NEW DELHI: A month ago, Pandit Ramkishan sat on a dharna in Rajasthan, demanding better quality water for his home district, Bharatpur. One of India’s oldest former MPs (he was in Parliament in 1977), he told TOI on Friday, a day before he turned 100, that he will always remain a socialist. “That’s what I learnt from Ram Manohar Lohia.”Sitting in his Bharatpur home, the veteran, “Lohia’s oldest disciple” as he likes to call himself, speaks with the authority of one who has not just witnessed history, but shaped it. Until a recent fall briefly hospitalised him, he was holding three meetings a week.What keeps him going is unfinished work.“The day I stop thinking about a better India, that’s the day I will stop living. I am alive now and my voice will be heard,” he insists. “The values we fought for — equality, integrity, dialogue — are under strain. We need to speak up.” Aptly named, his autobiography, out last year, said just that — Main Zinda Hoon.

First half of life defined by ideology, second has seen its erosion: PanditjiBut why continue agitations that are physically taxing, sitting under the sun, sometimes without food and water, with a failing knee and the weight of a century behind him? “It comes naturally to me,” Pandit Ramkishan says simply.A participant in the Quit India movement of 1942, “and shaped by Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan”, Panditji, as people call him fondly, was jailed during the Emergency, from which, he says, he came out wiser.Not born into politics, he was a farmer’s son for whom Independence meant “freedom from fear, from ‘lagaan’ and scarcity, and freedom from a system that kept the common man on edge”.He recalls looking for Mahatma Gandhi in his youth. As a student in Bharatpur, he one day travelled to Delhi with a few coins collected among friends, hoping to hear Gandhi speak. Panditji was not impressed. “We had gone looking for revolutionary ideas.”Today, he believes, the idea of freedom itself is unsettled. If the first half of his life was defined by ideology, the second, he says, has seen its erosion. Politics, he argues, has shifted from conviction to convenience.Panditji left the Congress when the socialist bloc split — and never returned. He remembers repeated attempts to bring him over, including offers to head the state of Rajasthan. He refused. “It was difficult — but necessary…opportunity or pressure should never override principle.”So, what are the modern issues he grapples with these days? “Quite a few,” he says. “From problems concerning farmers and Dalits to climate change, unemployment and artificial intelligence.” What unsettles him, though, is “what politics now has lost”. He tells a story. “I was contesting against Union minister Babu Raj Bahadur, who once stopped mid-journey to help me during my campaign when my vehicle broke down. We were fighting elections, but there was no enmity.”Today, he says, the opponent is treated as an enemy, not as part of governance. “Criticism is meant to strengthen democracy — not invite hostility.”Is he hopeful?Panditji pauses. There is pessimism when he speaks of communal polarisation and political opportunism. But also a refusal to give up. “The solution will not come from political parties. It’s the common people who have to understand what affects the country’s progress, and in turn, their own,” he said.

NEW DELHI: A special Delhi court on Friday acquitted former Congress MP Vijay Darda, his son Devendra, ex-coal secretary H C Gupta and others in a coal block allocation case, ending over a decade of trial after finding the evidence “highly insufficient” to prove charges of cheating, conspiracy, or misconduct.The case stemmed from the allocation in Maharashtra’s Bandar and led to the first CBI chargesheet in the larger coal block controversy dating back to the time Congress-led UPA was in office. The FIR was filed in 2012 and the chargesheet in 2014.

Judge Sunena Sharma held that there was no proof of criminal conspiracy, noting the case was based on conjectures and lacked evidence of a “meeting of minds” or illegal agreement. The others cleared included AMR Iron and Steel Private Ltd, which had bagged the block in Maharashtra’s Bander, its director Manoj Kumar Jayaswal and two others. Advocate Mudit Jain appeared for Jayaswal, the Dardas and AMR, while lawyer Rahul Tyagi represented Gupta.Sharma observed that the material on record was too sparse to conclusively establish any of the essential ingredients — viz deception, inducement, dishonest intention or cheating under Section 420 of IPC.CBI had alleged that AMR, in conspiracy with Gupta, submitted false information to a screening committee of the Union coal ministry to secure the allocation. According to CBI, then Rajya Sabha MP Vijay wrote to various departments allegedly reiterating misrepresentations to influence the allocation process and received Rs 24.6 crore as illegal gratification.Strictly follow rule on not naming survivor: SCSC said: “Clearly, the intent of this Section has been given a miss in these proceedings. The name of the survivor is treated like that of any other witness and is freely used throughout the record. This must be deprecated in the strongest terms. In fact, this court has noticed earlier also that the mandate of this provision is not being followed”.The court said that a copy of this judgment be sent to all high courts to ensure strict compliance with the apex court’s order.“This has been the long-standing position in law but it has not been followed. The primary reason there amongst, one supposes, is the general indifference of the courts below and possibly even the lack of awareness of the deep stigma that follows such offences,” the Supreme Court said.Supreme Court, while convicting the accused and setting aside the acquittal order of Uttarakhand high court, said courts must not give undue importance to minor discrepancies.“A truthful witness may make honest mistakes or omit immaterial details, and such normal variation should not result in wholesale rejection of evidence. However, when omissions or contradictions relate to material facts that form the foundation of the prosecution’s version, they assume significance and may create reasonable doubt….We may observe that the approach adopted by the high court is one of attempting to pick holes in a case that otherwise has withstood the test of cross-examination. The prosecutrix has positively identified the respondent-accused and has unequivocally stated that it was he who forced himself upon her,” it said.

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court has rebuked trial and high courts for disclosing the identity of rape survivors in their orders and directed them to ensure that names of survivors and family members are not mentioned in court records, reports Amit Anand Choudhary.A bench of Justices Sanjay Karol and N K Singh expressed concern that despite statutory safeguards and repeated directions from SC, such lapses persist. The court made the observation while convicting a rape accused, noting that the name of the minor survivor was mentioned in lower court orders.“The legislature had as far back as 1983 introduced a provision into IPC seeking to protect the identity of the victim of the offence under Section 376 IPC. The amendment was made apparently to address a specific mischief that emerged starkly from the way sexual offence cases were handled: the public disclosure of a survivor’s identity.”Morality won’t guide court for protection of citizen’s rights: HCThe court rejected the argument of the woman’s family. “There is no offence of the kind where a married man, staying with an adult in a live-in relationship, by consent of the other person, can be prosecuted for any offence whatsoever,” the bench said. “Morality and law have to be kept apart. If there is no offence under the law made out, social opinions and morality will not guide the action of the court for protecting the rights of citizens.”The couple told the court that the woman’s family members had threatened her with death and they feared an honour killing attempt. The district police chief allegedly took no action.The court reminded the authorities that it was the fundamental duty of police to protect two adults living together. Finding a prima facie case, the bench admitted the petition, issued notices to respondents, and granted the state counsel two weeks to file a counter-affidavit.Granting immediate interim relief to the couple, the court also directed that the petitioners not be arrested “until further orders”. The case against the man had been registered under Section 87 of BNS, which criminalises kidnapping, abduction or inducement of a woman to compel her into marriage or illicit sexual relations, with penalties of up to 10 years’ imprisonment and fines.To ensure protection, the court restrained the informant and all members of the woman’s family from causing any harm to the couple in life or limb, from entering their home and contacting them directly, through electronic means, or through others. The district SP would be personally responsible for ensuring the petitioners’ safety and security, the court said.