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Monday,
April 14, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Killing
Hindus part of jehad: LeT chief PM: India
wants peace with all neighbours
Iraq war
may hike fertiliser prices
17
arrested after communal clash |
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Lucknow
gears UP for BSP rally Ajit
Singh’s threat to quit over farmers’ cause FBI
conducts probe against Rastogis
SC raps
up for denying land to Dalit Following
in footsteps of Mother Teresa Blockade
in front of Pepsi plant
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Killing Hindus part of jehad: LeT chief
New Delhi, April 13 In an interview to a Pakistani weekly, “The Friday Times”, Saeed, in reply to a question as to why he should not lay down arms and talk, said “The solution is not to bow before India and beg for dialogue... Our policy in Kashmir is studied and measured. They only understand the language of jehad. We have no choice but to respond by killing Hindus.....”. Notably, the statement from Saeed comes close on the heels of claims by the Jammu and Kashmir Director-General of Police A K Suri that the LeT is behind the killing of 24 Hindus in Nadimarg in South Kashmir on March 25. Asked about the greatest threat faced by the world, he said, “We must fight against the evil trio of America, Israel and India....the need for jehad against India is paramount.” The LeT chief also defended the menace of suicide attacks, saying,”Suicide missions are in accordance with Islam. In fact, a suicide attack is the best form of jehad.” He claimed that all Parliament members of Pakistan supported jihad. However, taking a dig at the Pakistani regime, he said, “They are taking instructions from foreign powers and have made a mockery of the state’s sovereignty.” About why the Muslim world could do nothing for Iraq, he said “Ideally, the Pakistan Government should mobilise troops and fight against invaders. Pakistan could even ferry missiles and nuclear bombs to Saddam Hussein so he could use them to protect Iraq.”
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PM: India wants peace with all neighbours Gangtok, April 13 “We want peace and friendship with all our neighbours, but, we cannot clap with one hand. The initiative for peace can be taken by either side,” he told a public meeting here. Referring to Iraq war, he said “It is good the war in Iraq has ended paving the way for peace and development.” Dwelling largely on development projects in Sikkim, the Prime Minister said Central assistance worth Rs 110 crore would be given to the state for construction of an airport and an alternative highway between West Bengal and Sikkim. To boost medical facilities in the state, Mr Vajpayee said tele-medicine connectivity would be established between Thondup Namgyal Memorial Hospital here and the AIIMS in Delhi. Stating that Chief Minister Pawan Chamling had placed a list of demands before him, he said he would extend as much central assistance as possible to the state to fulfil these. Referring to the road sector, he said in the past 50 years no attempt was made to have good roads in the country. “This prompted my government to give priority to the road sector.”
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Sikkim gets Rs 110 crore
central aid Gangtok, April 13 Addressing a public meeting here, he said the road sector in the country had been neglected in the past 50 years and efforts would be made to bring Gangtok on the east-west corridor linking Silchar to Gujarat. Without roads, it would be difficult for a state to undertake development works, Mr Vajpayee said. Chiding the state government for not encouraging education of girl child, Mr Vajpayee said attention should be paid to this aspect as women education was essential for the development of the country. He assured the state that the Centre would consider giving it a central university and a college in each district as demanded by the Chief Minister.
