Madhya Pradesh government has introduced “Ramcharitmanas” of Tulsidas as part of the curriculum for undergraduate students and students of engineering will have to learn about Ramsetu — which many in the saffron clan considers a feat of engineering. For the medical stream, students will be offered the option of studying medicine in Hindi. On the approval of the syllabus committee for higher education, “Ramcharit Manas Ke Vyavharik Darshan” (Applied philosophy of Ramcharitmanas) has been introduced as an elective course for first-year BA students from the academic session of 2021-22.
Madhya Pradesh’s Medical Education Minister Vishwas Sarang told Afternoon Voice, “Very soon a committee would be formed to ensure that medical education courses are arranged in Hindi as well. In the near future, we will start medical studies in Hindi too.”
This will have a 100-mark question paper and include topics such as “Spirituality and religion in root sources of Indian culture”. “Four ages in Vedas, Upanishads and Purans”. “Difference between Ramayana and Shri Ramcharitmans” and “Incarnation of divine existence”.
In the foundation course for English, a preface to Mahabharata by C Rajagopalchari will be taught to first-year students — the objective, according to the order, is to help students develop “leadership ability and humanistic attitude by focusing on various dimensions of personality development”.
Madhya Pradesh made an effort towards having a Hindi curriculum for higher studies earlier. In 2011, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hindi University was established in the state for engineering and medical education in Hindi. But even after 10 years, it has made no headway. The engineering stream was discontinued in 2018 in absence of adequate faculty, translated syllabus, books and students. Medical studies in Hindi have not been started till date.
By way of students, the university has eight peons and two drivers; 74 departments are being handled by 29 teachers — all guest faculty. No recruitment has taken place in the last 10 years.
There is also a proposal to include the biographies of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh founder Dr KB Hedgewar, Bharatiya Jan Sangh chief Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Dr BR Ambedkar among other leaders as part of the first-year foundation course in medicine to instill social and medical ethics in students.
Higher Education Minister Mohan Yadav said the changes were meant to “bring our glorious past to the fore”. The syllabus is being implemented “on recommendation of scholars”, he added, countering Congress allegations of “saffronisation of education”.
“It has been proved by a NASA study that Ram Setu was a man-made bridge-built millions of years ago,” he said.
MTDC owns about 128 acres of land in Gorai in survey nos. 46, 53,54,56,57,59. Some person called Dashrath Chavan informed MTDC about the encroachment on its land. He said he had struck a deal with a couple — Dinesh Pavle and his wife Fatima — for a big plot for Rs 20 lakh last year and paid them Rs 12 lakh. However, locals later told Chavan that there was a legal tangle over its ownership.
The said scam was exposed after MTDC officials were told in May about encroachment on the land. MTDC had tried to consolidate its landholding in the area in 2007, but the exercise was halted after locals went to court. The court had ordered that no construction of any kind would be done on the land without its permission.
Sanjay Dhekane, Sr. Manager Legal & Personnel of MTDC said, “The moment we were tipped of we carried out a survey. It was found that 20-25 guntha [a guntha is about .025 acre] from survey no. 53 had been encroached upon and a house had been built on it.”
Following a complaint by the tourism corporation, the local police launched a probe and found Pavle and his wife had made forged papers to pass off the land as their inherited property.
Adv. Ganesh Sudhir Vaidya, “Basically if a buyer understands that any property, he is dealt with is the government has undertaken a zone; then he will not buy it. The seller in such a situation should give an idea to the customer before transacting. The customer also must use his right to information about the land or property before he agrees. In such cases, the giver or dealer should not cheat his client.”
The couple made bogusly papers to show that the land belonged to their family. Police and MTDC are investigating the matter; meanwhile obtaining property search records from the office of the sub-registrar of assurances is a must if you are a buyer or seller.
A buyer has to give public notice in 2 leading newspapers, one in English and the other in the local language, giving 14 days to file written objections along with documentary evidence subtending ownership rights of the property, none of the above was taken into consideration by the seller or buyer.
