New Delhi, December 15
India is reconciled that it will never be accommodated in the NPT as a nuclear weapons state and has started advocating a broader treaty focusing on complete nuclear disarmament.

“We should not expect anybody agreeing to amending the NPT as it will open a pandora’s box…there are other countries also which would like to be included in NPT as nuclear weapons states,’’ high-level sources said here today. New Delhi is quite convinced that no one would agree to amending article 9 of the NPT to shift from 1968 to 1974 the date for having conducted a nuclear test.

The sources were commenting on a report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), which was released today. Former National Security Adviser (NSA) Brajesh Mishra was one of the 15 Commissioners of the commission, set up jointly by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his Japanese counterpart Fukuda in June 2008. Another India, Gen (Retd) V R Raghavan served on the Advisory Board of the commission. The commission members had visited India in October and held discussions with NSA M K Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao.

The voluminous report of the commission admits the reality that India, Israel and Pakistan (the three elephants outside the room) would not join the NPT as nuclear weapons states nor would the NPT admit the three as nuclear weapons states. It advocates applying equivalent non-proliferation and disarmament obligations to the three.

However, New Delhi’s contention is that the report differentiated nuclear histories and records of all the nuclear armed states.

They observed that despite some positive elements, the report has missed an important opportunity to advance the debate on nuclear disarmament. It does not take some promising ideas on reducing the role of nuclear weapons, on building partnerships with non-NPT states and on multilateral negotiations on disarmament to their logical conclusion. The focus remains on what can be done to shore up the NPT in the run up to the 2010 conference on nuclear disarmament, the sources regretted.

On the disarmament process, the report advocates a staged approach without setting a final deadline. This has disappointed India which wants a timeline to be set up for complete dismantling of atomic weapons as outlined in the Rajiv Gandhi plan for complete nuclear disarmament.

In line with India’s position, the report advocates delegitimisation of nuclear weapons and suggests that the eight ‘nuclear armed states’ adopt a no-first use or modified no-first use policy. Just as India feels, the report endorses the idea of a nuclear weapons convention as the preferred instrument for nuclear disarmament and the conference on disarmament as the preferred forum for negotiations on nuclear disarmament. India does not agree with the idea of a unified platform for all non-NPT states as mentioned in the report. Its contention that civil nuclear agreements would lead to proliferation has also not gone down well with New Delhi.

New Delhi, December 15
Taking exception to the Law Commission describing surrogacy as an “industry,” the Supreme Court today sought to know why the government had not put in place laws to deal with the practice of Indian women renting wombs to foreign nationals.

A Bench comprising Justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly said the judiciary was perhaps resolving only a fraction of the problems arising from surrogacy as most of the cases did not come up before the courts. The government must have taken the initiative to regulate the practice as a debate has been raging on the issue for over three years, the Bench felt and wanted to know from Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium details about the number of surrogate children born in the country.

Observing that it was unfortunate that everything was measured with the yardstick of revenue, the Bench nevertheless asked the Subramanium about the inflow of foreign exchange into the country owing to the practice. The Solicitor General said the details were not readily available, but cited a Law Commission report that had described surrogacy as an industry. “With due respect to the Law Commission, you cannot call it industry,” the Bench said.

The court made the observations during the hearing of a case relating to a German couple - Jan Balaz and Susanne Lohle - who had a twin in January last year through a Gujarati woman, Martha Khristi. Subramanium said the children could be issued Indian passports only after getting an assurance that they would get the citizenship of Germany or some country. The External Affairs Ministry was in touch with the German Embassy to know whether it was possible for Germany to grant citizenship to the kids as a one-time exception. German laws do not recognise surrogacy.

The court asked senior counsel L Nageshwar Rao - who appeared for Balaz - to file an affidavit by tomorrow stating whether the couple was interested in adopting the children to enable their travel to Germany. The court would hear the case again on December 17.

Counsel Rao this case was complicated as the eggs for the pregnancy had been donated by another Indian woman (unnamed) as Susanne Lohle was not in a position to give her eggs. Under the Indian law, the woman whose eggs are involved in the pregnancy is recognised as the biological mother and her husband becomes the father. In this case, the surrogacy agreement was between Martha Khristi and the German couple.

