YEH MERA INDIA

Political workers on Private-sector payroll

Mumbai: The Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray has been caught in a trouble with social activist Anjali Damania accusing that Thackeray’s driver and domestic workers of ‘Matoshree’ were on payroll of Cambata Aviation. Vinayak Raut, Sena’s Member of Parliament and president of Bharatiya Kamgar Sena (BKS) admitted that the driver and other workers were on the payroll of Cambata. Raut added they too have lost their salaries.

Damania alleged that along with the driver, six other people working at ‘Matoshree,’ the official residence of Thackerays and 15 Sena workers were paid salaries by Cambata Aviation without working for that company.

Damania further alleged, “Initially we did not have a proof. Now we have the salary slips of all these people. It makes me feel sick. How compromised these people are? See the way they talk in their rallies and in actual life, all they do is loot.” She further accused the Sena’s Union of not sparing the innocent, poor workers of Cambata Aviation and their families.

“They tied up with the Management and compromised on all the rights of the workers. I will teach them a lesson,” she threatened. Congress Legislator Nitesh Rane, who is jointly working with Anjali Damania to expose the connection between Sena and Cambata Aviation said, “There was an understanding between Cambata management and Sena’s registered workers union BKS that is why Sena has kept mum even though 2700 bhumi putras (Marathi spoken local workers) lost their jobs.”

“The management and BKS had signed an understanding with which the workers lost their jobs. We will raise this issue till the workers will get justice,” said Rane.

Handicapped dreams to become an IAS

NASHIK: Laxmi is an average teen with ambitions of becoming an IAS officer. Presently she is appearing for her 12th standard exams from Solapur. The only thing extraordinary about her is that she writes with her foot – you see, she was born without arms.

“I am normal”, Laxmi told confidently. “I can write well, turn the pages of textbooks and notebooks, use the computer keyboard and use the TV remote with my feet,” she said.

She suffers from Congenital amputation – which means born without limbs. Hence, she does not feel much difference in her life compared to a non disabled person who loses a limb or limbs and cannot fend for themselves.

Her father Sanjay Shinde and her family were reluctant to send her to school fearing a negative reply from the school and fear of other students. Nearby was a zilla parishad nursery. Laxmi wanted to go and explore inside the school. Not being a student she used to sit under a tree near the school and watch the children studying and playing.

“I longed to study and play with other children but the schools didn’t accept me. So I used to sit outside the school for hours and listen to and sing songs or pretend I was studying,” she said.

Struck by her stubbornness, Sanjay Shinde appealed the nursery headmaster to admit her but was refused. He continued to pester the headmaster. Finally the headmaster agreed to admit Laxmi, putting all responsibility on the family. Thus began her journey. She got 47 percent in SSC and 52 percent in 11th. When told that she would have to increase her grades if she wanted to make it to IAS, Laxmi said that her grades were improving. “I am studying really hard…I’ll make it,” she asserted.

Workers die- cleaning septic tank

Mumbai: Three labourers died of suffocation while cleaning a septic tank near Zarimari area of Malwani. The victims have been identified as Murti Harijan (30), Maya Harijan (26) and Kashi Harijan (45).

The senior inspector of Malwani police station, Dipak L Phatangare, said, “The trio were daily wage workers. Two of the labourers died on the spot and the third victim Kashi died while being taken to Kandivali-based Shatabdi hospital.” The incident took place at around 9.30 am, said Phatangare. “There is a common toilet in the vicinity. The contractor hires labourers to clean the tank and doesn’t provide them any safety gear,” said Ramesh Kalia, a local.

11 years in jail for no fault!

NEW DELHI: “If you are in jail for more than 11 years for a crime which court finds you have not committed, you must be sick of the system. I try to imagine the mental states of two persons arrested for 2005 Delhi blasts, who spent 11 long years in jail and now the court clears them of all charges, one wonders the type of policing we have, the type of criminal justice system we have where innocents can be made to spend as much as 11 years in jail.”

