Cuttack, (PTI) The National Green Tribunal has imposed restrictions on the Odisha government's ambitious Bali Jatra project, for which the Cuttack district administration had “reclaimed an area of around 426 acres of the Mahanadi riverbed”, environmentalists said on Saturday..

As part of the Bali Jatra riverfront or the Barfi project, the district administration had reclaimed the floodplain zone of the river near Jobra barrage in Cuttack city by filling sand and garbage, they claimed.

According to them, the move allegedly "reduced the water retaining capacity of the barrage and posed a threat of inundation to at least 38 nearby villages".

A five-member special bench, headed by chairperson Justice A K Goel, said it was difficult to accept the state government’s plan for construction on the reclaimed land, which has been clearly established to be part of the floodplain zone.

"There's the clear anticipated danger of flooding. We're guided by precautionary principle under Section 20 of the NGT Act," the eastern zone of the NGT observed while adjudicating on an application by city-based advocate Pradip Pattnaik.

The tribunal, however, has agreed to retain the original Bali Jatra ground of 34 acres, although it falls under the floodplain zone.

This is because the ground has been used for holding the annual historic festival since time immemorial, it said.

The Bali Jatra is one of the largest open fairs in Asia to commemorate the glorious past of voyages to the islands of Indonesia by Odia traders.

"There should be no further expansion and no concretisation or compacting of the said ground," the court said.

It also directed that the remaining 392 acres of land be used for plantation of local species and the area be developed as a biological park where no commercial activity would be allowed.

The NGT said "two-thirds of the reclaimed land be developed as dense forest" and the remaining area may be used for the park and playground without any permanent or temporary constructions or any commercial activity.

"It is made clear that no concretisation of any sort will be allowed in the entire 426 acres of reclaimed land," the tribunal said, adding that due precautions for maintaining sanitation and hygiene should be made at the Bali Jatra ground.

The bench directed the state government to take necessary safeguard measures for protecting 38 riverside villages, which are likely to be affected by flood in the periphery of Cuttack city.

It also ordered that the area where the forest is to be developed may be handed over to the forest department after demarcation.

"Rest of the area may be maintained by the local body/ irrigation department, as may be decided by the state government," the bench said.

Meanwhile, Cuttack collector Bhabani Shankar Chayni said the administration will examine the NGT order. PTI

Pauri (UKD), (PTI) A BJP leader’s son who owns a resort in Yamkeshwar block of Pauri district and his two employees were arrested on Friday allegedly for killing a 19-year-old girl who had been missing for the last few days, police said.

The girl worked as a receptionist at the resort.

Pulkit Arya is the son of Vinod Arya, a BJP leader from Haridwar, and a former chairman of Uttarakhand Mati Kala Board. Vinod Arya has been granted a state minister’s rank but holds no post in the government.

Pulkit Arya, the resort owner, manager Saurabh Bhaskar, and assistant manager Ankit Gupta were arrested after they confessed to have killed the missing girl and thrown her body into the Cheela Canal, Pauri Additional Superintendent of Police Shekhar Chandra Suyal told PTI.

Initially, they tried to mislead the police, but when interrogated sternly they confessed to the crime, the ASP said.

A team has been sent to search for the girl’s body in the canal, he said, adding the case was cracked within 24 hours of being transferred from the revenue police to regular police.

The three accused were sent to a 14-day judicial custody by a Kotdwar court, police said.

A missing complaint had been lodged at a revenue police outpost after the girl was not found in her room by her parents on Monday morning. PTI 

Rewa (MP), (PTI) In a video that has gone viral on social media, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Lok Sabha member from Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa, Janardan Mishra, can be seen cleaning the toilet of a girls’ school in his constituency with his bare hands.

The video was shot on September 22, during the parliamentarian’s visit to the school in Khatkhari to participate in a plantation programme as a chief guest.

After seeing a dirty toilet at the school, Mishra decided to clean it himself with his bare hands using only water and without waiting for any equipment, including gloves and brush, sources said.

When asked about it, Mishra said, “Everybody should maintain cleanliness. From Mahatma Gandhi to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they have given the message of cleanliness.” He said he cleaned the toilet to motivate people towards cleanliness.

In 2018 also, Mishra had cleaned the toilet of a school and a video of that act had gone viral at that time. He had also driven a garbage collection vehicle. PTI

New Delh, (PTI) Former Congress leader and senior lawyer Kapil Sibal on Friday made veiled attack at the Centre, alleging people have been living in the fear of investigating agencies, the State and the police.

Talking about the “use of religion as a weapon”, the Rajya Sabha MP said that even though it was happening all over the world, “India is an excessive example of the use of religion”.

“It’s happening all over the world. It was complete intolerance what happened in Leicester yesterday. We all know what happened there. So it’s being exported now. The real problem is, in India today those who are part of the hate speech are the collaborators of a particular ideology, the police are not willing to do anything,” Sibal said.

The former Cabinet minister was speaking at the launch of his book, “Reflections: In Rhyme and Rhythm”, published by Rupa Publications.

