The Bombay High Court on Thursday said the Maharashtra government should take a decision on providing an office to the Maharashtra Administrative Tribunal (MAT) on its own instead of waiting for a court order.
A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Madhav Jamdar was hearing a petition filed by advocate Yogesh Morbale about vacancies and lack of facilities at the MAT.
On Thursday, the court was informed by MAT lawyer Amrut Joshi that the tribunal’s office had to be shifted from its premises near Vidhan Bhavan to a building in Nariman Point due to ongoing construction for the Metro project.
The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (MMRCL) was paying around Rs 33 lakh to MAT earlier towards monthly rent.
But in a letter to principal secretary of the General Administration Department in July, MMRCL said it was facing a financial crunch due to the delay in the completion of metro project, and would not be able to pay rent amount to MAT.
The state government should pay MAT instead, it said.
The high court said it would hear the matter after two weeks, but the government should not wait for its orders.
“It is for the state government to ensure that the MAT functions. Why should we tell you what should be done. You should do on your own,” CJ Datta said.
Oil minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Thursday hinted at reviving the stalled mega West Coast refinery project in Maharashtra.
Addressing an industry event here, the minister said no concrete proposal has been come to him yet from the state or from investors.
“We have sent feelers to all and the response so far has been good. The 60 million tonne per annum project can come up anywhere in Maharashtra or any other west coast state or even in a southern state and it need not be in Ratnagiri alone,” Puri told reporters later.
“We are also thinking of splitting the project to two or more locations but it would be best if the over Rs 3 lakh crore project can come up at a single location as originally planned,” the minister said.
The project was put on the back burner amid opposition from locals.
The world’s largest oil company Aramco of Saudi Arabia and UAE’s Adnoc were keen to pick up considerable minority stakes in the project that was jointly floated by the three national oil companies — Indian Oil, BPCL and HPCL.
The auction of the gold and silver offered by devotees to Lalbaugcha Raja will be conducted on Thursday evening.
“Gold and silver items offered by devotees during Ganeshotsav to the “King of Lalbagh” will be up for auction. All devotees should note that on Thursday, September 15, 2022, from 5 PM to 10 PM, the auction will be held at the Mandap,” said the official Twitter handle of Lalbaugcha Raja Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Mandal.
As per reports, items that will be part of the auction would include various artefacts and pieces of jewellery made up of gold and silver.
This auction exercise in the revered temple is a regular practice.
Ganesh Chaturthi or Ganpati Utsav, which starts on the fourth day of the Hindu lunisolar calendar month Bhadrapada, is celebrated with much fanfare in Maharashtra and other parts of western and southern India with lakhs of devotees converging on mandaps to seek blessing from Lord Ganesha. The festival is also known as Vinayak Chaturthi or Vinayak Chavithi.
In a unique initiative, Lalbaugcha Raja organising committee, in collaboration with Jio Mart and Paytm this year delivered prasad to the doorsteps of the devotees.
Prasad on JioMart was in the form of two laddus and took orders only for Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, and the Thane region.
Through Paytm, prasad was made available in the form of 250 gms of dry fruits and was available to devotees all over India and outside India too.
This year, with Covid cases having declined substantially, the Ganpati festival was observed with much fanfare across the nation.
With falling domestic onion prices and rising financial stress among farmers, the Maharashtra government has requested Union food and public distribution minister Piyush Goyal to purchase around 2 lakh tonnes of onions across the state through its agency National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED).
“Onion farmers are facing financial difficulties due to a fall in onion prices. Therefore, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has requested the Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Supplies Piyush Goyal to buy 2 lakh metric tonnes of onion through Price Stabilization Fund through Nafed,” a statement by Maharashtra chief minister’s office said.
However, the statement from the CMO did not mention anything about the current selling price of onions in the state.
Onion is the main cash crop in Maharashtra and it accounts for 35 to 40 per cent of the country’s total production of the staple vegetable.
With a good monsoon, onion production is expected to reach 136.70 lakh metric tonnes in 2021-22, which is 20 lakh metric tonnes more than the previous season, the statement said.
