At A Glance: August8, 2010

Cleric comes to ex-royal's rescue

Prominent Shia scholar and cleric Maulana Kalbe Jawaad on Thursday sprung a surprise by coming out in support of the erstwhile royal of Mahmoodabad who was suddenly deprived of his properties that he had retrieved after fighting a 32-year-long court battle. If it was the Supreme Court that had entitled Ameer Mohammad Khan of Mahmoodabad, to get back his family estates worth billions in different cities of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, it was an ordinance promulgated last week by President Pratibha Patil that brought him back to square one.

The local administration in Lucknow, Sitapur and Nainital resumed possession of the different properties on behalf of the Custodian of Enemy Property at amazing speed, leaving Khan at his wit's end. While Khan was incommunicado, Kalbe Jawaad chose to speak up for him. Questioning the ordinance that sought amendment in the Enemy Property Act, he told a press conference: "I fail to understand what prompted the Congress-led union government to promulgate such an ordinance which bars even a court of law to alter the status of a property as enemy property."

He said: "If the Supreme Court of India had entitled the Raja of Mahmoodabad to his family properties taken over by the government after his father migrated to Pakistan, simply because he had chosen to stay back in India, how could his properties be labelled as enemy properties?"

"I see this as a conspiracy of the Congress party against Muslims." Jawaad has urged the union government to withdraw the ordinance and restore the properties to the ex-royal. -IANS

Govt doctors to boycott OPD

Doctors of government hospitals in Uttarakhand on Thursday decided not to attend OPD from Friday (August7) to protest against the appointment of an IAS officer in health directorate. The doctors demanded that appointment of IAS officer Piyush Singh as director (administration) be cancelled, saying it amounted to "interference" in their functioning and that only a doctor should be nominated to the post. "They decided to boycott OPD from tomorrow (Friday) after the government refused to accept their demand," said Dr D.P. Joshi, general secretary of Prantiya Chiktsa Evam Swasthya Sewa Sangh. Joshi said if the government does not withdraw its order, the doctors would be forced to launch a general strike.

Four of a family die of food poisoning

Four members of a family, including two children, died due to suspected food poisoning at a village in Rudraprayag district on Thursday. Soon after having dinner, the members of the family belonging to Darmola village complained of vomiting and headache. Four of them died in the morning, Superintendent of Police Sweety Agrawal said. The other five members were immediately rushed to a nearby hospital where condition of one of them is stated to be serious, she said. The doctors attending them said the family might have consumed contaminated food which resulted in food poisoning.

State's first ATM for visually challenged

India's second talking Automated Teller Machine (ATM) for the visually-challenged was installed in Dehradun to help them to perform their banking work independently. The machine, installed on the premises of National Institute for the Orthopedically Handicapped, works on the basis of fingerprint identification system and has customized keypads to make money transactions easier.

"In this, they don't have to put in any password; it works on the basis of their fingerprints. The bank scans their fingerprints and on that basis they can withdraw money from ATM," said Pramod Khanna, manager of the Punjab National Bank.

Sajji Mathews, a visually-challenged person said that the newly set up audio-aided ATM would help in making such people independent. "This will benefit us in many ways. Now we can do our banking work independently. Earlier we used to need help of a sighted person to help us fill forms and submit the forms. The major problem that we would often face was that our signatures didn't match many times. This used to cause a lot of problem for us, but today we can withdraw money whenever we want," said Mathews.

ICICI Bank was the first one to set up the first Automated Teller Machine (ATM) for the visually impaired in Pune in August 2002.