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| Friday, January 5, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Identify allies for Assembly poll: Laxman
Qureshi sent back to Tihar Jail News Analysis 6 more held in Red Fort attack case |
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| India plays key role 12 nations’ rice genome project NEW DELHI, Jan 4 — India is playing a key role in the international rice sequencing project which aims at identifying all 50,000 genes in the rice genome in the next 10 years. Rs 70,000 cr food ‘wastage’ a year CAG exposes a chink in PDS Multi-speciality ESI hospital for each state Cong praises scientists
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| Identify allies for Assembly poll: Laxman NEW DELHI, Jan 4 — The BJP today came heavily on the Opposition accusing it of attempting to “throw spanners” in the implementation of the NDA agenda by repeatedly raising the Ayodhya issue. Addressing the two- day the National Executive of the party here, the President, Mr Bangaru Laxman, criticised the Opposition for attempting to “throw spanners” in the implementation of the NDA agenda by raising the Ayodhya issue, and expressed confidence that NDA partners “will carry on the good work conforming to the coalition dharma”. Stressing that the BJP was a party of governance, Mr Laxman said “our government is in the process of implementing the national agenda of governance”. Dwelling upon a wide range of subjects from economic reforms to prevailing situation in North-East specially Assam, Manipur and Tripura as also the ongoing ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir and forthcoming Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Kerala, West Bengal and Assam, the BJP President said the need for creating infrastructure for storing, exporting and using foodgrains and expressed concern over the dumping of cheap Chinese goods in the country. Setting the agenda for the deliberations in the next two days, the BJP President said the Executive should analyse the political situations in the five states where Assembly elections are due to take place this year. There was a need to identify “potential allies” as poll would provide immense opportunities to increase the party’s strength substantially, Mr Laxman said adding: “The moral of the party workers must be kept so high that they could face the challenge effectively”. “In the states that are going to the poll, we have immense opportunities to increase our strength substantially, and in some states we can even bid for power either on our own or along with our allies and friendly parties”, he said. Describing the situation in Assam as “alarming and deteriorating day by day”, Mr Laxman said the state government had failed miserably in discharging its fundamental duty of protecting the lives of the citizens as militants in the state “have a free run”. He pledged that the BJP would restore peace in the state which was “crying for change.” He said there was need to tighten “our belts and make every effort to win the forthcoming assembly elections to redeem our pledge”. The BJP President said the situation in Manipur and Tripura was equally grave as lawlessness was the order of the day. Speaking on the economic front, Mr Laxman said: “It is imperative that adequate attention be given to creating infrastructure for storing, exporting and using the foodgrains for the hungry, the poor and the unemployed”, he said. Mr Laxman asked the government to take adequate measures to ensure that the vital sectors, small industries and the farmers interests are adequately taken care of. “I may also mention the unrestricted flow of cheap Chinese goods, which are being dumped in this country. I am sure that the government shares the concern with everybody else and adequate measures are being taken,” Mr Laxman said. Referring to his Nagpur message to the minorities, he said it had “yielded remarkable results” and the party’s efforts to combat the false and vicious propaganda by its political opponents that separated these sections from it, have been fruitful. “Those who were unwilling to listen to us in the past are today prepared to enter into a dialogue with us. Thousands of people from these sections across the country have come closer to us”, he said. The BJP President said the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee’s, ceasefire initiative in Kashmir “has achieved initial success. It has inaugurated a new era in our continuing efforts to bring peace to Kashmir”. Mr Laxman said “the initiative had exposed the militant outfits that are perpetrating violence in the state and their sponsor, Pakistan”. “The incidents of violence by these forces only betray their panic at the success of the initiative. Their isolation from the local population, the resulting frustration prompts them to desperate attempts to subvert the initiative”, he said. Mr Laxman said apart from cross-border terrorism, fundamentalist terrorism is active throughout the country. “Here our duty lies in being vigilant and in exposing their designs to disrupt the harmony in the society”. On the recent incidents of violence against Indian community in Nepal, he suspected a “conspiracy to cause harm to the interests of both India and Nepal” and urged the Nepalese Government to take effective steps to protect the lives and property of the affected people and investigate and expose the “faces behind this trouble”. |
