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Doctors hold OPDs in AIIMS lawns
Tirumala issue: NCM intervention sought
Vajpayee files affidavit
SC notice to Centre on NBA foreign funding
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suspended: contact failure with PM’s jet
Nepal poll not under shadow
of gun: Deuba
HC lifts ban on ‘Da Vinci Code’
Panel to recommend assessment exercise
Sibal for more ‘science counsellors’
Monsoon may arrive in region tomorrow
CPM demands report on security breaches
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Doctors hold OPDs in AIIMS lawns
New Delhi, July 7 A formal decision on the strike will, however, be announced only after the meeting of the General Body of Faculty Association of AIIMS (FAIMS) and that of the Resident Doctors Association (RDA), the Society of Young Scientists and the AIIMS Students Union. RDA spokesperson Dr Anil Sharma hinted that any decision on the strike would be in the interest of the patients. Terming the High Court order as “victory oftruth”, Dr Sharma said, “We are happy that the court has stayed the proposed sacking of Dr Venugopal. We will look forward to his reinstatement.” Resident doctors of AIIMS attended on patients in parallel Out Patient Departments (OPDs) on the lawns facing Jawaharlal Auditorium. The doctors who have been on strike for the past three days in protest against the unceremonious removal of their Director, Dr P. Venugopal, decided to run OPDs in the interest of the patients. Patient care services inside the hospital remained crippled as no doctor showed up for duty at the emergency or OPDs. As a result, patients were turned away. Meanwhile, Dr Venugopal today said that he would not compromise on the dignity of the institute and continue to fight for its autonomy. The AIIMS Director said that he would ignore the “personal humiliation’’ meted out to him. Asked if he would complete his full term, the AIIMS Director said: “Let us see. That is a bigger point. Let me discuss with my counsel.’’ Meanwhile, the Union Health Minister and President of AIIMS today threatened to take punitive action against striking doctors and said that they were playing with the lives of patients. He said he has appealed to the agitating doctors to return to work. The Health Minister said that if the “doctors and students don’t return to work, he will have no option but to crack the whip.” Adopting an ambivalent posture on Dr Venugopal’s removal, the Health Minister said that Dr Venugopal continued to be the Director of AIIMS. “The Institute Body has made the recommendation which will be considered by the Cabinet where a collective decision would be taken by the ACC (Appointments Committee of the Cabinet). Replying to a question, Dr Ramadoss went to the extent of saying that he would accept the Cabinet’s decision even if it rejected the recommendation of the Institute Body. “I will accept it. I have no ego on this issue.’’ He clarified that the recommendation on Dr Venugopal’s removal was a collective decision of the Institute Body of AIIMS to improve administration. He said that the proposal was okayed by a 12 to 3 majority at the meeting.
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Tirumala issue: NCM intervention sought
Hyderabad, July 7 In the backdrop of recent reports of missionary activity at the hill shrine and the temple management’s moves to curtail it, the council has taken the matter to the National Commission for Minorities (NCM), seeking intervention. “We request the NCM to examine the constitutionality of laws or local regulations that bar any citizen’s movement, profession and charity work in such areas”, council president Dr Joseph D’souza and its and secretary general Dr John Dayal said. Four nuns of the Sisters of Charity were recently detained following complaints that they were carrying out religious conversions at the Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanam-funded Sri Venkateswara Ruia Hospital at Tirupati. Following this, the devasthanam authorities had made it clear that preaching non-Hindu religions on the sacred hills would not be allowed and had recommended the government to come out with a law providing for penal provisions.
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Vajpayee files affidavit
New Delhi, July 7 He said the two-bedroom flat at La-Plaze complex was allotted to him by the UP government before he became Prime
Minister because he did not have any house in the town, which was his parliamentary constituency. He said since he had been allotted a bungalow in Delhi in the capacity of former Prime Minister, he was not “interested in having any government accommodation at Lucknow.” “I have no accommodation of my own in Lucknow and I had to stay either in the government Circuit House or the BJP office whenever I used to go to Lucknow for the constituency work and, therefore, I applied for accommodation to the UP
Government, which allotted me a two bedroom flat at La-Plaze multi-storey building,” Mr Vajpayee in his affidavit submitted. He also said after he became Prime Minister, the SPG, which was providing security to him, found the accommodation unsuitable for security reasons and he did not stay there. He said after his office requested for allotment of another house, which would satisfy SPG security requirements, the UP Government “seems to have allotted 10 Mall Road (house) instead of La-Plaze.”
