VOL. 13, ISSUE 74 | Friday, 16 March 2018 | New Delhi | Pages 16 | Rs 3.00

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SPACE TRAVEL CAUSES LONG-TERM CHANGES TO DNA, FINDS NASA PG10

FIVE OF FAMILY DIE AS SPEEDING TRUCK RAMS INTO STATIONARY CAR PG4

GOVT TAKING STEPS TO KEEP DIGITAL MARKET FAIR & SECURE: PASWAN PG6

GOVT MAY BAN 91 DEFAULTERS FROM LEAVING INDIA

MPOST BUREAU

NEW DELHI: Some 31 suspected economic offenders have fled the country to avoid prosecution, the government has told the Lok Sabha.

Asked if many businessmen had absconded after “doing scams” and settled in various other coun-tries, Minister of State for Exter-nal Affairs M.J. Akbar in a written reply gave a list of 31 persons, including Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, accused in the Pun-jab National Bank scam, who are under investigation by the Direc-torate of Enforcement and the CBI.

The others in the list include Nirav Modi’s wife Ami Nirav Modi and son Neeshal Modi, liquor baron Vijay Mallya, cricket czar Lalit Modi and arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari.

The reply doesn’t mention the time since when they have been absconding from the country.

Akbar said the ministry had received extradition requests from the CBI in respect of Vijay Mal-lya, Ashish Jobanputra, Pushpesh Kumar Baid, Sanjay Kalra, Varsha Kalra and Arti Kalra. The requests, he said, have been sent to the con-cerned foreign countries for their consideration.

“The extradition request from CBI in respect of Sunny Kalra is under process by the Ministry of External Affairs. As per the infor-mation provided by Ministry of Finance, the government has decided to introduce the ‘Fugitive Economic Offenders Bill, 2018’ in the Parliament.

The bill will help in laying down measures to deter fugitive economic offenders from evading the process of Indian law and pro-vides for expeditious confiscation of proceeds of crime and proper-ties of fugitive economic offenders to make them submit to the juris-

diction of courts in India.The others in the list are: Sou-

mit Jena, Vijaykumar Revab-hai Patel, Sunil Ramesh Rupani, Pushpesh Kumar Baid, Suren-der Singh, Angad Singh, Harsa-hib Singh, Harleen Kaur, Ashish Jobanputra, Jatin Mehta, Chetan Jayantilal Sandesara, Dipti Chetan Sandesara, Nitin Jayantilal Sand-esara, Sabhya Seth, Nilesh Parekh, Umesh Parekh, Sunny Kalra, Aarti Kalra, Sanjay Kalra, Varsha Kalra, Hemant Gandhi, Ishwarbhai Bhat, M.G. Chandrasekhar, Cheriya Van-narakkal Sudeer, Nausha Kadeejath and Cheriya Veettil Sadique.

In a related development, the government has compiled a list of 91 people it is considering barring from leaving the country because of their involvement with compa-nies that have defaulted on loans, a highly placed source said.

The people were selected because of their roles as direc-tors or owners of Indian compa-nies which have been identified as so-called wilful defaulters, firms which refuse to repay loans despite having the means to do so, the source said. Some 400 Indian com-panies have been classified as wil-ful defaulters.

31 economic offenders have fled India: Govt

Pak calls its envoy home, India calls it routine

MPOST BUREAU

ISLAMABAD/DELHI: Upping the ante, Pakistan on Thursday said it has decided to call back its High Com-missioner in India Sohail Mahmood for consultations after the repeated incidence of “harassment” of its dip-lomatic staff in New Delhi.

Foreign Office spokesman Muhammad Faisal said that the Indian government failed to take notice of the increasing incidents of intimidation of Pakistani diplomats, their families and staffers by its intel-ligence agencies.

“Our High Commissioner in New Delhi has been asked to come to Islamabad for consultations,” he said.

On Tuesday, the Foreign Office had summoned India’s Deputy High Commissioner J P Singh over the alleged harassment of its officials and their families in New Delhi.

The Pakistan Foreign Ministry claimed that the staff and their fami-lies have been facing “harassment, intimidation and outright violence” from Indian state agencies in recent weeks.

Faisal on Thursday alleged that this deliberate continuing bullying was not confined to a single iso-lated event and “continues unabated despite repeated official protests lodged with the Indian High Com-mission here, and also with the Indian Ministry of External Affairs at the highest (level).”

He said the Pakistan High Com-mission shared with the External Affairs Ministry photographs iden-

tifying the individuals, who forcibly halted and took pictures of the offi-cers but regrettably no positive action was taken by the Indian side so far.

He claimed that in the latest inci-dent, Indian officials stopped the car of the deputy high commissioner for 40 minutes and harassed the occu-pants of the vehicle.

“Pakistan will go to any limit to ensure the safety of the staff of (its) high commission in India,” he said.

“The Pakistan High Commis-sioner has been called for con-sultations and it is normal,” MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said on Thursday.

Noting that our high commis-sion in Islamabad is facing a “lit-any of issues”, he said that “we have taken them up through established mechanism”.

“We want Pakistan to resolve the issues being faced by our staff and ensure their safety,” he said.

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TDP set to exit NDA alliance

Will back YSR Congress’ ‘no-confidence’ motion in Parl

MPOST BUREAU

HYDERABAD: N Chandrab-abu Naidu, whose relationship with the BJP has been frosty for weeks, may finally call it off and then back bitter rival Jaganmohan Reddy’s no-trust motion against the centre.

TDP president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has called a politburo meeting on Fri-day to take a final call on the issue of exiting from the NDA. Sources said that a majority of the members including MPs, MLAs and senior lead-ers have already told Naidu to quit NDA. “This is the final option. The CM is livid that instead of resolving issues faced by the state, the BJP is indulging in dirty politics that it played in Tamil Nadu,’’ TDP leader Kambhampati Rammo-han Rao said.

The TDP’s support to the no-confidence motion to be moved in parliament by Jagan Reddy’s YSR Congress is seen as a signal that the party is willing to back its political rival for the sake of Andhra Pradesh.

Last week the TDP pulled its two ministers out of the central government but had

stopped short of walking out of the alliance.

On Thursday morning, Naidu addressed his party parliamentarians in Delhi through teleconference and reportedly said Wednesday’s bypoll results in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar reflected an anti-Modi and anti-BJP wave.

Naidu also accused the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of using YSR Congress Party and actor K Pavan Kaly-an’s Jena Sena Party to target him and the TDP.

The Centre had earlier turned down Naidu’s demand for special category status to Andhra Pradesh saying the nomenclature had been done away with, except for hill states and states in the Northeast. But Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had promised the state funds equivalent to what a spe-cial category state gets.

MPOST BUREAU

KOLKATA: Mohammed Shami has ruled out all hopes of reuniting with wife Hasin Jahan as their public dis-pute continues to get murkier.

Shami, in an interview that said he has evidence to prove his innocence in the face of serious allegations made by his wife.

“I made every effort to save the future of my family. But Hasin said she wants to take this to court. I would have done anything to save my family,” Shami said.

“My family members are there in Kolkata for the last seven days, but there has been no response from Hasin’s family. This makes it clear that there is no hope left. All hopes of reuniting with my wife are over,” he added.

Mohammed Shami says Hasin Jahan kept him in the dark about her first marriage.

Shami said he would co-operate with all investigating agencies and hoped for a thor-ough probe into the matter.

The entire episode has hit Shami hard. Apart from being left out of the new BCCI central contracts, his participation in this year’s Indian Premier League could also be in jeopardy. Mean-while, BCCI has also asked its Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) to submit a report on Shami within a week.

Shami’s wife Hasin Jahan has sent the doc-uments related to her complaints against her husband to the BCCI’s Committee of Adminis-trators (CoA) chairman Vinod Rai for a probe into her allegations of corruption, her lawyer said on Thursday.

Shami says all hopes of reuniting with wife Hasin Jahan are over

MPOST BUREAU

CHANDIGARH: The Haryana Assembly on Thursday unani-mously passed a Bill which pro-vides for the death penalty to those found guilty of raping girls aged 12 years or less.

After Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Haryana has become the third state where the Assem-bly has approved the provision of capital punishment for such sexual offenders, the House was informed.

The Criminal Law (Hary-ana Amendment) Bill, 2018, moved by the state’s Parliamen-tary Affairs Minister Ram Bilas Sharma, was passed on the last

day of the budget session.The Bill was passed unani-

mously by INLD and Congress members also lending their support.

“After Section 376-A of the Penal Code, the following Sec-

tion shall be inserted, namely 376-AA,” the Bill stated.

Under section 376-AA, in case of rape of a girl up to 12 years of age, there will be a punishment of death or rigorous imprison-ment of not less than 14 years

which may extend to imprison-ment for life that is for remain-der period of persons natural life, according to the legislation.

A provision 376-DA has also been added after section 376-D of the penal code.

Under section--376-DA, if a girl up to 12 years of age is raped by one or more persons con-stituting a group, each of those persons shall be deemed to have committed the offence of rape and will be punished with death or rigorous imprisonment for a term which will not be less than 20 years, but which may extend to life along with a fine.

The Bill also provides for making the existing crimi-

nal laws related to other sexual offences more stringent.

The punishment under sec-tion 354 of the IPC (Assault or criminal force against a woman with intent to outrage her mod-esty) will not be less than two years (earlier not less than one year) but may extend up to seven years (earlier up to five years).

Also, under section 354D (2) of the IPC, those found guilty of stalking will be punished on first conviction with imprisonment up to three years and can be pun-ished on a second or subsequent conviction, with imprisonment for not less than three years, but which may extend to seven years (earlier up to five years).

Haryana Assembly passes bill allowing those guilty of raping minors to be hanged

MPOST BUREAU

NEW DELHI: Chief Jus-tice of India Dipak Misra on Thursday sharply criticised the electronic media during a hearing in the Supreme Court on a defamation suit against a news website.”We respect freedom of the press, but it has to act responsibly. Elec-tronic media can’t think they become Popes overnight,” he said, asserting that he was speaking in general, not about the case.

The Supreme Court put on hold the defamation case until it takes up the case next on 12 April.

During the hearing, Jus-tice Misra used strong words against the TV media.

“Many in electronic media think they can write anything. Whatever suits your imagina-tion can you write anything and get away? Can some peo-ple sit on the pulpit and write anything? Is that journalism?” the Chief Justice said.

He added that while he was all for the freedom of the press, “how can anyone start speaking anything about any-one? There are limits. How can you comment on anyone whatever you like?”

CJI pulls up news channels, asks them to act

responsibly

AFTER MADHYA PRADESH AND RAJASTHAN, HARYANA FOLLOWS SUIT

MOVIES MAKE ALIA BHATT FEEL ALIVE PG16

INTERIM RELIEF TO KARTI EXTENDED

SC transfers to itself all cases related to ED’s power to arrest on PMLA charges

Shortage of 1,496 IAS officers in country: Govt

MPOST BUREAU

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday trans-ferred to itself all pending Delhi High Court (HC) cases related to the adjudication of the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) power to arrest under the Prevention of Money Launder-ing Act (PMLA), including the INX Media case related to Karti Chidambaram. At the same time, the SC extended interim relief granted to Karti by the Delhi HC, to until March 26.

An SC bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra extended the interim relief for Karti - from possible arrest by the ED - which was earlier on Thursday extended by two days by the Delhi HC.

The apex court’s decision came after the CBI and the ED

petitioned the SC challenging the Delhi HC decision to grant interim relief to Karti, from possible arrest by the ED in the INX case which is to do with alleged money laundering by Karti. The two agencies said in their plea to the top court that Karti, a son of senior Congress leader and former finance min-ister P Chidambaram, “abused” the law to get relief from the Delhi HC.

The two agencies detailed what they called a “gross abuse of process of law” and how pieces in a maze were made to fall into place, setting the stage for relief.

The probe agencies said much before Karti moved the SC with a writ petition ques-tioning the ED’s power to summon and arrest, another petition had raised similar issues before the Delhi HC.

MPOST BUREAU

NEW DELHI: There is a shortage of 1,496 IAS officers in the country, Union min-ister Jitendra Singh said on Thursday.

The total authorised strength of Indian Adminis-

trative Service (IAS) officers is 6,500 and the total number of officers in position on Jan-uary 1, 2017, is 5,004, he said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

“There is a shortage of 1,496 IAS officers,” the Minis-ter of State for Personnel said.

He said the occurrence of vacancies and filling them up are an ongoing practice.

Singh said the government has increased annual intake of IAS officers to 180 from civil services examination 2012 and the same continued in the 2018 exam.

Highlights » The ministry had received extradition requests from the CBI with regard to high-profile absconders » Some 400 Indian companies have been classified as wilful defaulters

CITY

‘TRADERS MUST UNITE AGAINST SEALING’ 3

NATION

INDIA’S 1ST CLONED BUFFALO BORN 6

EDIT

TOWARDS THE NADIR 8

INTERNATIONAL

NEPAL CJI PARAJULI RESIGNS 10

BUSINESS

US DRAGS INDIA TO WTO 12

SPORT

MESSI HITS CL CENTURY IN BARCA WIN 15

Parliament must debate bank frauds issue

M VENKAIAH NAIDU

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CBSE denies paper leak, to approach cops against those spreading fake news

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The CBSE on Thursday denied allegations of a paper leak of its Class 12 Accountancy examination, assert-ing that all seals were found intact in the examination centres.

The board also said that it had approached the police against those spread-ing “false” news.

The development comes after Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia tweeted Thursday morning about the com-plaints received by him in this regard.

“Received complaints about the Class 12 CBSE Accountancy paper being leaked. Have asked officers of Directorate of Edu-cation to investigate and lodge a complaint with CBSE,” he said on Twitter.

“Swift action must be taken so that hard-working students don’t suffer due to the negligence of CBSE,” he added.

Sisodia, who is also the education min-ister, had directed officers of the Director-

ate of Education (DoE) to complain with the CBSE.

A senior CBSE official, however, said, “There has been no leakage of the ques-tion paper. All the seals have been found intact at all exam centres. However, at the local level, some miscreants may have cir-culated messages through WhatsApp and other social media platforms to hurt the sanctity of the exam”.

“The board has decided to take strict action against such activities. An FIR is being lodged,” the official said.

Police officials, however, said they had not received any complaint yet.

2 MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018mp around town

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Printed & Published by Jaiyendra Kumar Sharma on behalf of Front Row Media Pvt. Ltd. and printed at The Indian Express Pvt. Ltd., A-8, Sector-7, Noida-201 301 (U.P.) and published from First Floor, Pratap Bhawan, 5 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110 002. Editor: Durbar Ganguly, Executive Editor: Arya Rudra. Email: durbarganguly@gmail.com, Tel. No. 011-47777500

PANORAMA 10panorama10, a group exhibition of paintings and sculptures by contemporary artists, will be held at the Lalit Kala Akademi. This exhibition is dedicated to the undying spirit and enthusiasm of the promising and talented artists: a rarity in the 21st century cosmopolitan life where people hardly get time to appreciate art and aesthetics.WHEN: March 18 – 24 WHERE: Gallery No. 5, Lalit Kala Akademi TIMINGS: 11:00 am - 7:00 pm

FILM SCREENING‘Banaras: Ka’ba-e-Hindostan: Ghalib’s Ode to Banaras: Charagh-e-dai’, a film by delhi based filmmaker Beenu Rajpoot, will be screened on March 16. The movie is a tribute to eminent

Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib. Beenu’s movies are usually based on Indian art, culture and literature with thought-provoking message to society. Padma Bhushan Dr Uma Sharma will be present as the chief guest during at the screening. WHERE: Conference Hall -1 Jamia Hamdard UniversityWHEN: March 16TIMING: 4:00 pm

MUSICAL EVENINGTime Machine will be hosting a soulful musical evening with Bismil, a multi-genre band who would perform live to engross the audience with their classic music. The band will perform foot tapping retro and Bollywood hits to sway people off their feet. WHEN: March 16WHERE: Time Machine, Sector 38 A, Noida TIMINGS: 9:00 pm

DAYINDAYOUT What’s on Around Town

OUR CORRESPONDENT

The 31st edition of ‘Amazon India Fashion Week’ finally kicked off in the National Capital, with more than 100 designers showcasing

their work. The event, which is scheduled from March 14 to 18, is taking place in Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

The show was opened by Samant Chauhan, whose collection featured out-fits, mostly in shades of black and grey along with embroidered designs and ruf-fled detailing.

Designers Ashish N Soni launched the Autumn-winter 2018 range – a menswear collection that focuses on palette extremes of pitch black and pure white. In its pursuit of modern royalty, this is a collection that would aspire to attend the met gala or any other occasion that required an overt dis-play of class and sophistication.

With the collec-tion predominantly in shades of black and white – keep-ing a largely mono-chrome look, the

designer’s minimal-istic aesthetic shines through. These col-ors form the perfect background for the experimental sil-houettes that pave the way forward. The collection may be devoid of colour but is certainly not devoid of energy. All pantsuits have

textured sur-faces andare in a variety of jac-quards which create a unique base of other-wise restrained detailing and dimensions.

Also, Gauri and Nainika, who for the first

time presented their collection together at the fashion week, focussed on women’s wear. Going along with the spirit of the moment, Gauri and Nainika Fall Winter 18 speaks of bold femininity and strong women.

Romantic and grand, the collection has been designed for women who flourish in their femininity. Dramatic textures, full skirts, enormous 3D hand embroidered flowers, delicately pleated tulle are some of the elements seen in this stark black and white collection.

Next in the line, Adarsh Gill X Sofiya Azad, showcased the Autumn Winter col-lection 2018. Inspired by the 1950’s look, the collection bridges the gap between clas-sic influences and modern forms. Adarsh Gill has achieved a perfect balance of old Hollywood elegance along with comfort.

Abraham & Thakore presented a trans-seasonal collection, taking inspiration from the streets of Delhi. Battling with the crowded thoroughfares of the NCR, the multicoloured pageantry of street life lifts the tedium. The incredible array of colours, fabrics, and silhouettes is an uplifting tes-tament to the diversity and the sheer joy of dressing, in the midst of the cacophony and the ever-rising PM levels. From hoodies to ghagras, skinny jeans to salwars, jutis to trainers, a multitude of stylistic influences

are mixed and re-mixed.The colour palette ranges from soft kha-

kis and creams to shades of coral and olive green and is juxtaposed with black and white. Cotton and silk fabrics form the base, and textures and sheers are contrasted with opacity.  

Anupama Dayal’s collection ranged from dreamy white colored outfits to brighter hues, quirky designs, and asym-metric hems. She has worked with tradi-tional chikankari karigars on white but has also adapted the timeless needlecraft to contemporary looks.

On the occasion of Pearl Academy celebrating 25 years of creative impact, renowned alumni also showcased their col-lections. Designers presented ‘Influence’, a showcase that took audiences on a journey of fashion through CRAFT which is the heart of Indian fashion.

This collection was inspired by evolv-ing trends in the fashion industry and how Pearl alumni have contributed the growth of fashion in India over the years. Indus-try experts, fashion bloggers, and media received each design with a loud applause, every time the model sashayed down the ramp. Pearl Alumni who presented their collections included Nikhil Mehra, Man-dira Wirk, Leon Vaz, Rimzim Dadu, Vaish-ali S, Sumiran Kabir and others.

(L-R) Ashish N Soni, Gauri, Vani Kapoor, Nainika

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Odisha Parba 2018, a three-day mega celebration in the heart of India’s

National Capital, received an overwhelming response from the visitors. People from various foreign countries relished the authen-tic taste of Odisha and experi-enced the essence of the rich cultural ethos at this event. Over two lakh visitors were thrilled with joy to witness Odisha’s magnificent jour-ney from the ancient era to the illustrious contemporary times.

Organized by Odia Samaj, Odisha Parba 2018 is a celebra-tion of Odisha’s culture, tradi-tion, heritage. it was inau-gurated on March 9 at India Gate Lawns, New Delhi. Rajnath Singh, Min-ister of

Home Affairs, GOI, was the chief guest of the valedictory ceremony whereas Mahesh Sharma, Cultural, and Tour-ism minister marked his pres-ence as the guest of honor. Among other dignitaries were Bhartruharai Mahtab, Member of Parliament, Padma Shree Sudarshan Sahoo, Padma Shree Aruna Mohanty, San-gram Dhar and Sidharth Prad-han, Odia Samaj President.

Speaking on the occasion, Rajnath Singh said “Today, because of this mega event we all have witnessed a mini Odisha at India Gate. I would like to congratulate Odia Samaj for successfully organising such a grand

fest that made us aware of the rich culture, heritage, and tra-dition of Odisha.”

One of the main highlights of this three-day extravaganza was authentic Odia food that not only evoked the nostal-gia of Odia people but also indulged the sense of the bon-vivant Delhiites.

From mouth-watering snacks to lip-smacking des-serts, from hearty veg-non-veg thali to exotic seafood, people got a huge platter to relish on.

On the second day, a first of its kind fashion show was

organized that show-cased hand woven beautiful textiles from Odisha.

Three renowned designers, Divya Sheth,

Shruti Sancheti and Raas pre-sented a spectacular collection to celebrate this unique amal-gamation of Odiya craft and fashion.

On its final day, Odi-sha Parba commenced with a series of enthralling fusion Paika Nacha and Bagha Nacha. Odissi performances by Padma Shri Aruna Mohanty mesmerized the audience. Also, musical performances by Bollywood singer Krshna Beuraa filled people with joy. Odia song by ‘Hati Saja Kara’ by Susmita Das was another attraction.

Moreover, contempo-rary dance Kalinga Gatha along with Aranya Dhwani, Kalanga Danda, Dakul was also performed.

3-day festival that relishedCULTURE OF ODISHA

OUR CORRESPONDENT

A UNIQUE display showcasing the var-ious textiles and weaving techniques of countries belonging to the group of Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC), was inaugurated at ‘The National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum’, in New Delhi, recently.

The exhibition features traditional textiles made by, mostly, women in Latin America and the Caribbean region. A magnificent collection of over 70 pieces narrates the combined rich cultural heri-tage of these nations.

Inaugurated by Aashna Kanhai, Ambassador of Suriname, the display serves to highlight traditional attires. During her speech at the well-attended inauguration ceremony, Ambassador Kanhai acknowledged the combined efforts of GRULAC in conceptualis-ing the joint exhibition of textiles, and specially thanked Melba Pría, Ambas-

sador of Mexico for the opportunity to make this collaboration a reality. She also shared an explanation of the Koto, a traditional dress from the Afro-Suri-namese women and delivered a brief history of the traditions of textile by the Mayan weavers who were not only part of an advanced civilization of Central and North America, but also had a good sense of fashion.

Ambassador Kanhai reiterated the fact that the textiles are not bound by geographies but by traditions, in that the Mayan women weavers could easily make one believe in the sense of similar-ity with weavers of India. She declared the exhibition open by stating, “The cultural dichotomy between the Latin American and Caribbean region and India will linger in your imagination at this exhibition”.

Curated by Shruthi Issac, the exhibit will remain on display for the public until April 8, 2018.

Exhibition showcasing traditional textiles of Latin America

OUR CORRESPONDENT

CELEBRATING 70TH anni-versary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and Italy, a series of cul-tural exchanges  have been planned in India, which includes exhibitions and music. 

On March 18,  the cham-ber orchestra ‘Cameristi della Scala’, formed by the musicians of the orchestra of Teatro alla Scala di Milano, will make their debut in India with a concert at Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre. Camer-isti della Scala together with Laura Marzadori as the solo-ist will stage concerts in Cal-cutta, New Delhi, and Mumbai. The program includes music by Rossini, Paganini, Sivori, and Bazzini. 

Dr Andrea Baldi, Director Italian Embassy Cultural Cen-tre stated, “The clas-

sical music is one of the great cul-tural products for export that

Italy has pro-duced, with plenty

of masterpieces dur-ing its glorious cul-tural history.  Music is also known to be the most transversal artistic expression among different

cultures.”    “Our upcom-

ing Indian tour will be an extremely exciting experience for us since it’s the

first time we visit and per-form in your country. We will perform the Indian National Anthem at the Italian Embassy which will be a night to cele-brate the relationship between Italy and India. We have cho-sen some of the most famous themes from Opera (the fan-tasy on the themes of Traviata and Trovatore) as well as our violin virtuoso Nicolò Pagan-ini. We have also paid attention to the 20th century by choos-ing a composition from Nino Rota who wrote the wonder-ful soundtrack for the famous movie Il Gattopardo. Our young soloist, Laura Marza-dori, is not only the concert-master of Teatro alla Scala but also a very well known solo-ist” said Roberto Nigro, Coor-dinamento Generale, Cameristi della Scala.

“The message we bring for Indians is that we can’t wait to visit your country for the first time. The program we have chosen is a taste of three cen-turies of Italian musical inspi-ration. We hope the audiences will enjoy it and feel our pure joy of making music together while we drink a sip of your magic atmosphere” continued Roberto. 

India, Italy celebrate 70 years of diplomatic relations

AIFW 2018 STARTS WITH A BANG

mp city 3MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

ROUSHAN ALI

NEW DELHI: The Budget session of Delhi Assembly is all set to begin on Friday on a stormy note, with the rul-ing Aam Aadmi Party and the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party planning to corner each other over several issues, such as the ongoing sealing drive and the government-bureau-cracy tussle.

The government will table its annual Budget in the House on March 22.

Meanwhile, AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj said that he would move a resolution on Friday asking the Centre to stop the sealing drive, which is likely to be passed by the Assembly.

Bharadwaj said he has also submitted a notice for short discussion on the issue on Friday.

“I will move a resolution demanding that the Centre either pass an ordinance or bring moratorium on the seal-ing of commercial establish-ments, as it has done in the case of unauthorised colonies,” the Greater Kailash MLA said.

The Budget Session will commence with the speech of Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal in the morning on the achievements and plans of the AAP government.

In the afternoon, the House will again sit and most likely witness a heated debate.

Conventionally, the first day of the Budget session concludes after the LG's speech.

However, Friday’s session will last throughout the day, following submission of notices by legislators from both the rul-ing AAP and Opposition BJP for discussions and resolutions on sealing issues.

The formal sitting of the House will commence at 2.00 pm.

Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition Vijender Gupta said that BJP MLAs will bring an adjournment motion on a number of issues, including sealing and the government's tussle with bureaucrats.

"The Opposition will expose the government's dou-ble face and indulgence in politics on the sensitive issue of sealing, collapse of gover-nance due to mistrust with the bureaucracy and unauthor-ised continuation of Kailash Gehlot as Minister despite can-cellation of his membership...," Gupta, the Rohini MLA, said in a statement.

According to a statement issued by the Assembly Secre-tariat, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia will present the 2018-19 Budget on March 22

and on March 19 table the Eco-nomic Survey of Delhi.

The statement added that Sisodia will present the 'Out-come Budget" on March 20, where the House will be informed about the deadline of projects carried out by vari-ous departments.

In its Budget, described by AAP as the "green budget" , the government is likely to introduce a subsidy scheme for households that shift to CNG-based generator sets.

An official said that around 20 proposals will be mentioned in the Deputy CM's Budget speech.

The government has already announced several measures in its upcoming 'budget', includ-ing the promotion of CNG-based generators, third party audit of polluting industries and their switchover to Piped Natural Gas.

ROUSHAN ALI

NEW DELHI: A day ahead of the commencement of the Budget session of Delhi Assem-bly, Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel issued a state-ment that Assembly Secretary Prasanna Kumar Suryadevara has been relieved from the position, following the latter’s sudden and mysterious disap-pearance from his office since March 10.

Goel on Thursday directed that C Velmurugan, Joint Sec-retary of Delhi Assembly, will officiate as Secretary till fur-ther orders.

No official comments have yet been made over Suryade-vara’s whereabouts.

Sources in Delhi Assem-bly said that Suryadevara is on leave and likely to report back to Prasar Bharati, from where he had come on deputation in July 2016.

According to sources in

Delhi Secretariat, Suryadevara is likely to join as Secretary in Telangana Secretariat.

Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assem-bly Vijender Gupta had earlier said, "Suryadevara’s continu-ation had become a bone of contention among the Cen-tre, Assembly Speaker, Prasar Bharti and the then Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung.

“When he was repatriated to his parent office by the Cen-tre, the Assembly continued to retain him, despite the LG’s order on the contrary," Gupta had further said.

Reacting to Gupta's press statement, Speaker Goel had said the Assembly's secretary is a very "esteemed post", and he should not make "baseless allegations".

Before moving to the Delhi Assembly, Suryadevara had served in the Lok Sabha for five years and the Rajya Sabha for over six years

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said that nearly 4.5 crore patients in the Capital will be assured treatment, after the govern-ment reaches its aim to setting up 1,000 Mohalla clinics.

Jain added that the Aam Aadmi Party-led government was working fast-track towards setting up 1,000 Mohalla clin-ics in the Capital, to provide healthcare facilities to the peo-ple of Delhi.

Jain – who also holds port-folios of Public Works Depart-ment, Industries, Home and Urban Development – also said, “We have set up 164 mohalla clinics as of now and preparation is on for a total of 1,000 Mohalla clinics.”

He further noted that in the health sector, revolution-ary changes have been made in the last three years.

“In the first year of setting up of Mohalla clinics, around three crore patients received treatment, while in the second year, around four crore patients were treated. This shows that people’s faith has increased on such a health facility,” Jain said, also claiming that Delhi has become the first state in the country where free medicines are given to patients in govern-ment-run hospitals.

Mohalla clinics have been conceptualised as a mechanism to provide quality and accessi-ble primary healthcare services to the communities in Delhi at their doorstep.

Earlier, Jain had said that the government would set up a five-member managing com-mittee in each Mohalla clinic, with 100 health volunteers attached to them to effectively manage and monitor work in the clinics, and given annual honorarium of Rs three lakh.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: With the Maj-lis Park–Durgabai Deshmukh South Campus section of Delhi Metro’s Pink Line opening for the public on Wednesday, the total number of interchange stations in the Metro network has now increased to sixteen.

“These interchange stations will enable both new and exist-ing commuters of Delhi Metro to have access to a number of alternate and shorter routes from one point to another

point across Delhi-NCR, resulting into saving of time and money,” said an official of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.

