This is the real face of judicial activism, friends!
This is the real face of judicial activism, friends!Chief Justice Kabir justified economic reforms even before taking oath. Outgoing CJ also did support the reform drive! What should be the role of the judiciary? Instead of ensuring the rule of the law, Indian Judiciary seems rather too engaged in bailing out the corporate governance.The Supreme Court has come to the government's rescue on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the retail sector. The Supreme Court has asked the government to amend the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) regulations to implement FDI in retail.
Palash Biswas
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This is the real face of judicial activism, friends!Chief Justice Kabir justified economic reforms even before taking oath. Outgoing CJ also did support the reform drive! What should be the role of the judiciary? Instead of ensuring the rule of the law, Indian Judiciary seems rather too engaged in bailing out the corporate governance.The Supreme Court has come to the government's rescue on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the retail sector. The Supreme Court has asked the government to amend the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) regulations to implement FDI in retail.The trickle trickle growth story does not work to help the common man either.The market remains boom boom bullish with expansion beyond border. But Wholesale price index- inflation for September came in at a 10-month high of 7.81 per cent, slightly higher than the 7.73 percent according to the average of a poll by CNBC-TV18. The numbers make for grim reading.Improvement in monsoon towards September had little impact on food inflation, though it declined slightly. Manufactured products inflation at 6.26 percent year-on-year, is the highest so far this calendar. And core inflation (manufactured products excluding food) at 5.56 percent is way above RBI's comfort levels. Most economists and market analysts have given up hope on the RBI cutting interest rates at its monetary policy review on October 30. And they see inflation rising further in the coming months before peaking out. Growing urbanisation in India will have a significant impact on environment and the rich biodiversity which is critical to the well-being of people, a United Nations Assessment report said in Hyderabad. Indian judiciary seems not to care public welfare while pushing for more refoms resultant in indiscriminate urbanisation and industrialisation.It is neither interested to control the nuclear menace nor doing anything to conserve environment, ecology and biodiversity.
B.S.RAGHAVAN commented rightly in business line,`Judicial activism: This connotes the judiciary becoming the surrogate of the executive and stepping into the breach caused by the latter’s abdication of its responsibilities. Sometimes, especially on tricky or thorny issues which the executive does not want to touch with a pair of tongs, it may willingly let the judiciary carry the can to save itself from political embarrassment.’(http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/b-s-raghavan/article3988289.ece)
The court said that the RBI has till date not amended the regulation which will legitimise government's FDI policy. The government has now asked RBI to amend FEMA regulations so that FDI in retail can be implemented. RBI will make the required changes in FEMA by November 3.
The Supreme Court has also refused to stay the government's meeting scheduled for October 19, to give licences to 50 companies for FDI in retail. The order came on a PIL against the FDI policy since the act wasn't amended.
It is time for global credit rating agencies to take India off the negative watch list, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said today even as a leading firm last week threatened of a possible downgrade of the country within 24 months.The Planning Commission will work with state governments and ministries to make norms for funding 16 flagship programmes, dispelling concerns that it would have discretionary powers in financing such schemes.
Meanwhile,a ministerial panel chaired by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is expected to finalise the controversial land acquisition bill in its third meeting tomorrow.It is also subjected to corporate lobbying.
On the other hand the global Hindutva is engaged to win mandate for the zionist lobby in US Presidential elections and corporate lobbying intensified to manage Indian diplomacy accordingly.Citing US President Barack Obama's stance on outsourcing of jobs to India and work visas for IT firms, a leading Indian American Republican has said that Mitt Romney, not the incumbent, is the best bet for strong and enduring Indo-US relations.Dr Sampat Shivangi, who was one of the three Indian American delegates to the Republican National Convention and a major fund raiser in Mississippi state, said the Democrats' India-friendly image is but just a myth.He pointed out that Romney had promised to bring out a White Paper on India soon.
Shivangi, the President of Indian American Forum for Political Education (IAFPE), told PTI that with Obama openly and unhesitatingly criticising outsourcing to India, the future of ties between the two nations will be in safe hands only if a Republican occupies the White House.
He claimed that though majority of Indian-Americans do support the Democratic Party and Obama in particular, the trend was changing among second and third generation Indians.
"They no longer carry the Socialist and Nehruvian baggage from India like some of us in the age group of 60 to 70 do.
"President Obama is very critical of outsourcing jobs to India and work visa from India for IT companies are being gradually dispensed with. It's only a myth that Democrats are India-friendly," said Shivangi.
"President Obama's tirade against India on outsourcing has really changed his image in majority of the Indian-Americans. His television advertisements day in day out have taken warpath to disgrace India as the problem for joblessness in US which is untrue," Shivangi said.
Shivangi helped raise $1.7 million for Republican contender Romney in Mississippi, the highest collected in the State so far topping $1.2 million collected for the then President George Bush, again with the help of Shivangi.
"President Obama is increasingly becoming anti-India," says Shivangi who has attend Republican conventions as a delegate for 12 years in a row, a record of sorts especially for any Asian-American.
He pointed out that Romney had publicly declared at the Republican National Convention last month that India is the strategic ally of the US, indicating the importance Republicans attach to India.
"It was President George Bush who initiated Indo-US Civil Nuclear deal and pushed hard for it in the Congress. Democrats like Hillary Clinton hesitated till the last minute even to support the Bill in the Congress," he said.
The Cities and Biodiversity Outlook', which was released today at the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP-11, said the global urban expansion will draw heavily on water among other natural resources and consume prime agricultural land.
"India's population is currently about 30 per cent urban and is expected to become 50 per cent by about 2044. This will have significant implications for the country's environment, ecology and sustainability," the report said.
"India already contains three of the world's ten largest cities- Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata -as well as three of the world's ten fastest growing cities- Ghaziabad, Surat and Faridabad," it added.
The world's total urban area is expected to triple between 2000 and 2030, with urban population set to double to around 4.9 billion in the same period.
Urban expansion is occurring fast in areas close to biodiversity hotspots and coastal zones, the report said.
In rapidly urbanising regions, such as large and mid-sized settlements in sub-saharan Africa, India and China, resources to implement sustainable urban planning are often lacking, the report observed.
According to Thomas Elmqvist, scientific editor of the report, cities need to learn better how to protect and enhance biodiversity as this is extremely critical to the well-being of people.
However, lifestyle changes in India due to urbanisation may decrease pressure on forests, as usage of firewood and charcoal is reduced, the report also said.
On China, the report said the country, which has around 50 per cent of the population living in cities, is in the middle of its urbanisation transition.
By 2030, its urban population is expected to exceed 900 million, an increase of more than 300 million from today, the report states.
In Europe, the current urbanisation level is 70-80 per cent and the urban growth in recent decades has mostly been in the form of land expansion rather than population growth.
"Many European and North American cities have exhibited trends of shrinking and of shifting patterns of population in central parts of cities, coupled with sprawl in outer suburbs and exurban areas," it said.
