NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday distanced itself from its Bihar leader Giriraj Singh’s "back Narendra Modi or go to Pakistan" remark with the party saying that he has been conveyed the “displeasure” of the top brass and asked to refrain from stoking any further row.

Mr. Singh had said in an election meeting in Jharkhand on Saturday that those opposing Mr. Modi will have to go to Pakistan after elections, leaving BJP red-faced and inviting sharp criticism from rival parties who said his comments were aimed at Muslims.

BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said the party had nothing to do with Mr. Singh’s statement.

Senior Bihar BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi termed the statement “irresponsible” and said the party does not approve of it.

“BJP doesn’t approve of irresponsible statement given by Giriraj Singh,” he tweeted.

Party sources said Mr. Singh has been pulled up for his remarks which, BJP believes, have given other political parties a handle to go after it even as it has built its campaign around the developmental agenda.

“He has been conveyed the leadership’s displeasure,” a party leader said.

Attacking BJP, Congress spokesperson Meem Afzal wondered if non-NDA leaders like Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati will be sent to Pakistan.

He said the Election Commission should take note of Mr. Singh’s comments and he should be sent to “jail“.

K C Mittal of Congress Legal Cell said they will go to the EC. “It’s a serious issue. He is trying to provoke people and laying foundation of dividing the nation. The language he used is dangerous and divisive,” he said.

Mr. Singh had said, “Those opposing Narendra Modi are looking at Pakistan, and such people will have place in Pakistan and not in India”. — PTI

LJP leader admits to meeting Geelani, but denies
being Modi's emissary

SRINAGAR: Sanjay Saraf, who belongs to Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) which is part of the NDA, on Sunday confirmed that he had met Syed Ali Shah Geelani but dismissed reports that he had carried any message from Narendra Modi to the hardline Hurriyat leader.

Lok Janshakti Party national youth president Saraf said his relations with the separatist leader were "personal".

"I have been meeting Geelani for the past so many years. I have not met him in the context that has been reported," Saraf told PTI.

Saraf said he rushed here from Bihar after he was named as one of the emissaries of Modi that Geelani claimed had called on him for opening a dialogue with the BJP leader.

"This is a completely baseless report. I have not met Geelani since he was taken to Delhi for treatment in early March this year," he said.

Asked about media reports identifying him as one of the two emissaries, Saraf said he was exploring legal options against a daily which carried the report for "spreading falsehood and dragging my name into something that I was never part of".

Geelani on Friday claimed that Modi had sent two emissaries to him and the separatist leadership in Jammu and Kashmir to create a "soft corner" for BJP by making a "commitment" to seek a solution to Kashmir issue.

Geelani has not named the emissaries so far. The meeting allegedly took place in Delhi on March 22. The separatist leader also claimed that the emissaries had called on other separatist leaders who were now pinning hopes with the NDA coming to power for resolution of Kashmir issue.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had on Saturday questioned the secrecy behind the move and asked the hardline separatist leader to identify the pointmen to establish who was "lying".

Geelani's claims invited denials from Jamaat-e-Islami and moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference with the latter accusing the hardline leader of deliberately making statements aimed at creating confusion among the people.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the chairman of the moderate faction, advised Geelani to shun the 'holier than thou' attitude as holding talks with the stakeholders of Kashmir issue does not tantamount to a sell out. — PTI

Sonia calls off Maharashtra tour due to health reasons

MUMBAI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi has called off her Maharashtra visit today due to health reasons, party sources said.

She was scheduled to address campaign rallies in Nandurbar and Dhule in north Maharashtra and another one in Mumbai.

The Mumbai rally will be addressed by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. NCP president Sharad Pawar will also be present.

At Nandurbar and Dhule rallies, the Congress president has deputed Ghulam Nabi Azad and Raj Babbar, the sources said.

Congress leader Mohan Prakash, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan and MPCC president Manikrao Thakre will also be present at all the three rallies. — PTI

NEW YORK: A 20-year-old man has been arrested and charged with hate crime for a brutal assault on a Sikh Professor last year during which the attackers called him "Osama" and a "terrorist" in the US.

