The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

	SOHRABUDDIN CASE Shah seeks SC nod to return to Gujarat R Sedhuraman Legal Correspondent New Delhi, January 24 Former Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah, who has been staying away from his state for 16 months on the Supreme Court directive, today approached the apex court pleading for revocation of its order as the largest Assembly constituency that elected him for the fourth time in a row could not be “deprived of its representative” for such a long time. The CBI has filed a chargesheet against Shah for his alleged involvement in the killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, allegedly in a fake encounter with the Gujarat Police on November 26, 2005. Maintaining that the CBI had falsely implicated him in the case as part of a “malicious design to harm his blotless political career”, Shah contended that even the SC had “trashed” the investigating agency’s charge that he was running an extortion syndicate making use of Sohrabuddin. Ever since the SC granted him bail on October 30, 2010, and directed him to remain outside Gujarat, he said, he had complied with all bail conditions, including reporting to the CBI every month. Also, the CBI had not complained that he tried to influence the witnesses or tamper with evidence all these months, Shah reasoned.
	Locked in row, ‘highly accurate’ Aadhar faces Cabinet scrutiny Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service New Delhi, January 24 Ahead of a likely Cabinet meeting tomorrow to debate the role of National Population Register under the Home Ministry and the Unique Identification Authority of India under the Planning Commission, the UIDAI has said its use of biometric technology in issuance of Aadhar cards is reliable and the most accurate. Apprehensions were earlier raised by Home Minister P Chidambaram, who recently wrote to the PM saying the UID data collection did not pass the security test as mandated by the NPR. Now, in a report titled "The role of biometric technology in Aadhar enrolment", the UIDAI has highlighted a high degree of accuracy of biometrics used in the project and said the authority's biometric capability for enrolments was ready to handle 10 lakh Aadhars per day with 99.965 per cent accuracy on duplication detection and can generate database of 1.2 billion people. Since the first Aadhar card, which was issued on September 29, 2010, in Tembhali, Maharashtra, the UIDAI has issued over 10 crore Aadhar numbers as of December 31, 2011. "Our findings lay to rest the fear that the use of biometric technology in the Indian context would be unreliable and flawed," the authority said amidst a turf war with the Home Ministry that recently wrote to the Cabinet Secretary that the UID data was not reliable. The note said UID did not accept MHA's NPR data as it saw the Home Ministry in competition. Chidambaram also sought from the PM immediate resolution of the issue. The Cabinet Committee on UID is now expected to meet tomorrow. Meanwhile, the UIDAI's paper says the Aadhar data is reliable. "Our biometric data collection is in the best interest of national security," UID sources said. The report says since fingerprints and irises are being captured using high-quality sensors, high levels of accuracy are being achieved in enrolling residents. On the effectiveness of biometric technology in India, where a large number of rural/agricultural workers live, the analysis shows that the Failure to Enroll (FTE) rate of the UIDAI biometric system is just at 0.14 pc. "This implies that 99.86 pc population can be uniquely identified by UID biometric system. Even exceptions (0.14%) are checked manually and processed. UID's False Negative Identification Rate (FNIR) is as low as 0.035 pc. This means 99.965 pc duplicates submitted to the biometric de-duplication system are correctly caught by the system as duplicates," says the report. Chairman UIDAI Nandan Nilekani today said, "The UIDAI biometric system is processing over 100 trillion biometric person matches with a high degree of accuracy each day capable of issuing 10 lakh Aadhar cards daily. This makes us the most accurate and soon to be the largest biometric system in the world." Top UPA sources maintained while NPR was a compulsory enrolment system under the Registrar General of India and the ultimate register of population, the UID was meant to collect biometric data for application of services. "While NPR is mandatory, UID is voluntary. But UID has collected a lot of data which can't be allowed to go waste. Much more remains to be collected. While no one wants duplication of effort, timelines are also critical. You can't have 2014 pass by with NPR not generating the required data for use by the UIDAI. These issues will be debated," a Cabinet minister said.