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Iraq war may hike fertiliser prices New Delhi, April 13 A Parliamentary Standing Committee has asked the government to consider the fallout of the Iraq war on the production and prices of urea and initiate steps to secure the interests of the fertiliser industry and farmers. The committee, which submitted its report this week, has found that the prices of ammonia have already risen which will have budgetary implications for DAP and NPK production. Similarly, the prices of sulphur, naphtha and urea have gone up. The prices of sulphur, which is an import item, have also gone up. Urea prices which were hovering around $ 125 to $ 130 are reported to be around $ 160. “That is the price when India has not gone into the market. Very often, when India goes into the market, the prices go further up. If the prices get pushed up, then our units may be cheaper compared to the import prices,” the Secretary (Fertiliser) informed the committee. Moreover, the freight cost and insurance charges have also gone up. These factors will have an impact on the budgetary provisions of subsidy which already is more than Rs 12,000 crore. It is likely to further increase. The prices of naphtha have increased in the past eight months by Rs 5,000 per tonne. Its impact in terms of subsidy is Rs 1000 crore. There is a fear that naphtha prices will further go up from Rs 17,000 to Rs 19,000 per tonne. The committee observed that the war in Iraq might have a cascading effect on the prices and production of fertilisers. The woes of the farmers are further compounded by the fact that the new fertiliser policy aims to bring the domestic prices on a par with international prices in a phased manner. The new policy aims to gradually move the production units to supply the fertiliser in the direction of parity with international prices based on the use of most efficient feedstock and state-of-the-art technology. The scheme would be implemented in stages. The farm gate price of urea is fixed at Rs 4,830 per tonne. On an average, a subsidy amounting to more than Rs 4,100 is borne by the government on every tonne of urea sold to the farmers. Subsidy on urea in 2002-03 is estimated to be Rs 7,004 crore, the Economic Survey said. Among the states in the plains, the per hectare consumption was the highest in Punjab with 173.38 kg per hectare. In Haryana, it was 155.69 kg per hectare. The all India average is 90 kg per hectare. During the 1980s, kharif crops accounted for nearly one-third of the total fertiliser consumption, whereas the rabi crops accounted for a much larger share. This has now changed and the consumption is more evenly spread between the two sowing seasons, reflecting a more assured water availability in the kharif season at the all-India level, the survey added. |
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17 arrested after communal clash Rourkela, April 13 As many as 22 platoons of Orissa Special Armed Police (OSAP) had been deployed in the town where prohibitory orders under Section 144, CrPC, had been promulgated after the Friday evening clash, DIG Pradip Kapoor said. Life continued to be affected in Rajgangpur town, 50 km from here, as most shops and business establishments remained closed for the second consecutive day while the streets wore a deserted look. The weekly market in the town also did not open today.
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Lucknow
gears UP for BSP rally Lucknow, April 13 The city has been decked with arches, gates and
graffiti urging the Chief Minister to fight a decisive battle against her adversaries, (read Samajwadi Party). It has been painted in blue, the official colour of the
BSP. Between 5 lakh and 8 lakh persons are expected to take part in the rally, to be held in the Ambedkar Park and for that, the administration is making elaborate arrangements,” said Principal Secretary Home Pradeep Kumar. Officials have asked the traders to close their shops tomorrow. “probably, the officials fear that BSP workers may go berserk,” said Ramesh
Upadhaya, a tea vendor in Charbagh. The Lucknow Development Authority
(LDA), PWD and Department of Information and Cultural Affairs have been entrusted with jobs ranging from the labelling of the rally maidan to widening of roads. PCS officers have been deployed at parking places to monitor the movement of traffic. “We have a foolproof crowd dispersal plan. We want that the people who converge on Lucknow should disperse at the earliest without affecting the normal city life,” said District Magistrate Navneet
Sahgal. In the last BSP rally on September 28, 2002, around 14 persons had died after a stampede in Charbagh railway station of the city. “This time we are taking precautions. Policemen have been deployed at all important positions to ensure no clogging of traffic,” said ADG Law and Order Vikram Singh. The BSP has hired a number of trains to ferry its workers. The trains will start from different locations of the city thus de-congesting the main railway station in
Charbagh. Meanwhile, the Samjwadi Party has called the proposed BSP rally as an “officials’rally” in which the DMs and the SPs have been asked to collect money for the BSP kitty. “Targets have been given to the DMs and the
SPs. The SHOs in each police station have been asked to collect between Rs 15,000 and Rs 50,000 for the rally,” alleged President of the Samajwadi Party Mulayam Singh
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Ajit Singh’s threat to quit over farmers’ cause Kanpur, April 13 Talking to the media at a kisan rally in Kakvan, 65 km from here, he claimed he had been opposing the move of bringing farmers within the income tax purview and was trying to persuade the Finance Minister for withdrawal of the tax proposal in the Budget. The minister said the government was contemplating withdrawal of the Budget proposal and an announcement to this effect was expected during the next phase of debate on the Union Budget in the Lok Sabha beginning April 21. However, if the government failed to do so, he might tender his resignation in the interests of the farming community, he declared. To a question, he said joining the coalition at the Centre as well as in Uttar Pradesh was his party’s “political compulsion.” On the Samajwadi Party as a possible alternative in Uttar Pradesh, Mr Ajit Singh alleged it was Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav’s regime that had ruined the state most during the past one decade. Earlier, addressing the rally, he regretted that no party was concerned over the “miseries of farmers.” Instead, every party had divided farmers on the basis of caste to gain political mileage, he added.
