Five persons of a family were killed and an equal number were seriously injured as a milk tanker in which they were travelling from Sangamner to Mumbai overturned near Kasara on the Mumbai-Agra National Highway on Sunday.
The accident took place at about 1.45 AM. Thane district rural police said the deceased were from the same family and were residents of Rajiv Gandhi Nagar in Goregaon in suburban Mumbai.
They had hitched a ride in the tanker, which was on its way from Nashik to Mumbai.
The injured were rushed to the Nashik civil hospital, while the bodies were taken to the Shahapur rural hospital for autopsy.
According to police, the tanker seemed to have skidded, hit the road-divider, and overturned.
Madhav Waghmare of Shahapur rural hospital said the injured were brought there at around 2.45 AM; they were later sent to Nashik civil hospital for further treatment.
A minor fire broke out on an ocean-going tug Matanga which was undergoing repairs at the naval dockyard on Sunday afternoon. The tug is capable of towing two large vessels out of the harbour.
The fire broke out during a welding work in the ship, naval officials said in a statement.
Fire tenders were rushed to the spot to douse the flames. The extent of damage caused by the fire is being investigated.
No casualty took place in the incident, the officials said. A board of inquiry has also been ordered to investigate the incident, the officials added.
This is the 14th such incident involving a naval vessel in the last 10 months, including INS Sindhurakshak submarine which sank at the Mumbai harbour on August 18, last year, killing 18 personnel on board.
A Lok Sabha candidate from Nashik in Maharashtra left officials speechless when he paid his security deposit of Rs. 12,500 in one, two, five and 10 rupee coins.
Pramod Natekar, who heads the small Bahujan Swarajya Mahasangh party, deposited the money, weighing a few kilograms, in plastic bags in Nashik.
There were 2,500 coins of Re. 1 (Rs 2,500); 2,500 coins of Rs. 2 (Rs 5,000); 908 coins of Rs. 5 (Rs 4,540) and 46 coins of Rs. 10 (Rs 460) – totalling Rs. 12,500.
Candidates have to pay Rs. 25,000 as security deposit while filing nominations. The amount is 50 percent for those fighting in seats reserved for Dalits and tribals.
It took the Election Commission (EC) officials three hours to count the deposit money.
“There is no rule which says that small change can’t be given as security deposit,” an aide to Natekar said.
The deposit money is forfeited if the candidate does not get a minimum number of votes.
Natekar is a street vendor, selling odd items, and the security money was collected from other vendors and pavement dwellers, his aide said.
In the process, a couple of other candidates were forced to wait for a long time to file their nominations — because officials took a long time counting the mountain of coins.
Aeronautical tariffs, including landing and parking charges and user development fees (UDF) charged from passengers, for Delhi and Mumbai airports would remain unchanged for another two months.
According to official sources, the tariff for these two major airports was fixed till March 31 this year but airport operators — DIAL and MIAL — have sought more time for fixing these charges.
Besides UDF and landing, parking charges, the tariff include charges for housing and parking of aircraft, ground handling and ground safety services, supply of fuel, navigation, surveillance and supportive communication for the airplanes.
In its latest orders for the two airports, the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) said the rates of aeronautical charges would continue at the same levels for two months till May 31 or till further orders.
Normally, the control period for tariffs fixed by AERA is five years.
While Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) had sought a six-month extension for prevailing tariff rates since the fixation of new charges for the second control period would take some time, GVK-led Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) had wanted the same rates to continue till the new rates are fixed, the sources said.
Late last year, GMR-led DIAL had urged AERA to put on hold tariff determination, citing unresolved financial issues including rate of return on equity and calculation of asset base.
However, the Civil Aviation Ministry wanted reduction in the Delhi airport tariff rates at least by half for the next five years, which DIAL had appealed against.
Earlier while determining the tariff structure, AERA had allowed Delhi airport to hike aeronautical charges by 346 per cent from May 2012, lower than its demand for a 775 per cent hike.
But this was opposed by many airlines as well as the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which said these high charges have made Delhi airport the most expensive in the world, badly hurting fliers and airlines.
Last year, government auditor CAG and the Parliamentary Standing Committee of Transport, Tourism and Culture had slammed the Civil Aviation Ministry on various issues, including high airport charges and for giving away Delhi airport and its land to GMR-led DIAL at a cheap price.
Descendants of political families, actors, professionals, and a former chief minister are in fray for election to 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra.
The state, which accounts for the second highest number of Lok Sabha constituencies after Uttar Pradesh, goes to polls in three phases starting from April 10.
In the first phase of election for ten constituencies from Vidarbha, there are 201 candidates in fray while in the second phase on April 17, 19 constituencies in Marathwada and western Maharashtra will see 358 candidates.
The 19 seats of Mumbai, Thane, North Maharashtra, Raigad, Aurangabad and Jalna will go to polls in the third phase. As many as 495 candidates have filed their nominations and the last date of withdrawal is April 9.
Among the generation next of political families, Supriya Sule, daughter of NCP chief and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, is seeking a second term from the family seat Baramati.
