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HIMALAYAN MIRROR
NATIONAL
GANGTOK, MONDAY 05 JANUARY 2015
Land acquisition act amendments for
enhanced compensation: Jaitley
New Delhi, Jan 4 (IANS)
: Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley Sunday came out
against criticism of the
amendments to the land
acquisition act, made
through an ordinance,
saying they "balance the
developmental needs of
India, particularly rural
India" and provides
enhanced compensation
to the land-owners.
In a Facebook posting,
titled "Amendments to
the Land Acquisition Law
- The Real Picture", he
said that the 2013 Act had
"over 50 drafting errors"
and the "provision" in the
ordinance with regard to
rectification of errors
"will be used to cure most
of them.
"Some are being cured
through this ordinance
which alters the earlier
mandate of the 2013 law
that unused land has to be
returned five years after
the acquisition. The earlier provision was clearly
defective".
"Creation of smart
cities, townships, industrial corridors, business
centres, defence projects,
cantonments,
ports,
nuclear
installations,
building of highways,
irrigation projects, dams
have a long gestations
period. They cannot be
Kashmir border quiet
but villagers stay away
Jammu, Jan 4 (IANS) :
The Jammu and Kashmir
border was quiet Sunday,
a day after Pakistani
gunfire left two Indian
soldiers and a civilian
dead and forced hundreds to flee their homes
along the frontier.
Although no firing or
shelling was reported
Sunday, frightened villagers chose to stay away
in makeshift camps in
Samba and Kathua districts where they have
been sheltered, an official said.
"Since
yesterday
(Saturday)
evening,
there has been no ceasefire violation by the
Pakistani troops on the
international border in
the two districts," a
senior
official
told
IANS.
Around 1,400 villagers
who fled their homes
Saturday due to indiscriminate shelling by
Pakistan Rangers were
still camped at safer
places away from their
homes, the official
added.
They were in camps at
Hiranagar,
Chan
Kahtriyan and Maren in
Kathua and at Regaal
and Chichi Mata in
Samba. The official said
male members of some
of the families visited
their villages Sunday
morning to feed the cattle but decided against
returning home with the
women and children for
now.A woman was killed
and eight other civilians
were injured Saturday in
Pakistani shelling along
the international border
in Samba and Kathua,
police said. The woman
identified as 45-year-old
Toshi Devi, wife of
Somnath and a resident
of Mangu Chak village
in Samba, was injured in
the shelling and suc-
cumbed to her injuries at
a hospital in Jammu. The
eight injured civilians
were being treated in the
same hospital, a police
officer told IANS.
The shelling forced
scores of villagers to
migrate to safer places.
Reports from the border
villages of Manyari,
Paansar, Bobia, Londi,
Sadechak,
Chailari,
Chachwal, Mangu Chak,
Regaal, Mawa, Sadho
and Chak Fakira said
dozens of families left
their homes because of
the shelling.
In the other incident of
Pakistan firing on the
Line of Control in
Tangdhar sector of
Kupwara district, police
said rocket propelled
grenades (RPGs) fired at
an Indian army post triggered a blaze in which
two soldiers of Gorkha
Rifles were killed and
two others were injured.
completed in five years.
"If the earlier provision
is to be effected, we
would be a nation of
incomplete projects on
account of defective legislative drafting," he said.
Countering criticism of
the acquired land to be
also given to developers,
he said that the draft provisions of the 2013 Act
"enthusiastically provide
that no part of an acquired
land could be used for a
private educational institution or a hospital.
"How will new smart
cities and townships
come up? Will they only
have a civil hospital and a
government school/college and no other healthcare and educational
institutions
will
be
allowed to be established
there?
"The ordinance permits
hospitals and educational
institutions to be established on an acquired
land. That is the purpose
of acquisition for townships. A township without
a social infrastructure
would be inherently
incomplete."
Jaitley said the needs of
"a modern growing and
developing India need a
balanced
approach"
where "development and
justice to the land-owner
must coexist. One cannot
be done at the cost of the
other".
According to him, the
amendment ordinance "is
based on extensive consultations where state
government of most political parties supported
these changes. Those who
are opposed to it can certainly mandate their
party's state governments
not to use the provisions
of the ordinance. History
will judge how these
states will lose out in the
era of competitive federalism.
On Dec 31, the government promulgated an
ordinance to amend provisions of the Right to
Fair Compensation and
Transparency in Land
Acquisition, Resettlement
and Rehabilitation Act,
2013.