“Overall market prices have come down drastically. Due to this, there is an atmosphere of despair and uneasiness among the onion growers,” the statement added.
Further, terming Sri Lanka as a large importer of onions, it said the exports to the neighbouring island nation fell apart due to the ongoing economic crisis.
“Due to the ever-changing situation in the international market, it is not possible for our farmers to get good prices from exports,” the statement added.
Meanwhile, beating past records, the Central government has procured 2.50 lakh tonnes of onion as a buffer for the 2022-23 season. The buffer size of onions for the current year is 0.50 lakh tons higher than the 2.0 lakh tons procured during 2021-22.
The onions that were procured from the rabi harvest season are meant for price stabilization in case the rates go up significantly during the lean supply season. There have been several instances in the past when prices of onion shot up sharply, thereby needing urgent government interventions — including imposing stock limits on traders or restrictions on exports.
Rabi onion harvested during April – June accounts for 65 per cent of India’s onion production and meets the consumer’s demand till the Kharif crop is harvested in October-November.
Dr. Anahita Pandole, who survived the car accident in which former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry died earlier this month, underwent pelvic surgery at a private hospital here on Thursday.
Anahita and her husband Darius Pandole are undergoing treatment at Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital in the city following the September 4 accident in neighbouring Palghar district.
“Dr Anahita Pandole has been operated today for pelvic reconstruction by an expert team of doctors at Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital.
Given the complex pelvic fracture, multiple opinions of various experts around the world were also taken including doctors from USA, UK, Europe and more,” said Dr Tarang Gianchandani, hospital CEO, in a statement.
Dr Peter V Giannoudis, chairman of Academic Department of Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery at University of Leeds, was flown in for providing expert advice, the statement added.
Mistry (54) and his friend Jahangir Pandole were killed after their car hit a road divider on a bridge on the Surya river in Palghar district.
Anahita Pandole (55) who was at the wheel and her husband Darius (60) suffered injuries.
The Shiv Sena on Thursday said the mega semiconductor project of Vedanta-Foxconn going to Gujarat was an attack on Maharashtra’s “prestige”.
This was just the beginning and one day the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government might even “trade Mumbai,” said the editorial in the Sena mouthpiece “Saamana”.
Before this, an international finance centre (which eventually took shape as Gujarat International Finance Tech- GIFT City) was shifted to Gujarat from Mumbai, the editorial alleged.
A blame-game has begun in Maharashtra following the announcement two days ago that the joint venture semiconductor project of the Indian conglomerate Vedanta and Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, proposed to be set up near Pune earlier, will come up in Gujarat.
Without naming the BJP, the Sena mouthpiece alleged that like this project, some people also harbour the desire to “conquer” Mumbai-Thane and undermine Maharashtra’s prosperity.
This was the reason a “puppet chief minister” was installed in Maharashtra, Saamana alleged.
When BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis was chief minister from 2014-19, the GIFT City project was handed over to Gujarat, and current CM Eknath Shinde similarly allowed the semiconductor plant to slip away, it claimed.
“Tomorrow they will not hesitate to even trade Mumbai. Foxconn is a start,” the editorial said.
“This is a serious attack on Maharashtra’s prestige,” it further said.
On Wednesday, Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray had said that Maharashtra had also lost a proposed bulk drug park project in Raigad district as the Centre approved similar parks in Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh instead.
Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta is starting to test Community Chats for Facebook Groups inside the Messenger app.
According to GSM Arena, it’s probably easiest to think of Community Chats as Meta’s own interpretation of Discord.
These will be available for Facebook Groups, and users will be able to join and partake from Facebook Messenger.
To quote the horse’s mouth, “with Community Chats, people can connect with their communities in real time around the topics they care about on both Facebook and Messenger via text, audio, and video. The experience seamlessly blends Messenger and Facebook Groups”.
This gives a more immediate vibe and “admins can now start a conversation about a topic and get in-the-moment responses instead of waiting for people to comment on a post”.
The person who creates the Community Chat can organize it into categories, so group members are easily able to find what’s most interesting to them.