The Supreme Court today directed all the states and Union territories to conduct a survey on existence of bonded labour in their regions and take steps to rehabilitate them. The bench of justices K S Radhakrishan and Dipak Misra said all the states should submit their bi-annual reports to the National Human Rights Commission which would monitor the implementation of Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act. "Fresh surveys be conducted periodically once in three years in all the states/ UTs in accordance with the provisions of the Act and the revised report, the findings of the survey should be made a part of a computerised data base available on the websites of all concerned," the bench said. "The responsibility of conducting the surveys is on the District Level Vigilance Committees and Sub Divisional Vigilance Committees of the states/ UTs and such committees should submit their reports to the NHRC. This should be done every three years and committees also should be reconstituted in every three years," it said. The court passed the order on a petition filed by Public Union for Civil Liberties seeking its direction for effective implementation of law to abolish bonded labour. "Bonded labour, it may be noticed, is rampant in brick kilns, stone quarries, crushing mines, beedi manufacturing, carpet weaving, construction industries, agriculture, in rural and urban unorganised and informal sector, power looms and cotton handlooms, fish processing etc. The committees are directed to give more attention to these areas and take prompt action in case violation is noticed," the bench said.
In a bid to retain the basic character of the information commissions under the endangered Right to Information Act, the Centre on Thursday moved the Supreme Court seeking review of its ruling last month that quashed one of its provisions and directed all the state and central panels must be led either by retired or sitting judges.
The 2005 RTI Act provided for stuffing the panels with retired bureaucrats though the legislation empowers ordinary citizens to take recourse to it for any information of public importance which has been hitherto denied to them.
While deciding a law suit filed by one Nimita seeking direction to the government to fill up the vacant posts of commissioners, the top court overturned the enactment and modified it in such a manner that the government and activist feel has changed the commissions’ composition.
In its review petition, the government seeks review of the September 12 verdict saying “it is against the provisions’’ of the transparency law.
The controversial judgment said like other quasi judicial bodies, people from judicial background should be also appointed as members of the central and state commissions which is to be done after consulting with the CJI and Chief Justice of the respective high courts.
“Chief Information Commissioner at the centre or state level shall only be a person who is or has been a chief justice of the high court or a judge of the Supreme Court of India,” a bench of justices AK Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar had said in the judgment.
India's Judiciary creates scam over Kudankulam, comments The Canadian! Just read:
There is no reason why the judiciary, the conscience of the nation, should willingly play pro-regime roles by opposing people’s and humanity concerns.
Paranoia about nuclear energy isn’t new. Most nations have shown a similar paranoia when it comes to nuclear energy following the disaster in Fukushima. Over 100 activists from these sites came together for the first time ever at a public hearing in Delhi on August 22 - just as national support for the five-year-long campaign against the Jaitapur plant snowballed. The National Committee in Solidarity with the Jaitapur Struggle - comprising leaders like Prakash Karat, AB Bardhan, Sitaram Yechury and Ram Vilas Paswan, independent experts and intellectuals - trenchantly criticised the project, based on French company Areva's troubled European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs).
The grounds of protest against the 9,800 MW plant in Maharashtra are somewhat similar to those being echoed in Tamil Nadu. The protestors argue that the plant will damage local ecology, their consent for the plant wasn’t sought and also speak of the obvious fear of how a potential accident at the plant could affect them. While the issue is currently not in the headlines anymore, the agitators in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra are no doubt closely following the developments in Kudankulam.
After plant reopening gimmicks, Japan now talks of reducing its dependence on nuclear power altogether by the 2030s. Germany has also begun decommissioning old plants and also speaks of weaning itself off it altogether by the 2020s. The US despite promoting nuclear energy in India, is caught at a crossroads when it comes to developing its own nuclear power program. In Japan a major loss of confidence in nuclear energy came after it was discovered that the nuclear safety regulators had allowed the plant to function despite problems being evident earlier.
After the Fakushima disaster, almost every country that uses nuclear energy declared that it would change its policy. Every country, except India! The India government has colluded with Union Carbide (now Dow Chemicals) to ensure that the victims of the Bhopal Gas Leak will never get justice. But no amount of compensation can ever be a solution for nuclear disasters.
Regime-Judiciary Nexus
When the Madras High court refused to stay the deadly fuelling operation in the nuclear terror plant, the people of Kudankulam and the humanity at large, besieged by nuclear terror operations of state, still had hopes of getting justice from Supreme court but when apex court also sided with the state terror operators and delivered an interim judgment in favour of state nuclear terror intent against the people, humanity has become shaky, felt betrayed yet again, losing trust in the judicial ability in justice delivery. As suggested by the regime and nuclear mafias, the courts have protected the transnational nuclear mafias.
Declining to put on hold for now the loading of fuel rods in one of the two reactors of Kundankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu, the Supreme Court Thursday Sep 13 said it would hear Sep 20 the plea seeking to restrain the central government.
The apex court's decision came as hundreds of people from Tamilnadu's Idinthakarai village, the epicentre of the protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), stood in the sea water Thursday to protest moves to load uranium fuel in one of the two reactors.
Justice K. S. Radhakrishnan and Justice Dipak Misra declined to pass any immediate order on a petition seeking to restrain the government from going ahead with the loading of nuclear fuel rods in the reactor of the plant. The court said it would hear Sep 20 the plea seeking to restrain the central government from doing so.
Judiciary mischief is perhaps the worst kind of menace and brute evil. Madras High court seems have created the basis for the Supreme court to promote state nuclear terror agenda. Supreme Court has just said the regime must ensure security and safety of the people and the regime knows it has to just file another affidavit stating that people are safe. In other words, the judiciary has clearly offered the regime and nuclear mafias to ensure safety of the people by killing them so that they need not to live until the nuclear plant blasts.
The nuclear terror project was cleared in haste in violation of the recommendations of an official Task Force, and without even the fig leaf of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report. The NPCIL has refused to furnish to the public the site evaluation and safety analysis reports, although so directed by the Central Information Commission.
In the name of nation and national interests they protect the rich and multinationals and want the common people also support that. Recent disclosures from a special official safety review on all Russian reactor designs reveal their several generic flaws, including inadequate emergency cooling, poor evacuation procedures, and non-factoring of earthquake hazards. The Kudankulam reactors lack an independent freshwater source, critical to cooling them in emergencies. They are probably the world's only nuclear reactors dependent on unreliable seawater desalination, which can fail and has no backup. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) approved the fuel-loading despite all this and without the mandatory emergency evacuation drill in a 16-km radius. AERB approval is NPCIL's clinching justification for fuel-loading. The AERB "has no rule-making powers." It never fulfilled the mandate to prepare an overall nuclear and radiation safety policy.
It has failed to develop as many as 27 of the 168 Standards, Codes and Guides it itself termed essential. It has no role in radiological surveillance and monitoring workers' health. It doesn't directly oversee on-site emergency drills. The AERB doesn't even possess a full inventory of nuclear materials and radiation sources. It has no framework for decommissioning nuclear plants.
