SRINAGAR, Mar 3:

In a major recognition for Kashmir Cinema, a Kashmiri feature film has won an international award at Canada International Film Festival 2013, a first for any local movie.

‘Partav’, meaning influence, has won the Award of Excellence in Canada International Film Festival 2013 in feature film category.

‘Partav’, the first Kashmiri film shot entirely in the 35mm digital format, is a story of a professor who forsakes everything in his life to devote himself to his literary pursuits.

The film revolves around the ideology that “a life lived for others is a life worth living”. In fact, this Albert Einstein quote is the catch-line of the one-hour-and-fifty-minutes film, which became the first Kashmiri film to receive any international recognition.

The Canada International Film Festival, held each year in the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, brings the very best of world cinema to Canada from over 90 countries around the world.

The 2013 edition will be held April 5th to 6th, 2013 at Edgewater Casino in downtown Vancouver.  This year’s Festival Programme will showcase a wide variety of North American and International Feature Films to thought-provoking Shorts, Documentaries, Music Videos, Animations, Experimental Films, Student Films, a Screenplay Competition, and more.

Listed at number six in the 2013 Award of Excellence Winners – Feature Competition category, ‘Partav’ has made proud not only its makers, but the whole community here. (AGENCIES)

NEW DELHI : Officials from Indian Air Force (IAF) and Defence Accounts Department will join a special CBI team formed to probe the allegation of payment of kickbacks in the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP helicopter deal as the investigating agency prepares to examine suspects named in its Preliminary Enquiry (PE).
Sources in the agency said an IAF officer would be joining the CBI team along with some officials from the Controller General of Defence Accounts to examine the documents collected from Milan as well as from Italian-based Finmeccanica, parent company of AgustaWestland helicopter.
The special CBI team, to be assisted by the Income Tax department sleuths as well, will study the necessity of changing the specification of the helicopter besides the money trail, they said.
Former IAF chief S P Tyagi and his three cousins are among 11 individuals named in the PE registered by the CBI on February 24 besides four companies.
Suspected European middlemen Carlo Garosa, Christian Michel and Guido Haschkhe, advocate Gautam Khaitan formerly associated with Aeromatrix and its CEO Praveen Bakshi, former Finmeccanica Chairman Giuseppe Orsi, former AgustaWestland CEO Bruno Spagnolini, have also been named.
The CBI will examine some of the officials from the Aeromatrix and IDS Infotech, the sources said, adding that Tyagis including Julie, Dosca and Sanjeev Tyagi, cousins of former IAF chief, will be questioned at a later stage.
The Defence Ministry has handed over the documents to the CBI which includes replies from the AgustaWestland to its show cause notice issued besides some internal communication of the ministry pertaining to the deal.
In its PE, registered to probe kickbacks in the 12 AW-101 VVIP/VIP helicopters from AgustaWestland deal, CBI will investigate allegations that some “middlemen have influenced the deal in favour” of the Italian company.
It is also learnt that Italian company Finmeccanica paid a commission of seven million Euros (about Rs 50 crore) to the middlemen out of which huge sums were transferred to seven Indian nationals through Tunisia and Mauritius, the PE said.
The money was sent in the garb of of engineering contracts with two Indian companies — IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, it said.
All the suspects have refuted the allegations.
The investigation report by Italian prosecutor has claimed that Haschkhe and Gerosa, through the Tyagi brothers, managed first to change the tender details, in a way to favour, modifying the ‘operational ceiling’ from 18,000 feet to 15,000 feet altitude, thus allowing AgustaWestland (which otherwise could not have even submitted an offer) to take part in the tender.
The report also claimed that the duo managed to introduce a comparative flight trial with non-functional engine, thus facilitating AgustaWestland helicopters, the only ones which had three engines, swinging the deal in its favour.
The sources said during PE, the agency’s powers in summoning and carrying out searches are very limited and it is trying to complete the enquiry as early as possible. (AGENCIES)

