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Woman ends life, husband held
Woman assaults loanee
11-yr-old Vaishali boy abducted
Huge haul of illicit liquor
Business centres in Gurgaon wooing MNCs
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Delhi Govt loses crores due to misspending: CAG
Metro keeps exemplary record of punctuality
13 days of holiday for Haryana Govt employees
TERI to teach civil servants
Record number of candidates for civic polls
Delhi Tourism’s gesture to Pak team
PM opens Eternal Gandhi exhibition
Medha Patkar stresses importance of environment education
India’s IT sector growth hailed
Pankha Road flyover opens
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Woman ends life, husband held
New Delhi, April 15 The incident was discovered by Anil at around 2.30 pm when he returned home for lunch. Some of the neighbours told the police that they had seen Seema around 10 in the morning today and Anil left for work around 11 am. The neighbours also said that Anil used to harass her for dowry and the couple had heated arguments on several occasions. Sensing a foul play, the SDM Preet Vihar inquired about the incident and gave a report against Anil, who was arrested this evening. The police said they were still interrogating the accused.
Businessman’s house looted
Three persons armed with country-made weapons and knives entered the house of a businessman in Shankar Nagar, East district, in the afternoon today and decamped with Rs 1 lakh in cash and gold jewellery, after threatening his wife and children. The businessman has been identified as one Satish Mittal. The police said that today at around 2.30 pm, three persons in their early twenties entered the house and threatened the woman to give them the almirah keys. After obtaining the keys, they decamped with cash and jewellery. The police received a call at around 3.30 pm and they reached the spot, but could not find any clues except that the suspects were three in number.
Dacoits held, pistols seized
With the arrest of three armed dacoits, the West district police today claimed to have worked out a dacoity case and recovered the stolen iron pipes worth Rs 1 lakh from their possession. The police also claimed to have seized two country-made pistols along with three live cartridges. The accused have been identified as Salaudeen alias Pappu (20), resident of Madanpur Extension; Kailash (25), resident of Jhajjar; and Bhagwan Dass (47), resident of Mayapuri. On April 15 at around 1.30 am, some persons armed with country-made weapons entered a godown near Shiv Shanker Dharam Kanta, Mundka and robbed iron pipes worth Rs 1 lakh after threatening the guards with the country-made weapons. When the guards informed the owner Hemant Goyal (28), resident of New Multan Nagar of the robbery, he immediately rushed to Mayapuri and found the vehicle which looted the pipes in Balaji Dharam Kanta. He informed the police. Accordingly, suspects Salaudeen, alias Pappu, Kailash and Bhagwan Dass were nabbed. The police are now looking for their associates.
Three get life term for murder
A Delhi court has sentenced three persons to life imprisonment for murdering the owner of a factory located at Onkarnagar in Keshavpuram police station area where they committed robbery on April 24, 1997. Besides sentencing Satish Kumar, Mahesh Kumar and Sanjay Kumar to life, Additional Sessions Judge Deepak Jagotra awarded an imprisonment of three years to one Sunil for receiving stolen
property. — TNS
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Woman assaults loanee
Noida, April 15 According to the SO of Kakode police station, Anil Pratap Singh, Rekha, the woman, had loaned Rs 36,000 to Ram Singh and she had been pressurising him to return the money. In the village Panchayat, called to sort out the issue, Ram Singh said he would pay her back later. This had apparently infuriated the woman who just caught hold of him and started beating him up. Rekha, who with the help of some other persons, started beating Ram Singh and forced him to her house where Ram Singh was made a captive and locked in a room. The police had later rescued Ram Singh and arrested the woman along with two
others. — OC
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11-yr-old Vaishali boy abducted
Ghaziabad, April 15 The ransom demand was made at 9 pm yesterday through a phone call. Naresh Chander, father of the victim, was asked by the kidnappers to
come with Rs 2.5 lakh “if you want your son back alive”. The boy was abducted at about 4 pm, while he was playing outside his house (No 955) in Sector-3 Vaishali. Naresh Chander runs a PCO and his son is a class V student. Naresh had lodged a report with the Indirapuram police when the boy did not come home by 9 pm.
