New Delhi, March 26
After a Pay Commission for “babus”, it is now the turn of parliamentarians. Following up on a suggestion from Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, the UPA government plans to set up an independent commission to periodically determine the salaries of MPs.

Called the “Emoluments Commission”, this permanent body will have five members. The exact composition of the commission will be decided by the presiding officers of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, the Prime Minister and the leader of opposition. This matter is to be taken up by the Union Cabinet at its weekly meeting tomorrow.

After its formal approval, the government will introduce a Bill in the ongoing budget session of Parliament for the constitution of this body.

This issue has been pending with the ruling coalition for nearly two years now. There was initial resistance to this proposal as MPs were not happy with the idea of “outsiders” deciding on their remuneration.

The Lok Sabha had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggesting that instead of MPs voting on their own salaries as is the present practice, this task be entrusted to an independent commission, similar to the Pay Commission which decides on the salaries of government employees.

Such a move, the Speaker felt, would help restore the credibility of the political class. The Lok Sabha Speaker had subsequently called an all-party meeting where his proposal had met with all-round approval and was subsequently endorsed by a Joint Parliamentary Committee, headed by Giridhar Gomang.

In fact, this proposal surfaces every time MPs vote to give themselves a hike in salaries. When it was raised again in 2006 during the consideration of the Salaries and Allowances Amendment Bill, parliamentary affairs minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi had assured members that a ‘permanent institutional mechanism' would be established to ensure changes in the remuneration of MPs.

Those who defend the current procedure have argued that since Parliament is the supreme authority in enacting laws and sanctioning grants, it has no other option but to use the same authority to decide on the salaries of MPs.

The general view has been that a commission comprising “outsiders” would dilute the provisions of Article 106 of the Constitution which lays down that the salaries and allowances of MPs will be periodically reviewed and decided by Parliament.

Any change, it was pointed out, will require a Constitutional amendment. At present, a Joint Parliamentary Committee recommends changes in salaries and pensions of MPs and ex-MPs, which are then approved by both Houses of Parliament.

New Delhi, March 26
In a major blow to the Shiv Sena, the entire North India units, including in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, split from the main party over the attacks on North Indian and Hindi-speaking people by Sena and MNS members in Maharashtra.

“The Shiv Sena has become a Private Limited Company of some people. It has limited itself to Maharashtra alone, deviating from the main nationalist policies of the party. Balasaheb Thackeray seems to be bogged down by some thing he is towing Uddhav’s line only,” North India Shiv Sena president Jai Bhagwan Goyal told a news conference here.

“We don’t want to be part of a party which wants to divide India once again... There is no difference between Shiv Sena and terrorists from Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab’s Khalistan Comando Force who are demanding a separate nation,” he added. He accused Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray of working hand-in-glove with estranged nephew and MNS chief Raj Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray in attacking North Indians.

“We tried to get in touch with him but could not.... Our views were not allowed to reach him.... It appears that he is also working in collusion with Raj and Uddhav in attacking North Indians to capture Marathi votes,” he added.

Announcing that a new party - Rashtrawadi Shiv Sena - will be launched soon, Goyal said it would contest the year-end Assembly polls as well as the general elections.

Claiming that more than one lakh North Indian Shiv Sena members supported him, he said functionaries from Jharkhand, Haryana, Delhi, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh had resigned.

Goyal parried queries on whether he would join or merge his new party with the BJP, saying “let the new party be launched. It is not the time to discuss these issues.”

Describing as “demeaning and inhuman” the attitude of the Shiv Sena and MNS towards North Indians, he said the sentiments of North Indian party workers were “deeply hurt”.

“Every slap on a North Indian or his insult is my personal insult. It will not be tolerated any more,” he added.

Warning against any more attacks on North Indians in Maharashtra, he said Shiv Sena and MNS should remember that Marathi people live in other parts of the country as well.

