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Inflation: Pranab offers hope, no assurance
India, China inch ahead on defusing tension
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On Sonia’s birthday, Cong website hacked
Kerala Assembly sticks to new dam demand, DMK announces hunger stir
Congress, RLD seal pre-poll deal
13 years after soldier’s death, widow gets pension
Pak: MFN status for India by Oct
CRPF ‘mistakenly’ kills boy, probe ordered
SC to decide if RTI can be used to get Guv report seeking Prez Rule
ULFA issues threat to ‘Indians in Assam’
Fighting corruption
Bhanwari’s husband sent to five-day CBI custody
Maoists kidnap seven labourers
in Bihar Special to the tribune ULFA issues threat
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Inflation: Pranab offers hope, no assurance
New Delhi, December 9 Projecting himself as a village boy, who walked six miles a day to reach school and stayed in his village until graduation, Pranab took on the Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj who had yesterday charged him with being insensitive to the pain of the poor. “Don’t teach me what a village is. I am a village boy,” he declared adding that food inflation would moderate if the current declining trend continued. “Had the international situation been conducive, we could have stated with confidence that we would provide more subsidy (for oil companies). If the current trend of the past seven weeks continues, food inflation will get moderated,” Pranab told the House, only to be questioned by JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav, who traced the current drop in food inflation to increased supply of wheat, this being the reaping season. The government didn’t even once hint at any reduction in petrol or diesel prices. On the contrary, the minister countered Sushma’s point of inflation in India being impacted only by fluctuations in international oil prices. Pranab mocked the Leader of Opposition today and said, “I admire her eloquence but I was baffled yesterday when she said that global oil prices alone concern us as if oil is the only commodity we import. We import urea, steel, palm oil, important metals, whose global prices have increased sharply.” Making it clear that India - the fourth largest world economy - could not remain isolated from the world facing a Eurozone crisis, a weakening US economy, the FM invoked Rabindranath Tagore to present the government’s case for growth and reforms which, he said, would ensure inclusion. He insisted there was no connection between inflation and growth and even cited data in support. “Tagore had said you can’t progress till the time there are people behind you. I believe in a global village and in moving together, not in isolation. On major economic reforms, we have to work together and create an environment where investors come,” Pranab said, seeking BJP’s support for its financial reform agenda, one of whose items — FDI in multi retail — just got junked. With the Opposition listening listlessly, Pranab went on to state that that government revenues had not dropped despite slow growth; that 7.6 per cent current GDP growth was not an all-time low as CPI’s Gurudas Dasgupta yesterday said and that everyone in India was not starving as Sushma yesterday claimed. “You can say 7 per cent growth is not good enough. I will happily agree. But you can’t say it’s an all-time low growth,” Pranab said, doling out statistics on how food grain supply was being ensured and agricultural growth was improving. He also remembered to warn the Opposition, “If manufacturing sector growth doesn’t pick up to 8 to 10 per cent and investor confidence doesn’t return, there will be trouble.” Minutes later, Sushma slammed the speech as “routine and uninspiring” and led the Opposition walkout. Mayawati’s BSP didn’t join her march.