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A woman in a sorry state, waiting patiently
for her daughter
New Delhi, April 15 She would not disclose her name, country of origin or how she found her way to New Delhi. “I have no documents,” is all she would reluctantly say in response to persistent questions about her. One moment she is sceptical and fearful of people and refuses to speak, the next moment she is concerned about her daughter and talks of joining her. “I have been here for 22 days,” she says, pointing to a piece of cloth laid out neatly under a tree by the side of the road that has been home to her all these days. “I have no documents. I have asked them to give me documents so that I can meet my daughter in Spain, but they are not helping me,” her voice fades away as cars whiz past her. With the sweltering summer sun beating down, all she has for comfort is an umbrella and the shade the trees have to offer. Sitting with her belongings neatly stacked around her, she is vague when asked about her native country. “My country does not exist anymore,” she says cryptically while eating biscuits and drinking milk straight out of a milk packet. She is a familiar figure for the passers-by and guards posted outside the UNHCR office and other buildings in the neighbourhood. “She is from Russia,” enlightens one, even as beat constables descend on the scene. “What did she tell you?” the constables ask, but leave when told that she is not forthcoming. Officials of UNHCR are just as tight-lipped about her. They refuse to divulge the details as from where the woman has come or what happened to her travel documents. Maintaining the confidentiality of refugees is important, that is all they would say. They, however, claim that they are seized of the matter and extending all help to her despite her ‘stateless’ status. But as the weather heats up, it is likely to be a long summer of discontent for her.
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Huge haul of illicit liquor
New Delhi, April 15 The accused has been identified as one Dalip Singh, resident of Jaipur. Acting on a secret information that a truck carrying illicit liquor would enter Delhi near Sindhu border, the sleuths nabbed him. During interrogation, the accused said that the liquor was coming from Chandigarh and booked for Rajasthan.
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Business centres in Gurgaon wooing MNCs
Gurgaon, April 15 With the rising real estate prices and changing business environment, the business centres are becoming a craze for Gurgaon–the IT capital of North India. Industry experts say that the multinational companies (MNCs) and corporates, which are planning to enter India or considering to set up their network in northern India, are moving in these fully-furnished offices. By paying a little extra, the clients can move in without bothering about other necessary services like security, investment in interiors, data cabling and Internet connectivity, utilities, internal housekeeping, besides electrical and AC provisions. Among others Vatika and Unitech groups have set up business centres. Says Meenakshi Taneja, Business Centre Head, Vatika Group: “Business centre is a marriage of hospitality and traditional office. Originating from the developed world, the concept of business centre is fast catching up in Gurgaon, besides metros like Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi.” The group has set up two business centres here and plans to set up another besides in Jaipur and
Mumbai, Ms Taneja says, adding that Vatika group is also exploring the emerging markets like
Chandigarh to set up business centres in North India. The group has an annual business of over Rs 500 crore. “Most of our clients are MNCs like Dupont, Marriott International, Genesys Telecommunications, Watson Wyatt, Intellirisk Management and Communications. With the opening of the economy, a number of businessmen are coming to India to explore the market. Before setting up their full-fledged operations, they need temporary offices, thus offering a business opportunity to players like Vatika, which offer complete real estate solutions,” says Ms Taneja. Real estate market analysts say that with the fast growth in the IT sector, annual software exports cross Rs 6,000 crore from Gurgaon alone. Companies do not have time to build up their offices and start their business. They want to start their operations, say within a week. So, opting for such business centres make an economic sense for them. Regarding hire rents for office accommodation in these centres, real estate experts say that like in the telecom sector, rent is certain to come down with the opening of FDI and entry of big players like Raheja Group, DLF and Jaipuria Group. Admitting that the charges are slightly on the higher side, Ms Taneja said: “We offer first-class services on an average monthly charge of Rs 18,000 per work station. The clients can have two seats to 37 seat suites at this reasonable rate in the most posh area.” The Group is planning to offer service apartments on rent. It is also setting up a premium hotel and residential apartments. In addition, it has also set up virtual offices–offering premium address, facility to receive phone calls while sitting any part of the globe and back-end support,
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Delhi Govt loses crores due to misspending: CAG
New Delhi, April 15 The sales tax arrears alone almost doubled from Rs 4,718 crore in 1999-2000 to Rs 9,364.77 crore in 2003-04, the CAG said in a review. In 13 cases, dealers were allowed exemption of Rs 26.38 crore on statutory forms beyond the prescribed limit, causing short realisation of Rs 1.92 crore in tax. Assessing officers levied tax at incorrect rates on a turnover of Rs 148.86 crore while finalising 24 cases, prompting a short levy of Rs 12.48 crore. An interest of Rs 5.21 crore and Rs 31.19 crore as penalty were also leviable, the CAG report said. Its overview reveals that four of the nine government companies incurred an aggregate loss of Rs 684.12 crore as against the aggregate profit of a mere Rs 7.75 crore by four others. One company did not even finalise its first accounts. One of the two statutory corporations suffered a loss of Rs 546 crore while the other could get just Rs 5.03 crore in profit. A review of the revenue records of the State Excise Department shows a loss of Rs 23.03 lakh because of incorrect fixation of ex-distillery price of Indian made foreign liquor/beer in two cases alone for 2002-03. The Irrigation and Flood Control Department drained Rs 63.39 lakh in what the CAG called unfruitful expenditure on building boundary walls around Gram Sabha land at Jaunpur and Bawana villages.
