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GOVT COUNTERS SELJA ON LIVID PUTIN WARNS OF

RETALIATION OVER NATOS
CASTE ROW AT TEMPLE,
INVITE TO MONTENEGRO 20
SPARKS FURORE IN RS 13

AHEAD OF KOTLA TEST, KOHLI

SHRUGS OFF ICC CALLING
NAGPUR PITCH POOR 23

Chennai drowns under heaviest rain ever

345mm In A
Day Smashes
114-Yr Record

AIRPORT SHUT TILL DEC 6 TN floods echo in

Chennai gets 345mm rain in 24 hrs, highest ever
for a single day in Dec, breaking a 114-yr-old record
Its almost double the normal rain Chennai receives
in the whole of Dec (191mm). Downpour predicted to
continue on Thursday & Friday, lighter rain thereafter

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Officials say over 200 people have died in Tamil Nadu

Chennai/New Delhi: Chennai on Wednesday recorded

the heaviest-ever rainfall of
294mm and 345mm in the Met
offices two observatories
here in 24 hours, breaking the
previous record of 261mm set
in 1901. Wednesdays level
was more than half the average rainfall for the entire
northeast monsoon and pummelled an already stricken
city into submission.
Large swathes of Tamil

25,000 cusecs of water released from overowing

Chembarambakkam reservoir oods city further
Tens of thousands stranded in their homes. Up to
12 feet water at many places, ground oor ats fully
submerged in some areas. Hospitals without staff
Airport shut till Dec 6; some aircraft under water.
Rail links snapped, highways & bridges inundated
Over a million people hit. 72,000 in relief camps
in Thiruvallur, Kanchipuram & Chennai districts
Army, Navy, IAF join rescue ops. Divers deployed
A family wades through oodwaters in
Chennai on Wednesday

FULL COVERAGE: P 14 & 15

Nadu remained marooned,
leaving over 200 people dead
over the past month, with the
Met department predicting
further downpour over the
next 48 hours.
The last time a natural calamity struck the state with
such vehemence was the 2004
Asian tsunami. While the

death toll was much higher at

nearly 8,000, the damage and
disruption this time is feared
to be on a similar scale.
Prime Minister Narendra
Modi held an emergency
meeting with senior Cabinet
ministers Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj
and Venkaiah Naidu for an

appraisal of the situation,

which was followed by a discussion in Lok Sabha.
The Army, Navy, Air
Force and National Disaster
Response Force (NDRF) are
out on the streets to rescue
people from their flooded
homes. But, rescue teams
faced serious problems in re-

Govt: Lens on all MARK GOES MAX ON CHARITY

diesel vehicles

eavy industries minister Anant Geete on Wednesday said the Centre will
conduct extensive checks on
all diesel passenger vehicles
in six months for possible violation of emission norms.
Volkswagen, however, maintained that it didnt violate
any norm. P 21 & 22

unmen targeted at least

20 people at a public golf
course in Californias San
Bernardino on Wednesday.
The location is near a family
planning centre. Last Friday, a shooter killed three
people and injured nine others at a similar clinic in
Colorado Springs.

UP boy bags
`1.8cr Google job

ucknow boy Ashutosh

Agarwal, a final-year
computer science student of
IIT Patna, has bagged a plum
job with an annual package
of Rs 1.8 crore at Google Inc,
reports Isha Jain. The 21year-old had earlier completed a three-month internship at Google New York. P 9

Peshawar school
killers hanged
akistan on Wednesday
hanged four militants involved in last years massacre at a Peshawar army
school in which 134 children
were killed. The hangings
marked the first executions
of civilians convicted by the
countrys military courts,
which were established
after the killings. P 20

there, National Disaster Response Force director-general O P Singh said.

Telecom minister Ravi
Shankar Prasad has said that
state-run operator BSNL will
not charge anything for a
week in Chennai.

El Nino to blame, P 15

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

A week after the birth of their daughter Max, Facebook CEO

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, both 31, wrote a letter
to her in which they pledged to donate 99% of his shares
in FB, currently valued at $45 billion, to charity
Our hopes for your generation focus on two ideas:
advancing human potential and promoting equality...
I will continue to serve as Facebooks CEO for many, many years
to come, but these issues are too important to wait until you or
we are older to begin this work...We will give 99% of our Facebook
shares currently about $45 bn during our lives to advance
this mission...Max, we love you and feel a great responsibility to
leave the world a better place for you and all children. We wish
you a life filled with the same love, hope and joy you give us.
Buffett also pledged 99% and
Gates 95% to charity | P 21 & 22

City court comes

to rescue of
disabled woman

Delhi trial court has taken up the case of a disabled woman, dumped in an
old-age home, as her siblings
reportedly wanted to usurp
her share in the family property, reports Sana Shakil.
The court told Delhi Commission for Women to probe

WORLD
DISABILITY DAY
Dec 3

P 6 & 16

To read full text of letter, go to

http://toi.in/ftyT3Y

Ahmedabad: BJP suffered

its worst loss in local body
elections in Gujarat in over
a decade as Congress regained lost ground, especially in
rural areas, in what it called a
stepping stone for the 2017
state polls. A clear divide was
visible as BJP fared much better in the cities and towns, giving some consolation to CM
Anandiben Patel.
While BJP retained all six
municipal corporations, Congress wrested 23 of 31 district
panchayats and 113 of 193 taluka panchayats. BJP continued to hold on to nagarpalikas, or town councils, winning 42 of 56 municipalities.

