South Asia Citizens Web

The Koodankulam reactor was made critical despite the massive and sustained peaceful popular protests against the plant, and despite numerous warnings by nuclear experts, including former AERB chairman A Gopalakrishnan, about the plant’s vulnerability to hazards and the use of substandard equipment supplied by Russian company Zio-Podolsk.. ... it violates the spirit of the Supreme Court’s May 6 order, which asked that NPCIL, the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, Ministry of Environment and Forests and Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board "oversee each and every aspect of the matter, including the safety of the plant, impact on environment, quality of various components and systems in the plant before commissioning of the plant. A report to that effect be filed before this Court" prior to its commissioning.

Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) has challanged false public claims regarding the Narmada Project made by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at a public meeting in Pune city, in western India. See attached press release in Hindi.

In an interview to the foreign news agency Reuters that was published on July 12 2013, Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief minister has made a desperate attempt to creat an impression that Supreme Court has given him a clean chit through the SIT which was appointed by it to investigate the criminal complaint of Zakia Jafri and Citizens for Justice & Peace (CJP) on 27.4.2009. A section of the media, without verifying the facts has allowed this impression to gain credibility. The facts in relation to Supreme Court and SIT are as follows:

In her new biography of her great uncle (The Pity of Partition: Manto’s Life, Times, and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide, HarperCollins India, 265 pages, Rs. 599), historian Ayesha Jalal does little to dispel the notion that Manto should be lionised as a unique writer who need not be considered in the context of a literary milieu. Though she does nod at his many contemporaries, this is only to showcase Manto’s place as a combative genius among lesser figures. This tendency is particularly noticeable when she discusses his relationship with the Progressive Writers’ Association, which blacklisted him in 1948 for being a ‘reactionary’ writer.

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation has charged eight Gujarat policemen, including senior officers DG Vanzara and PP Pandey, with premeditated murder for the 2004 ’encounter’ killing of teenager-student Ishrat Jahan and three others. They were falsely accused of plotting to kill Narendra Modi. The police abducted and unlawfully detained the victims, blindfolded and drugged them, and pumped 70 bullets into them. The First Information Report had already been fabricated.