STATESCAN
  • Castle Conflicts
  • VC and his CV
  • Shaking their Fists
  • Here's to Atlanta
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  • The Nonsense File
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  • Event Scan

    • Castle conflict
    Municipal commissioner shifted after denying licence to hotel


    Gothic grandeur: Amrutha Castle, the latest hotel in Hyderabad which is styled on a European castle

    ANDHRA PRADESH
    The marble marvel that is the Birla Mandir in Hyderabad now has competition in the form of a castle styled on the lines of the Royal Castle of Neuschwanstein nestling in the Alpine mountains of Southern Bavaria. The Rs 16 crore fairy-tale castle--its gothic architecture contrasting starkly with the Moghul designs of the city--is the newest hotel in Hyderabad!
    If the silver towers and turrets of Amrutha Castle stand in mute tribute to the six-member team of European architects which designed the structure, the interiors are rich in medieval memorabilia--knights in shining armour, crossbows from Spain, swords and stained glass from Holland--all done up by designer Zarine Khan.
    "I have built this monument to gain a permanent place in the hearts of Hyderabadis," says the builder, Rajiv Reddy. But the municipal corporation decided that he did not build by the rules and refused to grant licence to the hotel which is right opposite the secretariat.
    The Hyderabad Municipal Commissioner K. Sujatha Rao also maintained that the builder had encroached upon government land.
    "I am innocent. There are some people who cannot bear to see people who are happy and who create beautiful things in life. There is a deep rooted conspiracy against me, engineered by sadistic officers just to put me in bad light," claims Rajiv who is one of the biggest builders in the south, having built close to 2.5 million sq ft. Even earlier he had been embroiled in an FSI problem, but had been given a clean chit. "This controversy too will pass," he says confidently.
    According to Sujatha Rao, the hotel was built on land earmarked for recreation after the hotelier managed to secure a government order in his favour. The builder had left very little area in the cellar for parking vehicles and had converted most of the space into rooms and a banquet hall. The fire service department also refused to grant a safety certificate as there was no provision to ensure safe passage of the inmates in an emergency.

    Getting it regularised:
    Rajiv Reddy         		But Rajiv Reddy denies encroaching on government land and claims to have the documents to prove that the whole accusation is farcical. "This land has been in my possession from 1985 and no alterations have been made to the boundaries." While applying for a licence, he had asked for 3,200 sq yards for the project. The MCH now says he holds 719 sq yards in excess. "If somebody down the line has given wrong measurement then it is their misfortune," he contends and threatens to file a defamation suit against those involved in "dragging my name into this controversy".
    Rajiv pooh-poohs the talk that his friend and minister for municipal administration and urban development, Tammineni Sitaram, helped him build the hotel. "I spent three years travelling around the world for designs for this hotel. The Sunday Times of London has featured the hotel and praised it. But the people I build it for want to drag me into a controversy? I do not understand this at all."
    About the parking lot, he says: "Whatever was shown to the government has been maintained, except for the place where the transformer and generator have been kept." As for the fire service department’s charge, he contends that the problem does not arise since the Castle does not come under the MSRP highrise regulations and does not strictly warrant a certificate from the director of fire services. He adds: "There is mention of this even in the plans released by the MCH (municipal corporation of Hyderabad)."
    But commissioner Sujatha Rao proved a hard taskmaster. On a visit to the hotel for a check, the swimming pool on the fifth floor caught her eye. She invited professors from the engineering college of Warangal to check out on the structural safety of the pool. They apparently opined that it would be safe for 80 years.
    With the corporation refusing to give the occupancy certificate on the ground that there have been several violations, the matter was taken to the chief minister. He regularised the building, asking Rajiv Reddy to pay the penal amount, which could be to the tune of Rs 2.17 crore.
    "My Castle is an entrepreneur’s gift to the city of Hyderabad. Take it in the right spirit. For, if this kind of harassment continues, I’ll take my business out of AP," says Reddy angrily. "I have given land worth crores of rupees to the MCH for widening roads and they have not given me a penny. Now they accuse me of land-grabbing. It is shameful." Whether he feels vindicated or not, Sujatha Rao who was shifted to the women and child welfare department applied for long study leave, saying she has been waiting for such an opportunity.
