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KCR gives ultimatum to Centre
Cold wave sweeps North India
BJP elated over J’khand scenario
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5 years on, pain of killer tsunami lingers on
Testing times likely for Yeddy, Dinakaran
Maoist violence, Koda scam shook the state
Unique event to remember couplet-king Ghalib
Thulir schools out to empower the deprived
He uses RTI to fight corruption, give farmers their due
ULFA head sent to judicial custody
Pravin Mahajan may be shifted to govt hospital
Girl’s Murder
Goa eve-teasing: Taxi driver held
One killed by train robbers
Three policemen suspended
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KCR gives ultimatum to Centre
Hyderabad, December 26 “We will wait for the Union government’s announcement till Monday. If it fails to respond, we will go for an indefinite bandh. The statehood movement has reached a decisive stage and no one can stop now,” Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief K Chandrasekhar Rao said here. He was speaking to reporters after a meeting of the Joint Action Committee (JAC) comprising representatives of the ruling Congress, TRS and rebels of actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party (PRP). Pressure is mounting on the main opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) to join the JAC. In a related development, all 13 ministers from Telangana region, who resigned yesterday on the issue, will leave for Delhi on Monday to meet the Central leaders and keep up pressure on the statehood issue. “The latest statement of Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has created confusion in the minds of Telangana people. We want clarity from the Centre and a time frame for creation of Telangana state,” the IT and communications minister K Venkat Reddy said after a meeting of Telangana ministers. The ministers have sought an appointment with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Tension continued to grip Telangana region as activists of pro-Telangana organisations, political parties and student organisations staged rallies and hunger strikes even as additional police and paramilitary forces were deployed in vulnerable areas. Over 200 companies of paramilitary forces and additional police forces from neighbouring states were being deployed in the region. A large number of policemen were positioned at Osmania University campus here, the epicentre of Telangana agitation where a group of students are on indefinite fast. There were road and rail blockades at some places. The South Central Railway (SCR) cancelled some short distance trains on Secunderabad-Kazipet, Kazipet-Dornakal and Secunderabad-Mudkhed routes while long distance trains were running late due to blockades and also due to the damage caused to signalling systems by protestors. TRS protestors also disrupted a film shooting involving popular hero Junior NTR, the grandson of late NT Rama Rao, in the old city area. The AP Road Transport Corporation, which suffered a loss of Rs 120 crore due to the agitation this month, has still not completely restored its bus services in the region.
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Cold wave sweeps North India
New Delhi/Jalandhar, December 26 Snowfall in higher reaches of Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir valley brought down temperatures in Delhi, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand where foggy conditions prevailed, Met officials said. Leh and Kargil districts were reeling under severe cold wave as minimum temperatures dipped to minus 19.4 and minus 14.0 respectively. Even day temperatures registered a steep fall with the two places recording a minimum of minus 2 degrees and 5.8, respectively. Srinagar recorded a low of minus 3 degrees celsius. However, there was a little improvement in Jammu as the city recorded a minimum of 6.8. The city had recorded a low of 4.7 yesterday. In Punjab, Amritsar saw a minimum temperature of 0.5 degrees. Adampur witnessed a slight rise in the mercury and remained at 2 degrees celsius. The temperature there yesterday was 0.8 degree celsius. In the Malwa belt, Bathinda recorded a minimum temperature of 4 degrees followed by Halwara which saw a low temperature of 5.2 degree celsius. Pathankot witnessed a slightly warm day with mercury remaining at 6.4 degree celsius. The high reaches of Himachal Pradesh remained under sub-zero temperature, while the lower areas had no respite from the shivering cold winds. Kaza in Lahaul-Spiti recorded night temperature of minus 16 degrees. Keylong, the headquarters of Lahaul-Spiti, had a night temperature of minus 11.4 degrees. The day also saw the national capital recording the season’s lowest temperature of 5.2 degrees celsius. People had to brave icy winds as mercury dipped 2.2 notches from yesterday’s 7.4 degrees. A thin layer of fog engulfed the city in the morning reducing the visibility to 700 m. However, flight movement was not affected. Two persons died in Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh. The met department at Adampur Air Force Station predicted partly cloudy to fair sky with fog in the morning and mist in the evening in the next 24 hours. It was also disclosed that the cold wave would intensify in the region in the coming days due to the western disturbance over the Northern side. “The winds are moving towards the North-Eastern side of the country, which is leading to disturbance over the northern region. Temperature would witness a rise only with the formation of clouds in the region bringing respite from chill in the weather. At the same time there are no chances of rain in the coming days as well,” the sources maintained.
