New Delhi, August 20
The Lok Sabha witnessed the enactment of a mock Parliament today when Deputy Speaker Karia Mudna adjourned the lower house for the day amidst disruption and protest by Opposition MPs on different issues.

Soon as the House reassembled for the post-lunch session, RJD chief Lalu Prasad led the SP, RJD and some Shiv Sena and JD-U MPs into the well of the House protesting the shortfall in the salary hike proposal passed by the Union cabinet earlier in the day.

The protesters remaining unrelenting, the government moved and got passed two important Bills. The Chair went through the motion of hurriedly passing first the Trade Marks (Amendment) Bill 2009, moved by Commerce Minister Anand Sharma. Next on the list of the agenda was the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill 2010, moved by Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.

Soon as he moved the Bill amid the din, Maneka Gandhi (BJP) objected and protested and insisted upon a discussion.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal made some attempt to persuade Maneka Gandhi to allow the passage but she wouldn’t relent. By this time, the Chair pronounced the Bill passed and the House adjourned till tomorrow.

Immediately, BJP MPs Maneka, son Varun, Kirti Azad and Uday Singh were on their feet refusing to accept the passage and insisting on the Chair taking back its ruling an demanding a discussion nevertheless. They also tore the copies of the Bill.

BJP Deputy Leader Gopinath Mude said, “We tried to approach the Speaker, but the door had been shut and so we had no option but to observe a sit-in.”

Munde and a few others like CPM leader Basudeb Acharia rushed into the House a little after the adjournment was announced. But they all agreed that the government had no business to pass the Bill without allowing the Opposition to discuss it.

Soon, the slogan-shouting members settled in the well of the House and someone amongst them suggested to run the House. That required a government and a chairman. Promptly, Gopinath Munde was chosen to chair the proceedings and Lalu Prasad and Mulayam Singh Yadav were pronounced ‘dual prime ministers’. Kirti Azad was made the Leader of Opposition.

Lalu escorted Munde to one of the reporters’ chair as a temporary chairman’s seat. Munde asked first Maneka to speak who spoke for 20 minutes. Then he asked Basudeb Acharia to speak who too spoke for a while. In between, Mulayam Singh as the ‘prime minister’ made a brief intervention admitting that the Bill was “wrong” and promised that “it would be withdrawn”.

In the meantime, the Marshals came in to get the House vacated. By this time, they had already cleared all the galleries, including the Press gallery. But seeing the Marshals, Lalu declared “as prime minister, I announce as long as my government is there no Marshals will be allowed inside the House”, and asked the Marshals to leave, which they did quietly. Thereafter, Munde announced the adjournment of the ‘House’ till 10 am tomorrow.

New Delhi, August 20
The Delhi High Court today rejected Congress leader Sajjan Kumar’s plea for staying his trial in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case. Exactly a week ago, the Supreme Court stayed the trial against him in another such case till August 27.

Justice AK Pathak, however, issued notice to the CBI on Sajjan’s plea for quashing the charges framed against him by the trial court on July 7 for murder, rioting and spreading enmity between two communities. The case relates to an incident in Delhi’s Sultanpuri locality in which six persons were killed.

The second case against him in which the SC has granted stay pertains to violence in Delhi Cantonment area in which five persons lost their lives, including three family members of one Jagdish Kaur.

The next hearing in the High Court is slated for September 16 and in the Supreme Court for August 27.

New Delhi, August 20
The Comptroller and Auditor General, in a report tabled in Parliament today, unveiled what could be the most daring of frauds with public money running in hundreds of crores.

CAG in its report “Procurement of stores and machinery in ordnance factories” today pointed out how the Ordnance factory at Nalanda entered into a contract with an Israeli company for manufacture specific ammunition, all without even having an “approval” of the Cabinet Committee on Security to do so.

Originally, a tender was floated in 2004 to manufacture 155mm Bi-Modular Charge Systems (BMCS). The IMI Israel emerged as the lowest bidder at Rs. 571.71 crore. The matter was kept in abeyance. In July 2006, the project was restarted. The IMI wanted a small increase from the 2004 price and sought Rs 654.79 crore. It was, however, decided to issue global tender enquiry to generate more competition.

In this global tender, IMI Israel again emerged as the lowest bidder at Rs 1090.83 crore. After this the Ministry of Defence constituted a cost negotiation committee (CNC).

The CNC put up a note to the Cabinet seeking approval for revision of the estimated cost of project from Rs 941.13 crore to Rs 2160.51 crore. The most damaging part is that the “approval para” of the note to the Cabinet did not refer to the approval of the BMCS plant at all, says CAG. And on the basis of this note the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) and the MoD went about signing contracts and giving out payments.

In what will come as a shocker, the CAG on Friday rapped the Ministry of Defence for making payments of Rs 611 crore to buy a system for fighter aircraft of the IAF even as the equipment did not meet performance parameters trials.

A reconnaissance system, used to collect intelligence data for operational need, was to be integrated under the wings of the Sukhoi-30 aircraft, at a total cost of Rs. 640.70 crore. The system procured was not selected and evaluated as per Defence Procurement Procedure, said the CAG while adding “frequent changes in the operational requirements (OR’s), although earlier approved by Competent Authority, were made to facilitate the procurement of such a system offered by Israel Aerospace Industries’s, ‘Elta’ product.” The frequent changes ensured that IAI became the only vendor capable of meeting the changed OR’s.