    --LALITA IYER
    VC and his CV
    Did he rise up the ladder on a fake degree?

    Charges of cheating:
    VC Dr Indra Pal Singh Yadav     		UTTAR PRADESH
    The Chandra Shekhar Azad Agriculture University, Kanpur, is named after a freedom fighter remembered for upholding his values and courage of conviction. But today the university’s name is linked with corruption and cheating. Giving its image a body-blow was the charge that its vice-chancellor, Dr Indra Pal Singh Yadav, earned his prestigious post by submitting fake degrees and making inaccurate claims in his bio-data.
    Digging out the details: S.K. Singh (right)
    On April 13 he was suspended after a directive by the new Governor, Mohammed Shafi Kureshi. Dr Indra Pal Singh went to the High Court against this decision but his plea was turned down.
    The irregularities were first brought to light by Prof. S.K. Singh, general secretary of the teachers association. He not only launched an agitation but also wrote to the then Governor Motilal Vora demanding the ouster of the VC. When no action was taken, he filed a criminal case against Singh. Meanwhile, Surendra Mohan, revenue director, was asked to inquire into the allegations against the VC but he never submitted his report. Recently the government named A.P. Singh as commission chairman in place of Surendra Mohan and asked him to submit a report within three months.
    S.K. Singh, who made independent inquiries into the claims made in Dr Indra Pal Singh’s bio-data, came up with a shocker: the VC, having failed in the first year of his masters in economics, used a forged marksheet to gain admission in Bundelkhand University for pursuing his second year. He passed and even went on to do his Ph.D. His basic degree, though, was in agriculture. But in the bio-data he had allegedly shown that he had passed BA. Another claim was that he had been working as a teacher between 1968 and 1974 but actually he was only a student at that time, says S.K. Singh. It is not his qualifications alone that are under investigation. S.K. Singh has alleged that while the VC robbed the university of sheesham wood worth Rs 5 lakh, his first cousin who was put in charge of the university’s guest house made away with stone worth Rs 1 lakh. Yet another relative, who was appointed in the Etawah engineering college, is said to have auctioned off five Ambassador cars.
    His detractors also say that the VC appointed nearly 100 Yadavs in different posts in the university. Ironically, Dr Indra Pal Singh Yadav was handpicked by Mulayam Singh Yadav after charges of nepotism forced his predecessor, Uday Veer Singh Yadav, to make an inglorious exit.
    Giving a communal twist to his suspension, Indra Pal Singh Yadav, in a recent letter to Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, says that "Brahmins", who could not stomach the fact that a backward man has been made the VC, plotted against him.
    --KRISHAN SAITH
    Shaking their fists
    Bar girls hit the streets against government policy

    Taking the issue to the streets:
    Bar girls demonstrate in their garish finery     		MAHARASHTRA
    The BJP-Shiv Sena government’s philosophy can be summed up in one line--React in haste and withdraw in a hurry. A number of ‘moral’ decisions that it took were to pacify a section of society but the government was equally prompt in retracting, when a larger, more influential section protested. The latest furore testing the government’s moral credentials is the decision to keep women serving as waitresses and dancers, away from bars at a ‘respectable’ hour.
    The decision brought the women out on the streets, denouncing the government and asserting their right to work. "Who will give us work with these restrictions?" one of them screamed into a mike. "We too have the right to work."
    The women, who were protesting under the aegis of the Maharashtra Bar and Restaurant Ladies’ Union, fear that their livelihood is at stake with the government trying to impose a time restriction of 8.30 p.m. They argue that other women professionals like doctors and those in the hotel industry have no such restrictions. The controversy has its roots in a meeting the residents of Mulund, a Mumbai suburb, had with senior police officials last year. The residents alleged that the bars were a corrupting influence on youngsters of the area. Earlier this year, some bar girls were molested while returning home late at night.
    Matters took a decisive turn when Minister of State for Culture Anil Deshmukh conducted surprise raids on some of the city’s bars which employed women. He was outraged at the women dancing to film songs. Many of the bars had permission for dancing girls claiming to propagate Indian dance and culture. Furious, the minister decided to revoke the licence of all such bars which drew large crowds because of the dancers.