Vijay Nalavade, Property Developer, “See the one who takes over a property. Firstly, one has to carefully study the site papers. He has to take advice from his advocacy. A big deal is never done with blind eyes. By the ministerial contacts will manage and digest this land in the government zone is the loophole these parties hide play with. Normally they think this assumption of Government land will be put easily in their pockets. Then when it’s an issue and the matte is hot, they start playing hide and seek.”
“The one who is fooled should appeal to the court. At first, he should register a petition on the injustice he has experienced,” said Raja Shirsat, Real Estate Broker.
“Meet the advocate first. Get a Land property search Report. A search report traces the history of a property that was the original owner of the property and how it has moved hands over some time before reaching the present seller. NOC is an important factor. Now when the money gets transferred from you can understand where the money is going in a private account or government account. These are the vital and important points one has to be careful of,” said Shiv Singh, Real Estate Manager.
“We had a piece of land at Gorai allotted by the Collector. We have found out some encroachments are happening there. We got a Complaint from Dashrath Chavan that some proxy specimen pretending to be this landowner is dealing in business to sell this property. We have then filed an FIR through Gorai Police Station. The Cops are investigating the matter,” said Sanjay Dhekane, Sr. Manager Legal & Personnel of MTDC.
“We haven’t got any such Information. On this issue and nobody or no one will be able to say anything on this matter. The ITDC has not got any such information on this,” said Ankush, ITDC, Chief Vigilant Officer (Dept).
Most of the slums in Mumbai are illegally occupied and gradually became legal habitats. See pans, collector lands, government lands are free passage for migrants and land sharks. Illegally occupied slums are steadily evicted by land mafias by giving them money or alternate accommodation.
What has happened is that if the slum is right in the heart of the city, it has a lot of value. In fact, Mumbai slums cost billions. This attracts all kinds of vested interests. The politicians promise money to the inhabitants, they get them registered as voters, they raise requests to regularize the ownership of land, which they occupy on humanitarian grounds.
When we talk about better standards of living it includes living in healthy neighbourhoods. Had it been a developed country, they would simply build alternative homes, move out the residents of Dharavi and bulldoze down the area to create a new township on the basis that the housing there does not conform to basic norms of housing laws.
We actually can afford to do that, without considering the billions generated by reclaiming all that real estate, but it will not stop until there are people willing to live in that mess. One day, as people get more educated and are more productive than people who live on casual labour, these slums won’t find anyone willing to live there. You will then find no resistance to reform the slums.
Land mafia often pays money to agents to move people into government lands and then declare it as residential or commercial land and take ownership.
Things are changing; it needs Indians to be better equipped with productivity so that they do not compromise with such situations.
Experts claim it is a myth that land is not available in Mumbai to house the poor–land is available but is owned by a powerful elite, which ensures that vacant land is not freed for slum dwellers. The National Commission on Urbanisation reported that 91 people in Mumbai owned 55 per cent of vacant land. This concentration of ownership, in fact, is a widely known phenomenon, accepted by government officials as well.
It is not that houses are not available in Mumbai, but these are unaffordable to the lower middle class. There are a few developers who control the Mumbai housing sector. We need to break this jinx and deregulate the housing sector.
In mid-2016, property prices in Mumbai’s business districts reached record levels, becoming, for a brief period in 2020, the most expensive real estate in the world is built in south Mumbai. Unleashed by a series of national-level industrial and monetary reforms, demand for residential and commercial property intensified among both local investors and global speculators.
Yet the increased demand was met with constrained supply — due both to geographic limitations (Mumbai is an island city with few transits linkages to the mainland) and a regulatory context posing restrictions or disincentives on certain types of development — prices rose dramatically if we look at the projects like Nijman, 2000; 2002; Bertaud, 2002). Responding to these market pressures, the local state began making certain highly valued lands available for development through a series of industrial land conversions, slum clearance schemes, and the de-reservation of certain public lands.
Construction activities in Mumbai’s island city and northern suburbs expanded, further bolstered by the growth of the finance industry, access to new sources of capital, and both funding and pressure from multilateral aid agencies. Although activity slowed somewhat after the mid-1990s peak when some speculators left and real estate prices began to ‘correct’, both prices and demand have remained high and property development has emerged as one of India’s and Mumbai’s fastest-growing industries.
