Soon, withdraw cash from atm on trains The Central Railway has installed an ATM onboard the Panchavati Express on an experimental basis, officials said. The ATM, provided by the Bank of Maharashtra, has been put up in a cubicle at the rear end of the air-conditioned chair car coach coach, a space earlier used as a makeshift pantry. Passengers can withdraw cash even when the train is moving. To ensure safety, a shutter door has been provided | P7 hyderabad l thursday l april 17, 2025 l `9.00 l PAGES 16 l late city EDITION CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI Interim SC order curbing Restore ecology in 100 acres: SC to TG parts of Waqf Act likely CEC sees ‘extensive damage’ in Kancha Gachibowli S u c h i t r a K a lya n M o h a n t y @ Delhi Govt gets additional day to present its case S u c h i t r a K a lya n M o h a n t y @ New Delhi The Supreme Court on Wednesday stopped short of passing interim orders restricting certain sections of the controversial Waqf (Amendment) Act from coming into play, giving the government a day more to present its case in detail. A three-judge bench led by the Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna said it will pass interim orders on Thursday on various aspects, including the contentious “waqf by user” issue. The court said normally it does not pass interim orders, but would make an exception in the present case. “Properties declared by courts as waqfs should not be de-notified, whether they are by waqf-by-user or deed waqf,” the bench said. The petitioners claimed that the Act tramples several fundamental rights, including right to equality and right to pursue religious practices and others. The bench asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta how ‘waqf by user’ can be disallowed as many will not have the requisite documents to get them registered. ‘Waqf by user’ refers to those properties that are deemed as waqf based solely on prolonged use for religious purposes. Referring to the provision under the new Act to de-notify properties declared as waqf long ago, the CJI pointed out that the government cannot rewrite history through changes brought in by the amendments to the waqf law. “When a public trust is declared to be a waqf 100 or 200 years ago, suddenly you say it is being taken over by the Waqf Board and declared otherwise,” the CJI said. The bench, also comprising justices Sanjay Kumar and K V Viswanathan, said it will also pass orders on a proviso of the Act, which states that a waqf property will not be treated as waqf when an inquiry by a collector on whether it is a government land is under process. It will also address the issue of religious composition of the members of the Waqf Boards and the Central Waqf Council. The judges asked the law officer whether Muslims would be allowed to be part of Hindu religious trusts. “Are you saying that from now on, you will allow Muslims to be part of the Hindu endowment boards?” the court asked. The court said that under the Act, only eight out of 22 members of the Waqf Council would be Muslims. But Mehta said not more than two non-Muslim members, apart from ex-officio ones, would be included in the Waqf Council. He offered to state it in an affidavit. There was brief tension when Mehta appeared to question the neutrality of the allHindu judicial bench. Exception in the present case, says CJI “Ordinarily, courts do not interfere at the admission stage when a law is passed. But this case may warrant an exception. If a property declared as waqf by user is denotified, it can have grave ramifications,” Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna said Violence in protests very disturbing CJI Sanjiv Khanna expressed serious concern over widespread violence during protests against the Act in West Bengal. “One thing is very disturbing is the violence that is taking place. If the matter is pending here it should not happen,” the CJI said Bench’s Key posers How can waqf-by-user properties, existing for many centuries, be asked to register? Will majority of the members of the Central Waqf Council and the State Waqf Boards be Muslims? How can the Act override the court’s judgments which declare properties to be waqf? Making it clear that “not a single tree” in the 400 acres adjacent to the University of Hyderabad should be felled, the Supreme Court on Wednesday sought a plan on restoration of the ecology in the 100 acres that were recently denuded of green cover. “You (state government) have to come up with a plan as to how you will restore those 100 acres if you want your chief secretary to be saved from any severe action. The better course would be to come up with a plan to restore the forest,” a bench of Justice BR Gavai and Justice Augustine George Masih told Abhishek Manu Singhvi, senior advocate appearing for Telangana. Singhvi told the court that all activities in the area in question have been stopped. The senior advocate also told the bench that the state government needed time to respond to INSIDE Hyderabad: Stating that the entire 2,374 acres and two guntas, including the land assigned to the University of Hyderabad and the 400 acres in Kancha Gachibowli, appears to have all characteristics of a forest, the Supreme Court appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) opined that uprooting and clearing vegetation with heavy machinery caused extensive damage to the ecological integrity of the site. However, the CEC’s report submitted to the apex court on Wednesday said that although there were significant “forest-like features”, they were insufficient for conclusive determination. The report concluded that a vegetation density survey by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) would be the most reliable method to assess whether the deforested 100 acres and the rest of the 400 acres qualify as forest. According to the CEC, of the 400 acres handed over to the Telangana Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (TGIIC) by the state government, development was initiated on 122 acres in the first phase. Trees were uprooted using heavy machinery and the remains dumped at various locations. On April 3, during an inspection by the Forest Range Officer, Chilkur, 125 non-exempted trees were found to have been felled, leading to the booking of a case and relevant seizures. As per the available records, 1,524 trees were felled in total, of which 1,399 were under the exempted category. continued on P4 the voluminous report filed by the Central Empowered Committee (CEC). The bench granted four weeks to the state government to do so. During the hearing, senior advocate K Parameshwar, appearing as amicus curiae, said the land has been mortgaged to a private party. To this, the bench said, “We are not on mort- gage and all. We are only on how so many trees were chopped off without the permission of the state government. We are only on dozens of bulldozers and forests of a hundred acres being destroyed. If you wanted to do something you should have sought proper permissions.” Expressing serious concern over the environmental damage due to the felling of a large SMITA SABHARWAL summoned by cops I P4 number of trees, the bench made it clear that it would go out of its way for the protection of the ecology and adjourned the matter to May 15. The court, which took suo motu cognisance of the tree felling, had earlier asked the state government to explain the “compelling urgency” for clearing the land, and stayed any future activity till further orders. Guv sends k’taka quota bill to Prez I P4 CJI Khanna for Gavai as successor S u c h i t r a k a lya n m o h a n t y @ New Delhi CJI Sanjiv Khanna on Wednesday sent a proposal to the Law ministry recommending Justice BR Gavai as his successor. Khanna is set to retire on May 13. Gavai is presently the second-most senior judge Justice BR Gavai of the court. He will become the 52nd CJI and will hold the post for six months before he retires on November 23. Justice Gavai joined the Bar in 1985. He was elevated as an additional judge of the Bombay High Court in November 2003 and had joined the Supreme Court on May 24, 2019. Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell says Trump’s tariffs put the central bank in a situation it hasn’t seen in decades US tariffs will weaken credit conditions and raise defaults risks, says Moody’s | P9 hyderabad dialogues with doctor-politician p vinay kumar|P5