	PMO wakes up to Twitter ‘virtues’ Anita Katyal Our Political Correspondent New Delhi, January 24 Two years after former minister Shashi Tharoor was pulled up by the government for his indiscreet comments on Twitter, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has realised the power and influence of the popular micro-blogging site. In a bid to reach out and inform people about the work being done by the office, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s office made its debut on Twitter on Monday night. The PM is already on Facebook. It was only apt that this announcement was made on Twitter by his newly-appointed Communication Adviser Pankaj Pachauri. “The Prime Minister’s Office is now on Twitter@PMOindia. Thank you for your support,” Pachauri tweeted on Monday night. The first tweet by the PMO related to the bravery awards function held at the PM’s residence. It had links to his speech and photographs of the programme. The account had over 10,000 followers hours after it went public. The UPA government’s media managers woke up to the potential of social media after the Centre’s brush with the Anna Hazare movement. In fact, Home Minister P Chidambaram had publicly confessed that the government was caught unawares by the impact of social media during Hazare’s two fasts after it saw how Team Anna used this technology to draw crowds at the protest venues and capture the imagination of the people with its messages. The ruling coalition appeared helpless as it was subjected to a barrage of criticism on social media networks while television channels and the print media ran news stories on the various scams and scandals that had tumbled out of the UPA government’s cupboard. PM Manmohan Singh had to bear the brunt of the attack as he was criticised for not speaking up on key issues while his government was accused of “policy paralysis”. The decision to create a Twitter account and put out regular updates on his programmes is a clear attempt to give the image of the PM and his office a makeover. “This will incrementally build up an image of a PMO at work,” remarked a senior government official.
	FOREIGN NATIONALS Deport prisoners within a month, SC tells Centre R Sedhuraman Legal Correspondent New Delhi, January 24 Expressing concern over the long delays in the release and repatriation of foreign nationals even after they had served out their sentences, the Supreme Court today directed the Centre to deport within a month all such persons to their respective countries, mostly Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Iran. A Bench comprising Justices RM Lodha and HL Gokhale passed an order asking the Union Home Ministry also to submit a compliance report by February 28 when two PILs on the issue would be taken up again for hearing. The Bench pointed out that the government had been taking only ad hoc steps and that too at the instance of the SC for deporting foreign nationals who had completed their sentences and whose nationalities had been established through diplomatic channels. The convicts were involved in various crimes such as drug smuggling and illegal crossing of the border. This amounted to gross violation of Article 21 of the Constitution relating to personal freedom, the Bench noted. “We are constrained to observe that the government has failed” to appreciate the urgency and allowed the matter relating to the repatriation of a large number of prisoners to linger, ignoring their right to liberty. The Bench noted that the Home Ministry’s affidavit, filed on November 28, 2011, showed that the deportation of some of the foreign nationals was withheld because of the delay in providing special consular access. Under Clause 4 of the May 21, 2008 Indo-Pak agreement on consular access, the two governments should provide such access within three months of the detention or arrest of nationals of their respective countries. But in several cases, consular access was being provided only upon completion of sentences by the convicts. This resulted in delays in the verification of their nationalities and subsequent repatriation, the SC pointed out. The apex court also asked the government to submit a copy of the guidelines for repatriation of prisoners belonging to other countries. During the arguments, the Bench made it clear that it did not want bureaucrats to “sleep over the files.” Some of the prisoners were held under the preventive detention law under Section 109 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and this amounted to the worst form of infraction of their human rights, it noted.
	‘Fair weather’ friend of U’khand campaigners SMA Kazmi/TNS Dehradun, January 24 Dr Anand Sharma’s telephone number is the hottest in the state at the moment. The calls come in from the Prime Minister’s Office in New Delhi, the Chief Minister’s office here and from practically all political parties. All of them seem to have just one query to make: What are his predictions for the next few days? He is no astrologer and the question does not relate to poll predictions. The anxious enquiries relate to weather conditions as Dr Sharma happens to be the Director of the Uttarakhand Meteorological Department. With weather playing the spoilsport with campaigning schedules, and more inclement weather said to be round the corner, Dr Sharma’s advice is being sought every day. Inclement weather, snowfall in the upper reaches and rain have made campaigning difficult. Helicopters are having trouble taking off and landing; and star campaigners are being forced to either cancel rallies or to travel by road to meet their commitment. Dr Sharma, however, had predicted that weather would be clear at Rudrapur, where PM Manmohan Singh addressed a Congress election rally on Friday. The office of Congress president Sonia Gandhi has also been in constant touch with him, since she was to address an election rally at Tehri Garhwal on January 15. However, Dr Anand Sharma predicted that weather would be rough with the possibility of snow and rain through the region on January 15-16. It forced Congress to postpone the rally to January 17. However, tension mounted for Congress leaders as it was still raining on January 16. But the weather cleared and she did address rallies at Roorkee and Tehri Garhwal on January 17. Sonia Gandhi arrived a day earlier as she did not want to take chances. Her visit to Haldwani on December 23 had been cancelled due to bad weather conditions. BJP president Nitin Gadkari was also forced to skip his election rallies on January 18. With only a week left for campaigning, and the weather still playing the spoilsport, most of the political parties are worried about election rallies to be addressed by their star campaigners. With hilly terrain, most of the star campaigners use helicopters to reach far off places. Uttarakhand CM BC Khanduri one of the star campaigner of ruling BJP has been provided a helicopter exclusively by the party to campaign. Beside him, BJP star Campiangers Hemal Malini, Shatrughan Sinha, Samiriti Irani, Party Chief Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley are supposed to campaign in the next week. Similarly from the Congress, president Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, PM Manmohan Singh, many senior central ministers and some Congress CMs are also expected to address 65 meetings through the length and breadth of the state. But it all depends on weather conditions that permits flying of helicopters in the hilly areas. “Congress leaders as well as CM Khanduri are in touch with me regarding the prediction for the next fortnight,” said Dr Anand Sharma.
