SPAIN TO TAKE CONTROL OF CATALAN INSTITUTIONS PG10

PM HIT COUNTRY WITH TORPEDOES OF NOTE BAN, GST, SAYS RAHUL PG5

PUBLISHED FROM DELHI & KOLKATA VOL. 12, ISSUE 300 | Tuesday, 31 October 2017 | New Delhi | Pages 16 | Rs 3.00

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RNI NO.: DELENG/2005/15351REGD. NO.: DL(S)-01/3420/2015-17

NEW DELHI: Voicing con-cern over the delay in hear-ing of criminal appeals, the Supreme Court has directed the Centre to explore the possi-bility of having alternative fora for hearing of pleas by adopting suitable legislative or adminis-trative measures.

A bench comprising Jus-tices A K Goel and U U Lalit said a large number of criminal appeals were pending in dif-ferent high courts and it takes more than 10 years for hearing.

The apex court said speedy justice is a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Con-stitution and if the cases are not heard within the reason-able time, this right may be ren-dered meaningless. It issued notice to Attorney General K K Venugopal to assist the top court and inform it accordingly.

Additional Solicitor Gen-eral Pinky Anand was asked to apprise the Attorney Gen-eral about the issue. It also appointed senior advocate Dhruv Mehta as amicus curiae in the matter.

“It appears necessary to explore the suggestion whether there can be an alternative fora for hearing of appeals by adopting suitable legislative or administrative measures to effectuate the mandate of fun-damental right under Article 21. MPOST

Explore alternative fora

for criminal appeals: SC

MPOST BUREAU

NEW DELHI: Continuing the hearing in the contentious Kerala ‘love jihad’ case, the Supreme Court on Monday observed that the consent of the girl for the marriage is paramount as she is an adult by law.

In the matter of the girl Hadiya alias Akhila, whose marriage to Shafin Jahan was annulled by the Kerala high court in May this year based on the complaint of her father who alleged that she had been unlawfully indoctrinated into Islam and held captive by her husband, the Supreme Court ordered the girl to be produced before it for an interaction on November 27.

The directive was issued to Hadiya’s father, who was given legal custody of Hadiya after the annulment of her marriage by the Kerala HC. Hadiya’s husband Shafin Jahan had petitioned the apex court to overturn the lower court’s deci-sion to set aside their marriage.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said it would interact with the 24-year-old girl in open court to take a preliminary assessment of her mental state. If any indoctrination is sus-pected, they will institute a detailed examina-tion of the girl by appropriate authorities, the bench said. The Supreme Court’s firm stand on the girl’s free will to go with anyone was diluted when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said there is a pattern of indoctrination in 89 such cases in Kerala. Additional solicitor gen-eral Maninder Singh told the bench that the NIA found a systematic apparatus engaged in targeting and radicalising youth for jihad. Singh said when a person is indoctrinated to hate her religion and parents, there is little to determine whether free will was exercised.

Consent of the girl important, says SC

TO HEAR ALL AADHAAR PLEAS

MPOST BUREAU

NEW DELHI: A constitution bench would be set up to hear a clutch of peti-tions challenging the Centre’s decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for availing various services and government welfare schemes, the Supreme Court on Mon-day said.

Earlier on Monday, the apex court hearing the plea of the West Bengal gov-ernment challenging Aadhaar for gov-ernment schemes, asked West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to file

the appeal as an individual.Bengal’s petition is separate from 22

others challenging the linking of Aad-haar to welfare schemes, which was trans-ferred to a five-judge constitution bench of the country’s most senior judges.

A bench, comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khan-wilkar and D Y Chandrachud, said the larger bench would commence hear-ing on these petitions in the last week of November this year.

Recently, a nine-judge Constitution bench had held that the Right to Privacy

was a Fundamental Right under the Con-stitution. Several petitioners challenging the validity of Aadhaar had raised the issue that the scheme was violative of privacy rights.

Senior advocates Gopal Subrama-nium and Shyam Divan, appearing for those opposing the Aadhaar scheme, had sought an urgent hearing on the petitions.

The Centre had on October 25 told the apex court that the deadline for man-datory linking of Aadhaar to avail the benefits of the government schemes had been extended till March 31 next year for those who do not have the 12-digit bio-metric identification number and were willing to have it.

The petitioners had termed the link-ing of the Unique Identification Author-

ity of India (UIDAI) number with bank accounts and mobile numbers as ille-gal and unconstitutional and strongly objected to the CBSE’s move to make it mandatory for students to appear for exams.

Divan, appearing for some of the peti-tioners, had earlier contended that final hearing in the original Aadhaar matter, which is pending before the apex court, was necessary as the government “can-not compel” citizens to link their Aad-haar with either bank accounts or mobile numbers.

SC to form 5-judge Constitution Bench

Modi, Gentiloni ink six pacts MPOST BUREAU

NEW DELHI: India and Italy on Monday inked six pacts, includ-ing on boosting cooperation in the energy and trade sectors, after extensive talks between Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi and his Ital-ian counterpart Paolo Gentiloni on critical issues such as terrorism and cybercrime.

The two leaders also discussed ways to strengthen the bilateral political and economic relations, apart from deliberating on strate-gic international and regional issues.

Addressing a joint media event with Gentiloni, Modi said they discussed wide-ranging issues, including the challenges posed by terrorism and cyber crimes, while agreeing to enhance cooperation to counter them.

Modi also noted that there was a considerable potential for enhanc-ing India-Italy trade ties.

After the Modi-Gentiloni meet-ing, the two sides signed six pacts to

deepen cooperation in the fields of railways sector safety, energy and promoting mutual investments, among others.

Italy is India’s fifth largest trad-ing partner in the EU with a bilateral trade of USD 8.79 billion in 2016-17, as per official figures.

India’s exports to Italy were at USD 4.90 billion, while its imports were at USD 3.89 billion, result-ing in a trade imbalance of USD 1 billion in favour of India. In the first four months of fiscal 2017-18, bilateral trade has reached USD 3.22 billion.

Ahead of his meeting with Modi, the visiting leader had described his visit as an opportunity to make ties between the two countries stronger.

Earlier, External Affairs Minis-ter Sushma Swaraj called on Genti-loni and discussed issues of mutual interest, ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

Gentiloni’s visit is the first prime ministerial trip from Italy in more than a decade.

The India-Italy diplomatic ties took a hit after two Italian marines — Latorre Massimiliano and Sal-vatore Girone — on board a ship named Enrica Lexie, were arrested for allegedly killing two Indian fishermen off the coast of Kerala in 2012.

NEW DELHI: The Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) of India Lt Gen AK Bhatt on Monday warned his Pakistani counterpart Major Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza that the Indian Army would continue to retaliate to “pro-vocative acts of aggression” from its neighbour. “Indian Army will continue to take all retaliatory measures as well as retain the right to punitively respond to such provocative acts of aggression from Pak side in future too,” Bhatt said. P7

Will retaliate to acts of provocation: Indian DGMO to Pak

Bomb hoax delays Jet Airways flight, lands lovelorn repeat offender in dock

OUR CORRESPONDENT

AHMEDABAD: The city police have detained a passenger of a Mumbai-Delhi Jet Airways flight which was forced to make an emer-gency landing at the Ahmedabad airport on Monday after a note stat-ing that there were hijackers and a bomb on board was found in the washroom, a police officer said.

An initial probe into the back-ground of Birju Kishore Salla, the man who created the hijack scare on Jet Airways’ Mumbai-Delhi flight on Monday, reveals a plot straight from a Bollywood movie

with unrequited love as its theme.Investigators say 37-year-old

Salla had reportedly fallen for a Jet Airways employee and had hoped that by doing something that runs the airline to the ground, he would leave the lady jobless and force her to come to him for employment.

“Salla runs property business in Thane, a suburb of Mumbai. His company is registered with the ministry of corporate affairs. Last July, he had picked up a major fight on a Jet Airways flight by claiming

that his meal had cockroaches. He somehow wanted to harm Jet so that the lady comes to him for a job. Salla may be of unsound mind,” said a senior investigator.

Earlier, Union Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said the person responsible for the secu-rity threat on the Mumbai-Delhi Jet Airways flight had been identified and should be immediately put on the no-fly list.

Flight 9W 339, which had taken off from Mumbai at 2.55 am with 115 passengers and seven crew members, landed without incident at Ahmedabad around 3.45 am.

BAIL TO UNITECH MD ONLY AFTER FIRM DEPOSITS RS 750 CRORE: SC PG3

WHEN SHREYAS TOOK COMEDY AS A CHALLENGE PG16

In today’s paper

...

RELIEF TO CONSUMERS

KERALA ‘LOVE JIHAD’ CASE

GoM for making GST inclusion in MRP mandatory

MPOST BUREAU

NEW DELHI: In a huge relief to consumers, the maximum retail price of goods must now include the GST component to efficiently address consumer complaints that some retailers charge the new indirect tax on MRP of products, a high-level panel of state finance ministers has recommended.

The group of ministers, headed by Assam Finance Min-ister Himanta Biswa Sarma, has in its recommendation to the GST Council on easing com-pliance burden on small and medium enterprises suggested that the government make it amply evident in the present law that MRP is the maximum price of a product to be sold in retail and charging anything above this is an offence.

This rule, sources said, must apply to establishments like restaurants, eateries and malls that sell packaged goods such as bottled beverages which already carry an MRP, but at some places, a GST is charged over and above that MRP.

However, businesses while uploading the invoice to the government in filing returns and paying taxes can separately show the GST component and the selling price of the product.

“We have suggested that when businesses issue invoice to consumers, the MRP should be inclusive of GST. The bifur-cation in tax collection and sale price can be shown in the

invoice while paying taxes to the government,” sources said.

In Guwahati on November 10, the GST Council, chaired by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and comprising his state counterparts, is likely to take up the recommenda-tions of the GoM, which was set up earlier this month.

Over half a dozen MSMEs on Sunday made a presenta-tion before the GoM, sources added.

Among other things, the GoM also suggested lowering the fees for the delayed filing of returns to Rs 50 a day from Rs 100.

Also, the panel pitched for extending the quarterly filing of returns facility to all taxpayers.

Currently, businesses with a turnover of up to Rs 1.5 crore are allowed to file returns and pay taxes every quarter.

It also suggested further simplification in return filing process, HSN Code and invoice matching.

The primary recommen-dation of the GoM includes slashing tax rate to 1 percent for manufacturers and restau-rants while easing norms for traders opting for it.

MAN DETAINED IN AHMEDABAD

PM Narendra Modi shakes hands with his Italian counterpart Paolo Gentiloni before their meeting in New Delhi on Monday PIC:NAVEEN SHARMA

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Regulatory control must be minimised for India’s growth

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2 mp townMILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

DAYINDAYOUT What’s on Around Town

WHITE AND BLACK 75-year-old artist Pushpa Bagrodia, who has always been known for her water-colours is for the first time exhib-iting her exploration with charcoals in an exhibition aptly titled ‘Shwet-Syam’ (White and Black). The show is curated By Uma Nair. It will be inaugurated by eminent singer-actor-musician and Padma Shri recipient Shekhar Sen. This debut in the monochromatic medium is symbolic of deep devotion to creating works that embrace the beauty and power of nature.WHEN: October 31 – November 6 WHERE: Hall No.1, Lalit Kala Akademi TIMING: 6:30 pm (Inauguration)

INDIA’S BOTANICAL HERITAGEOrganised in collaboration with Bo-tanical Survey Of India, this exhibition on the Indian natural history collections in botany and meteorology showcas-ing specimens and literatures that de-pict some of the most crucial chapters of botanical history of India and the world. On view are copies of paint-ings and drawings by botanical artists of species discovered by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker; a collection of Bengali manuscripts known as Puthi, and the exhibition also celebrates the life and work of Indian Botanist, Janaki Ammal.WHEN: Till November 7 WHERE: IICTIMING: 11 am – 7 pm

ABU DHABI IN DELHIThe Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi will shortly be commencing its first ever ABU DHABI WEEK at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. The week-long extravaganza will promote the emirate’s tourism and cultural heritage proposition. The event represents a great opportunity for consumers, trade agents and stake-holders to be present under one roof, and for Abu Dhabi to be showcased as a highly significant destination for the Indian market.WHEN: November 3 – 5WHERE: Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium

‘THE RHYTHM AND BLUES FESTIVAL’Making its entry into Delhi, The Gen-esis Foundation’s Rhythm and blues festival 2017, will be organising a music fiesta. The festival is especially curated for a community of festive go-ers who wants to enjoy two days filled with music that resonates with good will. 100% of the funds raised through the event are used towards the traet-ment of critically ill, underpriviliged children. WHEN: November 4 and 5WHERE: Amphitheatre, The ZorbaTIMING: 4 pm onwards

With the Nobel Prize for Liter-ature and the Man Booker Prize – the two most cov-eted literary honours – hav-

ing been awarded earlier in October, the literary season has indeed set in.

The DSC Prize for South Asian Lit-erature will be announced in about two weeks, while the Jaipur Literature Festival is also round the corner. What better time for publishing houses to release the most-awaited books of the year?

While October saw a diverse book-shelf, ranging from “Finding my Virgin-ity,” by Richard Branson to “The Bhojpuri Kitchen,” by Pallavi Nigam Sahay, the upcoming month is more about concrete titles by well-known faces.HERE ARE FIVE BOOKS WE CAN’T WAIT TO READ THIS NOVEMBER:

“The Book of Chocolate Saints” by Jeet Thayil

This is the most-awaited literary novel of the year by Jeet Thayil, a past winner of the DSC prize, and a finalist of the Man Booker Prize. In incandescent prose, Thayil tells the story of Newton Francis Xavier, blocked poet, serial seducer of young women, reformed alcoholic (but only just), philosopher, recluse, all-round wild man and India’s greatest living painter. At the age of 66, Xavier, who has been liv-ing in New York, is getting ready to return

to the land of his birth to stage one final show of his work (accompanied by a mad bacchanal). Narrated in a huge variety of voices and styles, “The Book of Choco-late Saints” is the sort of literary master-piece that only comes along once in a very long time.

