NEW DELHI, Apr 1:
The CBI today issued a restraint order to prevent London-based NRI businessman Ravi Rishi, an accused in a case of alleged irregularities in purchase of Tatra trucks for the Army, from moving out of the country.
The agency has alerted all airports and exit points to ensure that he does not leave the country, official sources said.
Rishi was not available for his comments and his company, when contacted, refused to react to the development, saying it were cooperating with the CBI in the case.
57-year-old Rishi, named as an accused in the agency’s FIR in alleged irregularities in purchase of Tatra trucks for the Army, has been questioned twice so far by the CBI and was likely to be summoned again.
Rishi has termed the allegations against him as unfortunate, saying the trucks were sold through public sector undertaking Bharat Earth Movers Limited. He also said the charges levelled with regard to Tatra trucks by Army Chief Gen V K Singh were baseless.
The move comes after the Army chief complained alleging Lt Gen (retired) Tejinder Singh had offered him a bribe for clearing a consignment of “sub-standard” trucks.
Lt Gen Singh has refuted the allegations and has filed a defamation case against the Army chief and some other senior officers.
CBI officials will be seeking more details from the Army chief before they decide on whether to register a preliminary enquiry or a case in connection with the bribery charge.
The sources said the Army chief was expected to soon provide more material about the alleged bribe offer. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Apr 1:
Banks from today will stop honouring cheques and drafts if they are not presented within three months of the date of issue as against six months earlier.The decision to reduce the validity of cheques, bank drafts and other instruments to three months announced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) earlier will come into effect from today.With a view to mitigating frauds related with such instruments, the RBI in a directive had said with effect from April 1, 2012, banks should not make payments against cheques, drafts, pay orders or banker’s cheques if they are presented after the period of three months from date of issue.
The directive followed complaints that some persons were taking undue advantage of the six-month validity period and circulating these instruments like cash.Commenting on the decision to curtail the validity period of cheques and drafts, a senior banker said, the three-month validity period is a good enough time for conciliation of these instruments.The RBI had said, “In public interest and in the interest of the banking policy, it is necessary to reduce the period within which cheques/drafts/pay orders/banker’s cheques are presented for payment from six months to three months from the date of such instrument.” (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Apr 1:
India should have sent its troops back to Sri Lanka to kill or capture Prabhakaran and the LTTE leadership after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, says a new book by a former US diplomat.
Rajiv Gandhi’s killing was an attack on India’s status as a regional power. Forcibly bringing Prabhakaran to India to face trial would have sent a clear message to the region, and the world, that India would defend its political leaders from attack, defend its political system from intimidation and defend its primacy in South Asia against any challengers, the author says.
A frightened India became content with being a passive regional power rather than active global power, says the book “China’s Nightmare, America’s Dream: India as the next global power” by William H. Avery, former American diplomat.
Avery was on posting in India and served in the US Department of State during the Administrations of President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
India’s window of opportunity to influence Sri Lanka will never be as wide open as it was in 1991 after Rajiv’s killing”, the author says adding that India’s craven inaction in Sri Lanka after the assassination cost it valuable years in its quest to become a global power.
The events of 1991 that included the shame of having required to sell its gold and killing by a terrorist organisation of its former prime minister were a low point in the history of modern India.
Seven years after its annus horribilis, India, however, was able to make its first crucial step towards true power- the move that stunned the world- and earned India virtually universal approbation. But history has proven India’s 1998 nuclear test to have been a wise choice, says Avery.
The Pokhran test changed India overnight into a ‘front-line’ post in the US Foreign Service. It also made India a much more interesting assignment for an American diplomat, the author says. He says by any measure the 1998 American sanctions on India were a failure.
Withdrawn in stages and completely by 2001, the sanctions achieved little other than to make the US feel that it was taking action against India’s nuclear test. By the time the decade ended the US had become resigned to a nuclear India.
The world is no longer responding to India with indifference. India has the world’s attention and respect. Now India must reach out and claim global power status. Doing so will require a transformation of India’s economy far greater than that which followed the reforms of 1991, and, a foreign policy far more assertive than that of the past decade, Avery says.
The author says that to become a true global power the Indian economy will have to make a transition from outsourcing to innovation-intensive industries. Its multinationals will have to become truly global companies, with more business outside India than within.