As an admin, users can start a chat for group members around a specific topic, an event chat for an outing or a meetup, a view-only broadcast chat to announce group-wide updates, and an admin-only chat to collaborate with other admins and moderators.
Users can also make audio channels, and participants then have the option to enable video once they’re in the audio channel. As heavily implied so far, Community Chats are only accessible to members of a group.
Facebook is providing a variety of moderation tools to ensure that the experience isn’t bad, as per GSM Arena.
Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday released a sting operation showing the alleged corruption by Delhi’s AAP government in “handing over contracts for liquor licenses” under the excise policy introduced by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
Addressing a press conference, BJP Delhi unit chief Adesh Gupta claimed that a total amount of Rs 100 crore was given by liquor giants to AAP in cash, to be used for elections in Goa or Punjab.
BJP aired a sting operation in their press conference which claims to show proof of AAP’s complicity in the alleged Delhi liquor scam. The sting aired by BJP claims that “total amount of Rs 100 cr was given by liquor giants to AAP in cash, to be used for elections in Goa or Punjab.”
Sting aired by BJP claims AAP’s policy killed small retailers and only let giants live. “License earlier for Rs 10 lakhs, was brought up to Rs 5 crore so no small player exists.
Govt was not getting money from retailers, only wholesalers, so they stopped fixing a quota for wholesalers,” the BJP added.
The sting aired by BJP further claimed that while earlier commission for wholesaler or supplier was of approximately 5 per cent and it was now made 12 per cent adding that the same policy was applied in Punjab but at 10 per cent rather than 12.
The excise policy was passed in Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi Cabinet in the middle of the deadly Delta Covid-19 pandemic in 2021.
The Delhi government’s version is that the policy was formulated to ensure the generation of optimum revenue, eradicate the sale of spurious liquor or non-duty paid liquor in Delhi, besides improving user experience.
The Delhi government’s version is that the policy was formulated to ensure the generation of optimum revenue, eradicate the sale of spurious liquor or non-duty paid liquor in Delhi, besides improving user experience.
The CBI had filed a case against alleged corruption in the 2021-22 excise policy. The excise policy was subsequently withdrawn by the AAP government. Last month, CBI raids on Manish Sisodia’s official residence in connection with the alleged corruption in implementing Delhi’s Excise Policy.
Sisodia was among 15 others booked in an FIR filed by the CBI. Excise officials, liquor company executives, dealers, some unknown public servants and private persons have been booked in the case.
It was alleged that irregularities were committed including modifications in the Excise Policy and undue favours were extended to the license holders including waiver or reduction in licence fee, an extension of L-1 license without approval etc.
However, Sisodia and the AAP have said the corruption allegations are politically motivated. Sisodia had alleged on August 22, that he has received an offer by the BJP to join them by splitting the AAP in return for getting the cases of CBI and ED against him closed.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says King Charles III continuing to advocate for climate change action in his new apolitical role as monarch would be “perfectly acceptable.”
Albanese was speaking ahead of an Australian delegation’s scheduled departure from Sydney on Thursday for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.Albanese said the new king would decide whether he continued to advocate for reduced greenhouse gas emissions has he had done for years as a prince.
Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp.: “It’s important that the monarchy distance from party political issues. But there are issues like climate change where I think if he chooses to continue to make statements in that area, I think that is perfectly acceptable.”
Women’s security cannot be expected from those facilitating release of rapists: Rahul 11
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday attacked the BJP over the alleged kidnapping and murder of two Dalit girls in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri, saying women’s security cannot be expected from those facilitating the release of rapists.
The two teenage sisters were found hanging from a tree in a sugarcane field located about a kilometre away from their house in Nighasan police station limits in Lakhimpur Kheri on Wednesday, police said.
Six people were arrested on Thursday in connection with the rape and murder of the two girls.
“Women’s safety cannot be expected from those facilitating the release of rapists and welcoming them,” the former Congress chief said in an apparent reference to 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case being set free last month from the Godhra sub-jail after the BJP-led Gujarat government allowed their release under its remission policy.