The major demands of protesters included release of those arrested for agitating against nuclear power, compensation for those injured and whose articles went missing during police action, stopping fuel loading in the plant and no action against 'peaceful' protesters.
When the Regime Targets People.......
The Indian regime, committed to the welfare of the people is interested only in promoting the nuclear and other arms merchants and is threatening the people with impending nuclear disasters.
One has no idea as to how many more nukes India wants and for what, because it has already plenty of weapons of mass destruction at various sites. Madras High court and Supreme court seem not worried about the deadly risks involved in the state nuke manufacturing agenda. Both High CA private company's employee moved the Supreme Court against a Madras High Court order giving the green signal to the commissioning of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu.
People of Kudankulam moved the Supreme Court. Indian regime seems to have exerted pressure to expedite the case so that uranium terror operations can continue. In fact it was not known when the petition would come up before the apex court. But the regime among other interested parties pushed for an early verdict so that the process of continued of fuelling of the nuclear reactor with deadly poisonous uranium quickly manufacturing nukes?
IT professional P. Sundarrajan moved the apex court contending that the government should not go ahead with the loading of the fuel rods till 17 safety steps recommended by the expert committee are implemented. Petitioner G. Sundarrajan, working with an IT company, claimed that the Madras high court paved the way for starting the plant without ensuring that critical safety features were in place. He challenged the Aug 31 verdict of the high court and sought an ex-parte interim order restraining the government from going ahead with the initial fuel loading of Unit I and 2 of the Kundankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) in Tirunelveli district.
The petition said the Government had also absolved the Russian supplier of the nuclear reactor from any liability in case of an accident. And Russia has already stated that it not responsible for any nuclear blasts.
Besides the central government, the petitioner made the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Nuclear Power Corporation of India, the power plant director and the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board as respondents.
Mentioning the matter before the bench, counsel for the petitioner Prashant Bhushan, a prominent member of Anna team, spearheading anti-corruption campaign, told the court that the expert committee was set up after Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan, to suggest safety steps to ward off any such incident. Bhushan told the court that out of 17 safety steps recommended by the expert committee only six have been put in place and to implement the remaining 11, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) will require six months to two years. The petitioner had said that the recommendations of the government's own expert task force on the critical safety features had not been implemented so far.
The petitioner said that the recommendations of the government's own expert task force on the critical safety features had not been implemented so far. "The recommendations are extremely critical to the safety of the plant and it could not be allowed to run even for a day without adequate safety and backup features in place," the petition said.
The task forces' recommendations, amongst several others, concerning alternative fresh water storage system and emergency pumping equipment, were yet to be implemented even. And state claims it is supreme to decide everything against people’s safety.
People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), which is spearheading the stir, said the agitators have put forward four demands - stoppage of the process of fuel-loading in KNPP, giving up of the plan to arrest anti-nuclear movement leaders, adequate compensation for those who suffered losses and release of those already taken into custody. In other words, the people use the simple villager language to tell the terrocratic regime to quickly dismantle the nuclear assets from their soil so that they can live without nuclear terror fear.
If this govt can’t handle garbage, how will it handle nuclear waste?
Popular Sufferings and Regime Frustration
If this govt can’t handle garbage, how will it handle nuclear waste? The Manmohan-Jayalalitha terror combines seem to derive too much of sadistic pleasure at the pains and sufferings of common masses in and around Kudankulam, India Tamilnadu..
The Manmohan-Joyalalitha regime has not yet realized that it’s pointless to try and silence the masses by state terror techniques. The state frustration in not being able to impose nuclearism on people has led to repression, including lethal firing, unleashed on peaceful protesters against the Kudankulam nuclear plant , on top of FIRs over many months charging thousands with sedition. People are terrorized by the state which makes two things clear. Nuclear projects in India can only be thrust on unwilling citizens at gunpoint.
Extreme arrogance of Indian state terrocracy is in full display in Kudankulam. Erection of human chains in the Sea by the Jalsatyagraha shows, people will resist them tenaciously, because they are aware of their hazards. That's true of every nuclear project, whether Jaitapur (Maharashtra), Gorakhpur (Haryana), Mithi-Virdi (Gujarat), Kovvada (Andhra Pradesh), Haripur (West Bengal), Chutka (Madhya Pradesh) or Banswada (Rajasthan). For instance, at Gorakhpur, there has been a daily dharna against four proposed reactors for two years, unbeknownst to Delhi, which lies in their potential radiation-fallout zone. Manmohan regime has decided that multiple reactors will be erected at Jaitapur, aggravating hazards, as in Fukushima.’
At the people's hearing, activists vented their apprehensions about the safety hazards of nuclear power, heightened by the catastrophe at Fukushima and the poor safety record of India's Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL). They exchanged their experience of the nuclear establishment's non-transparent and authoritarian ways, its refusal to share information of vital importance to public safety, and police vindictiveness. They also discussed how to develop common strategies. The NPCIL has no plans for long-term storage of nuclear wastes.
People hate both nuclear terror plants and their supporters. Taking their protest against the Kudankulam power plant to the sea route, hundreds of people today stood in the waters forming a human chain to demand halting of preparations for fuel loading into the reactor.
With black flags fluttering in the backdrop, the protesters said they were prepared to sacrifice their lives to protect their livelihood and ecology through the 'jal satyagraha Taking their protest against the Kudankulam power plant to the sea route, hundreds of people today stood in the waters forming a human chain to demand halting of preparations for fuel loading into the reactor.
Over 100 activists from these sites came together for the first time ever at a public hearing in Delhi on August 22 - just as national support for the five-year-long campaign against the Jaitapur plant snowballed. The National Committee in Solidarity with the Jaitapur Struggle - comprising leaders like Prakash Karat, AB Bardhan, Sitaram Yechury and Ram Vilas Paswan, independent experts and intellectuals - trenchantly criticised the project, based on French company Areva's troubled European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs).
Indian police continue to terrorize the masses by their dirty terror techniques of searches for PMANE activists.
State Brutality
For development of rich poor people must sacrifice their lives. So, the government has also brutally cracked down on the local community's peaceful protest against the plant and slapped sedition cases on them.
Anti-people Indo-Tamilnadu duo jointly killed already 2 innocent fishermen, Antony and Christ Sahayam. While Antory was murdered on land, Sahayam was forced to jump on to rock, killing himself. A 38-year-old man has been hospitalised with head injuries after he fell down in panic while a Coast Guard aircraft flew low along the coast near Idinthakarai in one of its sorties. Taking their protest against the Kudankulam power plant to the sea route, hundreds of people today stood in the waters forming a human chain to demand halting of preparations for fuel loading into the reactor.
The Coast Guard aircraft hovered over the sea and its ships kept a vigil off nearby Idinthakarai as the villagers, including women and children, from Kudankulam and nearby fishing hamlets walked into the sea for the show of strength.
Villagers are complaining that police are coming into their homes and conducting searches, pulling their belongings and smashing window panes. One villager said that the window panes in at least 25 houses have been destroyed and that two people were arrested in police efforts to terrorise them.
