No trial, no vax for pregnant women: Experts

No trial, no vax for pregnant women: Experts

Pune:11.02.2021 

Public health experts have said pregnant women and lactating mothers should not be given Covid-19 vaccine since trials have not been conducted on such subjects.

Dr Vinod Paul, Niti Aayog member (health), said, “There have been no trials for this group. So they cannot be administered vaccines.”

“Pregnant and lactating women are left out of trials as no one wants to risk damage to mother or baby,” said vaccine scientist Dr Gagandeep Kang. “Current vaccines can’t be tried on them.” TNN

›62% of those vaccinated in Karnataka are women, P 2

HC seeks reply of MP govt on delay in release of Vyapam whistleblower

HC seeks reply of MP govt on delay in release of Vyapam whistleblower

‘What Am I — Revolutionary Or Criminal?’ Asks Ashish Chaturvedi

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Bhopal:11.02.2021 

The Madhya Pradesh high court has issued notices to the state government and DG (prisons), seeking their explanation on a PIL filed by Vyapam whistleblower Ashish Chaturvedi, alleging that he was kept under detention for 18 hours despite bail.

“I was fighting for a cause and the arrest has led to a blot on my image. I won’t get a government job. Let the government declare if I am a revolutionary or a criminal,” Chaturvedi says in the PIL.

Chaturvedi was sent to jail on August 9, 2018, by a special court in Gwalior after he failed to heed repeated summons to record his statement in connection with a complaint he had filed on one of the alleged kingpins of the Vyapam case, Rahul Yadav. Police executed a non-bailable warrant to produce him in court.

During the hearing, Chaturvedi appeared without his lawyer. When he was asked to record his statement, he refused. He was warned that he would be arrested and let off only if he paid a surety of Rs 200. But Chaturvedi refused to budge and was sentenced to jail for 15 days.

“On very same day, the fine of Rs 200 was deposited (by someone on his behalf) and the fourth additional sessions judge, Vyapam, Gwalior, ordered his release. Even after issuance of release warrant, Chaturvedi was kept in custody in Gwalior Central Jail from the evening of August 9, 2018, till 8am on August 10, 2018. This illegal custody is highly objectionable, and deserves cognizance against the responsible officers,” says the petition.

An anguished Chaturvedi said, “I was jailed in the same prison that houses Vyapam accused. My detention, despite the release warrant, was illegal, arbitrary and unlawful.”

In a PIL filed before Madhya Pradesh HC, Ashish Chaturvedi alleged that he was kept under detention for 18 hours despite bail

NOC from competitors? No need, HC tells NGU

NOC from competitors? No need, HC tells NGU

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Ahmedabad:11.02.2021 

The Gujarat high court said that there cannot be the pre-condition of obtaining an NOC from a competitor college within a 25-km radius to start an educational institution in the same discipline.

With this observation, the bench of Justice Vineet Kothari and Justice Gita Gopi said that the provision of Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University can be dispensed with by which it grants affiliation to an education institute only after it obtains an NOC from another institute imparting education in the same discipline within a 25-km radius.

The issue involved Swamy Vivekanand Education Trust, which wanted to start a college in Kadi in 2013 and requested the university for affiliation. The university received an opinion from its local inspection committee and granted affiliation to the trust. But another institute being run by MP Shah Education Society objected and moved the HC claiming that its NOC was not obtained. A single-judge bench held that the new college should have obtained an NOC from the nearby existing institute.

The issue reached to the division bench, which expressed its “dismay” at the existence of such a system in NGU. The judges observed, “On an overview of the situation also and with the rapid increase in the population and number of students increasing ever, we cannot even appreciate the restrictions put about the existence of more than one or more educational institutions to provide such education and these variety of factors which may be relevant to determine the need for setting up of more of such educational institutions, which is ever changing and therefore, no static criteria or yardsticks can be fixed even by the competent bodies under the Act of 1986.”

For affiliation, a new college needed an NOC from another college of same discipline if it was within a 25-km radius

3 needles removed from woman’s body

3 needles removed from woman’s body

Ahmedabad:11.02.2021 

A 25-year-old woman from Jammu & Kashmir had a freak accident, as she fell on needles in a carpet she was weaving, and three needles pierced her. The knitting needles had penetrated deep into her abdomen, causing her severe pain.

“She was brought to Civil Hospital by reference earlier this month. When her CT scan and other tests were performed, we learned that the needles were very near the large intestine and piercing the intestine could lead to sepsis,” said a gastric surgeon. The team pinpointed the locations of each needle and extracted them in a two-hour surgery.

