New Delhi, April 9
Patch –up efforts are on in the Jamiat-Ulma-e-Hind as the rift between its president Maulana Arshad Madni and general secretary Maulana Mahmood Madni has brought it on the verge of split.

The party stood by the Congress and opposed partition. After Independence it has been led by the family members of Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni.

After Independence, the Jamiat has come to the verge of split third time. First , Maulana Syed Ahmed Hashmi left the Jamiat in 1987 and formed another party. Second, in 1990s Maulana Fuzail had differences with its president Maulana Asad Madni and left the Jamiat to form the Markazi Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind.

The two leaders were not from the Maulana Asad Madni family.

Now, the third time if it splits the Jamiat may suffer a major loss, said Mohammad Adeeb, member of the Muslim Personal Law Board.

Adeeb met both the groups members to bring about rapprochement between the two.

According to sources, third time differences came to light when Maulana Arshad Madni tried to reconstitute central managing committee of the Jamiat. He did not nominated a single member of his family which didn’t go well with Mahmood. By doing this Arshad wanted to make the image of his family clean as there was allegation that Maulana Asad Madni had captured the Jamiat for his own benefits by taking his relatives into the party bodies.

According to the Jamiat constitution , the central managing committee doesn’t have powers to sack the president. They are all nominated. The Mahmood group’s decision to expel the president is unconstitutional, Adeeb said.

Former Jamiat president late Maulana Asad Madni got the constitution amended to include his family members in the Jamiat . He retained the post till death, sources said.

Refuting all charges Maulana Mahmood Madni said everything was done according to the constitution. The CMC can expel the president or any other member. Its members are elected. Differences between the group came to fore on March 6 when Maulana Arshad Madni dissolved the CMC. And reconstituted the CMC on March 14. “Only I and Arshad were the family members in the Jamiat. It’s false that we have captured the party”, he said.

The allegation against late Maulana Asad Madni has no basis. 

New Delhi, April 9
The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) today announced the start of a B.Tech programme in aeronautical engineering in an effort to keep pace with the growing aviation sector of the country.

The varsity signed an agreement with Pune based Aeronautical Engineering and Research Organisation (AERO) to develop course curriculum and facilitate the programme.

The four-year B.Tech programme aims to develop knowledge, awareness and professional skills in the discipline.

The delivery of the programme will be through both classroom and distance learning modes. The course would start in July 2009 from four centres across India, said IGNOU pro vice-chancellor Omprakash Mishra.

“The initiative aims at development of technical professionals in the area of aeronautical engineering through joint design by IGNOU and AERO,” varsity spokesman Ravi Mohan said.

With a student base of more than 1.5 million, IGNOU has a presence in over 34 countries besides India. — IANS

New Delhi, April 9
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued a notice to Delhi University (DU) following a public interest litigation (PIL) that has alleged objectionable references to the Hindu epic Ramayana in a textbook prescribed for graduate-level history students.

A division bench of Justices Manmohan Sarin and Manmohan issued the notice to the Delhi University vice-chancellor and the academic council to reply by May 19.

“The objectionable references in the book are hurting the feelings of Hindus. It is a violation of fundamental rights,” advocate Monika Arora, who filed the PIL, told IANS.

She was objecting to “Three Hundred Ramanayas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation “, an essay by A.K. Ramanujan on different folk traditions related to the Ramayana. It is a recommended reading for the students of second-year BA (honours) course in history.

Members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) youth wing have also opposed the essay in the history book as it mentions many versions of the narrative of Lord Ram’s life.—IANS

New Delhi, April 9
The Delhi High Court today pulled up the special cell of Delhi Police for illegally detaining two people and branding them as terrorists.

Justice SL Bhayana said that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) preliminary report on the arrest of Mohammed Moarif Qamar and Irshad Ali, both from Jammu and Kashmir, was against the police.

“The report is totally against you,” the judge said while giving the CBI four more months to file a conclusive report.

Qamar and Ali were arrested by the special cell from Mubarak Chowk on GT Karnal Road in North Delhi in February 2006. Both were alleged to be militants of Al-Badr group.

The CBI questioned several senior officials as the agency found proof to establish that the two were police informers.

While nailing several aspects of the probe by the police, the CBI in its investigations pointed out that statements of special cell sleuths contradicted one another. Some of the low-rung officials in the Intelligence Bureau (IB) were also questioned, the CBI said.