With construction crews becoming a common sight throughout the city in the late 1990s, two new shopping centres then drew little attention when constructed in the Crawford Market area of South Mumbai, opposite the city’s police headquarters. The Sara and Sahara Shopping Centres opened in 2000, joining a myriad of new shopping centres and retail establishments that had appeared in the area in the previous five years.
It was soon learnt that the Sara and Sahara Shopping Centres had been built illegally by the D-Company, the city’s largest and most notorious mafia organization, on land belonging to the state government’s public works department.
As the details of the case came to light in mid-2003, it was learned that representatives of the D-Company had purchased the property from a small-scale businessman who had been illegally squatting on the public land. The D-Company then acquired the requisite building permits from the municipal building department, with the payment of hefty bribes, and constructed the buildings with few obstacles.
As more information about the D-company’s involvement in the shopping centre project surfaced, it became apparent that the mafia organization had been running a highly profitable property development business since the mid-1990s, constructing retail and residential buildings in other parts of Mumbai, as well as in Dubai and Karachi. Further investigation revealed that the D-Company was not the only criminal organization involved in such activities at the time, but that all of the city’s major organized crime groups had involved themselves in real estate and property development.
Poised on the northern edge of South Mumbai is a piece of real estate developers who would love to get their hands on. Rubbing shoulders with upmarket Bandra, Dharavi is known as Asia’s largest slum, but it’s actually much more than that–it’s a settlement in which people live and work, producing a wide array of goods and services. The government’s plan to ‘redevelop’ Dharavi is threatening a huge number of livelihoods.
Supported by an illicit nexus of politicians, bureaucrats and the police, the mafia has emerged as a central figure in Mumbai’s land development politics. The structural shifts that facilitated the criminalization of land development and the implications of mafia involvement in local politics are visible here.
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Mumbai Police on Tuesday arrested Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders Gopal Jhaveri, Sumitra Shrivastav, Kunal Pawar and other volunteers who were part of AAP’s Mooshak Yatra in Dahisar by the DCP Zone-XII DS Swami.
“The AAP Mooshak Yatra is a 5-day Mumbai campaign with Lord Ganpati’s aide, Lord Mooshak – to understand the struggles of common Mumbaikars and the Shiv Sena’s failures, and to pray for a better city and a better government”, said an AAP volunteer.
“This arrest is unlawful and unfair. DCP Swami is the same police officer who led a lathi-charge against the Aarey protests, and holds a personal grudge against the Aam Aadmi Party,” said an AAP leader.
Yesterday in a shocking incident a 16-year-old girl committed suicide just because she was not allowed to play games on a smartphone. She was the daughter of an autorickshaw driver. They are five children, four daughters, and one son. The son is much valued in the family and he had the upper hand on everything. There was one mobile phone among five children and this 16-year-old was addicted to mobile games.
There was a minor quarrel between the 16-year-old victim and her younger brother over playing games on mobile. After which the girl came out of the house with Ratol, a rat-killing drug from a nearby medical store, and drank it in front of the younger brother. The younger brother informed the family about this. The family immediately took the girl to Shatabdi Hospital; there she was declared dead.
These days’ teenagers are increasingly depressed, feel hopeless, and are more likely to consider suicide. The sudden increase in teens’ symptoms of depression, suicide risk factors, and suicide rates in 2012 — around the time when smartphones became popular. Especially during the lockdown, the cellphone was the only outlet for their emotional needs and desires.
Many research studies have claimed that the teens who spend five or more hours per day on their devices are 71 per cent more likely to have one risk factor for suicide. And that’s regardless of the content consumed. Whether teens are watching cat videos or looking at something more serious, the amount of screen time — not the specific content — goes hand in hand with the higher instances of depression.
The idea that they’re under an increasing amount of academic pressure and they’re spending more and more time on schoolwork doesn’t turn out to be true when you look at these large, nationally representative surveys. For example, there’s a large survey of entering college students, so that’s exactly the population you’d expect would feel a lot of pressure to have spent a lot of time on homework and extracurricular activities.
