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Saturday,
July 19, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Nitish unveils VRS for gangmen PM’s talk a
gimmick: Bengal CM Rahman against Line of Control as international border BJP, BSP workers
clash Sonia calls meeting of oppn parties Tarlochan gets status of
Cabinet Minister |
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Ample proof against Advani, says CBI Pandya had gone to pacify mob, says father Punjab asks Centre to hike support
price More states demand share in package for cane growers
Disabilities Act translated into Urdu Foreign Ministry denies report Paramhans admitted to hospital
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Nitish unveils VRS for gangmen New Delhi, July 18 Elaborating upon the scheme for more than 40,000 gangmen involved in track inspection and 8000 drivers, the Railway Minister and the Samata Party leader clarified that their wards would have to meet the eligibility criterion for the post and pass the examination. He also drew attention to the commitment of railwaymen. Mr Nitish Kumar had approved the proposal for appointing wards of gangmen and drivers who opt for VRS at the recently concluded workshop on safety here. Gangmen and drivers between 50 to 57 years of age could avail themselves of the scheme. He said the decision fulfilled a long-standing
demand of various union leaders to offer the VRS option to drivers and gangmen and appoint their wards instead. Replying to a question, the Railway Minister said the work of drivers and gangmen was demanding, taxing and strenuous. “It needs a lot of concentration. The average age of gangmen working in the Indian Railways is between 48 to 50 years. They have to lug heavy tools for maintenance and patrolling involves walking long distances. The average age of drivers is between 40 to 42 years. The drivers may experience problems in concentration on attaining a certain age,’’ he said. In a seemingly earnest attempt to put things back on track after reversing his decision to resign, Mr Nitish Kumar enumerated key decisions taken by his ministry to achieve the ambitious target of “zero level of accidents’’ Speaking to mediapersons in the presence of heads of major federations including the All-India Railwaymen Federation and the National Federation of Indian Railwaymen, he said participants at the safety workshop stressed the need for similar interaction in all railway zones and workshops. He said the exercise aimed at identifying and addressing problems faced by various zones and divisions would be termed as “Rail Safety Samwad.” The General Manager of the zone concerned, member from the Railway Board and a representative from one of the national federations would be present at the workshop. He said the plan would be chalked out and implemented after identifying problems at all levels. He said the Railways was also considering a maintenance break for trains and was exploring the possibility of adopting the measure by reworking on the railway time-table. New Delhi, July 18 Convinced and assured by party peace brokers that irritants would be addressed, Mr Kumar left on a pilgrimage to Amarnath today with party President and three MPs. Replying to questions, he said that he was accompanying NDA convener and Party President, Mr George Fernandes to Amarnath this evening as it had always been his desire to visit the shrine. “I had been telling Mr Fernandes for two years that he should take me along whenever he goes to Amarnath.’’ Three other MPs who have joined the two leaders on the pilgrimage are Mr Basisht Narain Singh, Mr Prabhunath Singh (Maharajganj) and Mr Arun Kumar (Jehanabad). Sources in the Samata Party said the MPs left for Srinagar this evening. They would go to Panchtarni by helicopter, the last halt for the pilgrims before the cave shrine and then walk six kilometre to reach the shrine. Successful in persuading the Railway Minister to change his decision to resign, the MPs accompanying Mr Fernandes and Mr Kumar have been credited with ending the crisis in the party. They called on Mr Kumar on Wednesday and succeeded in addressing irritants during a two hour meeting. |