“Conflicts of Interest” by Sunita NarainOne of India’s foremost environmental-

ists, Sunita Narain gives a personal account of her battles as part of the country’s Green Movement. While outlining the enormous environmental challenges that India faces today, Narain says political interests often scuttle their effective resolution. She recounts some widely reported contro-versies triggered by research undertaken by her along with her team at the Centre for Science and Environment, such as the pesticides in colas report, air pollution research in Delhi and endosulfan research in Karnataka, among others. Narain also includes an ‘environmental manifesto’, a blueprint for the direction India must take if it is to deal with the exigencies of climate change and environmental degradation.“Life among the Scorpions” by Jaya Jaitly

From arranging relief for victims of the 1984 Sikh riots, to joining politics under firebrand leader George Fernandes, to becoming president of the Samata Party, Jaya Jaitly’s rise in Indian mainstream poli-tics invited both awe and envy. All this even

as she continued her parallel fight for the livelihood of craftsmen on the one hand, and conceptualised and ensured establish-ment of the first Dilli Haat in 1994, on the other. With all the backstories of major events in Indian politics between 1970 and 2000, including her experience of deal-ing with the Commission of Inquiry and courts regard-ing the Tehelka sting, the story of Jaya Jaitly makes for a riveting read. A powerful narra-tive on why being a woman in politics was for her akin to being surrounded by scorpions; this hard hit-ting memoir offers a per-spective on the functioning of Indian politics from a woman’s point of view.

“Chase Your Dreams” by Sachin Tendulkar

Why should adults have all the fun? In his career spanning 24 years, hardly any records have escaped Sachin Tendulkar’s masterly touch. Besides being the high-est run scorer in Tests and ODIs, he also

uniquely became the first and only bats-man to score 100 international centuries and play 200 Tests. His proficient stroke-making is legendary, as is his ability to score runs in all parts of the field and all over the world. And Tendulkar has now come up with this uniquely special edition of his autobiography for young readers.

“China’s India War” by Bertil Lintner

The Sino-Indian War of 1962 delivered a crushing defeat to India: not only did the coun-

try suffer a loss of lives and a heavy blow to its pride, the world began to see India as the provocateur of the war, with China

‘merely defending’ its ter-ritory. This perception that

China was largely the innocent victim of Nehru’s hostile policies

was put forth by journalist Neville Maxwell in his book “India’s China War,” which found readers in many opinion makers, including Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon.

For far too long, Maxwell’s narrative, which sees India as the aggressor and China as the victim, has held court. Nearly 50 years after Maxwell’s book, Bertil Lint-ner’s “China’s India War” puts the ‘border dispute’ into its rightful perspective. IANS

Five ‘must read’ books

IN NOVEMBERThe upcoming month will see concrete titles by well-known faces - from border disputes to personal battles - this literary season is not to be missed

OUR CORRESPONDENT

The Minister of State (Indepen-dent Charge) for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Giri-raj Singh, on Monday, said that

following the ‘Khadi for Fashion’ call by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the min-istry had planned to connect at least five crore village women to Charkha (spin-ning wheel).

Addressing the Gandhi Jayanti Cele-brations at Khadi Bhawan in Connaught Place, the minister said that Khadi has now become popular among younger genera-tion too. “For a significant span of time Khadi was meant for either dadaji (older ones) or netaji (politicians). But, due to the initiatives and appeals made by our Prime Minister – who is himself the latest USP of Khadi –Khadi has now become a fashion trend among the youth,” he said, adding, “Even the results speak. The pre-vious governments could increase the sale by only 70 percent in 10 odd years, but we enhanced it to 90 percent.”

Speaking of solar charkhas, the min-ister said that it would provide employ-ment to at least five crore village women in the coming five years. “With five pilot projects at Varanasi, Nawada and other

places, we are already on our heels with this project. It will ensure a regular income between Rs 6000 and Rs 10,000 to each of the women,” he said. The minister claimed that in efforts to make Khadi a fashion brand across the globe, the department is in regular contact with all leading fashion institutes of the country.

Singh further added that even in Africa, as a part of centenary Year celebrations of Gandhiji’s Swadeshi Movement, the High Commission of India in Uganda, in asso-ciation with the Republic of Uganda, is unveiling the Gandhi Charkha – gifted by

Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) – at the Gandhi Heritage Site at Jinja in Uganda.

Khadi and Village Industries Com-mission (KVIC) Chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena, in his address, said that Khadi has been spreading its wings in all directions for creating maximum job opportunities for the artisans. “Since sanitation and Khadi was close to Mahatma Gandhi’s heart, the KVIC is all set to take his legacy forward,” he said, adding, “We have also taken Prime Minister’s call of ‘Sweet Revo-lution’ very seriously and we are trying to give a major push to our ‘Honey Mission’ in the coming days.”

Arun Kumar Panda, secretary, MSME, also laid stress upon enhancing the total turnover of Khadi and Village Industries.

Earlier, the minister inaugurated 60 Khadi outlets – which were renovated and re-launched during the completion of KVIC’s 60th anniversary and a Khadi outlet at Chaudhary Charan Singh Inter-national Airport at Lucknow, through remote device.

He also handed over the cheques to five artisans each from two Khadi institutions of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, under the new sales initiatives undertaken by KVIC. Later, he inaugurated a Honey Parlour – showcasing several qualities of honey – at Palika Bazaar.

Charkha to provide jobs to FIVE CRORE WOMEN

OUR CORRESPONDENT

INDIA’S HABITAT centre witnessed a pulsating evening on October 27 when legendary Indian music composer Salil Chowdhury was paid tribute by singer and music composer Runki Goswami on the occasion of his upcoming 95th birth anniversary.

“It was a pleasure to perform on the songs of iconic personality Salil Chowd-hury,” said Goswami. I am a big fan of his

composition and it was a privilege to sing his song. The moment was overwhelming and paying tribute to such a legend is like a dream come true. It was like a test for my singing ability because if any singer can sing Salil Chowdhury’s song then that means he/she can sing any song.

The evening started when Runki ren-dered her performance with hit classics like “Kahin Dur Jab Din Dhal Jaye” and “Rimjhim k yeh pyare pyare geet liye”. The audience was swaying to her performance on songs like “Janeman Janeman tere do nayan”.

The stealing performance of Runki on classical music has left today’s generation songs behind. She has proved that cur-rent songs might be catchy but what steal the heart of the audience are the melodies of old classic songs. The evening brought back the golden period and revived the memories with some unforgettable songs of Salil Chowdhury. Runki believes that new generations are taking up classical

songs to the top and they are coming up with various versions of classical songs.

In the end, Runki said, “This evening was like a blessing for me. And the musi-cians were the life and soul of the evening.”

Melody rejuvenated memory of Salil Chowdhury

OUR CORRESPONDENT

GIVING DELHI a comical kick, Magic Creations Moms’ Theatre Group in association with Fenesta Windows and Amplifon presented ‘Shh.. Kaun?!, a play that amalgam-ates suspense, drama, com-edy, romance, and mystery altogether.

Held at the LGT audito-rium on October 27, the play was staged by an all mothers group of Gurgaon, who came together to claim their ‘creative kick’ back in life.

The play is scripted, designed and directed by Binod Sharma whereas the choreography and music are given by Jitendra Bisht. The story revolves around five indi-viduals who are bored of life and are looking to do some-thing different. Fate gets them together and they decide to

start a resort in Chamba, Utta-rakhand. Guests start com-ing in and each of them has a different experience alto-gether. Creepy, scary, funny, mysterious ...What is this all about? What is the mystery of the resort? What is the story behind it? The play answers all these questions. The story keeps the viewer gripped, seek-ing more with each passing scene. The play also imbibes a strong message that evolves as the story progresses.

The concept, which has not been picked by the directors for live theatres since ages, and the execution involving amaz-ing visual effects, makes it a pleasure to watch.

Talking about the Moms’ Theatre Group, Geetika Goyal, founder, says, “Our thought behind the launch of this group was to give the mothers in Gurgaon a creative corner, where they come, unwind and discover themselves all over again. As of now, the group is

of 20 passionate mothers who have come to challenge them-selves and find some ‘ME’ time while taking a break from their everyday routine.” Among the important guests, Alok Mittal, IPS, Inspector Gen-eral – National Investigation Agency (NIA), Manoj Rajput, Actor, D R Ankur, Ex-Direc-tor NSD, and NSD’s faculty Saoti Chakrabarty and senior NSDian, writer and director Sushila Varnekar, marked their presence at the event.

Gurgaon mothers create magic on stage

3mp cityMILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

Bail to Unitech MD only after firm deposits Rs 750 crore: SC

BTech student hangs self

Delhi reports 753 more dengue cases; tally mounts to 6,623

15k resident docs warn of strike from Nov 1

SDMC tightens grip over parking rule violators

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Monday allowed the CBI's plea seeking advancing of hear-ing on its application on poly-graph test on nine students in connection with JNU student Najeeb Ahmed who has been missing for over a year now.

Additional Chief Metropol-itan Magistrate Samar Vishal posted the matter for Novem-ber 10 and sought the response of nine students of Jawahar-lal Nehru University (JNU) on the central probe agency's application.

Najeeb, a first-year MSc Biotechnology student, has been missing from the Mahi Mandavi hostel in JNU since October 16, 2016. The CBI, in its plea, had sought early hear-ing on its application seeking consent of nine students for a lie detection test regarding the disappearance of Najeeb in October last year.

The CBI had on October 16 approached the court seeking early hearing of its plea seeking consent of the suspect students for a polygraph test.

The application was moved by the agency on the direction of the Delhi High Court for an early hearing of the plea, which has been adjourned to January 24, 2018.

27-year-old Najeeb went missing after a scuffle at his JNU hostel allegedly with ABVP activists. The RSS students wing has denied any involve-ment in his disappearance.

A Delhi court had on May 3 quashed a police order sum-moning nine JNU students for recording their consent or denial for lie-detector test in the case after it noted a defect in the notice sent by the inves-tigating officer to the students.

On May 16, the high court handed over probe of the case to the CBI. AGENCIES

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday said that it will consider granting bail to Unitech Ltd Manag-ing Director Sanjay Chandra after the embattled real estate firm deposits Rs 750 crore by December end.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said the money, to be deposited in the apex court registry, will be used in facilitating refund to the home buyers who want their money back.

The bench, also comprising justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, asked the authorities of Tihar jail, where Chandra is presently lodged, to facilitate his meeting with his company officials, financiers and lawyers so that he could arrange the money for refund-ing the home buyers as well as

for completing the ongoing housing projects.

Advocate Pawan Shree Aggarwal, assisting the court as an amicus curiae in the mat-ter, told the bench that the real estate firm needed around Rs 2,000 crore to refund money to home buyers as well as com-pleting the ongoing projects.

Senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, appearing for Chan-dra, told the court that they have given a plan for refund of money and completion of projects and they needed some time to do it.

The apex court has fixed the matter for hearing in the second week of January and granted liberty to Chandra to mention the matter for grant of bail after depositing Rs 750 crore in the apex court Registry.

The Supreme Court had on October 23 asked the jailed Unitech Ltd MD to establish his

bonafide by depositing at least Rs 1,000 crore out of a total of Rs 1,865 crore to refund has-sled homebuyers who do not want possession of flats.

The apex court had also questioned the real estate firm why they cannot auction their properties to refund money to

the homebuyers and complete their housing projects.

The apex court had ear-lier directed the amicus cur-iae to create a website in which the home buyers could upload their details and claim flat or refund from the company.

Chandra is seeking interim

bail from the apex court after the Delhi High Court on August 11 had rejected the plea in a criminal case lodged in 2015 by 158 home buyers of Unitech projects’ –'Wild Flower Country’ and ‘Anthea Project’–situated in Gurugram.

The apex court had on Sep-tember 1 said that although it is absolutely conscious that it is dealing with an applica-tion for bail, but "the consum-ers who have invested their money in various projects undertaken by the petitioners cannot be allowed to lurch in the dark. Their problem has to be solved".

It had said that settlement of the problem can take place in two ways -- the consumers who are inclined to take posses-sion of the flats can opt for the same and those who wanted their money back shall get the amount along with interest.

Unitech Managing Director Sanjay Chandra

ANUP VERMA

NEW DELHI: With 753 new cases being reported over the last week, according to a Municipal report released on Monday, the total number of people affected of dengue has reached to 6,623 in the Capi-tal this season. The number of people affected by Malaria this year has climbed to 1,082 in which 9 new cases recorded in a week while the figure for Chi-kungunya stands at 752 with 21 new cases reported previ-ous week.

Recently, 26-year-old Moajeba, a resident of the Delhi’s Arbindo Marg died at Max Super Specialty Hospital, taking the total tally to four till now. Earlier, 26-year-old Manipuri woman Rhoda Dai-mai, who was living in south Delhi's Sarita Vihar, had died at the Holy Family Hospi-tal in August, while 49-year-old Meena Devi, hailing from Bihar, died of dengue shock syndrome on September 2 at the SGRH and 12-year-old

boy had succumbed to dengue shock syndrome on August 1 at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, the first death due to the vector-borne disease reported in the city this season,” according to civic authorities.

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), which tabulates data for the entire city, however, has not acknowledged the fatalities at the LNJP Hos-pital and kept the official toll at four. However, a senior official of the Corporation said that the introduction of the concept of the dengue free cooler is an environment-friendly initia-tive and will be taken up at war footing to generate awareness among the people.

