New Delhi, December 28
The Centre today said that the recommendations and observations of the Sachar Committee on Muslims will be implemented fully next year.

Minorities Affairs Minister A R Antulay’s remarks came a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assertion that the government was committed to the uplift of minorities.

“We will not only implement the recommendations of the Sachar committee but also its observations,” Antulay told reporters after addressing an international conference of Dalits and Muslims here.

“They will be implemented in toto in 2007,” he said when asked about a specific time frame for their implementation.

He also spoke about plans to carry out amendments in the Wakf Act to give more powers to the Central Wakf Council. Such an amendment, aimed at clearing Wakf properties worth thousands of crores from trespassers, is expected to be brought about in the budget session.

In his address to the conference, the minister mounted a fierrce attack on the BJP, saying it “hates” the word minority. “You were in power for six years and you did not create any ministry for minority welfare. You hate the word minority,” Antulay remarked without naming the BJP.

He maintained that it was the government’s key responsibility to ensure welfare of minorities, both linguistic and religious, who he said, make up more than 30 per cent of the country’s population.

"If minorityism does not have to be in India where else should it be in the world,” he asked. — PTI

New Delhi, December 28
The Congress celebrated its 121st foundation day today with AICC president Sonia Gandhi unfurling the party flag here with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other Congress leaders standing in rapt attention.

Seva Dal activists sung the national song "Vande Mataram" as Mrs Gandhi arrived at the party headquarters. The brief function ended with the singing of the national anthem.

After saluting the party flag, Mrs Gandhi walked up to Dr Singh and greeted him on the party's foundation day. She greeted ministers and party leaders who had come from all over the country.

Thiruvananthapuram, December 28
The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, which came into force two months ago, has come to the aid of a housewife here who successfully claimed possession of the house her husband built for his “second wife”.

Valsala Chandran from Mariyathura, Aymanam in Kottayam district, has become the first woman in the state to win a case against her husband under the Act.

Kottayam Judicial Magistrate (First Class) N.K. Prasannakumari directed that Valsala occupy the house at Sasthamangalam built by her estranged husband Chandrasekharan Nair, now living with another woman in the Gulf.

Valsala, who was a military officer, had given up her job after her marriage and had moved with her husband to the Gulf. She returned to Kerala after spending 10 years there.

Nair, who is running a business in the Gulf, started living with another woman who he “married” without divorcing Valsala. He also forced her to leave the house he constructed at Sasthamangalam in the city, it was alleged.

Valsala had filed a petition in the Kottayam family court which issued attachment notice to the house built at a cost of Rs 1 crore. When she was refused entry to the house, Valsala approached the court under the domestic violence Act after which she was granted permission to occupy the house.

The court also directed the Thiruvananthapuram police Commissioner to give protection to Valsala and her two sons. — PTI

New Delhi, December 28
Nuclear warhead capable Agni-III surface-to-surface missile with a range of 3,000 kms would be test fired early next year as the “material-related” fault that caused the failure of its first trial in July has been rectified.

Defence Ministry sources said the problem was material related and there was no problem in the missile’s rocket motor, or control, guidance and navigation systems.

The mechanical modification to rectify the problems is going on and the lethal intercontinental ballistic missile would be ready to blast off from the Interim Test Range in Balasore, Orissa, in late January or early February, they added.

The failure of Agni-III was a major damper to defence scientists as it came even as Pakistan went ahead with a series of successful missile tests of Hatf, Gauri and Shaheen range of missiles in 2006.

For the defence scientists, Agni-III was not the only failure as surface-to-air Akash and anti-tank Nag missiles failed to keep deadlines for user trials and the Trishul missile, in which the DRDO saw potential of turning it into a multi-purpose interceptor, faced near closure.

Meanwhile, the Defence Minister, Mr A.K. Antony, today asked scientists to speed up development of an air-launched supersonic cruise missile. He said India favoured going in for more joint ventures to develop futuristic weapons platforms on the pattern of Brahmos produced with Russia.

“India favours more joint ventures on the pattern of Brahmos cruise missile to develop world-class defence products,” he told Indian and Russian defence scientists during a visit to joint venture Brahmos missile complex in the cantonment area here.

New Delhi, December 28
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice has strongly rejected the proposal envisaged in the Administrative Tribunals (Amendment) Bill for abolition of the Central Administrative Tribunal and State Administrative Tribunals, the preliminary fora for redressing the service related grievances of government employees.

The Committee headed by E. M. Sudarsana Natchiappan said such a provision in the Act will “seriously undermine the independence of judiciary, violate the basic structure of the Constitution and will result in a death knell to the rule of law.”

The Bill brought before Parliament by the Government in March, seeks to amend the Administrative Tribunal Act, 1985, by incorporating an enabling provision in it to give the Executive power to abolish the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) and the State Administrative Tribunals (SATs).

The 27-member panel was unanimous in its view that incorporation of such a provision in the Act, would not only make the CAT and SATs “vulnerable” to the arbitrary action of the bureaucracy but would defeat the very purpose of establishing them and go against the objectives laid down in Article 323 of the Constitution. The Article cast a specific responsibility upon the Union Government to set up such tribunals.

“The Committee is of the strong view that the creation of an institution is a very serious, consistent and rigorous work whereas abolition of an institution is very simple and very grievous in nature and more so when no alternative efficient system has been envisaged,” the panel in a strongly worded 47-page report said.

It said the CAT and SATs, mandated by the Constitution had over the years emerged “specialised, robust and dynamic” institutions and had proved to be of great benefit to persons in public service, who were unfairly treated by their superiors and their departments.