The police arrested Christian Morales on Friday night and charged him with aggravated harassment and committing a hate crime in connection with the attack on Prabhjot Singh, a Professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Morales was produced in court yesterday.

While the investigation is still ongoing, he is the only person in custody, the New York Police Department said.

Singh was assaulted last September by a group of 20-30 young men while he was walking in the Harlem neighbourhood near here.

The father of one had been "brutally attacked" and was rushed to the hospital with severe bruising, swelling, small puncture in his elbow and fracture in his lower jaw.

While in hospital, Singh had told the police that his assailants had taunted him and beat him, calling him "Osama" and "terrorist" as they pulled at his long beard.

He was repeatedly punched in the face and head.

Singh was returning from dinner, dropping his wife and one-year-old son at home before going for a walk.

While being attacked, he saw one of the assailants put his arm inside his coat as if reaching for a gun.

Addressing a press conference days after the attack, Singh had said he would want his attackers to visit the Gurudwara and interact with members of the community to better understand the Sikh faith.

"If I could speak to my attackers, I would ask them if they had any questions, if they knew what they were doing. May be invite them to the Gurudwara where we worship, get to know who we are... Make sure they have an opportunity to move past this as well," Singh had said.

The New York police had released a survellaince video of the suspects believed to be involved in the attack.

The grainy clip showed a group of young 15-20 suspects riding their bikes shortly before they encountered Singh as he walking with a friend.

Singh, who has lived in the city for 10 years, had said he would not be deterred from his goal of engaging with communities to educate and uplift people to make them become better human beings.

There is need to understand "who gave these kids the green light to hate." "These sort of things are not who we are. This is not an America that I recognise," he had said.

In 2012, Singh had written an op-ed in the New York Times days after six Sikh persons were killed in a tragic shooting at a Wisconsin Gurudwara in August.

"We must do away with a flawed and incomplete assumption of 'mistaken identity' regarding Sikhs; until we do, we will all be the ones who are mistaken," he had written in the op-ed titled 'How Hate Gets Counted' —PTI

S Korea ferry disaster: Death toll rises to 56

MOKPO, South Korea: Divers began retrieving bodies Sunday from inside the submerged South Korean ferry that capsized four days ago with hundreds of children on board, as families angered by the pace of the rescue efforts scuffled with police.

Coastguard officials said 16 bodies had been removed from the ship which sank on Wednesday morning, pushing operations further along the painful transition from rescue to recovery and identification.

The retrieval of the first bodies from the interior came after prosecutors revealed that the officer at the helm of the 6,825-tonne Sewol when it capsized was not familiar with those particular waters.

The confirmed death toll from the disaster stood at 56 with 246 people still unaccounted for.

Three bodies were pulled out of the fully submerged ferry just before midnight and another 13 were recovered later Sunday morning, a coastguard spokesman said.

The breakthrough followed days of fruitless efforts by more than 500 divers to access the capsized ship, while battling powerful currents and near-zero visibility.

It was a watershed moment for distraught relatives who have clung desperately to the idea that some passengers may have survived in air pockets in the upturned vessel.

The bodies were placed in tents at the harbour on Jindo island — not far from the disaster site — where the relatives have been camped out in a gymnasium since the ferry went down.

In a process that looks set to be repeated with tragic frequency in the coming days, they were checked for IDs and other particulars, after which their relatives were informed and asked to make an official identification.

Some of the policemen standing guard at the tents were openly weeping, while the cries of the family members could be heard from inside.

Of the 476 people on board the Sewol, 350 were high school students headed for the holiday island of Jeju.

The devastated relatives have repeatedly denounced what they feel has been a botched, delayed and incompetent emergency response to the disaster.

Nearly 200 family members set off Sunday on a hike from Jindo to Seoul — 420 km to the north — where they planned to march on the presidential Blue House in protest.

