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Thursday,
August 21, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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No-trust
motion exposed Cong, says George
Tributes
paid to Rajiv Gandhi |
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India
flays attack on UN office in Iraq
SC seeks
policy on industry near residential areas SC
declines to entertain plea of J&K teachers After
Sharon, PM of Palestine to visit India Karisma’s
charisma to unfold on TV
Financial
aid sought for ex-servicemen PM to
unveil statue of Ranjit Singh today
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No-trust motion exposed Cong, says George
Bangalore, August 20 Talking to newspersons here, he said ‘’there was no common purpose or a coordinated determination for unity within their (Congress) formation, which was on display during the two-day debate on the no-confidence motion.” The defeat of the motion had, however, reiterated the unity of the National Democratic Alliance and helped the alliance to emerge stronger than ever before. It had proved beyond doubt that the Congress was not in a position to defeat the government or break the alliance”, he added. Asked about the AIADMK abstaining from the voting, Mr Fernandes said the party had remained neutral. He had tried to speak to the AIADMK supremo and the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Ms J. Jayalalithaa over other issues, he added. Mr Fernandes ruled out early election to the Lok Sabha, saying there was almost a year to go. He said the Prime Minister had made it clear to the Leader of the Opposition, Ms Sonia Gandhi, in the Lok Sabha last night, that the NDA government could not be destablised by such motions, and only the people had the right to judge its performance. Mr Fernandes said the decision on acquiring the much-awaited Advanced Jet Trainers (AJT) for the Indian Air Force would be taken by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) within two weeks. Talking to newspersons here after handing over coaches assembled by the Bharat Earth Movers Limited to the Delhi Metro, he said the Cabinet note on the AJT deal had moved from his ministry to the CCS. Asked if there were competitors for the British Hawk, which had been pitching actively for the contract, Mr Fernandes declined to state the number of players in the field.
— UNI |
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Govt misused
no-trust move, says CPM New Delhi, August 20 Veteran CPM Leader Somnath Chatterjee told newspersons that “it (NDA) has made a mockery of Parliament and the Parliamentary system.” A day after the Lok Sabha rejected a Congress-sponsored no-confidence motion against the government, he said the performance of the Prime Minister Defence Minister George Fernandes had exposed the government’s ‘total inability to answer what the country’s people wanted to know’. The basic question on defence deals raised by the Opposition, which remained unanswered, was regarding the lack of probity in public life and how a minister could be reinstated in the Cabinet before being exonerated from allegations of corruption, Mr Chatterjee said. Mr Chatterjee said the boycott of the Defence Minister in the Lok Sabha by the Left parties would continue. Asked whether the Congress would follow suit, the veteran communist leader said they had to take a decision. However, in the Rajya Sabha the entire Opposition is boycotting the proceedings on the PAC issue and the position is unlikely to change despite the no-confidence motion reply by the government in the Lower House. “Not a single basic question of the Opposition, be it regarding defence, economy, human resource development or communalism, was answered. Rather the Prime Minister’s attitude was that whatever had been done was right and nobody should have the temerity to ask anything. No Prime Minister can react like this to questions posed by the Opposition as well as the people,” he said. Mr Chatterjee said in his past 32 years in Parliament, he had not seen a Prime Minister saying that whatever he did was right. “His reply has to be condemned. It was a miserable performance.” He said while the Finance Minister was virtually kept away by the government side in the face of questions on the economic situation, the only thing the Prime Minister had said was that the nation was on the path of economic growth, which was without any substance. “Having found no answer to charges on all fronts, the only issue the ruling coalition kept referring to score a point was the difference of opinion among Opposition parties,” he said. Terming it as a government which engaged in quid pro-quo for a “few votes”, he said it stood “self-condemned in its total inability to answer questions.” The senior communist leader, who had been honoured as the best parliamentarian, however, lauded the efforts of Ms Sonia Gandhi, especially her reply after Mr Vajpayee’s speech. |
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Tributes