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India, China inch ahead on defusing tension
New Delhi, December 9 New Delhi has made specific suggestions on moving forward and Beijing has agreed to consider the proposals, sources said. “Both sides agreed that the process of dialogue and communication should be strengthened at various levels to ensure stability in the border areas,” spokesperson for the Defence Ministry Sitanshu Kar said. Today, delegations of the two countries resumed the annual defence dialogue (ADD) - the first since January 2010. The Indian side was led by the Defence Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma while the Chinese delegation was led by General Ma Xiaotian, Deputy Chief of General Staff, People’s Liberation Army. The two neighbours, who have had a tiff over the navigation rights in the South China Sea and have a running dispute over demarcation of boundaries, agreed that the existing confidence-building measures and the protocol laid down in 2005 on maintaining peace and tranquility along the Line of Control (LAC) were working well. It was decided to continue with the existing arrangement. The border management issue stems from varying perception of the LAC. Troops on either side transgress and reach a point which they perceive as the LAC. As per the 2005 agreement on protocols at LAC, New Delhi and Beijing have worked out what is called a ‘banner drill’. This helps keep tension under check. Whenever either side perceives that a transgression has been made across the LAC, soldiers on either side show each other a 10-feet-wide banner with a slogan painted across. The banner primarily cites the 2005 agreement and says there is a need to back off from the present positions of patrolling. India is keen to have a similar protocol at sea with the Chinese. The two sides also decided to have more military delegations — involving middle level officials — to talk on various issues. The first Chinese military delegation is coming to India at the end of this month while New Delhi will reciprocate by sending its delegation in January 2012. The Chinese delegation called on the Defence Minister AK Antony. He extended an invitation to the Chinese Defence Minister to visit India at a mutually convenient time. The visiting delegation also called on Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee and Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Nirmal
Verma.
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On Sonia’s birthday, Cong website hacked
New Delhi, December 9 “One of our three websites was hacked by miscreants, but our technical people restored it soon,” a party leader said. The hackers had defaced the profile page of Sonia Gandhi with a message, the sources added. “The hackers could penetrate deep inside the website and changed one paragraph,” AICC computer department chief Vishwajeet Prithvijeet Singh said. Vishwajeet Prithvijeet Singh, a former MP, said that the party websites have been under frequent attacks from hackers, who had some time back tried to break into the websites thrice one night. The website was closed after hacking was detected and was later repaired. The Congress party has three websites — congress.org.in, aicc.org.in and inc.org.in. “It may be the handiwork of miscreants. No serious political meaning need be drawn into it,” said the party leader. The cyber attack comes at a time when a controversy had broken out over Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal’s comments on monitoring content on websites. Sibal had talked about evolving guidelines and mechanisms to deal with “unacceptable” online content. — Agencies
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Kerala Assembly sticks to new dam demand, DMK announces hunger stir
Thiruvananthapuram/Chennai, December 9 The one-day special Assembly session adopted a resolution moved by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy asking the Centre and the state government to take steps to build a new dam, an issue that has erupted again in recent weeks, putting both the neighbours on a collision course. In Chennai, DMK expressed dissatisfaction with both the Centre and AIADMK government in the state over their handling of the issue and announced a hunger strike and a mammoth human chain next week protesting Kerala’s demand. DMK called an emergency meeting of its executive council and passed a resolution blaming "narrow political considerations" by some persons in Kerala for "tension on the border" and expressed the fear it would affect cordial relations between people of the two states. It also asked Chief Minister Jayalalithaa to convene an all-party meeting so as to present a picture of unity on the decades-old issue over the dam located in Kerala but controlled by Tamil Nadu under a 999-year-long lease. Winding up the three-hour-long debate in Kerala Assembly, Chandy said the state wanted to resolve the issue through talks, with the Centre as an intermediary, while maintaining cordial ties with Tamil Nadu. —
PTI
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Congress, RLD seal pre-poll deal
New Delhi, December 9 Party sources said that Ajit Singh today met Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi in the presence of senior leader and lead broker of the arrangement Digvijay Singh. All of them are expected to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi tomorrow, following which the Congress-RLD pact may be formally announced. Bargaining on the basis of the influence that he enjoys in western Uttar Pradesh, Ajit Singh was earlier clamouring for the Agriculture Ministry, a portfolio held by NCP supremo Sharad Pawar. While there was just no way that the Congress could have possibly divested Pawar of the Agriculture Ministry or even the Food Processing Ministry, sources said with the UPA’s ambitious Food Bill on the anvil, the party was also finding it difficult to let off the Food Ministry currently held by KV Thomas. They said that when Ajit Singh scaled down his preference to either commerce and industry or civil aviation to suit the “personality and demeanour of leading Jat leader that he is” that the deal was finally negotiated. Considering that Civil Aviation Ministry, before it landed with Congress leader Vyalar Ravi, was being held by party ally NCP, the senior party leadership is understood to have agreed to give it to Ajit Singh to fulfil Rahul’s “Mission UP 2012”. While Ajit Singh may be settled in the aviation ministry, the sources said his son Jayant Chowdhury may not get anything. According to the arrangement, Congress may leave 45 seats for Ajit Singh in western Uttar Pradesh and a couple more in eastern UP. Meanwhile, the Congress is still divided as far as an alliance with Ajit Singh goes. But a significant section led by Digvijay Singh feels that a pre-poll deal with the RLD would help the Congress in the poll.
