Excelsior... Nation

C P Thakur

NEW DELHI, Dec 24: The Union Health Ministry has decided to constitute a "core team" for certain highly AIDS infected hotspots like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Manipur to control its.....more

AJSU to contest bypolls to Ramgarh Assembly seat

RANCHI, Dec 24: The All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) has decided to contest the byelections to the Ramgarh Assembly seat in Jharkhand, slated ......more

Anand opposes exhibition of female body on pretest
of fashion

UDAIPUR, Dec 24: Opposing the exhibition of the female body on the pretext of fashion shows, music director Anandji has said it went against the culture of the country.....more

Cong will have to wait to re-capture power at Centre

NEW DELHI, Dec 24: Sonia Gandhi gained electoral legitimacy organisationally making mincemeat of the feeble challenge ....more

Hope eternal at the dawn
of new millennium

NEW DELHI, Dec 24: Peace got a chance in Kashmir even as the north-east remained a hotbed of insurgency ...more

K R Narayanan

MPs urge President to probe credentials of NBA activists

NEW DELHI, Dec 24: A delegation of Parliament members from Gujarat, led by former Gujarat Chief Minister Shankersinh Waghela, have urged President K R Narayanan not to pay any heed to the anti-Narmada dam activists and .....more

HC seeks details on "nexus" between SEBI
and FIIs

NEW DELHI, Dec 24: The Delhi High Court has sought additional details from a petitioner to substantiate his allegations in a writ against SEBI . ....more

Bouquets, brickbats
for ‘Kolkata’

CALCUTTA, Dec 24: The decision to change Calcutta’s nomenclature from Calcutta to Kolkata has attracted both bouquets. .....more

Core team planned for AIDS hotspots

NEW DELHI, Dec 24: The Union Health Ministry has decided to constitute a "core team" for certain highly AIDS infected hotspots like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Manipur to control its growth through more focused programmes.

Each core team, headed by a senior health officer, would go into the specific reasons for the spread of aids in these states and formulate programmes best suited for the region, Union Health Minister C P Thakur told PTI here.

Similar exercise would be taken up subsequently in other states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Nagaland categorised in Group I on the basis of 1999 sentinel surveillance data showing prevalence of HIV in the country, he said.

The minister said he himself would regularly monitor the functioning of the special team. Besides, Thakur said he would visit the high AIDS risk states and hold meeting with Chief Ministers and cross-section of people and organisations to intensify the drive against the deadly disease, fast becoming the most serious public health problem in India.

Thakur said past experience has shown that a generalised AIDS control programme had limited success because there are different reasons for the spread of the disease geographically.

Data from various sentinel sites in Maharashtra shows the HIV infection has increased among commercial sex workers, is rapidly progressing among STD clinic attendees while in manipur the infection has spread very sharply among intravenous drug users.

Since the detection of the first AIDS case in India in 1986, the disease has taken the shape of an epidemic.

The number of full-blown AIDS cases reported almost doubled to 6227, till November this year, from 3272 in 1999. The number of reported cases in 1998 was only 1548.

The number of female AIDS cases has almost tripled from 574 in 1999 to 1524 till November this year.

"Now there is no time to rest. Unless it is nipped at the nascent stage, the spread of HIV will become unmanageable," he said announcing the fight against AIDS at a war-footing.

To make the anti-AIDS drive more broadbased and effective, India has entered into partnership with UNAIDS for technical and managerial support. A number of initiatives have been taken in moving this collaboration forward.

India has recently recruited team members for coordination between the national programme and sectoral programmes of the UN co-sponsors.

Constitution of UN group in last two years has been able to play a crucial role in bringing together the efforts of UN co-sponsor and Government.

