1. ‘Will Stall Project if Govt Doesn’t Keep It’s Word’
Saying that the judges are not children to believe the stories of the government officials, a division bench of the Madras High Court on Tuesday warned that the entire 10,000-crore Chennai-Salem eight-lane corridor project would be stalled if the government continued to violate the interim orders passed on the assurances given earlier by the government that it would not dispossess the farmers of their land.
The bench of Justices T S Sivagnanam and V Bhavani Subbaroyan made the observation when the remaining writ petitions challenging the project came up on Tuesday.
(Source: The New Indian Express)
2. What Ails Chennai Metro?
Metro commuters fumed over disruptions in services for the second day in a row on Wednesday, owing to glitches in the signalling system.
From 8.30 am until 10.30 am, trains stopped every now and then and ran at a reduced speed of 25 kmph. This is the third instance in a week that services have been hit by issues in the signalling system. The signalling system in the Chennai Metro Rail network uses Automatic Train Supervision (ATS), which tells a train what its next stop is and monitors its movement, sources said. All recent disruptions in Metro services occurred due to a technical glitch in the ATS; when the ATS failed, the two backup systems to run the trains also failed, thereby leading to disruptions in the signalling system that brought trains to a halt immediately, sources said.
(Source: The Hindu)
3. Chitlapakam Lake Size Fudged for Water Project
It’s not just encroachers. Even a town panchayat in southern suburbs of the city seems to have shrunk a lake in its limits so that it can dig five wells right in the lakebed and pump water. The Madambakkam lake, one of biggest lakes in the south of the city, is said to be spread across 250 acres. But apparently the map of the lake submitted by the Madambakkam town panchayat to the Public Works Department changed the shape of the lake and shrunk it to a mere 80 acres.
(Source: The New Indian Express)
4. Over 1.5 Lakh Driving Licenses Suspended in TN in ‘18
Over 1.56 lakh driving licences have been suspended for various traffic offences in the State in the first six months of this year.
Speaking on mobile phones was the prime reason for licence suspension. While driving licences of 57,158 persons were suspended for the offence for the whole of last year, this number is 64,105 at the end of first six months in 2018.
A total of 2,658 licences of drivers involved in fatal accidents have been suspended and 1,066 have been cancelled during this period. This includes MTC drivers too, a transport official said. There are six heads, as notified by the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety, under which licences can be suspended. They are over speeding, overload in goods carriage, carrying persons in goods carriage vehicles, using mobile phone while driving, drunken driving and red light jumping.
(Source: The Hindu)
5. Chargesheet Filed Against 17 in Ayanavaram Rape Case
Wrapping up its investigation, the city police on Wednesday filed a charge sheet against the 17 offenders who were arrested for allegedly committing aggravated sexual assault on an 11-year-old hearing-impaired girl in an apartment in Ayanavaram. In the charge sheet, the police added newly amended provisions of the Indian Penal Code that provide for death sentence.
A senior police officer told The Hindu , “We have completed investigation and filed the charge sheet against the 17 offenders in the Mahila court on the High Court campus. The charge sheet contained more than 300 pages with evidence, witness numbers and medical reports. This is the first time that the prosecution has included the new amendment to get the maximum punishment for the guilty in the case.”
(Source: The Hindu)
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