Finally, India must develop and implement a more assertive foreign policy one that backs talk of great power status with military might and willingness to use it.
“China has no such timidity in its foreign affairs. In addition to the port in Sri Lanka, it is also helping expand the Pakistani port of Gwadar and Chittgong port in Bangladesh.
China has also requested Burma to allow its warships to dock at Burmese ports, which, if approved would give China naval access to Indian Ocean’, the author says.
The author notes that all the rich countries in the world have had their time in demographic ‘sweet spot’. Europe was there in the eighteenth century. The United States in the nineteenth. Japan in the early twentieth. China in the 1980s. Now, it is India’s turn, he says.
The book says that with their economies trailing off, the United States, Europe and Japan have only one choice if they are to increase or even maintain their standards of living- they must export to where the growth is today.
“Number one on their list of markets will be India. The big prize in the next 50 years will be Indian customer, not the Indian supplier”, he says.
China will also be a big market but not the first, the book says.
Avery, however, cautions that India today is falling into the colonial trap. Imperial England’s economic policy was simple: Import raw material from the colonies and export manufactured goods from England.
The difference today is India’s ‘raw material’ is services, not goods. The export of these services- outsourcing- represents the single greatest limitation on India’s growth.
Two centuries ago, the United Kingdom used Indian cotton as raw material to run its textile mills and strengthen its industrial base. Today, the US uses Indian IT services to run its software products and strengthen technology base, he says.
The effect, the author says, is the same: a colonial style enrichment of other nations, at India’s expense.
Avery says that there was every indication that bilateral relations would continue to strengthen rapidly with Barack Obama replacing George W. Bush. After all, Manmohan Singh and Bush had been, for all their success, an unlikely pair: the soft spoken economic professor and the brash cowboy.
“It was tempting to wonder as Obama began his presidency, the author says: “If the cowboy and the professor could produce the nuclear deal, what even greater things can the two professors achieve?”
“The professors have been in charge and it shows. The first three years of the Obama-Singh era have resembled a long-term academic seminar on growing strength of the Indo- American relationship. Somewhere along the way, however, the world stopped listening. For all the words that Singh and Obama put forth about each other and the bilateral relationship, it turns out that they were missing one important thing: action”, the book says.
The strength of the Indo-American relationship depends not on which party is the White House, but instead on the quality of leadership in both, White House and Delhi. The Indo-American relationship under Singh and Obama is drifting.
Happily, it is not yet too late, but there is no time to spare!, the book says. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Apr 1:
At a time when police-population ratio is abnormally low, 16,800 VIPs across the country had more than 50,000 security personnel to guard them, nearly double the actually alloted strength.
According to a Home Ministry report, 50,059 policemen were deployed in 25 states and Union Territories in 2010 to provide security to 16,788 VIPs, which included ministers, MPs, MLAs, judges and bureaucrats, for more than six months.
Interestingly, only 28,298 police personnel were actually sanctioned to be deployed for protection to these VIPs in that year.
The report, released by Home Minister P Chidambaram on Friday, said manpower for protected persons’ protection duty is drawn from available resources generally without corresponding increase in sanctioned strength for the purpose.
“The increase in the protected persons’ protection deployment has strained the already limited manpower resources of state police. Therefore, there is a need for periodic review of the deployment of police for protected persons’ protection against need based assessment coupled with proportionate increase in the sanctioned and professionally trained manpower commensurate to the bona fide protected persons’ protection requirements,” the report said.
The report, prepared by Bureau of Police Research and Development, said as on January 1, 2011, the actual strength of the police personnel for per lakh population was 131.39 against the sanctioned posts of 173.51 personnel per lakh population.
Altogether 47,355 police personnel—more than double the alloted strength—were deployed to provide security to 17,451 VIPs across the country in 2009. The alloted strength of police personnel for VIP security that year was 23,637.
From the perusal of states and UT wise data, it is observed that during 2010, the maximum of 3,030 VIPs were given protection in Bihar followed by 1,685 in Punjab and 1,640 in West Bengal.
For protection of VIPs, Punjab deployed the maximum of 5,410 police personnel followed by 5,001 security men by National Capital Territory Delhi and 3,958 by Andhra Pradesh in 2010.
