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Report soon on Tehri cloudburst: Minister DEHRA DUN, Aug 17: Uttaranchal Disaster Management Minister Harak Singh Rawat today said a comprehensive report would soon be brought out . ...more Advani
defends NEW DELHI, Aug 17: Striking an aggressive posture, Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani today charged the opposition with indulging in "character .....more Class
discrimination KOLKATA, Aug 17: Class discrimination by teachers is one of the major stumbling blocks to overall improvement of primary education in West ....more ‘Mother
Teresa’s VATICAN CITY, Aug 17: The Vatican said the process for possible sainthood for Mother Teresa, the nun who dedicated her life to caring for the outcasts of Kolkata, is moving ahead well, but it denied a report today that .....more |
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Next round of GUWAHATI, Aug 17: The next round of peace talks between the NSCN(IM) and the Centre would be held in India for the first time, probably in ....more EC
decision on NEW DELHI, Aug 17: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) today hailed the Election Commission’s decision rejecting the Gujarat Government’s . ...more Mulayam demands Advani’s resignation LUCKNOW, Aug 17: Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav today demanded resignation of Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani on "moral . .....more Punjab needs to accelerate reforms to tideover power crisis: Shahi MOHALI, Aug 17: To tide over the power crisis which Punjab is facing currently, the state needs to take several steps to plug the shortage .......more |
Report soon on Tehri cloudburst: Minister DEHRA DUN, Aug 17: Uttaranchal Disaster Management Minister Harak Singh Rawat today said a comprehensive report would soon be brought out by the State Government on the damage and relief in the villages of Tehri affected by the cloudburst last week. He told mediapersons that the report would be sent to the Central Government for financial assistance. Relief was being carried on on a war-footing in the geographically difficult terrain, he said. Geological experts have also been sent to the area to assess the potential danger to the villages, he said. "We are sparing no efforts to deal with the situation." A budget of Rs 57 crore was earmarked in the state for disaster management. Of this amount, Rs 22 crore was the balance from the last financial year, said the Minister. "We have given Rs one crore to the Tehri administration besides Rs 30 lakh earlier made available to the district." He said 28 villagers had been killed in the clouburst of August ten last and 27 had been injured. Fifty-two animals had perished while nine were injured. Seventy houses in the eight affected villages have been completely destroyed in the clouburst. These eight villages, he said, had 575 families and a total population of 3,091. Till now, said Mr Rawat, an amount of Rs 15 lakh had been distributed among the injured and the next of kin of those who died in the cloudburst. The minister said Rs 10,000 each had been given in cash and Rs 40,000 by cheque to the next of kin of each of the persons killed in the cloudburst. Mr Rawat said a control room set up at Budha Kedar was also serving as a base-camp for relief work. The Minister said he would be putting up the detailed structure of the disaster management department for approval at the next cabinet meeting to be held in the state. "We are finalising the complete structure and will not delay getting it approved," he said. Satellite telephones and WLL (wireless in local loop) phones would be acquired by the department to connect the remote areas of the state to the capital so that there was no gap in communication of the occurrence of natural calamities, he added. In case, the report being prepared by geological experts said that the villagers were in danger if they continued living in the region, they would be shifted and settled in safer places nearby, said the Minister who also holds charge of food and civil supplies and revenue. The ITBP, PAC, Police, local administration and some voluntary organisations were engaged in relief work in the Tehri region, said the Minister. (UNI) |
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Advani defends self, Modi, Mahajan NEW DELHI, Aug 17: Striking an aggressive posture, Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani today charged the opposition with indulging in "character assassination and slander campaign out of frustration" by targeting him, Union Ministers Pramod Mahajan, Ananth Kumar, Ram Naik and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. "The opposition is saying whatever they feel like. They are attacking me, Modi, Naik, Ananth Kumar and Mahajan. This does not reflect confidence, but frustration," Advani said inaugurating a day-long political conference of the Delhi unit of the BJP. Terming the allegations regarding the petrol pump and land allotments as "baseless", Advani said, "it is just a slander campaign as they have realised