Removing religious shrines from public places

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Posted by Liju Philip | Posted in anti social, gujarat, India, Politics, Religion, supreme court | Posted on 01-08-2009

This ruling was a long time coming.  Over the years we  have been seeing a small stone / religious place besides a road converting into a massive place of worship that blocks the traffic on the road, creates law and order problems and encroaches on public and private land.   Simply because a few morons decide that its a place fit for worshiping.

Even when the government allocates them alternate land and facilities, they intend to stick to the encroachment beside the public roads as that gives them the leverage to create a nuisance whenever they want to.

600px-Religious_symbols

I have always believed that a religious structure beside a public road is nothing but a public nuisance.  And this means any religious structure, whether its a temple, mosque, church, gurudwara etc.   Its high time the government picks up the gauntlet and takes on the anti-social elements who use these religious structures to achieve their own narrow political ends.

Am not sure why the Supreme Court is not asking for the current hurdles to be removed and only to prevent such things happening in future.  Does that mean that the tax paying public will still have to struggle traveling on the roads just because some graveyard or religious shrine blocks the access?  Has the dead become so important that the living has no rights?

Though am not a great supporter of Narendra Modi, i very much appreciate his government’s decision of razing of all religious structures that dot the public roads.  It doesn’t matter which religious group has put up the structure.  Anything that is a hindrance to the safety of the people traveling on the roads should be demolished.

Treading a cautious path on places of worship springing up unauthorizedly in public places — including roads — the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that while existing structures may remain, the government must prevent such encroachment in the future.

While acknowledging the difficulty in demolishing existing shrines even if they caused serious traffic bottlenecks, given the sensitivity attached to religious places, a Bench comprising Justices Dalveer Bhandari and M K Sharma found nothing holy about them and stressed to solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam the need for framing guidelines to strictly prohibit religious places from occupying public land unauthorizedly in the future.

Subramaniam assured the Bench that the Centre would take up the issue with the states. The Bench asked the Centre to file an affidavit by September 29 intimating the progress made on the contentious issue.

Interestingly, the proposal for framing guidelines came on an appeal filed by the Centre in 2006, challenging a Gujarat High Court order directing the Modi government to remove all religious structures, without any discrimination, that were encroaching on public land across the state. The SC had stayed the HC directive on May 4, 2006.

When the authorities took steps pursuant to the HC order in Vadodara and started demolishing a dargah right in the middle of a road, violence and riots broke out and the Army had to stage a flag march to bring the situation under control. According to a PIL before the HC, a survey by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation threw up 1,200 temples and 260 Islamic shrines encroaching on public spaces.

Above news source: TimesofIndia

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India's refining hub to be largest in world – Jamnagar

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Posted by Liju Philip | Posted in Business, gas, gujarat, India, invest, investment, jamnagar, oil, Petroleum, refinery, World | Posted on 28-11-2007

Reliance Industries and Essar Oil , India’s largest private sector oil refiners, are set to create the world’s biggest petroleum refining hub as part of plans to expand their plants in Jamnagar, western India. Essar has announced a $6bn expansion plan to more than triple capacity at its refinery, while Reliance, at its site a few kilometres away, is working on plans to almost double capacity.

essar reliance logo

The expansion projects will bring their combined refining capacity at Jamnagar to 1.9m barrels a day, the largest in the world in a single location, outstripping hubs such as Rotterdam and Singapore and those in China and South Korea, according to figures compiled by Fesharaki Associates Consulting and Technical Services, Singapore.

reliance refinery

An FCC regenerator being prepared for erection at the Reliance Petrochemical Complex in Jamnagar

Under their plans, Essar announced it was lifting capacity at its plant to 700,000 b/d by 2010 from 220,000 b/d. Reliance is in the middle of a $6bn investment to expand capacity to 1.24m b/d from 660,000 b/d by next year. Once the expansion works are complete, the nearest comparable hub will be South Korea’s Ulsan at 1.35m b/d, Facts said.

Prashant Ruia, Essar group director, said the total development cost of the refinery including the expansion would be $9bn, which analysts consider extremely cheap against the global average of about $13bn-$15bn for the same size plant.

Full article here.

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Narendra Modi – The butcher of Gujarat

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Posted by Liju Philip | Posted in bombay, godhra, gujarat, India, mumbai, Politics, World | Posted on 26-10-2007

narendra modi

Read the explosive article by Tehelka on how Narendra Modi planned, executed the riots in Gujarat post the Godhra train fire. How he let the mobs run free for 3 full days killing, maiming muslims and raping their women, children and systematically burning/destroying their business and economic activity.

As the Supreme Court observed, “Narendra Modi played the perfect Nero who fiddled while Gujarat burnt“. Shameless, unable to take the repeated pointed questions from Karan Thapar, he excused himself from the interview on “Devil’s Advocate“. If you see the video, you can see the guilt on his face. Will it make him repent and accept his part in the holocaust he perpetrated in Gujarat? Well, the Indian politician is made of thick skin, and he/she has never been known to accept their mistakes.

Rajiv Gandhi and his cronies went unpunished for the thousands of Sikhs who were massacared post Indira Gandhi’s killing. Bal Thackeray still lords over Mumbai inspite of instigating riots in Mumbai which led to the Bombay bomb blasts. And we have Lal Kishan Advani who was the chief conspirator behind the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which led to large scale riots all over India. And, today he is planning to become the Prime Minister again.

Will all these criminals ever be bought to justice? Well, Rajiv Gandhi met his. We wait for the rest of the justice to be played out.

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