New Delhi, November 28
India has denied that it supported the IAEA resolution censuring Iran for its clandestine nuclear programme under Washington’s pressure and hoped Tehran would now see the reason and co-operate with the UN nuclear watchdog.

Official sources said there was no question of New Delhi allowing any other power to influence its decision on issues of critical importance to the country.

The sources said India has been of consistent view that it does not want a nuclear weapons state in its neighbourhood. This view was articulated once again by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as recently as during his visit to Washington. New Delhi has also been emphasising from time to time that Iran, being a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), should cooperate with the agency.

The sources pointed out that this was not the first time that India had voted against Iran’s secret nuclear programme. It had done so in September 2005 and February 2006.

Asked if New Delhi’s move could affect its ties with Iran, they hoped Iran would appreciate the circumstances under which India had to vote against it at the IAEA governing body meet.

The sources underlined that India was opposed to any sanctions against Iran and had emphatically put forward its views in this regard at the IAEA meeting as well. “This resolution cannot be the basis of a renewed punitive approach or new sanctions.’’

New Delhi believes that the coming weeks should be used by all concerned to expand the diplomatic space and satisfactorily address all outstanding issues. “In recent months, we were encouraged by the new pathways of engagement that had opened up with Iran, including the recent meetings in Geneva and Vienna which gave rise to hopes of constructive and productive results,’’ they added. They were obviously referring to the dialogue between Iran and the group of 6, which includes the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.

The sources explained that the IAEA’s safeguards system is the bedrock of the international community’s confidence that peaceful uses of nuclear energy and non-proliferation objectives can be pursued in a balanced manner. The integrity of the system should be preserved. All member states of the IAEA must fully and effectively implement their safeguards obligations.

New Delhi, November 28
Within two weeks of the Home Ministry having sounded an alert about the leading military establishments being on the target of Pakistan militants, the Army has taken the first step to introduce modern methods to regulate entry of its personnel and visitors to its campuses.

As the first step, the Army has decided that the infantry training school at Mhow, Madhya Pradesh, will have biometric entry system. For the layman, entry and exit will only be allowed on finger print recognition and also a radio frequency card that will establish a person’s identity. A tender has been issued asking a private company to install the equipment at Mhow.

This was long overdue, said a source, adding that this would be expanded to other major campuses like the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, and the National Defence Academy, Pune. The process of entry would be stringent and will allow the Army to have a computer back-up of all person who visited Mhow.

At Mhow, the Army not only wants to check who is entering, but it will also have a system by which a controller can block the entry of any person, who has been issued an identity card and whose finger print is already registered.

It means if a person ends his work and has exited after his duty hours, his entry could be blocked by the controller. This is crucial for locations like the infantry school were strategic documents and maps are placed for training purposes.

At present, the entry to Army institutions is based of archaic system by which a sentry at the gate hardly has a clue about the identity of the person.

Hyderabad, November 28
Taking a lead in innovation in school education, Andhra Pradesh is planning to introduce filmmaking as part of the school curriculum.

“A healthy debate has started on inclusion of films into the curriculum. We will take feedback from educationists, film makers and general public and act accordingly,” state School Education Minister D Manikya Varaprasad said.

All aspects of filmmaking including script writing, editing and visualisation techniques would be taught to students to foster their creativity, he said adding that the modalities would be worked out in due course.

“There is no denying the fact that schoolchildren are generally sharp in grasping the issues through visual medium. Films will sharpen their creative and analytical skills,” the minister said.

Incidentally, Hyderabad is a permanent host for the biennial international children’s film festival. The event has been witnessing tremendous enthusiasm from schoolchildren, some of whom have even taken to filmmaking and their movies were screened at the festival.

“I personally feel that children should be taught about films at young age itself and cinema should be taught in schools just like history and geography,” the minister said.

During an “Open Forum”, organised as part of the16th International Children Film Festival (ICFF) here recently, several filmmakers, writers and campaigners for children’s films favoured introduction of films as part of school curriculum to make learning more entertaining and also informative.

Filmmaker Amol Gupte said children understood visual presentation of situations and conditions on par with the adults.

New Delhi, November 28
Principal correspondent for the Ludhiana Bureau of The Tribune Kanchan Vasdev has bagged this year’s Prabha Dutt Fellowship for Excellence in journalism.

The fellowship is given every year to mid-career woman journalists to encourage in-depth research and investigative stories.

In the ceremony that held today at the All-India Women’s Press Club in the Capital, Inder Malhotra, noted columnist and author, presented the fellowship to Kanchan.