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13 years after soldier’s death, widow gets pension
Chandigarh, December 9 The Bench comprising Justice Ghanshyam Prashad and Lt Gen HS Panag also directed that arrears of pension be paid to the widow with effect from 1998, along with interest. The petitioner’s husband, while posted near Bikaner, developed psychiatric problems for which he was given electric shocks in a civil hospital. Thereafter, he was sent on leave to recuperate. A few days after returning from leave, the unwell soldier walked out of the unit and went missing. He was found wandering near the Delhi railway station by the Government Railway Police (GRP) who requested the Army authorities to take him back to his unit. However, rather than sending a team to bring back the soldier, his unit in Bikaner and the military authorities in Delhi kept writing letters to each another in this regard. While the correspondence continued, the GRP let him go when no one from the Army came to escort him. His body was found the next day from a well. The Army unit then showed him on leave retrospectively from the date he had wandered out of his unit. No Court of Inquiry (CoI) was conducted as Bikaner and Delhi authorities kept on shifting the blame. After three rounds of litigation in the Delhi High Court, the court finally ordered the authorities to convene a CoI that was held 11 years after the soldier’s death. The CoI, however, declared the death as not related to service factors and opined that the unit had readied a team to bring back the soldier from the GRP, but the team could not be ultimately dispatched. Holding the unit responsible for callousness leading to death, the tribunal observed that there was extreme negligence in handling the issue since no care was taken to keep the soldier under medical supervision and then to bring him back from the GRP. The tribunal also observed that a CoI was not held which was mandatory under rules and the inquiry was held 11 years after the death on judicial intervention. The tribunal also held that it was wrong for the authorities to have shown the soldier on leave retrospectively to evade responsibility. It was held that in terms of the dictum of the Supreme Court in Charanjit Kaur vs. Union of India, the widow deserved to be granted special family pension and appropriate compensation.
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Pak: MFN status for India by Oct
Islamabad, December 9 Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said, “October next year is the time frame which has been given” for granting MFN status to India. He was responding to a question during yesterday's weekly news briefing on the latest status of the Pakistan Government's move to grant MFN status to India. Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan had recently announced during a news conference that the Cabinet had conferred the status to India but the government subsequently clarified that the process was yet to be completed. Basit said the Commerce Ministry was working on the issue and a decision would be made “in sync with our interest and WTO rules”. "The decision in principle was taken by the Cabinet. Details as to how MFN status will be granted are being worked out," he said. Following talks between their Commerce Ministers, India and Pakistan recently unveiled a slew of measures to normalise trade relations and to boost trade from $2 billion to $6 billion in three years. —
PTI
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CRPF ‘mistakenly’ kills boy, probe ordered
Guwahati, December 9 CM Tarun Gogoi has announced a compensation of Rs 3 lakh to the next of the kin of the boy even as the incident triggered mass protest in the area. The boy was shot dead while he was going to the jungle in the morning. The CRPF personnel on duty in the area had mistaken him to be a member of an insurgent outfit and opened fire at the boy. — TNS
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SC to decide if RTI can be used to get Guv report seeking Prez Rule
New Delhi, December 9 The apex court would have to go into the issue and deliver its judgment as it involved vital legal aspects, a three-member Bench headed by Justice Dalveer Bhandari clarified. Justices TS Thakur and Dipak Misra are the other members. The Bench made the observation while staying the Bombay High Court order asking the Goa Raj Bhawan to make public the Governor’s report to the Centre on the political situation in the state during July-August 2007. The Governor’s office has come to the SC challenging the HC order. Issuing notice to the Goa Government and the Chief Information Commissioner of the state, the Bench listed the next hearing after six weeks. Appearing for the Raj Bhawan, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Vivek Tankha said the Governor was not covered under the RTI as he was not a public authority. Further, the Governor had a fiduciary relationship with the President and as such was not supposed to make public his communication to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The counsel appearing for the RTI applicant, however, contended that no way the Governor could be kept out of the purview of the Act as even the SC and Rashtrapati Bhawan were covered under it. The ASG suggested the RTI applicants should approach the Union Home Ministry which also had such reports, instead of bothering the Raj Bhawan. Citing the notice sent by the state Information Commissioner to the Governor, he said the RTI officer, who was an appointee of the Raj Bhawan, had used unacceptable language asking the head of the state to appear before the commission on a particular day and remain present until permitted to leave.
