ESTD-1928 Vol. 67 No. 229 | WEDNESDAY | JUNE 26, 2024 | 27 Pages | `5 & for Pune `6 only ✩✩✩ Reg.No MCS/048/2021-23; RNI No. 1541/1957 M.p.c.s office Mumbai. PIN 400001 QUALITY @ VALUE THE FREE PRESS JOURNAL www.freepressjournal.in NATION BJP, Cong together have made Constitution casteist, communal: Mayawati EDITIONS: MUMBAI INDORE PUNE BHOPAL E-paper Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar EQUATION NEW DELHI OM BIRLA 297 MPs BREAKUP BJP has 240 votes of its own, 53 from NDA partners and 4 of YSR Congress. OPPOSITION 232 MPs BJP MP Om Birla at Parliament House complex during the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha. –PTI term Congress MP K. Suresh, three nominations were filed. The bloc had earlier also demanded that Suresh be made the Pro-Tem Speaker as he was the senior most MP but the government had chosen seven-term MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, who left the Biju Janata Dal in March this year and joined theBJP, for the post. Its argument was that Mahtab’s tenure was continuous while Suresh’s had two breaks. This had also led to a lot of heartburn between the two sides. Contd on | Nation Member: Audit Bureau of Circulation (Jan to Dec 2023) Games Afghanistan storm into T20 World Cup semifinals BJP leader Preetham Gowda named in fresh FIR in the Prajwal case Battle lines drawn for Speaker’s post Modi and union ministers Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and J.P Nadda besides MPs from BJP’s allies, including the Telugu Desam Party, Janata Dal (United), Janata Dal (Secular) and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram-Vilas). On behalf of the INDIA bloc candidate and eight- KONKAN NATION SLUGFEST | It is NDA’s Om Birla versus INDIA bloc’s K Suresh; Centre rejects demand for Dy Speaker The Lok Sabha is heading for its first ever election for the post of Speaker as National Democratic Alliance candidate Om Birla, who was the Speaker in the 17th Lok Sabha, and INDIA bloc’s Kodikunnil Suresh filed their nominations for the post on Tuesday. In the previous 17 Lok Sabhas, the Speaker was always chosen through consensus between the ruling party and the Opposition. However, this time a contest appears to be on the cards on Wednesday, when the election would take place, since the NDA has not yet given a positive response to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s demand for giving the Opposition the Deputy Speaker’s post in return for its support for the post of Speaker. For Om Birla, 10 nominations were filed backing his candidature, including those by Prime Minister Narendra NASHIK Edit Crucial role of a responsible Opposition TMC keeps Congress on an edge Aritra Singha KOLKATA After much hemming and hawing, a miffed Trinamool Congress has softened somewhat and is likely to attend Wednesday morning’s strategy meeting of floor leaders in the chamber of Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on the speaker’s post. Earlier in the day, in a backstage twist, TMC had lamented that it was not consulted by the Congress party on the "unilateral" nomination’’ of its Kerala MP K Suresh for the Speaker’s post and said the party would decide by evening on what stand to take. (When K. Suresh filed his nomination for the post of the Speaker on Tuesday morning, TMC from the INDIA bloc didn’t sign his papers.) The TMC has 29 MPs in the Lok Sabha. Its numbers, however, do not count unless the Congress is assured of weaning away TDP and Janata Dal(U) and persuading them to crossvote for Suresh. It is understood that TMC decided to play along after the outreach by Congress leaders. An indication of the thaw came when TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi were seen talking with each other on the floor of Parliament. PORSCHE KILLINGS Detention illegal; aunt given minor’s custody HC: Police, juvenile board swayed by public outcry Urvi Mahajani MUMBAI Terming as ‘illegal’ the continuation of the custody of the juvenile accused in the Porsche deaths last month, the Bombay High Court on Tuesday directed his release from the observation home in Pune where he was remanded. It noted that the entire situation was handled in a kneejerk manner, following a public outcry for the trial of the juvenile as an adult. “It is the court’s bounden duty to prioritise justice above everything else, and that it is not swayed away by the uproar created because of the ghastly mishap, for which allegedly the minor is personally responsible and which has resulted in loss of two innocent lives,” the court noted. “Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum, a We must treat him as any child in conflict with law. He needs to be treated separately, not as an adult, despite seriousness of crime Rahul to be Leader of Oppn Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar NEW DELHI Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will be the Leader of the Opposition in the 18th Lok Sabha, Sonia Gandhi, the party’s longest serving president and former chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance, informed the Pro Tem Speaker on Tuesday evening. With this, the Congress has reclaimed the post of Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The Congress almost doubled its tally in the 2024 election to 99 seats from 52 in 2019. In the 2014 elections, the party managed to win just 44 seats. Despite being the second largest party in Parliament after BJP FPJ News Service Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, who has been fighting against his extradition to the US on espionage charges for over a decade, has been freed from prison under a plea deal with the American authorities. These charges have dogged Assange since 2010 when WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history -- along with a swathe of diplomatic cables. Assange, 52, it is understood boarded a private jet that landed in Bangkok on Tuesday morning. He will now proceed to Northern Mariana Islands, a tiny US-controlled territory in the south Pacific, where he is expected to plead guilty to a single espionage charge which will pave the way for him to return to his native Australia and be reunited with his wife Stella. The hearing is taking place in the US Commonwealth territory because of Assange's opposition to travelling to one of the 50 US states and the court's proximity to Australia. "After more than five years in a 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife, Stella, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars," the WikiLeaks said in a post on X. Stella took to social media, sharing a video montage of her husband in a car and then boarding a plane. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will arrest Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in connection with the now-scrapped liquor policy case on Wednesday. This comes a day before the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear his bail plea. The central probe agency on Monday examined Kejriwal, the national convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), in Tihar jail and recorded his statement. It will produce him in the trial court on Wednesday. The move came in for flak from the party. “At a time when there is a cent per cent possibility that Arvind Kejriwal will get bail from the Supreme Court, sources have Contd on | Nation HC stays bail order informed me that the Centre is conspiring to register a fake CBI case against the Delhi CM and get him arrested by the CBI. The entire nation can see this and is standing in solidarity with Arvind Kejri- Contd on | Nation He is already under rehabilitation which is a primary objective and has been referred to a psychologist Tailpiece COURT PLAYS AGONY AUNT N Agencies S Balakrishnan MUMBAI Contd on | Nation Earlier on Tuesday, the Delhi High Court put a stay on the trial court's June 20 order granting bail to Kejriwal. It held that the Vacation Judge passed the bail order without going through the entire material provided by the Enforcement Directorate. Justice Sudhir Kumar Jain, who had heard the matter on June 21 and had reserved the order then while staying the bail order till its pronouncement, also found “perversity” in the trial court order. Contd on | Nation Sunita Williams stuck in space in 2014 and 2019, the Congress fell short of the threshold which would qualify it as the principal opposition party in the house. Rahul Gandhi, who was Congress president from 2017 to 2019, had played a key role in the revival of the party and the creation of the INDIA bloc. wal,” AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said. There was no immediate reaction to the allegation from the CBI or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).\ FPJ News Service NEW DELHI we are bound to implement the law as it stands.” The HC disposed of the habeas corpus (produce person in court) petition filed by the juvenile’s paternal aunt. The 17-year-old was allegedly drunk when the luxury car he was driving, rammed into a two-wheeler, killing two persons. Amid kneejerk reaction and public outcry, the child’s age was not considered COMMENT Assange is DLS co-creator a free man CBI turns heat on Kejriwal Duckworth dead after deal ahead of bail hearing in SC F LONDON/BANGKOK Latin phrase which connotes, ‘Let justice be done though the heavens fall’, clearly convey a principle in law, that justice must be realised regardless of consequences and just decisions may be made at whatever cost it comes,” a bench of Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande said. It added: “We have all sympathies for the victim and their families but as a Court of Law, rank Duckworth, one of the inventors of the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method, passed away on June 21 at the age of 84. The Duckworth-Lewis method, devised by Duckworth and fellow statistician Tony Lewis, was introduced to determine results in rainaffected cricket matches. It is based on statistical analysis. The quashing of detention of the 17-year-old drunken boy from Pune, who