New Delhi, June 9
The Supreme Court today kept in abeyance the action taken by the Reserve Bank of India against Sahara India Financial Corporation Ltd, including a ban on fresh deposits, and asked the bank to give the company a fresh hearing.

At the same time, the Bench comprising Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice P.P. Naolekar said the interim order of Lucknow Bench of Allahabad High Court staying the RBI action against SIFCL will not be in operation.

SIFCL will now appeal to RBI on June 12 for a personal hearing.

"Till the matter is disposed afresh by RBI, its order of June 4 will not be given effect and at the same time interim protection granted to Sahara India Financial Corporation by the High Court shall not be operative," the Supreme Court said.

While senior counsel Mukul Rohtagi appeared for SIFCL, P R Andhyarujina represented RBI.

"Since the entire matter has been disposed by this court, there will be no need for the high court to deal with the matter," the Bench said.

RBI had approached the Supreme Court on June 6, challenging the Allahabad High Court stay on its order banning Sahara group's para-banking company from taking fresh deposits.

The Bench, while passing the order, said, "We are of the view that in view of peculiar facts involved in the matter, RBI should give opportunity to SIFCL for personal hearing." Sahara had contended that it was not given a fair opportunity to express its response on the show cause notice issued by the RBI. — PTI

Bayana, June 9
The first round of talks between the Gujjars agitating for the Scheduled Tribe status and the Rajasthan government ended here today as the community withdrew its countrywide general strike tomorrow and agreed to attend the next round of negotiations in Jaipur.

Emerging from the over three-hour talks here, the Gujjar leaders said the exercise was held in an “amicable” atmosphere.

The talks were attended by two ministers of the Vasundhara Raje government -- L.N. Dave and S.M. Jat and a 37-member Gujjar delegation at a government school.

The Gujjar delegation with representatives from all districts also included V.S. Choudhary, agitation spearhead Kirori Singh Bainsla’s doctor, and Delhi MLA Ramveer Singh Vidhuri.

Meanwhile, 20 Gujjars charged with murder in the wake of clashes with the police were today sent to judicial custody till June 25 by a court here, district SP Rohit Mahajan said.

He said of the 20 arrested yesterday, 15 were held after being discharged from Swai Man Singh hospital in Jaipur. The other five were arrested from Bharatpur. — PTI

New Delhi, June 9
Beginning tomorrow, a high-level team of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM) will be visiting Uttar Pradesh for two days to settle the pending claims of families affected by 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Close to 2,200 such claims are still pending. The commission will also discuss with the UP government the possibility of extending reservation to Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians.

In a recent study based on ethnographic and statistical data drawn from National Samples Survey Organisation’s survey of 2004-2005, experts made a strong case in favour of according Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Muslims and Christians-something already available to Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist Dalits. This because Dalit Muslims and Christians endured discriminatory and exclusionary practices, including untouchability, though such prejudices received no support in either Islam or Christianity.

Also on the agenda for the commission’s UP visit will be the implementation of Sachar committee recommendations for minorities, a task the commission says would be daunting, especially in UP, which has the worst minorities’ report card in India. The maximum, 80 complaints of atrocities against minorities pending with the NCM, are from Uttar Pradesh alone.

Chairperson of the commission Mohd Shafi Qureishi confirmed the pendency to The Tribune today, and added: “These cases vary in range from brutality against minorities to illegal occupation of burial grounds. We have written to the state government several times. But now we hope to discuss the matter face-to-face.”

As regards Sachar committee report, Shafi said as yet the government had only accepted it. It was now for the states to carry forward its recommendations through state minorities’ commissions. “We will discuss the issue with UP authorities where the Muslim minorities are particularly troubled,” Qureishi said.

This will be second time that commission members will visit Uttar Pradesh in less than two months. 

New Delhi, June 9
Pakistan's ISI plans to substantially enhance the financial support to militant organisations operating in Jammu and Kashmir to increase their activities in the run up to the assembly elections in the state, reports with Indian intelligence agencies indicate.

According to sources, reports with the intelligence agencies say that the ISI has recently briefed the Pakistani political establishment on the activities of the terrorist groups. It was pointed out that the so-called freedom movement in the state was weakening as the jehadi groups were facing financial constraints and the security forces had also tightened noose around them.