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PM’s talk a
gimmick: Bengal CM Kolkata, July 18 Mr Bhattacharjee called the Prime Minister’s charge that the Bengal Government was pursuing retrogressive policies on the state’s development process “baseless allegations”. He also attacked the Prime Minister for discriminating against Bengal in comparison to other states ruled by the NDA partners. Mr Vajpayee had publicly criticised the Left Front government at the inaugural function of the 150th foundation anniversary of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industries (BCCI) for downgrading the state in various fields, which the Chief Minister sitting on the dais, next to him, had silently swallowed. But now, Mr Bhattacharjee came out with a counter-attack against the Prime Minister by alleging that Mr Vajpayee had an eye on the forthcoming Lok Sabha poll in making some false charges against the state. The Chief Minister alleged that the Centre was still treating Bengal and other NE states with an indifferent attitude, adding that the central assistance on floods and other calamities, bank deposits ratio, advance plan assistance etc were much lower in the Bengal compared to rest of the states. The Chief Minister alleged that Mr Vajpayee was acting at the behest of the RSS and the VHP and ruining the country on communal lines, adding that he was not prepared to take any lesson from him. Though the CPM criticised the Prime Minister for making false charges against the West Bengal Government, no other Front partners like the RSP, the Forward Bloc and the CPI had attacked Mr Vajpayee. On the other hand, the West Bengal Pardesh Congress Committee Chief, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, and the Trinamool Congress leader, Ms Mamata Banerjee, congratulated Mr Vajpayee for rightly criticising the Front government for its failure in various fields. |
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Rahman against Line of Control New Delhi, July 18 Maulana Rahman — who is perceived as the ideological father of Taliban and a patron of militant outfits — also said he wanted the two countries to resolve all their disputes bilaterally as per the Shimla Agreement and blamed the governments in Islamabad and New Delhi for non-implementation of the 1972 accord. “If the Line of Control is converted into the international border then what is the dispute between India and Pakistan,” Maulana Rahman said in an exclusive interview to The Tribune here this evening. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has gone on record rejecting “LoC-as-international border” solution saying that the solution being suggested was itself a problem. Significantly, when asked whether his views were different from those of the Pakistan Government’s, on this issue the Maulana said: “My concept is similar to that of Pakistan Government’s.” “My view is that this issue (LoC as international border) should be left to the two governments to decide. It should not be discussed by individuals or organisations. I know there are differences between India and Pakistan. But still let us try to resolve these differences. Let’s work towards peace,” he contended. Maulana Rahman said he would convey this message to the Indian leadership, including Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani whom he was hopeful of meeting in the next few days. The official and security circles here are keeping a close tab on Maulana Rahman’s visit as he is known to be the ideological father as well as one who conceptualised the fundamentalist Taliban. However, the real brain behind the Taliban was Maj Gen Nasrullah Babar, who used to be the Interior Minister in the Benazir Bhutto’s government. Maulana Rahman is also known to wield enormous clout on such Kashmiri militant outfits like the Harkat-ul Ansar, the Harkat-ul Mujahideen (HUM) and the Harkat-ul Jehadi Islami. Maulana Rahman said he had come to this country with the message of peace and said he was firmly of the view that India and Pakistan should resolve all their outstanding issues bilaterally without any third party involvement.
