The Hindu – Top LeT militant killed in encounter in Srinagar

Political activists, guerilla fighter, terrorist ? Fake encounter or death in an exchange of fire ? Who to believe ? Man in Blue

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

Srinagar, 23 May 2013.  The District Police and Special Operations Group killed a militant, Hilal Maulvi, belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), during an early morning raid on his hideout in the congested Fatehkadal area on Thursday. The militant from Palhalan, Pattan, was one of the most wanted men in Jammu and Kashmir.

Sources said that the gunbattle lasted for about an hour, though the militant was believed to have died within 15 minutes of firing. This is the first time after several years that an encounter has taken place between the police and the militants in downtown Srinagar, once the hub of separatist militancy and politics.

Senior Superintendent of Police, Srinagar, Syed Ashiq Hussain Bukhari, confirmed to The Hindu that the militant killed in the gunbattle near Chinkral Mohalla, between Habbakadal and Fatehkadal, was identified as Hilal Maulvi of Palhalan, Pattan. He said that the raid was conducted on specific information about the militant’s presence at the hideout. As soon as the holed up militant found himself cordoned, he lobbed at
least four hand grenades and shifted to three different houses, but was finally gunned down by the police, Mr. Bukhari said.

Hilal Maulvi, according to the SSP, was a top-ranking LeT commander who was also involved in a fidayeen attack at a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp at Police Public School at Bemina, in Srinagar outskirts, on March 13, this year. Two Pakistani militants of LeT and five CRPF men died in that gunbattle.

Mr. Bukhari said that the two militants killed, and also the arrested militant from his hideout at Qamarwari area, had stayed with Hilal Maulvi at his home in Palhalan village a number of times.

One Chinese pistol was reportedly among the things recovered from the site of the encounter. Mr. Bukhari said that three policemen sustained injuries in the encounter.

Even as the police and security forces had described Hilal Maulvi as “LeT’s most wanted militant in North Kashmir,” separatist political groups, including Syed Ali Shah Geelani-led faction of the Hurriyat Conference, had repeatedly mentioned him as a “political activist.” They have claimed in their statements that Maulvi was not associated with any guerrilla group but had gone underground due to continued raids on his home and harassment to the family.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/top-let-militant-killed-in-encounter-in-srinagar/article4742117.ece?homepage=true

The Hindu – Special Representatives to ensure Depsang-type incidents don’t reoccur

India, China keen to take the relationship forward in new spheres

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, 20 May 2013.  India and China expressed a strong desire to resolve pending issues and take the relationship forward in new spheres, such as civil nuclear energy, during two rounds of discussions here on Sunday evening and Monday morning between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.

The interaction, taking place against the backdrop of a mini-security blanket around a portion of Lutyens’ Delhi to thwart attempts by Tibetan exiles to stage protests, attracted worldwide attention, coming as it did after a three-week face-to-face standoff between troops of the two Asian giants.

A joint statement, however, did not mention Tibet, a staple of joint communiqués China issues with every country. India had last done away with the inclusion of the T- word in 2010 and officials maintained there was no need to bring in Tibet when Beijing was aware of New Delhi’s stance about the region being an inalienable part of China.

In restricted and delegation-level discussions totalling three hours, the two leaders decided to entrust the task of ensuring incidents like Depsang do not reoccur to the two Special Representatives (SRs), who have also been asked to speed up work on demarcating and delineating the border by trying to achieve closure on the second of the three-stage process of resolving the border question.

“We also took stock of lessons learnt from the recent incident in the Depsang sector, when the existing mechanism proved its worth,” explained the Prime Minister in a media statement.

Mr. Li said both sides “believe we need to improve the border mechanisms that have been put into place and make them more efficient…and the two sides should continue to advance the negotiations on the boundary question and jointly maintain peace and tranquillity in the border area.”

India could not get its way with an upgraded joint mechanism on trans-border rivers to ease its concerns at construction activity on the Chinese portion of the Brahmaputra. But both sides signed a pact — among the eight agreements inked — to increase the frequency of exchange of hydrological data.