    However, the government was taken aback by the fury of the bar women. While the new rule will affect thousands of women, it is common knowledge that their protests would have come to naught without the backing of the influential bars’ and hoteliers’ lobby. The government will have few backers for the new law. "More posh bars like Topaz have a regular clientele of politicians who spend thousands of rupees in one night," points out a police officer of MRA Marg police station. "Some of the prettier women earn even up to Rs 25,000 in one night!" he claims.
    The so-called upmarket bars are even attracting international business executives. "Some of the women are more prettier than the top film heroines. They dress very well and their make-up is classy," says a regular visitor. And if the right customer comes their way it could well be a night of notes of them--either garland or shower, of the Rs 100 or Rs 500 kind.
    "Only people with black money can afford to blow up money like this," says the police officer. But the allegation is that many of the smaller bars serve as pick-up joints. It would, however, be too sweeping to paint all waitresses as prostitutes.
    The government is sending confusing signals as the keeper of Mumbai’s morality. While it wants to clamp down on the women in bars, there seems to be no move to curb the increasing number of women soliciting openly on the busiest streets of Mumbai, in broad daylight. Some of them do so even in the presence of cops.
    In keeping with his record of retracting, Chief Minister Manohar Joshi has assured the waitresses that he will look into the problem.
    A problem that will hit not only the bar owners and employees but also several powerful politicians who have a stake in such bars. Will the CM be forced to dance to their tunes?
    --MARIA ABRAHAM
    Here’s to Atlanta
    A jumbo team almost made it to the US
    KARNATAKA
     As government delegations go this would have surely taken the cake had it taken off. It had 42 members who were to jet it to Atlanta ostensibly to study the arrangements made for the Olympics and adapt these for the National Games in Bangalore later this month!
    Atlanta had begun making preparations even before the Olympic flame had been dimmed in Barcelona, but the delegation which had on its rolls Sports Minister Ajay Kumar Sarnaik, MLAs and government officials had planned to complete its study in just two days. The better part of the 20 days in the US was to have been spent sight-seeing, including a trip to Disneyland and, according to a tour operator, a three-day cruise to Mexico. Making up the numbers were the spouses, all of them part of the delegation! Among the couples were Sarnaik and his wife Lakshmi, legislative assembly deputy chairman Rani Satish and her husband R.N. Satish, Karnataka Sports Authority vice-chairman R. Rathan Singh and his wife Parvathi Bai, Sports Commissioner S.N. Borkar and his wife Surekha, MLA L.R. Shivarame Gowda and his wife and MLC Basavaraj Horatti and his wife Hemalatha, judo coach Divya Sharma and her husband Jeevan. The single members included MLAs Vatal Nagaraj, A.B. Patil and Mahadeva Prasad.
    Some of the legislators were even planning to enhance their tour by returning to India via Europe. And at what cost to the exchequer? Not less than Rs 80 lakh, by some estimates.
    When Chief Minister J.H. Patel signed his approval on the file, the list contained 24 names. Within a week, it had grown to 42. That was when the Citizens’ Action Group of Bangalore stepped in. It filed a petition in the High Court, accusing the government of wasting public money on an American jaunt.
    Predictably, it caused a furore and as a result the list is down to seven, with many even feigning ignorance of such a delegation. Of course, their spouses can get the best of action in Atlanta on their TV screens while they dream of the cruise to Mexico that never was.
    --M. D. RITI
    THE NONSENSE FILE : By THE COLONEL
    Laugh and be damned
    The commonest sights in India today are mynahs and Marutis. And the rarest items are Siberian cranes and simple humour.
    As a nation, we are devoid of a sense of humour. We can’t help it. After all, for millenniums we mastered only ponderous subjects like philosophy and mathematics. Unlike the British, we do not take humour seriously.
    Look what happened to our cricketers in England. Sidhu was ready and padded up to go one down in a match. As he is walking towards the stumps he learns that he is not in the playing eleven.
    Azaruddin, the captain, smiles sardonically at Sidhu’s predicament, the type of smile parents normally reserve for their idiot sons, and the cruel joke ends tragically. Sidhu walks out and trudges all the way back from Old Trafford to Mohali.