SC limits states power

to remit long jail terms
Amit Anand Choudhary &
Dhananjay Mahapatra TNN

New Delhi: The Supreme

Court on Wednesday put a
question mark on attempts by
NGOs and social activists for
release of hardened criminals
after 14 years in jail, popularly
believed to be the span of a lifeterm, and said the states
couldnt release a convict if
courts awarded a term much
in excess of that period while
considering the nature of the
crime and its perpetrators.
A Constitution bench of
Chief Justice H L Dattu and
Justices F M I Kalifulla, P C
Ghose, A M Sapre and U U Lalit
ruled by 3-2 majority that taking into account the heinousness of the offence and nature
of the crime, if courts awarded
a sentence for a period beyond
14 years, states could not remit
that sentence. While Justices
Dattu, Kalifulla and Ghose

Apart from agitating Patidars, who gave the defeat

BJP call, other factors including anti-incumbency and
anger over lack of irrigation
water and minimum support
prices added to the woes of a
rudderless party machinery
which missed the charisma of
PM Modi and the strategising
of Amit Shah. Patidars dealt a

Estonian couple
attacked by Raj
tribals, injured
Geetha Sunil Pillai

Rajiv case convicts

to stay in jail for life

he TN government on
Wednesday suffered a jolt
as the apex court ruled that it
could not unilaterally commute
life terms of Rajiv case convicts
and release them without the
Centres concurrence, report
Amit Anand Choudhary and
Dhananjay Mahapatra. With
the SC ruling on life sentence,
the convicts might end up spending their lives behind bars. P 9

TNN

Udaipur: An Estonian couple, trekking from Dungarpur to Udaipur, were seriously injured when a group
of tribals mistook them for
robbers and threw stones at
them near the Gujarat-Rajasthan border on Tuesday.
Nature lovers Eha Kutt,
46, and her husband Vahur
Estkkak, 45, had entered a
hut looking for drinking water when an old woman, who
was inside, screamed for
help after mistaking them
for robbers. Her neighbours
rushed for help and hurled
stones at the couple. Police
later found the injured tourists by the roadside and hospitalised them. Three men
were arrested on Ehas complaint. Its a case of mistaken identity and not an intentional assault, Udaipur SP
Rajendra Prasad Goyal said.

AGRA TOP DRAW

FOR FOREIGNERS

Drone photos create wedding buzz

M A M Ramaswamy of
Chettinad dead, P 22
Dattu cleared a record
30,000 SC cases, P 17

Agra and Fatehpur Sikri have

5 of Indias 10 monuments
most visited by foreigners

Taj Mahal gets

23%

of Indias
foreign
tourists
(6.4L/yr) the
highest; Agra Fort 12% (3.43L)
3 other Agra monuments
in top 10 are Fatehpur Sikri
(5th), Akbars tomb (8th) and
Itmad-ud-Daula (10th)
Delhis Qutub Minar
attracts 2.76L foreign
tourists annually
2014 figures, Source: Ministry of culture

Is it due to climate
change? Possibly

n 24 hours ending
Wednesday, Chennai got
almost twice the rain it
normally receives in the month
of December. Can the record
rain spell be linked to climate
change? The short answer is
yes but such connections can
only be shown through probabilities, not directly, reports
Amit Bhattacharya. P 14

gave the above ruling, the other two judges said even when
the courts could award jail for
a specified period like 25 years,
it would not debar the states
from exercising their power of
remission after the convict
served 14 years in jail.
Rights vs security, P 12

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

hey say marriages are made in heaven perhaps the view from the
sky is better too! That may explain
the new trend of nuptial proceedings being recorded by drones buzzing over the
heads of guests. People want to be a cut
above the rest, explains Rati Saxena of
FotoShaadi, a Bengaluru studio, probably
unaware of the pun in the statement. But
yes, the grand Indian wedding now suddenly seems incomplete without a birdseye view of the glitzy proceedings.
This year has been tremendous for
drone photography, says Lakshya Manwani, a Delhi photographer. Earlier, aerial shots were possible only with jibs or
from a helicopter. But while the first
achieved a height of 25ft at most, the lat-

HOVER & CLICK: A drone at work in Udaipur

ter ran up an exorbitant tab. The drone is

the easy way out. One can be bought for
Rs 75,000-4 lakh and can soar 50ft to 500ft

above the celebrations. But its easier for

lensmen to rent one for Rs 12,000-35,000
per day. And they do. As wedding chronicler Jerry Jacob says in Delhi, A drone
can add grandeur to images of the already plush location of the wedding.
Phagwara resident Gurdeep Singh
Deepa gushes about his nephews wedding a year ago, We had got a drone and it
added colour to the event. When so much
prestige hinges on the grandeur of the
matrimonial arrangements, the added
colour is probably the green of envy. Rishab Sood, who runs the Candidates Studio
in south Delhi, recalls a customer who discreetly enquired if he could get a discounted price to have a drone flying
around without recording anything!

