Manorama Bawa, patron of the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC), said she anxiously watched the proceedings in the Rajya Sabha Tuesday where the bill was passed by an overwhelming majority after two days of pandemonium.

‘There were many uncertain moments when the bill met with stiff opposition from a few people. But yesterday (Tuesday) evening when the bill was passed, we were all very happy,’ Bawa told IANS.

‘The bill will face many problems, especially when it comes to the Lok Sabha. A few days back when we were interacting with women in a Haryana village, they knew about the bill and saw it as a positive step,’ Bawa said.

Sunitha Chauhan, Delhi’s first woman auto-rickshaw driver who also contested the Lok Sabha election in 2009, said she would contest again if the bill becomes law.

‘I am very happy as this bill is being passed in the face of such harsh opposition. This will bring about a change in how Indian women are perceived. I will contest elections again,’ Chauhan told IANS.

Women’s rights activist Ranjana Kumari, who heads the Centre of Social Research, feels that the main challenge was to get political parties pass the legislation.

‘It was heartening to see all parties support the bill. Even BJP’s (Bharatiya Janata Party) Arun Jaitley spoke very passionately about the bill. I feel it will get through the Lok Sabha as well,’ she said.

The main challenge after that would be to get true representation of women from Dalit and other groups, she said.

The CSR in collaboration with an NGO, Women Power Connect (WPC), has selected 1,000 women from across India and is grooming them to contest elections under a UN project called ‘Enhancing the Role of Women in Strengthening Democracy’.

‘Women have less than 10 percent representation in India’s parliament even though they make up 44 percent of the voting population. We need more women in politics. It has taken 62 long years… Our voices are now being heard,’ Kumari said.

WPC executive director N. Hamsa said: ‘We want to congratulate all political parties. We look forward to the passage of the bill in the Lok Sabha now. All parties need to resolve their differences.’

Bawa, however, undelined some of the problems.

She said that the AIWC had faced many teething problems while training women in rural India over a decade ago when seats were reserved for them in village panchayats.

‘In many cases, it would be the woman’s husband who made the decisions. But after four years of reservation, women emerged stronger as examples to others in taking decisions.’

Congress leader Sajjan Kumar and nine others were Wednesday granted bail by a city court in two cases related to their alleged involvement in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Lokesh Kumar granted bail to the accused, including Sajjan Kumar, after they all appeared before him.

All the accused furnished a surety and personal bond of Rs.50,000 each. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) also provided a copy of the chargesheet to all the accused.

Dressed in a white safari suit, Sajjan Kumar looked calm during the court proceedings.

The court slated the case for further hearing March 20.

The CBI had filed a chargesheet against Sajjan Kumar and the others in two cases for allegedly instigating mobs after the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi Oct 31, 1984.

Over 3,000 Sikhs across Delhi were killed in the communal frenzy in the days following the assassination.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Raj Shekhar Attri gave the ruling. Rathore was accompanied by his wife and another counsel, Abha Rathore. His main counsel, Narayan Dutt Sharma, was injured last month.

The case will now be heard April 15 and 16.

The court had earlier adjourned Rathore’s case till March 10 following a knife attack on him by a student, Utsav Sharma.

At that time, Rathore had refused to file a complaint against Sharma. But last week he asked the Chandigarh Police to register an attempt to murder charge against the young man.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special court held Rathore guilty in December last year of molesting a minor in Panchkula town in August 1990. She committed suicide three years later.

He was sentenced to six months’ rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs.1,000. Rathore is on bail.

Clearing the first hurdle, the Women’s Reservation Bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha Tuesday. It seeks to set aside for women 181 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha and 1,370 of the total 4,109 seats in the 28 state assemblies.

The 13-year struggle to give women adequate representation ended with the Rajya Sabha finally debating the contentious legislation and then voting 186-1 on the Constitution (One Hundred and Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2008. And that is what many women felt proud of.

‘I am very proud today. My country has made me proud,’ said Manisha Bhasin, who was glued to the TV set almost the whole day, watching the drama unfold in the Rajya Sabha where a handful of members were bitterly opposed to it.

Bhasin had ‘no regrets’ over what happened in parliament when the bill was tabled and before it was finally voted.

To put the house in order for the debate over the bill, Chairman Hamid Ansari ordered physical eviction of the seven MPs who were disrupting the proceedings to oppose the bill. They were earlier suspended but refused to leave the house.

‘That is all part of the game. In the end, the democracy emerged victorious,’ Bhasin, a housewife, said of the drama in the house.

Nishta Sharma, a student, said she had taken a day off from college to watch the ‘history in making’.

‘There were only two possibilities. Either our democracy would have shone brighter or the men MPs would have failed us. But thank god, it was the former. We are proud of our constitution,’ Sharma said.

‘I can feel the sense of victory. A victory that has empowered nearly half the population of India. I am sure, the Rani of Jhansi would be feeling proud today of her nation,’ Sharma added.

Meenakshi Jaitely, an employee of a multinational company in Noida on the outskirts of the national capital, has no plans to join politics but she is excited about the number of women MPs the next Lok Sabha could see.

‘I know the bill has to cross another hurdle in the Lok Sabha. I am keeping my fingers crossed,’ she said.

It was party time for Swati Agarwal, a banker. ‘We distributed sweets in office and partied for a while. Though I am not directly affected, there is this sense of satisfaction that women are given their due.’

