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India asks Pak to release Sarabjit

New Delhi: India today requested Pakistan to release death row prisoner Sarabjit Singh after Islamabad in a midnight twist said it had taken steps for the release of another Indian prisoner named Surjeet Singh who has been jailed for three decades.

Hours after reports emerged yesterday that Pakistan was to free Sarabjit Singh, the presidential spokesman last night clarified that authorities were working on the release of Surjeet Singh.

PM calls meeting to discuss eco agenda

New Delhi: A day after taking over as the head of the Finance Ministry, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called a meeting of all officials of the ministry on Wednesday to chalk out agendas in order to revive the Indian economy.

As per reports, the meeting, to span over two days, will decide the outline of the economic agenda the Prime Minister wants the ministry to follow. The agenda is likely to include issues such as the Vodafone tax case, 2G spectrum case, and reviving the economy and market to attract investors.

Economic growth slumped to nine-year low of 5.3 percent in the quarter ended March 31, 2012. Rupee got battered and hit a record low of 57.33 against a dollar last week.

In fact, the Indian currency has lost over 46 percent of its value since touching a high of 39 against a dollar in January 2008.

The Prime Minister is also expected to have a one-to-one meeting with C Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.

Reports said Singh, during the meeting, is expected to take a call on how to guide the 24 GoMs that Pranab Mukherjee, the former finance minister, had headed.

CET row: Sibal to meet IIT council

New Delhi: HRD Minister Kapil Sibal will meet IIT directors on Wednesday to resolve the common entrance exam row as the government proposal is being resisted by some of the IITs.

Sibal will chair the meeting of the IIT Council, the highest decision making body of these elite institutes comprising IIT directors and heads of other educational bodies, deliberating on a resolution adopted by the IIT Joint Admission Board (JAB) which met in New Delhi last Saturday.

The resolution was adopted by the JAB after discussing a compromise formula which was supposedly floated by the HRD Ministry to end the current impasse.

IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur had rejected the proposed format on the ground that the test was "academically unsound and procedurally untenable".

As per the compromise formula, JAB has sought a suitable time gap between the main and the advanced tests so that the results of mains are available before the advanced and only the top 1,50,000 candidates (including all categories) in the mains appear in the advance test.