Sufian Siddiqui, counsel for Qamar and Ali, has already given an undertaking before the court that his clients would not be filing any bail plea and would await the court’s ruling on the matter.

Last year, the high court pulled up the CBI for not investigating the matter properly.

“If this is your conduct, what can I say about the local police? At whose instance are you working? You are not doing an in-depth probe into the allegations but only beating around the bush,” justice SN Dhingra said hearing the case last year.

The court was also irked when the agency sought some more time and observed, “The pace at which you are working means this case will take 20-25 years like other high profile cases you have investigated. The liberty of the accused is in jeopardy as he is behind bars for the past 20 months because of you.”

The CBI investigations, as suggested in the first status report, clearly point at a nexus between the IB and special cell in framing Qamar and Ali.

Apart from Delhi Police, an inspector from IB, Majid Din, has also been found involved in the abduction and illegal detention of the two Kashmiris. — IANS

New Delhi, April 9
The Delhi Police crime branch has busted an international internet phishing racket and unearthed a fraud to the tune of about Rs 34 lakh .Three persons, including two Nigerian citizens,have been arrested. The accused Nurul Huda Khan, Ibimina Joshua and Fellex Awatefe were involved in withdrawing money from account holders of private banks through internet banking by using their personal details.

Anil Shukla, DCP (crime and railways) said that the accused used to send e mails to internet banking users seeking personal details, including personal identification number (pin). The mail used to carry the logo of the bank, to make the account holders believe that the e mail had been sent by the bank. ‘’The mails were usually short and asked customers to furnish details to enable the bank provide them with better services,’’ said Shukla and added that the link provided in the e mail connected the customer to a pseudo site not actually managed by the bank. As a result, using the details, the accused use to transfer huge sums of money to another account from where it was withdrawn instantly using ‘self’ cheques or ATM cards.

New Delhi, April 9
Expanding the ambit of investigations into the killing of city-based businessman Arun Gupta, Delhi Police on Wednesday quizzed his brothers-in-law and some women who allegedly had intimate ties with him.

“We have quizzed Sneh and his brother Dinesh Mittal in the morning and some women, but no breakthrough has been reached,” said a senior police official.

“In our investigations, we have found Gupta had intimate relations with some women. His personal and family relations are under scrutiny,” he added.

Gupta, 47, was shot dead on Monday morning by three unidentified motorcycle-riding assailants barely a few metres from his home in Kalkaji, south Delhi, while he was on his way to his electronic goods shop at Bhagirath Palace in Old Delhi.

The assailants waylaid Gupta’s WagonR car near a pastry shop flagging him to roll down his car window. As soon as he did so, one of the assailants got down from the bike and pumped two bullets in Gupta’s head, killing him.

Gupta’s wife Sadhna, after Arun Gupta’s gunning down, alleged her brothers Sneh and Dinesh Mittal could be behind the murder due to a property row.

“They had threatened to kill my husband over a property dispute and no one else could be behind the murder,” she said.

According to the police, after the death last year of Madan Lal Mittal, the father-in-law of Gupta, the Gupta family and the Mittals were not on good terms.—IANS

New Delhi, April 9
Five persons have been killed in separate road accidents on the Capital roads since last night. Two call centre employees were killed on the spot after their bike collided with a dumper at the Kalindi Kunj red light at 1.50 in the morning today. The deceased were identified as Dinesh Kumar of Hapur and Jagdev of Shamboli.

Noida, April 9
Barely a day after three firing incidents shocked Delhi, two more such cases on the outskirts of the Capital have left a former airhostess dead and a senior citizen injured.

Sheeba Thomas, 24, a former airhostess with an international airlines, was shot dead late on Tuesday by four unidentified assailants in Sector-31, Noida, around 11.30 p.m.

The police said that the assailants on two motorbikes waylaid Thomas’ car and spoke to her for a while after which one of the men drew a revolver and pumped a bullet into her chest from point blank range.

The men escaped from the scene.

Police said that the victim was originally from Nagpur. Her parents are reported to be abroad.

“It could be a fallout of a love affair. We have detained her boyfriend and his friend and they are being questioned,” said a senior police official.

The police have ruled out robbery behind the murder motive.

Unidentified robbers opened fire at a senior citizen shortly before midnight on Tuesday, when he tried to stop them from stealing his bike near Amity University in Sector-44, Noida.

He was admitted to Army Research and Referral Hospital, where his condition was stated to be stable.