C P Thakur was elected as president of UNAIDS coordination committee during a four-day meeting of the agency at Brazilian Capital Rio De Janeiro recently. The next meeting of the Board would be held under his presidentship in May next year in Geneva. (PTI)

AJSU to contest bypolls to Ramgarh Assembly seat

RANCHI, Dec 24: The All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) has decided to contest the byelections to the Ramgarh Assembly seat in Jharkhand, slated for February.

Talking to UNI here, AJSU convenor and Jharkhand Road Construction Minister Sudesh Kumar Mahato said the party was well placed in Ramgarh and confident of wresting the seat, for which byelections were being held for the first time after creation of the of new state.

To a query, he said the AJSU had supported the Babu Lal Marandi-led National Democratic Alliance in Jharkhand, but had no electoral tie-up with it as yet. It is now up to the NDA to decide whether it would like to back the AJSU candidate, he said.

Mr Mahato claimed that the left had no support base in Ramgarh after the AJSU entered the arena.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) which represented Ramgarh, has decided to field Roshan Khatun, the widow of late Sabbir Ahmad Quraishi who was elected from there in the last Assembly elections. The seat fell vacant due to his sudden demise. (UNI)

Cong will have to wait to re-capture power at Centre

NEW DELHI, Dec 24: Sonia Gandhi gained electoral legitimacy organisationally making mincemeat of the feeble challenge in the party president’s election, but there were no immediate signs of Congress being in the vicinity of power after being out in the cold for the past four years.

This, in a nutshell, sums up the situation in the "grand old party" of the country in a by and large uneventful 2000.

The year saw the Congress badly losing Orissa in the devastating aftermath of a supercyclone, breaking alliance with Laloo Prasad Yadav’s RJD in the Bihar Assembly elections but later joining his Government to keep "communal forces at bay".

Though Gandhi established her firm control over the party by handing out a crushing defeat to challenger Jitendra Prasada in the party presidential elections, the year gone by did not see the party becoming the natural rallying point for the opposition.

The talk of reviving the third front at the national level is interpreted as a setback to the Congress claim of being the prime alternative to BJP-led coalition.

While Gandhi continued to learn the tricks of the trade as leader of the opposition, there were hardly any instances of a united opposition giving sleepless nights to the Government but for the controversy on the RSS issue.

BJP’s raking up the Ayodhya issue during the close of the year and the subsequent unease in NDA allies like Trinamool Congress and TDP has rekindled hopes in the Congress, with sections in the party expecting mid-term elections next year. A redeeming feature for the Congress was the victory in panchayat elections in Gujarat, a bastion of BJP, and a good showing in local body polls in UP and Kerala.

With the carving out of a separate Chattisgarh out of Madhya Pradesh, Congress power was extended to one more state during the year.

The coming year will be a test for Gandhi’s leadership as Assembly elections for Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry are scheduled early in the year while those in the crucial Uttar Pradesh are due by the year-end.

While the mood in Assam and Kerala is upbeat for the party, it is not so in Tamil Nadu where it is looking upto AIADMK and Tamil Maanila Congress - led by erstwhile party veteran G K Moopanar - for support.

The Congress is leading a coalition in Pondicherry after the fall of DMK-led coalition during the year.

During the year, Gandhi was confronted with the ticklish issue of "Mahajot" (grand alliance) in West Bengal, an idea floated by Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee to drive out the Marxists from power in the state.

Senior leader A B A Ghani Khan Chaudhary became a champion of the "Mahajot" despite the AICC taking the view that there will be no truck with any party having direct or indirect understanding with the BJP. This led to Chaudhaury’s removal as West Bengal PCC chief by Gandhi who has brought senior leader Pranab Mukherjee. (PTI)

Hope eternal at the dawn of new millennium

NEW DELHI, Dec 24: Peace got a chance in Kashmir even as the north-east remained a hotbed of insurgency in the Y2K year, which saw three new states being added to the Indian union, as it set up a review commission on the statute book.

As the country became a billion strong, it played host to the two most powerful world leaders and signed statements on enhancing strategic relationship and trade and economic ties with both the United States and Russia.

