Archives for July 2022

Guwahati: An IndiGo flight from Jorhat in Assam to Kolkata skidded off the runway during take off and a pair of its wheels got stuck in the muddy outfield, the airline said on Friday.

The incident took place on Thursday when the aircraft was taxing out for take off with 98 passengers on board and the flight was cancelled, it said.

“IndiGo flight 6E-757 operating from Jorhat to Kolkata returned back to bay during departure. While taxiing out the pilot was advised that one of the main wheels had partially run over the grass adjacent to the taxiway,” the airline said in a statement.

The pilot held the taxi procedure as a precaution and asked for necessary inspection, it added.

“The aircraft was taken back to the bay at Jorhat for inspection. During the initial inspection no abnormalities were observed. As a matter of caution the maintenance team initiated a thorough inspection. The flight was cancelled,” the IndiGo statement said.

An Airports Authority of India official told that the Indigo flight to Kolkata was cancelled after being held up for several hours at Jorhat due to a “technical issue”.

“There was some technical issue with the aircraft. There were 98 passengers on board. All passengers deboarded and are safe. They waited in the terminal building and the flight was cancelled at around 8:15 pm,” he added.

Earlier, a local journalist uploaded a picture on Twitter showing an aircraft, which apparently skidded off the runway and one pair of wheels got stuck in the soft grassy outfield.

Tagging IndiGo, the scribe posted, “Guwahati Kolkata @indigo flight 6F 757 (6E757) slips from runway and stuck in muddy field in Jorhat airport in Assam. The flight was scheduled to depart at 2.20 pm but the flight delayed after the incident.”

Replying to his post, IndiGo said, “Sir, we’re concerned to hear this and raising this right away with the concerned team. Please share the PNR via DM for the same. We hope you’re well and comfortably travelled to your destination.” 

Ahmedabad: A sessions court in Ahmedabad is likely to pass its order on Friday on the bail applications of activist Teesta Setalvad and former DGP R B Sreekuamr arrested for allegedly fabricating documents to frame innocent people in the 2002 riots cases.

Additional principal judge D D Thakkar is likely to pronounce the order on the bail pleas.

On Thursday, the court had deferred its order in the case till Friday, which it did for the second time this week.

The two accused have denied the charges. The government has formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case. Apart from Setalvad and Sreekumar, former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt is also an accused in the case and has been arrested.

The trio has been arrested by the crime branch, which had filed a first information report (FIR) against them under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 194 (giving or fabricating false evidence with intent to procure conviction for capital offence).

In its affidavit, the SIT has alleged that they were part of a larger conspiracy carried out at the behest of late Congress leader Ahmed Patel to destabilise the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Narendra Modi.

It has alleged that Setalvad was paid Rs 30 lakh at Patel’s behest soon after the Godhra train burning incident of 2002. Sreekumar was a “disgruntled government officer” who “abused the process for damning the elected representatives, bureaucracy and police administration of the whole state of Gujarat for ulterior purposes”, the SIT claimed.

The FIR against Setalvad, Sreekumar and Bhatt was registered after the Supreme Court last month dismissed the plea filed by Zakia Jafri, widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri who was killed during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Her plea had alleged a “larger conspiracy” behind the post-Godhra riots.

On February 8, 2012, the SIT filed a closure report giving a clean chit to Prime Minister Modi and 63 others, including senior government officials, saying there was “no prosecutable evidence” against them.

The top court on June 24 this year upheld the SIT’s clean chit to Modi and 63 others.

New Delhi,: A SpiceJet aircraft heading to Kandla in Gujarat safely aborted take off on the Mumbai airport’s runway on Thursday as the caution alert lit up, the airline said on Thursday.

A senior official of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) called the incident as “routine”, adding that the regulator has started a probe into it.

This is at least the ninth incident of technical malfunction on a SpiceJet aircraft in the last 40 days.

