Patna, October 28
Polling in 48 constituencies in the third phase of assembly elections in the state passed off peacefully without any major incident of violence today.

Bihar’s Chief Electoral Officer Sudhir Kumar Rakesh said 53.65 per cent of the electorate exercised their right to franchise in this phase with the highest turnout reported from East Champaran (58 per cent) and lowest from Gopalganj (48 per cent).

The voters abstained from voting at three polling booths in different constituencies in protest against lack of development in their respective villages.

The administration had made elaborate security arrangements for the polling. Besides deploying armed police personnel at each polling station, an intensive patrolling was carried out by mounted military police personnel, river patrolling by policemen on speed boats and air-surveillance by the special task force on two choppers.

State DGP Neelmani said 221 persons were taken into preventive custody across the six districts of West Champaran, East Champaran, Gopalganj, Siwan, Saran and Vaishali where the polling was held today. The police seized 11 light motor vehicles and 116 two-wheelers during the polling hours.

In the Naxal-affected constituencies of Ramnagar, Balmiki Nagar and Patepur, polling concluded at 3 pm whereas in two other Naxal-hit constituencies, Amanour and Taraiya, it concluded at 4 pm.

Prominent candidates whose fate was sealed in the electronic voting machines (EVMs) today include former Chief Minister Rabri Devi and six ministers of the Nitish Kumar government.

Lucknow, October 28
Four persons were killed and at least 20 injured, four of them seriously, in a massive explosion in the staff quarters of a government-run primary health centre in the Kalyanpur area of Kanpur today.

According to ADG (Law and Order) Brij Lal, prima facie it appears that an illegal firecracker factory was being run in the staff quarters of the PHC.

The flat where the explosion occurred had been allotted in the name of PHC ward boy Rajesh. Rajesh, along with another ward boy Krishna, has been absconding since the blast.

The anti-terror squad (ATS) as well as the bomb disposal squad are present at the site of the blast, collecting samples of the explosive to ascertain the chemical used, its source and to ascertain if the explosives were being used for making firecrackers or something else.

A large quantity of explosives and “sutli” used in the manufacturing firecrackers has been seized from the spot.

The blast was so powerful that the roof of two staff quarters came crashing down, reducing several other staff quarters on the campus to rubble and burying dozens under the debris. The bodies were so badly burnt that the deceased could not identified so far.

Guwahati, October 28
Gauhati High Court today stayed the order of the Union government for withdrawal of National Security Guard (NSG) commandos guarding former Assam chief minister and senior leader of Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.

The Central government recently ordered withdrawal of Black Cats attached to Mahanta after making a review of the security cover provided to VIPs in the country. In response, Mahanta on Wednesday filed a petition in Gauhati High Court against the order of the Union Government.

Mahanta’s counsel Pranabananda Pathak informed that a special bench of Justice Anima Hazarika of the High Court today stayed the Centre’s order to withdraw NSG Commandos at the disposal of the former Assam chief minister and asked the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to show cause by November 8 as to why the elite commandos deputed for his security were being withdrawn.

It was on October 24, the Additional Director General of Assam Police (Special Branch) through Guwahati city police conveyed to the office of Mahanta through a memo dated October 20 that the NSG commandos were being withdrawn.

Black Cat commandos were assigned for Mahanta’s protection after the banned United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) made an abortive attempt to blow up his vehicle in 1997 after he had become chief minister of the state for the second time in 1996.

The ULFA was and is nurturing a grudge against Mahanta for the firm stand taken by him against the insurgent outfit. It was during the second tenure of Mahanta as chief minister that the three-tier unified command of Army, police and paramilitary forces was put into action in counter-insurgency operation in the state that led to breaking of the backbone of key insurgent outfits in the state, including the ULFA.

As Mahanta has remained in the hit-list of the ULFA, his movement and political activities would have been hampered in the absence of the ring of Black Cat commandos around him.

Chandigarh, October 28
A day before he is to retire from office, the senior-most Judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice Mehtab Singh Gill was given a highly emotive send off by the Bar and the Bench.

