Tuesday, 21 August 2012

Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News

Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News

Sangma challenges Mukherjee’s nomination in Supreme Court

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 04:30 PM PDT

Former Lok Sabha Speaker  P Sangma has  moved the Supreme Court challenging Pranab Mukherjee’s election as the president of India, and claimed Mukherjee held an office of profit when he filed his nomination papers.

Sangma, a former Lok Sabha speaker, said Mukherjee was chairman of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Kolkata when he plunged into the presidential race.

He added that during the election process, Mukherjee was also leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party in the Lok Sabha.

In his petition, Sangma has contended that Mukherjee’s signatures on his resignation letter to the Indian Statistical Institute “are neither of the respondent (Mukherjee) nor have been put by the respondent (Mukherjee). They are fabricated.”

Mukherjee’s signatures on his resignation letter “do not match with his signatures appended on the reply dated 3.7.2012 filed before the returning officers,” the petition stated.

The petition said that Mukherjee was “not qualified for contesting and for being the president of India” and his “nomination papers have been wrongly accepted by the returning officer”.

Sangma, in his petition, has contended that while accepting Mukherjee’s nomination papers, the returning officer had not checked the “genuineness of the signatures on the purported resignation letter (as chairman of ISI, Kolkata), the genuineness of the resignation letter itself”.

The petition said the returning officer also did not decide whether the president of the ISI was competent to accept the chairman’s resignation.

Sangma has said that all these questions were substantial and the returning officer was statutorily mandated to decide all these objections at the time of scrutiny and he “failed to exercise the powers vested in him by the law”.

Sangma wants the presidential poll result to be declared null and void and himself to be declared the president of India.

The petition referred to Article 58 of the Indian Constitution, which makes a person ineligible for contesting the election to the post of president of India if such a person is holding an office of profit.

The petition said the ISI was governed by the provision of the Indian Statistical Institute Act, 1959, and the post of the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party are governed by the Leader and Chief Whips of Recognised Parties and Group in Parliament (Facilities) Act, 1998, and the rules thereunder.

Both these offices have been declared as office of profit by the Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Act, 1959, the petition added.

Till July 2, 2012, the Lok Sabha website as well as the ISI website showed Mukherjee as the chairman of the ISI.

Facebook working to remove Hateful Contents that sparked riots

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 03:30 PM PDT

Social networking website Facebook has said  that it was working with the government to remove hateful content  that is widely being perceived as likely to spark communal tension across the country.

“Facebook will remove content which breaches our terms as set out in our statement of rights and responsibilities. Content or individuals can be removed from Facebook for a variety of reasons, including issuing direct calls for violence or perpetuating hate speech,” the company spokesperson told IANS.

“We have received requests from Indian authorities and agencies and are working through those requests and responding to the agencies. We encourage people to continue to use our tools to report content they are concerned about so that we can investigate and take action fast,” he added.

This is against the backdrop of the online hate campaign targeting people from the northeast which has put the spotlight on the power of the social media network in India, which accounts more than 60 million users.

The unprecedented exodus of people from the northeast, abetted by hate messages, has also opened the debate about issues related to internet freedom and content regulation.

India, which is looking into the alleged role of Pakistan-based elements in using morphed images on internet, has blocked over 250 websites for orchestrating the online campaign of hatred.

According to a report by iCRossing, nearly 36 million people in the country use Facebook.

Of these, nearly 50 percent users are aged below 50. Estimates for 2012 posted on the India pages of various network sites show that microblogging site Twitter and LinkedIn have nearly 15 million users each in India.

What India can learn from Pakistan Air Base Attack ?

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 02:30 PM PDT

The daring terror attack on Pakistan’s Kamra air base on Aug 16 claimed by Tehreek-e-Taliban and persistent intelligence reports that Pakistan-based militant groups keep planning terror attacks on India’s civilian airports should be enough to raise all kinds of alarms in India.

The attack should be a serious reminder about the fact that terrorist groups such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) have openly and repeatedly announced that they would like to destroy India’s emerging economy through terror strikes, and Pakistan has no visible plans to stop them.

If such elements can breach Pakistan’s air base security, Indian civilian airports become all the more vulnerable.

Experts say it is high time the Indian government redoubles its efforts to bring security at its airports to international standards, or maybe even better than the international standards in view of the continuous threat it faces from the Pakistan-based militant group LeT, a group that has openly vowed to destroy India.

The Airports Authority of India did its part on Oct 18, 2007, when it introduced a new Ground Handling Policy, under which any agency operating at airports would have to have 100 percent full-time employees with their background antecedents fully checked by the relevant security agencies.

Officials say that in view of the haphazard standards followed by the different ground handlers at different airports of India, the Ground Handling Policy is also aimed at limiting the numbers of ground handling entities that can carry out such operations at airports.

