New Delhi: The Central Information Commission has summoned officials of the offices of the lieutenant governor, chief minister, and chief secretary over the non-disclosure of information on salaries paid to Imams of mosques in Delhi under the RTI Act.

Information Commissioner Uday Mahurkar has also issued notices to officers of the Delhi Waqf Board on the plea of activist Subhash Agrawal.

Agrawal wanted complete information, including the file notes, on the decision to pay salaries to Imams in Delhi mosques through his application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

He sought to know the total number of mosques in the national capital where Imams receive salaries, the total amount incurred, annual expenditure, and details of the competent authority responsible for the payments.

Through his RTI application, Agrawal also asked if such salaries are being paid to priests of Hindu temples as well.

The offices of the LG and the chief minister did not respond to the RTI application, but the office of the chief secretary transferred it to the Department of Revenue and Delhi Waqf Board.

The Delhi Waqf Board, in its reply to Agrawal, said none of the queries are related to it.

The commissioner has also issued notices to the Public Information Officers of these two departments asking them to appear before it for hearing on November 18.

The CIC has asked the officers to bring all the files related to the matter for hearing.

The Supreme Court in 1993 had ordered the Waqf Boards to pay adequate salaries to Imams working in mosques managed by the boards.

“We are, therefore, not willing to accept the submission that…in the absence of any statutory provision in the Waqf Act the Imams who look after religious activities of mosques are not entitled to any remuneration,” the Bench of Justice R M Sahai had held on a petition by All India Imam Organisation which had approached the apex court for “enforcement of fundamental right against their exploitation by Waqf Boards.”

The organisation had approached the apex court seeking a direction to Central and State Waqf Boards to treat them as employees of the Board and to pay them basic wages to enable them to survive.

Waqf Boards in several states, including Haryana, Karnataka, and Delhi, are following the practice of paying salaries to Imams.

Imphal: A 47-year-old man in Manipur’s Imphal West district has converted barren land into a 300 acre forest with a wide variety of plant species in 20 years.

Moirangthem Loiya, who hails from Uripok Khaidem Leikai area of the district, started planting trees on the outskirts of Imphal town in the Langol Hill range about 20 years ago.

A nature lover from his childhood days, Loiya told PTI, “in early 2000, after completing my college studies from Chennai, when I went to the Koubru mountain, I was appalled by the wide scale deforestation of the previously thick vegetation that marked the Koubru hill ranges. I felt a strong urge to give back to mother nature what we humans as a whole have destroyed so much in modern times.”

The search soon led him to Maru Langol renamed “Punshilok Maru” or “Spring of Life” in the Langol Hill range on the outskirts of capital Imphal town.

“I encountered the place accidentally while taking a hike and immediately felt the area which was all barren due to jhum cultivation could be converted into a thick green lush forest with time and dedication,” the 47-year-old told PTI.

“The site served as a home for me for six years, as I lived in isolation in a hut which I had constructed myself, planting bamboo, oak, jackfruit trees and teaks while nurturing the area previously destroyed by human activities” Loiya who now stays “on and off” at the forest said.

“I would purchase saplings from my own pocket and plant it whenever possible,” Loiya said, adding “the plantation is done mostly ahead of the monsoon season and vegetative growth was always quick.”

“Periodic illegal wildlife hunting for deers, mostly for sports, is another problem we generally face,” Loiya who established Wild Life and Habitat Protection Society (WAHPS) said. The society is devoted to preserving the Punshilok forest and fighting off illegal hunting and wildfires.

The state forest officials have been supportive of the endeavour of Loiya in planting trees in the Longol hill range.

There are more than 100 species of plants, around 25 varieties of bamboo species in the 300 acre forest which also has barking deers, porcupines and snakes, forest officials said.

The officials said the land was barren some 20 years ago.

Forest officials said that most of the wildfires spread as people want a piece of land either for cultivation or any other activity.

