For Ratnabala Patnaik, the mother in-law of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s daughter, it was a long wait of seven years. On Tuesday, the wait came to a pleasant end when Gursharan Kaur, wife of the PM, paid a visit to her house at Kharavela Nagar here in the city.
Ratnabala served Odia dishes like “parantha,” curd and sweets to Ms Kaur who happily relished them. “It feels very good. I cannot express my feelings in words,” Ms Kaur told waiting reporters. Mrs Kaur went to Ratnabala’s house soon after the Prime Minister left for KIIT University.
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SC notice to state on noida land issue
AGE CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, Jan. 3
The Noida Extension land acquisition row, attaining the dimension of a big political issue between Congress and BSP ahead of the Utter Pradesh Assembly elections, once again reached the Supreme Court on Tuesday with some farmers questioning the Mayawati government order acquiring their land for private developers.
A bench of Justices R.M. Lodha and H. L. Gokhale admitted their appeal against the Allahabad high court order dismissing their plea for return of their land and issued notice to the UP government and Noida Authority.
The farmers, led by Sanjeev Kumar, while questioning the manner in which their land was acquired in the name of industrial development.
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Crash aid: SC to go into montreal convention
AGE CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, Jan. 3
The Supreme Court on Tuesday decided to examine whether international standards laid down by the Montreal Convention on compensation for air disasters would apply to 158 victims of the Mangalore air crash.
According to the norms laid down by the convention, the kin of each dead passenger would be entitled to a minimum compensation of `75 lakh even as the government opposed it describing the formula as “unreasonable and absurd”. Taking cognisance of a petition filed by Abdus Salam and four members of his family seeking to enforce the convention norms, a bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Verma issued notice to the Centre and Air India.
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Naveen urges PM for special status to Orissa
age correspondent
Bhubaneswar, Jan. 3
Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh urging him to accord Special Category State (SCS) status to the state.
Mr Patnaik, while sharing dais with Dr Singh at the 99th Indian Science Congress here at the KIIT University campus, handed over him the memorandum mentioning the justification of the SCS demand.
Orissa has been unsuccessfully pressing for SCS status since 1979. Former chief minister Nilamani Routray had first raised the issue at a National Development Council (NDC) meeting. The demand gathered momentum in 1998 Lok Sabha polls when it found place in the joint election manifesto of the BJD-BJP.
The ruling BJD had which dropped it from its manifesto in 2000.