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Testing times likely for Yeddy, Dinakaran
Bangalore, December 26 The recent challenge thrown at him by dissident MLAs led by the powerful Reddy brothers of Bellary has made sure that the CM steps into the coming year with loads of apprehension in his mind about what the dissidents may have in store for him next. Sporadic shows of defiance by dissident MLAs have already become a routine occurrence in Karnataka. The trend is likely to gain strength in the coming year leading to further erosion of power and authority of the Chief Minister. Another highly-placed man holding a constitutional position, who is anticipating more trouble for him during 2010, is Karnataka High Court Chief Justice P D Dinakaran. Having been divested of his judicial powers by the Supreme Court, the controversial High Court Chief Justice is also facing the possibility of losing his job as a notice for his impeachment has been admitted in the Rajya Sabha. Lawyers had already staged a violent protest against him and some of Dinakaran’s fellow judges also want him to refrain from exercising his administrative powers. All these are certain to make Dinakaran to look at the coming year with trepidation. While politics is likely to get murkier in 2010 and the cocooned world of judiciary too is likely to face some hiccups as a result of the can of worms unleashed by the Dinakaran controversy, same cannot be said about the scientific and research institutions that dot the landscape of Bangalore. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), still savouring the discovery of water in the moon by a payload aboard its Chandrayan mission, has a number of satellite launches scheduled for 2010. The first of these launches is slated to take place in February when the ISRO will put GSAT, an experimental communication satellite, on a geosynchronous orbit. Launch of GSAT by a GSLV rocket will also be the first test of the indigenous cryogenic engine. Another important event in the ISRO calendar for next year is the launch of the Megha Tropique mission. Built in collaboration with France, the Megha Tropique satellite is aimed at studying the South West Monsoon. While Earth observation satellites launched by ISRO earlier had improved understanding of the monsoon rains in India, much about it had still remained in the realms of the unknown. As a result, predictions about monsoon rains have become a sort of a gamble. Data sent by the four payloads aboard the Megha Tropique satellite will help the Met department to predict the rains with more accuracy. The coming year will also see the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc) start offering graduate courses to students for the first time in its 100 years history. The course will be a unique blend of basic sciences, engineering and humanities. Students enrolling for the elite four-year programme will form a cadre of R&D personnel and fill in such vacancies available with the industry. A piece on the year ahead for Karnataka will remain incomplete without touching upon the performance of the IT sector in the state. IT sector in Bangalore and elsewhere in the country managed to withstand the crisis that followed the global recession. With the recession now on the wane, the IT companies are expected to do even better in 2010.
