The Tribune – First Vidhan Sabha session on March 19

Sarbjit Dhaliwal, Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 10. The first session of the newly elected Vidhan Sabha will begin on March 19. On the first day, oath will be administered to the MLAs. The next day, the legislators will elect the Speaker. After that, tributes will be paid to politicians and other persons who passed away in recent months.

It has already been announced that Parkash Singh Badal will take oath as Chief Minister on March 14 at Chappar Chiri. Following this, oath will be administered to cabinet ministers. In 2007, Badal had designated all ministers as cabinet ministers and no one was made minister of state or deputy minister. It was a single-tier cabinet. He is likely to follow the same pattern this time too.

The Punjab Governor will address the House on March 21. He would present the philosophy of the SAD-BJP government before the state people. What will be the agenda of the government for the next five years will be revealed in the address.

Following this, there will be a debate on the address and the Chief Minister will reply to the points raised in the debate on March 26.

Sources said each department had been told to prepare a note keeping in view the promises made in the election manifesto. In the Governor’s address, the government’s plan to fulfill the promises would be revealed. Chief Secretary SC Aggarwal has briefed all secretaries in this regard.

Villagers to attend Badal’s swearing-in

Muktsar: Apart from VIPs like West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and National Democratic Alliance senior leadership, there would be a number of residents from SAD patron Parkash Singh Badal’s native village who would be attending his swearing-in at Chhapar Chiri on March 14.

On the occasion when Badal would become the CM for the fifth time, a large number of residents of Badal village would be taken to the venue in private vehicles. “We have invited all our supporters for ceremony. We have also made transport arrangements for those who do not own a car,” said Tejinder Singh Middukhera, a Badal aide.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20120311/punjab.htm#3

The Tribune – Jat agitation; Soon, SC guidelines to tackle protesters with iron hand; 26 trains cancelled on Hisar-Rewari route

R Sedhuraman, Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, March 10. At a time when rail and road blockades are becoming the preferred protest tool of Jats and other agitators across the country, the Supreme Court is in the process of issuing guidelines for the Central and state governments to sternly deal with the protesters.

A Bench of Justices GS Singhvi and SJ Mukhopadhaya is hearing a bunch of PILs on the issue. Two of the PILs relate to Jat agitations — one in Haryana in the wake of the police action against those responsible for the anti-Dalit violence in Hisar’s Mirchpur village and another in Uttar Pradesh for demanding job quota for the community.

Another PIL has been filed by former Uttar Pradesh Police chief Prakash Singh in the wake of a prolonged road blockade in Manipur that had snapped surface transport service to the state and created a scarcity of essential commodities.

At one of the hearings, the Bench had asked the Centre to come up with suggestions for dealing with such agitations effectively. In its proposals, the Centre has said that states should swing into action immediately on receipt of intelligence reports on proposed agitations to block rail, road or air traffic.

Such information should be instantly conveyed to the state Home Secretary, who would then direct the Director General of Police to prevent or remove such blockades.

If the agitators could not be dispersed within 12 hours, the state Home Secretary should request his Central counterpart to direct the central forces or any other paramilitary force to initiate “desired preventive steps” immediately to maintain or restore public order within 24 hours.

The state Home Secretary “shall personally supervise” the situation under the direct supervision and control of the Union Home Secretary.

Under the Centre’s proposals, the District Magistrate would assess the damage to public property and take legal steps to recover the loss as if “the same were arrears of land revenue against the delinquents individually”.

The DM would also initiate in the court of the District Judge the mandatory prosecution of persons involved in acts of rioting, destruction of property and other forms of violence. The district court would dispose of the cases within six months.

Ex-police chief Prakash Singh has suggested through his counsel Rohit Singh that if a stir continued beyond 24 hours, the Divisional Commissioner/Range DIG should take charge of the situation. If the agitation persisted for more than three days, the Principal Secretary (Home) or the DGP should intervene. If all these steps failed to yield any result in five days, the Chief Justice of the state High Court should be informed for appropriate orders. The persons or groups responsible for organising the blockade would be penalised by imposing collective fines and filing cases.

The apex court Bench has made it clear that its guidelines would be based on the Centre’s proposals.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20120311/main3.htm

The Hindu – Prospects of justice for rape victims in free fall

Despite sustained campaigns and legal changes, convictions have declined steadily

Praveen Swami

New Delhi, 11 March 2012. From the near-illegible notes scrawled by investigators at the Prasad Nagar police station, we know this: ever since 2005, the young woman who walked in through their doors last month had been stalked by her brother-in-law, given flowers and chocolate and beatings.