In 2009, she had won by a margin of over three lakh votes. Union Minister of State for Telecom Milind Deora, son of senior Congress leader Murli Deora, is seeking a third term from the prestigious Mumbai South seat.
Priya Dutt, the daughter of actor-politician late Sunil Dutt, is in fray from Mumbai North Central as Congress nominee. She is pitted against Poonam Mahajan, daughter of BJP leader late Pramod Mahajan.
Besides, Vishwajit Kadam, son of Congress veteran Patangrao Kadam and state youth party chief, is the candidate from Pune, while Indian Youth Congress president Rajiv Satav is in fray from Hingoli.
Not just sons and daughters, but some daughters-in-law are also making their debut this time. In Raver, opposition leader Eknath Khadse’s daughter-in-law Raksha is the BJP candidate against Manish Jain of NCP, the son of NCP Rajya Sabha member Ishwarlal Jain.
In Dindori, NCP legislator A T Pawar’s daughter-in-law Bharati, a medical practitioner, is making electoral debut.
The legacy of actor-politician late Sunil Dutt ‘inherited’ by his daughter Priya Dutt, sitting MP and Congress nominee from Mumbai North Central Lok Sabha seat, is likely to be under threat with BJP candidate Poonam Mahajan and SP’s Farhan Azmi also in fray.
For the first time, the Dutt legacy is set to face stiff competition from Poonam Mahajan, BJP candidate and daughter of late Pramod Mahajan, besides Samajwadi Party’s Farhan Azmi aiming to grab a large chunk of four lakh Muslim and 2.5 lakh North Indian votes in the constituency, political observers said.
More than Congress, it was Sunil Dutt who held sway in the constituency for several years ever since he strode into political waters in 1984. While BJP had no cadre as Dutt’s victory was a forgone conclusion, they said.
“All the MLAs and corporators would be loyal to Sunil Dutt and there was a time when along with Dutt, all six Assembly segments would have Congress MLAs and also sizable corporators,” observers pointed out. But, according to them, the situation had changed now.
“The anti-incumbency factor is massive. Priya Dutt has no local support of MLAs. Kurla MLA Mohammed Arif Naseem Khan and Kalina MLA Kripashankar Singh were conspicuous by their absence when Priya filed her nominations.
Apart from Bandra west MLA Baba Siddique and Vile Parle legislator Krishna Hegde, Priya has no support from the local Congress cadre,” sources said. Whereas, BJP has fielded Poonam Mahajan, who has been active in politics for quite some time.
According to a BJP office-bearer from the constituency, “In 2009, the BJP morale was low. Lawyer Mahesh Jethmalani was new to politics. But, Poonam is a good choice. There is support for Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate and the local cadre is active,” he said. BJP sources said Poonam belonged to the anti-Vinod Tawde camp.
A special money laundering court has attached assets worth Rs 75 lakh of a conman who cheated film maker Rakesh Roshan in 2011 and several others posing as a senior CBI officer.
The court acted on a complaint of the Mumbai office of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) which registered a money laundering case against Ashwani Kumar Sharma and his wife Meenakshi Mansotra taking cognisance of numerous CBI FIRs against him for duping gullible people who wanted to secretly settle their serious cases of penalty and customs duties.
A comfy flat in Sector-20A of Navi Mumbai worth Rs 26.25 lakh and two plots in Sushant city area of Haryana’s Panipat district valued at Rs 15.75 lakh and Rs 31.50 lakh respectively had been attached by the ED last year under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The case dates back to 2011 as the agencies got on hot pursuit of Sharma and his associate Rajesh Ranjan after Roshan complained to the CBI that the duo has “threatened” him that they, posing as CBI officers, would issue arrest warrants against him, his actor son Hrithik and other family members in a payments case related to their home production Hindi flick ‘Kites’.
The conmen, who had cheated numerous people by this time flaunting their fake status as CBI officers, also extracted Rs 50 lakh from Roshan on the pretext of helping him get closed a civil complaint case against the Roshans.
The Adjudicating Authority of the PMLA, in two latest and separate orders, attached the assets in the name of Sharma as “proceeds of crime” earned by creating illegal assets by cheating a number of people who were scared of their status of being CBI authorities.
The Authority is a judicial body to decide on cases of enforcement action.
The ED probe found that the assets created by Sharma were “done with the sole intention of money laundering by projecting the tainted money derived out of scheduled offence as untainted in the form of genuine investment.”
The case had made headlines three years back as a number of people who were under the scanner of agencies like DRI and the Income Tax department got in touch with the conmen, taking them to be CBI officers, for bailing them out of legal action by these agencies.
Relying on circumstantial evidence, the Bombay High Court has upheld the life sentence awarded to a 26-year-old man for killing his pregnant wife. Laxman Dhotre was sentenced to life imprisonment by Nanded sessions court on the charges of killing his wife, Chanda, who was carrying his child. He was also awarded seven years’ jail term for killing the unborn child.
The division bench of Justices K U Chandiwal and V M Deshpande dismissed his appeal last week.
Dhotre worked at Umri Bazaar village in Nanded. After the marriage, he and his wife shifted to Hyderabad in 2009.
