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State safe, please return: K’taka Dy CM to N-E migrants
Power yield down for want of coal
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Talks on with Pak to resolve Sir Creek issue: Antony
PM to meet Zardari at NAM Summit
Flexible visa regime sought
Marriages can end before cooling-off period gets over, rules apex court
SENIORITY PRINCIPLE
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Seven dead as fresh violence hits Assam
Imphal, August 25 Inspector General of Police LR Bishnoi confirmed that five bodies had been recovered from the area. The deceased were yet to be identified, he added. "Suspected miscreants must have killed the five people during the day and hidden their bodies in a paddy field in the area," he said. The slain persons were travelling in a TATA mobile vehicle from
Bijni, about 20 kilometres away from the site where miscreants launched an attack on the vehicle coming from a relief camp at
Amguri. Forces are said to have been rushed to the spot. Communal violence erupted between the dominant Bodos and Bengali-speaking Muslim settlers in Assam on July 19 at Kokrajhar district. The violence soon spread to contiguous Chirang and Dhubri districts, killing close to 80 people and displacing over 4 lakh people in the three districts. Night curfew is in
force in Chirang and Dhubri districts. The Kokrajhar district administration imposed indefinite curfew in Kokrajhar district on Thursday after police arrested Pradeep Brahma, a legislator of the Bodoland Peoples’ Front
(BPF), for his alleged involvement in the violence. Meanwhile, officials say
terrorist outfits of the northeastern region have reportedly shifted their bases to neighbouring Myanmar following crackdown by the Bangladesh security forces. (With inputs from
IANS)
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State safe, please return: K’taka Dy CM to N-E migrants
Imphal, August 25 Ashoka, who is on a confidence-building visit to Assam and Manipur along with Karnataka DGP L
Pachhau, today met a group of Assamese youth who had fled from Bangalore. He told them that the employers in Bangalore and elsewhere had assured the government that all the North-East people would be taken back. “Karnataka is safe. We have already registered 17 cases and arrested 22 persons who had spread these rumours and sent out threats through SMS and MMS. Our police has seized two personal computers, a laptop and a mobile handset which were used for spreading the rumours and threats,” Ashoka
said. Ashoka said over 3.5 lakh persons from Assam and other north-eastern states were working or studying in Karnataka. “While majority of them are employed in security agencies and the hospitality sector, there is also a sizable number of people from the North-East working in the IT sector,” he added.
Ashoka said 34,627 persons had bought train tickets for various destinations in Assam during the week beginning August 15 in Bangalore. “Investigations are going on in full swing and we are sharing the inputs with the Union Home Ministry in order to book the main culprits,” Ashoka said.
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Power yield down for want of coal
New Delhi, August 25 As a result, thermal power plants today face a severe shortage of coal and are even importing it to produce electricity. The shortage of railway wagons needed to transport coal across the country has compounded the problem. Close to 60 per cent of the installed power generation capacity in the country is of coal-based thermal plants — 1,17,283 MW (as on August 24) out of the total capacity of 2,06,456 MW. The remaining capacity is spread across gas-based, hydel, nuclear and renewable energy plants. Coal-based thermal power plants form the backbone of the power grid that sustains industry, said sources. On August 22 — the first day of the Parliament logjam on the issue — 31 thermal power-generating plants, out of a total of 89 plants countrywide, had coal stocks below the ‘critical-stock’ level. Out of these 31 plants, 21 were below the ‘super-critical stage’, according to data from power regulators. Under Central Electricity Authority guidelines, the ‘critical’ stage means a coal stock at the power station for less than seven days. ‘Super-critical’ means that the stocks would last less than four days. The countrywide need for coal linkages to thermal power is 1.1 million tonnes a day. A major reason for the shortage is the inadequate number of railway wagons needed to transport this coal across the country. Some 440 rail rakes are needed daily while the best availability, last fiscal, was been 231 rakes on March 31. On August 22, the Dadri, Singrauli and Anpara plants in Uttar Pradesh had no coal stock. In West Bengal, Kolaghat and Sagardighi had no coal stocks. Around 15,000 MW capacity is lying idle for want of coal supply linkages. This includes requests made by Punjab for coal linkage of 1,980 MW at Talwandi Sabo and 1,320 MW thermal plant at Rajpura. Haryana is looking for coal linkage for the third stage of the 1,500 MW plant at
Jhajjar.
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Talks on with Pak to resolve Sir Creek issue: Antony
Porbandar, August 25 "The dialogue process is on to resolve the issue with the neighbouring country, but can't tell any time limits," Antony told media-persons after inaugurating Remote Operating Station (ROS) of the Coastal Radar Network at Porbandar today. Sir Creek is a 98-km disputed territory between India and Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch marshlands, which opens up into the Arabian Sea. The Sir Creek divides the Kutch region of Gujarat and the Sindh province of Pakistan. Antony inaugurated the Gujarat leg of the ROS as part of the coastal radar network, which has been envisaged to provide security cover for the coastline. Earlier in the day, he inaugurated a similar system in Maharashtra. "With the inauguration of this system, the country will be able to meet any challenges that arise either from outside or within", Antony said. The system would function round-the-clock to keep a constant vigil on the activities on the sea, he said.
