New Delhi, January 7
The government appears to be having no qualms in hitting eminent cardiologist P. Venugopal below the belt, while defending a law allegedly enacted to oust him as director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

“The law fixing 65 as the age of retirement for the AIIMS director was in no way aimed at besmirching the image of Dr Venugopal, who served AIIMS for several years and has a worldwide reputation.

“But it’s also a fact that for last several years, he did not perform a single heart surgery owing to his own ill-health as he often needed help from others to move around,” the health ministry said in affidavit filed before the Supreme Court in defence of the controversial law.

The affidavit made this remark to counter Venugopal’s assertion in his petition to the Supreme Court that the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and Post Graduate Institute for Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh (Amendment) Act, 2007, was enacted solely to oust him from the institute after tarnishing his reputation.

The 78-page affidavit, filed by Health Secretary Naresh Dayal, contended that as the law also fixed the retirement age for the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) director, it could not be said that it was targeting Venugopal.

The health ministry said that the cardiologist’s assertion that the law was a brainchild of Health Minister A. Ramadoss and was enacted with the sole motive to sack him (Venugopal) was patently wrong.

“The law was passed by Parliament and reflected the will and wishes of the Parliament and not that of a single individual, the health minister,” said the affidavit adding it was parliament’s decision to fix 65 years as the retirement age of the AIIMS and PGIMER directors and it was Parliament’s decree which has resulted in Venugopal’s retirement.

The affidavit said Venugopal had levelled a host of allegations in his petition against Ramadoss without making him the respondent in the petition.

Venugopal’s failure to make Ramadoss a respondent in his petition deprives the minister the opportunity to respond to the allegations against him and adds to the petition the legal defect of non-rejoinder, making it liable to be dismissed summarily on this ground, said the affidavit.

The affidavit also refuted Venugopal’s allegations that the law was enacted with retrospective effect only to target him.

The affidavit contended that Venugopal ceased to be the AIIMS director only after President Pratibha Patil assented to the law on November 30 and so it cannot be said that the law was enacted with retrospective affect.

Denying Venugopal’s allegations that the law negated the ruling by the Delhi High Court on the dispute between him and the government, the affidavit asserted that the law was enacted as per the directions in the ruling, which asked the government to enact an appropriate law to fix the retirement age of the AIIMS director.

Citing a host of apex court rulings, the affidavit asserted that it was Parliament’s prerogative to enact a law to fix the age of retirement of government servants.

The apex court will hear later this month Venugopal’s petition challenging the law which paved the way for his ouster as AIIMS director. — IANS

New Delhi, January 7
A State Bank of India (SBI) employee has been arrested for fraudulently withdrawing Rs 4,00,000 from dead accounts through ATM cards that he had obtained at his own without the customers’ knowledge, the Delhi Police said today. Shashi Bhushan, 38, works with the bank’s Malaviya Nagar branch in South Delhi.

He was arrested from his East of Kailash home on Sunday, after the bank registered with the police a case of cheating a few days ago.

The police said that Bhushan in his interrogation told them he had suffered huge financial losses in the stock market and wanted to make a quick buck.

“Bhushan said that while working in the bank as a field officer, he found out some dead accounts not used for long with huge amounts in them.

He got issued ATM cards on his own on these accounts without informing the clients,” deputy commissioner of police (South Delhi) Anil Shukla said.

“Bhushan disclosed that he transferred the amounts from some dead accounts to those for which he had obtained ATM cards, and thus, fraudulently withdrew around Rs 4,00,000 in total,” Shukla added. — IANS

New Delhi, January 7
Sharada Jain, former Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) councillor undergoing life term for killing fellow councillor Atma Ram Gupta five years ago, on Monday sought bail from the Delhi High Court to attend her daughter’s wedding.

Jain’s counsel Puneet Mittal told a division bench, comprising Justices B.N. Chaturvedi and G.S. Sistani, that her daughter’s marriage was fixed for January 19 and sought suspension of the jail term for two months.

The bench posted the hearing on the bail application for Tuesday, after it found that Justice Sistani was not provided with a copy of it.

On December 22, 2006, a city court had sentenced Jain, who was with the Congress party, and her brother Raj Kumar to life imprisonment for hatching a conspiracy and later killing Gupta in 2002.

The court also sentenced three Uttar Pradesh police personnel to three years’ rigorous imprisonment for helping them destroy evidence.

According to the prosecution, Jain allegedly had an affair with Gupta and wanted to take revenge, after he started ignoring her and developed close ties with councillor Memwati Barwala.

