Model code stops govt from announcing incentive for Gomathi Marimuthu 

DECCAN CHRONICLE.

Published Apr 30, 2019, 1:46 am IST


The MCC came into force on March 10 this year. Gomathi had won gold at the recently-concluded Asian Athletics Championship in Doha.

Gomathi Marimuthu

Chennai: The state government could not announce incentives to honour athlete Gomathi Marimuthu, who won the 800 m gold at the Asian Athletics Championship last week, owing to the enforcement of the Election Commission's Model Code of Conduct (MCC), fisheries minister D. Jayakumar has said.

He however hastened to add that the government had sought permission from the EC and after "clearance" is obtained from the Election Commission, the government would make the announcement.

The MCC came into force on March 10 this year. Gomathi had won gold at the recently-concluded Asian Athletics Championship in Doha. She is now focussed on qualifying for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, media reports said. The athlete hails from a village near Tiruchy.

The Election Commission's guidelines for political parties and candidates prohibits parties in power from announcing financial grants in any form, Mr Jayakumar told reporters at the airport here on Monday. Refuting allegation that the state government failed to encourage Gomathi, he said it was the government under Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami who had enhanced the quota in government jobs for sports persons to three per cent from two. "Only Amma (former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa) government has been bestowing importance on sports," he said.

"That is a false allegation. It is worrying that knowingly or unknowingly that opinion is being expressed. Now the code of conduct is in place. At that time, without the clearance of the EC, (support) cannot be given. We have written to the Election Commission. If we get clearance, the Chief Minister is ready to provide all help in a happy way. Action will be taken after the Election Commission clearance is received," he added.

Days after winning the gold, Gomathi had said, "if the Tamil Nadu government supports me, I can try further, to win a medal at the Olympics. There is one more year for the competition." Stating that the government was set to help her, she requested, "no one else should struggle the way I have. It would be helpful if the Tamil Nadu government helped them."

She knew of many athletes who had given up on their sporting careers due to lack of support, Gomathi had said.

No man has right to compel girl to fall in love or marry him: Madras HC

DECCAN CHRONICLE. | J STALIN

Published Apr 30, 2019, 4:32 am IST


The judge directed the Superintendent of Prisons to immediately arrange for counseling of this petitioner with a psychiatrist.

Madras High Court

Chennai: Holding that no man has any right to compel any girl to fall in love with him or to marry him, the Madras high court has dismissed a bail petition from an accused, arrested in connection with stabbing all over the body of a girl, on her refusing to concede his request for marriage, in the city.

Dismissing the bail petition filed by Kavin, Justice N.Anand Venkatesh said, "It will be better if the petitioner is kept inside the jail and the jail authorities start giving this petitioner counseling by experts and bring him to normalcy before he is released from the jail. Probably, by the time, the petitioner gets out of the jail, he will regret for what he did to the girl with whom he had a love affair".

The judge directed the Superintendent of Prisons to immediately arrange for counseling of this petitioner with a psychiatrist.

The judge said this is yet another case where the lover of the victim girl has attacked the girl in a brutal manner with knife on her refusing to marry him. Incidents of this nature are continuing to happen on a daily basis and it has reached monstrous proportions where man seem to think that the girl has to concede to their request for love/marriage and on refusal to do so, they take the extreme step of brutally attacking girls and had also gone to the extent of setting them to fire, the judge added.

The judge said this trend is on the raise and it is high time that courts put down their foot and bring some sanity in society. These incidents continue to happen because man things that a woman is a chattel and she has to concede to whatever a mandemands. This attitude has to be changed. In the instant case, the petitioner was in love with the injured girl. It seems that the girl had informed the petitioner that her parents are looking for a marriage and she is not in a position to marry him. The petitioner lost his sense of balance and has proceeded to brutally attacked her. The ruthlessness with which the injured has beenattacked is apparent from the discharge summary that has been given by the hospital. The girl has been stabbed all over the body and there are four stab incisions on the left side of the face with one penetrating into the buccal cavity. There are multiple stab injuries on the chest and on the abdomen. This is apart from the stab injuries that are found in the neck, arms and lower limbs. "

It is a miracle that this victim girl has survived this attack due to the effective treatment that has been given by the hospital. After this attack, this injured girl can never come back to normalcy and this incident is going to remain deep in the mind of the victim girl till the end of her life", the judge added.

The judge said this court while considering the bail petition has to necessarily look into the gravity of the offence and also the seriousness of the accusation made against the accused person. Obviously, the present case falls within the ambit of a case with serious accusations and very serious gravity of offence. The courts must stop being merciful or tend to have misplaced sympathies in cases of this nature. If the accused person had committed the crime, since he was wounded by the conduct of the girl who had suddenly refused to marry him, that does not give him a right to resort to stabbing a woman. There were other ways to deal with the situation, the judge added.