There was some progress on the economic front — an area that Beijing maintains is the centre piece of the visit from its point of view — with China holding out the promise of addressing India’s complaints about market access for its three exporting mainstays of IT, pharmaceuticals and food products.

Besides seeking to resolve the issues of border, water and trade through further discussions, the two leaders set milestones for the future by listing new areas of cooperation such as civil nuclear energy and seamless connectivity between Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar. They also sought to bring back to the table areas of cooperation, agreed upon with the previous Chinese leadership of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, such as maritime security, ocean-bed research and tackling non-traditional security threats.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/special-representatives-to-ensure-depsangtype-incidents-dont-reoccur/article4732310.ece?homepage=true

The Hindu – Don’t dilute promise on better deal for Tamils, India tells Sri Lanka

Khurshid asks Colombo to request Army not to purchase land in conflict-hit area

Sandeep Dikshit

New Delhi, 19 May 2013.  India tried to contain the after effects of a selective briefing it gave on Friday about its relations with Sri Lanka.

During a telephonic conversation on Friday, the External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid advised his Sri Lankan counterpart G L Peiris not to take any steps that would dilute Colombo’s assurance of a better deal to island Tamils who had been hit hard by the conflict between the Sri Lankan military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The Indian advice came in the wake of reports about a small nationalist party, the JHU, planning to move parliament soon to abolish the thirteenth amendment — which aims to empower the Tamils regionally.

Asked whether a small party would be able to get the government to drop a clause that it has promised to the world to implement, official sources they feared that an upsurge of nationalist sentiments in the Sri Lankan Parliament may well carry such a proposal through. That’s why Mr. Khurshid thought it prudent to caution Mr. Peiris.

The second counsel by Mr. Khurshid was to request the Lankan Army not to purchase land in conflict-hit areas. Here too the same approach of cautioning the Lankans has prevailed with sources pointing out in the past too, India has drawn Colombo’s attention to the issue of the Sri Lankan Army squatting on prime pieces of farm land years after the conflict ended.

Sri Lankan diplomatic sources continued to remain baffled over this interpretation of the conversation.

“This is strange because I hear there are factual inaccuracies in the reports,” they said. Indian sources also tried to play down the reports that have got adverse play in the Sri Lankan media.

“We were not as stern but we had to take this risk of pointing out the pitfalls. People will take us to task if we didn’t point it out,” they explained while preferring to highlight Mr. Khurshid raising the issue of early release of 26 Indian fishermen detained by Sri Lanka.

Jayalalithaa’s ‘indifference’

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s indifference was one reason for the arrests and long detentions of prisoners, said the MEA sources. They accused Ms. Jayalalithaa of not allowing Tamil fishermen from both countries to meet in order to resolve most issues of discord among themselves.

The sources also blamed her for Indian fishermen being detained in Sri Lanka for long periods because her government tends to arrest fishermen from the other country and not respond to pleas to release them.

“The MEA has written several letters to the Tamil Nadu government on releasing the Sri Lankan fishermen after completing the formalities. But she has rarely, if ever, replied to them,’’ they said.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/dont-dilute-promise-on-better-deal-for-tamils-india-tells-sri-lanka/article4728284.ece

The Hindu – Awais Sheikh, the Pakistani lawyer of slain Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh, has told police that the armed men who abducted him and his son were “Pashto-speaking”.

According to the FIR registered by police, Mr. Sheikh and his son Shahrukh were intercepted by four to five men travelling in a red pick-up truck and a motorcycle yesterday morning.

The armed men then bundled them into the pick-up.

Mr. Sheikh said the kidnappers did not talk to him or his son while they were in captivity.

The men, who were armed with sophisticated weapons, assaulted Mr. Sheikh and dumped him on Sheikhupura Road, 40 km from Lahore.

The abductors did not harm Shahrukh and dumped him several kilometres from the point where his father was thrown out of the pick-up.

Mr. Sheikh told police that the kidnappers were wearing ’shalwar-kameez’ and were fluent in Pashto. They also spoke Urdu.