New Delhi, December 15
A change of guard in the BJP, earlier slated before the end of this year, appears unlikely in 2009. The schedule for electing a new president, earlier to be announced today, December 15, has been put off with no fresh dates announced, though there were indications that it is unlikely to be announced before January 15 next year.

Sources in the BJP explained, “President’s election cannot be held before at least half the states have completed organisational polls and so far not even a third states have completed these.

This means that Rajnath will continue to steer the party in 2009. Earlier soon as RSS made it known that it had chosen Maharashtra BJP chief Nitin Gadkari to succeed Rajnath, he offered to announce Gadkari’s succession. But Sangh preferred a formal election for Gadkari and had banked on the process completing before the end of this year.

But 2010 is another year and insiders feel a lot could happen between now and then. For one, the BJP leaders under pressure from RSS after their failure in the 2009 general elections are banking heavily on their expected victory in Jharkhand assembly elections on December 23 to strengthen their sagging morale.

In addition L.K. Advani is likely to flaunt the Winter Session of Parliament as a proof of his success as a sober, moderate leader of stature, around whom the entire Opposition rallied. Advani gave an inkling of this while addressing his parliamentary party today.

He complimented his party MPs saying: “We have very ably and successfully discharged our role as the main opposition in forcing the government to discuss all the contentious issues. The entire Opposition stood united.”

New Delhi, December 15
Issuing a clarification on Union Home Minister P Chidambaram’s statement in Rajya Sabha yesterday over the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, the Home Ministry today said four cases were pending with the competent authority for sanction of prosecution and none of them related to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler.

The Ministry, in a statement, said Chidambaram had referred to the sole case against Tytler. “In one case after completion of investigation, chargesheet was filed in the court on September 28, 2007, and final report was filed in the court on March 28, 2009, which was under consideration,” the statement said.

No reference whatsoever was made to Jagdish Tytler while mentioning the four cases, the statement added. 

Bangalore, December 15
A thanksgiving gesture from the Karnataka government to express gratitude to BJP leader Sushma Swaraj for her role in facilitating a compromise between the two warring factions of the ruling BJP in the state has backfired with the targeted beneficiary of the move expressing annoyance at the impropriety of the state government’s decision.

Reacting to the Karnataka government’s step of including his name in the panel of lawyers representing the state in Delhi, Swaraj Kaushal, former Mizoram Governor and husband of Sushma Swaraj, said, “It is like appointing Gopal Gandhi (outgoing Governor of West Bengal) as the public prosecutor of West Bengal, or appointing Hansraj Bhardwaj (former Union Law Minister and current Governor of Karnataka) as an Advocate General.”

Talking to this reporter over phone from Delhi, Kaushal said he had been a Governor of Mizoram, a member of the Rajya Sabha and an Advocate General of Mizoram. “I had been a standing counsel of Karnataka in the 1980s during when I had handled a huge number of cases. There is no question of accepting inclusion of my name in the Karnataka government’s panel of lawyers for the Supreme Court. Neither me nor my wife had asked for any such thing from the Karnataka government,” Kaushal, who sounded clearly very upset by the move, said.

Guwahati, December 15
Enraged locals set fire to a portion of a hospital and heart research centre owned by controversial heart surgeon Dr Dhaniram Baruah at the Sonapur area in the outskirts of the city after the police had recovered two severed human heads in the vicinity of the hospital complex this afternoon.

A senior police official informed severed heads were recovered by the sniffer dog outside the boundary wall of the hospital complex and further investigation is on. The police picked up some hospital staff for interrogation.

As soon as the heads had been recovered, an angry group of locals went on a rampage inside the hospital complex and set fire to a portion of the building in presence of the police demanding arrest of Dr Baruah, who is now out of station. The mob linked the recovery of the human heads to the last Sunday’s gruesome murder of six of a family at Jogdol village near the hillock on which the hospital located.

Sensation was prevailing in the area since the murder came to the light. The police had recovered all the six family members, including headless bodies of two minors. Those, who were murdered using sharp weapons, were identified as Harakanta Doley, his wife Sapna Doley (40), their daughters Sabita (12), Punita (11), son Atul (9) and Harakanta’s six-year-old nephew Tukul. Bodies of Atul and Tukul were found headless.

New Delhi, December 15
The government today said it would strive to establish a National Security Guard (NSG) hub or an equivalent commando force in every state in due course to strengthen the national security apparatus.