Anti-corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal met PMANE convenor SP Udaykumar who was whisked away by villagers in an effort to stop him from surrendering to police. Udayakumar had turned up at Idinthakarai and announced he would surrender at 9pm in the presence of a “prominent non-political national leader.”
IAC activist Arvind Kejriwal who travelled to Kudankulam to express support for the people’s agitation against the nuclear power plant has slammed what he has called ‘terror tactics’ by Jayalalithaa and the Tamil Nadu police. ”Police came and broke idols in the church in Idinthakarai and also urinated on the stage. They destroyed motorcycles and boats: What law gives them the right to destroy property? These are terror tactics by Jayalalithaa – how can she do this to the people who voted for her?”, he said, in a media address at the Idinthakarai village which has been the site of a sustained anti-nuclear protest.
The activists' testimonies and expert opinions clearly oppose deadly nuclearism efforts of an arrogant India regime.
Nuclear Notes
Clearly what is being done in Kudankulam in name of development is a state crime and the top criminals responsible for the ghastly murders should be brought to justice. On the one hand Indian regime does what USA, UK and Russia ask it do, and on the other, it makes all out efforts to help the domestic multinationals and other big business to thrive at the cost of others. On the one hand, India secures the profitable business of multinational corporations to use the huge profits they make in India to be shifted to their own countries by allowing FDI in all sectors, on the other, the poor, deprived, weaker sections are made to suffer more; the regime, claiming to be a great democratic setup, terrorizes the common people with price rises, state terrorism and nuclear terror threats.
The shameless attack on and murder of two fishermen by Indian paid police in deep conspiracy testifies Indian state terror intent. Entire humanity stands in complete solidarity with the villagers of Idinthakarai who are resisting the forceful fuel loading of the Kudankulam nuclear reactor. Among those who expressed complete solidarity with the people of Kudankulam village fighting against imposition of nuclear plant Tamil leader Vaiko, Kerala Communist leader and ex-CM Achu, Arunthathi Roy, and Anna Hazare team members like Prashanth and Kejriwal. A lot of humanist leaders and activists across the globe also support them.
Indian regime is eager to push a nuclear button like cowards with no nobility, wipe out entire peoples with nuclear bombs, just because their neighbouring rulers don't agree with their policies and do not promote their global interests.
Not only the mere safety measures are hoax but even the nuclear terror project itself is a serious, deadly threat to people. Judiciary must ask the regime to terminate the nuclear terror path and adopt alternative better ways of electricity generation. The agitation has ruined the lives of most of the local people. Police have driven out many from their villages. Immediate compensations for property loses and human loses must be paid and the people should be allowed to resume their daily life as before - fearlessly.
India has already amassed huge piles of deadly weapons of mass destructions. How many more nukes does India require and for what?
People and the nation have to saved from imminent nuclear disasters and nuclear wars. Judiciary has a positive role to play. It could ask the reigm eto shut down the Kudankulam nuclear terror project forth with.
Supreme court is expected to protect the masses, encourage the terrocratic regime to end the nuclear arms race in the name of electricity generation and ask it to seriously promote the cause of total disarmament and regional-global peace!. .
Dr. Abdul Kalam, former president of India whom the regime hired to dissuade the people from the anti-nuke movement has now declared that only non-nuclear world is safe.
The Congress led UPA government is stand discredited by its anti-people polices. Regional leaders like Tamil state CM Joyalalitha have shown that they care damn about people and they, emboldened by the mandate by the people, now want to protect the rich and multinational interests even by killing common people who elected them.
The UPA regime is discredited from all ankles. Popular anger, discontentment and frustration could dent its chances, drastically dent its vote bank when it goes to poll next. Coalition might become too tough too!
Regime has become the enemy of the people. Popular good will cannot be earned by state terror mechanism and machination.
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/intrnational/2012/09/17/4465.htm
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Holding that the government cannot be prohibited from carrying out liquor business, the Supreme Court today declined to entertain a PIL seeking to restrain the Tamil Nadu government from selling liquor through its official retail outlets.
A bench of justices D K Jain and Madan Lokur dismissed the petition filed by K R Ramaswamy alias Traffic Ramaswamy who contended that the state's official policy of selling liquor was contrary to Article 47 and was also causing considerable nuisance and loss of lives. "If you go by the directive principles of state policy then no public servant can drink. Can it be done? "It talks of guidelines. It only talks about regulations. It does not talk about prohibition.
"Can it be done? Otherwise, no public servant can drink. Your public sectors cannot function. You are sitting on a high pedestal," the bench told senior counsel M N Krishnamani and counsel Raja Raman appearing for the petitioner. The petitioner had earned the sobriquet "Traffic Ramaswamy" as he regularly assists Chennai police to manage the peak traffic in the city.
According to Article 47 which is part of the Directive Principles of State Policy, it is the duty of the state to raise level of nutrition and the standard of living and to improve public health.
"The state shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standards of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties and in particular, the state shall endeavour to bring about the prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injuries to health."
The petitioner has challenged the Madras High Court judgement which had quashed his petition challenging certain provisions of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition Act which empowered the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC), a 100 per cent state subsidiary to sell liquor to the public through its own outlets.
India's Finance Minister P. Chidambaram exudes the self-confidence of a man who, in the eyes of India's cheerleading financial markets, can do little wrong.
In the 11 weeks since he took office, the benchmark BSE index has surged around 8 per cent, due in large part to his hard-charging drive to boost investor sentiment that had soured under his predecessor, Pranab Mukherjee.
But the reality is the steps taken so far will not fix the sluggish economy in the near term, and the window of opportunity for implementing game-changing reforms such as slashing government spending on fuel, food and fertiliser subsidies will narrow as campaigning for a 2014 election gets under way.
"When you are fixated on equity markets and you are doing whatever you can to push them higher that is exactly what you will see," said economist Rajeev Malik of CLSA, Singapore.
"Pushing up equity markets is a lot easier than taking up some of these more difficult moves."
Together with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram has unveiled a series of big-ticket and small-bore initiatives over the past month that were long demanded by investors and business leaders frustrated by years of policy inaction in New Delhi.
According to government officials, the slew of policy announcements on lifting the bar on foreign investment in the airline, insurance, pensions and retail sectors are part of a two-step government strategy - first, pump up the financial markets, then unveil a road-map for cutting the fiscal deficit.
The first step has worked. Net inflows from foreign investors have surged since Chidambaram's appointment, with $7.7 billion flooding into stocks and bonds since then, according to regulatory data. The next step will be more difficult.
TURF WARS, FRICTION
Reports published by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Standard & Poor's and a government panel over the past 10 days have provided sobering reminders of the huge challenges facing an economy still beset by high inflation and dragged down by ballooning current account and fiscal deficits.
