Mumbai, February 18
The government today told the Bombay High Court that there was no evidence against Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, MNS president Raj Thackeray and Congress leader Narayan Rane in four separate incidents of political vandalism that took place last year.

Workers of the Shiv Sena, the MNS and the Congress had allegedly indulged in violence and damaged public and private property in these incidents.

On the last occasion, the high court had asked if any action had been taken against top leaders.

In an affidavit filed today, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Chandra Iyengar has said that “during the investigation of these four cases, it was not revealed that top leaders of these parties had instigated their followers or aided and abetted...since no involvement of top leaders or conspiracy was revealed, no action of arrest or prosecution could be taken”. Former IPS officer Julio Rebeiro had written a letter to the high court, mentioning these four incidents, and demanding that compensation be recovered from those guilty.

The letter was treated as a PIL.

The first incident took place last January where Shiv Sena workers, led by MP Sanjay Raut, attacked hotel Inter Continental near the Mumbai airport over some labour dispute. In the same month, supporters of Narayan Rane allegedly ransacked the office of daily “Nava Kal”, angered by an editorial critical of him.

In the third incident, on January 28, MNS workers vandalised the office of registrar of Mumbai University to protest the rumour that Marathi would be made an optional subject for arts stream examination.

Then in February, MNS workers ransacked a beauty parlour in neighbouring Thane, suspecting that it was a prostitution hub.

On the last occasion, the court had specifically asked whether action was taken against Bal Thackeray, Raj, and Rane.

But according to Iyengar, none of them was found to be involved, and attacks were carried out by local workers “on their own”.

Government pleader Niranjan Pandit told the Division Bench of Chief Justice Anil Dave and SC Dharmadhikari that chargesheet had been filed in all cases, and compensation had been recovered in three cases. — PTI

New Delhi, February 18
Anguished over an incident of police brutality on a Dalit woman in Uttar Pradesh, the National Commission for Women has sought a report in the matter from the state government and the police force.

“This act of punishment by way of beating up of an accused obviously defeats the very purpose of the universally accepted principle of innocence of every accused before being convicted by a court of law,” NCW chairperson Girija Vyas said.

The incident occurred yesterday in Manyari village in Aliganj area of Sultanpur after a man named Deepak Kumar was found strangulated, following which his mother lodged an FIR and the police started looking for his wife Sangeeta.

His wife was rounded up after some time and she allegedly confessed to the crime, Superintendent of Police, Sultanpur, Satyendra Veer Singh said. Despite the confession, Inspector Kailash Nath Dubey beat her up.

After the incident came to light, the authorities suspended the police officer concerned.

Vyas said the act of “taking up the role of judiciary in deciding the guilt followed by punishment by way of beating” should prompt severe reprimand and relevant provisions of IPC should be invoked against the officer.

She also wanted to know why no criminal case had been registered against him.

The NCW has sought a report in this matter, along with information on action taken by the police so far. The commission has also urged the state government to take appropriate steps to ensure security and safety of women. — PTI

Kolkata, February 18
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who had been silent since the massacre at the Shilda police camp in West Midnapore on Monday, broke his silence today and announced to hold an administrative inquiry into the incident in which 24 EFR jawans were gunned down inside their camp in broad daylight.

The incident was shocking and the inquiry would be made how the Maoists could make such a successful attack so easily, the Chief Minister told mediapersons at Writers Building. It seemed there were security lapses and lack of alertness at certain levels, which could be revealed only through an inquiry, he said.

The Chief Minister said it seemed the Maoists operating in neighbouring states were also involved in the attack. He said grievances of EFR personnel and their families would be looked into, but, as demanded by them, he would not visit the Salua camp immediately.

He said he held detailed telephonic discussions with Home Minister P Chidambaram over the incident and, accordingly, it was decided that the joint action force would be strengthened further so that it could undertake a bigger offensive against the Maoists. He said all police stations and camps in Maoists-infested areas would be renovated and the security arrangements stepped up.

