New Delhi, May 3
The fake killings in Gujarat today rocked the Rajya Sabha twice in the morning session leading to it being adjourned till 2 pm with the Samajwadi Party leading the charge on the issue and the opposition BJP raising a demand for discussion on spurt in “anti-national” activities in Jammu and Kashmir.

Earlier, just after newly elected member Kapila Vatsyayan took oath as an independent member, Shahid Siddiqui (SP) said the Muslims were being branded as terrorists and killed in fake encounters in Gujarat.

BJP members countered this by trying to raise the recent killing of farmers at Nandigram in West Bengal.

While chairman of the Rajya Sabha Bhairon Singh Shekhawat pleaded for allowing the question hour to be taken up, the SP member was unrelenting and wanted suspension of the question hour to take up discussion on the issue.

S.S. Ahluwalia (BJP) said his party’s March 15 notice for discussion on THE Nandigram killings was still pending. The two sides resorted to slogan shouting but the chairman ruled that nothing would go on record.

All through, Congress members maintained a studied silence. The Prime Minister was present in the House when the issue was raised.

After 10 minutes of uproar, the House took up the listed business.

The issue was raised again by the CPM-Samajwadi Party combine as an effort to counter the BJP demand for discussion on “anti-national” activities in Jammu and Kashmir in the zero hour immediately after the papers

against the members names had been tabled.

BJP leader Sushma Swaraj raised the issue of Lashkar-e-Toiba hoisting Pakistani flag at a meeting of Hurriyat leader Ali Shah Geelani in Srinagar recently. 

Lucknow, May 3
As the polling for the sixth phase drew to a close this evening, Uttar Pradesh created a history of sorts. Today was the 26th day since the staggered seven-phase elections began on April 7.

Till now the five-phase West Bengal assembly elections last year had been the longest-drawn polling in the country running into 21 days.

Once again the sixth phase polling in 52 constituencies, spread over nine districts, experienced a low turnout, averaging 46 per cent. The lowest voting (27 per cent) took place in Allahabad (North), while the highest was reported from Chakia in Sonbhadra district.

While no reports of violence were received from any place, at least two presiding officers, one in Ghazpur and another in Varanasi, were arrested for violations, informed chief electoral officer A.K. Bishnoi.

A presiding officer in Allahabad succumbed to heart attack early today before the polling process began. Once again in Ghazipur, a constable on duty was arrested from a polling station for possessing a country-made weapon.

While Gopalji Pandey, presiding officer at Sohawal, was arrested for allowing a young man Rameshwar in impersonating to vote, the other presiding officer at Kolsalna in Varanasi was reportedly telling a voter which button to press.

Twenty-nine EVM-related complaints and 10 complaints regarding irregularities in voters list also came to the notice of the Election Commission.

The two Lok Sabha seats in Robertsganj polled 43.44 per cent and Mirzapur 41.71 per cent. Polling also went without any violence in the Naxal-affected areas These are spread over 450 polling stations at the 355 polling centres across the three districts of Mirzapur, Chandauli and Sonbhadra. 

Guwahati, May 3
Three ULFA militants were killed in an encounter with the police and two employees of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) were hurt when the banned ULFA detonated a bomb in a FCI warehouse in the heart of the city in two separate incidents here today.

The police gunned down the three militants at Koirara in Nalbari district of lower Assam.

The police claimed to have recovered some weapons and live ammunition from the slain militants, who were yet to be identified. The police swooped down on the hide out of the ultras after being tipped off.

Meanwhile, the ULFA added to the woes of the FCI staff, who are already panicky over April 17 abduction of their executive director Dr P.C. Ram, by triggering a powerful explosion in premises of the FCI warehouse in New Guwahati area, here, this noon.

Two FCI employees, Purna Sharma and Ratneswar Rabha, were injured in the blast that left window panes of the guar house shattered besides causing damage to two cars, seven motorcycles and 11 bicycles parked in the yard of the warehouse.

The injured were rushed to the Guwahati Medical College and Hospital.

It is the biggest FCI warehouse in the region with a capacity of 23,000 MT.

The new FCI executive director M.C. Tiwari told mediapersons that the blast would make the staff feel much more insecure to discharge their duty. He said there should be adequate security for the staff and its property in the state.

Patna, May 3
Arrest of the top Maoist leader, Ram Raj, alias Azad, and subsequent revelation by the police today is a pointer to how a section of ultra left-wing leaders have now become fond of wine and women, which they often brand as so-called ‘capitalist vices’.

Sources in the police said a section of Maoist leaders could afford wine and women, ironically in the name of revolution, following huge levy (extortion) money collected by them from contractors and builders.