	HC rejects plea on ‘jumbo cover-up’ Shahira Naim/TNS Lucknow, January 24 Supporting the Election Commission’s decision to cover statues of elephants installed at various parks and memorials across the state, the Allahabad High Court today rejected a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) challenging the Election Commission’s order. The Division Bench comprising Justices Amar Saran and Ramesh Sinha had, on January 16, reserved its order on the PIL filed by a local businessman Dheeraj Singh. On January 7, Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi had taken the decision to order covering of statues of elephants. Singh had moved a similar petition earlier, which was “dismissed as withdrawn” by the court on January 11 as the PIL was found to have “technical shortcomings”. Singh’s lawyer Anil Bisen had pleaded that the petitioner was “a devout Hindu who has felt hurt by the Election Commission’s order as the figure of an elephant represented Lord Ganesha”.
	AP college revisits tryst with Tagore Suresh Dharur/TNS Hyderabad, January 24 It was a fitting tribute to a stirring composition and its creator. Over one lakh persons gathered at the historic Besant Theosophical College at Madanapalle in Andhra Pradesh today to pay tribute to Rabindranath Tagore by singing the National Anthem in unison. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy led the group, comprising students, faculty members and public, in singing ‘Jana Gana Mana’ to commemorate the spirit of freedom struggle, two days ahead of Republic Day. Along with the CM, Tirupati MLA and actor Chiranjeevi and senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu joined the chorus. It was on this campus of Besant Theosophical College at Madanapalle, about 120 km from the temple town of Tirupati, that Tagore translated the national anthem from Bengali to English. The Nobel Laureate’s Madanapalle connection is interesting indeed. In February 1919, Tagore visited the campus on an invitation from his friend and Irish poet James H Cousins, whose wife Margaret Cousins was the college principal. During this trip, enchanted by the hills of Madanapalle, Tagore penned the English translation of the song he had originally written in 1911.
	Jan 22 landmine blast: Village head detained Garhwa (Jharkhand), Jan 24 A village head was today detained in connection with the January 22 landmine blast that killed 13 policemen near Bariganwa forest in Jharkhand’s Garhwa district, the police said. “We detained Ramdas Minz, the mukhia (head) of Bargarh village under Bhandaria police station today. We have got some evidence against him,” Garhwa Superintendent of Police Michael S Raj said over phone. On Saturday, the Maoists blew up an anti-landmine vehicle to kill 13 policemen. The incident happened when the policemen were going to Bargarh after getting information that some local people had enforced a shutdown in protest against the location of an under-construction health centre. — PTI
	Top Maoist leader, accomplice held Bargarh (Odisha), Jan 24 In a major success to the Odisha police, a wanted top Maoist leader allegedly involved in several crimes, including murder, and his accomplice were arrested in Bargarh district today. Dhiren Mahanto alias Girish, second in command in CPI (Maoist) Odisha state committee and active in western Odisha who had escaped from a Jharkhand jail last year, was nabbed by a special district police team at Kharamunda, Superintendent of Police Kabita Jalan of Bargarh said. His accomplice Shankar Cherua alias Munda was caught along with him and hand sketches of the district armoury, besides a loaded revolver, 12 live cartridges, cash, one compass, maps of Odisha and Bargarh and Maoist literature were seized from them, she said. Girish, who hails from Girdidh in neighbouring Jharkhand, is in the executive committee and also core group member of the CPI (Maoist) state committee has altogether 29 cases including murder, arson, loot and attack on police pending against him in Odisha. He had escaped from Chaibasa jail in Jharkhand on January 18 last year after being arrested in November, 2007 at Bariatu in Ranchi. Thereafter, he stayed in Saranda forest on Odisha-Jharkhand border for a few months and looked after the outfit's activities in Sambalpur, Bargarh, Deogarh and Sundargarh district in Odisha, she said. Shankar was inducted into the Maoist outfit last year and was one of Girish's close associates. — PTI