.
“On the basis of new evidences that have surfaced, it appears Sanjay Raut may have also played a major role along with other accused due to which POC (proceeds of crime) were siphoned off instead of utilization of the same for the tenants and other buyers who had booked their flats with developers and put their hard earned money,” the ED claimed in the charge-sheet.
However, Sanjay Raut told the ED he had no knowledge about the Patra Chawl project and came to know about it through media reports published in the past two years.
The Rajya Sabha MP has also denied having entered into any financial or business transaction with Pravin Raut, who as per the probe agency, was working as a “front man” for the politician.
The Sena leader has claimed he does not know Rakesh Kumar Wadhwan, Sarang Wadhwan (HDIL promoters) and Nippun Thakkar, all accused in the case. The Member of Parliament has said he did not have any knowledge about the involvement of Pravin Raut in the Patra Chawl redevelopment.
Sanjay Raut has said he was not directly involved in any real estate project, but his wife Varsha Raut along with Madhuri Raut, spouse of Pravin Raut, had got associted with Avni Construction and Auri Infrastructure which intended to develop some buildings, which as per his knowledge, were supposed to be outside Mumbai.
On the recovery of Rs 11 lakh in cash from his residence in suburban Bhandup, the Sena leader said it was contributed by Shiv Sena workers for their Ayodhya visit in the first week of June 2022.
On foreign trips, Sanjay Raut said Swapna Patker, a witness in the case, told him they were planning to visit China and Hong Kong.
Sanjay Raut said he had not negotiated with any land owners at Kihim village in Alibag taluka for buying their land. Swapna Patker at that time came with the idea to build a hotel or restaurant at Kihim village in Alibaug, a coastal town in adjoining Raigad district, he has told the central agency.
Sanjay Raut’s lawyer Vikrant Sabne said, “In view of the charge-sheet, the ED should answer that if (Sena MLA) Pratap Sarnaik has been discharged on the basis of reports filed by the prosecution in the principal offence, then in the judicial order of March 21, 2020, a similar undertaking was given by the prosecution in Patra Chawl case in favour of Pravin Raut and on the basis that Pravin was released on bail.” “This order is not yet challenged, then the question arises if Sarnaik has been discharged why similar relief should not be granted to (Sanjay) Raut as equality before law is the basis of our judicial system,” the lawyer added.
The chief metropolitan magistrate’s court had on Wednesday last accepted the closure report filed by the Mumbai police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in a case against Topsgrup Services and Solution Ltd. It was this case, based on which, the ED had lodged a money laundering case agianst Sarnaik.
Meanwhile, the daughter of a property owner in Alibag, in her statement to the ED, has claimed her father had purchased 1 acre of land in 1995 and constructed a bungalow and in the rest, he had made approximately 16 plots.
Her father sold 7 to 8 plots to some persons and the remaining plots were forcibly acquired by Sanjay Raut, she told the agency.
The witness further said her father had no intention to sell the land in Kihim (in Alibag), but it was sold due to threatening calls received from workers of Sanjay Raut.
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Monday attacked the Centre and the Maharashtra government over the suicide of a farmer in Pune, with party chief Sharad Pawar saying those in power in the state should decide their priorities, an apparent swipe at Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis.
Addressing reporters, NCP spokesperson Mahesh Tapase claimed the farmer had blamed the Modi government for agrarian distress.
“Dashrath Laxman Kedari, a farmer from Junnar (in Pune district) died by suicide on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday (September 17). He blamed the Modi government for farmers in distress in the country. We condemn the Modi government. When an annadata (food provider) commits suicide, then the government has to give a justification for this,” Tapase said.
Reacting to the farmer’s suicide, Pawar said those in the power in the state, where farmers have to resort to suicide, should decide “what to celebrate and what to appreciate”.
Pawar was apparently referring to CM Shinde’s recent visit to several Ganesh pandals.
The farmer, Dashrath Kedari, had consumed pesticide before jumping into the pond in Wadgaon Anand village in Junnar tehsil in the Pune district on Saturday, prima facie over not getting the MSP for onions, according to the Pune police.
The farmer had left behind a suicide note in which he purportedly extended birthday wishes to PM Modi and urged that he ensure guaranteed price for onions and other crops.
Tapase also targeted the state government over its handling of the lumpy virus disease in cattle.
He said the state government did not look committed to tackling the spread of lumpy skin disease, which has killed several thousand heads of cattle nationwide.
He slammed the Shinde- Fadnavis government over the delay in the cabinet expansion which was expanded 41 days after Shinde and Fadnavis took oath as the chief minister and deputy chief minister on June 30.
Train services in the Kolkata-Mumbai route via Jharsuguda were affected for some time on Monday as two wagons of a goods train derailed at Lajkura near Brajrajnagar station in Odisha, railway sources said.
The third and fourth coaches from the engine of the train jumped the rails. There is no major damage to the train and no casualty was reported.
The matter is being investigated, the sources said adding that train services were affected on the Kolkata-Mumbai line for some time.
This is the third incident of derailment in Odisha this month.
On Saturday, two front wheels of the guard-cum-luggage van of the Howrah-Bhubaneswar Jan Shatabdi Express derailed at a level crossing near Bhadrak. At least four coaches of the Visakhapatnam-Kirandul passenger special train jumped the rails between Jeypore and Chatriput stations in Koraput district on September 12.
One person was arrested at Karipur airport, who was carrying one kilogram of gold inside four capsules in his stomach. The accused has been identified as Naufal (36), a native of Variamkode in the Malappuram district. He arrived at Karipur airport from Dubai on September 19.
He tried to smuggle 1.063 Kg of gold by concealing it as 4 capsules of the gold compound in his rectum. The police carried out a thorough inspection of his body and luggage but failed to recover the gold. Following this, Naufal was taken to a private hospital at Kondotty and was subjected to a detailed medical examination. The X-ray revealed four capsules containing gold inside his stomach.
This is the 59th gold smuggling case being reported at Karipur airport within the past few months.
On Monday BJP leader alleged that Former leader Nitin Raut is using chatered flights for personal use to Bombay High Court.He used to travel through chatered flights to travel till Nagpur. Leader Raut also said during Covid-19 pandemic we were using flights only for official assignment and not for another personal work.
BJP leader Vishwas Pathak has alleged Nitin Raut for using chatered flights for personal use and has misused the power of being in the position of minister. A Public Interest litigation (PIL) was filed in this case.
BJP leader also said that Raut had pressurized the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) and other units and also administrative control so they they can bear expenses of the chatered flights.
The PIL has been filed stating that illegally the money was spent on the chatered flights also it should recover the money the amount been spent.
The PIL also stated that chatered flight was used in 12 different occasions for approximately Rs 3 crore and the benchof Justices Dipankanr Datta and Justice Madhav Jamdar who were hearing on this case on Monday.
While hearing this case Congress MLA has denied the allegations and said that chatered flights were not used for personal works.
An affidavit has been filed in this case and Congress MLA said “ I deny that the expenditure incurred for the chatered flights was illegal, arbitrary and gross waste of public funds.
Raut said being the guardian minister of Nagpur at the time, he had to travel to the district in eastern Maharashtra routinely for administrative work. “On the relevant occasions, I had travelled to Nagpur for administrative work which included overseeing of day-to-day functions of the power companies and to resolve issues brought about by the lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Nisarga cyclone (which hit coastal Maharashtra in June 2020). This was to ensure uninterrupted supply of electricity,” the affidavit said.