Cases of vector-borne dis-eases are usually reported between mid-July and Novem-ber-end. This year, however, it has been much earlier.

Dengue and Chikungunya are caused by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which breeds in clear water. The female Anoph-eles mosquito, which causes malaria, can breed in both fresh

and muddy water.According to the SDMC,

mosquito breeding has been reported from 19. 62 lakh households in Delhi this year till October 28 and 1.59 lakh legal notices have been issued for mosquitogenic condition so far.

At least, 21 deaths due to dengue were reported last year from various city hospi-tals, including nine at AIIMS, though the official figure of the civic bodies stood at 10.

Seventeen deaths, suspected to be due to malaria, were also reported by civic bodies last year. At least 15 fatalities were reported last year from various city hospitals due to complica-tions triggered by chikungu-nya, though civic authorities kept the death tally at zero. One of the worst outbreaks of Chi-kungunya was in 2016 when 12,221 cases were reported till December 24, 2016. Of these, 9,749 were confirmed.

Experts have raised their concern after the resurgence of this deadly parasite.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has claimed to tighten its grip over viola-tors of the rules pertaining to parking, littering and plastic bags. It has been noticed that action taken during the month of October 2017 proved to be deterrent.

It may be recalled that a special drive was conducted by General Branches of the Zones under SDMC and Traf-fic Police resulted in curbing the incidents of wrong and unauthorized parking on met-alled road and footpath.

As far as Central Zone is concerned on the spot 140

challans against littering were issued and an amount of Rs 9000 as fine. 194 challans for insanitary conditions issued by Municipal court resulted in collection of Rs. 2, 99,300 as fine. Further 14 vehicles were seized for violation of parking rules. Similarly, in West Zone 139 challans for littering were issued and an amount of Rs 6950 was collected as fine. Fur-ther 108 vehicles were seized for violation of parking rules. 35 kg poly bags were seized, 24 challans were issued and an amount of Rs 1,20,000 was recovered as fine.

In South Zone on the spot 39 challans against littering were issued and an amount of Rs. 1950 was collected as

fine. 324 Challans for insan-itary conditions were issue by Municipal court and an amount of Rs.3, 99,400 were collected. 4 challans were issued against burning of leaves/ garbage under NGT Act an amount of Rs. 20,000 was collected.

Further continuing action against unauthorized park-ing 182 cars were fined on the spot and an amount of Rs. 2, 08,452 was recovered. As far as Najafgarh Zone 47 on the spot challans were issued against littering resulting in collection of Rs 2350 as fine.

Further 52 kg poly bags were seized and 22 challans were issued resulting in col-lection of Rs. 1.1 lakh as fine.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: A newly joined employee of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) suffered life-changing injuries when he was electrocuted on Sunday night near DMRC’s Faridabad Receiving Sub Station(RSS) of Line-6. The injured employee has been identified as Aneesh Kumar, 21, a trainee electrician who joined the DMRC on July 27, 2017.

“No competency to work on high tension equipment given to him from DMRC. He was working in PSI depart-ment under Avinash Parmar ( Manager/Traction) and Pankaj Gupta( AGM/Traction),” said an employee of the DMRC, on condition of anonymity.

According to the DMRC

spokesperson, “A staff from the Electrical section got an electric shock during the field train-ing work on the night of 28/29 October at Faridabad Receiv-ing Sub Station. He was taken to Safdarjung Hospital and is under treatment. The incident is being investigated.”

Sources at the DMRC said that the incident took place at around 2.50 am, while the employee was doing routine maintenance work of insula-tors during his night duty and the concerned section was in discharged condition.”

He further said that sud-denly line was charged without informing the staff working on the site and one of the Metro employees came into electro-cution grip. A group of 8 Metro employees including 2 supervi-

sors were working on site.”According to the doctor at

Safdarjung Hospital, the con-dition of the Metro employee who has received nearly 50 per cent of burn injury, is critical.

A DMRC staff said, “It is a serious safety lapse on part of Delhi Metro Rail Corpora-tion (DMRC) as how a new employee could be assigned to work on high tension lines/equipment without providing proper training and issuing competency.”

An employee on anonym-ity said that similar accidents took place in past at various project sites of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and the matters were covered up. On February 14, 2006, a Metro staff was found dead due to OHE electrocution.

DMRC trainee battles life after electrocution

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Delhi's power supply saw the infusion of innovative technology with the launch of an oil-free trans-former on a high platform here on Monday by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

"Besides being safer than the conventional transformer as it does not contain oil, the transformer, mounted atop a 30 foot-high platform to save space, will address the issue of traffic congestion in the area," a BSES, one of the capital's two electricity distribution companies (discoms), release said.

The packaged oil-free transformer has been installed in east Delhi that is under the jurisdiction of BSES Yamuna Power Ltd (BYPL).

"The existing 400 kVA transformer in the area has been replaced with the state-of-the-art 1,000 kVA packaged oil-free (dry) transformer. This has been possible with the active help and assistance of the MLA Ishrak Khan," BYPL Chief Executive P.R. Kumar said in a statement.

CM launches oil-free E Delhi transformer

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NOIDA: A Btech 2nd year stu-dent allegedly committed sui-cide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan at his hostel room on late Sunday night, said police.

The deceased identified as 21-year-old Rupanshu hailed from Raebareli district. He was an engineering student at JSS engineering college, situated at sector 62 in Noida and lived in Annapurna Hostel in Bishan-pura village of Sector 57.

According to police, Rupanshu was alone at his room as his friend had gone home after giving his examina-tion on October 28. Rupanshu did not take the exam. On Sat-urday night, he had dinner and gone to his room to sleep. His friends raised a concern when

he didn’t come out of the room for the next day. On Sunday night, they knocked the door but he didn’t reply. The friends then peeped through the win-dow of his room and found him hanging from the ceiling fan. They immediately alerted the hostel warden and other friends who informed police about the incident.

“After receiving the infor-mation, a police team reached the spot and broke the door of his room. He was taken to the hospital where doctors declared him brought dead. The actual reason behind the death of the student cannot be ascertained but some of his friends said that he was under depression after his mother’s death. We have recovered no suicide note from the spot,” Rajeev Kumar Singh, circle officer, Noida.

NEW DELHI: Resident doc-tors in the city have threat-ened to shut down Out patients department (OPD) services on November 1 if the Delhi gov-ernment fails to take back its decision to extend OPD tim-ings at its hospitals.

In its October 9 order, the Delhi government had extended OPD timings saying that facilities would remain functional from 8 am to 2 pm so that there is enough time to attend to patients and avoid crowding. The timing earlier was 9 am to 1 pm.

Over 15,000 resident doc-tors in city government hos-pitals wore black ribbons to work on Wednesday to pro-test against the extended OPD

timings. The Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association expressed concern over the “apathetic attitude” of the Delhi government towards their demands. “We are currently protesting peacefully against this by wearing black ribbon in all the hospitals of Delhi till October 31. As unanimously decided, on November 1, resi-dents of all Delhi government hospitals are going on strike and all the OPDS will remain closed that day,” Vivek Chouk-sey, FORDA president, said.

“If the government still does not respond after that, the residents working in Delhi will be forced to take some serious steps and that will be extremely unfortunate,” he said. MPOST

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Armed with an NGT order banning protests and dharnas around the his-toric Jantar Mantar here, the police and civic officials on Monday demolished tents and makeshift structures set up by ex-servicemen protesting there demanding implementation of the One Rank-One Pension scheme.

The former servicemen have been protesting there for the past more than two years and the police said the exer-cise was carried out after the October 5 order of the National Green Tribunal.

The police also said the pro-testers were informed about the NGT order in advance and asked either to leave or bring a stay order from the court. However, the ex-servicemen termed it "an attempt to throt-tle our voice in a democracy".

Major General (Retd) Sat-bir Singh, who is among those spearheading the protest at the site, said the police and MCD officials came with a JCB machine and demolished their tents and other temporary structures.

"They also took away our equipment and other stuff like beddings at around 8.45 AM. We have been protesting peace-fully demanding implemen-tation of the OROP scheme," he said.

"It is an attempt to throttle our voice in a democracy. And, even if there has been any order from any tribunal, there is a way to do things. What they have done is completely unfair and unjust," he added.

Singh further said the wife of an ex-serviceman was inside the tent when the exercise was carried out. He, however, clari-fied that nobody was hurt.

The police denied use of

any force. "The OROP protest-ers were informed about the NGT's order about vacating the Jantar Mantar area and asked to either leave or bring a stay order from the court," a senior police official said.

The NGT had on October 5 banned all protests and dhar-nas around the historic Jan-tar Mantar, which has been a hotspot of many agitations for decades, saying such activities violate environmental laws.

The green panel had also directed the NDMC to remove all temporary structures, loud-speakers and public address systems from the stretch of the road.

Tents used by veterans for Jantar Mantar OROP protest uprooted

Court allows CBI plea in

Najeeb case

Jantar Mantar being vacated by Delhi Police personnel on Monday after NGT order PIC/NAVEEN SHARMA

mp city4MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

3 held for teen murder, ‘upset with victim’s chats with girl’

Nigerians clash inside hospital

Inflated power bills irk Ggn residents

Car collides with divider; two killed

Police special team to deal with heinous crimes

Gunshots fired inside MG road mall; two suffer grave injuries

GDA issues notices to 16

defaulting builders

Tension at Kathputli Colony; residents allege police beating

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Monday appointed former Director of Prosecution B S Joon its commissioner to oversee the lie detector test of controversial arms dealer Abhishek Verma, a witness in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case in which senior Con-gress leader Jagdish Tytler is an accused. The court's order came on the application of Verma, who accused a forensic lab here of trying to shield Tytler during earlier polygraph tests.

In his application, Verma sought setting up a commitee of eminent persons, including a judicial officer, to observe the proceedings during the test.

Additional Chief Metropoli-tan Magistrate Amit Arora has now fixed the matter for hear-ing on November 1 when the CBI is likely to inform it about a suitable date for the test.

Senior advocate H S Phoolka, appearing for the 1984 riots victims, said the consent document of the former direc-tor of prosecution on being appointed the court commis-sioner will also be submitted on the next date of hearing. AGENCIES

CHHATH RUSH: NORTHERN RLY GM HAILS STATION OFFICIALS, RPF STAFFNEW DELHI: The Chhath rush period 2017 on North-ern Railway witnessed a massive surge in rail passen-gers from the National Capital to east-bound desti-nations. Committed leadership and team spirit went hand-in-hand in ensuring incident-free and hassle free services at the four prominent stations viz. New Delhi, Anand Vihar Terminal, Delhi Junction, Nizmuddin in the national capital area handling the huge Chhath Rush. Reviewing the positive outcome of the entire exercise of crowd and security management besides judicious planning efforts in running special trains, as a motiva-tion to officials dynamism and team spirit, General Manager, Northern Railway RK Kulshrestha announced group cash awards for the officials discharging duties at the four railway stations viz. New Delhi, Anand Vihar T, Delhi Jn., Nizmuddin. A group cash award of Rs 50,000 was announced for staff discharging duties during the rush period at New Delhi railway station and Anand Vihar T station respectively, group cash award of Rs 25,000 to staff at Delhi Jn station and Rs 10,000 to staff at H Nizamuddin railway stations. The services of RPF officials posted at these railway sta-tions were also commended with a group cash award of Rs 50,000.

NORTHERN RAILWAY LAUNCHES VIGILANCE AWARENESS WEEK

NEW DELHI: In consonance with the principles of cor-ruption-free services, Northern Railway is observing a Vigilance Awareness Week from Monday (October 30 to November 4 ). R K Kulshrestha, General Manager, Northern Railway launched the Vigilance Awareness Week at a simple ceremony held in the morning at Northern Railway Headquarters office, Baroda House, New Delhi on Monday and administered integrity pledges on the occasion. Manju Gupta, Addl. General Manager, Northern Railway, Chandralekha Mukherjee, Sr. Deputy General Manager & Chief Vigilance Of-ficer, Northern Railway were present on the occasion. Principal Heads of Department, Senior Officers and staff of Northern Railway also undertook the Integrity Pledges.

CITY BRIEFS

NEW DELHI: A clash took place among Nigerian nation-als in South Delhi's Saket area. Police claimed that they have registered a case in this regard and they are probing the case from all angles.

According to police, on October 28 at 4.30 am a PCR call was received at Saket police station in which the caller Lai-rab stated that Nigerian peo-ple are fighting at Neelu Angel Nursing home, on reaching the spot it was found that the furni-ture at the reception and inside the laboratory was damaged.

The entire group including the injured fled away before the arrival of the police.

According to Addi-tional Deputy Commissioner of Police (south) Chin-moy Biswal, they have reg-istered a case under section 147/148/149/323/427/452 of IPC. MPOST

PIYUSH OHRIE

GURUGRAM: Rivalry between the two groups took an ugly turn in Gurugram as 15 people on late Sunday night entered inside the Grand Mall on MG road with an objective to eliminate their rivals. In the deadly scenario, two persons namely Pravinder and Praveen were attacked with sticks and sharp weapons. The assailants even fired gunshots at them.

The brazen incident that was caught in the CCTV cam-eras occurred at around 11:30 pm. It resulted in the victims sustaining severe injuries from the bullets. The two are pres-ently admitted at a private hospital in the city where their condition is said to be stable. Hours after the incident, the Gurugram police arrested two people –Mintoo who is from Faridabad and –Amit belong-ing to Sohna.