Nainital, February 18
The death of “Butterfly Man” Fredrick Smetacek Junior on February 14 has left the fate of his prize collection of butterflies and moths hanging in a limbo. The issue that continues to hang fire is what will happen to the collection now and who is going to take it over for conservation.

The collection in question is said to be the biggest in Asia. Fredy Jr had inherited a part of it from is father Frederick Smetacek Senior and had gone on to build on it in a big way. With more than 10,000 specimens of butterflies, moths and beetles, it is a treat for anyone who cares for the tiny colourful creatures.

He had gone as high as the Pindari Glacier to capture the rare snow apollo species. Another prized possession of Fredy was the rare VA moth that he had captured in 1974 and is said to be one of the only three in collection worldwide.

His family is yet undecided on what to do with the collection, but is determined to preserve it. Earlier, his wife Ranjana and now his son Kartik had said they would sit down and decide what was to be done to preserve it. His caretaker for almost a decade, Leela Bisht had stated: “He always wanted that the museum should continue to grow. He had taught us to take care of the butterflies and insects in his collection”.

The Uttarakhand Forest Department does not seem to be too keen to take it over. Chief Wildlife Warden SK Chandola said: “Ideally, it should be the Zoological Survey of India which should take it over. We also do not have the wherewithal to preserve and conserve the collection. We are just the caretakers of the forests”.

Akshat Sah, who is the secretary of the Lok Chetna Manch, a prominent non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Nainital, said: “It needs to be understood who is the legal inheritor of the collection and what he wants to do with it. There will be a need for equipment like humidifier and de-humidifiers for its conservation. It should ideally be converted into a small museum in a heritage property so that in can help in promoting tourism and also be of help to students”.

He said he would take up the issue with Kumaon Commissioner S Raju.

As a child, Fredy Jr had been inspired by his father’s small collection of butterflies. He had gone ahead to convert his passion into a lifelong hobby. As a school boy he used to frequent the Raj Bhawan campus in Nainital, that was close to St Joseph School where he was studying, to collect the colourful insects. People who knew him recount that for 10 years from 1962 it had been a daily routine for him to move around the mountains in search of elusive species of butterflies.

His father was a collector by nature who had collections of postage stamps, matchbox covers, currency, butterflies and insects. Fredy Sr was a German-speaking man of Czech origin who had come on a horseback from Kathgodam to buy a house and later June Estate from his earnings as a supplier of goods to the Allied Forces in Kolkata during World War II.

He had earlier fled Nazi Germany. He had gone on to marry an Indian girl Shaheda.

Fredy Jr was also the founder of the Society of Appeal for Vanishing Environment, affiliated to the Eco-Ethics International of Germany, with a purpose to create awareness about the destruction of the mountains by builders and loggers.

New Delhi, February 18
US President Barack Obama telephoned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today and strongly condemned the bomb blast in Pune that had claimed 11 lives and left nearly 60 injured.

The two leaders also reviewed developments in the Indo-US relations, a statement from the PMO said.

Washington is said to have offered assistance of the FBI for probing the Pune bomb blast. Meanwhile, in Bangalore, US Ambassador to India Timothy J Roemer said India and Pakistan should decide the agenda of their bilateral talks. “India and Pakistan need to talk to improve bilateral ties. It’s important to talk because the terrorists don’t want that to happen. Their agenda is to disrupt the democratic process and values of freedom and liberty we all cherish,’’ he said.

Roemer said the US always favoured dialogue between India and Pakistan. Washington’s consistent position has been that the two countries should engage in bilateral dialogue on all the issues.

Hyderabad, February 18
Taking a lead in fixing accountability on violent agitators, Andhra Pradesh has come up with a legislation seeking recovery of damages to public properties from the perpetrators.

The AP Public Property (Prevention of Damage and Recovery of Loss) Bill 2010 was introduced in the state Assembly today. The legislation provides for recovery of damages due to destruction of public properties during riots, strikes, shutdowns and civil disturbances from the persons and organisations responsible for such losses.

