Sunday, September 27, 1998
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Bihar situation bad, says Thakre TIRUCHIRAPALLI, Sept 26 — The BJP will ask the Union Government to send its recommendation again to the President for dismissal of the Rabri Devi government in Bihar, BJP president Mr Kushabhau Thakre said today. Price rise
shadow over Delhi Assembly poll |
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Convent
looted, nuns beaten |
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Kiran
Bedi’s book on Tihar released Orissa
MBBS merit list cancelled Gowda
has sympathy for Vajpayee |
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Bihar situation bad: Thakre TIRUCHIRAPALLI, Sept 26 (UNI) — The BJP will ask the Union Government to send its recommendation again to President K.R. Narayanan for dismissal of the Rabri Devi government in Bihar, BJP president Mr Kushabhau Thakre said today. Reacting to the President returning the recommendation asking the Union Cabinet to reconsider it, Mr Thakre told reporters here today that the BJP was of the firm opinion that the law and order situation in Bihar was “very bad”. The party would insist on the centre to send its recommendation once again, he added. However, he admitted that the BJP-led government at the Centre had to overcome the constitutional difficulties in this regard. Mr Thakre said: “Bihar is a fit case to invoke Article 356 of the Constitution”. He said he did not know what compelled Mr Narayanan to return the Union Cabinet’s recommendation. Mr Thakre said even the Patna High Court had passed strictures against former Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav and others in connection with corruption cases. Such cases could not be properly proceeded against while the Rabri Devi government was in power, he added. He denied that the law and order situation in the BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh was worse. On the proposed seven-hour bandh called by the ruling DMK and its allies in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry on Monday in protest against the Centre’s move to impose President’s rule in Bihar, Mr Thakre said “each and every political party will have its own views.” To a question, he said the law and order was basically a state subject and the Centre’s role was minimal in this matter. If the law and order situation was very bad in a particular state and if the state government concerned had failed in its duty then the Centre had to interfere, he added. To a question, he said frequent meetings among the leaders of the alliance partners of the BJP would help resolve the difference of opinion. Later, Mr Thakre left for
Karaikudi to attend the two-day state-level meeting of
the party. |
Convent looted, nuns beaten NEW DELHI, Sept 26 (PTI) — The All-India Catholic Union (AICU) today claimed that armed gangsters looted a convent and beat up nuns in Baghpat, 50 km from Delhi. The incident occurred on Thursday at Yesu Christ Convent and School run by the Franciscan Clarist nuns, the AICU said adding that the chapel was desecrated and the Cross torn out of the wall. “One nun was told her throat would be slit if she did not cooperate with the gangster and another five were slapped around,” the AICU said. “The nuns said though they were slapped, there was no attempt at sexual molestation by the armed gang members who left after terrorising over 30 nuns, novices and school-teachers for three hours from near midnight on September 23 and 24,” it said. According to school Principal Sister Johncy, the dacoits had apparently come looking for Rs 15 lakh which they believed the nuns had drawn from the bank. The nuns had actually drawn only Rs 15,000. The President of Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) Archbishop Alan de Lastic and AICU national secretary John Dayal visited the convent today. Dayal later said a delegation, led by CBCI president, will call on Home Minister L.K. Advani tomorrow in view of the unrelenting wave of anti-Christian violence in the country. BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh police on Saturday arrested one person in connection with Wednesday’s gangrape of four nuns in Navapara village of tribesmen-dominated Jhabua district. The arrested, identified as Bahadur from Roomkheda village, named 21 co-accused in the crime. INDORE: The
Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Mr Digvijay Singh, on
Friday promised to take urgent steps to punish the
culprits involved in the rape of four nuns in Jhabua
district last Wednesday. The Chief Minister, who visited
Mandaria Falia Mission Centre near Navapara where the
crime was committed, expressed his sympathies to the
victims. He also met the priests and representatives of
the Catholic Council of the state. Meanwhile, Congress MP
from Jhabua and former state minister, Mr Kantilal
Bhuria, denied press reports that his supporters were
involved in the incident. The Jhabua District Collector,
Mr Vasim Akhtar, said that one person had been detained
for interrogation in this connection. |
Price rise shadow over Delhi