| Qureshi sent back to Tihar Jail NEW DELHI, Jan 4 — The Delhi High Court today sought the assistance of the Attorney-General of India to transfer the custody of Hashim Qureshi to the Jammu and Kashmir police which had registered a case of hijacking in 1971. Considering the political significance of the case, a double Bench comprising Mr Justice Cyriac Joseph and Mr Justice S. N. Kapoor today sought the assistance of the Attorney-General of India for transferring Qureshi’s custody to the Jammu and Kashmir police. The case has been adjourned to Tuesday. Qureshi, who is a founder member of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, arrived in India on December 29 and surrendered before the Indira Gandhi International Airport police following which he had been remanded in judicial custody. He was admitted to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital on Tuesday after a complaint of chest pain. He was shifted to Tihar Jail from the hospital following an improvement in his condition. Qureshi, who is on judicial remand till January 11, was discharged from the hospital this morning when his condition was reported to be stable, Deputy Medical Superintendent of the hospital, Dr N.S. Das, said. He said Qureshi’s condition was normal barring a slight enlargement of the heart on the left side. The test, including ECG and blood pressure, conducted this morning showed that he was stable. Qureshi’s counsel, Mr K.T.S. Tulsi, said his condition was not normal yesterday. He had a history of cardiac ailments and was carrying some medicines when he was lodged in Tihar Jail on December 29 but he was not allowed to take those medicines, he added. His brother, Mohammad Aslam, said today there was no improvement in Qureshi’s condition when he met him at the hospital this morning. In this condition, he should not be shifted to jail, he added. |
| News Analysis CALCUTTA, Jan 4 — Chief Minister Buddadev Bhattacharyya has been accused of undermining Mr Jyoti Basu’s performances who headed the CPM led Left Front government in West Bengal for 24 years at a stretch. And this accusation has come not from his adversary, Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo, Mamata Banerjee but from one of his senior Cabinet colleagues. Mr Subhas Chakraborty (in charge of Transport and Sports), who has been known as a rebel leader in the party. Mr Chakraborty recently organised a grand reception to the grand-old man in the Marxist party, for ‘‘successfully’’, running the Bengal government for a record term — unprecedented in the history of democracy in any country. Mr Chakraborty who had been a ‘‘blue-eyed boy’’ of the party’s iron-man, late Promode Dasgupta, is now Mr Jyoti Basu’s ‘‘sweet truant goody man’’, who has become Mr Basu’s family friend in need. The Transport Minister openly charged Mr Bhattacharyya of launching an image-building campaign of his own in the name of bringing back work culture in government offices by undermining Mr Jyoti Basu’s performances as Chief Minister Mr Chakraborty alleged that Mr Bhattacharyya’s style of functioning directly aimed at undermining Mr Basu who had voluntarily stepped down from the Chief Minister’s chair to make room for his young successor. Mr Bhattacharyya has been creating an impression in the public mind as if Mr Basu had been responsible for the present devastating work culture. His intention is to minimise the great leader by projecting himself as a person with a clean image’’, alleged Mr Chakraborty. Oddly enough, the grand-old man, did not rebuke Mr Chakraborty for publicly raising an issue which could create differences not only in the party but also encourage Miss Mamata Banerjee and Mr Tapan Sikhdar of the BJP and state congress leaders to launch an anti-CPM campaign on the eve of the forthcoming state Assembly elections. Chief Minister, Bhattacharyya also did not explain anything to the people to justify his stand, contradicting Mr Chakraborty’s allegation against him. On the contrary, he preferred remaining silent. But the party state unit secretary, Mr Anil Biswas, gently tried to protect Mr Bhattacharyya by stating that he had just been carrying out the party’s decision. It has been publicly known that Mr Chakraborty has been very much cornered in the party for some time past and his relations with the party bosses, excepting Mr Jyoti Basu, had been embittered, which forced him to join hands with rebel Saifuddin Chowdhury — Samir Patutundi group, even being an important minister of Mr Bhattacharyya’s cabinet. Mr Chakraborty also maintains good relations with Miss Mamata Banerjee, who has been projected by the TMC-BJP combine as Bengal’s future Chief Minister, Miss Banerjee was already become an ‘‘eyesore’’ for the CPM leadership who has been fighting a prolonged battle against them, which put the Marxist party in a real political crisis. By age and experience, senior to Mr Bhattacharyya in the party, Mr Subhas Chakraborty is known for his dynamism who can be entrusted with any difficult jobs in the party which he will most successfully deliver. In fact, he had been one of the main fund-raisers and also the main organisers of the all-important party meetings and functions where he would mobislise the maximum number of people at short notice and make it a grand success. And for that matter, he often sided with corrupt businessmen and got himself involved in various ‘‘unusual activities’’ and became a subject of criticism in the party. Sometime he would bring controversy by ordering the police to releasing a branded criminal, some time, he would side with a corrupt business man, some time, he would protect an anti-social and so on. He would also collect fund by organising gala ‘‘Hope 86 like ugly functions’’ in bringing Bollywood stars to take part in sexy dances and other ‘‘rock-n-rool’’ events at Salt Lake stadium against the