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Friday,
October 5, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Ajit caught on wrong foot Modi invited to form government
SIMI supporters trying to regroup Energy conservation Bill gets President’s nod
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Plan to tighten airport security SAD supporters attack Sikh body volunteers 271 women cops
pass out
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Ajit caught on wrong foot New Delhi, October 4 Official sources said Mr Ajit Singh while making public the choice of Dr Rai had jumped the gun as the appointment had not been cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. The committee, which had to choose from three candidates, including Dr Mangla Rai and Dr Panjab Singh, opted for the latter. Dr Panjab Singh was Director of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) before being appointed to the highest position in agricultural research. He had also served as Vice-Chancellor of Jawahar Lal Nehru Krishi Vishva Vidyalaya, Jabalpur, and Assistant Director-General, ICAR. The two posts had fallen vacant after Dr R.S. Paroda quit them in August to take up an international assignment. The delay in the appointment of a
successor to Dr Paroda was caused by the change of ministers in the Agriculture Ministry. The previous minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, had appointed a high-level search panel headed by noted rice scientist
M.S. Swaminathan to recommend the next candidate for the twin posts. Mr Nitish Kumar’s preference was for Dr Rai. However, when Mr Ajit Singh took over the ministry he reconstituted the panel by expanding the members in the search committee and asked them to do the exercise again. While the panel shortlisted three names for the post, Mr Ajit Singh too preferred to forward the name of Dr Rai to the Department of Personnel and Training for processing the case. The Appointments Committee of Cabinet, however, went strictly by the recommendations of the two search panels and settled for the name of Dr Panjab Singh. |
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Modi invited to form government Gandhinagar, October 4 Modi (51) will be sworn-in Chief Minister on Sunday. Governor Sunder Singh Bhandari, in a letter to Modi, also sought from him the list of ministers to be sworn-in according to Raj Bhavan sources. The Governor’s invitation came after state BJP president Rajendrasinh Rana, accompanied among others by the Chief Minister-designate Modi, central party observer Madan Lal Khurana and party chief whip Vadibhai Patel met Bhandari and handed over a letter from the party MLAs, informing about the unanimous election of Modi as the Legislature Party chief this morning. Bhandari also congratulated Modi, who will be the state’s 19th Chief Minister, on his election as leader of the Legislature Party. Meanwhile, BJP President Jana Krishnamurthy thanked Keshubhai Patel, the outgoing Chief Minister, for stepping down after agreeing to the decision of the central leadership.
PTI |
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Date for new registration
plates postponed New Delhi, October 4 The note said it had come to the notice of the Central Government that some advertisements had appeared in the newspapers inviting individuals to come forward for being considered as franchise holders by the manufacturers/suppliers and vendors of high security registration plates. It clarified that so far no high security registration plate has yet been tested and approved by any of the authorised testing agencies of the Central Government. |
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SIMI supporters trying to regroup Lucknow, October 4 While the Uttar Pradesh administrative machinery has rounded up about 80 office-bearers of SIMI, thousands of “ansars” (brothers) and “ikhwans” (sympathisers) are at large and are trying to regroup to keep the work of SIMI going, intelligence sources said. SIMI was active in almost 35 districts of the state. But Aligarh, Azamgarh, Mau, Lakhimpur Kheri, Mathura, Allahabad, Kanpur, Pratapgarh, Faizabad, Bahraich, Gonda, Gorakhpur, Siddarthnagar, Hardoi, Moradabad, Varanasi and Sant Ravidas Nagar were chosen by SIMI leaders for special focus. Eastern UP districts were selected because some of these like Bahraich have border with Nepal and because they are adjoining Bihar, intelligence sources pointed out. Many SIMI activists, particularly those who had crossed the age limit of 30, have crossed over to Bihar where the administration, despite a ban from the Centre, had adopted a “benign” approach towards the outfit. SIMI, which was constituted on April 25, 1977, in Aligarh, initially was part of the Jamaat-e-Islami, but the two developed differences after the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992. In the wake of Mumbai serial bomb blasts on March 12, 1993, SIMI received a major boost when Pakistan’s ISI decided to develop contacts with it. The SIMI leadership, after careful planning, decided to adopt a twin approach. On the one hand, SIMI continued to undertake educational and other social activities while on the other, it decided to organise “ex-ansars” for underground activities. SIMI had prescribed an age limit between 15 and 30 for