— PTI
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PM to meet Zardari at NAM Summit
New Delhi, August 25 The PM will have bilateral meetings with Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the margins of the summit to review bilateral relations as well as international developments, particularly the situation in Afghanistan. Briefing reporters here today on Manmohan Singh’s visit, Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said the PM would also have meetings with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and the leaders of Afghanistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. A ‘pull-aside’ with the new Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi was also a possibility. The summit will be preceded by a customary ministerial meeting on August 28-29 and a senior officials’ meeting tomorrow and the day after. The theme of the ‘Tehran Summit’ is ‘Lasting Peace through Global Governance’ in accordance with the NAM practice. It would focus on global, regional and sub-regional issues, including the conflict in Syria, as well as the issues relating to development and human rights and social issues. Asked if the NAM Summit or the Iran issue had figured during his recent talks with US Ambassador to UN Susan Rice, Mathai said, “We did discuss matters relating to Iran but formally no such issues were taken up.’’ His comments assume significance against the backdrop of the fact that the US has been nudging India to reduce its engagement with Iran and also considerably slash its oil imports from the Islamic republic as part of Washington’s attempt to isolate Tehran. The Foreign Secretary, however, noted that economic relations between India and Iran had only strengthened in the past two years though the balance of trade was heavily tilted in favour of the Islamic republic, primarily because of oil purchases by India. “We would certainly like to expand our exports to Iran.’’ Giving figures, he said the total bilateral trade between the two countries in 2011-12 was to the tune of $ 15.9 billion. Of this India’s imports were worth $ 13.5 billion and exports amounted to $ 2.4 billion. Mathai also made it clear that India would abide by the sanctions imposed against Iran by the UN and ignore those slapped by individual nations like the US. However, he admitted that the sanctions by the US and other Western nations had caused some problems in trading with Iran, like bank guarantees and shipping.
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Flexible visa regime sought
New Delhi, August 25 Vikramjit Singh Sahney, president of SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) and President of World Punjabi Organisation (WPO) today demanded a flexible visa regime to augment India-Pakistan economic cooperation and help inflow of FDI to India from Pakistan in the wake of the Government of India’s decision to allow investment from Pakistan. Last night, the WPO and the SCCI hosted a dinner meet with a Parliamentary delegation from Pakistan led by Senator Jahangir Bader, Leader of the House, Senate of Pakistan.
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Marriages can end before cooling-off period gets over, rules apex court
“We grant a decree of mutual divorce to the parties and direct that the marriage between the parties shall stand dissolved by mutual consent,” a Bench comprising Justices Altamas Kabir and J Chelameswar said in a verdict. The SC ended the marriage of a man working in Canada by invoking its special powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to relax the statutory six-month waiting period after filing for divorce by mutual consent. “It is no doubt true that the legislature had in its wisdom stipulated a cooling period of six months from the date of filing of a petition for mutual divorce till such divorce is actually granted with the intention that it would save the institution of marriage. “It is also true that the intention of the legislature cannot be faulted with, but there may be occasions when in order to do complete justice to the parties, it becomes necessary for this court to invoke its powers under Article 142 in an irreconcilable situation,” the Bench clarified. Explaining the case on hand, the SC pointed out that the husband had filed for divorce under Section 12 of the Hindu Marriage Act (HMA) on June 1, 2011, just two months after the wedding. During mediation, both the parties agreed to dissolve their marriage by filing a petition under Section 13B of HMA following which the Section 12 petition was disposed of. Entertaining the petition for divorce by mutual consent on April 13, 2012, Additional District Judge, West Delhi, posted the matter for October 15, 2012 for the purpose of second motion. This prompted the husband to challenge it in the SC. He pleaded for invocation of its special power under Article 142. In its verdict, the SC pointed out that the “marriage is subsisting by a tenuous thread on account of the statutory cooling-off period, out of which four months have already expired. “When it has not been possible for the parties to live together and to discharge their marital obligations towards each other for more than one year, we see no reason to continue the agony of the parties for another two months,” the Bench reasoned.
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Ad hoc service counts if recruiter competent: SC
R Sedhuraman Legal Correspondent
New Delhi, August 25 A Bench of Justices GS Singhvi and SJ Mukhopadhaya delivered the verdict by allowing an appeal filed by Haryana challenging the HC verdict directing the state government to consider 15 teachers for promotion to the posts of lecturer by taking into account three years of their ad hoc service. State government had acknowledged the teachers had been appointed as Masters during 1994-96 on ad hoc basis against sanctioned posts after being sponsored by Employment Exchanges and on being recommended by the District Selection Committee. Their seniority could not be fixed on the basis of total length of service because their appointments were purely ad hoc and were subject to the availability of the candidates selected for regular appointment. Further, the Director of Education was the competent authority to make appointments for posts.
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3 held for killing deer
Bikaner: Three men were arrested for allegedly killing a deer in Rajasthan's Bikaner district. Deer’s horn and skin were also seized. — PTI
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As political parties slug it out in Parliament over the allocation of 57 coal blocks, the gap between demand and supply of coal in the country is growing every year.
Even as Washington tightens its noose around Tehran over the Islamic nation’s controversial nuclear programme, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is leaving here next week for Iran to attend the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit to be held on August 30-31.
New Delhi, August 25