Among that group, when they report on their last year in high school, homework time is about the same as it was in the ’80s, and the time they spend on extracurricular activities are also about the same … The other thing is, we also found that teens who spend more time on homework are actually less likely to be depressed.
Moreover, they have to handle the demands of social media. And some of the mental health trends are the most pronounced for the youngest teens, as well. Every teen has her/his social media account. They update every small thing on their status. Smartphones have become their status symbols, lifeline, and the main resource to live connected with all that they want. Smartphones are having a profound impact on the way adolescents today communicate with one another and spend their free time. And while some experts say it’s too soon to ring alarm bells about smartphones, others argue we understand enough about young people’s emotional and developmental vulnerabilities to recommend restricting kids’ escalating phone habits.
Kids who used social media daily were 13% more likely to report high levels of Many types of research claimed that the kids have more depressive symptoms than those who used social less frequently. Overall, kids in the study who spent low amounts of time engaged in in-person social interaction, but high amounts of time on social media were the most likely to be depressed.
Some experts have pointed to the aftermath of the lockdown, or rising student workloads, as possible non-device explanations for young people’s recent struggles. New research presents compelling evidence that the more time teenagers spend on smartphones and other electronic screens, the more likely they are to feel depressed and think about, or attempt, suicide. Screen time should be considered a modern-day risk factor for depression and suicide.
There is a concerning relationship between excessive screen time and risk for death by suicide, depression, suicidal ideation, and suicidal attempts. All of those mental health issues are very serious. This is something that the parents and society at large should ponder. Depression and suicide rates for teens between the ages of 13 and 18 have increased dramatically since 2020, especially among girls, and excessive use of electronic devices is a likely culprit.
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A 16-year-old girl, who lived in the Janupada compound in the limits of Mumbai’s Samta Nagar police station, committed suicide.
The incident took place around 11.30 pm on Friday night when there was a minor quarrel between the 16-year-old victim and her younger brother over playing a game on mobile. After which the girl came out of the house with Ratol, a rat-killing poison from a nearby medical store, and drank it in front of the younger brother. The younger brother informed the family about this. The family immediately took the girl to Shatabdi Hospital.
Police Sub-Inspector Santosh Kharde of Samata Nagar Police Station reached the spot and inquired about the family members after doing a panchanama of the incident.
Police said that after receiving information about the death of the victim girl during treatment at Shatabdi Hospital at around 10 am on Saturday morning, the police handed over the body to the family after conducting a post-mortem.
Afternoon Voice spoke to some experts who are studying and researching teenage depression and young suicides.
Dr Rajendra Barve (Psychiatry specialist) told Afternoon Voice, “Online gaming is as addictive as any Narcotics substance. It eventually plays a Neuro Chemical reaction and the Dopamine increases. The American Doctors Manual has clarified Cyber Addiction as a Mental Disorder.”
Santosh Kharde, PSI of Samata Nagar Police station said, “The incident has happened in the Thakur Village area of Kandivali. The victim girl drank poison over a spat with her brother on playing a game on mobile. Her family admitted her to Shatabdi hospital, she was declared dead on arrival. We have registered a chargesheet and further inquiry is going on.”
Dr Jitendra Tiwari (Electopathist) said that “Use mobile and computer less, and utilize it only when needed. Technology should not be misused nor be overused. Children and youngsters have to avoid getting indulge and involved in it at late nights. This is unnatural use of that. Especially do not disturb your sleep.”
Himesh Nepani, Rebellious Gaming Cafe (Proprietor) said, “Time management is a must. Study time and playtime play. I have many customers who work on their laptops and also play computer games. Mobile and smartphone games are a bit different. One thing for sure is that mobile gaming is growing so are the mental hazards.”
“First and foremost, the government and parents should create awareness amount youngsters about the consequences and dangers of phone gaming and internet addiction. Parents should set a time limit, control the data usage on mobile phones and computers,” said Anshul Pandey (Cyber-maestro), Global Infosec Chairman.
