Vol. 66 No. 78 | SATURDAY | JULY 30, 2022 | 21 Pages | FROM THE STATES HOOCH DEATHS CHEM POISON? E ven as the toll in the Gujarat hooch tragedy mounted to 42, the Opposition parties – the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) -- on Friday came down heavily on the BJP Government for dismissing the deaths as having been caused by “chemical poisoning” and not illicit liquor. Simultaneously, Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi took to Twitter to condemn the hooch tragedy and asked who was giving patronage to the liquor mafia in the State of Gandhi and Sardar Patel. DARSHAN DESAI/Ahmedabad – SEE NATION STRONG GOVT, NOT CONTROL A strong government does not control everything or everyone and the BJP has changed the earlier notion on governance, PM Narendra Modi said in Chennai on Friday. ‘‘We have changed this. A strong government does not control everything or everyone. It controls the system’s impulse to interfere,” he said. “A strong government is not restrictive but is responsive. A strong government does not move into every domain. It limits itself and makes space for people’s talents. A strong government’s strength lies in its humility to accept that it cannot know or do everything,” he said, harping on the reforms undertaken by the BJP Government. – SEE NATION METRO BITS PLEA TO IMPORT FROZEN EMBRYO T he Bombay High Court on Friday asked the National Board – constituted under the new Assisted Reproductive Technology Act (ART) and Surrogacy Act – to give a hearing to a couple who wish to import their embryos from the US. The HC was hearing a petition filed by a 43-year-old woman, who suffers from medical issues, and her husband. The couple resides in US where they froze the embryo. However, later they shifted to India and seek to complete their surrogacy procedure now. IT’S ENCOUNTER TIME: MINISTER JUNE CORE INDUSTRIES GROWTH FALLS TO 12.7% VS 19.3% IN MAY OUTRAGE CROWDS OUT OTHER, REAL ISSUES SHANKAR RAJ BENGALURU Following seething anger and protests over a BJP worker’s killing in Mangaluru, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had warned that he would adopt the CM “Yogi Model” against “communal forces." Now, the State’s Higher Education Minister Ashwath Narayan has threatened to go “five steps ahead of Uttar Pradesh” and carry out “encounters” targeting the accused. “Without giving any opportunity, merciless action will be taken. We are ready for encounters. We have already communicated to our Chief Minister and the State government," said Narayan, who also holds the skill development and IT-BT portfolio. Narayan further said were instigators some testing their patience. “Hence, our government and the chief minister have given a clear message. In the coming days, we will make arrangements, so that that criminals tremble before they even think of committing such murders." “The time has come for encounters. Our government will take stringent action. We will not leave any room for such criminal activity by forming special squads,’’ the Ranjan eats crow, tenders apology FPJ NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who has been in the firing line for his ‘rashtrapatni’ remark, wrote a letter to President Droupadi Murmu on Friday and sought an apology. “I am writing to express my regret for having mistakenly used an incorrect word to describe the position you hold. I assure you that it was a slip of the tongue. I apologize and request you to accept the same," Congress leader said in his letter. “It was not a slip of the MOVE TO REMOVE MMRDA HURDLES State govt ratifies International Finance & Business Centre in BKC In a significant development, the Eknath Shinde government issued an order formally recognising the International Finance and Business Centre (IFBC), that stands on 200 hectares of land in the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), on . Friday This move is expected to remove all the legal, technical and procedural hurdles faced by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority in attracting investments from and outside the . country Sources in the state urban development department have clarified that the EDIT YOGI MODEL: Karnataka minister says they will be five steps ahead of UP in reining in criminal elements FPJ EXCLUSIVE SANJAY JOG MUMBAI EDITIONS: MUMBAI*, Pune, Nashik, Konkan, Indore, Bhopal, E-paper IFBC should not be confused with the much-debated International Finance Centre (IFC). The Centre had, in 2018, already conveyed that it could not approve of a special economic zone (SEZ) for the proposed IFC, as the BKC plot did not qualify for the same; it did not have 50 hectares of contiguous land, as required under the SEZ Act. A senior officer from the urban development department told The Free Press Journal, “With the government’s decision to declare the IFBC on 200 hectares of land in the G, GN, G-Txt and E blocks in the BKC, its potential will be further CONTD. ON NATION PAGE tongue. If you watch the clip, Chowdhury clearly (referred to President Murmu as) Rashtrapati twice, then he called her Rashtrapatni," Law Minister Kiren Rijiju told news agency ANI. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE minister explained, reports a wire agency. The comments came soon after Praveen Nettaru, a BJP Yuva Morcha worker, was hacked to death on Tuesday. The two men arrested for the killing were said to have links with the Popular Front of India, an extremist Islamic organization. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Review plea on OROP is dismissed A GOOD MARRIAGE IS NOTHING BUT GREAT COMPANIONSHIP: YAMI GAUTAM DHAR 310c. 260c. HC asks for demolition plan Sunrise: 06:14 am Sunset : 07:16 pm 48 OBSTACLES IN VICINITY OF INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT URVI MAHAJANI MUMBAI The Bombay High Court on Friday directed the Mumbai suburban district collector to indicate the steps proposed to be taken for demolition of 48 obstacles (unauthorised portions of buildings) which violate height norms in the vicinity of the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice M S Karnik also came down heavily on the suburban collector for trying to shift the responsibility on the BMC for the demolition of these obstacles. Asking the authorities to consider disconnecting the electricity and water supply of these unauthorised buildings, the court said that the collector has to take steps to tackle this “menace". The HC was hearing a PIL filed by advocate Yashwant Shenoy seeking action against construction of buildings above the prescribed height limit in the vicinity of the international airport. The Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) informed the court that periodical surveys are conducted to check whether structures are violating the height limit. In a , 2016 survey 137 such obstacles were identified which posed Justice M S Karnik said the committee, which has to be constituted by August 19, shall comprise experts from the field. The committee has been asked to submit its report to the state government in two months. The HC was hearing a PIL petition filed by advocate Abha Singh seeking directions to the government for the issuance of the final notification on the Special Regulations for buildings vulnerable to manmade disasters in the Development Control Plan and Regulations (DCPR) 2034. The PIL was filed in 2019. Due to lockdown, following the Covid-19 pandemic, the PIL had not come up for hearing. In 2021, following a spate of fires in high-rises in the city , Singh’s advocate, Aditya Pratap, mentioned the PIL for urgent hearing. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Form committee on draft fire safety rules: Court STAFF REPORTER MUMBAI The Bombay High Court on Friday directed the Maharashtra government to set up a four member committee to prepare a report on implementation of the 2009 draft Fire Safety Rules and Regulations for buildings and structures vulnerable to man-made disasters. A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and OUR BUREAU NEW DELHI The Supreme Court has dismissed the plea for reviewing its order upholding the One Rank-One Pension (OROP) principle adopted in 2015 by the Centre, holding that it neither suffers from any con, stitutional infirmity nor . is it arbitrary A bench comprising Justices D Y Chandrachud, Surya Kant, and Vikram Nath said there was no merit in the review petition, rejecting the plea for hearing it in an open court. serious threat to flights. Of these, in 63 cases, final demolition orders were passed by the DGCA. Of those, except the present 48, others either filed an appeal against the final order or reduced the height of their structures. MIAL said that since there is neither compliance nor an appeal has been filed by the remaining 48, hence these need . to be demolished immediately The collector contended in his affidavit that in Mumbai , city the BMC is the appropriate authority to carry out demolition since it is the planning authority under the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE CONGRESS LEADERS SUMMONED OUR BUREAU NEW DELHI The Delhi High Court on Friday summoned three Congress leaders on August 18 in response to Rs 2-crore defamation suit filed by Union Women and Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani on their alleged claim that her 18-year-old daughter Zoish Irani was running an illegal bar in the name of Silly Souls in Goa. A single-judge Bench of Justice Mini Pushkarna also asked Congress general secretary and chief spokesman Jairam Ramesh, media chair- Irani’s Rs 2 crore defamation suit contests their claim that her 18-year-old daughter was running an illegal bar in Goa A ‘level 2’ fire – a moderate blaze that was relatively easier to control but required 4-12 fire engines – broke out at 4.30 pm on Friday on a film set in Andheri west, where a movie featuring actors Ranbir Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor was due for a shoot.The fire on the set at Chitrakoot Ground, was confined within an area of 30000 sq. ft and it took the fire brigade almost five hours to put it out. One casualty was reported and the fire allegedly caused a loss of Rs 50 lakh. man Pawan Khera and Mahila Congress President Netta D’souza to delete within 24 hours their tweets, videos and re-tweets accusing Zoish of running the illegal bar in Goa. If these leaders fail to remove the tweets in the next 24 hours, Twitter will remove them, the order said. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Many corporators left without a ward Family of 4 found KALPESH MHAMUNKAR MUMBAI Following the Supreme Court (SC)’s acceptance of the Banthia Commission report on OBC reservation, the state election commission (SEC) directed the BMC to conduct a lottery for OBC reservations in each of its wards in Mumbai, and accordingly, the civic body did so on Friday.  