Meanwhile, Loiya is certain that the task of growing a forest and nurturing it is going to be “a lifelong mission” although he now works in a pharmacy to earn a living and to sustain his family.

Loiya is currently preparing to organise a camp for volunteers this November so as to protect the forest from wildfire ahead of the dry season. During the camp, a fireline will be created along the periphery of the forest, so that wildfires cannot cross into the forest section, he added.

Venur: Jewellery worth lakhs of rupees was stolen from a house in Naravi allegedly by a group of four masked men, who tied up the lone woman resident before making away with their loot.

The incident took place on Saturday evening at the residence of 67-year-old Prabhavathi Nayak in Arsikatte near Naravi in Belthangady taluk, said sources.

The group of masked looters, who forcibly entered Nayak’s house, reportedly bound her limbs with a rope and silenced her by thrusting cloth into her mouth.

They then stripped Nayak of her gold chain and ear rings, before stealing three gold bangles, three gold rings, a gold chain and a mobile phone in the house. They left the house, declaring among themselves in Tulu, “Our job here is done!” according to the police complaint.

The stolen gold items are worth a total of Rs 4.6 lakh, the sources said.

A case has been registered by the Venur Police. Also, Deputy Superintendent of Venur Soumya J and the police staff members are learned to have visited the crime site.

Puttur: In a motorbike and scooter collision on the Maani-Mysuru national highway bypass here, a local youngster was reportedly killed on the spot recently.

Naushad, 22, son of Abdul Aziz, a resident of Sampya in Aryapu village of Puttur, was the victim, said sources. He worked in a cloth store near the KSRTC bus stop in Puttur.

Naushad was riding the scooter that hit the motorbike. The victim’s body was shifted to the mortuary at the Puttur government hospital.

Puttur Traffic Police have registered a case and are investigating, sources added.

Ahmedabad: A man from Bopal has complained to the Railway police here that his bag, which contained jewellery worth Rs 6 lakh, was stolen as the start of his journey on the Vande Bharat train.

Paresh Sonani, 55, resident of Bopal, filed an FIR with the police on Friday, and told the police that the incident took place on Tuesday, reports Times of India.

Sonani told the police that he had left his house and took a BRTS bus to Iskcon Crossroads, from where he traveled to the Kalupur Railway Station in an AMTC bus. He added that he got on the Vande Bharat train and put his bag on his seat, but, after a while, found that the bag was stolen he was distracted.

He filed a complaint of theft against an unknown person with the Ahmedabad Railway Police, who are learned to be checking the CCTV footage at the station for clues on the case.

Rahul Gandhi

New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is unlikely to attend the upcoming winter session of Parliament due to the ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra, the party said on Saturday.

The winter session of Parliament is likely to commence in the first week of December in the old building and conclude by the end of the month, sources had said on Friday.

There is a proposal to hold the session between December 7 and 29 and a final decision regarding the dates will be taken by the Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs, they had said.

Asked whether party MPs participating in the yatra will attend the session, Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh told reporters that it is unlikely that he and three other parliamentarians — Rahul Gandhi, K C Venugopal, Digvijaya Singh — who are walking in the yatra consistently would attend Parliament.

Ramesh said they would inform the Speaker and the Chairman accordingly that they would not be able to attend the upcoming session.

He said the yatra, which has completed about half the 3,570 km distance, is seeing massive enthusiasm in Maharashtra currently and several allies of the Congress are participating in it.

Nationalist Congress Party leaders Supriya Sule, Jayant Patil and Jitendra Awhad joined the yatra and so did Shiv Sena’s Aaditya Thackeray, Ramesh said, asserting that this reflected that the Maha Vikas Aghadi combine was intact.

He said the yatra is likely to enter Madhya Pradesh on November 22.

Talking about the sub-yatras, Ramesh said while Odisha became the first state to begin a yatra simultaneously with the main yatra on October 31, Assam was next to join starting a more than 850-km-long yatra on November 1.