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SC notice to Centre on NBA foreign funding
New Delhi, July 7 The court, which also issued a notice to Medha Patkar’s close associate Rahul Banerjee, in whose account the Madhya Pradesh Vigilance Department had claimed to have detected transactions of $ 40,000 in three instalments from the McArthur Foundation, refrained from issuing notices to Ms Patkar and the CBI. A Bench comprising Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal and Mr Justice C.K. Thakker directed the Centre, the governments of the two states and the NBA to submit their replies to the issues raised in the petition by the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), an Ahmedabad-based NGO. When NCCL counsel Amar Dave pressed for notices to Ms Patkar and the CBI, the court declined to issue a notice to her at this stage and said the role of the investigating agency would come only after hearing the parties. Basing its petition mainly on the findings of the Madhya Pradesh Vigilance Department, the NCCL sought a CBI inquiry into the NBA receiving huge funds from abroad. The vigilance report, annexed with the petition, stated that apart from receiving $ 40,000 from the McArthur Foundation by Mr Banerjee, the NBA had also been receiving foreign assistance from the Right Livlihood Foundation and the Goldman Foundation to run an organisation named the Jan Sahyog Trust by it. This information had been collected from Mr Banerjee’s computer by the department, the report said, adding that according to information gathered from the computer, he wanted the money to increase villagers’ resistance power and prepare them for fighting against the government. The NCCL counsel further alleged that transactions of Rs 47 lakh by the Aadiwasi Sanghathan Morcha, another NBA-affiliated organisation, had also been detected and the Madhya Pradesh Government had registered FIRs against several activists, including Mr Banerjee. On the one hand, the NBA had been raising the issue of rehabilitation of Narmada dam oustees and on the other, instigating people to drive away government officials engaged in rehabilitation work, he alleged. Despite these findings, no action had been taken by the government and therefore, a CBI probe was needed into the issue of financial sources of the NBA, which was essentially aimed at curtailing the project.
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suspended: contact failure with PM’s jet New Delhi, July 7 Official sources said here today that two officials A K Sangal and O P Saxena, both from the communications wing of the AAI, were suspended following a probe into the incident by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Reports suggested that the two officials were suspended for dereliction of duty as the probe into the incident pointed out that neither Mr Sangal nor Mr Saxena were present when the Prime Minister’s aircraft landed on June 24 on his return from Bangalore. The AAI had recently issued a directive that officials in charge of communications should be present at key airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai whenever a flight carrying a VIP landed or took off. The VHF communication system at the airport went dead as soon as the plane touched ground. There was no VHF contact between the ATC and the jet for a few minutes. Alarmed ATC officials then re-established links with the jet from the IAF's VIP squadron by switching to an alternate frequency.
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Nepal poll not under shadow
of gun: Deuba
New Delhi, July 7 Addressing a Press conference in the Capital, three-time Prime Minister of Nepal said the 8-point Agreement reached between the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists “clearly stipulates that arms held by the Maoists have to be "managed" before they join the interim government”. The Maoists have to return the looted properties and stop extortion to create a free-from-fear atmosphere, Mr Deuba said. "The people of Nepal want an assurance from them(Maoists). They have to assure the people of Nepal on arms management", he said.
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HC lifts ban on ‘Da Vinci Code’
Chennai, July 7 The court also directed the state government to pay Rs 15, 000 to compensate the loss suffered by the distributor of the film. Last month when the film was released in the country the Tamil Nadu Government banned its screening in cinema halls, stating that the movie might hurt the sentiments of Christrians and lead to public breach of peace. The fiction turned into a movie shows Jesus Christ married to Magdalene, one of his disciples. The Vatican had strongly condemned the book and many Christian organisation in the country voiced their opposition to the film being released in India.
