Latest news with #post-Independence
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Have law, history closed door on princely states' properties? SC to examine
If India's Constitution bars courts from adjudicating disputes arising from pre-Independence covenants, can erstwhile royal families like that of Jaipur ever reclaim their legacy properties? Or have time, law and history closed the door forever? These questions came into focus on Monday as the Supreme Court agreed to examine whether covenants signed between princely states and the Government of India before 1950 are amenable to judicial review even as Article 363 of the Constitution expressly keeps such matters out of the courts' jurisdiction . The legal challenge comes from the Jaipur royal family. Rajmata Padmini Devi, along with her daughter, Rajasthan deputy chief minister Diya Kumari, and grandson Maharaja Padmanabh Singh, moved the apex court against an April 17 ruling of the Rajasthan high court, which held that their civil suits, seeking possession and damages for prime Jaipur properties, were barred by Article 363. A bench of justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and AG Masih, while issuing notice on Monday, signalled willingness to engage with the nuanced constitutional debate, particularly the continuing relevance of Article 363 in the absence of its companion Article 362, which earlier guaranteed privileges and dignities of former rulers and was repealed in 1972. With its admission, the case now becomes a pivotal test of how India navigates the legacy of its integration of over 500 princely states post-Independence. If the court finds Article 363 no longer an iron curtain, it could open the floodgates of historical claims, not just from Jaipur, but across former royal families of India. On the other hand, a reaffirmation of the constitutional bar would strengthen the finality of India's break from the royal past. Appearing for the Jaipur royals, senior advocate Harish Salve urged the Supreme Court to lift the constitutional veil and re-examine whether Article 363 still blocks judicial access in disputes involving princely covenants, particularly when the Union of India was not a party to the disputed agreement. The court, however, had a pointed question for Salve: 'How will you come out of Article 363?' Salve, assisted by senior counsel Vibha Datta Makhija, replied that Article 363 has multiple nuances and precedents. 'But the previous judgments did not answer whether Article 363 survives after deletion of Article 362. Both were part of the same package,' he added. Salve further contended that the 1949 Covenant in question was not signed with the Government of India per se, but by five Rajasthan rulers, with India acting merely as a guarantor. That distinction, he said, was vital to determining whether the bar under Article 363 even applies. The bench, however, expressed concern about the possible consequences of lifting this bar. 'If we agree with your submission, the entire city of Jaipur will be your property. All former rulers of Bikaner, Jodhpur, Udaipur could reopen similar claims.' But Salve said: 'Filing a suit is different from asserting rights. I am only arguing on the right to adjudicate. Ownership was 100% prior to the covenant. Nobody has a right to assert title over what belongs to the State but I must be allowed to argue that in court.' At this point, the court agreed to admit the matter for a hearing. The Rajasthan government's additional advocate general, Shiv Mangal Sharma, remained present during the hearing and accepted the notice on behalf of the state. He also undertook before the court that the issue will not be precipitated in so far as alienation of any property is concerned since the state respects the pendency of the matter before the highest court. The challenge stems from a sweeping April 17 judgment by the Rajasthan high court, which threw out four suits filed by the Jaipur royals and their trust over iconic heritage properties, including the Town Hall (Old Vidhan Sabha), Hazari Guards Building (Old Police HQ), and parts of the City Palace. In a 50-page judgment, the high court ruled that civil courts have no jurisdiction to entertain disputes arising from such covenants, citing the constitutional bar under Article 363. The court allowed the State's revision petitions and set aside lower court orders that had refused to reject the plaints under the civil procedure code (CPC). 'If law is clear and suit appears to be barred by law then the plaint is necessarily to be rejected at the very threshold,' stated the judgment, citing apex court precedents. The high court found that the claims were inextricably linked to the rights and obligations flowing from the 1949 covenant, under which the state was granted perpetual use of certain royal properties for 'official purposes'. The royal family's suits had sought possession, injunctions, and mesne profits -- potentially running into crores, over several properties including those mentioned above. The royals claimed that the state had either abandoned their official use or was seeking to use them for commercial ventures like shopping malls or art galleries, violating the covenant's original purpose. However, the Rajasthan government argued that the suits were barred under Article 363, as they arose directly from a covenant between the ruler of Jaipur and the Government of India. The high court agreed. It held that even if the properties were in disrepair or misused, courts could not adjudicate such disputes due to the constitutional bar. The Jaipur royals are now hoping the Supreme Court will re-evaluate the legal architecture surrounding Article 363, especially after the 1972 repeal of Article 362, which earlier guaranteed privileges and dignities of former rulers. During Monday's hearing, Salve suggested that the constitutional bar in Article 363 was designed to protect political agreements in the early years of the Republic but cannot be a permanent barrier in civil disputes, especially when one of the original articles has been removed. The bench retorted: 'You have been non-suited because of the bar. We are not commenting on merits. But allowing your argument would mean half of Jaipur should be yours.' Still, the court agreed to hear the case and issued notice to the state.