Just a day before, the regulator had ordered SpiceJet to operate not more than 50 per cent of its flights for eight weeks to ensure “safe and reliable transport service”.

During these eight weeks, the budget carrier will be subjected to “enhanced surveillance” by the DGCA.

The airline, however, said there has been no flight cancellations because of the regulator’s order as it is already operating limited services “due to the current lean travel season”.

On Thursday’s incident, SpiceJet said, “A SpiceJet Q400 aircraft scheduled to operate from Mumbai to Kandla rejected take off owing to illumination of a caution alert. Crew acted as per the SOP (standard operating procedure).”

“There was no safety scare. The aircraft returned back to bay and all passengers and crew safely deboarded,” it mentioned.

On July 5, a SpiceJet freighter aircraft, which was heading to Chongqing in China, returned to Kolkata as the pilots realised after the take-off that its weather radar was not working.

The same day, the airline’s Delhi-Dubai flight was diverted to Karachi due to a malfunctioning fuel indicator and its Kandla-Mumbai flight did priority landing in Maharashtra’s capital city after cracks developed on its windshield mid-air.

On July 2, a SpiceJet flight heading to Jabalpur returned to Delhi after the crew members observed smoke in the cabin at an altitude of around 5,000 feet.

Fuselage door warnings lit up on two separate SpiceJet planes while taking off on June 24 and June 25, forcing the aircraft to abandon their journeys and return.

On June 19, an engine on the carrier’s Delhi-bound aircraft carrying 185 passengers caught fire soon after it took off from the Patna airport and the plane made an emergency landing minutes later. The engine malfunctioned because of a bird hit.

In another incident on June 19, a SpiceJet flight for Jabalpur had to return to Delhi due to cabin pressurisation issues.

The airline has been making losses for the last three years. It incurred a net loss of Rs 316 crore, Rs 934 crore and Rs 998 crore in 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21 respectively.

The Delhi government has decided to withdraw the new Excise Policy for the time being and directed the sale of liquor through government-run vends, after multiple enquiries, including those by the CBI and Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police, into charges of “undue financial favours to liquor licensees” and other “major decisions/actions in violation of statutory provisions… that had huge financial implications.”

Targeting the BJP, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia alleged they were “running an illegal liquor business in Gujarat” and they wanted to do it now in Delhi also.

The deputy chief minister, who also holds the excise portfolio, said in a press briefing that the Delhi chief secretary has been directed to ensure that liquor is now sold through government shops only and there is no chaos.

He also alleged the BJP was using agencies like the CBI and ED to threaten liquor licensees, many of whom have now shut shops, and the excise officials who were scared to start open auctions of retail licences.

“They want to create a shortage of liquor so that they can run an illegal liquor trade in Delhi like they are doing in Gujarat. But we will not let this happen,” Sisodia said.

Under the new excise policy, nearly 468 liquor stores are running in Delhi at present.

The policy, that extended twice after April 30 for a two-month period each, will end on July 31.

The old liquor policy is likely to be back in force from August 1, 2022, sources said.

This newspaper was the first to report that the city government’s liquor policy “extended wrongful gains and favours to liquor wholesalers in Delhi… at the cost of state’s revenue.”

In a letter marked “Topmost Priority” to the state’s excise commissioner Krishna Mohan Uppu, Delhi finance secretary Ashish Chandra Verma on Friday said: “Reference is invited to the directions of Hon’ble Dy CM dated 28.07.2022 vide which it has, inter alia, been directed to revert to old regime of excise policy for a period of 6 months till a fresh Excise Policy is in place.” The letter further said,

“Considering that the timelines are very short, you, while taking other necessary actions in the matter, may coordinate immediately with the heads of the DSIIDC, DTTDC, DCCWS, DSCSC (all PSUs) to get the following information prepared latest by end of today (i.e., 29.09.2022) in the following format separately for all such four organizations.”