“This seems to be a case of personal rivalry that has been festering for years. On Sunday, after getting the information of the whereabouts of the vic-tim, the rival groups decided to attack them at this specific location,” said Inspector Ravin-der Singh, spokesperson Guru-

gram policeThe law enforcement offi-

cials are in the process to hunt down other culprits that are involved in the deadly crime. Already notorious for its dete-riorating law and order, Sun-day’s incident again reflected various lapses in maintenance of security.

The entire incident took place when there was substan-tial number of people who were present in the mall. Moreover the group of people were able to not only enter the mall with the deadly weapons but were able to carry out the attack for minutes inside the commercial premises.

While incidents of thefts, molestation and drunken driv-

ing are major complaints that are received from the mall mile, of late there are also vari-ous incidents of murder and attempt to murder are also being reported.

This year there have been two attempts where drivers in the fit of rage tried to run over the cops who were try-ing to stop them. Last year in October, a 34-year-old woman was brutally at the MG road metro station after her jilted lover stabbed her 30 times in broad daylight. Intense gang war resulted in a major shoot out incident at the area with an objective to kill Rakesh Hayat-pur. Though he survived, an auto driver unfortunately had to pay with his life.

RAHUL SINGH

GREATER NOIDA: Two per-sons died while three other got critically injured after a car they were travelling in col-lided with the divider and over turned near Alpha-1 sector in Greater Noida, late on Sunday midnight, said police.

The incident took place at around 12:30am near Kai-lash hospital. A total of five men were travelling in the car which was moving towards Pari Chowk.

According to police, all the five occupants of the car were friends. The two deceased were identified as 35-years-old Rajesh Kushwaha and 40-years-old Amar Singh. Among the injured were Pramod Kumar (35), Lokesh Sharma (33) and Kuldeep (28).

The passersby informed police about the incident and started rescuing the victims. Police had to use gas cutters to bring out the body of one of the five victims from the man-gled car. Some people alleged that the police delayed in pro-viding the help and getting the gas cutter.

“If the cutter was brought on time, the life of one person

could have been saved” said a passerby who helped in rescu-ing the victims.

One of the two deceased died while taking to the hospital.

“It is possible that the car was driven at a high speed. Lokesh was driving the car who is receiving treatment at the hospital. We have ques-tioned the driver who told us that he lost his control over the car while trying to save a man who was crossing the road” said a senior police official.

“We have registered a case in relevance to the incident. The dead bodies have been sent for the post mortem and we have launched a probe into the matter” the officer added.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

GHAZIABAD: The Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) on Monday said that it has issued notices to 16 defaulting builders and individual com-mercial plot allottees, who failed to clear their dues.

The orders follows cancel-lation of the allotment of their land if they fails to clear the dues within the given time period. The authority had sold its group housing land to builders for housing projects and commer-cial complexes on an install-ment basis.

“We have issued a public notice to builders and allot-tees asking them to either pay their respective dues or face strict legal action. If they will not pay their installments, then the authority will cancel the allotment of their land.

“The notices are issued to those defaulters who have Rs 50 lakhs or more than that due to the authority” said a senior GDA official.

The authority has been struggling to recover around Rs 357 crore dues from these 16 defaulters.

ABHAY SINGH

NEW DELHI: A detailed investigation in any criminal case proves vital for the justice but sometimes city police have to deal with several other daily activities in their jurisdiction and with the time file related to crime keeps increasing on the police table. Taking note of the situation, Delhi Police started a pilot project in which a special investigating team will be there at the police station which will be dealing with only investiga-tion of heinous cases and they will not be engaged in daily policing of the areas.

Police sources told Millen-nium Post that in three police stations in South West Delhi a pilot project is going on in which a special team only dealing with the investigation of cases instead of the day to day activity. “This project has been started a few days ago, the teams only focusing on the investigation in the cases which will increase the speed of inves-tigation and also a detailed investigation will be there,” said a police source.

Police sources further

claimed that sometimes inves-tigating officer of a case had to deal with other daily routines of the jurisdiction like vehi-cle checking, picketing but the special team will not have any such routine they will only focus on the investigation. The team will consist of constables, head constable sub-inspector or assistant sub-inspector and Inspector investigation and Station House officer will take care of the team.

The team will not be engaged in other police rou-tine activity the main focus was to give a detailed investigation through which the victim get justice. “It is a pilot project we are checking if it is success-ful other police station in the Capital will have the investiga-tion team,” said a police official. The three police station where the project is currently going on been selected according to the crime in their jurisdiction. Police sources claimed that one of the police station where the project is running has more crime another police station have medium crime whereas the third police station has less crime in their jurisdiction.

PIYUSH OHRIE

GURUGRAM: Your power consumption bill may just shock you. A large number of residents are facing a major problem of getting inflated power consumption bills from the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vit-ran Nigam (DHBVN).

Admitting there is a major problem, officials of the elec-tricity boards said it was due to the lapses by the employees of the new agency that has been outsourced the job of metre reading. Even though officials concede their mistakes, it has failed to satisfy most of the angry residents. Many of the consumers who are receiving

inflated bills highlight that they have to pay Rs 20,000 to 40,000 because of the blunders com-mitted by DHBVN.

The issue of preparing faulty bills is not a new phe-nomenon in the city.

Earlier, most of the resi-dents of Sector-56 recently highlighted that their bills were prepared wrongly and thereby refused to pay. Taking note of protests by the citizens, the DHBVN officials conceded that there were mistakes that were committed in preparing the bills.

Taking a corrective mea-sure, it replaced the agency that was outsourced the respon-sibility of taking the readings

from discom and preparing the bill. Residents in the area however claim that not only are the employees careless in their approach but there has also been no action in replac-ing the faulty discoms even after several requests.

“In Gurugram the rates of power are not cheap. For people of middle- class back-ground the expenses incurred in the power bills really gives you a pinch especially dur-ing these months when the rate of power consumption is high,” said Ranjan Gulati, a city resident.

“It is imperative that the official must be transparent with the consumer while tak-

ing the readings. Because the process is opaque and non transparent, mistakes have started coming out in form of inflated electricity bills pro-vided to citizens,” he further said.

“I have no qualms in say-ing that situation of power in Delhi is better managed than in Gurugram. There is a lack of regulation for power sup-ply in the city. Even as the res-idents to pay a higher sum for power in the city, the short-age of power during sum-mer months is resulting in the citizen paying an equally higher amount to the genera-tors,” said another city resident Amardeep Singh.

NEW DELHI: Delhi Lieuten-ant-Governor Anil Baijal on Monday flagged off the unique festival of “ Phool Walon Ki Sair,” at Raj Niwas. The L-G stated that these festival have come to represent communal harmony and national inte-gration and “Phool Walon Ki Sair” has helped foster a sense of mutual respect and harmony among the communities living in Delhi.

Receiving the pankhas, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal said that “Festivals likePhool-Waalon Ki Sair” are very rel-evant in our society, as such festivals spread message of love,

peace and communal harmony among the people.

“The culture of celebrat-ing festivals of all religions with feeling of festivity and joy should be celebrated by all to promote message of peace and brotherhood in the society.” added Kejriwal .

“Phool Waalon Ki Sair" is a 7-day long festival during which Hindus and Muslims together offer the floral chaa-dar and pankha at the Dargah of Khwaja Bakhtiar 'Kaaki' in Mehrauli and floral pankha and chhatra (canopy) is offered at the ancient temple of Devi Yogmaya in Mehrauli. MPOST

LG Baijal flags off Phool Walon Ki Sair

ABHAY SINGH

NEW DELHI: Two persons were arrested and a juvenile was apprehended after they killed their friend in South Delhi’s Mehrauli area. Police claimed that the plan was hatched after a girl with whom one of the accused used to chat informed that the victim was taking inter-est in her and this activity of deceased was taken adversely by his killer friend.

The family claimed that after committing the crime the accused and their family had joined search operation of the deceased who was missing from Saturday, only to know police investigation. Accord-ing to police, the accused were identified as Aakash, Naveen and a juvenile who were appre-hended after their sustained interrogation.

It all started on Saturday when 17-year-old Jaydeep Goyal, a resident of Mehrauli went for the temple in Chhatar-pur from his house.

According to family, he used to visit temple on Satur-day but this time he did not return. It was around 9: 30 pm on Saturday when his mother made a phone call to his son and asked him. The shocker came when she heard another person picking the call and telling her that he will kill his child if they did not pay 20 lakh rupees. The family asked the kidnappers that where they should come with the money. The accused told them that he will tell them next morning. Police were informed and the search was made in this regard. Additional Deputy Commis-sioner of Police (south) Chin-moy Biswal stated that technical surveillance was mounted and they have found out the loca-tion of the last phone call. The police team has also found the deceased’s scooty. While scanning the CCTV footage, police found that there were three persons on a bullet motor-cycle and their face was cov-ered with clothes. Later, police

team found out that the Bul-let belongs to a friend of the deceased.

Meanwhile, accused came at the home of the deceased and shown fake sympathy. The family members of the accused were also at the house and help-ing the family on the search .

''We think that the accused and his family were seeing the police investigation so that they can dodge the police,” said Naresh.

The family was shocked to know that they have killed the Jaydeep. “We treated them as children and in turn they killed

Jaydeep,” said one of the fam-ily member. The accused also changed their voice when he was talking to the deceased mother. They also got the idea from a crime serial.” Said Naresh. Police claimed that dur-ing sustained interrogation, the accused disclosed that Naveen had developed the close friend-ship with a girl, studying in the same school in which deceased was studying.

Accused Naveen and that girl used to chat since last one and half month. The girl informed Naveen that Jaideep is taking interest in her and this

activity of Jaideep was taken adversely by Naveen. In order to teach a lesson to Jaideep, he hatched a criminal conspiracy with his two friends Akash and one JCL.

Police also claimed that the accused knew that deceased Jaideep used to visit the Shani Dham Temple regularly and they find it the good opportu-nity. After reaching there, they started talking to each other.

As per plan, Naveen went behind Jaideep and strangulated him with the help of ‘gamchha (a towel size cloth) and dumped the body in DDA jungle.

Thereafter, Naveen took the motorcycle and ask the JCL to abandon the same near Maidan Garhi, Chhattarpur area near jungle.

Naveen also took out the wallet of deceased. As per the plan, they abandoned the vehi-cle near the jungle, leaving the key inside. They also designed a plan of ransom to divert atten-tion of police so that they could not catch the actual culprits.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Once again there was tension at the Kath-putli Colony in Central Delhi as the residents claimed that they were beaten by police. The Delhi Police claimed that they have just used tear gas to dis-perse the crowd. The residents claimed that the incident took place in the morning when the police officers had come to the colony and said that they have to move out which soon led to the protest after which police used force on them. “We were beaten severely by the police and one eight-year-old child was injured,” said Arjun, a resi-dent of the colony.

He further claimed that police forcibly pulled us out of our home. Police also beat up other residents who refused to move out of their homes.How-

ever, police officials denied the allegations of the locals. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cen-tral) Mandeep Singh Randhawa said that they have used no force on them only tear gas was used .“There was no lathi-charge on the residents. No casualty was reported,” said Randhawa.

Amid allegations of force-ful eviction of Kathputli Colony residents, Delhi Devel-opment Authority (DDA) has claimed to resettle the entire lot in newly constructed tran-sit camps within the next couple of months.

The Authority said that despite witnessing protests by a section, they have ensured shift-ing of more than one-third fam-ilies and talks are on to ensure shifting of the remaining fami-lies too. “To start the project, we need the entire land vacant. As around 1,150 families have been

shifted to the make-shift camp located in nearby Anand Parbat area, we hope to reclaim other parts and to start out leveling work there,” said DDA official.The Colony residents, however, are divided over the issue. Some of the Colony residents vented their ire at the media and NGO workers for allegedly disrupt-ing their development.Around 2,641 families were living in the colony.

According to residents evac-uation is being taken without proper consent. “Earlier, they just came here and started send-ing out notices. None of the res-idents had time to go through the notice and then they came with a heavy police force. There are many who want to shift, but they would come on their own accord and should not be forced. Shockingly their move is still going on,” said a resident.

Joon made court commissioner for Verma's lie detector test

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Narela area wit-nessed several rounds of fir-ing which resulted in the death of two persons who were sup-posed to be a businessman and his associate on Monday morning. Police claimed that the one person was receiving treatment at a nearby hospital. The accused after firing at the victims fled away with cash bag.

According to police an incident of firing was reported at 10.30 am near Old Grain Mandi, Main road, Narela. The victims were travelling by a Maruti Eeco car and were going to bank to deposit cash. The accused who were two to three masked persons on the motorcycle were waiting for them on the way and inter-cepted the van. Deputy Com-missioner of Police (outer) Rishipal stated that the accused did not wait and started firing in which three persons received

bullet injuries. A PCR call was made by a passerby and the vic-tims were rushed to the hos-pital where two persons were declared dead whereas one per-son is still receiving treatment.

The deceased are identified as Pankaj (35) and Harish (32). The other victim Amit Goel received injury in the left arm.

On the day of the incident,

the regular driver of the vic-tim did not report for duty and another employee was engaged as the driver.

In the midst of the incident, a brave effort was shown by an Assistant sub-inspector Pawan of Narela police station who was on patrolling duty nearby. When he came to know about the incident he rushed to the

spot and challenged the assail-ants but they managed to escape with the looted amount of Rs 25 lakh.

“ASI Pawan chased the rob-bers on the bike along with a local person but the criminals escaped towards the border with Haryana,” said the DCP.

Police sources claimed that they are probing the case from several angles, which include the role of the insider. The deceased was the whole-sale traders of pulses and rice. The accused when witnessed the victim car they told them to stop after which they broke the window pane and tried to snatch the bag and started firing. Police were scanning CCTV footages of the area to get the clue of the incident.

In another incident, one of the bad character was shot at in Narela area. The injured iden-tified as Ajay has come out on bail in a robbery case ten days back.