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BJP, BSP workers
clash Lucknow, July 18 “Security has been tightened around the place and manhunt has been lodged to arrest the miscreants,” the police spokesman said here today. The tension had been simmering among the BJP and BSP workers for many days. BJP legislator Ram Iqbal Singh had levelled allegations saying a senior BSP legislator Ghura Ram had usurped a dalit’s land. He was demanding the restoration of land to the Dalit. He had even put up a poster to this effect outside the BJP office which read: “Akhir kiska dosh? (whose fault is this?). The BJP legislator has the support of BJP chief Vinay Katiyar in his crusade. During her visit, Ms Mayawati had called the BJP legislator’s demand as a “drama” to win the sympathy of the Dalits. She reportedly asked the police to take action against the BJP legislator. In the same vein she said if the BSP leader was at fault, action should also be taken against him. “The BSP workers raised slogans against Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani,” Mr Ram Avadh Singh, a local BJP leader, told The Tribune. This infuriated the BJP workers. They stopped the jeep carrying BSP workers and beat them up, he said adding that in retaliation the BSP workers attacked the BJP workers injuring many of them. SP, Ballia, Sridhar Pathak told this reporter that senior leaders of the BSP, including MP Babban Rajbhar and MLA Gura Ram, staged a dharna outside the PHC where the injured BSP workers were admitted. |
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Sonia calls meeting of oppn parties New Delhi, July 18 The meeting, called to discuss the floor strategy for the monsoon session of Parliament beginning on Monday, is scheduled for 4.30 p.m. Leaders of the Left parties, the Samajwadi Party, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Rashtriya Janta Dal would attend the meeting, Congress sources said. They said former Prime Ministers Chandra Shekhar and H.D. Deve Gowda, Lok Janshakti chief Ram Vilas Paswan and Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh had also been invited for the meeting. New Delhi, July 18 Responding to questions about the reported plans of the BJP to raise the issue of Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin in the next general elections, party spokesman Anand Sharma said it was a “dead issue.’’ He said the BJP was an “issueless party” which raised issues like Ayodhya with their sister organisations in the Sangh Parivar at the time of elections. Asked if the party expected a Sonia Gandhi-Vajpayee battle in the next general elections, Mr Sharma said the Congress had declared its willingness to face elections at any time.
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Tarlochan gets status of Cabinet Minister New Delhi, July 18 Dr M.S. Usmani, Vice-Chairperson of the Commission, has been granted the status of a Minister of State. A communique issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs states that the above “positions will be personal to Mr Tarlochan Singh and Dr Usmani for the duration of the term of their office.” Mr Tarlochan Singh took over as Chairperson of the NCM on February 10. In a telephonic conversation with TNS on Friday afternoon, Mr Tarlochan Singh said several issues related to Sikhs in Maharashtra deserved the attention of the state government. He said the State Minorities Commission did not have a Sikh member. “There is no Sikh MLC in the Legislative Council”. He said he would also urge Maharashtra Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde to work towards the development of Nanded, the last resting place of Guru Gobind Singh. |
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Ample proof against Advani, says CBI Rae Bareli, July 18 Apart from Mr Advani, the other accused are Dr M M Joshi, Mr Vinay Katiyar, Uma Bharti, Mr V.H. Dalmia, Mr Ashok Singhal, Sadhwi Ritambhara and Acharya Giriraj Kishore. —
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Pandya had gone to pacify mob, says father Ahmedabad, July 18 Dr Bhavnagari, a dentist of the Ellis Bridge area here, who had also won many awards for shooting, had alleged before the commission yesterday that Mr Pandya had led the rioters instead of pacifying them when commotion broke out in the wake of the Sabarmati Express carnage of February 27, 2002, at Godhra. Mr Pandya was assassinated in Ahmedabad on March 26 this year. The late minister’s father, Mr Vitthalbhai, who submitted a sealed letter today to the commission, told reporters that February 28 being his (Vitthalbhai’s) birthday, his son (Haren) was with him. However, on receiving information about riots in his assembly constituency, Haren rushed to the area and tried to pacify the mob. It was due to this effort that many a life was saved, Mr Vitthalbhai said, adding that it was his son who had tried to control the explosive situation and not incited the rioters as alleged by Dr Bhavnagari. Producing a number of documents — police case papers, V S Hospital records and forensic laboratory reports, the special public prosecutor said nowhere did the dentist ever mention the late minister’s name during the last 18 months. Moreover, neither the rioters nor the victims, in their police complaints, had ever mentioned Haren Pandya’s name anywhere, he Added. —
