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Saturday,
August 10, 2002, Chandigarh, India  
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Kushabhau
dropped from BJP Parliamentary Board Parliament
adjourned for fifth day Advani’s
invitation to Hurriyat Don’t shun spies,
says Fernandes |
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Bid to
mollify Keshubhai BJP
ex-minister held for killing lawyer Move to
amend Minimum Wages Act NORTH INDIA IN
PARLIAMENT
Congress President
Sonia Gandhi with Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit at a function to
commemorate the 'Quit India Movement day' in New Delhi on Friday. — PTI
photo RS pays
homage to martyrs
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Kushabhau dropped from BJP Parliamentary Board New Delhi, August 9 Mr Naidu also announced a new Central Election Committee and a Central Disciplinary Action Committee of the party. The nine-member Parliamentary Board to be headed by Mr Naidu will have party general secretary Arun Jaitley as its secretary with other members being Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, HRD Minister M.M. Joshi, Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan, Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj and party general secretary Rajnath Singh. Ahead of the crucial Assembly elections in Gujarat and other states, Mr Naidu recast the 17-member Central Election Committee with Mr Jaitley as secretary. Besides Mr Vajpayee, Mr Advani and Mr Joshi, the other members include all five general secretaries, Union Ministers Sushma Swaraj, Pramod Mahajan and Karia Munda. However, Mr Thakre has been retained in the committee. The BJP president also set up a five-member Central Disciplinary Action Committee to be headed by former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kailash Joshi. The other members of the committee include central minister Bandaru Dattatreya, party office secretary Ram Kripal Sinha and Mr Ram Kapse. Meanwhile, Rajasthan BJP MLA Ramzan Khan and Mr Chaudhary Shah Mohammad of Delhi have been appointed the president and the general secretary of the BJP Minority Morcha, respectively. A BJP press note here stated that the newly constituted morcha would have five vice-presidents in Mr Shoukat Ansari, Jaipur, Mr Denzil B. Atkinson, MP, Hyderabad, Mr Rahat Hussain, Kolkata, Mr Tanveer Haider Usmani, Kanpur, and Mr Mohammad Yusaf, Gwalior. The five secretaries of the morcha were Mr Fayaz Ahmed Bhat, Anant Nag, Mr Wasin Ahmed, Allahabad, Mr Baby Ampattu, Calicut, Mr Manzoor Ansari, Ranchi, and Ms Noorjahan Sheikh, Mumbai, it stated. Mr Shoukhat Mohammad Khan of Bhopal was the treasurer of the Minority Morcha. The Working Committee had 12 members and 23 special invitees, it stated. BJP general secretary and spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Union Civil Aviation Minister Syed Shanawaz Hussain, Mr M.S. Usmani, Mr Tanveer Ahmed and Dr Sheema Rizvi figured as the permanent invitees of the morcha working committee, the press note said. |
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Parliament
adjourned for fifth day New Delhi, August 9 Uproarious scenes were witnessed in the Houses as the Opposition was not in a relenting mood. While the Rajya Sabha was adjourned shortly after it assembled this morning, the Lok Sabha passed the supplementary demands for grants for Railways without any discussion as Opposition members stood in the well raising anti-government slogans. The Railway Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, also moved the relevant appropriation Bills which were adopted by a voice vote. In 10 minutes the supplementary demands amounting to over Rs 400 crore were passed. The Speaker, Mr Manohar Joshi, called it a day immediately after the supplementary demands were passed. |
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Advani’s invitation to Hurriyat New Delhi, August 9 Mr Advani made the offer during a 40-minute meeting with the Kashmir Committee (KC) headed by former Law Minister Ram Jethmalani. “Mr Advani authorised and requested the committee to declare publicly that he would welcome anyone from the state who has any relevant issues to discuss with him and that no one need wait for a formal invitation,” Mr Jethmalani said in a press statement. The Deputy Prime Minister said the open invitation could be communicated to Hurriyat leaders and Mr Shabir Shah of the Jammu Kashmir People’s Democratic Freedom Party. The committee delegation, which also comprised Times of India Editor Dilip Padgaonkar and lawyer Ashok Bhan, conveyed to Mr Advani the disappointment of some of the political leaders in the state about the non-commencement of the dialogue which was promised by Mr Advani during his speech in the Rajya Sabha. Terming the response of Mr Advani as “extremely constructive”, the Kashmir Committee said the Deputy Prime Minister expressed his happiness over the efforts of the committee to start a dialogue with various elements in Kashmir. Regarding the dialogue process, Mr Advani said the dialogue had started by his very statement in the Rajya Sabha which in express terms promised free and fair elections with the maximum possible participation and a sincere dialogue after the elections had identified the real representatives of the people and their wishes and expectations. |
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Don’t shun spies,
