NEW DELHI: A landmark Bill to overturn the collegium system was on Wednesday a step short of becoming the law, with the Lok Sabha approving it amid government's assertion that the measure was aimed at ensuring that only meritorious people are selected as judges to the higher courts.

The National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill, 2014, was passed by voice vote along with one official amendment. Along with it, the 99th Constitution Amendment Bill, which will give constitutional status to the proposed Commission, was passed by 367 in favour and nil against.

Replying to the debate on the Bills, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the proposed law does not impact upon the independence of the judiciary.

He said the new law will provide for wider consultations for appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and high courts.

"We are for maintaining the sanctity of the judiciary ... We have said this House respects independence of judiciary. That should be assuring," he said, allaying apprehensions that new law would curb the independence of judiciary.

Seeking support of all parties, he said, "Let the message go that this House is one for maintaining dignity of the judiciary."

Suggesting that the existing collegium system of judges appointing judges had flaws, the Minister said many good judges could not make to the Supreme Court.

Under the new law, where a commission will decide appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and high courts, seniority along with "ability" and "merit" will be considered for elevation, Prasad said. — PTI

Modi’s remarks on terrorism ‘baseless rhetoric’, says Pakistan

Islamabad: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused it of indulging in a proxy war against India, Pakistan on Wednesday hit back by dubbing it as “baseless rhetoric” and said both countries should focus on resolving issues instead of engaging in blame game.

“The press reports of Indian accusations, at the highest political level, are most unfortunate, especially as the leadership of Pakistan wishes to establish good neighbourly relations with India,” Pakistan Foreign Office Spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said.

“Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to India in May was in this spirit and generated a fresh momentum in the bilateral relationship,” she said in a statement.

Modi, in his address to Army and Air Force troops on his maiden trip to Leh, had said, “It is unfortunate about our neighbour’s attitude ... they have lost the power to fight a war but they use proxy war.

There has been a process of killing innocent people through this proxy war.”

“Pakistan has consistently condemned terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations,” the Foreign Office statement said.

“Having lost the lives of 55,000 of its citizens as a result of terrorism; Pakistan is the biggest victim of the menace,” it said.

“Our armed forces remain ready to defend the country’s borders and thwart any threat of aggression,” the spokeswoman said.

“It would be in the larger interest of the regional peace that instead of engaging in a blame game, the two countries should focus on resolving all issues through dialogue and work together to promote friendly and cooperative relations,” she said. — PTI

Terrorism core concern in Indo-Pak ties, tool kit to fight is not restricted: India

JAMMU: Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire twice today by opening heavy fire on several Indian posts along the Line of Control and the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir, leaving an Army jawan injured.

"Pakistani troops resorted to unprovoked small arms and automatic weapons firing on Indian posts along LoC in Bhimber gali (BG) sector of Poonch district around 1000 hours", a Defence spokesman said.

Army troops retaliated and the exchanges were continuing till last reports came from the spot, he said, adding that a jawan was injured in the firing.

This is the fifth ceasefire violation in the past five days.

Earlier, Pakistani Rangers resorted to heavy firing with mortar shells, small arms and automatic weapons on five BoPs and civilian areas along the IB in Arnia-R S Pura areas in Jammu district from 2145 hours late last night," a BSF officer said here.

BSF troops guarding the borderline retaliated to the Pakistani firing which resulted in night-long exchanges.

The firing exchanges continued till 0500 hours, the officer said, adding that there was no loss of life or injury to any one in the firing.

The fresh violation comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday accused Pakistan of indulging in a proxy war killing innocent people in India.

BSF and Pakistan Rangers had on Friday last made a commitment to uphold peace and tranquillity on the border and extend all cooperation to each other in dealing with emergent incidents in a proactive and positive manner.

However, the ceasefire violations have continued.

On August 11, two BSF jawans were among four persons injured when Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire by firing with small arms, automatic weapons and mortar shells on 10 border out posts and civilian areas along the International Border in Arnia and R S Pura belts of Jammu district.

On August 10, Pakistani troops had violated ceasefire by targeting Indian forward posts with small arms and automatic weapons along the Line of Control in Mendhar sector of Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir, prompting Indian forces to retaliate.

Pakistani troops violated had violated the ceasefire on August 8 by resorting to firing on Indian Posts along LoC in Bhimbher Gali (BG) sector of Poonch district.