2 men gunned down in Narela

5mp nationMILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

PM hit country with torpedoes of note ban, GST, says Rahul

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Monday attacked Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi, saying he had destroyed the country’s economy with two “torpedoes” -- note ban and GST.

Narendra Modi had failed to understand the pain of the people, Gandhi said.

Wondering why the gov-ernment was “celebrating” the first anniversary of note ban on November 8, Gandhi said, “I don’t know what is there to celebrate.” Gandhi said while the economy was able to with-stand the “torpedo” of note ban, it could not withstand the one of GST.

The economy, he said, “was in tatters now”.

“The prime minster is not able to understand the feeling of the people and the hurt and sadness these two decisions have caused,” he told report-ers after holding two meetings here of top Congress leaders

on demonetisation and GST.The Congress leader said

the GST is a “good idea” which has been “destroyed” by the Modi government. While the first meeting discussed the plans of the party, along with other opposition parties, to

observe November 8 as ‘black day’, the second deliberated upon GST implementation.

The second meet was attended by former prime minister Manmohan Singh and ex-finance minister P Chidambaram.

Regulatory control must be minimised for India’s growth: V-P

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Regulations should not become a strangu-lation, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu said on Monday, empha-sising on the need of minimis-ing regulatory control to attract investment and ensure devel-opment in the country.

Addressing an event here, he said if India has to welcome investors, the ease of doing business must be considerably enhanced.

“Without investment you cannot grow. You need investment.

And the investment will come if the processes are made simple, if there is no harass-ment, if there is no corrup-tion, then people will be happy coming to India and to invest money also,” Naidu said.

He said regulatory control must be minimised and pro-cedures should be made clear, simple and streamlined so that there is a very little ambiguity in the system.

“Regulations should not become a strangulation. In all these regulations, we have so many regulators nowadays. We

have too many tribunals also. But they should not become obstacles in the path of the growth and development,” Naidu said inaugurating the Vigilance Awareness Week.

He said people welcomed demonetisation or remonetisa-tion because they realised tem-porary pain will bring them long term gain.

“There is a talk on demon-etisation in the country. It should happen. It is very nec-essary. What were the faults in its implementation? What were the mistakes and what were not? How much money returned? How much of it is black money and white money in that? That the Reserve Bank (of India) should do at earliest,”

the vice president said.Prime Minister Narendra

Modi had on November 8 last year announced ban on the use of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

Several opposition parties including the Congress and Mamata Banerjee’s TMC have announced that they would observe the first anniversary of demonetisation as ‘Black Day’ and would hold protests across the country to highlight its “ill- effects” on the economy.

To counter the opposition protest, the ruling BJP has decided to observe the note ban anniversary as “anti- black-money day”.

On Goods and Services Tax, touted as the biggest tax reform by the Modi govern-ment, Naidu said there may be certain shortcomings in the implementation of the GST but in the long run it is really going to improve the health of econ-omy and going to create a very positive atmosphere.

He said the presence of strong civil society, including a free press and independent judiciary are important pre con-ditions for good governance.

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi addresses the media after a meeting with the party’s general secretaries at AICC headquarters in New Delhi on Monday PTI

Govt mulling time-bound mechanism for granting licences for def production OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The govern-ment is considering intro-duction of a time-bound mechanism for granting licences and various other reg-ulatory clearances for defence manufacturing to cut inordi-nate delays in key projects.

The defence ministry is examining the reform initiative in consultation with the Home Ministry which issues licenses to defence manufacturers, defence ministry sources said.

A number of leading indus-try captains had recently con-veyed to defence minister

Nirmala Sitharaman their disappointment over delays in grant of licence for setting up of manufacturing facilities for military equipment and platforms.

The sources said the gov-ernment was looking at putting in place a system under which a time limit will be stipulated for granting of licence on short, medium and long- term basis.

If a licence is not granted within the prescribed time- frame and there is no commu-nication from the concerned agency on it, then the applicant can consider it to be approved, they said while elaborating

on the broad contours of the proposal.

India is a leading importer of arms and military platforms globally and the NDA govern-ment has listed indigenisation of defence manufacturing as a priority area.

However, nothing signifi-cant has happened, primarily due to the regulatory hurdles.

Sources also said govern-ment was examining giving tax benefits to domestic defence industry on the lines of relief being provided to the foreign equipment makers.

The government gives a tax concession to original equip-

ment makers but those manu-facturing the same product in India do not get the benefit.

In May, the government had unveiled an ambitious policy under which select pri-vate firms will be roped in to build military platforms such as submarines and fighter jets in India in partnership with foreign entities.

A wide range of issues, including matters relating to licensing, taxes and duties and ways to speed up the procure-ment processes were discussed at a meeting Sitharaman had with defence manufacturers last week.

GST’s faulty design has killed jobs and businesses: Manmohan NEW DELHI: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday said the GST as implemented has a “faulty design” and that its “complication of compli-ances” has killed jobs and businesses. At a meeting on GST at the AICC headquarters, Singh raised con-cerns over the faulty implementation of GST. “While demonetisation was organised loot and legalised plunder, GST has ended up taking away livelihoods of ordinary people besides shutting down businesses,” Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala quoted Singh as saying. Surjewala said Singh noted with concern “the fact that the faulty design (of GST), and architecture and complication of compliances have killed jobs and businesses”.

’T’ for transgender in railway tickets soonOUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Transgenders will now have the option of identifying themselves as the third gender with the Railway Board modifying reservation forms to provide the option ‘T’, besides ‘M’ (Male) and ‘F’ (Female).

The Railway Board in a let-ter to all zonal railways has said that ticket booking and can-cellation forms will be modi-fied from the current option of ‘Transgender (Male/Female)’ to just ‘T’.

According to the letter, the social justice and empower-ment ministry is at present dealing with various issues of transgenders and a proposed legislation on this -- The Trans-gender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016, is being reviewed by a parliamentary standing committee.

“The matter has been reviewed and it has been decided that till such time the detailed modalities on this account are finalised by the Ministry of Social Justice, a provision may be made in the system to capture the gender of transgender as ‘T’ instead of ‘T(M/F)’ as advised earlier,” according to the October 17 letter.

In a landmark judgement in 2014, the Supreme Court cre-ated the ‘third gender’ status for hijras or transgenders.

Earlier, they had to write

male or female in gender column.

Following the order, many government documents such as passport, ration card, bank forms and voter identity cards have started providing ‘TG’ (third gender), ‘Other’ or ‘T’ (transgender) as options.

The railways introduced the option as ‘T(M/F)’ through an order in 2016 which, activists said, still forced them to choose between the binary genders -- male or female.

The Railway Board said in its review it had also taken into

consideration directions of the Kolkata High Court which had asked State Bank of India to allow the choice of third gen-der in its application forms for recruiting new employees.

This case pertains to a case filed by Atri Kar, the first transgender from West Ben-gal to appear for the civil ser-vices exam, who sought the court’s intervention to enforce her right to participate in the selection process of SBI as a transgender.

The Railway Board also said that the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Railways, will make necessary changes in the software for giving the option of transgender (T) alongside the option of M/F in the passenger railway system under intimation to all zonal railways, the letter said.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Monday asked the Centre to consider giving an alternate job to a transgen-der sailor who was removed from service after sex change, terming it an “out of the box situation”.

“You can punish her for indiscipline, but at the same time you can accommodate her,” a bench of Justices G S Sistani and V K Rao suggested to Additional Solicitor Gen-eral Sanjay Jain, who appeared for the Centre and Navy.

Calling for a change in mindset, the bench said the instant case was probably the only one of its kind in the armed forces and asked the Navy to consider the trans-gender for some other job.

“Here is an opportunity to look at it from a different per-spective. It is an out of the box situation. It maybe a first of its kind situation.

“Here is a person strug-gling with gender identity. Had she suppressed the con-

dition and continued, it would have been dangerous. It could have been fatal. Think about it and come back,” the bench said and listed the matter for further hearing on November 23. The court said that while the person deserved to be punished for indiscipline for being absent without leave, but where there was a medi-cal condition of this sort, it may be seen from a different perspective.

During the course of the hearing, the bench said, “the mindset should change. In today’s situation, a medical condition like this cannot be suppressed.”

The court was of the view that the petitioner, who was posted onboard INS Eksila at

Visakhapatnam, can give up claim for the job of sailor and may accept a clerical position so that the family, comprising aged parents, the individual’s wife and child, need not suffer.

ASG Jain and central gov-ernment standing counsel Anil Soni, who also appeared for the Navy, told the court that the individual in question “had a chequered history of indiscipline” for being absent without leave several times.

However, they agreed to take instructions on whether the instant matter can be taken up as a special case.

They also told the bench that the individual had got badly infected after undergo-ing sex reassignment surgery and it was the Navy which treated her humanely and pro-vided treatment and counsel-ling to her.

The lawyers said that one seat in another branch or department of the force can-not be blocked for such an individual who also suffered from psychiatric and gender identity problems.

HC asks Navy to consider transgender for job

NDA govt ensured development of

minorities: Naqvi OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Union minis-ter Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has said that the NDA government has fulfilled its commitment to development of minorities with dignity by eradicating the “disease of appeasement”, according to a statement here on Monday.

Without taking any names, the minority affairs minister accused the “so-called cham-pions of secularism” of work-ing only to appease and exploit minorities, resulting in back-wardness of the communities, particularly Muslims.

But, he added, the present regime has ensured all com-munities, including minorities, become equal partners in the country’s development process, the statement said.

Addressing a seminar on ‘Participation of Minori-ties in Building a New India’ here, Naqvi also listed several schemes the government has been implementing for the wel-fare of the communities and talked about the proposed Haj Policy for 2018 -2022.

Among the key features of the draft policy include main-taining reservation for Haj pilgrims aged above 70 and allowing women aged more than 45 to travel in at least a group of four without being accompanied by a male rela-tive or a ‘Mehram’. “The Modi government has fulfilled the commitment to development of minorities by eradicating the disease of appeasement given to the country by so-called political champions of secu-larism for last several decades,” the statement quoted Naqvi as saying. Naqvi said that previous governments claimed to spend crores of rupees for the wel-fare of Muslims. “But the Mus-lim community was kept in the dark in the name of develop-ment,” he added.

Whereas, the minister said, the development works carried out by the Modi government during last three years have benefited the poor, including a large number of minorities.

Soon only end-to-end immigration checks on Dhaka-Kolkata train

NEW DELHI: Immigration and custom checks at border points for passengers of Dhaka-Kolkata Maitree Express will soon be done away with, end-ing a major inconvenience, senior railway officials of India and Bangladesh said.

Just like in international flights, checks will continue only while boarding and deboarding a train at Dhaka Cantonment and Kolkata sta-tions, reducing the journey time from around nine hours to around six-seven hours.

The Indian and Bangla-desh governments have finally decided to end two rigorous and time consuming immi-gration checks at Darshona

(Bangladesh side) and at Gede (Indian side), conceding a major demand of passengers from both sides, the officials said. Passengers had to deboard along with their luggage at these two points for checks which took anywhere between two to three hours.

Officials added that the passengers will not be able to deboard the train anytime dur-ing the journey.

The end-to-end immi-gration check is likely to be launched by the prime minis-ters of the two countries this November, the officials said .

“The checks will now be done at Kolkata and Dhaka. It will solve a lot of issues that

passengers have while dealing with such checks which cause delay as well,” Md Habibur Rahman, Assisting Director General (Operations) of Ban-gladesh Railway, said, adding the new system will be officially launched next month.

Officials in Indian Railways said that while there will be no checks at Darshona and Gede anymore, the train will halt for technical checks by secu-rity forces of either country at these stations.

During the halts when the train’s under carriage will be checked, officials said, the pas-senger coaches will be under lock and key, thus restricting any passenger movement. MPOST

6MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

mp nation

SIDDARAMAIAH ACCUSES BJP OF MAKING ‘WILD’ CHARGES AGAINST HIM MYSURU: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Monday accused the BJP of making “wild” allegations against him and termed it as a “sign of their fear and desperation”. Speaking to reporters here, Siddara-maiah said he had been targeted by the BJP because he has emerged as a strong leader. Siddaramaiah’s reaction comes in the wake of a series of allega-tions, including corruption, being levelled by state BJP leaders as part of their campaign against the ruling party ahead of assembly polls, due early next year. “People want our government to come back (to power) again because they know that Siddaramaiah fulfils the election promises. They know well that our govern-ment came out with programmes for the economically weaker section, farmers, women backward communi-ties and minorities”, he said.

WOMAN DIES, 30 INJURED AS FOOT OVERBRIDGE COLLAPSES IN KERALA KOLLAM: A 55-year-old woman was killed and more than 30 others injured when a foot overbridge across a canal collapsed at Chavara near here on Monday, the police said. The bridge was located inside the state-run Kerala Minerals and Metals Limited (KMML) complex. The deceased Shyamala, an employee of KMML, died after the iron bridge fell into the canal, they said. The collapsed bridge connects the com-pany’s complex to its adjacent mineral separation (MS) unit. All the injured were admitted to a nearby govern-ment hospital, police said.

NEW TIMINGS FOR SCHOOLS IN KASHMIR VALLEY ANNOUNCED SRINAGAR: Authorities in Kashmir on Monday an-nounced new timings for schools from Wednesday, asking all government and private educational institutes in the Valley to strictly adhere to them. The directorate school education, Kashmir, has ordered that the new timing in schools within the municipal limits of Srinagar shall be from 10am to 3pm, while in areas falling outside the city’s limits, the timing will be from 10.30am to 3.30pm, an official spokesman said here. The spokesman said the new timings will be effec-tive from November 1. He said the instructions shall be adhered to strictly in all the concerned institutions. The change in school timings in the Valley is a routine decision, ordered every year during the onset of the winter season.