“We were quiet so far because we were part of Shiv Sena, but not any more.... They should remember that MPs from that state and Marathis live in North India also,” he added. — UNI

New Delhi, March 26
The Supreme Court today directed the Gujarat government to constitute within 10 days a special investigation team (SIT), headed by former CBI chief R.K. Raghavan, to re-investigate over a dozen post-Godhra communal riots cases.

A Bench headed by Justice Arjit Pasayat, while passing formal orders, said the SIT would submit its report in a sealed cover to the court within three months.

The SIT would be free to evoke its own modalities for the purpose of carrying out investigations into the cases, the court said.

The SIT, led by Raghavan, would comprise former DGP of Uttar Pradesh C.D. Satpathy and three IPS officers from Gujarat - Geeta Johri, Shivanand Jha and Ashish Bhatia. Johri would be the convener of the team.

The orders came on a petition filed by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) that has sought transfer of the trial of the riots’ cases outside Gujarat and re-investigation by an independent agency like the CBI.

The NHRC had filed the petition after several witnesses turned hostile amidst allegations of threat, coercion and inducement to derail the investigation.

The Bench of Justices Pasayat, P. Sathasivam and Aftab Alam, which heard the matter yesterday, had said it would pass formal orders today on the five-member SIT for re-investigating the riots cases.

There are about 14 cases referred to by the NHRC and a host of individuals and NGOs petitioners who alleged that witnesses were intimidated or the local police acted at the behest of perpetrators and refused to record their statements.

In 2003, the NHRC had filed the petition for the transfer of trial of riot cases expressing fears that it would not be conducted in a fair and transparent manner due to the hostile environment encountered by the witnesses, most of whom had turned hostile due to alleged threats and inducements. — PTI

New Delhi, March 26
Strong religious beliefs prevailing in Sikkim about Kanchenjunga, India’s highest mountain, has forced a change in plan of a mountaineering team of the Border Security Force.

The BSF team, which is planning to scale the summit, will go through a route in Nepal and also pay a fee for using the route in the neighbouring country.

The 25-member BSF team was flagged off by the director general of the force A.K. Mitra here today.

Sikkim does not allow mountaineers to scale the 28,170-feet-high peak that is considered to be a “guardian” of the hill state. So much so, that only 167 mountaineers have scaled it so far in the past 53 years.

The Himalayan peak - the third highest after the Everest and K2 - was climbed for the first time in 1955 by Joe Brown and George Band of a British expedition. The British expedition honoured the beliefs of the Sikkimese, by stopping a few feet short of the actual summit and scaled it from the Nepal-side.

Most successful summit parties since then have followed this tradition. The mountain and its mystique was also glorified in the Booker Award winning book “The inheritance of loss” written by Kiran Desai and set in Kalimpong that is close to the Kanchenjunga.

The BSF team will also be following the south-western route through Taplejung district in Nepal. It is be longer trek than the route through Sikkim and will also cost Rs 7 lakh as fee payable to Nepal, said a member of the team. It will take about two months as the team has set a target of around May 30 for the final climb.

The BSF team headed by N.S. Satish Chander Nair is scheduled to set-up base camp at 17,000 feet by April 16. It will then set up four small summit camps enroute to the peak. At least three of its members have already scaled the Everest.

Kanchenjunga is exceptional in a sense. The entire Himalayan chain has an east-west direction while this peak has a north-south direction. Until 1852, Kanchenjunga was assumed to be the highest mountain in the world but calculations made by the British Great Trigonometric Survey in 1849 arrived at the conclusion that the Everest was the highest peak.

Panaji, March 26
Slain British girl Scarlett Eden Keeling's body will be flown to Mumbai tomorrow morning, according to the family lawyer.

"We have the required permission. The body would be flown to Mumbai and kept in a hospital mortuary there," advocate Vikram Varma told PTI today.

Scarlett's bruised corpse was found on Goa's popular Anjuna beach on February 18.