Time of India
a day ago
- Business
- Time of India
IPL chairman Arun Dhumal wants cricket to revolve around its big star
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Mumbai: It may be time for the International Cricket Council (ICC) to rethink its calendar and give T20 leagues precedence over bilateral series , which are losing steam with fans and sponsors alike, Indian Premier League (IPL) chairman Arun Dhumal has said."Cricket is shifting its flavour towards franchise-based formats. If that is the case, we have to prepare ourselves for that situation," Dhumal told ET in an interaction. "So, if that has to happen, the entire scheduling needs to be aligned around these T20 leagues-be it the IPL, Big Bash League, The Hundred, SA20, MLC, or ILT20. At some point, we may need to sit around the table with all stakeholders and decide what should be prioritised."The T20 format has not only reignited interest in One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and Test matches but has also played a key role in expanding cricket's footprint to emerging markets such as the United States and Europe, Dhumal noted."Based on what weather conditions work best for each country, you schedule your leagues accordingly and then plan the bilateral series around them," he the International Cricket Council's (ICC) Future Tours Programme (FTP) is structured around bilateral Tests, ODIs, and ICC events, with the IPL being the only T20 league to have a dedicated are multiple T20 leagues including Australia's Big Bash League, South Africa's SA20, the England and Wales Cricket Board's The Hundred, the UAE's International League T20, and the Caribbean Premier League. Most of these leagues are inspired by the IPL and have IPL team owners-such as Reliance , GMR, and Sun TV Network-owning teams."The IPL is the number one 'Make in India' property post-Independence," Dhumal Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which owns the IPL, sold the league's media rights for ₹48,390 crore for 2023-27 proposed expansion of IPL to an 84-match format will depend on the availability of a suitable window in the international calendar, Dhumal said. For IPL 2025, the tournament has retained the 74-match format to manage player workload and accommodate a packed FTP schedule."There is no point in adding new teams to the IPL when we are not yet able to optimise the existing structure with 10 teams," he to Dhumal, IPL's current April-May window is becoming tricky to manage due to shifting weather patterns-the Southwest monsoon arrived almost two weeks early this year. But advancing the event is also challenging as the FTP has been finalised until 2027 and media rights deals have already been signed based on that is the driver of the global cricket economy, with the ICC generating over 70% of its revenue from the Indian IPL chairman noted that other ICC member boards are struggling to sell media rights for bilateral series and have been requesting the BCCI to play such series to help boost their said IPL viewership continues to remain strong on TV and digital platforms, despite a one-week suspension caused by the India-Pakistan conflict, which disrupted the tournament's momentum.
Time of India
2 days ago
- General
- Time of India
Chatra village bridge project gets stuck in bureaucratic limbo
Chatra: The 2,000 residents of Potam village under Hedum panchayat in remote Naxal-hit Lawalong block of Chatra district would have to face transportation hurdles again during the rainy season as their demand for a bridge continues to be ignored. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Govt teams visited the place several times to measure the construction site, but the work never began. Area residents said that they have been awaiting a bridge over the Thekhi river since independence. Despite survey teams's visit to the site multiple times, around 300 households, including students and workers, are forced to walk 1.5 km daily to access the main road. "Schoolchildren are forced to navigate a treacherous 1.5 km path through bushes and cross a 300-ft stretch of the rain-fed Thekhi river to reach their school transport," said a villager. Area resident Somnath Yadav, who has been pursuing bridge construction since 2010, highlighted that 78 years post-Independence, the village lacks basic amenities. "Medical emergencies are particularly challenging, requiring a 1.5 km walk to reach healthcare facilities. During monsoons, residents must take a 10 km detour via Jawari village. Despite repeated surveys and measurements, no concrete action has materialised," he said. Students Amit Kumar (Std-3) and Bablu Kumar(Std-6) expressed their daily struggle of walking a kilometre to school, emphasising their desire for a bridge. Hedum panchayat mukhiya Santosh Ram revealed that bridge proposals were approved in gram sabha meetings during 2022-2023, 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 fiscal years with requests for DMFT funding sent to district offices. "However, these proposals remain unprocessed," he said. Lawalong block development officer (BDO) Bipin Bharti said, "I will apprise the district administration to look into the matter and request the officials to take necessary steps."