TOY TRAIN SERVICE RESUMES IN MATHERAN MUMBAI: The toy train, a big attraction for tourists visiting the picturesque Matheran hill station near here, has once again resumed its journey after being halted for over one year following a couple of mishaps. The services of the 110-year-old toy train, synonymous with the tourist spot located in the Western Ghats of the neighbouring Raigad district, were suspended in May last year following two incidents of derailments that month. “The Central Railway (CR) has resumed the toy train services between Aman lodge and Matheran hill station this morning. It received a tremendous response from locals,” CR’s Chief PRO Sunil Udasi said. “We are hopeful that the toy train services on the (complete) 21-km hilly stretch of Aman Lodge to Neral would start as soon as possible,” Udasi said. Fol-lowing the two derailments, the then railway minister, Suresh Prabhu, had stopped the services till the safety measures were not ensured as per the parameters. After the toy train was halted, the tourism industry was hit adversely following which a delegation of residents of Matheran had demanded resumption of the service. “Considering the demands of the locals, we have started our services on one stretch,” Udasi said. As the toy train resumed its service on Monday, the locals gathered in large numbers, burst crackers and played music to rejoice the happy occasion.

NATION BRIEFS

OUR CORRESPONDENT

SAMBHAL: Sri Sri Ravi Shan-kar’s initiative to resolve the Ayodhya issue on Monday hit a road block with former BJP MP Ram Vilas Vedanti reject-ing the move and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and the Babri Action Commit-tee opposing an out of the court settlement.

The Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar does not qualify to mediate on the matter as he has never been associated with the movement, Vedanti, who has been associated with the Ram Temple movement, told newspersons here.

“How can someone who has never been associated with the movement and never had dar-shan of the Ram Lalla medi-ate on the matter of temple construction...we have gone to jail for it, faced house arrest and have been fighting court cases ...Sri Sri does not qual-ify to mediate on the matter,” Vedanti said.

“We want Muslim religious leaders to come forward. We will sit together and discuss the issue...We want Hindus and Muslims together to find a solu-tion to the dispute and that tem-

ple is constructed on the basis of mutual agreement,” he said.

Vedanti said the Ram Tem-ple movement has been led by the Ram Janmbhoomi Nyas and Vishva Hindu Parishad and these two organisations should get an opportunity to hold dia-logue on the issue.

The Art of Living Founda-

tion had said last week that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has been in touch with several imams and swamis, including Acharya Ram Das of Nirmohi Akhara, to help find an out-of-court settlement to the Ram Temple dispute.

The AIMPLB too said they do not favour arbitration and the dispute can only be settled

through adjudication.AIMPLB member and Con-

venor of Babri Masjid Action Committee Zafaryab Jilani denied that any of their autho-rised representatives met the Art of Living founder for an out of the court negotiated settle-ment of the Ayodhya dispute.

“The Ayodhya dispute can-not be settled by arbitration. We will never withdraw our claim on the land in Ayodhya where once the Babri mosque stood and demolished on December 6, 1992.

“If Sri Sri Ravishankar wants to mediate on this issue then he should send a formal proposal to the AIMPLB,” Jilani said.

“If some individual mem-bers of the board did meet the Art of Living founder, it doesn’t represent what AIMPLB stands by. The position of the board is very clear on this and that the solution is possible only through adjudication and not mediation. There has been no attempt by the board to meet Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,” he said.

“We have 251 members in AIMPLB and many of them are from Bangalore. But the AIM-PLB did not authorise anybody to negotiate on its behalf,” he clarified against the backdrop of

reports that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has been in touch with several imams and swamis, including Acharya Ram Das of Nirmohi Akhara, to help find an out-of-court settlement.

The AIMPLB wields consid-erable power and influence in the Muslim community, which is represented by the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board.

The Board is not a direct party to the dispute.

There are about a dozen con-testants in the court case, with six each from both the commu-nities. The title suit, however, is being fought between the Nir-mohi Akhara and the UP Sunni Central Waqf Board.

Babri Action Committee member Haji Mehboob said Sri Sri Ravi Shankar had “never talked with us nor had he sent us any message.”

The Allahabad High Court, in 2010, had ruled a three-way division of the disputed 2.77-acre area at Ayodhya among Sunni Waqf Board, Nirmohi Akhara and Lord Ram Lalla.

The oldest Hindu litigant, Mahant Ram Das of the Nir-mohi Akhara, however, said they were ready for talks but refused to budge from their stated positions.

Vedanti rejects Ravi Shankar’s mediation in Ayodhya dispute

OUR CORRESPONDENT

CHENNAI: Rains lashed sev-eral parts of Tamil Nadu on Monday, partially disrupting normal life in some areas in this metropolis and claiming one life in Thanjavur district.

Though the showers, the first big spell after the North East Monsoon set in over the state last week, brought cheers in several parts hit by water scarcity, they also caused traf-fic snarls and inundation.

Several schools in Chen-nai closed ahead of schedule as the city experienced heavy showers. A 38-year-old man died when a mud wall of his hut collapsed in Thinnaiyoor near Thanjavur district’s Orathan-adu which experienced heavy rains, police said.

The intermittent rains, under the influence of an upper air cyclonic circulation over South West Bay of Ben-gal, began last night in parts of the state, and intensified this morning. The Met office fore-cast heavy to very heavy rains in some areas of coastal dis-tricts, including the capital city and its neighbourhood, in the next 24 hours.

“The upper air cyclonic cir-culation over Southwest Bay of Bengal near Sri Lanka yesterday

continues to be positioned in the same region,” Director of Area Cyclone Warning Cen-tre here S Balachandran told reporters.

Due to this, coastal districts and many places in interior districts were likely to witness moderate showers in the next 24 hours, he said.

Some areas in coastal dis-tricts of Chennai, Kancheep-uram, Tiruvallur, Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, and Ram-anathapuram might experience heavy and very heavy rains as well, he added.

Traffic in Chennai came to a grinding halt in several loca-

tions like the arterial GST Road and Anna Salai, affecting traf-fic bound for airport and other outskirt areas.

Buses were delayed in sev-eral areas and parts of the city and suburbs witnessed water logging, affecting office-goers and school children.

Greater Chennai Cor-poration Commissioner D Karthikeyan said the civic body was fully geared to tackle the situation.

He said the corporation had over 450 water pumps which would be used in low-lying areas to bale out water in the event of water logging.

Rains lash several parts of TN, 1 killed in wall collapse

BJP Gujarat list likely by 2nd week of November

SIMONTINI BHATTACHARJEE

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may announce the final list of can-didates for the upcoming Guja-rat Assembly Elections by the second week of November, sources said.

The list will be finalised in Delhi after the Central Election Committee’s meeting, as it is the Standard Operating Proce-dure while selecting candidates to contest elections.

Meanwhile, from October 21 the saffron party had a six- day rigorous brainstorming session on names of probable candidates. The party had also sent observers to every dis-trict in Gujarat to interview the candidates and shortlist three candidates each for the 182 assembly seats in the pres-ence of party’s national presi-

dent Amit Shah.Shah is currently in another

poll-bound state of Himachal Pradesh and will hold meet-ings with state leadership. He will again visit his home turf on November 4.

As the party seeks its fifth term in the power of the home state of Prime Minister Nar-endra Modi and party chief Amit Shah, the first preference in a candidate would be “win ability”, sources said. A party veteran also claimed that the selection process is most “dem-

ocratic” and reportedly, about 30 to 40 seats from a certain region of the state were dis-cussed each day. Candidates have been shortlisted taking into account caste, age and people’s perception.

The Assembly polls will be held in Gujarat on Decem-ber 9 and 14, and votes will be counted on December 18 along with Himachal Pradesh. Sources also said that the last dates of filing nominations for the candidate for two phased polls are November 21 and 27.

AP leading in cow dung uberisation concept: Chandrababu Naidu

OUR CORRESPONDENT

AMARAVATI: Andhra Pradesh is now leading the way in what Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has called “cow dung uberisation”.

“Uberisation of dung has been successful in 460 villages across the state,” the Chief Min-ister told officials in a telecon-ference on Monday.

A release from the Infor-mation and Public Relations Department Commissioner quoted the Chief Minister as telling that money could be earned not only from (cattle) milk but also dung.

“A monthly income of Rs 2,500 could be earned from each cattle. Each village could earn Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh per annum through cow dung uberisation that will contribute to the village’s economic prog-ress,” the Chief Minister added.

He cited the example of Konanki village in Prakasam district that achieved good results through cow dung

uberisation.“Konanki should be a

model for other villages in deriving wealth from waste. Every animal in Konanki, which has 1,500 families, has been tagged and they are earn-ing Rs one lakh per month,” the Chief Minister pointed out.

Cow dung uberisation is a new concept being imple-mented in several villages in Andhra Pradesh, a senior offi-cial later said.

“All dung generated in a vil-lage is pooled and dumped at a fixed spot. It is then processed and converted into organic manure. The cattle owners share the money thus earned,” the official said.

Everyone needs to change mindset: HC on inconvenience due to Metro III

OUR CORRESPONDENT

MUMBAI: Everyone needs to change their mindset about the inconvenience due to Metro III project work going on here, the Bombay High Court on Mon-day said even as the Metro Rail Corporation informed that it has come out with a proposal to ensure minimum nuisance is caused to the public.

A division bench of Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice M S Sonak was hear-ing a petition filed by advocate Robin Jaisinghani that the con-struction activity of the project was causing noise pollution in areas concerned.

The court had last month refused to allow Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Lim-ited (MMRCL) to use heavy machinery or transportation vehicles at night for the Metro III line work.

Advocate General Ashutosh Kumbhakoni, appearing for MMRCL, on Monday told the high court that the corporation had come out with a proposal by which it would ensure that

the work is carried out and fin-ished expeditiously.

The MMRCL authori-ties will soon be meeting the petitioner (Jaisinghani) and advocate Zal Andhyarujina, appointed as amicus curiae to assist the court in the matter, to discuss the proposal and come out with a solution, he said.

The HC then said while there may be some inconve-nience, the authorities must see to it that it is bare minimum.

“The Metro project is in public interest...at the same time how much the authori-

ties can reduce the inconve-nience and problems caused to public because of the con-struction work is also impor-tant. Everyone needs to change their mindset...

everyone needs to come out of their respective attitudes and perceptions,” Chief Justice Chellur said.

She said the authorities must also change their atti-tude and be pro-active in try-ing to come out with the best solution.

The bench has now posted the petition for further hearing

on November 2.In another petition filed by

Jaisinghani, raising concerns of fire hazards due to the ongoing construction work of the Metro project in Cuffe Parade area of south Mumbai, the bench directed the fire brigade offi-cials to carry out inspection of buildings concerned and sub-mit a report.

In the petition, Jaisinghani had claimed that due to bar-ricades put up in and around the area, in the event of fire in any of the residential buildings, the fire brigade would not be in a position to bring its vehicles inside the premises to douse the flames.

The court has asked the fire brigade department to submit its report by November 2.

Meanwhile, the court posted for hearing on Novem-ber 6 another petition filed by a city resident challenging the construction of Metro rail car shed at suburban Aarey colony.

The petition claims that Aarey colony is a sensitive eco zone and hence, no construc-tion can be carried out there.

BJP, Cong spar over sleaze CD row in ChhattisgarhOUR CORRESPONDENT

RAIPUR: Amid the controversy over a “sex CD” allegedly involving a Chhattisgarh minister, the ruling BJP on Monday said technology should be used in politics but not for “destruc-tive purposes”, while the Congress asserted truth needs to reach to the people in this age of transparency.

The “sex CD” allegedly involv-ing Chhattisgarh PWD minister Rajesh Munat sparked a row after senior journalist Vinod Verma was arrested by the state police last Fri-day on charges of blackmailing and extortion related to the CD.

Though the state government rec-ommended a CBI probe the very next day, the Congress and the BJP have traded charges over the issue since the arrest.

BJP MLA and spokesperson Shivratan Sharma on Monday said, “No one is against the use of tech-nology in politics. But it should be used for constructive purpose and not destructive.”

“A CD should be used for dissem-inating ideology and other informa-tion but not vulgar things.”

Claiming that the alleged sex video was morphed and tampered with, he alleged the Congress used

the technology for “character assas-sination” of a political leader, which should not be done.

Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition in the Chhattisgarh Assembly, T S Singhdeo, said investigative journal-ism is not a new thing and is being practised for decades.

People believe there should be no restriction in bringing out the truth in this transparent age, he added.

“There is nothing wrong in expos-ing something which is wrong, though the publication of false and fake information is absolutely inap-propriate and should not be done,” he added.

State Revenue Minister Prem Prakash Pandey had on Saturday said the CD was “fake” and a local TV

channel had mentioned in its report that it had been tampered with.

Verma was arrested by the Chhat-tisgarh Police last Friday morning from his Ghaziabad residence.

Verma had claimed that the Chhattisgarh government suspected that he had a “sex CD of Chhattis-garh PWD Minister Rajesh Munat” and that is why he was being framed.

Munat called the CD “fake” and an attempt at character assassination.

He had on Saturday filed a com-plaint against state Congress chief Bhupesh Baghel and Verma for alleg-edly tarnishing his image through the “fake” sex CD.

Assam peaceful, investors keen to set up

base here: SonowalOUR CORRESPONDENT

GUWAHATI: Assam has transformed into a peaceful state and several investors are now looking at coming and setting up base here, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said on Monday. “Assam has become peaceful and its impression of being a highly progressive state has strongly been put in place outside the state as well,” Sonowal said.

He added that the law and order situation in the state has improved considerably and not only people are coming out spontaneously to participate in the last two Independence Day celebrations but investors are also showing interest to come to the state and set up base.