party’s ideology which heavily reflected on the traditional Bengali culture. Mr Chakraborty’s adversaries criticised him. Party bosses questioned his honesty and his very style of functioning. At the party meetings also, he would often be the subject of severe criticism and on several occasions show-cause notices would be served on him. Still nothing would happen to him and Mr Chakraborty would remain in the government and the party as before, only leaders like Mr Bhattacharyya and others would hate him. But it does not matter much to Mr Chakraborty. He would go on acting the way he thought right and would so in the interest of the people and the party. He knows he would have a place in the party as the party needed him. And his present stand against the Chief Minister on work culture would not invite any immediate trouble for him. He knows the party cannot afford to lose him. And if such a situation at all comes, he would not silently leave the party alone. He would come out with many others and form a more formidable group with Saifuddin-Patitundu dissidents — which would mean another partition in the party. |
| 6 more held in Red Fort attack case NEW DELHI, Jan 4 (UNI) — The Delhi police today made further headway in the investigation into the December 22 Red Fort attack as it arrested three sympathisers of Lashkar-e-Toiba here and its tip-off led to the arrest of three hawala operators in Srinagar. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Ashok Chand said the three local contacts of the Pakistan-based militant group — Babar Mohsin Bagwala, Devinder Singh and Shahanshan Alam — were arrested from Jama Masjid, New Friends Colony and Ghaziabad early today. The Delhi police’s investigation had revealed that an amount of Rs 35 lakh had been deposited by Lashkar militant Ashfaq Ahmed, who was arrested by the Special Cell on December 25 night, in the accounts of hawala operators in Srinagar. The Delhi police’s information led to the arrest of the hawala dealers — Farooq Ahmed, Nazir Ahmed and Maqbool Ahmed. With this, the total arrests in the case have gone up to seven and the police says more arrests are likely in the coming days. Another Lashkar militant Abu Shamal, who along with gang members Ashfaq Ahmed and four others, took part in the attack at the 7 Rajputana Rifles camp in Red Fort was killed by the police in an encounter on December 26. Mr Chand said the arrests of the six persons had been made following disclosures made by Ashfaq Ahmed, who was in the police custody. |
| India plays key role NEW DELHI, Jan 4 — India is playing a key role in the international rice sequencing project which aims at identifying all 50,000 genes in the rice genome in the next 10 years. Dr Gurdev S Khush, Principal Plant Breeder at International Rice Research Institute, Philippines, who is here to participate in the 88th National Science Congress (ISC), told TNS that once the genes were identified, it would not only help in producing disease-resistant and nutrient-rich varieties of rice but would also be beneficial for wheat and maize. While the work on the structure of the genes scheduled to be completed by 2005, knowing exact functions of these 50,000 genes would take another five years. India, which is working on chromosome number 11, is one of the 12 countries involved in the rice genome project. Each of the countries is working on one chromosome. Dr Kush said the rice institute, which has evolved 320 rice varieties so far, was currently working on ‘super rice’ variety which would increase crop yields by 20 per cent. The new variety was likely to be available in all parts of the world in the next two years. Talking of problems of productivity faced by farmers in Punjab and Haryana, Dr Khush said they must modify cropping pattern and sow legume crops. While it was important to break the wheat-rice cycle, soil health can be improved by rotating crops like soyabean, he said. Earlier, speaking at the plenary session of the ISC on ‘improving productivity and alleviating poverty’, Dr Khush called for increasing crop productivity to feed the world in the next century. He said this can be achieved by developing crop varieties with higher yield potential and closing the gap between potential yields and actual yields obtained by farmers. “We will have to produce 50 per cent more food by 2025. Food grain production in Africa will have to increase almost 400 per cent, Latin America 200 per cent and Asia 50 per cent,” he said. Chairing the session, Mr Sompal, Member, Planning Commission, said about 88 million hectares of land was still lying unutilised in the country. He said while the country had an unprecedented food surplus, nearly 33 crore people were living below the poverty line. Advocating a shift to integrated farming system, he said deficiencies of nutrients had been reported in many new crop varieties and mere quantitative increase in crop yield would not help. In her address, Ms Uma Lele from the World Bank, Washington, said despite a rich history of innovation and India’s recent strides in information technology, China had faired much better across a broad spectrum of performance indicators including per capita GDP growth, savings and domestic and foreign investment. Maintaining that India had lagged behind even in terms of quality of growth, she said that appropriate lessons should be learnt from the Chinese experience. Ms Lele said China had been more agile and skilful in adjusting its command and control approach to the use of market forces. Dr Anwar Dil from US International University, San Diego, emphasised importance of dynamic, transformational leadership and strengthening coalition of enlightened and progressive ideas to overcome the political, social and institutional constraints in fight against hunger, poverty and environment problems in South Asia. |
