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Hurriyat-Centre talks generate global
interest Stay on Maya’s arrest challenged in
SC CPM fails to impress delegates at World Social
Forum Investigation on against SA judge NE can be trade link to SE Asia:
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Cong to hold talks with smaller groups Delhi-Lahore bus trip to cost more It’s boom time for Bollywood
overseas Nepal’s Crown Prince on India visit DMK not to return to NDA fold: Karunanidhi
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Hurriyat-Centre talks generate global
interest New Delhi, January 20 The decision of the Hurriyat to come for the dialogue is seen as a silver lining in dark clouds of militancy and bloodshed in J&K. Though the decision is a welcome move, a legitimate question is why the APHC did not accept the Centre’s offer of talks earlier? Why the Hurriyat kept away from the negotiation table for a decade since its inception in 1993? After all, New Delhi had always kept the option open for a dialogue with anyone, including the Hurriyat Conference? The so-called Constitution of the Hurriyat Conference also talked about holding dialogue to resolve all outstanding disputes. But this clause was never implemented. Mirwaiz Umer Farooq had said in an interview with the PTI in 1996 that he was ready for talks with the Centre provided it was aimed at resolving the Kashmir issue. Under pressure, the Mirwaiz later denied the statement. Next came Syed Ali Shah Geelani, during whose rule the Hurriyat was pulled farthest possible from the negotiating table and militants held total sway in J&K. The Hurriyat started acting as an extension counter of Pakistan during which the dictates used to flow from Islamabad directly. Then came the tenure of Mr Abdul Ghani Bhat. He pursued an equi-distance policy vis a vis the Governments of India and Pakistan. When he saw things not going in right direction, Prof Bhat rephrased the formula of Mirwaiz’s option of talks with New Delhi and demanded sending of Hurriyat delegation to Pakistan after holding talks with India. A majority of the Hurriyat leadership, minus Geelani, started seeing
through the Pakistani gameplan. Those who believed that the Government of India was not serious enough in talks with the separatists, were in for a rude shock in 2000 when India started holding talks with militant groups like the Hizbul Mujahideen. The public response to the Government of India’s initiative too has been good and encouraging. Syed Nazir Geelani, chairman of the international Kashmir alliance (London), says it serves the interest of Pakistan to ensure that Kashmiri leadership does not take an independent step and shortlist its grievances against India. Mr Geelani argues that Pakistan needs Indian cooperation more than its needs to care for the rights movements of the people of Kashmir. It has to play between bilateral and trilateral goal posed to ensure an enduring claim on PoK, northern areas and an interrupted interest in the flow of water from Kashmir. |
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Stay on Maya’s arrest challenged in
SC New Delhi, January 20 The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court had passed an order restraining the CBI from arresting Ms Mayawati in the Rs 175-crore Taj Heritage Corridor case on October 22 last despite no provision for anticipatory bail under the amended Code of Criminal Procedure in UP, a special leave petition (SLP) said. Similar relief was granted to the other accused, including Ms Mayawati’s then Principal Secretary P.L. Punia and former UP Environment Secretary Vinod Gupta on the same day, said the SLP, filed by former UP standing counsel in the Supreme Court Ajay Agrawal. Mr Agrawal was sacked by Ms Mayawati when she was in office for his admission in the apex court that there was no formal clearance from the Union Environment Ministry for the Taj project. The CBI had registered an FIR against Ms Mayawati, her Cabinet colleague Naseemuddin Siddiqui and six high officials of the state and the Centre on the court’s September 18, 2003, order for their alleged role in clearing the project in violation of the law. The SLP said the Lucknow Bench of the high court had granted a “blanket relief of stay of arrest of the accused during the entire period of investigation” even when there was no provision of anticipatory bail in UP under the CrPC following its amendment by the state some years ago. |
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CPM fails to impress delegates at World Social