Sonowal said this while

paying tributes to victims who died in bomb blasts at CJM Court premises and below the Ganeshguri Flyover in 2008.

The chief minister said it is important to stay united to face terrorism and only collec-tive willpower will ensure last-ing peace.

“We must stay united against terrorism and must defeat evil designs of forces inimical to the society’s progress.

Only peace can lead to development and harmony among all sections of the soci-ety which is must for achieving lasting peace,” he said.

Extending his sympathies to the families of the victims, the chief minister said the gov-ernment is committed to look after the needs of the families.

Tejashwi flays JD-U move to contest

Gujarat polls OUR CORRESPONDENT

PATNA: RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav on Monday took a swipe at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for his party’s decision to contest “four-five seats” in the Gujarat Assembly polls.

The JD(U) had last week announced that it will contest its “traditional” four to five seats in Gujarat and urged the Election Commission to reject the Sharad Yadav faction’s claim over the party symbol.

“Why is his party planning to contest the Gujarat polls? Can JD(U) win there? During the presidential elections, Nit-ish had urged the UPA not to fight a losing battle by insisting on putting up a candidate. Has he done away with his wisdom of that time,” the former deputy chief minister tweeted.

A couple crosses the waterlogged service road near the Marina beach during heavy downpour due to the onset of Northeast monsoon in Chennai PTI

7mp nationMILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Monday sought the Enforcement Directorate’s response on a bail plea of a woman director of two Dubai-based firms, arrested in connec-tion with a money laundering case arising out of the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP chopper scam.

Justice A K Pathak issued notice to the ED seeking its reply on the bail application by December 1. Shivani Saxena, director of Dubai-based M/s UHY Saxena and M/s Matrix Holdings, was arrested by the ED and is currently in judi-cial custody. Senior advocates Dayan Krishnan and Mohit Mathur, appearing for Saxena, submitted that the woman has not been chargesheeted by the CBI in the main case but only the ED has chargesheeted her under the Prevention of money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The counsel said when the accused was not chargesheeted for the main offence, the grav-ity of alleged scheduled offence dilutes. They further submitted that the woman has been in jail for over three months now.

The high court had in September dismissed an ear-lier bail plea of Saxena. She was also denied the relief by the trial court. Saxena was nabbed on July 17 by the ED from Chennai under the pro-visions of the PMLA. The ED has chargesheeted her and the companies under various sec-tions of the PMLA.

Saxena and her husband Rajiv Saxena are residents of

Palm Jumeirah in Dubai. The charge sheet contains her name and that of her husband, who is also a director in the two firms.

Rajiv Saxena has been evading ED summons and not joining the probe, the ED had alleged. The agency has so far not arrayed him as an accused.

The ED has alleged that the two Dubai-based firms and Shivani Saxena were the ones through whom “the proceeds

of crime have been routed and further layered and integrated in buying the immovable prop-erties/shares among others”.

The agency has claimed its probe found that AgustaWest-land, United Kingdom, had “paid an amount of Euro 58 million as kickbacks” through two Tunisia-based firms.

“These companies further siphoned off the said money in the name of consultancy con-

tracts to M/s Interstellar Tech-nologies Limited, Mauritius and others which were further transferred to M/s UHY Saxena and M/s Matrix Holdings Ltd, Dubai and others,” the charge sheet has said.

The ED had also claimed that Rajiv was the “beneficial owner of M/s Interstellar Tech-nologies Limited, Mauritius”. It has alleged that both the Dubai-based companies of the couple “received the proceeds of crime in their respective Dubai bank accounts” from the Mauritius-based firm.

The ED, in this case, had also arrested Delhi-based busi-nessman Gautam Khaitan who is currently out on bail. The ED had registered a PMLA case in 2014 and named 21 people, including Tyagi, in its money laundering FIR.

On January 1, 2014, India scrapped the contract with Fin-meccanica’s British subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW-101 VVIP choppers to the IAF over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of kickbacks to the tune of Rs 423 crore paid by the firm for securing the deal.

VVIP chopper scam: HC seeks ED reply to director’s bail plea

Your army’s support to terrorism unacceptable,

India warns Pakistan NEW DELHI: Pakistan Army’s support to terrorism is unac-ceptable and India will con-tinue to take all retaliatory measures to respond to such acts, Indian Army’s director-general of military operations (DGMO) told his Pakistani counterpart on Monday.

In an unscheduled con-versation with Lt Gen A K Bhatt over the hotline, Paki-stani DGMO Maj Gen Sahir Shamshad Mirza accused the Indian security forces of resort-ing to unprovoked firing along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir.

However, Bhatt said retal-iatory firing by Indian troops has only been carried out in response to “unabated sup-port” provided by the Pakistan Army to armed terrorists, who infiltrate across the border and target Indian Army posts with heavy calibre weapons, the Army said in a statement here.

The telephonic conversa-tion was requested by the Pak-istani side.

The Indian DGMO told his Pakistani counterpart that while the Indian Army will continue its efforts to ensure peace and tranquillity on the borders, the support provided

to the terrorists by the Pakistan Army was the prime reason for any “collateral damage”.

“He reiterated that this sup-port to terrorism by the Paki-stan Army is unacceptable and the Indian Army will continue to take all retaliatory mea-sures as well as retain the right to punitively respond to such provocative acts of aggression from the Pakistani side,” the Army said. It said Lt Gen Bhatt also clarified that the Indian Army always maintains impec-cable standards of profession-alism and does not target civilians.

“On the contrary, Paki-stan Army has employed civil-ians at the forward posts and accorded permission for per-manent locations of civilians in the vicinity of Pakistan Army posts,” the Army said.

It said that these civilians have repeatedly been used for gaining information of loca-tions of Indian troops and pro-viding guides to the terrorists while crossing the LoC.

The LoC in Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed a spurt in ceasefire violations by the Pakistani troops and the Indian Army has been retaliating effectively to Pakistani actions.

NEW DELHI: India’s beloved author Ruskin Bond who has been enthralling readers for decades says he has never been too interested in politics and believes in being loyal to the country without any political affiliations.

“I have never been both-ered about what party is in power because my loyalties are to a country and not to a political party.

“I am basically loyal to India,” Bond said.

The octogenarian writer was speaking at the Penguin Fever held yesterday at the India Habitat Centre here.

Sifting through his child-hood memories, Bond talked about his “addiction” of chaat at the shop near the clock tower in Dehradun.

He recalled an unsuccess-ful attempt to register himself in the Limca Book of Records despite having gorged on as many as 32 aloo tikkis.

“At the age of 16, I made a bet with my friends that I could eat the maximum num-ber of tikkis at the shop. “After I won the bet, I submitted the record to the Limca Book of Records but they refused to publish it,” he said. MPOST

Never been too interested in politics, says Ruskin Bond

Cooch Behar Zilla Parishad Cooch Behar

E-Notice Inviting Tender ( in brief)

Following E-Tender are herby invited on behalf of Cooch Behar Zilla Parishad for Civil and Electrical works vide NIT No. WBZP/35/DE-ET/COB/2017-18 to WBZP/49/DE-ET/C0B/2017-18 for which last date of Technical & Financial bid submission - 14.11.2017 (up to 6.00 P.M.). & WBZP/26/DE-ET/COB/2017-18 (2nd call) for which last date of Technical & Financial bid submission - 13.11.2017 and WBZP/50/DE-ET/COB/2017-18 for which last date of Technical & Financial bid submission - 20.11.2017. For details the website https: // etender.wb.nic.in may be accessed. Sd/-

Addl. Executive OfficerCooch Behar Zilla Parishad

Cooch Behar

eNIT No. 12 of EE/MD of 2017-18 (2nd Call)Tender ID : 2017_PHED_134447_1 to 2

Shifting of Dist. main / Restoration of damaged pipe line of different PWSS under Midnapore Division, PHE Dte. (2nd Call)For details please see website: https://etender.wb.nic.in.

Sd/- Executive EngineerMidnapore Division, PHE Dte

ABRIDGED 2nd Call OF TENDER NOTICE NO. 17/KGP to 18/KGP OF 2017-18 OF KHARAGPUR DIVISION.

Sealed tenders are invited by Shri A.Mukherjee, W.B.F.S. Divisional Forest Officer, Khargpur Division, P.O. Hizli Co-operative Society, Ghagra (Khargapur -6), Dist.-Paschim Medinipur for the following works under Khargapur Division :

Tender Notice No. Place Item of works 17/KGP to 18/KGP Under Kharagpur Division. Making False ceiling, Supply of A.C. machine.

For further details, please contact the office of the Divisional Forest Officer, Khargapur Division , Phone No.03222-277269.

Sd/- A.Mukherjee Divisional Forest Officer

Khargapur Division

ICA-2201(5)/2017

ICA/T 5023(3)/2017

ICA/T 5022(3)/2017

ICA/T 5017(3)/2017

ICA/T 5013(3)/2017

ICA/T 5020(3)/2017

eNAM proving to be a non-starter

DHIRENDRA KUMAR

NEW DELHI: In a major set-back, the government’s flagship initiative aimed at doubling farmers’ income is proving to be a non-starter as just 4 per cent farmers have registered themselves with the electronic national agriculture market (eNAM) platform. According to market experts, the major reason for the ‘failure’ of the eNAM is non-availability of interstate transaction facility in the electronic mandis.

According to officials, out of total 14 crore farmers, only 52 lakh farmers have joined the eNAM platform as of now. “Given that inter-state transac-tions are in poor state, farmers and traders are not keen to join the eNAM portal for trading. It’s so that the total turnover of eNAM the last one and half years of its launch is just Rs 28 crore,” the expert said.

“The e-NAM is not getting the response as what govern-ment had anticipated. Since it’s a major reform in the agricul-ture sector and a most impor-tant vehicle to transform the lives of farmers by doubling their income in next five years, the government should have made efforts to resolve the inter-state transaction issues,” the expert said on the condi-tion of not to be quoted.

According to a senior gov-ernment official, the eNAM

was launched with the objec-tive to bring farmers and traders together on a sin-gle platform to help farm-ers in getting better price of their produce. “The portal was launched to help farmers to sell their produce in any digitally connected mandi, but it’s not happening as interstate trans-actions are not allowed despite the fact that above 400 man-dis have been registered with eNAM,” the official said.

However, the farmers prefer conventional ways to sell their produce rather than doing business through eNAM. It’s worth mention-ing that when the eNAM was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in April 2016, it was showcased as an initia-tive that would revive the agri-culture sector.

As per government data, 18 states have joined the eNAM and 13 of them have made nec-essary amendments to rules under their respective APMC Acts. The government has set a target to bring 585 mandis across the country on to the platform by the end of March 2018.

The eNAM is a pan-India electronic trading portal, which networks APMC (agricultural produce market committee) markets to create a unified national market for agricul-tural commodities, which was launched in April last year.

Punjab CM writes to Centre on extradition of 10 accused in drugs cases from Canada

OUR CORRESPONDENT

CHANDIGARH: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has urged the Union gov-ernment to take up with Can-ada the extradition of 10 NRIs, declared proclaimed offenders in drugs-related cases in the state and living in that country.

In separate letters to Home Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Singh said the extradition process in the cases had been pending for up to four years, scuttling the state government’s efforts to bring the accused to justice.

The Congress govern-ment in Punjab has scaled up its efforts for their extradition from Canada, but the efforts have been obstructed as the cases remain pending at vari-ous levels, he said.

According to an official spokesperson, the state gov-ernment had decided to aggres-sively pursue the extradition of these suspects as their cus-todial interrogation was vital to establish the entire chain of the drug cartel in Punjab and to expose those allegedly patron-ising the trade.

Listing out details of these cases, the Punjab chief minis-ter said Sarabjit Singh Sandhar, alias Nik, a resident of village Balioun in Samrala, now liv-ing in Vancouver, had been declared a proclaimed offender on October 19, 2013.

His extradition request had been sent to Canadian author-ities and thereafter prepared afresh as per guidelines shared by them. The revised request was sent to the home minis-try, which forwarded it to the external affairs ministry on July

20, 2017.The same is the status in

another case, involving Ran-jit Singh Aujla, a resident of village Muthada Kalan in Jalandhar district, in which the extradition request is pending since July 25, 2017. He was declared a proclaimed offender in August 2013.

In the case of Nirankar Singh Dhillon of village Apra Mandi in Jalandhar, who was declared a proclaimed offender in October 2013, and is cur-rently reported to be living in Lietkencher Circle Brampton, Canada, the extradition request is pending since September 19, 2017, Singh said, citing police data.

The extradition request for Gursewak Singh Dhillon, who was declared a proclaimed offender in April 2014, was sent to the external affairs ministry by the home ministry on July 20, 2017, but there has been no movement since then.

Singh in his letter cited similar cases of Amarjit Singh Kooner, Lamer Singh Daleh, Pardeep Singh Dhaliwal, Ama-rinder Singh Chheena, Par-minder Singh Deo and Ranjit Kaur Kahlon.

SRINAGAR: Autonomy has been provided to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution of India and forms the core of the relation-ship between the state and the Centre, CPI(M) MLA from Kulgam, M Y Tarigami, said on Monday.

He also said that “fiddling

with Article 35 A of the Con-stitution” was not acceptable.

“J&K acceded to India under the guarantees provided by the Constitution of India. It is the Constituent Assembly which incorporated Article 370 in the Constitution pro-viding a constitutional basis for the relationship of J&K

with the Union,” Tarigami said in a statement here.

Autonomy guaranteed under this constitutional pro-vision is the “core of the rela-tionship” between state and the Centre, he added.

The CPI(M) leader expressed surprise that the government led by Prime

Minister Narendra Modi had characterised the demand for autonomy for J&K as “encour-aging national disintegration”.