The IMF sharply cut its economic growth forecast for India for 2012 to 4.9 percent from an earlier projection of 6.1 percent growth. The Kelkar budget panel, meanwhile, warned that India was teetering on the edge of a "fiscal precipice" and called for swift action to reduce the deficit, which it said could hit 6.1 percent of GDP this year if no action was taken.
Palash Biswas
Mobile: 919903717833
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This is the real face of judicial activism, friends!Chief Justice Kabir justified economic reforms even before taking oath. Outgoing CJ also did support the reform drive! What should be the role of the judiciary? Instead of ensuring the rule of the law, Indian Judiciary seems rather too engaged in bailing out the corporate governance.The Supreme Court has come to the government's rescue on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the retail sector. The Supreme Court has asked the government to amend the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) regulations to implement FDI in retail.The trickle trickle growth story does not work to help the common man either.The market remains boom boom bullish with expansion beyond border. But Wholesale price index- inflation for September came in at a 10-month high of 7.81 per cent, slightly higher than the 7.73 percent according to the average of a poll by CNBC-TV18. The numbers make for grim reading.Improvement in monsoon towards September had little impact on food inflation, though it declined slightly. Manufactured products inflation at 6.26 percent year-on-year, is the highest so far this calendar. And core inflation (manufactured products excluding food) at 5.56 percent is way above RBI's comfort levels. Most economists and market analysts have given up hope on the RBI cutting interest rates at its monetary policy review on October 30. And they see inflation rising further in the coming months before peaking out. Growing urbanisation in India will have a significant impact on environment and the rich biodiversity which is critical to the well-being of people, a United Nations Assessment report said in Hyderabad. Indian judiciary seems not to care public welfare while pushing for more refoms resultant in indiscriminate urbanisation and industrialisation.It is neither interested to control the nuclear menace nor doing anything to conserve environment, ecology and biodiversity.
B.S.RAGHAVAN commented rightly in business line,`Judicial activism: This connotes the judiciary becoming the surrogate of the executive and stepping into the breach caused by the latter’s abdication of its responsibilities. Sometimes, especially on tricky or thorny issues which the executive does not want to touch with a pair of tongs, it may willingly let the judiciary carry the can to save itself from political embarrassment.’(http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/columns/b-s-raghavan/article3988289.ece)
The court said that the RBI has till date not amended the regulation which will legitimise government's FDI policy. The government has now asked RBI to amend FEMA regulations so that FDI in retail can be implemented. RBI will make the required changes in FEMA by November 3.
The Supreme Court has also refused to stay the government's meeting scheduled for October 19, to give licences to 50 companies for FDI in retail. The order came on a PIL against the FDI policy since the act wasn't amended.
It is time for global credit rating agencies to take India off the negative watch list, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said today even as a leading firm last week threatened of a possible downgrade of the country within 24 months.The Planning Commission will work with state governments and ministries to make norms for funding 16 flagship programmes, dispelling concerns that it would have discretionary powers in financing such schemes.
Meanwhile,a ministerial panel chaired by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is expected to finalise the controversial land acquisition bill in its third meeting tomorrow.It is also subjected to corporate lobbying.
On the other hand the global Hindutva is engaged to win mandate for the zionist lobby in US Presidential elections and corporate lobbying intensified to manage Indian diplomacy accordingly.Citing US President Barack Obama's stance on outsourcing of jobs to India and work visas for IT firms, a leading Indian American Republican has said that Mitt Romney, not the incumbent, is the best bet for strong and enduring Indo-US relations.Dr Sampat Shivangi, who was one of the three Indian American delegates to the Republican National Convention and a major fund raiser in Mississippi state, said the Democrats' India-friendly image is but just a myth.He pointed out that Romney had promised to bring out a White Paper on India soon.
Shivangi, the President of Indian American Forum for Political Education (IAFPE), told PTI that with Obama openly and unhesitatingly criticising outsourcing to India, the future of ties between the two nations will be in safe hands only if a Republican occupies the White House.
He claimed that though majority of Indian-Americans do support the Democratic Party and Obama in particular, the trend was changing among second and third generation Indians.
"They no longer carry the Socialist and Nehruvian baggage from India like some of us in the age group of 60 to 70 do.
"President Obama is very critical of outsourcing jobs to India and work visa from India for IT companies are being gradually dispensed with. It's only a myth that Democrats are India-friendly," said Shivangi.
"President Obama's tirade against India on outsourcing has really changed his image in majority of the Indian-Americans. His television advertisements day in day out have taken warpath to disgrace India as the problem for joblessness in US which is untrue," Shivangi said.
Shivangi helped raise $1.7 million for Republican contender Romney in Mississippi, the highest collected in the State so far topping $1.2 million collected for the then President George Bush, again with the help of Shivangi.
"President Obama is increasingly becoming anti-India," says Shivangi who has attend Republican conventions as a delegate for 12 years in a row, a record of sorts especially for any Asian-American.
He pointed out that Romney had publicly declared at the Republican National Convention last month that India is the strategic ally of the US, indicating the importance Republicans attach to India.
"It was President George Bush who initiated Indo-US Civil Nuclear deal and pushed hard for it in the Congress. Democrats like Hillary Clinton hesitated till the last minute even to support the Bill in the Congress," he said.
The Cities and Biodiversity Outlook', which was released today at the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP-11, said the global urban expansion will draw heavily on water among other natural resources and consume prime agricultural land.
"India's population is currently about 30 per cent urban and is expected to become 50 per cent by about 2044. This will have significant implications for the country's environment, ecology and sustainability," the report said.
"India already contains three of the world's ten largest cities- Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata -as well as three of the world's ten fastest growing cities- Ghaziabad, Surat and Faridabad," it added.
The world's total urban area is expected to triple between 2000 and 2030, with urban population set to double to around 4.9 billion in the same period.
Urban expansion is occurring fast in areas close to biodiversity hotspots and coastal zones, the report said.
In rapidly urbanising regions, such as large and mid-sized settlements in sub-saharan Africa, India and China, resources to implement sustainable urban planning are often lacking, the report observed.
According to Thomas Elmqvist, scientific editor of the report, cities need to learn better how to protect and enhance biodiversity as this is extremely critical to the well-being of people.
However, lifestyle changes in India due to urbanisation may decrease pressure on forests, as usage of firewood and charcoal is reduced, the report also said.
On China, the report said the country, which has around 50 per cent of the population living in cities, is in the middle of its urbanisation transition.
By 2030, its urban population is expected to exceed 900 million, an increase of more than 300 million from today, the report states.
In Europe, the current urbanisation level is 70-80 per cent and the urban growth in recent decades has mostly been in the form of land expansion rather than population growth.
"Many European and North American cities have exhibited trends of shrinking and of shifting patterns of population in central parts of cities, coupled with sprawl in outer suburbs and exurban areas," it said.
