Month: November 2013

Noted social activist Aruna Roy has said that rural India, which suffers the worst aspects of democracy, is also where democracy is most alive.

“The people who live in rural India are intelligent people. Ordinary people are intelligent. They are bright. We don’t listen to them,” Roy said yesterday at a conference in London on ‘Open Government Partnership Annual Summit’

Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Thursday said that there was no Narendra Modi wave in the country and it was only a creation of the media.

“There is no Modi wave — it is media created wave — it is no public wave,” the Health minister told reporters here during his two day visit to border belts of Jammu.

“Despite adverse publicity (against Congress), we were able to snatch Uttrakhand and Himachal Pradesh,” he said adding the party will put up a similar performance in the forthcoming polls in five states.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will make an aerial survey on Saturday of areas hit by cyclone Phailin in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh to see the damage caused. He has already expressed distress over the extent of damage caused to property, crops and livestock by the cyclone that hit these states on October 12.

He has announced Rs 2 lakh as ex-gratia assistance to the kin of each of those killed and Rs 50,000 for those seriously injured.

Former Uttar Pradesh minister and three-time legislator from Vishwanathganj seat in the state’s Pratapgarh district, Raja Ram Pandey died late Thursday following a massive heart attack.

The 58-year-old leader had held the portfolio of Khadi and Gramudyog in the Akhilesh Yadav government. He was removed from the state cabinet April 15 this year over his alleged sexist remarks about woman officials which sparked off national outrage.

Madras High Court today upheld Indian Oil Corporation’s amended policy of giving just one LPG cylinder to the head of the family, saying there is no legal infirmity in IOC limiting subsidised LPG supply.

Dismissing an appeal by one R Muthukrishnan, who had two gas connections here and Nagapattinam, the First bench comprising Chief Justice R K Agrawal and Justice M Sathyanarayanan said there is no legal infirmity in IOC limiting supply of subsidised LPG connection to households in ratio of one connection for household headed by an adult member of the family.

Former DGP of Punjab K P S Gill, who had served as security advisor to the Gujarat Chief Minister in 2002, said tonight that Narendra Modi cannot be blamed for post-Godhra riots as it is the job of the police leadership to respond to law and order situations.

“In law and order situations, it is the police leadership which has to respond and not the political leadership,” Gill said when asked by reporters about his assessment of Modi’s handling of post-Godhra events.

As the fresh communal violence here tested the Akhilesh Yadav government again, the Uttar Pradesh police chief today admitted to lapses on the part of police even as paramilitary forces patrolled sensitive areas.

Eight persons have been arrested and cases registered against 15 people in connection with last night’s violence in Budhana area of Muzaffarnagar in which three men were killed. A woman was also killed and her husband injured when some unidentified people attacked them in Thugana area but police said it was not known if there was a communal angle to it.

Around 400 Indians are in Pakistani prisons, of whom 90 have completed their sentences and are entitled to be released and sent home, a top official said Thursday.

According to external affairs ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin, of the 400 Indians, 214 are civilian prisoners while 186 are fishermen.

He said the 90 who have completed their terms “should be released because according to the India-Pakistan bilateral agreement all prisoners who have completed their sentence should be released within one month”.

“So, we would hope that this is abided by”.