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Mercy plea for Rajiv case before President NEW DELHI, Oct 31: Barely a week before the noose hangs ....more
Technological upgradation will not hamper working class interests: Paswan PATNA, Oct 31: Union Communications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan has .....more
Bill for checking sale of spurious fertiliser, seeds DARBHANGA (BIHAR), Oct 31: Union Minister of State for Agriculture....more Kendarapada worst-affected, Army engaged in relief work JALESWAR (ORISSA-WB BORDER), Oct 31: Preliminary Army relief ......more |
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Army
Chief releases NEW DELHI, Oct 31: Chief of Army Staff Gen V P Malik .......more
Mahatma
Gandhi caught NEW DELHI, Oct 31: Fifty one years after his assassination....more
Govt plans time-bound review of Prasar Bharati structure NEW DELHI, Oct 31: Government has decided to have a ...more SHIMLA, Oct 31: Six people were killed and three others ....more |
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Mercy plea for Rajiv case before President NEW DELHI, Oct 31: Barely a week before the noose hangs around the necks of the four condemned prisoners in the Rajiv assassination case, a senior advocate has filed a mercy petition before President K R Narayanan requesting him to use his constitutional powers to commute their death sentences. Highlighting the case of the lone woman prisoner Nalini, advocate B L Wadhera in his mercy petition said even one of the judges of the three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, which confirmed their death sentences, had commuted the capital punishment awarded to her to Life Imprisonment. Quoting Justice Thomas, who had felt that Nalini deserved to be awarded Life Imprisonment, the petition said it could not be overlooked that she is a mother of a little female child who could not have experienced maternal cuddling as that little one was born in captivity..... Wadhera said the case of Nalini, an Indian Tamil, was distinguishable from the other three, her husband Murugan, Suthenthiraja and Perarivalan who were Sri Lankan Tamils who came to India to assist the crack team sent by LTTE supremo Prabhakaran to assassinate Rajiv. Her’s is clearly a case distinguishable from the other three, deserving very special consideration at the hands of your excellency for grant of clemency to her not only for her sake but also for the sake of the little one born in the most agonising circumstances and faced with the cruel prospect of the fate of growing up in continuous stifling pain sharable with none in the world, the petitioner said. Coming to the Supreme Court judgement confirming the death sentence on the four and even rejecting their review petitions, Wadhera said the criteria for determination whether a case falls within the rarest of rare category have not been evolved though several judgements dealt with the issue. He cited the case of Gian Singh, who was convicted for killing Sant Longwal, and said Rajiv assassination case was similar to this as both the leaders were killed at public meetings. Gian Singh was sentenced to death by the trial court but the Supreme Court commuted the sentence to life saying it was not case under the rarest of rare category. Wadhera, who had regularly participated in the Jain Commission proceedings on the conspiracy angle of the Rajiv assassination, said in both the cases the perpetrators of the crime believed that they were doing their religious or political duty by eliminating the person whom they and their fellow community brethern hated. He said the killers in both the cases did not have anything to gain personally and added the rights and wrongs of their beliefs apart, what needed to be considered was that the circumstances leading to the crime. Recently, Tamil Nadu Governor Fatima Beevi had rejected the mercy petitions filed on behalf of the four accused. (PTI) |
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Technological upgradation will not hamper working class interests: Paswan PATNA, Oct 31: Union Communications Minister Ram Vilas Paswan has said technological upgradation would not hamper the working class’ interests. Inaugurating a conference of All India State Bank of India Staff Association here yesterday, Mr Paswan said he was not personally against the proposed regulations in the telecom sector as far as it brought efficiency in the department. This, he said, should not lead to retrenchment as it was contrary to the basic concept of welfare society. The National Democratic Alliance Government at the Centre would protect the interest of the working class at all cost, he observed. Mr Paswan said the current reforms process in the economy could not be stopped now since the Congress had opened the floodgates for the multi-national companies. He assured that the Government would try to evolve a mechanism to safeguard the interest of the country in this phase of the globalisation. But he himself was personally against the entry of the multi-national companies as the large scale privatisation would minimise the job opportunities. SBI Staff Association president S K Mehra said there was apprehension among the bankmen about possible retrenchment and urged Mr Paswan to help protect the wage earners. He said that criminal cases should be lodged against those people who failed to repay the bank loan and demanded publication of their names for wider publicity to expose the wrong doers. (UNI) |