“The existing civil and criminal laws are not sufficient to recover damages to public properties and do not provide for speedier and effective remedy,” the State Transport Minister S Vijayaramaraju said, while introducing the Bill.

The move comes against the backdrop of political unrest in the wake of the movement for separate Telangana state. There have been frequent disruptions and violent shutdowns during the last three months, causing major damages to public properties, particularly the stateroadways buses.

The Bill envisages constitution of special tribunals which will conduct inquiry and award the damages to those responsible for violent attacks during agitations. Each tribunal will be headed by a chairman, a judicial officer not below the rank of a district judge. It will have two members appointed by the government in the rank of joint collector.

The aggrieved government department needs to file an application before the tribunal, which will have the powers of a civil court, for recovery of losses within six months from the date of the damage. After conducting inquiry, the tribunal will determine the amount of damages to be paid.

Chandigarh, February 18
The Australian government has tightened its visa laws for students who wish to study there.

The official data of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Australia, has revealed that more than 50 per cent seeking admissions to Vocation Education and Training (VET) courses sent fake documents.

In wake of relaxed visa laws and easy entry, majority of students enroll for courses in the VET category like community service, hair dressing and house keeping, with the intention of securing visas to reach the Australian shores.

A database compiled by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Australia, on basis of a recent forensic analysis of applications conducted by the Australian High Commission revealed that approximately 50 per cent of them contained at least one fraudulent document.

The available data showed that applications rejected in the VET sector rose from 8.2 per cent in 2008-2009 to over 40 per cent in 2009-10.

Talking to The Tribune, Naresh Gulati, chief executive officer of Oceanic Consultants, said, “Recent incidents of violence witnessed in Australia are important indicators to a pre-existing problem of fraudulent entry of students. Over the last few years, a large number of bogus institutions have sprung up and allowed entry of undeserving students. Such students did not have the financial ability to either pay the tuition fee or meet living expenses. Hence, they all resorted to working at odd hours. A careful perusal of these unfortunate incidents will reveal that they all happened during the nights”.

It has been established that easier visa laws, fake examinations and distortions in evaluation rules for entry, all added up to facilitate wrong entries.

The trend led to mushrooming of agents in India, as well, as they were offered handsome commission, Gulati said.

These agents neither had the expertise nor the infrastructure to be agents of good universities. Private institutes appointed them to expand their reach. However, in absence of good infrastructure, most of these fake institutes were finally shut down and the students got stranded, sales head of an overseas consultancy Rohit Chopra said.

Australia has woken up to the problem and made amendments to the existing rules to make the entry strictly on merit. UK, too, recently stopped accepting applications from North India. However, March onwards, certain category of students will be allowed, based on academic merit.

Sunil Dutt, father of a student based in Australia, said, “The credibility of any institute needs to verified through an agency of the Indian government for better avenues for students before any major decision-making.”

Indore, February 18
Accusing the UPA Government at the Centre of aiding terrorists, BJP Hindutva mascot Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi strongly opposed any talks with Pakistan

Modi was, in effect, articulating the prevalent mood in the BJP stated first by president Nitin Gadkari in his inaugural address and then by Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitely who drafted and introduced the resolution on “National Security and Jammu and Kashmir” at the national council meet here today.

He said, “There is no point in talking to Pakistan. There should be no dialogue with Pakistan. They (the UPA government) say we are mature democracy therefore we should talk to Pakistan. I say how mature if you don’t talk to the main opposition?”

Earlier, he claimed that UPA removed POTA only to aid and abet the terrorists. He said, “We are suffering the scourge of terrorism only because of this government’s failures.”

Modi also cited the Centre’s refusal to grant Presidential approval to his state government’s GUJCOCA as the other instance. He said, “Thrice the Gujarat assembly passed the GUJCOCA and every time it was sent back. That only shows their unwillingness to deal with terrorists.”