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Panel to recommend assessment exercise
New Delhi, July 7 The Ministry of Human Resource Development has set up a committee headed by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) Director, Prof. Krishna Kumar, to recommend the procedure to be followed for carrying out the assessment at the school level. The committee, which held its meeting here today, has set up a sub committee headed by Prof Jacob Tharu which will prepare the draft that will be discussed on July 28 and will be submitted to the government on July 31. “It has been mentioned in the National Policy of Education, 1986, that there should be a national evaluation organisation. The committee will inform the government whether there is a need to have such a body and what should be its mandate. There is a need to compare different boards in terms of examination results and the quality of education at the primary level,” said Prof Krishna Kumar. The National Policy of Education, 1986, had pointed out the need, “for a national evaluation organisation to conduct tests to determine the suitability of candidates for specific jobs to pave the way for the emergence of norms of comparable competencies across the nation and to bring about an overall improvement in testing and measurements”. The committee, which has been given the task of recommending how the assessment exercise should be conducted, has to submit its report by July 31.
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Sibal for more ‘science counsellors’
New Delhi, July 7 Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal today said that the ministry was working on a roadmap to restructure its international cooperation and the process included appointing more science councellors and giving more authority to those already posted in Indian embassies. India has Science Counsellors in its embassies in Russia, USA, Germany and Japan. Mr Sibal, who recently returned from a visit to the USA, Mexico and the UK, said here today that diplomacy was now “technoloy diplomacy” with international relations increasingly based on trade. He said science and technology was the driving force for trade. The minister said India was a huge market which was of value to all countries with high technology. Mr Sibal co-chaired the first meeting of the India-UK Science and Innovation Council with UK Minister for Science and Innovation Lord Sainsbury. He said UK proposed to earmark up to eight million pounds for science and technolgy cooperation in the next five years from its 12 million pounds United Kingdom Education and Research Initiative (UKERI) fund and India would provide a matching grant to the corpus. He said India and the UK had decided to create centres on stem cell research and animal biotechnology, next generation communication technologies and advanced materials and nano-technologies. Initiatives on weather science and climate change and new energy, including hydrogen energy had also been planned.
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Monsoon may arrive in region tomorrow New Delhi, July 7 Today, however, a ray of hope has appeared with Union Minister for Science and Technology Kapil Sibal giving an assurance to the media that monsoon was likely to arrive over Delhi and adjoining areas on July 9, adding that it was only a prediction. India's weather forecasting agencies have stopped giving any more commitments on when it will rain over Delhi and other parts of the north-west, including Punjab, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir west Utter Pradesh. However, Mr Sibal says "We are expecting the monsoon to arrive in Delhi on July 9 or 10 but factors such as low pressure and other conditions would determine the exact time-period. We can only approximate the timing of monsoon
on which has hit many parts of the country, including Vidharbha in Maharashtra, and other parts of Gujarat Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.," Weather experts say there is truth to the statement as good monsoon showers are likely over Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Utter Pradesh on July 9, 10 and 11 and the existing monsoon limit is likely to move further. They say that clouds hovering over the region in the past couple of days were not rain-bearing. "People often make the mistake of associating all types of clouds
with rains. Besides, for rains to occur a lifting mechanism is also required." So what is expected to happen is that somewhere around July 9, a cyclonic circulation is likely to build up over Utter Pradesh which will extend to Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. This will also result in some rains over parts
of northeast Rajasthan as well. Now there is a moisture surge coming from the Arabian Sea side which is moving towards the north-east from the Bay of Bengal are going north-westward. The two streams are expected to meet over Uttar Pradesh in the next 48 hours and result in the formation of the cyclonic circulation which in turn will bring good showers over entire plains, Haryana, Punjab and Bihar.
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CPM demands report on security breaches
New Delhi, July 7 The party alleged that the Indo-US strategic partnership was facilitating “strategic spying” and doors had been opened for systematic subversion of security and intelligence agencies in the country. Seeking an urgent review of the joint forums and collaborations like the Indo-US Cyber Security Forum, the CPI(M) asked the government not to cloak such “serious breach of security and subversion of intelligence agencies in the name of security considerations”.
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