According to a DMRC statement, for the first time, a record five new interchange stations have been added to the Metro network in just little over a two month-period.

Two interchange stations – i.e. Botanical Garden and Kalkaji Mandir – were added to Magenta Line in late 2017, with the opening of the Botan-ical Garden to Kalkaji Mandir

section.Three new interchange sta-

tions – i.e. Azadpur, Netaji Sub-ash Place and Rajouri Garden – came up between Majlis Park and Durgabhai Deshmukh South Campus station, with Wednesday’s inauguration of Pink Line.

The other eleven existing interchange stations are Kash-mere Gate, Rajiv Chowk, Cen-tral Secretariat, Sikanderpur, Yamuna Bank, Kirti Nagar, Dwarka Sector-21, New Delhi, Ashok Park Main, Inderlok and

Mandi House.The DMRC statement fur-

ther reads that these new sec-tions and interchange stations of Phase-III will not only help in addition of new passengers, but also realign and decon-gest some of the existing sta-tions, once the entire Phase –III becomes operational.

It also noted that after a drop in October 2017, Metro ridership has registered a steady increase.

In January 2018, the over-all ridership of Delhi Metro

was 69,000 more than the pre-ceding month. Moreover, the average monthly ridership increased further by 80,000 passengers in February.

“In December, the Delhi Metro network expanded by 12.94 km, with the opening of the Botanical Garden–Kalkaji Mandir section. The average daily ridership of this newly opened section was about 45,000 in January 2018. In addition to this, about 24,000 more commuters travelled by the Metro everyday in Janu-

ary, in comparison to Decem-ber 2017.

“In February, 2018, about 49,000 passengers travelled by Magenta Line everyday, which again indicates that in the rest of the corridors, there was an increase of over 30,000 every-day,” the statement reads.

“The highest ridership achieved in December 2017 was 25.64 lakh, while in Janu-ary 2018, the same figure stood at 26.85 lakh. The highest rid-ership ever in February is 26.98 lakh,” the official added.

SAYANTAN GHOSH

NEW DELHI: Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday joined the protest by traders at Gandhi Nagar market, on the issue of sealing drive in Delhi.

Kejriwal urged all the traders to come together across political affiliations to fight the ongoing sealing drive.

"Forget about politics and let us agitate together. I am here today not as a leader of AAP but as your Chief Minister and I will fight with you," he said.

The CM said that BJP has tried to divulge the issue by raising the notification of 351 roads, but the Delhi government has already started working on these roads.

"After repeated requests to the MCDs, we received the files last week on Mon-day. We will send the files for the Supreme Court's affiliation and the work will be done," Kejriwal added.

He further said that the only way out to stop the sealing drive is through an ordi-nance in the Parliament.

"We have requested an ordinance and raised the issue in Parliament," he said.

Earlier, the CM had called for an ‘all-party meeting’ at his residence on Tuesday, to find solutions to the problems being faced by traders due to the sealing drive in the national Capital.

The CM, on Saturday, had written let-

ters to Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari and Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken, in which he said, “We should rise above politics and come together to find a solu-tion to the problems that have risen due to sealing”.

The meeting took place at his residence, which was in attended by Maken but boy-cotted by BJP. After the meeting, Con-gress and AAP said they will work together on the issue of sealing and raise it in the Parliament.

Earlier, the CM had threatened go on a hunger strike, if the issue of sealing of com-

mercial establishments in the city is not resolved by the end of the month.

"If there is no solution to the sealing drive by March 31, I will sit on hunger strike. We will put pressure on the Centre together," the CM had told traders.

In the Budget session, scheduled to commence on Friday, the Delhi Assembly will pass a resolution against sealing and send it to the Centre, urging for an ordi-nance against it. Kejriwal has written a let-ter to the Prime Minister and the Union Urban Development Minister, urging to have the ordinance passed.

Traders must unite to fight sealing drive: CM Kejriwal attends protest by traders at Gandhi Nagar market

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at the traders’ protest in Gandhi Nagar market on Thursday PIC/MPOST

No sealing on 351 roads exposes

BJP’s stand: AAPOUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday said that the sealing drive had not taken place on the 351 roads, the notification of which for commercial and mixed land use was still pending.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had alleged that traders were suffering because of the ongo-ing sealing drive, which was a result of the government’s fail-ure to notify these roads.

However, AAP spokesper-son Dilip Pandey on Thursday said, “We asked the Corpora-tion, how many shops or busi-ness establishments on the non-notified roads were sealed? They have written (that) no sealing has taken place on 351 roads.”

He also questioned the stand of BJP leaders on the issue, claiming that the BJP was exposed by the reply and its leaders were trying to fool Delhi traders.

Refuting allegations that the AAP-led Delhi government had not been able to notify the roads for mixed use in the Cap-

ital, Pandey said the notifica-tion process was in the hands of municipal corporations which had not yet given the sugges-tions necessary to initiate the process.

Pandey said that the BJP MPs from Delhi should con-vince the Centre to bring an ordinance or amend the Delhi Master Plan 2021 to stop the sealing drive, if they really cared about traders.

“On the first day of the Bud-get session of the Delhi Assem-bly starting Friday, the party plans expose the BJP's incom-petence,” AAP chief spokesper-son Saurabh Bharadwaj said on Thusday. He added that AAP would also pressurise the Cen-tre to bring an ordinance to put an end to the sealing drive.

Around 2,490 properties

sealed since Dec: Centre

Delhi govt floats tender for 1,000 new

DTC buses

Irregularity in coop bank

referred to ACB for inquiry

CS assault: AAP MLA

Rajesh Gupta questioned

BSES Delhi discoms

announce new 5-digit helpline

NEW DELHI: About 2,490 properties were sealed in the national Capital by the four local bodies since December for violation of Delhi’s Mas-ter Plan 2021, Parliament was informed on Thursday.

Minister of State (Indepen-dent Charge) for Housing and Urban Affair Hardeep Singh Puri told the Rajya Sabha that North Delhi Municipal Corpo-ration has sealed 1,359 prop-erties, South Delhi Municipal Corporation 788, East Delhi Municipal Corporation 284 and New Delhi Municipal Council 56 properties since December 15, 2017.

However, no data was avail-able on the estimated loss of business and jobs due to sealing of properties, he said.

The minister further said that sealing of properties in the National Capital Territory of Delhi was being carried out by the local bodies concerned for violation of the provi-sion of Master Plan 2021 on the instructions of a Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee.

The sealing was carried out after a judgement, dated December 15, 2017, of the apex court, he said. AGENCIES

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: After a gap of around five years, the national Capital is all set to get a fleet of 1,000 new buses, with the Transport Department of Delhi government on Thursday float-ing tenders for procurement of 1,000 buses for the Delhi Trans-port Corporation.

‘’Tenders for 1000 DTC buses floated today. Another firm step of Delhi Government towards increasing buses and strengthening public trans-port,’’ Delhi Transport Min-ister Kailash Gahlot said in a official tweet on Thursday.

Hailing the decision by his Cabinet colleague, Chief Min-ister Arvind Kejriwal retweeted Gahlot’s tweet, and further tweeted, “A big step in improv-ing public transport.”

The Delhi Cabinet had, in January, passed the proposal to float tenders for procuring 1,000 buses for DTC.

Earlier this month, the Delhi High Court had directed the government not to go ahead with its tender to pur-chase standard-floor buses, slashing its bid to add 2,000 vehicles plying under DTC down the middle.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Amid reports of irregularities in cooperative bank Delhi Nagarik Sehkari Bank Ltd, over giving loans against fake/fictitious ITRs and illegal appointments etc, the Lieutenant Governor’s office on Thursday said that LG Anil Baijal had earlier referred the matter to the Anti Corruption Branch (ACB) for inquiry.

A statement from the LG’s office said, “The LG had referred the matter for investi-gation on October 16, last year. Already 40 appointments made by direct recruitment have been cancelled and promotion of 62 employees of the bank has been set aside. A number of FIRs have also been lodged.”

Further, on the LG’s direc-tions, the Reserve Bank of India has been requested to inquire into the matter to ensure that there are no financial irregular-ities in the running of the bank and wherever required, correc-tive and preventive measures/actions are taken.

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police on Thursday questioned AAP MLA Rajesh Gupta for over two hours in connection with the alleged assault on chief secretary Anshu Prakash last month.

The Wazirpur MLA arrived at the Civil Lines police station at around 4 pm and was ques-tioned till 6.30 pm, the police said, adding four more legisla-tors have been summoned for questioning.

On Wednesday, AAP legis-lator Rituraj Govind was inter-rogated in connection with the case. Two other MLAs -- Madan Lal and Dinesh Mohaniya -- are likely to be questioned next week.

The role of the MLAs in the case is under investigation as they were present at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s resi-dence, when the alleged assault took place on the night of Feb-ruary 19.

Last week, AAP MLAs Nitin Tyagi and Praveen Kumar were also questioned in the matter. AGENCIES

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Delhi power distribution company (discom) BSES on Thursday announced new round-the-clock helpline numbers for its sister con-cerns in the Capital -- BSES Rajdhani Power Ltd (BRPL) and BSES Yamuna Power Ltd (BYPL).

While the number for BRPL, operating in south and west Delhi, is 19123, that of BYPL, with jurisdiction in east and central Delhi, is 19122, a BSES release said.

“For services, these num-bers mirror the existing call centre numbers 39999707 (BRPL) and 39999808 (BYPL),” it said.

“Besides registering ‘no supply’ and streetlight (non-LED) complaints through these numbers, consumers can also avail/apply for a host of ser-vices like new connections, name changes, duplicate bills, resolve billing and metering queries, as well as anonymously report power thefts,” it added.

Stormy Budget session on the cards in Delhi Assembly today

Speaker relieves missing Assembly Secretary

‘1,000 new Mohalla clinics to treat 4.5 cr Delhiites’

With 16 interchange stations, Metro ridership to receive major boost

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Com-mission for Women (DCW) has ensured registration of FIR in the case of a girl sold into flesh trade by her aunt.

The matter came to light when a woman had brought the now 16-year-girl – a res-ident of Odisha’s Malkangiri district – to DCW.

She was reportedly brought to Delhi by her maternal aunt in 2013, at the age of 11.

According to DCW, her aunt initially sent her to dance classes in Munirka, gave tuition classes to the girl at her home and then kept her as a babysit-ter in the house.

One day, the girl was shifted to a house in Safdarjang, where she was forced to have physi-cal relations with a man. Sub-sequently, the aunt regularly sent her to different men – up to eight a day – for three years.

“According to the girl, she got pregnant once. But her aunt aborted the pregnancy by forc-ing her to consume some pills. The girl said that she was taken

to bars and different hotels in Delhi by her aunt for prostitu-tion. Also, the aunt’s husband and their domestic help used to repeatedly rape the girl and physically assault her,” claimed DCW.

One day, the girl escaped from her aunt's house and was brought by a lady to DCW.

The Commission took immediate cognisance of the matter and sent a team along with the girl to Safdarjang Enclave. Based on her com-plaint, Delhi Police eventually registered an FIR under rel-evant sections of the IPC and POCSO Act.

Her aunt and four other accused were arrested and raids are being conducted at several places to nab other accused.

DCW Chief Swati Jai Hind said, “Delhi has become a hub of human trafficking. It is sad that wide-scale prostitution rackets are being run in Delhi. Delhi Police should strengthen its information gathering mechanism. Strictest punish-ment should be given to per-petrators of such heinous acts."

DCW ensures FIR in case of girl forced into

flesh trade by auntNEW DELHI: The CBI on Thursday told the Delhi High Court that its efforts to trace self-styled preacher Virender Dev Dixit, who had allegedly confined several women at an ashram here, have not yielded results so far.

The agency has informed that Dixit “is absconding and has not joined investigation and efforts are being made to trace him in Nepal,” a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar said.

Officials of Dixit’s North West Delhi ash-ram, from where girls and women were rescued, also told the court that they were not aware of his whereabouts as he does not stay long at one place and keeps moving from ashram to ashram delivering sermons.

The submissions were made before the bench which asked CBI to explore additional steps, including issuing a Look out Circular (LOC) to trace Dixit, who according to the agency could be hiding in Nepal, where too he has set up ash-rams or institutions.

The court asked the CBI to file a fresh sta-tus report about the efforts made by it to trace Dixit and listed the matter for hearing on May 8.

The bench also said that the ashram should not keep the women and girls locked up in the building or in cages. The inmates were kept in “animal-like” conditions behind metal doors in a “fortress-like” building surrounded by a barbed wire fence.

Meanwhile, Dixit’s ashram told the court that it has changed its name from ‘Adhyatmik Vishwa Vidyalaya’ to ‘Adhyatmik Vidyalaya’ and the requisite modifications have been made on

its website, You Tube channel and the building itself, located in Rohini.

Taking note of the submission, the court asked the institute to file an affidavit stating the changes it has made. It also directed it to ensure that all printed material it distributed bore the new name and no material should include the word ‘vishwavidyalaya’ in its name.

The name was changed on the basis of an earlier direction by the high court.

When the court asked the institute’s lawyer about the whereabouts of Dixit, the advocate said the ‘leader’ never stayed for long at one place and has been going around delivering sermons since 1998 and therefore, no one knows where he is.

To this, the bench asked the lawyer to state the name of one ‘leader’ who is behaving in this fashion.

It asked the committee appointed by it to conduct random inspection of the ashrams run by Dixit in Delhi to ascertain the health condi-tion of the inmates there.

Unable to trace Rohini ashram founder: CBI tells Delhi HC

The court asked the CBI to file a fresh status report about the efforts made by it to trace Dixit and listed the matter for hearing on May 8

AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj said that the party plans expose the BJP's incompetence on the sealing issue

Three interchange stations were added to Pink Line, with the opening of the Majlis Park to Durgabai Deshmukh South Campus section PIC/PTI

mp city4MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

PIYUSH OHRIE

GURUGRAM: Having faced a lot of negative reactions on the treatment of Adhya Singh, there can be more troubles in store for Fortis hospital Guru-gram on the issue of credibil-ity, ethics and patients trust. In the latest case of medical neg-ligence involving the hospital, the district health department has blamed its management for the death of one-and-a-half year-old Vansh.

Suffering from a rare enzyme deficiency, the patient was admitted in the hospital in April last year for the bone marrow replacement. However, he breathed his last on May 15, 2017 after contracting infec-tion during the course of treat-ment. Alleging that the patient was not provided an infection-free room by the hospital that resulted in the death of Vansh, his parents filed a complaint against the hospital with the district health department. They also alleged that the hos-pital charged them a bill of Rs 27 lakh that was way more than the bill amount of Rs 13 lakh that was agreed upon.

In a major relief to

aggrieved parents, the district health department in its report stated that as the infection-free room was not provided to the patient, it subsequently resulted in the loss of a young life. Ironi-cally this case occurred four months before the Adhya case that not only affected its repu-tation but also compelled the Haryana government to take stringent action against the pri-vate hospital.

On September 14 last year, Adhya was contracted den-gue and succumbed to her illness after the disease got complicated. Questions, how-ever, were raised on the medi-

cal treatment provided to the patient. During her 15 days stay at Fortis hospital in Gurugram her parents were charged an amount of Rs 16 lakh.

The expression of anger against the private health-care system in the city is not a recent phenomenon. How-ever, deaths and exploitation of minor patients in quick succes-sion in some of the private hos-pitals have resulted in a group of citizens to demand action against erring hospitals.

The government on their part has claimed that lack of law in the state has tied the hand of authorities towards

taking strict action against err-ing hospitals.

After action against Fortis hospital in Gurugram, people who have been victims to the malpractices of other private hospitals in Gurugram now want action against the man-agement of other hospitals. Not only Fortis but there has been other private hospitals in the city where recently shock-ing incidents of negligence and apathy took place.

The statement from the Fortis hospital said, “While we have not received any formal information from any author-ity, we strongly refute all allega-tions of negligence in the case related to Vansh. The patient was suffering from Hunter’s Disease (Mucopolysacchrido-sis Type 2 ), a rare genetic dis-order with very high mortality rate for which he underwent bone marrow transplant,

“The child was treated as per best medical protocol avail-able in the country. While the pain and despair of the family is understandable, blaming the doctors and hospital is unfair without understanding the medical facts of the case,” the statement further said.

Kid not provided infection-free room by Fortis hospital in Gurugram, confirms report

DEATH OF 18-MONTH-OLD BOY

The district health department has blamed management of Fortis hospital Gurugram for the death of one-and-a-half year-old Vansh

PIYUSH OHRIE

GURUGRAM: Even after a major fire tragedy in Guru-gram hospital last year, it seems that most of the medical insti-tutions do not give high con-siderations on the fire safety. The reply to the RTI filed by Mohit Khatana reveals that there are 15 private hospitals in the city that are operating without the fire safety clear-ance. What seems to even more shocking that even the two sole government hospi-tals that are situated in Sadar and Sector 10 area also do not have the fire NOC.

It is estimated that there are more than 300 private hospi-tals and clinics that are opera-tional in the city. According to official sources, most of these institutions have not applied for fire safety clearance. Medi-cal institutions that are oper-ating without the NOC pose life threatening risk to thou-

sands of patients. Since these units are situated in densely populated areas, the difficulty for rescue operations increases as was witnessed in the fire at Sheetla hospital.

According to law, it is man-dated that any building that is 15 metres in height must renew their NOC on fire safety after every year, yet most of the pub-lic buildings do not adhere to the rules. There are over 200 high-rises that have not renewed their fire NOC.

A major tragedy was averted after the fire broke out at Sheetla hospital in July last year due to short circuit in the AC of the rooms. Quick response by the hospital staff and proximity of the fire bri-gade station saved lives of more than 40 patients. Most of these patients were admitted in ICU and children ward. Though there were no casualties, two people sustained burn injuries while rescuing the patients.

PRIDE OF THE FORCE

Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik meeting Babu & Babe, the winner of gold & bronze medals, at All India Police Meet held in Chennai, Tamil Nadu

RAHUL SINGH

GREATER NOIDA: In a fatal road accident, five persons of a family, including three children died while five others were critically wounded when a speeding truck rammed into a station-ary Wagon-R car near Fauzi Dhaba in Deri Maccha village of Badalpur area in Greater Noida on late Wednesday night, police said on Thursday.

According to police, the incident occurred at around 12:30 am on Thurs-day. The deceased have been identi-fied as Manveer Singh (38), son Arjun (12), daughter Khushi (6), sister-in-law Neetu (26), and her daughter Nisha (8).

Police said that the accident took place while they were returning after attending a marriage ceremony in Bhovapur village in Ghaziabad. All the victims hail from Dadri area.

Among the injured were Sanju (32), Prashant (4), Deepanshu (2), Kashish

(5) and Anjali (14)."The family was returning after

attending the marriage ceremony of Manveer's nephew. All the victims belong to same family. The incident occurred when Manveer who was driv-ing the car had parked the vehicle at a Dhaba," said Mukesh Kumar, station house officer, Badalpur police station.

Police said that the driver of the speeding truck lost his control and rammed into the car.

"The truck loaded with goods was coming from behind and when it hit the car, all the occupants were present inside the car. The intensity of the col-lision was such that the car was badly crushed," added Kumar.

Passersby informed the police about the incident and police somehow res-cued the victims from the mangled car. They were then taken to Sarvodaya Hospital in Ghaziabad where doctors declared five as brought dead while

those who managed to survive are stated to have suffered multiple griev-ous injuries.

The truck driver fled the spot after the incident. The police have seized the truck and are trying to trace the owner with the help of vehicle’s registration number which is stated to be regis-tered in Delhi.

Family members and rela-tives blocked the National Highway demanding arrest of the accused driver.

Police said that a case of death due to negligence has been registered against the truck driver. “We have registered a case under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 279, 338, 304A and 427 against the unidentified truck driver and have launched a manhunt to arrest the accused truck driver," Kumar continued.

Five of family die as speeding truck rams into stationary car ABHAY SINGH

NEW DELHI: Driving a cab for more than 1,000 kilometers to dry state Bihar only to supply illegal liquors is the new trend used by bootleggers. Police claimed that the new modus operandi was revealed after the arrest of the 45-year-old man from MB Road on Wednesday.

According to police, the accused identified as Amit Kumar, a native of Meerut was living in a rented accom-modation in Sec 51, Noida. The accused with his associ-ates were using rental car for the supply of illegal liquors in Bihar. Police sources told Mil-lennium Post that they started the modus operandi from December 2016 and more than 40 trips were made by the accused. The team who made the arrest was led by Inspec-tor Richpal Singh from Special Staff under the close supervi-

sion of Kulbhushan Sharma ACP (Operation) South District.

During the investigation, the accused disclosed that they had a plan that if the vehicle will be caught by police the cab company will bear the loss of the car and they used to hire the cab for some period in which the liquor was supplied.

“The cab companies never checked who was driving their cab. One of the accused used to book the cab through the mobile application and then it was driven by other accused to

Bihar,” said the police source.Deputy Commissioner of

Police (South) Romil Baan-iya stated that the gang has a unique modus operandi of transporting illicit liquor from Gurugram to Bihar through Delhi. The team has recovered 20 cartons of illicit liquor. In a bid to expand their business, cab owners have obtained a fleet of vehicles registered in the different state. To sustain in the competition, many cab owners allow their vehicles to users without the driver. With-out any co-passenger, they eas-ily bypass thorough checking.

“In past time, the accused obtained the rental taxi and used it for the supply of illicit liquor. Accused preferred to hire new models of high-end car to avoid suspicion of trans-porting liquor,” said the DCP. Accused Kumar obtained Rs 10,000 per trip for delivering the consignment.

The mangled remains of the car after the accident in Greater Noida

To dodge police, bootleggers drove high-end rental cars to Bihar

Accused Amit Kumar

15 private hospitals operating sans fire NOC

PIYUSH OHRIE

GURUGRAM: Intense sum-mer heat may be yet to peak in Gurugram but shortage of water has already hit various parts of Gurugram. A major challenge for the Gurugram authorities however remains of not only providing adequate supply but also clean drink-ing water.

Impure drinking water and presence of large amount of minerals in the ground water reserves seems to be a major concern in districts of South Haryana. The worse impact of this is being felt in the Mewat region where it is believed that large number of cancer cases that is being reported is due to consumption of contaminated

water. This issue was recently raised in the budget session of Haryana Vidhan Sabha. Speak-ing on the issue the Haryana Chief Minister ML Khattar advocated the formation of committee of Southern Hary-ana districts led by Gurugram and Faridabad to deal with the challenge. Water borne dis-eases also affected Gurugram last year as the city reeled under Diahorrea epidemic.

Medical experts highlight Over 30 percent of the Diahor-rea cases in the city were e due to consumption of contami-nated food and water. Worry-ingly, there were large number of minors and infants that were affected by the disease. The seriousness of the situa-tion came to fore when on a on

a single day there were more than 20 patients from Om Vihar suffering from Diahor-rea registered themselves for treatment in the Civil hospital.

Many residents especially in the old Gurugram area have registered their complaints with supply of unclean water.

The increase in the num-ber of Diahorrea cases had prompted the district health department to collect the water samples from thirteen promi-nent areas in the city. Shock-ingly out of the seventy five water samples collected forty failed the test while the rest have been marked as suspect. Last year also it was observed that supply of drinking water to 174 areas in the city was unfit for drinking.

NEW DELHI: A 26-year-old JNU Ph.D scholar, who had gone missing on March 11, informed her parents on Thursday that she was fine and had ‘gone out’, police said. The matter came to light after her family lodged a complaint on March 12 at the Vasant Kunj police station, they said.

"The missing student has said that she had gone out on her own. She is fine," said Dep-uty Commissioner of Police, SouthWest, Milind Dum-bere. The woman had spo-ken to her family on March 10 but from March 11, her phone was switched off, they said. Police said that after her family's attempts to trace her did not yield the result, they approached them with a com-plaint. The matter is being probed, they said. MPOST

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The reason behind the murder of financier in South Delhi's Malviya Nagar was a loan which the accused was unable to pay to deceased who usually insulted him on this issue. Police claimed that they arrested four men and apprehended one juvenile on Wednesday. The accused were identified as Dinesh (22), Man-jot Singh (48), Rajender Singh (33) Rohit Takhur (30) and one juvenile.

On February 8, an informa-tion about quarrel at L-Block, Malviya Nagar was received. It was learned that a man identi-fied as Sanjay Chawla (47) was stabbed by unknown persons.

During the treatment, he died.Deputy Commissioner of

Police (South) Romil Baaniya stated that during the investiga-tion of the case, it was revealed that the deceased used to pro-vide loan against interest on monthly basis. The suspicion arose on Manjot Singh who used to take the loan from deceased. Some CCTV footage was also scrutinized in which the accused were seen roaming around the scene of the crime.

Police claimed that on March 14, they got an informa-tion that two accused (Dinesh and juvenile) will visit Ganda Nala in Chirag Delhi. A trap was laid and accused were nabbed.

During interrogation, the

accused disclosed that they committed the murder of the financier at the instruction

of Rohit, Kale and Vicky and received Rs 35,000 for this act. From the instance of Dinesh,

his associates were nabbed.During probe, Manjot

Singh disclosed that he took a loan of Rs 52 lakh from the deceased against monthly interest. Sometimes when he was unable to pay the interest, the deceased Sanjay Chawla usually insulted him. So he decided to take the revenge. Therefore he hatched a con-spiracy with the accused

“In order to execute the conspiracy, Dinesh and juve-nile did recce of the office and residence of the deceased. On February 8, Dinesh with the help of juvenile followed the deceased from office to resi-dence and Dinesh stabbed the deceased while juvenile kept a watch,” police said.

Unable to pay loan of Rs 52 lakh, man killed financier in Malviya Nagar

MAN THRASHED BY THE GROUPNEW DELHI: A man was thrashed by a group of few persons, who were allegedly known to the victim in North West Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar area. A video emerged thereafter, wherein the man was seen ly-ing and people had gathered around him, for help, but none came for help. The victim was identified as Arvind, who lives with his family in Mukundpur and works as a driver. The incident was reported on March 11, he was in his home when one of his neigh-bour asked him to come along with him as he wanted to drop a few items. When they were on their way, the victim received the phone call from one of the accused who told him that he brought alcohol and asked him to reach near a bridge. The victim reached the place where he was thrashed by the accused over money. One of them started smashing the bottles on his head. They then threw him out of the car and ran over him. The alleged video shows the man asking people to help him out since he cannot breathe and move, but the onlookers made videos instead, say-ing that they would not touch him until the cops and ambulance arrives.

LABOURER FALLS TO DEATH AT UNDER-CONSTRUCTION DMRC HOSTELNEW DELHI: A 35-year-old labourer fell from the ninth floor of an under-construction DMRC hostel in north-west Delhi’s Shastri Park on Thursday, the police said. The deceased, Kunkun Paswan, belonged to Bihar. He was working as a labourer at the under-construction DMRC hostel. While he was involved in plasterwork, he fell to his death on Thursday, the police added. Po-lice have registered a case against the supervisor and are probing whether there were other people whose negligence triggered the incident.

CITY BRIEFS

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: A 12-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by her neighbour in South West Delhi's Vasant Kunj area. Police claimed that they have arrested the accused.

According to police on Wednesday, a PCR call was received at 11.00 am at Vas-ant Kunj South police station about sexual assault upon a 12 years old girl child. Vic-tim child stated that she was alone at her home. Her neigh-bor Bijender Choudhary came inside her house and locked the door. Thereafter, he sexu-ally assaulted the girl child. She cried for help and upon hear-ing her screams her aunt came for rescue. Accused Bijender ran away from there.

Deputy Commissioner of

Police (South West) Milind Dumbere stated that the vic-tim was sent for medical exam-ination at Safdarjung Hospital. On the basis of the statement of girl child, a case under section 354/376 IPC and section 6 &10 POCSO Act was registered.

During investigation accused Bijender has been arrested and sent to judicial custody.

According to Delhi Police data around 2,049 rape cases were reported in the year 2017 and the investigation in the rape cases revealed that 38.99 percentage of accused were friends or family friends whereas the involvement of neighbors in the rape was 19.08 percent. Relatives were also found in the involvement of rape cases as their percent-age was 14.20.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: JNU adminis-tration has removed the chair-persons of centres and deans of schools who from day one have been protesting against JNU VC over compulsory attendance. Reacting over the sudden change of teachers, stu-dent’s union has locked several cenres.

According to the JNUSU statement, on Wednesday night in a circular JNU administra-tion appointed a set of pro-administration teachers to these posts, going to the extent of placing teachers from some other department to head these department and schools.

JNUSU further condemns moves by JNU VC and his administration as dictato-rial and highly detrimental.

JNUSU also salutes students of French (SL), CHS (SSS), SAA and other centers, who locked down their respective centres against administration’s deci-sion to change chairpersons and dean.

“In a draconian manner, the Vice Chancellor has dis-missed our dean Kavita Singh as dean of school for non-compliance with attendance. She's been replaced by Mazhar Asif, who has the distinction of simultaneously being an external member nominated by the MHRD to the JNU EC, a Professor of Persian with a specialisation in Sufi thought, the Chief Coordinator of the Linguistic Empowerment Cell, and a hostel warden, all within three months of joining JNU (yes, he is on probation!), said a student of Phd at JNU.

Deans transfer: JNU students shut centers

JNU scholar is safe: Police

Four men have been arrested while one juvenile has been apprehended by the police

Water supply hit in Gurugram ahead of peak summer

Man assaults minor neighbour

mp nation 5MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

OUR CORRESPONDENT

LUCKNOW: Enthused by his party’s strong showing in the Gorakhpur and Phul-pur bypolls, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav indi-cated on Thursday that his party was keen on burying its bitter rivalry with Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party say-ing sometimes “past incidents have to be forgotten”.

Yadav, whose party wrested both the high-profile seats from the ruling BJP with BSP’s back-ing, claimed the victory margin of his candidates would have been larger, had paper ballots been used.

Speaking to reporters here, Yadav also said that his par-ty’s relations with Congress too continued to be good.

On Wednesday, in a scene which seemed unimaginable only till the recent past, Yadav had rushed to the residence of the BSP supremo shortly after his candidates emerged victori-ous and thanked her.