NEW DELHI: BJP veteran L K Advani today asked the partymen to adopt zero tolerance against corruption.
Mr Advani, while speaking during the concluding session of the party’s two-day National Council here, said the party did not handle the Karnataka crisis properly.
He said the party should have taken strong steps in Karnataka, the first ever BJP-ruled state in South India.
Former BJP leader B S Yeddyurappa had resigned from his post after corruption charges. He quit the BJP and formed a new political outfit last year.
“There should be no compromise with corruption. There should be zero tolerance against corruption,” he said.
Mr Advani said,”Without mincing words let me admit that our wavering and unprincipled handling of the situation in Karnataka caused great damage to our image. We forgot that the people judge the commitment of any political party to fight corruption not by its pronouncements but by its practice and, when the need arises, by its punitive actions.”
He said when the BJP was launched in 1980, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had urged the partymen to become “a party with difference”.
“…However, contrary to this aspiration, the image of the BJP that has gained ground in the past few years, is that of a party with differences, which also keeps talking in multiple voices,” he added.
The BJP veteran further said the party takes legitimate pride in the fact that it was a non-dynastic party that values and promotes internal democracy.
“But we must recognise that internal cohesion, especially at the top levels of the organisation, sustains internal democracy. If internal cohesion is allowed to be weakened by lack of internal discipline, which has always been the hallmark of the BJP and earlier the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the party begins to project an image of an organisation suffering from internal differences,” he said.
He urged party chief Rajnath Singh, in cooperation with senior leaders at the central and state levels, to start taking firm steps to remedy this situation.
Mr Advani slammed the Congress-led UPA government on various issues.
“The popular mood in the country is anger and revulsion against the Congress-led government at the Centre. Many factors are feeding this mood, but chief amongst them is the firm belief among all sections of society that this is the most corrupt government in the history of independent India,” he said.
He alleged that the Centre has completely failed to control price rise.
He said it was “crystal clear” that the people of India “want to get rid of the UPA government.”
Mr Advani said the BJP must work closely with all the like-minded parties ─ both those within the NDA and those outside the NDA ─ to reassure the people that a strong, viable non-Congress alternative, with an agreed agenda of good governance, was available before them.
“This is what I had meant, when, in my remarks at the last meeting of the BJP’s National Executive at Surajkund, I had put forward the idea of NDA-Plus,” he said.
“Let us convey a strong and credible message to the people of India that the BJP is ready to rise to the occasion by meeting their expectation for a stable, visionary and transformative alternative to the non-performing UPA,” Mr Advani added. (AGENCIES)

SRINAGAR: Property worth lakhs of rupees has been destroyed in a devastating fire incident in north Kashmir district of Kupwara, official sources said here today.
They said fire broke out at Meelyat Bazar Kupwara causing damage to six shops and a food godown.
The cause of fire was being ascertained, they said, adding no one was injured in the incident.
(AGENCIES)

HYDERABAD: The National Investigating Agency (NIA), probing the February 21 Dilsukhnagar Twin Blasts that claimed 16 lives and injured over 100, is questioning two more suspects.
The duo were brought to the city from Nellore District Jail and being interrogated but officials remained tightlipped about the probe.
Indian Mujahidden (IM) operative Syed Maqbool and Imran Khan, who had allegedly conducted a recce of the blast area, were brought to the state capital from Tihar Jail two days back after a Delhi court granted NIA five-day custody of the accused.
They were being questioned for the third day today by the NIA, according to sources here.
Though the CCTV footage lacked clarity, Maqbool, who trained over a dozen IM operatives including Tabrez and Waqas in preparing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), reportedly told the agency that one of the persons seen along with the bicycle looked like Tabrez, sources said.
The inputs given by Maqbool assumed significance as the investigators were already holding a view that Tabrez and Waqas could have played a key role in the twin blasts.
The NIA are likely to grill Maqbool and Khan for the next two days to get more inputs in the case, sources added.
Even as investigators struggled for a breakthrough nine days after the blasts, no arrests have been made officially either by state police or NIA in connection with the terror attack in which two powerful Improvised Explosive Devices(IED) went off in the crowded Dilsukhnagar area.
According to NIA, the blasts took place on instructions from IM’s Pakistan-based founder Riyaz Bhatkal and the duo’s interrogation will help in unearthing the exact plan hatched by the perpetrators.
Andhra Pradesh DGP, V Dinesh Reddy had earlier said sketches of suspects were being prepared and he was hoping for a breakthrough. The state government has formed 15 probe teams, besides NIA for probing the case. (AGENCIES)

SRINAGAR :  Tension gripped in major parts of south Kashmir district of Pulwama after death of a Kashmiri student in a university campus hostel at Hyderabad.
People took to streets at village Parigam and main Pulwama town and other areas this morning after hearing that a Kashmiri student Mudasir Kamran, was found dead in the hostel room at Hyderabad yesterday.
The demonstrators, who also pelted stones on passing vehicles alleged that Kamran was killed during interrogation by Hyderabad police for his participation in the recent demonstrations against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
Kamran was found hanging in the room and Hyderabad police has said it was a suicide.
As the news spread in the district, people at other places, including Kakpora joined the demonstrations.
Authorities deployed additional security forces and state police personnel to the demonstration site to maintain peace, official sources said adding the situation was under control but tense.
Senior civil and police officials rushed to the spot to pacify the agitators.
(AGENCIES)