In recent months, the security forces had frustrated several attempts of the terrorist groups to kill innocent people in the valley.

Significantly, these reports have been received at a time when the new government in Pakistan has expressed its desire to improve relations with India and the two countries are discussing the dates for the next meeting of the joint anti-terror mechanism set up by them in 2006.

The reports with the Indian agencies say that the ISI proposed to double the financial support to the terrorist groups so that they have the resources to disrupt the polls.

The ISI has also assured the leadership that it would make every effort to see that no pro-Pakistan individual or group participated in the electoral exercise.

The Jehadi groups like Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, have been asked to use “weak surveillance points” for infiltration into India in view of the difficulties they are encountering in crossing the LoC. They have also been advised by the ISI to opt for infiltrating via Bangladesh or Nepal.

The political uncertainty in Pakistan when a fragile government is presiding over the country's affairs has also helped the military establishment, particularly the ISI, to pursue its policy of pushing the jehadi elements into the Indian territory.

The reports also indicate that some terrorist organisations have recently set up new offices in Karachi and Islamabad with the full knowledge of the authorities.

New Delhi, June 9
Millet farms in India have lost more than 10 to 12 million hectares of land in the past 30 years to more lucrative crops like wheat and rice. Currently around 30 million hectares of land is under millet farming and the Millet Network of India (MINI) is now asking the government to break the wheat-rice monopoly and include the more “nutritious and environment-friendly" millets in the public distribution system (PDS) and an ecological bonus for farmers to encorage them to grow the foodgrain.

MINI national convener P.V. Satheesh, who was in the Capital today in connection with a function related to dry-land women millet farmers from Andhra Pradesh, told The Tribune that since millet farming did not consume much water and had zero dependence on chemical fertilisers, farmers should also be given an ecological bonus.

He asserted that the revival of millets could only be possible if they were included in the PDS along with wheat and rice, stressing that the foodgrain had more nutritional value than rice and wheat.

Satheesh says that millet acreage has fallen drastically in the past 30 years and continues to drop.

This was also the focus of the first national consultation on millets that concluded in Hyderabad recently where participants felt millets were the answer to the food crisis.

Kolkata, June 9
An indefinite bandh has been called in Darjeeling from tomorrow and the tourists holidaying in the hills at Kurseong, Kalimpong and Darjeeling have been asked to leave the place by tonight.

As the decision was announced in the morning, the tourists were seen hurriedly leaving the hotels, lodges, bungalows and other places and assembling at the bus terminus, railway stations and the Mal for finding out public transport for traveling down to Siliguri.

But due to the non-availability of adequate public transport, several tourists, particularly women and children, had to suffer. Some people could be seen even trekking down to the planes in batches. Oddly enough, the district administration and the police kept witnessing the whole drama and none came to the rescue of the helpless tourists.

The bandh is called by the Gorkha JanMukti Morcha, an anti-Ghising group, which has been on agitation for the past few weeks, demanding a separate Gorkhaland for the hill people.

Yesterday, the GJM organised sit-in demonstrations and obstructions on the NH-31 and Bagdogra and elsewhere after the clashes between activists of the GJM and the CPM in which over 50 persons were injured.

Toshan Giri, GJM spokesperson, said they had taken the decision of an indefinite bandh in the hills as a mark of protest against the torture and atrocities on them by the police and the CPM. He alleged that they had been denied their democratic rights of holding of meetings at Siliguri, Naxalbari and elsewhere in the planes, though they are part of Darjeeling district.

Giri said they would launch a massive agitation from tomorrow against the district administration, the police and the CPM. “Gorkhaland is our legitimate right and we will have it,” Giri said.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and hill development minister Ashok Bhatacharyya have asked GJM president Bimal Gurng and other leaders to abandon their agitation and come to the negotiation table for resolving the crisis.

Bhattacharyya said the GJM had been making some absurd demands which neither the Centre nor the state government could accept.

New Delhi, June 9
The BJP, ever-demanding the hanging of Mohammad Afzal, convicted by the Supreme Court for his involvement in the December 2001 attack on Parliament, raised its pitch further here today when in desperation Afzal himself said he’d rather be hanged then lie in limbo.

Reacting to news reports about Afzal’s allegations of the Congress adopting a double voice on his issue and not deciding either on his mercy petition or on his hanging, BJP president Rajnath Singh demanded an explanation from the UPA government over the delay in carrying out Afzal’s death sentence.