According to a government notification, under the policy, only three ground handlers would be allowed to perform this function at the six metro airports of the country. These would be AAI or its joint venture company, subsidiary companies of the national carrier and any other independent ground handling company selected through a competitive bidding process subject to its security clearance.

The non-metro airports have been allowed self-handling by the domestic airlines provided they comply with certain standards and ensure that all activities are carried out by their own full-time and bona fide employees.

According to some security experts, strict enforcement of the policy is an absolute must because at some Indian airports, non-entitled entities that are still providing ground handling services do not even comply with International Air Transport Association (IATA) standards. They cite overstaffing with totally untrained personnel without any background and security checks, duplication of resources, the use of inappropriate and outdated equipment and the presence of multiple non-entitled agencies.

All this, they say, has created an environment in which safety and security at airports are being crucially compromised.

Security officials say the new policy has plugged all these loopholes. But its implementation has been delayed again and again by greedy vested interests who want to put “their own petty profits” before the country’s security. They are not concerned about the risk that can invite a 9/11 kind of terror attack, jeopardise lives of a large number of people and also hurt India’s tourism industry for a long period of time by tarnishing India’s image due to the continued chaos at Indian airports.

Since the new policy, when fully implemented, would really improve safety and make Indian airports more secure by using the best service standards and eliminating outsourced non-entitled entities as well as restricting the number of service providers operating at airports, it would result in bringing greater discipline and bona fide trained workers at the airports. Besides making them foolproof from the security angle, it would also prevent accidents on the apron because only IATA-approved equipment limited to certain required numbers would be operating on tarmacs.

Salman Khan talks about success of Ek tha Tigert

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 01:30 PM PDT

First Look of Ek Tha TigerAction films take a toll, says Salman Khan, who is recovering from a facial nerve disorder, and adds disarmingly that a “Tiger” can’t make excuses like “I am not well” , a reference of course to his action film “Ek Tha Tiger”.

“I am the ‘Tiger’, I can’t make excuses like ‘I am unwell, I can’t do it’,” Salman, who recently underwent treatment for trigeminal neuralgia in the US, told IANS in an exclusive interview.

“I have done all the things like running, beating, falling, jumping from one place to another…. if you are physically fit, you can perhaps do all this. But it takes a lot of toll on your body as you are doing the same thing the whole day,” he explained.

Salman’s hard work seems to be paying rich dividends as his espionage romp “Ek Tha Tiger” raked in Rs.33 crore on its opening day.

Now Salman wants to go back to the romantic genre.

“I am doing a romantic film soon. Action is very tough… One has to get up at odd hours, like early morning, to do action films, work till late night, do action in worst conditions like in hot weather, fighting on rooftops and dirty places. It is difficult,” he said.

The 46-year-old is destiny’s child. Controversy, it appears, could be his middle name; he is neck deep in legal battles and health issues and has yet emerged box-office king with back-to-back action blockbusters – “Wanted”, “Dabangg”, “Ready” and “Bodyguard”.

All of them entered the Rs.100 crore club and “Ek Tha Tiger” is on a record-breaking spree too. After setting a new record by raking in Rs.33 crore on opening day, it has also smashed the weekend collection record by earning Rs.45 crore.

In Salman’s view, with the increasing number of theatres and the rise in ticket prices, Rs.100 crore could soon be equivalent to Rs.10 crore.

“The exact collection starts from single screens and multiplexes in cities and small towns. With ticket prices and number of theatres also increasing, the films are likely to do a huge amount of business. Soon, this Rs.100 crore will be like Rs.10 crore,” Salman said.

“And talking about the overseas business, who knows what business the film is exactly doing in overseas? Once the distributor starts giving actual figures, the numbers will definitely go up.”

Salman forayed into Bollywood with 1988 film “Biwi Ho Toh Aisi” in a small role as Rekha’s spoilt brother-in-law. Success was his the very next year with the 1989 romance “Maine Pyaar Kiya”.

There was no looking back after that. He climbed the success ladder rapidly and churned out romantic hits like “Love”, “Saajan”, “Hum Aapke Hain Kaun” and “Hum Dil Chuke Sanam”.

He then did romantic comedies like “Mujhse Shaadi Karogi”, “Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya” and “Partner”. In 2009, he endorsed action with “Wanted”, the first in the series to hit the screen.

Infosys defends its stand in Corporate VISA Fraud Case

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 12:30 PM PDT

Investigation by IT bellwether Infosys Ltd. into the complaint filed by its former US-based employee Satya Dev Tripuraneni against it revealed that the charges were unfounded, a top official of the company said Tuesday.