The Hindu
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
A 100 years and Hyderabad turns into Urbs Humungous
June 2 marks 11 years of the formation of Telangana. It also marks 218 years of the creation of Secunderabad. Between these two dates, a post-Independence one and a pre-colonial one, is the story of the explosive growth of an inclusive city that is now Brand Hyderabad. A city that spells biryani, chai, chips, code, and rings of circular roads. Hyderabad was a 132 sq km city with 4,04,187 souls, inside a walled area with 14 gates in 1921 and was the fourth largest city in India. More than a 100 years later, Hyderabad is an urban sprawl of 1,451 square kilometres with 1,13,38,000 people ringed within a circular road with 21 interchanges and is the sixth largest city in the country. A growth of 999.24% in terms of land area and a population that has grown by 2705.13%. In the process, the city has changed names from Golconda to Hyderabad to Secunderabad to Cyberabad and now the Future City envisioned by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy. The rulers and planners have come and gone but the trajectory of the growth of the city has been exponential. The movers and shakers for the city of Hyderabad have been a legion since the time of Mohammed Quli Qutb Shah and Mir Momin, continuing with Mir Osman Ali Khan, M. Visvesaraya, Mehr Ali Fazil, Mohammed Fayazuddin and Mehdi Nawaz Jung. Then there were later day politicians who left their stamp on the city — N. Chandrababu Naidu, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, K.T. Rama Rao and now A. Revanth Reddy. There also have been countless other bureaucrats and technocrats who have left behind a legacy. 'Cities grow organically with nudges for change in a particular direction. But some areas of the city have developed too rapidly discarding principles of planning like in Cyberabad. Jubilee Hills was a planned residential area but was turned into something else. Similarly, Musi beautification and Imlibun park were planned earlier but we are coming to that after a detour,' says historian and engineer Sajjad Shahid. 'Coupled with that there was no sanctity to a master plan. There were hundreds of notices of change in land use undoing the master plan,' says Mr. Shahid. Planned city 'Geography, topography, history and culture have driven Hyderabad's planning. It was a planned city in Hyderabad state. There was planning till 1956. Not just Hyderabad but areas like Karimnagar, Adilabad, Warangal and other cities were planned and nurtured,' says Anuradha Reddy linking the earlier planned cities to the outer walls that enclosed Hyderabad and Warangal. But the walls of planning made way for roads when Hyderabad was born with Charminar as its centrepiece and four radiating roads connecting it to the port city of Machilipatnam. The 1591 plan with the east-west and north-south axial roads made way for circular roads. 1930 map This is a 1930 map of Hyderabad which bears the signature of Meher Ali Fazil, the superintending engineer, at that time. The map has the earliest outline of an Outer Circular Road that had a 30 km circumference. Enclosed within it was the River Road Circuit that circled back girdling both the banks of the Musi River between Chaderghat and Purana Pul. This model was transformed by the earliest town planner in India — Mohammed Fayazuddin, who, in 1944, created the Outer Circular Road that became the present-day Outer Ring Road. 'Road networks are a kind of flood mitigation measures. When you don't run a road through a settlement, it would bring down noise and vehicular pollution. As the road was in the periphery, it created potential for growth of other areas,' says architect Pingali Naga Praveen. 'The latter day planners like HMDA, HUDA and other development authorities had these plans in front of them and they incorporated them. River circuit road should have been an alternative means of transport but it did not take off in a big way. But the Inner Circular Road was an idea ahead of its time that was aimed at decongesting the traffic even when the situation was not so bad,' says Mr. Praveen. This is proving to be the USP of new residential areas that are popping up around the ORR. Outside the JBS Metro Station is the advertisement for villas near the Outer Ring Road in Gowdavelli with each of the houses costing upwards of ₹3 crore. Incidentally, these were planned in the 1933 map, where the area was earmarked as 'suburb to be developed as a residential area'. The key line being '10 minutes from Outer Ring Road'. The 158-km ORR is now set to be dwarfed by a 340-km Regional Ring Road.
