Archives for August 2021

New Delhi: The Centre has told the Supreme Court that a draft notification has been issued inviting objections from all the stakeholders for banning different categories of plastic, including PVC, that have a thickness of less than 100 microns.

The submission was made by Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati before a bench comprising Justice L Nageswara Rao and Justice Aniruddha Bose.

“We hope and trust that the Union of India will proceed to pass suitable orders and directions after finalising the objections to the draft notification,” the bench said.

The top court was hearing an appeal against an order issued by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) against the use of PVC and chlorinated plastic for banners or hoardings used during elections.

The NGT had directed for appropriate steps to comply with the directions issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) on January 17, 2019 to the chief secretaries and chief electoral officers of all the states and Union territories.

The petitioner, W Edwin Wilson, contended that it is necessary for the MoEF to issue certain directions under section 5 of the Environment Protection Act, 1986 to ban the use of PVC and chlorinated plastic for advertisements during elections.

The petitioner also said the Election Commission (EC) should take pro-active steps in including this in the Model Code of Conduct and give suitable directions to all concerned.

Senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, appearing for the EC, stated that it is for the Centre to make necessary amendments to the Act and there is nothing for the poll panel to address at this stage.

The NGT had directed the EC and the chief electoral officers of the states to monitor the compliance of the advisories against the use of plastic, especially banners and hoardings, during elections.

The NGT order came after it was informed that the MoEF has asked the chief secretaries and chief electoral officers of the states to use alternative options during poll campaigns.

The ministry said it has written letters to them asking to use compostable plastic, natural fabrics, recycled paper and other eco-friendly material.

“In view of the fact that the MoEF as well as the Election Commission have taken the view that use of plastic during elections, particularly banners or hoardings, needs to be avoided, it will be appropriate that the compliance of advisories or directions mentioned above is appropriately monitored by the Election Commission of India, the chief electoral officers of all the states and Union territories and the Central Pollution Control Board,” the tribunal said.

The green panel had passed the directions on a petition seeking a direction to the MoEF and the states to prohibit the use of short-life polyvinyl chloride (PVC), synthetic plastic polymer and chlorinated plastic, which includes banners and hoardings for promotion and advertising during poll campaigns.

The petition, moved through advocates Sanjay Upadhyay and Salik Shafique, had claimed that campaigning material made of plastic is used during elections and later, discarded as waste, which is detrimental to the environment.

New Delhi: Observing that the law-making process in the country is in a “sorry state of affairs”, Chief Justice of India N V Ramana on Sunday rued the lack of debates in Parliament, saying this led to absence of clarity and a “lot of gaps and ambiguity” in the legislations.

Doing some plain speaking at a public event, Justice Ramana said an elaborate discussion during the law-making process reduces litigation since when courts interpret legislations, “we all know the intent of the legislature”. He was speaking at the 75th Independence Day function organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association(SCBA).

Justice Ramana’s remarks come against the backdrop of the tumultuous Monsoon session of Parliament when several bills were passed without any debate during the pandemonium following relentless protests by the Opposition over the Pegasus snooping row, farm laws, price rise and other issues. Parliament was adjourned sine die on Wednesday two days of the scheduled date of August 13.

The crucial observations of the CJI also assume significance in connection with a case where though the apex court is seized of matters concerning appointment in tribunals, the Centre went ahead and secured the passage of the amendment bill relating to tribunals without any debate in Parliament. The bill restored the provisions struck down by the Supreme Court recently.

The CJI also exhorted the members of the legal fraternity to participate in public life and share their experience about laws.

He said the country’s long freedom struggle was led by lawyers. “Whether it is Mahatma Gandhi or Babu Rajendra Prasad, they were legal luminaries, who sacrificed their property, family and life and led the movement.”

“Most of the members of first Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were all lawyers and members from the legal fraternity. Unfortunately, we know what is happening now in the Parliament with respect to debates on laws.”

He said there used to be debates in Parliament on various constitutional amendments and how they will affect the people.

“Long ago, I have seen a debate during the introduction of the Industrial Disputes Act and a member from Tamil Nadu used to discuss the law so elaborately as to how the law will affect the working class. It used to reduce the burden on the courts, as when the courts interpreted the law, we all knew the intent of the legislature,” the Chief Justice said.