Prabha Dutt’s daughters, Barkha Dutt and Bahar Dutt, famous television journalists, were also present on the occasion. Barkha Dutt (NDTV group editor) said, “This fellowship recognises good work and aims at encouraging it. This year, the fellowship amount has been raised to Rs 1 lakh. We hope that Kanchan will bring out an excellent report”.

Kanchan is currently heading the Ludhiana Bureau of The Tribune group of newspapers. She is the youngest female bureau chief of the newspaper.

A Masters in zoology from Punjabi University, Patiala, Kanchan had also won Investigative Journalist Award bestowed by the Press Club, Chandigarh, in 2006.

Through this fellowship, Kanchan aims to work on her project on the women left in the lurch by NRIs after bogus promises of marriage.

“These women have nowhere to go. Today, as many as 30,000 affected women wait for their visas and transfer papers, which may never arrive. My work will aim to revoke action from the government’s side.”

“Stringent rules have to be put in place so that any NRI never even thinks about victimising any more women,” she added.

She believes that women holding position of importance are duty-bound to encourage other women breaking the shackles.

Extremely sensitive to environment issues and women rights, she has highlighted women’s plight and environment degradation in her decade-long career. Her stories on the toxicity caused by Budda Nullah, a river transformed into a sewer drain in Ludhiana, moved the judiciary. Her poignant reporting on the condition of the children of a Punjab village, who burnt their legs when they accidentally stepped on industrial ash dumped on their playgrounds, caused an uproar, forcing the government to shut down the factory.

The fellowship, managed by the Sanskriti Pratishthan, was instituted in memory of Prabha Dutt, who was among India’s first few woman journalists. Dutt died at the young age of 40 in 1984 due to haemorrhage.

New Delhi, November 28
Law Minister M Veerappa Moily today asserted that the proposed Judicial Standards and Accountability law would ensure that “corruption does not even cross the minds” of judges in the higher judiciary.

Acknowledging that the Judges Inquiry Act, 1968, had failed to realise its objectives, Moily told a conference on judicial and legal reforms that the relevant Bill on accountability had been drafted with utmost care that “no person even with a shadow of corruption can become a judge.” Under the present Act, high court and Supreme Court judges could be removed only through impeachment in Parliament.

“A foolproof system has been worked out so that no judge can become corrupt even for a minute, even in the mind,” he said in his inaugural address at the daylong seminar organised by the Bar Association of India.

Moily was responding to jurists’ protests against the second and third round of inquiries, “formal or informal and in-house or outhouse,” into the complaints of corruption and land grabbing against Karnataka Chief Justice PD Dinakaran, whose proposed elevation to the Supreme Court had been put on hold. The complaint against the CJ had been confirmed by the report of the district collector concerned in Tamil Nadu and there was no point in further investigation, the legal experts contended.

The minister was, however, categorical that he would not comment on complaints against any specific individuals. Once there was a proper system and atmosphere, everything else would fall in place, he contended.

He said he had planned to come out with the proposed National Litigation Policy by November 30, but since he wanted to take the Cabinet, and thereby the entire government, also into confidence it had been delayed by about two weeks.

There has been a tremendous response from all union ministries to his queries on the number of pending cases filed by them and the proposed litigation policy would turn the government from that of a compulsive litigant to that of a selective and scrupulous litigant. This would help reduce drastically the number of pending cases as the government was the biggest litigant at present.

Moily said he was initiating all the judicial reforms in “secret” consultation with legal experts like former Chief Justice of India JS Verma, who was felicitated at the function, and after taking the entire legal fraternity into confidence.

Eminent Jurist Fali S Nariman, BAI President who chaired the inaugural session and was the Chief Guest at the plenary session, said he had no faith in the present Collegium system being followed for the appointment of judges to the higher judiciary.

PP Rao, Vice President of BAI, regretted that he was a major force behind bringing about the Collegium system, eliminating political interference, in the hope that it would be immensely helpful in improving the judiciary. “Now we find we were not all that correct. Our hopes are belied. The judiciary is at the cross-roads and if we do not rise to the occasion and help the judiciary, it will go down the drain.”

New Delhi, November 28
India cannot negotiate with Pakistan while having a gun pointed at its head, Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor said today, reacting to Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi accusing India of being “myopic”.

In an interview telecast on CNN-IBN today, Qureshi said India was being narrow-minded in not coming to the table for talks.

“I think you (India) are being myopic. You are being narrow-minded. You have to look at the broader picture and the broader picture demands cooperation and not confrontation,” he said at Port of Spain, where he is leading the Pakistani delegation at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the absence of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

He also said India had provided “inadequate” evidence to prosecute Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, who India has named as the mastermind of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

In Delhi, Tharoor retorted that any evidence that had to be unearthed against Saeed had to be done in Pakistan itself.