Assembly poll NEW DELHI, Sept 26 — The BJP central leadership has asked the Delhi Chief Minister, Mr Sahib Singh Verma, to invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) to contain the prices of essential commodities, especially of onion, to brighten the prospects of the party in the Delhi assembly poll scheduled for November 25. The BJP’s prospect of sweeping the poll could be bleak if the state government fails to halt the rising prices of essential commodities, the central leadership has told the Delhi Chief Minister, sources in the BJP Delhi unit said. Sources indicated that the price rise could emerge as a major poll plank for the Opposition parties and if the government failed to act in earnest, it might result in a great loss for the party. Even the statement of Mr Verma that “poor people do not eat onion” had evoked a strong criticism from the central leadership and the Chief Minister had been asked to restrain in his comment, sources said. As invoking ESMA is the prerogative of the state government, the senior BJP leaders have asked the Chief Minister to act fast in this direction. They have also asked the Chief Minister to direct the authorities to conduct raids on hoarders and black marketeers, as it might send the right signal to the electorate before the poll. Middlemen have been earning huge profits due to the spiralling prices and the party poll prospects would be marred if the state government does not take any stringent steps against them soon, party workers feel. The price of onion touched a record high of Rs 40 per kg in the Capital and the state government has started distributing them at Rs 10 per kg in different parts of the city. The central government is importing 10,000 tonnes of onion and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) would import another 15,000 tonnes. There were reports of fights breaking out at places where black-marketing of onion was taking place. The distribution centres of subsidised onions witnessed serpentine queues and sharp rise in tempers. Meanwhile, the process of identifying the issues in the forthcoming assembly elections have started, sources in the BJP said, adding that the party should not let the Congress set the tone for the poll. However, if the debate in the no-confidence motion moved by the Congress against the ruling BJP in the Delhi Assembly is any indication, it appears that the Congress would try to capitalise on the failure of the state government on different fronts. The spiralling prices of essential commodities, adulteration of mustard oil, deteriorating law and order situation in the Capital, failure of the state government to provide basic civic amenities and erratic power supply in Delhi were the issues taken up by the Congress in the debate. The Delhi Health Minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan, had to “apologise and owe moral responsibility” in the House for the failure of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Department in not preventing adulteration of mustard oil. Moreover, the Congress has intensified its attack on the BJP both inside and outside the House. The party has been holding several demonstrating and corner meetings against the steep rise in prices and deteriorating law and order and it plans to similar events in large numbers in the coming days. The Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president, Ms Sheila Dikshit, led a delegation to the Union Home Minister, Mr L.K. Advani, and apprised him of the concerns of the Delhiites. An opinion poll conducted by the Centre for Media Studies has said that the anti-incumbency factor would help the Congress to come to power in Delhi. The ruling BJP, which
swept the 1993 poll, securing 48 seats in the 70-member
assembly, would get less than 30 seats. However, the
Congress, which had managed to win only 14 seats would
get 37 to 39 seats, the survey said. |
Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar awards for 12 NEW DELHI, Sept 26 (PTI) — Twelve scientists have been selected for this year’s Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar awards, the nation’s highest awards in science. The names were announced by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Director General Dr R.A. Mashelkar, on the occasion of the CSIR foundation day today. The award for biological sciences goes to Debi Prasad Sarkar from the University of Delhi, South Campus and K. Vijayraghavan from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Centre at Bangalore. The award for chemical sciences goes to Akhil Ranjan Chakravarty of Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and K.N. Ganesh of National Chemical Laboratory. Ashok Jhunjhunwala from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai, and Anurag Sharma from the IIT, Delhi, have been selected in the field of engineering sciences. In the field of medical sciences, G. Balakrish Nair from the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases in Calcutta bags the award, and Rengaswamy Ramesh from Physical Research, Laboratory, Ahmedabad, in the field of earth, atmosphere, ocean and planetary sciences. Sumit Ranjan Das from the TIFR in Mumbai and Arun Jayannavar from the Institute of Physics in Bhubaneswar have been selected for physical sciences. T.R. Ramdas from the TIFR in Mumbai and Subhashis Nag from the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai get the Bhatnagar prize for Mathematical Sciences. Nineteen scientists have been selected for the Om Prakash Bhasin awards for science and technology. The awards will be presented on October 14. Nine scientists selected for 1997 include Mr S.L. Mehta, Deputy Director-General of Indian Council of Agricultural Research; Mr S.K. Basu, Director of the National Institute of Immunology here; Mr D. Balasubramaniam, a former Director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad; Sneh Bhargava, a former AIIMS Director and Mr N.K. Ganguly, Director-General of Indian Council of Medical Research. The awardees for 1996
include CCMB Director Lalji Singh; T. S. R. Prasada Rao,
Director of the Indian Institute of Petroleum in
Dehradun; Kalyan Banerjee, Director of the National
Institute of Virology in Pune; Mr V.P. Kamboj, former
Director of Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI) in
Lucknow, and Mr M. R. Srinivasan, former Atomic Energy
Commission (AEC) Chairman. Mr A.N. Purohit, Mr P. K.
