Gauhati HC lawyers protest proposed transfer of judge

GUWAHATI, Nov 27: Advocates of the Gauhati High Court today staged a demonstration here protesting the proposed transfer of a "tainted judge" from Punjab to Assam in the first fallout of the cash-for-jobs scam outside that State.

There was, however, no disruption in the proceedings and the courts functioned normally after the members of the Gauhati Bar Association gave a call for the demonstration.

The lawyers are up in arms over the reported recommendation made by former Chief Justice of India B N Kirpal just before his retirement for transferring Justice Amar Bir Singh Gill from the Punjab High Court to Gauhati High Court.

Referring to Gill’s alleged involvement in the Punjab Public Services Commission scam, Bar Association president A C Borbora said Gill was one of the three judges who were debarred from functioning for a while and wondered how can he be accepted in Gauhati High Court.

The association’s general secretary Apurba Kumar Sarma said a "judge who is unfit to be a judge in one high court cannot be dumped in another high court, and it is not in public interest to allow a tainted judge to carry out the judicial work in any high court".

Sarma said the advocates will spare no efforts in stalling Gill’s transfer and cautioned that the shifting of Gill would be detrimental to public interest in view of the serious allegations levelled against him. (PTI)

RPI for job reservation in private sector

NEW DELHI, Nov 27: Republican Party of India (RPI) today demanded reservation in jobs for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Castes (OBCs) and minorities in the private sector.

The party’s central executive committee at its meeting here demanded that economically backward people too should get the reservation benefit, RPI president Ramdas Athawale, MP, told reporters.

He said RPI would hold demonstrations in all State capitals on December 16 in support of the demand.

The party also demanded that every landless SC/ST family should have at least five acres of land. RPI will start a fill-the-jail campaign from January ten next year in support of the demand.

He said the backlog in appointments of SC and ST candidates in Central and State Government jobs and in public sector undertakings should be cleared immediately and stipend and scholarships to SC/ST students be increased suitably. Besides, all unemployed youth should be paid an allowance of Rs 1000 per month.

Athawale said the minimum wages to unskilled and skilled labourers should be revised to Rs 100 and Rs 250 respectively.

The meeting also condemned the terrorist attack on the Raghunath temple in Jammu and opposed the move to bring a legislation to ban religious conversion. (PTI)

Pant criticises industrialised countries for non-tariff barriers

NEW DELHI, Nov 27: Deputy Chairman Planning Commission K C Pant today criticised the industrialised countries for exploiting environmental standards laid down by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as non-tariff barriers to exports from developing countries.

"There is considerable discretion available to importing countries to impose their own rules regarding these (SPS and TBT) standards and other regulations such as inspection of imported products, specific treatment or processing of products, fixing of minimum allowable level of pesticide residue and labelling and packaging requirements," Mr Pant said while inaugurating an international workshop on environmental requirements and market access: addressing developing countries concerns."

The two day conference has been organsied by the OECD global forum and research and information system for the non-aligned and other developing countries (RIS).

Mr Pant was primarily referring to the WTO agreements on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) and TBT (technical barriers to trade), which tend to provide that these standards and regulations were not arbitrarily used for protectionist purposes and do not have an adverse impact on trade while protecting the interest of the consumer.

Mr Pant said the SPS agreement allows importing countries to impose norms that are higher than international standards, provided there was a scientific basis. "A number of countries have used very minute environmental risk assessments to justify much more stringent norms compared to international standards thus raising the compliance costs for the exporters. Another problem is the variation of standards across importing countries which further increase the compliance cost." Mr Pant said many of the standards were imposed in less than transparent manner and were sometimes accompanied by other requirements such as good manufacturing practice. While the system of notifications under sps and tbt agreements had produced a list of notifications on products of export interest to developing countries, not all enquiry points in member countries were functioning well in reacting to relevant notifications disseminating the inforamation to exporters.

Serious gaps remain in information gathering and dissemination and capacity to respond adequately. Moreover, there was no obligation to notify to the wto voluntary standards and buyers requirements, and information clearing house services for these do not exist as yet.

"The effect of these requirements is particualrly severe for the small and medium sized exporters in developing countries who lack information on the requirements and the financial and technical capability to comply with them," Mr Pant said.