“Samajwadis always give due respect to all and that is why today we have good rela-tions with all. People were recalling old incidents but sometimes they have to be for-

gotten,” Yadav told mediaper-sons here.

The SP and the BSP, bitter foes of UP politics, have been at daggers drawn ever since the infamous state guest house case of 1995. In June 1995, Sama-jwadi Party workers, who were angry with Mayawati for with-drawing support to Mulayam Singh Yadav, had targeted the BSP chief who was present at

the state guest house on Meera Bai Marg here.

Following SP’s win in the bypolls, there has been much speculation about UP’s two biggest regional parties join-ing hands to take on a formi-dable BJP in the 2019 general elections.

On ties with the Congress, with which SP had an electoral truck in the last Assembly elec-

tions, Yadav said the good rela-tions would continue.

“We both are young and together will have to find a way out to the problems fac-ing the country. Rahul Gandhi has congratulated me as well as other senior leaders and I have thanked them all,” Yadav said referring to the Congress chief.

To a volley of questions on the future course of action, the

SP chief remarked, “No one can say anything about the future.”

When his attention was drawn to the Congress cam-paigning against his party in the by polls, the former chief minister stressed “only those who forget old things are successful.”

He said the previous SP government in Uttar Pradesh presented an example of devel-opment before the country.

Despite the victory of his candidates, Yadav raised ques-tions about EVMs.

“Had the EVMs worked smoothly and no time was wasted, the victory margin of Samajwadis would have been much bigger.

In several of them (EVM machines), votes had already been cast (even before the pro-cess of polling began). We have complained about it and Elec-tion Commission should take note of it,” he alleged.

The ballot system is the best way of voting as it helps people vent their anger, he said.

“The entire anger of the vot-ers could not come out through the EVMs, had the ballot been used the impact of the anger would have been clear,” he stressed.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

CHANDIGARH: Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Thursday said the BJP may call for early Lok Sabha elec-tions after its stunning defeat in the parliamentary bypolls in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, whose gam-ble of backing the Samajwadi Party for the bypolls in Gor-akhpur and Phulpur in the state paid rich dividends, said the idea was to teach the party a lesson.

Addressing a rally here, she labelled the Narendra Modi government at the Centre a “dictatorship” and alleged that it had “surpassed” the Emergency imposed by the Congress government in 1975.

Mayawati also accused the government of weaken-ing democracy and making constitutional organisations and the media ineffectual.

“In Uttar Pradesh, we wanted to teach the BJP a les-

son and decided to support SP candidates so that it loses the seats earlier held by the chief minister and deputy chief minister... They have lost their sleep with this result,” she said.

The BJP lost out to the SP in both Gorakhpur and Phul-pur, the former vacated by Chief Minister Yogi Adity-anath and the latter by his Deputy Chief Minister Kes-hav Prasad Maurya when they were elected to the legislative council. The BJP also lost the Lok Sabha bypoll in Araria in Bihar.

“With yesterday’s result, there is great possibility that the BJP will advance the Lok Sabha polls, which are other-wise to be held in 2019,” May-awati said.

The party, she added, may hold Lok Sabha polls along

with assembly elections in seven-eight states.

“They know that the more they delay, the more damag-ing it can be for them,” she said at the rally.

Referring to allegations of EVM tampering, she said only ballot papers should be used in the forthcoming elections.

Urging people not to let political outfits like the BJP come to power again, the BSP chief said most people were disappointed with the performance of the BJP-led government at the Centre and warned them against “false and tempting poll promises”.

“Modi had given the slo-gan, ‘Na khaunga, na khaane dunga’ to eliminate corrup-tion. But scams worth crore of rupees have surfaced involv-ing people like Lalit Modi, Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi, which proved that slogan hol-low. These corrupt people are enjoying their lives in foreign countries with the tacit sup-port of the government,” she alleged.

UP BY-ELECTION RESULTS

Let bygones be bygones on past rivalry: SP to BSPAkhilesh says victory margins would have been higher if no EVM problem

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav addresses a press conference at party headquarters in Lucknow on Thursday PTI

BJP may go for early Lok Sabha polls after defeat: Mayawati

OUR CORRESPONDENT

GONDA (UP): After BJP’s defeat in Lok Sabha by-elec-tions in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur and Phulpur con-stituencies, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Aditya-nath on Thursday cancelled his scheduled visit here because of “unavoidable reasons” and sent his deputy Dinesh Sharma in his place.

Adityanath was sched-uled to take part in the ongo-ing All India Lok Kala Sangam at Deendayal Shodh Sansthan today.

The organisers of the pro-gramme said that the chief minister’s visit has been put off due to unavoidable reasons.

Meanwhile, on BJP’s loss in the bye-elections, the dep-uty chief minister said, “Vic-tory and defeat are part of politics...the party had posted

an impressive win in the local body elections prior to this.”

He said the state govern-ment has taken note of over 10 lakh students dropping out of board examinations and the process has started for appoint-ing 10,000 teachers to ensure students’ proper attendance in schools from the next aca-demic year.

“The Yogi government is committed to bring out qualita-tive improvement in the educa-tion system and has taken steps in this direction,” Sharma said, adding that steps will now be taken to effectively check cheat-ing cases in higher education.

Yogi skips event after Lok Sabha bypoll loss OUR CORRESPONDENT

PATNA: Buoyed by the bypoll victory in Bihar, RJD MLAs on Thursday staged a demonstra-tion outside the state assem-bly demanding resignation of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar over the ruling coalition’s defeat in the by-elections.

The RJD registered emphatic victories in Ara-ria Lok Sabha and Jehanabad assembly seats yesterday. The BJP was defeated in Araria though it succeeded in win-ning Bhabhua assembly seat.

The ruling JD(U) suffered a crushing defeat in Jehanabad.

RJD legislators gathered at the main gate of the state assembly and shouted slogans against the NDA coalition in Bihar.

“The results of the bypolls are an expression of pub-lic resentment against Nitish Kumar, who betrayed the man-date by walking out of ‘Maha-gathbandhan’,” RJD MLA Bhai

Virendra, who led the slogan-shouting MLAs, told reporters.

Leader of Opposition Tejaswi Yadav had last evening demanded Nitish Kumar’s resignation.

“The voters have rejected ‘double engine’ governments of NDA at the Centre as well in Bihar. Hence, Nitish Kumar should tender resignation,” he said.

HAM president Jitan Ram

Manjhi, who had quit NDA on the bypolls eve to join hands with RJD, was present with Tejaswi Yadav last evening to celebrate the victory at Araria and Jehanabad.

Tejaswi Yadav, who had attended UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s dinner for non-BJP parties on Sunday last, had spearheaded the RJD campaign for the bypolls in absence of Lalu Prasad, who is in Ranchi

jail in connection with fodder scam cases.

Nitish Kumar, who had fought the assembly polls of 2015 as part of the Grand Alli-ance comprising RJD and Congress, walked out of the coalition last year following corruption cases against his then deputy Tejashwi Yadav.

The BJP, which was till then in opposition, offered its sup-port to Kumar following which the latter formed a new govern-ment and returned to the NDA.

Meanwhile, senior BJP leader and state minister Nand Kishore Yadav rubbished the demand raised by RJD MLAs.

“They must remember that we won Bhabhua. Moreover, they should analyse the results of Araria, which comprises six assembly segments. In four of these, BJP candidates had a lead. Massive leads in just two assembly segments tilted the result in favour of the RJD can-didate,” Yadav told reporters.

RJD seeks Nitish Kumar’s resignation

RJD and Congress legislators stage a protest during an ongoing Budget session in Patna on Thursday PTI

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Union min-ister Giriraj Singh on Thurs-day claimed that the victory of RJD’s Sarfaraz Alam from Ara-ria Lok Sabha seat would make the place a hub of terrorism, which would be a danger to not only Bihar but also the country.

Singh’s controversial remarks invited strong com-ments from opposition par-ties, with RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav saying the BJP should withdraw support from Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar if it did not believe in his leadership.

A day after the BJP suffered reverses in Lok Sabha bypolls, Singh told reporters that the RJD had spawned an “extrem-ist ideology” to fulfil its politi-cal ambitions. “The RJD has started a new political culture for its political ambitions... They have spawned an extrem-

ist ideology which is a danger not only to Bihar but also to the country in the coming days. It will become a hub of terror-ism,” he claimed.

Singh, seen as a Hindu-tva hardliner within the BJP, has ignited controversies with his fiery comments in the past as well. Attacking him, Yadav tweeted, “This man is a central minister and unfortunately he is not aware that it’s his govern-ment in Bihar and Delhi.”

“If he and the BJP don’t believe in Nitish Kumar’s lead-ership, then why don’t they ask him to step down or withdraw support. Such a shame for Nit-ish Kumar,” he said.

Alam had defeated BJP’s Pradeep Kumar Singh by over 60,000 votes. During the campaign for polls, Bihar BJP president Nityanand Rai had claimed that Araria would become an “IS (Islamic State) den” if the RJD won from there.

RJD win will make Araria hub of terrorism: Giriraj Singh

OUR CORRESPONDENT

MADURAI: Rebel AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran on Thursday floated a new politi-cal party, the “Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam”, named after late Tamil Nadu chief min-ister J Jayalalithaa.

“From today onwards, we will function with a name to retrieve the great movement of AIADMK from the betrayers,” Dhinakaran told a gathering on the occasion, challenging the ruling dispensation in the state.

Dhinakaran and his fol-lowers often use the word “betrayers” to refer to the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu, led by Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his deputy, O Panneerselvam.

Announcing the name of the new party, “Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam”, roughly translated as “Amma’s party for people’s development”, thrice to a thunderous applause at Melur, near here, Dhinakaran said it was a party of the followers of “Puratchi Thalaivi Amma” (revolutionary leader Amma).

“This party will func-tion in the name of Amma...

The Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam will capture power in Tamil Nadu,” he said.

Before announcing the party name and unveiling its flag, Dhinakaran traced their background.

He recalled that the original party name -- AIADMK -- and its “two leaves” symbol were frozen by the Election Com-mission (EC), following a plea by the “betrayers” -- Panneer-selvam and E Madhusudanan -- in March, 2017.

Subsequently, though the name AIADMK (Amma) was allotted to the faction led by him, eventually it could not be used since the poll panel had allotted the party name of AIADMK and the “two leaves”

symbol to the unified factions of Palaniswami and Panneer-selvam last November, Dhina-karan said.

“How long can the 1.5 crore cadres work without a name?,” he asked, adding that for the last four months, the party workers had faced difficulties in securing permissions from the authorities for party events in the absence of a party name and flag.

Under such circumstances, Dhinakaran said he approached the Delhi High Court, which directed the EC to allot the “pressure cooker” symbol and a party name of his choice to the AIADMK faction led by him.

Even during last Decem-ber’s RK Nagar bypoll, which

he won hands down with the “pressure cooker” symbol, “We made the rising sun (DMK’s symbol) lose its deposit, and the ‘two leaves’ (ruling AIADMK) managed to scrape through,” Dhinakaran added.

Regretting that party gen-eral secretary VK Sasikala could not be with them on the occasion, he said he was announcing the name of the party with her greetings and permission.

Later, Dhinakaran hoisted the new party flag on a 100-foot pole.

Party flag and Amma’s leg-acy Dhinakaran, who has the support of several dissident AIADMK workers and lead-ers, said the new outfit would capture power in the state and unveiled its flag, which fea-tures the image of a smiling Jayalalithaa.

The flag is black on top and red below with white in the middle.

The black and red colours are politically significant in Tamil Nadu and they feature in the flags of the two Dravid-ian majors -- the AIADMK and the DMK -- as well.

Dhinakaran names new party after Jaya

ARUNAV SINHA

LUCKNOW: The defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party in all six Lok Sabha seats where by-elections were held this year has sounded alarm bells in the party in Uttar Pradesh ahead of the 2019 Parliamen-tary polls, while stoking spec-ulation about the Opposition stitching an alliance together to take the BJP on after tasting success in the recent bypolls.

The BJP failed to break the jinx of repeated failures in Par-liamentary by-elections in 2018 when it was defeated yester-day in Gorakhpur, the bastion

of Chief Minister Yogi Aditya-nath, and Phulpur, earlier held by deputy Chief Minister Kes-hav Prasad Maurya.

The ruling party’s can-didates in the two constitu-encies lost to the Samajwadi Party (SP), triggering a debate on whether political outfits opposed to the BJP could forge a mega alliance before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The SP, supported by the BSP, romped home in the bypolls.

SP’s Pravin Nishad defeated Upendra Dutt Shukla of the BJP by 21,961 votes in Gorakh-pur, a seat which had been with

the BJP since 1989. Nagen-dra Pratap Singh Patel of SP cornered the Phulpur seat, drubbing the saffron party’s Kaushalendra Singh Patel by 59,460 votes.

As the results of the two by-election were declared yes-terday, Adityanath said there was a “lesson” to be learnt from the outcome, and cited over-confidence and the inability to understand the implications of the pact between SP and BSP as the prime reasons for the BJP’s defeat.

UP Congress spokesper-son Ashok Singh told PTI the outcome had brightened the

prospects of the formation of a “maha gathbandhan” (grand alliance) ahead of the 2019 polls to defeat the saffron party.

“We will ponder seriously about a larger alliance keep-ing the next Lok Sabha polls in mind,” he said.

The Congress had con-tested the 2017 UP Assem-bly polls jointly with the SP and might want to tackle the polls together next year, too, another senior party leader told PTI, requesting that he not be named.

The outcome of the March 11 bypolls has sparked talk in political circles about a con-

tinuing pact between the SP and the BSP -- once bitter crit-ics in Uttar Pradesh.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav thanked BSP head Maywati, his former arch-rival, for the sup-port the Bahujan Samaj Party gave the SP candidates in the by-elections.

“Foremost I want to thank BSP leader Mayawati for her and her party’s support in this important fight,” he told the media yesterday.

Though he did not take any questions on prospects of an alliance in the next Lok Sabha polls, saying that all he wanted to do for the present was thank

the parties which had helped SP in its “grand” victory, there is conjecture about the parties coming together to fight the BJP.

The prospect of an anti-BJP alliance meeting with electoral success was also highlighted in Bihar, where Lalu Prasad’s RJD retained the Araria Lok Sabha seat.

Its nominee Sarfaraz Alam beat the BJP’s Pradeep Kumar Singh by over 60,000 votes, dealing a blow to the JD(U)-BJP alliance, which went to the hustings for the first time after Nitish Kumar returned to the NDA fold last July.

There is growing concern in the BJP which has lost all the Lok Sabha by-elections held in 2018.

“This defeat is definitely an unexpected one,” said UP BJP spokesperson Rakesh Tripathi.

He said the possible causes would be analysed at length.

“There were some short-comings which will be reviewed at the micro-level,” he said.

Another senior UP BJP leader said the results had sounded “alarm bells” in the party.

Apart from Gorakhpur and Phulpur (UP) and Araria (Bihar), the party was defeated

in the bypolls in Ajmer and Alwar (Rajasthan) and Ulube-ria (West Bengal).

In Rajasthan, both the seats were won by the Congress --- Raghu Sharma in Ajmer and Karan Singh Yadav in Alwar.

The BJP was defeated in Uluberia, too, with the seat going to Sajda Ahmed of the Trinamool Congress.

Wednesday’s shocker for the BJP came days after its sur-prise win in three northeastern states, including Tripura, where it scripted history, demolishing the Left citadel of 25 years and forming its first government in the state. PTI

Alarm bells in UP BJP after LS bypoll defeat; talk of alliance in Oppn

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Congress pres-ident Rahul Gandhi has met NCP chief Sharad Pawar to step up efforts and put up an united front against the BJP ahead of the 2019 general elections, sources said on Thursday.

The meeting with the National Congress Party (NCP) leader comes amid the party’s poor performance and loss in the bypolls in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Gandhi met Pawar on Wednesday night within hours of the BJP’s defeat in the Gora-khpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha bypolls in Uttar Pradesh. The meeting took place at the lat-ter’s residence, they said.

It has been learnt that they discussed efforts of putting up a joint opposition front against the saffron party, the sources in the Congress said.

The meeting comes a day after UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi hosted a dinner for opposition leaders, which was attended by leaders of 20 par-

ties including the Congress.The Congress chief is also

likely to meet TMC president and West Bengal Chief Min-ister Mamata Banerjee soon. Banerjee is expected to attend a joint opposition meet being hosted by Sharad Pawar on March 28, the sources said.

The call for putting up a common front by the opposi-tion in the 2019 elections came after BJP’s Wednesday defeat in Gorakhpur and Phulpur, the constituencies of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Aditynath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya.

The Congress, which had also contested the bypolls inde-pendently and had not sup-ported the SP-BSP combine, drew a drubbing after both its candidates lost their security deposits.

Gandhi also highlighted the contribution of BSP founder Kanshi Ram on Thursday and lauded his efforts in bring-ing the downtrodden and lower castes into the political mainstream.

Rahul meets Pawar to put up united front against BJP

NEW DELHI: It seems like Uttar Pradesh chief minis-ter Yogi Adityanath has taken the setback to the BJP in the recently-concluded Uttar Pradesh bypolls in his stride. Maintaining that the results were a lesson to be learnt by the ruling party, the fire-brand leader forecast a bril-liant showing for the saffron outfit in next year’s Lok Sabha elections.

“I think this has been a les-son to the BJP and the party will do very well in Uttar Pradesh come the 2019 gen-eral election,” Adityanath told a newspaper. The saffron party was left red-faced after it was trounced in its own backyard, while also failing to break the jinx of repeated losses in Par-liamentary by-elections this year. Gorakhpur, the bastion of the chief minister, and Phul-pur, earlier held by Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya, fell to the combined onslaught of former rivals SP and BSP.

The UP CM did not spare

the brickbats and pointed out where his party had gone wrong ahead of the bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur. Admitting that the defeat was unforeseen, Adityanath blamed overconfidence for the disappointing outcome.

“I remember telling party workers: ‘elections are elec-tions, don’t take them lightly. Elections are like exams, instead of being overconfi-dent, a person should check the groundwork and review their preparation,” TOI quoted Adityanath as saying.

Things went amiss due to failure to guage the implica-tions of the electoral under-standing between the SP and BSP, he explained.

“Workers and voters become careless when they feel victory is assured. It also low-ers the voter turn-out,” Adity-anath added. Taking about EVMs, the CM said this time, they would stridently oppose its use during polls, due to alleged tampering. AGENCIES

BJP will do very well in UP in 2019 election: Yogi

MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

CBI COURT REFUSES REGULAR BAIL TO VIKRAM KOTHARI, SONLUCKNOW: A CBI court has rejected the regular bail pleas of Rotomac Global promoter, director Vikram Kothari and his son Rahul Kothari, in connection with the alleged Rs 3,695 crore willful loan default case.Earlier on March 7, the court had turned down Vi-kram's interim bail plea also. The CBI had arrested the duo accused in Delhi on February 23 and since then they have been in jail. The accused were then brought to Lucknow on transit remand after their arrest. The CBI court, on the application of premier agency, had on February 24 allowed their police remand for the purpose of interrogation in its custody.

OVER 50,000 NEW CANCER CASES REPORTED EVERY YEAR IN KERALA THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As many as 50,000 new cancer cases were reported in the state every year as per a study by WHO, Health Minister KK Shylaja told the assembly on Thursday. Breast, thyroid and cervical cancer was found to be more among women, while oral and lung in men, the minister said while replying to a calling attention to the necessity to control the increasing occurrence of cancer and kidney disease in the state. A comprehensive programme for early detection and treatment was being implemented by the government, she said.

68-YEAR-OLD MAN DUPED OF `36 L ON FALSE JOB PROMISETHANE: A 68-year-old man from Vartak Nagar has been duped of Rs 36 lakh by unidentified persons on the false promise of providing a job in a US-based company, police said on Thursday. According to police, the victim, Balwant Ranade, was looking for a job and had applied to various establishments. In June last year, he received an e-mail purportedly from a petro-leum company based in Dallas in USA.

TRIAL IN RAPE CASE AGAINST TARUN TEJPAL BEGINS IN GOA COURTPANAJI: The in-camera trial in the rape case against former Tehelka editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal began on Thursday with a district court in North Goa recording the statement of the victim. "The statement of the victim is being recorded before Additional District and Ses-sions Judge Vijaya Pol today," Public Prosecutor Francis Tavora, who represents the state police said. He said that the trial is being held in-camera with no access to media. A junior colleague of Tejpal had accused him of sexually assaulting her inside a lift at a five-star hotel in Goa during the magazine's THiNK fest event in 2013.

AIR INDIA TWITTER ACCOUNT HACKED; LATER RESTOREDMUMBAI: Air India's official Twitter account was hacked late Wednesday night and was restored on Thursday, according to the airline. After many hours of being hacked, Air India said in the afternoon that the account has been restored. Messages in Turkish language were posted on the handle @airindiain to mislead passengers, an Air India spokesperson said.

NATION BRIEFS

mp nation6

DISPROPORTIONATE ASSETS CASE

BHIMA-KOREGAON CASE

OUR CORRESPONDENT

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government on Thursday pre-sented a revenue deficit budget of Rs 17,490.58 crore for 2018-19 even as it allocated crores of rupees for welfare initiatives, including free laptop for school students.

Targeting the state gov-ernment on the Cauvery river water issue, opposition parties led by DMK, however, staged a walkout from the Assembly on the opening day of the house.

Soon after Panneerselvam began his budget speech, DMK MLAs led by leader of opposi-tion in the Assembly, MK Stalin clad in black shirt, sought the Speaker's permission to raise an issue.

As Speaker P Dhanapal declined, he led a walk out of his party MLAs.

Congress MLAs led by leg-islature party leader KR Rama-samy later followed suit.

However, the government went ahead with its budget presentation.

Betting on the investments made by it in the primary sec-tor and measures for attracting investments, Finance Minis-ter O Panneerselvam who pre-sented the budget said such measures could drive the eco-nomic growth to "surpass nine

per cent" in the current fiscal despite challenges.

He said fiscal consolida-tion against inadequate central devolution and slow growth of tax and non-tax revenues was among the challenges.

The total revenue receipts are projected to be Rs 1,76,251.48 crore and the total revenue expenditure is pro-jected to be Rs 1,93,742.06 crore during 2018-19, leaving a revenue deficit of Rs 17,490.58

crore, he said.Taking the pay revision into

account, salaries and allow-ances are estimated to be Rs 52,171.18 crore and pension and other retirement ben-efits are estimated to be Rs 25,362.20 crore in the budget estimates 2018-19, he noted.

A sum of Rs 758 crore has been allocated for providing laptops to school students dur-ing the current fiscal and sim-ilarly allocations have been made for other welfare and social security schemes.

"The economy is slowly picking up, which is evi-dent from the increase in GSDP growth rate in real terms, from 4.85 per cent in 2012-13 to 8.03 per cent in 2017-18 despite the temporary setbacks in between," the min-ister said.

As Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, holding a suitcase displaying the image of late J Jayalalithaa, entered the Assembly along with Chief Minister K Palaniswami to present the budget for 2018-19, AIADMK MLAs gave a rousing reception by thump-ing the desks.

It is for the first time that Panneerselvam is presenting the budget after joining hands with with K Palaniswami last year.

TN Govt presents revenue deficit budget of ̀ 17.5K cr

Cauvery issue: Oppn stages walkout from Chennai Assembly

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami with Tamil Nadu Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam arrive to present the budget 2018-19 in the state Assembly in Chennai on Thursday PIC/PTI

OUR CORRESPONDENT

MUMBAI: Passengers are likely to face harrowing times with IndiGo and GoAir decid-ing to cancel more than 600 flights this month, of which 488 are by IndiGo alone, fol-lowing grounding of 11 A320 neo planes with faulty Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engines.

The cancellations by the two budget carriers, which operate more than 1,200 flights daily on average, may significantly disrupt the summer sched-ule. There was no immediate clarity about the way possible compensation and alternative choices would be made avail-able to the passengers already having tickets.

IndiGo, which has the largest share in the domestic aviation market, would be can-celling as many as 488 flights during the period March 15-31. GoAir has decided to cancel a total of 138 flights between March 15-22, as per announce-ments made on their respective

websites. According to the cur-tailed flight schedule submit-ted to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and posted on the airline's website, IndiGo would not operate 36 daily flights between March 15 and March 21.

Another 18 daily flights would remain cancelled between March 22 and March 24. The number of flights can-celled between March 25 and March 31 stands at 26 per day, the airline indicated.

This takes the total number of cancelled flights to 488 till

the end of this month.The revised schedule of

Wadia group-promoted GoAir showed that the airline has can-celled seven daily flights to 10 destinations between March 16 and March 24 apart from can-celling six services per week between March 15 and March 22. On the whole, 138 flights stand cancelled.

Put together, IndiGo and GoAir have cancelled around 626 flights.

While the airlines have said that choice of alternative flights and refund would be offered for the passengers, it was not immediately clear how the pro-cess would be implemented.

While an IndiGo spokes-person said the airline follows all the guidelines as per the rel-evant provisions of the appli-cable regulations, to the same query, a GoAir spokesperson said, "We follow the process as specified by DGCA in its CAR (Civil Aviation Requirement). The same has also been pub-lished on our website."

IndiGo cancels 488 flights, GoAir 138

RANCHI: The judgement in the fourth case of multi-crore fodder scam against former Bihar CMs Lalu Prasad and Jagannath Mishra was deferred on Thursday by a CBI special court after the RJD leader's counsel filed a plea.

No date has been fixed yet for the pronouncement of judgement in the case which is related to fraudulent with-drawal of Rs 3.13 crore from Dumka Treasury (RC 38A/96).

Special CBI Judge Shiv Pal Singh put off the judgement in view of the counsel for Lalu Prasad filing a petition under 319 CrPC, asking that then three officials of the AGO in the 1990s be made a party to the case under 319 CrPC. MPOST

Verdict in 4th fodder scam case involving Lalu Prasad deferred

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: A court here on Thursday allowed former Haryana chief minister OP Chautala's son Abhay Chau-tala, accused in a dispropor-tionate assets case, to travel to Lahore in Pakistan.

Special Judge Arvind Kumar gave his nod to Abhay to travel from Thursday till March 19 to Lahore for a wed-ding on furnishing a secu-rity of Rs 2 lakh, saying there was no tangible ground made by the CBI to deny him the permission.

"The present case relates to accused having possessed assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. It is not the case of CBI that accused had tampered with evidence or there is a chance of accused absconding from justice," the court said.

"The only grievance of the CBI is that the accused had filed his application at the fag end and CBI did not get the time to verify the facts stated in the application by the accused. No tangible ground is made by the CBI for not granting the permission to go abroad," it said.

The court while allowing Abhay's plea also imposed con-ditions, including not contact-ing or influencing any witness and intimating the court prior to leaving and within 48 hours of return from abroad.

It also directed him to pro-vide his travel itinerary and an attested copy of his passport and visa once he returned.

The court had on Wednes-day reserved its order after Abhay's counsel Harsk K Sharma submitted an applica-tion before the special judge seeking permission for the accused to travel to Lahore.

The plea was opposed by the CBI, which had lodged the DA case against Abhay, his father and INLD chief O P Chautala and brother Ajay on the complaint of Congress leader Shamsher Singh Sur-jewala. Surjewala had alleged that the three accused had amassed wealth worth several times more than their income.

Objecting to Abhay's appli-cation, CBI Special Public Prosecutor Ajay Gupta had said there was an inexplicable delay in filing this plea as he made the request only on Thursday for travelling to the "enemy coun-try" on Friday.

DA case: Court allows ex-Haryana CM's son to travel to Pakistan

SRINAGAR: A BJP leader escaped a militant attack in Pulwama district of Jammu & Kashmir on Thursday, but his personal security officer (PSO) was injured in the inci-dent, the police said. Militants fired upon Anwar Khan, a BJP leader, at Balhama in Pulwama district, a police official said.

While Khan escaped the attack unhurt, his PSO, con-stable Bilal Ahmad, was injured in the incident, he added.

The injured policeman was rushed to a hospital, where his condition was stated to be sta-ble, the official said. Security forces had launched a search operation in the areas around the scene of attack on the BJP leader, he added.

"Following the leads from the Khunmoh (Balhama) inci-dent, security forces have cor-doned the area, from where the militants opened fire," the offi-cial said. MPOST

BJP leader escapes ultra attack in J&K

OUR CORRESPONDENT

HISAR (HAR): A cloned Assa-mese buffalo male calf has been born for the first time, the Cen-tral Institute for Research on Buffaloes (CIRB) claimed here.

"We used unique methods and produced this clone calf, Sach-Gaurav, on December 22, 2017 through a normal deliv-ery," CIRB cloning team head PS Yadav said on Thursday.

The calf was born to a Mur-rah buffalo. It was also the first to be born in the field, 100 kms from the cloning laboratory at Hi Tech Sach Dairy Farm here, he said.

Indian Council of Agri-cultural Research-CIRB is a central institute and it has a mandate to conserve superior animals of all buffalo breeds.

ICAR-CIRB Director Inderjeet Singh said the Assa-

mese buffaloes were found only in the north-eastern part of the country and they were used mainly for agricultural work.

He said this was the sec-ond cloned male produced by ICAR-CIRB after Hisar-Gaurav, born December 11, 2015. Hisar-Gaurav was pro-

ducing quality semen from the age of 22 months and ten females of the institute's herd were pregnant with its frozen semen.

Yadav said the birth weight of the calf was 54.2 kgs and it was in good health. It had nor-mal physiological parameters and blood profile, he said.

The genotype of the calf was confirmed by microsat-ellite analysis (parentage ver-ification) and chromosome analysis, he said.

Animal cloning can be an excellent reproductive tool for conservation and multi-plication of selected superior animals of buffalo breeds, he said.

He said it was India's first cloned Assamese buffalo calf and the embryos were trans-ported for about two hours before being transferred into the recipient mothers.

"The ovaries of Murrah buf-faloes were used as a source of recipient oocytes...Small tissue of Assamese buffalo was air-lifted from Veterinary College, Khannapara, Guwhati, 2000 km away from our cloning lab-oratory, to culture establish the donor cells," he said.