Supreme Court Weekly Round Up

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HC allows rectification of error in application forms

STAFF REPORTER

MADURAI, APRIL 30, 2019 00:00 IST

Bringing relief to two candidates, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has directed the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission to consider their claim for rectifying error in their application forms to the post of Assistant Horticulture Officer.

In separate petitions, M. Kavin Kumar and R. Uma Maheshwari had sought rectification of the errors. The candidates had wrongly entered their community status as Backward class (BC) instead of De-notified community (DNC) in their online application form.

Though both the candidates had cleared the cut-off marks and met the eligibility criteria, they were not short-listed due to the error. Their representations to the TNPSC for rectification of the error was rejected, following which they approached the court.

Justice R. Mahadevan observed that such mistakes happen inadvertently and can be rectified. The petitioners cannot be penalised by denying them employment. The court directed the authorities to consider them for appointment to the post if they were found to be eligible and if there were no other legal impediments.

Student who scored 99 given zero

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

HYDERABAD, APRIL 30, 2019 00:00 IST

The Board of Intermediate Education recommended suspension of a lecturer and imposed a fine of Rs. 5,000 on an examiner, after the Inter results fiasco.

The action was taken with regard to the error in the marks of Navya, CEC second year student of Karimala Junior College of Mancherial. Though she secured 99 in Telugu, she was given zero marks due to the wrong marking in the OMR sheet.

Flight overshoots Shirdi runway on landing, all safe

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:30.04.2019

A SpiceJet flight overshot the runway at Shirdi airport on Monday when its landing gear got stuck in unpaved area. Luckily, it stopped safely and nobody was hurt aboard the Boeing 737 aircraft.

The runway had to be closed to remove the aircraft, due to which flight operations were hit in Shirdi. Passengers are learnt to have remained inside the aircraft for a long time. Arrangements for quick deboarding were reportedly not made.

Aviation authorities have categorized this as a serious incident and referred the probe to the Aircraft Accident Investigation Board.

T’gana teacher sacked for giving ‘0’ marks instead of 99

Hyderabad:30.04.2019

This is the most glaring and classic example of the scale of goof-up in Telangana Board of Intermediate examinations with a student getting ‘0’ marks instead of ‘99’in a subject.

Gajji Navya failed in Intermediate Second Year (Class XII) as she scored ‘0’ marks in Telugu paper. This student from Mancherial district (Hall ticket number 1933216764) scored 99 marks in Commerce, 96 in civics, 95 in economics and 68 in English.

She was shocked to see the results declared by the Telangana Board of Intermediate (BIE) on April 18. She could not believe when she saw ‘0’ in Telugu as she had scored 98 in Telugu paper in Class XI and equally good marks in the remaining subjects.

With a leading Telugu daily highlighting her plight, the BIE swung into action and after checking her answer sheet revised the marks obtained in Telugu to 99. The incident caused huge embarrassment to the board.

With 21 students committing suicide and many students like Navya coming out in open to vent their anger, the state government was forced to order re-verification of answer sheets of 3.28 lakh students who failed to obtain the pass marks. A total of 9.47 lakh students had appeared in the exams for both first and second year in February-March.

After an inquiry into Navya’s case, BIE suspended a teacher and imposed fine on another. It announced that it has imposed ₹5,000 fine against Uma Devi, a teacher of a private school who evaluated Telugu paper of Navya. She was also sacked by her school management.

BIE also suspended Vijay Kumar, a teacher of a tribal welfare school, who had served as a scrutinizer but failed to notice the blunder.

BIE announced the action against the two teachers late on Sunday, a day after a threemember committee submitted its report to the government, which admitted to the discrepancies. However, the opposition parties and student groups are demanding action against the higher-ups in the Board and also the information technology company for the massive bungling.

They alleged that BIE was shielding those who committed serious blunders like giving single digit marks. IANS

Goa univ to teach vaastu, astrology

Gauree.Malkarnekar | TNN

Panaji:Students will soon be able to pursue higher education programmes offered by Goa University in ancient Indian knowledge systems like vaastu shastra and jyotish shastra, as also take up study of the ancient Indian languages of Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit. Vaastu shastra and jyotish shastra are the systems of architectural design and astrology, respectively, as practiced in ancient India.

Goa University is expected to start these courses in the academic year 2019-2020. This also makes the university rare among varsities to offer higher education in Indic knowledge systems.