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Bill for checking sale of spurious fertiliser, seeds DARBHANGA (BIHAR), Oct 31: Union Minister of State for Agriculture Hukumdeo Narain Yadav today said a bill would be tabled in the next session of Parliament for checking the sale of spurious fertiliser, seeds and insecticides. Mr Yadav told newsmen here that the Centre was also giving final shape to an action plan for improving the cattle breed. He said a high-powered committee had been constituted for reviewing the functioning of agriculture research centres and for conducting their physical verfication. Mr Yadav said the crop insurance scheme would now cover all farmers irrespective of whether they involved of Government loan or not. He pointed out that special efforts were being taken to clear the hurdles coming in the way of achieving objectives of the farmers’ credit card scheme. He said the target had been fixed at distributing 2o lakh credit cards among the cultivators during the current year and hoped that the newly developed seeds would be made available in the area by the next month in the State, particularly in its northern part and Barhaia Tal area, where agricultural activities faced a jolt because of the floods and heavy rains. Mr Yadav said farmers’ fairs would also be organised with the combined efforts of agricultural universities, Non-Governmental Organisations and agriculture centres for testing the soil and taking appropriate steps for its improvement and apprise them of the modern technology. He said the Centre had provided over Rs 36.93 crore for economic development of the small and marginal farmers in the State so far during the current year. However, further financial assistance was not possible because the State Government did not give utilisation certificates. (UNI) |
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Kendarapada worst-affected, Army engaged in relief work JALESWAR (ORISSA-WB BORDER), Oct 31: Preliminary Army relief operations began in Friday’s cyclone ravaged areas of Orissa today with the coastal district of Kendrapada emerging as the worst-affected. The Army had already moved hundreds of people to safer places at Jaleswar, still witnessing blinding rains, Col S Chauhan, Commander of the Gorkha Regiment camping here for relief operations, told a team of PTI reporters. Our troops have not been able to reach Balasore as a key connecting bridge has been washed away, he said, adding an Army column had been moved towards Cuttack and was sending radio messages every two to three hours. Our first task is to clear the debris on national highway number five between Cuttack and Bhadrak .... Then we will see what help we can provide to the affected people. Chauhan said a 5,000-strong Army team comprising medicos, signal communication detachments, electrical and mechanical engineers and infantry battalions from Calcutta and Ranchi armed with an inmarsat satellite communication facility had started moving towards the affected areas. The ultimate goal is to reach Bhubaneswar via Cuttack and restore comunication fully. We will leave the Inmarsat at Bhubaneswar to help the civil administration restore links, he said. Though the port town of Paradip was thought to have borne the most severe brunt of the super-cyclone, reports received from the district administrations suggest that Kendrapara was even badly hit, he said. Heavy downpour since early yesterday has magnified the problem even as more and more people were leaving their broken houses to come out on the roads. Inclement weather conditions continued to hamper rescue and relief operations. Some had to remain perched on the roofs for over 24 hours and we have just begun rescuing them, Chauhan said, adding Army radio reports suggested that 5000 to 7000 people were still marooned in a particular pocket in Balasore. The national highway no 60 linking Kharagpur to Khurda in Orissa was also affected due to the onrush of water overtopping the road around 21 km from the district headquarters of Balasore. With the NH-60 being inaccessible, traffic has been diverted to NH-5 from Rupsa, district administration officials said. A large number of Balasore-bound passengers who had alighted at Rupsa station were stranded with no vehicle in sight. The real scenes of devastation unfolded as one neared Balasore with overflowing river Budha Balanga inundating vast areas of standing crops while gale winds had uprooted trees and electricity poles on both