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Siddaramaiah inducts 28 ministers in
Karnataka
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Punjab panchayat elections today, 1.1 crore voters hold the key
Rahul slams Oppn for stalling food Bill in Parliament
Spot-fixing in IPL
NSC warns govt on telecom suppliers’ link with PLA
Now, no separate samadhis for national leaders
Chit fund scam: Sudipta sent to judicial custody
Saradha Group chief Sudipta Sen is produced at a local court in Salt Lake city near Kolkata on Saturday. — PTI
Maharashtra to roll out cash transfer despite sluggish Aadhaar
registration
Won’t let Houses work unless PM quits: BJP
Appeal against Pappu Yadav’s acquittal, Left urges CBI
26/11: Trial of Pak suspects adjourned
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Siddaramaiah inducts 28 ministers in
Karnataka
Bangalore, May 18 Mining baron and Rajya Sabha member Anil Lad, elected from Bellary city, former working president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee DK Shivakumar and R Roshan Baig, all of whom are facing corruption charges, were kept out of the ministry fearing denting the party image ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. But Anil’s cousin Santosh Lad, also a controversial mining baron, was included in the ministry. Twenty were sworn in as Cabinet ministers while the remaining eight got inducted as ministers of state by Governor HR Bhardwaj at Raj Bhawan in the presence of Siddaramaiah and KPCC president G Parameshwara. Parameshwara’s bid to get the Deputy Chief Minister’s post was scuttled by Siddaramaiah saying it would create a parallel power centre. Siddaramaiah, who belongs to the Backward Caste, opposed the candidature of Parameshwara, also a Dalit, arguing that both Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister should not be from reserved categories. Those sworn in as Cabinet ministers included former Union Ministers V Srinivasa Prasad and MH Ambarish, an actor-turned-politician.
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Punjab panchayat elections today, 1.1 cr voters hold the key
Chandigarh, May 18 Nearly one lakh employees have been deployed to conduct polling. A whopping 1.1 crore voters are on the electoral rolls. It is, perhaps, for the first time that all main political parties have been hyperactive during campaigning. The top Congress leadership led by its president Partap Singh Bajwa toured the state to mobilise party activists, who had been in a state of inertia for some time due to various electoral upsets to the party in recent years. Consequently, the SAD and the BJP leadership also remained on its toes to guard its political turf. Sanjha Morcha leaders, who have made electoral adjustments with the Congress in certain districts, also actively campaigned to make their presence felt. Zila Parishads and Panchayat Samitis in the state are by and large ineffective bodies, as these have not been empowered fully by the respective ruling parties since the 1990s. However, the main political parties, with an eye on the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, were successful in activating their rank and file to a large extent during campaigning. Experts say the state government has given only certain supervisory powers to Zila Parishads and Panchayat Samitis, but has not empowered these bodies financially and administratively. In fact, as per the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, these bodies should be highly powerful institutions of grassroot democracy. Interestingly, regional parties such as the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), which has been pressing the Centre for decentralisation of powers, has not shown the same keenness as far as giving powers to Zila Parishads and Panchayat Samitis is concerned. These institutions were to be given powers to play a major role in managing the village and district-level functions of 29 government departments. However, the Punjab Government has provided space to these institutions to play a very limited role. Interestingly, there is no effort at any level to make elected members of these institutions aware about even their limited powers and rights and they end up playing second fiddle to officials of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department. Politicians, especially MLAs, are aware of the fact that in case these institutions were to be empowered as per Constitutional provisions, they would be reduced to mere makers of policy.
Election in numbers
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Rahul slams Oppn for stalling food Bill in Parliament
Thiruvananthapuram, May 18 “I am sad that the Opposition is acting against the interests of the poor Indian...I can understand politics. But I cannot understand political parties hurting the poor of the country,” Rahul told a party rally here. “We have been working on the Bill for quite some time. But the Opposition does everything that they can do to stall the Bill. It does not matter what they do. The UPA and the Congress are going to give you (people) the right to food to ensure that no single Indian goes to sleep at night hungry,” Rahul said at a well-attended rally at Central Stadium here. Spelling out the salient features of the UPA's economic policies, he said the Congress, while pursuing liberalisation, believed in inclusive growth to ensure that every Indian was part of the progress. “We believe in inclusive growth, liberalisation, opening up of business. But every single Indian should become part of the progress,” he said. The Congress Vice-President also took a dig at the Communists in the country for holding on to an ideology that had “failed” all over the world. Even China had changed its old approach towards Communism, he said. "As you know, the rest of the world has given up Communism. In fact, tomorrow the leader of China is coming to India. China itself has a different view of Communism from what they used to have," he said apparently targeting the CPI(M)-led LDF opposition in Kerala. “I would ask the Communist party to ask themselves as how their ideology has failed all over the world and why they are holding to the ideology that has failed all over the world,” he said. Rahul said it was disturbing that the opposition in Kerala was “using violence” against the Congress workers. “Everybody is allowed to have their view point. But what disturbs me is the systematic use of violence and aggression (by the Opposition) against Congress workers,” he said.