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Metro keeps exemplary record of punctuality
New Delhi, April 15 The Metro, known for its state-of-the-art technology, corporate culture, environment-friendly approach and its ability to turn each opportunity into a profit-making one, has achieved a unique record of being one of the few Railway systems in the world with a punctuality level of over 99 per cent in train operations. DMRC Chief Public Relations Officer Anuj Dayal told ‘The Tribune’ that the DMRC has surpassed the Honk Kong Metro punctuality measure of 2 minutes. “The DMRC is working according to the most difficult and tight punctuality yardsticks in the world. Any Delhi Metro train, which is late by 60 seconds, is considered unpunctual. Even the UK Metro has a punctuality measure of more than 1 minute,” he said. Metro trains, presently running between Shahadara and Rithala, managed to achieve a punctuality level ranging between 99.55 and 99.91 per cent since the operations began on December 20, 2004. At present, 252 Metro trains trips run between Shahdara and Rithala and 245 trips between Kashmere Gate and Delhi University. “During peak hours, the train frequency is six minutes. The system is designed to ultimately operate on a 3-minute frequency. That, however, will be done depending upon the traffic load,” said Mr Dayal. At present, as many as 1.5 lakh commuters are using the Metro daily. While the centralised Operation Control System at Shastri Park automatically monitors trains constantly through computers, leaving no scope for fudging figures, the Train Integrated Management System (TIMS), an equipment similar to a black box in an aircraft, records all movements of a train at a particular time. The Passenger Information Display System (PIDS) informs passengers when the train will arrive at the platform, down to exact minutes. “The DMRC insisted on PIDS from the very beginning because we wanted to introduce people to the culture of punctuality,” says the DMRC CPRO. While the trains start running from 6 am onwards, the first inspection train, called the pilot train leaves the Shastri Park Maintenance Depot at 4.10 am to check overhead electrification, tracks, signalling, etc. The Metro will be extended from Kashmere Gate to Central Secretariat in June this year and the Line 3 between Barakhamba Road and Dwarka will become operational in December 2005.
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13 days of holiday for Haryana Govt employees
Faridabad, April 15 Though half of the month has passed, the government employees have been to the office for only eight days. The present week has been quite gainful as far as the offs were concerned. After the last Sunday, which fell on April 10, some of the employees have attended office for only two days--on April 11 and 12. If anyone would have sanctioned a casual leave on April 15 (today), then this unusual long break contains six continuous holidays. The employees who attended office today will, however, will be getting three holidays from tomorrow to April 18, which will be an off due the festival of Ramnavmi. After attending three days of office from April 19 to 21, the state government and Central government employees will again be getting a three-day off due to Mahavir Jayanti on Friday (April 22) and weekend offs on April 23 and 24 (Saturday and Sunday). Thus, the total number of offs in this month comes out to at least 13, which include four festivals this month and eight holidays due to five-day week working concept that is in practice in the state and majority of the Union government departments. In addition, the Haryana government employees will be enjoying a holiday on April 30 or some other date also due to polling for the local bodies in the state.
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TERI to teach civil servants
New Delhi, April 15 The Master’s programme in Public Policy and Sustainable Development for the mid-career bureaucrats, an initiative of TERI and the Department of Personnel and Training, is aimed at developing awareness of recent trends in public policy design and management. Registrar of the TERI School, Mr Rajiv Seth pointed out that the course, which is scheduled to commence in January 2006, would focus more on research than rote learning. “We will make them go through thesis and research work in the second year of the course. With the help of a TERI faculty guide, they will carry out the research work on topics proposed by them at their own place of work,” said Mr Seth. The bureaucrats will be on deputation to TERI for the first year and will return to office in the second to complete their thesis, which will be submitted at the end of the year. The course, which is on its final stage, will help them with “enmeshing domestic and international public policy domains with emphasis on social and environmental aspects of globalisation and development”. It was further pointed out that the study programme would apply rigorous methodologies and sophisticated tools and techniques to the public policy. The programme will also deal with the various facets of policies in the much-changed scenario of economic reforms and sustainable development. While the first year of the programme will include a set of core and elective courses at the TERI School in the Capital, a six-week term will be scheduled at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, USA. “The students for the course will be selected by the DoPT and later screened by TERI. The first batch would have between 20 and 30 people and the last date of applications will be sometime in July,” said Mr Seth.