On late Monday three people suffered bullet injuries in a suspected case of gang rivalry in Ashok Vihar of Northwest Delhi. According to the police, five rounds were fired near a market.— IANS

New Delhi, April 8
A day after a man bled to death from his gunshot wounds in a city hospital after being turned away from two others, hospital managements claimed today that saving lives was their top priority.

Arun Gupta, 47, an electronics goods trader, died yesterday after being shot by three unidentified men near his home in South Delhi’s Kalkaji area. His son rushed him from one hospital to another but both refused to admit him, evidently for fear of being embroiled in a medico-legal case.

Gupta was finally taken to the Holy Family Hospital. But it was too late and doctors declared him dead.

As newspapers readers and others reacted with shock, hospital managements said human life was paramount.

“Life saving is the foremost duty of a doctor and a hospital. In accident or medico-legal cases (MLC), all that the doctor has to do is to fill the injury sheet, which in any case is a part of the assessment of the patient,” said BK Rao, chairperson of the board of management and head of the critical care unit of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

“Doctors should not be afraid of getting involved in such cases. Their priority should be to save the person’s life,” Rao told IANS.

According to officials, the hospital gets about 125 patients a day in its casualty department. Of these, five per cent are MLC cases.

Added Dilpreet Brar, chief administrator of Max Healthcare, “I don’t want to comment about other hospitals, but if we get a patient who needs emergency life saving treatment, we will give it to him.

“Medico-legal cases keep happening. That does not stop us from saving a person’s life first and then looking into the MLC side by side.”

Authorities at the Apollo Hospital agreed and said that if it was a matter of saving a life, the hospital never refused an emergency case.

According to the hospital authorities, some hospitals hesitate in taking in MLC cases immediately because of financial implications. If a patient is not accompanied by a relative, the hospital administration might hold the medical staff responsible for unpaid bills, they fear. — IANS

New Delhi, April 9
Jamia Millia Islamia recently opened the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance (CCMG) that seeks to enhance integration and development of inter-disciplinary research in media in India and South Asia.

The Centre aims at contributing towards examining and developing new approaches, creating an archive of media research data which would be of value to researchers across South Asia and comparative perspectives across mediascapes and regions.

It would offer courses like – two-year MA programme in media governance and a Ph.D programme from the current academic session.

The MA course in media governance will examine issues pertaining to the inner workings and outer configurations of media. It seeks to attract graduates interested to make a career in media policy.

The applicants must have passed graduation with a minimum of 50% marks. Appearing candidates can also apply. The total number of seats will be 25. Applicants will have to appear for a written test. The short-listed candidates would then be interviewed.

The course would focus on the evolution of media environments, their contextual legal-administrative systems and an exposure to ideas and tools required to grasp the interplay of media and governance.

The Ph.D. programme will cover various aspects of the contemporary media, culture and governance with special focus on India and South Asia. The applicant must be an M.Phil in media studies, humanities or social sciences.

Meanwhile, the prospectus for the year 2008-09 along with the prescribed application forms for all courses at Jamia Millia Islamia University can be obtained from the university. The prospectus can be obtained from the faculty of engineering and technology and the faculty of education. Shortly, the sale of prospectus will also commence from a third site: the school gate. The prospectus and the application form can be downloaded from the university website jmi.nic.in.

New Delhi, April 9
A 10-year-old Delhi girl has won the hearts in Bollywood. Ananya Shukla is one of the favourite faces on small screen and a much sought after child actor in movies.

At 10, she has starred in two big budget Hindi films ,including “Bhram” and “Hijack”. With almost 16 small screen appearances, Ananya has also associated herself with social causes.

“Ananya may still be a child but she is concerned about what is happening in society. When she grows up, she will be a model citizen,” said Gurpreet, Ananya’s mother.

Instead of realising her limitations as being young, she does not underestimate her capacities in bringing a change in society. “I know I am very young, but my mother always pushes me into good causes. I think if we as human beings come together for noble causes, we can make this world a better place to live,” she said.

Acting is not the only genre that interests the child artist. With two complete years of training in kathak dance, Ananya loves dancing, reading and acting equally. “My mother manages my schedule; she does not let my studies get affected when I am off for my shooting,” she said. “I also take out time for the NGOs and other social causes on the weekends, when I do not have studies or shooting schedules.”