that BJP cannot be ousted and the party is stabilising." "We were aware of many irregularities done by previous Governments but they were exposed through the courts, through writ petitions. No political party can gain by making such charges and indulging in a character assassination campaign," he said. "It is indeed regrettable that the opposition can stoop so low," the Deputy Prime Minister said. On the charges that some organisations affiliated to RSS have been given land in the capital’s institutional areas, "people living in glass houses should not throw stones at others. About 4,000 applicants have been allotted land as per the laid down procedures. Is it a crime if a handful of them are related to the RSS?" Regretting the "skepticism" pervading public life which has a "demoralising effect on the nation", the Deputy Prime Minister said there was a feeling that Congress was making a comeback in the wake of BJP’s poor electoral performance in some states. There was a change in the situation following the party’s national executive in Goa and its victory in the State Assembly elections. The political parties which had apprehensions about the BJP-led coalition’s survival have now come to terms with the fact that this Government would last its full term, he said, adding a jittery opposition was now resorting to character assassination and slander campaign. Recalling that earlier the common refrain was that democracy will not succeed without a two-party system, he said "political polarisation is necessary. While 1958 was a turning point with the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the earlier avatar of BJP, securing 25 seats in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi as against 27 of the Congress and thus emerging as an alternative, 1998 when the coalition came to power was a watershed for Indian politics." Asserting that a bi-polar polity has emerged in the country, he said "today there are two poles in the political firmament. Other parties have to decide which side they have to go." BJP, he said, was not a "mere political party, but a movement to strengthen nationalism." (PTI) |
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Class discrimination hinders improvement of primary edu KOLKATA, Aug 17: Class discrimination by teachers is one of the major stumbling blocks to overall improvement of primary education in West Bengal, nobel laureate Amartya Sen has observed. Describing the scenario in the state’s primary education system as ‘disturbing’, Prof Sen has observed in a report on his ‘Pratichi Trust’ that large absenteism of children from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes in schools and unparalleled prevalence of private tuition in primary schools were the other malaises that afflict the state’s education needing "radical reforms". Prof Sen, who had set up the ‘Pratichi Trust’ with the nobel prize money, released its report here yesterday after a comprehensive survey and analysis conducted in six districts to present the state’s schooling system at the grassroots level. The report has sounded an alarm that teachers had a distinct bias against the students from poor families in imparting lessons which had made the whole system lop-sided and detrimental to society. "The over-reaching need is to overcome the rigid barriers of class division that plight the basic rights of children from economically and socially disadvantaged and backward classes," the report pointed out. It also revealed that absenteism of students in primary schools was much greater among those belonging to SC and St Communities than the children hailing from upper classes. While 75 per cent of the students from SC and ST families was found to be absent, the figure was much less at 33 per cent among the other children, the report said. It has busted the old bogey that parents do not send their children to school. 96 per cent of the respondents said boys should acquire primary education while 82 per cent want the girls to get education too. The report also pointed out that a wide practice of private tuition in primary schools reinforced the inefficiency of the education system at the primary level. "The prevalence of private tuition in primary education is found nowhere else in the world. It reflects the poverty of the school system." Despite his criticism of the education system, Prof Sen’s findings on private tuition perhaps came as a shot in the arm for the Left Front Government which has recently banned private tuition in Government school evoking a furore among a section of teachers and guardians. Prof Sen has observed in his report that in the absence of private tuition, the solvent families would depend on schools for education of their children forcing the authorities to run institutions efficiently to cope with the mounting demand. "Perhaps the strongest argument for banning private tuition lies in the recognition that its absence makes the more influential parents concerned of normal schooling," he said. Making some other suggestions the reports stressed on the need for greater responsibility to be shouldered by teachers, formation of parents-teachers committee, revival of school inspection system and a change in the daily mid-day meal system. (UNI) |