Delivering the key note address, Dr Jurgen Wiemann, Deputy Director, German Development Institute, said development assisstance by multilateral and bilateral aid agencies should support activities relating to early warning information about upcoming new standards and regulations and help to establish the necessary infrastructure for testing and certification. (UNI)

Motorola introduces 3 new mobile handsets

NEW DELHI, Nov 27: Motorola today launched three new handsets for the Indian market aimed at tapping the casual as well as the corporate user.

"The Indian handset market has been growing at a cagr of over 60 per cent making it among the fastest growing markets in the world. Motorola has set its target on growing faster than the market," Narendra Nayak, Country Operations Manager, Motorola India said.

The C330 is priced at Rs 9,495, while the E360 is priced at Rs 12,995 and T720 at Rs 17,995.

The launch of C330, Mr Nayak said is central to Motorla’s strategy of growing its market share in India.

Motorola invented the world’s first commercial cellular handset in 1984 and has since then introduced the world’s first dual and tri band handset. (UNI)

3.73 lakh tonne of rice delivered

CHANDIGARH, Nov 27: The Haryana Food and Supply Department has so far delivered over 3.73 lakh tonnes of rice to the Food Corporation of India as against only 2.60 lakh tonnes of rice in the corresponding period last year.

A spokesman of the department said that over 28.32 lakh tonnes of paddy has arrived in the Mandis of Haryana till yesterday.

Out of the total arrival,20.29 lakh tonnes was leviable paddy and 8.02 lakh tonnes non-leviable paddy.

He said that about 21,000 tonnes of paddy was arriving in the Mandis daily.

He said that out of the total leviable arrivals, 15.38 lakh tonnes of paddy had been purchased by various Government agencies.

The Food and Supplies Department had purchased over 4.12 lakh tonnes of paddy, HAFED 5.54 lakh tonnes, FCI 1.14 lakh tonnes, Haryana Agro Industries Corporation 1.83 lakh tonnes, Haryana Warehousing Corporation 1.48 lakh tonnes and confed 1.26 lakh tonnes. (PTI)

IBM Global Services India achieves
SEI-PCMM level certificate

NEW DELHI, Nov 27: IBM Global Services India’s (IGSI) export services has been assessed successfully for People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM) level 5, version 2.0, awarded by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Carnegie Mellon University.

The PCMM level 5 assessment covers all IGSI, export services locations in India.

Dr Uday Shukla, Director, IGSI (Export Services) said, "continuous integration of workforce development with process improvement fosters development of effective teams driven by excellence, to help achieve our business goals. IBM’s customers and labs globally can continue to look forward to getting the best value for their business through an empowered and driven team."

Conforming to PCMM level 5 requirements further enable IGSI export services to continue benchmarking their people practices against the best current practices worldwide in the areas of human resources, knowledge management, organizational development. The PCMM framework, developed by Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, defines organizational maturity of people, processes and practices on a scale of one to five, with five being the highest. IGSI, export services is one of the few organisations in the world to achieve this rare distinction. IGSI, export services delivery is already driven by ISO 9001:2000 and SEI cmm level 5 quality standards.

IGSI, export services is a process-centric organisation, equipped with fully functional delivery centers on-site offshore, located at Bangalore, Gurgaon and Pune. (UNI)

Row over hybrid rice research collaboration
in Chhattisgarh

RAIPUR, Nov 27: Discussions between Chhattisgarh’s Indira Gandhi Agriculture University and a multi-national company for a collaboration on hybrid rice research have trigerred a controversy with the opposition parties alleging that it was a move to sell off the rare varieties of paddy germplasm preserved in the state.

While the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded a CBI inquiry into the whole matter pertaining to the rare rice germ plasm, the university has dismissed the charges as "baseless and far from truth" saying the discussions with M/s Syngenta Seeds India Private Limited was only at a preliminary stage.

"The discussions were held for collaboration on hybrid rice research and not for the sell off of the rich rice germplasm varieties available with us," Agriculture University Vice-Chancellor Dr V K Patil told reporters here today.

Clarifying on the opposition charges and reports in a section of media, he said M/s Syngenta seeds had come up with a proposal for a collaboration with the university on hybrid rice research. He said ‘preliminary discussions’ have been held with the multi-national in this regard.