This is a Facebook post on Mohammad Rafiq Shah and Mohammad Hussain Fazli, two youths from Kashmir, acquitted on February 16 by a Delhi court that ruled the evidence against them was “fabricated and flimsy.” They were implicated in the pre-Diwali blasts in Delhi in 2005 that killed 67 people.

The post would have been dismissed as one more from the human right activists but for the fact that it has come from Satyendra Garg, a senior IPS officer currently joint secretary in charge of the Northeast in the Home Ministry.

It is also for the first time that a serving police officer as senior as Garg has spoken about the two youth implicated in terror cases by police.  Rafiq was in college in Kashmir attending classes at the time the police accused him of planting a bomb in a bus in Delhi. Fazli was a shawl vendor in Srinagar.

Garg said that like any right-thinking citizen, he was deeply disturbed by the realisation that two lives had been destroyed by wrongful arrests. “The court acquitted the two youths who were booked by Delhi police for terror without evidence. It is very disturbing and a serious issue… a sad commentary on the criminal justice system and the way national security is handled,” he lamented in an interview to a newspaper.

“If innocent people are booked on wrong charges, there is a dire need to correct this system. The security officials who investigated these cases should be made accountable. Inspector-level officers probe the cases, but they report to their superiors.”

Garg flagged how the families of the 67 victims had also been denied justice. “They have lost family members but have been denied justice. The perpetrators of the crime are still at large. Who is accountable for that,” he asked. A third accused, Tariq Ahmed Dar, was convicted. But he was found guilty of being a member of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and providing support to it, and not of masterminding the attack as alleged. Dar had already spent more than 10 years in jail, the maximum punishment for his offence.

A Home Ministry official criticised the special cell of Delhi police cell that probes terror cases for making arrests in “haste” to please their bosses and grab gallantry medals. “The government should order an inquiry against the investigators and their superiors in the intelligence agencies for implicating the two innocent youths without any evidence. The guilty officials should be criminally prosecuted,” he said.

Two years ago, the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Action, a rights group made up of educators, had prepared a dossier highlighting how the Delhi police cell had framed 16 Muslim youths in terror cases and how they were later acquitted by the courts.

BMC Poll: Lottery Draw Questioned in Court

Mumbai: Though the results of Brihanmumbai Mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are out, the fight for wards continues.

Shiv Sena aspirant Surendra Bagalkar who was contesting elections from Colaba lost the lottery draw against Atul Shah, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate.  Therefore, he has moved the small cause court in hope of justice. The applicant (Bagalkar) has requested the small cause court Judge P S Deshmukh to disclose the five tender votes.

As both the leading aspirants got a tie, BMC commissioner Ajoy Mehta took a lottery draw as per the legal provision 28(H) of MMC Act in which Atul Shah of BJP won. Seeing the lottery result not in his favour, the aspirant who lost has moved the small cause court.

Speaking to the press, Bagalkar said, “In my ward, there are five tender votes, but before the lottery I was not aware of it and so I did not oppose the lottery draw. Also there was no question of my opposition to the lottery system as there is a provision in BMC act and whatever the BMC commissioner Ajoy Mehta read we followed. But I’m strongly against the lottery system as it kills the democratic value which every candidate has. If we have to decide by lottery system only, then why do we spend so much of money in elections. Let’s decide all candidates by lottery only.” He further added, “I hope after clarity on these tender votes it can change the results entirely.” Bagalkar is a two-time corporator from Sena from Mumbadevi constituency while he contested the elections from Girgaum for the first time. The winning candidate Atul Shah of BJP remarked, “I have full faith that in the legal battle too I will get the results in my favour and I’m ready for the legal fight also.”

What does a Tender vote mean?

On behalf of a valid voter if someone does a bogus voting, then the electoral officer after taking cognizance and proof of identification of concerned voter gives the valid voter an opportunity to cast his vote on a ballot paper. However, this vote is not counted while vote counting. However, if such situation appears then this tender vote becomes helpful.