    We surely lack a sense of humour to understand that this cricket tragedy struck only because of a lack of sense of humour in our team. Sandeep Patil’s major observation on the debacle of the Indian team is that the physiotherapist did not do full justice to the team. What we need in the team, though, is not a physiotherapist but a humorist. Look again at the hue and cry raised at Phoolan Devi’s hijacking of the Shatabdi Express. Pray, what else was she expected to do? Surely the voters who elected her for her heroics do not expect the Queen of Chambal to do a sybarite chain-pulling act and pay a measly fine to the railways! Her shenanigans are after all cleared by the people’s court. This is functional democracy at its best.
    The criticism of our versatile former home minister Taslimuddin on his formidable criminal background--of being involved in as many as eight criminal cases including rape, extortion, murder attempts and dacoities--was muted in Parliament, as compared with the flak Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw drew a couple of years back. Maneckshaw, a brilliant General and equally brilliant wit, made the mistake of humorously remarking to a foreign correspondent that the story of the Indo-Pak war of 1971 would have been different had he been the chief of the army staff of Pakistan! Our government immediately deprived Maneckshaw of a couple of orderlies and probably an ambassadorship.
    And what a pandemonium we made in our Parliament when Nani Palkhiwala, our ambassador to the US, chivalrously bent down to fit out a pair of Kholapuri chappals on Lillian Carter, the mother of the then US President.
    Notwithstanding the lack of humour among our parliamentarians, they do provide occasional relief. Seeing them on TV recently was an exhilarating experience. A leading cartoonist doodled a cartoon of a child asking his mother to turn off a comic programme and shift to the parliamentary proceedings!
    We may have to wait for years to see parliamentarians of the likes of Piloo Mody or Pralhad Atre. Thank God for mercies like Indrajit Gupta, an erudite Parliamentarian. Atre, a member of the Maharashtra assembly, was a brilliant wit and orator, a boozer and a womaniser and a true polyglot. Once he was asked how effective he would be as one of the few opposition members in a massive Congress assembly. Pat came the reply: "If you visit a dairy farm, you will see many buffalo cows, but there is only one stud bull." Of course, the entire house was in splits even before he could complete the sentence.
    Lord give us a sense of humour, and give us more Modis, Atres and Guptas.
    KERALA
    No laughing matter
    There was no shortage of wit and jokes when the state’s humorists got together in Kozhikode recently. But the Narad Award Committee set up after the pow-wow will not exactly be a joke. The funny men are serious about giving an award to the ‘wag of the year’ on the death anniversary of Sanjayan, author of rib-tickling works.
    The first prize of Rs 1,003 will go to the most creative gossip-monger; consolation prizes await the also-rans. Just spin a yarn on half a page and dash it off to the committee based in Kozhikode. But it should be original and not lifted from any published work.
    The committee is chaired by noted satirist Kozhikodan and comprises the sharpest pens in the business. District Collector U.K.S. Chauhan will represent the administration.
    MADHYA PRADESH
    From Chambal to White House
    Not even Phoolan Devi can believe it. The Madhya Pradesh government has revealed that US President Bill Clinton has invited the queen of the ravines to dinner in the White House!
    Her election to Parliament has done the trick. Clinton was bowled by her passion for the downtrodden that he decided to host her a party. But the hitch is the passport.
    Her papers are pending with the regional passport authorities in Bhopal as the intelligence department has not given the green signal. If there is one person who can help the one-time queen of the Chambal, it is Chief Minister Digvijay Singh whom she has approached.
    DELHI
    Down in the damp
    Singing in the rain is passé, dancing in the rain is the rage now. This Mumbai passion has found ready takers in the capital. Some of them, a group of long-haired boys and the short-haired girls, were gyrating away at a famed night-spot when the artificially created rain drops fell plonk! plonk! on them. Just as the music had reached a raucous crescendo and the plonks began coming down in a splatter the speakers went dead. The ‘rain’ too stopped suddenly!
    Clearing the wet strands of hair from their eyes, the dancers tried to figure out who it was that was being the wet blanket on their fun. They didn’t have to look far. It was the over-zealous staff of Prime Minister Deve Gowda whose motorcade was passing by. They had turned the hose and speakers off. Don’t they know about the sins of all work and no play?
