DVAC raid discovers ₹1crore cash, 1kg gold at official’s residence

DVAC raid discovers ₹1crore cash, 1kg gold at official’s residence

Siddharth.Prabhakar@timesgroup.com

Chennai:  15.12.2020 

Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) officials on Monday raided the office and residence of an office superintendent in the state department of environment and discovered more than ₹1 crore in cash and 1 kg of gold.

The counting of cash at the official’s Saligramam residence was still on at the time of going to press, officials said. Earlier in the day, the agency found ₹88,500 in unaccounted money from the office superintendent’s office at Saidapet’s Panagal Maligai where all senior environment department officials sit.

A DVAC official said the superintendent is only a member of the clerical staff, but influential. “Top Indian Forest Service (IFS) officials were also wary of him. He would threaten to transfer other officials if they did not listen to him,” he said.

The superintendent dealt with files pertaining to environmental clearances given to builders and industries. “This makes him a very important person as any proposal or clearance could be rejected if he was not taken care of,” the official said.

From the cash seized at his office and residence, DVAC officials are clear that most of the transactions were done through cash. “We are also probing if he is a conduit for other officials,” said another official. Based on the documents and other evidence seized at his residence, DVAC will register a disproportionate assets case against him, the official added.

The raid at the residence of the environment department official at Saligramam was on at the time of going to press

Distancing norms go for toss as air traffic soars

Distancing norms go for toss as air traffic soars

Passengers Careless Inside All Terminals

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:  15.12.2020

As the number of passengers has increased, social distancing measures have gone for a toss inside the terminals at Chennai airport.

There seems to be a mismatch between precautions followed inflight and norms adheared to during boarding and disembarking, especially when shuttle buses are used.

Often, precautions are taken seriously inflight but not inside the terminals where passengers appear more relaxed and careless during morning peak hours.

Sources said that passengers tend to follow the norms at all stages of the departure process.

"They try to crowd around ticket counters outside the terminals, at the baggage drop area and also during the boarding process. There are spots marked on the floor to ensure that people stand on them but none follows this. No one listens too," said an airport official. While there is some semblance of order and discipline in the departure terminal, it's chaotic at the arrival terminals. Passengers crowd around the baggage conveyor.

In most of the instances, airlines allot more than one flight to a baggage conveyor making more than 200 passengers to crowd around waiting to pick up the bags.

As the number of arriving passengers are more than departure, the crowding is more in the arrival terminal.

Jacob R, a passenger who arrived from Kochi on Sunday, said, "The safety protocol inflight was excellent. There were announcements and people behaved well. But everything went for a toss when people disembarked. The shuttle bus was packed with passengers. This defeats the whole purpose of following health safety rules inside the aircraft.”

He also said, "There was very little scope for maintaining social distance inside the bus as people were standing rubbing shoulders to each others."

Rules say that there should be only 15 to 20 passengers in one shuttle bus. This is followed often for departures but not always for arrivals.

"People are lowering their guard as lockdown restrictions have been relaxed and life is coming back to normal. That is being reflected at the airport too. Procedures have been tweaked to ensure minimum passenger-staff contact inside the terminals and inflight. The departure process is digital. The airline staff and the security staff follow the rules," said an airline official.

The airport now handles more than 20,000 passengers and more than 200flights per day.

A file photo shows people violating social distancing norms at a counter at the airport

A walk on the Marina, after 9 months

OPEN TO ALL

A walk on the Marina, after 9 months

SOPs Violated, Sands Unclean; Besant Nagar Beach Barricaded

Komal.Gautham@timesgroup.com

15.12.2020

Riyaz Khan, a resident of Sowcarpet, had been going for a walk along the lanes near his house all these nine months. He had known those lanes for years, but morning walks along them seemed strange. On Monday, he was back in familiar territory. Shut for nine months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Marina was finally declared open.

“After nine months I walked on the sand and I felt very happy,” Riyaz said.

Walkers, cyclists, fitness enthusiasts, nature lovers and casual visitors flocked the beach in droves. However, absence of standard operating procedures was a concern, and a littered beach and damaged equipment marred the experience of an outing long awaited. “No one was following the standard safety protocol,” said Riyaz.

At Besant Nagar, though, there was little activity. The beach was barricaded and the usual pomp on the promenade were missing. The park equipment were broken and sanitary workers had begun cleaning the beach only on Monday morning. Damaged shanties stood in heaps on the sand.

On the Marina, corporation and police personnel did not regulate visitors or check them for Covid symptoms. While all push carts, recreational and park equipment were not functional, most of the visitors did not wear masks.

“We do not have standard operating procedures so we do not know how to regulate the crowd now. Police officials ensured barricades were placed so that two-wheelers and cars were not allowed in the service lanes,” said a senior corporation official from the Teynampet zone.

Asked about the lack of cleanliness, the official said beach-cleaning machines were deployed. “We have cleaned the beach every day even when the visitors were not there. At Besant Nagar, cleaning began in the morning and the new contractor cleared garbage from the service lane,” said an official.

The official said vendors are yet to open shops. “We are waiting for a few more days for the SOPs to come,” he said.

Besant Nagar, an official said, will be barricaded during the New Year and Pongal holidays and people will not be allowed near the water. U Rakesh, a resident of Adyar, said he was eagerly waiting for the beach to open. “I usually go cycling and I missed the beach a lot. I am very happy that it is now open. However, we have to wait and see how the crowd behaves as New Year and Pongal are coming,” he said.

