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Flowers, especially jasmine, are in high demand during the Tamil month of Thai, popular for weddings, but jasmine even during the peak season doesn’t go beyond 450 a kg. This weekend, however, it climbed to 1,500 a kg, forcing many to use cheaper flowers like roses for wedding decorations.

Madurai Flower Market Vendors’ Association president S Ramachandran said the fresh flowering season had brought relief. “It is fortunate that winter is almost over and the hot afternoons will aid the blooming of these flowers. The price that stood at 1,500 a kg two days ago has come down to 450 a kg and will remain so for the next week,” he said.

Jasmine farmers in Nilakottai in Dindigul district say it is good that winter is coming to an end. Sonnai, a farmer, said that despite the high prices they had found it difficult to meet the demand as the flowers had started wilting very soon. “Unlike, in the month of Margazhi and during the Mandalam-Makaram season popular with Ayyappa devotees, when even the smaller buds can be sold off, in the month of Thai, decorators and makers of garlands, ask for full blooms,” he said.

Farmers say they pay the flower-pickers, usually women and children, 100 for a specific quantity. The picking is usually done early in the morning. This year, the cold weather kept the usual pickers away forcing farmers to pay higher wages to others in spite of the buds getting spoilt due to the weather.

R Karunanidhi, a member of the Thovalai flower market in Kanyakumari district, said the flowers had now started arriving in the desirable form and the price had decreased to 250 a kg. “We have to supply flowers for temple festivals in Kerala from mid-February to April. With the climate and weather improving, it is good for both flowers and vendors,” he said.

“The boards will help identify animal crossing areas and elephant crossing areas. We have planned to conduct a meeting with national highways officials to create speed breakers on the NH 209. Hereafter, we would take stringent action against drivers who ram or run over wild animals. They will be booked under sections of the Wildlife Protection Act,” said district forest officer N Satheesh.

The boards will be in Tamil, Kannada and English.

On Friday, a 30-year-old female wild elephant was killed when a KSRTC bus rammed the animal near Hasanur, Sathyamangalam. The KSRTC bus was going to Mysore from Coimbatore. The elephant was crossing the road to reach a stream.

According to forest officials, the bus driver tried to avert a collision but failed. Forest officials said the driver would not be booked under the Wildlife Protection Act since the accident was intended.

The driver, it seems, was blinded by the 20-feet tall bushes beside the road which effectively hid the elephant. Bushes along an eight km stretch road near Hasanur would be cleared to prevent any such accident in future, said DFO Satheesh.

The work for the Rs. 784-crore scheme formally commenced at Melur here on Friday. The Melur, MLA, R. Samy, and Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board officials, including its Chief Engineer, B. Gothandaraman, were present at the bhoomi puja held at Gandhi Park.

The scheme, aims to draw Cauvery water near Karur and it would cover three municipalities of Avaniyapuram (now included in Madurai city limits), Melur and Tirumangalam and six town panchayats in Madurai district and the lone town panchayat of Singampuneri in Sivaganga district.

Besides the towns of Paravai, Vilangudi, Tirunagar, Alanganallur, Palamedu and A. Vellalapatti, it would also cater to 1,430 rural habitations.

“I have been fighting for the scheme since 2005-06. The Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, had approved it during the previous All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Government. However, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam that came to power in 2006, did not show any interest in implementing it,” Mr. Samy said. All the villages in Melur Assembly constituency would be covered, he said.

“This is one of the biggest water projects and once this is implemented, there will be no habitation that will not be covered with the supply of protected river water for drinking purpose,” TWAD Board Executive Engineer, PL. Muthiah, said.

Water would be drawn from three collector wells to be set up on the Cauvery riverbed near Krishnarayapuram, between Kulithalai and Karur. The water would be pumped for 100 km up to Kottaiyur in Madurai-Dindigul border from where it would flow through gravity for another 112 km. The project has been designed to draw a maximum of 84 million litres of water a day.

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Analysis

The Republic Day of India commemorates the date on which the Constitution of India came into force replacing the Government of India Act 1935 as the governing document of India on 26 January 1950.

The 26th of January was chosen to honor the memory of the declaration of independence of 1930. It is one of the three national holidays in India. While the main parade takes place in the national capital New Delhi at the Rajpath before the president, the anniversary is also celebrated with varying degrees of formality in state capitals and other centers.

