Binayak Sen demands scrapping of the Posco Project

Source The Indian Express

Human rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen on Saturday demanded immediate
scrapping of the Posco project. He said the State Government was going
out of its way to support the company. Sen was delivering the fifth
Loknath Memorial Lecture here.

Sen said the State Government was turning a blind eye to people’s sufferings in the name of industrialisation.

He
said the State Government had submitted an undertaking in the High
Court that it would not use force to press its case as far as land
acquisition for the Posco project was concerned. “But with beginning of
the land acquisition and deployment of security forces, it has become
evident that the promise has been broken,” he said. Sen also flayed the
Government for suspension of Dhinkia Sarpanch Sisir Mohapatra on charges
of conducting palli sabhas illegally. Sen, who returned from South
Korea after receiving the Gwangju Award for Human Rights for 2011 a week
back, said he had raised the Posco issue at the award ceremony which
was also attended by the South Korean Prime Minister.

Speaking
on sedition charges levelled against him, Sen said the People’s Union
for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has launched a nationwide campaign demanding
repealing of the “black laws” in the country, including laws on
sedition, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the Unlawful
Activities (Prevention) Act. Stating that the governments use sedition
provisions to target people opposing it, Sen said PUCL would submit a
memorandum to Parliament with 10 lakh signatures demanding abolition of
the law.

“We are planning to submit the memorandum with signatures of a million people to Parliament in the Winter Session,” Sen said. http://ibnlive.in.com/news/scrap-posco-project-binayak-sen/155188-60-117.html

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Women are entitled to Father's property : Supreme Court

Source The Pioneer

aiming share in their father’s ancestral property have a reason to cheer. In a landmark judgement, the Supreme Court has held that they will be entitled to an equal share in their father’s estate even if such cases were adversely settled against them before 2005 when the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 was amended, or by any other law. 

The case relates to a woman from Karnataka who was denied equal share in her father’s property. The petitioner Prema had relied on the Karnataka Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 1990, by which unmarried daughters became entitled to equal share as sons in father’s estate in the absence of a will.

But the Act came into force on July 30, 1994 by when a preliminary decree passed by a Munsif court at Srirangapatna on August 11, 1992 decided her share in the ancestral property to be one-twenty-eight part. Prema claimed two-seventh part of the property under the new law. Both the trial court and the Karnataka High Court rejected her claim on the ground that her fate was sealed with the trial court decree. But the apex court saw reason to accept her appeal.

A Bench of Justices GS Singhvi and KSP Radhakrishnan said, “By the preliminary decree, shares of the parties were determined but the actual partition or division had not taken place.”

It noted that the petitioner sought benefit of a law when the decree passed by lower court was not yet final. “If law governing the parties is amended before conclusion of the final decree proceedings, the party benefited by such amendment can make a request to the court to take cognisance of the amendment and give effect to the same,” the Bench added.

This decision assumes significance since the ruling would have a bearing across the country after the Centre amended the Hindu Succession Act 1956 providing equal property rights to daughters (married or unmarried) in family property. 

Since the amended law came into force at a time when the final decree of partition was yet to be passed, the court said, “The appellant had every right to seek enlargement of her share by pointing out that the discrimination practiced against the unmarried daughter had been removed by the legislative intervention and there is no reason why the court should hesitate in giving effect to an amendment made by the State legislature.”

On the scope of Section 6A of the Karnataka Act, the Bench said that it aimed to enlarge the ambit of benefits to unmarried daughters. Applying this thought to the case at hand, the Bench said, “With a view to achieve the goal of equality enshrined in Articles 14 and 15(1) of the Constitution and to eliminate discrimination against daughters.” It gave Prema permission to move an appropriate application under the amended Act to claim a higher share of property to remove the discrimination and to bring it in conformity with Articles 14 and 15 of Constitution. http://www.dailypioneer.com/340582/Women-entitled-to-father%E2%80%99s-estate-SC.htmlhttp://www.dailypioneer.com/340582/Women-entitled-to-father%E2%80%99s-estate-SC.htmlhttp://www.dailypioneer.com/340582/Women-entitled-to-father%E2%80%99s-estate-SC.html

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Arundhati Roy's two new books: Broken Republic and Walking with the Comrades

NEW DELHI: They emerged suddenly shouting slogans - 'Arundhati Roy murdabad' and 'Bharat mata ki jai' - when the writer-activist was making a point on paid news. The three young men threw unsigned pamphlets on the stage and caused a 45-second interruption before being whisked away by police.


"I paid them to do that," Roy joked, drawing laughter from a packed gathering at the Amphitheatre in the India Habitat Centre on Friday evening. It had been an engrossing conversation till then between Roy and economist Amit Bhaduri at the evening launch of her two books, Broken Republic and Walking with the Comrades. And it stayed that way despite the brief disruption.

"The colonization of the land of the poor is at the heart of the unfolding civil war in the country," said Roy. She applauded the resistance of the poorest people who have stood against the richest mining corporations in the world. Yet, the corporations and those who support them seem to be like "lazy predators" waiting for an opportune moment to strike. "We are facing the prospect of a militarized democracy, though that might sound as an oxymoron," she said.

Roy said the institutions that sustain democracy are being "hollowed out". She recalled how as a child she stole carrots from her teacher's garden. "I would then plant back the top. That's what is happening today. We just retain the ritual of democracy," she said.

Bhaduri offered a less pessimistic view. He said Indian democracy is something like "now you see it, now you don't". In other words, it was prevalent in some areas of our life, missing in others.

Roy also explained the need to sell her books to an elite audience that had no idea of the lives she wrote about, especially about the adivasis in Dantewada. Literature of this kind has been written in regional languages and is read by many in those back of beyond areas, she said. "This is the last train in the station," she said.

The conversation was followed by a spunky performance by the agit-rock-reggae band, The Ska Vengers. In the heat and the humidity, they sang with enthusiasm about justice and corruption. They looked cool. And they made you feel optimistic.

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Two faces of Strauss-Kahn

At Paris' prestigious Sciences Po university, where Strauss-Kahn gave economics classes for two years before he was tapped to head the IMF, his former students told Reuters they were excited to have a famous professor." "He was pretty popular, it was neat to have a well-known professor." said one lady student.
Still, she recalled being made to feel ill at ease by a "diabolic and severe" look Strauss Kahn gave female students sitting in the front row. "It wasn't at all pleasant, and not like a professor," said Margaux, adding her girlfriends had also noticed his gaze.

Of course it was not all one-way traffic. "Women would hit on him as much as he hit on women," says Pauline Blanchet, a former Sciences Po student and volunteer political campaign helper for Strauss-Kahn. Read all Sphere: Related Content

Kandhamal riots - imprisonemnt and fine for Three

RI to three persons for involvement in Kandhamal riots
PTI – 25 minutes ago

Phulbani (Orissa), May 20 (PTI) A fast track court in Orissa''s Kandhamal district today sentenced three persons to rigorous imprisonment for three years for their involvement in rioting and arson in the December 2007 riots in the communally sensitive district.

Addition Session Judge Sobhan Kunar Das sentenced the trio to RI and also slapped a fine of Rs 1,000 on each of the convicts in connection with riots and torching of houses at Budurukia village under Raikia police station on December 26, 2007.

The violence had its genesis in the attack and pelting of stones on Christmas revellers at Barakhama in the district on the previous day.

The incident had evoked large scale protest and spread to other parts of the tribal-dominated district in which three persons died.Source Sphere: Related Content