MARINA

BESANT NAGAR

MAMALLAPURAM

TOWARDS NORMALCY: Chennai residents flocked to the Marina beach on Monday morning. But the buzz was missing at the Besant Nagar beach. Tourists returned to Mamallapuram which may again get crowded in the weekend

1K visit Mamallapuram, big crowd expected this weekend

1K visit Mamallapuram, big crowd expected this weekend

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

15.12.2020

About 1,000 tourists visited the monuments at Mamallapuram on Monday, nine months after the heritage sites were shut following the outbreak of Covid-19. The number of visits on the first day was about 40% of entries recorded on pre-Covid weekdays, when an average of 2,000 to 3,000 explored the heritage site.

While visitors started trickling in from 9am, the numbers swelled post noon. Those entering the Shore Temple, Five Rathas, Krishna Butterball and Tiger Caves were subjected to thermal screening before their tickets were scanned. According to sources, most tourists visited all the monuments.

Archaeological Survey of India officials are expecting the number of entries to increase and reach the peak during weekends. There is a cap on the entry with an upper limit of 2,000 individuals a day in the light of Covid-19.

“If one goes by the number of people who thronged Mamallapuram on Sunday, when the monuments remained shut, it will be a packed weekend for the ASI monuments on coming Saturday and Sunday,” an official said.

Rajini’s name in TN party’s poll application

Rajini’s name in TN party’s poll application

Bharti.Jain@timesgroup.com

New Delhi: 15.12.2020

A political party called ‘Makkal Sevai Katchi’ in Tamil Nadu, which has been allotted the election symbol ‘autorickshaw’ by the Election Commission of India, had mentioned actor Rajinikanth’s name in the application. The applicant, whose name was not disclosed, had sought the ‘twofinger pose’ or ‘hasta mudra’ symbol (made famous by Rajini in the 2002 film ‘Baba’) as the first preference.

Autorickshaw holds significance to Rajini’s clout among masses

The EC is understood to have denied the ‘hasta mudra symbol’ as it bears resemblance to the Indian National Congress’s ‘hand’ symbol. ‘Autorickshaw’ is reminiscent of the 1995 Rajini blockbuster ‘Baashha’. Sources told TOI that Makkal Sevai Katchi is the new name of the party after the applicant got a previously registered named, ‘Anaithindhia Makkal Shakthi Kazhagam’ changed through an EC notification issued two-and-a-half months ago. The application for the symbol mentioned the party’s intention to contest all the 234 assembly seats in Tamil Nadu.

While the list of political parties notified by the Commission on March 15, 2019, included ‘Anaithindhia Makkal Shakthi Kazhagam’, with its headquarters at Ernavoor, Chennai, as entry number 237, an amended list notified by the poll panel on September 30, 2020, said entry no 237 was being revised to ‘Makkal Sevai Katchi’.

In the film ‘Baba’ produced by Rajini, the protagonist starts off as an atheist and, after a chance meeting with Mahavatar Babaji in the Himalayas, returns to place his own government in power. In the movie, Rajini made the ‘hasta mudra’ – thumb holding down middle and ring fingers, with the forefinger and little finger raised – as a style statement. The film flopped. Autorickshaw holds significance to the superstar’s clout among the masses, since he played the role of an auto driver in his biggest blockbuster ‘Baashha’ which catapulted him to a different commercial league in Indian film industry.

(With inputs from D Govardan in Chennai)

Gmail, GPay, YouTube suffer global outage

Gmail, GPay, YouTube suffer global outage

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi: 15.12.2020

For millions, the world stopped a little after 5 pm on Monday. Several ‘essential’ services of the internet age — Gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, Maps and GPay — went down simultaneously for about an hour. The outage occurred across India, United States, Canada, Europe, Central and South America. A user, Kshitij, shared an image of a group of cavemen making fire, to sum up the online mood. “An illustration of what life without Google feels like in 2020,” he wrote.

Users said they were unable to access their emails, watch videos or access their documents stored on Google Cloud, owned by technology giant Alphabet Inc. Google Cloud later tweeted that the outage was caused “due to an internal storage quota issue” and that the problem had been “resolved”. According to real-time outage tracker downdetector.com, the disruption in all the services began around 5.30pm. At the peak of the disruption, YouTube was the worst impacted.

On Twitter, Google was the top trend globally with over 1,518k tweets, followed by Gmail with over 298K tweets. In India, too, the outage caused a tsunami of tweets and memes on the microblogging site. #googledown, #YouTubeDown and gmail were the top three trends around 9pm, with 102k, 175k and 307k tweets.

HC raps CBSE for ‘treating students like enemies’

HC raps CBSE for ‘treating students like enemies’

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi: 15.12.2020

Delhi High Court on Monday rapped the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for its “anti-student attitude” and observed that it is “treating students as enemies” by dragging them in prolonged litigation.

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan made the remarks while hearing aplea by CBSE opposing an earlier court order that improvement candidates be included in the reassessment scheme for students whose board exams got cancelled due to Covid-19.

“We don’t like this anti-student attitude of CBSE. You are dragging students all the way to the Supreme Court. Should they be studying or going to court? We should start imposing costs on the board...you are treating students as enemies,” an irked bench observed.

Addressing the issue at hand, it asked CBSE to explain “what is the harm” if the scheme applies to all improvement students.

A single-judge had held on August 14 that the scheme approved by the Supreme Court for assessing students due to cancellation of CBSE exams in light of Covid-19 will also apply to students, who appeared for improvement examinations as they are equal victims of the pandemic.

“There is no earthshaking emergency for you to come to court now all guns blazing,” the bench pointed out, adding that CBSE should have itself gone to the apex court to seek a clarification, instead of dragging students to court.

The August 14 order had come on a plea by a student who appeared in the CBSE Class XII exams but sought improvement since one of the papers was cancelled. The court had directed CBSE to issue a corrected marksheet, which was done. However, it also challenged the order.

The high court issued notice to the student and sought his reply to the CBSE’s plea. The bench listed the matter for hearing on February 5, 2021.