Wednesday, October 27, 1999

Humiliated youth commits suicide
SRIGANGANAGAR, Oct 26 — Humiliated by the scornful punishment, meted out by the village panchayat, a 30-year-old youth of Kikar Wali Johri village ended his life by hanging himself from tree, in Suratgarh area of this district.

Pawan Bansal LS panel member
NEW DELHI, Oct 26 — Mr Pawan Kumar Bansal, MP from Chandigarh, is among the 14 members who have been nominated by the Speaker, Mr G M C Balayogi to the Business Advisory Committee of the Lok Sabha.

Strike called off in WB, Orissa

NEW DELHI, Oct 26 (PTI) — Transporters and the government resumed talks today to resolve the nationwide truckers agitation which entered it’s sixth day, affecting inter-state movement of goods.

Both All-India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC), which is spearheading the stir, and Surface Transport Ministry officials were tight-lipped about the outcome of the talks, which resumed after a gap of three days.

"We have discussed some issues and will continue discussing," Road Transport Secretary Ashoke Singh told reporters after the two-hour meeting.

AIMTC Secretary-General J.M. Saksena said talks were likely to resume tomorrow.

The entire Opposition in the Lok Sabha, meanwhile, staged a walkout protesting against the government’s failure to give an assurance to roll back the price of diesel.

More truck unions withdrew from the strike as the government reiterated its stand not to roll back diesel prices.

While transporters in West Bengal called off the strike, truckers in three districts of Uttar Pradesh pulled out from the agitation.

The government claimed that transporters in Gujarat and Orissa had also decided to resume operations. However, AIMTC said it was united in the strike.

Denying that transport operators in Gujarat and Orissa had withdrawn the strike, Mr Saksena said: "Our president represents the Orissa association. How can it withdraw?"

Truck operators in West Bengal, which joined the strike only yesterday, today called it off following assurance from the state government to look into their demands, including fixation of a minimum freight rate within two months.

A report from Calcutta said truck operators in West Bengal tonight called off the strike following categorical assurance by the state government to look into their demands.

Mr Satyajit Majumder, General Secretary of the Federation of West Bengal Truck Operators Associations, apex body of all district truck operators association in the state, said they had withdrawn the strike from 8 p.m.

Two other organisations — Truck Owners Association and the All-Bengal Transport Federation (ABTF) affiliated to the AIMTC, earlier stated that they had called off the strike with immediate effect.

Stating that it felt let down by the AIMTC leadership, ABTF charged the AIMTC with pushing the truckers into a strike on an "untenable issue" of withdrawal of diesel price hike.

West Bengal Minister of State for Transport Sushanta Ghosh earlier told newspersons that the government had decided to constitute two committees to look into the demands of truck operators.

Union Surface Transport Minister Nitish Kumar, meanwhile, said the government was open to discussion on issues other than diesel prices. "Our doors are open for talks as everyone is losing from the strike," he said.

He said the supply of essential commodities was "normal" throughout the country and prices had moved up marginally only in some parts of the country. "Even this is due to panic buying rather than any shortage," he added.

In Tamil Nadu, the cargo movement remained affected and goods continued to pile up in various centres of the state. Movement of finished products was also affected due to the strike.

Supply of essential commodities limped back to normalcy in Maharashtra with 50 per cent more goods transport vehicles plying in the state compared to yesterday.

Transporters in Haryana, Punjab and Chandigarh hinted at an early end to the six-day old strike as a large number of trucks were "clandestinely" loading and unloading in these states. Reports from Rajasthan suggested that the supply of vegetables and essential commodities continued to be affected.

Campaigning ends in Bihar

PATNA, Oct 26 (UNI) — The campaign trail tapered off this evening for Thursday’s Lok Sabha flood-deferred elections in Purnea, Khagaria, Rajmahal (reserved) and Bhagalpur where the BJP is trying to protect its newly earned ground in Bihar against a determined CPM, the RJD and the Congress.