India's 1st cloned Assamese buffalo born

Representational image

OUR CORRESPONDENT

MUMBAI: Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh leader Prakash Ambedkar on Thursday demanded that the Maharash-tra government arrest Hin-dutva leader Sambhaji Bhide in the Bhima-Koregaon vio-lence case, failing which he will launch a protest.

Though Hindu Ekta Aghadi leader Milind Ekbote has been arrested, the government is yet to take Bhide into custody, he said.

A case was registered against Ekbote and Bhide, the head of the right wing outfit Shiv Pratishthan Sansthan, for

allegedly inciting the anti-Dalit violence that left a man dead near the Bhima Koregaon war memorial in Pune district on January 1.

The incident took place during an event to commem-orate the bicentenary of the Bhima-Koregaon battle.

Subsequent protests had disrupted normal life in Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra.

The Pune rural police yes-terday arrested Ekbote, after the Supreme Court turned down his anticipatory bail plea.

"We give an ultimatum to the government to arrest Bhide till March 26, failing which

we will take to the streets," Ambedkar told reporters here.

He also demanded that the judicial commission, set up under retired Justice Jai Narayan Patel, to probe the Bhima-Koregaon violence be disbanded and a sitting judge be appointed to investigate the incident. The new committee should be given powers pre-scribed under the Criminal Procedure Code, he said.

He alleged that false cases were filed against those who came out on streets to express anguish over the Bhima-Koreg-aon violence on January 1.

Meanwhile, Ambedkar also demanded that all scholarships

of students belonging to the Scheduled Castes (SCs), Sched-uled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) be given on time.

The income limit of the families of SC/ST/OBC stu-dents who seek scholarships should be increased to Rs 5 lakh and for the families of stu-dents of economically back-ward class, it should be raised to Rs 10 lakh, he demanded.

Also, the condition of 75 per cent attendance for SC, ST and OBC students to avail the scholarships should be done away with, said the Dalit leader and grandson of Dr B R Ambedkar.

Ambedkar demands Bhide's arrest by Mar 26

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The govern-ment has released Rs 3,633 crore between 2014-15 and 2016-17 for cleaning the Ganga and beautifying ghats along it, the Lok Sabha was informed on Thursday.

Minister of State for Water Resources Satyapal Singh also said in a written reply that con-struction and beautification of 228 of the total 361 ghats sanc-tioned have been completed till now under the Centre's Namami Gange programme.

Of these, 189 ghats are located along the river's stretch in West Bengal. In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand works on 20, 16, two and one ghats have been completed till date respectively,

he added.The minister said 154 prior-

ity drains and 1,109 grossly pol-luting industries (GPIs) have been identified along the river, most of which are located in Uttar Pradesh.

Of the five basin states, the longest stretch of the Ganga is in Uttar Pradesh.

Highlighting the steps taken by the government to abate pollution in the river, the minister said, Surprise inspec-tion of GPIs is carried out for compliance verification of the stipulated environmental norms."

Out of the 1,109 GPIs inspected, 538 were found to be non-complying and 358 of those were issued closure direc-tions and 180 have been given show cause notices.

Over ̀ 3.6K crore released in last 3 yrs for cleaning Ganga

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Expressing con-cern over challenges faced by online consumers, the gov-ernment on Thursday said it is taking steps to put in place adequate safeguards to keep digital marketplaces fair and secure.

Once the consumer pro-tection bill is passed in Par-liament, the government will frame comprehensive rules to regulate the e-commerce mar-ket, Consumer Affairs Min-ister Ram Vilas Paswan said at an event organised to com-memorate the World Consum-ers Right Day.

"There are issues and chal-lenges for online consumers that they normally would not face when shopping tradition-ally... Cyber crime is becom-ing a major area of concern," he added.

The openness of the inter-net, the lack of identification

and the low level of users' understanding of security, particularly among the first-time users, is a major area that requires focused efforts, he said.

The Consumer Affairs and the Information Technology Ministries are working in tan-dem to create digital awareness programmes and to deal with digital payment related griev-ances, Paswan added.

That apart, efforts are being made to formulate com-prehensive rules to regulate

e-commerce from business to consumer perspective, the minister said.

The government is on the right track in enabling the con-sumers to harness the full ben-efits of digitization and putting in place adequate safeguards against risks associated with the electronic world, he added.

In order to safeguard the interest of consumers, Paswan said, the Bureau of Indian Stan-dards (BIS) is in the process of adopting ISO Standard -- ISO 10008:2013 -- on guidelines

for business-to-consumer elec-tronic commerce transactions, for improving an effective and efficient business-to-con-sumer electronic commerce transaction system within an organization.

With rise in number of e-transactions, National Cyber-security Coordinator Gulshan Rai said more steps need to be taken to safeguard online con-sumers as e-transactions are expected to reach USD 200 bil-lion by 2025. E-transactions in the country today is more than 2.2 billion per day, while it is 60 billion transaction per day the world over, he added.

"There are issues like who is the regulator of digital mar-ket place? How do we handle the consumer grievances?... Frauds in ATMs and credit cards are very complex and solving them is a bit difficult," he said and stressed the need to take more steps to address these problems.

Govt taking steps to keep digital market fair & secure: Paswan

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The Prasar Bharati Act does not bar the appointment of IAS officers as member (personnel) on the public broadcaster's board, Union minister Rajyavardhan Rathore informed the parlia-ment today.

He was responding in the Lok Sabha to a query on whether the Ministry of Infor-mation and Broadcasting had proposed the appointment of an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer as full-time member (personnel) on Prasar Bharati Board in viola-tion of its Act. Media reports, quoting sources, had claimed that the Prasar Bharati board

in its meeting on February 15 dropped the ministry's pro-posal for appointment of IAS officer as member (personnel) as some of the board members felt that such appointments would amount to "contempt of the Prasar Bharati Act .

As per the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act, 1990, member (personnel) shall be a person having special knowledge or practical experience in respect of personnel management and administration.

The Act does not bar IAS officers from being appointed as member (personnel) on the Prasar Bharati Board. In the past, such officers have been appointed as member (per-

sonnel), Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore said in a written reply in the Lower House. He said the appoint-ment of any member on the Prasar Bharati Board was made by the president on the recom-mendation of a committee consisting of vice president, chairman of the Press Coun-cil of India and one nominee of the president. The informa-tion and broadcasting minis-try is the nodal ministry for the Prasar Bharati, which runs DDK and AIR. To another query on whether the gov-ernment had proposed to terminate the services of all contractual employees of the Prasar Bharati, Rathore said.

Rathore: Prasar Bharti Act doesn't bar appointment of IAS officers to its board

mp nation 7MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Opposition members tore papers and threw them around as relent-less protests by them and other parties disrupted proceedings in the the Lok Sabha for the ninth day on Thursday, but the government managed to get two bills passed without debate amid the din.

The proceedings of House were paralysed as opposition parties, along with ruling NDA partner TDP the TRS, stormed the Well as soon as it met and continued with their noisy pro-tests over a number of issues, including the PNB scam, spe-cial status for Andhra and increase of quota.

Speaker Sumitra Mahajan first adjourned the House till noon and then for the day.

However, the government pushed two bills - The Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Bill and The Specific Relief (Amendment) Bill, for passage amid this din and the House passed them with a voice vote without debate.

Congress leader Jyotirad-itya Scindia, whose party mem-bers were also in the Well, sought a discussion on the bills.

With continuous protests by different parties making the prospect of any discussion improbable, the Speaker went ahead with the proceedings for the passage of bills.

Opposition members were seen tearing papers and throw-ing them around in protest as the second bill was passed before the Speaker adjourned

the House for the day.Earlier, Parliamentary

Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said the Payment of Gratu-ity (Amendment) Bill was an important piece of legislation as he sought the opposition's cooperation.

The Bill notifies the period of maternity leave as part of continuous service and pro-poses to empower the central government to notify the gra-tuity ceiling from time to time without amending the law.

Moving the bill for pas-sage, Labour Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar said it is a very important legislation for employees, especially women.

The Specific Relief (Amend-ment) Bill proposes to grant a party the right to seek dam-ages from the other side in case of a breach of a business con-tract and to reduce discretion of courts in such matters.

Protests began in the House as soon as the Speaker took up the Question Hour in the morning, with members from various parties trooping into the Well holding placards.

When union minister Ram Kripal Yadav was responding to the first question on rural housing, the protesting mem-bers raised their pitch, drown-ing his voice.

Parliamentary Affairs Min-ister Ananth Kumar urged the protesting members, includ-ing the Congress, to return to their seats and allow the House to function.

He said Parliament is the 'maha panchayat' of the coun-try where issues are discussed

but disruptions were not allow-ing important issues to be raised.

He also thanked the Speaker for trying to ensure smooth functioning and said the government was open to discuss issues including bank scam, Cauvery water manage-ment board and special sta-tus for Andhra Pradesh, but the House has to function first and members have to vacate the Well.

As the protests continued, the House was adjourned till 12 noon minutes before it was adjourned till tomorrow.

While members from the Congress, TMC, TDP, YSR Congress and TRS were in the Well raising slogans and hold-ing placards, MPs from the Left were standing at their seats and shouting slogans.

Since March 5, when Parlia-ment had met after a recess, the Lok Sabha has seen disruptions on a daily basis. Amid the din, the Finance Bill and the appro-priation bills were yesterday passed by the House without discussion.

Two Bills passed amid din in LS, proceedings remain paralysed

Opposition members protest during the ongoing budget session of Parliament in the Lok Sabha, in New Delhi on Thursday PTI

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: With opposi-tion and government differ-ing over contours of debate on the biggest bank fraud, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday said Parliament should function to debate on the larger issue of frauds, dam-age they cause to the country's image and doubts created over banking system.

The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha have witnessed repeated adjournments during the sec-ond half of the Budget session that began on March 5, with opposition parties stalling pro-ceedings over issues, including Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud.

The opposition wants a debate on the issue under rules that would require voting on a resolution, the government is pressing for a short duration discussion without any voting.

Speaking at realtors' body CREDAI annual conclave, Naidu, who is also the presid-ing offer of Rajya Sabha, said he has agreed for a debate on the PNB fraud and other issues

but "unfortunately" discussion is not happening.

"Irony is members (MPs) want discussion, government want discussion and chair wants discussion but discus-sion is not taking place," he said.

Both houses of Parliament were paralysed for the ninth consecutive day on Thursday with no business except for the legislations government pushed through in the din being transacted.

"Two three instances of Nirav Modi, (Mehul) Choksi and Vijay Mallya...but they are damaging the image of the country and they are damaging the image of the system.

"People are questioning entire banking system. Is there a structural failure, is there a

collusion of people at differ-ent levels. If it is so, then why no action is taken," Naidu said.

He said there is no use in finding fault in whose regime the frauds took place.

"I hope that Parliament function and then there is a meaningful and constructive debate. Where does the fault lies," Naidu said.

"The issue is not this regime or that regime. The issue is of people losing confidence in the banking system. This is the larger issue. Who is account-able? What assurance they are giving to depositors. These are the larger issues that should be taken," Naidu said.

India's second largest lender Punjab National Bank has been hit by a fraud of about Rs 13,000 crore wherein billion-aire jewellers Nirav Modi and his uncle Choksi allegedly used fraudulent letters of undertak-ing to obtain credit from over-seas branches of Indian banks.

Naidu cautioned CREDAI not to allow black sheep and have a self code of conduct to keep defaulters and violators out of its organisation.

Parliament must debate bank frauds issue: Naidu

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The Congress on Thursday walked out of the meeting of the Business Advi-sory Committee (BAC) of Lok Sabha, alleging that the central government was adopting an "undemocratic" approach and bulldozing the proceedings in the House.

A meeting of the BAC to decide on the Lok Sabha's agenda for next week was held in Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's chamber on Thursday after-noon where leaders from a number of parties were present.

The Lok Sabha has been paralysed since March 5, when Parliament met after a recess, due to protest by various parties on issues like PNB scam, spe-cial status for Andhra Pradesh and Cauvery dispute. Amid the din, the Finance Bill and the appropriation bills were yester-day passed by the House with-out discussion and two other

bills were also pushed today by the government.

Unhappy with the passage of bills without any discussion, Congress leader and deputy chief whip of the party in the lower house KC Venugopa today stormed out of the BAC meeting and accused the gov-ernment of bypassing all dem-ocratic traditions and customs of the House.

He alleged that the govern-ment was trying to avoid dis-cussion on the PNB scam issue.

The Government had yes-terday passed the all-important finance bill and demands for grants without any discussion in the Lok Sabha.

He said on Thursday too the government went ahead with two bills without any discus-sion, although the opposition parties, including the Congress, had agreed to cooperate in pas-sage of important legislations like The Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Bill.

Cong walks out of meet on LS agenda

OUR CORRESPONDENT

GANDHINAGAR: Four can-didates -- two each of the Con-gress and the BJP -- were on Thursday elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Guja-rat, days after the last moment entry of two nominees from these parties raised the pros-pect of a contest.

Union ministers Purshot-tam Rupala and Mansukh Man-davia (BJP) and Naran Rathwa and Amee Yajnik (Congress) were declared elected unop-posed by the election authori-ties after BJP's Kiritsinh Rana and Congress-backed Indepen-dent PK Valera backed off on the last day of withdrawal of nominations today.

A total of four seats were up for grabs from the state.

"BJP's Union ministers Pur-shottam Rupala and Mansukh Mandavia, and Congress can-didates Naran Rathwa and Amee Yajnik are declared elected unopposed," Returning

Officer for Rajya Sabha polls, A V Karova, said.

"On the last day of with-drawal of nomination forms, BJP candidate Kirsitsinh Rana and Independent nominee PK Valera, along with other dummy candidates, withdrew their papers, leaving only four candidates," he said.

The prospect of a contest came up when Valera, a Con-gress general secretary, and Rana filed their forms on the last day of filing of nomination papers on March 12.

On March 13, the BJP took objection to Rathwa's candi-

dature during the scrutiny of forms alleging that he had filed a "fake" no-dues certifi-cate along with his nomina-tion forms.

However, the returning offi-cer overruled the BJP's allega-tions and accepted Rathwa's papers during scrutiny.

Unhappy with the officer's decision, the BJP approached the Election Commission demanding the nomination of Rathwa be quashed because of "several irregularities" in his form. However, the poll panel ruled out any immediate intervention.

RS polls: All four candidates from Guj elected unopposed

OUR CORRESPONDENT

JAIPUR: The three BJP candi-dates in Rajasthan for the bien-nial Rajya Sabha elections were on Thursday elected unop-posed as no other contestant had filed their nomination, an official said. The BJP candidates -- Kirori Meena, Bhupender Yadav and Madan Lal Saini -- were declared elected unop-posed after scrutiny of their nominations, Secretary, Raj-asthan Legislative Assembly, Prithvi Raj, said here.

He said that Returning Offi-cer Akhil Arora declared the candidates as winner.

Meena had separated from the BJP in 2008 and had rejoined the party on Sunday along with his two National Peoples Party (NPP) MLAs. He, as the state president of the NPP, which he had joined in 2013, also merged his party with the BJP.

All three BJP RS candidates from

Rajasthan elected unopposed OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Uproarious scenes by opposition and NDA partner TDP seeking a probe into India's largest Rs 12,700 crore banking scam and special status to Andhra Pradesh dis-rupted Rajya Sabha proceed-ings for the ninth consecutive day on Thursday.

The House was adjourned for the day in the afternoon after witnessing two adjourn-ments earlier in the day.

Minutes after the Upper House reassembled at 3 pm, Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien who was in the Chair rose to his feet and urged the oppo-sition to take up the Finance Bill and Appropriation Bills as members from TDP, AIADMK and Congress trooped into the Well raising slogans and carry-ing placards.

"Please listen to my request...There is Finance Bill...

Appropriation Bills...If you don't consider (them), Rajya Sabha will beocme irrelevant. I will dispose (these) in five minutes," Kurien urged the members.

To this, Leader of the Oppo-sition Ghulam Nabi Azad said "No Bill can just be finished in five minutes".

However, as the slogan-shouting continued, Kurien

adjourned the House for the day, saying "I will have to adjourn the House and the responsibility of not discuss-ing or taking up Finance Bill is on the shouting members".

Earlier, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley moved a statu-tory resolution to approve a notification of March 1 which seeks to increase the basic cus-tom duty on chickpeas, falling under a tariff item of the Cus-toms Tariff Act from 40 to 60 per cent.

When the House had met at 3 PM, former minister TDP MP YS Chowdhary, who was earlier allowed by Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to make a statement under Rule 241 on the reasons for quitting the Union Cabinet, said he wanted to complete his statement.

However, Kurien did not permit him, saying "I am not denying your right...The point is, the statement was allowed in the morning and it could not be completed...on what ground (that) I am not aware...You can request the honourable Chair-man tomorrow." Soon after it met for the day, the Upper House was adjourned till 2 pm amidst protests by Congress members over Chowdary's remarks against the erstwhile UPA regime over the division of Andhra Pradesh.

RS adjourned as oppn continues protest

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KATHMANDU: India is committed to working with Nepal's leadership to further strengthen the wide-ranging bilateral ties for the benefit of people of both the countries, President Ram Nath Kovind has said.

Congratulating Nepal's first woman president Bidya Devi Bhandari on her re-election for a second term in office, Presi-dent Kovind said he is com-mitting to working with her to strengthen bilateral ties.

"President Kovind has said that he commits to working together to further strengthen wide-ranging cooperative bilat-eral ties for the benefit of peo-ple of India and Nepal," Kovind was quoted as saying in a letter to Bhandari by Indian Embassy.

Bhandari, 56, the Left alli-ance's candidate, was elected on March 13 with more than a two-thirds majority as she defeated her Nepali Congress (NC) rival Kumari Laxmi Rai in the presidential election.

India committed to strengthening ties with Nepal: President Kovind

OUR CORRESPONDENT

MUMBAI: Petitions chal-lenging the discharge of some senior police officers from the Sohrabuddin Shaikh fake encounter case would be taken up for hearing by a new judge at the Bombay High Court on March 22.

Three revision petitions filed by Sohrabuddin's brother Rubabuddin, and two petitions filed by the CBI were earlier being heard on a daily basis by Justice Revati Mohite-Dere.

But her 'assignment' (cases allotted to her) along with that of some other judges was changed last month.

She had completed the hearing of three of the five pleas, and passed some scath-ing remarks about the CBI, saying that the court wasn't getting cooperation from the agency.

Registrar of the Bombay High Court had termed the change of assignment as a "rou-tine change".

Earlier this week, Rubabud-din's lawyer Gautam Tiwari mentioned his petitions before Justice N W Sambre, the new

judge. The petitions were then listed for March 22.

The CBI lawyer said it was yet to receive a notice on the new date of hearing of its two petitions.

Rubabuddin told reporters that he would request the new judge to allow him to approach acting Chief Justice V K Tahil-ramani and seek that the mat-ter is reassigned to the Justice Mohite-Dere's court.

"The only reason I want to urge the acting chief justice to reassign the matters to Justice Mohite-Dere is that the lat-ter has extensively heard the arguments. Going before a new bench and re-doing all the arguments will be a needless waste of time," he said.

Sohrabuddin case: New judge to take up hearing on Mar 22

DHIRENDRA KUMAR

IMPHAL: In a first, Mani-pur, which is also known as ‘Gateway’ to ASEAN, is all set to hold 105th Indian Science Congress. The Congress, which is a conglomeration of scien-tists across the globe, is to be organised in Imphal, the capi-tal city of Manipur.

It would not be wrong to say that the Science Congress may prove to be a milestone for Manipur as the organising university --- Manipur Cen-tral University --- has managed to compete all the preparatory works in just two months of time.

According to Manipur Varsity Vice Chancellor AP Pandey, who hails from Vara-nasi, about 5,000 delegates, including three Noble laure-ates, scientists, scholars and researchers from all across the country will take part in the programme. The Science Con-gress would be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday.

Following the inaugural session of the Science Con-gress, Modi will head for

Luwangshangbam at 11.55 am where he will lay the foun-dation stones for Luwang-pokpa Multi Sports Complex, National Sports University and freedom fighter Rani Gaidinliu Park at Mantripukhri.

The PM is visiting Mani-pur a day after completion of one-year of the BJP-led coali-tion government in the state on Thursday. Meanwhile, secu-rity in the state particularly in Imphal and the places where Narendra Modi will visit and lay down foundation stones have been beefed up.

Area sensitization, daily combing operations and round-the-clock vigilance to check any anti-social activities have been in process for the last eight days, a senior offi-cial said. As per the informa-tion, the PM will arrive here in a special aircraft of Indian Air Force at 9.25 am and depart at around 1.30 pm.

Imphal ready to hold first Science Congress

The Science Congress would be inaugurated by PM Modi today

OUR CORRESPONDENT

PATNA: Union Law Minis-ter Ravi Shankar Prasad and five other candidates, two each of the JD(U) and the RJD and one from the Congress, were on Thursday declared elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Bihar.

State Assembly Secretary Ram Shresth Rai handed over the certificates to the six candi-dates. Since there were only six nominations for as many seats falling vacant from the state in the Rajya Sabha, all the can-didates were declared elected unopposed.

Apart from Prasad, who has been re-nominated to the Upper House of Parliament by the BJP, the others declared elected to the Rajya Sabha are -- Bashistha Narain Singh and Mahendra Prasad alias King Mahendra of the JD(U), Manoj Jha and Ashfaq Karim of the RJD and Akhilesh Prasad Singh of the Congress.

While the first three are sitting members of the Rajya Sabha, Jha, Karim and Singh would be making their debut in the Upper House.

However, Singh had been a Lok Sabha member from Motihari between 2004 and 2009. He was with the RJD at that time and had served as a Union minister in the UPA government.

Notably, the Congress will have a Rajya Sabha member from Bihar after more than a decade. The last candidate of the party to have been elected to the Upper House from the state was veteran leader R K Dhawan, who was nominated in 2004. Despite today's devel-opments, the number of JD(U) Rajya Sabha MPs has now come down by two to seven, while the BJP's tally (four) stands reduced by one.

Prasad among six elected to RS from Bihar

RAIPUR: Road construction in Sukma, a Maoist hotbed in Chhattisgarh, has unsettled the rebels, leading them to fre-quently target security per-sonnel in a bid to stop such projects, a state police offi-cial said. In the past couple of years, several security person-nel posted at road construc-tion sites in Sukma district have been killed in the line of duty.

The deadly attack on Cen-tral Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel on March 13 in Sukma is the latest exam-ple of Maoists' attempt to dis-rupt the road network being laid there. However, despite the heavy loss, the central and state governments have been mak-ing efforts to expand the road network in the region, believ-ing that will bring development to tribals there.

Several times, Naxals have tried to disrupt road construc-tion in Sukma by launching attacks on security forces and damaging the roads, and vehi-cles and machines used in the work, Special Director General (anti-Naxal operations) DM Awasthi said. MPOST

Road projects major cause of Naxal attacks

OUR CORRESPONDENT

AGARTALA: Fifty-nine out of the 60 MLAs of the Tripura Assembly were administered their oaths at the assembly house on Thursday by protem speaker Ratan Chakraborty.

Deputy Chief Minister Jishnu Debbarman, who won from Charilam during the day, will be sworn in on Fri-day, Chakraborty told reporters after the oath taking ceremony.

Chakraborty said that 35 MLAs of ruling BJP, including Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb and eight legislators

from alliance partner Indige-nous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) took their oaths today.

Sixteen MLAs of the oppo-sition CPI-M, including former chief minister Manik Sarkar, who were slated to be sworn in tomorrow, also took their oaths along with the ruling legisla-tors today.

All MLAs of the ruling party will perform in a con-structive way , Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb told report-ers after swearing in as a legis-lator in the twelfth Assembly.

The chief minister said he expected a ''healthy opposition

will also take part in the assem-bly proceedings in a construc-tive manner .

He said, ''If they (opposi-tion) have any good sugges-tions, we will accept them.''

Chakraborty said that the first session of the new assem-bly would begin on March 23 and is likely to continue till March 31.

Meanwhile, Manik Sarkar was unanimously elected as the leader of the CPI-MLP and would be proposed as leader of the opposition, party mouthpiece Daily Deshrkatha reported today.

59 Tripura MLAs sworn inFORGIVE AND FORGET

Newly-elected Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb shakes hands with former chief minister Manik Sarkar during an oath-taking ceremony of state MLAs in Agartala on Thursday PTI

Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority

ICA/T 2038(3)/2018

mp editorial8MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

KOTA NEELIMA

TAPONEEL MUKHERJEE

Farmer suicides have been taking place across India for years now, and studies of

rural distress reveal the deeply-rooted, tenacious causes—such as the lack of irrigation, frag-mentation of land, unsuitability of seeds and inadequate sources of credit. Despite the democrat-ically-elected governments that claim to represent a country where over half the population is dependent on farming, agri-culture has been consistently ignored at a steep cost to farm-ers’ lives. Remedies have been tried – the state waived loans to small and marginal farm-ers ahead of elections and such sops were criticised after elec-tions for disrupting the credit discipline among borrowers.

The crisis provided an opportunity to try more adven-turous “remedies”; farmers were cornered into using expensive, genetically-engineered seeds, even when these added heav-ily to the costs of cultivation for crops like cotton, further indebting them. Although this generated hope, which helped the governments get re-elected, none of the remedies worked. The question remained: Why did farmers commit suicide, bringing a bad name to “popu-lar” governments?

So, it became prudent and necessary for the state that other causes for the suicides were invented, such as alco-holism, depression, vices, etc. Farmers were blamed for being ambitious, extravagant, adven-turous, lazy, cowardly, and too emotional. Camps were set up to help them cope with life’s stresses, charities were organ-ised and advice was dispensed. Additionally, the state found the usual way of containing the sit-uation; not all farmer suicides would be recognised as such. There were rules to dying; only those deceased farmers who had unpaid bank loans in their names or in the names of their

families, and had land in their names or in the names of their families, were considered to fall in the “farmer suicide” category. These “correct” suicides of the farmers, verified through this process, earned them compen-sation money, which was given to their widows. Once again, the state expected that such monetary relief would make the farmers, and voters in general, appreciate the kindness of the politicians and re-elect them. And once again, it was not a remedy. The question still per-sisted: Why did farmers commit suicide despite such “generos-ity” of the state?

Again, it became imperative for the state to find other rea-sons to explain why it failed to contain farmer suicides. It was believed that the compensa-tion itself encouraged farmers to kill themselves; that the Rs one lakh might have increased the toll, and that the farmers who died due to other reasons were shown as farmer sui-cides. But the state knew the truth because the compensa-tion procedure ensured that each farmer suicide was inves-tigated in depth. The state was aware that farmer suicides hap-pened because of one essential

reason – the farmer’s sense of fairness and responsibility was hurt by his continued inability to repay debts.

This explanation was in stark contrast to the ease with which the state and politicians tried arbitrary solutions to farm distress and blamed farmers for their own deaths. It was an inconvenient truth that would have shifted the guilt to the state and was, therefore, never told. Meanwhile, the question con-tinued: Why did farmers com-mit suicide, denting the image of every charismatic Prime Minister of the country and every dynamic Chief Minister of the state?

Farmer suicides reflect the crisis brewing through several phases of structural transforma-tion of the rural sector. The first phase, from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, focused on land reforms, irrigation, and objec-tives like the supply of credit, which are yet to be uniformly achieved. The second phase was the Green Revolution, during which the implications for the distribution of resources, and economic and social develop-ment were ignored, and agri-cultural development was measured through productivity.

The last phase was the period of economic reforms and glo-balisation, which only widened and deepened the inequalities.

During this time, and under the aegis of politically-correct pro-farmer governments, agri-culture had become particularly difficult in rain-fed areas due to a fall in the public investment in irrigation and infrastructure, and in technological research and innovations. Maharashtra presented the contradictory picture of extreme agricul-tural failure along with high non-agricultural growth. This disparity was the sharpest in western Vidarbha, where the farmer was entirely at the mercy of the weather, the market, and the state’s indifference. The wide regional, as well as inter-dis-trict differences, suggest the study of the region as a unit, like Vidarbha, which displayed the severe impact of farm neglect. Further, owing to the inten-sity and length of the farm crisis, the study of Vidarbha mapped the diversity of con-ditions and the common fac-tors for farmers’ distress, such as indebtedness, rising costs of cultivation, declining returns, and inadequate policy support. The region also indicated how

small and marginal farming could not be sustained with-out substantial public infra-structure support and that the solution had to include initia-tives of both policy and civil society. In what might be true for the entire nation, agricul-tural distress in Vidarbha was also worsened by the oppor-tunism of the political class that used the crisis in blame-games instead of meaningful and timely interventions.

The neglect that the farm-ers face through their lives has no witnesses, except perhaps, their wives. They knew how the state ignored their husbands while they were alive, how their desperate applications for wel-fare were dismissed, how many times their husbands visited the collectorates for relief, how much money was spent appeas-ing local officers like tehsildars, gram sevaks, panchayat mem-bers, talathis, etc. The wives had seen their husbands lose faith, and found the empty pes-ticide bottles that had ended their lives. These were the car-ing mothers who rescued the memories of their fathers for their children, shielding them from the painful facts.

