New Delhi, May 30
Leaving on a week-long nostalgic trip to Pakistan where he was born, BJP President L.K. Advani said today that terrorism posed a serious threat to both neighbours and they would have to get rid of the problem.

Addressing party workers here today, Mr Advani maintained that striving for friendly and good neighbourly relations was the need of the hour and he would underline this aspect during his discussions with the Pakistani leaders.

He pointed out that despite the Kargil intrusion in Jammu and Kashmir, it was the NDA government which had taken the initiative for the peace process between India and Pakistan and expressed happiness that the UPA government had taken it forward.

In this context, he drew attention to the joint statement issued by India and Pakistan on the sidelines of the Saarc summit in January 2004 in Islamabad, which provided the breakthrough in the relations between the two countries. The peaceful initiatives were given a push when Pakistan declared that it would not allow its territory to be used for terrorist activities against India.

During his stay in Islamabad, Mr Advani will discuss several issues of mutual interest with Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf and Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmud Kasuri, who also studied with him at the St Patrick School in Karachi.

Paying his second visit to Pakistan in nearly three decades, Mr Advani noted that it was important from a personal perspective as well. Accompanied by his family members, the BJP president observed that during his trip “I would lay stress on developing friendly relations between the two countries and that there was complete unanimity in India in this regard.”

He said even though the Vajpayee government had made a lot of efforts to improve relations with Pakistan which brought to fore the Lahore bus yatra and the failed Agra summit, Mr Advani said success could be achieved only five months before the NDA government lost power.

Mr Advani recalled that the decision of holding talks at the level of foreign ministers coupled with other initiatives was taken during the NDA rule.

During his last trip to his birthplace Karachi in 1978 as the Union Information and Broadcasting Minister, he said he had visited his ancestral home and the school where he had studied. Getting emotional, Mr Advani said that going back to one’s place of birth always brings back memories about “myself and my family members”.

New Delhi, May 30
The Congress today said it was confident that BJP President L.K. Advani would “continue the line” taken by the Centre on the Indo-Pak relations during his visit to Pakistan.

Responding to queries about Mr Advani’s visit to Pakistan, Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natrajan said there was a broad political consensus on foreign policy issues. She said the party was confident that Mr Advani would “continue the line taken by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh which had done a great deal to improve the relations between India and Pakistan.”

Replying to another question, she said the BJP-led NDA coalition was a failure in external affairs.

Referring to the issue of non-payment of Rs 17 crore funds to tsunami victims by the Rajasthan Government, Ms Natrajan asked state Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia to clarify her government’s position. 

New Delhi, May 30
For the first time, China, Russia and India are going to open official talks on formalising their trilateral axis, a diplomatic initiative for which groundwork has been going on for the past three years.

The three countries’ Foreign Ministers will hold talks in far eastern Russian port city of Vladivostok on June 2 which will be exclusively devoted to explore one another’s views on bilateral affairs, regional matters and international relations to thrash out areas of convergence and cooperation.

External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh is leaving here early tomorrow morning for Singapore and South Korea en route to Vladivostok. A joint statement is also expected to be released after Mr Natwar Singh’s talks with his Russian and Chinese counterparts, Mr Sergei Lavrov and Mr Li Zhaoxing, respectively.

Though the countries of the proposed trilateral axis insist that their cooperation will be limited to economic, scientific and energy-related issues and it would not be a “military bloc” against any country, the move is taking place largely due to post 9/11 developments and the increased rivalries between China and the USA. The most interesting pole of this triangle is China, which has fought a war with another pole (India) and has been in a near-war situation with the third pole (Russia) in the 60s.

China has been the most reticent and cautious pole in this proposed trilateral and had so far refused to open its cards. It has had three contacts with Russia and India at the foreign ministers’ level — twice on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and the next year in Almaty on the margins of CICA meet. These meetings were largely exploratory and China stayed away from a formal trilateral axis, despite open lobbying for it by Russia over the past two years.

Patna, May 30
The Bihar police today alerted immigration officials and airport authorities for the arrest of high-profile former Patna District Magistrate Gautam Goswami, his assistant Amitav Arun and Santosh Jha wanted in connection with the multi-crore flood-relief scam.

Additional Director-General of Vigilance Bureau probing the scam Neelmani said here: “We have furnished specific information about the three accused to the authorities of domestic and international airports, besides immigration officials there to help facilitate their arrest and prevent them from leaving the country.”

The step has been taken apprehending that some accused may leave the country on coming to know of the registration of an FIR, he said.

Meanwhile, Director-General of Police Ashish Ranjan Sinha said he had requested his UP counterpart to direct the authorities in Lucknow to help assist the vigilance team, already camping there, to arrest Goswami.

