Release pension benefits to centenarian, says High Court Bench

26/02/2020, STAFF REPORTER,MADURAI

Bringing relief to a centenarian, who served as a Tamil Pandit from 1944 to 1964, the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court directed the State government to release his pension benefits within two weeks so that he could enjoy the fruits in his lifetime.

Hearing the petition filed by K. Srinivasan of Virudhunagar who served as a Tamil Pandit in various aided schools till the post was abolished in 1964, Justice J. Nisha Banu directed the State to release the pension benefits of the 100-year-old man.

The petitioner moved the court after several of his representations seeking disbursement of pension were rejected by the State.

The stumbling block for him was the fact that he was unable to produce relevant records to prove his employment except for Service Certificates provided by schools where he worked.

The court observed that under the Tamil Nadu non-Government Teachers Pension Rules, a teacher was eligible for pension if he/she was discharged from service due to abolition of the post.

Taking into account that the petitioner was a centenarian and the documents relating to his service were not traceable, the court directed the authorities concerned to consider the case of the petitioner sympathetically based on the documents produced by him.

Students complain about old bicycles to Collector

26/02/2020, STAFF REPORTER,MADURAI

A set of students from Class 11 of the American College Higher Secondary School arrived at the Collectorate here, complaining about being given broken and old bicycles on Tuesday.

In the academic year 2001-2002, former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa launched the free bicycle scheme for girl students and those from Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) communities to augment education.

The scheme was subsequently extended to all categories in government and government-aided schools.

One of the students pointed to the slashed tires and the broken basket on his bicycle.

A resident of Therkku Street in Melur, the student said that he had to cycle nearly 10 km to get to school.

While in some cycles the chain was broken, others did not seem to have any seats. One cycle’s mudguard was bent.

Another schoolmate asked how the students were expected to ride on these broken cycles to class.

“We are not from affluent families. We want a solution from the school and the government which has given us these bicycles,” he said.

He added that around 250 bicycles were distributed of which 1/5th was broken. The students submitted a petition to the Collector.

SC defers hearing in Nirbhaya case

Separate execution of convicts sought

26/02/2020, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT,NEW DELHI

The Supreme Court on Tuesday deferred to March 5 the hearing of an appeal filed by the Centre for permission to separately execute the death sentence of the four Nirbhaya case convicts.

A three-judge Bench led by Justice R. Banumathi was informed at the beginning of the session that the trial court had fixed the execution of the four convicts for March 3 at 6 a.m.

The court decided to watch the unfolding of events over the next few days rather than start hearing arguments on the legality of executing convicts separately before the legal and administrative remedies available to their co-convicts are exhausted.

If the four convicts are indeed executed on March 3, the appeal would become infructuous on March 5, the court reasoned.

End of legal remedies

Except for Pawan Gupta, the other three Nirbhaya convicts — Vinay, Mukesh and Akshay — seem to have come to the road’s end of legal and administrative remedies available to them.

Pawan is yet to file a curative petition in the Supreme Court. He has also not filed a plea for clemency with the President. Earlier Solicitor General Tushar Mehra had highlighted how the convicts were trying the patience of the nation.

Five Supreme Court judges infected with swine flu
CJI meets Bar Association chief on steps to prevent spread

26/02/2020, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT,NEW DELHI

Getty Images/iStockphoto

Five judges of the Supreme Court have been affected by swine flu, caused by the H1N1 virus, the Union Health Ministry confirmed on Tuesday.

“Five judges were kept in home isolation as soon as the infection came to light and, of these, three judges have already resumed their duty; two continue to be under home isolation/observation and are recovering. The court rooms and residences are being sanitised,” a release issued by the Ministry said.

On Tuesday, Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde met with the Supreme Court Bar Association president Dushyant Dave to discuss urgent measures to prevent the spread of infection among judges, advocates, staff and litigants.

Mr. Dave later confirmed that some judges had been taken ill in the past few days. He, however, said he did not know their exact number.

The court itself assembled half an hour late on Tuesday. Some of the judges were on leave. Justice Sanjiv Khanna was seen wearing a mask in the courtroom. Justices Hemant Gupta, A.S. Bopanna and Abdul S. Nazeer did not attend court.

The public relations division of the Supreme Court confirmed that some of the judges had been unwell, but maintained that all of them had recovered fully.

Justice D.Y. Chandrachud expressed concern about the infection spreading. Justice Arun Mishra was heard cautioning people against coming to court if they exhibited traces of infection.

Elderly to get rations at doorsteps in Karnataka

26/02/2020,BENGALURU

The Department of Food,

Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs of Karnataka has decided to provide home delivery of ration to 1.4 lakh elderly people across the State in a few days. Minister for Food and Civil Supplies

K. Gopalaiah reviewed the programmes of the department and said food inspectors in the city limits and revenue inspectors in rural areas would be given the responsibility of delivering rations from the PDS shops to homes.

Another feeder service to link Airport Metro to MEPZ

Facility will be available every half hour, at ₹20 per trip

26/02/2020, STAFF REPORTER, CHENNAI

To cater to more passengers, the Chennai Metro has now decided to operate an additional air-conditioned tempo traveller from Chennai Airport Metro station to MEPZ (Madras Export Processing Zone) from Tuesday, according to a press release.

The service will be available every half hour and passengers would have to pay ₹20 for a trip.

The Chennai airport is one of the busiest stations with 10,000 passengers travelling through it every day and there are share-cars and tempo traveller facilities already from this station to Pammal besides four cars running from the station to MEPZ.

Hundreds of passengers from locations like Pammal, Pallavaram, Tambaram and MEPZ travel to the airport station and then take a metro to various locations in the city.

This apart, Chennai Metro have also been running share cars to several stations across the city.

Technical snag delays 2 international flights

TNN | Feb 26, 2020, 04.38 AM IST

Trichy: Nearly 200 passengers were stranded at the Trichy Internation Airport after two outbound international flights developed technical snags early on Tuesday. Following the issue, the Kuala Lumpur-bound Air Asia and Dubai bound Air India Express were grounded at the airport.

The scheduled arrival time for Air Asia flight from Kuala Lumpur is 11.40 and it will return at 12.10 am. When the flight was about to take off as per the schedule with 127 passengers, the flight developed a technical snag.

After intimating the air traffic control room, a technical team started to rectify the snag. Though the team took hours to fix it, the problem remained unsolved. Then the service was cancelled and the passengers waiting at the airport were shifted to a private hotel. Later a technical team was called in from Kuala Lumpur and engaged in rectifying the fault.

Though it was declared that the plane would depart at 10.30 am on Tuesday, technical team kept resolving the issue, forcing passengers to remain at the hotel till the evening.

Airport sources said that the terminal officials have been intimated that the flight would take off at 4 pm. However, that too did not happen. According to officials, the flight may leave Trichy probably at 9 in the night, adding some passengers were accommodated with 8.55-morning flight while others were waiting.

In another development, the Air India Express from Dubai, which was supposed to arrive at Trichy at 12.10 am on Tuesday landed at Trichy airport at 4.10 am a 4 hours delay. The flight should have departed from here at 1 am. However, it took off at 5.20 am, airport sources said.