The Supreme Court today directed all the states and Union territories to conduct a survey on existence of bonded labour in their regions and take steps to rehabilitate them. The bench of justices K S Radhakrishan and Dipak Misra said all the states should submit their bi-annual reports to the National Human Rights Commission which would monitor the implementation of Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act. "Fresh surveys be conducted periodically once in three years in all the states/ UTs in accordance with the provisions of the Act and the revised report, the findings of the survey should be made a part of a computerised data base available on the websites of all concerned," the bench said. "The responsibility of conducting the surveys is on the District Level Vigilance Committees and Sub Divisional Vigilance Committees of the states/ UTs and such committees should submit their reports to the NHRC. This should be done every three years and committees also should be reconstituted in every three years," it said. The court passed the order on a petition filed by Public Union for Civil Liberties seeking its direction for effective implementation of law to abolish bonded labour. "Bonded labour, it may be noticed, is rampant in brick kilns, stone quarries, crushing mines, beedi manufacturing, carpet weaving, construction industries, agriculture, in rural and urban unorganised and informal sector, power looms and cotton handlooms, fish processing etc. The committees are directed to give more attention to these areas and take prompt action in case violation is noticed," the bench said.
In a bid to retain the basic character of the information commissions under the endangered Right to Information Act, the Centre on Thursday moved the Supreme Court seeking review of its ruling last month that quashed one of its provisions and directed all the state and central panels must be led either by retired or sitting judges.
The 2005 RTI Act provided for stuffing the panels with retired bureaucrats though the legislation empowers ordinary citizens to take recourse to it for any information of public importance which has been hitherto denied to them.
While deciding a law suit filed by one Nimita seeking direction to the government to fill up the vacant posts of commissioners, the top court overturned the enactment and modified it in such a manner that the government and activist feel has changed the commissions’ composition.
In its review petition, the government seeks review of the September 12 verdict saying “it is against the provisions’’ of the transparency law.
The controversial judgment said like other quasi judicial bodies, people from judicial background should be also appointed as members of the central and state commissions which is to be done after consulting with the CJI and Chief Justice of the respective high courts.
“Chief Information Commissioner at the centre or state level shall only be a person who is or has been a chief justice of the high court or a judge of the Supreme Court of India,” a bench of justices AK Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar had said in the judgment.
India's Judiciary creates scam over Kudankulam, comments The Canadian! Just read:
There is no reason why the judiciary, the conscience of the nation, should willingly play pro-regime roles by opposing people’s and humanity concerns.
Paranoia about nuclear energy isn’t new. Most nations have shown a similar paranoia when it comes to nuclear energy following the disaster in Fukushima. Over 100 activists from these sites came together for the first time ever at a public hearing in Delhi on August 22 - just as national support for the five-year-long campaign against the Jaitapur plant snowballed. The National Committee in Solidarity with the Jaitapur Struggle - comprising leaders like Prakash Karat, AB Bardhan, Sitaram Yechury and Ram Vilas Paswan, independent experts and intellectuals - trenchantly criticised the project, based on French company Areva's troubled European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs).
The grounds of protest against the 9,800 MW plant in Maharashtra are somewhat similar to those being echoed in Tamil Nadu. The protestors argue that the plant will damage local ecology, their consent for the plant wasn’t sought and also speak of the obvious fear of how a potential accident at the plant could affect them. While the issue is currently not in the headlines anymore, the agitators in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra are no doubt closely following the developments in Kudankulam.
After plant reopening gimmicks, Japan now talks of reducing its dependence on nuclear power altogether by the 2030s. Germany has also begun decommissioning old plants and also speaks of weaning itself off it altogether by the 2020s. The US despite promoting nuclear energy in India, is caught at a crossroads when it comes to developing its own nuclear power program. In Japan a major loss of confidence in nuclear energy came after it was discovered that the nuclear safety regulators had allowed the plant to function despite problems being evident earlier.
After the Fakushima disaster, almost every country that uses nuclear energy declared that it would change its policy. Every country, except India! The India government has colluded with Union Carbide (now Dow Chemicals) to ensure that the victims of the Bhopal Gas Leak will never get justice. But no amount of compensation can ever be a solution for nuclear disasters.
Regime-Judiciary Nexus
When the Madras High court refused to stay the deadly fuelling operation in the nuclear terror plant, the people of Kudankulam and the humanity at large, besieged by nuclear terror operations of state, still had hopes of getting justice from Supreme court but when apex court also sided with the state terror operators and delivered an interim judgment in favour of state nuclear terror intent against the people, humanity has become shaky, felt betrayed yet again, losing trust in the judicial ability in justice delivery. As suggested by the regime and nuclear mafias, the courts have protected the transnational nuclear mafias.
Declining to put on hold for now the loading of fuel rods in one of the two reactors of Kundankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu, the Supreme Court Thursday Sep 13 said it would hear Sep 20 the plea seeking to restrain the central government.
The apex court's decision came as hundreds of people from Tamilnadu's Idinthakarai village, the epicentre of the protests against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), stood in the sea water Thursday to protest moves to load uranium fuel in one of the two reactors.
Justice K. S. Radhakrishnan and Justice Dipak Misra declined to pass any immediate order on a petition seeking to restrain the government from going ahead with the loading of nuclear fuel rods in the reactor of the plant. The court said it would hear Sep 20 the plea seeking to restrain the central government from doing so.
Judiciary mischief is perhaps the worst kind of menace and brute evil. Madras High court seems have created the basis for the Supreme court to promote state nuclear terror agenda. Supreme Court has just said the regime must ensure security and safety of the people and the regime knows it has to just file another affidavit stating that people are safe. In other words, the judiciary has clearly offered the regime and nuclear mafias to ensure safety of the people by killing them so that they need not to live until the nuclear plant blasts.
The nuclear terror project was cleared in haste in violation of the recommendations of an official Task Force, and without even the fig leaf of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report. The NPCIL has refused to furnish to the public the site evaluation and safety analysis reports, although so directed by the Central Information Commission.
In the name of nation and national interests they protect the rich and multinationals and want the common people also support that. Recent disclosures from a special official safety review on all Russian reactor designs reveal their several generic flaws, including inadequate emergency cooling, poor evacuation procedures, and non-factoring of earthquake hazards. The Kudankulam reactors lack an independent freshwater source, critical to cooling them in emergencies. They are probably the world's only nuclear reactors dependent on unreliable seawater desalination, which can fail and has no backup. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) approved the fuel-loading despite all this and without the mandatory emergency evacuation drill in a 16-km radius. AERB approval is NPCIL's clinching justification for fuel-loading. The AERB "has no rule-making powers." It never fulfilled the mandate to prepare an overall nuclear and radiation safety policy.
It has failed to develop as many as 27 of the 168 Standards, Codes and Guides it itself termed essential. It has no role in radiological surveillance and monitoring workers' health. It doesn't directly oversee on-site emergency drills. The AERB doesn't even possess a full inventory of nuclear materials and radiation sources. It has no framework for decommissioning nuclear plants.
The major demands of protesters included release of those arrested for agitating against nuclear power, compensation for those injured and whose articles went missing during police action, stopping fuel loading in the plant and no action against 'peaceful' protesters.