“Normally my advice is that games should be played for fun. Work on a particular time frame and allot timeslot to this amusement. Internet in India is speedily developed all over the nation,” Nilesh Gawade (Game developer) Co-Founder Aryavarta Technologies.
“Cyber addiction is worse than any other addiction. Suicide is not a sudden thought it is a long process. Due to excessive digital gaming, emotional instability rises. To monitor this one has to be self-dependent. Therapies are available to get rid of addiction,” Dr Jaini Savla (Expert in Psychology).
Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Ghatlodia MLA Bhupendra Patel took oath as the 17th Chief Minister of Gujarat on Monday. Union Home Minister Amit Shah congratulated the new Chief Minister of Gujarat soon after the ceremony.
CMs of BJP ruled states, including Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar, Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Goa CM Pramod Sawant were also present at the ceremony. It is believed that Patel holds a strong influence in the Patidar community in Gujarat which the BJP has banked upon to win the upcoming elections.
Fondly addressed as ‘Dada’ by his supporters, Bhupendrabhai Rajnikanthbhai Patel is now the 17th Chief Minister of Gujarat. The announcement of the 59-year-old BJP leader’s name as the Chief Minister-elect at a legislative party meeting of the BJP on Sunday came as a surprise for many as the low-profile MLA was not seen to be among the top contenders for the post.
Born in Ahmedabad, Patel is a first-time MLA from the Ghatlodia seat, a post previously held by Anandiben Patel, who is currently serving as the Governor of Uttar Pradesh with an additional charge of Madhya Pradesh. He had won his maiden seat by a margin of 1,17,000 votes in 2017, the largest margin in that poll defeating Congress candidate Shashikant Patel. He grabbed more than 72 per cent of the vote share in the Ghatlodia constituency during the 2017 assembly polls.
Patel is, however, not a new face in politics and has served as the Ahmedabad municipal councillor. Patel, who holds a diploma in civil engineering, also served as the chairman of the Standing Committee of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA). With Assembly polls in the state scheduled to be held in 2022, BJP went with Patel, a Patidar face for the Chief Minister. He is also a trustee at Patidar organizations Sardar Dham and Vishwa Umiya Foundation.
The Patidars are a dominant caste in Gujarat with a sizeable control over the electoral votes. The community also dominates the political economy with a stronghold over education, realty and cooperative sectors. The party is counting on Patel to navigate the party through tough waters during the upcoming assembly elections in 2022. In the 2017 state election, the BJP won 99 of the state’s 182 Assembly seats, Congress got 77 seats.
The long-awaited Ganesha festival is a low-key affair with the imposition section 144. The mighty festival of Ganesh Chaturthi is one of the most celebrated festivals in Mumbai and India. In honour of Lord Ganesha – the lovable elephant-headed God is illustrious all over India. Many Hindu families across India and abroad celebrate this festival with much grandeur in their homes.
The festival is celebrated on the 4th day of the Bhadrapada month according to the Hindu calendar, which falls in late August or early September. People believe that the wish is always granted to those who visit the idol. The Lalbaugcha Raja in Lalbaug is the biggest draw. Although the idol in the cramped fish market remains the same each year, crores of devotee’s flock to this much-hyped pandal to seek godsends from the wish-fulfilling deity.
There were many challenges to the city for accidents, blasts, heavy rain pours and demonetization but the sheen of the festival remained intact. This situation is a little different, it’s a hazardous pandemic, people need to be careful and safe. While Mumbaities devotedly celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi, the politicians make the most out of this to their political advantage.
Lockdown is one of the biggest reasons many shopkeepers or business groups refrained from supporting Ganesh donations, after demonetization, it was the GST monster that killed business opportunities to small scale industries. Somehow a Mumbai businessman overcame these challenges and now it’s been two years since people are suffering due to post lockdown challenges. Meeting daily needs is a big task, donating funds is just next to impossible. The pandals across Mumbai would be dependent solely on the politicians for the funds for the festival.