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Mulayam demands Advani’s resignation LUCKNOW, Aug 17: Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav today demanded resignation of Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani on "moral grounds" saying he had no right to continue after the Election Commission’s observations on the situation in Gujarat. "The Commission’s observation that people in Gujarat have lost faith in local police, civil administration and politicians, is a slap on the NDA Government," Yadav told reporters here after the conclusion of the party’s two-day state executive meeting. He said that Advani had strongly defended the Modi Government in Gujarat and he should now resign on moral grounds after the EC’s observations. "The EC’s decision on the polls in Gujarat had proved that the Sangh Parivar outfits would never succeed in their efforts to murder democracy," he said. The SP supremo also urged President A P J Abdul Kalam to dismiss the Narendra Modi Government in Gujarat so that normalcy could be restored there. Launching a scathing attack on the BSP-BJP coalition Government in the state, Yadav said the Government was persecuting the SP workers by implicating them in false cases. He alleged that the former Lucknow Bar Association president Indra Deo Singh was murdered at the beshest of a former BJP Minister. The SP president declined to comment on the allegations levelled by former Haryana IG (Prisons) Ravi Kant Sharma’s wife against Union Minister Pramod Mahajan saying he was yet to go through the allegations and would comment later. Yadav also alleged that the ‘muhnochwa scare’ was being spread by the State Government ‘to instigate communal tension’. He criticised the Government’s decision to take away the village Panchayat’s powers to allot Panchayat land on lease to the landless and empower the Sub-Divisional Magistrates to do the same. The amended Zamindari Abolition Act was aimed at scuttling the powers of the village Panchayats, he said in reply to a question. Earlier, a resolution adopted at the meeting the party alleged that the coalition Government in the State was neck deep in corruption. The resolution said that the Government had not yet started relief measures in the drought affected villages as a result of which the people were facing severe problems. The one point agenda of the Government was to mint money by effecting large scale transfers of officials, it said. It also condemned the recent attack on the Apna Dal Legislator Ateeq Ahmed at Allahabad and alleged that it was an effort to eleiminate the political rivals. Earlier, former State Congress general secretary Chandra Prakash Rai joined the SP in the presence of Yadav. (PTI) |
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Punjab needs to accelerate reforms to tideover power crisis: Shahi MOHALI, Aug 17: To tide over the power crisis which Punjab is facing currently, the state needs to take several steps to plug the shortage including going for capacity addition, checking transmission and distribution losses, tariff rationalisation and manpower management, Secretary, Union Power Ministry, R V Shahi said today. Among various steps to improve the power scenario, Punjab must go for capacity addition. It must explore opportunities to set up projects in Chattisgarh, Uttaranchal, Himachal and set up power stations there, Shahi told reporters here. "I had a discussion with Chief Minister Amarinder Singh yesterday and we discussed power sector reforms," he said. He said that to improve transmission and distribution system under accelerated power development and reforms programme, three circles—Mohali, Patiala and Khanna—had been identified. Next, we will take up Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Patiala, he said. "We have asked NTPC and Power Grid to assist the state so that it can take steps in this direction quickly and efficiently," he said. Saying the gap of what Punjab State Electricity Board earns and what it spends stood at Rs 1800 crore, he said if this gap was not plugged immediately funding agencies will find it difficult to advance loans and nobody will be willing to put his money, he said. Shahi said five years back the PSEB was a profit making board, but was now facing hard times. "It must reduce technical losses, thefts must be checked, steps to deal with excess manpower over a period of time must be taken," he said, adding presently the board had a manpower of 90,000 people which was almost double of what is required. Shahi said that total generation capacity of the state at present was 5700 mw including 1250 mw supplied by the Centre. The power consumption in the state was 803 kilowatt hour per year, which is the highest in the country, even higher than states like Gujarat and Maharashtra and much higher than national average of 350 mw, he said. PSEB should be able to turnaround by 2003-04, Shahi said. Chairman