Security tightened at Delhi
airport after terror threat
New Delhi, Jan 4 (IANS)
: Security was Sunday
tightened at the Indira
Gandhi International (IGI)
airport here following an
intelligence alert that terrorists may target Air
India flights going to
Afghanistan,
officials
said.
The Central Industrial
Security Force (CISF),
which looks after the airport's internal security, has
been asked to be on alert
and keep a tab on the
activities of every person.
Besides, Delhi Police,
which is in charge of security outside the airport,
was also put on alert.
"Security has been
extended and policemen
have been increased,"
Deputy Commissioner of
Police (IGI) M.I. Haider
told IANS.
CISF
spokesperson
Hemendra Singh said
security has been tight
since the last two months.
the fact that Modi had
addressed five rallies in
Delhi ahead of the previ-
ous assembly elections
last December.
"The last time too we
wanted him to hold a couple of more rallies but
that did not happen due to
some reasons. We think
that might have been the
reason that we fell slightly short of victory," a
senior party leader told
IANS.
The BJP won 31 seats
in the Delhi assembly
with the support of a lone
Akali legislator but fell
short of the magical figure of 36 in the 70-member house.
"But hopefully, this
time round, it will be an
all out attack on the
opposition," the leader
said.
According
to
the
leader, the focus of the
rallies will "obviously"
be on the unauthorized
colonies.
"They (colonies) have
always been pivotal for
all parties and our efforts
towards their regularisation will help us," said
the leader, adding that the
party was hoping to bag
Man injures wife,
commits suicide
New Delhi, Jan 4 (IANS) :A 32-year-old man committed suicide here by hanging himself after critically injuring his wife on her head with a sharp object, police said
on Sunday.
The mother of the deceased informed security personnel after finding herself locked from outside in a room of
the flat at Platinum Heights Apartments in Dwarka area
of south Delhi around 4.30 a.m. Sunday.
The security personnel, after freeing the elderly
woman, found the man hanging from a ceiling fan in
another room and his wife lying in a pool of blood. She
was rushed to a nearby hospital where her condition was
stated to be critical.
The security guard also informed police.
The couple married last year in November but their
short-lived marriage was fraught with frequent quarrels,
police said. They also said that no suicide note was
recovered.
Venkaiah Naidu to
meet municipal
commissioners
New Delhi, Jan 4 (IANS) :Union Urban Development
Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu will Monday interact with
municipal commissioners of cities with population of
more than a lakh, as the government launches a series of
"consultative workshops" for top civic officials.
The first such workshop for municipal commissioners
will be held in Hyderabad Monday for the southern
states, before the government launches its new initiatives
on urban development and housing.
Municipal commissioners from over 70 cities and
officials of urban development departments from the
five southern states - Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka,
Telangana and Andhra Pradesh - and the union territory
of Puducherry will attend the first workshop, a government statement said Sunday.
"Implementation issues pertaining to the schemes viz.,
Swachh Bharat Mission, urban renewal of 500
cities/towns, housing for all by 2022, skill development
and self-employment of urban poor under the Deendayal
Antyodaya Yojana and capacity building of urban local
bodies will be discussed in detail," it said.
During the workshop, Naidu will also nominate nine
'Swachh Bharat' ambassadors each from Telangana and
Andhra Pradesh.
Over 3.65 lakh treated
for drugs in Punjab
"Flights
going
to
Afghanistan are being
monitored carefully," he
said. Air India spokesperson G.P. Rao told IANS
that their control room in
Kolkata Saturday received
a call from an unknown
person who said the
Kolkata-Kabul flight will
be hijacked but it later
turned out to be a hoax.
"We have not received
any official input from
intelligence
agencies
about a threat on DelhiKabul flights. But checks
are on," Rao said.
In 1999, Indian Airlines
flight IC 814 was hijacked
by terrorists who took it to
Kandahar in Afghanistan
and demanded the release
of three terrorists from
Indian prisons in return
for the passengers.
Modi to address over a dozen rallies in Delhi,
focus on unauthorised colonies
New Delhi, Jan 4
(IANS): Prime Minister
Narendra Modi is likely
to address over a dozen
rallies in the capital
ahead of assembly polls
likely
in
February,
sources in the party said,
adding that the focus
would be on the over six
million residents of the
city's
unauthorised
colonies who have now
got a new lease of life.
According to these
sources, the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) is confident that the union cabinet's decision to regularise all illegal settlement colonies that came
up in Delhi till June 1,
2014, will pay rich dividends in poll-bound
Delhi.
"He (Modi) is likely to
hold around 12 to 14 rallies all over Delhi. We
want him to address all
the 14 districts," said a
senior leader of the BJP,
which doesn't have a
chief ministerial candidate for Delhi and is
instead
banking
on
Modi's image to get it
through.
