New Delhi, September 20
In a significant development on the right to education debate, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has said states need not wait for the central legislation to implement right to education, which is already enshrined in the Constitution.

Adopting the draft resolution on the subject, the NHRC has urged the centre to have a strict time frame for implementation of the Right to Education Act. The target age group, the commission has said, should be 0 to 18 and not 6 to 14 years as it is now.

In its present form, the right to education bill drafted by the human resource development ministry targets children aged 6 to 14 years - the group most vulnerable to child labour. Census data says there are 1.26 crore child workers in this age group in India and 1.34 crore children in this age bracket are out of school.

The NHRC, however, argues against age segmentation for the realisation of right to education. It also challenges the bill’s provision of penalising parents for not sending children to school. “Penalising parents is not the solution. Focus should be on making the school environment conducive for child’s growth,” feels the commission, which has said in its draft resolution that segmentation can at best be based on the level of education, not age.

“Care and education should be the focus areas for 0-6 age group. For children between 14 and 18 years, the stress should be on vocational training,” the commission has held, after conducting national-level consultations with experts on the subject.

The cabinet referred the right to education bill on August 8 to the group of ministers. Earlier, it had fallen out of favour with the law ministry that objected to some of its ambiguous provisions. After analysing the present contents of the bill, the NHRC also feels it needs refinement to do away with ambiguities.

In its draft recommendations, the commission has said that the provision of having 25 per cent seats for poor children in private schools should be made mandatory and should not be subject to reimbursements. “Also, such reservation should be extended beyond class I,” feels the commission.

The NHRC resolution, which minutely assesses the provisions of the draft bill, further calls for categorical elucidation of terminologies used in the bill like “quality education, free and compulsory education, norms and standards.”

“Also although minimum standards for implementation of right to education have been laid out in the schedule of the bill, they talk mostly of infrastructure and not quality. This is not a happy situation,” the commission’s feels.

Experts who worked with the NHRC on the subject further add that accessibility is a critical aspect of right to education if it has to be made universal. “Efforts should be made to increase the coverage of SSA and extend its scope up to secondary education. But we must also remember that SSA can’t be a substitute to the formal education quality norms,” they say, calling for effective regulatory and evaluation mechanisms to be part of the draft bill to ensure implementation and quality assurance to education.

New Delhi, September 20
Signalling a shift in the Indian government’s mindset, defence minister A.K. Antony today said the government would consider allowing 49 per cent foreign direct investment (FDI) in the defence sector. However, this will be examined on a case-to-case basis, said the minister.

Antony’s remarks assume significance as he has in the past expressed anguish at how India continued to rely on imports to meet its defence equipment needs.

This consideration of allowing more foreign stake in India-based companies will not mean a blanket permission. Antony said they will stick to the policy of allowing 26 per cent FDI in Indian defence sector. “We will consider allowing 49 per cent FDI only on a case-to-case basis, if the industry is able to convince us,” he said in a seminar organised by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) on the subject of the new defence procurement policy (DPP) here.

Almost all major companies of Europe and the US are vying for a share in the huge and fast growing Indian defence equipment market. In the next five years it is believed that the Indian defence outlay will be to the tune of $130 billion, of which over $45 billion will be for defence acquisitions.

However, some of these foreign companies have openly expressed that they were not finding Indian partners to match the scale of investment, besides facing shortage of skilled manpower. The ASSOCHAM was one of the bodies that had demanded 49 per cent FDI as this would aid absorption of latest technologies.

The new DPP came into force from September 1. Assuring transparency in the new DPP, Antony said every industry will get the tender details.

He told assembled top-bosses of the industry that the new DPP contained significant changes from the earlier one promulgated in 2006. This included broad details of the trial methodology forming part of the request for proposals. The suppliers (called vendors in the defence parlance) will now be aware at the outset of the modalities by which their products would be evaluated.

The results of the evaluations, along with the reasons if any, for the disqualifications, will now be communicated in writing.

Under the “offset policy” of the DPP, foreign suppliers getting a defence contract worth over Rs 300 crore, will have to plough back 30 per cent of the deal back into Indian defence industry. Indian firms need to just meet the relevant guidelines specified by the government.

Vivek Lall, chairman, ASSOCHAM defence committee and Sajjan Jindal, ASSOCHAM chairman, were among those who spoke at the meet.

Lucknow, September 20
Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) president Rita Bahuguna Joshi today filed an FIR against the state chief secretary and other senior officers for attempting to destroy evidence of misappropriation of government funds running into several crores in the sapling plantation drive in Bundelkhand.

The complaint formally lodged at the Hazratganj police station today is based on the findings of the party’s state chairman of the NREGA monitoring committee Sanjay Dikshit.

It demands appropriate action against ministers, senior bureaucrats and field-level officers who are reportedly pressurising the people who had helped a Congress verification drive of the ambitious plantation drive in the region during which massive bungling has been discovered.

Following physical verification in a mere 18 places in four of the seven districts where the plantation drive was carried out, the UPCC team led by Dikshit has unearthed misappropriation to the tune of  Rs 323.93 lakh.

The state chief secretary on July 1 had announced an ambitious programme of planting 10 crore saplings in the seven districts of Bundelkhand at the cost of Rs 409.07 crore of which Rs 218.56 crore was to come from the NREGA budget.

The remaining resources to the tune of Rs 90.21 crore were to be procured from the state’s budget and the rest Rs100.51 crore from the departmental budgets of the departments of forest, rural development, horticulture, PWD, irrigation, power and local-self government and even through public participation.

The FIR alleges various department claming to have exceeded their targets within a month. For instance, in its progress report, the forest department claims to have planted within a month 4.52 crore saplings against its target of 4.5 crore.