By deviating from the prescribed procedure of field trials, the IAF accepted the system. While the IAF’s operational need is yet to be fulfilled even after almost a decade, a sum of Rs. 611 crore, has been paid to IAI. Separately, The CAG has also pointed out at that Defence Public Sector Undertaking, Bharat Electronics Limited was awarded a contract by the MoD for the supply of 22 surveillance radar element (SRE Radar) at a cost of Rs. 870 crore.

A total of 60 per cent of the radars were manufactured by BEL using imported completely knocked Down (CKD) kits rather than manufacturing them.

Bangalore, August 20
Come September and the latest books on the show windows of bookstores could be yours at forty per cent less than its market price. Well, not the book really, but the matter inside its two covers.

Wink, the e-reader launched by Bangalore-based digital publisher EC Media International (ECMI), is slated to hit the market in the first week of next month. “It is already available on order. The retail stores will start having it from September onward”, K S Rajesh, who looks after ECMI’s India operations, told this reporter. The machines will cost Rs 11490/- apiece. The e-reader’s unique advantage is that besides English, it also offers a choice of Indian languages. Hindi and Malayalam books are already available on the reader and the next in line are Marathi and Bengali books. ECMI is working to make available books in 15 Indian languages on the reader.

As for the English section, the e-reader has a comprehensive list ranging from Shakespeare to Danielle Steel and Cervantes to Elizabeth Gillbert. The Hindi and Malayalam sections also promise to be good. The number of titles now available on the reader is more than 1.9 lakh. It will cross the two lakh mark soon with the launching of Bengali and Marathi books on the reader. “The contents will cost about 60 to 70 pc of the paperback edition of the book. Payment will have to be made online through the e-reader to download a book. The e-reader can also be fitted with a PC”, Rakesh said.

Books, as we know it now, are in vogue for a few centuries. It is the very best that one can think of in terms of convenience of reading and portability. The e-reader, which looks like an oversized mobile phone, is also portable and has the advantage of offering the reader multiple choices. One, of course, will have to shell out money each time he or she wants to download a new book.

It is, however, not always necessary to pay money to download a book. Quite a few books come free with the reader and these include works of Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, Gandhi, Tagore, Kipling and others.

So what are you carrying next time you start on a train journey? Couple of thrillers or an e-reader?

Jaipur, August 20
Fresh details are emerging in the case of 61 trucks laden with 300 tonnes of explosives, which went missing after being dispatched from RECL, Dholpur, en route to Sagar in MP between April and June.

According to sources, Shiv Charan Heda, owner of Ajay Explosives in Bhilwara, is purportedly kingpin of the entire deal. Heda also runs a magazine (warehouse of explosives) at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra under the same name. Sources said Heda’s relative and partner Jaikishan Ashwani executed the deal by receiving consignments from the RECL in the name of Ganesh Explosives, Sagar, before diverting it midway. Ashwani also had some share of partnership in the Sagar-based firm whose real owner was Devendra Singh Thakur.

This was done in clear violation of norms as per which a company first needs to unload the consignment and complete the paperwork, only after which it can dispatch the consignment further. However, Ashwani didn’t follow these procedures.

Sagar SP Vijay Kumar Suryawanshi said Ashwani exploited the licence of Ganesh Explosives, which had expired in March, for carrying out his illegal activities. According to him, Ashwani is also a shareholder in the BM Traders, a company onwed by Heda’s wife Deepa. He also had a licence for a magazine at Beawara in Rajgarh district of MP. BM Traders, Beawara, had also received three trucks of explosives while the rest of the consignment was sent to Heda’s firms in Bhilwara and Ahmednagar.

Interestingly, both the firms of Heda - BM Traders and Ajay Explosives - are also licencees and do business with the RECL. This has also been confirmed by RECL Deputy Manager GS Parmar, who in his statement to the media, said that the two firms, to which the explosives were diverted, were valid licence holders.

Another point, which hints at Heda’s involvement in the deal, is that both his firms didn’t send any indent to the RECL between April and July when these illegal deliveries took place.

New Delhi, August 20
Even as China was indulging in fast-paced construction of infrastructure in its territory, India’s slow pace of infrastructure development was posing challenges to the national security, a Parliamentary panel report said today. The panel slammed the Defence Ministry for its "casual attitude" of not keeping an eye on developments across the border and said that India’s own plan of building roads was lagging far behind.

The panel in its report of border roads, said the long-term perspective plan was to have 277 roads with a collective length of 13,100 km. It was cleared at a cost of Rs 24,866 crore and the target is 2012. Only 29 roads have so far been completed and the work in respect of another 168 roads is in progress. No work has started with respect to 80 roads measuring 2624 km, the report said. Infrastructure created by countries, particularly China, further poses a challenge before the country,” the report added. The Ministry has admitted that the deadline of 2012 will not difficult to meet said the panel of MP’s while adding “ … There seems to be a sense of complacency on part of the Border Roads Organisation…. The BRO needs to set international standards.”

The report said it is an acknowledged fact that infrastructure is being created on the borders by countries, particularly China, the ministry has not maintained any data of such activities on borders... this speaks volumes about the ministry's casual attitude towards such an important matter.

There was an urgent need to ensure that Indian plans are in consonance with impeding security challenges, said the report.The panel said the problems along the different portions of the country's extensive borders have aggravated in recent times due to cross-border terrorism.