— PTI
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Gujarat Police had no clue of Delhi cops’ ops in state
Manas Dasgupta
Ahmedabad, May 18 The state police sources admitted that it had no knowledge about the presence of the Delhi Police in Ahmedabad or in other parts of the state. After the exposures, the sources confirmed that the sleuths of the Delhi Police spent over a week in Ahmedabad, Rajkot and some other places in the state watching the activities of the bookies connected with the spot-fixing, but it had neither sought any assistance from the Gujarat Police nor it had any idea about its operations. Besides bookies, the Delhi Police had also kept a watch on the residence of the former Rajasthan Royals and Gujarat Ranji trophy player Amit Singh in Ahmedabad, without the knowledge of the city police. Among the 11 bookies arrested by the Delhi Police so far, four are from Gujarat besides the alleged conduit Amit Singh who was arrested in Mumbai today. The critics of Chief Minister Narendra Modi said while he did not miss any opportunity to claim that he had made the Gujarat Police most modern and abreast with the modern technological developments, it was shocking that the state police did not get even a whiff of what was happening around it. In a bid to prevent repetition of the episode of the Delhi Police in which a police constable was found keeping records of the call details of the higher officers of his own department, the state home ministry has recently issued an order barring any policeman from seeking phone call details of any person without the written consent of the police commissioners in the commissionerates or the district superintendent of police in the districts. The police sources pointed out that with the system of cultivating ‘police informers’ to pass on basic information to the police having almost become obsolete, the modern police mostly depend on mobile call records to detect crime or to keep watch on the known criminals. According to one estimate, in Ahmedabad city alone about 10,000 mobile call records are being checked to keep trace of the known and little known criminals every month. The staff at the smaller police stations would prefer to ignore checking the records than approaching the police commissioner every now and then for approval to seek call records. It was widely believe that the decision taken under police pressure to restrict the lower-ranked police from seeking call records to prevent alleged misuse, could make Ahmedabad and other parts of the state more ‘unsafe’.
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NSC warns govt on telecom suppliers’ link with PLA
New Delhi, May 18 Even though the tussle over the preferential market access (PMA) policy of the Ministry of Telecom continues, the National Security Council (NSC) Secretariat has written to the government warning about the two telecom equipment suppliers’ connection with the PLA. India has recently got over a stand-off with the Chinese army in the Daulat Beg Oldi sector in eastern Ladakh. The NSC has written to the government to take steps to overhaul its domestic telecom manufacturing capabilities to check, investigate and ultimately replace risks that come with foreign equipment. The letter from the NSC comes at a time when there is already a major debate under way in the telecom sector over the PMA which says that all public and private sector companies are required to use 50-100 per cent domestically manufactured equipment or face penalties. ZTE and Huawei remain the largest telecom equipment suppliers mainly to the private telecom operators. The PMO has, however, pointed out flaws in such a policy, questioning the correlation between domestic manufacturing and national security. The NSC has pointed out that while Huawei was focusing on switches and routers in the Chinese Army project, ZTE was involved in mobile and fibre networks. The project would strengthen Chinese army’s electronic warfare capabilities.
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Now, no separate samadhis for national leaders
New Delhi, May 18 The approval came at the meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which also gave its clearance for the establishment of the Gandhi Heritage Sites Mission with the objective of conserving and restoring the heritage sites associated with ‘Father of the Nation’. A statement issued by the government said that in the past, separate memorials for departed national leaders were created near the Rajghat which covered a large space. In view of the Cabinet decision taken in 2000 that “Henceforth, the government shall not develop any Samadhi for departed leaders” and the paucity of land at the Samadhis Complex area, the ‘Rashtriya
Smriti’ is being developed to perform the last rites of departed national leaders. The Smriti area will provide space for a public gathering. Gandhi Heritage Sites Mission would be entrusted with the identification, collation and assessment of information on ‘Gandhi Heritage’ material for its management and deployment. The mission will aim at preserving for posterity 39 core sites as well as other 2,000 important sites earlier identified by the panel under the chairmanship of Gopalkrishna Gandhi.