“They didn’t talk to me and my son,” Mr. Sheikh said.

He further said police that he did not suspect any intelligence agency or anyone else was involved in the kidnapping.

Mr.Sheikh needed six stitches for a wound on his head.

Police registered a case against unidentified men under Section 365 of the Pakistan Penal Code, which relates to kidnapping a person with intent to secretly and wrongfully confine him.

Mr.Sheikh and his son were abducted when they went to a village near Burki Hudaira area to buy land for a farmhouse.

Mr.Sheikh was the lawyer for Sarabjit, who died on May 2 after being comatose for nearly a week following a brutal assault by other prisoners in Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail.

The lawyer recently said that he had been receiving threats for defending Sarabjit, who was sentenced to death for alleged involvement in a string of bomb attacks in Pakistan’s Punjab province in 1990.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/sarabjits-lawyer-says-his-kidnappers-were-pashtospeaking/article4723811.ece

The Hindu – News Analysis; TINA factor works for Manmohan Singh

New Delhi, 15 May 2013. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, accompanied by Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, will fly to Assam on Wednesday to file his nomination papers for another term in the Rajya Sabha, ensuring his membership of the Upper House till 2019, the same term the next elected government will get, making him eligible for a third term as PM — if the UPA government succeeds in getting another five years.

That, Congress sources stressed, should end the speculation that has been swirling around in the capital since Saturday of a disagreement between Dr. Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the exit of two Cabinet Ministers, and the likelihood of a new Prime Minister.

So much so that on two successive days Congress general secretary Janardan Dwivedi was compelled to publicly deny the existence of a rift between the two leaders, even as he firmly asserted that Dr. Singh would remain Prime Minister till 2014. “We refute such rumours and malicious campaign.

No new decision has to be made in this matter,” Mr. Dwivedi said on Monday when asked whether Rahul Gandhi could replace Dr. Singh before the monsoon session of Parliament, later this year, stressing, “Whenever there was a need, the party has said in clear terms that Manmohan Singh will be Prime Minister till 2014. That is the position today also.”

Of course, it is true that as the next general elections draw near, the government’s inability to prevent a slew of financial scandals, rising prices and social protests over a rash of crimes against women from taking political centre stage has made the party’s Lok Sabha MPs queasy.

There is a growing resentment against the leadership — that neither the government nor the party is doing enough to help them get re-elected. So, there were voices raised privately, for instance, against the party leadership for waiting until after the budget session of Parliament had ended and Siddaramaiah was safely elected CLP leader in Karnataka — the latter the first piece of good news in months for the party — to dump
two Ministers whom party MPs saw as a liability.

But, while changing the Prime Minister could certainly change the optics, the fact is, as the Congress sources themselves point out, the TINA (there is no alternative) factor works in favour of Dr. Singh. The obvious — and most acceptable — alternative within the party is Mr. Gandhi, but the young vice-president has made it clear that he does not wish to replace Dr. Singh at this stage.

If one sets that name aside, then, party sources say, there is no other name that will be acceptable to both the Congress and its allies — and that Ms. Gandhi simply cannot impose anyone else. Finally, these sources stress that Dr. Singh’s nine consecutive years in power — on May 22, the UPA government will celebrate its ninth anniversary — have been marked by stability, something not to be knocked.

In the current case, the sources say that while Ms. Gandhi did want the Ministers to be dropped from the outset, there was also a sense that this should not be done while Parliament was on and that nothing should be done to cast a shadow over Karnataka elections. The party was also concerned that it should not appear as if it was buckling under Opposition pressure. That, they say, is the quintessential Congress style of
doing things.

Over the last nine years, the equation between Ms. Gandhi and Dr. Singh, and the division of labour have been discussed almost continuously — and not just in political circles. If that division of labour worked better in UPA I, it was also because it was a period in which the Congress appeared to have done no wrong, despite the exit of the Left parties over the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal issue.

