Thursday, September 9, 1999

Harkat-ul-Ansar ultra held
NEW DELHI, Sept 8 — The Special Cell of Delhi Police has arrested a Kashmiri militant of Harkat-ul-Ansar outfit.

Where booth walks to voter!
JAIPUR, Sept 8 — Two camel-driven polling booths that virtually went to the voter’s doorstep in Rajasthan saw brisk polling in sharp contrast to elections elsewhere on Sunday last.

Warrants against 14 in fodder case
PATNA, Sept 8 — The CBI court here has issued arrest warrants against 14 of the 22 accused in connection with a regular case of the fodder scam.

Telecom policy
BJP refutes Cong charges
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Sept 8 — The Bharatiya Janata Party today refuted Congress allegations on the Telecom Policy and described these as "baseless".

The party’s reaction came a day after the Congress raked up a number of issues related to the telecom policy saying that these should have been looked into before ushering in the revenue-sharing regime for private telecom companies.

BJP spokesman, Narendra Modi maintained that there was nothing undemocratic or irregular about either the formulation or the implementation of the New Telecom Policy (NTP), 1999. A Group on Telecom comprising Ministers and experts was constituted and this group interacted with various Ministries, industry, financial institutions and telecom experts, he said.

He said the draft policy was put up for national debate and it received more than 17,000 responses, every one of which was scrutinised and, those considered useful were suitably incorporated in the policy.

On the Congress demand for the withdrawal of termination of cellular licences, Mr Modi said a more glaring instance of inconsistency and double standards could not be imagined. "This amounts to hunting with the hounds and running with the hares". He said the Congress could not plead rescuing of defaulting operators and at the same time demand that they be penalised.

Mr Modi said the NTP, 1999 had nothing to do with conflict resolution between DoT, TRAI and telecom operators and it was an issue entirely to do with the TRAI Act.

He said contrary to the Congress statement, there had been no complete waiver of committed licence fees and the companies had to clear all their dues by January 31, 2000.

He described the Congress charge that the implementation of the NTP had cost the exchequer a loss of Rs 70,000 crore as "fevered imagination running riot". There was no basis or material whatsoever to support the frivolous allegation and it was absurd to expect revenue from an industry on the verge of closure, he added.

He asserted that against the Budget estimate of revenue collection of Rs 1700 crore from the telecom operators, the actual figure would be much more than the target.

The BJP spokesman said the Government had acted decisively, democratically and with utmost transparency in implementing the telecom policy.

I am no security threat: Sonia

NEW DELHI, Sept 8 (PTI) — Congress President Sonia Gandhi today blasted those who question her for not taking Indian citizenship for 18 years after her marriage.

“Jis din main Indiraji ke ghar bahu ke roop me aayi, usi din main Bhartiya bani. Baki sab technical hai”, (The day I came into Indira Gandhi’s family as daughter-in-law, I became an Indian. Everything else is a technicality, she said in an interview to well known journalist, Rajiv Shukla.

Mrs Gandhi said that those who were talking about barring people of foreign origin form occupying high posts had no faith in either the people or democracy.

She said she was certainly the target of this proposal as the Indian Constitution does not have any such provision.

“Show me one example in Indian culture where a daughter-in-law has been subjected to such a question”, she said adding that “whatever I have got and whatever I have lost was all in India. Then why people raise such questions?”

Mrs Gandhi took umbrage to the Prime Minister’s charge that she was a “security threat”. She said that she was the daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi when she was Prime Minister for 16 years and wife of the Prime Minister for five years. “How did I suddenly become a security threat?”

She said that it has become a habit with “these people” to level accusations against our family which they have been doing for the last 30 years. “What all he (Vajpayee) has not said about my mother-in-law and Rajiv Gandhi”, she said in a direct attack on the Prime Minister.

Replying to questions, Mrs Gandhi denied the charge that she was “power-hungry”. She said that if she wanted she could have become Prime Minister way back in 1991 (after the assassination of her husband Rajiv Gandhi).

“The state in which I was then I could not think of anything else”, she said when asked why she declined the offer to become Congress president after the assassination of her husband in 1991.

Mrs Gandhi said she had attempted to form an alternative government following the fall of the BJP-led coalition, as it was the responsibility of the Congress, which was the main opposition party.