paid to Rajiv Gandhi New Delhi, August 20 In the capital, the leader’s wife and Congress President Sonia Gandhi flagged off six “Rajiv Gandhi mobile diagnostic units” for Punjab to make available modern advanced facilities for people in remote areas of the state. Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit and her Maharashtra and Rajasthan counterparts Sushil Kumar Shinde and Ashok Gehlot were among the prominent leaders who paid floral tributes at his memorial “Veerbhoomi”. An all-religion prayer meeting was organised on the occasion. At his ancestral house “Anand Bhavan” in Allahabad, an all-religion prayer meeting was held. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa paid floral tributes before a portrait of Rajiv Gandhi at the secretariat quadrangle. In Shimla, “Rashtriya ekta shapath” was administered by Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh to the assembled gathering to pay tributes to the late Prime Minister. Lok Sabha Speaker, Manohar Joshi, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Manmohan Singh, Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha Najma Heptullah and Deputy Speaker of the Lok Sabha P.M. Sayeed also paid homage to the late Prime Minister. Members of Parliament Motilal Vora, Natwar Singh, R.L. Bhatia, Bal Kavi Bairagi, P.R. Dasmunsi, Suresh Pachaouri, I.G. Sanadi, Prof Saifudeen Soz, Shyama Singh, Santosh Chowdhary and Praneet Kaur were present on the occasion. A booklet containing a profile of Rajiv Gandhi, brought out by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, was distributed among the dignitaries on this occasion. Rajiv Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka and son-in-law Robert Vadra were among those who paid homage to the late leader. The Congress President released “Access Delhi - A Road Map for 2003-2008” and presented it to the Delhi Chief Minister. “Rajiv Sadbhavana Jyoti” was received by Ms Gandhi from the All-India Rajiv Gandhi Brigade. The brigade brought the jyoti from the Tilak Bhavan Mumbai. |
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India flays attack on
UN office in Iraq New Delhi, August 20 In a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha described yesterday’s suicide attack as “outrageous” and “reprehensible” and said no words could be strong enough in condemning the act. A spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs said: “We are shocked by the news of the attack in Baghdad on Tuesday”. Seventeen people, including UN special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, were killed in the attack. |
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SC seeks policy on industry near residential areas New Delhi, August 20 A Bench comprising Mr Justice M.B. Shah and Mr Justice A.R. Lakshman issued the direction to this effect during the hearing of a bunch of applications by brick-kiln owners, whose units fall in the Taj Trapezium Zone (TTZ), where the court had banned operation of any polluting units. The applications were filed by the brick-kiln owners following a public interest litigation (PIL) by advocate M C Mehta seeking the protection of the Radha Kunj pond near Mathura falling in the TTZ. The kiln owners had raised the question that the ban order could not be extended to them as their units did not fall in the TTZ. The court also asked Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) counsel Vijay Panjwani to lay before the court its guidelines clarifying whether any polluting unit could be allowed to operate up to June 2005 around Taj. According to the CPCB any industry, including brick-kiln using coal, charcoal or any other polluting fuel, could not be permitted to operate in the zone. But the brick-kilns and small industrial units using clear fuel like CNG could be allowed to work in the TTZ. The CPCB counsel said as per the present policy all indications were that dense residential areas were allowed to come up around the new industrial townships all over the country, posing a major threat to environment and ecology. He said the CPCB had collected data about the emergence of residential clusters around the industrial townships allowed to come up near villages and towns all over the
country. |
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SC declines to entertain plea of J&K teachers New Delhi, August 20 “We are also concerned about the education of students in the border areas as nobody is willing to go there,” a three-judge Bench, headed by Chief Justice V.N. Khare said, while declining to hear the petitions. Counsel for the teachers placed their writ petitions before the Bench, which also had Mr Justice H.K. Sema and Mr Justice S.B. Sinha, as other judges, yesterday. The court said since the teachers had refused to join their duty in those areas and students were without teaching staff, their petitions could not be accepted. If students were eager to go to the schools in the area living in the prevailing situation, the teachers were not “above them”, the court observed. When advocate Ranjit Kumar, appearing for one of the teachers, tried to point out that the threat perception was real and pleaded for stay of the transfer orders, the court said, “They have to work where they have been posted.” “If the employees of the state show such an attitude, the administration there would come to standstill,” the court observed. The court was not impressed with the arguments by the counsel that the state administration had not disputed the fact that there was threat from terrorists in the border areas. |
