Medical college planned at Dayanand Hospital

02/08/2019,NEW DELHI

Standing Committee of the East Delhi Municipal Corporation on Thursday passed a resolution to set up a medical college at Swami Dayanand Hospital. The hospital gets the most number of daily patients in East Delhi and is planned to be expanded to a 500-bed hospital, the resolution stated. Hospitals with more than 400 beds are suitable for setting up medical colleges and since the hospital meets all other criteria, the move is being undertaken to help train skilled doctors and deliver affordable health care, it said.

Free electricity for Delhiites using up to 200 units

Move will encourage power saving, says Kejriwal; BJP, Cong. call announcement ‘election gimmick’
02/08/2019, STAFF REPORTER,NEW DELHI

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal at a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday.Sushil Kumar Verma Sushil Kumar Verma

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday announced free electricity for people consuming up to 200 units under a domestic connection. The decision, which came into effect from August 1, has been taken barely six months before Delhi Assembly elections due in February 2020.

“In Delhi, people who consume up to 200 units will not have to pay electricity bills. Their bills [will be] waived,” Mr. Kejriwal said while addressing a press conference. Those consuming 201-400 units of electricity will get about 50% subsidy, he added.

“Now people using 210 or 300 units will think that if they use under 200 units, their bill will be zero. We believe this will encourage them to save electricity,” the Chief Minister said.

Attacking the move, both the BJP and the Congress termed it an “election gimmick”. Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari said the Delhi government has “looted” ₹8,500 crore from the people as fixed charge and load charge and demanded that Mr. Kejriwal refund it or else his party will “initiate a movement” against it.

The Chief Minister said around 35% of the total consumers use less than 200 units during summer and in winter, the percentage goes up to around 70. Terming the move “historic”, he claimed Delhi has the cheapest electricity rate in the country.

The Delhi Congress, however, claimed that the Aam Aadmi Party government was misleading the people on power tariff. “It is a lie that Delhi has the cheapest rates of electricity and I challenge Arvind Kejriwal and other AAP leaders who are misguiding people. When Congress was in power, even then power tariff in Delhi was lowest in the country,” senior Congress leader Haroon Yusuf said.

Asked about the timing of the move, Mr. Kejriwal said: “When we took over, the power sector was in a bad state. We worked and slowly improved it. Since then, the DERC has been reducing rates... It was not possible earlier, as power companies’ financial state was bad. At that point, there was no question of making it free.”

(With PTI inputs)

Sheela Priya to head Bharathiar University VC search panel

02/08/2019, STAFF REPORTER,COIMBATORE

The State government has replaced the convener of the three-member search committee to recommend names for the post of Vice-Chancellor of Bharathiar University following the resignation of K. Ganesan, former Higher Education Secretary, as the government nominee.

According to a Government Order issued on Wednesday, M. Sheela Priya, retired Additional Chief Secretary and former State Chief Information Commissioner, will be the new government nominee.

She has been also appointed as the convener of the search committee replacing Mr .Ganesan, who had resigned within days of his nomination.

Panel members

In the panel, C. Subramaniam, former Vice-Chancellor of Tamil University in Thanjavur, continued as the senate nominee and S.P. Thyagarajan, former Vice-Chancellor of University of Madras, continued as the syndicate nominee.

The varsity remains without a Vice-Chancellor for more than one-and-a-half years.

Coimbatore siblings’ murder: SC confirms death sentence

2:1 decision concludes that crime is in rarest of rare category

02/08/2019, KRISHNADAS RAJAGOPAL,NEW DELHI

Manoharan

The Supreme Court, in a 2:1 majority judgment, confirmed the death sentence of a man accused of the gruesome rape and murder of a 10-year-old child and the murder of her seven-year-old brother in Coimbatore nine years ago.

The majority decision of Justices Rohinton Nariman and Hemant Gupta on Thursday concluded that the convict, Manoharan, showed no remorse for the heinous crime and found it to be a case of the “rarest of rare category”, deserving the death penalty. Manoharan had come in appeal.

Justice Sanjeev Khanna, while confirming the guilt of Manoharan, dissented with the majority decision and awarded the accused life sentence without remission/commutation till his natural death. Justice Nariman, writing for the majority, said the trial court and, subsequently, the Madras High Court had correctly balanced the mitigating and aggravating factors for and against Manoharan to find that the “crime committed was cold-blooded and involves the rape of a minor girl and murder of two children in the most heinous fashion possible”.

The majority judgment said Manoharan falsely retracted only those parts of his earlier confessional statement which implicated him of the rape of the young girl and the murder of both children. “Consequently, we confirm the death sentence and dismiss the appeal,” Justice Nariman wrote.

Justice Khanna held that the retraction of the confession should not be treated as absence of remorse or repentance but as “an afterthought or on advice propelled by fear that the appellant (Manoharan), in view of his admission, may face the gallows, and that the earlier confession made seeking forgiveness would be the cause of his death”.