| Rs 70,000 cr food ‘wastage’ a year NEW DELHI, Jan 4 — India wastes Rs 70,000 crore worth of food articles every year due to inadequate technologies, according to the Director of Central Food Technological Research Institute. Delivering the Dr B.C. Gupta Memorial Lecture at the ongoing Indian Science Congress here today, Dr V. Prakash of the Mysore-based institute said the wastage negated India’s standing as one of the world’s largest producer of food articles. There was a need to adopt technologies for extending the shelf life of fruits and vegetables on one hand and proper processing of food grains to check the wastage. The setting up of a efficient cold storage system would also go a long way in preserving food articles. Dr Prakash also laid stress on promoting traditional Indian food, the need for value addition in food articles and adopting cleaner technologies for processing. Dwelling on the enormous scope for export of meat products from India, Dr J. Abraham of Kerala Agricultural University said the World Trade Organisation agreements actually favoured India in this respect. Meat from India, he added, had several advantages such as lower prices and lower cholesterol content. Saying that a large potential existed for exports of buffalo meat, especially in the wake of the mad cow disease panic in the West, Dr Abraham said focus should be on adhering such export quality meat to quality specifications. The animals should be reared in disease-free zones and animals meant for slaughter should themselves be free of any disease. With the advent of meat research, he said it was possible to improve eating quality and palatability. Dr K. Gopakumar, Deputy Director General of ICAR, said his lecture on Fish processing and value addition that India earned $ 1.1 billion through marine exports in 1997. Of this frozen shrimp accounted for around 31 per cent of the total quantity exported but earned nearly 71 per cent of the total value. Apart from this, value addition and processing of by-products had opened up new vistas for export earnings. One of them was shake bones, a highly priced pharmaceutical products for the treatment of calcium deficiency and neurological disorders. CAG exposes a chink in PDS NEW DELHI, Jan 4 (PTI) — Pointing out diversion of a large quantity of subsidised foodgrains, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said commodities under the public distribution system (PDS) valued at Rs 84.37 crore were misappropriated in 12 states. “A significant portion of subsidised foodgrains and other essential commodities did not reach the beneficiaries due to their diversion in the open market”, the CAG said in its latest report on food and consumer affairs. |
| Multi-speciality ESI hospital for each state NEW DELHI, Jan 4 — The Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) plans to set up one model multi-speciality ESI hospital in each state and UT by upgrading and updating the diagnostic and treatment facilities of one of the existing ESI hospitals. Announcing this at the annual conference of state medical directors of the ESI services and other senior ESIC officers, the Director General, ESIC, Ms Suman Swaroop said the corporation would fund the project for the upgradation, modernisation and addition of common specialities. She said the parameters for selecting the hospital for conversion into a model hospital would include its easy accessibility to the beneficiaries, concentration of insured population in the catchment area, quality of existing infrastructure and standards of support services available. Sources in the ESIC said the corporation also plans to set up its own super speciality centres at selected places for cardiology, nephrology, renal transplantation and cancer treatment to provide total in-house service to ESI beneficiaries. Most state directors expressed concern over the improper flow of funds for the scheme from the state governments and cited it as a reason for under-utilisation of the ESI services in the states. Participants at the conference also reviewed the implementation of action plans for the upgradation of medical services, management of hospital waste, control of HIV/AIDS among ESI beneficiaries, commissioning of new hospitals and provision of immunisation and family welfare services through the ESI service outlets. The conference also stressed upon sensitisation of medical and paramedical staff in 138 ESI hospitals and 1,450 service dispensaries across the country, besides, client satisfaction for the target population that has crossed the 35 million mark. |
| Cong praises scientists NEW DELHI, Jan 4 — The Congress today congratulated the country’s scientists on the successful test flight of indigenously-made Light Combat Aircraft (LAC). Party spokesman Prithviraj Chavan said the project was one of the most challenging task taken by the country’s defence establishment. He said there were fears that the project might not take off due to sanctions imposed by the USA after the Pokhran tests but the Indian scientific community had overcome the challenge. |
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Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee flanked by BJP President Bangaru Laxman and his predecessor Kusha Bhau Thakre at the BJP National Executive meeting at Parliament annexe in New Delhi on Thursday. Union Home Minister L K Advani and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh are also seen in the picture — PTI photo