New Delhi made a determined effort to put ties with china back on rails, as it deftly handled the issue of a teenaged Buddhist religious head’s ‘flight’ to India and reports about border incursions in Arunachal Pradesh and Aksai Chin while steering clear of all controversy in refusing to allow another IPKF to Colombo.

But it was the mother of all scandals, match-fixing that stole glory from the country’s most popular game of cricket as players and bookies hogged the headlines for the wrong reasons, relegating to the background sometimes the ‘worst drought’ of the century or the conviction of a former Prime Minister in a bribery scandal.

Loud politics was the Mantra for lawmakers in the year gone by as Government allies and the opposition alike, forced a roll back on subsidies cut on cooking gas and oil and kept at bay the landmark Women’s Reservation Bill for the third time that it was introduced in Parliament.

Bold experiments were made to usher in peace in Kashmir Valley, which first saw the pro-Pak but indigenous Kashmiri militant outfit offer ceasefire towards the end of July only to revoke it within a fortnight even as the Prime Minister agreed to talk to militants "within the ambit of humanism".

Vajpayee again withstood popular pressure from fundamentalist allies in November when his Government declared a unilateral ceasefire in the strife-torn valley for the month of Ramzan and further extended it by one month this week.

The premier also managed to put behind the bitterness of the Pokharan blasts with his visit to the United States within a couple of months of the US President’s visit to New Delhi when Washington endorsed India’s call to Pakistan to stop sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir and signed a vision 2000 statement between the two countries.

While India signed a strategic partnership document with Moscow during newly-elected President Vladimir Putin’s two-day visit and exchanged boundary maps with China, the Government faced rougher weather at the hands of allies for various reasons.

Trinamool Congress leader twice resigned her post as Railways Minister to protest a cut in subsidies and own moral responsibility for a rail accident, while Shiv Sena ministers resigned when arrest loomed large on party supremo Bal Thackeray for inciting riots in Mumbai in the aftermath of Babri Masjid demolition.

Opposition parties also witnessed intra-party turmoil, the most significant being the election for the post of the Congress president, which saw Jitendra Prasada challenge Sonia Gandhi.

The leftists suffered a significant blow when the Election Commission derecognised the Communist Party of India (Marxist) as a national party. Yet another blow came to it when Chief Minister Jyoti Basu’s bete noire Mamta Banerjee’s party won local elections, and bitter grassroots political feuds brought President’s rule to its door.

The ageing Basu finally bid adieu to writers building, even as Communications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan split ways with the parent Janata Dal to float a new outfit for competition in Bihar with renewed vigour.

All the NDA men, however, could not rob the Rashtriya Janata Dal of its third tenure of governance in the wake of a fractured election verdict and seven days of power for samata party leader Nitish Kumar, who resigned before proving majority on the floor of the House.

States, led by Jammu and Kashmir, clamoured for more political and fiscal autonomy under Farooq Abdullah and Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu, even as the emergence of Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh made the republic a union of 28 states and seven union territories. (PTI)

MPs urge President to probe credentials of NBA activists

Presenting a memorandum to the President, they said considering the petition of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) and entertaining the delegates of such an organisation at this juncture would send wrong signals to the people, because the organisation, instead of accepting the judgement of the Supreme Court, is indulging in pressure tactics.

"Where does the NBA funding come from and who is financing the its international media exposure?" they demanded.

"Are there vested interests, who look to India as a big market for surplus agriculture produce and dairy products and want the country to be dependent on petroleum imports, behind the NBA," said the memorandum signed by 24-Parliament members.

The memorandum presented to the President on the last day of the winter session of Parliament said, ‘’as the elected representatives of the poor and deprived of the country, they felt the Indian Government should be asked to investigate this issue’’. (UNI)

HC seeks details on "nexus" between SEBI and FIIs

NEW DELHI, Dec 24: The Delhi High Court has sought additional details from a petitioner to substantiate his allegations in a writ against SEBI alleging that it has nexus with top brokers including Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) to effect the share market sentiments.