On August 24, 2002, Gupta was kidnapped from a Congress rally at the Firozeshah Kotla ground here by hired killers, who murdered him in Ghaziabad, the police said. — IANS

New Delhi, January 7
The Supreme Court on Monday gave the Delhi and Uttar Pradesh governments four more weeks to resolve the issue of parallel probes by their police into the case of tapping Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh’s telephonic conversations.

A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice J.M. Panchal gave more time to the two states after Additional Solicitor General Amrendra Saran informed the court that Uttar Pradesh Governor T.V. Rajeshwar and Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor Tejendra Khanna were in talks over the issue but needed more time to resolve it.

Following the submission by the central government’s law officer, the bench adjourned the matter.

In 2006, the apex court bench headed by then Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal had disapproved the parallel probes and asked the two governments to resolve the issue.

Saran apprised the court of the ongoing dialogue between the constitutional heads of the two states during the hearing of an appeal filed by the Uttar Pradesh government challenging a Delhi High Court decision of January 2006 to launch contempt of court proceedings against senior police officials of the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force.

The High Court had restrained the Uttar Pradesh police from interfering into the probe by Delhi Police, but the Uttar Pradesh police had continued its investigations saying it was not interfering into the Delhi Police probe but merely investigating another first information report (FIR) filed by the Noida police on the phone tapping. — IANS

New Delhi, January 7
Be it book launches, speeches or promotion of a website, Vice-President Hamid Ansari — with 50 public appearances in just under five months — is a man for all occasions.

Ansari, also the presiding officer of the Rajya Sabha, India’s Upper House of Parliament, has set himself a scorching pace, be it in his role as chief guest to deliver public addresses, compulsory attendance during visits of foreign dignitaries or giving out awards.

From speaking at the Urs celebration of poet Amir Khusro to delivering the key address at the national conference on Dalit organisations, talking to an assorted audience at the convocation of Gwalior’s Lakshmibai National Institute or addressing alumni of Berkeley University, Ansari has been a big draw.

“Yes, we do receive a lot of invitations for the Vice-President to be present. He tries to accommodate most requests but sometimes because of his pressing engagements has to skip some,” said a close aide of the diplomat-turned-Vice-President.

Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, during his five-year stay at the Rashtrapati Bhavan that ended in July last year, set an unprecedented record by delivering over 1,020 speeches all over the country.

Loosely translated, this meant giving a whopping 250 speeches every year, which included multi-media tele-conferences, video addresses and educational satellite talks.

Ansari seems to be going the Kalam’s way. He has been involved in at least 10 book launches till date, promoted a website bdguptafoundation.com - a tribute to late Haryana chief minister Banarsi Das Gupta - and released an audio CD ‘Sada-e-Sufi’ by Anita Singhvi.

Last month, Ansari released the Oxford India Anthology book of ‘Modern Urdu Literature’, the ‘State of India’s Democracy’ brought out by the Centre for Policy Research and a quaint book ‘Jhansi Mein Kranti’.

He was also the chief guest at the release of former UN undersecretary general Shashi Tharoor’s book ‘The Elephant, The Tyre and The Cellphone’ and journalist Nirmala Lakshman’s ‘Writing a Nation - An anthology of Indian Journalism’.

The 70-year-old Vice-President - who has served as India’s permanent representative to the United Nations and ambassador to Iran, Australia and Saudi Arabia - also delivered the Justice Sunanda Bhandare memorial lecture as Kalam had done during his tenure, an honour normally reserved for presidents.

His innings as the Vice-President has largely been smooth except when he created a small flutter at a seminar on emerging security concerns in the West Asia in November last year, where he remarked that the US polices had given an impetus to terrorism in the Middle East.

Though it was unusual to see the Vice-President voicing an independent - even critical - opinion at variance with the government, Ansari declared there that the US policies were aiding terrorism and even suggested that Iran’s nuclear programme was reasonably benign.

However, Ansari’s views found support among those who know him. “For a person who knows the region so well and having served in many missions during his diplomatic career and besides bringing out a book ‘Iran Today’, he is well within his rights to air his views at such a forum,” said a confidant who did not want to be named. — IANS

New Delhi, January 7
Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari inaugurated the National Cadet Corps (NCC) Republic Day camp here, saying that the rigorous discipline the cadets were put through was a useful training for both the body and the mind.

Ansari was hopeful that the NCC cadets “would rise above parochialism and regionalism and develop a broad national outlook to make a united and prosperous India”.

In this context, the Vice-President noted that the cadets, hailing from various parts of the country and with different linguistic and religious backgrounds, represented a mini India.

A contingent of smartly turned out NCC cadets drawn from its army, navy and air force wings, presented a guard of honour to the Vice-President.

