Archives for December 2023

Lucknow: Construction of a proposed mosque in Ayodhya mandated by the Supreme Court in its Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case verdict is expected to begin in May, people associated with the project have said.

The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust, which is tasked with building the mosque in Ayodhya’s Dhannipur, also intends to appoint in-charges in different states starting in February to raise funds.

Settling a fractious issue that goes back more than a century, the Supreme Court in a historic verdict on November 9, 2019, backed the construction of a Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya and ruled that an alternative plot be found for a mosque in the Hindu holy town.

The construction of the mosque is yet to begin even as the consecration ceremony of the Ram temple is expected to take place on January 22, 2024.

Chief trustee of the Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Zufar Farooqui said, “The final design of the mosque is likely to be ready by mid-February and it will then go for administrative approval. The site office will be set up in the complex in February.”

“It is expected that we will be in a position to start construction of the mosque in May next year,” Farooqui, who is also the chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board, told PTI.

Farooqui said the construction of the Mohammad Bin Abdullah Ayodhya Mosque is getting delayed due to the fresh formalities after “drastic” changes were made in the design of the mosque and financial constraints.

The initial design of the mosque was based on those built in India. However, it was rejected and a new design was prepared. The mosque will be built on 40,000 square feet instead of the earlier 15,000 square feet, he said.

The IICF had earlier decided to shift to a “grand” design for the mosque similar to the one adopted in the Middle Eastern countries.

Asked about the possibility of a crowdfunding campaign to overcome the financial constraints, Farooqui said the trust will take a call on it by February.

“Crowdfunding is a huge task and very difficult to handle. What we are trying to do is to give responsibility to our people in different states to raise funds for the project,” he said.

“We will work in a manner to ensure both transparency and accountability,” he added.

Currently, the Mumbai team associated with the trust is working on this and it is expected that within one-and-a-half months, we will have sufficient funds, Farooqui said.

However, Farooqui did not completely rule out the possibility of crowdfunding and said that if needed, online donations would be sought from the people willing to donate.

He also asserted that the construction of the mosque was getting delayed more so due to the changes in the design.

IICF Secretary Athar Hussain said that the trust will build a hospital, library, community kitchen and a museum along with the mosque on the land given by the government.

Talks have been held with a group from Mumbai and they have been made in-charge of the construction committee.

Asked when the construction will be completed, Hussain said it will depend on the availability of funds.

On the orders of the Supreme Court, the government had given five acres of land in Dhannipur, Ayodhya to the Sunni Central Waqf Board Uttar Pradesh to construct the mosque.

The board then formed the IICF for the construction of the mosque and other facilities like a community kitchen, a research institute, a hospital and a museum.

A map of the proposed mosque and other buildings was submitted to the Ayodhya Development Authority in 2021. It was approved in March this year.

Nagpur: Angry locals and relatives of workers blocked a highway near an explosives manufacturing unit in Nagpur district, where a blast claimed nine lives on Sunday, and demanded they be allowed to allowed to enter the premises to see the bodies.

The crowd was later dispersed, police said.
According to sources, the bodies of the victims were still inside the premises, where the blast took place at 9 am.

Nine people were killed and three others injured in the incident, police said.
A number of ambulances were stationed at the entrance gate of the Solar Industries factory, located at Bazaargaon, about 30 km rom the district headquarters.

A tense situation prevailed as nearly 200 people, including local residents and relatives of the workers, gheraoed the factory’s entrance gate.

A senior police official told PTI that there were explosives near the spot.

The explosives need to be secured and bomb disposable squads were at the spot, he said.

The process of securing the explosives was underway and thereafter the bodies will be recovered, the official said.

Angry locals and relatives of the victims blocked the Amravati-Nagpur road outside the factory.

They raised slogans in front of the factory’s entrance gate and blocked the Amravati-Nagpur highway, demanding that they be allowed to enter the premises to see the bodies of their kin.

The police later dispersed the crowd, an official said.

Heavy police security was deployed in the area.

The father of Aarti Sahare, who is among the deceased, told reporters that he got a message about the death of her daughter at 9.30 am and was still waiting for further information.

The blast also caused severe damage to the factory building, as per police.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in a post on X termed the incident as unfortunate and condoled the death of the nine people.

The state government will provide an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh to the families of the deceased and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has approved the decision, he said.
Fadnavis said nine people, including six women, died in the blast at Solar Industries. It is a company that manufactures drones and explosives for the armed forces, he said.

The state government stands firmly with families of the victims on this sad occasion, he said.

HYDERABAD: With the change of government, senior bureaucrats considered close to the previous BRS regime are now vying for key positions in the current administration. Among them, two top officers — a senior IAS officer and a senior IPS officer — are actively lobbying for key positions. According to high-level sources, these two officers have approached the close associates of Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar. The two officers are eyeing the posts of chief secretary and director general of police (DGP).

If sources are to be believed, they have requested Shivakumar to advocate on their behalf with Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy. Sources close to Revanth said that the chief minister dodged taking an immediate decision, saying “let’s see after the superannuation of those in the posts now”.The sources said that the chief minister is inclined to maintain the current hierarchy.

Meanwhile, the present DGP Ravi Gupta is a 1990-batch IPS officer.His predecessor Anjani Kumar was also from the same batch. Next in line are Rajiv Ratan and CV Anand, both 1991 batch and both holding director general rank.It remains to be seen who the Congress government picks to succeed Ravi Gupta as head of the police force.

A Paris-based investigative website Mediapart has reported that the Narendra Modi-led government is refusing to cooperate with French judges in their ongoing investigation into alleged corruption in the sale of 36 Dassault-built Rafale fighter jets to India in 2016 for €7.8 billion.

The Wire, quoting Mediapart’s information, has said that the Indian government has de facto refused to comply with a formal request for international cooperation on the case that was made in November 2022 by the two French judges in charge of the criminal investigation into suspected “corruption”, “influence peddling” and “favouritism”.

Mediapart had earlier reported how the French and Indian governments are united in their desire to slow down a highly sensitive investigation that could implicate three heads of state or government: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French president Emmanuel Macron and his predecessor at the Élysée François Hollande, The Wire added.

This case, per the report, illustrates in particular the desire of the Modi government, echoed in Paris, to ensure that the French judicial investigation into corruption over the sale of the Rafale jets does not reach an outcome. The result is that the investigating judges face a major hurdle, as they lack both the classified French documents and the Indian judicial documents which prove the payment of secret commissions, the report claimed.

For instance, in October 2018, the French investigating judges had requested the Indian authorities to send them judicial documents concerning Dassault and Sushen Gupta, an influential defence businessman, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in the alleged Agusta Westland Chopper scam.

Gupta was also the Rafale deal agent, who received “millions in commission”, Mediapart had reported in April 2021.

The Dassault Reliance Aerospace Limited (DRAL) is the joint company created by Dassault and the Reliance group, which is run by billionaire Anil Ambani.

In a noteworthy development, The Hindu reported in February 2019 that the Modi government had removed “anti-corruption clauses” from the Rafale deal in 2016, just before the signing of the final contract. This, despite earlier objections from members of the Indian negotiating team, the newspaper reported, The Wire added.

In a diplomatic note, written on July 25, 2023, the French ambassador to India, Emmanuel Lenain, highlighted challenges in cooperation on criminal cases with India.

“Many cases are handled by our Indian partners with very long delays, often in an incomplete manner,” he said in the note.

The Indian government’s communications service and India’s Ministry of Home Affairs did not respond to Mediapart.