"The country wants to know why Afzal's death sentence is not being executed," he stated in Mumbai and his party spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy echoed it here in Delhi.

Noting that Afzal had filed the clemency petition on October 4, 2006, Rajnath Singh asked, "What is taking so long to take execute the court decision?" The mercy petition is pending before the President.

Afzal had hoped that only when L.K. Advani would become the country's next Prime Minister he might be able to take a decision and hang him and spare him of his daily ordeal.

The BJP and Advani have already announced their intent to use ruling UPA’s soft attitude towards terrorism as a major poll plank and cite the instance of Mohammad Afzal, alias Afzal Guru, all over.

Dehra Dun, June 9
Peeved at the nonchalant attitude of the successive governments towards their demands, dentists working in various government hospitals of Uttarakhand have threatened to adopt a legal path if the government fails to pay heed to their issues. Speaking to The Tribune at a press conference here yesterday, president of the Provincial Dental Services’ Association (Uttarakhand), Dr. K. P. Sharma said the government had not given time bound promotions to dentists from the past eight years.

“Besides, there is great disparity in the salary given to a dentist in comparison to MBBS doctors. There are several super specialist dentists, who had done MS and MD but are getting meager salaries. As a result, some of the dentist working in government medical institutions had resigned from services in the recent past,” Sharma pointed out. While stating that announcement made in 2005 by the then Chief Minister N. D. Tiwari about a dental directorate to be set up in Dehra Dun was still on papers, Sharma said dental wing was being completely neglected in Uttarakhand. Association secretary J. D. S. Rana said there was need for setting up dental multi speciality clinics in government hospitals. “Expert dentists are busy just extracting loose teeth. If multi speciality dental clinics are set up, it would be of immense help to patients, who will get treatment for many dental diseases under one roof,” disclosed Rana.

The association revealed that government dentists from the state would meet the director general (health) on June 18.

New Delhi, June 9
A delegation of BJP leaders and legislators from Goa met President Pratibha Patil here today and demanded the immediate recall of Goa Governor S.C. Jamir.

The delegation led by former Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parriker also presented a memorandum to the President to buttress their demand.

The memo stated that “Jamir’s direct interest in his home state resulting in his frequent trips to Nagaland at the cost of state exchequer of Goa, and his blatant partisan actions, in order to save the crisis-ridden Digamber Kamat Congress government, has brought disrespect to this high constitutional post.”

Guwahati, June 9
Adivasi agitators will hit the streets of Assam to highlight their grievances before UPA chairman and Congress president Sonia Gandhi during her visit to Guwahati on June 13 to attend a ‘kissan rally’.

The ruling Congress is leaving no stone unturned to make Sonia’s rally a success to silence the opposition political parties, who have launched state-wide campaign against the ‘misrule’ of Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government in the wake of arrest of former state education minister Ripun Bora by the CBI in New Delhi on June 3. The minister was trying to bribe a deputy superintendent of the central investigating agency probing the murder of tea tribe students’ leader Daniel Topno, a political rival of Bora.

The Congress sources informed that the Chief Minister had instructed all the legislators of the party to bring farmers in large numbers from their constituencies to the rally to showcase the party support base before Sonia Gandhi despite the embarrassment caused to the party by Ripun Bora, who had already been suspended from the party.

Meanwhile, the All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam (AASAA) has declared a series of month-long agitation programmes that would start the day Sonia Gandhi arrives in Assam. The agitation is to register protest against misrule of the Congress and demand exemplary punishment to former education minister Ripun Bora for masterminding the murder of Topno.

A leader of the AASAA David Horo said the protest would continue from June 13 to July 12. He said: “The adivasis will take out processions on the streets of Guwahati to protest against the visit of Sonia Gandhi.”

The agitators will lay siege to national highways in the state and call for cease-work by tea workers all over the state on June 13. The AASAA leader said Adivasis in the state were anguished that the ruling Congress had all along been shielding Ripun Bora.

New Delhi, June 9
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) has charged that the Government of India’s figures to claim under recoveries by oil manufacturing companies in India were “fictitious and totally absurd.”

CPM Rajya Sabha MP Tapan Sen has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking withdrawal of the hike in petrol, diesel and LPG prices.