“The UP police chief has assured all-possible help to the vigilance team from here to arrest Goswami,” he said.

The bureau also moved the court of Special Vigilance Judge J.M. Prasad to obtain warrants of arrest against Goswami, owner of a fake firm Santosh Kumar Jha, the alleged kingpin of the racket, and others in connection with the scam.

Neelmani, however, said: “As we have sufficient evidence against all the accused and the FIR has been registered under non-bailable sections of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act, we can take into custody any of the evading accused even without warrants of arrest.”

In a bid to build up pressure on the accused to surrender on their own before the court or the vigilance sleuths, he said the state vigilance bureau had announced reward for information which would lead to arrest of Goswami and Jha.

Goswami had earlier featured in ‘Time’ magazine for his exemplary role in coordinating flood relief operations in the state last year. — PTI

New Delhi, May 30
The Navy will get its first full “port controlled” base tomorrow when Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee will unfurl the Navy’s ensign along with the traditional “breaking of the commissioning pennant” at Project Seabird in Karwar, Karnataka. The Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Arun Prakash, will also be present during the commissioning of the naval base.

Project Seabird, christened INS Kadamba, will also take the Navy a step closer to realising its ambition of becoming not just a blue-water Navy but one that has a littoral focus and a capacity to become a regional force. The base would give the Navy the advantage of positioning and manoeuvring its operational fleet without worrying about the movement of merchant vessels.

The Navy’s existing bases, including its two operational ones in Mumbai and Vishakhapatnam, are located in enclaves within commercial ports, which puts it in some disadvantage especially in times of war.

The Rs 35,000-crore fully integrated INS Kadamba — expected to be the biggest Naval base in Asia and would provide the Navy with the much-needed depth of defence at sea. By the end of the year, the Navy plans to base around 10 ships of the surface fleet — mainly of diesel and gas turbine design, which include missile destroyers, missile frigates, missile corvettes, auxiliary ships — such as survey ships and tankers and offshore patrol vessels.

This figure will be increased to 30 in a phased manner by reallocating vessels that are now based at the overcrowded Mumbai base. The final configuration would of course depend on how serious the Naval High Command is about decongesting Mumbai and on the availability of repair facilities at Kadamba’s fledgling Naval Ship Repair Yard. 

New Delhi, May 30
The blueprint of what curriculum should be, a draft of the national curriculum framework (NCF), envisages an education that is a source of joy and hopes to start a freedom movement for education of the young.

This draft of the NCF 2005 that will be presented to the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) here on June 7, has four guiding principles for curriculum development: connecting knowledge to life outside school, ensuring learning shifts from rote methods, enriching the curriculum so that it goes beyond textbooks and making examinations more flexible.

Following the UPA government’s drive to “desaffronise” education, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) was asked to set up the National Steering Committee to review the national curriculum framework for school education, 2000.

Pointing out that the NCF 2005 will be implemented only after extensive discussions, Prof Krishna Kumar, Director of the NCERT, said it would be forwarded to state governments for their feedback, ruling out arbitrary implementation of syllabi.

And while the draft prepared by the National Steering Committee in consultation with 21 Focus Groups does include the virtues of “reducing the curriculum load”, it also focuses on how education can become an enjoyable experience as also forge a connection between the learner and the immediate environment.

The draft of the NCF that recommends significant changes in all four familiar areas of school curriculum, language, mathematics, science and social science also advocates the “softening of subject boundaries so that children can taste integrated knowledge”.

While the mother tongue of the child has been recognised as an important tool in the teaching-learning process, incorporating local knowledge and traditional skills has also been stressed upon.

The draft, which is claimed to be “completely free from political influence and interference”, recommends a holistic approach in the treatment of learner’s development and learning, meeting learning disabilities through need specific programmes and encouraging a child’s inquisitiveness.

It also recognises the necessity of inculcating the knowledge of arts and crafts where emphasis is on interactive approaches not instruction. Peace oriented values promoted in all subjects through relevant exercises and strengthening the teaching process have also been included. Examinations and the stress that is manifest through the increasing number of suicides each year have received attention through the reforms suggested by the members. From shifting the content based testing to problem solving and understanding and shorter examinations, the recommendations seek to replace memorising with reasoning.

In the context of systemic reforms, the draft emphasises strengthening of the panchayati raj institutions by adoption of a more streamlined approach to encourage community participation as means of enhancing of quality and accountability.