“We have found the charges made by him (Tripuraneni) unfounded. Our lawyers are preparing the defence for the case,” Infosys chief executive S.D. Shibulal told IANS in a conference call.

Tripuraneni, a US citizen, filed the lawsuit Aug 2 in a California court alleging that the global software major was misusing visas to depute its employees to the US from India for onsite projects.

“Soon after the complaint was filed with our whistleblower team, we conducted a comprehensive investigation into the allegations and found them to be baseless and without merit,” Shibulal asserted.

As the case is sub-judice, he declined to comment on its outcome but said the company was prepared to defend against the charges as it did not violate visa laws of any country, including the US.

“We have completed the investigation into the charges and found them to be not true. Our lawyers will be filing the defence in the court and clarify our stand as per the policy,” Shibulal said.

The chief executive’s remarks about the second case came a day after a US court dismissed a similar lawsuit filed by its US-based employee Jay (Jack) Palmer accusing the company of violating the federal norms on B-1 and H1-B visas.

First Delhi International Film Festival to be held in December

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 12:30 PM PDT

After getting the glimpse of Arab and Asian cinema at the Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival, get set for first ever Delhi International Film Festival (DIFF) Dec 21-27, which the capital hosts.

to know more about world cinema as the capital prepares to host its .

As many as 150 films from across 70 countries including France, Israel, Britain and Brazil will be showcased during the week-long festival showcasing world cinema, that will be held at Siri Fort Auditorium and NDMC Convention Centre.

“In my point of view, the DIFF is not just the festival of films. It is the vision of bringing the world together at a universal platform, far away from the lines of controls and boundaries that mankind has created,” filmmaker-writer Suresh K. Goswami, who is also the festival director, said at the launch of the festival.

He was accompanied by Ram Kishore Parcha, senior film journalist and president of DIFF and filmmaker Sanjay Singh, vice president DIFF.

“Moreover, Delhi is rich in terms of culture and heritage, but unfortunately it doesn’t have its own platform to showcase creativity and that is the reason why we wanted to have our own international film festival here,” he added.

Classical films from overseas and India will be showcased across 10 sections, including Delhi Scope section in the festival. The Retrospective, Tributes and Homage section will include films of Dev Anand, Balraj Sahni and other legendary filmmakers and actors.

The World Cinema section will showcase films like “Daughters of Hill” by Patrizia Landi, “The Artist” by Michel Hazanavicius, “Jeremiah” by Eran Paz, “Love Bird” by Susan Collins, “The Sunshine in The Corner” by Sun Hao Young, “Mar” by Caner Erzincan among others. It will also include seminars and workshops.

The festival has a special section called NRI Cinema, under which 15 films by non-resident Indians living in different parts of the world will be showcased. Another section is dedicated to the NRI writers. DIFF will also have an art exhibition in which artworks of people across the world will be showcased.

Also present at the occasion was filmmaker Tigmanshu Dhulia and Shiney Ahuja.

“With a festival like this young and aspiring filmmakers across the country will benefit a lot,” said Dhulia.

Adds Shiney, “Film festivals are great medium for aspiring filmmakers to come and showcase their talent and eventually they get a lot of publicity without any extra expense. And that publicity helps for the mainstream release in a big way.”

Organised by Social Circle, the festival has partnered with Broadway International Film Festival, Los Angeles, South Cinema South Film Festival, and JMT from Israel, Slade school of fine arts, London, Film factory China, Turkish Film Industry, Cinetech Nationale Mexico, Brazil films, Media Box Bangladesh, Hunarkada from Pakistan, Film Boutique from Germany, Nantes Film Festival of France and French Cultural Centre.

Indian Gas Pipelines total length of 11000 Kms

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 11:20 AM PDT

More than 11,000 km of cross-country gas pipelines have been laid for connecting the consumption centres, Minister of State for Petroleum R.P.N. Singh said.

“Another 14,000 km of pipelines infrastructure is under various stages of implementation,” the minister said in a written reply to a question in parliament on the natural gas pipeline grid in the country.

He said that as part of a multi-pronged initiative to increase natural gas availability, the government has sought to intensify domestic exploration and production through measures like a New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), exploring shale gas potential, LNG imports and transnational pipelines like the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline and Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline.

Singh informed the Rajya Sabha that joint venture oil and gas company, Petronet LNG, has started developing a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal at Gangavaram port (Andhra Pradesh) which will be connected to gas pipelines for delivering gas to consumers, including the power sector.

The Gangavaram LNG terminal would address the current lack of a terminal on India’s entire east coast for importing gas from abroad, which greatly increases the cost of imported gas for utilities located on the east coast.