says Fernandes New Delhi, August 9 Mr Fernandes said this while releasing a book “Mission to Pakistan” by former Director of Intelligence Bureau Maloy Krishna Dhar. Mr Fernandes said soon after taking over as Defence Minister, he had pondered over the problem being faced by spies who had gone across the border, but had been shunned when they returned home. He said time had now come to stand by these “brave men” and suggested that an international protocol should be enforced to enable these people to stand tall at the end of espionage assignments. |
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Bid to mollify Keshubhai New Delhi, August 9 Even as the central leadership, after an hour long meeting last night which was attended by state Chief Minister Narendra Modi, decided to go in for Assembly elections under the leadership of the present leadership and appointed Mr Patel as the chairman of the election campaign committee, the state unit appears to be a divided lot. The sources said Mr Patel had taken a serious view of the announcement of the Gujarat Gaurav Yatra by the state in charge Ramdas Agarwal. Gujarat Gaurav Yatra, which was postponed few weeks ago on the request of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Even today, Mr Agarwal had a heated argument with Mr Patel in the lobby of Parliament about the possible impact of the yatra on the electoral fortunes of the party but the sources said the former was not able to convince the latter. While former Revenue Minister Haren Pandya, who had been served a show cause notice by the state unit, continues to remain opposed to Mr Modi, the central high command is making plans to expel him from the party, the sources said adding the party was more concerned about Mr Pael than Mr Pandya. The party high command had even asked the RSS to make efforts to placate Mr Patel but it appears that RSS Joint General Secretary Madandas Devi’s meeting with the former Gujarat Chief Minister failed to produce a positive result. Mr Modi’s style of functioning and his arrogance has annoyed many in the party and Mr Patel has made it known to the party high command that they are not going to tolerate the former’s behaviour. However, party General Secretary Arun Jaitley maintained that there was no “infighting” in the state unit. “There is no infighting. All the leaders, including Mr Keshubhai Patel and Mr Kanshi Ram Rana will unitedly contest the elections in the state,” Mr Jaitley told newspersons. On the resignation of Mr Pandya from the Modi Government and openly questioning the style of functioning of the Chief Minister, Mr Jaitley said “the state Unit is dealing with the matter.” The party high command, under the specific instructions of Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, has asked Gujarat BJP chief Rajender Singh Rana to weed out ineffective elements from his team and bring in energetic partymen into the team. Mr Modi is understood to have conveyed to all BJP MLAs of the dissolved Gujarat Assembly that if they want to be renominated then they must fall in line. Meanwhile, it is learnt that some of the BJP sitting MLAs, who are the followers of Mr Patel and are not going to be renominated, may contest as rebel candidates on the Nationalist Congress Party ticket. NCP President Sharad Pawar has been in touch with certain BJP leaders. |
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BJP ex-minister held for killing lawyer Lucknow, August 9 Senior lawyer and former president of the Lucknow Bar Association I.D. Singh was gunned down in broad daylight in the state capital yesterday. The wife of the deceased had named the former minister as one of the conspirators. Earlier, the police had arrested a senior PCS officer and his wife in this connection. The arrest of Verma, a senior backward leader of the saffron party, has sent shock waves in the BJP headquarters. The state president of the party, Mr Vinay Katiyar, said the police should not arrest a senior politician merely because he had been named in the FIR. “A thorough investigation should be carried out. If then Mr Verma is found guilty then action should be taken against him,” said Mr Katiyar and added that he would speak to the Chief Minister, Ms Mayawati, in this regard. The Urban Development Minister, Mr Lalji Tandon, said Mr Verma did not have criminal past. He could not murder anyone, he said. The senior lawyer was gunned down when he was returning from the high court to his residence. According to eyewitnesses, the lawyer gave a lift to a person near a “paan” shop. The person sitting in the pillion, killed him with a country-made revolver and escaped. In the FIR the wife of the deceased named the PCS officer, his doctor wife and Verma for the murder of her husband. Though the PCS officer and his wife were arrested immediately, the police developed a cold feet when it came to arresting Verma. Lawyers gheraoed senior police officials and
pressurised them to arrest all those named in the FIR. Mr Verma, however, said he was innocent and had nothing to do with the murder of the lawyer. |
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Move to amend
Minimum Wages Act New Delhi, August 9 This was stated by Labour Minister Sahib Singh while addressing the meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee, attached to his ministry, here today. Mr Verma said the Centre and the states needed to do much more to ensure the implementation of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948. Special awareness generation campaigns would be launched in various parts of the country for workers and employers regarding rights and obligations envisaged in the Act. He suggested that while making non-compliance of the Act more punishable, its sustained voluntary compliance should be amply rewarded. Mr Sahib Singh said the government was seriously considering bringing in an umbrella legislation for workers in the unorganised sector. Stating that the Labour Ministry was studying the report of the Second National Commission on Labour, he said detailed discussions would be held on it with the members of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee and various social partners. |