Forum Mumbai, January 20 Mr Per Ake Westerlund, a Swedish socialist, said he had asked the CPM members in the WSF about their achievements in West Bengal where a CPM-led government is in power for the past 25 years. “I must say they were extremely defensive when I asked this question to them”, Westerlund said. He said some of the CPM members claimed that they were trying to reform the party from within but when asked about the concrete steps being taken by them for reforming the party, they could not give any satisfactory answer. The left wing parties of western countries taking part in the WSF conference are mostly pro-Trotsky outfits and they also criticise the CPM for its allegiance to Stalin. Mr Kambiz Boomla, a London-based doctor of Indian origin, who is member of the Socialist Workers Party of Great Britain, said the main problem of the CPM flowed from the Stalinist practice of confining revolution to one country. “In the case of CPM, they had become complacent after forming the government in one or two states of India”, Boomla said. According to Boomla, the left parties should never form government in a province under a federal government which may not be leftist. “If the programme of the CPM was a truly revolutionary one, they would have perhaps never won the elections in a state at all”, the Parsi doctor, whose forefathers had migrated to the UK from Mumbai, said. Ms Kathryn Palmateer, member of an organisation called International Socialist, said whenever she had asked the CPM members about the points being raised by the critics of the Left Front Government in West Bengal, the answer always was that it was not possible to do much as head of the government of only one Indian state. However, it was not all brickbats for the Stalinist party from the international delegates. A Vietnamese delegate, Mr Vu The Nang, a member of the Vietnamese Communist Party, said the CPM-led government in West Bengal was doing good work for the working class people and common people of West Bengal. “I do believe that the CPM is still a revolutionary party which will like to transform the country’s power equation”, Nang said. Kolkata, January 20 It has been officially admitted by the party leadership that from now onwards, they will honour Netaji as a national leader. The party leadership accordingly, directed the district committees and the zonal committees to prepare some detailed programmes for celebrating the occasion and also to involve others in the functions. The party secretary, Mr Anil Biswas, admitted that the party had made a mistake in not recognising the contribution of
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Investigation on against SA judge Mumbai, January 20 Fifty-three-year-old Sirajuddin Mohammed Ibrahim Desai, a Cape Town sitting judge, who was here to attend the
proceedings of the World Social Forum (WSF), was placed under arrest following charges of rape made by a fellow delegate, who is a member of the AIDS Awareness Resources Trust. He has been booked under Section 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code by the Cuffe Parade police station after being held from the Taj President Hotel here. —
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NE can be trade link to SE Asia:
Vajpayee New Delhi, January 20 "Our north-eastern states can become our economic bridgehead to South-East Asia. India is working actively to promote regional and sub-regional trade," Mr Vajpayee said addressing the second North-East (NE) business summit, organised by the Department of the North-East Region and the International Chamber of Commerce. Because of its proximity to the South-East Asian markets like Bangladesh, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand, the NE region had the advantage of location, Mr Vajpayee said. He, however, made an appeal to the NE states, saying, "The Centre has taken a conscious decision to provide more resources and incentives for development of the NE. It is the responsibility of the individual states to demonstrate visibly that the funds are used properly." |
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Cong to hold talks with smaller groups New Delhi, January 20 Next in line is the Telengana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) whose leader Chandrashekhar Rao is expected to meet AICC leaders Pranab Mukherjee and Ghulam Nabi Azad here on Thursday in connection with a possible electoral tie-up in Andhra Pradesh. Mr Rao is coming to Delhi ostensibly to attend a meeting of a loose front of similar groups demanding creation of smaller states. However, he is expected to use this opportunity to pursue talks with senior AICC leaders about a poll pact. Congress sources revealed that since Mr Mukherjee is heading the committee on alliances and Mr Azad is the AICC general secretary in charge of Andhra Pradesh, the TRS chief will meet them for the initial discussions. A meeting with Congress President Sonia Gandhi is not being ruled out in case something concrete materialises during these deliberations. In the Congress party’s reckoning, Andhra Pradesh is among the states where it can take advantage of an anti-incumbency against the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and improve its tally of five Lok Sabha and 90 assembly seats. Although, the state witnessed a straight fight between the Congress and the TDP in Andhra Pradesh last time, the emergence of the TRS as a strong force can hardly be overlooked. This is particularly so for the Congress as Telengana is its traditional area of strength with half of its sitting MLAs having won from this region. It