According to the prosecution, he was an alcoholic, and often quarrelled with his wife. After Chanda became pregnant, the couple returned to Nanded. However, Dhotre, when drunk, beat his wife sometimes despite her condition. On January 10, 2010, Chanda was found dead in the house. There were injuries on her body.
Dhotre was arrested and put on trial. His lawyers argued that he had gone to Hyderabad when Chanda died. But the High Court noted that no evidence was produced in this regard.
Public prosecutor G K Naik-Thigale pointed out that a witness had seen Laxman passing down a road in Umri Bazaar on the night of Chanda’s death.
His lawyer, Advocate D Y Nandedkar, also argued that the trial was vitiated because the charges had not been framed properly. But the High Court said this too was never proved, and even if some defect in framing was assumed, it was not proved how it caused any prejudice to the accused.
Court also pointed out that liquor bottles were recovered from the house “from which we can safely draw an inference that the appellant must have consumed the liquor”.
Moreover, the court said that although what happened on that night could be known only to Dhotre, the victim, being his wife was in his “custody”. As per the Evidence Act, he was required to “give plausible explanation in respect of the injuries found on her body”. No such explanation was given, the HC noted, upholding the sentence.
Narendra Modi is being addressing hundreds of rallies across India and his favorite targets in every rally are Sonia Gandhi and Congress Party. However, looking at the prospect at Uttar Pradesh, he lately started attacking Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and accused him for indulging in vote bank politics and “misleading” Muslims in the name of secularism. He also pursued to blame Gandhi and Yadav for the communal clashes, saying “700 riots took place right under the nose of Madam Soniaji in the last one year and 250 of them took place right here under Netaji (Yadav) in Uttar Pradesh.” Modi charged that the Congress, SP and the BSP do “vote bank politics and sing songs of secularism”.
What they are doing is just talking. They talk about secularism but their intention is to keep every people poor so that can play the poor card always. In a recent speech, Sonia talked about the 15-point programme for developing 90 Muslim-dominated districts in the country of which 15 are in UP. Modi took a dig at her statement and said, when an MP asked about the work under the project, Soniaji’s UPA government said not a single paise has been spent in last one year. This is an example of misleading the Muslims and people. They can neither provide development nor security to the people and they have no right to be in power even for a second. Modi accused the Congress of being against bringing back black money stashed in foreign banks. Now I am curious to know, what plans Modi has to bring back this said ‘black money’, and does he know where it is deposited? If he knows then why he is waiting all these years. Why he had not exposed the people who have black money in foreign bank?
Sometimes, I feel these are just political gimmicks, asking people to provide a strong majority to the BJP in the forthcoming elections, and get voters assurance over the victory of BJP and NDA candidates and get them at least 300 seats. He appealed to the voters that they have elected rulers for the last 60 years but “this time you elect a servant for next 60 months and he promises to do things which they have not done in last 60 years. Modi is not the person who builds castles in the air; he has done development in Gujarat and made it possible for each and every community to prosper there. People of this country have seen irresolute government which is always busy in appeasing one particular community for 10 long years. No doubt, you have to develop financially backward classes but that doesn’t mean you leave out other poor people. However, national politics has its own challenges. Modi should be little practical. Unfortunately, in our country leaders come to power nations are self-improved. Modi is an authoritarian, we would be very fortunate to be guided by that very leader. Delayed development has hurt India.
Modi would have not got the prominence that he is enjoying today. The middle class of 2014 India is not an illiterate block which can’t read the blunt communalism that so called secular parties are playing. Original BJP which represent the ‘Far right’ ideology has a core support base. People today very much understand politics to philosophy and have a view about all. They see naked failure of Congress and its attempt to hide everything under the carpet of secularism, while they find Modi as a mascot of change/development. Within these circumstances in the country, young and old feel that he is fit to lead the country, reeling under utter chaos.
In the interest of political expediency, Modi was handpicked for a specific purpose. At this time, country needs a person who can deliver. Many of us are unable to find a suitable person other than Modi. He has proved himself with the possible growth and strong leadership. He even works in sectors like agriculture and stands with agriculturally developed states like Haryana and Punjab. In the last ten years, the entire economy, administration has seen the lowest. Only area worth mentioning enormous growth is the area of corruption. Looking at the present scenario, people are flowing in Modi wave, they want him as the prime minister of India. Blame it to the development mantra that he gave or the marketing that has built his image larger than the party, or one can blame the published opinion poll or his social media manager and campaigners. The fact is that, Modi has influenced the people of this country, and more than that he has managed to deliver through his own ruled state.
People alleged that BJP have leadership crises but when they finalised their leader, then they accuse the party of being a one man party. Anyway, whether Modi can revive the BJP is the big question and debate will go on and on. However, that doesn’t matter. Here the matter is, will Modi deliver as expected by the citizens of this country and will he change the fate of this country?
Five persons of a family were killed and an equal number were seriously injured as a milk tanker in which they were travelling from Sangamner to Mumbai overturned near Kasara on the Mumbai-Agra National Highway on Sunday.
A minor fire broke out on an ocean-going tug Matanga which was undergoing repairs at the naval dockyard on Sunday afternoon. The tug is capable of towing two large vessels out of the harbour.