Justice Khanna said the retraction should not be held against Manoharan.

Bharti Airtel logs first quarterly loss in 14 years

Telco posts ₹2,866 crore loss in Q1

02/08/2019, PRESS TRUST OF INDIA,NEW DELHI

Bharti Airtel on Thursday posted a staggering ₹2,866 crore loss for the June quarter, its first consolidated loss in 14 years, as the telco lost ground to rival Reliance Jio and took a hit from exceptional items such as charges towards accelerated depreciation of 3G network gear.

The revenue rose 4.7% to ₹20,738 crore during the first quarter ended June 2019.

“After accounting for hit of ₹14,454 million (₹1,445.4 crore) towards exceptional items (net of tax), the resultant net loss for the quarter ended June 30, 2019 came in at ₹28,660 million (₹2,866 crore), compared to profit of ₹973 million (₹97.3 crore) in the corresponding quarter last year and ₹1,072 million (₹107.2 crore) in the previous quarter,” the company said in its quarterly report.

‘Exceptional hit’

The “exceptional hit” for the quarter included amongst other heads a charge towards accelerated depreciation of 3G network equipment and operating costs on network re-farming and up-gradation programme as well as incremental provision for derivative liabilities pertaining to customary indemnities provided to a clutch of investors of Airtel Africa and expenses relating to its recent listing, the company explained.

Airtel’s revenue from India mobile services increased 4.1% year-on-year to ₹10,724 crore.

In revenue terms, Reliance Jio is now comfortably placed on top of the telco stack given that its topline stood at ₹11,679 crore in June quarter (just three years into its commercial operations) against ₹11,269.9 crore of Vodafone Idea.

Airtel, though, registered an improvement in many of the operational parameters. For instance, for the June quarter, Airtel’s India Average Revenue Per User stood at ₹129 against ₹123 in the March quarter. Also, mobile data traffic on its network grew 94% year on year.

Commenting on the earnings, Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel, said the first quarter of the year has begun with a “healthy and equitable growth across all our lines of businesses. Headline pricing remained stable, albeit at low levels,” he said.

SC transfers Unnao cases to Delhi court

02/08/2019

Sunday’s ‘accident’ killed two of her aunts accompanying her in the car and left her and her lawyer critically injured. The victim is on ventilator support at King George’s Medical College and Hospital in Lucknow. The CBI is investigating suspicions of foul play.

The court ordered the CBI to complete its probe into the ‘accident’ case in the next seven days. As an exception, it said, the CBI could take another week. But under no circumstance should the probe extend beyond a fortnight.

The agency, represented by Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta, initially sought a month’s time to complete the probe. “A month? You have seven days… you do what you have to do within that time,” CJI Gogoi said.

The court also ordered protection for the girl and her family by personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force at the urging of its amicus curiae V. Giri.

Mr. Giri said the girl was in the hospital with just her mother to attend to her. The family was not financially well off. The State should pay her an “exemplary” compensation, he said.

But the Uttar Pradesh government protested that it would pay a compensation only “as per statute”.

“What is happening in this country? You want the Supreme Court to follow statutes to order compensation?” the CJI said.

The court finally fixed ₹25 lakh as the interim compensation and ordered the U.P. government to pay the amount on August 2.

The court insisted on getting a complete low-down on the Unnao cases and the status of the CBI probe.

Further, the court directed Mr. Mehta to have a team of doctors check the medical condition of the victim and her lawyer to see if they could be airlifted to Delhi for advanced treatment.

At 2 p.m., Mr. Mehta informed the court that both were medically fit to be shifted. The court said it would pass the necessary orders whenever their families gave their consent to shifting both to Delhi.

In a separate order, the CJI Bench directed Sanjeev Sudhakar Kalgaonkar, Secretary General of the court, to conduct an enquiry within seven days into whether any lapse or negligence on the part of Registry officials caused the Unnao victim’s letter to reach the CJI late.

Thursday’s first hearing began with the CJI asking Mr. Mehta to have a responsible officer of the CBI present in the court by noon with the entire case detail. The CJI was not swayed when Mr. Mehta asked the court to reschedule the case for Friday. “Tomorrow is another day, Mr. Solicitor. We want this to happen today,” he responded.

Man faces action for cancelling food order

02/08/2019, STAFF REPORTER,BHOPAL

Two days after a man in Jabalpur cancelled an order on food aggregator Zomato for being assigned a non-Hindu delivery executive, the local police on Thursday decided to make him sign a bond stating he would not post incendiary messages on social media that were against secularism and could disturb harmony.

“His tweets ended up dividing Twitter users on religious lines and could stoke communal disharmony. Therefore, we are taking preventive measures and taking him to the SDM court where he will be asked to sign a bond and a notice would be served on him,” said Amit Singh, Jabalpur Superintendent of Police.

The police had warned him that if he made such statements again, he would be charged under Section 122 and sent to jail for the remaining bond period.