Gujarat Confidential: HC Relief

The Gujarat High Court recently quashed a criminal case registered against Kaizad Dastoor, the interim Chief Fire Officer (CFO) of Gandhinagar. Dastoor is a legacy fire officer whose father served as Ahmedabad CFO for more than a decade. A Divisional Fire Officer with the Ahmedabad Fire and Emergency Services (AFES), Dastoor had been booked in an FIR in Kalol in 2021 for allegedly gaining admission to the National Fire Service College (NFSC) Nagpur on the basis of false sponsorship documents that rendered his subsequent certification and all his work experience illegitimate. In an order published Wednesday, the HC quashed the criminal case against the officer.

Professors & Politics

Criticising the presence of Gujarat University (GU) Vice-Chancellor Neerja Gupta at one of the events in the ongoing state conference of the ABVP in Ahmedabad, NSUI stated that no V-C has attended any of the events organised by either the NSUI or Congress till date. “…if any of the professors attended any of the events in their personal capacity, s/he had to face action from the government (in the past),” it stated. Demanding clarification on the V-C’s presence at the ABVP event, NSUI stated that it should be made clear if it was their compulsion or a diktat from the ‘higher office’. The outfit also said that if the V-Cs want to attend ABVP events, they should also show courage and morality to show their presence at NSUI events as well. However, this is not the first time a GU V-C has attended an ABVP event. In the past, former V-C Himanshu Pandya had also attended ABVP events.