The impressive ceremony held this afternoon in the Bar room saw an unprecedented rush. As the crowd outnumbered the chairs, the advocates actually had to stand in the corridors.

The ceremony saw Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal doling out praise for the effort put in by Justice Gill for taking the justice delivery system forward, both on the judicial and administrative sides.

Chief Justice Mudgal said it was no “ordinary retirement”. A “veteran” with a distinguished career was leaving the High Court.

Describing Justice Gill as “always dignified”, the Chief Justice said he played “second to none” role as the chairman of the building committee in giving the judicial complexes in Punjab a presentable look.

Bar Association president G.S. Attariwala said Justice Gill’s dedication could be gauged from the success of the mega Lok Adalat held in 2008 under his direct supervision, besides the setting up of 18 judicial complexes in Punjab.

Overwhelmed by the response, Justice Gill said he looked back upon the work done on the administrative side with a sense of satisfaction. He was accompanied by his wife Harsimrat Kaur Gill.

Acting Chief Justice of High Court before Chief Justice Mudgal took over in December last, Justice Gill also gave a call for encouraging young advocates.

Pursuant to his transfer from Madras High Court, Justice Muttaci Jeyapaul was today administered oath as a Judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court by Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal. At a ceremony attended by sitting and retired judges of the High Court, bureaucrats, relatives and 500 advocates, the Judge swore to "bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established".

New Delhi, October 28
The Defence Ministry has asked the Army and Navy to tell if a controversial piece of prime real estate located in Colaba, Mumbai, was ever held by either of the two services and was it ever classified as “defence land”.

Sources said, the Ministry would be keen to hand over the investigation to an outside agency like the CBI as multiple agencies are involved in the clearance of such projects, some of which are not under the Ministry of Defence.

The land under the scanner is valued at Rs 500 crore and was allotted at throwaway rates to Adarsh Society to build a 31-storey complex. The beneficiaries of flats in the society include several former Army and Naval officers, senior bureaucrats and top politicians of Maharashtra. Media reports have accused the top brass belonging to the armed forces for colluding with civilian agencies and political authorities in the scam and getting flats allotted for themselves. Media reports originating from Mumbai have quoted revenue authorities of Maharashtra saying the land never belonged to the Defence Ministry.

The Ministry, in a query to the Army and Navy, has made it clear if the land was with them. No time-frame has been given, however, the information is wanted at the earliest as questions could pop up during the forthcoming Winter Session of Parliament commencing in the first week of November.

The beneficiaries are Chief Minister Ashok Chavan's late mother-in-law Bhagwati Manoharlal Sharma, former Army chiefs Generals N C Vij and Deepak Kapoor, ex-Navy chief Admiral Madhavendra Singh, former Army Vice Chief Lt Gen Shantanu Chowdhary, former Union Minister and Shiv Sena MP Suresh Prabhu.

Mumbai, October 28
The Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan is facing embarrasment after the name of his late mother-in-law emerged as one of the beneficiaries in a scam where houses meant for war widows and veterans were diverted to politicians and bureaucrats.

Chavan's mother-in-law Bhagwati Manoharlal Sharma passed away last July in Mumbai. However, her name figures in the list of people who own flats in the Adarsh Co-Operative Housing Society at Colaba in South Mumbai where the Western India Naval Command is located. The building was originally planned as a six-storeyed structure to house war-widows and veterans who fought in the Kargil war.

Over the years, the building grew into a 31-storeyed luxury tower housing the kin of politicians, bureaucrats and top military officers. In all, there are 104 flats in the building.

According to reports, each member of the society paid Rs 60 lakh each

for a flat which is estimated to cost Rs 8 crore at today's prices.

Chavan refused to comment till late afternoon today on how his late mother-in-law's name cropped up as one of the beneficiaries.

New Delhi, October 28
The Union Government has decided to ignore author Arundhati Roy and Hurriyat hawk Geelani for their “anti-India” remarks and hate speeches at a seminar in the national capital last week.

