Front page of The Indian Express on April 13, 1978
The Union Cabinet is understood to have decided to abolish through a constitutional amendment the Fundamental Right to Property. The right to own property will now be made an ordinary right and will not enjoy protection as a fundamental right.
Basic Structure
The Union government has approved a proposal that any change in the basic structure of the Constitution should be made only after people of the country have given a mandate for it through a referendum. The Cabinet is also believed to have drawn up a list of what in its view should be the basic features of the Constitution. Among these are parliamentary democracy, secularism, independence of the judiciary and the fundamental rights excluding the right to property, adult franchise, direct elections to the Lok Sabh and state assemblies, principle of the government’s accountability to Parliament and federal polity.
CIA On Himalaya
A CIA-planted monitoring device powered by plutonium may endanger the headwaters of the Ganga through radio activity, the NBC reported. Writer Howard Kohn, in an article in a journal, said in late 1964 after the Chinese exploded their first nuclear device, the CIA wanted a monitoring device. It recruited a team of eight crack American mountain climbers. Kohn spoke to eight of those climbers who participated in the Nanda Devi expedition. On way to the top of the Nanda Devi, the expedition ran into inclement weather. The members decided to return in the fall of 1965, leaving the device in a cranny among the rocks hoping to retrieve it later and plant it atop the mountain. That winter an avalanche hurled the device to about 17,000 feet. Subsequently, the members of the expedition went to look for it, but were forced to leave the device where it was. So far, there is no sign of pollution on the Ganga headwaters from the device.