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ULFA issues threat to ‘Indians in Assam’
Guwahati, December 9 In a statement e-mailed to the media here, the ULFA faction has threatened to train its gun on ‘Indians living in Assam’ in retaliation to the ‘atrocities perpetrated on innocent Assamese people by the COBRA (Combat Battalion for Resolute Action) Force of colonial India’, especially in Tinsukia district of eastern Assam, in the name of operation against the ULFA militants. The ULFA statement signed by its publicity secretary Arunodoy Dahotia said the latest situation indicated that the COBRA force was out to let loose a reign of terror among the local people taking advantage of the Armed Forces (Special Power) Act that is now in force in the state.
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Fighting corruption
New Delhi, December 9 Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office V Narayanasamy said in a written reply to the House, “The Central Vigilance Commission has noted with satisfaction that in a majority of cases, the authorities concerned have accepted the commission’s advice in accordance with the suggestions given. Deviation from the Central Vigilance Commission’s advice has been negligible.” Ironically, answering another corruption-related query, the Prime Minister’s Office also admitted to as many as 1,832 Central Government appointments across 52 departments and ministries having been made on the basis of fake caste certificates. Out of these appointments made through adoption of corrupt practices, erring officers have faced suspensions in only 276 cases, which is merely 15 per cent of the total burden of fake appointments. The biggest defaulter in this category is the Department of Financial Services, comprising Central Government banks and insurance companies which had 1,256 officers with tainted backgrounds working. They had all used forged caste (SC/ST/OBC) certificates to gain entry into jobs. Only 36 of these erring officers have so far been suspended or removed from service. Among institutions, the General Insurance Corporation (GIC) of India has emerged the single biggest defaulter with 146 officers found to have used false documents to get jobs. The Central Bank of India follows with 135 cases and the Indian Overseas Bank with 112. The Security Force with 91 cases of forged certificates is the second biggest defaulting government sector after the financial service sector. The Department of Defence follows closely with 57 cases and the BSNL with 49 cases. Critical ministries like Health and the Department of Space also have 19 and 16 cases, respectively, while the Indo-Tibetan Border Police has 39 cases. The Prime Minister’s Office said in its reply in the Lok Sabha on Monday that out of 1,832 cases of fake caste certificates, action had been initiated by the departments concerned in 1,035 cases. What matters, however, is whether officers with a record of corrupt practice have been removed from service, where the record of the government is dismal. So far as non-compliance with the Central Vigilance Commission’s advice to act against corrupt officers goes, the Centre said it had deviated in negligible cases — 16 cases out of 5,522 cases recommended for action last year; 29 cases out of 5,317 cases recommended for action in 2009 and 20 cases out of 4,238 cases suggested for action in 2008. Non-compliance rate, by these standards, is less than 0.4 per cent. The Central Vigilance Commission website listed 35 cases as “pending for prosecution sanction by relevant departments for more than four months”. Of these, maximum (9) cases are pending in the Finance Ministry.
