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Saturday,
June 7, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Advani leaves for USA, UK Medha Patkar ends fast Tax on paddy for exporting rice challenged
CPM divided over alliance with Congress Antarctica mission returns |
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Patna Sahib sevadar shot
at 8 get death for gunning down 19
Dalits 3 of family shot dead BJP sets 300 seats
target for LS Heatwave
toll 1,350
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Advani leaves for USA, UK New Delhi, June 6 The tour encompasses visits to New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago and London. Mr Advani is heading a high-level official delegation which includes Home Secretary N. Gopalawami, Director, Intelligence Bureau, K.P. Singh, and other senior officials of the ministries of Home and External Affairs. On June 10, Mr Advani will have a meeting with the US Vice-President Dick Cheney. In Los Angeles on June 11, the Deputy Prime Minister will visit the Rand Corporation, a US thinktank on counter-terrorism and security matters. He will give a lecture at the World Affairs Council on “Indo-US relations : a strategic perspective.” On June 12, the Deputy Prime Minister will go to Chicago, where he will address the “Council on Foreign Relations”. From there he will proceed to New York the next day. In New York, Mr Advani will address an invited audience of about 50-60 people, including policy-makers, intellectuals, and UN officials and have a luncheon meeting with them. On June 14 night, he will have media interviews. Later he will fly to London on a three-day visit, during which he will have meetings with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders on wide-ranging issues, including security-related matters, immigration and bilateral trade and exchange of prisoners. Mr Advani will meet Mr Blair on June 16. |
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Medha Patkar ends fast Nasik, June 6 She had yesterday told reporters from her hospital bed that the state government had accepted her main demands at a meeting, which was attended by Chief Minister Mr Sushilkumar Shinde, Rural Development and Water Supply Minister R.R. Patil and a group of NBA activists. After taking a glass of lemon juice from two senior tribal leaders of the NBA, Ms Patkar announced that the state government had granted the NBA’s main demands and decided to prepare a draft for sanction. Earlier, Ms Patkar was discharged from Nasik Civil Hospital, where she was forcibly admitted on Wednesday evening by police following deterioration in her condition. From the hospital Ms Patkar went straight to the spot outside the Divisional Commissioner’s office at Nasik Road, where NBA activists had been holding 12-day old dharna over the issue. The dharna was also withdrawn following the government acceptance of the demand. Ms Patkar said after discussions at the meeting, the NBA had prepared draft of their demands, including rehabilitation and compensation to all families whose houses or lands would get submerged in the coming monsoon, to get the cabinet’s sanction. The Rehabilitation Committee and the Overview Committee would also meet on June 10 to discuss the draft, Ms Patkar said. The NBA activist Pratibha Shinde said the Minister of State for Home, Kripa Shankar Singh, assured her that all cases registered by the Nasik police against Ms Patkar and agitating NBA activists would be withdrawn and orders to this effect had been issued to the City Police Commissioner Prakash Pawar. The government had also agreed to pay compensation of Rs 38 lakh to the beneficiaries in Akkalkuwa and Akrani villages in Nandurbar district, pending since 1999, and the payment would be made to the people on June 9 and 10, she said. Also responding to the NBA’s complaint that Assem Kumar Gupta, Collector of Nandurbar, had “failed” to forward the NBA demands to the state government, he had been transferred, claimed Pratibha.
PTI, UNI |
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Tax on paddy for exporting rice challenged New Delhi, June 6 A Bench comprising Mr Justice N. Santosh Hegde and Mr Justice Shivaraj V. Patil, has issued a notice to the Haryana Government on a petition filed by 12 rice mills, located in Karnal, Kurukshetra and Sonepat districts of the state, challenging the constitutional validity of such a provision in the Act. While issuing the notice to the Haryana government through Secretary, Excise and Taxation and seeking a reply, the court, in its order said a status quo with regard to the past dues from the rice mills would be maintained as per its August 14, 2002, interim direction on identical petitions, filed by some other mill owners. The mill owners’ counsel Ravi Prakash Gupta told the court that the Haryana Government’s legislation had withdrawn the benefit of exemption on tax to his clients by declaring paddy also as taxable for the exported rice. “To make the said provision from bad to worse, the state has withdrawn this benefit of exemption with retrospective effect from May 27, 1971,” the petition said. Seeking to declare Section 5 read with Section 17 and Schedule D of the Haryana General Sales Tax Act, 1973, authorising imposition of tax on paddy also, for the rice exported out of the country, the petitioners claimed that these provisions were contrary to Article 286 of the Constitution and beyond the jurisdiction of the state. Article 286 provides sufficient safeguards by restraining the states from imposing tax on the sale or purchase taking place in the course of inter-state trade or export outside the country, it said. It further said both paddy and rice were declared as goods of “special importance” by Parliament by virtue of which the Centre has the power to regulate the levying of tax by the states, including fixing the rates for it. The Haryana Government, while making the imposition of the tax with retrospective effect, did not appreciate the fact that the exporters did not realise the “purchase tax” from their customers to whom the rice was sold outside India, the petitioner said, adding that this was done by the state even when the Union Government in the 1996 Finance Act had clarified that the both paddy and rice would be treated as “one single commodity”. “The state government, when it could not get revenue out of the exporters, has created an artificial distinction between the direct and indirect exporters by excluding the benefit from over the indirect exporters,” the petitioners alleged. The millers, who shell rice from paddy, had been put in the category of the indirect exporters for the purpose of levying tax on paddy as well, petitioners’ counsel said. |