However, following reports of huge bungling in the special plantation drive, a 15-day physical verification drive was conducted out by a team led by the chairman of the state’s NREGA monitoring cell Sanjay Dikshit in Belawahat Nyay Panchayat of Lalitpur district points out the complaint.

Besides finding far less number of saplings than officially claimed by the forest department, the physical verification drive also found irregularity in the manner smaller pits were dug and no arrangement were made for nurturing of the saplings due to which the survival rate turned out to be abysmal.

For instance, Sihori village of Panwadi Block in Mahoba, the forest department claimed to have planted 2.20 lakh plants over an area of 200 hectares. The physical verification drive found only 76,000 plants. In this single instance, the forest department has pocketed approxiately Rs 60 lakh, claims the FIR.

Jaipur, September 20
With illegal Bangladeshi migrants in focus after a series of serial blasts in various parts of the country, including Jaipur, this city has become the first city in the country to clear all illegal colonies of Bangladeshi migrants, where thousands resided since decades.

The police operation, that went on for three months after the bomb blasts in May this year, has now started clearing Ajmer region where thousands of such migrants are living in serious violation of the Foreigners Act.

More seriously, they were suspected to be harbouring HUJI, SIMI or Indian Mujahideen terrorists. Terrorists often use their colonies as perfect hiding place where they easily gel with the look-alike community members, as was revealed during investigation of the Jaipur blasts.

An estimated 6,500-7,000 Bangladeshis were residing illegally in Jaipur at the time of the blasts.

What shocked the cops were heaps of real identity documents recovered from the illegal migrants. Many had got ration cards, driving licences, voter I-cards and even PAN cards. They claimed they were from West Bengal or Assam.About 300 illegal Bangladeshi have been deported since May this year after the serial blasts, killing 62, rocked the Pink City. The immense police pressure led about 2,500 others to leave the state voluntarily.

"These persons, identified in a special survey, were living at Bagrana, Gillgate, Manoharpura Kachhi basti, and were believed to be helping terrorists, besides indulging in criminal activities," said ADGP- Rajasthan (planning and welfare) M.K. Devarajan, who is supervising the operation.

About 4,000 migrants are said to be living under assumed identities, "well-supported" by fake or genuine Indian nationality documents, in Ajmer, he said. Massive house-to-house search and verification is on in the district.

It all began when blast investigations indicated that one of the perpetrators, who bought a cycle used in the blast, spoke Hindi with a Bengali accent.

Guwahati, September 20
As many as 15 miscreants died and 30 others fell seriously ill after getting “suffocated in an atmosphere of insufficient oxygen” precipitated by hydrocarbon spill when they tried to pilfer high speed diesel (HSD) from a railway wagon between Rangapahar and Dhansiri stations in Karbi Anglong hill of Assam near Assam-Nagaland border today.

District police superintendent K.K Sharma confirmed that two cadres of the Naga rebel group, the NSCN-IM, were among the dead. The police recovered eight bodies from the incident site while some more bodies were removed by the miscreants. About 500 empty plastic gallons were also recovered from the spot.

According to the police, miscreants tried to break open a wagon resulting in the spill. Railway spokesperson Samir Goswami said the incident occurred when a goods train carrying over 48 wagons of HSD from Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) in Golaghat district of Assam to Mugalsarai in Bihar was stopped by the miscreants after it left Rangapahar station late last night.

He stated that the guard of the train informed the control room through his mobile phone about the interception. The Railway control room in turn informed the police. The train later reached Dhansiri station in the wee hours today. The NRL sends out its products - petrol, HSD, aviation turbine fuel and kerosene - through Railway wagons from its marketing terminal at Numaligarh.

Dr S.K Choudhury, a senior chemistry professor, stated that the deaths might have been due to suffocation as volume of oxygen in the atmosphere might have drastically come down after there was spill of petroleum fuels. The police informed that pilferage of fuels by miscreants from railway wagons frequently takes place in the area and several miscreants had been arrested on earlier occasions also.

Bhubaneswar, September 20
The situation in the flood-hit Orissa continued to be grim with lakhs of people marooned in 15 out of the total 30 districts today as major rivers, including Mahanadi, caused at least 31 breaches.

The breaches on the embankments of Mahanadi and its branches in the delta have affected over 10 lakh persons in 15 districts, revenue and disaster management minister Manmohan Samal said, adding the Army was asked to stand by for rescue and relief work.

The state government has sought five more helicopters from the Centre as one of the two choppers already provided had developed technical snag, he said.

Earlier, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik reviewed the situation arising out of the floods and preparedness to deal with it. He also undertook an aerial survey of the affected areas from where about 90,000 persons were evacuated to safer places.

The breaches in the embankments in the delatic plains were caused by surging waters of the swollen Mahanadi, which was being fed by water from the Hirakud reservoir in western Orissa, official sources said.

As many as 46 of the 64 sluices of Hirakud dam had been opened to discharge over 6.93 lakh cusec water even as Angul, Kendrapara, Puri, Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur and Jajpur districts faced the deluge, they said.

The road link between Bhubaneswar and Puri as well as Cuttack and Paradip was disrupted due to major breaches at several places.

Light vehicles and two-wheelers were not allowed to ply on Puri-Bhubaneswar road due to a breach by Debi river near Pipili, the sources said. — PTI 

BRIEFLY

Roorkee
Ruckus at Roorkee rly station: There was a ruckus at the local railway station here following a clash between two groups of youths. According to police sources, a heated exchange took place between the groups, which soon turned into a violent clash at the platform. The police rushed to the scene and arrested three persons. It recovered one countrymade pistol and two sharp-edged weapons from them. A case has been registered. — TNS