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BJP elated over J’khand scenario
New Delhi, December 26 Even as a delegation of BJP leaders was all set to meet GovernorKSankaranarayanan in Ranchi, the BJP rushed two of its senior-most leaders, former president Rajnath Singh and outgoing general secretary Ananth Kumar, to seal the deal with the JMM. It also swiftly elected its state president Raghuvar Das as the leader of the BJP legislature party in Jharkhand Assembly. On behalf of the legislature party, Das has given his letter of support to Soren to stake a claim to form the government. The BJP has 18 members in the newly elected state Assembly -the same as the JMM has. Five AJSU leaders, one member of another Jharkhand regional party, as also two of the JD (U) have also offered support, providing a clear majority in the 81-member Assembly. The party is in high spirits and sees this as a mark of success of new president Nitin Gadkari, whose assumption of office is being seen as a good augury for the party, which was earlier only on a losing spree. This notwithstanding the fact that the party and its alliance partner JD (U) members in the Jharkhand Assembly are nearly half the number together than the 36 MLAs it had in the outgoing Assembly. The party has forgotten the criticism that it had levelled against Soren and the UPA government. A BJP spokesman explained the present stand of the party. He said, “Given the fractured mandate in Jharkhand, we have come together for the sake of providing stability and development in the state. It is a deft political move by us to keep the Congress out of power.” He said, “In both major cases he has been acquitted, and the decision has been taken in the larger interest of the state. Jharkhand deserves a stable government which can focus on progress and development of the people.”
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5 years on, pain of killer tsunami lingers on
Chennai, December 26 Though people who have lost their kith and kin are attempting to put the tragedy behind them and start a new life, painful memories still haunts
them. Vasanthi of Akkaraipettai village in Nagapattinam district, who lost three daughters and a son, now has two children, thanks to the recanalisation surgery, but is still agonised by the loss of her children in the tsunami. “Thank God I did not lose my husband Viswanathan who had just returned home from the sea after fishing. He did his best to rescue the children, but could find only their bodies,” a sobbing Vasanthi said. Same is the story of many families in the coastal hamlets of Nagapattinam district, which alone accounted for 6,000 of the 8,000 deaths. The tsunami overnight left many young women as widows and children orphans. A woman at Devanampattinam village in Cuddalore district got married only in August 2004, but lost her fisherman husband
Bhoopathy. When he died, she was two months pregnant and now has a three-year-old kid. But the elderly villagers prevailed upon her to marry again. She joined a women's self-help group to manufacture incense sticks and now supports the family with her small contribution. Some of the villagers are totally disappointed as Bollywood actor Vivek
Oberoi, who visited them soon after the tsunami and promised to adopt and develop it into a model one, never turned up after that. Other voluntary agencies also did not come there due to the commitment made by
Vivek, Devaraj, a fishermen said. The district administration at
Nagapttinam, where over 16,000 houses were built, have tried to prevail upon the fishermen to occupy them, with no success, as fishermen say “we want a home not a house. The houses are away from the sea shore and we are not used to such an environment”. However, children in government sponsored orphanage at Sikkal near Nagapattinam are happy with their new environment. “We are being sent to school and given good accommodation, which we could not earlier afford,”
Poonkodi, an 11-year-old girl said. Orphanage authorities say queries still come in from parents about their missing children, but that they are unable to trace them even after five years. Even if somebody wants to adopt a child, we have to adhere to legal formalities, they
said. — PTI
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Maoist violence, Koda scam shook the state
Ranchi, December 26 The year started with signs of political instability as JMM supremo Shibu Soren had to step down after failing to enter the state Assembly, drubbed by a relative greenhorn in politics in the January 3 Tamar bypoll. Jharkhand came under President's Rule as no combination came forward to stake claim for the formation of a fifth government in as many years. Assembly elections were held towards the end of the year but the state again returned a fractured verdict in which JMM appeared to be holding the key to the new government. The Congress-JVM(P) alliance emerged the single largest group. The state also had to face the Maoist onslaught throughout the year. Naxalites kidnapped and beheaded Special Branch Inspector Francis Induwar in October, triggering a nationwide outrage and prompting the Centre to promise tougher actions to combat the growing threat to internal security. Koda's arrest for his