“Now, it is a sorry state of affairs. There are a lot of gaps and a lot of ambiguity in the law-making process due to lack of debates… There is no clarity regarding the laws. We don’t know what the intent of the legislature is. We don’t know for what purpose the laws are made. This causes great inconvenience to the people. This happens when members of the legal fraternity are not in the Parliament and state legislature,” he added.

During the function, the CJI told the lawyers, “Don’t confine yourself to your profession, earning money and living comfortably. Please think over it. We should actively participate in public life, do some good service and share the experience with the country. Hopefully, goodness will come out of it in the country.”

He added that the Supreme Court has played an active role in the country and has given more than what the Constitution has thought of, but he expects the legal fraternity to contribute more.

“There are small issues but around 75 percent of the people in need of justice have got legal aid. You (lawyers) all should participate in the legal aid movement. On November 26 and 27, we may have two-day workshops on Constitution Day and legal aid,” he said.

At the outset, the CJI said it is a historic day and an occasion for all to rethink and review the policies to understand “what we have achieved and what we have to achieve in the future”.

“Seventy-five years is not a small period in the history of the country but we have to also consider the vast landscape and geographical condition of our country,” the CJI said, while recalling his childhood days when they were given jaggery and and murmura (puffed rice) in school on the occasion of Independence Day.

“Since then, a lot of development has taken place. Small things given to us in school made us very happy but in today’s time when we have so many facilities, we are not happy. I think this is due to our saturation level,” he added.

Supreme Court Judges AM Khanwilkar and V Ramasubramanian were also present on the occasion along with several lawyers and members of the SCBA.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who was also present on the occasion, said the Chief Justice of India is the karta’ (guardian) of the Indian legal family and thus he does not wish to say anything more.

“India is a young democracy and when we look around the neighbouring countries and they call themselves democracy and we all know how they have failed. In contrast, we have been able to sustain it the way it was envisioned by the framers of our Constitution,” Mehta said.

The CJI also unfurled the national flag after which the national anthem was played by a police band.

SCBA President and senior advocate Vikas Singh said it is a historic day as the country is celebrating its 75th Independence Day and thanked the Chief Justice and other judges for gracing the occasion.

New Delhi: Stressing that he has full faith in the youth of the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sunday said this is a “can do generation” which can achieve every goal.

Addressing the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the occasion of 75th Independence Day, Modi said he is not a soothsayer, but believes in action.

Underlining his faith in the youth of the country, Modi said, “This is a Can Do Generation and it can achieve every goal.”

The prime minister said he has full faith in the sisters and daughters, the farmers and the professionals of the country.

Stating that no obstacle can stop India from fulfilling its 21st century dreams and aspirations, Modi said, “Our strength is our vitality, our strength is our solidarity. Our life force is the spirit of nation first.”

Modi said that to fulfil the resolutions the country has taken, every person will have to join hands and every countryman own them.

The prime minister also cited a poem which emphasised making most of the current times.

Shimla: A moderate intensity earthquake of magnitude 3.1 struck Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur district on Sunday, a disaster management official said.

There was no immediate report of any casualty or damage to property, he said.

The earthquake’s epicentre was at a depth of 10 km in Kinnaur. Tremors were felt in and around the district at 1.13 pm, the official said.

Mangaluru: Veteran Yakshagana artiste Bottikere Purushotham Poonja, who worked as ‘Bhagavath’ for 45 years in several Melas, died late Saturday night, family sources said.

Poonja was 68. He is survived by his wife and two sons.

Poonja, who had been ailing for some time, was undergoing treatment at a hospital.

He had served the first Mela of Kateel as chief Bhagavath. Poonja worked as chief Bhagavath for 45 years in Uppala Mela, Geetambika Mela of Mumbai, Puttur Mela, Karnataka Mela and served in Kateel Mela for the past 30 years.

Poonja has written 32 ‘prasangas’ in Kannada and Tulu languages. His prasangas Ma Nishada, Ubhayakula Billoja, Nalinakshi Nandini, Megha Mayuri and Swarnanupura, are very popular in the Yakshagana field.