Close to 2,000 cadets, both boys and girls, drawn from 17 NCC directorates covering India’s all states and union territories are participating in the camp.

“The cadets will take part in a number of activities involving, cultural, national integration awareness and institutional training competitions,” a defence ministry statement said. The nearly month-long camp will conclude with the Prime Minister’s rally on January 28.

Later, addressing the cadets NCC director general Lt Gen Prakash Chaudhary said the corps had signed an MoU with the UNICEF, under which girl cadets would participate in a pilot project on a literacy mission. — IANS

Noida, January 7
A sea-change seems to have taken place in the lingua franca at call centres. It is no longer a must to talk in English.

One could use Hindi, Punjabi or any other language well understood locally, instead, say the senior executives of software companies and call centres in Noida.

The change in the scenario has thrown open the call centres to people who are not comfortable with English but can express themselves well in Hindi or local languages.

After English and Hindi, leading local languages like Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Bangla, Marathi and Punjabi-knowing people have started making in- roads into the call centres.

Among others, Hinduja group, HTST, Infovision First Source, Aziz BPO and Infosys have started their services in leading regional languages.

According to reports, for the time being, marketing, sales and customer-care operations have been introduced in these languages.

According to Deepak Kapoor, director of BPO-India, the volume of business in local languages is likely to increase up to 60 per cent in near future.

Kapoor said the turnover in local language call centre in Pune and Bangalore is comparatively much higher than in northern states.

Aditya Gupta of Infovision also alludes to the possibility of a big market in local languages.

New Delhi, January 7
Delhi finance and planning minister A.K. Walia has stated that 13.01 per cent increase has been recorded in tax revenue collection during eight months of current financial year.

A total of Rs 7,675.16 crore was collected up to November, 2007 during current financial year against Rs 6791.71 crore during the last financial year.

According to these figures, there has been an increase of Rs 883.45 crore in revenue tax collection.

Walia further stated that there had been increase of 29 per cent in entertainment tax, 24 per cent in taxes on vehicles, 22 per cent in stamps and registration fees and 14 per cent in luxury tax. However, increase in VAT collections comes to 11.08 per cent.

Giving details of revenue collection, the minister said that Rs 37.76 crore was collected as entertainment tax against Rs 29.38 crore in corresponding period of last year, Rs 305.40 crore in taxes on vehicles against Rs 245.79 crore, Rs 821.56 crore in stamps and registration fees against Rs 674.22 crore and Rs 222.40 crore in luxury tax against Rs 195.24 crore, Rs 815.51 crore in State Excise against Rs 721.70 crore and Rs 5468.60 crore in VAT against Rs 4923.06 crores.

There has been increase of 16.37 per cent in collection of other taxes and duties on commodities and services.

Walia expressed confidence that collection of revenue receipts of Delhi government would continue to increase as the city government has been implementing trader-friendly and people-friendly policies.

He further expressed hope that the target as envisaged in Revenue Estimates would be comfortably achieved.

Three major deterrents that came to light were high initial upfront cost, several trips to complete the formalities and middlemen, who used to take these uneducated and ill-informed people for a ride.

This scheme, with just one stroke, has addressed all the three concerns, said Kanchan while asserting that they wanted to eliminate the menace of touts.

New Delhi, January 7
Keeping in view the assembly elections to be held in November this year, the Delhi Cabinet has decided to establish a separate Maithili-Bhojpuri Academy in Delhi under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister of Delhi.

Talking to media, Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit stated that her government would soon establish a new academy since Delhi had a sizeable number of Maithili and Bhojpuri speaking population.

Maithili has been included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India by the Constitution (Ninety Second Amendment) Act, 2003.

It has rich literary traditions and contributed great poets like Vidyapati to Indian literary panorama.

Bhojpuri speaking population has a large numerical base in Delhi and it deserves proper support and patronage from the state.

The cultural dimension of these two languages has already enriched Delhi for quite sometime and the Chhath Pooja celebration has become an integral part of Delhi’s cultural calendar.

Therefore, there is a strong need to create a separate language academy for these two languages.

The proposed Maithili and Bhojpuri Language Academy will organise programmes, seminars, exhibitions and make arrangements for the translation of work of other languages. It will also help in the publication of books related to these languages.

It will support, recognise and give aid to the deserving institutions connected with these languages.

This academy would also support the upcoming and established authors for the publication of their work to enrich the regional literature.

With a view to promoting unique cultural streaks related to these languages, the Delhi government has already established five language academies—Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Sanskrit and Sindhi.

These academies extend support to literary activities and cultural traditions related to these languages.

The grant in aid to various language academies are given through department of art, culture and language.