alleged involvement in a Rs 2,000 crore money laundering scam grabbed national headlines. A countrywide search by Income Tax sleuths at the residences of his aides unearthed the scam. After defying summons from Enforcement Directorate, Vigilance and IT departments, Koda was finally arrested by the state Vigilance Bureau from Chaibasa on November 30 when he was venturing out to address a poll meeting. He was sent to judicial custody by a special vigilance court in connection with a disproportionate assets case. Three of his ex-cabinet colleagues Kamlesh Singh, Enos Ekka and Harinarayan Rai were also sent to judicial custody in separate DA cases during the year. The Enforcement Directorate has filed cases against Koda and some of his ex-ministers and aides charging them with money laundering and illegal investments. — PTI
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Unique event to remember couplet-king Ghalib
New Delhi, December 26 Ghalib was born December 27, 1797. Coming in the wake of reports of the misuse and vandalisation of Ghalib’s haveli by holding of wedding receptions, the cultural
programme, which will end tomorrow, will seek to give new life and meaning to his ancestral property in the old city, according to Firoz Bakht Ahmed, heritage activist and secretary, Ghalib Memorial Movement.Danseuse Uma Sharma will begin the first day of the event today with a candle-light procession from Town Hall, Chandni Chowk to the Gali Qasimjan haveli of Mirza
Ghalib. The procession will conclude at Ghalib’s haveli where Gulzar
Dehlvi, Pavan Varma, Uma Sharma and Ustad Iqbal Ahmed Khan will pay homage on life and times of
Ghalib. After this there will be a cultural evening at Kucha Pati Ram Haveli at Kucha Pati Ram, Bazaar Sita Ram in old Delhi. All through the vintage selling street of Chandni Chowk will be the specially created platforms highlighting the
attarwalas, pankhewalas (fan holders), mashals (torches), huqqas (smoking system) and pandaans (betel leaf boxes). The ‘nafeeri’ and ‘tasha’ (musical instrument of the Mughal era) artistes will accompany the procession to Ghalib's house at Gali
Qasimjan. On day two of the Yadgar-e-Ghalib, the main attraction will include Uma’s unique ballet “Shama bujhti
hei...” at the India Islamic Cultural Centre, Lodi Road at 6.30 pm. The function will begin with Pavan Varma reading from his book “Ghalib: The man, The times”. According to Firoz Bakht Ahmed, the glorious thing about Ghalib is that his poetry never fitted into watertight compartments because his world in the ghazals was too vast and too contradictory. His poetry is unique, not only for the intensity of feelings but also for the exquisite charm and profound thoughts that are part of his beautiful world, said Ahmed.
— IANS
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Thulir schools out to empower the deprived
Chennai, December 26 Now they are attending “Thulir” schools, a unique project guided by Tamil Nadu’s Ariviyal Iyakkam -- a movement to spread knowledge. This is a voluntary organisation run by the people from various professions, who are determined to make a difference to the lives of illiterate youth in Tamil
Nadu. The secretary of the movement, Kalaiselvi Venkatesan, said the Thulir schools -- meaning schools for the budding youth -- had helped over 3,000 children complete their high school, while allowing them to do jobs during the daytime. Several of them have passed degree courses after completing school education in these schools, which were earlier called moonlight schools, when they first began in 1997. Many students have landed up with jobs in private and government sectors and have progressed in life. Many women students have formed self-help groups and prospered economically, she said. She gives the entire team credit for the success of the movement. The movement does not collect any fees from its students. It meets the cost of running these schools from the money earned by them. They do not receive funds from the government but some philanthropists who are aware of their work have helped them in times of need, she said. Except for the timing of these schools, there is no difference between them and other schools. The syllabus is the same and the students appear for board examinations for classes eight, ten and plus two, Kalaiselvi explained. "Since our volunteers are enthusiastic and involved in the work, they are able to achieve impressive success rates, which ranges from 40 to 60 per cent every year. For students who had not pursued education in regular schools and are working hard during daytime, this is a good success rate,” she said.
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He uses RTI to fight corruption, give farmers their due
Guwahati, December 26 Gogoi won the prestigious first-ever RTI award in the country announced this year. Instituted by the Public Cause Research Foundation
(PCRF), headed by Magsaysay award winner Arvind Kejriwal, the award was been conferred on Gogoi for his “outstanding contribution to the RTI movement, in particular his work in using the RTI to expose corruption in government schemes in a hostile environment despite great personal risk.” Gogoi was among the 19 finalists selected from over 1,130 nominations.