The information sought from the excise commissioner includes the name of old vend and its location, staff deployed in the previous regime, whether the premises where the vend was located were rented or owned by the public sector undertaking, and whether the premises were still vacant or occupied.

Copies of the finance minister’s letter have also been sent to the heads of the four PSUs, which were earlier engaged in running the liquor vends.

The Delhi government implemented a new excise policy on November 15, 2021, that withdrew the four PSUs from the liquor business and handed over the entire trade over to the private sector. Friday’s order rolled it back and directed the excise commissioner to bring back the PSUs into the liquor trade.

Sources said the new policy was scrapped to stonewall the probe and prevent action against Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia who was the head of the group of ministers that drafted it.

The new excise policy had generated protests from retailers, with 10 zonal retailers out of the total 32 zones surrendering or refusing to renew licenses accusing the government of favouring wholesalers.

BENGALURU: Terming the speed with which the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) prepared a source report, registered an FIR and conducted a search of a flat belonging to an engineer in 24 hours as “mockery of procedure”, the Karnataka High Court chided the ACB for throwing procedures and time required to follow them, to the wind. “It becomes a fit case, where this court cannot turn a blind eye to the plea of the petitioner for exercise of jurisdiction under Section 482 of the CrPC, and obliterate registration of crime against the petitioner. Failing which, it would become a classic illustration of a case becoming an abuse of the process of law and resulting in miscarriage of justice.

Above all, putting a premium on the action of the ACB, notwithstanding the fact that “the ACB blissfully ignored the ABC of procedure”, Justice M Nagaprasanna said, quashing the FIR and further proceedings against KR Kumar Naik, Executive Engineer, Operations and Maintenance Division, Bescom, Nelamangala. Naik’s counsel K Satish argued that the process initiated by the ACB is contrary to law, as no preliminary inquiry was conducted, no source report was prepared, and disproportionate assets shown in the ‘source report’ were zero.

Despite this, an FIR was registered, search was conducted and the petitioner was harassed. To counter this, ACB’s counsel defended the action of the investigating agency. The court said the report, in corruption parlance, is a source information report. It was generated in haste, the FIR was registered on March 16, 2022, and the source report was also done on the same day, in a jiffy.

The ACB, which performs a significant role in checking corruption among public servants, cannot indulge in such a casual act, the court added. A crime was registered against Naik under the Prevention of Corruption Act by ACB, a day after two travel bags and one carton, allegedly belonging to him, were found during a search on his neighbour Munavar Pasha’s flat. This was in connection with a disproportionate assets case registered against J Jnanendra Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Transport, on March 15, 2022, on the allegation that he possessed assets disproportionate to his known source of income.

RAIPUR: A first-ever no-confidence motion moved by the opposition against the Congress government-led by Bhupesh Baghel in Chhattisgarh was defeated by a voice-vote after over 13 hours of marathon debate that continued till the small hours of Thursday in the Assembly.

The motion came up with the 84-point charge sheet which was tabled by the leader of the opposition Dharampal Kaushik in the House. The discussion began with the BJP MLA Brijmohan Agrawal hitting out at the ruling Congress stating that neither the chief minister nor his cabinet colleagues have faith in each other in the government.

“A minister (T S Singhdeo) had himself expressed no confidence in the chief minister. Now even the people have lost trust in the government and the administration,” the BJP leader said.

During the stormy debate over the no-trust motion as many as 20 members participated with the opposition members attacking the Congress government over ‘infighting within Congress’, alleged deteriorating law and order situation, corruption and failure to live up to the poll promises.

Baghel while responding to the charges strongly countered the opposition. He eulogised the state government’s achievements during the three-and-a-half year rule and lashed out at the opposition (BJP) for allegedly “misusing” the Central agencies.

“Our government has raised the self regard with faith in oneself as Chhattisgarhiya and the people can now directly talk to the CM,” he said The Assembly election in Chhattisgarh is due next year.