Home Ministry sources said despite the legal opinion being clear that the speeches attracted sedition charges under Section 124 of the IPC, it was decided that such a move would give unnecessary publicity to the duo and a handle to separatists in the Valley.

“We have decided to ignore them,” a senior functionary said. The political opinion was clear that ignoring them would be the best option, a source said.

At the convention on Azadi-The Only Way, Geelani had shared the stage with Roy and pro-Maoist leader Vara Vara Rao among others. Geelani was heckled by the audience with one of them throwing a shoe at him. The convention was organised by Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP).

The BJP had insisted that a case of sedition be lodged against those who spoke at the seminar.

New Delhi, October 28
The Supreme Court today reserved its verdict on the CBI’s plea for transferring the trial in the PF scam in UP’s judiciary to Delhi after Attorney General GE Vahanvati contended that justice must not only be done but also seem to be done.

A three-member special Bench, headed by Justice DK Jain, passed the order after hearing arguments for nearly two hours when most of the 70 accused, including six retired Judges of the Allahabad High Court, opposed the transfer of the trial from Ghaziabad. Counsel for the accused argued that shifting trial would amount to casting aspersions on the impartiality of the judiciary in Uttar Pradesh as well as the state administration.

Pointing out that the CBI had cited as many as 13 sitting judicial officers as witnesses, the accused contended that these witnesses could not be influenced whether the trial was held in Ghaziabad or Delhi. If the trial was held in Delhi, 34 class III and IV employees who were also accused would be subjected to hardship. Further, the complaint in the case was made by a judicial officer of Ghaziabad itself, they argued.

Counsel Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Transparency International which has become a party to the case, said the custodial death of the main accused, Ashutosh Asthana who was a treasury officer, under mysterious circumstances in a Ghaziabad jail had raised serious doubts over the possibility of conducting an impartial trial in that district, a suburb of Delhi.

Meanwhile, the Bench gave a clean chit to Ghaziabad District Judge Vishnu Chandra Gupta against whom the CBI had made a complaint that he was interfering with the investigations. “We are satisfied with the explanation” given by the District Judge that he had sought details of the charges against the accused only for the purpose of deciding the requests for permission to prosecute them, the Bench said.

New Delhi, October 28
The spat between Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Leader of Opposition in Parliament Sushma Swaraj turned uglier today, with the Modi group claiming that party president Nitin Gadkari fired Sushma and asked her to make amends for her remarks belittling Modi's prominence in the BJP.

Sushma, however, categorically denied Gadkari having spoken to her at all. But Modi's patron saint LK Advani called Gadkari home and the two were together for over an hour, said sources close to Advani, without denying the possibility of a discussion on Sushma-Modi spat.

Sushma fired the first salvo against Modi saying in Patna on Monday that "Modi's magic and charisma have worked in Gujarat ... but it is not necessary that everybody's magic works at every place. In Bihar, the magic of Nitish Kumar and Sushil Kumar Modi is at work ... And we are confident of our victory for carrying forward development."

She also clarified that, "Nitishji has put no condition before us whether or not Narendra Modi should campaign in Bihar. The decision who should or should not campaign in Bihar has been the sole discretion of the BJP," implying that the BJP has succumbed to Nitish Kumar's pressure without a whimper, upsetting the Modi camp that was already upset with Nitish for snubbing the BJP during the party's last national executive in Patna.

Sources said what hurt Modi more was that taking a cue from Sushma, Advani also dropped the mention of Gujarat as the model state of development and started singing the Bihar tune. After learning of Modi's hurt, Advani was keen to make amends. Therefore today's meeting with Gadkari, sources said.

In the meantime, a Modi well-wisher, Karnataka MLC and treasurer of the state unit of the BJP Leher Singh Siroya, retaliated yesterday by putting out an advertisement in prominent Hindi dailies of Delhi, eulogising his achievements and appealing to him to come to Delhi and "give a direction to the directionless nation".

BJP vice-president Najma Heptullah also launched a big Modi campaign by claiming that Modi magic had spread to the neighbouring Daman and Diu and Dadra Nagar Haveli islands, where the BJP won because of Modi's influence in Gujarat.

