New Delhi, April 6
Delhi University teacher Sanjaya Kumar Bohidar, Associate Professor in the commerce department at Sri Ram College of Commerce, has alleged that he was manhandled and pushed out of the SRCC auditorium by the DU Vice-Chancellor's security men when he tried to put a question to the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Dinesh Singh, during his public address at the college.

The university teachers today reacted strongly to the incident, calling it 'shameful'.

Following the incident, the teachers and students of SRCC were in a shock.

"The practice of asking questions or debating the points of view in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and respect has been throttled by this administration. The goondaism indulged in by the VC's security men is obviously allowed at his behest. As fellow-teachers and Bohider's colleagues, we share his anguish. That the VC is claiming to improve the academic standards of DU while the university's teachers are being treated in this shoddy manner goes to expose the hypocrisy in his claims," said Prof Saikat Ghosh, executive member, DUTA.

"I stood up before the Vice-Chancellor started his address and had barely uttered 'May I take a minute', when bouncers accompanying Prof. Singh rushed towards me and from the centre of the auditorium kept pushing me even though I offered no resistance.

“This carried on till they made sure that I was out of the auditorium," said Prof Bohidar in a statement today.

Efforts to contact the VC's office for comment draw a blank as nobody responded to the phone calls or SMSes.

New Delhi, April 6
Amidst cheers and banners of support from the crowds of supporters at Sunder Nagri in northeast Delhi, the activist-turned-politician, Arvind Kejriwal ended his fast against 'inflated' power and water bills on the 15th day here.

Indicating that both power and water are going to be election issues, known to be the pet issues of the BJP, he announced that power tariff will be reduced by half with 24x7 supply besides water up to 20 kilolitres for all the domestic consumers will be provided if the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) comes to power in November.

"The first achievement of the fast is that now power and water will be election issues. A government which can't give people cheap electricity and water cannot rule over Delhi. Both the BJP and the Congress are two sides of the same coin," he said.

Whether the over 10.5 lakh protest letters of people who have pledged to default on the 'irrational' electricity bills will be translated into votes, only time will tell; but Kejriwal's party has surely managed to strike a chord with people.

"I'm a diabetic and doctors told me that I will not survive after 48 hours, but where there is truth nothing can beat. People know we are not greedy for power but are here for a cause. The BJP and the Congress are problems of society and the AAP is a ray of hope," said Kejriwal who had been fasting since March 23 and was also appealed by his former mentor Anna to break the fast.

Championing the cause of self-governance model in his promise-package, Kejriwal said, "The most important thing is that there would be a system of 'Jal Swaraj' in which the people in Delhi will themselves look after the system of collection and management. The Congress government has only hiked tariff, resulting in faulty billing up to 30-40 pc. Come November and we'll recover the penalty for the last 10 years," Kejriwal said while urging people to be part of the non-cooperation movement.

While claiming the support of people from across the religions, he said, "People ask me as to what the fast has actually done and the answer is support from all sections has been pouring in here. This morning 500 people from the Valmiki community have extended their support. The Father of a church and the head of the Nizamuddin Dargah too have pledged their support.”

New Delhi, April 6
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has a foundation of a world-class enforcement agency, but now it needs to make certain dynamic changes in view of the new age cyber and economic crimes, said Ranjit Sinha, Director of the premier investigating agency, at OP Kohli Memorial Lecture-"Good Governance: Empowering Institutions, Society and Public"-on the occasion of the golden jubilee of the organisation.

He said that there are growing voices in the country against corruption. The public expects the CBI to act with greater effectiveness and speed.

Speaking on the occasion, Sinha said that the advancement in information technology is encompassing the areas of work. New age cyber and economic crimes need new skills and constant upgradation of the existing knowledge.