mowed down two persons on May 19 while driving his father’s Porsche, is shocking, to put it mildly. The judgment passed by a division bench of Bombay High Court, comprising Justice Bharti Dangre and Justice Manjusha Deshpande, pivots on the technical fact that the Juvenile Justice Board’s remand orders were illegal and passed without jurisdiction. The court has now given his custody to his aunt. However, the bench ought to have considered the case in totality. The facts are unimpeachable: l The boy was drunk. There is CCTV footage showing the minor drinking alcohol in a bar with friends; l CCTV footage shows the car being driven at breakneck speed; l Eyewitnesses said the boy was drunk; l The boy’s father kidnapped the family driver, confined him to a room and forced him to make a false confession that he was at the wheel; l The local MLA was taken by the father of the accused to the police station, in an obvious bid to influence the case; l The blood sample of the boy was thrown away and substituted with that of his mother; asa astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore are stranded in space: glitches in Boeing's Starliner capsule, docked at the International Space Station (ISS), is preventing them from being ferried back to earth. NASA has already rescheduled the planned return three times and now has no firm date set for it, reports Reuters. It is understood that the capsule has had five helium leaks, five manoeuvring thrusters have died and a propellant valve has failed to close completely, since its launch on June 5, prompting the crew in space and mission managers in Houston to devote more time pursuing fixes. Starliner can stay docked at the ISS for up to 45 days. Contd on | Nation Contd on | Nation BMC to take possession of racecourse Rucha Kanolkar MUMBAI The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is finally ready to take possession of 120 acres of land at the Mahalakshmi racecourse, ending a long-standing dispute. The decision approving the handover of the land to the municipality is to be taken at the state cabinet meeting on Wednesday, paving the way for the creation of a sprawling central park, gardens, and open spaces. The 211-acre racecourse was originally leased to the Royal Western India Turf Club (RWITC) in 1914. The lease expired in 2013 and was not renewed. Now, 120 acres of this prime land is being handed over to the municipality, following the approval of the state government. RWITC will retain the remaining 91 acres for continued use, confirmed Munici- pal Commissioner Bhushan Gagrani. “We are in the final stages of the handover process, though the lease premium still needs to be finalised before signing,” Gagrani told the Free Press Journal. Contd on | Nation offgrid “Jai Palestine” chant stirs LS Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar NEW DELHI All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Asaduddin Owaisi created a stir in Lok Sabha on Tuesday when, after taking oath as MP from Hyderabad, he raised the slogan “Jai Bheem, Jai Telangana, Jai Palestine”. The use of the word “Palestine” was immediately noted by BJP MPs in the House who protested and brought it to the notice of the Chair. BJP MP Shobha Karandlage was the one who complained to Radha Mohan Singh, who was at that time presiding over the House proceedings as acting Pro Tem Speaker. Singh subsequently ordered the deletion of the slogan from official records. When confronted by the treasury benches for his remarks, Owaisi countered by demanding how was he wrong when “other members were also saying different things”. Incidentally, in 2019 Owaisi had ended his oath in Urdu with the chant of “Jai Bheem, Jai Meem, Takbeer Allahu Akbar, Jai Hind.” Regarding the context of his slogan, he explained that it was linked to the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people. “Wahan ki awaam mahroom hai” (The people there are destitute),” he said. Contd on | Nation FPJ IMPACT / HOARDING MISHAP IPS officer Qaiser is suspended S Balakrishnan MUMBAI The Maharashtra government has suspended IPS officer Mohammed Qaiser Khalid in connection with the May 13 Ghatkopar hoarding collapse in which 17 persons were killed. The suspension will come into effect immediately. Khalid, who is at present the Additional Director General of Police (Protection of Civil Rights), had had granted permission to Ego Media Pvt Ltd to erect the hoarding when he was the railway police commissioner. The FPJ had carried a report on June 23 stating that pressure is mounting on Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is in charge of the home portfolio, to suspend the controversial officer. The Special Investigating Team (SIT) probing the crash found out that Ego Media had transferred Rs46 lakh to the account of Mahpara Garments Company in which Khalid’s wife Sumanna was a director along with one Mohd Arshad Khan. The company, which has its address at Govandi, had received the money despite not rendering any service to Ego Media. Contd on | Nation