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CPI-M urges EC to NEW DELHI, Sept 8: The Election Commission today reserved its order on derecognising the. .....more
Govindacharya says NEW DELHI, Sept 8: With BJP president Bangaru Laxman still to finalise his team, party general .....more
Illiteracy behind slow NEW DELHI, Sep 8 : Vice President Krishan Kant today regretted that India was home to nearly one....more |
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USA alone has 35 million impotent
men Arterial diseases render millions of men impotent From B L Kak NEW DELHI, Sept. 8: Arterial diseases like hypertension, diabetes, arteriosclerosis render millions of men impotent, according to Mr Sudhakar.....more PM’s speech at UN CALCUTTA, Sept 8: West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu today expressed hope that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s speech at the U.N. Millennium Summit would enhance national pride and prestige in the comity of nations........more Rajasthan powermen to JAIPUR, Sept 8: Rajasthan power employees, engineers and officials joint struggle committee today declared that it would join the nationwide one day strike called by .....more National Film awards NEW DELHI, Sept 8: The Dada Saheb Phalke award for lifetime achievement to veteran filmmaker .......more ‘Mere filing of case NEW DELHI, Sept 8: In an important ruling on criminal cases, the Supreme Court has ruled that mere.......more |
CPI-M urges EC to amend symbols order NEW DELHI, Sept 8: The Election Commission today reserved its order on derecognising the Communist Party of India (Marxist) as a national party after hearing its leaders make a strong plea that the the 1968 symbols order, under which parties are granted recognition, should be amended as it does not reflect current political reality. The full commission, presided over by Chief Election Commissioner M S Gill and comprising Election Commissioners J M Lyngdoh and T S Krishnamurthy reserved the orders after the hearing lasting nearly 45 minutes. The Commission also directed the CPI-M to file written submissions by September 15. Representing their case before the Commission, party general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Rajya Sabha member Ramachandran Pillai urged it to consider the CPI-M’s political stature and the significant role played by it in the polity while deciding on its status. They also contended that the election symbols (reservation and allotment) order, 1968, was focused on the aggregate of a party’s performance at the state level, and did not take into account its overall presence in Parliament. They urged the Commission that a party having at least one member for every 25 members in the Lok Sabha (four per cent) should be recognised as a national party, provided that the MPs are elected from at least four states. Under the present criteria, a party having the status of a state party in four states qualifies to be recognised as a national party. To get recognition as a state party, the group has to either secure six per cent of the votes polled in the state, or have one member for every 30 MLAs or one member for every 25 members in the Lok Sabha from that state. The CPI-M fulfilled these criteria in Tripura, West Bengal, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh prior to the 1999 general elections, but lost its position in Andhra Pradesh in those polls. Interjecting during the arguments, Dr Gill said the EC had amended the symbols order in 1996-97 and could give it another hard look in light of the larger issues of public importance raised. The views of other political parties could also be sought on the matter, he added. But, as the order stood at present, the CPI-M did not fulfil the laid down criteria, which were quite liberal, he added. The CPI-M however contended that the symbols order was framed in 1968, when one political party held sway over the national polity. The situation was vastly different now with several political parties competing for votes. The order should be amended to reflect the current political reality, the party leaders said. Under Para 18 (C) of the symbols order, the Commission was empowered to issue instructions and directions in relation to any matter with respect to the recognition of parties, for which the order made no provision or made insufficient provision. Using this power, the Commission could add a fourth criteria for according recognition as a national party, they said. The CPI-M leaders also pointed out that the present symbols orders produced an anomalous situation wherein a party with no representation in Parliament could still be considered a national party. They also drew the Commission’s attention to the fact that the CPI-M was the third largest group in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha and had members from six different states in Parliament. The party, politically active for the past 70 years, was also in power in three states and had MLAs in at least a dozen states. Besides, it had membership at a mass level in various youth, trade union and women organisations. "We urge the Commission to consider the party’s stature and significant role played by it while reaching a decision," they added. The CPI-M presently has 33 members in the Lok Sabha. Twentyone of them from West Bengal, eight from Kerala, two from Tripura and one each from Tamil Nadu and Bihar. It also has members from Kerala, West Bengal, Tripura and Andhra Pradesh in the Rajya Sabha. Besides heading the Governments in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala, the CPI-M also had members in the State Assemblies of Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh. (PTI) |
