In High Court

The bench directed that there will be no activity until then, except for some planting of trees.

The directions came in a public interest petition filed by the World Wide Fund for Nature, which challenged the construction of Nisarg-Vihar and claimed it entailed the construction of buildings to serve as an education centre on wildlife, and an entertainment park, both of which are non-forest activities that cannot be allowed in forest area. They also claimed the state government had not taken the requisite permission for the project from the Centre.

Counsel for Nisarg-Vihar8217;, Usha Purohit argued that there were no plans to build any concrete structures in the area, and asked for time to file a detailedaffidavit.

One month for eye bank rules

The division bench of Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal on Thursday has allowed four weeks to the state public health department to file an affidavit on the guidelines for eyebanks registration and those involving corneal transplants.

The orders came in a petition filed by the Association of Consumers Action on Safety and Health ACASH, which claimed that while the state had in 1994 brought about the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, this only dealt with the transplant of kidneys, livers and other organs, but not corneal grafting. In fact, the petitioners claimed there was no adequate or detailed standards for the registration of eyebanks.

Stay on Girish Vyas case extended

The high court today extended the stay granted on the demolition of Sun Dew Apartments, Prabhat Road, Erandwane, Pune till October 15.

The present stay was to expire on August 31. However, the order copy 8212; apparently of 450 pages 8212; was not ready, even though the verdict wasannounced in March this year. The respondents who intend to approach the Supreme Court against the order, moved for a stay, which was to have expired on June 31, was then extended to August 31, and now till October 15.

Sun Dew Apartments, built by Girish Vyas, the son-in-law of former chief minister Manohar Joshi, had been held as illegal by a division bench of Justice B N Srikrishna and Justice S S Parkar since the plot of land was reserved for a public utility. The reservation had been illegally shifted and the chief minister was found to have misused office to help Vyas construct the residential complex.

Since Justice Srikrishna will be sitting at the Nagpur bench on an assignment for the next few weeks, the respondents today moved his bench and sought the extension.

Bal Bharati plea dismissed

The division bench of the Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal on Thursday dismissed a petition filed by one B C Padhy, who had challenged a chapter in the standard V Bal Bharati text book, on Brain thenatural computer8217;, wherein it said that the brain interprets the impulses on what is seen by the eye and then interprets it8217;. The petitioner claimed that the brain does not interpret the image, because if it did so, a rope would not be mistaken for a snake or vice versa.

The bench held that it could not go into such matters and dismissed the petition.

Newsline reports