In 2004, when Ms. Gandhi made Dr. Singh Prime Minister, there was some heartburn in the party, but in 2009, when the Congress increased its score by over 50 seats, and some of the credit for the party’s fine showing went to him, there was a fair amount of resentment among those who were PM-aspirants.

But in a party, where power is centralised, the buck stops with Ms. Gandhi. Her choice remains Dr. Singh, and no one as yet is about to challenge that choice — not until 2014.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tina-factor-works-for-manmohan/article4715264.ece?homepage=true

The Hindu – Second chance to mend ties

Despite being attacked by some in Pakistan for being soft on India, Nawaz Sharif has been consistent in his position that he will work to improve ties between the two countries

Anita Joshua

Monday, 13 May 2013.  The hope among some in India of better bilateral relations with Pakistan under Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister could well be the undoing of his India policy even before it is crafted. Much before his path to the Prime Minister’s house was cleared for the third time, Pakistani hawks were at him for making pro-India statements in his election rallies and interviews to the Indian media.

Ripping apart Mr. Sharif’s recent interview to CNN-IBN’s “Devil’s Advocate” and other India-related references, a report in The News said: “In his bid to appease India or vent his pent up anger on the military establishment, days before the May 11 elections, Mian Nawaz Sharif have (sic!) gone to the extent of committing that if he returns to power he would share the reports of commissions on Kargil and Mumbai incidents with New Delhi.”

For now, however, Mr. Sharif appears to be holding his ground if his remarks in an interview to the Wall Street Journal soon after establishing a decisive lead in the vote count are anything to go by. “We’ll pick the threads where we left. We want to move toward better relations with India, to resolve the remaining issues through peaceful means, including that of Kashmir.”

While no civilian government can cast its India policy in stone — as the military still has the last word on strategic affairs and foreign policy as it pertains to New Delhi, Washington, Beijing and Kabul — those who have watched his political journey from the Zia days say that he has matured as a politician and remained consistent on India.

Trade

“He is a businessman and has always believed in trade with India,” said veteran journalist M. Afzal Khan.

While Mr. Sharif always spoke out in public meetings against India when he was Chief Minister during Benazir Bhutto’s stint as premier, Mr. Khan recalled that “he would insist in private that those statements were basically political in nature for domestic consumption.”

His first stint as Prime Minister did not see much positive movement on India but in his second tenure he did make efforts resulting in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s bus journey to Lahore and the Lahore Declaration.

Kargil upset all that but, as Mr. Khan pointed out, since then he has never spoken against India.

Indeed, Mr. Sharif has always insisted he was kept in the dark about the Pakistan Army’s Kargil adventure, though he was then the Prime Minister. However, varied accounts on what transpired in the days ahead of the intrusions, provide a more mixed picture, the latest being a book by the then Director-General of the Analysis Wing of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Shahid Aziz.

He has indicated that Mr. Sharif might not have been completely in the dark about the “Kargil misadventure” orchestrated by then Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf and three other generals. The retired general recalls a colleague telling him that Mr. Sharif asked “when are you giving us Kashmir” during an informal discussion, challenging the new Prime Minister-designate’s denials.

Plus there is the growing corpus of evidence that show the behind-the-scene agreements — including pre-electoral arrangements, his party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has with jihadi outfits, many of them with an anti-India focus. In the 2010 Punjab budget, his brother Shahbaz Sharif’s government allocated PKR 80 million to institutions linked to the Jamat-ud-Da’wah (JuD) despite it being on the United Nations’ terror list. The provincial government’s plea was that these schools and hospitals had been taken over by the administration as closing them down would be counterproductive.

How these Faustian bargains — Mr. Shahbaz Sharif himself has secured help from the banned anti-Shia outfit Sipah-e-Sahaba and its many incarnations in his elections — will impact PML(N)’s policies remains to be seen. But, Mr. Afzal Khan was optimistic. “Despite being right-leaning and his good relations with JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, Mr. Sharif never said anything against India during his entire campaign.”

No resonance

If anything, Mr. Sharif flagged Mr. Vajpayee’s Lahore bus journey as a major achievement in many of his election rallies. “He has been consistent on improving relations with India,” is a commonly heard refrain about Mr. Sharif.