The CPM, the RJD and the Congress are in the fray from Bhagalpur and Purnea. The Congress and the RJD have reached an agreement for Rajmahal and Khagaria but the CPI walked out, dissatisfied.

The CPI has fielded its party MLA, Mr Satyanarain Singh in Khagaria where the RJD candidate is Mrs Nayana Rana, wife of party’s MLA and an accused in fodder scam Mr R.K. Rana. The main contest is between nominees of the RJD and the JD(U) but, the CPI MLA is trying to make it triangular.

In adjoining Purnea, the BJP candidate, Mr Jaikrishna Mandal, the CPI candidate, Mr Khalil Ahmed and an Independent candidate and former MP Mr Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav are locked in a three-pronged contest.

The Bhagalpur constituency will witness a straight fight between the CPM candidate, Mr Subodh Roy and the BJP candidate, Mr Prabhashchandra Tiwari.

The BJP candidate, Mr Som Marandi who won last time with the wafer-thin margin of nine votes is once again in a keen contest in Rajmahal with the Congress candidate Mr Thomas Hansda but the JMM candidate, Mr Simon Marandi, is trying to make it triangular.

Bhagalpur has the maximum number of 12,33,246 voters followed by Purnea (1085515), Khagaria (1044754) and 950682 in Rajmahal.

The election has put before the BJP the challenge of increasing its tally in the 13th Lok Sabha.

Top leaders of the BJP and the Congress have stayed away from campaigning as the interest in the election dwindled.

The RJD President Mr Laloo Prasad, instead of the Chief Minister, Mrs Rabri Devi, himself took the command of campaigning.

The Union Minister of State for Communications, Mr Tapan Sikdar also campaigned in the Rajmahal constituency in view of its proximity to West Bengal.

The JD(U) leaders and the Central Ministers, Mr George Fernandes, Mr Nitish Kumar and Mr Ramvilas Paswan also toured the constituencies.

The state Home Commissioner U.N. Panjiyar said the inter-state and inter-district borders had been sealed in view of the elections and all police district superintendents alerted.

Mr Panjiyar said the Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bangladesh border all along Bihar had been sealed.

The sensitive pockets were being monitored under the supervision of armed police.

Besides 24 companies of the Central Paramilitary Forces, 50 companies of the state police force and Home Guards were being deployed in the four constituencies.

BJP banks on sympathy factor

DHUBRI (Assam), Oct 26 (UNI) — The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is riding on the sympathy factor in this Lok Sabha constituency where election was countermanded after the abduction and killing of its candidate Dr Pannalal Oswal last month.

Senior BJP leaders, including former Union Minister Sushma Swaraj, are campaigning for Mr Bimal Oswal, the eldest son of Dr Oswal, who was pitchforked into politics after the murder of his father.

The constituency, which goes to the polls on October 28, has the highest concentration of Muslims in the country (70 per cent of the 10.49 lakh electorate are Muslims), and is a Congress stronghold. The party has not put its top leaders on the campaign trail for Mr Abdul Hamid who won the 1998 elections by more than 200,000 votes.

The BJP event brought its lone Muslim MP and Union Minister Shahnawaj Hussain to campaign here. The party is also banking on possible division of Congress votes following the entry of rebel candidate Afzalur Rahman who was later expelled from the party.

The BJP, which controls the Dhubri Town Committee, also has the backing of the United Peoples Party of Assam. The other candidates in the fray are Mr Allaudin Sarkar of the CPI and NCP nominee Ahmed Hussain.

Dhubri is one of the five Lok Sabha constituencies where election was postponed to October 28. The others are in Bihar — Purnia Bhagalpur, Rajmahal and Khagaria.

Dhubri, which is situated on the banks of the Brahmaputra, is one of the most neglected constituencies of the country. A town, which served as a link between East Bengal (now Bangladesh) and the rest of the country till 1947, had a port, an international rail route and an airport, but it is today one of the most underdeveloped constituencies of the region.