an active member (ansar). After attaining the age of 30, the membership ceased to exist. These “ex-ansars” became the instrument for launching an illegal, underground and criminal network. Kanpur, because of its topography and concentration of uneducated and unemployed Muslim youth population, became one of the crucial operational centres of SIMI in the state, a top police official said, adding that districts neighbouring Nepal were other places which were chosen by SIMI for its activities. Similarly, Bahraich, which has about 58 per cent Muslim population, was chosen because of operational reasons. It was easy for the ISI, which has an extensive network in Nepal, to interact closely here. The SIMI’s national council passed a resolution in 1993 and declared itself independent. About the same time, it started establishing contacts abroad and became the member of the World Association of Muslim Youth. SIMI had been asked by its mentors to spread its reach and accordingly had decided earlier this year to develop a girls’ wing also. In this above background, the strength and reach of the SIMI could not and should not be determined by the number of its office-bearers, a police official, who has been following the activities of the Muslim organisation for quite some time now, said, adding that it required a long-term political-cum-administrative approach to tackle the outfits like SIMI. |
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Energy conservation Bill gets President’s nod New Delhi, October 4 With this, the Bill has been notified in the Gazette of India as Act No. 52 of 2001, an official release said here today. The Act has come into force with immediate effect except the penalty part of it which has been kept in abeyance till the time people concerned are acclimatised about economics and efficacy of conservation of power or for a period of five years. The Energy Conservation Act, 2001, seeks to set up a bureau of energy efficiency whose governing council will be headed by the Union Minister for Power. It will work out stringent norms for conservation of energy in all forms wherein there will be no room, whatsoever, for substandard equipment. The bureau will exercise the powers of the Centre for enforcement of efficient use of energy and its conservation. The states will emulate the Centre at its level. The Act is a unique law of its kind with India being the second country in the world to have such a law. |
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Plan to tighten airport security Kolkata, October 4 The IAAI wants that residents living in the vicinity of the airport in the Dum Dum Cantonment-Birati area should be shifted elsewhere so that anti-hijacking installations be set up in the vacated land. The Civil Aviation Ministry and the IAAI have sent a proposal in this regard to the state government, an official source said. The state Chief Secretary, Mr Manish Gupta, however, said he had so far not received any such proposal from the Civil Aviation Ministry. But he admitted that there was a need to vacate certain areas around Kolkata airport, not only for security reasons but also to facilitate better flight services. He said a vast area adjacent to the airport had been illegally occupied by some persons and the government had failed to vacate the land due to legal obstacles. Unlike Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, the Kolkata airport is located near a vastly populated area in Dum Dum-Birati in North 24-Parganas. This area has become an impediment to the expansion of the airport. At one stage, there was a move to bring more areas within the IAAI by acquiring the adjoining land. But it was opposed by the state government. |
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SAD supporters attack Sikh body volunteers New Delhi, October 4 The SAD workers chased the fleeing demonstrators and pinned two of them down in front of the gurdwara building and rained batons and blows on them, injuring one seriously. The protesters belonged to the Baba Deep Singh Sewak Jatha attached to the Singh Sabha Gurdwara in South Delhi.
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271 women cops
pass out New Delhi, October 4 “It was an exemplary performance by these women recruits, and I am happy that their services would be useful for the Delhi police,” said Mr Ajay Sharma. The
Commissioner also unveiled the multimedia system academic block-II for the trainees and said the trainees could make use of this system in a constructive manner. In fact the Chief Minister of Delhi Ms Sheila Dikshit was supposed to have unveiled this block. Since she had to attend the funeral of late Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia in Gwalior, she could not attend the parade in Delhi. A visibly happy Kiran Bedi, Joint Commissioner (Training), rejoiced and said, “Today we all got full marks”. Ms Bedi said, “There is no difference between a boy or a girl, when they are trained they would equally do well.” In fact, this batch is the first largest batch that has passed out from the police training college. |
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Students
in Hyderabad have a second thought on making the USA their
most preferred destination for higher studies.
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