The norms for land acquisition will be more stringent if government accepts recommendations of a parliamentary committee on the new Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill. 

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development, which adopted its report Tuesday on the key bill, has recommended that the definition of public purpose should be more stringent so that it cannot be used to acquire land for making profit.

In another key recommendation, it has said that fertile land being used for agriculture should not be permitted to be acquired for Public Private Partnership projects. 

The panel headed by BJP MP Sumitra Mahajan has said that any land should not be acquired for profit purpose.

The recommendations are likely to invite criticism from the industry, which has been in the favour of the expanding the definition of public purpose so that land could be acquired not only for infrastructure or defence purposes but also for industrial, commercial or institutional purposes, creating wealth and employment. 

The panel has also recommended that land being acquired for any purpose should be meeting the conditions prescribed in the current legislation, which means doing away with the exemptions granted to land acquisition under 16 earlier Acts listed in the Fourth schedule. 

The committee felt that the exemptions should not be allowed as most of the land acquisition takes place in the mining, power and other infrastructure sectors for which land have been required so far under one or the other of these 16 legislations.

It was the dual evils of alcoholism and the hardships of drought that apparently drove a 54-year-old farmer Vitthal Muralidhar Chavan, a father of four, to commit suicide by hanging himself at his house on Sunday. 

He is a resident of Kalthan -2 village in the Indapur taluka of the state minister for cooperatives Harshavardhan Patil.

Although, the local police claim that sheer alcoholism drove Chavan to allegedly take the extreme step, relatives who spoke to DNA over the phone from the village painted a different picture.

Datta Jadhav, police havaldar of Indapur police, said that the police did not find any suicide note.

“Chavan’s wife had gone out of the house in the afternoon, during which he might have committed the act under the influence of alcohol,” he said.

Rahul Mhakre, nephew of Chavan, said that his uncle was finding it difficult to make ends meet, since the last few months.

“The ongoing drought has resulted in drying up work of farm workers like my uncle. Although, he had a long standing history of alcoholism, in the recent past, depression drove him more and more to the bottle,” he said. 

Chavan’s family was wrecked by his alcoholism and hardships that seem to have become common for all families of small and medium sized agriculturists in the state. 

“My uncle used to earn around Rs 10,000. But his source of income had dried up in the past few months due to the drought. In fact he was unemployed since the last few months and only had started working a few days back,” he said. 

Chavan’s predicament was endemic to almost all villagers who are facing the virulent onslaught of the drought. 

“People are finding it very difficult to earn their living,” he said. 

Mhakre hoped that the government takes steps to alleviate the suffering of the villagers on an urgent basis.

Chandigarh: Management of highly contaminated underground water is the focus of new collaboration between the Central and Punjab governments.

The Planning Commission on Monday announced setting up a cancer specialty hospital in the state to deal with increasing number of cancer cases because of high underground water contamination.
 
High use of pesticides in the farm sector is said to be reason for contamination of underground water, which has resulted in certain regions in the state turning into cancer hotspot.   
 
Announcing an annual plan of Rs 14,000 crore for Punjab for this financial year, Planning Commission Deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia also said that a technical committee headed by plan panel member Mihir Shah will visit the state to examine its water crises.
 
“The committee will suggest how Central government resources and resources under which can be used to address the issue,” he said, after discussing the issue with Punjab chief minister Prakash Singh Badal at the annual plan meeting.  
 
But, Badal made an unequivocal attack on the Central government saying it was adopting “unitary form” of governance approach, reducing the state governments to “dignified municipal corporations.”

Badal said the current model of planning have failed to address the systemic problems like poverty despite 65 years of independence and told the commission about his government’s resolve to set up a Planning Board in Punjab.

The CM also accused the Central government of step brotherly treatment even though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Ahluwalia and minister of state for Planning Ashwani Kumar come from Punjab.

Badal is the latest among the list of non-UPA chief ministers after Narendra Modi of Gujarat and J Jayalalithaa of Tamil Nadu, who have criticised the planning process for being ineffective in addressing the state-specific imbalances.
 
On major problems of the state like drugs, the CM said the drugs were being trafficked from Congress ruled Rajasthan and Pakistan creating havoc in the state. “Punjab cannot define the borders with Rajasthan nor does my government has any say over the Wagah border,” he told the panel.
 
In a bid to pacify Badal, Ahluwalia assured of helping the state to build up a cancer hospital in the state’s Malwa region. A team of Commission officials will tour the entire state to study the steady depletion of water level in the state.

It is pertinent to note that last week Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had met Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and had requested him for complete waiver from the Centre of outstanding small savings loan of Rs 22,202 crore to Punjab Government as this money was spent to curb the terror-related activities in the state.