Surely the evidence is available in their country, where the man has been conducting his nefarious activities. So, it seems to me that in saying that the evidence is not enough, the Pakistani government is essentially saying that its own investigative capabilities are not what they should be, Tharoor said here.

On the demand to restart talks, Tharoor said there had to be adequate progress by Pakistan for India to return to the table. India had frozen all talks after the Nov 26-29, 2008 Mumbai carnage that claimed the lives of 166 persons, including 26 foreigners.

“We know that there is gun pointed at your head, but you still got to talk to us. Will you first get the gun removed from our head, then we will talk to you happily,” he said.

If we can see some real action on the two things that we have been asking for in a year, we would be very happy to persuade the public and parliament that we need to engage in serious talks. — IANS

Koderma (Jharkhand), November 28
There should be efforts as made by freedom fighter and socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan, to bring Maoists back to the mainstream, RJD chief Lalu Prasad said yesterday.

"Jayaprakash Narayan was successful in convincing the dacoits of Chambal to surrender. Similar efforts should be made to bring the Naxals back to the mainstream," Prasad told an election meeting here.

Stating that he was against aerial attacks on Maoists as innocent people could fall victim as well, he said, "not violence, only talks are the surest way of bringing about a solution."

Expressing disappointment over Congress not aligning with his party, but with the JVM-P of former Jharkhand chief minister Babulal Marandi, Prasad sought to know why the Congress tied up with a person who had an ‘RSS background’.

"They will realise later," he said. Prasad also alleged that the trading community affiliated to the BJP was behind the price rise as huge stocks of essential commodities were being hoarded in godowns. — PTI

Kolkata, November 28
The Maoists struck again on the Joint Action Force at Jangalmahal in the west Midnapore yesterday and killed two IRP jawans on the spot in the Pirakota forest area, while they were marching back to the camp after their route-combing operation against the Maoists.

According to reports reaching the state government, a group of 20-jawans of the para-military force, were returning back from the Pirakota forest area around 4 pm to their camps at Buripara, when two landmines, planted on the wayside, suddenly exploded.

Altogether 10 jawans were injured, while two of them died immediately and the remaining started firing at the Maoists. But with the quick falling of the darkness in the jungle area, the operation had to be stopped. The Maoists soon escaped into the forest. All injured jawans had been admitted to Midnapore Sadar Hospital.

The Joint Action Force yesterday launched combination operations in several villages at Lalgarh, Jhargram, Janalmahal and other areas but no Maoists could be arrested. The Home secretary, A Sen, said the combination operation by the Joint Action Force would continue, though the forces would vacate all school premises one after another, which they were occupying as their camps since the operation against the Maoists started about six months back. The jawans would be accommodated elsewhere in the vicinity and the suitable premises were already identified.

Chief secretary AM Chakraborty said there was no information about the visit of the central team to the disturbed areas at Khanakul and three other Maoists-infested districts. He said the DM, Hooghly, was asked to organise an all-party meeting at Khanakul for restoring peace and normalcy there. The police was also directed to take firm action against the law-breakers.

Union Minister Mukul Roy (TMC) and opposition leader in the Assembly Partha Chatterjee yesterday visited Khanakul and went to the house of Ananta Doloi, who was killed by the CPM during their area-capturing drive on Thursday. Roy also went to SSKM hospital and saw injured Khanakul thana officer-in-charge Sukumol Das who was injured by gun-shot during the clash between the CPM and the TMC.

The left front chairman Biman Bose requested the TMC leaders for participating in the peace-meeting at Khanakul, which the Hooghly DM was organising. He also appealed to the political parties to take part in the Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s soon-to-be-held, an all-party meeting.

Chandigarh, November 28
Concealment in LPG cylinders and fabricated cavity in the tail light of vehicles are among methods being increasingly used to transit smuggled narcotics across the country.

According to the Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), marble tile blocks are also being used to transit narcotics like - heroin, besides other known methods of concealment like vehicle dashboards, hollow space of rear door of cars, spare tyres and luggage with false bottom.

Information available with the DRI reveals that all major drug hauls in the country involving seizure of heroin during the past fiscal have been in Delhi, Punjab and Rajasthan, which points to the susceptibility of the International border with Pakistan. Heroin continues to be the most prominent drug that is being smuggled into India and then out of India.

