New Delhi, June 10
DMK MP Kanimozhi, lodged in Tihar jail here since May 10 for her alleged involvement in the 2G spectrum scam, today moved the Supreme Court seeking bail.

On June 8, the Delhi High Court had rejected her bail plea, observing that she might influence the witnesses in the case using her “political and financial clout”. Kanimozhi, daughter of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and a shareholder in Kalaignar TV with a 20 per cent stake, has challenged the HC order.

Her counsel, senior advocate VG Pragasam, confirmed that he had filed a special leave petition (SLP), seeking bail for Kanimozhi and Kalaignar TV MD Sharad Kumar, who was taken into custody along with the DMK MP. Sharad Kumar also holds 20 per cent stake in the TV channel, which allegedly received Rs 200 crore as kickback from a telecom company that benefited from the spectrum scam.

The advocate, however, refused to give details of the petition, stating that let the pleas be heard by the apex court. He was obviously cautious as the vacation Bench of Justices BS Chauhan and Swatanter Kumar had rejected a petition earlier this week on the issue of Baba Ramdev, taking exception to the media publicity before the court hearing.

The bail pleas of Kanimozhi and Sharad Kumar are likely to be heard on Monday. A Raja, former telecom minister and DMK leader, is the prime accused in the case.

The HC had listed as many as 12 “factors that have come to the fore” in the case. Besides being a shareholder, Kanimozhi and Raja “are important functionaries of the same political party”. Raja helped Kalaignar TV to get registration with the government and also get included in the bouquet of Sky TV.

The “facts and circumstances prima facie show the complicity of the petitioners in the conspiracy and their having received illegal gratification of Rs 200 crore in the account of the company controlled by them, namely M/s Kalaignar TV Pvt Ltd,” the HC had said.

Raipur, June 10
In the second brazen attack in as many days, Naxals today blew up an anti-landmine vehicle killing 10 security personnel in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district.

The anti-landmine vehicle of the security forces was approaching a bridge near Gatan village when the Naxals triggered a blast and opened indiscriminate fire on them, the police said.

Seven special police officers (SPO) and three police jawans were killed when their vehicle was tossed in the air by the powerful blast, they said.

Three of the injured have been rushed to a hospital in Bastar. The Naxals had yesterday opened indiscriminate fire near the camp of Chhattisgarh Armed Force in Naraynpur district, killing four jawans and leaving another injured.

Giving details of the incident, senior police officials said two police vehicles from police headquarters were on their to the Katikalyan area of the district. As soon as they reached a bridge near Gatan village, the Naxals triggered a powerful landmine blast damaging the anti-landmine vehicle and opened indiscriminate fire at the police personnel.

The police force retaliated following which the Naxals fled from the spot.

“The condition of the four injured jawans is critical,” they said. A police team has been rushed to the spot and another is scouting the jungles of the area to trace the Naxals.

The attack comes at a time when the Naxals are observing “Janpituri” week when they hold celebrations and also carry out attacks. The week is celebrated in the second week of June every year.

Dantewada is a Naxal hotbed. Two years back, the Naxals had killed 76 CRPF jawans in an attack in the district. Naxals have killed 30 police personnel in the state this year. — PTI 

New Delhi, June 10
Blaming the DMK for the drubbing in the Tamil Nadu and Puducherry Assembly elections, the Congress has said there is a need to take a “relook” at its strategy in the southern state as the party must not lose its vote bank due to “mistakes of its coalition partners”.

The remarks made in the editorial and an article of the latest issue of the party mouthpiece ‘Congress Sandesh’ have come at a time when DMK chief M Karunanidhi is holding an emergency meeting of the party's high-level Action Committee.

“The results in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry were affected by the 2G scam and these states were lost to other parties,” the editorial said.

Another article in the journal says, “The Congress has to have another look at their strategy in the southern state. It must not lose its vote bank due to the mistakes of its coalition partners.” The Congress was part of the DMK-led alliance in Tamil Nadu.

Sarvajit Singh, who is one of the two-member editorial board of 'Congress Sandesh' along with Union minister Salman Khurshid, also categorically says in the article that the results in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry were influenced by “public discontent” on the 2G scam being faced by members of the DMK.

“A lot of good work done by the ruling party was lost in the public anger against the alleged huge loss to the exchequer being attributed to a DMK minister,” it says.

Noting that the UPA government at the Centre has allowed law to take its own course and “many important political figures associated with the DMK and others are currently interned”, the article insists “the Congress has to regain its old glory and be in a position to be in power by itself”. — PTI 

New Delhi, June 10
The Centre’s optional Class X board exam move passed the test of students’ scrutiny with flying colours, as 70 per cent of those taking the exam this year junking the boards in favour of the school-based assessment system called the Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE).

For the first time, all 10, 62, 210 students, registered for Class X exams in the CBSE’s 11, 600 schools this year, were assessed for not just academic but also non-scholastic skills. Today, they received multi-paged report cards that ranked them with grades in scholastic subjects and non-scholastic fields like originality, interpretative skills; health and physical education; life skills, including the ability of a student to bond with his peers.

That being the case, a student passing out of the CBSE now has a better chance of admission anywhere in the world, armed as he is with descriptive certificate of school-based assessment, which presents a thorough insight into his personality, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said today.