Badal had also told Mukherjee that Punjab was a revenue surplus state till 1986-87, but its finances were adversely affected during the long period of militancy and President’s rule.

It has been almost 17 years when Punjab had taken loan from the Centre to deal with the terror. The total debt as on 31 March 2012 was about Rs 77,585 crore, which has now become Rs 22,000 due to interest rates. The state had to pay Rs 6,500 crore as interest every year on the principal amount.

IK Gujral government had waived about Rs 8,500 crore. 

Both the Congress and Akali Dal have been trying to reap maximum benefit from waiver scheme before the 2014 general elections.

After the dismal performance by the Congress in the recently held assembly elections, the Congress doesn’t seem to have any agenda and its workers are also demoralized from the poll debacle.  So, the Congress is striving hard to gain momentum and take a different route for the upcoming general elections.

Ambala: The families of the two cousin sisters who married each other have began hurling allegations on each other. Neha’s aunt Nisha claims Poonam thrashed and pressurised her into marrying her saying she would commit suicide if the marriage wasn’t solemnised. And she claims Neha confessed all this to her over the phone.

The aunt, Nisha, says her family will be meeting the girl at Karnal’s Nari Niketan on Monday. They claimed that Poonam beat up and threatened Neha, and she wilted under pressure thereby agreeing to marry her.

Neha and Poonam, who are cousins, had run away from their homes, have now solemnised their wedding. The family of one of the girls filed a complaint with the police on Saturday, after which the two were arrested and produced before the court. Both the girls are adults and were sent to Karnal’s Nari Niketan. 

Poonam, a resident of Ambala Cantonment is a tomboy and dresses up like a man. Her maternal sister Neha lives in Jalandhar (Punjab). Neha was seen dressed like a married woman, sporting vermillion and wedding bangles. 

Poonam’s mother, Bimla Devi, says that her daughter had gone missing some days back and she couldn’t belive when she got to know of the wedding between the two sisters. 

 This is the second case of two women eloping and marrying each other that has emanated from Ambala. Earlier, a woman who worked as a software engineer and a teacher of a private school had married at a temple after a one-and-a-half year long love-affair. 

Samir De, the husband, and his father were arrested from their house at Nashrapara village following a police complaint lodged by the girl, a day after the incident took place on Friday, and were produced in court on Sunday.

Police said soon after the ‘bou bhath (wedding feast)’ was over, Samir asked his wife Anna to arrange Rs 4,000 as dowry in addition to Rs 6,000 already paid under an agreement.

As the girl refused to pay the amount, the husband and his relatives forced her to leave for her parents’ house, they said. Samir is employed with a local hotel as a casual worker, police said.

‘Obviously the merger didn’t go as planned, and there is something seriously gone wrong. My job is to see what is the current situation, learn from past mistakes and work to see that Air India succeeds,’ Singh told Karan Thapar in CNN-IBN’s Devil’s Advocate programme.

He said, ‘We all agree that the merger hasn’t progressed or happened as it should have. But at this point of time we have to decide how to implement the Dharmadhikari report which takes care of most of these problems (integration of the human resources).’

Asked whether the airline management was not up to the mark in handling the challenge of merger, he said, ‘We are not here to indict the management, past or present. We are here discussing what the problems are with the airline. Merger didn’t take place, we know.’

To a question whether the government planned to privatise Air India, Singh said, ‘First, we have to put Air India on right track, make it viable.

‘If you look around, the days of national carriers have gone. Any countries you look at, those days when national carrier was a reality, have gone. Those facts are before the government, our whole effort is to make Air India a viable entity.’

On being pressed further and asked whether the government was making Air India viable to privatise it, he said, ‘At this point of time, we are not looking at that (making viable for privatisation).’

The Minister accepted it was difficult for the government to run a service industry like an airline where ‘customer is king’.

‘Top to bottom in a government PSU, in a government company, the culture is entirely different from what you need in the service industry,’ Singh said.

But, at the same time, he also said that most of the good public sector units were being run by the government servants and many private companies were in a bad shape despite being run by professionals.

Singh said both Air India and Indian Airlines were making profits till 2005 before the merger, despite being government entities.

‘So, it’s not impossible or beyond the realm of possibility that government can’t run a service industry. Most likely it is difficult. Let’s try the difficult thing,’ he said.

On the question of merger not taking place well and was half-heartedly or irrationally done, Singh said, ‘What I have come to know is that merger has taken place in about 70 per cent of the areas, marketing forces have been merged.

‘But the key area of pilots, cabin crew and engineers, basically the human resource area, has not yet been merged. That’s why Justice Dharmadhikari committee was set up’ as the employees have different areas of operations, different pay scales, he said.