There was the time, a bottle of rat-poison in his hand, he threatened to kill himself if she did not declare her love; there was the time he showed up with an affidavit on Rs. 50 stamp paper, promising to marry her.

Then, there were the times he raped her.

The files do not record what led the woman to summon up the extraordinary courage it takes to file a criminal complaint for rape, but this we can be certain of: she is less likely than ever before to receive justice from India’s criminal justice system.

Shameful figures

In 1973, when the National Crime Records Bureau first published nationwide statistics on rape, 44.28% of perpetrators — almost half — were being convicted by trial courts. In spite of years of hard-fought struggles by women’s rights groups, and landmark Supreme Court judgments, the conviction rate has fallen to 26.5% — just about a quarter. The decade-on-decade conviction rate has been in free fall: to 36.83% in 1983, 30.30% in 1993 and 26.12% in 2003.

How dangerous is your city?

Maharashtra reported a 13.9% conviction rate in 2010, while Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal both recorded 13.7%. Karnataka stood at 15.4%. Jammu and Kashmir had the lowest conviction rate nationwide: a disgraceful 2.6%.

India’s rape crisis in 2010

Lawyer Rebecca John, who has worked on the frontlines of sexual assault prosecutions, holds declining investigation responsible. “I can tell you from personal experience,” she said, “that nine out of ten cases fall apart because of shoddy investigation.” “There often isn’t a single fingerprint to link the perpetrator to the crime scene, let alone anything else.”

In 2009, Delhi began issuing SAFE — short for sexual assault forensic evidence — kits to all major hospitals, in the hope of improving evidence collection. “The new systems,” says Pushpa Singh, head of obstetrics and gynaecology at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, which has been using SAFE kits for the last year and a half, “make evidence-gathering far more accurate and useful.”

The fact is, though, that SAFE hasn’t boosted conviction rates — often, an official familiar with the procedures said, because “protocol isn’t followed.” “The police accompanying the victims aren’t sensitised on how to deal with them; clothes and personal articles aren’t stored properly; the temperature at which vaginal swabs are kept is sometimes inaccurate. The evidence is often useless.”

Legal measures haven’t helped much either. In case after case, the Supreme Court has set landmark standards for rape trials — holding, among other things, that the testimony of a victim did not need independent corroboration, and insisting that women officers alone deal with victims. In trial courts, though, perpetrators are still walking free.

In not one of five 2012 cases surveyed by The Hindu had forensic tools been used to link the alleged perpetrator to the crime scene; in one, involving a 14-year-old Bihar resident kidnapped by a friend, there was no paperwork to suggest that the alleged perpetrators had even been tested for a DNA match.

“Frankly,” says Pinky Anand, an eminent New Delhi-based lawyer who has worked on several key women’s rights cases, “I think we need to focus less on the law, and more on the institutions which make the law work. That’s where the real problem is.”

(With inputs from Devesh Pandey and Bindu Shajan Perappadan)

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2982321.ece?homepage=true

Netherlands 23 december till 2 January, Den Haag & Amsterdam

From Den Haag to Delft and back  
30 December 2011

Den Haag, Leidschenveen, RandstadRail station,
RET Metro E, HTM TramTrain 3 & 4
TramTrain 3 to Centrum West

Den Haag, Leidschenveen, RandstadRail station,
RET Metro E, HTM TramTrain 3 & 4
TramTrain 3 to Centrum West

Den Haag, Leidschenveen, RandstadRail station,
RET Metro E, HTM TramTrain 3 & 4
TramTrain 4 to De Uithof via Centraal Station

Walking home from Den Haag Centraal Station

Den Haag Centraal Station, Turfmarkt

Den Haag, Spui
Underground station for HTM Trams 2 & 7 and TramTrains 3 & 4
‘Overground’ HTM Trams 1, 9, 10, 15, 16

To see more Belgium and Netherlands public transport pictures :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12445197@N05/sets/72157622685920411/

To see more Belgium and Netherlands gurdwara pictures :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12445197@N05/sets/72157622147381380/

More Belgium / Netherlands pictures to follow
 Harjinder Singh
Man in Blue

Special to the Tribune – Victor Dalip Singh’s shotgun to go under the hammer in UK

Shyam Bhatia in London

An unusual weapon specially made for the eldest son of Maharaja Dalip Singh will go under the hammer here on April 4.

Commissioned for Prince Victor Dalip Singh when he was all of 15, the .12 bore hammer gun was made by J. Purdey and Sons.

Bonhams auctioneers have put its price between £2000 and £3,000.