Although India obtained its independence on 15 August 1947, it did not yet have a permanent constitution; instead, its laws were based on the modified colonial Government of India Act 1935, and the country was a Dominion, with George VI as head of state and Earl Mountbatten as Governor General. On 28 August 1947, the Drafting Committee was appointed to draft a permanent constitution, with Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar as chairman. While India’s Independence Day celebrates its freedom from British Rule, the Republic Day celebrates the coming into force of its constitution.

A draft constitution was prepared by the committee and submitted to the Assembly on 4 November 1947. The Assembly met, in sessions open to public, for 166 days, spread over a period of 2 years, 11 months and 18 days before adopting the Constitution. After many deliberations and some modifications, the 308 members of the Assembly signed two hand-written copies of the document (one each in Hindi and English) on 24 January 1950. Two days later, the Constitution of India became the law of all the Indian lands. The Constitution of India was passed on 26 November 1949, 10.18 AM IST, but it came into effect completely only on 26 January 1950. Following elections on 21 January 1950, Rajendra Prasad was elected as the president of India. The Indian National Congress and other parties had been celebrating 26 January as a symbol of Independence, even before India actually became independent. Thus, applying the constitution on 26 January, to mark and respect 26 January and the freedom struggle and the freedom fighters.

Wishes

Oddanchatram.in Team wishing you all 63rd Republic Day. Enjoy the Day.

Refer: http://oddanchatram.in/republicday

JAIHIND!

The solar flare occurred at about 11pm EST (0400 GMT) on Sunday and will hit Earth with three different effects at three different times. The biggest issue is radiation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.

The radiation is mostly a concern for satellite disruptions and astronauts in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-traveling airplanes, said space weather center physicist Doug Biesecker.

Radiation from Sunday’s flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will likely continue through Wednesday. Levels are considered strong but other storms have been more severe. There are two higher levels of radiation on NOAA’s storm scale — severe and extreme — Biesecker said. Still, this storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005.

The radiation — in the form of protons — came flying out of the sun at 93 million miles per hour (150 million kph).

“The whole volume of space between here and Jupiter is just filled with protons and you just don’t get rid of them like that” Biesecker said. That’s why the effects will stick around for a couple days.

NASA’s flight surgeons and solar experts examined the solar flare’s expected effects and decided that the six astronauts on the International Space Station do not have to do anything to protect themselves from the radiation, spokesman Rob Navias said.

A solar eruption is followed by a one-two-three punch, said Antti Pulkkinen, a physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Catholic University.

First comes electromagnetic radiation, followed by radiation in the form of protons.

Then, finally the coronal mass ejection — that’s the plasma from the sun itself — hits. Usually that travels at about 1 or 2 million miles per hour, (1.6 or 3.2 million kph) but this storm is particularly speedy and is shooting out at 4 million miles per hour, Biesecker said.

It’s the plasma that causes much of the noticeable problems on Earth, such as electrical grid outages. In 1989, a solar storm caused a massive blackout in Quebec. It can also pull the northern lights farther south.

But this coronal mass ejection seems likely to be only moderate, with a chance for becoming strong, Biesecker said. The worst of the storm is likely to go north of Earth.

And unlike last October, when a freak solar storm caused auroras to be seen as far south as could see an aurora but not until Tuesday evening, he said.

For the past several years the sun had been quiet, almost too quiet. Part of that was the normal calm part of the sun’s 11-year cycle of activity. Last year, scientists started to speculate that the sun was going into an unusually quiet cycle that seems to happen maybe once a century or so.

Now that super-quiet cycle does not seem as likely, Biesecker said.

Scientists watching the sun with a new NASA satellite launched in 2010 — during the sun’s quiet period — are excited.

“We haven’t had anything like this for a number of years,” Pulkkinen said. “It’s kind of special.”

NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

The stone pelting spree began with the Paramakudi police firing and continued after the murder of dalit leader Pasupathi Pandian on January 10. In most cases, the front and rear windshields as well as window panes were damaged, while the bus crew and passengers sustained injuries in at least two dozen incidents. Buses were damaged on arterial roads in Madurai, Ramanathapuram, Dindigul, Tirunelveli as well as Tuticorin districts. Interestingly, no such bus damage has been reported in Theni where mass protests by villagers on the Mullaperiyar dam row rocked the district.