According to the Brihanmumbai Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Samanvay Samiti (BSGSS), an umbrella body of Ganesh mandals in the city, there are a total of 11,400 Ganesh pandals across the city. Each pandal on average spends around Rs 7 lakh on organizing the 10-day festival and the total turnover estimate of all pandals is over 800 crores in Mumbai during this time. The donations have been reduced by almost 50 per cent given the fact that redevelopment projects in the city have been stuck for more than a year and many developers have backed out from giving huge donations.
Many businesses and corporate companies got shut down and many small-scale industries suffered so the collection from all these sources has reduced to 50 per cent. Also, the political leaders have avoided putting up banners and posters which have affected the revenue of the pandals. They can now get funds only through the events organized by the pandals and sponsored by a few entities.
The celebrations’ content has changed. It is no longer a platform for gathering to and participate in discourses on nationalistic, pro-Independence issues which Tilak created. When Lokmanya Tilak was in great distress and worried about our country’s freedom. He used to sit at the bank of Girgaum Chowpatty and wondered how to collect people. While sitting on the bank of the seashore he used to make idols and people used to stop by to see them.
Such collective movement was not restricted by the British. So, from there he got an idea to celebrate Sarvajanik Ganesh Utsav. He started the tradition of Sarvajanik Ganesha Utsav by making clay idols. Tilak was the first person to install large public images of Ganesha in pavilions and he was the one who established the practice of submerging all the public images on the tenth day of the festival. Ganesh Chaturthi soon started seeing community participation and involvement, in the form of cultural events. Later on, this became an important festival during the Peshwa rule in Maharashtra. It acquired a more organized form all over India during the Swaraj movement, when Lord Ganesha was chosen as a rallying point for protest against British rule, because of his wide appeal as “the God for Everyman”.
The strongest movement to evoke nationalism, through religious passions, was the organization of Ganesh Chaturthi in Maharashtra, which inspired feelings of Hindu unity in the state. Once India became Independent, it had no such use anymore. But it endured as a tradition but only in its run as an annual event. It has, of course, a political content, but rather the perverse one.
Meanwhile, the road widths are guzzled up, civic bodies and police make it a point to talk of restrictions on such pandals but it often remains mere talk. They are gaudy and loud, gauche, and they are expensive and the focus, fortunately, remains on the idol; the bigger they are, the better they get acknowledged.
This year as the country battles the third wave of coronavirus, Maharashtra is on high alert. This has forced organisers of the annual Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations to make arrangements for online darshan. This is to minimize the infection spread since this event sees heavy public gathering across the pandals (across Mumbai, Pune and other regions. Areas like Parel, Chinchpokli and Byculla which are near Lalbaugcha Raja Mandal have several buildings and lanes identified as restricted zones by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.
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The Mumbai Police has imposed section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) in the city from September 10 to September 19, prohibiting crowding at Ganpati pandals in view of the threat of third Covid-19 wave.
According to Mumbai Police commissioner Hemant Nagrale, no procession will be allowed and not more than five people will be allowed to gather at a place. He has also urged the public to opt for online darshan and not crowd at ganpati pandals.
He has requested Ganesh mandals to arrange digital darshan for the devotees and made it compulsory for them to put out announcements through social media that physical darshan was not allowed.
Nagrale said “No crowd will be allowed at any place where sarvajanik mandals are located. Household Ganpati idols should not be above the height of two feet and sarvajanik Ganpati idols not more than 4 feet,” The police chief further declared that immersion processions, which usually attract large crowds, would not be allowed and mandals should take all safety precautions allowing not more than 10 people for immersion.
The number is restricted to five for household idols. Mumbai Ganesh Chaturthi 2021: In a bid to contain the spread of the virus during this festival season, Mumbai Police on Thursday decided to impose Section 144 of CrPC in the city from September 10-19. “Mumbai Police impose Sec 144 CrPC in Mumbai from 10-19 Sept.
The Mumbai civic body had also issued guidelines for the Ganpati festival beginning from Friday and banned the physical darshan for devotees at public pandals as well as imposed restrictions on the number of participants in processions during the celebrations.