He added that those who give hate speeches are not prosecuted and hence, are “emboldened to give another speech of the nature”.

“Whole populations are afraid and they get mentally ghettoised. What do they do? So they are afraid. We are living in constant fear. We fear the ED, we fear the CBI, we fear the State, we fear the policemen, we fear everybody. We don’t have any trust in anybody anymore,” the politician-turned-poet said.

The 74-year-old senior advocate also criticised the judiciary, alleging the poor man cannot come to the court as he has “no money to pay the lawyers”.

“It is the fight between two corporate world in the court every day. Amazon vs Reliance, this vs that. And the poor man, he cannot come to the court. He doesn’t have the money to pay for lawyers. A guy from Kerala, from the Northeast, West Bengal, in the south, how is he going to come to the Supreme Court. He just doesn’t have the means,” he rued.

He added that people’s confidence in the justice system is waning. “Then there is the issue of fairness. What is fair? Fair is when you have great confidence that you will get justice. Lot of us believe that that confidence is waning and the general public, people of India think. People who interact with me on a daily basis, will we get justice? I cannot assure them… there is no way to help. Because the system doesn’t help them,” Sibal said.

The book launch was also attended by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and Jammu & Kashmir National Conference president Farooq Abdullah.

It’s the criminal justice system which is the much worse than the other. The real people get away, and the poor people get involved. PTI

Bhubaneswar,(PTI) After a decade of struggle, the women of Odisha’s Nayagarh district lead the battle for forest rights from the front, having reclaimed what they think is theirs and winning the rights over forests resources in 24 villages.

Narrating their hardships to protect the forests, the Block-level Women Federation President in Ranpur, Shashi Pradhan said that the women of Nayagarh District see forest as a “source of their livelihood” and have been “protecting it since 1984.” “Women have been protecting and conserving these forests since 1984. People living in the villages had no idea about these rights. The women took charge and decided to hold awareness campaigns on Forest Rights Act,” Shashi said.

Community and forest resource rights were granted to Kodalapalli and Sinduria village together as they led the fight for the rights jointly.

Explaining why the forests are managed mostly by women in Nayagarh district, Shashi said that there was “mismanagement” when the forests were taken care by the men.

“There was miscommunication and huge mismanagement when the men used to manage the forests. Later, the women took over and led the fight for rights,” she said.

Another forest-dweller in Ranpur, Anita Pradhan told PTI that there were instances when people from other villages attempted to invade their forest and tried to peel the barks of the trees.

“The women of these villages always fought back. They would visit those invaders’ village, hold meeting with their block presidents and once even confiscated their vehicles when their forests were illegally invaded by them,” Anita told PTI.

On November 2, 2021, 24 villages in Odisha’s Nayagarh district had received 14 community rights (CR) and community forest resource rights (CFRR) titles.

The titles were assigned to the villages under the the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights Act).

“We view these forests as our source of livelihood. There’s various kinds of resources here. Be it herbs, shrubs, fruits or vegetables, we get everything from here,” another forest-dweller of Ranpur said.

Cashew cultivation is one of the primary source of income for the people living in Kodalpalli and Sinduria village, they said.

“There is at least 20 acres of land for kaju cultivation in these two forest areas. The work is primarily managed by 15 families in Kodalpalli and 7 families in Sinduria village and they manage to earn around Rs 2 lakh to Rs 3 lakh per annum,” Shashi said.

She further stated that all villagers possess medical insurance cards and that, each family earn around Rs 50,000 a year only via forest-conservation and cashew cultivation. PTI 

Haridwar,  (PTI) The sanyasi akharas have refused to accept the appointment of Swami Avimukteshwaranand as the new Shankaracharya of Jyotish Peeth after the death of his guru Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati.

Shankaracharya of Dwarka-Sharda Peeth in Gujarat, and Jyotish Peeth in Uttarakhand, Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati died on September 11 at his ashram in Madhya Pradesh.

Niranjani Akhara secretary and president of Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad Mahant Ravindra Puri claimed the appointment of Avimukteshwaranand as the Shankaracharya is against the rules.

A meeting of all seven sanyasi akharas will soon be convened to decide the strategy for the appointment of the new Shankaracharya, Puri added.

There is a procedure for the appointment of the Shankaracharya which was not followed in the case of Avimukteshwaranand, he said.

Avimukteshwaranand was declared as the new Shankaracharya allegedly on the basis of a will prepared by Swami Swaroopanand by another disciple of his, Subuddhanand. PTI

New Delhi, (PTI) The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a supplementary charge sheet against an accused in a case related to the conspiracy by Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) terrorists to kill a Hindu priest in Punjab’s Jalandhar last year.

Gagandeep Singh alias “Gaggu”, a resident of Sangat Pura Mohalla in Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut, is the fifth person charged by the NIA in a special court in Punjab after taking over the investigation of the case on October 8 last year.

The agency had filed charge sheet against four accused — Canada-based chief of KTF Hardeep Singh Nijjar, his close associate Arshdeep Singh alias “Prabh”, Kamaljeet Sharma and Ram Singh alias “Sona” — on July 4.