He has received several honours including Muddana award, Yaksha Manasa award of Mumbai, Academy book literature award, Asranna award and Karnoor award.

Poonja had converted his home into Gurukula and used to teach hundreds of students about Bhagavathike and Yakshagana literature.

KABUL: The Taliban completed their sweep of Afghanistan’s south on Friday, taking four more provincial capitals in a lightning offensive that brought them closer to Kabul just weeks before the U.S.

In the last 24 hours, the country’s second- and third-largest cities — Herat in the west and Kandahar in the south — have fallen to the insurgents, as has the capital of the southern province of Helmand, where American, British and NATO forces fought some of the bloodiest battles of the conflict.

The blitz through the Taliban’s southern heartland means the insurgents now hold half of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals and control more than two-thirds of the country.

The Western-backed government in the capital, Kabul, still holds a smattering of provinces in the center and east, as well as the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

While Kabul is not directly under threat yet, the resurgent Taliban were battling government forces in Logar province, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the capital.

The U.S. military has estimated that Kabul could come under insurgent pressure within 30 days and that the Taliban could overrun the rest of the country within a few months.

They have already taken over much of the north and west of the country.

In the south, insurgents swept through three provincial capitals on Friday.

Attaullah Afghan, the head of the provincial council in Helmand, said the Taliban captured Lashkar Gah following weeks of heavy fighting and raised their white flag over governmental buildings.

He said that three army bases outside of the city remain under government control.

In Tirin Kot, the capital of the southern Uruzgan province, Taliban fighters paraded through a main square, driving a Humvee and a pickup seized from Afghan forces.

Local officials confirmed that the Taliban also captured the capitals of Zabul province in the south and Ghor in the west.

With security rapidly deteriorating, the United States planned to send in 3,000 troops to help evacuate some personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

Britain and Canada are also sending forces to aid their evacuations.

Denmark said it will temporarily close its embassy, while Germany is reducing its embassy staff to the “absolute minimum.”

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have fled their homes amid fears the Taliban will return the country to the sort of brutal, repressive rule it imposed when it was last in power at the turn of the millennium.

At that time, the group all but eliminated women’s rights and conducted public executions as it imposed an unsparing version of Islamic law.

An early sign of such tactics came in Herat, where insurgents paraded two alleged looters through the streets on Friday with black makeup smeared on their faces.

There are also concerns that the fighting could plunge the country into civil war, which is what happened after the Soviets withdrew in 1989.

“We are worried. There is fighting everywhere in Afghanistan. The provinces are falling day by day,” said Ahmad Sakhi, a resident of Kabul.

“The government should do something. The people are facing lots of problems.”

The U.N. refugee agency said nearly 250,000 Afghans have been forced to flee their homes since the end of May, and 80% of those displaced are women and children.

In all, the agency said, some 400,000 civilians have been displaced since the beginning of the year, joining millions who have fled previous rounds of fighting in recent decades.

Peace talks in Qatar between the Taliban and the government remain stalled, though diplomats are still meeting, as the U.S., European and Asian nations warned that battlefield gains would not lead to political recognition.

“We demand an immediate end to attacks against cities, urge a political settlement, and warn that a government imposed by force will be a pariah state,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy to the talks.

But the Taliban advance continued.

Hasibullah Stanikzai, the head of the Logar provincial council, said fighting was still underway inside Puli-e Alim, with government forces holding the police headquarters and other security facilities.

He spoke by phone from his office, and gunfire could be heard in the background.

The Taliban, however, said they had captured the police headquarters and a nearby prison.

The onslaught represents a stunning collapse of Afghan forces after the United States spent nearly two decades and $830 billion trying to establish a functioning state.

U.S. forces toppled the Taliban in the wake of the Sept.11, 2001, attacks, which al-Qaida planned and executed while being sheltered by the Taliban government.

With only weeks remaining before the U.S.

plans to withdraw its last troops, the fighters now advancing across the country ride on American-made Humvees and carry M-16s pilfered from Afghan forces.

Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the Afghan army has rotted from within due to corruption and mismanagement, leaving troops in the field poorly equipped and with little motivation to fight.

The Taliban, meanwhile, have spent a decade taking control of large swaths of the countryside.

KABUL: It was early evening and Zahra, her mother and three sisters were on their way to dinner at another sister’s home when they saw people running and heard gunshots on the street.

“The Taliban are here!” people screamed.

In just a few minutes, everything changed for the 26-year-old resident of Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city.

Zahra grew up in a mostly Taliban-free Afghanistan, where women dared to dream of careers and girls got an education. For the past five years, she has been working with local nonprofit organizations to raise awareness for women and press for gender equality.

Her dreams and ambitions came crashing down Thursday evening as the Taliban swept into the city, planting their white flags emblazoned with an Islamic proclamation of faith in a central square as people on motorcycles and in cars rushed to their homes.

Like most other residents, Zahra, her parents and five siblings are now hunkering indoors, too scared to go out and worried about the future. The Associated Press chose not to identify her by her full name to avoid making her a target.

“I am in big shock,” said Zahra, a round-faced, soft-spoken young woman. “How can it be possible for me as a woman who has worked so hard and tried to learn and advance, to now have to hide myself and stay at home?”

Amid a lightning offensive over the past several days, the Taliban now control more than two-thirds of the country, just two weeks before the U.S. plans to withdraw its last troops. And they are slowly closing in on the capital, Kabul.

The U.N. refugee agency says nearly 250,000 Afghans have fled their homes since the end of May amid fears the Taliban would reimpose their strict and ruthless interpretation of Islam, all but eliminating women’s rights. Eighty percent of those displaced are women and children.

The fundamentalist group ruled the country for five years until the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. During that time, it forbade girls an education and women the right to work, and refused even to let them travel outside their homes without a male relative to accompany them. The Taliban also carried out public executions, chopped off the hands of thieves and stoned women accused of adultery.

There have been no confirmed reports of such extreme measures in areas the Taliban fighters recently seized. But militants were reported to have taken over some houses and set fire to at least one school.

At a park in Kabul, transformed since last week into a shelter for the displaced, families told the AP on Friday that girls riding home in a motorized rickshaw in the northern Takhar province were stopped and lashed for wearing “revealing sandals.”

A schoolteacher from the province said no one was allowed to go out to the market without a male escort. Some 3,000 families mainly from northern provinces recently taken over by the Taliban now live in tents inside the park, some on the sidewalks.

Zahra stopped going to the office about a month ago as the militants approached Herat, and she worked remotely from home. But on Thursday, Taliban fighters broke through the city’s defensive lines, and she has been unable to work since.

Her eyes welled up with tears as she considered the possibility that she will not be able to return to work; that her 12-year-old sister will be unable to continue going to school (“She loves learning”); that her older brother will not be able play football; or that she won’t be able to freely play the guitar again. The instrument hung on a wall behind her as she spoke.

She listed some of the achievements made by women in the past 20 years since the Taliban’s ouster — incremental but meaningful gains in what is still a deeply conservative, male-dominated society: Girls are now in school, and women are in Parliament, government and business.

Marianne O’Grady, Kabul-based deputy country director for CARE International, said the strides made by women over the past two decades have been dramatic, particularly in urban areas, adding she cannot see things going back to the way they were, even with a Taliban takeover.

“You can’t uneducate millions of people,” she said. If women “are back behind walls and not able to go out as much, at least they can now educate their cousins and their neighbors and their own children in ways that couldn’t happen 25 years ago.”

Still, a sense of dread appears to be omnipresent, particularly among women, as Taliban forces take more territory each day.

“I feel we are like a bird who makes a nest for a living and spends all the time building it, but then suddenly and helplessly watches others destroy it,” said Zarmina Kakar, a 26-year-old women’s rights activist in Kabul.

Kakar was a year old when the Taliban entered Kabul the first time in 1996, and she recalled a time when her mother took her out to buy her ice cream, back when the Taliban ruled. Her mother was whipped by a Taliban fighter for revealing her face for a couple of minutes.

“Today again, I feel that if Taliban come to power, we will return back to the same dark days,” she said.