The importance of winning Delhi, where the
BJP has remained out of
power for 15 years and is
facing the heat from the
AAP, can be gauged from
Short Takes
over 25 seats that fall
under such colonies.
The previous Congress
government had found
895 of the 1,639 illegal
colonies eligible for regularising. However, after a
Dec 29, 2014, cabinet
nod, all the 1,639
colonies, along with
another 300 that came up
after March 2002, will be
regularised.
Considered a traditional vote bank of the
Congress for years, the
residents
of
these
colonies switched allegiance in last year's
assembly
polls
and
played a key role in helping the AAP bag 28 seats.
The BJP has however
set its eyes on the substantial chunk of voters
from these colonies - the
majority of whom are
labourers and workers
from states like Uttar
Pradesh,
Bihar,
Jharkhand and Odisha.
"Although every resident knows about the
decision but when Modi
interacts with them personally, it will have a
deeper impact on them
and they will know whom
to vote for," another BJP
leader told IANS.
Modi will Jan 10 formally kick off the BJP's
campaign for the Delhi
assembly elections with a
rally at the Ramlila
Maidan that will be
attended by the party's
three newest chief ministers
from
Haryana,
Jharkhand,
and
Maharashtra.
Meanwhile, another
source in the know said
that the party's first list of
candidates is likely to be
announced January 18.
Chandigarh, Jan 4 (IANS) Over 3.65 lakh patients were treated last year or are undergoing treatment at various medical
facilities in Punjab for drugs de-addiction, a senior health official said here Sunday.
"Field workers mobilized people with substance use disorders to the nearest CHC (community health centres) where they
were treated and those requiring admission were admitted,"
K.K. Talwar, adviser on health and medical education to Punjab
government, told the media here.
"Till Dec 15, 330,533 patients had been treated at the OPD
(out patient department) and 11,656 were treated as indoor
patients," Talwar added.
Talwar said that the patients were identified on the basis of a
de-addiction camp conducted state-wide in June last year. "In
an effort to address this serious issue (of drug addiction), the
Punjab government had conducted a de-addiction campaign
from June 19 to 28, where sensitization, treatment and counselling facilities were provided to substance abusers," Talwar
said. With rampant drugs abuse inside jails in Punjab, the state
government also set up de-addiction centres inside the prisons
last year.The official said de-addiction centres have been set up
in each of the eight Model Central Jails at Amritsar, Gurdaspur,
Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Patiala, Bathinda, Faridkot and
Ferozepur. "Till now, 22,669 patients have been treated, 461
patients are under detoxification and 718 patients are in rehabilitation wards," Talwar said.
In the past two years, 27 Drug De-addiction Centers (DDCs)
have been made operational in the state at an expenditure of
Rs.38 crore. Seventeen more such centres are being set up in the
state at a cost of another Rs.70 crore.
The DDCs being set up at Jalandhar, Patiala and Bathinda
will have facility of 50 beds each. Amritsar and Faridkot have
50-bedded DDCs already.
Amit Shah to launch BJP's
drugs campaign Jan 22
Chandigarh, Jan 4 (IANS) : BJP president Amit Shah will
launch the party's campaign against drugs from Amritsar Jan 22,
a senior BJP leader said Sunday.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sukhminderpal Singh
Grewal said that the campaign would be launched under the aegis
of the party's youth wing, Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha
(BJYM).
"BJYM president and MP Anurag Thakur and Punjab BJP
chief Kamal Sharma would be supervising the campaign against
drugs. The drive would cover Punjab state in three phases, with
its culmination to take place on the occasion of Baisakhi on April
14," he said. Grewal said BJP leaders would tour villages and
towns to create awareness about drug menace and educate people on the harm that drugs are doing to the state.
The BJP's drugs campaign has become a bone of contention
with its alliance partner in Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal.
The Akali Dal, in a clear move to preempt the BJP campaign,
has announced its own protests against drugs in Punjab's border
belt to be held Monday (Jan 5).
Differences between the BJP and Akali Dal leaders emerged
after Sharma demanded that state Revenue Minister Bikram
Singh Majithia should resign as he had been summoned by the
Enforcement Directorate (ED) for alleged links to money-laundering by some NRIs in a Rs.6,000 crore international synthetic
drugs racket busted by the Punjab Police in 2013.
Grewal said that the BJP wants Majithia ousted from the
Parkash Singh Badal government in the state.
He said that the Akali Dal protests against the Border Security
Force (BSF) over the drugs issue could demoralise the force.

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