Laddoo served from above, P 7

For three days in a row, Delhis air quality has been

very poor, and the city has done nothing. Heres how
Indias capital compared with Chinas on Wednesday

MOST POLLUTED SPOT

(Air Quality Index)

860

Delhi

DELHI 5 TIMES
MORE POLLUTED

175

Beijing

LEAST POLLUTED SPOT

260

Delhi

16

DELHI 16 TIMES
MORE POLLUTED

Delhis least polluted spot was nearly 50% more

polluted than Beijings most polluted place
ON PAGE 4  Six different levels of pollution
 Health hazards of each  Action taken by Beijing and Delhi
Air quality index values taken on December 2 at 11 pm in Beijing
and at 9 pm in New Delhi. Index values are determined by the lead
pollutant, which varies from day to day | Source: aqicn.org

NGT asks city

govt to act
he National Green Tribunal pulled up the Delhi
government on Wednesday
and directed it to convene an
emergency meeting to discuss measures to tackle pollution. All you can say is
there is no pollution... All
stakeholders who are dealing with pollution indicate
that Delhi is highly polluted.
We cannot permit such a
state of affairs...to prevail,
said the bench. P 4

Smog to stay
till Saturday

ir quality in Delhi remained very poor on

Wednesday, according to the
Central Pollution Control
Board air quality index, with
smog continuing for the fifth
day. Air quality is expected to
be very poor over the next
three days as well. The PM 2.5
level in Anand Vihar, one of
Delhis most polluted areas,
was between 137-294 micrograms per cubic metre, against an acceptable limit of 60.

Swaraj may travel

to Pak next week

Apart from the Patidar stir,

anti-incumbency, lack of water
for irrigation and resentment
over MSP added to BJPs woes
BJP had never lost an
election when Modi was
CM (2001 to 2014)

...restricted construction activities and

barred outdoor exercise in schools.

Beijing

in cities as it retained all

6 municipal corporations

Another ISI agent held,

terror alert for Kolkata, P 17

CIC rejects 11k appeals

for lack of papers, P 17

he floods in Chennai and

other parts of Tamil Nadu
on Wednesday caught the
attention of experts, civil
society leaders and even
negotiators of developing
countries in Paris on the
sidelines of the climate
summit. The weather event
was flagged to highlight how
countries like India are victims
of climate change that is a
result of emissions from rich
nations in the past, reports
Vishwa Mohan. P 15

Cong posts big win in

Guj panchayat elections

the matter and asked the government to appoint a guardian to ensure the womans relatives dont violate her
property rights. Shes reportedly a victim of domestic violence and was also sexually
abused by her ex-employer.
The woman appears to
be 40-50 years old and is disabled waist-down, the court
said, adding she needs psychiatric help, though her medical records are sketchy. P 4

OTHER TOP STORIES

BJP Hit By Patel WAKE-UP CALL FOR ANANDIBEN

Cong wrested 23 out of
Stir, Retains
31 district panchayats and 113
out of 193 taluka panchayats,
Grip On Cities while BJP fared much better

Gunmen target
California clinic

aching the interiors of Chennai, where most people are

stuck in the floods.
The entire southern part
of the city is disconnected.
There is no public transport
running there. Two main
bridges there have also been
closed and water current is
too high for our boats to reach

Paris summit talks

AT DELHIS AIR QUALITY

BEIJING WOULD HAVE
SHUT DOWN FACTORIES...

Cong workers celebrate the

partys win in Ahmedabad

blow to BJP bastions in Saurashtra and north Gujarat.

Wins in all major cities
saved BJP the blushes, but
rural Gujarat has given an
early wake-up call to the party which never lost an election during Modis stint as
CM from 2001 to 2014.
Need to analyse, P 17

New Delhi: External affairs

minister Sushma Swaraj
may travel to Pakistan next week for a
multilateral
meeting, a move that could
break the deadlock in
Indo-Pakistan
dialogue. On Wednesday
night, Swaraj, however, said that her visit had
not been finalised yet.
Pakistan is hosting a 14nation ministerial-level conference on December 8 to dis-

cuss regional cooperation

on Afghanistan. Swaraj has
been invited, but New
Delhi has so far given
no indication whether
she will attend. However, informed sources
said in Delhi that prospects of the ministers visit were fairly
bright but a final decision
was likely to be announced
by Friday. PTI
Sushma meets PM, P 9