Data from the CCE and CBSE’s no-board experiment has yielded heartening results for the government, which had risked criticism last year to reform India’s school education system. The fact that students studied in a stress-free environment is evident, as 97 per got promoted to the next class (Class XI) this year as against 89 per cent in 2010.

Interestingly, there were hardly any differences between the pass percentages of students who opted for Class X board exams and those who volunteered for school-based assessment, with their respective pass percentages being 99.06 and 98.61. Also, many more students - 38377 - than last year’s 11,055 - came out with topmost grades in all five areas of assessment this time.

New Delhi, June 10
Unintentional injuries among children of less than five years of age led to around 82, 000 child deaths in India in 2005, a new online study published by Injury Prevention, a British Medical Journal, showed.

These estimates are almost three times higher than previous estimates for injury deaths among children. The study was led by the Registrar General of India and co-authored by Professor Prabhat Jha from the Centre for Global Health Research, St Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto, and involved researchers from The George Institute for Global Health, University of Sydney, Australia.

These results were collected from Million Death Study (MDS), which is one of the largest studies of premature mortality in the world. Using a method called verbal autopsy, MDS seeks to assign causes to deaths occurring in all parts of India.

Unintentional injuries were the sixth leading cause of death among children under 5 years of age, with higher risks in rural areas. Drowning was the leading cause of child injury deaths, accounting for over 30 per cent of all injury deaths.

More children die from drowning in India than anywhere else in the world, killing more than 26,000 children, in 2005. The north-eastern and eastern regions of the country are hit heavily by monsoon rains, which cause flooding along major rivers, leaving behind flooded waterways and open water ponds that pose drowning risk for children. Deaths due to drowning were three times higher in rural areas compared to urban areas, and were also higher in boys compared to girls.

Injuries due to falling led to 12, 000 deaths among under-five-year-old children. Falls were the leading cause of injury deaths in urban areas. In rural areas, deaths due to injuries caused in road accidents were reported in higher numbers than falls.

Authors note that while major investments to prevent childhood deaths by reducing the burden of infectious conditions, ensuring better nutrition, and promoting safe motherhood continue to be made, avoidable deaths due to various injuries have received substantially less attention.

Speaker of the Assembly Biman Bandyopadhyay said instead of the ordinance promulgated yesterday, a Bill would be placed in the Assembly to reclaim the 400 acres land and return it to unwilling farmers of Singur.

The move came on a day when a Left delegation led by leader of the Opposition Surya Kanta Mishra met Governor MK Narayanan and said it would not be proper to promulgate an ordinance when the Assembly was in session.

Mumbai, June 10
Members of the 14,000 strong Indian community in Yemen are slowly trickling back home following a lull in fighting in the country. 

Hyderabad, June 10
After the debacle in West Bengal and Kerala state assembly elections, the CPM today began a postmortem exercise to go into the reasons for the drubbing, and to chalk out an action plan for the future.

A meeting of the party’s politburo was held here to finalise the agenda for a two-day meeting of the central committee, commencing tomorrow. The party general secretary, Prakash Karat, Brinda Karat, Sitaram Yechuri, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, West Bengal unit secretary Biman Bose and other top leaders attended the daylong meeting held at MB Bhavan, the headquarters of CPM’s Andhra Pradesh unit.

Former Chief Minister of West Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was conspicuous by his absence. Party sources cited health reasons for his absence.

As a galaxy of senior leaders gathered here for the crucial exercise in self-introspection, the one question that pops up prominently is whether the party will consider change of guard in the wake of criticism against its general secretary Prakash Karat’s style of functioning.

A section of party leaders blame Karat’s dogmatic and obstinate approach for the Marxist party’s decline.

The party leaders from West Bengal are said to be particularly peeved over his hawkish political line that had led to the withdrawal of support to the UPA-I on the issue of Indo-US civil nuclear deal.

The enormity of the drubbing in West Bengal, where the Left Front lost power after ruling the state for 34 years, may force the party to take some hard decisions. The central committee will also take stock of the current political situation in the country, particularly the ongoing anti-corruption campaign.

The meeting is likely to chalk out action plan for taking up various people's issues. According to the party sources, the meeting is also likely to discuss the issue of re-admitting former Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan into the politburo. He was removed from the politburo in 2009, following internal squabbles in the party's Kerala unit. 

Chandigarh, June 10
After 13 years of legal wrangles and time in prison, the Armed Forces Tribunal has awarded him compensation of Rs 2 lakh for the damage to his career and unwarranted imprisonment due to an “unfair” trial by a summary court martial. The court martial had tried jawan Ravindra Kumar on three charges pertaining to theft of official documents, handing over photocopies of documents to a civilian and making false accusations against an officer. He was awarded six months rigorous imprisonment and dismissed from service in 1998.

Quashing the court martial proceedings that “gave the impression of a mock trial”, the Tribunal ordered that he be notionally reinstated in service and paid all his salary arrears and benefits along with 8 per cent interest. Since Ravindra Kumar’s stipulated term of engagement of 24 years had expired in 1999, he cannot be actually re-instated in service at this stage, but would get his dues till that period.

Ravindra Kumar had contended that it was wrongly recorded during trial proceedings that he had pleaded guilty and that his signatures were not obtained against such a pleading. Further, there was no mandatory certificate from his Commanding Officer testifying that he was explained the implication of the charges and his plea on them.