The document also recommends partnership between the school system and other civil society groups, including NGOs. Summing up the experience of working on the draft with 21 Focus Groups, Chairperson of the National Steering Committee, Prof Yashpal said:” we were not daunted by the task, we felt it was doable”. 

Hyderabad, May 30
Congress chief Sonia Gandhi is treading the same path as former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in violating the federal spirit of the Constitution and trampling on the rights of the states, the Telugu Desam Party today alleged.

Launching a broadside against the Congress on the concluding day of its three-day annual conference “Mahanadu,” the TDP accused the UPA government of indulging in desperate attempts to undermine the mandate of the people in different states since it took over last May.

”The Congress coalition had resorted to usurping power through the institution of Governors when it failed to secure the people’s mandate in Goa, Jharkhand and Bihar. Disgruntled and defeated party politicians have become the choice for Governors of various states,” the political resolution proposed by K. Yerrannaidu, a TDPP leader, said.

Former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu was unanimously re-elected as President of the party for a term of two years. During the three-day conference,

the party adopted as many as 19 resolutions, including the one that reiterated the party’s opposition to separate Telangana state.

Tracing the ‘dubious track-record’ of the Congress in misusing the provisions of Article 356, Yerrannaidu said the policy of targeting non-Congress governments,

that had started with the dismissal of the E. M. S. Namboodripad government in Kerala, was still continuing.

Asserting that coalition politics have come to stay, the TDP meet castigated the Congress for cobbling an alliance by entering into unethical tie-ups, after

having earlier dubbed regional political formations as “anti-national.” 

Churachandpur (Manipur), May 30
Three-year-old Michael Hauzel, whose parents have died of AIDS, cries inconsolably, pleading with his grandfather to buy him a toy gun he saw in the market.

The toddler’s shrill cries soon die down, but tears well up in his grandfather’s eyes. “I cannot afford even two proper meals a day for Michael, let alone buying him a toy,” Surep Hauzel, 59, told IANS, waving away a swarm of mosquitoes circling over his grandchild in their mud-and-straw hut in this distant town in northeastern India.

Michael is among hundreds of orphaned children in Manipur who have lost their parents to HIV, the virus that causes the killer disease AIDS.

Michael’s parents were both intravenous drug users. Community leaders are worried at the increasing number of orphans in the northeastern state.

In this small town, about 65 km south of the state capital Imphal, there are an estimated 500 orphans like little Michael.

“Both his (Michael’s) parents died when he was just beginning to crawl,” Hauzel said in between sobs. “I do not have the resources to send him to school and I’m not sure if he too is suffering from the illness like his parents.” “The number of orphaned children is increasing by the day with HIV-AIDS assuming threatening proportions across Manipur, particularly in this district,” P. Vanlalmuana, director of the Society for HIV-AIDS and Lifeline Operation in Manipur (SHALOM), a community healthcare group, said.

“We are not sure about the exact number, but we believe the number of orphaned children could be between 1,400 and 1,700,” a Manipur government health official said.

“Most of the orphaned children come from poor families. There is an urgent need for help in the form of food supplies, healthcare facilities, besides resources to send these children to school,” Vanlalmuana said.

Manipur accounts for about 20,000 HIV-positive cases although unofficial estimates put the figure in the state at close to 35,000.

“There are thousands more whose blood samples have not been screened and the situation here is more frightening than government projections,” T. Singh, another leading healthcare worker said.

“At least 1.5 to 2 per cent of the total AIDS cases in Manipur are children who have acquired HIV post-natal,” an official at the Manipur government AIDS Control Society said.

“The problem of mother-to-child transmission of HIV is very serious and unless checked could pose a real threat to the entire healthcare system in the region.” While the seven northeastern states ——- Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura —— have an estimated 1,00,000 HIV-positive patients, authorities fear the disease may further spread because of the region’s acute drug problem.

India’s northeast lies on the edge of the heroin-producing “Golden Triangle” of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand and independent estimates have put the number of regular intravenous drug users in the region at 3,00,000 - a key cause of HIV infection here.

“More than promiscuity it is the sharing of needles among intravenous drug users in the northeast that is responsible for the spread of HIV-AIDS at an alarming rate,” S.I. Ahmed, a frontline anti-AIDS campaigner in the region, said.

According to the latest government figures, India has 5.1 million people infected with HIV, second only to South Africa. — IANS

Mumbai, May 30
Bollywood actor Shakti Kapoor had to face the ire of a students group at the Nagpur airport this morning, apparently unhappy at his refusal to perform in the city.

''I was approached by some persons asking me to perform for them during my stay in the city, which I refused, Kapoor said on his return here.

''When I was about to enter the airport this morning to catch my flight this morning, a group of students approached me and said they wanted to take pictures with me and garland me", he said.

