Flight cancellation: Airline to pay ₹1.5L to three flyers

TIMES NEWS NETWORK   09.04.2018

Chennai: The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Chennai (north) has directed SpiceJet to pay a compensation of ₹1.55 lakh to three passengers for a flight cancelled at the last moment.

In their petition, Basheer Ahmed of Chennai, state president of the Indian National League, T M Abdul Kadar, a retired professor from Vaniyambadi and advocate E Sarwar Khan from Tindivanam contended that they were to travel from New Delhi to Chennai in a SpiceJet flight on December 16, 2014. While they were at the airport three hours before the scheduled take-off at 10.45am, the flight was cancelled at the last minute and they came to know of it only through a notice board. “There were no alternate arrangements. We immediately booked tickets on another flight that was much costlier,” their petition stated.

In a reply, the airline contended that the flight was cancelled on account of a sudden technical snag which was beyond their control and hence no liability could be fastened against them. “We intimated the passengers about the cancellation. The passengers were given an option to either get the full refund or take an alternate flight, which was on the next day at the same time,” read the reply.

The forum bench comprising president K Jayabalan and member M Uyirroli Kannan observed that no man would wait for 24 hours to catch a flight and that the airline should have tried to accommodate the passengers in any other airline. The forum further observed that the trio suffered mental agony due to the cancellation and directed the company to refund ₹1 lakh they spent on executive class flight tickets in another airline and also a compensation of ₹55,000 for causing mental agony.

Get married in 24 hrs: Dept to take regn process online 
 
Going On Net May Prevent Mistakes In Certificates

Yogesh.Kabirdoss@timesgroup.com 09.04.2018

Chennai: Getting a marriage certificate may not take more than a day soon, as the registration department is pushing the process online. Currently, couples have to wait for up to a week to receive certificates validating their marriage, after manually submitting applications at sub-registrar offices.

“The process is simple. Those applying for marriage certificates will have to feed the data into the application form through the portal. The same data would be entered into the marriage registry and later in the marriage extract (certificate),” a senior official privy to the developments said.

Once the system is in place, if a couple applies for the certificate with necessary supporting documents online in the morning, they may be able to collect it by the same evening, after three witnesses to their marriage provide signatures at the sub-registrar office in person.

This would also help in avoiding errors, particularly spelling errors that occur when officials manually key in details into registers. Correcting errors is also timeconsuming, because it can be processed only by the inspector-general of registration at Chennai.

On an average, 80,000 marriages are registered in the state under the Tamil Nadu Registration of Marriages Act every year. While around 59,000 marriages were recorded under the Hindu Marriage Act between April 2017 and February 2018, nearly 6,600 marriages were registered under the Special Marriage Act during the same period. In the existing offline procedure, filled in applications submitted at sub-registrar offices take anywhere between three days and one week for processing.

Official sources said the online facility would be launched in a couple of months. “It is likely to be introduced from July,” another official said. Moreover, all marriage registrations would be uploaded online a day after certificates are issued.

Option to register for marriage certificates online is part of the upgradation of registration department website to facilitate speedy registrations. Since February this year, all property registrations have been pushed to the cyberspace. 

Officer probing Ponzi scam takes ₹69L bribe, arrested

Siddharth.Prabhakar@timesgroup.com 09.04.2018

Chennai : A deputy superintendent of police, who had allegedly collected a bribe of ₹68.91 lakh from the managing director of a company running a Ponzi scheme by threatening him with arrest, is in the net.

The directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption (DVAC) has booked A Mohammed Balulullah, former DSP in the economic offences wing-II (EOW) unit and who is at present working as DSP in district crime records bureau (DCRB) in Tiruvarur, under the provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act. The FIR, registered on Thursday, has accused him of collecting cash and electronic goods from the company as bribes.

The action was taken based on a discreet enquiry conducted by an additional director-general of police in September, 2014. In 2013-14, the EOW was investigating a case pertaining to M/s Grow Rich Foundation, started by S S Sundaram and Mahadevan, registered as a firm in 2011.

The firm collected deposits from public and invested them in capital market and real estate. It spawned four eponymous companies as well. They had issued advertisments to collect deposits from public, guaranteeing a monthly return of 10% up to 24 months with 100% capital guarantees in forex and commodities trading.

They also announced referral income similar to multi-level marketing (MLM) and incentives in the form of laptops, bikes, cars and villas. SEBI had collected information and referred the guarantee of abnormal returns to EOW, which investigated the issue.

The case came to Balulullah, who collected details and copiesof documents and initiated an inquiry against the firm, DVAC said. EOW found that between September 2013 and August 2014, Balulullah collected a sum of ₹68.9 lakh as cash and household articles on various occasions from managing director of the firm, S S Sundaram, through his administrative executive Mohamed Rizwan. This was allegedly done by threatening Sundaram with a case and arresting him for collecting investments from public without proper approval from regulatory bodies.

Based on this, DVAC conducted a detailed inquiry against the DSP and the then in-charge superintendent of police, an IPS officer.

The latter had forwarded the complaint against Grow Rich Foundation to the accusedfor taking necessary action.

12 LAKH TAKE TEST

Students find Physics portion of JEE difficult

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 09.04.2018

Chennai: Students, who appeared for the Joint Engineering Examination (JEE) on Sunday, found the Chemistry portion easy while a section of them found the physics and maths portions comparatively tough.

In terms of difficulty level, many found that this year’s paper was similar to the papers from the last two

years. The three-hour exam had 90 questions split across three subjects for 360 marks. JEE also has negative marking so a wrong answer would mean a deduction of a mark. Experts expect the JEE Main cutoff to fall between 85 and 105.

