faheem Andhra Pradesh Home Minister Sabita Indra Reddy today informed in the state Assembly government has taken up reforms in jails to bring transformation in prisoners.
Responding to members during Question hour, the Minister said the government from time to time had been issuing guidelines for release of Life convicts and as many as 1252 prisoners were released during the last three years.
A shopkeeper and three employees were killed in a blaze in Andhra Pradesh’s Eluru town Thursday, police said.
The fire engulfed Ramakrishna Khadi Bhandar, a textile shop, in Eluru in West Godavari district, 350 km from here.
The fire, blamed on an electrical short-circuit, destroyed goods worth Rs.10 lakh.
The issue of separate statehood to Telangana needed a “national view”, the Congress said Thursday as the Lok Sabha continued to be disrupted for the fourth consecutive day on the matter.
“It is a sensitive issue… we are a national party and the issue needs a national view,” Congress spokesperson Renuka Chowdary told reporters.
“Sentiments are divided over the issue and both sides need to be looked into,” said Chowdary, who belongs to the Telangana region.
Telugu Desam Party is turning 30 today. Founded by Dr N T Rama Rao on March 29, 1982, TDP came into existence with the only mission of being the voice of ‘Telugu Atma Gowrawam’ and also resplendent with the yellow color- considered good omen by the entire Telugu community.
The TDP plans to felicitate prominent party workers one from each district on the occasion today at a colorful event in the state party office, a Party statement said.
Karnataka Muslim Sangharsha Samithi President M J Ali today demanded the Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda to immediately remove State Board of Wakfs Chairman R Abdul Riyaz Khan for his alleged involvement in an illegal Wakf land deals in the city.
In a release here, he said the Samithi Executive Committee, which met on March 27, has passed a resolution to this effect since Mr Khan was involved in an illegal deal of Wakf land near Lal Bagh (HOPCOM) belonging to the Dargah Hazarth Ataulla and Nabi Shah (Bada Mackan) in the city.
Two days after the Andhra Pradesh High Court cancelled his bail, senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer B.P. Acharya Thursday surrendered before the special CBI court for allegedly misusing his official position in the Emaar-APIIC case related to corruption in development of the township.
Acharya gave himself up before the CBI court at Nampally Criminal Court complex.
The high court had Tuesday cancelled Acharya’s bail and had directed him to surrender before the CBI court.
The high court struck down the CBI court’s March 16 order granting bail to the top bureaucrat.
The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were adjourned till noon Thursday following demands for a separate Telangana state as well as protests on the Sethusamudram project and the Cauvery waters dispute.
Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Congress and Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) members from Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh raised the issue of a separate Telangana state for a third day in the Lok Sabha.
They also displayed placards with slogans like “Indecision causing innocent deaths” and “Introduce Telangana Bill, Jai Telangana”.
Whether people are scared of dubbing of hit films or not Aamir Khan seems to be certainly scared of Vidya Balan.
Kolavari De has created a sensation and the film 3 is slated for release this week. A couple of films, not involving the biggies, are also lined up for release on the same day.
A message is being sent that dubbing films cannot scare straight films, point well taken. All rules are regulations are meant only for small budget films and small timers. For biggies everything is exempted or in some cases every rule is strictly applied.
Rocked by the letter written by army chief Gen V.K. Singh to the prime minister, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned twice till 12 noon Wednesday even as Defence Minister A.K. Antony assured a response at “an appropriate time”.
The Lok Sabha was also adjourned till 12 noon as members raised the issue of a separate state of Telangana.
V.K. Singh, in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has pointed out a shortage of arms and ammunition in the armed forces.
A 35-year-old woman, mother of two, was arrested here Wednesday for allegedly killing her drunkard husband and burying him within the house.
The woman battered husband Rajender Patel to death, then dug a 4 by 8 feet ‘grave’ within the house and buried man in it late Tuesday.
Admitting she killed him, the woman told horrified police officials that she was sick of being beaten up by her husband. So she decided to do away with him.
“When he was asleep last night, I smashed his head with a stone and kept beating him till he was dead,” police quoted her as saying.
Vimlendra Mohan Pratap Mishra alias Pappu Bhaiya, the Raja of Ayodhya, today resigned from the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party.
Mr Mishra, who was the BSP candidate from Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, told newspersons that he was taking a departure from the Mayawati’s party that faced a defeat in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.
“I was feeling suffocated in BSP, which remains biased towards a particular section of the society,” he asserted.
The Telangana statehood demand disrupted Question Hour proceedings in the Lok Sabha for the third successive
day today. Speaker Meira Kumar was forced to adjourn the proceedings till 1200 hrs.
Agitating members raised the issue of a separate Telangana State carved out of Andhra Pradesh. The NDA raised the Coalgate scam which resulted in huge loss to the national exchequer.
—UNI
Akhilesh Yadav today became the first Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister to declare his assets publicly. Yadav (38), who declared his assets on the UP government website, owns three residential plots — two in Lucknow and one in Etawah — besides agriculture land worth Rs 98 lakh.
He has investments totalling Rs 1 crore, and Rs 1.18 crore in cash.