A division bench, during a recent hearing, said the reliefs prayed for by the petitioner were vague and could not be granted because the parties named in it were not respondents in the writ.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has sought to restrain SEBI from imposing sudden margin charges upon indian investors during the trading and termed it as against the SEBI Act. The PIL had also sought inquiry in respect of share transactions of some companies, which had not been named as respondents.

Accusing SEBI of "effecting market sentiments" by creating artificial demand and supply with the help of top brokers and FIIs by applying the "margin rule" during the trading, the PIL, by advocate Manhor Lal claimed this had affected prices of various sripts.

"SEBI has allowed FIIs and other institutions to trade without depositing any margin in the stock exchange, while it is imposing margin rule in Indian investors resulting in the controlling of the market by them (FIIs)," the PIL said.

However, SEBI, in its briefs placed before the court, said margins were essentially "pre or part payment" advance in the form of earnest money for fulfillment of the commitment towards the final settlement on the share sold or bought.

SEBi counsel Saurabh Kiripal said "some of the regulators have preferred to term the margin as insurance against default of performance, committed during the trading."

Kiripal said regulatory authorities had used margins from time to time as an effective tool for managing and containing risk in the capital market and ensuring safety to investors.

SEBI has set up a "group on risk management for equity markets" comprising representatives of the stock exchanges, market participants and people from academic fields and before imposing any new margin, the issue was discussed by the group and due publicity was made through media, he said.

Referring to the transactions by mutual funds, FIIs and other institutional investors, SEBI counsel said the exemption to them were given because they were regular and long term players in the stock markets.

He said imposition of margin rule had resulted in increase of delivery base business.

However, the petitioner claimed that under the act, SEBI’s role was confined only to regulate the stock exchanges not controlling the trading in the market by imposing margins.

"Due to this illegal act of SEBI, market (sensex) had once reached at a point of 6006 but crashed to around 4000 point resulting in passing of thousand crore of rupees in the hands of FIIs and other institutions," Sharma claimed.

"The margin game has been used as a lethal weapon for controlling the market by FIIs, other institutions and top brokers upon the interest of small and marginal investors," he said. (PTI)

Bouquets, brickbats for ‘Kolkata’

CALCUTTA, Dec 24: The decision to change Calcutta’s nomenclature from Calcutta to Kolkata has attracted both bouquets and brickbats.

"I wonder what the Bengali culture will stand to gain by rechristening the metropolis Kolkata. The heavens wouldn’t have fallen had the city’s name remained Calcutta," eminent film-maker Mrinal Sen told PTI.

Asked whether the Left Front Government had followed in the footsteps of Shiv Sena and AIADMK in renaming Bombay as Mumbai and Madras as Chennai, Sen said, "I don’t know whether regionalism has outweighed cultural considerations or it is the other way around."

"We can see an assertive cultural movement here which speaks about making it mandatory to paint signboards in Bengali. Will it help us to integrate with the world? I’m not sure."

On a different note, noted Bengali novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay said, "it has been a long-standing demand of intellectuals of the metropolis. They have been clamouring for a change in Calcutta’s nomenclature."

Veteran litterateur Annada Shankar Roy said "I’m vehemently opposed to the decision which will make a mockery of the history behind Calcutta’s name."

Bengali fiction writer Buddhadeb Guha was, however, all for Kolkata.

"It is a welcome decision albeit long overdue" Guha, the writer of much acclaimed `Chapras’, said.

"You can call the decision as a fulfilment of our dreams and aspirations," he said.

Magsaysay award winner and writer Mahasweta Devi said, "we wanted a change. But what will happen to the names of our venerable institutions?"

"Will the Calcutta University be renamed Kolkata University or Calcutta High Court, Kolkata High Court from now", she asked. (PTI)