Rajshekhar Ratrey, vicepresident of Educational Content, of the coaching portal Toppr.com said the paper was moderately easy and found similarities in the weightage of marks between this paper and the Class XII syllabus. “Surprisingly, physics was the toughest section among the three. The questions were a mix of theory and calculative. However, this section was not lengthy,” he said.

While chemistry was a relatively easy portion, experts added that it was the most lengthy. Initial responses by students also showed that they found more than one option correct in question 63 in Set B of papers.

There were mixed reactions on the difficulty of the maths paper as a section said it was much easier than other portions. Uday Nath Mishra, chief academic officer, of BasicFirst education portal said the paper was based on NCERT syllabus. “Maths was mostly based on Class XII syllabus. Maximum questions were from Calculus. Physics was based on Class XI syllabus and greater portion of mechanics & electrostatics was covered,” he said.

Anand Nagarajan, academic head for school division, T.I.M.E., Chennai, said the Mathematics questions required lengthy calculations. Of the 12 lakh students who appeared for JEE, only 2.24 lakh students will be eligible for the JEE Advanced round on May 20.

48/59 TN emergency docs hold unapproved PGs, shows RTI reply

Rema.Nagarajan@timesgroup.com 10.04.2018

The Medical Council of India (MCI) and Tamil Nadu Medical Council (TNMC) are looking into a complaint that 48 of the 59 doctors registered with the state council as holding postgraduate degrees in emergency medicine actually have unrecognised degrees.

The complaint was filed by Emergency Medicine Association, an organisation of specialists in the discipline, based on information provided to it by the state council after an application filed under the right to information. The association’s complaint has also raised the question about such registrations being allowed in other state councils.

The degrees these doctors hold are from Sree Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute and Vinayaka Mission Medical College. These colleges got letters of permission (LoPs) for a postgraduate course in emergency medicine with two seats each in 2013 and 2012 respectively.

Thus, there cannot be a recognised post graduate degree in this discipline from these colleges before 2015 and 2016. Yet 48 of the postgraduate degrees registered were from before 2015, of which 20 are from before 2009, the year when emergency medicine was first recognised as a postgraduate specialty in India by MCI.


Unrecognised degrees were registered in last quarter of 2017

MCI president Dr Jayshree Mehta told TOI that the complaint had been referred to the relevant section for scrutiny and verification before deciding the further course of action. TNMC vice-president Dr R V S Surendran confirmed that only MCI-recognised degrees could be registered and added that they were looking into the matter. “These registrations happened long ago and we do not allow this anymore,” he added. However, all 48 unrecognised degrees have been registered in October, November and December 2017.

The list of 48 included several office bearers of the Society for Emergency Medicine in India (SEMI), an organisation that was running an unrecogniaed masters in emergency medicine programme. SEMI had said that it was merely a certificate programme that made no claims to being a post-graduate degree or to being recognised by MCI. SEMI’s board is dominated by doctors without MCI-recognised post graduate emergency medicine degrees.

Senior faculty members teaching emergency medicine asked what the sanctity of a regulated system of medical education would be if unrecognised degrees were being registered in state councils.

They pointed out that hospitals employed specialists with registered degrees as they trusted the system of registration.

SC convicts man in 45-year-old murder case

Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com 10.04.2018

New Delhi: A farmer was brutally murdered in a village in Sasaram, Bihar, in October 1973, his body was cut into two by rich and influential assailants and 45 years later, the judicial process culminated in the Supreme Court on Monday with life sentence to one person.

A Sasaram trial court took 15 years to find five people guilty of murdering farmer Gupteshwar Singh. He was done to death by influential members of the village for not heeding to their threat that he would be killed if he deposed against them in two theft cases lodged against them by the railway police. The trial court sentenced all of them to life imprisonment in 1988.

The convicts appealed against the trial court order in the Patna high court, which took 22 years to uphold the trial court’s decision. The appeals were filed in the Supreme Court in November 2010 and notices were issued on March 18, 2011. But for some strange reason, the appeals could not be taken up for hearing for seven years.

The task was finally entrusted to a bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and M Shantanagoudar, which heard counsel for the accused and the state government on March 22 this year and gave its verdict on Monday. It upheld the conviction of one Kameshwar Singh and sentenced him to life imprisonment, but gave the four others benefit of doubt and acquitted them.

Provisional list of students out for PG med, dental courses in Pondy

TIMES NEWS NETWORK   10.04.2018

Puducherry: All the seats under government quota barring one (under physically handicapped category) in a government college, two unaided private medical colleges (minority institutions) and an unaided private medical college, have been allotted for candidates seeking admissions into postgraduate medical courses for the academic year 2018-19.

Similarly, all the seats under government and management quotas in a government dental college and a private dental college were allotted for candidates seeking admission into postgraduate dental courses. A lone seat under NRI category was not filed.

The centralised admission committee (Centac) on Monday released the provisional lists of students, who were allotted postgraduate medical and dental seats under government and management quotas for the academic year 2018-19. The committee allotted all the seats under government quota in Indira Gandhi government medical college and research institute (three seats), Pondicherry institute of medical sciences (Pims) (religious minority), 25, and Sri Venkateshwaraa medical college, (SVMC) (linguistic minority), 19, for the candidates featuring in the provisional lists evolved by it.

Thirty-six seats in Sri Manakula Vinayakar medical college (SMVMC) have been allotted for the candidates. A lone seat under physically-handicapped category in SMVMC was not filled.

Thirty-eight seats of the total 81 under management quota in Pims and SVMC fell vacant after the Centac released the provisional lists after the first round. Twenty-three of the total 25 seats in Pims and 15 seats of the total 19 in SVMC under management quota fell vacant after the first round.