PSEB Sudhir Mittal said all new agricultural connections in the state are metered. He said to start with, PSEB should be able to put back financial loss by Rs 250 crore every year. The technical commercial loss, he said, would be brought down. The state was also thinking in terms of bringing legislation to prevent theft of power, he added. (PTI) Ambitious Sez project to be inaugurated INDORE, Aug 17: The Centre’s project to establish a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at the nearby Pithampur industrial area would provide employment to over 60,000 people in the initial stage. To be developed on an area of more than 1,000 hectares, it would require an investment of Rs 1,000 crore to establish the infrastructural facilities, Madhya Pradesh Industry Minister Narendra Nahata told mediapersons last night. One of the 13 sezs to be established in the country, the zone will be inaugurated here tomorrow by Chief Minister Digvijay Singh in the presence of Minister of State for Communications Sumitra Mahajan. Mr Nahata described it as the biggest move ever in the state to attract foreign investment and said that the Madhya Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation (MPSIDC), which is the nodal agency for the project, would publicise the scheme in metropolitan cities and bring entrepreneurs to this tax-free zone. MPSIDC managing director Sudhi Ranjan Mohanti said that the Sez would be a duty-free "deemed foreign area" where in-house custom clearance would be provided and licences would not be required for import. No duty would be imposed on articles imported in the zone, he added. The units expected to generate foreign exchange within three years would be from the manufacturing, trade and service sectors. There would be no limitation of foreign investment in the small industries, he said. Mr Mohanti said that infrastructural facilities such as electricity, roads, water and drainage, besides rail connectivity and an inland container depot, would be available in the Sez. The entire area would be managed by a separate company with the participation of entrepreneurs. The zone was expecting establishment of industries from sector like communications, food-processing — especially soya-processing — drugs and pharmaceuticals, software, textiles — particularly garment — leather and gems and jewellery sectors. Mr Mohanti said that the Sez had already obtained 132 hectares of developed land, including 78 hectares of the export promotion industrial park merged with the zone, and the marketing exercise would begin right tomorrow. After receiving 245 hectares from Pithampur industrial area, a further 661 hectares would be required for the Sez, he added. (UNI)
Asteroid comes ‘very close’ to earth today NEW DELHI, Aug 17: Sky gazers will be able to enjoy a rare sight tomorrow when an asteroid - the celestial bodies which are thought to have destroyed dinosaurs after colliding with the earth - comes "very close" to our planet. "Asteroids usually remain in certain regions of the solar system, but some of them are pushed into the orbits. Their orbits sometimes lie close to the earth or may even cross the earth’s orbit," Nehru Planetarium Director N Rathnasree told PTI. "Under such circumstances, the question always asked is whether the asteroid will hit the earth," she said adding "this newly found asteroid - discoverred on July 14 - has absolutely no chance of hitting us." Dinosaurs were thought to be extinct from the earth after such an asteroid-hit, Rathnasree said adding Lonar Lake in Maharashtra was also thought to be the result of such a hit. Few years back, burning of a meteorite in sky caused forest fires in Tunguska, Russia. "The Asteroid - 2002 ny40 - would just pass near enough, a little less than one-and-a-half times the distance to the moon and offers us the chance of viewing it through modest two inch telescopes or binoclulars," she said adding the closest encounter was set for tomorrow and after that the asteroid would move at a distance and could be seen for two more days but with powerful telescopes. However, viewing this celestial object from the polluted mucky skies of Delhi would need a little more than simple modest instruments, the Director of the Planetarium said. The difficulty in viewing asteroids comes from the fact that they are small and have very low reflectivity particularly if they are made of carbonaceous material, she said. The last time such a close encounter took place was on August 31, 1925. However, the asteroid monitoring programme at that time was not so intense and no one knew of the encounter until much later, Rathnasree said. Hours after 2002 ny40 passes earth, it would change phase. Asteroids have phases like moons and planets. Its sunlit side is facing the earth now and thus it would appear a full moon. Tomorrow the asteroid will cross earth’s orbit on its way towards the sun. Then the phase of asteroid will change and finally the night side would turn to face the earth and the asteroid will grow dark like a new moon. (PTI) |
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