Week in Review: April 18-24

M. S. Dhoni.

Indian spiritual leader Satya Sai Baba succumbed to heart failure on Sunday in the pilgrim town of Puttaparthi, in Andhra Pradesh. Sai Baba, 85, had been terminally ill for three weeks. His personal assitant and his nephew are the leading contenders to replace him as the head of Shri Satya Sai Central Trust, which is believed to have assets worth Rs40,000 crore. Anna Hazare accused Congress leaders of seeking to derail the process of drafting the Jan Lokpal Bill via a smear campaign against lawyer Shanti Bhushan, whom he appointed as the co-chairman of the panel in charge of making the new law. The Congress and the BJP wanted Bhushan to quit the panel after news reports said that he was allotted land in Noida at subsidised rates by the Mayawati government. In response Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi, told Hazare that she does not support or encourage the politics of smear campaigns. “You should have no doubt of my commitment in the fight for probity in public life,” she said. “I strongly support the institution of a lokpal that is consistent with the practices and conventions of our parliamentary democracy.” Former Samajwadi party leader Amar Singh handed to the Delhi police an audio CD where Bhushan was heard offering to fix a judge for Rs4crore. Bhushan claimed that the CD was doctored but the Central Forensic Science Laboratory vouched for the authenticity of the recording.

The Supreme Court pointed to the Planning Commission the yawning gap between India’s economic prowess and poverty-eradication measures saying, “We can’t have two Indias. You want the world to believe that we are the strongest emerging economy, but millions of poor and hungry people are a stark contrast.” On the suggestion of the petitioner organisation, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, the court directed the government to release 10 million tonnes of grains to the 150 poorest districts in the country. In another judgment, following a petition by NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan that had alleged that nearly half of the children engaged in circuses have been trafficked from Nepal, the Supreme Court ordered the government to ban the employment of children in circuses across the country.

In Time’s magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people, Indian cricket captain M. S. Dhoni was ranked (52) above US President Barack Obama (86) and soccer icon Lionel Messi (87). Dhoni was the only Indian sportsperson to make the list. The magazine described Dhoni as “captain fantastic”. The Shiv Sena called for a bandh in Ratnagiri to protest against the building of the 9,900MW Jaitapur nuclear power plant. State industries minister Narayan Rane accused the Shiv Sena of opposing the nuclear power plant at the behest of 11 corporate houses. “We have information that 11 corporate houses offered Rs500 crore to a political party to scuttle the Jaitapur project in the Konkan region,” Rane said. “The party in question is none other than Shiv Sena.” A day after the bandh, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said that there was no room for a rethink on the multi-crore nuclear power project, while Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh recommended that the government delay it. “The issue raised by the agitators in Ratnagiri are rationally justifiable, particularly in light of what happened in Japan,” said Ramesh. “I am not advocating complete rewind or the fast forwarding of the project, but the government must press the pause button instead of using bullets to deal with protestors.”

To prevent waterborne diseases in the summer, the BMC decided to crackdown on unauthorised vendors who sell water-based street food and drinks such as pani puri, golas and nimbu pani. “We will impound the stalls and food items so that the vendors don’t come back,” said Chandrashekhar Rokde, deputy municipal commissioner. A drive conducted by the Food and Civil Supplies Department revealed that 42.20 lakh bogus ration cards were in circulation in Maharashtra. The urban areas of Mumbai and Thane topped the list with nearly 10 lakh fake ration cards found in these areas. In response to hikes in tax rates for Indian-made foreign liquor, bars and restaurants across the city announced that they would raise prices as much as 233 per cent. An IPS officer from Gujarat, who claimed to have attended Gujarat CM Narendra Modi’s meeting on February 27, 2002, filed an affidavit against Modi for encouraging communal violence during the Godhra riots, alleging that he told government officials that it was time to let the Hindus vent their anger. “This time the situation warranted that the Muslims be taught a lesson to ensure such incidents do not recur every again,” Sanjay Bhatt quoted Modi as having said. However, former Gujarat police chief K. Chakravarty said that Bhatt was not present at that meeting.