When the Regime Targets People.......
The Indian regime, committed to the welfare of the people is interested only in promoting the nuclear and other arms merchants and is threatening the people with impending nuclear disasters.
One has no idea as to how many more nukes India wants and for what, because it has already plenty of weapons of mass destruction at various sites. Madras High court and Supreme court seem not worried about the deadly risks involved in the state nuke manufacturing agenda. Both High CA private company's employee moved the Supreme Court against a Madras High Court order giving the green signal to the commissioning of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu.
People of Kudankulam moved the Supreme Court. Indian regime seems to have exerted pressure to expedite the case so that uranium terror operations can continue. In fact it was not known when the petition would come up before the apex court. But the regime among other interested parties pushed for an early verdict so that the process of continued of fuelling of the nuclear reactor with deadly poisonous uranium quickly manufacturing nukes?
IT professional P. Sundarrajan moved the apex court contending that the government should not go ahead with the loading of the fuel rods till 17 safety steps recommended by the expert committee are implemented. Petitioner G. Sundarrajan, working with an IT company, claimed that the Madras high court paved the way for starting the plant without ensuring that critical safety features were in place. He challenged the Aug 31 verdict of the high court and sought an ex-parte interim order restraining the government from going ahead with the initial fuel loading of Unit I and 2 of the Kundankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) in Tirunelveli district.
The petition said the Government had also absolved the Russian supplier of the nuclear reactor from any liability in case of an accident. And Russia has already stated that it not responsible for any nuclear blasts.
Besides the central government, the petitioner made the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Nuclear Power Corporation of India, the power plant director and the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board as respondents.
Mentioning the matter before the bench, counsel for the petitioner Prashant Bhushan, a prominent member of Anna team, spearheading anti-corruption campaign, told the court that the expert committee was set up after Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan, to suggest safety steps to ward off any such incident. Bhushan told the court that out of 17 safety steps recommended by the expert committee only six have been put in place and to implement the remaining 11, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) will require six months to two years. The petitioner had said that the recommendations of the government's own expert task force on the critical safety features had not been implemented so far.
The petitioner said that the recommendations of the government's own expert task force on the critical safety features had not been implemented so far. "The recommendations are extremely critical to the safety of the plant and it could not be allowed to run even for a day without adequate safety and backup features in place," the petition said.
The task forces' recommendations, amongst several others, concerning alternative fresh water storage system and emergency pumping equipment, were yet to be implemented even. And state claims it is supreme to decide everything against people’s safety.
People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE), which is spearheading the stir, said the agitators have put forward four demands - stoppage of the process of fuel-loading in KNPP, giving up of the plan to arrest anti-nuclear movement leaders, adequate compensation for those who suffered losses and release of those already taken into custody. In other words, the people use the simple villager language to tell the terrocratic regime to quickly dismantle the nuclear assets from their soil so that they can live without nuclear terror fear.
If this govt can’t handle garbage, how will it handle nuclear waste?
Popular Sufferings and Regime Frustration
If this govt can’t handle garbage, how will it handle nuclear waste? The Manmohan-Jayalalitha terror combines seem to derive too much of sadistic pleasure at the pains and sufferings of common masses in and around Kudankulam, India Tamilnadu..
The Manmohan-Joyalalitha regime has not yet realized that it’s pointless to try and silence the masses by state terror techniques. The state frustration in not being able to impose nuclearism on people has led to repression, including lethal firing, unleashed on peaceful protesters against the Kudankulam nuclear plant , on top of FIRs over many months charging thousands with sedition. People are terrorized by the state which makes two things clear. Nuclear projects in India can only be thrust on unwilling citizens at gunpoint.
Extreme arrogance of Indian state terrocracy is in full display in Kudankulam. Erection of human chains in the Sea by the Jalsatyagraha shows, people will resist them tenaciously, because they are aware of their hazards. That's true of every nuclear project, whether Jaitapur (Maharashtra), Gorakhpur (Haryana), Mithi-Virdi (Gujarat), Kovvada (Andhra Pradesh), Haripur (West Bengal), Chutka (Madhya Pradesh) or Banswada (Rajasthan). For instance, at Gorakhpur, there has been a daily dharna against four proposed reactors for two years, unbeknownst to Delhi, which lies in their potential radiation-fallout zone. Manmohan regime has decided that multiple reactors will be erected at Jaitapur, aggravating hazards, as in Fukushima.’
At the people's hearing, activists vented their apprehensions about the safety hazards of nuclear power, heightened by the catastrophe at Fukushima and the poor safety record of India's Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL). They exchanged their experience of the nuclear establishment's non-transparent and authoritarian ways, its refusal to share information of vital importance to public safety, and police vindictiveness. They also discussed how to develop common strategies. The NPCIL has no plans for long-term storage of nuclear wastes.
People hate both nuclear terror plants and their supporters. Taking their protest against the Kudankulam power plant to the sea route, hundreds of people today stood in the waters forming a human chain to demand halting of preparations for fuel loading into the reactor.
With black flags fluttering in the backdrop, the protesters said they were prepared to sacrifice their lives to protect their livelihood and ecology through the 'jal satyagraha Taking their protest against the Kudankulam power plant to the sea route, hundreds of people today stood in the waters forming a human chain to demand halting of preparations for fuel loading into the reactor.
Over 100 activists from these sites came together for the first time ever at a public hearing in Delhi on August 22 - just as national support for the five-year-long campaign against the Jaitapur plant snowballed. The National Committee in Solidarity with the Jaitapur Struggle - comprising leaders like Prakash Karat, AB Bardhan, Sitaram Yechury and Ram Vilas Paswan, independent experts and intellectuals - trenchantly criticised the project, based on French company Areva's troubled European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs).
Indian police continue to terrorize the masses by their dirty terror techniques of searches for PMANE activists.
State Brutality
For development of rich poor people must sacrifice their lives. So, the government has also brutally cracked down on the local community's peaceful protest against the plant and slapped sedition cases on them.
Anti-people Indo-Tamilnadu duo jointly killed already 2 innocent fishermen, Antony and Christ Sahayam. While Antory was murdered on land, Sahayam was forced to jump on to rock, killing himself. A 38-year-old man has been hospitalised with head injuries after he fell down in panic while a Coast Guard aircraft flew low along the coast near Idinthakarai in one of its sorties. Taking their protest against the Kudankulam power plant to the sea route, hundreds of people today stood in the waters forming a human chain to demand halting of preparations for fuel loading into the reactor.
The Coast Guard aircraft hovered over the sea and its ships kept a vigil off nearby Idinthakarai as the villagers, including women and children, from Kudankulam and nearby fishing hamlets walked into the sea for the show of strength.
Villagers are complaining that police are coming into their homes and conducting searches, pulling their belongings and smashing window panes. One villager said that the window panes in at least 25 houses have been destroyed and that two people were arrested in police efforts to terrorise them.