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Bhanwari’s husband sent to five-day CBI custody
Jodhpur, December 9 They were produced before the CBI court here where magistrate Jagdish Jyani ordered the extension. Maderna (59), who represents Osian Assembly constituency, was arrested on December 2 in Jodhpur by the CBI along with Parasram Bishnoi, the brother of Congress MLA Malkhan Singh, after it filed charge sheets against three other arrested accused. Bhanwari, 36, posted as an auxiliary nurse and midwife at a sub-centre in Jaliwada village, is missing since September 1. — PTI
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Maoists kidnap seven labourers in Bihar Jamui, December 9 They later went to another site where labourers were engaged in construction of a water tank of state Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) and kidnapped three of them. They were identified as Dharmendra Yadav, Yogendra Yadav and Anil Singh. The Maoist cadre took the labourers away in Garhi forest areas at gunpoint, they said. The labourers were kidnapped after the construction firm failed to meet their demand for money, sources said. A combing operation has been launched in the forest areas at Garhi to secure safe release of the labourers, officials said. CRPF and Special Task Force (STF) of Bihar police are engaged in the operation. — PTI
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Special to the tribune Thousands of people are expected to keep an all-night vigil here as climate talks continued late into Friday night, the last day of the talks. But negotiators could also be talking through Saturday. As the impasse persisted, hundreds of people flooded the corridors of the conference centre in Durban as the climate change negotiations entered its final act. Frustrated protestors chanted for climate justice. They urged their government representatives to act for 99 per cent of the people and not 1 per cent of corporations and oil companies that pollute. The European Union (EU) agreed to further reduce its CO2 emissions but only if India, China and the United States also agreed to sign up to a new treaty for reducing their emissions. Under the EU roadmap, the treaty should be signed by 2015 and come into force by 2020. but before signing a treaty, India wants to see if developed countries take on ambitious targets for reducing their own CO2 emissions during this decade, and if they provide developing countries the required finance as well as technology to combat climate change. “"We want answer to our questions before we agree to anything,” said Jayanthi Natarajan, the Indian minister for environment. The EU’s position is that the world cannot wait for a decade before agreeing on a treaty. China and U.S. are the largest emitters of CO2. The EU position is also backed by some of the poorest developing countries as well as the most vulnerable small island nations, which want to see India and China to do more. But developing countries like India argue that despite their rapid growth, they still have to lift millions out of poverty. While they will embark on a path of green growth, they will continue to use fossil fuels to stimulate their economies. In India, for instance, 400 million people currently have no access to electricity. As the climate talks draw to a close, India has become the focus of negotiations though Ministers from 194 countries have gathered here. While it has been described as a “stumbling block” in the Western media, Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan has been repeating that she has come to Durban with an “open mind.” “The developing countries feel that the burden is being pushed on their shoulders to take more on commitments,” said Martin Khor, head of South Centre. “The finances and technology have not been forthcoming….the institutions are still being built…they should have been built two years ago.” Pleaded Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, “President Obama, do not listen to the CEOs of fossil fuel companies. Listen to the people.”
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The discussion on price rise in Parliament ended this afternoon with the conclusion of the debate in Lok Sabha where the government offered hope but not assurances of respite from back-breaking
prices.
Thiruvananthapuram/Chennai, December 9
A CBI court today remanded missing nurse Bhanwari Devi's husband
Amarchand, who was arrested for non-cooperation yesterday, to the agency's custody for five days.
The court also extended the CBI custody of sacked Rajasthan Minister Mahipal Maderna and another accused Parasram till December 12.
The NDA, Left as well as SP, which supports the government from outside, boycotted proceedings soon after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee listed a slew of statistics to blame inflationary pressure on global factors and gave credit to the UPA for reducing food inflation to 6.6 per cent as against 22 per cent in February 2010.