On the birth anniversary of former prime minister Indira Gandhi on November 19, the party’s Tripura unit will begin a yatra, Ramesh said.

On December 28, the West Bengal Congress will begin a Bharat Jodo Yatra in its state, he said.

Also in the next fortnight or so, the Congress will take out a Bharat Jodo Yatra in Bihar from Banka to Bodh Gaya, covering an estimated 1,100 km, Ramesh said.

Jay Shah

Melbourne: New Zealand’s Greg Barclay was on Saturday unanimously re-elected as chairman of the International Cricket Council (ICC) for a second two-year term.

Besides Barclay’s re-election, BCCI secretary Jay Shah was elected as the head of ICC’s all powerful Finance and Commercial Affairs (F&CA) committee at the board meeting.

Barclay was unopposed following the withdrawal of Zimabwe’s Tavengwa Mukuhlani from the process, and the ICC Board reaffirmed its full support to the New Zealander to continue at the helm.

Jay Shah will have the responsibility of heading ICC’s most important committee. Al the major financial policy decisions are taken by the F&CA committee before it is ratified by the ICC board.

“Each and every member accepted Jay as the head of F&CA committee. This is an equally powerful sub committee apart from the ICC chair (Greg Barclay),” an ICC source told PTI on conditions of anonymity.

It includes the revenue sharing among the member nations and also the various major sponsorship deals that the global body inks through the year.

The F&CA committee is always headed by an ICC Board member and Shah’s election makes it clear that he will represent the BCCI on the ICC Board.

The F&CA head’s position used to be India’s during the N Srinivasan era but during Shashank Manohar’s tenure as ICC chairman, the BCCI’s power and might had significantly reduced.

In fact during the Committee of Administrators’ tenure, there was a point when BCCI didn’t even have any representation in the F&CA committee.

Former BCCI president Sourav Ganguly was a member of the F&CA committee till last year.

“India is a commercial hub of global cricket with more than 70 percent sponsorship coming from the region. It is imperative that an ICC F&CA should always be headed by BCCI,” the ICC source said.

Sourav Ganguly to remain ICC Cricket Committee head

Former India captain Ganguly, who completed his tenure as BCCI president last month, will remain the head of ICC’s Cricket Committee.

Lucknow: The construction of a mosque in Ayodhya, being built pursuant to the Supreme Court verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case, is expected to be completed by December next year, the trust entrusted with the task has said.

“We hope to get approval to the map of the proposed mosque, hospital, community kitchen, library and research centre from the Ayodhya Development Authority by the end of this month. Soon after we will start the construction of the mosque,” Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust secretary Athar Hussain told PTI.

The construction of the Dhannipur Ayodhya Mosque is likely to be completed by the end of December 2023, while the remaining structures on the five-acre Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah Complex will be come up subsequently, he said.

The Supreme Court, in its verdict in the long-standing Ayodhya dispute, ordered the construction of a Ram temple on the 2.77-acre plot where the Babri Masjid once stood, and directed that five acres be allotted for building a mosque in the Uttar Pradesh district.

The ‘bhoomi pujan’ for the temple was performed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August 2020 and, according to the temple trust, it is likely to be opened to devotees in January 2024.

The timing of the completion of the temple and the mosque is significant as the next parliamentary election is scheduled for early 2024.

The Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust, formed by the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board for the construction of the mosque, has also decided to build a hospital, community kitchen, library and a research institute.

“The trust will start the construction of all proposed structures simultaneously and the mosque is likely to be completed first because of its small size. Although no deadline has been fixed, it will hopefully be constructed within a year’s time,” Hussain said.

Efforts are being made to raise funds for the construction of the mosque and other structures in the complex, he said.

Hussain said the hospital will begin with 100 beds and later upgraded to a 200-bed facility. The community kitchen will initially have the capacity to serve 1,000 people daily and subsequently expanded to cater to 2,000 people.

He said the trust decided to build an Indo-Islamic Research Centre and a library so that the people of the area can benefit from them.