UNI |
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Punjab asks Centre to hike support
price New Delhi, July 18 The Agricultural Ministry had recently accepted the recommendations of the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which had called for no real term increase in MSP for 2003-04. The State Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development Minister, Mr Jagmohan Singh Kang, who met the Union Agricultural Minister here, said the Centre while calculating the MSP should take into consideration increasing prices of fertiliser, pesticides and diesel. He said the MSP should be announced well in time so that the farmers could make rational choices for sowing different crops. Mr Kang also demanded that oil seeds and pulses should be promoted by enhancing the MSP, clearly indicating that farmers of the state would diversify to other crops only if they had assured return for their produce. The CACP had suggested clubbing the last year’s MSP for paddy at Rs 530 and Rs 560 per quintal for two grades with the one time special drought relief
(SDR) of Rs 20 per quintal each. With good rainfall in July so far, expectations are that more farm land would come under cultivation and the country could witness bumper Kharif production. Mr Kang, while welcoming the lowering of interest rate on farm loan up to Rs 50,000 to 9 per cent, urged Mr Rajnath Singh to enhance the amount in view of the inflation. The Punjab minister regretted that funds for the Operation Flood to promote dairy development were not being given to Punjab. He said as the poultry industry of the state had been decimated, the dairy industry was facing a gloomy picture and it needed the support. The economic survey had suggested a freeze in MSP as its continuous increase had not only distorted domestic market prices, but also eroded India’s export competitiveness. |
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More states demand share in package for cane growers New Delhi, July 18 The Centre announced a one-time financial package for Haryana, Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh yesterday. While NCP leader Sharad Pawar had written a letter to Union Food Minister Sharad Yadav for extending food aid to Maharashtra, leaders of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had expressed reservations over the package. Official sources said the leaders were of the view that the Sugar Development Fund (SDF), from which the aid was proposed to be extended, was an all-India corpus, benefits from which should not be restricted to a handful of states. In his letter to Mr Yadav, the NCP leader pointed out that the SDF was contributed to by all cane-growing states, in which Maharashtra’s share was almost 35 per cent. He said for the last one year, cane growers in Maharashtra had been unable to receive the statutory minimum price for their produce. This was due to a steep drop in sugar sales prices. As a result, there had been a series of agitations, causing law and order problems in major cane-growing areas of Maharashtra. The financial assistance was to be paid for accruing the difference between the higher state advisory price and the statutory minimum price. While Uttar Pradesh was the largest cane producer with about 35 per cent of the total annunal production in the country, Haryana and Uttaranchal contributed about three per cent each. |
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Disabilities Act translated into Urdu New Delhi, July 18 A translated copy of the Act will be released by in Sringar tomorrow by Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed at the inauguration of a two-day meeting of the North zone partners of the National Disability Network, a cross disability advocacy group. More than a 100 delegates from various parts of the country will participate in the workshop. It has been organised by the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) in association with its state partner, Shelter Towards Independent Living (STIL). Hailing the initiative, Mr Javed Abidi, executive director of the NCPEDP, said the Jammu and Kashmir government had taken the lead in translating the Persons with Disabilities Act into Urdu, the official language of the state. He said that the availability of the Act in Urdu would enable the disabled know their rights better. The orthopaedicclly disabled president of STIL said that Dr Ghulam Qadir, a Srinagar-based academician, had translated the Act into Urdu free of cost. He said that Khyber Industries had offered to take care of the expenditure involved in the printing. |
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Foreign Ministry denies report New Delhi, July 18 In a statement here today, the MEA said “to suggest that Indian troop deployment in Iraq was linked by the USA to specific quid pro quos mentioned in the article, such as progress on trinity issues, reimbursement of cost of troop deployment or recovery of Indian investments in Iraq is equally baseless and false”. |