These were the grieving women who, within days of a suicide, convinced the state of the good mental condition of their husbands, signed docu-ments attesting to the “truth”, and accepted the meagre cheques. But for the state, they did not exist. After all, what did the widows of farmers know about agriculture, crop man-agement, bank loans, private debts, land documents, health bills, power connections, pan-chayat politics, children’s edu-cation? The short answer was – everything. IANS

(Kota Neelima is the author of Widows

of Vidarbha. Excerpted from the introduction of

the book. The views expressed are strictly personal)

Towards the nadirEDITORIAL

Waivers and myopic schemes have done little to alleviate the condition of India’s farmers

The compensation procedure ensured that each farmer suicide was investigated in depth. The state was aware that farmer suicides happened because of one essential reason – the farmer’s sense of fairness and responsibility was hurt by his continued inability to repay debts

As rightly pointed out, the spectrum of national politics has taken a new turn since the outcome of the Northeast Assembly elections, where the BJP won the Tripura Assembly with a landslide

and retained power in Meghalaya and Nagaland in coali-tion with the regional parties. Galvanised by the BJP’s stun-ning victory in the North-East, the opposition parties once again came around to the need of implementing unified efforts on their part to put up a credible challenge before the lotus party. Taking a step in that direction, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati had lent last-minute sup-port to the Samajwadi Party candidates in the Gorakhpur-Phulpur Lok Sabha by-elections and both the SP candidates trounced their BJP rivals in an equally stunning victory for the opposition. The losses for the BJP in the two prestigious Lok Sabha seats represented by Chief Minister Yogi Adity-anath and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya were further accentuated by a similar defeat in the Araria Lok Sabha by-election and Jehanabad Assembly by-polls in Bihar. Both seats were won by Lalu Prasad’s RJD while the BJP won the Bhabhua Assembly election. In a nutshell, BJP conceded four out of five seats that went to by-polls in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. This signals that caste-based alliances can still give BJP a tough fight in the two crucial states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath admitted having misunderstood the caste alli-ance between Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav. He also admit-ted that BJP was overconfident about its victory and that became an important reason causing its defeat in the two prestigious Lok Sabha seats. But, more notably, this elec-tion brings back Mayawati in the reckoning. Her sway on the voters was unmistakable. Even Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav profusely expressed his gratitude for May-awati’s support. Mayawati’s BSP had won no seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and it won only 19 seats in the UP Assembly elections held last year. The two leaders had been on the margins of national politics after their defeat in the UP elections. Now, with their victory in the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats, the two parties will lead the efforts of a grand alliance of opposition parties ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. There are a number of Assembly elections lined up this year, where opposition parties can experiment with their unification model. Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has expressed his desire to play a more active role in national politics and has floated the idea of a People’s Third Front, a political front of non-Congress, non-NDA parties. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has called upon regional parties to forge an alliance against BJP. NDA partner Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has already flagged its differences with BJP and the Centre for not according a special package to Andhra Pradesh. It has also pulled out two ministers from the Union Cabinet. Though the TDP is still a part of the NDA at the Centre, its relations with BJP in the state are on the rocks. Further, two BJP ministers in the Chandrababu Naidu Cabi-net have resigned from their posts. An Assembly election is due next year. Problems are also being routinely floated from another NDA partner, Shiv Sena, which has been flagging their disappointments from the state as well as the central governments. If the disgruntled TDP and Shiv Sena join the opposition’s grand alliance in 2019, the likely sce-nario of all opposition parties coming together to present a united fight to the BJP and its PM candidate Narendra Modi could be unnerving for the BJP. But, before that, the opposition needs to show some results. Next is the Karna-taka Assembly election, due in April-May. The BJP will try to wrest power in the state from the incumbent Congress. If the opposition joins forces with the Congress to defeat BJP in Karnataka, it will play a decisive role in the idea of forg-ing a grand alliance of opposition parties. BJP is in power in 20 states and three of its major states are going to polls this year: Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. In similar by-elections in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the Congress candidates have defeated their BJP rivals. How much BJP is troubled by the opposition in these states will depend on how well the opposition is able to orchestrate a united fight. The latest by-election results bring the oppo-sition at the epicentre of the impending electoral battles.

Philippine President, Rodrigo Duterte, seems to be a law unto himself when it comes to presid-ing over the anti-drug war campaign. Its brutal-ity defies description. Few bloodthirsty dictators

have had his track record in ensuring deaths even on sus-picion. Now, he vows that the campaign will continue and become even more ‘brutal’ as the death toll keeps climb-ing. Naturally, he would have nothing to do with the Inter-national Criminal Court (ICC) now that the proceedings into the controversial war on drugs have commenced. Duterte has repeatedly said that if lives of law enforcers are in danger they should ‘shoot’ the suspects. “The drive against corruption, criminality and drugs will resume and it will continue and it will be brutal,” he said. More than 12,000 people have died since Duterte took office on June 30 last year and began his anti-drugs campaign. A third of the fatalities were killed in raids and sting operations by the police who say they acted in self-defence, while the rest were killed by unknown gunmen. Rights groups said that many of the deaths were assassinations of drugs users with police complicity, allegations that the authori-ties have denied. Duterte has said that he would rather see “thousands or millions of criminals go first” than see the security forces killed in the anti-narcotics war. The Phil-ippines now officially says that it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court, a month after the judicial body started an inquiry into Duterte’s controversial war on drugs. The rights groups have long accused Duterte of gross human rights violations in his anti-drug campaign, which Human Rights Watch estimates have claimed the lives of more than 12,000 people since June 2016. Accord-ing to the Philippines government, only 3,900 people have been killed in the drug war. Duterte has hit out at the United Nations efforts to investigate human rights viola-tions in the country. In a speech, earlier this month, he ordered the police against cooperating with the UN inves-tigators and even warned them. The ICC is not a part of the UN but the two bodies have a cooperation agreement. Last year, Amnesty International said that the alleged extraju-dicial killings by the police “may constitute crimes against humanity.” The Philippines is not the first country to quit the ICC. Burundi, Russia, South Africa, and Gambia all moved to withdraw from the court. The ICC is meant to be a “court of last resort,” a place to try dictators and other people who cannot be brought to justice domestically. It has long been controversial for its focus on the develop-ing world, Africa in particular.

Opposition’s comeback

Licence to kill

Log on to write letters to the editor or send them to

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comments to The Editor,Millennium Post,

Pratap Bhawan, 5 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110 002

millenniumpost.inWHY IS THE COST OF ENERGY SO HIGH? dear

EDITOR

India has no shortage of power today as the total installed generating capacity stands 332GW with a 67 per cent contribution from the thermal power stations. And, fortunately, the share of the renewable energy account for twenty per cent and nucler power is only two per cent. But, why is the energy cost per unit cost of consumption by the domestic users are Rs seven per unit cost? Even today, twenty per cent of the coal is imported from Australia. We are not Energy secure and we depend on the foreign country. This is the Crux of the issue and challenges before the policy makers of our country.

AMAR NATH BHADRA Via email

Energy and persistence conquer all things

Quote martial

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

With a rapidly-growing econ-omy, the fact that India

needs significant investments in airport infrastructure can-not be overemphasised. While Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and the privatisation of airports has been attempted to some extent, the time has come to accelerate the pace on this front.

The broader trend seen in infrastructure, of attract-ing global capital, applies as much to airports as to any other sector. As they say, “All Roads Lead to Rome” (implying that there are few roads to Rome). There are alternative ways of creating and financing airport infrastructure.

“Asset recycling” – a strat-egy of monetising existing assets to generate capital – eminently applies to airports. The asset recycling of exist-ing airport assets will allow the government to monetise financially-viable projects to generate capital with which to finance other economically useful but not financially viable airports. This is an alternative to a viability gap fund strategy or a strategy of financing new assets using extra charges on air tickets. The asset recycling strategy needs to be looked at in greater detail, especially with a view to developing airports in tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

Airport operators and regulators also need to start thinking in terms of capital structure innovation around airport businesses. In terms of generating financing, the

airport business can be listed through an IPO. This is an idea that has been around for a while in India. Globally, air-port operators such as Corpo-racion America Airports are also looking at IPOs. The cash liquidity that an IPO route pro-vides without having to deal with the contingent liabilities of a debt structure can be use-ful in pursuing high-growth projects for airport operators. On the other end of the spec-trum are financial instruments such as revenue-backed airport bonds. This would be a big step for airports and airport opera-tors in India.

While revenue-backed air-port bonds would take some

regulatory mechanism changes, the impact can be crucial to speed up the creation of air-port infrastructure. The ability of airport operators to optimise their capital structure using a variety of well-defined financial instruments and vehicles will be crucial to bringing down the cost of capital and facilitating its flow into the airport sector.

A more delineated capital structure will mean that air-port assets will open up not just to the large airport operators but also to relatively smaller financial institutions inter-ested in a “pie of Indian air-ports”. Having a wider capital base means more competition for assets and a more efficient

credit system.A few critical questions

worth asking are: Why does airport infrastructure matter in India? Are there positive mul-tiplier effects of creating more such infrastructure? Given the limited resources and various requirements, why is airport infrastructure a compelling investment opportunity?

A study, titled “Economic Impact of European Airports” by InterVISTAS, found that the relationship between aviation connectivity and GDP per cap-ita for 40 countries was a posi-tive one but with a significant scattering around the average. The key take away from the study is the positive impact on

GDP growth that airport infra-structure has – and the careful planning needed to deliver this positive impact.

It is imperative that the cre-ation of airport infrastructure by both private players and regulators looks at each air-port asset individually within the larger hub-and-spoke net-work. It is as important not to create excess capacity as it is to build meaningful infrastruc-ture. Without a doubt, business productivity, local economies, and inbound tourism all stand to develop from well-built air-port infrastructure.

Interestingly, according to a study by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) in 2014, domestic airline seats per capita in India was 0.08, while the number for the Phil-ippines was 0.29. According to the World Bank, the nomi-nal GDP per capita in 2016 for India was approximately $1,709 versus $2,951 for the Philippines.

Despite this, according to CAPA, India was the third-largest domestic aviation mar-ket in the world in 2016 – and one of the fastest-growing. The data tells us that despite the aggregate size of the market, penetration rates are low here. This implies that the economic and financial value creation capacity of airports in India is immense. Airport infrastruc-ture creation, if done well, is an opportunity for everyone involved. IANS

(The author heads Development Tracks, an

infrastructure advisory firm. The views are personal)

It is imperative that the creation of airport infrastructure by both private players and regulators looks at each airport asset individually within the larger hub-and-spoke network. Airport infrastructure is studied to have a positive impact on GDP growth

With an evolving aviation industry, developing robust airport infrastructure could expedite India’s growth story

The sky is the limit!

India’s growing aviation industry demands adequate infrastructure (Representational Image)

India’s farmers are under-served with little support from consecutive governments (Representational Image)

9mp in focusMILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

SHALU VERMA KUMAR

SHREESHAN VENKATESH

Tuberculosis (TB) is an infec-tious disease variously named consumption, white plague, phthisis, or scrofula. It has

been rampant in India, with the first cases being reported in as early as 1500 BCE. As we celebrate the WHO World TB Day on March 24, 2018, we require an updated assessment of our efforts to control TB.

In 2016, 10.4 million people world-wide were diagnosed with TB, with 1.7 million people succumbing to the dis-ease. As per the Global TB Report 2017, a whopping 26 per cent of these deaths (4.23 lakhs) were reported from India. The incidence of TB in India remains high—2.790 million patients in 2016. However, the incidence has declined during the 2000-2016 period—the rate (2016) stood at 211/100000 popula-tion/year. India led the world in the notification of new TB cases, with a 37 per cent increase during the 2013–2016 period. The issues of HIV/AIDS, and multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) further complicate TB con-trol in India. The Government of India’s initiative ‘Revised National Tubercu-losis Control Program’ (RNTCP) is tasked with TB control in India. India allocated US$525 million for TB pre-vention, diagnosis, and control in 2017. Plans are afoot to carry out a national TB prevalence study in 2018.

Tuberculosis is caused by one of several bacteria belonging to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC). Of these, Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the most important causative agent. One-third of the world’s population is infected with this bacterium. Those infected may either carry latent TB (these people do not feel sick, do not have any symptoms, can’t spread TB, and are usually posi-tive in PPD skin test) or show active disease. Symptoms of active TB include coughing that for lasts or more than 3 weeks, chest pain or coughing up of blood and sputum. Early symptoms may include unexplained weight loss, fever, fatigue, weakness, night sweats, chills etc. The infection spreads when you breathe TB bacteria shed into the air by a patient with the active dis-ease. Such patients can spread the dis-

ease by coughing, sneezing, or simply talking. Approximately 10 per cent people with latent TB infection, go on to develop active TB disease. People with a compromised immune system (such as HIV/AIDS patients), those who inject illicit drugs, and who have past history of inadequately treated TB have an increased risk of progression towards active TB.

Diagnosis starts with a physical examination wherein a doctor exam-ines your lungs with a stethoscope and checks your lymph nodes for swell-ing. The doctor may next order a chest X-ray or a CT scan which may show white spots (granulomas) in your lungs where your immune system has trapped TB bacteria. Should the chest X-ray be suggestive of TB, your doctor may take samples of your sputum (the mucus brought up by coughing). This is examined under the microscope, and also cultured to find out the strain of bacteria, and which antibiotics are effective. The most common TB test is a simple skin test called the Mantoux test. Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests are routinely used in TB diagnosis.

The treatment of TB is largely pos-sible. It requires a close cooperation between the patient and the physi-cian. The treatment involves taking one, or several different antibiotics. The most common antibiotics prescribed are Isoniazid (INH), Rifampin (RIF), Ethambutol, and Pyrazinamide. The side-effects of these drugs may include the lack of appetite, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, skin rashes, joint pain, blurred/changed vision, ringing in ears, hearing loss etc. However, it is danger-ous to discontinue your TB drugs, or not take them regularly. The TB bacte-ria could continue to proliferate in your body, and even develop resistance to the prescribed drugs. Thus, drug-resis-tant TB evolves when you are infected with a TB strain that is resistant to one or more of the standard antibiotics. Drug-resistant TB is more frequently encountered in people who do not take their prescription drugs regularly or as prescribed, are in close contact with a patient with drug-resistant TB, have relapsed disease, or hail from areas where drug-resistant TB is common.

Patients resistant to isoniazid (INH)

and rifampin (RIF) are said to harbour MDR-TB. In 2016, there were 147,000 such patients in India, with an inci-dence rate of 11/100000 population/year. Patients with MDR-TB are treated with several antibiotics each day for up to two years, but the mortality rate in such patients remains high. About 6.2 per cent of MDR-TB cases worldwide have extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB). Patients with XDR-TB are resistant to at least four anti-TB drugs. Such patients in addition to being resis-tant to INH and RIF, are resistant to fluoroquinolones (such as levofloxacin or moxifloxacin) and to at least one sec-ond-line drug (amikacin, capreomycin or kanamycin). Once treatment of such patients is initiated, isolation is usually neither necessary nor appropriate.

Tuberculosis control shall entail a sustained commitment by scientific, political and social authorities in India. It is time to tackle this scourge on a war footing.

(Dr. Shalu Verma Kumar is Vice President, Quality Assurance,

at CORE Diagnostics, India. The views expressed are strictly personal)

His work in popularising science is what makes him more than just a giant in the scientific community. Hawking is someone who could hold the world’s collective imagination and wonder even as he spoke of things that could not be further from the experienced realities of earth

In 2016, 10.4 million people worldwide were diagnosed with TB, with 1.7 million people succumbing to the disease. A whopping 26 per cent of these deaths (4.23 lakhs) were reported from India. The incidence of TB in India remains high—2.790 million patients in 2016

The shooting starCredited with path-breaking scientific discovery while bringing the cosmos to the coffee table,

Stephen Hawking create a thread of commonality between this world and the universe

The scourge of India

The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibili-ties—Stephen Hawking.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Stephen Hawking’s family released a statement confirming his death at the age of 76 after a decades-long battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). And, just like that, the bright-est star in the world of science was no more.

The world-famous physicist and cosmologist shot to a position of global prominence for his work on black holes in the 1970s and 80s. Hawking theoretically proved that black holes, much like the Big Bang that caused the formation of the uni-verse, were present as singularities in the cosmic space-time continuum. His theory flew in the face of the dominant scientific narrative of the time that black holes were inescap-able and did not emit any matter or energy. Hawking found this to be the-oretically false and laid out the argu-ment for the emission of one type of radiation. Today, this radiation has been observed in lab conditions and has been aptly named the Hawk-ing Radiation, cementing Hawking’s place in the annals of science.

While Hawking was always marked out as being intellectually exceptional, it was his physical limi-tations that ultimately pushed him to break new scientific ground. Hawk-ing was born exactly 300 years after Galileo’s death on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England. The oldest of four children to Frank and Isobel Hawk-ing—a medical expert in tropical diseases and a medical secretary, Ste-phen’s childhood has been described as intellectually stimulating. After attending the St. Albans school in Oxford, Hawking gained admission to the University College of Oxford University, in 1959, at the age of 17 where he studied physics after con-sidering medicine and mathematics. Hawking’s attitude towards academ-ics at this early stage has become something of folklore now, with the physicist claiming once that he stud-ied just 1,000 hours in the three years he spent as an undergraduate. Never-theless, Hawking had no difficulty in navigating his undergraduate studies and later on in life claimed that his tutors resented him for doing well academically despite the little time he spent on his studies.

Upon graduation, Hawking enrolled in Trinity College at Cam-bridge in 1962. This is where his probing into black holes and cos-mic singularities began under phys-icist Dennis Sciama and astronomer Fred Hoyle. While black holes had been implied by Einstein’s theory of relativity, the subject had yet to get any serious scientific attention until Hawking and his Professors com-menced their work.

Cambridge was, in more ways than one, the turning point in Hawk-ing’s life. Even as he started shaping his scientific and professional trajec-tories, his personal life was disturbed by multiple shocks during his time at Trinity. At the age of 21, in 1963, Stephen Hawking was diagnosed by his doctor as having an extremely rare and debilitating motor neuron

disease, ALS. While people seldom live more than five years with the disease, Hawking’s doctors gave him just two. This time was later described by Hawking as the most challeng-ing period of his life as he struggled to motivate himself to stay with his studies. Despite the doctors’ dire pre-dictions, Hawking lived for 55 years after his diagnosis, possibly making him the only person to have survived the condition for such a long time. The disease that ultimately led to his death left him restricted to a wheel-chair and an electronic voice for the most of his life. These remained as much a symbol of Hawking’s life as his scientific brilliance.

Hawking also met his first wife Jane Wilde, whom he married in 1965 shortly after his diagnosis, while studying in Cambridge. Wilde was a

critical pillar of support in the years following his diagnosis as Hawking struggled to cope with his rapidly deteriorating health. His relationship and personal struggles were the basis of the 2016 Oscar-winning biopic, The Theory of Everything. Eventu-ally, they had three children but their marriage ended in divorce in 1990. Following this, Hawking married one of his nurses Elaine Mason in 1995. This marriage too ended in 2007. Hawking is survived by his two for-mer wives and three children.

Soon after receiving his doctor-ate in cosmology, Hawking took up a teaching position at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge in 1968. The next 20 years were his most sci-entifically productive years during which he published a series of impor-tant and influential papers probing

the essential questions of the universe which propelled him to stardom in the scientific community.

In the late 1960s, Hawking teamed up with British physicist Roger Pen-rose and produced groundbreaking research that linked the Big Bang and black holes as singularities in the universe. A few years later, Hawking along with several other physicists presented a hypothesis that all black holes could be described in terms of their mass, angular momentum, and electric charge which unseated the cosmic phenomenon as an unob-servable, indescribable object of the universe. This was to be the plank on which Hawking proposed what is considered to be his most signifi-cant scientific contribution. In 1974, Hawking proposed that contrary to the leading belief of the time that

black holes were inescapable; sub-atomic particles, which came to be called Hawking radiation, could indeed escape black holes’ massive gravitational force. This implied that black holes too, like every other cos-mic particle, could age and die, which was unheard of at the time. The paper earned Hawking fame and catapulted him into the prestigious Royal Soci-ety, where he was named a fellow at the age of just 32.

While Hawking lost his ability to walk by the late 1960s it wasn’t until 1985 that he lost his ability to speak after a bout of pneumonia. Again, Hawking used this deterioration in his health to produce some of his important work. While his work on black holes and quantum theory were what earned Hawking his reputation in the scientific world, his best-sell-ing book, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, published for the first time in 1988 brought the wonder of science to living rooms and made him a star among even the generally curious people of the world. The book went on to sell around 10 million copies and became the most widely read sci-ence book of all time. For many, this book, which has been republished three times, was the gateway into a universe that had so far been isolated by specialisation – way out of reach for general populations.

His work in popularising science is what makes him more than just a giant in the scientific community. Hawking is someone who could hold the world’s collective imagination and wonder even as he spoke of things that could not be further from the experienced realities of earth. While he ultimately could not achieve his dream of a unified theory of the uni-verse, he did manage to create a thread of commonality between this world and the remotest, most inaccessible corners of the knowable universe—the entirety of which could be held in the human mind. He showed that all that was required to make sense of the universe is imagination and undeterred perseverance. By most means, Hawking’s life was no less singular than the cosmic phenomena that he concerned himself with. His death will surely be a gaping hole in contemporary science that will likely take years to fill. DOWN TO EARTH

(The views expressed are strictly personal)

Tuberculosis continues to plague India and requires collective societal intervention

tweetRETWEET

BRAHMA CHELLANEY @Chellaney

ATISHI MARLENA @AtishiMarlena

PIYUSH GOYAL @PiyushGoyal

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON @neiltyson

Given its strained relations with Pakistan, which it has dubbed "Terroristan," why does India allow that country to have so many diplomats in New Delhi? To address the current problems, why not downsize Pak's ISI-infested mission and have minimal diplomatic presence in Islamabad?

Parents queue up outside Delhi Government's new 'School of Excellence' in Sector 22 Dwarka to get admission forms for their children! Who would have thought this was possible in govt schools?!

Paying tributes to the proud son of India, Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan on his birth anniversary. His bravery, service & spirit of sacrifice will always inspire us.

Pointlessly geeky fact: 33 is the number of Pi digits required to manifest all ten numerals at least once: 3.14159265358979323846264338327950

“Although I cannot move and have to speak through a computer, in my mind I’m free”, said Stephen Hawking

Over a million Indians are still afflicted by variants of Tuberculosis (Representational Image)

mp world10MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

Space travel causes long-term changes to DNA, finds NASA

WASHINGTON: Space travel caused lasting changes to seven per cent genes of astro-naut Scott Kelly, according to a NASA study which compared his DNA to that of his identical twin brother, who remained on Earth.

NASA's Twins Study brought ten research teams from around the country together to accomplish one goal - discover what happens to the human body after spending one year in space.

NASA has a grasp on what happens to the body after the standard-duration six-month missions aboard the Interna-tional Space Station (ISS), but Scott Kelly's one-year mission is a stepping stone to a three-year mission to Mars.

In 2017, ten teams had pre-sented their preliminary find-ings at NASA's Human Research Programme (HRP) Investiga-tors' Workshop (IWS).

Reports included data on what happened to Scott Kelly, physiologically and psycholog-ically, while he was in space,

and compared the data to Mark Kelly, as a control subject on Earth. AT the this year's IWS findings from 2017 were cor-

roborated, with some additions.Researchers also presented

what happened to Scott after he returned to Earth, again while making comparisons to Mark. Later this year, an inte-grated summary publication is expected to be released.

By measuring large numbers of metabolites, cytokines, and proteins, researchers learned that spaceflight is associated with oxygen deprivation stress, increased inflammation, and dramatic nutrient shifts that affect gene expression.

After returning to Earth, Scott started the process of readapting to Earth's gravity. Most of the biological changes he experienced in space quickly returned to nearly his preflight status. Some changes returned to baseline within hours or days of landing, while a few persisted after six months.

Scott's telomeres - end caps of chromosomes that shorten as

one ages - actually became sig-nificantly longer in space.

While this finding was pre-sented in 2017, the team verified this unexpected change with multiple assays and genomics testing.

A new finding is that the majority of those telomeres shortened within two days of Scott's return to Earth.

Researchers now know that 93 per cent of Scott's genes returned to normal after land-ing. However, the remaining seven per cent point to possible longer term changes in genes related to his immune system, DNA repair, bone formation networks, hypoxia and hyper-capnia. Increasing mission dura-tion from the typical six-month ISS mission to one year resulted in no significant decreases in Scott's cognitive performance while in-flight and relative to his twin brother Mark on the ground. AGENCIES

Chinese scientists use rocket tech to develop artificial heart

BEIJING: Chinese scientists have developed an artificial heart using rocket technology and it is currently undergoing testing after thorough exper-iments on animals, a media report said on Thursday.

The heart was developed jointly by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) and the Teda Interna-tional Cardiovascular Hospital in North China's Tianjin.

The artificial heart has been sent for testing and inspection after thorough experiments on animals, Science and Technol-ogy Daily reported, citing Li Hong, former director of CALT from the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Tech-nology Corporation.

The artificial heart uses mag-netic and fluid levitation from a rocket system, and the "aero-space heart" is expected to move to clinical trials during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), state-run Global Times reported.

"The magnetic and fluid levi-tation technology can reduce

the friction in the device to increase the working efficiency and extend the life span of the power generator," the report quoted as saying Song Zhong-ping, a military expert and TV commentator.

This technology used can reduce damage to the blood and enable the blood pump to work longer.

"There is no self-made arti-ficial heart approved for sale in China. For now, patients have to rely on heart transplants," Sun Hongtao, associate chief physician at the Fuwai Cardio-

vascular Hospital, told Science and Technology Daily.

"An imported artificial heart could cost 100,000 euros (USD 152,800). If China could pro-duce its own artificial heart at a lower cost, that will definitely benefit heart patients in China," Sun said. Fuwai Cardiovascu-lar Hospital also developed an artificial heart using magnetic levitation, and the man-made hearts have been planted in three of the patients from June to October 2017, state-run Xin-hua News Agency reported on March 9. AGENCIES

Microsoft's AI translator equals humans in quality and accuracy

WASHINGTON: In a first, Microsoft researchers have developed an artificial intel-ligence (AI) system that can translate news from Chinese to English with the same qual-ity and accuracy as a human.

Researchers said that their system achieved human parity on a commonly used test set of news stories, which was devel-oped by a group of industry and academic partners.

To ensure the results were both accurate and on par with what people would have done, the team hired external bilin-gual human evaluators, who compared Microsoft's results to two independently produced human reference translations.

Xuedong Huang, a tech-nical fellow in charge of Microsoft's speech, natural language and machine trans-lation efforts, called it a major milestone in one of the most challenging natural language processing tasks.

"Hitting human parity in a machine translation task is a dream that all of us have had. We just didn't realise we'd be able to hit it so soon," Huang

said.The translation mile-

stone was especially gratifying because of the possibilities it has for helping people under-stand each other better, he said.

Machine translation is a problem researchers have worked on for decades and for much of that time many believed human parity could never be achieved.

Ming Zhou, assistant man-aging director of Microsoft Research Asia, cautioned that there are still many challenges ahead, such as testing the sys-tem on real-time news stories.

Arul Menezes, partner research manager of Micro-soft's machine translation team, said that they set out to

prove that its systems could perform about as well as a per-son when it used a language pair - Chinese and English - for which there is a lot of data, on a test set that includes the more commonplace vocabulary of general interest news stories.

"Given the best-case situa-tion as far as data and availabil-ity of resources goes, we wanted to find out if we could actu-ally match the performance of a professional human translator," said Menezes, who helped lead the project.

The research team can apply the technical breakthroughs they made for this achievement to Microsoft's commercially available translation products in multiple languages. AGENCIES

Controversial Nepal CJI Parajuli resigns

KATHMANDU: Nepal's con-troversial Chief Justice Gopal Parajuli on Thursday resigned from his post, a day after the Judicial Council sacked him for inconsistencies in his date of birth and remaining in office even after crossing the retire-ment age.

Parajuli met President Bid-hya Devi Bhandari and submit-ted his resignation.

The Judicial Council removed Parajuli from his post on Wednesday stating the inves-tigation of documents showed that he had attained the retire-ment age of 65 years seven months ago on August 5, 2017.

The Judicial Council in the removal letter to Chief Justice cited inconsistencies in the birth dates as mentioned in his citizenship and academic certificates.

The Judicial Council said that Parajuli should have retired seven months ago when he turned 65, the age of retirement for official positions in Nepal.

The Supreme Court's senior-most Justice, Deepak Raj Joshi on Thursday assumed office as the acting Chief Justice.

The judicial council's deci-

sion to remove Parajuli came in the wake of controversy sur-rounding Parajuli's date of birth and widespread condemnation of his move to charge the Nepal's leading newspaper Kantipur Daily with contempt of court for a series of articles that said he had given up to five different dates of birth on various offi-cial documents. Kathmandu, Mar 15 (PTI) Nepal’s contro-versial Chief Justice Gopal Para-juli on Thursday resigned from his post, a day after the Judicial Council sacked him for incon-sistencies in his date of birth and remaining in office even after crossing the retirement age.

Parajuli met President Bid-hya Devi Bhandari and submit-ted his resignation.

The Judicial Council removed Parajuli from his post on Wednesday stating the inves-tigation of documents showed that he had attained the retire-ment age of 65 years seven months ago on August 5, 2017.

The Judicial Council in the removal letter to Chief Justice cited inconsistencies in the birth dates as mentioned in his citizenship and academic certificates. AGENCIES

Britain’s position on spy poisoning ‘absolutely irresponsible’: Kremlin

MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Thursday slammed Britain's raft of punitive measures against Russia over the poisoning of a former double agent as "abso-lutely irresponsible."

"The position of the British side appears to us absolutely irresponsible," President Vladi-mir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

He said retaliatory steps would soon follow, with Putin likely to chose the option that "most suits Russia's interests."

On Wednesday, Britain said it would expel 23 diplo-mats and suspend high-level contacts with Russia, with other measures to follow. The announcement came after Brit-ish authorities said Russia was "culpable" of the poisoning of

Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a Soviet-designed nerve agent called Novichok on March 4. Peskov reiterated Moscow's position that Britain's accu-sations were unfounded and that the attack on Skripal had "all the signs of a provocation." "The accusations are not backed up by anything and have been voiced before any information about the used substance could appear," Peskov said. AGENCIES

Russia TV channel RT’s warning to UK MOSCOW: The head of Rus-sian state-funded RT television says British Prime Minister The-resa May is to blame if British media are kicked out of Russia over the poisoning of an ex-spy.

RT editor-in-chief Margar-ita Simonyan dismissed accu-sations that Russia was behind the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal. It prompted threats to shut down RT's British opera-tions, among other actions tar-geting Moscow. Simonyan told The Associated Press in Moscow that "if we are censored in the UK, that's going to be it for the British media" in Russia. AGENCIES

Taliban suicide attack near Sharif house; 10 deadLAHORE: A teenaged Tali-ban suicide bomber attacked a police check-post near the residence of Pakistan's ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Lahore, killing 10 people, including six policemen, police said.