Scuffles broke out when they were prevented from crossing the bridge to the mainland by a large police detachment, and eventually they were forced to turn back.

One of the marchers, Chung Hye-Sook, a mother of one of the missing students, said she was appalled that the authorities had begun taking DNA samples to facilitate identification of the bodies before the entire ferry had been searched.

"What are those people thinking?!," Chung shouted.

"We are asking them to save our children's lives. We can't even think about DNA testing. I want to save my child first," she said.

Three giant floating cranes have been at the disaster site off the southern coast of South Korea for days, but the coastguard has promised it will not begin lifting the ferry until it is clear there is nobody left alive.

Investigators have arrested the ferry's captain, Lee Joon-Seok who has been bitterly criticised for abandoning hundreds of passengers still trapped in the ferry as he made his own escape.

Also detained were a 55-year-old helmsman and the ship's young and relatively inexperienced third officer, identified by her surname Park, who was in charge of the bridge when the disaster occurred.

Tracking data shows the ship took a radical right turn while navigating through a group of islets off the southern coast.

Such a sharp turn could have dislodged the heavy cargo manifest -- including more than 150 vehicles — and destabilised the vessel, causing it to list heavily and then capsize.

While Park, 26, had been sailing the Incheon-Jeju for six months, "it was the first time for her to navigate this particular route," a senior prosecutor told reporters Saturday.

The captain said he was returning to the bridge from his cabin when the ship ran into trouble.

Questioned as to why passengers had been ordered not to move for more than 40 minutes after the ship first foundered, the captain insisted he had acted in their best interests.

"The currents were very strong ... I thought that passengers would be swept far away and fall into trouble if they evacuated thoughtlessly," Lee said.

The ferry tragedy looks set to become one of South Korea's worst peacetime disasters.

A Seoul department store collapsed in 1995, killing more than 500 people, while nearly 300 people died when a ferry capsized off the west coast in 1993.

Around 30 percent of South Koreans are practising Christians and special prayers were said across the country on Easter Sunday for the ferry victims. — AFP

NEW DELHI: The annual Khushwant Singh Literature Festival (KSLF), set in the hills of Kasauli, will have an added feature this year — a Rs 2.5 Lakh award for the best debut fiction novel in the memory of the noted author and journalist.

Titled as 'Khushwant Singh Memorial Book Prize', the award sponsored by author Suhel Seth and powered by Oxford Bookstore will be announced at KSLF. Besides the cash prize, the winner will get a chance to have a pan-India tour of Oxford Bookstores.

"I met Khushwant Singh in 1982 and since then he was not just a great friend but an admirable human being. Now that he is not with us, the only thing I believe I took from him is his zest for life.

"So, I announce for the next twenty years a 2.5- lakh best debut fiction prize in the name of Khushwant Singh, as a a mark to this man's great zest for life," Seth said.

The winner will be selected by a jury of eminent award- winning authors from a competitive short list, said author and Jaipur Literature Festival director Namita Gokhale, adding that the jury members will be announced soon.

Dedicated to the celebrated author, the three-day long festival was designed and conceptualised in 2012 to talk to a larger audience about the literature of Punjab, Sufi spirituality, Sikh entrepreneurship, rich heritage, Indo-Pak or Punjab-Pak civilisation, stories on the military tradition of the area and portraits of people.

Besides this, KSLF strives to bring alive diverse subjects like Kasauli's fragile ecology, rich heritage, colonial history and ever-present military that has helped preserve one of India's tiny hill stations.

While the debut theme of the festival was 'Kasauli', the festival theme in the 2013 edition was 'Greater Punjab'.

The veteran author, who had written bestsellers including 'The Train to Pakistan', 'A History of the Sikhs', 'Khushwantnama: The Lessons of My Life' and 'Death at My Doorstep' among others, died at the age of 99 in March this year.

Known as one of the finest Indian writers in English in contemporary times, he had also penned down his own obit and epitaph in his book 'Death at My Doorstep'. — PTI