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NORTH INDIA IN PARLIAMENT New Delhi, August 9 The hill state was allocated 1,19,250 tonnes of rice and 30,000 tonnes of wheat, the minister said in a written reply. The allocation of foodgrains was made at the BPL rates for distribution to all drought-affected families (BPL and APL) at the rate of 20 kg per family per month for three months. The Union Government has sanctioned Rs 62.51 lakh for financial assistance to cooperative societies, state handloom development corporations and handloom apex societies under the Deen Dayal Hathkargha Protsahan Yojana (DDHPY) to the Himachal Pradesh, Minister of State for Textiles, Mr Basanagouda R Patil (Yatnal), informed the Lok Sabha. Of the sanctioned funds, the Centre has so far released Rs 31.12 lakh. For Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre has sanctioned Rs 57.64 lakh, of which Rs 44.54 lakh have been released, the minister informed in a written reply to a question from Mr Ramdas Athawale. Under the scheme, proposals drawn in conformity with the guidelines duly recommended by the state-level project committee and forwarded by the respective state governments are provided assistance. No quota of edible oil was released to Punjab during last year as no demand was raised by the state, the Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Mr V. Srinivasa Prasad said. |
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Prime puzzle solved
New Delhi, August 9 Prof Manindra Agarwal and two of his students, Nitin Saxena and Neeraj Kayal of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, have discovered a polynomial time-deterministic algorithm to test if an input number is prime or not. Methods of determining whether a number is prime have captivated mathematicians since ancient times because understanding prime numbers is the key to solving many important mathematical problems. More recently, attention has focused on tests that run efficiently on a computer, because such tests are part of the underlying mathematics of several widely used systems for encrypting data on computers. This is why researchers have claimed this result as a major breakthrough as the new algorithm guarantees a correct and timely answer. One of the main features of this result is that the proof is neither too complex nor too long (their preprint paper is only 9 pages long!), and relies on very innovative and insightful use of results from number theory. Prime numbers play a crucial role in cryptography, so devising fast ways to identify them is important. Current computer recipes, or algorithms, are fast but have a small chance of giving either a wrong answer or no answer at all. Though the paper has not been published, Professor Agarwal and his students have distributed it to leading mathematicians, who have expressed excitement at the finding. A report in The New York Times, quoting Dr Shafi Goldwasser, a professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: “This was one of the big unsolved problems in theoretical computer science and computational number theory.’’ The paper is now posted on the computer science department web page at the IIT
(www.cse.iitk.ac.in). Dr Carl Pomerance, a mathematician at Bell Labs, who arranged an impromptu seminar on the result, determined it as correct. That he could prepare and give a seminar on the paper so quickly was “a measure of how wonderfully elegant this algorithm is,” Dr Pomerance said.
UNI |
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Quit India Day observed Bhopal, August 9 Earlier, a delegation of leaders of victims’ organisations and representatives of trade unions submitted to the Governor a memorandum addressed to the President. The memorandum seeks the intervention of the President to check what the organisations call “gross injustice” meted out to victim in Bhopal. It demands that the CBI should withdraw its application for the dilution of criminal charges against Mr Warren Anderson, former Chairman of the Union Carbide who is a prime accused in the criminal case. The protestors demand that the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers (which is in charge of the disaster-related matters) must ensure that the balance of compensation fund now with the Supreme Court is distributed among the gas victims. Their other demand is that the centre hold Dow Chemicals liable for clean-up of the contaminated factory site. |
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RS pays homage to martyrs New Delhi, August 9 The Deputy Chairperson, Dr Najma Heptullah, said August 9, 1942, saw the people responding to the clarion call of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, which culminated in the freedom of the country from the British rule. The House, then, observed a minute’s silence in the memory of the freedom fighters. |
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Cong seeks PM’s intervention New Delhi, August 9 Party spokesman Syed Sibte Razi demanded that Mr Vajpayee should intervene to stop the BJP from taking out such a march in the communally sensitive state. |
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Cong rally
tomorrow New Delhi, August 9 |
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