The Chhattisgarh government told the Supreme Court Tuesday that it has traced four more of the 12 tribals who were missing. The apex court was moved for a probe into the alleged killings of 10 villagers by security forces in the state’s Dantewada district during anti-Maoist operations.
Chhattisgarh government counsel Atul Jha told a bench of Justice B. Sudershan Reddy and Justice S.S. Nijjar that since the last hearing of the matter Feb 15, when six of the missing tribals were traced and brought before the court, the state government has traced four more of them and brought them to Delhi.

Jha sought the court’s permission to bring the four before it, but the bench asked him to take them before the Delhi district judge for recording their statements.

The bench slated Thursday for recording their statements, on the request of senior counsel Colin Gonsalves, lawyer for civil rights activist Himanshu Kumar who had moved the court for bringing the missing tribals before it.

Jha told the bench that authorities have found out that the two missing tribals have crossed over to Andhra Pradesh, but are trying to trace them.

The apex court Feb 8 asked the state government to trace the missing persons and bring them before it. The court issued the order while hearing a joint petition by Himanshu Kumar and relatives of the 10 people, who were allegedly killed by the security forces.

A bench of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan also asked the Delhi chief secretary to find out how the government has failed to fill up the vacancies for the past two and a half years.

The bench sought the chief secretary’s report within four weeks and asked him to initiate action against the officials responsible for letting the posts remain vacant.

“It is astonishing that on the one hand, Article 21 talks of free and compulsory education as a fundamental right and on the other hand there is an infraction of the fundamental right when posts of 2007 have not been filled up till date because of the total insensitivity of the district education officer,” the bench said in an order.

The apex court’s snub came after an affidavit of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) stated that though the Delhi government had approached it for filling up the posts in July 2007, it had not pursued the matte

Speaking to NDTV’s Barkha Dutt, Gandhi said she was grateful to all the political parties who helped the bill to pass, including the Left, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ‘and our coalition partners’.

She hoped that ‘those who did not support us will understand’ over time the need for the bill, which now needs to get past the Lok Sabha. She was particularly surprised about Trinamool Congress’ abstention, especially since its leader Mamata Banerjee was ‘enthusiastic’ about supporting it when the cabinet discussed it.

Gandhi, who is also chairman of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), said she was watching the parliament proceedings from her home and she felt happy the bill was passed after a lively discussion.

‘I am happy and relieved,’ she said and added the issue had been very close to her heart, especially since it was in keeping with vision of her late husband former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

‘The first step has been taken. As a natural corollary, the next step will also be taken,’ she said in reference to the bill’s passage in the Lok Sabha.

Regarding opposition from some UPA allies, Sonia Gandhi said she was aware of the political risks involved but the ‘big picture’ of empowerment of women in the country was more important and worth taking the risk.

The fissures caused by the divisions over the bill, she admitted, was a political risk.

‘It is a huge risk but we have taken risks before. Whenever something is revoutionary, there is opposition, there are difficulties. But the larger picture (of women’s reservation) is more important.’

She said she was not disappointed that the bill did not go through in the Rajya Sabha on Monday, the International Women’s Day. ‘I knew it was a difficult legislation, (that) problems may come up, one wasn’t really sure,’ she said.

Gandhi expressed surprise at Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee’s last minute objections vis-a-vis the bill.

She said she had been told by the person who sat by Banerjee at the last cabinet meeting that she was very enthusiastic about the bill. ‘I don’t quite understand what has happened.’

The Congress president gave full credit to allies DMK and Nationalist Congress Party for backing the bill fully right from the beginning.

She admitted that she had a personal rapport with Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, the most vocal critics of the women’s bill.

‘But when it comes to political issues, personal relations do not count too much. I understand their porblems, their compulsions.’

‘Of course, our party is committed. If we were not committed, we would not have taken the first step.’

They submitted they needed to verify the contents of the website run by the godman.

A court Thursday sent Dwivedi, who has been booked under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), to police custody for five days.

Under MCOCA, an accused cannot apply for bail for six months and a deputy commissioner of police will record his confession which can be used as evidence in the court.

Dwivedi, 39, who belonged to Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh, came to New Delhi in 1988 and initially worked as a security guard. He was arrested on prostitution charges in 1997 and 1998.

He then changed his appearance and started calling himself Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale. Under the cloak of spirituality, he started a flourishing flesh trade racket.

‘The opposition is raising this issue of a separate high court of Haryana, and we will certainly take up this matter strongly in the coming days. The chief justice of India has agreed in principle that Haryana should have a separate high court,’ said Hooda.

At present there is a common high court for Punjab and Haryana known as the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Hooda also assured Sikhs in Haryana that his government will work in the direction of setting up a separate Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) in the state.

Justice S.N. Dhingra quashed the order of a lower court that allowed an Indian-American wife to get custody of her child when she came to India to meet her parents, and said the court had exceeded its jurisdiction.

He said: ‘I consider that the district judge exceeded his jurisdiction when he entertained the application made by the respondent (mother) for custody of the child and appointment of guardian.’

The court passed the order on a petition of the father, challenging the jurisdiction of the court to hear a petition of his wife on the ground that both of them had taken US citizenship five years back and their son was also born American.

‘The US court or any other court will take into account the welfare of the child while passing orders regarding minor children, keep in mind the overall welfare of the children… while weighing the rights of the parties to have custody,’ the court said.

In this case, Sanjeev and Ruchi got married in Delhi in 1996 and then migrated to the US and took its citizenship in 2004. Their son was born in 2001.

Due to differences between them, Ruchi refused to get back to the US after they had come to India to meet their parents. She also filed a case in a court here seeking legal custody of their son living with her.

The court passed the order in her favour, taking into consideration the welfare of the child. Aggrieved by the order, the husband approached the high court, which set aside the order and said Indian courts have no jurisdiction to decide the case.