India not to remove subsidy from Diesel, Kerosene and LPG

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 10:30 AM PDT

India will not  remove subsidy from Diesel, Kerosene and LPG. The government has no plans to deregulate diesel, cooking gas (LPG) and kerosene prices by withdrawing subsidy on them, Minister of State for Petroleum R.P.N. Singh said  Today.

“At present, there is no such proposal,” the minister said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, in which he also gave data on the under-recovery or revenue losses incurred by state-run oil companies.

“The government is providing subsidy of Re.0.82 per litre on PDS kerosene and Rs.22.58 per 14.2 kg LPG cylinder on domestic LPG.”

The minister added: “The public sector oil marketing companies (OMCs) also incur under-recovery on sale of diesel, PDS kerosene and domestic LPG as the prices of these products are being modulated by the government.”

To compensate FY 2011-12 combined revenue losses of Rs.138,541 crore of the three Oil marketing companies, the government gave Rs.83,500 crore assistance to them, while upstream firms like Oil and Natural Gas Corp. (ONGC) contributed Rs.55,000 crore.

According to the minister, Rs.41 crore was borne by the OMCs. Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum currently lose about Rs.450 crore per day on sale of diesel, domestic cooking gas (LPG) and kerosene.

Losses to OMCs on account of domestic LPG, for instance, amount to Rs.231 per 14.2 kg cylinder.

Petrol prices were deregulated in June 2010 but subsequent price revisions by OMCs have been done in guarded manner so as not to stoke inflation. The losses on account of petrol work out close to Rs.3.80 per litre.

BCCI gets no Recognition from Union Sports Ministry

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 09:30 AM PDT

 The union sports ministry has not accorded its annual recognition to 14 national sports federations (NSF), including the Indian cricket board and Hockey India.

Among the 51 recognised sports bodies, outfits for little-heard-of sports like atya-patya, ten-pin bowling, tug of war, shooting ball, jump rope, and tennikoit have been accorded recognition.

Laudably, among other sports federations that have been recognised are those for sports for the deaf, and the sports for mentally challenged.

The stand-off between the Board of Control and Cricket in India (BCCI) and the sports ministry is too well known and it is no surprise it does not find a place in the list of recognised NSFs for 2011. However, the tennis ball cricket federation finds the pride of place.

While 10 NSFs have not been recognised for non-compliance of government guidelines, four – namely hockey, netball, throwball and gymnastics – have been de-recognised for internal disputes and mismanagement.

Sports Minister Ajay Maken, responding to an unstarred question by Nilesh Rane and M. Jagannath in the Lok Sabha said Tuesday that only the federations which met the government’s criteria were given the recognition.

“NSFs of hockey, netball, throwball and gymnastics have not been granted annual recognition due to dispute between various factions in the management of those federations,” Maken told the Lok Sabha.

The other debarred federations include the BCCI, Judo Federation of India, Aero Club of India, Bridge Federation of India, Korfball Federation of India, Indian Polo Association, Triathlon Federation of India, Mallakhamb Federation, Federation of Motor Sports Club of India and Indian Style Wrestling.

Explaining the reasons for the de-recognition, Maken said: “They have not been granted recognition for non-compliance of government guidelines, non-submission of complete documents, etc.”

The 14 NSFS, therefore, were not eligible for any financial or any other assistance from the government, he said.

Five Hydel Plants shutdown in Himachal Leading to Power Crisis in North

Posted: 21 Aug 2012 08:45 AM PDT

Five run-of-the-river mega hydropower plants in Himachal Pradesh remained shut Tuesday due to high silt level in rivers, triggering a power shortage in northern states.

The country’s biggest hydropower plant, the 1,500 MW Nathpa Jhakri Power Project, and Jaypee Karcham Hydro Corp. Ltd.’s 1,000 MW Karcham Wangtoo Hydroelectric Project, both located in Kinnaur district, have been closed since Monday, project officials said here.

The silt level in the Satluj river, on which the Nathpa Jhakri Power Project is located, was more than the permissible limit, V.K. Verma, deputy general manager, Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd. that operates the 1,500 MW Nathpa-Jhakri project, told IANS.

He said the silt level rose due to heavy rainfall in the catchment areas.

Likewise, Jaypee’s hydroelectric project located upstream of the Nathpa Jhakri project and NHPC’s 300 MW Chamera stage II and 231 MW Chamera stage III located on the Ravi river in Chamba district have been shut.

State-run Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board Ltd.’s 120-MW Bhava project in Kinnaur district and 5 MW Andhra project in Shimla district were also closed due to high silt.

“Both these projects stopped generating electricity early this (Tuesday) morning,” the board’s power controller Joginder Singh said.

The closure of the plants has led to a power crisis in the northern region. The northern power grid came under strain as the states procuring power from the projects were forced to overdraw from the grid.

The projects supply power mainly to Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
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