In fact, there is across-the-political spectrum consensus on the need to improve relations with India.

Through the elections, there were no reports of any mainstream political party using anti-India rhetoric to garner support and Kashmir was not an issue, finding nothing more than a passing reference in most manifestos.

An attempt made by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf office-bearer Shireen Mazari to fan anti-India sentiment in Islamabad in the twilight hours of the campaign by referring to Pakistani prisoner Sanaullah, who had succumbed to his injuries in a Chandigarh hospital earlier in the day, drew no response.

If there is any issue on which bitter political rivals agree, it is on improving relations with India.

Given its support base within the trading community, the PML(N) is in favour of improving trade relations with India and has been supportive of granting India most-favoured-nation status. Its comfortable position in Parliament should allow the party to push forth with this agenda but negotiating the India relationship would remain a tightrope walk given the PML(N)’s uneasy relationship with forces in Pakistan that have always succeeded in ratcheting up the anti-India rhetoric when it suits them.

The PML(N) manifesto states that the party is committed to trade with India but will also make special efforts to resolve the Jammu & Kashmir issue in accordance with “the provisions of the relevant United Nations resolutions and the 1999 Lahore Accord and in consonance with the aspirations of the people of the territory for their inherent right of self-determination.”

Transit economy

In keeping with its trade focus, the PML(N) is also eager to take advantage of Pakistan’s location at the junction of South, West and Central Asia to develop a “transit economy” for the country. “Pakistan can also develop a flourishing transit economy because it provides the shortest land routes from Western China to the Arabian Sea, through the Gwadar Port, while linking India with Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics (CARs) and providing land route from Iran to India and access to the CARs to the Arabian Sea and India for oil/gas pipelines.”

Non-committal on whether this could include revisiting the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement 2010 to allow India to send goods to Afghanistan and beyond through Pakistan, former Ambassador Tariq Fatemi, who was part of the manifesto drafting exercise, said: “Mr. Sharif believes the bilateral relationship should be extended to include the region as regional uplift is crucial.”

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/second-chance-to-mend-ties/article4709293.ece?homepage=true

The Hindu – Red-faced Congress axes Ashwani Kumar, Bansal

Decision came after PM held talks with Sonia

Smita Gupta

New Delhi, 10 May 2013.  The UPA government finally acted against errant Ministers Pawan Kumar Bansal and Ashwani Kumar, extracting their resignations late on Friday evening.

Shortly after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held discussions, first with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and later with her Political Secretary, Ahmed Patel, Mr. Bansal, and then Mr. Kumar, arrived at 7 Race Course Road — in their official cars — to put in their papers, bringing to an end days of mounting embarrassment to the Congress and the government.

The resignations coincided with the election in Bangalore of Siddaramaiah as Congress Legislature Party leader. Indeed, a hint that the government did not wish its victory in the Karnataka polls to be overshadowed by murky tales of indiscretion, impropriety and indiscretion in New Delhi came earlier in the evening: party spokesperson Bhakta Charan Das, asked how the party planned to deal with the two Ministers, said: “We must respect the verdict of the people in Karnataka,” a reference to the ouster of the BJP government in the wake of a string of corruption scandals.

With the departure of Mr. Bansal and Mr. Kumar from the Ministry, there are now eight vacancies, three of them in the Cabinet: in March, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham withdrew from the government and its Cabinet Minister — M.K. Alagiri, who held the Chemicals and Fertilizers portfolio — and five MoSs left.

None of those jobs has yet been filled. If Mr. Alagiri’s job is being taken care of by MoS Srikanta Jena, the government cannot afford to leave Law and Railway headless for too long.

Mr. Bansal’s resignation came precisely a week after a report suggesting that his nephew, Vijay Singla, had accepted a bribe from a Railway Board member to facilitate a lateral promotion, hit the headlines. Sources in the Congress said though Mr. Bansal had offered to put in his papers last Saturday, the party leadership asked him to stay on until after the Karnataka elections were over.