"Then, I realised one of the students was opening an ink bottle and about to throw it on me, I tried to stop him, but as I turned, the group threw ink on my body,'' he added.

The actor, who was recently in the eye of a storm in a sting operation by a private television channel, said he did not wish to lodge a police complaint because he had lot of friends in Nagpur and frequented the city.

''The entire episode was in a bad taste. The airport officials should also have been careful,'' he said. — UNI

New Delhi, May 30
In a bid to gear up its Bihar unit for the upcoming Assembly elections, the BJP appointed Sushil Modi as its president and former Union Minister C P Thakur as chairman of the party’s Election Campaign Committee.

The BJP President, Mr L.K. Advani, appointed Mr Modi as the chief of the Bihar unit of the BJP. With a bitter electoral battle on the cards, Mr Modi, who represents Patna in the Lok Sabha, will take charge immediately. The outgoing chief of the Bihar BJP unit Gopal Narain Singh will be accommodated elsewhere, according to senior party functionaries.

Enthused by his appointment, Mr Modi said his endeavour would be to secure a two-third majority for the NDA in Bihar by working in close concert with their allies particularly the Janata Dal (United).

“My focus will be to have better coordination with the JD (U) and other allies and see that if anything was lacking during the last Assembly polls, it is corrected this time,” he said. Mr Modi said he would soon get into a huddle with party general secretary in charge of elections in Bihar Arun Jaitley and Uma Bharti, co-incharge of the polls.

New Delhi, May 30
In order to clear the ambiguity about the permanent residential status of a person to claim benefits of various government schemes, including the allotment of oil and LPG dealerships specifically reserved for unemployed domiciles, the Supreme Court has said a permanent resident is a person who has settled down at a particular place permanently and regularly for some purpose.

“…the word ‘residents’ includes two types which are — a permanent residence and a temporary residence. The first type of residence form the permanent dwelling which means that the person has settled down at a particular place permanently and regularly for some purpose…

The second type refers to a situation that the person is not residing at a place forever but residing at a place for a temporary period or not for a considerable length of time. This is also referred to as temporary living in a place,” a Bench of Chief Justice, Mr R.C. Lahoti, Mr Justice G.P. Mathur and Mr Justice P.P. Naolekar said, clearing the ambiguity and doubts over the status of permanent residence, created by some previous verdicts of the apex court.

The definition was laid down by the three-judge Bench, while adjudicating a dispute over the allotment of LPG dealerships in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh in 1988, in which the issuance of letter of intent to Ms Kamal Abrol by Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) was challenged by another applicant Bhagwan Dass and his associate on the ground that she was not a permanent resident of the district.

Though a civil court had allowed a suit of Bhagwan Dass and cancelled the allotment to Ms Abrol, the Punjab and Haryana High Court reversed the lower court decision and gave its verdict in her favour in August 2002.

Aggrieved by the High Court judgement, Bhagwan Dass and his associate had filed an appeal in the Supreme Court seeking clear definition of the permanent residential status of a person as the Oil Selection Board (OSB) had laid down the rules that the allotment has to be made to a person who is a permanent resident of the district.

While referring the matter back to the High Court for fresh look of the case on merit in the light of the interpretation of residential status given by it, the apex court said the idea behind the allotment of oil dealerships under the employment scheme was that the agency has to be allotted to a person who did not hold any other such agency of any other petroleum company.

Laying down the law, the court took note of the fact that some of its previous judgments had given “flexible, elastic and somewhat ambiguous” definition and created certain doubts as no “technical and fixed meaning” was given as the word “resident” was interpreted according to the facts and circumstances of each case. Legal experts say that the judgement would be of a great help to the courts below to adjudicate such disputes, specially those relating to the allotment of oil dealerships, which had always mired in controversy whether they were made during the Congress regime in 1993-94 or by the NDA Government during the year 2000-01.

On both the occasions the allotments, allegedly made to party sympathisers, some influential persons and near and dear ones, had to be cancelled either by the government on its own or on the intervention of the court after it had snowballed into a major political controversy.

New Delhi, May 30
Search, characterisation, isolation and utilisation of new genes through the application of biotechnology are essential for the revitalisation of the Indian agriculture, which can prove to be the engine of growth in this millennium.

Natural and farm biodiversity needs to be explored as an essential prerequisite in search for new genes, said Dr Mangala Rai, Director-General of the ICAR, while delivering the 12th Dr B.P. Pal Memorial Lecture here today.