Here are the guidelines issued by BMC:
For bringing the idols of the deity and during their immersion, there will not be more than 10 people in the processions of public mandals and not more than five for the household Ganpati’s
All devotees should wear masks and observe social distancing. Also, the 10 participants should have taken both the doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and completed 15 days after taking the second dose
BMC has banned physical darshan for devotees at the public Ganpati pandals and appealed to citizens to celebrate the festival with simplicity.
The mandals falling in COVID-19 containment zones will have to make arrangements for the immersion of the Ganpati idols in the pandal premises or postpone it.
In sealed buildings, devotees will have to make arrangements for the immersion of idols at home.
If a house/building is declared a containment zone, the rules for it should be followed during the festival.
The cap on the height of Ganpati idols and restrictions on celebrations have been imposed for the second year in a row to curb the spread of the COVID-19.
“Considering the potential danger of a third COVID-19 wave, devotees are strictly forbidden from taking darshan. It has been decided that Ganeshotsav mandals should provide darshan facility to devotees through cable network, website, Facebook or (other) social media,” the civic body said.
A special court on Thursday discharged Maharashtra minister and senior NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal and seven others, including his son and nephew, in the Maharashtra Sadan scam case being probed by the state ACB.
Besides Chhagan Bhujbal (73), the special court hearing cases related to the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), discharged his son Pankaj, nephew Sameer and five others in the 2015 case.
They had sought discharge in the case, related to alleged corruption in the construction of a new Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi and involvement of a private firm, claiming there was no evidence to prosecute them and the court allowed their applications.
The Bhujbhals were represented by counsel Prasad Dhakephalkar along with advocates Sajal Yadava and Sudarshan Khawase.
They submitted that all the allegations against them were false and were based on wrong calculations, assumptions and presumptions.
Despite a voluminous charge sheet, running into thousands of pages and filed in 2016, there was no sufficient evidence to proceed with the trial, they argued.
“He (Chhagan Bhujbal) had no role in the selection of the developer. Neither he had any role In selecting the quantum of benefits to be conferred on the developer,” the lawyers argued.
There is no material on record in any form to suggest that the NCP leader got illegal gratification, they added.
The ACB, in a reply filed through special public prosecutor Ajar Misar, had earlier opposed the discharge pleas, saying Bhujbal and his family members had received kickbacks from a construction firm, KS Chamankar Enterprises.
Special judge HS Sathbai, after hearing both sides, allowed the discharge pleas of the accused. However, a detailed order was not available yet.
The case relates to a 2005-2006 deal that the NCP leader allegedly gave to the firm when he was the PWD minister.
According to the ACB, the contractors had “earned 80 per cent profit” in the construction of Maharashtra Sadan (the state guest house) in Delhi, while as per the government circular, such contractors were entitled to “only 20 per cent gain”.
On July 31, the court had discharged four other accused in the case. It had then said there was neither any illegality nor any direct or circumstantial evidence to show that certain illegal means were adopted in awarding a contract for the construction of Maharashtra Sadan.
The ACB has claimed that the original cost estimate for Maharashtra Sadan was Rs 13.5 crore, but it was later increased to Rs 50 crore.
The Bhujbals got Rs 13.5 crore in kickbacks from the firm, which earned a profit of about Rs 190 crore from the construction of Maharashtra Sadan and other PWD works, the state agency has alleged.
The anti-graft agency has alleged the books of accounts had been “fudged” to show that the profit earned was only 1 per cent.
The probe agency has claimed that for the construction of Maharashtra Sadan, KS Chamankar Enterprises had transferred money to Niche Infrastructure and other companies in which the minister`s son Pankaj and nephew Sameer Bhujbal were directors.
Most of the companies floated by the Bhujbals were in the name of employees and were used for siphoning off funds, the ACB has claimed.
Chhagan Bhujbal is currently the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection Minister in the Shiv Sena-led MVA government.
Mumbai Police on Tuesday arrested Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders Gopal Jhaveri, Sumitra Shrivastav, Kunal Pawar and other volunteers who were part of AAP’s Mooshak Yatra in Dahisar by the DCP Zone-XII DS Swami.
The Mumbai Police has imposed section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) in the city from September 10 to September 19, prohibiting crowding at Ganpati pandals in view of the threat of third Covid-19 wave.