According to rescue offi-cials, the blast took place last night close to a police check post, a few kilometers from the palatial residence of the Sharif family, and next to the congre-gation of the Tableeghi Jamaat centre.

"Five policemen - two inspectors and three consta-bles - are among nine persons killed in the blast," Rescue 1122 spokesman Jam Sajjad told PTI.

On Thursday, one more policeman wounded in the attack on the Raiwind Markaz of the Tableeghi Jamaat suc-cumbed to his injuries. His death brought the toll of those killed to 10.

Around 14 policemen are among 25 injured. The condi-tion of some of them is stated to be critical.

According to Federal Inves-tigation Agency (FIA), four sus-pected militants tried to enter the Tableeghi Jamaat gathering but were stopped by policemen. One of the attackers then blew himself up while the remaining managed to flee from the spot, the Express Tribune reported.

Inspector General Police Punjab Arif Nawaz confirmed

that the blast was a suicide attack carried out by a teen-aged boy who blew himself up near the checkpost.

Deputy Inspector General Police Lahore Dr Haider Ashraf said: "A teenaged boy blew him-self up at the check post set up close to the Tableeghi centre where at least 14 or so cops were present". However, he did not give the exact age of the boy.

He said the "police person-nel" were the target of the blast. "The condition of some police-

men is critical," he said."The body parts of the

bomber have also been recov-ered," the officer said.

It was such a powerful blast that its sound was heard several kilometers from the site. A fire ball was seen after the blast at the Nisar Police Check Post.

Abid Hussain, an injured constable, told journalists that he had been deputed at the entry point of the check-post to frisk those passing through the area.

"I saw a young boy who was trying to enter (the venue) and as soon as my colleague stopped him, I heard a powerful blast," Hussain said, adding that he had lost consciousness after that and came to later at a hospital.

Some reports said the Tahreek-i-Taliban Pakistan has claimed the responsibility of the blast and the banned out-fit has threatened more attacks on police. AGENCIES

Michelangelo's caricature hidden in his famous work

WASHINGTON: Italian artist Michelangelo inserted a carica-ture of himself into a sketch of his close friend Vittoria Col-onna made in the 16th century, a study has found.

The artwork, currently in the collection of the British Museum in the UK, may serve as a tool for analysing the art-ist's probable bodily dimen-sions and even his state of health at the time.

"Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), like many other renowned artists of his time, included a self-portrait in many of his works," Deivis de Cam-pos of the Federal University of Health Sciences in Brazil wrote in the study.

In the portrait of Colonna, a small figure can be seen stand-ing in the area immediately in front of her abdomen and between the lines that form part of her dress.

The caricature is leaning forward at an acute angle, as if he himself were drawing the portrait.

The caricature may have been a signature of sorts, said de Campos lead author of the study published in the journal Clinical Anatomy.

During Michelangelo's time, there were many restric-tions on artists and their work, perhaps the main one being that artists were not allowed to sign their works, said de Campos. AGENCIES

Slovakia prez accepts

PM’s resignationBRATISLAVA(Slovakia): Slo-vakia's president has accepted the resignation of Prime Min-ister Robert Fico, who offered to step down after facing a pub-lic backlash over the murder of a journalist, a junior partner in the ruling coalition said on Thursday.

Fico's Smer-SD party will put forward a candi-date to replace him, accord-ing to Most-Hid, the smallest party in Slovakia's three-way government.

"Smer-SD as the strongest (coalition) party will table its candidate for prime minister. The president has agreed to this," Most-Hid chairman Bela Bugar told journalists.

"One third of the gov-ernment members will be replaced," he added. AGENCIES

Afghan hostage kills 7 Taliban captors, flees

KABUL: An Afghan man taken hostage by the Taliban made a dramatic escape by stealing a gun while his cap-tors were praying and shoot-ing dead seven of them and wounding 18 others, officials said on Thursday.

Awal Khan and a local police officer were kidnapped Wednesday as they were driv-ing in the eastern province of Paktika, provincial dep-uty security chief Abdul Rauf Masood said.

Paktika is a Taliban strong-hold bordering Pakistan.

The officer was killed and 36-year-old Awal taken to a Taliban compound in Gomal district where he was held for hours.

During afternoon prayers, Awal, who Masood said was handcuffed at the time, grabbed

a weapon belonging to one of his captors and opened fire.

"Awal Khan sprayed bul-lets on all of them, killing seven and wounding 18 others," pro-vincial governor spokesman Mohammad Rahman Ayaz said.

Taliban spokesman Zabi-hullah Mujahid confirmed to AFP that the group had kid-napped the two men and that Awal had opened fire on the militants, killing three of them.

Awal then fled in a pickup truck belonging to his kidnap-pers, Ayaz said.

His brother, a local police commander, shared details of the incident with authorities.

The Taliban is often involved in kidnappings of Afghans and foreigners, some-times holding people for years for prisoner exchanges. AGENCIES

Space travel caused changes to 7% genes of astronaut Scott Kelly, says a NASA study which compared his DNA to that of his identical twin brother who remained on Earth

ICA/T 1958(4)/2018

ABRIDGED -e-NIT NIT ref. no.

Name of work Estimated Amount

Last date of Bid submission

28 (2nd Call) (EL/SE) 2017 - 18

Replacement of Conventional light fit-tings (i.e. SV’MH/FLT/CFL) on the exist-ing Electric Street Poles to energy efficient LED street light luminaries at different wards in Malda Town under English Bazar Municipality in the district of Malda

75,92,449.00 02/04/2018 up to 12:00 Hours

30(2nd Call) , (EL/SE) 2017 - 18

Replacement of Conventional light fit-tings (i.e. SV’MH/FLT/CFL) on the existing Electric Street Poles to energy efficiern LED street light luminar-ies at different wards(i.e. ward No- 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 & 13 ) in Balurghat Town under Balurghat Munici-pality in the district of Dakshin Dinajpur.

87,37,825.00 02/04/2018 up to 12:00 Hours

Sd/- Superintending Engineer North Bengal Development Department

Details can be seen in the Official Website www.wbnorthbengaldev.gov.in For all details and online tender submission visit https://wbtenders.gov.in

Government of West Bengal North Bengal Development Department

Branch Secretariat Uttarkanya, Fulbari, Jalpaiguri

ABRIDGED -e-NIT e-NIT ref. no.

Name of work Estimated Amount

Last date of Bid submission

NIT-188 OF 2017-18

Construction of New Road and Drainage work at Ashighar Colony adjacent to Soni Mondir in different location connected from the shop of Radha Krishna Bhander (Soni Mondir) to Bijay Sarkar House, from Nidhir Acharjee House to Suku-mar Mondal House, from Arjun Mandol House to Bikash Das House, from Toton Das House to Angari Jhora, at Dabgram-II in the Dist. Jalpaiguri. (830 mtr.Road and drain)

Rs. 65,81,558.00

03/04/2018 up to 15:00 Hours

Sd/- Superintending Engineer North Bengal Development Department

Details can be seen in the Official Website www.wbnorthbengaldev.gov.in For all details and online tender submission visit https://wbtenders.gov.in

Government of West Bengal North Bengal Development Department

Branch Secretariat Uttarkanya, Fulbari, Jalpaiguri

ABRIDGED -e-NIT NIT ref. no.

Name of work Amount put to tender.

Last date of application submission

NIT-191 OF 2017-18

Construction of R.C.0 box culvert with allied work at Oodlabari Pathar-jhora road at Ch. 10.8 km near Shi-rubari, PS. Malbazar, Dist. Jalpaiguri. (Phase-I)” (18.0 mtr. Road at both side Approach and 1 nos. RCC Box Culvert)

1108915.00 29/03/2018 upto 12:00 Hours

Sd/- Executive Engineer

North Bengal Development Department

Details can be seen in the Official Website www.wbnorthbengaldev.gov.in

Government of West Bengal North Bengal Development Department

Branch Secretariat Annex BuildingFulbari, District Jalpaiguri Pin- 734015

ABRIDGED -e-NIT NIT ref. no.

Name of work Amount put to tender.

Last date of application submission

NIT-190 OF 2017-18

Beautification of pond on the right side of Jalpesh Mandir, Maynaguri, in the district of Jalpaiguri

4363377.00 29/03/2018 upto 12:00 Hours

Sd/- Executive Engineer

North Bengal Development Department

Details can be seen in the Official Website www.wbnorthbengaldev.gov.in

Government of West Bengal North Bengal Development Department

Branch Secretariat Annex BuildingFulbari, District Jalpaiguri Pin- 734015

Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority

mp world 11MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

Indonesia battles fake news as elections loom JAKARTA: Indonesia is bat-tling a wave of fake news and online hate speech ahead of presidential elections in 2019, as a string of arrests underscore fears it could crack open social and religious fault lines in the world's largest Muslim-major-ity country.

The pluralist nation's reputa-tion as a bastion of tolerance has been tested in recent months, as conservative groups exploit social media to spread lies and target minorities.

Police have cracked down, rounding up members of the Muslim Cyber Army (MCA), a cluster of loosely connected groups accused of using Face-book, Instagram and Twitter to attack the government and stoke religious extremism.

Two of the group's most high-profile falsehoods were claims that dozens of Islamic clerics had been assaulted by leftists and that Indonesia's out-lawed communist party was on the rise, according to police.

Communism - and its hall-mark atheist beliefs - remains a taboo subject in Indonesia, where bloody purges under the Suharto dictatorship in the mid-1960s killed half a million sus-pected leftists.

Gatot Eddy Pramono, the

National Police's head of social affairs, has said the group wants to destabilise government and "create social conflict".

Although the Southeast Asian nation has seen Inter-net hoaxes before - including smear campaigns against Pres-ident Joko Widodo during the 2014 presidential elections - the recent clampdown reflects authorities' mounting unease about their possible impact on election campaigning.

Indonesia will hold simul-taneous regional elections in June, ahead of a presidential ballot in 2019.

Last month, the commu-nications ministry announced it was deploying new software to identify fake news websites, while Widodo - who has battled false Internet claims that he is

a communist - inaugurated a new cyber security agency in January.

Indonesia's problem with internet hoaxes and misinfor-mation campaigns reached fever pitch in the lead up to elections in Jakarta in late 2016 and early 2017, with incumbent gover-nor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, nicknamed Ahok, bearing the brunt of it.

Ahok - the city's first Christian and ethnically Chi-nese leader - was lambasted by Islamic hardliners after an edited video appeared to show him insulting the Koran.

The allegations drew hun-dreds of thousands of conser-vative Muslims onto the streets of Jakarta in major protests, and led to the once-popular Ahok - an ally of Widodo - being jailed

for blasphemy after losing the election to a Muslim challenger.

The Muslim Cyber Army played a pivotal role in dissemi-nating content attacking Ahok and non-Muslims.

"MCA was organising and agitating with this case," said Savic Ali, director of the media department at Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Indonesia's largest mod-erate Muslim organisation.

"There was a clear sentiment about religion in many of its accounts."

The group has at least four ideologically driven clusters that spread inflammatory material with the help of bots - software programmes that run repeti-tive tasks - or by hacking into opponents' online accounts, said Damar Juniarto, Indone-sia coordinator for digital rights group SAFENET.

One cluster pushed radical Islam and the establishment of a caliphate, while others sup-ported conservative political and military figures opposed to Widodo.

"They pose a threat to the national election in 2019," Juni-arto said.

"What they want to do now, in 2018, is copy what happened in Jakarta in other parts of the country." AGENCIES

Discredited, 'Panama Papers' law firm shuts ops

PANAMA CITY: The law firm at the heart of the "Pan-ama Papers" global tax evasion scandal that brought down two world leaders announced on Thursday it would shut down operations, citing negative press and what it called unwarranted action by authorities.

"Reputational deterioration, the media campaign, the finan-cial consequences and irregular actions by some Panamanian authorities have caused irrep-arable damage, resulting in the total ceasing of public opera-tions at the end of this month," Mossack Fonseca said in a state-ment. But it added a smaller group would continue work-ing to address requests from authorities and other public and private groups.

Last August, co-founder Jurgen Mossack acknowledged the firm had closed most of its offices abroad after its damaged credibility caused business to flounder. April 3, 2016 marked the beginning of the "Panama Papers" scandal -- a leak of

11.5 million files from Moss-ack Fonseca's digital archive that revealed how wealthy and influ-ential figures across the world had created offshore businesses to safeguard assets.

The information was obtained by German news-paper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, who shared it with the Interna-tional Consortium of Investiga-tive Journalists. It was released as a searchable database, with revelations continuing to be unearthed to this day.

Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugs-son was forced to resign after it was revealed his family had offshore accounts -- while for-mer Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif was disqualified for life from office after being implicated in the documents.

Other figures implicated included former British premier David Cameron, football star Lionel Messi, Argentina's Pres-ident Mauricio Macri, Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, to name but a few. AGENCIES

Trump organisation lawyer tried to silence porn star

WASHINGTON: New docu-ments show a second lawyer with ties to President Donald Trump was involved in legal efforts to keep adult film star Stormy Daniels from talking about her alleged affair with Trump.

Attorney Jill A Martin signed the documents, which were filed February 22 as part of confidential arbitration proceedings.

She's referenced in the fil-ing as counsel for "EC LLC," though the address she lists is that of Trump's Los Angeles golf club.

EC appears to be a refer-ence to a company formed by Trump's personal attor-ney, Michael Cohen, to facili-tate a USD 130,000 payment to silence Daniels in the clos-ing days of the 2016 presiden-tial campaign.

Cohen has acknowledged making the payment, but said he was not reimbursed and denied the campaign and the Trump Organization were involved in the transaction.

Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, confirmed the authenticity of the new doc-uments to The Associated Press. The documents were first reported by CNN and the Wall Street Journal.

Avenatti said the docu-ments show that "contrary to Mr. Cohen's representations, there is little to no difference

between EC LLC and The Trump Organization/Donald Trump." In a statement late on Wednesday, the Trump Orga-nization said Martin worked on the filing in her "individ-ual capacity" and the company "has had no involvement in the matter." The White House says Trump has denied the affair with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Earlier this month, Clif-ford filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate her "hush agreement" because it was signed only by her and Cohen, but not Trump. She's also offered to return the money she was paid for agree-ing not to discuss the alleged relationship.

Clifford alleges that she began an "intimate relation-ship" with Trump in 2006 and that it continued "well into the year 2007," according to the lawsuit. She said the relation-ship included encounters in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and Bev-erly Hills, California. AGENCIES

Bali going quiet for Day of Silence DENPASAR (Indonesia): Indonesia's bustling tourist island Bali is set to go quiet with Internet service and flights temporarily halted for a "Day of Silence", while young people get ready to pucker up. Resi-dents of the Hindu-dominated island stop regular daily activities for a day of meditation, fasting and introspection, an annual rite that includes elaborate beachside ceremonies and demon-like effigies. Known locally as Nyepi, Hindus on the island are expected to stop all work and play and remain indoors Saturday, while unmarried people kiss each other as residents pour buckets of water over them in a ceremony called Omed-omedan. AGENCIES

S Korean ex-president Lee admits he took $100,000 from spy

SEOUL: Former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak has admitted receiving 100,000 from the state spy agency while still in office, reports said on Thursday, after he faced a marathon interrogation by prosecutors over corruption allegations.

Lee returned home on Thursday after lengthy ques-tioning as he became the last of the country's living ex-lead-ers to be embroiled in a crimi-nal inquiry.

He denied most corruption charges but admitted taking the off-book funds from the National Intelligence Service (NIS) via a presidential aide, Yonhap news agency said on Thursday, citing a prosecution official.

Allegations of graft involv-ing the conservative 76-year-old's relatives and aides during his term have mounted in recent weeks as prosecutors investigate multiple cases of bribery amounting to millions of dollars.

The probe means that all four living former South Korean presidents have been convicted, charged, or inves-tigated for criminal offences.

Lee spent more than 21 hours at the prosecutors' office in Seoul from Wednesday morning, and did not reply to questions from journalists out-side as he left.

"President Lee denied most of the charges," the prosecutor was quoted as saying by Yon-hap news agency.

"But he accepted some facts. For example, he acknowl-edges the fact that he received 100,000 (106 million won) of the (1.7 billion won of secret) funds" Lee allegedly pocketed from the NIS, the prosecutor told Yonhap.

The news agency added that

Lee refused to explain what he did with the 100,000. He denies receiving the rest of the money.

A prosecution official con-tacted by AFP declined to com-ment on the report.

One of Lee's former aides Kim Hee-joong has told the Hankook Ilbo daily that he himself delivered the 100,000 to Lee's wife in 2011 when Lee visited the United States.

Lee, who was head of state from 2008 to 2013, has previ-ously denounced the inquiry as "political revenge" and said Wednesday he hoped it would be the "last time in history" that a South Korean ex-leader was summoned for questioning by prosecutors.

"As a former president, I have a lot to say about this but I will spare my words," he told reporters when he arrived for the interrogation.

Prosecutors are thought likely to ask a court for an arrest warrant for Lee in the coming days. The allegations against Lee include claims that the Samsung Group bought a presidential pardon in 2009 for its chairman Lee Kun-hee, who had been convicted of tax eva-sion and given a suspended jail sentence. Both Samsung and Lee have denied the allegations as groundless.

According to reports, Lee is also accused of accepting 2.2 billion won from a former CEO of a state-financed banking group for helping him assume the post. AGENCIES

India ranks 133 in World Happiness Report

US students walk out of class against gun violence WASHINGTON: From Washing-ton to Los Angeles, students walked out of US classrooms in the larg-est grassroots protest against gun violence seen in years, demanding action one month to the day after a deadly shooting rampage at a Flor-ida high school.

Hundreds of teenagers from Washington area schools gath-ered outside the White House on Wednesday, holding up signs reading "Books Not Bullets" and "Protect People Not Guns" before marching on the US Capitol.

"We want to show Congress and politicians we are not standing by, we are not silent anymore," said 17-year-old Brenna Levitan, who was at the protest with her mother.

"Parkland is going to be the last school shooting."

Students in dozens of other cit-ies in all 50 states staged similar demonstrations and observed a moment of silence to honor the 14

students and three adult staff killed a month ago at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

In Washington, several hours after the protests broke up, US law-makers took their first significant step to address school gun violence since the Parkland shooting.

The House of Representatives voted 407-10 to fund violence pre-vention measures at schools includ-

ing boosting security, mental health screening and creating anonymous reporting systems so students can report threats.

But Congress has yet to tackle the more controversial aspects of gun control demanded in the wake of the Parkland shooting.

These include expanded back-ground checks for gun sales, a ban on assault weapons and raising the minimum age for some firearms

purchases.Dressed in the school's maroon

colors, students at Stoneman Doug-las visited memorials to their slain classmates and hugged and cried.

At a high school in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, students marched to the football field and assembled in a heart formation to pay tribute to the victims.

In Los Angeles and other cities, teenagers spelled out the protest slogan "#ENOUGH" by lying down on the ground on sports fields.

In Washington, students were joined by Democratic members of Congress at the Capitol.

Speakers denounced the National Rifle Association (NRA), the powerful US gun lobby, and demanded that Congress enact tougher laws on gun ownership.

"You, the young people of this country, are leading the nation," Senator Bernie Sanders told the crowd. AGENCIES

LONDON: India continues to lag behind most of its neigh-bours, including Pakistan and Bangladesh, ranking 133 in the latest World Happiness Report released by the UN.

The report ranked Finland as the happiest country, closely followed by Norway and Den-mark. Burundi was listed as the least happy country.

According to the report pro-duced by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solu-tions Network (SDSN), India's happiness score fell by 0.698 points, bringing it down from its last year's position of 128.

In the sixth World Happi-ness Report, released ahead of the International Day of Happi-ness on March 20, the migration was the central issue under con-sideration. "Increasingly, with globalisation, the people of the world are on the move; and most of these migrants are seeking a happier life," the report said. There are large gaps in happiness between countries, and these will continue to create major pressures to migrate. Some of those who migrate between countries will benefit and others will lose, according to the report. In happiness rankings for immi-grants, India was ranked at 91. Finland's immigrants are also the happiest immigrant popula-tion in the world, based on the available data from 117 coun-tries, the report said.

"Where immigrants are wel-come and where they integrate well, immigration works best.

A more tolerant attitude in the host country will prove best for migrants and for the original residents," the report said.

In the report that included 156 countries, Pakistan was ranked 75, Bhutan at 97, and China at 86. Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were ranked 101, 115 and 116 respectively.

The US and the UK were in 18th and 19th place respectively.

The results are based on six key factors found to support wellbeing - income, healthy life

expectancy, social support, free-dom, trust, and generosity.

"The most striking finding of the report is the remarkable con-sistency between the happiness of immigrants and the locally born," said Professor John Helli-well of the University of British Columbia in Canada, co-edi-tor of the report. All of the top ten countries for overall happi-ness 2015-2017 are in the top 11 countries for immigrant happi-ness based on surveys covering 2005-2015. AGENCIES

The World Happiness Report 2018 ranks

156 countries by their happiness levels

based on factors like per capita GDP,

social support, healthy life expectancy,

freedom to make choices, generosity,

corruption perceptions.

Graphic shows how select countries

are ranked in the report

and

Russia

Turkey

Pakistan

China

Bhutan

Nepal

South Africa

Iran

Bangladesh

Sri Lanka

Egypt

India

Afghanistan

Burundi

59

74

75

86

97

101

105

106

115

116

122

133

145

156

KBK graphicsInfo

World Happiness Index

Finland

Norway

Denmark

Iceland

Switzerland

Australia

Germany

USA

UK

France

Brazil

Saudi Arabia

Japan

South Korea

Country Country

1

2

3

4

5

10

15

18

19

23

28

33

54

57

Rank Rank

7.632

7.594

7.555

7.495

7.487

7.272

6.965

6.886

6.814

6.489

6.419

6.371

5.915

5.875

Score Score

5.810

5.483

5.472

5.246

5.082

4.880

4.724

4.707

4.500

4.471

4.419

4.190

3.632

2.905

Source: The World Happiness Report 2018

Japanese Nobel Laureate wanders

away from car; wife found dead

CHICAGO: A Japanese Nobel Prize-winner was hospitalized Wednesday and his wife was dead, reportedly after driving off a road in rural Illinois.

Ei-ichi Negishi, 82, a chem-ist teaching at Purdue Univer-sity in the neighboring state of Indiana, and his wife Sum-ire Negishi, 80, were reported missing Monday.

Police found them early Tuesday morning about 200 miles (320 km) northeast of their home, on land belong-ing to the Orchard Hills Land-fill operated by the company Advanced Disposal.

Police discovered Ei-ichi Negishi walking in the area, and his wife was found dead near their car.

“Both her and the vehicle were found on the landfill prop-erty,” Lieutenant Brian Ketter of the Ogle County Sheriff ’s office said.

The couple had been driving to a nearby airport and became disoriented, and Ei-Ichi Negishi crashed their car into a ditch, according to WTHR television.

The TV station reported that Sumire Negishi had stayed behind while her husband left looking for help. Police would not confirm details about the incident, but did not suspect foul play. AGENCIES

Sri Lanka govt lifts ban on Facebook after assurance from US social media giant

COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government on Thursday lifted a week-long ban on access to the Facebook, after officials from the US social media giant agreed to step up efforts to remove hate speech posted on its platform during the anti-Muslim violence in Kandy district.

The government imposed a state of emergency March 6 and blocked Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media sites fol-lowing anti-Muslim violence in the island's central hills Kandy and Ampara districts.

It restricted the use of social media after police claimed that they were being used to spread hatred against the minor-ity community.

The nationwide restrictions, however, on image and video sharing on messaging apps WhatsApp and Viber were lifted on Wednesday.

President Maithripala Sirisena ordered the telecom regulator to lift the ban following talks between the government, led by his Secretary and head of the Telecommunications Regulatory Com-mission Austin Fernando and Facebook officials here.

"My secretary has discussed with officials of Facebook, who have agreed that its platform will not be used for spreading hate speech and inciting violence," the president, who is currently tour-ing Japan, said on Twitter.

According to an official statement, President Sirisena has ordered the country's telecommunications regulator to lift the blockage on access to Facebook. "In the context, where the impact that could be made by social media to expeditiously increase vio-lent actions based on racism and religious extremism has been internationally proven.

"Sri Lanka was able to control the rapid spread of violence by temporarily imposing restriction on social media as an action to ensure the national and public safety of Sri Lanka," the state-ment said. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe had said that the government would put in place a mechanism for the social media to prevent the attempts to disturb the livelihoods of people through spreading ethnic-hatred and racism, and damaging the image of an individual through false allegations. The government received flack from the Opposition for not lifting the ban despite improvement in the situation, which alleged that it was a move aimed at gaging the criticism of the government. AGENCIES

Stormy Daniels

mp business12MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

NEW DELHI: The government has invited expression of interest (EoI) to execute India's maiden pod taxi project on Delhi-Gur-gaon corridor, Parliament was informed on Thursday.

The development follows a high-level panel recommend-ing inviting fresh bids for the project, also known as Personal Rapid Transport (PRT), con-forming to the strictest safety standards on the lines of those prescribed by an American body.

"EoI has been invited for development of PRT Delhi-Gurgaon pilot project corridor (length 12.30 km) from km 24 at NH 8 (Delhi-Haryana border) - km 33.5 (Rajiv Chowk, Gurg-aon) NH 248A Sohna Road on design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT) basis, Minister of State for Road Trans-port and Highways Mansukh L Mandaviya told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.

He said the EoI has been invited as per the recommenda-

tion of a high-level committee."The Committee has rec-

ommended following Auto-mated People Movers (APM) standards prepared by Ameri-can Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) along with the general safety requirements, system safety principles, traffic con-trol and protection etc," he said.

The proposed Rs 4,000-crore pod taxi scheme is a dream proj-ect of Road Transport and High-ways Minister Nitin Gadkari.

The ambitious project has been plagued by delays as gov-ernment think-tank Niti Aayog raised some red flags, asking the highways ministry to direct ini-tial bidders to prepare a 1-km pilot stretch as all the technolo-gies were unproven. PTI

GENEVA: German auto major Volkswagen says India is not "really prepared" for a leap towards full electric vehicles (EVs) although the govern-ment's move to put it on the agenda is a good step.

The company, which has announced plans to expand production of EVs worldwide on a massive scale with 16 locations to produce battery-powered vehicles by the end of 2022, also said india should be clear about what kind of tech-nology it wants.

"I believe it was a good step from the government to put it (EVs) on the agenda. It is absolutely necessary for India," Volkswagen India Presi-dent and Managing Director Andreas Lauermann said when asked about the company's plans for EVs in India.

He, however, added, "...but we all know that India is a not really prepared for a such a step at the moment. Also in terms of technology, India should be clear what kind of technology it wants." On the compatibil-ity of the company's existing

EVs with the Indian market, he said,"When we look at our EVs at the moment with the tech-nology, it is little bit too early there (in India)."

Recently, the Indian gov-ernment think tank Niti Aayog had said there was no need for an electric vehicle policy, and technology should not be trapped by rules and regulations.

Another factor, which is also deterring VW from accelerating launch of its EVs in India, according to Lau-ermann, is the "new import duties (as) they are absolutely not fitting in our strategy".

"There is no plan visible for the future development in term of technologies," Lauer-mann said. On hike in import duties on automobiles imposed by India, he said, "It was clearly against European auto firms and this is not acceptable."

He, however, said VW hasn't taken a final decision on increasing product prices in India.

In the Budget for 2018-19, Indian government increased custom duty on CKD (com-pletely knocked down) imports of motor vehicles, motor cars, motor cycles from 10 per cent to 15 per cent. PTI

WASHINGTON DC: The US has challenged India's export subsidy schemes at the World Trade Organisation, saying these programmes harm Ameri-can workers and manufacturers by creating an "uneven" play-ing field.

US Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer argued that at least half a dozen Indian programmes provide financial benefits to Indian exporters, which allow them to sell their goods more cheaply to the detriment of American workers and manufacturers.

These programs are: the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme; Export Ori-ented Units Scheme and sec-tor specific schemes, including Electronics Hardware Tech-nology Parks Scheme, Special Economic Zones, Export Pro-motion Capital Goods Scheme and Duty Free Imports for Exporters Programme.

"These export subsidy pro-grammes harm American workers by creating an uneven playing field on which they must compete," Lighthizer said on Wednesday.

"USTR will continue to hold our trading partners account-able by vigorously enforcing US rights under our trade agree-ments and by promoting fair and reciprocal trade through all available tools, including the WTO," Lighthizer said.

The announcement from Lighthizer came while Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale was on his maiden visit to the US. In a statement, the USTR

alleged that through these pro-grammes, India is given exemp-tion from certain duties, taxes, and fees which benefits numer-ous Indian exporters, includ-ing producers of steel products, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, information technology prod-ucts, textiles, and apparel.

According to the Indian gov-ernment documents, thousands of Indian companies are receiv-ing benefits totaling to over $7 billion annually from these programmes.

The USTR said export sub-sidies provide an unfair com-petitive advantage to recipients.

A limited exception to this rule is for specified developing countries that may continue to provide export subsidies tempo-rarily until they reach a defined economic benchmark.

India was initially within this group, but it surpassed the benchmark in 2015. India's exemption has expired, but India has not withdrawn its export subsidies, USTR alleged. PTI

NEW DELHI: Markets reg-ulator Sebi is considering a proposal to disincentivise algorithmic trading by traders with a 'congestion charge' for high volumes along with other restrictions.

The proposal which was made at a recent meeting of an expert panel is aimed at addressing concerns that high-frequency or algo traders have unfair access to the trading sys-tem of exchange.

Algorithmic trading or 'algo' in market parlance refers to orders generated at a super-fast speed by use of advanced math-ematical models that involve automated execution of trade.

The issue is likely to be dis-cussed at the board meeting of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) this month, senior officials said.

Under the proposed norms,

the regulator plans to impose a higher fee on traders who unnecessarily clog the trading systems with high number of orders, the officials said.