has, therefore, become imperative for the Congress to have an alliance or seat adjustments with the TRS if it is to ensure there is no division in the non-NDA votes. Even before the two sides can begin hard negotiations on seat-sharing, the TRS is demanding that the Congress spell out its stand on the issue of a separate Telengana state in its election manifesto. In fact, this itself could become a bone of contention as the Congress has adopted an ambivalent attitude on this matter. It has officially stated that since it is not in power, it is in no position to take a decision on this issue. It has, instead, asked the Centre to set up a second states’ reorganisation commission to look at the entire issue of smaller states. The Congress cannot commit itself to a separate Telengana as it would then be faced with similar demands for a Vidharbha state in Maharashtra which has also acquired emotive overtones with senior leders N.K.P.Salve and Vasant Sathe also supporting it. This demand has been taken up by a number of local groups under the banner of Vidharba Sangarsh Samiti, headed by Mr Banwari Lal Purohit. The latter will also be in Delhi on Thursday and the possibility of talks with the Congress are not being ruled out. Maharashtra Congress leaders are pressing the party Central leadership that it have a poll pact with Mr Purohit’s group to avoid a split in votes. As in the case of Telengana, Vidharbha is the Congress party’s traditional stronghold.
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Delhi-Lahore bus trip to cost more
New Delhi, January 20 Delhi Transport Minister Haroon Yusuf said the fare for the Sarhad-i-Hind Delhi-Lahore bus service would be increased from Rs 800 to Rs 1,250. From the Pakistani side, the fare would now be Rs 1,500 (Pakistani currency). Mr Yusuf said the decision to revise the fare had been taken at meetings between senior officials of the two countries at Islamabad and Rawalpindi, where the agreement on the operation of the Delhi-Lahore-Delhi bus was renewed for another five years. —
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It’s boom time for Bollywood overseas Mumbai, January 20 In London, at the Harrow Warner Village Cinema, the only sell-out movie was Karan Johar’s Kal Ho Na Ho, starring Shahrukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Preity Zinta, which has nestled comfortably in the box office top 10 for over four weeks. It boasts of the highest per screen average of any movie currently being shown in the UK. In the USA, the film opened at 52 cinemas and collected $ 2,72,000 on the opening day itself; it drew full houses in New York, Fremont Los Angles and Houston. In its four weeks at the US box office it has notched up collections $ 17,87,378 (Rs 8.53 crore). Veteran film maker B.R. Chopra’s lavishly mounted family drama, Baghban, dwelling on relationships between parents and their children, has managed to collect £ 11,47,288 (Rs 5.39 crore) in 45 days in the UK. Another Shahrukh Khan starrer
Chalte Chalte collected £ 12,43,055 in the UK in nine weeks. Rakesh Roshan’s
Koi Mil Gaya, which was the most successful film of 2003 in the domestic market, also did good business overseas, remarkably in the UK, Australia and the USA. —
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Nepal’s Crown Prince on India visit New Delhi, January 20 Sources in the Nepalese Embassy here said the Crown Prince called on President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam yesterday. The Prince and members of the royal family left for Agra today. The visit is part of the interaction between “two traditionally close and friendly neighbouring countries” and familiarising the Crown Prince with India, which Kathmandu considers its most intimate neighbour. |
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DMK not to return to NDA fold: Karunanidhi Chennai, January 20 Reacting to senior BJP leader Pramod Mahajan’s statement yesterday that the erstwhile NDA allies, who had left it, would return after the Lok Sabha poll, Mr Karunanidhi pointed out that in the same breath, Mr Mahajan had also indicated that these parties need not come back. —
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In video: Children
paint for more schools and peace at World Social Forum. (
Mumbai, January 20
The north-eastern states could become the “economic bridgehead” to South-East Asia if they capitalised on the opportunities to enhance trade with the neighbourhood, the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, said here today.