‘There could be many other reasons for the failure. But if you look at other mergers in this area that have also failed,’ he said.

Initiating the debate in the House on the completion of 60 years of the first sitting of Parliament, at the same time he said the history of the functioning of the House over the last 60 years proves that the trust reposed in it by the founding fathers of the Constitution has been substantially fulfilled.

“That is not to say that we should not reflect with concern on the repeated disruptions of proceedings and a regrettable unwillingness, on occasion, to engage in informed discussion,” the Prime Minister noted.

He hoped that on this momentous occasion of the completion of 60 years of the functioning of the House members “can write a new chapter and restore to it the sense of dignity and decorum that is expected of a House of Elders.”

Expressing disagreement with the general impression that Rajya Sabha cannot make or unmake governments and, therefore, it is a superfluous body, the Prime said there are functions, which a revising chamber can fulfil fruitfully.

Quoting philosopher-statesman S Radhakrishnan, he said, “Parliament is not only a legislative but a deliberative body. So far as its deliberative functions are concerned, it will be open to us to make very valuable contributions, and it will depend on our work whether we justify this two-chamber system, which is now an integral part of our Constitution.

“So it is a test to which we are submitted. We are for the first time starting under the Parliamentary system, with a second chamber in the Centre and we should try to do everything in our power to justify to the public of this country that a second chamber is essential to prevent hasty legislation,” Singh said.

The Prime Minister said, “There is no doubt that one reason for India’s growing global stature in the world is the country’s unflinching commitment to pursuing a democratic path to achieving our social and economic salvation.

“It is therefore incumbent upon all of us to respect the great institutions of our democracy and respect the spirit of what is expected from the elected representatives,” he said.

The Prime Minister also chose the occasion to emphasise the increasing participation of people in the institutions of Parliamentary democracy.

“The resilience of our pluralistic democracy is the proudest achievement of the Indian State and Indian people. The people of India have repeatedly and regularly reposed their faith in the institutions of parliamentary democracy.

“In recent years, they are making their voice heard more forcefully by voting in increasing numbers in Parliamentary, State Assembly and Panchayat elections,” he said.

Singh, who is the Leader of the Upper House, said Rajya Sabha is an institution whose deliberations over the years have enriched our parliamentary democracy, nurtured the strength of the nation’s federal polity and served as a bulwark against the transient impulses of the moment.

“As a House of Elders we are called upon to reflect and guide, with patience and sobriety, on the issues and challenges our nation faces. This House brings balance and sincerity to the deliberations of the day and the legislation at hand.

“Through thoughtful interventions enriched by experience, intellect and a spirit of national bonding, members of the Upper House have contributed to forging a national consensus on critical issues enabling us to face the challenges of the present and the future as a united nation,”the Prime Minister said.

Singh said, “Rajya Sabha has a unique position in our Republic as it it is both a Council of States and a House of Elders.

“As a Council of States it provides a unique platform for every region of our vast and diverse country to have its voice heard at the highest forum of our democracy,” he said recalling that many great leaders served Rajya Sabha with great distinction.

He recalled that Rajya Sabha considered and passed historic legislations institutionalising land reforms through the first constitutional amendment, abolishing privy purses and nationalising banks.

“More recently, legislations passed by this House have expanded the entitlements of our people to education, information and minimum employment.

“I have been a proud member of this august House for the past 21 years. I have personally witnessed and participated in some very enriching and lively debates in this august House. This House has always been a repository of wisdom that has proved invaluable to the functioning of our parliamentary democracy,” the Prime Minister said.

The ongoing Parliament session ends at May 22 and India Against Corruption (IAC) wants Jan Lokpal Bill to be passed before the current session ends.

Kejriwal said that MPs have betrayed the masses of India by breaking their promise made in Parliament on August 27 last year. 

He also said that the current cabinet is comprised of at least 16 ministers who have serious charges against them and if Jan Lokpal Bill is passed then they will be behind bars.

Kejriwal maintained that after Lokpal Bill is passed, Team Anna will concentrate on electoral reforms, including right to reject and right to recall. 

The test was conducted at the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre at Mahendragiri in Tamil Nadu’s Tirunelveli district.

“The performance of the engine was as predicted,” it said.

The maiden flight test of the indigenous cryogenic stage onboard GSLV-D3 failed in May 2010 after it developed a snag and the rocket plunged into the sea minutes after lift-off.

ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan had said last month that GSLV would undergo two more tests at the Mahendragiri facility.
He had also said ISRO was planning a GSLV launch with Indian cryogenic engine during September-October.

ISRO plans to fly two GSLV rockets at an interval of six months with the third one meant for the Chandrayaan-2 moon mission.