The event was held at the Bal Gandharva Auditorium in Bandra. Some prominent names will now have to look for another ward to contest the upcoming civic elections. For instance, the BJP’s group leader in the House, Prabhakar Shinde, represented Mulund ward no. 106 but after the delimitation exercise, his ward has now become ward no. 109, which is now reserved for women (open BMC LOTTERY FOR OBC QUOTA CORPORATORS WHO HAVE LOST THEIR CURRENT WARDS NAME Prabhakar Shinde (BJP) Bhalchandra Shirsat (BJP) Ravi Raja (INC) Asif Zakaria (INC) Yashwant Jadhav (SS) Rakhi Jadhav (NCP) Sada Parab (SS) Samadhan Sarvankar (SS) Ashish Chemburkar (SS) Mangesh Satamkar (SS) V. Mahadeshwar (SS) Trushna Vishwasrao (SS) WARD  NO. 109 130 182 104 217 130 90 201 200 181 96 185 NEW RESERVATION (CATEGORY)  Woman (open) Woman (OBC) (open) Woman  Woman (open) Woman (OBC) Woman (OBC) Woman (open) Woman (open) (open) Woman  Woman (open) Woman (OBC) (OBC) Woman  category) candidates. Similarly, ward no. 217, formerly represented by the erstwhile civic standing  committee chairman Yashwant Jadhav is now a ward reserved for OBC woman candidate. The SEC had issued two directives for the BMC. The first entailed that wards that had not been reserved in the 2007, 2012 and 2017 elections were to be reserved for the OBC community this time. As per the second directive,  wards reserved for OBCs in 2007 but were not reserved in 2012 and 2017, had also to be reserved for the OBC community. Accordingly, 63 wards were reserved for OBCs. With the first directive, the BMC reserved 53 wards for OBC and with the second, it drew a lottery for the remaining 10 wards of OBC.   CONTD. ON NATION PAGE dead in Govandi AISHWARYA IYER MUMBAI A family of four, including two children, was found dead at their Shivaji Nagar residence in Govandi on Friday. Based on their preliminary investigations, police suspect that the head of the family, Shakeel Khan, 34, may have allegedly killed his wife and children by poisoning them and then died by hanging. However, the motive behind Khan’s alleged acts is not yet clear, as no suicide note was found in the house or on the deceased and as the door of their residence was locked from the inside, foul play .     seems unlikely     Police have registered accidental death reports (ADRs) in connection with the incident and are awaiting post- mortem reports to ascertain the exact cause of the death of all four deceased.  According to the Shivaji Nagar police, the deceased have been identified as Shakeel Khan, 34, his wife Raziya, 25, their son Sarfaraz, 7, and daughter Asiya, 3. Shakeel ran a grocery store in the same area where he resided with his family, police said. “Shakeel did not open his store at his usual time on Friday morning and hence, one of his relatives came to check on him. When repeated knocking on the door did not elicit any response, the relative peeped into the house and saw the bodies, after which he raised an alarm,” said Senior Police Inspector Arjun Rajane, Shivaji Nagar police station. CONTD. ON NATION PAGE Naked truth about ‘Full Monty’ Ranveer Shinde nets a Thackeray, LAST WORD GAUTAM S MENGLE MUMBAI It is often said that no publicity is bad publicity and no one is living this adage better right now than actor Ranveer Singh. A Google Trends analysis by The Free Press Journal has revealed that more people searched for the actor’s name on Google the day he was booked by Mumbai Police, than they did when he first posted pictures from his nowcontroversial nude photoshoot. Singh had, on July 22, shared nude pictures of himself on Instagram, clicked for a magazine photoshoot. The pictures instantly went viral on social media, with almost the entire Indian cyberspace speaking about it. Even as the debate about ‘his bodyhis rules’ was raging, a Mumbai advocate filed an FIR with the Chembur police against Singh, allegedly for ‘hurting the sentiments of women’. Google Trends is a free tool by Google that lets you analyse the trends observed in users’ online searching habits. One can enter specific keywords and find out how widely searched-for it was, as well as all related keywords that were entered by users of the Google search engine within a specific time period. The service is regularly used by data analysts to study and predict trends for a variety of reasons. Google Trends rates the value of the search-worthiness of a keyword from 25 to 100, 25 signifying that the particular subject or keyword received decent amount of attention, while 100 meaning that it was the most-searched for at that particular time. The Google Trends data for ‘Ranveer Singh’, analysed by the FPJ states that on July 22, when Singh first posted his pictures on his official Instagram account, the number of searches that he got on Google ranged between 33 and 59, and stayed well below 75 in the days to come. However, on July 26, as soon as Mumbai Police released their statement about having booked Singh, CONTD. ON NATION PAGE TAILPIECE Uddhav’s nephew Nihar SANJAY JOG MUMBAI Amid the ongoing tussle, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray received a fresh setback after his nephew Nihar Thackeray on Friday extended his support to Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who claims to represent the real Shiv Sena. Nihar’s move is being seen as a symbolic one, as it has emanated from within the Thack. eray family Nihar is the son of late , Bindumadhav Thackeray the eldest son of Sena founder Bal . Thackeray A filmmaker, Bindumadhav died in an unfortunate accident in 1996. A statement from Shinde’s office released after the meeting said Nihar will start his political journey under the CM’s leadership. Nihar, who has stayed away from politics all this while, is married to the daughter of BJP and former state minister Harshvardhan Patil. Even though Nihar was never active in the Shiv Sena or state politics, Shinde has succeeded in weaning him away and thereby trespassed . into the Thackeray family CONTD. ON NATION PAGE