The quantity of heroin seized in the Delhi-Punjab region during 2007-07 was 176 kg, followed by 271 kg in 2007-08 and 179 kg in 2008-09. The number of cases pertaining to these seizures registered was 16, 25 and 26, respectively. In 2008-09, the total quantity of heroin seized collectively by all law enforcement agencies across the country was 1,154 kg, out of which the DRI accounted for 248 kg.

Most of the heroin smuggled into India is of Afghan origin, which finds its way through the Indo-Pak border, mainly in the Punjab and Jammu sectors. The DRI analysis indicates that so far as heroin smuggling is concerned, India is used basically as a transit point.

Heroin is also smuggled out of India in smaller consignments through various air routes as well as courier parcels, as is reflected by seizures at airports and ports by the DRI as well as Customs.

New Delhi--Hong Kong and Macao, New Delhi-Kathmandu, Chennai--Kuala Lumpur, Hyderabad--Kuala Lumpur and Chennai- China are some of the air routs identified by the DRI being used for the purpose of smuggling narcotics.

In addition, there have been seizures of courier parcels at airports containing heroin that were destined for the USA, South Africa, Spain, and Canada. These parcels were booked for ferrying items like tea, religious icons and pictures, books, electronic items, and machine parts.

Other drugs like hashish, ganja and ketamine or “party drug” popular with youths of some countries are also being actively smuggled. The Indo-Nepal border and some ports are known transit points for such drugs.

Seizures and arrests by the DRI also reveals that gangs and syndicates involved in smuggling narcotics are also associated with smuggling fake Indian currency, illicit weapons and SIM phone cards of some foreign countries.

New Delhi, November 28
With every 94 persons against a population of one lakh suffering from mental retardation, India is presently home to more than 10 lakh mentally challenged. However, the country has just 10 recognised mental health institutes offering courses to produce medical experts who can then care for the retarded.

In a significant admission in the Parliament this week, the health ministry said only 10 institutes offering M Phil in Clinical Psychology were currently recognised by the Rehabilitation Council of India, the regulatory body for the sector.

These institutes are located in eight states, with primary concentration in South west. While Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh have two institutes each; Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Karnataka, Delhi and Manipur have one each.

That explains the mounting mental health burden in the country, where males are found to be more vulnerable to mental challenges than females. The health ministry data shows 115 males per one lakh people suffer from mental retardation as against the corresponding figure of 72 for women.

Analysis of records furnished to the Rajya Sabha in reply to a question on the subject by Shreegopal Vyas and Bal Apte, shows that the number of mentally challenged in several northern states is more than the national average of 94 (for every one lakh people).

While Lakshadweep is home to the highest number of such people at 249 per one lakh population; Goa, Kerala and Mizoram follow with 240, 194 and 127 cases, respectively.

Also in the top 10 states which surpass the national average when it comes to the numbers of mentally retarded are Himachal Pradesh with 118; Punjab with 116; West Bengal with 114, Tamil Nadu with 113. Uttarakhand, Jammu, Kashmir and Orissa are bracketed with 104 persons per one lakh population being mentally challenged.

One of the striking features of the statistics on mental retardation is the huge gap between the numbers of males and females suffering from mental challenges. The burden is almost 50 per cent higher for men, though there appears no significant difference between the rural and urban burden of mental retardation in India.

The average number of mentally challenged in urban India is 100 per one lakh persons; the figure for rural India is lower at 92 per 100000 persons.

New Delhi, November 28
With a view to strengthening the growing Indo-French ties, the French Embassy, in association with Culturesfrance, Louis Vuitton and the government of India, today inaugurated French festival ‘Bonjour India’ here today.

An exhibition focusing on humanist and philanthropist Albert Kahn and his life experiences with India has been put on display at the Modern Art Museum.

The festival was inaugurated by French Ambassador Jerome Bonnafont. Other eminent guests present at the occasion were Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit and MP Karan Singh. Structured in three well defined areas, the exhibition appeared to be a living iconic memoir, combining Albert Kahn’s idea of cultural diversity.

“Bonjour India will take off in 18 cities across India. It would be wonderful to discover old family ties through this exhibition. Especially, Elbert Kahn’s exhibition of this nature is truly meant to be enjoyed and cherished,” said the French Ambassador.

The Albert Kahn’s exhibition is a journey of India through a scenography of shots from the extraordinary collection of images commissioned and collected by Albert Kahn.

The festival will continue till February 2010 covering 18 cities. It will embrace exhibitions, concerts, literary meetings, film festivals, debates, conferences, food fests and economic, educational and scientific exchanges.

“The Government of India is planning to hold ‘Namaste France’ next year to showcase every facet of India in France. Such festivals pave way for more interaction between the two countries,” the French Ambassador said.