A great fan of Salman Khan, she went till the final round of the Boogie Woogie Celebrity Kids Dance Competition. Ananya understands that being young she gets preferential treatment from the crews of the television and film units. “Crews are lenient with me but I want to learn more and so I convey that I am fine if they shout at me on my flaws,” she said.

Out of the upcoming films Ananya is very excited about, “Rama-The Saviour”. “I enjoyed shooting for this film as there were a lot of kids shooting with me whom I could play with,” she said. “We had fun shooting with different animals.” Her upcoming films also include “Hello Zindagi”. 

New Delhi, April 8
Hearth is no longer the home. For millions of Indians living in cities across the country, home is where the gadget is.

Smart homes, in which everything right from the curtains, kitchen ware, fitness corner, air conditioners to the cosy little private theatre in the basement springs to life at the click of a switch, is the in thing in India now.

The buzzwords in Indian homes are greater technological awareness, finer aesthetics and heightened concern for the environment. Almost all home appliances in the market are designed to save power.

According to interior stylists, the booming economy, rising disposable incomes, increased stress and 24X7 work hours have turned Indians into complete homebodies. They prefer to spend as much time as possible at home.

Consequently, homes have become microcosms of what luxury hotspots outside have to offer: quality entertainment, holistic health services, gourmet cuisine, high-end home amenities and accessories matched by cutting edge technology.

The bottom line is de-stressing without compromising on time.

“Indian homes are becoming smart. High net worth individuals are bringing five-star amenities of hotels like — sophisticated home theatres, expensive spas for rejuvenation and relaxation, accessories like ultra-luxury beds and the latest electronic gadgets into their homes,” Siddharth Shetty, managing director of a Mumbai-based company, Evavo Wellness, told IANS. His is the country’s first wellness firm that has brought a host of Shiatsu-based mechano-therapy products, based on the ancient therapy from Japan, to India.

However, the hottest products in lifestyle marts across India are automated curtains or glystro, which operate either by wired switches, home automation systems or remote controlled devices. Some of them are also computer-generated and can be operated from a distance of 20 metres. Automatic curtains allow the user to open and close curtains manually without damaging the system or fabric.

“With the number of working couples on the rise, automated home solutions have become the need of the hour. Since we live in a digital age, it is only natural that some solutions need to be available at the tip of your finger,” Emmanuel Cantragel, general manager of the French home product company Somfy Ltd, told IANS.

Somfy specialises in automated blind management systems for Indian homes. According to Cantragel, climate is a major constraint in India and only an intelligent home can reap the benefits of Indian climate - by using sunlight as an alternative source of energy and electronic gadgets to control the harmful spin-offs of Indian climatic extremes.

The company, has found a ready market for its automatic solar-protection curtains that trap harmful rays of the sun and prevent direct sun rays from entering, as well as blinds, shutters and awnings in tier II cities like Pune and Chandigarh. The company’s business has grown by about 30 per cent in the last five years.

Prices of its 16 automated remote-controlled home accessories vary from Rs 8,000 for simple motorised blinds to Rs 20,000 for the sophisticated ones. Glystro motorised curtains cost Rs 60,000 and above.

Automated and solar protection curtains, according to Cantragel, can save up to 40 per cent energy because they reduce the use of air conditioners at home, Cantragel said.

Renu Bansal (name changed), wife of a Mumbai-based businessman has a room on the second floor of her villa in Mumbai developed into a home theatre. “We built it last year. The experience of watching a movie in a home theatre is amazing,” says Bansal. The theatre, which resembles a mini PVR facility, is done up in red, black and beige and fitted with a projector and sound processor and a proper cloth screen. The seats are PVR gold class reclining seats.

“It can seat 11 people,” Bansal told IANS. The theatre was built by Delhi-based interior designer Himanshu Kumar. His company, Mini Theatres, designs home theatres across metros in the country and even for homes in South Asia.

The price of his mini theatre range from Rs 120,000 to Rs 1 million, depending on the kind of space Kumar has to convert into a theatre and the accessories.

Mini Theatres, according to Kumar, is one of the fastest growing home theatre designing firms in India. In 2007-08, Kumar designed more than 25 home theatres in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune Chandigarh and Gurgaon. “Almost every villa or bungalow in Delhi and Mumbai has basement space which can be converted into a mini theatre,” says Kumar. — IANS

New Delhi, April 9
Stage seems set for the return of the hot summer climes in Delhi with the mercury, continuing its upwards movement, rising to 35 degrees Celsius today.