“As some people betrayed us, we could not form government and we are facing the elections now”, she said in an apparent reference to Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Mrs Gandhi denied suggestions that like the BJP, the Congress was also cobbling up an alliance of some regional parties like the RJD, AIADMK and RPI.

“I don’t think that you can compare it with them. They have a pre-poll alliance and they are sharing power, which we are not doing”, she said.

Refuting charges that those who have aligned with the Congress were corrupt, she said: when Jayalalitha was with the BJP, she was clean but when she came too the Congress she becomes corrupt.

She allayed apprehensions about problems in the Congress tie-up with AIADMK and said there were ‘no differences’ between the two parties.

Mrs Gandhi also made it clear that to withdraw support to Vajpayee government was Ms Jayalalitha’s own decision.

On Bofors, she wanted the government to expedite the probe in the kickbacks case so that “my husband will stand vindicated”.

Mrs Gandhi dismissed the BJP charge that the Congress was always destabilising governments when it was not in power.

“It is their old habit. They blame us for everything. When the price of onions shot up before the assembly elections in a few states last year, they blamed us”, she said adding that the responsibility to run the government “lies with them and not us”.

The Congress president was critical of the government for “rushing through” the controversial telecom package and said that this had led to a major scam.

On her children, Rahul and Priyanka, she said that they were quite supportive of her. She, however, made it clear that she would never force them to join politics and it was for them to take a decision.

She said she decided to join active politics last year as the Congress had become weak and those forces which had opposed Indira and Rajiv Gandhi were gaining strength.

Mrs Gandhi said she had brought about a lot of changes in the organisation after becoming party president. This included reservations for women, minorities, OBC, SC and ST in the party posts. “We will take these reforms ahead after the Lok Sabha elections are over”, she added.

President laments literacy failure

NEW DELHI, Sept 8 (PTI) — President K. R. Narayanan today said that the nation should have serious introspection over its inability to achieve the goal of free and compulsory education to children up to 14 years so far.

“We have to deeply look into the reasons for not being able to redeem the pledge enshrined in the Constitution to provide free education to children from five to 14 years, “he said while inaugurating the International Literacy Day celebrations here.

Mr Narayanan regretted that the implementation of various educational programmes had been “half hearted” hitherto but now there was an awakening among the people and the country would have to go all out to make India fully literate.

Lauding role of the National Literacy Mission (NLM) in the spread of literacy, he said literacy efforts should be made a social movement and linked to practical use for its full success.

Expressing concern over the drop-out rates in schools, he said spread of education, particularly among women, could also help in the family planning activities and all round growth of the society.

The President also gave away UNESCO’s prestigious ‘Noma Literacy Prize’ for 1999 to the National Literacy Mission and Satyen Maitra Memorial Awards for Literacy to Solapur and Satara in Maharashtra.

Opium factor in Mandsaur
From N.D. Sharma

BHOPAL, Sept 8 — Opium is a major factor — perhaps more important than even Kargil and stability — in the Mandsaur constituency of western Madhya Pradesh, adjoining Rajasthan. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, on his election tour of the area late last month, had promised special measures to ensure more “remunerative prices” to opium growers.

Mandsaur accounts for over 60 per cent of the country’s total opium production and it is now considered the country’s biggest centre for manufacturing heroin. Politicians of the state have been expressing themselves against opium cultivation but have been yielding to pressure from the opium lobby. Chief Minister Digvijay Singh, for instance, has been advocating a ban on opium cultivation in the state, but the area under poppy (from which opium is made) cultivation in Mandsaur district has increased from 6,000 hectares to over 17,000 hectares during his regime.

Opium is cultivated under controlled conditions. The area is decided by the government and licences for opium cultivation are issued by the Union Finance Ministry. Cultivators are required to sell to the government a minimum yield per hectare in order to become eligible for licences in the coming year. This minimum qualifying yield (MQY) is the real bone of contention, and not the price of the opium. The cultivators had been fighting hard against any government move to raise the MQY.