sides of NH-5. According to preliminary estimates, more than 100 acres of cropland were damaged in the area. Villagers in the area whose huts were blown off by the storm were taking shelter in tiny tents along the national highway with no signs of relief coming there way. Twentyfour-year-old Harihar Parida, an LIC agent whose house was inundated, has had to fend for himself under the open sky on NH-5 since yesterday without food and water. The local police promised to bring food and water for us last evening, but have not returned till noon today. No Government official has come to the spot yet. The continuing rains have made life very difficult for us, Parida lamented. In his village Nuagaon, which he had to flee, over 400 huts were completely blown away with the gales. (PTI) |
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Govt plans time-bound review of Prasar Bharati structure NEW DELHI, Oct 31: Government has decided to have a time-bound review of the Prasar Bharati structure in the light of its functioning since Doordarshan and All India Radio were granted autonomy. We will review the structure of Prasar Bharati and it has to be time-bound, Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley said. The Minister said there were several views on the Prasar Bharati, including suggestions to professionalise and develop it as a national broadcaster without partisan misuse. Spelling out the other views he said one was that Prasar Bharati was visualised when there was monopoly of DD and high chances of Government misuse and another questioned the handing over of a multi-crore organisation to a few people without any accountability. Replying to a question if any new channels were being launched by DD, Jaitley said his advice would be to consolidate the existing 20 channels as the Government support at present is to the tune of Rs 1600 crore while Rs 395 crore was the advertising revenue. We cannot go on expanding without economic viability, he said when asked if DD would have a channel devoted to business topics. About entry of foreign media, Jaitley stuck to the 1955 Cabinet decision against allowing its entry into India saying I would go by the conventional view. However, he made it clear that the issue could be reviewed only after consensus. Regarding views on entry of foreign electronic and print media, he said an argument against it was that it was not an industry in the commercial sense but moulded mindsets and it would be too early a step if the national broadcaster and private broadcasting companies were not strengthened first. I feel there is some weight in this argument, he said. However, he said the other view was how far can technology be defied, particularly when all major foreign newspapers were accessible on the internet and footprints of the foreign electronic media were available as the satellite did not recognise geographical boundaries. This debate will go on. There will be a lot of consensus needed on this, he said. Jaitley, who has been Minister for 17 days, said his priorities would be to make DD a national broadcaster and bring in the Broadcasting Bill regulating television channels. On the controversial Direct-To-Home (DTH) facility, Jaitley said that the Group of Ministers (GoM) had discussed this before elections and the Ministry was yet to receive any recommendations on the matter. He said it was an important technology and may eventually have to be adopted. He expressed the view that cable laws should be amended to make it compulsory for operators to show at least four or five channels of DD on prime band. At present it was mandatory to beam only two. Asked how the Government intended making Doordarshan news competitive, he said the packaging of a private channel was more impressive but on DD quantum and national representation of news was more. Admitting that DD had its limitations, he said the quality has to improve. About DD sports, he said marketing and quality of the channel had to be improved and the Prasar Bharati was finalising details about developing its own library, improved signals and marketing. The biggest handicap of Doordarshan is that it is an entertainment and current affairs corporation managed by those who do not have commercial training... You need to set up an expertise in DD on marketing and packaging, he added. (PTI) |
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SHIMLA, Oct 31: Six people were killed and three others seriously injured when a mini truck carrying them rolled down into a gorge near Hurat on the Dharampur-Mandi Road in Mandi district last night, police sources said today. The deceased were all workers of the Public Works Department (PWD). The injured were admitted to a hospital. The mini truck also belonged to the Public Works Department. PWD Minister Mohinder Singh, who rushed to the site, expressed his sympathies with the bereaved families and wished the injured speedy recovery. (UNI) |
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