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Govindacharya says he opted out of holding party post NEW DELHI, Sept 8: With BJP president Bangaru Laxman still to finalise his team, party general secretary K N Govindacharya today said he ha post and that he was not being dropped due to pressure. Asked whether he was being kept out by Laxman due to pressure from Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, he told reporters here "this was not so as it was my own well thought out decision and I pursued it after Laxman became president. I had met him yesterday and told him about my decision. I had been contemplating this since march and in may I had written to then party president Kushabhau Thakre." To a question whether he was going back to RSS, he said "I will continue in the party and am not going back to RSS. I told laxman that I did not want to hold any party post and wanted study leave for two years." Govindacharya, who would be pursuing research work at the centre for policy studies in Chennai, said that he was not "one among the sulking lot and I don’t have any personal ambitions. As of now I am doing 90 per cent party and now I would like to devote 90 per cent to study and field work." Meanwhile, Laxman, who held several rounds of consultations with Vajpayee, Home Minister L K Advani, his predecessor Thakre and the RSS had another round of discussions with Thakre today. He is likely to take another couple of days to finalise his team. The new team is likely to retain Venkaiah Naidu and Narendra Modi as general secretaries while inducting Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi to this post, elevating him from secretary. Another person who is likely to be inducted as general secretary is Maya Singh who headed the Mahila Morcha. Among those who are likely to be inducted into the team as part of his exercise to have a combination of youth and experience are Madan Lal Khurana, Krishna Reddy of the Yuva Morcha and Delhi MP Anita Arya, party sources said here. Among others expected to be inducted are Pyarelal Khandelwal and O P Kohli, who was returning officer in the party’s presidential elections. (PTI) |
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Illiteracy behind slow pace of
India’s NEW DELHI, Sep 8 : Vice President Krishan Kant today regretted that India was home to nearly one-third the world’s illiterate population and said capitulation to western dominance was the result of the country’s inability to make mass literacy and education the fulcrum of national life. "India took a long time to come to terms with the industrial and technological revolution, largely because mass illiteracy and lack of education made the process of adjustment to change much slower, longer and halting," Kant said here on the occasion of the International Literacy Day. He said the development strategy has to give central position to creation of social opportunities through basic education, literacy and numeracy to accelerate economic growth and social mobilisation. "Our unredeemed mass illiteracy weakened our sense of national identity and, our daily fight against poverty, hunger and disease set our sense of higher values into some kind of a recession..... Our repeated capitulation to western dominance was one of the more dramatic results of that central deficiency," Kant said. He said one of the many challenges in the new century was that the rural masses were not even sufficiently cognisant of the deprivation they were facing. Emphasising the importance of education for women, Kant said many problems of burgeoning population, high rate of infant mortality, poor nutrition and endemic superstitions were largely because education did not reach the women in the country. (PTI) |
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USA alone has 35 million