The British exploited its worth as a vital trade link up to the hilt. The port was used for exporting tea and wood with small ships carrying the goods to the bigger ports in the Bay of Bengal through the Padma river (as the Brahmaputra is called in Bangladesh) before joining in the Hooghly in Calcutta. The railway had a direct line via Rongpur (now in Bangladesh) to Calcutta which was disbanded after Partition. The town was forgotten after the Bangaigaon-Siliguri track came up linking the North-East with the rest of the country.

Cyclone national calamity: Sonia

BHUBANESWAR, Oct 26 (UNI) — Congress President Sonia Gandhi today said the devastation caused by the cyclone that hit the Orissa coast should be treated as “national calamity of rare severity”.

Mrs Gandhi, who visited the cyclone affected areas of Gopalpur and Berhampur in Ganjam district this morning, told newspersons at the airport that the situation was quite bad following the extensive damage in the cyclonic storm and warranted immediate central assistance.

She said her party and the state government had also urged the Centre to treat the cyclone as national calamity and “I also strongly feel that it should be declared as national calamity of rare severity.’’

The Congress chief said, her party would continue to raise the issue in Parliament and press for central assistance.

Mrs Sonia Gandhi, who arrived here last night, left for Berhampur this morning from where she went to some villages, entered the houses and talked to the victims while enquiring about the relief and rescue operations undertaken by the state government.

Accompanied by son Rahul, AIIC general secretary Ambika Soni, Orissa Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang and Pradesh Congress Chief Hemananda Biswal, she spent nearly two hours in the affected areas.

Asked about the Prime Minister’s relief announcement, she said the assistance was not for the cyclone affected people but to tide over the financial crisis.

She said she was told by the state government that so far no central assistance had been released although the Prime Minister had announced Rs 50 crore after an aerial survey of the affected areas.

‘Ram temple work from Nov 2001’

TIRUCHIRAPALLI, Oct 26 (UNI) — The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) will construct the Ram temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya overcoming hurdles from any quarters, VHP general secretary Kakade claimed today.

The temple construction work would be formally inaugurated on “ekadesi” day in November 2001 and during the Ramanavami celebrations in 2002, the sanctum sanctorum would be ready and lord Rama’s idol would be installed for public worship, he told reporters here.

On the reported protest by the VHP and other organisations against Pope John Paul’s visit to the country, Mr Kakade said it would welcome the visit provided the Pope fulfilled the VHP demands, including withdrawal of foreign missionaries and stoppage of foreign funding and mass conversion. The VHP also demanded that the Pope should apologise for the “cruel deeds” of Catholic Christians in Goa and in Vasai in Maharashtra, where thousands of Hindus were massacred 400 years ago, he added.

Mr Kakade said the VHP’s rath yatra demanding an apology from the Pope, which commenced at Goa on October 19, would reach New Delhi on November 4.

He said the Pope should proclaim clearly that the Vatican declaration on the validity of gods other than the Christian lord of the Bible still holds. This would be in consonance with the age-old Indian tradition of unity in diversity. Such proclamation by the Pope would ensure a better goodwill between the Hindus and the Christians.

Humiliated youth commits suicide
From Our Correspondent

SRIGANGANAGAR, Oct 26 — Humiliated by the scornful punishment, meted out by the village panchayat, a 30-year-old youth of Kikar Wali Johri village ended his life by hanging himself from tree, in Suratgarh area of this district.

The panchayat had condemned the victim, Mewa Ram Babri, with ostracism from the village after smearing his face black and putting a garland of shoes around his neck for allegedly teasing a girl of the village.

The police has arrested six persons, those who headed the proceedings of the panchayat, on the charge of abetment of suicide.

According to Mr Sarwar Ali, the police in charge of Suratgarh, three members of the Babri community lodged a complaint with the village panchayat that the victim had misbehaved with the girl of their family on October 17. After a six-hour-long trial, the panchayat ordered the youth to be paraded in the village after putting his face black and a garland of shoes to be put around his neck. The victim was also asked to leave the village, failing which he had to pay a fine of Rs 11,000. Unable to cope with the disgrace the next day, the youth ended his life by hanging himself from a tree in the village.