Mr. Bansal, apart from issuing a “clarification” stating his innocence and welcoming an investigation, largely stayed out of view. With fresh revelations in the bribery case emerging from telephone records and the expectation that he would be questioned shortly by the CBI, his continuance in office became untenable.

Mr. Kumar, however, quit after more than two weeks of high drama that included noisy scenes in Parliament, with the Opposition demanding his scalp for “vetting” the CBI affidavit in the Coalgate affair before it was submitted in the Supreme Court.

His attempts at a specially convened meeting of party and government spokespersons to mobilise support for himself failed, largely because he is not very popular with his colleagues. The final nail in the coffin was put by the Supreme Court questioning the CBI investigation’s credibility and asking for a thorough and qualitative probe.

On Thursday, an attempt was made to make a distinction between the charges against the two: while Mr. Kumar, his supporters said, was merely “indiscreet” and committed an “act of impropriety,” Mr. Bansal’s case, they said, was more serious as it involved corruption. But clearly, in the end, the party decided that both had to go if it was to get any dividends from the Karnataka results.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/redfaced-congress-axes-ashwani-kumar-bansal/article4702621.ece?homepage=true

The Hindu – Imran Khan on the mend as party seeks to cash in on sympathy wave

Anita Joshua

Islamabad, 8 May 2013. Though Imran Khan — who sustained injuries to his spine when he fell from a forklift at an election rally on Tuesday — is recovering, he had to pull out of the election campaign. Having been advised bed rest, he wouldn’t be able to cast his vote on Saturday in Mianwali, his home constituency.

Doctors attending on Mr. Khan said his morale was high and another round of tests was being carried out on Wednesday evening to assess the duration of his treatment. He has suffered three fractures on his spinal column.Soon after his admission to the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital on Tuesday night,

Mr. Khan gave an interview to a television channel in which he urged all Pakistanis to vote for his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Hoping to gain sympathy votes, the PTI quickly packaged his hospital bedside interview as an advertisement and it was being aired repeatedly across television channels. With the latest pre-election poll by Herald magazine showing the PTI neck-and-neck with its arch rival, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the Insaafians (as Mr. Khan’s supporters are called) hope the sympathy factor will give the party an edge over PML(N).

Already, the intense campaign of the PTI had pinned down the PML(N) to Punjab. Sensing the sympathy wave in favour of the cricketer-turned-politician, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced soon after the fall that his party had cancelled its campaigning scheduled for Wednesday in solidarity with the cricketing legend.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/south-asia/imran-khan-on-the-mend-as-party-seeks-to-cash-in-on-sympathy-wave/article4695213.ece

The Hindu – Pass food Bill even without amendments: Amartya Sen

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is upset that disruption of Parliament has held up passage of important legislation including the UPA’s flagship National Food Security Bill

Gargi Parsai

New Delhi, 6 May 2013.  Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is upset that disruption of Parliament has held up passage of important legislation including the UPA’s flagship National Food Security Bill.

He feels that if the Bill is not passed — even if without amendments — several hundred children will go hungry or die from under-nutrition. The Bill has been criticised as “limited” and “targeted” by activists such as Jean Dreze and Kavita Srivastava, who on Monday shared the dais with Prof. Sen to advocate its passage albeit with changes.

In the past, Prof. Sen too favoured the universal Public Distribution System but on Monday he said, “It is a moderate Bill and whether it goes far enough is another question but the case for passing it is strong.”

Even as Prof. Sen addressed a press conference here on the pitfalls of not getting the food security law through, there was a weak attempt in the Lok Sabha to debate the Bill through the opposition din demanding the resignation of certain ministers. The Treasury benches were nearly empty. It is learnt that in a new strategy the Opposition parties that want to move amendments will seek to get the Bill referred to a Select Committee.

Prof. Sen was hard on the Opposition for not allowing Parliament to function. “You can have a different view, but not having a debate goes against the tradition of democracy. Allow arguments, rather than kill arguments, and not allowing Parliament to meet is killing arguments.” The media should “take an intelligent interest” in what was happening. “The media should, for instance, put out the cost of the Bill not being discussed and passed.”