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CPM divided over alliance with Congress Kolkata, June 6 The meeting will follow a three-day Central committee meeting from tomorrow which was initially scheduled to be held in New Delhi or Kerala. But the excessive heat and humid weather in these cities, had forced the party secretary, Mr H.K. Singh Surjeet, to shift the venue to Kolkata, considered to be cooler and convenient place for holding such an important party meeting. Moreover, the old patriarch like Mr Jyoti Basu insisted that the meetings be held in Kolkata as he felt that it was difficult to fly up to New Delhi or hoop down to Kerala in this hot weather. At today’s meeting, senior leaders like Mr Jyoti Basu and Mr Surjeet suggested that they should either form an electoral alliance with the Congress or support the party against the BJP and other communal forces in the forthcoming state Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi. Ms Sonia Gandhi had invited the CPM and other secular parties to come to a common platform for fighting against the BJP and other communal parties in these elections. The Samajwadi Party leader, Mr Mulayum Singh Yadav, had already responded positively to Ms Gandhi’s call. Though senior politburo members wanted that the party should also favourably respond to Ms Gandhi’s invitation, the “young leaders” like Mr Prakash Karat, Mr Sitaram Yechuri, and Mr Anil Biswas had opposed the move. New Delhi, June 6 |
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Antarctica mission returns Vasco-da-Gama, Goa, June 6 The 210-metre icecore shipped in 72 crates via Cape Town will be preserved at the National Icecore Laboratory taking shape here at an estimated cost of Rs 5 crore. The consignment is awaiting customs clearance at the Marmagao port. The icecore with a five-inch diameter, collected from a depth of 84 metres, was packed in aluminium foils and then in plastic containers to maintain a constant —25°C temperature, Mr TVP Bhaskara Rao, Director (logistics), National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research (NCAOR) here told UNI. He said it was the first time that the Antarctic icecore had been brought on such a large scale for preservation in a laboratory for research. The Proposed National Icecore Laboratory replicates the Antarctic temperature at —25°C. It will have two chambers, one maintaining the Antarctic temperature and the other will beat 4°C for conducting research, according to Dr PC Pandey, NCAOR chief. The laboratory will be ready within three months, equipped with all research facilities. The NCAOR had, for the first time in 1996, brought a 160-metre long Antarctic icecore but in the absence of its own in-house facilities, was compelled to despatch it to the National Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, for analysis.
UNI |
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Patna Sahib sevadar shot at Patna, June 6 City Superintendent of Police O.N. Bhaskar said three armed men fired on sevadar Tejinder Singh Bunti while he was sitting in front of his room on the gurdwara premises. The miscreants fled after shooting at the sevadar, he said, adding that an FIR had been registered at Chowk police station against three persons on the basis of statement of the injured who had been admitted to a hospital here. The SP said the incident appeared to be related to confrontation between rival groups for the coming Gurdwara Prabhandhan Committee elections. Takht Harmandir Sahib is the birth place of 10th Sikh Guru Gobind Singh.
PTI |
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8 get death for gunning down 19 Dalits Gaya, June 6 The punishment was announced here by Gaya Additional District and Sessions Judge D.D. Pandey. A group of landowners had gunned down 19 Dalits and injured 11 others following a dispute over fixation of agricultural wages prior to the paddy cultivation season on June 16, 1988. The court pronounced 14 persons guilty of committing the massacre and awarded death sentence to eight and life imprisonment to six others. While 13 accused were already in judicial custody, one of them, Rajbhallav Yadav is absconding. Those awarded death penalties were Rajbhallav Yadav (absconding), Joddha Mahto, Ram Babu Mahto, Jung Bahadur Singh, Ramashish Yadav, Bipin Sharma, Dinanath Yadav and Jaddu Yadav.
PTI |
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3 of family shot dead Dehra Dun, June 6 Four persons barged into the house of Kartar Singh and gunned down his son, Vicky, and daughter-in-law,
Alka, while they were asleep before killing the guard. The assailants escaped on a motor cycle. One of them, Surinder Singh, was arrested later.. Surinder revealed that the murder was committed at the behest of Alka’s father, Kunwar Singh, who was not happy with the marriage that took place in November last year against his wishes. |
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BJP sets 300 seats
target for LS Guwahati, June 6 |
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Heatwave toll 1,350
New Delhi, June 6 Fortysix deaths were reported in Andhra Pradesh, which is bearing the brunt of the heat fury, and one each in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh since last evening as monsoon further advanced in the Arabian Sea.
PTI |
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The Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar today ended her indefinite fast after receiving a faxed assurance from the Maharashtra Government regarding the rehabilitation of tribals affected by the Sardar Sarovar project.
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