And yet he added, “Within Gujarat I will handle the terrorist, but what will happen to the rest of the nation?

Earlier while moving the security resolution Jaitely cited the Pune bomb blast to warn the Government against resuming dialogue with Pakistan. He said the recent bomb blast at Pune has demonstrated the re-emergence of terrorist attacks in India. It has exposed the fragility of our security set up, and the challenges that we face. There appears a clear coordination between terrorists on both sides of the border. The whole nation is puzzled by the Government of India’s curious position that in spite of terror continuing, the dialogue between India and Pakistan will go on. In January 2004, the NDA government under Atalji had agreed to the composite dialogue upon the pre condition of President Pervez Musharraf accepting that no part of the territory controlled by Pakistan would be used for terror against India. 

New Delhi, February 18
Amid raging public debate on Bt Brinjal with the Environment Ministry and the Science and Technology Ministry pitted against each other, proposed biotechnology regulator National Biotechnology Regulator Authority has come under criticism. The bill for the proposed regulator is likely to be introduced in the Budget session of the Parliament.

All those who vehemently opposed Bt brinjal have now joined ranks to oppose the government’s move to create the authority saying that the “draconian” bill “will have far more power to flood the country with genetically modified crops that are not tested”. They also feel that the attempt to deregulate biotechnology regulation from the Environment Ministry and pass it on to it to the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) “is not in India’s interest”.

Leading the fight is Pushpa Mittra Bhargava, India’s most globally cited scientist in genetic research and the only independent observer appointed by the Supreme Court to the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) that passed Bt Brinjal. Bhargava said if the bill were passed in the Parliament, the GEAC would be dissolved and all powers vested in a three-member regulatory commission. “The procedure for clearance will become so complex that it will be easier to give permission to those whom you want to,” he said.3

He said as per a clause in the bill, “whoever, without any evidence or scientific record misleads the public about safety of the GMOs and products thereof, shall be punished with imprisonment and fined.

This means no matter how much evidence you have, it can be shot down.” He said the term “biotechnology” in the bill also has the potential of being misinterpreted and misused. “The name is absurd because while they are talking of genetic engineering, they are using the word biotechnology. The bill is obviously being prepared by people who do not understand biotechnology,” he said.

Another question raised by those opposing the bill is that of the regulatory authority. Following the Bt Brinjal controversy, the government is fast-tracking the bill to create the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India. According to the current draft, the nodal agency for the autonomous regulator will be the DBT under the Science and Technology Ministry. This also means that the GEAC, the current biotechnology regulator under the MoEF, will become redundant.

Apparently, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, too, is not in favour of the move. He has cautioned that the bill required careful study. “We should not rush into it. The present draft is woefully inadequate,” he has been quoted as saying. As Bhargava said, the Environment Minister has taken a stand against Bt Brinjal, which shows that India is not tied to apron strings of any country or organisation.

DBT officials, however, said their role would not be to control the regulator, but merely facilitate the functioning of an autonomous body. They also added that it was the PMO’s decision on how the proposed authority was to run.

New Delhi, February 18
Tightening up visa procedures, the union home ministry today asked all central ministries and state chief secretaries to strictly adhere to the revised procedure for grant of visas to foreigners coming to India to attend international conferences and seminars.

People coming for such events from countries like Pakistan and China will have to get a clearance from the Union Home Ministry from now on.

In total, eight countries have been put on this list, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Sudan along with people of Pakistani-origin and other non-state persons.

Participants from other countries can obtain “conference visa” from the Indian Mission concerned on production of the invitation letter from the organiser, event clearance from the ministry of home affairs, administrative approval of the nodal ministry, political clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs and clearance from the state government and Union Territories concerned.

The instruction comes against the backdrop of reports that some departments were not adhering to these guidelines, officials said.

“These instructions have been issued so as to ensure that all organisers of such international events strictly adhere to the time line for submitting their proposals to this ministry at least six weeks before the commencement of the event.