The police said naxal leader Azad too was enjoying a drink at a beer bar in the company of a dancing girl of the infamous Sarai, one of the oldest red light areas of the state, at the time of his arrest from Gaya on Tuesday night.

For the Maoists, who are yet to recover from the shock caused by the arrest of two other top leaders, Ajay Kanu and Nathun Kahar, in the recent past by the police, Azad’s arrest was being regarded as yet another jolt to the outfit.

New Delhi, May 3
In the wake of Supreme Court advancing the final hearing on the OBC reservation in the central education institutions (CEIs), the DMK-led government in Tamil Nadu and the RJD, the two strong votaries of reservation, have moved petitions to become parties in the case to give legal and moral support to the UPA government.

While the Tamil Nadu government filed a petition for impleading itself as a party in the case yesterday, railways minister Lalu Prasad’s party RJD moved the apex court today, claiming that there was no provision in the Constitution which prevented the state from making special law for the advancement of socially and educationally backward classes in the country.

The Tamil Nadu government, in its petition, has said that the extension of the 27 per cent reservation for the OBCs in the CEIs was only the next step after providing the same benefit to them in government jobs, which had been duly recognised by the apex court in the Mandal Commission case.

While the RJD petition was moved by its counsel B.B.Singh, a close confidant of Lalu Prasad, it is learnt that the Karunanidhi government is taking the services of former Attorney-General K. Prasaran to plead its case and give strength to the UPA government in its legal fight on the issue.

The two strong allies of the UPA insisted that there was no occasion for re-defining the reservation policy for OBCs merely for reasons of its extension to admissions in the central elite institutions when the policy in respect of public appointment has been declared valid by the apex court in the Mandal Commission case.

They have also justified the figure of 52 per cent OBC population, arrived at by the Mandal Commission.

The two UPA components justified the 93rd constitutional amendment, inserting Article 15(5) in the Constitution.

New Delhi, May 3
With the talk of the presidential election gradually picking up, the Congress today rejected suggestions of a convention on elevating the vice-president to the top job.

Replying to a volley of questions, party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said there was no absolute convention and all conventions have to be seen in actual context. He remained non-committal to a question about a second term to President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. “Same answer, same question,” he said when asked whether the Congress would favour a second term for the President.

“We will make the best decision in the interest of India when appropriate time comes,” Singhvi said.

The picture is expected to be clear after results of the UP Assembly poll on May 11. Vice-president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat is a probable candidate for the election, which is expected to be held before July 24.

Congress leaders have been maintaining in private that they would like the top job to go to a leader from within the party.

Singhvi made light of suspended Congress leader Natwar Singh’s suggestion that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was a suitable candidate for the post of president. 

New Delhi, May 3
Talking about difficulties she had to face while bringing home her younger adopted daughter, women and child development minister Renuka Chowdhury today promised to do everything possible to make adoption procedures simpler and faster.

Admitting that there was a lack of transparency in the adoption set-up, Chowdhury said all adoption agencies must be linked together and a national database of children who could be adopted created.

Inaugurating a two-day national meeting on adoption here, she said it was a matter of shame that illegal adoptions still took place. “We have to set right the various loopholes in the laws and in the system. The main pitfall is the lack of transparency,” she said.

She promised to do everything possible to make adoption procedures simpler, faster and more transparent.

The minister, while referring to difficulties she had to face when she adopted a baby girl, said procedural bottlenecks had to be removed and the adoption process be made less cumbersome.

“Proper follow-up should be carried out to ensure that no trafficking took place under the garb of adoption,” she said, adding that the ministry proposed a cradle scheme for putting up for adoption abandoned girl children to check foeticide.

Bangalore, May 3
Women working in Karnataka’s hospitality industry and small business establishments have decided to fight back against a government legislation banning night shifts in these sectors to “as a protective measure”.

The government had passed legislation in this regard in the last session of the Assembly and sent it to the labour department for the framing of rules.

Labour minister Iqbal Ansari said today that the rules would come into force within two months. Once this rule is enforced women will not be allowed to work in hotels, spas, recreation centres and small businesses.

Women themselves feel the government is taking a regressive attitude on the issue as women working in IT companies, which are the major women employers in the city, as well as hospitals can continue to keep late shifts.

“I fail to understand the intelligence behind this move,” says Lata Vishwanathan, a senior executive in the hotel industry in the city.

“This instead of helping women will lead to their further exploitation and also limit the job opportunities available to them,” she added.

The women speaking up against the ban are likely to take solace by the fact that the move has not gone down well with the State Women Commission.

In a statement here, its chairperson Pramila Nesargi said the proposed move would affect the employment for women in the state. She said if the move was being proposed for security reasons, the government should state its concerns to make the public more knowledgeable on the issue.