In the beginning of this decade, for instance, the MQY was fixed at 34 kg. As the government moved to raise it to 38 kg, a lot of pressure was put on it by the opium growers and the MQY was then set at 37 kg. The case of the farmers was pleaded by 14 MPs of the adjoining areas belonging to all parties. The lower the MQY, the greater the quantities available with the cultivators for siphoning off into the black market.

For the 1994-95 season, the MQY was fixed at 65 kg per hectare. The figure was arrived at after extensive surveys by the Narcotics Department which had found that the actual yield of opium per hectare ranged between 60 kg and 80 kg — and even higher at some places. The government, however, under pressure from the MPs, decided to relax the figure set by its Narcotics Department and lowered the MQY to 50 kg. Later, the Union Finance Ministry, then headed by Mr P. Chidambaram, further reduced the MQY to 48 kg.

The conversion of opium (siphoned off in the black market, of course) into smack, heroin and brown sugar in Mandsaur and the neighbouring districts is so widespread that it has almost become a cottage industry there. Indore is the main centre for its export.

It is said that Shamsher Khan of Achaari village (in Mandsaur district) had first smuggled heroin (and the knowhow from Pakistan two decades ago. Today, Achaari is only one of the innumerable villages, mainly on the MP-Rajasthan border, where makeshift laboratories for extracting heroin from opium have mushroomed. And so has the number of smugglers in narcotics and also that of the addicts.

Kant releases Das’s book
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Sept 8 — The Vice-President, Mr Krishan Kant, today, released veteran journalist, Sitanshu Das’s book “Indian Nationalism : Study in Evolution” in the Capital.

Speaking at the book release function, Das, said Indian civilisation had grown through the millennium through assimilation and mutation.

“Indian civilisation is not confined to one country and several nations have inherited values and cultures generally associated with Indian civilisation,” he said. “Civilisation cohesion cannot guarantee a universal state,” Mr Das added.

Subject people, in a state of abasement turn to their distinctive religio-spiritual heritage to sustain their faith in the future and to define their identity. Enslaved people, or people in danger of losing their national autonomy, are known to draw upon their spiritual inheritance to relieve their sense of hopelessness when they confront seemingly unassailable powers subjugating them or threatening their autonomy, Das, who has studied at the London School of Economics, states in the book.

In such situations opposition by subject people is often expressed in the idioms and symbols of their familiar, ancient and sacred faiths. Such indeed were the favoured idioms of Indian nationalism when it confronted the British in the late 19th century.

As India’s nationalist movement gathered strength in the first two decades of the 20th century, Indian nationalism, reflecting the country’s social realities, mutated. It became more inclusive. It has always been pan-Indian. The change is, thus, evolutionary, connecting past perceptions of India’s fundamental oneness with modern Indian nationalism, Das states in his book.

Harkat-ul-Ansar ultra held
From Our Correspondent

NEW DELHI, Sept 8 — The Special Cell of Delhi Police has arrested a Kashmiri militant of Harkat-ul-Ansar outfit.

The militant, Mohammad Akbar Bhatt, alias Gajali, was arrested from Jammu by a team of the Special Cell, who went to Jammu to nab him following a tip-off. The police recovered 10.650 kg RDX, one wireless set, Rs 2 lakh cash and some incriminating documents from his possession.

During interrogation he disclosed that some arms and explosives were hidden in the hills of Doda district. The Delhi Police team, along with Army personnel, went there to recover the explosives. On the way to that place, the team was ambushed near Tatna village. Two jawans of the army were killed in the firing, police said.

Where booth walks to voter!

JAIPUR, Sept 8 (UNI) — Two camel-driven polling booths that virtually went to the voter’s doorstep in Rajasthan saw brisk polling in sharp contrast to elections elsewhere on Sunday last.

They were also a huge draw for women voters, officials said.

The mobile booths were introduced in the sprawling desert constituency of Barmer since people in distant rural hamlets would have had to trek long distances to vote.

District Collector and Election Officer R.N. Arvind said 81.08 and 73.65 per cent votes were cast in the booths in Shahdad ka Khurd and Sirguwala segments of the Lok Sabha constituency.

As many as half the voters in the national capital, where transport is more convenient, kept away from the elections.

The district collector said the turnout of women voters was “exceptional” in areas where the camel carts were used. Barely three per cent of the women in the constituency are literate.