Sen reminded the Prime Minister of his address to the nation wherein he had mentioned that the oil companies were facing under-recoveries worth Rs 2,45,305 crore which had led the government to hike petrol prices by Rs five per litre.

“In the same vein, a senior official of the petroleum ministry had said the entire under-recoveries could be made up if petrol was priced at Rs 71 per litre at the present crude prices level of $ 130 a barrel,” Sen said.

“As per lay-man’s calculation, Rs 71 per litre is equivalent to $ 256 per barrel. As you are well aware, the cost of crude comprises 93-94 per cent of the cost of the finished product viz petrol, diesel etc,” said the CPM MP.

“The figure of $ 126 (256 minus 130) per barrel as conversion cost of refining crude to petroleum product appears to be fictitious and totally absurd, specially in India which is self-sufficient in respect of refining,” he added in his letter.

“I am sure, the absurdity and totally speculative nature of such product costing has prompted you to form a committee to find out the real mystery behind the figures, designated as ‘under-recoveries’ in the official circles and ‘losses’ for public consumption,” he said.

Varanasi, June 9
The ripples of the devastating quake in China are being felt in the famed Banarsi silk saree industry here as imports from the communist country have taken a hit, pushing up silk prices by about 25 per cent.

The silk industry of Varanasi consumes 12,000-15,000 metric tonnes of silk every year and out of this over 60 per cent of silk is imported from China. “Due to the quake in China, import has been affected and proper supply of the required silk to Varanasi is not being made, leading to 25 per cent increase in silk prices here,” said K P Verma, assistant director, handloom department, Varanasi. District Magistrate, Varanasi, Ajay Kumar Upadhyay, said silk prices in the city had gone up to Rs 1500 per kg from Rs 1200 per kg for Filature (raw silk thread), while it had gone up to Rs 1800 per kg from the earlier rate of Rs 1500 per kg in the case of Katan silk thread.

He said silk price had swelled to this level in two weeks’ time.

Due to the decline in silk imports, small traders have been badly hit as they are forced to buy silk thread at exorbitant prices and are finding it extremely hard to earn their livelihood.

A lot of them have left Varanasi and gone to other places to earn their livelihood.

When asked about the problem, Upadhyay said the administration was identifying the hoarders and action would be taken against them.

Over three lakh weavers and traders have been affected by the price rise. However, retailers feel that the earthquake in China is just an excuse. In fact, wholesalers have started hoarding silk thread and have increased its price. — PTI

BRIEFLY

Virtual 3-D human body may replace cadavers
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A virtual three-dimension human body capable of replacing cadavers in the surgical studies has been developed by Dr Jerome Kalister in Kerala. The software, titled ‘3-D Indiana’, has been referred to the Medical Council of India for tests and approval. Developed by a 20 member-team led by Kalister, the software could help surgeons to perform robotic surgery on the brain, heart and liver, pinpointing the precise location of nerves and organ parts. — PTI

Pre-World War II ammunition found
CHENNAI: Forty kg of ammunition recovered from the campus of the state industries promotion building in Thiruvallur district belongs to pre-World War II era and was imported as scrap metal, the police said on Monday. “The ammunition dates back to 1937-38 and is totally unfit to be used in guns for firing purpose,” the police sources said. — PTI

I.M.G. Khan member of UPSC
New Delhi: I.M.G. Khan, former secretary (posts), Department of Posts, became member of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) today. The oath was administered by Subir Dutta, Chairman, UPSC. An officer of the Indian Postal Service belonging to the 1970 batch, Khan held several important positions in his career, which includes, member (Operations and Marketing) and member (Development) in the Department of Posts, additional secretary in the Department of Personnel and Training and Additional Secretary and the Controller for Examinations in the UPSC. — TNS

Assam beggars cashing in on alms
GUWAHATI: Beggars in Assam's capital have found a way to make profit from the alms they receive. They have set up a cooperative society to trade coins as change for Rs 100 with bus conductors being steady customers. "We provide change for Rs 100 to bus conductors with the 25 paisa, 50 paisa and Re 1 coins we get as alms. We make a profit of Rs 10 on Rs 100," Suren Haloi, a beggar said. The beggars set-up the cooperative to pool their resources and make some money. — PTI