impotent men From B L Kak NEW DELHI, Sept. 8: Arterial diseases like hypertension, diabetes, arteriosclerosis render millions of men impotent, according to Mr Sudhakar Krishnamurthi, an internationally renowned andrologist and a World Health Organisation (WHO) impotence expert. While diseases like multiple sclerosis and spinal cord lesions also cause impotence, trauma is another important cause. In a write-up circulated by Mr Krishnamurthi, it is clearly mentioned that the penis is not just a structureless robot that is meant to dance to the tunes of the mind but rather a complex entity in itself. The penis, Mr Krishnamurthi says, has "its own intricate system of delicate arteries, nerves, veins, vascular smooth muscle, membranes, neurotranmitters" and each of these is susceptible to injury and disease. According to him, disease elsewhere in the body-for example, diabetes and high blood pressure-can also affect the structures of the erectile apparatus. Referring to the arteries, he explains that the coronary arteries of the heart can develop spasm, become inelastic, or develop occlusions because of clots or cholesterol. Coronary insufficiency is well-known, he says and adds: "Diseases affecting the coronaries also affect other arteries in the body. In comparison to the much larger coronaries, the arteries of the penis are only 2 mm in diameter. Therefore, very little narrowing or occlusion can block these arteries and cause impotence". Mr Krishnamurthi’s finding: United States of America alone has a population of 35 million impotent men. Another finding: Accidents to the spine, pelvis and perineum as also operations on the bowel, bladder, prostrate, sympathetic nervous system etc can all cause impotence. Third finding: Probing ‘between the ears’ in an attempt to cure the penis by remote control is a fossil of the Freudian era. Mr Krishnamurthi’s write-up says: "Meantime, you’d do well to remember that if you are making out with your secretary in the office and your wife calls, the sudden loss of manhood experienced might have originated ‘between the ears’. But if your sex life has started flagging, especially after years of normal sex, remember that it’s most likely between the legs". Mr Krishnamurthi has prefaced his write-up by saying: "There is an old golden rule in medicine. A rule that is taught very early in medical colleges. The rule is that a doctor must never diagnose a patient’s problem as psychological unless a thorough examination and the necessary tests have ruled out all physical or bodily causes completely. Failure to follow this rule, budding doctors are warned, will make them lousy diagnosticians". That all sex is ‘between the ears’ is perhaps the biggest all-time humbug ever propagated. There is overwhelming evidence that non-psychological causes are identifiable in 80-90 per cent of cases of chronic erectile dysfunction. |
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‘Mere filing of case does not amount to taking cognisance’ NEW DELHI, Sept 8: In an important ruling on criminal cases, the Supreme Court has ruled that mere filing of a criminal complaint before a court does not mean the magistrate has taken cognisance of the offence mentioned in it. "Taking cognisance would mean the action taken by the court for initiating judicial proceedings against the offender in respect of the offence regarding which the complaint is filed," a division bench comprising Justice K T Thomas and Justice R P Sethi said in a recent judgement. Justice Sethi, writing the judgement for the bench, said "taking cognisance of an offence" by the court has to be distinguished from the filing of the complaint by the complainant. "Before it can be said that any magistrate or court has taken cognisance of an offence, it must be shown, that he has applied his mind to the facts for the purpose of proceeding further in the matter at the instance of the complainant," the bench said. Even if the magistrate orders investigation or issues search warrant on the basis of the complaint, it could not be said that he has taken cognisance of the complaint, Justice Sethi said while deciding a cheque bouncing case under Negotiable Instruments Act. The bench said "if a magistrate or the court is shown to have applied the mind not for the purpose of taking action upon the complaint but for taking some other kind of action contemplated under the CRPC. such as ordering investigation under Section 156(3) or issuing a search warrant, he cannot be said to have taken cognisance of the offence." Mere presentation of the complaint in the court could not be held to mean, that its cognisance had been taken by the magistrate, Justice Sethi said. He said "if the complaint is found to be pre-mature, it can await maturity or be returned to the complainant for filing later and its mere presentation at an earlier date need not necessarily render the complaint liable to be dismissed or confer any right upon accused to absolve himself from the criminal liability for the offence committed." In the instant case, the bench said, mere presentation of the complaint on November eight, 1994 and it being returned to him on the ground that the verification was not signed by the counsel, could not be termed to be an action of the magistrate taking cognisance under of Section 142 of the Act. The High Court appeared to have committed not only mistake of law but a mistake of fact as well, Justice Sethi said while setting aside the High Court order. (PTI) |
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