Initially, the police had contended that Scarlett died due to accidental drowning and later re-investigated the case after the second autopsy was conducted following persistent appeals from her mother Fiona Mackeown who suspected foul play.

Police investigation in the matter saw two locals being arrested for drugging, raping and leaving Scarlett to die on the shallow beach. Varma said Fiona will also fly to Mumbai.

"We are not sure when the body would be taken to UK as the formalities for the same are in the final stage," he said.

The lawyer said Fiona will also fly to UK with the body.

New Delhi, March 26
Letters written by Subhash Chandra Bose’s widow and daughter to the government are among the 29 classified documents, most of which relate to Netaji’s disappearance, kept in the high-security vaults of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

Other confidential papers available with the Prime Minister’s Office include those relating to Netaji’s ashes, INA treasure and policy papers about guidelines on posthumous conferment of Bharat Ratna Award.

These details form part of a list of the PMO’s 29 classified files on Netaji, that were released under the Right to Information law to Mission Netaji, a Delhi-based research trust.

The PMO had earlier refused to reveal the list of its classified documents on the grounds that divulging the titles and their contents could affect India’s sovereignty and relations with foreign nations.

The matter which was thereafter taken up with the Central Information Commission (CIC), directed the PMO on February 8 to provide a list of 29 out of its 33 classified files along with their titles, after perusing through the list produced before it.

Four classified documents were, however, exempted from disclosure by Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah, noting that it had references to foreign nations.

The commission in its order noted that out of 29 files, seven were classified “top secret,” three “confidential” while the rest were marked “secret.”

The CIC had also directed the PMO to provide the list of two recently de-classified files along with the 29 classified files held by it.—PTI

New Delhi, March 26
The Central Information Commission (CIC) has directed the CBI to provide information to a co-accused in Telgi scam regarding the commission’s report on the amount involved in the scam.

Anil Umrao Gote, former MLA from Dhule in Maharashtra and an accused in the multi-crore fake stamp paper scam, made an application to the CIC under the Right to Information Act. Before he was granted bail on medical grounds by a special court in Pune on July 1, 2007, Gote was in judicial custody for almost four years. He was released from Pune’s Yerawada Central Prison where Abdul Karim Telgi is serving his sentence. Gote was arrested on June 29, 2003, for allegedly assisting Telgi in securing stamp vending licences from the government.

Telgi, the kingpin of the racket was sentenced to 13 years rigorous imprisonment and an unprecedented fine of Rs 251 crore, last year by a special court, after he pleaded guilty.

The scam spread over nearly a dozen states, involved large-scale printing, circulation and sale of counterfeit stamp papers and other security instruments by an organised crime syndicate headed by Telgi.

While deciding to treat the application as a complaint petition, Chief Information Commission, Wajahat Habibullah directed the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO), a superintendent of police in the Economic Offences Unit-V of the CBI, to provide information sought by the applicant within 10 working days.

The CIC has asked the CPIO concerned to appear before the commission on Thursday through video-conference and show cause as to why he should not be asked to pay a fine for delay in information, under the provisions of the RTI Act. The CPIO was given the option of presenting written submissions before March 20.

It was almost two years back that Gote sought information from the CBI Director through an RTI application. He wanted information regarding the report of amount involved in the

Telgi scam. The report was submitted by the CBI to the home department in April 2006. When he did not receive any reply, he moved an appeal before the CIC on November 8 the same year.

Heeding the commission’s advice, Gote moved his first appeal on December 11 before the principal secretary, home department.

The deputy secretary and CPIO in the ministry of home affairs, forwarded his appeal to the CBI Director on December 27. It was then forwarded to the SP in the Economic Offences Unit-V of CBI on January 3, 2007. When Gote did not receive any reply, he

appealed a second time to the CIC and sought information regarding report of amount involved in Telgi scam submitted by CBI.

