Monday Blues

Some news items which I found quite interesting from print  and social media, would like to share the same with you all.

1. It seems that Excise Dept in Mumbai, now is after the vendors and buyers , who places order of liquor on phone or order on line. It seems that they have found one online portal called “Alcohol on Call” service provider that procured liquor from shops and bars and made deliveries to customers in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane and Raigad. Actually Excise Dept will  direct internet and phone service providers to monitor their clients and check anyone is operating an illegal online delivery. Similar request has been made to the Cyber Police to help in tracking such offenders. Online liquor sale is prohibitive in Maharashtra.          Under the Bombay Prohibition Act- Offering Online or On call liquor delivery service attracts up to 6 months in jail or Rs 5,000 fine, or both.     -Serving duplicate or adulterated liquor attracts 3-5 years in jail or fine ranging from Rs 25,000 to 50,000 or both.-Possessing liquor without drinking permit attracts jail up to 6 months or fine ranging from Rs 5,000 to 25,000, or both. The Drinking Permits charges are Rs 5 for 1 day, Rs 100 for a year and Rs 1000 for lifelong.                                           On last Saturday Excise Official busted an ON line delivery racket, and arrested a delivery boy, who had bought liquor worth Rs 57,000 for delivery to the customers. The main problem was that in the list of customers there were some young kids who have also ordered the liquor. Actually in Maharashtra the legal age for drinking Beer and similar product is 21 years and for hard liquor consumption it is 25 years.             In our country you can vote at the age of 18, as Govt thinks you are mature enough for electing right representative from your area, but you are not mature enough to drink. Agreed young kids of under 18 should not consume liquor, but in today’s world of free marketing it becomes very difficult to stop selling the liquor without permit or to under age customers. On the contrary the young kids should be educated about the ill affects of liquor, and secondly on line sale of liquor should be banned. Vendors should also be refrained from selling liquor to young kids, and lastly the permit system should be abolished as  it serves no purpose, I have never seen a shop keeper checking whether the customer is having valid permit or not.
2. Recently I saw a video of Retd Justice Markanday Katju of Supreme Court (SC) on the social media. In this video he is talking of Modi Govt’s decision for withdrawing subsidy on LPG cylinders, for the people whose annual income is more than Rs 10 lakhs and he praised Modi for taking such decision. He also stated that in same manner all the reservations benefits should also be withdrawn for the people from who are earning more than Rs 10 lakhs per annum. Their next generation should not be given any such benefits, like for  getting  admission to educational institutions/professional courses, for jobs etc. He is asking in the video why Modi is not announcing this type of decision on the reservations, so therefore this with drawl of LPG subsidy is just an eye wash. In my opinion Justice Katju is forgetting one thing , for withdrawing any subsidies to the reservation category citizen is a big political decision and secondly it requires constitution amendment, without that this subsidy with drawl is not possible, and for changing constitution it requires a brute majority in both houses of parliament. In the present scenario NDA govt of Modi is not having this type of majority in parliament, and secondly even if he utters few words on withdrawing this subsidy, from the next day parliament will be blocked by oppositions MPs and there will be widespread agitation across the country. He is forgetting that there are enough national and regional parties who are thriving only on reservation politics, and they have their own vote banks in this reservation category voters. Justice Katju is forgetting one more thing, even if Modi wants to withdraw this subsidy makes an announcement in this respect, in that scenario  someone will file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in SC , and Justice Katju, your friends sitting in SC as present Judges  will give the verdict that this with drawl is against the constitution of the country and hence can not be allowed. So to do this Modi has to do  2 things, the first one to have dialogue with all the political parties and make them agree to withdraw this reservations, which in the present scenario is impossible or secondly he has to wait till he gets the requisite majority in both houses of parliament to amend the constitution and enact the new law. So till then there will be many people like Justice Katju, who will keep on blaming Modi for this malice which is ruining our country, but will never say any thing on why this malice has taken this gigantic shape now, and will not speak any thing against the perpetrators of this malice.

In the end, waiting for your views/comments/ feed backs on this blog.