This would ensure that security clearance for the event and for the participants could be suitably assessed,” an official statement said.

New Delhi, February 18
The debate on Copyright Act amendments got more dramatic today, with everyone - from Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal to lyricist Javed Akhtar - seeking Aamir Khan back on the copyright panel.

The actor had quit the committee following Akhtar’s public outpourings against him.

A day after his resignation, Akhtar was in Sibal’s office appealing to him to get the actor back on board. “We would very definitely like Aamir to continue on this committee. We appeal to you to use your good offices with him to persuade him to remain with this initiative. We are confident he won’t refuse your request,” he wrote in a letter to the minister, signed also by other writers on the panel, including Anjum Rajabali, Vishal Bhardwaj, Parsoon Joshi, Saket Choudhury, Vishal Dadlani and Ram Sampat.

Sibal quickly obliged by calling up Aamir and asking him to return. “I told Aamir about the letter and that no one was alleging anything. I asked him to reconsider his decision about quitting the panel. He said he would do so,” Sibal said, hinting at the actor’s return for the February 28 meeting of the panel.

The fact that Sibal supported Aamir in the controversy was clear from his remarks today that he had requested every committee member to keep the “frank and detailed discussions” to themselves. However, Akhtar took his sparring with Aamir to the press, with Sibal today saying: “Aamir called me to say he was resigning. I said I’d have done the same, had I been in his place.”

His support for Aamir may well have inspired the letter from lyricists led by Akhtar. In the letter, they all swore by the actor-producer’s intentions, saying: “There has never been any doubt about Aamir’s intentions …, far less his integrity. And while we may have differing perceptions about the copyright issues and the implications of these amendments, his intention is the same as the rest of us - to work out a proposal that is fair to all parties concerned and therefore the Indian film industry.”

Earlier under Section 17 (b) of the Act, producers used to become owners of the works after buying them from writers for almost petty amount. They then sold these rights to music companies that made millions from sound recordings and performing rights.

This is now sought to be changed by giving writers a fair share in their works. The bone of contention is that film producers say they can give the creators more share if a film does well; not otherwise.

Bhubaneswar, February 19
Kalinga Sena, a fringe political outfit in Orissa, today threatened to disrupt the Indian Premier League (IPL) matches in the state next month if its conditions - such as not letting the Australians play - were not met.

“We have set four conditions. If they are not fulfilled, we will not allow the matches to happen,” Kalinga Sena president Hemanta Rath told IANS, referring to the IPL games scheduled in Barabati Stadium in Cuttack in March.

“We will not allow the Australians to play here because Indian students are attacked in their country. We want an assurance from the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) and the IPL that Australians will not be playing here,” he said.

Rath also sought an assurance from organisers that there would be no cheerleaders dancing at the matches and also asked the BCCI to explain why no player from Orissa was included in the East Zone Duleep Trophy cricket team.

Terming the IPL matches as “gambling”, Rath also sought criminal cases against various industrialists and actors involved in the bidding process for the IPL.

“If the police can arrest a poor man on the charge of gambling, why can’t cases be registered against these people,” he asked.

Reacting to the threat, the Orissa Cricket Association (OCA) said this was a ploy by the Kalinga Sena to derive political mileage.

“Even the Shiv Sena is allowing Australian cricketers to play in Maharastra. This (kind of) opposition is not in the best interest of cricket. This is the first time OCA has got a chance to host an IPL match. Instead of celebrating it, they are opposing it,” said Ashirbad Behera, secretary of the association.

“The Kalinga Sena is a political outfit and should concentrate on politics for the betterment of the party. They are doing politics over cricket, and only hampering the interest of Orissa cricket,” Behera added.

Reacting to the non-inclusion of Orissa players in the East Zone Duleep Trophy cricket, he said, “We are taking up the issue with the BCCI, and Kalinga Sena, a political outfit, should not bother about that.” — IANS