Anti-corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal met PMANE convenor SP Udaykumar who was whisked away by villagers in an effort to stop him from surrendering to police. Udayakumar had turned up at Idinthakarai and announced he would surrender at 9pm in the presence of a “prominent non-political national leader.”
IAC activist Arvind Kejriwal who travelled to Kudankulam to express support for the people’s agitation against the nuclear power plant has slammed what he has called ‘terror tactics’ by Jayalalithaa and the Tamil Nadu police. ”Police came and broke idols in the church in Idinthakarai and also urinated on the stage. They destroyed motorcycles and boats: What law gives them the right to destroy property? These are terror tactics by Jayalalithaa – how can she do this to the people who voted for her?”, he said, in a media address at the Idinthakarai village which has been the site of a sustained anti-nuclear protest.
The activists' testimonies and expert opinions clearly oppose deadly nuclearism efforts of an arrogant India regime.
Nuclear Notes
Clearly what is being done in Kudankulam in name of development is a state crime and the top criminals responsible for the ghastly murders should be brought to justice. On the one hand Indian regime does what USA, UK and Russia ask it do, and on the other, it makes all out efforts to help the domestic multinationals and other big business to thrive at the cost of others. On the one hand, India secures the profitable business of multinational corporations to use the huge profits they make in India to be shifted to their own countries by allowing FDI in all sectors, on the other, the poor, deprived, weaker sections are made to suffer more; the regime, claiming to be a great democratic setup, terrorizes the common people with price rises, state terrorism and nuclear terror threats.
The shameless attack on and murder of two fishermen by Indian paid police in deep conspiracy testifies Indian state terror intent. Entire humanity stands in complete solidarity with the villagers of Idinthakarai who are resisting the forceful fuel loading of the Kudankulam nuclear reactor. Among those who expressed complete solidarity with the people of Kudankulam village fighting against imposition of nuclear plant Tamil leader Vaiko, Kerala Communist leader and ex-CM Achu, Arunthathi Roy, and Anna Hazare team members like Prashanth and Kejriwal. A lot of humanist leaders and activists across the globe also support them.
Indian regime is eager to push a nuclear button like cowards with no nobility, wipe out entire peoples with nuclear bombs, just because their neighbouring rulers don't agree with their policies and do not promote their global interests.
Not only the mere safety measures are hoax but even the nuclear terror project itself is a serious, deadly threat to people. Judiciary must ask the regime to terminate the nuclear terror path and adopt alternative better ways of electricity generation. The agitation has ruined the lives of most of the local people. Police have driven out many from their villages. Immediate compensations for property loses and human loses must be paid and the people should be allowed to resume their daily life as before - fearlessly.
India has already amassed huge piles of deadly weapons of mass destructions. How many more nukes does India require and for what?
People and the nation have to saved from imminent nuclear disasters and nuclear wars. Judiciary has a positive role to play. It could ask the reigm eto shut down the Kudankulam nuclear terror project forth with.
Supreme court is expected to protect the masses, encourage the terrocratic regime to end the nuclear arms race in the name of electricity generation and ask it to seriously promote the cause of total disarmament and regional-global peace!. .
Dr. Abdul Kalam, former president of India whom the regime hired to dissuade the people from the anti-nuke movement has now declared that only non-nuclear world is safe.
The Congress led UPA government is stand discredited by its anti-people polices. Regional leaders like Tamil state CM Joyalalitha have shown that they care damn about people and they, emboldened by the mandate by the people, now want to protect the rich and multinational interests even by killing common people who elected them.
The UPA regime is discredited from all ankles. Popular anger, discontentment and frustration could dent its chances, drastically dent its vote bank when it goes to poll next. Coalition might become too tough too!
Regime has become the enemy of the people. Popular good will cannot be earned by state terror mechanism and machination.
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/intrnational/2012/09/17/4465.htm
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Holding that the government cannot be prohibited from carrying out liquor business, the Supreme Court today declined to entertain a PIL seeking to restrain the Tamil Nadu government from selling liquor through its official retail outlets.
A bench of justices D K Jain and Madan Lokur dismissed the petition filed by K R Ramaswamy alias Traffic Ramaswamy who contended that the state's official policy of selling liquor was contrary to Article 47 and was also causing considerable nuisance and loss of lives. "If you go by the directive principles of state policy then no public servant can drink. Can it be done? "It talks of guidelines. It only talks about regulations. It does not talk about prohibition.
"Can it be done? Otherwise, no public servant can drink. Your public sectors cannot function. You are sitting on a high pedestal," the bench told senior counsel M N Krishnamani and counsel Raja Raman appearing for the petitioner. The petitioner had earned the sobriquet "Traffic Ramaswamy" as he regularly assists Chennai police to manage the peak traffic in the city.
According to Article 47 which is part of the Directive Principles of State Policy, it is the duty of the state to raise level of nutrition and the standard of living and to improve public health.
"The state shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standards of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties and in particular, the state shall endeavour to bring about the prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injuries to health."
The petitioner has challenged the Madras High Court judgement which had quashed his petition challenging certain provisions of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition Act which empowered the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC), a 100 per cent state subsidiary to sell liquor to the public through its own outlets.
India's Finance Minister P. Chidambaram exudes the self-confidence of a man who, in the eyes of India's cheerleading financial markets, can do little wrong.
In the 11 weeks since he took office, the benchmark BSE index has surged around 8 per cent, due in large part to his hard-charging drive to boost investor sentiment that had soured under his predecessor, Pranab Mukherjee.
But the reality is the steps taken so far will not fix the sluggish economy in the near term, and the window of opportunity for implementing game-changing reforms such as slashing government spending on fuel, food and fertiliser subsidies will narrow as campaigning for a 2014 election gets under way.
"When you are fixated on equity markets and you are doing whatever you can to push them higher that is exactly what you will see," said economist Rajeev Malik of CLSA, Singapore.
"Pushing up equity markets is a lot easier than taking up some of these more difficult moves."
Together with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram has unveiled a series of big-ticket and small-bore initiatives over the past month that were long demanded by investors and business leaders frustrated by years of policy inaction in New Delhi.
According to government officials, the slew of policy announcements on lifting the bar on foreign investment in the airline, insurance, pensions and retail sectors are part of a two-step government strategy - first, pump up the financial markets, then unveil a road-map for cutting the fiscal deficit.
The first step has worked. Net inflows from foreign investors have surged since Chidambaram's appointment, with $7.7 billion flooding into stocks and bonds since then, according to regulatory data. The next step will be more difficult.
TURF WARS, FRICTION
Reports published by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Standard & Poor's and a government panel over the past 10 days have provided sobering reminders of the huge challenges facing an economy still beset by high inflation and dragged down by ballooning current account and fiscal deficits.
The IMF sharply cut its economic growth forecast for India for 2012 to 4.9 percent from an earlier projection of 6.1 percent growth. The Kelkar budget panel, meanwhile, warned that India was teetering on the edge of a "fiscal precipice" and called for swift action to reduce the deficit, which it said could hit 6.1 percent of GDP this year if no action was taken.
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