Describing the results yielded by the application of biotechnology in crop improvement, Dr Rai said the totally indigenous GM potato had more proteins than the normal potato, including substantial amount of essential amino acids, lysine and methionine.

In his lecture, Dr Rai pointed out the advantages offered by biotechnology over classical breeding in terms of precision, technology gestation period and gene transfer for specific traits even from unrelated organisms and added that it was vitally important for ensuring household food security.

This, he said, would yield benefits in the form of development of crop sciences and animal breeds that were more resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses, possess enhanced nutritional level, generate products with enhanced shelflife and possess the ability for the efficient conversion of organic waste into bio-fuels.

He said the challenge was to characterise some focused genes from the documented sequences and harness the much-needed genes for traits like drought resistance and salinity tolerance for effective use of the research results.

Drawing attention to the projected population of 1.5 billion of India by 2050, Dr Rai stressed the importance of enhanced productivity per unit area, input, time and energy.

To compete in terms of cost and quality globally, conservation and judicious utilisation of prime natural resources, particularly water, soil and genetic resources would be crucial.

He highlighted the fact that the Indian gene centre had about 4000 species of medicinal value, 500 fibre-yielding species, 100 aromatic, and essential oil-yielding species and 400 fodder-yielding species.

Referring to the emerging area of transgenic crops with noticeable growth in four commercial biotech crops, soyabean, maize, cotton and canola, he highlighted the importance of the IPR regime and the need for every scientist to get familiarised with the techno-legal requirements of the IPR protection and benefit sharing. 

New Delhi, May 30
The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) is in the process of identifying new stretches for the phase-III of its National Highway Development Project (NHDP) to be executed solely on the built-operate-transfer (BOT) basis.

In the NHDP phase-I and phase-II, projects had been undertaken on the BOT basis, but a large number of them had been commissioned with the government aid or by the funding of external agencies like the World Bank. Under the BOT, the NHAI will be responsible for clearing legal and other hurdles, including formalities associated with the acquisition of land.

In March 2005, a policy decision was taken by the Centre to execute all NHDP projects in the future under a structure that maximised the role of public-private partnership. The ambitious programme for the next seven years (2005-12), which maximises the role of public-private partnership and envisages an investment of Rs 1,72,000 crore for the development of national highway projects, includes NHDP-III for 4/6 laning of 10,000 km of national highways, NHDP-IV for 2-laning of 20,000 km of national highways, special accelerated road development programme for the north-eastern region, NHDP-V, VI and VII for 6-laning of select 5,000 km of national highways, development of 1,000 km expressways and removal of bottlenecks on national highway networks, respectively.

Under phase-III, seven projects, involving a total length of 457 km and costing Rs 2,012 crore, have already been awarded on the BOT basis.

The NHAI, responsible for the execution of NHDP, had recently come under the scanner, with a Comproller and Auditor-General (CAG) report slamming it for “inadequate planning and non-synchronisation of pre-construction activities”, besides raising questions about tender evaluation, accounting principles and undue benefit to certain contractors.

In addition, lack of coordination between governmental agencies, deficient detailed project reports (DPR) and ineffective contract management by the NHAI had been cited as primary reasons for cost and time overruns in the phase-I and phase-II. 

New Delhi, May 30
Mr Liaqat Ali Chowdhary, who has been serving in India as the Deputy High Commissioner of Bangladesh, today informally took over as Bangladesh’s new High Commissioner to India.

He can, however, start formal functioning as the High Commissioner only after presenting his credentials to President A.P.J Abdul Kalam.

He succeeds Mr Mohammed Hematuddin. Mr Chowdhary is a career diplomat and was Bangladesh’s Ambassador to the Netherlands before his new assignment. 

Mumbai, May 30
The special court in Mumbai hearing the re-trial in the Best Bakery carnage today adjourned the questioning of prime witness Zahira Sheikh till tomorrow after the Special Judge Abhay Thipsay, hearing the case, reported ill.

Zahira was present in court today after being ordered to do so. Zahira will be cross-examined following the availability of fresh evidence in the form of two videos taken by a television channel after the attack.

The special court here is conducting the re-trial of the case.

New Delhi, May 30
The Delhi High Court today refused to stay the order of the Motor Accident Claim Tribunal (MACT), awarding highest ever insurance compensation of Rs 14.7 crore to the kin of a city businessman, who was killed in a road accident.

Justice O.P. Dwivedi directed the Oriental Insurance Company (OIC) to deposit 50 per cent of the amount with the tribunal within four weeks and release 10 per cent of it to the family of the victim.

The MACT had recently awarded the highest compensation so far in the history of country’s motor accident cases for the death of Delhi businessman Rajneesh Goel.