On August 5, Pakistani troops targeted Indian forward posts with small arms and automatic weapons along the Line of Control in Sher Shakti forward belt of Poonch district.

Security officials feel that the heavy firing and shelling in LoC and IB areas in Poonch and Jammu sectors is aimed to infiltrate armed militants into Jammu and Kashmir to target Independence Day programmes.

BSF and Army officers said that troops have been put on high alert along LoC and IB in wake of the ceasefire violations, firings and infiltration bids.

They have been asked to give a befitting reply to ceasefire violations and cross border firing incidents.

The police have also been put on high alert in the border districts and additional monitoring and deployment has been done on traditional infiltration routes behind the security grid of Army and BSF along LoC and BSF in border districts of Kathua, Samba, Jammu, Rajouri and Poonch districts of Jammu region, they said. — PTI

JAMMU: An alert was sounded in Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday, a day after suspected militants hijacked a car on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway in Ramban district.

Police sources said a taxi was hired by two people for Srinagar from Pathankot city in Punjab on Tuesday.

But late Tuesday, a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) patrol party found the driver of the car tied to a tree at a secluded place in Ramban district.
"The driver said he was hired by two people from Pathankot and two more people joined them in Jammu.

"After reaching Ramban, the driver was told leave the vehicle and it was hijacked by its passengers at gun point," police said.

Consequently, a high alert has been sounded across the state as police fear the hijacked car could be used by militants for subversive activities around Independence Day Aug 15. –IANS

SRINAGAR: BSF Director General D K Pathak has taken stock of the security situation in Kashmir Valley following the attack on the convoy of the force that left eight personnel, including an officer, injured.

Pathak was briefed about the prevailing situation and the details of the attack on the convoy of the force on Monday night.

"D K Pathak, DG BSF arrived here by BSF aircraft to take stock of the situation. He was briefed about the prevailing situation in the Valley, besides the details of the above incident by P S Sandhu, Inspector General, Kashmir BSF," a BSF spokesman said in a release last night.

Eight BSF personnel, including an Assistant Commandant, were injured when militants opened fire on their convoy at Pampore on August 11. The convoy was returning from Pahalgam after performing security duties for the just-concluded Amarnath Yatra.

He said Pathak also visited Army's 92 Base Hospital here to inquire about the wellbeing of the injured personnel.
"Director General BSF boosted the moral of the injured BSF personnel, distributed sweets among them and wished for their early recovery," the spokesman said.
He said Pathak extended his gratitude for the services rendered by the Army Hospital authorities and the team of medical staff in providing immediate treatment to the injured BSF personnel and saving their lives.

"The above incident has further strengthened the spirit of the BSF men to fight back militancy in order to restore peace and harmony amongst the people of the state," the spokesman said. PTI

NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday accused the Narendra Modi goverment of "stealing" the ideas of UPA and "borrowing" its programmes as it has "nothing new to offer".

"The lesson of these ten weeks is that the BJP has nothing new to offer the country. They attacked us without principles and they are now governing us without policies. Well, they are welcome to steal our ideas. They are welcome to borrow our programmes," Sonia said addressing the first Congress Parliamentary Party meeting in the new Lok Sabha.

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let them even continue to blame us for their own failures, as they have been doing," she said.

Attacking the government over issues, including price rise and unemployment, the Congress president said, "Prices are rising across the nation, hurting the ordinary housewife, the college student, the worker, and particularly the unemployed and deprived.

"How long will they be able to blame the UPA government for their inability to control or improve the economy? Such excuses have a short shelf life."

The NDA government's first budget also came in for sharp criticism in the Congress president's speech.

Noting that the ten weeks that passed since the last CPP was held in May have been eventful ones for the country and the world, she said, "The government has introduced and passed a Budget that breaks little or no new ground."

"They have paid us the tribute of imitating and extending, if not strengthening, a number of Congress programmes and initiatives that they had vehemently attacked when they were in opposition.

"The new government now supports the proposed goods and services tax, sugar subsidies, railway and diesel price hikes, FDI in insurance, the Aadhaar scheme, and other key UPA Budget measures, all of which they had bitterly — and, if I might add, hypocritically — denounced, obstructed and prevented progress on when they were where we are today," she said.

Sonia also made a frontal attack on the Narendra Modi government and said there has been an "alarming increase" in communal incidents since the government came to power.

She asked partymen to resist Modi govt's "authoritarian and sectarian" tendencies.