New Delhi, October 28
In a major embarrassment to UGC’s outgoing Chairman Sukhdeo Thorat, the Ministry of HRD today cancelled the interview schedule he had planned tomorrow for the selection of secretary of the commission.

The development followed complaints that Thorat had only about three months left of his tenure (it ends on February 5 next) and as per the government’s own rules regarding selection of people by heads of autonomous institutions, no head can conduct selections or even order promotions two to three months before he is due to demit office.

Two SP MPs, Neeraj Shekhar and Tufani Saroj, had complained to the HRD Ministry citing Thorat’s personal interest in the matter and also questioned his right to hold selections.

Although Thorat clarified his position yesterday following a notice by the ministry, the latter was not convinced and today cancelled the interviews citing “unavoidable reasons”.

No new date for the said interview has been given.

New Delhi, October 28
Ruling out Yale University campus in India, top American University's visiting President Richard Levin today signed a partnership with the directors of the IIT, Kanpur, and IIM, Kohzikode, to advance higher education in India through academic leadership programmes and research on Indian higher education. India's faculty will benefit from this pact given the government's plans to set up 14 innovation universities.

Yale, however, said it didn't plan a campus here. "We are not planning a campus here. We have plans to set up a Liberal Arts College in Singapore but in India we will set up centres for training in academic leadership," Lewin said, forcing HRD Minister Kapil Sibal to say he was not expecting global brands like Harvard and Yale to have campuses in India though the other top foreign institutions had such plans.

For the academic leadership, a memorandum of understanding was today signed by Levin, Debashis Chatterjee, Director, IIM, Kozhikode and Sanjay Dhande, Director, IIT, Kanpur. Sibal for his part said the pact would help raise the level of India's academic leaders.

The partnership (as reported yesterday by The Tribune) is part of the Singh-Obama Knowledge Initiative announced during PM Manmohan Singh's November 2009 state visit to the US. The Yale-IIM-IIT agreement comes a week before President Obama's visit to India.

On the occasion, Yale President said, "Yale is pleased to undertake this important and much needed effort on higher education with IIM - Kozhikode and IIT - Kanpur. We look forward to working with them to advance the cause of higher education in India by sharing what we have learned over three centuries as an institution and we similarly look forward to learning from our partners in India in this age of global education."

IIM, Kozhikode, director Chatterjee hailed the development: "Our relationship with Yale will foster excellence and lend a much needed global perspective to higher education in India." Dhande added that the need for high quality academic leadership would be critical.

The partnership will take effect from January next and will be sited in two new Centers of Excellence for Academic Leadership (CEAL) being established at the IIM, Kozhikode, and IIT, Kanpur, by the HRD Ministry. The partnership will begin with a term of five years and could be renewed later.

The programme called India-Yale University Leadership Programme will expose V-Cs, directors and deans to best practices of academic administration in the US. Already Yale has, for five years, been working with the China's Ministry of Education on a similar front.

The first programme under the agreement will happen in 2011 in New Haven, Connecticut.

Mumbai, October 28
Former IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi perceives threat to his life from "unwanted elements" and won't return to India till the situation improves, his lawyer said here today.

Advocate Mehmood Abdi also said that in response to Regional Passport Office's show cause notice to Modi as to why his passport should not be cancelled, his client had sought clarification as to when the deadline for response expires. "We have also asked the RPO what documents they have relied on while issuing the notice on October 15," Abdi said.

He said that before responding to the notice, Modi must know what was the "reference of Enforcement Directorate" to the RPO, following which notice was issued.

Notice requires that Modi file reply within 15 days, but Abdi said that the period of 15 days should start from the date of receipt, which was October 20. "So according to us, deadline expires on November 4. We have sent a letter to RPO seeking clarification on October 26, but there has been no reply," he said.

Asked when Modi would return to India, Abdi said, "There is threat to his life from some unwanted elements, and he will not return till the situation alters." Abdi denied that Modi was "absconding". "He is communicating with ED and other authorities from London," he said. — PTI