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Record number of candidates for civic polls
Faridabad, April 15 It is for the first time that the ratio of the candidates to the seats is so high and it could be a battle of nerves for many, as there is a record number of aspirants for some of the wards. At least three former mayors and a majority of the outgoing councillors are trying their luck again in these elections, said a source. The nomination papers were scrutinised today, though the majority of the candidates have already started their campaign in the respective wards. The ward number 23 is the only ward where the number of candidates has been two, making it a direct contest. Here a total of seven nominations were filed, but five of the applications were rejected today. On the other hand, ward number six will be witnessing a real confusion as the number of contestants here have been a whopping 39 and all the nominations were found fit. Ward number 32 and 34 have 34 and 33 contestants respectively, though the last date of withdrawal of names was April 20. It may be recalled that the government had raised the total number of wards to 35 this time from 25 earlier. There were about one-third of the total wards, where the number of contestants are 20 or more. About five wards have the total number of 10 or less than 10 candidates in the fray at present. While no rejection was found for the applications for about 18 wards, which includes ward number six in which all the 39 nominations were found in order. However, the least number of nominations was filed for ward numbers 12 and 27, for which only six applications were filed respectively and all of them were found in order. The maximum number of rejections was in ward 23 where five out of seven applications were sent to the dustbin. The town has a total population of around 15 lakhs and each ward represents about 42,000 residents on an average. The MCF had come into existence in 1994 and this
will be the third general election.
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Delhi Tourism’s gesture to Pak team
New Delhi, April 15 The Pakistani fans staying in Delhi would be taken to sightseeing tour of Delhi by Delhi Tourism on concessional fares. The corporation has also offered free entry to the Pakistani visitors who visit Dilli Haat from April 16
to 20.
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PM opens Eternal Gandhi exhibition
New Delhi, April 15 On the occasion, he said, “The Mahatma has a unique place in the world. Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of non-violence and Satyagraha are being rediscovered again and are relevant in the current highly troubled world.” The practice of values of peace and brotherhood preached by Gandhi is gaining ground across the world and countries like Germany, Japan, the US and Palestine are in the forefront in highlighting such message, he added.
Ambedkar’s anniversary celebrated
The 114th birth anniversary of Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar was celebrated with great fanfare by the Life Insurance Corporation of India, Northern Zonal Office. The corporation erected a stall at Parliament Street which was inaugurated by Mr V.K. Sinha, Regional Manager. He paid floral tributes to the Bharat Ratan. Mementos and posters of Dr Ambedkar were also distributed among the
public. — TNS
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Medha Patkar stresses importance of environment education
New Delhi, April 15 Addressing rural teachers in the NCERT here, she said planting five plants on World Environment Day is not enough, everyday of our life has to be an environment day. Ms Patkar said even today the rural areas are not just important for livelihood, but also for life. Without environment, we cannot think of curriculum, learning process or knowledge, as it is a part of the lifestyle, she added. Speaking on the environment education, she pointed out that every part of education forms the basis of environment, but unfortunately we do not pay much attention to it. Claiming that environment education is very important for our future, she said we will have to decide on the present available resources: how, for whom, and when they should be used. Ms Patkar said that that while teaching the children, we have to carefully think on what we need to teach them. We must make them understand in details on all those things, which they come across in their day-to-day life, including their rights on the natural resources. She also emphasised the need to teach children with the help of live examples instead of the dead, a tree and leaf has water and this can be taught by showing them a leaf. On environment education, she said that environment cannot be taught by delivering monotonous lectures, but a teacher must take the students to nature, which a child will enjoy. On the present education system, which needs a lot of changes, she said we have to teach tribal children of the remote areas all those things published in the textbooks, which they have never seen or experienced. Ms Patkar also expected that while preparing the curriculum, NCERT should take special care of jungle, villages/ rural and poor children of the urban slums.
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India’s IT sector growth hailed
Noida, April 15 While addressing the ‘CYBUS 05 National IT festival’ at Amity Institute of Information and Technology in Noida, Mr Hasan said: “We are preparing ourselves for the cyber world scenario so that our networks don’t get disrupted.” Mr N. Vijayaditya, DG, National Informatics Centre, apprised the gathering of the achievements of NIC in e-governance in collaboration with the government for complete IT transformation of passport department, land record systems in the rural sector, agricultural mandis and marketing of artisan’s products.
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Pankha Road flyover opens
New Delhi, April 15
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Wheat procurement
Faridabad, April 15
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