To strengthen the regula-tory framework for algo trading and co-location facility, Sebi in 2016 had come out with a pro-posal to introduce resting time for order, random delays and random speed bumps, separate queues for co-location and non-co-location orders.

However, the proposals were not implemented due to opposi-

tion from market participants.The co-location facility

involves setting up servers on the exchange premises.

The speed bump mech-anism involves introduction of randomised order process-ing delay of few milliseconds to orders.

Sebi had proposed to begin minimum resting time mecha-nism, wherein orders received by the stock exchange would not be allowed to be amended or cancelled before a speci-fied time of 500 milliseconds is elapsed. Besides, it had pro-posed to eliminate 'fleeting orders' or orders that appear and then disappear within a short period of time.

As per the proposal, the reg-ulator had planned to introduce separate queues and order-val-idation mechanism for co-lo orders and non-colo orders. PTI

‘Frontline ally’ US drags India to WTO

Sebi plans to bring 'congestion charge' to disincentivise algo

India not really prepared to drive in EVs now: Volkswagen Govt invites EoI for 1st pod taxi project in India

NEW DELHI: Tata Steel on Thursday told NCLT that acceptance of UK-based Lib-erty House's bid for Bhushan Power and Steel would amount to violation of the level-playing field in the resolution process.

The tribunal was hearing a plea filed by Liberty House challenging the rejection its bid for Bhushan Power and Steel on account of late submission. Liberty House had moved the NCLT on February 26.

Appearing for Tata Steel, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi on Thursday submitted before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) that Lib-erty House has also hid facts in their petition filed before it.

"Acceptance of Liberty bid will violate level playing field," Singhvi said.

Citing some emails, he fur-ther said that Liberty House was in touch with the Insol-

vency Resolution Professional (IRP) of Bhushan Power and Steel and can not say that it was not aware about it.

Singhvi said maximisation of bids has to be seen within parameters of rules.

Tata Steel would continue its arguments before the prin-cipal bench of NCLT on Friday.

Earlier on March 13, NCLT had asked the Committee of Creditors of Bhushan Power and Steel not to hold their meeting that was scheduled to

finalise the highest bidder for the debt-ridden firm.

The CoC last month rejected Liberty House's bid to acquire Bhushan Power and Steel Ltd, leaving Tata Steel and JSW Steel in the race for tak-ing over the assets of the bank-rupt firm.

Liberty House has sub-mitted before the NCLT that IRP rejected its bid to acquire Bhushan Power and Steel with-out even opening the seal of its offer. PTI

NEW DELHI: Expressing dis-appointment over the US deci-sion to impose high import duties on certain steel and aluminium products, India on Thursday said it should be exempted from the duty as it is America's strategic partner.

Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia said the government has conveyed its "concerns and disappointment" over these

measures taken by the Trump administration.

"Currently we are not a big exporter, but we are an impor-tant strategic partner for the US and since this has been placed on security grounds, we feel that like other countries with whom US has a strategic partnership, India should also be exempted from these (duties)," she said. The Trump administration is

concerned about the adverse balance of trade with some some nations, but India is one of its trading partner to increase its exports, she said.

The US has seen a jump of 18 per cent in its exports to India last year, she said, add-ing that it is "inappropriate to apply these tariffs" on India. Since these taxes are imposed on security grounds and some

of the key trading partners of the US are excluded from this move, "we are certainly not a security threat to the US and exemption for India should also be avail-able," Teaotia added.

The increase in America's exports to India last year reflects that market access in India is very open and that there are lot of opportunities to boost trade, she said. PTI

NEW DELHI: Capital mar-kets regulator Sebi on Thurs-day raised the exposure limit under exchange-traded cur-rency derivatives trading for res-idents and FPIs to $100 million across all currency pairs involv-ing the Indian rupee.

The move will help entities engaged in forex transactions to maintain their currency risks in a better manner.

"Domestic clients/FPIs may take long or short positions without having to establish exis-tence of underlying exposure, up to a single limit of $100 mil-lion equivalent, across all cur-rency pairs involving INR, put together, and combined across all the stock exchanges," Sebi said. The regulator has asked FPIs to ensure that their short positions at all exchanges across all contracts in foreign currency (FCY) and Indian rupee pairs do not exceed $100 million. PTI

NEW DELHI: With India eye-ing a big push for electric cars, Argentina has approached Indian government and com-panies to invest in lithium mines in the South American nation.

Argentina has one of the largest lithium reserves in the world.

To meet India's demand for electric vehicles, lithium will be needed in abundance to pro-duce lithium-ion batteries... I am told India is planning to set up large lithium-ion bat-tery plants. Argentina is ready to meet India's growing demand for lithium, said Mario Osvaldo Capello, Undersecretary of Mining Development, Minis-try of Energy and Mining, Gov-ernment of Argentina.

Capello, who is currently in India, has met top officials in the government including those from Ministry of Commerce

and Industry and Mining, as also the corporates working on battery development and EV projects. These include repre-sentatives from Maruti Suzuki, Tata Chemicals and Su Kam battery.

We have lithium reserves to the tune of over 3,31,000 tonnes. Apart from giving var-ious concessions on mining, we also offer competitive edge and ensure ease of doing business compared to our competitors. Already couple of top Indian corporate have showed interest in lithium mining in Argentina, Capello said.

Capello also said that top global corporate working on EV and lithium-ion batter-ies development projects like Toyota Tsusho Corp, Aber-deen International and China's Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium Co have formed consortiums for

lithium mining in Argentina.We want India to explore

options for lithium mining apart from mining of other met-als like copper, gold and silver. With India going to lead in EV revolution, we are also keen to partner with Indian companies in development of Lithium-ion battery technology, he added.

Recently government think-tank Niti Aayog announced that there are plans to set up large lithium-ion battery manufac-turing plants

India is also pushing to have all-electric car fleet by 2030 to cut its oil imports bills and tackle environmental pollution problem. Notably, government-run Indian Space Research Organisation and DRDO are also working on development of low-cost lithium-ion batter-ies that can be used in EVs and other equipments. PTI

NEW DELHI: Bandhan Bank’s Rs 4,473 crore initial public offer was subscribed 42 per cent on the first day of bidding on Thursday.

The portion reserved for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) was oversubscribed 1.26 times, non institutional investors 1 per cent and retail investors 12 per cent.

The IPO received bids for 3,50,05,200 shares against the total issue size of 8,34,96,347 shares, data available with the NSE till 1730 hrs showed.

Kolkata-based Bandhan Bank on Wednesday raised Rs 1,342 crore from anchor inves-tors and is looking to raise a total amount of Rs 4,473 crore from the public issue of its shares. The IPO is of up to 119,280,494 shares comprising

fresh issue of up to 97,663,910 and an offer for sale of up to 21,616,584 shares (including anchor portion of 35,784,147 shares).

The issue, which would close on March 19, is in a price band of Rs 370-375.

Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, Axis Capital, Gold-man Sachs (India) Securities, JM Financial and JP Morgan India are managing the issue.

Bandhan Bank Ltd is an Indian banking and financial services company headquar-tered in Kolkata, West Bengal. Bandhan, which started as a micro-finance company in 2001, received banking licence by Reserve Bank of India in 2014. The equity shares are proposed to be listed on BSE and NSE. AGENCIES

Bandhan Bank IPO subscribed 42% on first day

Argentina woos India Inc to invest in its Lithium mines

Exempt ‘strategic partner’ from steel duty hike: India

NEW YORK: A former Indian-American president of the blood-testing company Ther-anos and the firm's founder and CEO were on Thursday charged with "massive fraud" amounting to over $700 million by the US federal regulators.

According to the Securi-ties and Exchange Commis-sion (SEC), Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani and the founder Eliza-beth Holmes raised money by

deceiving investors about the company's technology, busi-ness and financial performance.

Holmes, 34 and Balwani, 52, raised more than $700 million in years-long "massive fraud", it said.

The SEC alleged that Ther-anos, Holmes and Balwani falsely claimed that its key prod-uct a portable blood analyser could conduct comprehensive blood tests from finger drops of

blood, revolutionising the blood testing industry.

In truth, Theranos' propri-etary analyser could complete only a small number of tests, and the company used analysers manufactured by others to con-duct majority of patient tests. Theranos and Holmes neither admitted nor denied the allega-tions in the SEC's complaint and have agreed to settle the fraud charges levied against them. PTI

MUMBAI: Profit margins of the Indian shrimp industry are likely to be impacted due to the hike in the anti dumping duty (ADD) by the US, but the exports volume may remain unaffected in the near term, says a report.

"There could be some mar-gin compression across the supply chain, as these hikes are passed down to the producers or farmers and processors," rat-ing agency Icra said

However, its vice president and sector head- corporate rat-ings, Pavethra Ponniah added, "Given that India accounts for 32 per cent of USA's shrimp imports volume, we do not expect any impact of the ADD hike on export volume and the

growth trajectory is expected to continue in the near term."

The agency also expects the share of Indian shrimp exports to the US to increase given the sharp hike in ADD levied on exports from Vietnam to 25.39 per cent in March from 4.78 per cent earlier, against 2.34 per cent levied on Indian shrimp exports. The US recently hiked the ADD on shrimp exports from India to 2.34 per cent

from 0.84 per cent earlier.India continued to be the

largest supplier of shrimps to the US, contributing about 33 per cent to its total imports last year, while Indian shrimp exports to the US grew at an annual rate of 21 per cent dur-ing 2013 to 2017.

According to Icra, shrimp imports from India last year witnessed a 45 per cent growth aided by weak produc-tion dynamics in other major shrimp producing geographies such as Vietnam, China and Thailand.

During the first nine month of this financial year, Indian shrimp exports has witnessed a 29 per cent growth against the same period last year. PTI

Our shrimp industry profits may be hurt by US duty hike

Accepting Liberty bid for Bhushan to violate level-playing: Tata Steel

US blood-testing firm Theranos’ PIO ex-prez in $700 mn scam

Sebi ups currency derivatives trade limit to $100 mn

NEW DELHI: In its journey to acquaint increasing num-ber of people with various steel usages for eventually boosting domestic steel consumption, Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL) is organizing series of workshops and conferences titled "SAIL Structurals - The future of Steel Design” across the country with the objective of promoting Structurals, spe-cially the user friendly Parallel Flange Sections. The recent one in the series was organized at Dehradun on Thursday.

Structurals are popularly being used worldwide in vari-ous constructions as they help in erecting lighter structures facilitating easier fabrication, lesser construction time, eco-nomical, safer and sturdy build-ing and at the same time adding elegance to the design. MPOST

SAIL workshops across country to boost steel consumption

NEW DELHI: Exports grew by 4.5 per cent in February, the lowest expansion in the last four months, to $25.8 billion as shipments of engineering, textiles and gems and jewel-lery declined while trade deficit narrowed to a five-month low of $12 billion.

The trade deficit — the dif-ference between imports and exports — stood at $9.52 bil-lion in February 2017, as per the data released by the com-merce ministry.

Exports growth rate has

been steadily declining since November 2017 when it touched a high of 30.5 per cent. The trade gap in Septem-ber 2017 stood at $8.98 billion.

"Exports have been on a positive trajectory since August 2016 to February 2018 except for a temporary setback in October 2017," the ministry said in a statement.

The country's merchandise exports are showing continu-ous positive growth, , Com-merce Secretary Rita Teaotia told reporters here on Thursday.

Imports too rose by 10.4 per cent to $37.8 billion during the last month.

Cumulative value of exports for April-February 2017-18 period grew by 11 per cent to $273.7 billion, while imports grew by 21 per cent to $416.87 billion. The trade deficit was $143.13 billion.

Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu in a series of tweets said, "Exports data continue with their upsurge! Merchandise exports during February have exhibited positive growth of

4.48 per cent in dollar terms".Oil imports during Febru-

ary rose by 32 per cent to $10.19 billion, while non-oil import increased by 4.11 per cent to $27.61 billion.

Oil imports during April-February 2017-18 were valued at $98 billion which was 26.92 per cent higher than $77.21 billion in the corresponding period last year.

Exports of chemicals and petroleum products grew by 30.41 per cent and 27.44 per cent respectively in February.

However, engineering goods shipments dipped by 1.88 per cent.

Gold imports declined by 17 per cent to $2.89 billion in Feb-ruary as against $3.48 billion in the same month last year.

Prabhu said that services exports also continued to grow with total exports in January valued at $16.33 billion regis-tering a growth of 2.07 per cent. Imports during the month were valued at $9.847 billion, regis-tering a negative growth of 0.12 per cent. PTI

Feb exports grow 4.5% to $25.8 bn; trade deficit dips

PEOPLE’S BANKER: CEO Chandra Shekhar Ghosh

mp business 13MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

PANAJI: The five-decade-old mining industry in Goa is staring at another bout of uncertainty as the Supreme Court order on closure of iron ore extraction activity in the state comes into effect from Thursday night. Goa agriculture minister Vijai Sardesai had on Wednesday said that the state would face the “biggest” crisis from on Friday, when the mining ban comes into force. The mining and tourism industries are the key revenue earners for the coastal state. The state government fears that the sudden stoppage of extraction of fresh ore would result in two lakh people, working at mining sites on different as-signments, losing their jobs. The government, meanwhile, has drawn a comprehensive plan under which mine owners will stop the extrac-tion of ore from tonight while machineries will be moved out from the sites later. The SC had last month quashed the second renewal of iron ore mining leases given to 88 companies in Goa in 2015. The apex court said it was giving time till March 15 to mining lease holders, who have been granted a second renewal in violation of its previous directions, to manage their affairs. People dependent on this industry are worried as it appears there are no signs of resumption of mining activity in the near future. PTI

Goa mining industry stares at uncertainty; govt worried

NTPC-Ramagundam organised a project familiarisation programme for local reporters on March 15, 2018. A total of 49 reporters from Print and Electronic Media from Jyothinagar, Godavarikhani and Ramagundam attended the programme

North Zone of LIC comprising of 17 divisions spread over Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Himanchal and J&K has completed its annual new business target of First Premium on March 14, 2018 for the FY 2017-18. It has crossed the budgeted figure of ̀ 4745 crores on first premium and this feat has been achieved by the Zone for the first time in the history of Zone by 14th March 2018, almost 17 days before the closure of the FY 2017-18

CORPORATE KALEIDOSCOPE

NEW DELHI: Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmen-dra Pradhan has said India is a happening place as it is offer-ing Rs one lakh crore business in bio-fuel and bio-energy to the investors across the globe.

"India is a happening place for energy. Every day 40 million people are going to hydrocar-bon retail points to meet their demand, and 190 million people are getting the benefit of subsi-dies. India offers 1 lakh crore of bio-fuel and bio-energy busi-ness to the world," Pradhan said while inaugurating the first edi-tion of Delhi Energy Dialogue (DED) 2018, on Wednesday.

Addressing the gathering he said India is the third largest pri-mary consumer of energy after the US and China. In the next 25 years, that is, by 2040, India's energy consumption will grow by CAGR of 4 per cent.

The dialogue was organ-

ised by Ashden India Collec-tive (AIC) in alliance with the Climate Parliament and TERI.

The Delhi Energy Dia-logue 2018 brought together all the stakeholder in the field of energy and power, on a com-mon platform to deliberate on key developments and chal-lenges for energy for all' in India.

The industry and energy leaders, along with the policy makers, discussed the current scenario, roadmap to achieve

the target for renewable energy generation of 175 Gigawatt by 2022, opportunities and challenges.

"Ashden India Collec-tive (AIC) is bridging the gap between organisations that are working on the ground to accel-erate energy access for all and the policy makers that enable innovative business models to take off, by creating a positive environment. It is capitalising on the critical mass of innova-tive business models that are delivering so many sustainable energy projects in India.

"There are now 25 Indian Ashden Award winners that are involved in AIC and at Ash-den, we are so excited to see them working with each other and India's government to help increase access to clean, afford-able energy," Sarah Butler-Sloss, Founder Director and Advisor of Ashden, UK, said. PTI

NEW DELHI: The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed the Pay-ment of Gratuity (Amend-ment) bill which seeks to empower the government to fix period of maternity leave and tax-free gratuity amount with an executive order.

After the passage of the Payment of Gratuity (Amend-ment) Bill in the Rajya Sabha, the government would be able to enhance the ceiling of tax-free gratuity to Rs 20 lakh from existing Rs 10 lakh for employee under the Payment of Gratuity Act.

After implementation of the seventh Central Pay Com-mission, the ceiling of gratuity amount for central govern-ment employees was increased from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh. The unions are demanding for inclusion of the change into the Act.

The bill was passed amid the din in the Lok Sabha on Thursday as uproar over a host of issues went for the second week in a row.

Earlier in the day, Par-liamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said the Pay-ment of Gratuity (Amend-ment) Bill was an important piece of legislation and sought the opposition's cooperation.

The bill notifies the period of maternity leave as part of continuous service and pro-poses to empower the central government to notify the gra-

tuity ceiling from time to time without amending the law.

Moving the bill for pas-sage, Labour Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar said it is a very important legislation for employees, especially women.

Now, the bill will go to the Upper House for consideration and passage.

At present, formal sec-tor workers with five or more years of service are eligible for Rs 10 lakh tax-free gratuity after leaving job or at time of superannuation.

A senior government offi-cial said that the government wants to provide tax-free gra-tuity of Rs 20 lakh to organised sector workers at par with the central government.

The Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972, was enacted to pro-

vide for gratuity payment to employees engaged in facto-ries, mines, oilfields, planta-tions, ports, railway companies, shops or other establishments.

The law is applicable to employees, who have com-pleted at least five years of continuous service in an estab-lishment that has 10 or more persons.

The amendment will also allow the central government to notify the maternity leave period for female employees as deemed to be in continu-ous service in place of existing twelve weeks .

The proposal comes against the backdrop of the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 enhancing the maximum maternity leave period to 26 weeks. PTI

LS passes bill for Govt to double tax-free gratuity to ̀ 20 lakh

PANAJI: A cabinet committee in Goa is of the view that auc-tioning the mining leases is the only way to resolve the crisis in the mining industry.

The cabinet advisory com-mittee's members - Sudin Dhavalikar, Vijai Sardesai and Francis D'Souza - met on Wednesday to discuss what steps the state govern-ment needed to take to help the mining industry and its stakeholders.

The panel also resolved to file a review petition in the Supreme Court (SC) in con-nection with the mining issue.

The SC had last month quashed the second renewal of iron ore mining leases given to 88 companies in Goa in 2015.

The apex court said it was giving time till March 15 to mining lease holders, who have been granted a second renewal in violation of its previous direc-tions, to manage their affairs.

They are directed to stop all mining operations with effect from March 16, until fresh min-ing leases (not fresh renewals or other renewals) are granted and fresh environmental clearances are granted, the court had said.

Goa's senior minister Dhavalikar said on Thurs-day that the state has no other option but to auction the min-

ing leases. "Nobody can stop the auction as there is a Supreme Court order...we cannot ignore it," he told reporters here.

Dhavalikar, however, said the state government will exam-ine the implications of the auc-tioning process as the interest of people dependent on this industry needs to be protected.

Sardesai also agreed to Dhavalikar's view, but cau-tioned that the auctioning of leases "should not be done at the cost of people dependent on the mining industry."

"What is option before us? We have to go as per the apex court, which is supreme in the country," he said.

Sardesai said while taking any stand in the matter, the pri-ority should be to ensure that locals are not out of business.

D'Souza also said auction-ing of leases seems to be the only option, but added that a final call on the issue has to be taken by Chief Minister Mano-har Parrikar.

Parrikar is currently in the US for a medical treatment.

Before leaving Goa, the chief minister had formed the cabinet advisory committee to guide the state administration on various matters in his absence.

The fresh extraction of ore from the mining leases will stop from tonight, as per the SC directives.

The state mines and geol-ogy department has drawn a detailed plan to stop the fresh extraction of ore, its transpor-tation and also moving out of the machinery from the min-ing sites. PTI

Lease-auctions only way out: Goa govt on SC mining ban

Kannur International Air-port, situated 25 kilometers

from Kannur and Thalaserry railway stations, arguably is the most modern airport under construction in India. Although it is situated on the northern tip of Kerala, it serves Karna-taka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. With 6 aerobridges, 48 check-in counters, 16 immigration and customs counters, KIAL is equipped to handle one mil-lion passengers in the first year. This is expected to go up to 5 million passengers by the year 2025. Speaking on the side-lines of “Wings India” 2018 at Hyderabad, K S Shibu Kumar, the Chief Project Engineer of KIAL, answered our questions with élan.

So how did it all begin?KIAL is a company formed

by Govt. of Kerala in 2010. Chairman of the company is the Chief Minister. I came in from Airports Authority of India on deputation and started work-ing on the mandatory clear-ances from MHA, MOD, IMD,

DGCA and the biggest challenge of clearance from Ministry of Environment and Forest. It’s a PPP project on BOO model. 30 per cent is owned by Govt. of Kerala, 25 per cent BPCL and other small PSUs, 10 per cent AAI, balance 35 per cent is open to public. Another Rs. 892 crore came as consortium of Canara Bank, South Indian Bank & Federal Bank. We are short of Rs. 400 Crore which will be put up for IPO at a later date.

What was your personal experience, in choosing your team and how did your past experience help you?

My experience of 8 years at Delhi airport trained me a lot on international airports. Another 8 years in Tiruvan-thapuram allowed me to inter-act with the aviation industry closely. My colleagues, who are now heading various airports in India were consulted during the project. The team shortlisted from AAI workforce, has done a grand job in 4 years, consid-ering that effectively we work

half the year due to heavy rains.

Why was Kannur chosen for an International airport?

Apart from the tourist point of view, it was a strategic deci-sion for defence. We have a defence Enclave within KIAL. Spaces of 10 acres each has been earmarked for Airforce, Navy and Coast Guard to operate out of Kannur Airport. This has the shortest distance from the Gulf.

With so many modern air-ports constructed and under construction, what is the USP of Kannur Airport?

There is not one but many USPs of KIAL.

Truly an International Air-port constructed on 2300 acres of land, KIAL is equipped to operate Code - E aircrafts (like B-777) and compatible with Code - F aircrafts (such as A-380). We have a parking stand and a double-decker aero-bridge ready for Airbus A-380 to land and park. The runways are designed to expand to accom-modate A-380 when required.

KIAL is going to be a hub for cargo in Kerala. Emirates has already scheduled 2 wide bod-ied aircrafts for Kannur Airport each day, one in the morning and the other in the evening. KIAL has 9,553 sqm of inter-national air cargo complex, on modular format, expandable when required.

This airport is going to be the second international airport of Karnataka. Coorg is 45 min-utes and Mysore is 4 hours from KIAL. From tourist standpoint, 50 per cent catchment is from Karnataka and other 50 per cent Kerala and Tamil Nadu com-bined. It also connects Bekal

and Wayanad.The Terminal building is

built in a way that it integrates passengers from both domestic and international sector under one roof. The swing glass door allows the arrival section to be compartmentalized into inter-national arrival when an inter-national flight lands. Otherwise it is open to domestic passengers at other times.

International Airlines need world class maintenance facili-ties. How is KIAL equipped to deal with that exigency?

We have called for Expres-sion of Interest from compa-

nies which specialize in Line Maintenance to conduct man-datory checks when a flight lands. International airlines need not station their engi-neers and spares at Kannur; this maintenance company will conduct all necessary tasks. We are also in the process of sign-ing MOUs with airlines to avail of such services. BPCL, who is out dedicated Aviation Fuel Pro-vider, is commissioning a special container to cater to any aircraft requiring fuel.

What is in it for the Domes-tic Airlines?

India is soon going to have 900 new aircrafts. Indigo, Spice-jet and Jet have ordered 300 new aircrafts each. Where are they going to park them? We have 20 parking bays ready and another 40 is getting ready. As invitation offer we are providing one year of free parking to all at Kannur Airport.

Who is the Architect for Kannur International Airport?

Ecom Asia is the South East

Asia arm of its international aviation consultancy company based in the US. They are our consultants. In fact our unique approach of EPC (Engineering-Procurement-Construction) has been taken by AAI as a model format for all future airports. We were happy to hand over the construction to L & T.

Please elaborate on the road connectivity of Kannur Airport.

NHAI is building a 4 lane highway to Mysore. In fact there are six corridors being built from KIAL in various directions.

What are the passenger facilities and amenities?

95,00 sqm of terminal build-ing is 8th larget in India. KIAL is perhaps the first Indian air-port to have Baggage Drop-in facility. Go to counter weight your baggage take the print-out and head for the aircraft. If your baggage is excess weight, swipe your card and pay for your extra kilogram. We have left luggage and day boarding

facility. In the basement of the airport passengers have shower and snooze facilitates, charged by the hour. Tourists can leave their luggage, take a shower and leave for Mysore or Coorg.

Is Kannur Airport in the Udaan map?

When Ministry of Civil Avi-ation opened the bid for Udaan, KIAL got the highest number of 24 bids. If a person is travel-ing from Tiruvanathapuram to Delhi, the he has to spend 3 days on train. But if he takes a train to Kannur and take an Udaan flight for Rs. 2500/- he is in Delhi in 2 hours. 30 per cent of all NRIs are from North Malabar, a great catchment area for airlines to tap the Gulf passengers, as Cochin and Calicut can’t handle wide bodied aircrafts.

When is the Inauguration planned?

DGCA has certified KIAL. We are now awaiting ILS in June. Ideally we would like to open it around Onam of 2018, the aus-picious festival of Kerala.

India offers ̀ 1 lakh cr business in bio-fuel, bio-energy: Pradhan

KOLKATA: Speciality Restau-rants Limited, one of the larg-est chains of fine dining and casual dining restaurants in the country, announced their Pan India Expansion plans at a Press Conference held at their Mainland China, Gurusaday Road outlet on Thursday.

Anjan Chatterjee, Founder & Managing Director of Speciality Restaurants Ltd. addressed the media highlight-ing the journey and evolution of the company in the past 25 years. MPOST

SIMONTINI BHATTACHARJEE

NEW DELHI: The Gov-ernment of India will power renewable energy almost 3-fold by 2022 from a total capacity of 65 GW to 175 GW.

Besides, the government has undertaken many policy mea-sures to increase the share of renewable energy. In a written reply in Lok Sabha on Thurs-day, the Union Power Minis-ter RK Singh mentioned that the ministry has come up with a provision of Renewable Pur-chase Obligation (RPO) under the National Tariff Policy.

The government recently amended the NTP to increase focus on renewable energy, sourcing power through com-petitive bidding and the need for reasonable rates. It has also emphasized on the develop-ment of Solar parks, Ultra Mega Solar Power Projects,

and development of power transmission network through Green Energy Corridor project.

Recently the Green Climate Fund (GCF) approved the pro-posal submitted by NABARD for a ‘Line of credit for solar rooftop segment for commer-cial, industrial and residential housing sectors’ with a GCF loan support of $100 million. In its 19th Board Meeting held at Songdo, South Korea early this month the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has been accredited as a Direct Access Entity (DAE) of GCF

for channeling resources under this Fund.

The government has also permitted 100 per cent For-eign Direct Investment (FDI) in this sector. Early this week the French President Emman-uel Macron also announced that French National Institute of Research will support train-ing of executives for the solar sector during the International Solar Alliance founding con-ference here. It will also facili-tate research.

In addition, the minister also avouched that the gov-ernment would focus on the growth of offshore wind energy in the Indian Exclusive Eco-nomic Zone. According to the Facilitating Offshore Wind in India’s (Fowind’s) recent report in India offshore wind energy sector shows much progress, but more work needs to be done.

Govt set to power renewable energy almost 3-fold by 2022

Mainland China owner brews nationwide

expansion plans NEW DELHI: A bill proposing to grant a party the right to seek damages from the other side in case of a breach of a business contract and to reduce discre-tion of courts in such matters was passed by the Lok Sabha on Thursday amid din.

The House passed The Spe-cific Relief (Amendment) Bill, 2018 by a voice vote even as several parties were protesting in the Well over different issues, including the Punjab National Bank scam.

Several amendments moved by N K Premchandran (RSP) were negated by voice vote. The bill aims to tweak a 54-year-old law that deals with specific fulfilment of a contract, as part of the government's ease of doing business policy. The Union Cabinet had in Decem-ber last approved amend-ments to the Specific Relief Act, 1963. PTI

LS passes bill on damages for

breach of contract

NEW DELHI: Three Indian cities — New Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai — are among the cheapest cities in the world, according to an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) sur-vey, that named Singapore as the most expensive city.

As per the Worldwide Cost of Living 2018 survey, South Asian cities, particularly those in India and Pakistan offers the best value for money. Ban-galore, Chennai, Karachi and New Delhi featured among the 10 cheapest locations surveyed.

“India is tipped for rapid economic expansion, but in per-head terms, wage and spending growth will remain low. Income inequality means that low wages are the norm, limiting household spend-ing and creating many tiers of pricing as well as strong com-petition from a range of retail sources,” the report noted.

Moreover, cheap and plen-tiful supply of goods into cit-ies from rural producers with short supply chains as well as government subsidies on some

products, has kept prices down, especially by Western stan-dards, the report noted.

Syria’s capital, Damascus is the cheapest city in the world. Joining Damascus at the bot-tom is Venezuela’s capital, Cara-cas and Kazakhstan’s business centre, Almaty, in the second and third position respectively.

Others in the 10 cheap-est cities list include Lagos at the 4th place, Bangalore (5th), Karachi (6th), Algiers (7th), Chennai (8th), Bucharest (9th) and New Delhi (10th). PTI

Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai among world’s cheapest

NEW DELHI: State-run power equipment maker BHEL on Thursday announced com-missioning of a 600 MW coal-based thermal power plant in Andhra Pradesh.

The unit has been commis-sioned at Rayalaseema Ther-mal Power Project of Andhra Pradesh Power Generation Corporation (APGENCO) in Cuddapah district, a company statement said.

So far, BHEL has commis-sioned 18 sets of 600 MW rat-ing in the country. PTI

Bhel launches 600-mw TPP in Andhra Pradesh

K S Shibu Kumar to pilot Kannur International Airport to glorious take-off

mp sport14MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

COLOMBO: Washington Sundar has been phenomenal in the powerplay during the ongoing Nidahas Trophy Tri-series and the young-off spin-ner said he is fortunate to have the skill set to bowl during this crucial period of the game.