On July 22, the NIA had announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh for information leading to arrest of Nijjar.

“Investigations have revealed that the entire conspiracy was hatched by accused Nijjar and Arshdeep, both based in Canada, to disturb peace and disrupt the communal harmony (in Punjab).

“The target attack was executed by the members of terror gang with the weapons supplied by accused Gagandeep on the directions of Arshdeep,” a spokesperson of the NIA said.

The priest, Kamaldeep Sharma, was shot at and critically injured in Jalandhar on January 31 last year. PTI 

New Delhi,  (PTI) The Indian Muslims for Secular Democracy (IMSD) has hit out at Iran’s “obscurantist” and “authoritarian” laws in the wake of a young woman’s death in police custody for allegedly violating that country’s strictly-enforced dress code.

Mahsa Amini, 22, was arrested by Iran’s morality police in Tehran last week for allegedly violating its dress code. The police said she died of a heart attack and was not mistreated, but her family members have expressed apprehensions about it.

“IMSD strongly condemns Iran’s obscurantist, authoritarian laws and its murderous enforcement, as also the denial of the citizens’ right to protest,” the group said in a statement on Friday.

It further said in the third decade of the 21st century, it is inhuman and barbaric to kill a fellow human being merely for not covering her head.

“At the same time, we question the hypocrisy of India’s Muslim clergy in not supporting the Iranian women’s right to choose, an argument it puts forward in the context of the ongoing hijab controversy in India,” it said.

The statement issued by IMSD has been endorsed by nearly 100 prominent citizens from different cities and walks of life, including freedom fighter G G Parikh, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Zeenat Shaukatali, Yogendra Yadav and Tushar Gandhi. PTI

Thiruvananthapuram: Sporadic incidents of violence were reported in various parts of Kerala as the dawn-to-dusk hartal called by radical Islamic outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) was underway in the southern state on Friday.

The hartal was called by the PFI to protest against the raids in the offices and residences of its leaders and their subsequent arrests on Thursday by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and other agencies for allegedly supporting terror activities in the country.

Stones were pelted at Kerala State Road Transport Corporation buses (KSRTC) in various districts including Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Kozhikode, Wayanad, and Alappuzha.

Local media reported that a petrol bomb was hurled at a vehicle which was carrying newspapers for distribution at Narayanpara in Kannur in the morning.

In Alappuzha, KSRTC buses, a tanker lorry and some other vehicles got damaged in the stone pelting allegedly by those supporting the hartal call.

A 15-year-old girl and an auto-rickshaw driver suffered minor injuries in the stone pelting allegedly by PFI activists in Kozhikode and Kannur respectively.

Meanwhile, Kerala police beefed up security in the state and issued directions to the district police chiefs to ensure law and order after the PFI called for a day-long state-wide hartal.

A statement issued by the police said stern action will be taken against those who violate the law.

“All the policemen in the state will be deployed for the maintenance of law and order,” the statement said.

The PFI on Thursday had said a hartal will be observed in the state today “against the RSS-controlled fascist government’s attempt to silence dissenting voices using the central agencies”.

The hartal would be held from 6 AM to 6 PM, A Abdul Sathar, state general secretary, PFI, had said in the statement.

On Thursday, PFI workers had taken out marches to the places where raids were carried out and raised slogans against the Centre and its investigating agencies. However, central forces were already deployed in all such places as part of strengthening the security.

Multi-agency teams spearheaded by the NIA had arrested 106 functionaries of the PFI on Thursday in near simultaneous raids at 93 locations in 15 states for allegedly supporting terror activities in the country.

Kerala, where PFI has some strong pockets, accounted for the maximum number of 22 arrests, officials said.

PFI state president C P Mohammed Basheer, national chairman O M A Salam, national secretary Nasaruddin Elamaram, former chairman E Abubacker and others were among those arrested.

 Lucknow: A Samajwadi Party delegation on Friday met Governor Anandiben Patel here to draw her attention to the "continued harassment" of senior party leader Mohammad Azam Khan by the government, the party said.

Led by party president Akhilesh Yadav, the delegation of party MLAs met the governor at the Raj Bhawan in the morning and apprised her of the harassment of Khan, it said. "We apprised the governor about the continued injustice being done with Azam Khan and fake cases being lodged against him.

We have requested her to see to it that he gets justice," Yadav told reporters after meeting the governor.

"We told her that the government is continuously lodging fake cases against him (Azam Khan) so that he he remains in jail. He is ill and has health problems.

He was down with Covid and had to remain in jail. It was our request to the governor that there should not be any injustice with Khan," he said. On Wednesday, during the ongoing session of the state Legislative Assembly, Samajwadi Party members alleged that Khan had been implicated in "false" cases.

They created a ruckus because of which the Question Hour was washed out in both the Houses. Khan, who was released from Sitapur jail earlier this year after the Supreme Court granted him interim bail, is facing around 90 cases, including that of corruption and theft.

Another case was registered against him on Tuesday for allegedly stealing the cleaning machine of a municipality and using it for Mohammad Ali Jauhar University established by him.