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
The day Mrs Gandhi was shot: A reporter's diary
Four decades since one of the most tragic, violent events witnessed in post-Independence India — the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her security guards — a new memoir comes with fresh revelations. Dr Sneh Bhargava was appointed Director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on October 31, 1984 — the very day Indira Gandhi was felled by a fusillade of bullets fired by her security guards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh. In her recently released memoir, The Woman Who Ran AIIMS, the Delhi-based Dr Bhargava, now 95, graphically describes the horrific morning when 'the ink was not even dry on my appointment letter' but there, on the eighth-floor operation theatre of AIIMS, a desperate team of surgeons was fighting a 'losing battle' as they tried to save the Prime Minister's life. And for almost four interminable hours, they kept up a 'charade' that attempts were afoot to frantically try and resuscitate Mrs Gandhi. The pall of gloom of the fateful morning, the muffled wails emanating from some of the country's most powerful who lined the eighth-floor of that AIIMS corridor, have remained fresh in my mind too. I was there. I recall rushing to the PTI teleprinter in the Nehru Place office of Delhi Recorder, the magazine where I was a trainee reporter then, and reading, incredulously, the 'takes' of the Prime Minister being shot. I argued with another trainee reporter who wanted to stay in office and follow the story. 'No', I said, and zipped off towards AIIMS. As it turned out, I was among the very few reporters who managed to break several security cordons and reach the eighth floor. I remained there, just a fly-on-the-wall. By the time I left AIIMS in the evening, riots had broken out close to the hospital. Taxi stands had been burnt down. The reprisal had begun. Over several years, I kept in touch with the Indira Gandhi assassination case: I covered the trial in Tihar Jail; wrote several cover stories for Sunday, the magazine to which I had moved. In the minutes after the Prime Minister's killing, Beant Singh, the older of the two assassins, was killed by agitated guards posted at the Prime Minister's residence. Satwant Singh, the younger constable, was still alive but a predicament the media faced those days was that there was not a single photograph of Indira Gandhi's surviving assassin. I 'scooped' the picture. Days later, Satwant Singh's father, Trilok Singh, who would often travel to Delhi to meet his son's lawyers, once mentioned that when Satwant was recruited to the Delhi Police, he had got his service photograph taken at a photo studio located near Qutab Minar. When he went back to his village, Trilok Singh even got me the reference number. I located the studio, handed its owner the number and simply 'ordered' a set of passport-sized photographs of Satwant Singh. By 1990, I also wrote a book for Penguin simply titled, The Assassination of Indira Gandhi. The first chapter of that book, too, has all the minute details of the tragic drama that played out at AIIMS on October 31, 1984, and the brutality of the gunning down of Indira Gandhi. In her book, Dr Bhargava confirms that Indira Gandhi was brought in with no pulse and despite that, they put her on the heart-lung machine ( a cardiopulmonary bypass machine) and tried to revive her. She writes, 'The perfusionist was a young Sikh. The moment he heard the doctors mention that her killers were Sikh, he fled the operation theatre to save his life. The doctors had to bring in someone else.' In fact, Dr Bhargava has made it evident that even in the eighth-floor operation theatre that fateful morning, there was an apprehension that Sikhs would be targeted. She now writes about her fears, 'There was a lot to do. A huge crowd might storm the gates of AIIMS to catch a glimpse of Mrs Gandhi or barge into the premises to kill the first Sikh they saw… A bloodbath against Sikhs could not be ruled out. Sadly it did come to pass in the days that followed…' Perhaps the most important disclosure from the chapter on Indira Gandhi's assassination is the fact that just before he was whisked off to be sworn in as Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi ('he looked shocked but composed') told Dr Bhargava that he had 'warned' his mother about one of her Sikh security guards. The reason he gave her: 'because he looked suspicious'. One does not know which of the two assassins — Beant Singh or Satwant Singh — Rajiv was referring to or what he did about his suspicion. The writer, Executive Editor (News & Investigations) with The Indian Express, was a trainee reporter for Delhi Recorder in 1984
