YEH MERA INDIA

Either salary or pension, not both: Centre

Mumbai: The chairpersons and members of regulatory bodies cannot take both salary and pension, the Centre has said.

Existing norms provide that chairpersons and members shall be deemed to have retired from central or state government service on the date of their appointment to any regulatory authority. “In case such officers are in receipt of pension, the same shall be deducted in accordance with the prevailing orders applicable to the re-employed pensioner,” the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said. The directive comes as there have been complaints against chairpersons and members of a few regulatory bodies for receiving pension in addition to the salary. “With the latest order, such persons will have to face a cut in their salary. The amount of pension will be deducted from their salary,” a DoPT official said.

   After the implementation of the seventh central pay commission report, the pay and allowances of chairperson and full-time members of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA), Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and Competition Commission of India (CCI) have been delinked from government salaries. The pay and allowances of the chief and members of Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA), Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB), Warehousing Development Authority (WRDA), Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India (AERAI), Railway Development Authority (RDA) and Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) have also been delinked. Their pay is governed by the orders issued by the Department of Expenditure.

Aadhaar for Osama? Saddam tries to get him one

Lucknow: Osama bin Laden is long dead and gone but a Saddam Hussain operating an E-mitra kiosk center in Rajasthan’s Bhilwara district tried to make an Aadhaar card for the slain AI Qaeda terrorist.

However, officials of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) got a whiff of the matter and reported the matter to police immediately.

Police have arrested Saddam Hussain Mansuri, 25, who runs an Aadhaar card registration center in Mandal town. The accused had allegedly uploaded a blurred picture of Laden along with other details. UIDAI officials found discrepancies in the application and forwarded the matter for investigation to police.

Bhilwara Superintendent of Police Pradeep Mohan Sharma told PTI that they have registered the complaint from UIDAI. He said the state IT department had forwarded the complaint to him and a case was filed against Mansuri with the Mandal Police Station, Sharma said.

Mandal Circle officer, Chanchal Mishra, said that the accused will be produced before a court on Monday and will be taken on remand for further interrogation into the matter.

She said that a case under the IT Act has been registered against the accused, Saddam Hussain Mansuri.

Railway provide Lizard biriyani

New Delhi: The railway ministry cancelled a caterer's contract after a passenger found a dead lizard in his vegetable biryani served on a Delhi-bound train from Howrah, a ministry spokesperson said.

The passenger had ordered and eaten the dish without noticing the lizard but felt unwell later, a co-passenger, Meghna Sinha, said in a series of Tweets.

"In view of the Railway's zero tolerance policy towards poor quality and overcharging of food, the railway administration has terminated the contract of the catering contractor, R K Associates, for the Howrah-New Delhi Poorva Express," Railway Ministry spokesperson A K Saxena told PTI.

Sinha had shot a photograph of the biryani packet, uploaded it on Twitter and tagged the Indian Railways. In another Tweet, she tagged Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu. The ministry tweeted today that the catering contract on Poorva Express was given to R K Associates on May 15, 2014, for five years.

The caterer was fined `10 lakh last year and `7.5 lakh, it said in another Tweet. The passenger, who had asked for the biryani when the train was near Jhajha, Bihar, also uploaded a complaint on Twitter.

Minister’s driver has a company of 600 employees: Registered office of the company is minister’s official residence.

New Delhi: Is it a proverbial rags to riches story, or a link in an elaborate benami operation? Times Now is in possession of documents which prove that the driver of UPA minister Praful Patel was the director of a company which was extending manpower and cargo handling services to airlines. All this while his boss was the Union civil aviation minister. GVG Services Pvt Ltd was established in 2010 and, as per returns filed in 2013, had a share capital of `5 crore and only two directors — Vinod Singh and Ravi Singh.

As per sworn affidavits accessed by Times Now, both the directors have listed their official address as 26, Gurudwara Rakabganj Road, New Delhi. But, here is a twist in the tale: the address is the official residence of Praful Patel, former aviation minister and senior NCP member.

A visit to the company's headquarters in Mahipalpur — a suburb near the international airport in Delhi —revealed that the officials of the company were reluctant to name the proprietors.

At the end of a long conversation with general manager, GV Services, Karan Raina, Times Now got a confirmation on camera. When shown the picture of Vinod Singh, Patel's driver, the top company executive said, "This is Vinod Singh, the managing director of our company. He doesn't come here often, though."

The company, which services several national airports and a leading national airline, continued to have its registered address as 26, Gurudwara Rakabganj Road, New Delhi, the official residence of Union civil aviation minister, even after Patel had demitted office in 2011. The company employs at least 600 people as per its website and is therefore not a fly-by-night operation of insignificant antecedents. Prima facie, the documents accessed by Times Now raise questions about possible conflict of interest.

Times Now confronted Patel about the possibility of a conflict of interest. He didn't deny that Vinod Singh was his driver for decades, but said he wasn't aware that he had floated a company and bagged contracts running into lakhs of rupees at various airports across the country. "Yes, he's my driver, but I have nothing to do with the company, you can conduct your own investigations," Patel told Times Now.

Stolen Rs. 370/- in 1988: Gets 5 years jail in 2017

Bareilly: It's taken 29 years for a court in Bareilly to sentence two men to five years in prison for stealing Rs 370 from a man they had drugged in a train sometime in 1988.

The court of the additional district and sessions judge in Bareilly has, in its order, also fined the accused Rs 10,000 each.

A third accused died in 2004. On October 21, 1988, Chandra Pal, Kanhaiya Lal and Sarvesh had offered Wajid Husain tea laced with drugs as he was travelling on a train from Shahjahanpur to Punjab for a job. The three had then taken away the `370 that Husain had in his pocket.

Additional district government counsel Suresh Babu Sahu said, "An FIR was lodged against three people under IPC Sections 379 (theft), 328 (causing hurt by means of poison) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property).

In 2004, it came to light that Pal had died. Then the case was transferred to the court of the additional district and sessions judge against Kanhaiya Lal and Sarvesh." Pal remained absconding for 16 long years.

Husain, who is 59 years old now, last came to court in 2012 to depose against the accused. The two surviving accused, Lal and Sarvesh, who are now in their sixties and have grown-up sons and daughters in their native village in Hardoi, UP, regret the "gross mistake" they made back then due to what they termed "consequences of youth".

They now say the real punishment for them was the trial and not the jail term they have been given now. "The closure is a cause for happiness," Sarvesh said.

According to law ministry data, there are more than 2.8 crore cases pending in lower courts of the country and 38.7 lakh cases in high courts across India. One of the key reasons for the huge figure of pending litigation is the shortage of judges in subordinate courts as there are 4,954 judges' posts vacant when the sanctioned strength of judicial officers is 21,324.