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FBI conducts probe against Rastogis
New Delhi, April 13 After allegedly committing the fraud in India, the Rastogi brothers used the same modus operandi and duped international banks, mainly two German banks, of 600 million dollars by securing credit facilities against shipment of goods that “never sailed” off the shore. The FBI carried out its probe in the country earlier this year and now the CBI is to receive officers from Serious Fraud Office of London for a probe that had been reportedly initiated against “RBG Resources PLC” owned by Virendra Rastogi. The move comes close on the heels of the CBI preparing a request for extradition of Virendra, against whom the agency has announced a cash reward of Rs 10,000. According to the FBI and SFO, four companies — Allied Deals Inc (New York), SAI Commodity Inc (New Jersey), Hampton Inc (New York) and RBG Resources (England) — had allegedly defrauded banks around the world of an estimated 600 million dollars by obtaining finance for sham transactions and then pledging these as collateral for further loans, the sources said. The scam came to light in 2001 when the CBI submitted that the four brothers — Subash, Ravindra, Narendra and Virendra — had allegedly sent scrap material to Hong Kong and Russia and claimed duty drawback to the tune of Rs 43 crore from the government, pledging that they were bicycle parts of superior quality.
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SC raps up for denying land to Dalit
New Delhi, April 13 “It is surprising that the state of UP had chosen to file an appeal against the order of the SDO, in tandem with the Gaon Sabha. “It seems to be a clear case of non-application of mind on the part of the authorities concerned of the state, who are supposed to effectuate the socio-economic objective of the legislation,” a Bench comprising Mr Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Mr Justice P. Venkatarama Reddi observed. Setting aside the Allahabad High Court order, the Bench restored the order of the Konch SDO, who had recorded appellant Manorey, alias Manohar’s name as a ‘bhumidhar’ in revenue records with non-transferable rights under the Act on the ground that he was in continuous possession of the land since 1975. “It would be a travesty of justice to deny relief to the appellant, who is a Scheduled Caste agricultural labourer, and relegate him to an unfortunate situation of being left without remedy though he has a statutory right to continue in possession and enjoyment of the land,” the Bench observed.
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Following in footsteps of Mother Teresa
Kolkata, April 13 Recipient of the Rani Lakshmi Bai Stree Shakti Puraskar, 2001, given by the Ministry of Human Resources Development in March for extraordinary contributions in social work, 70 per cent physically handicapped Mehnaaz’s life presently revolves around bringing light into the lives of more than 500 underprivileged children, empowering about 200 women and giving solace to the lives of 75 old women who had been driven out of their homes by their families. “I kept on working silently,” she said, adding, “Mother Teresa has been my inspiration and she remained all along beside me, particularly during my surgery.” “Mother had arranged my surgery at Jaipur. But things did not turn out very happy there too. Mother was divine but not all her associates. Some of her associates tried to convert me to Christianity at Jaipur when I was putting up there for a series of plastic surgery,” she recollected. “I stopped putting up at the Mission House there and started staying in the hospital’s free beds during the periods between the surgeries,” she said, adding, ‘’It was only after coming back to Kolkata that I told Mother of all the happenings there.” “However, relationship between me and Mother remained the best till her last days,” the recipient of the Mother Teresa Millennium Award for peace, harmony and social work said. “The moment of winning the Rani Laxmi Bai award was the most important one as I could voice for the first time my opinion to the Vice-President to help me in establishing women empowerment centres across the country,” she said. “I want to open such centres in Bihar, Orissa, Delhi,
Manipur, Uttar Pradesh, Mumbai, Simla in Himachal Pradesh, besides West Bengal. Each centre will house about nine units which will
accommodate about 150 children, each of whom will be delivered non-formal education besides a range of vocational trainings,” she said.
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Blockade
in front of Pepsi plant Kolkata, April 13 Ashok Dasgupta, editor of Aajkaal, called on the people to boycott soft drinks manufactured by US multi-nationals. Among the protesters were 100 CPI (ML) activists. Earlier during the month, activists if the Revolutionary Youth Association and the AISA vandalised a Swanky Nike showroom in the city.
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