“Therefore nothing should be done to whittle down the effect of Administrative Tribunals… and power of abolition of should not be given to the Executive,” the panel recommended, while reminding the Government that the Executive was and should always be accountable to Parliament for such decisions, failing which the Constitutional mandate will not be acted upon.

If the Government proposal was incorporated in the Act, it would straightaway extinguish the right of government employees to seek legal remedy against an arbitrary and illegal orders of their superiors, the Committee said.

It said that it had “failed to understand the exact intention of the Government” as it on the one hand it had proposed to abolish the CAT and SATs on the other hand the Bill provides for handing over the pending cases before them to some other authority not clearly indicated.

“The Committee strongly feels that grievances of the government employees should be redressed without undue delay in order to create bob security which in turn imparts dynamism and vibrancy to governance.

Aggrieved government servants cannot reflect excellency in governance,” it held.

New Delhi, December 28
Dismayed over the Congress-led UPA government’s cold response to their demand for ‘adequate’ compensation, Punjab terrorism victims have threatened to launch an indefinite hunger strike.

Victims of terrorism, under the banner of the Punjab Terrorist Victims Welfare Committee, have been on a relay hunger strike in the capital for the past 11 days demanding compensation on a par with the victims of 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

“We had met Congress president Sonia Gandhi in June along with Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) Shamsher Singh Dullon and subsequently Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on October 28 in Chandigarh. However, despite their assurances, nothing has been done to meet our demand,” press secretary of the committee G.R. Gupta told The Tribune.

“It is highly regrettable that despite assurances from the highest-level and the Punjab Government’s recommendation in this regard to the Centre there has not been any forward movement. So, we are left with no other way than to intensify our struggle to draw the attention of the government to plight of terrorism-affected people and families,” Mr Gupta said.

“If there is no positive response from the Prime Minister’s Office by tomorrow, members of the Committee will start indefinite hunger strike,” he said.

Mr Charanjeet Kalia, who lost his 32-year-old son Shyam Sunder Kalia in a terror attack, said while the family members of 1984 riot victims had got compensation of upto Rs 3.5 lakh, terrorism-affected families had got compensation ranging between Rs 20,000 to Rs One lakh from the state government.

New Delhi, December 28
It was a year which saw the new age cinema in India coming of age; emerging from the cloistered

precincts of the film festivals to acquire a dominant place in the Bollywood mainstream.

Dominating the psyche of the average cinegoer in India during the year 2006 were films representing sensibilities “different-from-the-mainstream” like Rakyesh Mehra’s “Rang De

Basanti”, Rajkumar Hirani’s “Lage Raho Munnabhai”, Dibakar Banerjee’s “Khosla Ka Ghosla”, Vishal Bhardwaj’s “Omkara”, Pritish Nandy Communications’ “Pyar Ke Side Effects”, Milan Luthria’s “Taxi No 9211”, Madhur Bhandarkar’s “Corporate”, Nagesh Kukunoor’s “Dor”, Homi Adjania’s “Being Cyrus”, Anurag Basu’s “Gangster’ and Kabir Khan’s “Kabul Express”.

It was perhaps the first year in recent times that so many films dealing with offbeat themes and marked by an innovative cinematic style hit the bull’s eye at the box office garnering as much

attention from cinegoers as popcorn flicks like Farhan Akhtar’s “Don”, Rakesh Roshan’s “Krrish” and Sanjay Ghadvi’s “Dhoom 2”, besides earning tremendous critical acclaim at home as well as abroad.

For example, “Rang De Basanti”, which earned worldwide acclaim for its potent message of “standing up to one’s rights” and which was chosen by the Film Federation of India this year to represent the country to the Oscars for the Best Foreign film category, was also among the top grossers of the year.

Made on a budget of Rs 25 crore, “Rang De Basanti”, which was acclaimed at several international film festivals, including a film festival in Australia, garnered Rs 125 crore, Rs 35 crore from overseas alone. In fact, it was among the top overseas grosser from Bollywood this year.

Later, UTV, the producers of the film, which was chosen to represent India from among a list that included films like Rakesh Roshan’s “Krrish”, Karan Johar’s “Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna”,

Naseeruddin Shah’s “Yun Hota To Kya Hota”, “Lage Raho Munnabhai”, “Omkara”, “Corporate”, Marathi film “Bhook” and Telugu film “Amma Chepindi”, also decided to enter it in seven other categories, including Best Film, Best Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Art Direction and Best Sound Design.

New Delhi, December 28
Providing quality education to all including students from poor and minorities will be the focus of higher education during the 11th plan, Chairman of University Grants Commission Sukhadeo Thorat said today.

“Everyone, who deserve and desire, should get higher education. The focus of higher education during the 11th plan will be inclusiveness which aims to ensure that students from all sections including the poor and the minorities get quality education,” he said while interacting with academicians from Delhi University here.

“We have schemes to help girls, poor, SC/ST students to get fellowships. We have recently started new fellowships for students in central universities,” he said.

Besides, universities will be encouraged to develop courses in a manner to promote values of secularism, multiculturalism, scientific temper etc, he said.

Thorat lamented the poor enrollment ratio into higher education in the age group of 18 to 23 years.

“Presently 10 per cent of people in the age group of 18 to 23 years are in the stream of higher education. This ratio is very poor and has to be increased,” he said, adding that the ratio was only one per cent in the 1960s.

Earlier the Chairman of Bharati College, Naresh Kumar raised issues like lack of infrastructure and necessity of more colleges in the national capital to cater to the need of the students here.

Chairman of Bhaskaracharya college, Tom Vaddakan said that their college would double the intake from the next academic session. — PTI