The Chief Minister also has a Pajero worth Rs 20 lakh and loan worth Rs 1.3 crore against his name.
—PTI
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed two Muslim convert girls to stay at a shelter house in Karachi for three weeks to take a decision for their future in a free atmosphere.
Touching scene was witnessed in the court when Hindu parents started crying and demanded the SC that their daughters be allowed to go with them who, they said, were abducted and converted to Islam forcibly.
A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry took up a petition by Dr Ramesh Kumar, patron-in-chief of the Pakistan Hindu Council.
Babbar Khalsa terrorist Balwant Singh Rajoana, sentenced to death in the 1995 assassination of then Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, is to hang as scheduled on March 31, a Chandigarh court ruled Tuesday as opposition began building up in some places in Punjab to protest the hanging.
As per the court’s orders, Rajoana has to be hanged Saturday (March 31) at 9 a.m. in the Patiala jail premises.
Anita and her two sisters, all below 10 years, wake up at 5 am daily, complete their household chores and pick up either a school bag or an aluminum bowl depending on which day it is. If it’s a Thursday, Saturday or Sunday, these little children take a bowl in their hands and sit outside Sai Baba or Amba mata temples in Vapi begging for alms.
“My father is a daily-wage laborer. I have to support my family financially if I want to continue studies,” says Anita, who studies in a government school. She lives in a thatched hutment parallel to the railway tracks.
A non-Muslim family has been protecting a 400-year-old dargah here at Raheempura, Puranapul, which has been facing threats of encroachment. Munni Bai and her family renovated the dargah that was in a dilapidated condition and with the help of local Muslims, they also organise Urs.
With a Karnataka government- appointed panel unearthing an alleged scam with regard to Wakf land, Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Tuesday said it is a state level issue and they would have to take a decision on it.
However, if the state government wanted, it could refer the matter to the Union Government, he said.
Khurshid said, “This (wakf scam) is actually a state level issue, state level entitlement, so they will have to look at it,” he told reporters outside Parliament.
In what amounts to a virtual change of guard in Uttar Pradesh’s top police establishment, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav Tuesday reshuffled 112 officers, including four directors general of police (DGPs) and 65 of the state’s 75 superintendents of police (SPs).
The large scale transfers also include eight additional directors general (ADG), 16 inspectors general (IG) and 19 deputy inspectors general.
This means that 65 of the 75 districts in the state now have new police chiefs. The remaining were changed earlier.
Computer scientists, taking inspiration from the human face, are exploring whether machines can detect lies.
In a study of 40 videotaped conversations, an automated system that analyzed eye movements correctly identified whether subjects were lying or telling the truth 82.5 percent of the time.
That’s a better accuracy rate than expert human interrogators typically achieve in lie-detection experiments, said Ifeoma Nwogu, research assistant professor at University of Buffalo’s Centre for Unified Biometrics and Sensors (CUBS) who helped develop the system.
Named as the man who offered army chief V.K. Singh a bribe, Lt Gen (retd) Tejinder Khanna said Tuesday that if that had indeed happened then the matter should have been investigated at that time itself.
“If army chief had reported the matter to (the defence minister) and if this had happened, then he should have definitely at that time investigated the matter under the law,” Tejinder Singh, who filed a defamation case against the army chief in a Delhi court, told NDTV.
He calls himself a bathroom singer, yet Bollywood star Akshay Kumar didn’t think twice before singing romantic number “Bheege honth tere” for the leading ladies of his forthcoming film “Housefull 2”.
Akshay was here Monday for the launch of the new issue of Stardust magazine with co-stars Jacqueline Fernandes, Asin Thottumkal, Zarine Khan and Shazahn Padamsee and he sang for them at the event.
“Please dim the lights,” he said before he started singing, to set the mood for “Bheege honth tere”, which happens to be one of his favourite romantic numbers.
A college girl attempted suicide after she was allegedly raped by five policemen when she was returning home from tuition in Pakistan’s Punjab province, a media report said.
The student was raped by five policemen in Sheikhupura last week and attempted to end her life Monday, reported Dawn.
The five suspects are on the run.
The policemen were on patrol duty Friday evening when they stopped the 16-year-old girl who was returning home from tuition along with her cousin.
The policemen threatened the girl’s male cousin and forced him to leave. They then raped her.
In a major success for Maharashtra ATS, it arrested a fugitive suspect in 2008 Ahmedabad blasts that claimed 56 lives after gunning down his accomplice in an encounter in Aurangabad today that also left a constable injured, police said.
The gang, headed by Abu Faizal, a former member of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), had also reportedly plotted to eliminate the judges of Allahabad High Court who had pronounced the verdict in the Babri Masjid case, police said.
India’s Sachin S. Kukke is the Asia-Pacific region winner and one of the six global winners of the YouTube Space Lab 2012 contest for young people to design experiments that could be performed in outer space.
The winners of the contest by YouTube and Lenovo, in cooperation with Space Adventures, NASA, ESA (European Space Agency), and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) were announced at a ceremony at the Newseum here Friday.