After hoardings, crackdown on mobile towers
Recently, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation cracked down on those who had given their rooftop on rent for hoardings. Such advertising, without the nod from the civic body was illegal, the LMC said. Overnight, hundreds of households were deprived of their extra income coming from zero investment.
Now, in the second round, the Lucknow Development Authority has set its sight on mushrooming mobile towers. Fretted by neighbors for hazardous emission, now these towers, too, have been called illegal by the LDA. Owners, if they want to raise mobile tower on their rooftops, will now have to get their house maps cleared by the authority.
Worthy descendant
Connect Lucknow, a city-based organisation, recently honoured some eminent people for contribution to their respective fields. While the list had ‘usual suspects’ a historian and chief of Lucknow Metro, one name made heads turn — Ashok Janhavi Prasad. A renow-ned psychologist and qualified barrister, with an LLM from Harvard and doctorates from Oxford, Cambridge and North Carolina.
Prasad is the great grandson of India’s first President Rajendra Prasad. While Connect Lucknow was honored to felicitate him, Prasad refuted the attempts to paint his illustrious great grandfather as a Hindutva icon. “He was devout, but no way a hardliner. His best friend was Mazharul Haq,” he said.
Twist in Brightland case
There is a twist in the tale in the Brightland School case in which a class I student was found bloodied inside the bathroom of the school and a class VII girl was held as a suspect. The boy reportedly identified the girl and she was apprehended, though she got instant bail from the juvenile board.
Now, a report from Lucknow’s FSL reportedly says the hair strand found on the victim’s sweater didn’t match the suspect girl’s. That means most probably the perpetrator was somebody else. Did the Lucknow police acted in haste to make a 12-year-old a suspect?
LU scales down fee hike
Looking to expand its revenue base, the Lucknow University had to recoil a bit when its plan to hike annual fee was met with vehement protests. The university had announced 30% hike in fees of self-finance courses. Its logic was that the fee had not been increased for the past six years while the running cost, mainly salaries, rises each passing year. But students reacted sharply to the decision and even ABVP, the students’ wing of the ruling BJP, announced to launch agitation in protest. As a result the university scaled down the hike to 15%.
Namita Bajpai
Our correspondent in Uttar Pradesh
namita.bajpai@newindianexpress