The Indira Gandhi Agriculture University (IGAU), Raipur, has preserved about 23,000 rich varieties of paddy germ plasms. This collection of rice germ plasm is considered to be the second highest after the International Rice Research Institute at Manila. Throwing light on the draft proposal submitted by M/s Syngenta on the hybrid rice, Mr Patil said the company had proposed joint research for development of hybrid and drought resistant varieties and its marketing and distribution.

He said the company had proposed to make funds available for research to develop hybrid varieties from the germ plasm available. Besides, it had also offered to pay royalty to the university for marketing the hybrid paddy.

During the discussion, Mr Patil said, he had made it clear to the company that a final decision would be taken only after consultation with agriculture scientists, Varsity’s Academic Council, the Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR) and the State Government.

Pointing out that a 15 point draft MoU, which was to be implemented for a period of five years, was also discussed in detail, the Vice-Chancellor said the university officials did not agree with several points mentioned in the proposed MoU.

Citing an example, Mr Patil said M/s Syngenta wanted to utilise the IAAU germplasm, which the university did not agree. He said the university has clearly stated its stands to the company that the germ plasm will be utilised by the IGAU only.

Stating that M/s Syngenta’s main objective was to collaborate with the IGAU on the hybrid rice research using the facilities and knowledge of both the organisations, he said the university felt that the hybrid rice need to be developed based on the market oriented demand in collaboration with the company and partially utilising M/s Syngenta’s parental lines.

Similarly, he said the university also did not agree to the proposal that each party will propose and the board, to be constituted, will approve the lines/germplasm to be used in the individual projects. IGAU stuck to the point that it will not disclose the parental line till the variety was registered, he added.

"No decision has been taken so far. Syngenta officials told us that they will go back and communicate after discussing with their higher officials in the company", he added. (UNI)

NIIT’s subsidiary bags 10 mn dollar order from UK firm

NEW DELHI, Nov 27: A subsidiary of leading computer training firm, NIIT Ltd, has bagged a 10 million-dollar order from the UK-based Misys Independent Financial Advisory Services PLC (MIFAS).

The five-year deal, received by NIIT smartserve, consists of setting up an advanced quality assurance centre for MIFAS’ core business process, NIIT said in a statement today.

MIFAS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Misys PLC, is a leading supplier of support and research services to Independent Financial Advisers (IFAs) in Britain.

NIIT Smartserve is the remote business process management services subsidiary of NIIT Ltd. It focuses on insurance and financial services.

The process will help MIFAS increase its monitoring and compliance checking capabilities among its 7,000 IFAs.

The order will be executed out of NIIT Smartserve’s new 560-seat facility in Gurgaon.

MIFAS Chief Executive Patrick Gale said,"this is a substantial step towards our vision of delivering higher quality to the IFA."

This is one of the first core processes to be migrated into India, NIIT Smartserve President B Venkatesh Iyer said.

Misys PLC is a leading global supplier of software products in the banking and securities, healthcare and retail financial services sectors. The company earned operating profit of 128 million pounds last fiscal.

NIIT Smartserve’s primary facility in Gurgaon and the business community site in New Delhi are designed to handle both voice and non-voice based services for customers in the US and Britain. (UNI)

UTI Bank cuts interest rates on housing
loanby 25 basis points

MUMBAI, Nov 27: UTI Bank has reduced the interest rates on its floating rate housing loans by 25 basis points.

The new rates for a loan ranging from Rs 1 lakh to 50 lakh now stand at 9.25 per cent for a five-year tenure loan, 9.75 per cent for that of five years and above upto 10 years and 10.25 per cent for those above 10 years. (UNI)

Rugmark to set up carpet training centre for girls in UP

NEW DELHI, Nov 27: Rugmark Foundation, a Non-Government body for boosting exports of carpets affixed with Rugmark labels which guarantees a foreign buyer that the carpet is made without illegal child labour, will soon be setting up a training centre for girls in Gopalganj area of Uttar Pradesh.

The main purpose of the training centre is to make young girls and women economically self-sufficient. It will provide them training in carpet weaving with special arrangement to market these carpets

India has exported over 2.5 million carpets with the Rugmark label till September, 2002. Major importing countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the US, Switzerland Sweden and the UK have committed themselves to exclusively import carpets from the countries where the Rugmark scheme is in force, a foundation release said here today. (UNI)

| home | state | national | business | editorial | advertisement | sports
| international | weather | mailbag | suggestions | search | subscribe | send mail |