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After Sharon, PM of Palestine to visit India New Delhi, August 20 The top leaders of the two principal states involved in the 55-year-old West Asian conflict will visit India for the first time, and that too in close succession. The Palestinian Foreign Minister, Mr Nabil Shaath is planning to visit India at the end of this month. This will be followed by the high-profile visit of Mr Sharon and after him the visit of the Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, is slated for September-end or October beginning. The dates of the Palestinian leaders’ visits are still being worked out. As Mr Sharon and Mr Abbas prepare for their first-ever India visits, it would be a litmus test for the Indian diplomacy in the post September 11 and post-Iraq war world. India has made it clear that its relationship with one country should not be viewed through the prism of that country’s relationship with another country. Two classic examples of this diplomatic
detachment are India’s increasing interaction with China despite Beijing’s close relations with Pakistan and New Delhi’s burgeoning strategic partnership with the USA despite the extremely close Indo-Russian relationship. While India’s contacts with the Arab world go back centuries, New Delhi’s strategic engagement with Israel has picked up a never-before momentum in the past two years. |
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Karisma’s charisma to unfold on TV
Mumbai, August 20 On the eve of her television debut in the magnum opus ‘Karishma:The miracles of destiny’ on Sahara Manoranjan from August 25, the blue-eyed silver screen beauty told reporters here last night that the serial had come as the right opportunity at the right time for her. “My role as the serial’s protagonist is very different and challenging as compared to my film characters. I have a double role in it, a character with a big age graph and huge performance range. It has been a great jump for me — creatively as an artist as well as understanding the medium of television and its functioning”, the actress said. She said apart from
‘Karishma...’, she had no offers as yet on television, but if there was a good role, like the one she was doing at present, she would not mind acting in more serials.
Karisma’s charisma is about to unfold on television, but she says it does not mean that she had given up films completely. “I had made a conscious decision not to do films for a few months and concentrate on the serial so as to create a bank of episodes. So far, we have shot for about 100 episodes. I want to ensure that my work on television and films get my equal attention”, she said.
Karisma said the controversy surrounding the serial with British novelist Taylor Barbara Bradford accusing its makers of copying one of her best-selling novels did not affect the morale of the unit. “We continued shooting and there was not a single day where the shooting had to be cancelled. This kept us going”, she revealed. “I take things positively. I have a lot of positive energy”, she said. Making some candid observations about television, she said the functioning of the medium was extremely fast paced. “You have got be on your toes every time. It is a highly professional environment as television is deadline oriented”, she felt.
— UNI |
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Financial
aid sought for ex-servicemen New Delhi, August 20 In its 20th report tabled in both Houses of Parliament, it said: “The committee is constrained to observe that though a high-powered committee had, in 1984 recommended the setting up of an ex-servicemen financial corporation as well as an ex-servicemen industrial corporation, there has been no progress in this regard.” “The committee, therefore, recommends that the government should again examine the matter in consultation with state governments and other agencies and ensure the setting up of these corporations,” it said. |
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PM to unveil statue of
Ranjit Singh today New Delhi, August 20 The portraits to be unveiled by Mr Vajpayee are of Bakim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, Qazi Nazrul Islam, Baba Kharak Singh, Dr K.M. Munshi, Dr B. Pattabhi Sitaramaiah Pantulu and Master Tara Singh in a function at the Central Hall of Parliament in the morning. In the evening he will unveil statues of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and Hemu Kalani in front gates number 9 and 7 of Parliament building. |
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Sonia
flags off mobile diagnostic units 
In video (