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Paramhans admitted to hospital Lucknow, July 18 “The Mahant has been admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of the hospital. His condition is stable,” the SGPGI spokesman told reporters here today. The spokesman said the Mahant was uncomfortable since morning and had stopped eating. His words were incoherent and he was not able to recognise his friends. The doctors attending on him suggested that he should be shifted to the SGPGI. |
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Madan Mohan’s melodies in Yash Chopra
film Mumbai, July 18 Madan Mohan had a brief but bright innings as one of the composing geniuses of Hindi cinema. His premature death in 1975 extinguished a melodic mastery marvelled at and mimicked by composers. When he died, he left behind a rich legacy of recorded and unrecorded melodies. His son Sanjeev Kohli, a well-known musicologist and the CEO of Yashraj Films, has since had in his custody over 200 tunes composed and ready to be recorded. Some of these are to be used in Yash Chopra’s latest film. Chopra is known to create a musical milestone in his films. He has worked with the greatest stalwarts of the Hindi music world, from N. Dutta in “Dhool Ka Phool” and Khayyam in “Kabhi Kabhie” to R.D. Burman in “Joshila” and Laxmikant-Pyarelal in “Daag”. It was Chopra who brought santoor maestro Shiv Kumar Sharma and flautist Hari Prasad Chaurasia together as Shiv-Hari to compose for “Silsila”, “Faasle”, “Chandni”, “Lamhe”, “Darr” and “Parampara”. Chopra will now be using the unrecorded gems of Madan Mohan in his next directorial assignment that goes on the floors in December. This is Chopra’s first directorial assignment since “Dil To Pagal Hai”, which introduced Uttam Singh as a composer. For Chopra’s new film featuring Shah Rukh Khan, Kohli was assigned the task of sifting through the lilting legacy left behind. Javed Akhtar is doing the lyrics. The final tunes have been selected and the recording begins soon. “I’ve always been a fan of Madan Mohan’s music, specially the tunes that he created for Didi (Lata Mangeshkar). Though I have had the privilege of working with some of the greatest composers, including Hridayanath Mangeshkar, Khayyam and R.D. Burman, it was an undying regret that I could not work with Madan Mohan,” said Chopra. Songs by the composer, such as “Lag jaa gale se”, and “Woh bhuli dastaan”, “Baiyan na dharo balma”, “Aap ki nazron ne samjha”, “Hai tere saath meri wafa” are remembered and hummed to this day. “When his son Sanjeev, part of our company, told me about his father’s unrecorded tunes, a plan began to crystallise in my mind: why can we not make use of that rich unused heritage,” said Chopra. “I have to confess that although I have been hearing lots of new music, none of it was touching my heart. I do not want to comment on others, but I do feel the soul has gone from present-day music. That is true of compositions, lyrics and singing. When Sanjeev told me about these tunes, I immediately wanted to hear them,” he said. “Luckily, the film I am making demands and deserves the Madan Mohan kind of melodies. It is a very Indian film. I feel our films are deviating from our rich culture. I am guilty of this in some of my recent films. Girls in short dresses are becoming too frequent in the promos. Have those by all means, but let us not lose our rich emotions and culture,” he said. Would Madan Mohan’s music be acceptable to today’s generation? Chopra certainly seemed to think so. “It is a novel idea, but then the era of treading familiar grounds is over. My decision to use Madan Mohan’s music brings with it a huge responsibility. Before I start shooting, I want all the songs recorded. Once I start shooting in December, there will be no time because I will be shooting at a stretch.” —
IANS |
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LIFETIME AWARD FOR LUDHIANA MAN TEACHER SUSPENDED 'EXTINCT' DEER'S PHOTO WINS AWARD 'VRIKSHAMITRA' ASSAULTED |
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New Delhi, July 18
Leaders of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the Janata Dal (S) and the Lok Janshakti Party are unlikely to attend a meeting of opposition parties called by Congress President Sonia Gandhi at her residence on Sunday. 
New Delhi, July 18
Actor Vivek Oberoi had to be rushed to the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital here after he complained of severe pain following surgery in his left leg.
The actor developed complications on Thursday night after being operated upon at the Hinduja Hospital following an accident during shooting in Kolkata on Wednesday, hospital sources said.
An iron rod with screws has been attached to his left leg to set right two broken bones, according to hospital authorities.
Doctors are monitoring his condition and the cause of fresh pain is being investigated, the sources said. —
IANS
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