New Delhi, March 26
After securing a two-month suspension of the passport of arms dealer Suresh Nanda, the government today turned more heat on him deciding to impound his passport for his allegedly receiving kickback in defence deals, including in the purchase of Barak missiles from Israel.

The decision comes in the wake of the CBI plea that Nanda was required for the probe to ascertain the source of the money to the tune of Rs 400 crore received by him from abroad.

“The passport of Suresh Nanda has been impounded with immediate effect in pursuance of Section 10(3)(c) of the Passport Act 1967...,” a notice of the ministry of external affairs said.

Under the Act, the government is authorised to impound the passport of any individual if it is satisfied that the holder’s travel document should be impounded in public interest.

It also directed all passport issuing authorities in India, check posts, Indian missions abroad, Intelligence Bureau Director, Ministry of Home Affairs and FRRO to seize his passport, if presented, and hand over to the MEA.

Nanda, who is now in judicial custody, has been booked by the CBI in the Rs 1150-crore Barak Missile System deal, purchase of Armoured Recovery Vehicle and allegedly bribing a government servant to destroy evidence.—PTI

New Delhi, March 26
Kathmandu-datelined reports from wire services recently said that China had deployed its armed security personnel in plainclothes on Nepalese territory along the Nepal-Tibet borders. What these reports did not say was that the Chinese deployments have much higher stakes than tackling just a hundred Tibetans in Kathmandu.

Ostensibly, the Chinese security personnel were deployed to monitor the activities of the anti-China Tibetan protesters in Nepal and to prevent them from crossing over to Tibet to create disturbances there. But the Chinese move is strategic with a long-term view. This is corroborated by the fact that the Tibetan protesters in Kathmandu were dealt with much more brute force than what the situation required - an opinion shared by the office of the UN High Commission for Refugees in Kathmandu also.

It is not a coincidence that only last year, China’s ambassador to Nepal had said that Beijing would safeguard Kathmandu’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as its own. The statement clearly demonstrated how China looks at Nepal as a vassal state.

Decades ago, China’s strongman Mao Zedong had talked of an arc in the Indian subcontinent which must always remain under the Chinese sovereignty, come hell or high water-Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. These five regions - two independent countries and the rest integral parts of India - have always been of special significance for China. Beijing has always looked at these regions as its buffer states and anything suspicious there makes it up its ante.

A second Chinese comment, as recent as this month’s, deserves mention. Chinese assistant minister for foreign affairs, He Yefei, made a pregnant statement that Nepal should “find its own past from which to embark on a path of development”. What he actually meant was that the Nepalese political parties should not do away with the monarchy totally, but retain it with some ceremonial position.

Guwahati, March 26
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Arunachal Pradesh and the party’s national secretary, Khiren Rijiju today said 48 members of Indian Parliament cutting across the party lines had made a joint appeal to the international community and the United Nations to oppose the Chinese government’s ‘high-handedness’ in Tibet.

The BJP MP who hails from Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, bordering China, told the media here that Tibet issue was no longer an internal matter of China given that thousands of Tibetans living in India as refugees had an impact on the country.

Rijiju criticised the Congress-led UPA government in the Centre for distancing itself from the Tibet issue and acting as a minnow to China over the issue. He regretted that no protest was voiced by the Indian government so far after the Chinese authorities had summoned Indian Ambassador in Beijing at 2 am on Saturday to lodge protest against Tibetan activists breaking into the Chinese embassy in New Delhi.

Rijiju who also heads the All-India Parliamentary Forum on Tibet said: “The government maintained a grim silence on the major diplomatic snub inflicted by China when its foreign office summoned Indian Ambassador to Beijing, Nirupama Rao, at 2 am to give her a list of demonstrations that Tibetans planned to organise in India. It could have waited till the beginning of working hours next morning. It is nothing short of utter high-handedness by the Chinese government.”

He said international community and the United Nation should put pressure on China to stop the ‘inhuman treatment’ meted out to Tibetans in Tibet. He said the BJP had decided to take a strong stand against China over the issue without disturbing the bi-lateral economic relationship with China.