He was, however, quick to add that this did not mean the government had no questions to answer on corruption or the killing of Sarabjit Singh but the Opposition demand could not take precedence over important legislation such as the Food Bill. “Killing debate raises the suspicion that the Opposition arguments are weak.”

What if the government were to take the ordinance route to legislate the food Bill? Prof. Sen said, “It will be sad if it goes through the ordinance route because Parliament did not do its job.”

The Bill provides for mandatory provision of subsidised rice (at Rs. 3 a kg) or wheat (Rs. 2) or coarse cereals (Re. 1) to 67 per cent of the population at 5 kg per beneficiary a month. The beneficiaries will be identified by the State government as per the parameters set by the Centre.

It is being criticised for being targeted, for not specifying a time frame for rolling out the measure, for cutbacks in individual entitlements and for allowing entry of contractors and commercial interests in supply of food through the Integrated Child Development Services.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pass-food-bill-even-without-amendments-sen/article4689314.ece

The Hindu – CBI to quiz Bansal in rail scam case

Devesh K. Pandey

New Delhi, 6 May 2013.  Determined to drill deep into the layers of conspiracy behind the purported deal struck by Railway Board Member (Staff) Mahesh Kumar with Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal’s nephew Vijay Singla and his accomplices for securing the post of Railway Board Member (Electrical), the Central Bureau of Investigation is all set to “interview” Mr. Bansal

On condition of anonymity, CBI officials on Sunday said that in order to prepare a watertight case they would “investigate the case to its logical end” and probe all those connected with the main conspirators.

Since Mr. Bansal is the Railway Minister and related to one of the accused, the agency would have to approach him for clarifications as the investigation progresses, they said.

Countering Mr. Singla’s claim, made before a Delhi court, that the money (Rs. 90 lakh cash) seized from him was meant for some land deal, sources in the agency said they had “incontrovertible proof” of his complicity in the crime. On the basis of that they had set out to probe the case and arrest the accused, the sources added. With this, nine persons have been arrested in this case so far.

The electronic and other material evidence gathered prior to the arrest of Mr. Singla and his accomplice Sandeep Goyal would be placed before the court for perusal whenever needed.

The CBI has registered the case under Section 7 (public servant taking gratification), Section 8 (taking gratification to influence public servant) and Section 10 (Punishment for abetment by public servant) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, besides Section 120-B (conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

Since the Prevention of Corruption Act provisions invoked are regarding scheduled offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, officials said the Directorate of Enforcement would also probe the money trail. Transactions made through the companies in which the accused have interests will also be scrutinised.

The CBI, which seized property and investment documents of the accused during raids in New Delhi, Chandigarh and Bangalore following the arrests on Friday night, has also sought their Income tax return details.

The FIR alleged that Mahesh Kumar had arranged the bribe amount with the help of his accomplice Narayan Rao Manjunath, the managing director of Bangalore-based G.G. Tronics India Private Limited, to immediately pay Mr. Singal and his accomplices — Sandeep Goyal and Ajay Garg.

This, sources added, was allegedly an interim payment that Mr. Kumar made in order to secure the additional charge of General Manager (Western Railway and Signal and Telecommunication) till he was appointed as Railway Board Member (Electrical), the post that he sought.

While Mr. Kumar and Mr. Manjunath were arrested in Mumbai and Bangalore respectively, the CBI also arrested the two courier boys, Dharmendra and Vivek, besides Mr. Manjunath’s business associates Rahul Yadav and Samir Sandhir. The agency also arrested Sushil Daga, another accused in the case.

Sources said after the detection of the close-knit network of alleged middlemen, industrialists regularly dealing with the Indian Railway and a top Railway Ministry official, they received positive responses from within the Ministry. “We are expecting more information on cartels operating in connivance with unknown insiders to bag lucrative contracts,” said an official.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/cbi-to-quiz-bansal-in-rail-scam-case/article4686909.ece