In a complaint lodged by Mrs Punjab Kaur , the mother of the victim, it has been alleged that Jhan Singh, Chhinder Pal, Sahib Ram, Pala Ram, Kapoor Singh and Faqir Singh of the village abetted her son to commit suicide after subjecting him to merciless dishonour.

Pawan Bansal LS panel member
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Oct 26 — Mr Pawan Kumar Bansal, MP from Chandigarh, is among the 14 members who have been nominated by the Speaker, Mr G M C Balayogi to the Business Advisory Committee of the Lok Sabha.

The other members of the committee include Mr Ashok Chhaviram Argal, Mr Somnath Chatterjee, Mr Priya Ranjan Das Munshi, Ms Sheela Gautam, Mr Anant Gangaram Geete, Maj Gen(Retd) Bhuvan Chand Khanduri, Mr Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Mr Ram Sajiwan, Mr Madhavrao Scindia, Mr Akhilesh Singh, Mr Chintamani Vanga, Mr Devendra Prasad Yadav and Mr K Yerrannaidu.

NLFT releases 12 employees
AGARTALA: The outlawed National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) on Tuesday released 12 government officials, whom it had abducted last month, allegedly after extracting heavy ransom, the police said. Two of the 17 officials abducted from Tripura’s Manu block office on September 6 had been killed in captivity by the abductors, the police said quoting the released men. — PTI

ESCAP meet from Nov 15
BANGALORE: Member countries of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) will meet in New Delhi from November 15 to create a level playing field in the region for utilising space for sustainable development. The second ministerial conference on “space applications for sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific” is expected to be a milestone in preparing the region for the new millennium in which space information technology will play a part in all walks of life. — UNI

5 booked for abetting suicide
SRIGANGANAGAR: On the direction of the Chief Judicial Magistrate, the Kotwali police here has booked five senior officers for abetting suicide in a Municipal Councillor’s immolation case. In July, 1998, Mr Laxman Khichi, Municipal Councillor, had immolated in front of the District Collector’s office here. He did this in front of a large crowd in protest against the “lackadaisical approach” of the administration towards removing encroachments in his ward. . — FOC

5 lakh leprosy patients in India
BHOPAL: To declare India laprosy-free by 2000 seems a distant dream in view of the failure of leprosy eradication programmes in five states and the high prevalence rate of the disease, experts say . A report prepared by the World Health Organisation reveals that in India there are more than 5,00,000 leprosy patients.— UNI

Rehabilitating the rhino
LUCKNOW: The efforts of the authorities at Dudhwa National Park to rehabilitate the rhino in the region have borne fruit. The birth of a calf early this month has raised its numbers to 18. According to the Chief Wildlife Warden of Uttar Pradesh, Dr R.L. Singh, it was in 1984 that the Indian Government, on the advice of the United Nations Commission on Asian Rhino, agreed to rehabilitate the endangered species at the park. — UNI

Couple strangled to death
GREATER NOIDA: In a sensational double murder a 70-year-old retired engineer of the Uttar Pradesh Irrigation Department and his 65-year-old wife were strangled to death at their residence in Greater Noida area on Monday night. The police said motive for the crime appeared to be robbery and the assailants were probably known to the Jain couple. Among the suspect is a tenant of Mr Jain, who had vacated the house few days ago, a rickshaw puller who was about to shift at Jain’s residence as a tenant. — FOC

Five-year-old raped
GREATER NOIDA: A case of rape of a five-year-old girl under the Kasna police station area has come to the light. According to reports Chaman residing in the neighbour of victim took her on the pretext of showing her the garden where he was working as a gardener. After raping her, he left her in a nearby field and fled.The police has arrested Chaman. — FOC

Zee TV launches Punjabi channel
NEW DELHI: The Zee television network recently launched its Punjabi channel. The Former Prime Minister, Mr Inder Kumar Gujral, pressed a remote to mark the formal launch of the channel. — TNS