Nesargi, besides voicing her concern for thousands of women working in the hospitality and allied industries, said the proposal should have been widely debated before being handed over to the labour department for implementation.

“Even we were not consulted”. The commission said it would on its part call human resource heads of companies to a meeting to check measures taken to make workplaces safer for women.

Labour minister Ansari while speaking on the issue said the measure had been taken following complaints filed by women in these sectors. He said he was of the feeling that the legislation would come to the aid of lakhs of helpless working women and they too would regard it as a measure taken for their protection.

New Delhi, May 3
Security outside the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s official residence was beefed up today following a suicide attempt by a businessman near the house.

Kishori Lal Saigal (42), a businessman-cum-property dealer of the Dwarka area, allegedly stopped his Maruti Zen car near a PCR van, positioned opposite the residence on Race Course Road, and shot himself in the right side of his chest with a pistol. He was taken to the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital where his condition is said to be out of danger, said DCP of the area Anand Mohan.

Alappuzha (Kerala), May 3
As the row over encounter killings in Gujarat rages, the father of a Keralite youth, who was shot dead near Ahmedabad in similar circumstances three years ago, today alleged his son was also hunted and killed by police branding him as a terrorist and demanded a CBI probe into the case.

Gopinatha Pillai’s son Javed met with a sad end on June 15, 2004, allegedly in an encounter with a police team. — PTI

New Delhi, May 3
The UPSC today challenged a Delhi High Court single judge’s order, which had directed it to reveal the cut-off marks of preliminary test of the civil services examination, before a Division Bench of the court. The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in its petition appealed to the court to set aside Justice B.D. Ahmed’s ruling given on April 17.

“The learned Single Judge ought to have given due weightage that confidentiality is a vital ingredient in the successful discharge of the UPSC function. There is a difference between maintaining transparency and maintaining confidentiality,” said the petition.

The commission has pleaded that its efficacy of the examination system would be impaired if the cut-off marks are revealed.

“Once the raw marks and the scaled marks are disclosed, inference can be drawn there from and there is every likelihood of dummy candidates appearing in the examination in a well- planned out pattern,” the commission said.

The single bench of the High Court, on April 17, had directed the UPSC to make public the individual marks obtained by candidates in preliminary test of the civil services examination.

The court had rejected the contention of the Government body that the scaling system followed by it was very confidential and it was their intellectual property which could not be revealed to anybody.

The Bench had also directed the commission to provide model answer papers to students. — PTI

New Delhi, May 3
Nearly 50 journalists from Gujarat have sent a letter to Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, alleging that the state police chief P.C. Pande has prohibited their entry into the state police headquarters in the wake of Sohrabuddin fake encounter controversy.

Journalists from both print and electronic media in a letter appended with their signatures said it was an attempt by the Gujarat DGP to curtail the freedom of the Press by preventing them from getting information on the investigation of the case.

They said since May 1 no person from the media, even those journalists accredited by the state government, were allowed entry into the police headquarters and were being turned out by the security staff under “instruction from the DGP”.

The letter was submitted to the Supreme Court secretary-general V.K. Jain for placing it before the CJI.

New Delhi, May 3
The Union Cabinet tonight cleared the setting up of Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (aera) to ensure a level playing field for all airport operators in the country.

The AERA Bill, 2007, will enable the setting up of the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA), which will fix, review and approve tariff structure for aeronautical services and also monitor pre-set performance standards at Indian airports, union information and broadcasting minister Priyaranjan Dasmunshi said after the Cabinet meeting.

The need for a regulator was being increasingly felt as several major airports have gone into private hands, with the privatised Kochi having started functioning already.

The airports in Delhi and Mumbai along with the greenfield ones coming up in Bangalore and Hyderabad through public-private partnership are expected to become operational by 2008.

It accepted the recommendation of the joint committee that a Member of Parliament will be allowed to engage any number of persons either in Delhi or in his constituency for obtaining secretarial assistance within the total monetary ceiling of Rs 14,000 per month, and out of them at least one person should be computer literate and the certification by the member about the computer literacy of such person would suffice.

The Cabinet also gave its approval for making consequential amendments in the Members of Parliament (Office Expense Allowance) Rules 1988.

The Cabinet approved for moving the official amendments to the Constitution (103 Amendment) Bill, 2004, and the National Commission for Minorities (Repeal) Bill, 2004, in Parliament for consideration and passage.

The Cabinet approved for India becoming a Member of the Hague Conference on Private International Law.

The Cabinet also approved the launch of a Mission on Nano Science and Technology (Nano Mission).