The total police-population ratio (total sanctioned number of police personnel available for per lakh population) has shown wide variations across the country. The most populous states have relatively much less sanctioned strength of police men than warranted by their total population.
West Bengal has just 81 police personnel for per lakh population, followed by 88 personnel in Bihar, 115 in Madhya Pradesh and 118 in Rajasthan against the national average of 174 policemen for per lakh population.
Sparsely populated states like Tripura has 1,124 police men for per lakh population, 1,147 personnel in Manipur and 1,112 in Mizoram. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Apr 1:
BJP leader L K Advani today praised the Election Commission’s “landmark” decision to cancel Jharkhand Rajya Sabha polls and said the move would go a long way in preventing moneybags with no political support from jumping into poll fray.
Advani also sought to refocus on an NDA amendment in The Representation of the People Act in 2003 to make Rajya Sabha poll more open and said the EC decision together with its amendment would ensure that money power would no longer matter in polling to the Council of States.
“I think the Election Commission deserves special compliments for the order it has issued,” Advani wrote on his blog today, while giving kudos to Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi for scrapping this year’s Rajya Sabha elections in Jharkhand.
He said, “I hold that today’s decision of the Election Commissioner based on reasonably credible apprehensions is a landmark decision. Together with the NDA amendment of 2003, and today’s precedent, moneybags with no political support would think thousand times before jumping into the fray.”
The BJP leader also cited electoral reforms and clean elections in Britain where Parliament seats “were once sold” and said “history of electoral reforms in Britain should help dispel the general cynicism prevalent in India that there is no real remedy for the growing influence of money power in elections”.
Advani’s compliments to EC come despite Jharkhand BJP’s criticism of the poll body questioning it for being “overactive this time”. BJP’s Jharkhand affairs in-charge, Harendra Pratap Singh had said that EC “should not work under pressure from the Congress”.
“EC is overactive this time. Where was it on previous occasions when there was horse-trading by independents to get into the upper house?” Singh said in Ranchi yesterday.
Expressing concern over the affluent making their way into the Council of States by luring MLAs with their money power, Advani said “those concerned with the purity of elections have always felt distressed that affluent candidates who file their nominations for the Rajya Sabha without any evident support of the requisite number of MLAs to secure their victory often manage somehow to squeeze their way into the House or have a pawn elected by buying up MLAs.”
Advani wrote on his blog today that this is the first time in the history of Indian elections in any state that the polling to the Rajya Sabha in that state has been halted midway by the Election Commission itself, even before the votes have been fully counted.
He said EC acted swiftly before the election process got completed as otherwise the issue would have gone out of its domain.
“In this election the polling had been completed. Only Counting of Votes remained to be done, and the results announced. If that had been completed, the outcome could have been challenged only by an election petition. The matter would have thus gone outside the jurisdiction of the Election Commission, into the arena of the Judiciary!,” he wrote.
Rejecting criticism on countermanding of Rajya Sabha polls in Jharkhand, the Chief Election Commissioner had hoped it will work as a deterrent against use of money power in elections.
“We acted on complaints about use of money power in Rajya Sabha polls in Jharkhand and there was actionable evidence. We hope it (our action) works as a lesson and deterrent for political parties and their leaders not to indulge in such activities,” Quraishi told yesterday. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Apr 1:
A Parliamentary panel has pulled up Department of Telecommunication for delay in resolving the BlackBerry phone issue on concerns that security agencies are unable to get messages transmitted from it in a readable format.
“The (Standing) Committee observe that inspite of the security agencies expressing serious concern over the encrypted data of BlackBerry and its security risks, the Government have not been able to resolve the problem,” it said in a report tabled in Parliament.
Security agencies have expressed concern on highly encrypted communication made through BlackBerry phones and have demanded Research-In-Motion (RIM), maker of BlackBerry phones, to provide them data in readable format.
The Standing Committee on Information Technology headed by Rao Inderjit Singh also noted the government gave extensions to RIM, with the last date being March 31, 2011.
“The Committee express unhappiness over the way extension after extension are being given to resolve such an important issue related to security of the country,” the panel said.
Before the end of its last extension, RIM said its competitors were providing a number of other highly encrypted services in the country and sought to make it an industry issue.