    ORISSA
    Special treatment
    In districts like Mayurbhanj in northern Orissa, it is the quacks who make hay because regular doctors stay away from the rural dispensaries. Some of the less qualified even drive around in their Marutis.
    Fifty-five year old Dr B.C. Patra, medical officer of Thakurmunda health centre, is an exception and is known to stay in area of his jurisdiction. Of course, for reasons more salacious than medical treatment.
    Recently the villagers locked him up inside the house of a junior employee in her early thirties, Kamala Biswal. He had been staying there overnight taking advantage of her husband’s absence. The police and the magistrate were able to save him but not his face. The angry villagers then gheraoed the police and stopped traffic.
    DELHI
    Just what the doctor ordered
    Incarcerated in the high security Tihar Jail in Delhi most prisoners have no option but to steel themselves to rigours of staying in a cramped, dimly lit cells. They often have to cope with damp and dingy conditions and revolting food.
    But there is way out of here. That is if one has the right connections and the right ‘conditions’. For example, the rich and the influential inmates usually make it to a hospital every once in a while.
    Illness can get one a stay in hospital where he gets comfort and better food apart form being able to meet his friends and relatives.
    Jail doctors are usually in cahoots with other officials and considerable money changes hands for the trip outside. Recently, however, one enterprising doc went one step further and sent his influential patient to the private Escorts Heart Institute, an initiative that almost cost him his job. Under the rules prisoners can be sent only to government hospitals. The doc, it is now believed, was jailed and later transferred out.
    EVENTSCAN
    Vora, Shiv Shankar chargesheeted
    The CBI has chargesheeted former governors Motilal Vora and P. Shiv Shankar along with former Union minister Ajit Panja and two top bureaucrats in the Jain Hawala case. With this, the total number of public servants chargesheeted in the case has gone up to 29.
    The chargesheets state that Vora accepted Rs 11 lakh, Shiv Shankar, Rs 26.94 lakh, and Panja Rs 5 lakh, from the Jains. Former SAIL chairman V. Krishnamurthy was also charged with accepting Rs 90 lakh from the Jains.
    Enron cleared
    The Central government is to extend a counter-guarantee to Enron’s Dabhol power project in Maharashtra. Valid for 12 years it applies to the 740 MW first phase costing $920 million. It has a ceiling of Rs 1,500 crore every year with a provision for nine per cent annual escalation.
    The power purchase agreement between Dabhol Power Company and the Maharashtra State Electricity Board is for 20 years. The guarantee assures DPC prompt payment towards power sold to MSEB.

    J.H. Patel, S. Nijalingappa at the Dal meet     		Countering Hegde
    On July 1, Karnataka Chief Minister J.H. Patel organised a state-level convention of Dal workers at Davangere, the textile capital of Karnataka, to counter a state-wide tour undertaken by expelled leader Ramakrishna Hegde.
    Although Patel did not mention Hegde by name, he was obviously referring to him when he narrated a ribald anecdote
    about a mischief-maker who created trouble between husband and wife.
    Senior statesman S. Nijalingappa attended, and begged Dal leaders to sink their differences.
    However, Hegde’s meetings, too, drew large crowds despite rain.
    New attorney-general
    Ashok M. Desai, senior advocate of the Supreme Court has been appointed attorney-general of India for three years.
    He had earlier served as solicitor-general during 1989-90 and had chaired the committee on administrative law of the International Bar Association during 1986-90.
    HP plane crash
    Nine people, including three Japanese tourists, were killed when a 17-seater Archana Airways plane crashed into the Kanda mountains in Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh on July 11.
    The accident occurred in almost the same area where a plane carrying former Punjab governor Surendra Nath and his family had crashed almost to the day two years ago.
    NC leader killed
    The bullet-riddled body of prominent National Conference leader and former MLA, Syed Ahmed Sayeed, was found by the police in Budgam near Srinagar recently. He had been kidnapped from his residence in Budgam district on July 11.
    Saeed is 19th in the list of former MLAs killed by militants in the last seven years.
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