Gogoi, who also won the second Manjunath Shanmugam Integrity award in 2008, however, said it was not his individual achievement, but that of the members of the
KMSS. He has donated the entire Rs 2 lakh cash prize that was part of the award to the
KMSS. He competed with a host of individuals and organisations, including the Narmada Bachao Andolan and Association for Democratic Reforms, to win this prestigious award. The jury that selected Gogoi included eminent jurist Fali S
Nariman, Aamir Khan, Mallika Sarabhai, JM Lyngdoh, Narayana Murthy, Prannoy Roy and Madhu
Trehan. His organisation has undertaken a three-year-long march from Sadiya at the eastern tip of Assam since November 1 this year to cover all villages in the state to make farmers aware of their rights and to popularise the RTI movement besides mounting pressure on the government for full implementation of NREGA in the state. Regarding the “hostile environment” under which he has been working for information and rights, Gogoi said political
mafia-raj was at its height in Assam especially when one asks for one’s rights. “The situation is very bad. There are numerous instances of RTI applicants being threatened and attacked across the state,” he said. “One incident that immediately comes to my mind is when 35 of our members were seriously injured when goons of a political party attacked us as we took out a cycle procession after exposing massive corruption in the Gamariguri block in Golaghat in 2006,” he
said. Gogoi’s mission for the cause of farmers started in 2002 when he was a student in Guwahati University. “Several youths and I organised a movement against a Central government’s eviction drive in forest areas of the Doyang-Tengani area in Golaghat district to protect rights of a large number of landless farmers who had settled down there. The movement was named Doyang-Tengani Movement.” In March 2005, Gogoi led a 370-km-long march of farmers in the state from Guwahati to Doyang-Tengani to protest against the eviction of farmers. He also led a one-month- long bicycle rally in the state from June 20, 2005, as part of Doyang-Tengani Movement. On the culmination of the rally, he launched the
KMSS. “The long-pending demand of the KMSS has been that the government should provide irrigation facility to all farmers in the state besides implementing NREGA fully in the year ahead,” Gogoi said.
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ULFA head sent to judicial custody
Guwahati, December 26 The counsel of ULFA leader, Bijan Mahajan, informed that the court sent Rajkhowa and Baruah to judicial custody as the Assam police did not ask for their further custody. The ULFA chairman’s body guard, Raja Borah, was sent to Dibrugarh in response to a production warrant issued by the chief judicial magistrate of Dibrugarh district in connection to a Joipur police station case. The police had shown the three militants as arrested in separate cases registered in Paltanbazar, Bharalumukh and Bhangagarh police stations in Guwahati. All cases are related to incidents of explosions. The counsel said the ULFA leaders were booked under Section 384 of the IPC read with Section 10/13 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. He said charges under Section 384 of IPC and Section 13 of UAP Act were non-bailable. The ULFA militants were arrested by the BSF along the India-Bangladesh border in Meghalaya on December 4 night and were first produced before the court by the Assam police on December 5. The have spent 24 days in the custody of the Special Operation Unit of Assam Police since then. With the court sending them to judicial custody today, the two ULFA leaders will now be lodged in the Guwahati Central jail. Five other senior ULFA leaders, including the outfit’s vice-chairman Pradip Gogoi, ‘central publicity secretary’ Mithinga Daimari, ‘cultural secretary’ Pranati Deka and recently arrested ‘foreign secretary’ Sashadhar Choudhury and ‘finance secretary’ Chitrabon Hazarika are already lodged in the same jail.