Maitra, Mr K. Neelakantan, Mr D. Dutta Majumdar and Mr
C.G. Krishnadas Nair also bag the 1996 Bhasin award. |
Kiran Bedi’s book on Tihar
released NEW DELHI, Sept 26 — “I wish somebody like her were not running the jail, they were running the country,” said Mr Shiv Khera, noted author while proposing three cheers for the country’s first woman IPS officer, Dr Kiran Bedi. Mr Khera made these observations while addressing a distinguished audience here on Friday evening for the release of Mrs Bedi’s book, ‘It’s Always Possible.’ The book published by Sterling Publishers is also available on CD-ROM and claims to be an authentic documentation of the process of transformation of Tihar jail into an ashram. Speaking in her characteristic zealous tone, the former Inspector-General, Prisons, Tihar, said, “I could not wait for this evening. The book does not claim to be an individual success. It’s a collective success of thousands of prisoners, staff members and community members. It is based on a three C model of being corrective, collective and community.” She said that the proceeds of the book and the CD-ROM were dedicated to the India Vision Foundation founded by her for the ongoing project on the education of children of prisoners. A recipient of the Ramon
Magsaysay award, Mrs Bedi said that the book is an
outcome of the Nehru fellowship awarded to her. |
Orissa MBBS merit list cancelled CUTTACK, Sept 26 (UNI) — In a significant order, the Orissa High Court has cancelled the merit list prepared by the joint entrance examination (JEE) committee for admission to the 1998 MBBS course of the three medical colleges in the state. A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice S.N. Phukan and Mr Justice Arijit Pasayat passed the order yesterday while disposing of a batch of writ petitions filed by the candidates, alleging arbitrary valuation and large-scale irregularities by the committee in preparing the final selection list. The court directed the JEE committee to prepare a fresh merit list of the candidates for admission on the basis of the report submitted by a two-member expert committee comprising Superintendent of S.C.B. Medical College and Hospital Ratnakar Dash and retired professor of medicine Sabyasachi Das. As the merit list prepared
by the JEE committee was quashed, the admission of
students on the basis of this list would stand cancelled,
the court held. |
Gowda has sympathy for Vajpayee NEW DELHI, Sept 26 (PTI) —Former Premier H.D. Deve Gowda has sympathy for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who “is managing a government with 19 parties”. “I managed 13 parties for 11 months and now Vajpayee is trying it with 19 parties. I cannot say he is incompetent but it is a bit difficult,” Mr Gowda said after launching a new journal here last evening. Describing caste and community as two evil forces of Indian polity, he said these had to be eradicated to achieve a healthy democracy. “People have to rise
above petty politics and look into key problems like
poverty, population growth and unemployment,” Mr
Gowda said, adding that people had to play their role
without expecting miracles from politicians. |
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| 10 kidnapped in Tripura AGARTALA: Activists of the National Liberation Front of Tripura today kidnapped 10 persons including two Central Government employees from the Paharpur area in South Tripura district, the police said. The heavily armed ultras stopped two cars, at the Paharpur area under the disturbed Birganj police station and abducted the 10 at gunpoint. Army and para-military forces rushed to the spot and launched a massive search in the nearby areas. — PTI HC upholds ban on firearms Three years with
new heart Kalka-Mumbai
holiday special Dhanvantari award
for Pandit Sharma 2 die in house
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