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Chit fund scam: Sudipta sent to judicial custody
Kolkata, May 18 Sen was produced in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bidhanagar, A H M Rahman, after the expiry of nine days custody and sent on judicial remand in three separate cases till May 22, May 23 and May 31. The police which had taken him on remand for 14 days followed by a further nine days, did not make a prayer for its extension, Sen’s counsel Samir Das said. The three cases related to non-payment of salary and chit fund cases, Das said. The in-charge of Saradha Group’s Jharkhand operations, Arvind Singh Chouhan, was also remanded to judicial custody in three separate cases till till May 22, May 23 and May 31. Saradha director, Debjani Mukherjee, could not be produced as she was admitted to a private hospital in the morning after she complained of illness. “According to law for further remand in either police custody or judicial custody the accused has to be produced before the court either via tele conferencing or physically. As neither of the two is possible as of now her case is pending,” Debjani’s lawyer Anirban Guha Thakurta said. Sen, Mukherjee and Chouhan, were arrested from Sonamarg in Kashmir valley on April 24 while they were on the run.
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Maharashtra to roll out cash transfer despite sluggish Aadhaar
registration
Mumbai, May 18 The decision comes after the state government decided to accelerate implementation of direct cash transfers. Earlier, the scheme was to be introduced only in Mumbai and its suburbs:
Pune, Nandurbar, Amravati and Wardha. Accordingly, the state government’s machinery went into overdrive to enroll as many people as possible. However, with the scheme getting extended to more districts, the government has had to relax its criteria. “We expect enrolment to speed up in all these districts with 80-90 per cent of the population being covered by December,” says an official. To begin with, only cash in lieu of LPG subsidy would be disbursed. Officials expect Aadhaar enrolment to speed up once word of the direct cash transfer
spreads. Maharashtra is one of the states which has managed a high enrolment under the
UID. The state’s ruling Congress-NCP government expects the majority of its population to be brought under direct cash transfer before the General Election.
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Won’t let Houses work unless PM quits: BJP
Lucknow, May 18 Kumar's comments came while he was responding to a question on his party's stand on a likely special session of Parliament to clear the proposed Food Security Bill. Kumar is here in connection with BJP’s proposed nationwide ‘jail bharo’ campaign against corruption and inflation, which is to run from May 27 till June 2. He said that a meeting of the BJP national executive would be held in June to discuss the strategy for the party's anti-corruption drive.
— PTI
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Appeal against Pappu Yadav’s acquittal, Left urges CBI
Patna, May 18 Citing lack of evidence, the Patna High Court Friday acquitted Pappu Yadav in the CPM leader Ajit Sarkar murder case. “The acquittal of Pappu Yadav has come as a rude shock to law abiding citizens,” CPM state secretary Vijay Kant Thakur said while urging the CBI, which had filed the chargesheet in the case, to appeal against the verdict in the apex court. The Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist state secretary Kunal said the SC should order a fresh inquiry in the case on the lines of one ordered after the Gujarat riots in 2002. The CPI-ML has decided to observe a day-long protest in Patna and Purnea districts against the high court verdict.
— IANS
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26/11: Trial of Pak suspects adjourned
Islamabad, May 18 Court officials said the case would be taken up again on May 25. The Federal Investigation Agency is yet to appoint someone to replace chief prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, who was gunned down by suspected militants in Islamabad on May 3. Sources said Ali's deputy Chaudhry Azhar too was not keen on handling the case following the assassination of the chief prosecutor. Ali was killed by unidentified gunmen near his home in Islamabad in an execution-style drive-by shooting. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. Besides the Mumbai attacks case, Ali was also handling the Benazir Bhutto assassination case.
— PTI
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Thane Kavratti (Lakshadweep)
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Sudipta Sen, the chairman of the Saradha Group which allegedly defrauded thousands of small investors, was today sent to judicial custody by a Bidhanangar court as the police did not seek his further remand.
Sen was produced in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate, Bidhanagar, A H M
Rahman, after the expiry of nine days custody and sent on judicial remand in three separate cases till May 22, May 23 and May 31.