He said it was time for Indian government to assert itself and to mount pressure on China to stop ‘harassment’ of Tibetans instead of being a mere spectator to what is unfolding across the border.

Kolkata, March 26
The Congress and the CPM packed themselves and defeated Trinamool Congress candidate Dinesh Goswami in the Rajya Sabha polls, which were held at the state Assembly today.

On the five vacant seats for which the elections took place, four went to the Left Front and on the fifth seat, Goswami was locked in a direct contest against the CPM supported independent candidate, Ahmed Syed Malliwadi, the editor of an Urdu daily newspaper.

Malliwadi won the seat with the maximum number of votes of 58, while Goswami got only 31. While on three other seats, the sitting MPs, Prasanta Chatterjee and Tarini Roy of the CPM and the Forward Bloc’s Debabrata Biswas were

re-elected and the fourth seat went to CITU leader Shyamal Charbaoprty. Chakraborty, a former state transport minister in the Jyoti Basu government, has been elected for the first time to the Rajya Sabha. In the 1999 Assembly elections, he was defeated by Trinamool Congress candidate Paresh Pal.

After the election results were declared, Mamata Banerjee criticised the Congress’ pro-CPM stand that she alleged had

once exposed the true character of the Congress. She said she had information with her that several Congress MLAs, who were strongly anti-CPM, were not happy at the AICC’s direction for supporting the CPM’s sponsored candidate. But still they had to obey the AICC and voted for the CPM-sponsored Independent candidate.

New Delhi, March 26
Three candidates of CPI-M and two each of JD(U) and the BJP were among 13 elected to the Rajya Sabha as the results of biennial polls in four states for the Upper House poured in today. Forward Bloc, LJP, NCP and the RJD bagged a seat apiece as two Independents, a Reliance executive and a journalist, also entered the Council of States.

Union minister Premchand Gupta, former revenue secretary N.K. Singh and JD(U) spokesman Shivanand Tiwari were those who made it to the House of Elders.

Singh, a JD (U) nominee, was also secretary to the Prime Minister and a member of the Planning Commission.

Urdu daily editor A.S Mahilabadi and Reliance executive Parimal Nathwani, both Independents, got Rajya Sabha berths from West Bengal and Jharkhand respectively. Polling was held for 13 Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Meghalaya today. Earlier, as many as 39 candidates were elected unopposed soon after the deadline for withdrawal of nominations ended on March 19. — PTI

BRIEFLY

Maoists blast railway station in Andhra
HYDERABAD: Maoists blasted a railway station in Vizianagaram district of Andhra Pradesh yesterday, the police said today. A group of seven Maoists, including three women, went to the Gumada railway station of eastern railways and exploded it after planting gelatin sticks. The extremists asked four railway staff on night duty to come out from the station before blasting it. — PTI

Flight delayed due to snag
CHENNAI: Air Deccan’s Chennai-Delhi flight was grounded this morning shortly before it was to take-off at the airport here following a technical snag. Airport sources said the flight with 140 passengers was set for taxing, when the pilot noticed the snag while switching on the engines. The passengers were asked to disembark. — PTI

Security for UP invigilators
LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh government today directed all district police chiefs to ensure security of invigilators on exam duty in the wake of the Bijnore incident, in which an exam supervisor was shot dead by a student. Home secretary Mahesh Kumar Gupta said district police chiefs had been directed to ensure strict action against anti-social and mafia elements disturbing the ongoing UP school board examinations.— PTI

4 businessmen kidnapped
AGARTALA: Four businessmen were kidnapped by the Borok National Council of Tripura insurgents from a remote tribal hamlet in Jampui hills, the police said today. A group of six small businessmen went to Fuldonshai village in the hills to sell their wares yesterday. When they were returning by a lorry, a group of about 12 insurgents armed with country-made firearms stopped the vehicle at Tulangsang and kidnapped them. — PTI