He said that increasing engagement of the Indian economy with ASEAN, EU and SAARC member countries is expected to have major implications on the nature of the agency work. Mutual legal assistance, letters rogatory, corruption by MNCs, extradition and other areas of multi-jurisdictional investigation are set to expand in volume and complexity. In such a situation, the CBI has to prepare itself to work across the globe. But this can only be done by putting in place the requisite human resources with a clear vision of the future.

The director said that the CBI would use its golden jubilee year to assess its existing affairs and frame a plan on building the agency of the future that is at par with the finest law enforcement institutions of the world and for that the agency needs support of the government.

New Delhi, April 6
With a view to providing synergy between science and engineering, the Academic Council of Delhi Technological University (DTU) decided to launch some new programmes from the coming academic session to meet the needs of industry.

These programmes include a BTech and MBA dual degree programme, BTech (IT) evening programme, MTech in Computational Design and MTech in Renewable Energy Technology.

"The university is all set to start BTech evening in information technology to be run by the Department of Information Technology. The course will offer 30 seats and will be held six days a week from 6 pm to 9 pm. The course curriculum will incorporate majors in information technology, including object-oriented technology, DBMS, software engineering, artificial intelligence, computer networks, microprocessor, communication engineering," said the university Vice-Chancellor, PB Sharma.

To cater to the needs of the students who aspire to do BTech for gaining technical knowledge and augment this with managerial knowledge by pursuing MBA, the university has decided to start BTech and MBA dual degree programme, he added.

New Delhi, April 6
People not only from various parts of Delhi, but from the adjoining areas had also come to support Arvind Kejriwal and the fight on the issue of ‘inflated’ powder-water bills in Delhi. Many of them hoped to see a change in the government in the city.

A retired government servant, Vinay Mittal, who had come from Meerut with three other friends, said, "The beginning has been made. People are frustrated and now that the AAP has raised the issue surely it can emerge as a strong contender in the next polls. People no longer want the Congress to be in power as things have been just running out of hand and as far as the BJP is concerned, it had failed to give a credible alternative visible through the MCD."

Brijmohan Sharma from Ghazibad feels that earlier people had been scared but now with Kejriwal more of them are expressing their resentment.

"Kejriwal has provided people strength to fight," he said.

New Delhi, April 6
Ahead of World Health Day, the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its "Global Action Plan on NCDs 2013-2020" calls upon governments, including India, to work towards reducing the prevalence of hypertension by 25 per cent by 2025.

Hypertension or high blood pressure causes 9.4 million deaths (51 per cent attributable to strokes and 45 per cent to coronary heart disease) and the dangers are mounting for the WHO South-East Asia Region, where one in three adults in the 11 countries is living with high BP and nearly 1.5 million persons losing their battle to it every year, thus making it the leading risk factor for the non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like heart attack and stroke, WHO officials said.

WHO representative to India, Dr Nata Menabde said that in many countries, including India, the out-of-pocket expenditure incurred on NCDs is high, contributing to the impoverishment of households and hitting the poor most. She also added that medicines for these chronic diseases account for a large portion of expenditure.

In India that is faced with the double burden of communicable and non-communicable diseases--currently 139 million people living with high BP--the challenges are enormous, said Dr D Prabhakaran, executive director of the Centre for Chronic Disease Control.

The Lancet 2011 predicts that in India, the death toll of cardiovascular diseases will reach four million and those having hypertension will be 214 million by 2030.

Citing figures of joint studies of Indian Council of Medical Research-WHO, Dr Jagdish Prasad, Director General of Health Services, said, "It has been found that in India 76 crore people are affected by hypertension and diabetes up to the age of 30 years , with 13 per cent being hypertensive and 10 per cent diabetic. This calls for a concerted approach to deal with NCDs."

In this regard, the Indian government as part of a comprehensive approach to NCDs is mulling to scale up the response to the NCDs epidemic by expanding the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS) from 100 districts at present to cover all the districts in the country during the 12th Five Year Plan, said the Secretary of Health and Family Welfare, Keshav Desiraju.