Officials said that an image intensifier system was brought in for the surgery which helped locate the needles precisely. “The circulation of needles in other parts of the body could have also proved fatal,” said an official. TNN

Air ticket price bands to go once things are back to normal

Air ticket price bands to go once things are back to normal

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:11.02.2021 

Stating that domestic passenger traffic is gradually picking up, Union minister for civil aviation, Hardeep Singh Puri on Wednesday informed Parliament that the ticket price bands are expected to be done away with once flight services reach pre-Covid levels.

Hopeful that normalcy would return in the summer schedule, Puri shared data on the phased reopening of air traffic to point out that when flights were opened up in May last year, there were only 30,000 passengers. However, on Monday there were about 2,87,000 passengers.

The civil aviation sector was completely closed down on March 23, 2020, and was reopened in a phased manner starting from May 25 last year in what the minister described to be “a slow and calibrated manner” by putting in place SOPs and provisions for seamless contactless travel among other measures.

On the way forward, the minister said that a decision to open beyond the 80% capacity will depend on the behaviour of the virus and an assessment that that all SOPs are in place.

Employee cannot dictate terms of place of posting: HC

Employee cannot dictate terms of place of posting: HC

Ajay.Sura@timesgroup.com

Chandigarh:11.02.2021 

Dismissing the plea filed by Ravi Prakash Gupta, a visually impaired IAS officer, alleging that he has been deliberately denied fieldwork by the Haryana government, the Punjab and Haryana high court has held that no statutory rule or the order of any court has been violated by the state regarding his transfers.

Observing that an employee cannot dictate terms with regard to his place of posting, the HC held, “The said power is vested in the employer, who is to exercise the said powers as per the administrative exigencies keeping in view the public interest unless it involves any adverse impact on the career or further prospects.”

“The exercise of the power of transfer in the present case cannot be said to be not in accordance with law, which would call for any interference by this court in exercise of its powers under Article 226 of the Constitution of India, especially under the power of judicial review,” observed the court.

A division bench comprising Justice Augustine George Masih and Justice Ashok Kumar Verma has passed these orders while dismissing the petition filed by Gupta upholding the order dated June 3, 2020, passed by the Chandigarh bench of Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT).

The CAT had dismissed his plea challenging the transfer order dated May 18, 2020, from the post of deputy commissioner (DC), Fatehabad, to the post of director, Swarna Jayanti Haryana Institute for Fiscal Management.

The HC has also held that it could not find any violation of the statutory rule, any order of any court, including the SC, and has also not found any mala fide in the transfer orders of Gupta passed by then chief secretary Keshni Anand Arora.

Full report on www.timesofindia.com

The said power is vested in the employer, who is to exercise the said powers as per the administrative exigencies keeping in view the public interest, the Punjab & Haryana HC observed

Fearing arrest, man agrees to marry dalit woman

Fearing arrest, man agrees to marry dalit woman

Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:11.02.2021 

Marriages may be made in heaven but it was the fear of arrest under rape charges that made a Jat Sikh man keep his promise to marry a scheduled caste woman after trying to wriggle out citing the woman’s caste.

Kanwarbir Singh fell in love with a dalit woman and took her to a gurdwara where he promised to marry her. After the promise, they stayed in hotels and had a sexual relationship. Later, the man spurned the woman and said his parents were objecting to the marriage as she belonged to the Scheduled Caste community.

Crestfallen, the woman, who worked in Australia, filed an FIR at NRI police station in Amritsar, accusing Singh of raping her on the promise of marriage. Fearing arrest, the man moved the Punjab and Haryana high court seeking anticipatory bail. The HC refused to grant relief.

Singh moved the SC seeking anticipatory bail. Finding the chances of getting relief bleak, the man entered into a compromise with the woman, agreed to marry her within six months and filed the agreement before an SC bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian.

When Singh’s counsel Shakti Paul Sharma informed the bench about the compromise and the man’s willingness to marry the woman he spurned, the bench asked, “How come, suddenly the caste problem has disappeared? Is the settlement a sham and to stall prosecution? Will the issue crop up again once the prosecution is stayed?”

Sharma said Singh’s parents too had filed an affidavit stating the marriage would definitely take place within six months and after marriage, their son would migrate to Australia to be with his wife. The bench agreed to entertain Singh’s anticipatory bail plea and said, “We will issue notice on the petition but will grant relief only after you get married.”

When the advocate sought a stay on arrest, the bench said it would consider the same after Singh got married to the woman. Sharma then said the woman’s arrival from Australia for the marriage was getting delayed because of the strict Covid-19 protocol in that country. This persuaded the bench to stay Singh’s arrest. “Since you have agreed to marry, we will stay your arrest. If you don’t marry her, we will send you back to jail,” it said.