The gun is thought to have been used for many of the shooting parties that were hosted by Dalip Singh at his country estate of Elveden in Norfolk, which was sold to the Earl of Iveagh in 1894 after Dalip Singh’s death in Paris.

Victor, like his younger brother Frederick, was one of the best shots of his day. British records show how the two brothers hosted a shooting party at Elveden in the early 1890s when they bagged 846 partridges before lunch, stopping only because they ran out of cartridges.

Born in 1866 and baptized at the royal chapel in Windsor, Victor’s full name was Victor Albert Jay Dalip Singh. He was the eldest son of Maharaja Dalip Singh and godson of Queen Victoria.

Raised on his father’s estate at Elveden in Norfolk, he was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, before attending Sandhurst military college under a special Cadet-ship in 1887 after the personal intervention of his godmother (Indians normally being disqualified from attending). Later, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the 1st (Royal) Dragoons, and by 1889 he was based at Halifax, Nova Scotia as Honorary Aide-de-Camp to General Sir John Ross, then commander of forces in British North America.

In 1894, the same year he was promoted to Captain, he married Lady Anne Coventry, the youngest daughter of the 9th Earl of Coventry and whom he had first met while at Cambridge. The marriage was made possible through the intervention of the Prince of Wales, later Edward V11 and the wedding at St. Peter’s Church in Eaton Square was attended by Queen Victoria herself.

One of Victor’s best friends was George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, whom he first met at Eton and who shared his love of shooting and gambling. In Lord Carnarvon’s game book for 1895, both brothers are recorded shooting grouse alongside him at Delnadamph Lodge (part of the British royal family’s Balmoral estate in Scotland) throughout August, before returning to Carnarvon’s estate, Highclere, to start shooting on September 2, with 51 days of partridge shooting over the next three months and many of the parties consisting only of Carnarvon and Victor, accompanied by Lord Ashburton.

An all-time record three-day bag was recorded in late November, with a total bag of 10,807, including 5,671 pheasant, 16 partridges, 43 hares, four woodcock, 5,033 rabbits, and 40 various. The guns were Lord Carnarvon, both Victor and Frederick Dalip Singh, Earl de Grey, Lord Ashburton and others.

Victor’s problem was his addiction to gambling. Documents seen by The Tribune show that his debts in 1888, many of them as a result of his compulsive betting and gambling, amounted to more than £17,000, or £5 million in current day values.

Repeated appeals to the India Office to help Victor clear his debts, prompted one senior official, Major General Sir Owen Burne, to comment: “All things considered, I adhere to the opinion which I have already expressed that to clear Victor once more is a hopeless task, that in six months time he will come down upon us again in a similar manner, and that he is devoid of all principle and honour.

“In these circumstances I should ‘let him go’, continue his allowance of £1,500 a year and say that he may go to Canada if he wishes to do so, and be responsible for nothing more.”

Victor was finally declared bankrupt in 1902 and spent the rest of his life in exile in Paris where he remained throughout the First World War. He died in 1918 of a heart attack, aged 51, in Monte Carlo, where he is buried.

 http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20120311/main6.htm

Dawn – Restoring 1973’s Constitution biggest achievement: Gilani

Islamabad, 11 March 2012. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Saturday said that the passage of amendments to restore 1973 Constitution in its original form without having simple majority was the biggest achievement of his government.

Speaking to media representatives here at Prime Minister House, the prime minister said that restoration of 1973 Constitution was a challenging task when he took over as the chief executive four years ago.

The government accomplished the task with the support of other political parties by passing three constitutional amendments, he added.

He said it was the credit of this democratic government which had completed four years of its term and implemented 80 per cent of its manifesto to provide relief to the people.

He expressed the hope that the government would achieve consensus in the Parliament on the issue of Accountability Law like it had done with regard to the passage of the amendments.

The government had also succeeded in 80 per cent implementation of the Charter of Democracy (CoD) signed between Benazir Bhutto and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, he said.

Referring to other achievements, he said the government had taken decisions on foreign policy in the national interests, including access to the European Union market, election to the Security Council of the United Nations and improved relations with neighbours.

The prime minister said there was no political victimisation during his tenure, no arm twisting and no horse-trading to win political affiliations.

Talking about the challenges being faced by his government during the four years, the premier said energy crisis, extremism and terrorism remained the biggest challenges, which were inherited by it.

He said the government had been taking practical steps to face these challenges and provide relief to the people. He said the government would provide relief to the masses in the next budget in accordance with the available resources.

http://www.dawn.com/2012/03/10/restoring-1973s-constitution-biggest-achievement-gilani.html