The 18-year-old lanky spin-ner has come of age in this tournament and is the most penetrative bowler on display with seven wickets to his kitty, including three against Bangla-desh yesterday.

Besides, Sundar is the most economical bowler in the tour-

nament with an impressive economy rate of 5.87 runs an over -- surprisingly 11 of his 16 overs have been bowled in the powerplay.

While Sundar admitted that it is a challenge for a spinner to

bowl in the powerplay, but the key to success is to face those challenges and overcome them.

“It is definitely a challeng-ing thing but that is what you play cricket for. When you get an opportunity to represent

your country you need to face those challenges. When you win those challenges you get a lot of satisfaction,” he said.

“I have to admit that I am very fortunate I have got this skill. It’s more of reading the batsman’s mind, especially in the powerplays because every six balls, they will be looking to hit you out. So it’s important to read the mind. I myself being a batsman to an extent I can at least suspect what he is think-ing or where he is going to hit me,” Sundar said at the press conference. PTI

‘Fortunate to have skills of bowling in powerplay’

Sundar has been the most economical bowler (5.87) in 1st 6 overs

“I have to admit that I am very fortunate I have got this skill. It’s more of reading the batsman’s mind, especially in the powerplays because every six balls, they will be looking to hit you out. Washington Sundar

Washinton Sundar (left) celebrates after taking a wicket in Colombo on Wednesday

NEW DELHI:The ugly battle between the two-member Com-mittee of Administrators (CoA) and the three principal BCCI office bearers got murkier with the Vinod Rai-led panel decid-ing to take away all function-ing powers of acting president CK Khanna, acting secretary Amitabh Chaudhary and trea-surer Aniruddh Chaudhry.

Having already sought their removal in the seventh Status Report filed in Supreme Court last week, the CoA has gone a step further by issuing the diktat to stop the office-bearers from taking any decision unilaterally.

It also stopped Board offi-cials from using the BCCI funds to meet legal expenses in con-nection to the Lodha Panel related cases. The officials now can not plan their travel and accommodation for var-ious meetings without CoA’s permission.

It has been learnt that sit-ting on central contracts of the Indian players irked CoA chief Vinod Rai as insurance policies of the Indian players was about to lapse.

The matter became worse after secretary Amitabh ques-tioned the manner in which CoA made certain appoint-ments including that of a former Page 3 journalist and currently associated with a film produc-tion company as GM (Market-ing) for a whopping salary of Rs 1.65 crore per annum.

The 12-point diktat effec-tively takes away all the powers from executive functionaries.

“The CoA is ready to throw the principles of governance out of window. They want to take away the rights of the office bearers,” a BCCI office-bearer said. When told that CoA is peeved that they sat on players’ contracts and certain appoint-ments, he retorted: “Were we even kept in the loop when the contracts were being chalked out? You want people to sign it blindly when they don’t even know the terms of reference used for certain appointments. Where in Lodha Panel’s report was recommendation for GM (marketing)? Are we serious that we need to market Indian cricket?”In its diktat, the CoA has instructed: “Any employee/ retainer/ consultant of BCCI who receives a communication from any office bearer and finds that the same is not copied to the CEO and/or the CoA, shall immediately forward the same to the CEO and/or the Com-mittee of Administrators, as the case may be.” PTI

CoA takes away all powers of BCCI office-

bearersCOLOMBO: A place in the final at stake, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh would expect their batsmen to fire as they lock horns in a virtual semi-final of the Nidahas Twenty20 tri-series, here on Friday.

While Bangladesh batting line-up has been bolstered by return of their premier all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan, hosts Sri Lanka still have to do the job without their regular skipper Dinesh Chandimal, who is serving a two-match suspension.

Thisara Perera will con-tinue as skipper in Chandi-mal’s absence.

Shakib had missed the pre-vious matches of the series due to a finger injury.

The winner will play India in the title-clash on Sunday.

Both teams have two points with a victory each. Sri Lanka had surprised India in the tour-nament-opener while Ban-gladesh convincingly chased down a massive target of 215, set by the hosts, last week.

In case of a washout, Sri Lanka will proceed to the final, courtesy their better net run-rate. Save last week’s defeat, Sri Lanka’s recent record against Bangladesh has been impres-sive. They beat Bangladesh in an away Test and in a T20 series

apart from winning the final of the ODI tri-series, which also involved Zimbabwe.

The home side will rely on the batting efforts of Kusal Mendis, who has been in good form, along with Kusal Perera, Upul Tharanga and skipper Thisara Perera.

Bangladesh will be aim-ing for more consistency from their top-order which delivered in one game but disappointed in the couple of other matches against India.

Mushfiqur Rahim will look to continue from where he left

against India while Shakib Al Hasan’s surprise return will give a much-needed confi-dence boost to Bangladesh ahead of their do-or-die game.

Bangladesh skipper Mahmudullah admitted that their batters need to step up.

“We are looking forward to the Sri Lanka game. We will try to come hard at them. Our effort (against India) was there but we needed someone else to contribute with the bat. We wanted a flying start, but the early wickets made us lose momentum. PTI

Sri Lanka, Bangladesh clash in virtual semifinal

Sri Lanka vs BangladeshLive from 7:00 PM

SQUADSRI LANKA: Thisara Perera(c), Suranga Lakmal (vc), Upul Tharanga, Danushka Gunathilaka, Kusal Mendis, Dasun Shanaka, Kusal Janith Perera, Je-evan Mendis, Isuru Udana, Akila Dananjaya, Amila Aponso, Nuwan Pradeep, Dushmantha Chameera, Dhananjaya De Silva.BANGLADESH: Mahmudullah (captain), Tamim Iqbal, Soumya Sarkar, Imrul Kayes, Mushfiqur Rahim (wicket-keeper), Sabbir Rahman, Mustafizur Rah-man, Rubel Hossain, Taskin Ahmed, Abu Hider, Shakib Al Hasan, Abu Jayed, Ariful Haque, Nazmul Islam, Nurul Hasan, Mehidy Hasan, Liton Das.

COLOMBO: England will tour Sri Lanka for the first time in over six years to play three Tests, five one-day interna-tionals and a one-off Twenty20 match, organisers said on Thursday.

The tour will begin on October 10 with a day-night ODI at Dambulla, Sri Lanka Cricket said in a statement. There will be three day-night ODI matches in all while the T20 will also be a day-night game. The First Test will be at the picturesque Galle Interna-tional Stadium while the other two tests are slated for Pallekele stadium in Kandy and in the capital Colombo.

The Third Test is scheduled to be played from November 23 to 27. AFP

Poms to tour SL for 1st time

in 6 yearsVADODARA: The Southern Stars from Australia reasserted their supremacy with a compre-hensive 60-run victory against Indian women as they sealed the three-match series by taking an unassailable 2-0 lead, here on Thursday.

After cruising to an eight-wicket victory in the opening game, India were outplayed in all departments as Australia scored a healthy 287 for 9 and then bowled out Mithali Raj's brigade for 227 in 49.2 overs.

Indian team never appeared to be competitive with batters letting the team down on both occasion. A target of 288 in women's cricket is a tall order but pint-sized opener Punam Raut's lack of power hurt the Indian team badly as she undid all the hardwork done by her opening

partner Smriti Mandhana (67 off 53 balls). While Mandhana hit 12 boundaries and a straight six, Raut was not even able to rotate the strike. Her 27 off 61 balls was a major factor in India losing the match. Her ultra defensive bat-ting put so much pressure on Mandhana, that her attempted slog sweep off left-arm spinner Jess Jonassen. PTI

Aus women crush India, seal series

NAGPUR: Wasim Jaffer defied age and modern fitness norms to flay a young Rest of India attack throughout the second day of Irani Cup as Vidarbha reached a mammoth 589 for three, riding on Mumbai mae-stro's unbeaten 285.

At 40, with no worries of clearing 'Yo-Yo' tests, Jaffer bat-ted with composure, bleeding a young bowling attack with thousand cuts, en route his unbeaten knock on a shirtfront of a track at the VCA Stadium.

It was a lovely sight when young Prithvi Shaw, who now opens for Mumbai, was seen clapping after Jaffer reached his eighth career double hundred. Eighteen seasons back when Jaffer had made his debut for India, Prithvi was only three months old.

The Mumbai maestro wasn't troubled one bit by an attack that had current India off-spinner Ravichandran Ash-win (1/123 in 43 overs) and the discarded Jayant Yadav (1/149 in 38 overs) in their ranks. Both of them also had 'centuries' in their names which they would like to forget quickly.

He started the day on 113

and added 172 runs more to become the highest individual scorer for Rest of India in the Irani Cup, surpassing Murali Vijay's 266 during the 2012-13 season. Jaffer's innings had 34 boundaries and a six. He has faced 425 balls so far.

Along with Ganesh Sathish (120, 280 balls), Jaffer added 289 runs for the third wicket and then another 91 runs with Apoorv Wankhade (44 batting).

It is expected that Vidarbha will allow Jaffer to complete his triple hundred before declaring their innings..

When in flow, Jaffer is a delightful batsman to watch and it was no exception as he compiled runs with silken grace. The supple wrists time and again came into use, as any delivery from pacers, which drifted on the pads, was whipped to the mid-wicket fence.

The half-volleys outside the off-stump were driven through the covers and any width pro-vided outside the off-stump, was cut imperiously.

Ashwin once again bowled leg breaks without much suc-cess. In fact, Jaffer faced 83 balls from Ashwin and picked up as many as 54 runs.

It was once again evident that Ashwin, without any help from the pitch, isn't as effective as on a square turner.

When he bowled short outside the off-stump, Jaffer rocked back and cut him past backward point. Before that, Ashwin tried a fuller delivery on pads and he was flicked to square leg boundary.

The Indian selectors had come to watch the young national team hopefuls in action. PTI

Irani: Vidarbha reach 598/3 riding on Jaffer's 285*

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mp sport 15MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

BARCELONA: arcelona hailed Lionel Messi as “The King” as he handed Chelsea the royal punishment by scor-ing twice to reach 100 Cham-pions League goals and end their quarter-final hopes.

After unfurling a banner showing the words “God Save The King” before kick-off yes-terday, Barca’s fans were cele-brating after just 129 seconds at the Camp Nou as Messi found the net before Chelsea had even made a pass.

He then teed up Ousmane Dembele to double Barca’s lead in the second leg of the last-16 clash before register-ing a century of Champions League goals on his 123rd appearance to complete a 3-0 victory, 4-1 on aggregate.

Messi becomes only the second player to reach the milestone in Europe’s pre-mier tournament, following Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ron-aldo, who has 117 goals in 152 games.

“He knows in certain moments the stars have to come out,” Barcelona coach Ernesto Valverde said. “We enjoy him. We’re lucky enough to be seeing some-thing that will go down in history.”

By the end, the Argentin-ian’s scintillating breakaway in the build-up to Dembele’s first Barcelona goal had become little more than a footnote to what was another Messi masterclass.

“I think that a fantastic player moved the final result,” Chelsea manager Antonio Conte said. “In these two legs, he scored three goals, he made an assist for Dembele to score a goal. It’s a pity.” It also

caps a remarkable five days for the 30-year-old, who sat out Saturday’s La Liga win over Malaga to attend to the birth of his third child.

Chelsea, in touch after the 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge, were therefore unfortunate enough to encounter the striker fresh, free and at his frighteningly brilliant best.

At the finish, Conte left the field with his arm around the forward, perhaps with noth-ing to add but congratulations.

“I think when you have the opportunity to make great compliment to Messi, I think it’s right,” Conte added. “It’s right to recognise a super, super, super top player.”

Conte’s team had chances, particularly in the first half,

but the sense was once Bar-celona were in front they were content to sit back and counter.

Chelsea hit the woodwork twice and claimed for a pen-alty when Alonso was brought down by Gerard Pique.

“If you watch the game you can see the final result is unfair,” Conte said. “Over the two legs we hit the post four times. This is very strange.”

With Manchester United dumped out by Sevilla and Tottenham outmanouevred by Juventus, Chelsea’s exit means for all the talk of a Pre-mier League resurgence, Liv-erpool and Manchester City are its only two representa-tives in the quarter-finals.

Spain have three, after Real

saw off the challenge of Paris Saint-Germain.

Andres Iniesta shook off a hamstring strain to start while Dembele was a surprise inclu-sion, preferred to Paulinho and rewarded for his excellent display against Malaga.

Conte, meanwhile, plumped for Olivier Gir-oud up front ahead of both Alvaro Morata, who was on the bench, and Eden Hazard, who was granted his wish to play deeper in attacking midfield.

Within three minutes, however, Chelse’s plan to frustrate was spoiled. Messi started the move and finished it, with Dembele, Luis Suarez and a deflection off Alonso, helping him find the space

to fire through the legs of Thibaut Courtois for the fast-est goal of his career.

Dembele’s second came after Cesc Fabregas failed to secure possession in midfield and Messi was away, skipping past a desperate lunge from Andreas Christensen, before taking the whole stadium by surprise by squaring to the back post. Dembele took one touch and slammed the ball into the top corner.

Any hopes Chelsea had of a comeback were extinguishe shortly after the hour-mark. Suarez raced through midfield but looked to have hit a wall on the edge of Chelsea’s box.

Messi took aover, tear-ing past the rooted Moses and banging the ball, again

through the legs of Courtois, into the net.

Antonio Conte said he believed Lionel Messi will remain at Barcelona for the rest of his playing days after watching the Argentine mae-stro destroy Chelsea’s Cham-pions League hopes.

Messi, 30, scored twice and set up a goal for Ousmane Dembele as Barca beat Chel-sea 3-0 at the Camp Nou on Wednesday for a 4-1 aggre-gate triumph.

The double took Messi to 100 Champions League goals while his opener, coming after 129 seconds, was the fastest goal of his illustrious career.

Messi has fre-quently been linked with a big-money move to the Premier League but Conte is convinced the striker will retire at Barcelona.

“I think Leo wants to stay until the end of his career with Barcelona,” Conte said.“We’re talking about an impossible situation. I repeat: we must have great respect for this player. We are talking about a fantastic player.

“I think he wants to stay in Barcelona for the end of his career. I think it’s the right way for him. He’s writing with his team-mates a great story with Barcelona.”After full-time, Conte left the field with a congratulatory arm around Messi’s shoulder but Chelsea had chances too, most notably through Marcos Alonso and Antonio Rudiger, who both hit the woodwork. Alonso also thought he should have been awarded a penalty in the second half after he went down. AFP

Messi hits CL century in Barca winArgentine surperstar scores a brace in Catalans 3-0 vicotry over Chelsea in round of 16

ISTANBUL: A Thiago Alcantara strike and Sandro Wagner's first Champions League goal capped Bayern Munich's 3-1 win at Besiktas on Wednesday as the German giants cruised into the quar-ter-finals for the seventh year in a row.

Bayern completed a com-prehensive 8-1 aggregate victory in Istanbul, having effectively clinched the last-16 tie following a 5-0 rout last month in the first leg in

Munich.For Bayern coach

Jupp Heynckes, who replaced Carlo Ancelotti in October, this was his 11th straight win in the

Champions League which set a new competition record.

After Thiago fired home early on, an own goal by Besik-tas right-back Gokhan Gonul put Bayern 2-0 up right at the start of the second half.

With their team 7-0 down overall, Besiktas finally came to life, grabbing a consolation goal by Vagner Love.

But Bayern notched their third of the evening when back-up striker Sandro Wag-ner came off the bench to mark his Champions League debut with his first goal at this level.

Having resisted the urge to name a weakened team after their first-leg romp, Bay-ern wasted little time taking the lead against the Turkish champions.

Top scorer Robert Lewan-dowski surprisingly started up front, leaving Wagner waiting for his elite European debut until the last 20 minutes.

It was a surprise move by Heynckes with tough Bundes-liga games against RB Leipzig

and Borussia Dortmund to come this month.

Nevertheless, Lewan-dowski played until the 67th minute, but failed to add to his 32 goals this season in all competitions.

Thiago, back after injury, celebrated his first Champions League goal since netting in the 3-0 win at home to Ander-lecht last September.

With 18 minutes gone, Bayern captain Thomas Muel-ler swung in a cross and the Spain international thumped the ball home from close range.

After claiming Bayern's 100th goal this season, Thiago was forced off onaa 35 minutes -- attacking midfielder James Rodriguez replaced him as the Colombian made his return from a calf injury.

Mats Hummels, who along Jerome Boateng was booked in the first half, was replaced by Niklas Suele at the break before Bayern extended their lead thanks to a Besiktas own goal.

Right-back Rafinha whipped in a cross, but with the Besiktas defence focused on preventing the ball reach-ing the lurking Lewandowski, Gonul turned the ball into his own net.

Besiktas pulled a goal back on 59 minutes when David Alaba lost possession deep in his own half, allowing Gonul to supply Love who did just enough to roll the ball over the line. Alaba atoned with a crucial block to deny Besik-tas forward Mustafa Pektemek soon after, and the Austrian set up Wagner on 84 minutes as his deflected cross was chested over the line by the substitute German. AFP

Bayern sweep aside Besiktas to reach

quarter-finals

BHUBANESWAR: All India Football Federation's devrlop-mental team Indian Arrows will 'aim to continue the good work' when they face Mumbai City FC in the third qualifier match of the Hero Super Cup 2018 at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar on Thursday.

The Arrows, compris-ing of the India U19 National Team boys and the Indian U17 World Cup team, most of them emerging from the AIFF Acad-emy are being coached by Luis

Norton de Matos who believes that the 'process needs to continue.'

The qualifiers of the tournament will be played between teams

who finished between 7th and 10th in the Hero ISL and Hero I-League respectively. The four winners will proceed to the final round of the tournament which kicks-off from March 31.

"We are in a process and we'll continue to show that we are able to showcase a good brand of football, no mat-ter who are we facing," Matos stressed.

"We had four wins in the Hero I-League despite being the youngest squad in the league.  Moreover, the youngest highest scorer Abhijit Sarkar is in my team. My boys were cho-sen for the Hero of the Match 10 times. MPOST

Mumbai City are not taking Arrows lightly

MUMBAI CITY VS INDIAN ARROWS

LIVE FROM 5:00 PM

BHUBANESWAR: Churchill Brothers Football Club of Goa, redeemed their season some-what, with a tactical odd goal in three victory over Delhi Dynamos in the first match of the Hero Super Cup, India’s premiere football Cup com-petition, which got underway in Bhubaneswar, Odhisa on Thursday. Riding on a brace from Trinidadian Willis Deon Plaza, Churchill now enter the main draw of the tournament scheduled to begin on March 31 and will face Kolkata giants Mohun Bagan in the round of 16. The Goan side overcame a cautious start to get over the line in extra-time, after Kalu Uche had given the Delhi side a fifth minute lead.

At the Kalinga Stadium, Churchill, who placed ninth in the Hero I-League and face relegation, upset the six match unbeaten run of the Indian Super League outfit who had rallied at the end of the league to finish in eighth position.

The ‘Red Machines’ played in Blue while the Lions were

Plaza’s brace helps Churchill outwit Dynamos

the home side today with their White jersey’s. Miguel Angel Portugal, the Portuguese coach

of the Delhi side, fielded a 4-5-1 formation with Nigerian talis-man and captain, the 35-year old Kalu Uche the lone target-man in attack. Alfredo fernan-dez, coach of the Goan outfit chose to go with a more tra-ditional 4-4-2 formation with Gambian Dawda Cessay and Trinidadian Willis Deon Plaza upfront.

The ISL side started strong, controlling the proceedings from the midfield through Claudio Mirabaje. MPOST

BHUBANESWAR: It’s a dif-ferent tournament and ATK ‘wants to start afresh’ when they hit the pitch against Chennai City FC in the final qualifier match of the Hero Super Cup 2018 at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar  tomor-row (March 16, 2018). 

The qualifiers of the tournament will be played between teams who fin-ished between 7th and 10th in the Hero ISL and Hero I-League respectively. The four winners will proceed to the final round of the tournament which kicks-off from March 31.

 “Chennai City FC have shown their capability on the field and we have to very cau-tious. Otherwise, we might have to bow out of the tour-nament on the first day itself,’’ Asstistant coach Bastab Ray mentioned in the pre-match press conference held at the venue on Thursday.

 Meanwhile, Jayesh Rane stated that the entire team is eager to end the season on a positive note.

  “We haven’t had an impressive season. We were plagued with injuries. This is going to be another test and we have to make this opportunity count,’’  Rane said.

  On the other hand, Mohammed Akbar, the newly-appointed head coach of Chennai City FC also urged his team to make a ‘new beginning.’

 “It would be wrong to con-template  tomorrow’s  result from the league’s outcome. Everyone will start from scratch and we have the poten-tial to swing the result in our way. It’s a new challenge and we’re ready for it,’’ Akbar stated. The Chennai-outfit coach added that they have a special plan for everyone, especially ATK skipper Rob-bie Keane. MPOST

Plaza’s brace helps Churchill outwit Dynamos

CHENNAI CITYVS ATK

LIVE FROM 8:00 PM

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OFFICE OF THE EXECUTIVE. ENGINEER Public Works Division Pandharpur

NOTICE FOR HYBRID ANNUITY MODE [HAM] (ONLINE) TENDER (IIIrd Call)E-Tender Notice No. 19/ For 2017-2018

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CHANGE OF NAME

16MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Friday, 16 March, 2018

mp Entertainment

MUMBAI: Actor Alia Bhatt, whose look from her upcoming film Raazi was unveiled on her 25th birthday on Thursday, says movies keep her alive.

Alia and Raazi producer Karan Johar treated her fans to a glimpse into her look for the film, which is directed by Meghna Gul-zar. It is a period drama based on Harinder Sikka’s novel “Calling Sehmat”, about a Kashmiri spy married to a Pakistani man dur-ing the 1971 India-Pakistan war.

Alia, who started her film journey with Student of The Year and has impressed critics and audiences with projects like Highway, Udta Punjab, Badrinath Ki Dulhania and Dear Zindagi among others, shared two images from Raazi on Instagram. “Mov-ies, or in this case my movies,

aren’t just something I do for a living. It’s kind of the reason I feel like I’m alive. So... On my 25th birthday I’ve randomly picked out two images from the 25th day of shoot of ‘Raazi’ and the trailer will be out 25 days from today (April 9)... Happy Birthday to me,” wrote the daughter of cinema veterans Mahesh Bhatt and Soni Razdan.

Alia’s Raazi look, as shared by Karan, features a close shot of the actor’ face, which has mini-mal make-up. She is seen wear-ing simple golden earrings and a nose stud for jewellery.

Vicky Kaushal, her co-star from the film, described her an “amazing human”. The Twitter world was abuzz with wishes for the young talent, who is counted amongst the best actors in Bolly-wood today.

“Your growth as an actor has been phenomenal and this is just the beginning. Keep doing what you do best! Good luck,” wished Anil Kapoor via Twitter. Akshay Kumar called her “immensely tal-ented”, and said: “You’re the per-fect example of ‘good work speaks for itself ’.”

Composer Shankar Mahade-van wished Alia a “journey full of happiness and success ahead”. Her Udta Punjab and Shaandaar co-star Shahid Kapoor had a word of advice for Alia. “Happy birthday! Enjoy these years, they don’t come back. May you grow creatively even more than you already have. And may you be happy... always.”

Others who wished her include Neha Kakkar, Riteish Deshmukh, Shraddha Kapoor, Pulkit Samrat, and Maniesh Paul. IANS

Movies make Alia Bhatt

FEEL ALIVEThe ‘Shaandaar’ actor will next be seen in ‘Raazi’, a

period drama based on Harinder Sikka’s novel about a Kashmiri spy who married to a Pakistani man

MUMBAI: Filmmaker Rajku-mar Hirani, who is busy with the post-production process of his upcoming biopic on actor Sanjay Dutt, says biopics are more interesting when pre-sented in a fictional format.

Hirani spoke at a ‘#Films-ForChange’ initiative, organ-ised by Good Pitch India and the Indian Documen-tary Foundation here. He was there along with Nandita Das, Naseeruddin Shah, Rahul Dholakia and Javed Jaffery.

While

Hirani is making a film on Sanjay’s life now, the BBC had made a documentary on the controversial actor’s life back in 1996.

Asked whether he ever thought of making a documen-tary on Sanjay’s life instead of doing it in a fictionalised for-mat, Hirani said: “Certain sub-jects will be more engaging if they are done in a fiction for-mat and certain subjects would

probably be more interesting in a documentary format.

“PK was the only film which I started with reverse where I wanted to talk about God and religion, but in the jour-ney of making that film,

I realised that I am end-ing up talking very little

about it. There is so much to talk about God and reli-

gion that you cannot actually say enough in a fictional format.

“In a fic-tional format, it is expected that you have to sugarcoat

your story, entertain the audience and still

manage to say what you want to say. So, at some stage, I do want to

make a documentary.”“There are still unsaid

or undiscussed issues that I haven’t been able to show in ‘PK’, so I want to do a documentary where you can say what you want to say. But in a film like ‘Sanju’, I think it’s more engaging as a fic-

tional film where you see another actor doing it.”

Actor Ranbir Kapoor essays Sanjay’s life on-screen in Sanju, which is set for release on June 29. IANS

MUMBAI: Superstar Aamir Khan, who turned 53 today, is considered something of a marketing genius in Bollywood but the actor says it has been years since he charged remu-neration for his films. The actor said if his films do well, he earns money and if they fail, he suffers losses.

“Actually, I don’t charge a fee. It has been years since I have stopped charging a fee. If my film earns less, I earn less and if my film makes more money, I make more money,” the actor told reporters while discussing whether stars should take a pay cut.

Aamir had a great year with the extraordinary success of Dangal in China market, which was followed by an equally impressive box office run of Secret Superstar. The actor is currently shooting for Thugs of Hindostan in Jodhpur and flew here to be with his family. “We had wonderful year in terms of success of ‘Secret Super-

star’. Also this year, I had the privileged of working with Mr Amitabh Bachchan on ‘Thugs of Hindostan’,” he said.

“I hope the work that we are doing on ‘Thugs of Hindostan’ turns out well and people like the film upon its release. As I am working with Amitji for the first time, I hope it turns out to

be the most memorable film,” he added. There is a lot of curi-osity surrounding his dream project “Mahabharatha” but the actor is not ready to share details just yet. “There are a number of things I am work-ing on and as soon as I am clear about what I am doing... I will tell you,” he said. PTI

LOS ANGELES: Actor Daniel Bruhl has said that he was left speechless and surprised by the script of his upcom-ing film 7 Days In Entebbe. The Captain America: Civil War star will be seen in the role of a German terrorist in Jose Padilha-directed film, which also fea-tures Rosamund Pike in a pivotal role.

The film is about the 1976 Israeli rescue operation that freed the mainly Jewish and Israeli hostages of a hijacked plane in Uganda. It focuses on two con-flicted left-wing Germans – played by Bruhl and Pike – who allied with Pal-estinian terrorists to hijack the Paris-bound plane. “I was speechless and surprised when I first read the script. I

knew about Entebbe and I’d seen one of the earlier films on the subject, but reading this particular script made me aware of so many additional details that are absolutely fascinating. The script made it clear what drove each of the individual groups involved,” Bruhl said in a statement.

“The first conversation I had with Jose was over an hour. We ended up talking about the current state of Ger-man politics and I could feel that this was a man with a strong political con-science,” he added. Bruhl said that the mood on the sets was upbeat and quite energising despite the grim nature of the film. PTI

LOS ANGELES: Reality TV star Kendall Jenner, amid rumours of being gay, has said she doesn’t think she has a “bisexual bone”. Kendall, 22, however said she has not closed the door on the possibility, reports aceshowbiz.com.

“I don’t think I have a bisexual or gay bone in my body, but I don’t know! Who knows? I’m all down for experience – not against it whatsoever – but I’ve never been there before. I’m not gay. I have literally noth-ing to hide, I would never hide something like that,” Kendall told Vogue magazine.

Kendall said the rumours around her sex-uality may have stemmed from the fact that she rarely talks about her personal life, unlike her sisters. 

“I think it’s because I’m not like all my other sisters, who are like, ‘Here’s me and my boyfriend’. So it was a thing for a minute because no one ever saw me with a guy. IANS

‘Biopics more interesting in fictional format’

‘I have stopped charging fee, but have a share in profits’

‘7 days in Entebbe’s script left me speechless’

Kendall Jenner denies being gay

Taylor thinks Joe Alwyn is

‘the one’

LOS ANGELES: Actor Mark Ruf-falo, who essays Hulk in the Aveng-ers movies, says filming for the

project is like shooting a TV show.Ruffalo, 50, has portrayed

Bruce Banner aka The Hulk in three movies of the fran-

chise till now, including the two Avengers movies

and Thor: Ragnarok.He is set to

reprise his role in Avengers: Infinity

War and says he has had “a lot

of say” in his character’s

progres-sion,

reports aceshowbiz.com. In an interview with Collider

magazine, Ruffalo said: “Oddly enough, I joke with people that this is like doing a TV show where you shoot one episode every three years.”

“There’s a continuity to it and when we talked about it with Mar-vel and Kevin Feige we really do talk about it as the character’s pro-gression. I’ve been able to have a lot of say in where it goes, and you’re also dealing with a new script and a new world but the characters feel like they’re making a journey.

“And it does feel like one goes to the next and goes to the next. It feels like a long serial which is nice, I think.” IANS

‘Filming ‘Avengers’ movies is like shooting TV show’

LOS ANGELES: Singer Taylor Swift reportedly thinks actor and model Joe Alwyn is the one for her. According to a source, Taylor “wants to get engaged” soon, reports usmagazine.com.

“This is the first time she’s kept the guy private. She really likes Joe. She wants to keep her personal life separate from her work life,” the source added.  The couple has been linked since last May.  What Swift loves most about her boyfriend is that he “doesn’t seek atten-tion and is low-key”. 

“She loves that he is confident and has his own career. She feels confident in their relationship and Joe really loves her – he is happy being out of the spot-light.” Joe will be travelling with Swift during her “Repu-tation” world tour that starts in May.  IANS