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Pravin Mahajan may be shifted to govt hospital
Mumbai, December 26 Mahajan suffered a brain hemorrhage on December 11, while on parole. He was to return to the Nashik central jail the following day. Following his illness, Pravin’s family rushed him to a private hospital in Thane where he continues to be on life support system. With medical bills mounting, Pravin’s wife Sarangi wrote tothe Maharashtra government seeking financial assistance on the grounds that the medical expenses of a prisoner on parole were the government’s responsibility. Maharashtra’s Home Minister RR Patil said the state’s law department was studying the matter. Earlier, he had said that the government was responsible for a prisoner’s medical treatment as long as he or she was in the prison. However legal experts consulted by the state government have indicated that the latter should take custody of Pravin Mahajan since his parole period was long over. The Home Ministry is expected to set up a fresh medical panel to examine Mahajan’s condition before recommending his move to the state-run government hospital, sources said. Earlier, government doctors had stated that Mahajan was too ill to be shifted from Thane to the JJ Hospital in South Mumbai. However, his condition has shown signs of stabilisation, sources added.
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BJP MLA seeks CBI probe
Bhopal, December 26 In a letter to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Asha Rani demanded a CBI inquiry claiming that her husband was innocent and had been framed by the Bhopal police in the murder case. “And as far as his criminal antecedents were concerned, he (Ashok Vir Vikram Singh alias Bhaiyya Raja) had been acquitted in the cases registered against him,” she said. The MLA from Bijawar urged Chouhan to recommend a CBI probe in the case so that the investigation was not affected by the local Chhatarpur police. Later, in a statement, Asha said she would accept the court verdict in the case if it was investigated by the CBI. Singh was arrested on December 20 and Asha Rani said police had forcibly seized vehicle and arms from her husband to implicate him even though he was in the hospital in MP Nagar area of the city at that time. Singh’s grand kin Vasundhara Bundela’s bullet-riddled body was found lying under mysterious circumstances on December 11 in the limits of the Misrod police station near Bhopal. — PTI
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Goa eve-teasing: Taxi driver held
Panaji, December 26 The girls complained that the driver Pramod Shirodkar took them to an isolated place along the beach in the wee hours yesterday and tried to assault them. The girls jumped off his car and took shelter in the woods for five hours before the sunrise. The girls said the taxi driver along with two other motorcycle-borne men chased them for almost half an hour before losing their sight in the jungle. The driver has been booked under Sections 509, 323 and 506 of the IPC for eve-teasing, causing hurt and threatening, the police said without giving details about two others accused in the case. "We are still investigating. How can we divulge everything at this juncture?" said a senior police officer. The police nabbed Shirodkar after tracking down his address from the taxi number provided by the victims. — PTI
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One killed by train robbers
Jamui (Bihar), December 26 About 12 bandits boarded the S-4 coach of the Amritsar-bound train from Howrah and looted valuables worth Rs 2 crore from the passengers, the police said. They fired a couple of rounds when some passengers resisted them. While one Shiv Prasad Gupta was killed on the spot, three others sustained injuries. The dacoits pulled the chain and decamped under the cover of darkness before Jhajha railway station, the police said. The train was stopped at Jhajha for a couple of hours to facilitate the injured passengers receive medical aid.
— PTI
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Three policemen suspended
Hardoi, December 26 The police team, comprising a sub-inspector and two constables, had gone to the village yesterday in connection with a dispute case and got hold of Ram Khilavan, father of an accused in the dispute. As Khilavan tried to flee, the policemen caught and beat him up, the police said. The old man died on the spot. Circle officer Hafizur Rehman said the sub-inspector and the two constables had been suspended and a case had been registered against them while police station in charge Rajesh Kumar Maurya had been sent to the lines.
— PTI
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Bangalore, December 26
The arrest of ex-Chief Minister Madhu Koda on corruption charges and the brutal beheading of a police officer by the Maoists rocked Jharkhand in 2009, a year which also saw the state going under President's Rule and Assembly elections that threw a hung verdict.
The year started with signs of political instability as JMM supremo Shibu Soren had to step down after failing to enter the state Assembly, drubbed by a relative greenhorn in politics in the January 3 Tamar
bypoll.