In the aftermath of the Paramakudi police firing, 73 buses of TNSTC Madurai and Karaikudi divisions were damaged in stone pelting while four buses of Madurai division were damaged during Thevar Jayanthi on October 30. On January 10, 52 buses of the Madurai, Tirunelveli and Karaikudi divisions were attacked after dalit leader Pasupathi Pandian’s murder. This apart, several private buses were also damaged in these incidents.

“Those who damage buses do not realise that the buses were in fact their own property,” P Chandrasekaran, general manager, TNSTC Madurai said. Madurai division is more vulnerable as a considerable amount of the buses belong to high-end models. While it costs Rs 2,500 for an ordinary windshield, when a windshield of the Tata Marcopolo model is damaged, the corporation has to shell out Rs 27,000 for one piece, he pointed out.

The stone pelting culture keeps the bus crew on their toes whenever an untoward incident happens, ultimately putting the public to inconvenience. After Pasupathi Pandian’s murder, bus services to several places were abruptly halted as the bus crew refused to operate vehicles as they were told that the safety of the bus was their responsibility.

Trade unionists note that the Public Property Damages Act had stipulated that the political outfits or parties involved in stone pelting had to bear the cost of damage to buses. But the previous DMK revoked the provision because many of the defaulting parties were allegedly its allies. “Now the transport corporations have to bear the cost of repair. Besides, it also piles up work on the already burdened mechanics of TNSTC. It is high time that the provision to charge political parties and outfits responsible for the damages is re- introduced to instill fear and prevent bus damages,” said a senior trade union leader.

But even the Madras High Court does not seem to follow the time limit scrupulously as it had not provided information sought by an applicant even after one year since the application was filed and six months after information was promised to be provided.

Filed with six queries

The RTI application was filed by an advocate here as early as on December 30, 2010 with six queries.

Replying to it on July 27 last year, the High Court’s Assistant Public Information Officer (APIO) V. Devanathan provided information for four queries with an assurance that the answers for the rest of the two queries would be provided at a later point of time. But the promise has not been kept till date.

The two queries, for which the information was yet to be provided, included details of judicial officers who were subjected to disciplinary action between 2006 and 2010, the charges levelled against them, the nature of punishment imposed on them and district wise particulars regarding vacancies in the post of judges, government advocates and court staff.

Revenue was less

However, information provided to the other queries of the applicant has revealed that the revenue earned by the State Government through stamps and court fee paid by those who file cases in the Madras High Court, its Madurai Bench as well as the lower courts in the State was less than 30 per cent of the expenditure incurred by the government every year for the judiciary.

As per the information provided by the Chief Accounts Officer of the Madras High Court through the APIO, the revenue obtained through stamps and court fees and remitted to the government account was Rs.68.24 crore in the financial year 2006-07, Rs. 76.63 crore in 2007-08, Rs. 79.07 crore in 2008-09, Rs. 76.58 crore in 2009-10 and Rs. 95.21 crore in 2010-11.

Funds sanctioned

On the other hand, funds sanctioned by the government to the judicial department through budget allotment during these five years was Rs. 204 crore, Rs. 239 crore, Rs. 333 crore, Rs. 388 crore and Rs. 564 crore respectively.

Of this amount, the expenditure was Rs. 207 crore, Rs. 233 crore, Rs. 317 crore, Rs. 381 crore and Rs. 372 crore (expenditure up to December 2010).

The expenditure included payment towards monthly salary, medical allowance, house rent allowance, travel concession, honorarium, dearness allowance and non-salary items such as travel expenses, office expenses, rent, hospitality or entertainment, sumptuary allowance, festival advances, prizes, awards, books, notebooks, computer accessories and maintenance of court buildings.

Replying to another query, the APIO said that there were a total of 818 lower courts across the State including 107 District Courts, 49 Fast Track Courts (FTC), 205 Sub Courts (including Chief Judicial Magistrate courts), 184 District Munsif courts, 209 Judicial Magistrate courts and 63 District Munsif-cum-Judicial Magistrate courts.

The district-wise details of lower courts showed that at least eight districts — Kanyakumari, Karur, Krishnagiri, Nagapattinam, Nilgiris, Sivaganga, Thiruvannamalai and Thiruvarur — did not have even a single FTC. Dharmapuri, Dindigul, Kancheepuram, Namakkal, Perambalur, Pudukottai, Ramanathapuram and Theni districts had only one FTC each.

The rest of the districts had between two to five FTCs each.