Hussain said that about a month ago, during perusal of the application for obtaining NOC from the fire department for the mosque and other facilities, the department had objected to the narrow approach road.

The district administration was immediately informed about this.

Taking prompt action, the administration has completed the process of measurement of additional land to be given to widen the approach road, the trust secretary said.

He said the land given by the government to the Waqf Board is recorded in the revenue records as agricultural land, so no construction can be done on it without changing its use.

“The trust has already applied for change in its land use and the administration has assured it of completing the entire process and approve the map within 15 days,” he said.

Dallas (US): Two historic military aircraft collided and crashed Saturday during an air show in Dallas, exploding into a ball of flames and sending black smoke billowing into the sky. It was not clear how many people were on board.

Emergency crews raced to the crash scene at the Dallas Executive Airport, about 16 kilometers from the city’s downtown. News footage from the scene showed crumpled wreckage of the planes in a grassy area inside the airport perimeter. Dallas Fire-Rescue told The Dallas Morning News that there were no reported injuries among people on the ground.

Anthony Montoya saw the two planes collide.

“I just stood there. I was in complete shock and disbelief,” said Montoya, 27, who attended the air show with a friend. “Everybody around was gasping. Everybody was bursting into tears. Everybody was in shock.”

Officials would not say how many people were on board the planes, but Hank Coates, president of the company that put on the airshow, said one of the planes, a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, typically has a crew of four to five people. The other, a P-63 Kingcobra fighter plane, has a single pilot.

No paying customers were on the aircraft, said Coates, of Commemorative Air Force, which also owned the planes. Their aircraft are flown by highly trained volunteers, often retired pilots, he said.

A team of National Transportation Safety Board investigators will arrive at the scene of the crash on Sunday.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said the NTSB had taken control of the crash scene, with local police and fire providing support.

“The videos are heartbreaking,” Johnson said on Twitter.

The planes collided and crashed around 1.20 pm, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The collision occurred during the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas show.

Victoria Yeager, the widow of famed Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager and herself a pilot, was also at the show. She didn’t see the collision, but did see the burning wreckage.

“It was pulverized,” said Yeager, 64, who lives in Fort Worth.

“We were just hoping they had all gotten out, but we knew they didn’t,” she said of those on board.

The B-17, a cornerstone of US air power during World War II, is an immense four-engine bomber used in daylight raids against Germany. The Kingcobra, a US fighter plane, was used mostly by Soviet forces during the war. Most B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II and only a handful remain today, largely featured at museums and air shows, according to Boeing.

Several videos posted on social media showed the fighter plane appearing to fly into the bomber, causing them to quickly crash to the ground and setting off a large ball of fire and smoke.

“It was really horrific to see,” Aubrey Anne Young, 37, of Leander. Texas, who saw the crash. Her children were inside the hangar with their father when it occurred. “I’m still trying to make sense of it.”

A woman next to Young can be heard crying and screaming hysterically on a video that Young uploaded to her Facebook page.

Air show safety – particularly with older military aircraft – has been a concern for years. In 2011, 11 people were killed in Reno, Nevada, when a P-51 Mustang crashed into spectators. In 2019, a bomber crashed in Hartford, Connecticut, killing seven people. The NTSB said then that it had investigated 21 accidents since 1982 involving World War II-era bombers, resulting in 23 deaths.

Wings Over Dallas bills itself as “America’s Premier World War II Airshow,” according to a website advertising the event. The show was scheduled for November 11-13, Veterans Day weekend, and guests were to see more than 40 World War II-era aircraft. Its Saturday afternoon schedule of flying demonstrations included the “bomber parade” and “fighter escorts” that featured the B-17 and P-63.

Videos of previous Wings Over Dallas events depict vintage warplanes flying low, sometimes in close formation, on simulated strafing or bombing runs. The videos also show the planes performing aerobatic stunts.

The FAA was also launching an investigation, officials said.