Thereafter, the government formed a committee to come up with mechanism to deal with encryption issues for providing data access to security agencies which is mandatory under the Indian Telegraph Act.
“Constitution of committee for the purpose is another delaying tactics,” the committee said.
Department of Telecom (DoT) informed the panel about the action taken by it and the progress made by the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) in this regard.
“The Department instead of taking concrete action on the recommendation of the committee simply reproduced the response of C-DOT which only indicates the R&D made by the research organisation in respect of data interception,” the panel said.
It further said that C-DOT in its response has clearly stated that the Government would be in a better position to furnish appropriate response to the Committee’s concern.
Despite that, it said, DoT “did not bother” to note the response of C-DOT and respond aptly to the issue raised by it.
The Panel said DoT has not even indicated the status of the report of the Committee which was looking into all types of encrypted communication and whose report was expected by April 20, 2011.
“This speaks volumes for the casual attitude of the Department towards such an important issue, particularly, when the issue has long been highlighted by the security agencies and raised strongly by the Committee in the report,” the panel said.
The panel has asked DoT to analyse the position internationally in this regard and act upon it appropriately.
“The Committee would again like to emphasis that no compromise can be made when it is the question of the security of the nation”, the report added. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, Apr 1:
Urgency clause can be invoked by the Government only in exceptional cases after “applying its mind”, the Supreme Court has ruled while quashing acquisition of land by the Delhi administration for a housing project in Rohini.
The apex court said the burden of justifying acquisition by invoking the urgency clause under Section 17(1)(4) of Land Acquisition Act solely rests on the Government as otherwise it amounts to depriving a person of his or her property.
A bench of justices R M Lodha and H L Gokhale found fault with Delhi’s Lt Governor for acquiring the land at Rohini in April 2000 by dispensing with Section 5A of the Act which mandated that the aggrieved land owners shall be given an opportunity to be heard before their land is acquired.“Where the Government invokes urgency power under Section 17(1) and (4) for the public purpose like ‘planned development of city or development of residential area’ or ‘residential scheme’, the initial presumption in favour of the Government does not arise and the burden lies on the Government to prove that the use of power was justified and dispensation of enquiry was necessary.
“In the present case the respondents have miserably failed to show to the satisfaction of the court that the power of urgency and dispensation of enquiry under Section 5 A has been exercised with justification,” Justice Lodha writing the judgement said.
The apex court upheld an appeal filed by Ram Dhari Jindal Memorial Trust challenging acquisition of their land along with others. The trust had contended that it was running a school at the premises.
“The action of the Lt Governor, Delhi, in the facts of the case whereby, he directed that the provisions of Section 5A shall not apply, if allowed to stand, it would amount to depriving a person of his property without authority of law,” the bench said.
The Delhi High Court had on July 9, 2007, dismissed the Trust’s plea along with several other petitions, following which it appealed in the apex court.
The apex court said the power of urgency by the government under Section 17 for a public purpose like residential scheme cannot be invoked as a rule but has to be by way of exception.
“No material is available on record that justifies dispensation of enquiry under Section 5A of the Act. The high court was clearly wrong in holding that there was sufficient urgency invoking the provisions of Section 17 of the Act.
“The exercise of power by the Lt Governor, Delhi under Section 17(1) and (4) has to be held bad in law. Except the statement in the notification, there is no other material available on record which indicates that there has been application of mind by the Lt Governor Delhi on the aspect that urgency was of such nature that necessitated dispensation of enquiry under Section 5A of the Act,” the bench said.
According to the apex court, the government “miserably failed” to show that the stated purpose Rohini Residential Scheme could not have brooked the delay of a few months and the conclusion of the inquiry under Section 5A of the Act would have frustrated the said public purpose.
“If the government seeks to invoke its power of urgency, it has to first form the opinion that the land for the stated public purpose is urgently needed.
“Such opinion has to be found on the need for immediate possession of the land for carrying out the purpose for which land is sought to be compulsorily acquired. The use of power of urgency under Section 17(1)and (4) of the Act ipso facto does not result in elimination of enquiry under Section 5A and therefore, if the government intends to eliminate enquiry, then it has to apply its mind on the aspect that urgency is of such nature that necessitates elimination of such enquiry,” the apex court said. (PTI)