Adarsh land not of Maha: Official
In an U-turn, a Maharashtra government official, who had earlier claimed that the controversial Adarsh Housing Society land belonged to the state government, on Friday told a judicial panel that the land does not belong to the state.
“I have stated in my affidavit filed before the panel that the land in question belongs to the government of Maharashtra. I did not personally verify the fact of title. I made the statement on the basis of the development plans prepared by MMRDA.”
“Now, I withdraw my statement that the land in question belongs to the state government,” assistant superintendent-cum-city survey officer from the city survey and land records department D.N. Surve told a two-member inquiry commission.
Mr Surve was being cross-examined by Aniket Nikam, advocate for the ministry of defence. Mr Surve is the first state government official to admit before the commission that the land in question does not belong to the state government. “As per records, it appears that the land in question is a reclaimed land. I cannot say when the land was reclaimed and by whom,” Mr Surve said. In his affidavit filed before the commission in May this year, Surve had said the land belonged to Maharashtra government.
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‘Populated areas in seismic zone’
age CORRESPONDENT
New Delhi, Nov. 4
Describing the after-effects of earthquake on health as “most devastating”, an article in the renowned British Medical journal Lancet has said that the world’s largest and most populated metropolitan areas like India’s (Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata) Tokyo, Mexico City, Shanghai, Los Angeles, even New York City are in seismic zones. Explaining that children are often at higher risk of injury and death during earthquakes than adults, the authors said that during the earthquakes in India, 25 per cent of patients were aged less than 17 years.
Differentiating the epidemiology of mortality and injury of earthquakes than natural hazards, such as hurricanes and flood emergencies, the experts said that floods and hurricanes typically cause many deaths due to drowning but few serious medical or surgical injuries. By comparison, earthquakes not only cause many deaths initially, but also many severe injuries requiring complex surgical and resuscitative medical care.
“By destroying medical facilities, roads, and bridges, in addition to interrupting medical supply chains, earthquakes devastate the local curative medical capacity and create a large, unmet need for complex surgical and medical care,” it said.
In the past 10 years, experts said that earthquakes have caused more than 780,000 deaths — almost 60 per cent of disaster-related morality. More than a million earthquakes occur around the world each year. They list a variety of injuries earthquake victims often suffer. People who are trapped under collapsed buildings and other structures get crush injuries, in which pressure on muscles damages tissues and can lead to electrolyte imbalances, kidney failure, sepsis and death.
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