"It is our task to play the role of a vigilant Opposition, to stand up for the values and policies of the Indian National Congress, and to resist the authoritarian and sectarian tendencies of the new government as it tries to get its way in Parliament.

"This we have begun to do, I believe, with increasing effectiveness," Sonia Gandhi said.

Stepping up her attack on the BJP over communalism, she alleged there has been an alarming increase in number of incidents of communal violence since the BJP has come to power.

"We have had hundreds of incidents of communal violence and rioting in Uttar Pradesh, in Maharashtra and a number of other States. In addition, there have been other subtle but pernicious signals of intolerance," Gandhi said telling the partymen "our work is cut out for us."

She acknowledged that it has been a "challenging time" for the Congress Party.

But at the same time, she noted "the process of rebuilding and restoring the confidence of the public in the Congress party has begun."

"We have been reduced in numbers to an all-time low in the Lok Sabha. But we have not been reduced in spirit," Gandhi said telling the partymen that the work of Congress is in Parliament, in public forums across the country, in our media and in the streets and homes of ordinary Indians everywhere.

With the Congress still not getting the post of Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha apparently weighing on her mind Gandhi said, "but Parliament is not the only forum available to us. If each of us has to be an effective Congressman and woman, we must also work to maintain and strengthen the grassroots connections to the voters that has brought us here." — PTI

NEW YORK: Two Indian-origin academicians have won prestigious global prizes in the field of mathematics with one of them being awarded the Fields Medal — known as the "Nobel Prize of mathematics".

Manjul Bhargava won the Fields Medal while Subhash Khot won the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize, awarded by the International Mathematical Union (IMU), at the International Congress of Mathematicians 2014 held in Seoul.

Bhargava, a Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, was among the four winners who have been awarded the Fields Medal, given out every four years.
Iranian-born mathematician and Stanford University Professor Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman to win the Fields Medal this year.

Bhargava was awarded the Fields Medal for "developing powerful new methods in the geometry of numbers, which he applied to count rings of small rank and to bound the average rank of elliptic curves."

According to the award citation, Bhargava's work is "based both on a deep understanding of the representations of arithmetic groups and a unique blend of algebraic and analytic expertise."

Khot was awarded the Nevanlinna Prize for his "prescient definition of the 'Unique Games' problem, and leading the effort to understand its complexity and its pivotal role in the study of efficient approximation of optimisation problems."

His work has led to breakthroughs in algorithmic design and approximation hardness and to new exciting interactions between computational complexity, analysis and geometry.

Khot is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. He has a PhD from Princeton.

Born in 1974 in Canada, Bhargava grew up in the US and also spent much time in India. He received his PhD in 2001 from Princeton University and became a professor there in 2003. Bhargava's honours include the Merten Hasse Prize of the Mathematical Association of America (2003), the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize (2005), the Cole Prize in Number Theory of the American Mathematical Society (2008) and the Infosys Prize (2012).

He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2013.
The Fields Medals were started in 1936 and the Nevanlinna Prize in 1982.

The Fields Medal is awarded on the occasion of the International Congress of Mathematicians to recognise outstanding mathematical achievement for existing work and for the promise of future achievement.

The candidates in fray for the medal must be below the age of 40.

The Rolf Nevanlinna Prize is awarded once every four years at the International Congress of Mathematicians, for outstanding contributions in Mathematical Aspects of Information Sciences including all mathematical aspects of computer science, including complexity theory, logic of programming languages, analysis of algorithms, cryptography, computer vision, pattern recognition, information processing and modelling of intelligence as well as scientific computing and numerical analysis. — PTI

US sends more military advisers to Iraq

WASHINGTON: At least 130 additional US military advisers have arrived in Iraq to help with the humanitarian aid in northern Iraq, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said.

Hagel announced in California that the new detachment arrived on Tuesday in the Kurdish capital of Erbil, where it will help rescue a large group of civilians besieged by the Sunni terrorists of the Islamic State, Xinhua reported.

The troops were there to "take a closer look and give a more in-depth assessment of where we can continue to help the Iraqis", Hagel said, insisting that the troops were not there for combat and the American mission remains "limited".
Hagel restated President Barack Obama's belief that only a new, inclusive Iraqi government could end the crisis there.

"As the president has made very clear, we're not going back into Iraq in any of the same combat mission dimensions that we once were in Iraq," he said.

The new detachment brings the total number of the US troops in Iraq to more than 900, including previous teams of special operators and other troops sent since the crisis flared up in June. — IANS