Warrants against 14 in fodder case

Patna, Sept 8 (PTI) — The CBI court here has issued arrest warrants against 14 of the 22 accused in connection with a regular case of the fodder scam.

Special CBI judge S.K. Lal issued the arrest warrants yesterday against the accused, who are either not on bail or have not been remanded in judicial custody in the instant case so far.

The court took the cognisance of the charge sheet filed by the CBI against the accused under section 120 B read with 420, 467, 468, 471 of the Indian Penal Code and 13(2) read with 13(A) (D) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.

The CBI had earlier submitted the charge sheet against the 22 accused persons in connection with the case.

The agency submitted the charge sheet in case no 58(A)/96 relating to fraudulent withdrawals of more than Rs 1.07 crore from Simdega sub-treasury by the state Animal Husbandry Department officials through "forged and fake" bills.

Among those who were chargesheeted in the case were former Regional Director (ahd-Ranchi), S.B. Sinha, Under Secretary (Home Special), Bihar, Yogendra Hansda, Executive Magistrate, Simdega, Sona Chand Das, and former Budget-cum-Accounts Officer, Patna, Brij Bhushan Prasad.

The others include Vinay Kumar, former District ahd Officer of Jamshedpur, Rambriksha Ram, former District Supply Officer, Pakur, and S.K. Sharma, Research Officer of Genetic and Breeding, Bhagalpur.

Two killed in blast
AHMEDABAD: Two persons were killed and one was injured in a blast at a factory in Chharodi village in Sanand talika of Ahmedabad district yesterday, the police said on Wednesday. All three were working as chemists in the factory, the police said. Investigations were on to ascertain the circumstances that led to the blast with the help of forensic experts, police sources said, adding that so far no breakthrough had been made in the probe. — PTI

6 TDP men die in mishap
HYDERABAD: Six activists of the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) were killed and five injured when their lorry collided with an Andhra Pradesh State Transport Corporation (APSRTC) bus on the national highway in Visakhapatnam district on Tuesday, the police said here on Wednesday. According to the police, the mishap occurred near Nyayampudi village when the victims were returning after attending an election meeting of the Chief Minister N.Chandrababu Naidu at Payakaraopet. — PTI

2 gangsters gunned down
MUMBAI: Two gangsters belonging to the Chhota Rajan gang were gunned down in an encounter with the police in South Mumbai on Tuesday night, the police said. Acting on a tip-off that the gangsters, Sultan Ansari (24) and P. Prakash (23), would be arriving at L.T. Marg, the police laid a trap in the area. On spotting the duo, the police ordered them to surrender. The gangsters, however, shot at the police, who repulsed the attack and in the firing the gangsters were killed. — PTI

Convict hangs himself
NAGPUR: A convict, serving a life imprisonment term, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in Government Medical Hospital on Wednesday, the police said. The police said the 60-year-old convict, Wasudeo Mondi Chunarkar from Chandrapur, was undergoing treatment for cancer and used the bandage tapes to end his life. — PTI

Bandh hits life in Tripura
AGARTALA: A 12-hour bandh, called by major parties, in protest against the kidnapping of 16 government officials by NLFT guerrillas, crippled life throughout Tripura on Wednesday. The bandh was called by the ruling CPM-led Left Front, the Congress, the BJP, the Trinamool Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party. The officials remain untraced. — UNI

2 Railways employees kidnapped
GUWAHATI: Mr P.K. Das and Mr S.N. Deb, two Northeast Frontier Railways employees, were kidnapped by unknown militants between Bashbari and Motirchar on Tuesday. Mr Das and Mr Deb along with another colleague were on a routine duty when the miscreants kidnapped them and asked the third person to inform the Railways authorities. — UNI

Minor raped in Delhi
NEW DELHI: An 11-year-old girl was allegedly raped by three kabariwalahs in the Turkman Gate area of Central Delhi on Sunday, the police said on Wednesday. The girl, a local resident, had gone to dispose of some plastic items to the scrap dealers when she was allegedly raped, the police said. — PTI

Photo journalist dead
LUCKNOW: Veteran photo journalist and editor of Lucknow City Magazine Satpal Premi died here on Wednesday morning. He was 65. Mr Premi is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son. He will be cremated here on Thursday morning. — UNI