“It is surprising that those at the helm of affairs in New Delhi have characterised any demand for more autonomy to J&K as encouraging national disintegration,” he said. MPOST

Autonomy forms core of relationship between J&K and Centre: Tarigami

mp editorial

Every fifth blind per-son in the world is an Indian. Of the 15 mil-lion blind people in

India, 1.1 million suffer from corneal blindness. And, 25,000 new cases are added to this backlog annually. A compila-tion of data from last year shows that only 25,713 transplant pro-cedures were conducted. In order to manage the problem, there is an urgent need to per-form 100,000 transplant sur-geries every year. Almost 80 per cent of the prevailing cases of blindness is avoidable – 60 per cent of it is due to cata-ract which can be cured with a simple 15-minute surgery and 20 per cent is due to refractive

errors, which can be treated with simply a pair of spectacles.

The cornea is a transpar-ent tissue covering the front of the eye. If it becomes cloudy from disease, injury, infection, or malnutrition, vision is dra-matically reduced or often even lost. Corneal blindness can be treated by replacing the dam-aged cornea with a healthy human cornea. The cornea can be procured through eye donation.

We have, at hand, techni-cal skills and a ready infra-structure for treating corneal blindness, but what is lacking is the availability of donor eye tissue. What makes the situ-ation worse is that a majority

of the patients suffering from corneal blindness are children or young adults. All efforts at establishing quality eye banks will go to waste unless general awareness and the practice of eye donation are substantially increased among the wide pop-ulation of the country. So far in India, the onus and responsibil-ity of promoting and spreading awareness about eye donation have been resting on the med-ical fraternity; whereas, glob-ally, successful eye banking has been the outcome of dedicated community effort and focused societal initiative.

There are, however, certain self-perpetuating myths about eye donation which are not only

false but also need to be com-pletely uprooted from their origins. These myths broadly circumscribe to the assump-tions that: a) the face/body of the dead will be left entirely dis-figured if the eyes are removed from the facial cavity; 2) one will be born blind in the next birth (emanating from a belief in the cycle of birth and re-birth); 3) one will not be able to see God once they knock on the doors of heaven. In fact, though, all religions endorse and support eye donation as a noble act.

Some facts about eye dona-tion need to be borne in mind: First, eyes need to be donated within six to eight hours of

physical death. Second, any-one can be a donor, irrespec-tive of age, sex, blood group or religion. Third, one cornea is grafted on to one person only. Switch off the fans, keep the air conditioner or cooler running and place wet cotton over the closed eyelids, as it will assist in keeping the eye tissue moist and raise the head with a pil-low. Those who have been users of spectacles, those diagnosed with hypertension and diabetics can also donate without causing damage to the recipient. Finally, the total removal time is brief, only about 15-20 minutes.

Eyes can be donated even if the deceased had not formally pledged their eyes during their lifetime. The eye bank team will immediately reach the donor’s home to collect the eyes. This service is conducted free of any cost. Tolerance, sharing, caring and giving have been synony-mous with Indian culture. It is an integral part of our heritage. It is then ironic to hear about the paucity of eye tissue – a gift which is required to be made only when we are no more and are eyes are of no use to us.

The gap between the need and the availability will grow wider unless 1.5 per cent of annual deaths in India (eight to nine million) or about 240,000 are converted into success-ful eye donations. Only then will we be able to achieve a zero waiting list for corneal transplant.

To make this possible, eye donation has to be ushered in as a family tradition. IANS

(The author is Managing Director of Venu Eye Institute & Research

Centre. Views expressed are strictly personal.)

8MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

Though the government’s radical measure of demon-etisation has disrupted the economy including the real

estate sector – already reeling under a prolonged slowdown – it will turn out to be a blessing in disguise, in the medium-to-long term.

As an asset class, real estate has been a major source of generating and con-suming black money. The cash com-ponent in real estate has been present at various levels, beginning with land transactions where it amounts to 30-50 per cent. The cash payout is quite high in luxury housing too. The con-sumption of cash has been as high as 30 per cent in the secondary market transactions.

The primary market transactions, however, are by far bereft of the cash component as home purchases are financed through loans from banks and housing finance corporations. It is another matter that even at the pri-mary market deals, developers have been encouraging cash payouts by luring property buyers with attrac-tive discounts on property prices. The speculative buying by investors through offerings like underwriting and pre-launches has also been involving cash payout, leading to an artificial price hike which, in turn, makes homes out of the reach of the masses.

Demonetisation, coupled with the government’s move to check benami transactions through a legislation and curbs on cash transactions, was meant to clean up the system. This sudden ‘shake up’ was, however, not without its adverse impacts. Demonetisation badly affected the liquidity in the cap-ital-intensive real estate sector, deep-ening the problem of massive fund shortage and cash crunch faced by the developers reeling under delayed deliv-eries, which had deterred buyers from purchasing property.

The impact was more evident in markets of the NCR and Mumbai which were largely investor-driven, as opposed to the southern markets of Bengaluru, Chennai and even Pune in the west,

which have been end-user driven. The premium or luxury residential segment, in which the cash component was more active in transactions, was evidently impacted by demonetisation. The real estate experts’ belief that the impact of demonetisation is only short-term and will not have any long-term impact, stems from the fact that developers who have been following transparent and fair practices have not been affected by demonetisation, which has instead worked out to their advantage. This also turned out to be a positive development for big global real estate consultants like JLL India, which doubled its profits in 2016 over 2014-15, by recording 60 per cent revenue growth. One key positive impact of demonetisation and RERA (Real Estate Regulation Act) has been that speculative investors deserted real estate and end-users or the genuine buyers, who were all these years pushed to the sidelines, came out in large num-bers. Now, it is the property consumers who are driving the real estate market, especially the residential markets, aided by the government’s pro-industry and pro-consumer initiatives.

The step to promote affordable hous-ing and according a real estate industry status for the purpose of making easy

and cheap funds available to the sec-tor has also been helpful. Demonetisa-tion has particularly boosted foreign funding. The transparency brought in by demonetisation, aided by RERA, GST reforms and liberalisation of FDI norms, has boosted the confidence of foreign investors, which is clearly evi-dent from the spurt in foreign invest-ments, particularly from pension funds.

This will inject a much-needed liquidity into the sector starved of funds. Targeting consumers, the gov-ernment under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), is providing sub-stantial interest subsidy to home buyers. The clampdown on floating cash in the system has contributed significantly to curbing inflation which, in turn, helped the RBI in cutting interest rates, thereby boosting home buying. The proposed measures to liberalise FSI norms and rationalise stamp duty will provide a further fillip to the residential sector, particularly for affordable housing.

Demonetisation had a salutary impact on property prices by curb-ing cash transactions and checking on speculative pricing, in turn increasing affordability, which is a key to achieve the government’s flagship mission of ‘Housing for All’. RERA & GST are

further aiding demonetisation to con-trol the prices. The key provisions in RERA, to speed up project completion, by checking diversion of funds through mandatory escrow account, strin-gent penalties to check project delays, together with the government’s move to make all building sanctions online, will go a long way in checking time and cost overruns of real estate projects, thereby controlling home prices.

The ban on pre-launching of proj-ects under RERA will also check the artificial spurt in pricing. GST has come to tackle the flow of cash in the pur-chase of building materials by intro-ducing input credit tax. Further, the government’s plans to liberalise FSI norms, especially for affordable homes, and rationalising stamp duty will have a sobering effect on property prices. But, for some little lingering effect, econo-mists and real estate experts believe that the overall downside impact of demon-etisation has faded and its impact is not going to be there in the next quarter.

Says Ashwinder Singh, formerly CEO of JLL India & now CEO of the leading real estate consultancy, Anarock Consultants: “Other than in terms of the initial confusion-induced decline in sentiment, the trend that is emerg-ing now, points towards a recovery in buying sentiment with serious buyers already returning to primary markets.”

The entire demonetisation exercise undertaken by the government and aided by other reforms, like Benami Property Act, RERA and GST, is to be looked at in the backdrop of the govern-ment’s multi-pronged policy to create an institutional and regulatory frame-work for speedy and steady growth of the economy. And, at the centre of all these initiatives is real estate, which is a key contributor to the GDP. Going for-ward, these policy initiatives will help make real estate more organised, trans-parent, credible and affordable; mak-ing the sector investor and consumer friendly. IANS

(The author is Editor, Realty Plus, a leading real estate monthly. The

views expressed are strictly personal.)

Blessing in disguiseEDITORIAL

Despite initial bumps, demonetisation has assisted the realty sector with RERA and GST providing extra boost

We have, at hand, technical skills and a ready infrastructure for treating corneal blindness, but what is lacking is the availability of donor eye tissue. What makes the situation worse is that a majority of the patients suffering from corneal blindness are children or young adults

Demonetisation has particularly boosted foreign funding. The transparency brought in by demonetisation, aided by RERA, GST reforms, and liberalisation of FDI norms, has boosted the confidence of foreign investors, which is clearly evident from the spurt in foreign investments, particularly from pension funds

The dragon seems to be showing its reluctance, once again. While the increasing presence of Chi-na’s armed People’s Liberation Army (PLA), near Doklam, does not constitute an immediate threat of

escalation, it clearly manifests that the issue has yet not been entirely written off. The recent agreement ending the stand-off did not lead to a complete withdrawal of troops from the Doklam plateau as Beijing abides by its old habit of delving into all options to regain its upper hand. As a result, the PLA has strengthened supply lines and raised troop levels in the surrounding areas. India, too, has done the same on its side of the border, in the recent weeks. But, as such deployments on both sides do not change the status quo, the chances of a re-escalation cannot be ruled out. Notably, at times, it seems as though both countries are getting along well and at other times, not so much. The tactical doubt between both the coun-tries has been illustrated by military standoffs on a number of previous occasions too. Doklam will count only as a part of the initial series of incidents – alongside those at Depsang in 2013 and Chumur in 2014, both along the Line of Actual Control in the western sector of the disputed boundary – that marks a change in the nature of engagement between the Indian and Chinese armed forces and governments. It is, undoubtedly, the result of a rise in the economic strength, military strengths, and regional and global political ambi-tions of the two countries. And, it calls for a re-evaluation of the prevailing bilateral agreements as well as an arbitra-tion on the boundary, if bilateral ties are not to decay. While New Delhi believes that the China-Pakistan Economic Cor-ridor and China’s opposition to Indian entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group threaten India’s national security, Beijing thinks that India is using Taiwan, the Dalai Lama, and the ongoing South China Sea issue as bargaining chips. Though the US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, in his recent visit to India, promised to deepen strategic and economic ties in the face of China’s growing influence in the region, it was merely Washington’s tactics of seeking support from coun-tries like India, Japan, Australia, Philippines and Vietnam to build formal alliances against China. In fact, the US had always planned to use India as a proxy against China, hop-ing to use a divide-and-rule strategy. India agreed to become a part of this military strategic partnership in 2016 by sign-ing a Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement with Washington. Time has now come that India would have to understand the US’s strategic double game. Amid the pre-vailing geopolitical reality of US-China interdependence, it appears farcical when the US claims that strong defence ties with India can challenge China’s rising regional influence. In a clear display of Beijing’s precedence for the US, President Donald Trump’s first visit to Asia in early November would also start with China. Back home, a confused New Delhi is just watching the US choreography with Pakistan and China care-fully unfurl itself. While it is an established fact that Ameri-ca’s relationship with India would never come at the expense of Pakistan, why would India waste its energy on this issue? Not to forget, the US courted China against the Soviet Union during the Cold War and now it is aiming to make a sequel of that with India against China in the new cold war. It may be noted that China has frequently warned India and other Asian countries about forming alliances against it, asserting that Trump’s policies are paradoxical and unreliable. Beijing has also cleared its stance that an informal alliance, contem-plated during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June this year, would compel it for a war – cold or hot. China also believes that India’s US-backed conspiracies against Beijing are needless because Beijing poses no national-security threat to New Delhi. But, since India cannot change its identity as a democracy – which millions of Indians are justifiably proud of, New Delhi would have to realise the pros and cons of shak-ing hands with the anti-China axis. Remember, in the recent past, despite escalating tensions on the border, Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has been appreciated as a strong leader on a number of occasions, by the Chinese people and the otherwise hate-billowing Chinese media. And, any move in an unanticipated rush would generate suspicion and preju-dice at the people-to-people level, on both sides. Nevertheless, any alliance against Beijing would lead the dragon towards building a firm, sustainable and comprehensive security plan for developing a win-win cooperation in the changing world. And, since repression and conflict would be in the dark-room, it would give birth to an illegitimate child, the ‘cold war’.

It seems that despite being dethroned, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has not given up his habit of mak-ing a mockery of his country’s judiciary and investigating agencies. And, the strong grip that Sharif still has could

be understood from the fact that only last week the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) of Pakistan, despite serious allegations of partiality and discrimination by the Opposi-tion parties, merely issued a bailable arrest warrant for him after he didn’t appear before the court in person. It may be recalled that the Apex Court of Pakistan had disqualified Sharif in July this year, following a probe into the revelations about his family’s wealth in the Panama Papers. The cases relating to several offshore companies – including Avenfield Flats, Al-Azizia Company Limited and 15 other firms set up by the Sharif family, were handed over to the NAB for trial. But, it could not compel Sharif to display any fear of the law and neither did his family bother to take the litigation pro-ceedings seriously, ever since being summoned on September 19. Though Sharif and his daughters appeared twice before the court, his sons failed to show up at all, as has been the Sharif family’s trusted prototype to obstruct justice. Sharif had a proper game plan in his mind to dodge the court, who had summoned him to be in person on November 3. He under-took religious pilgrimage and instead of returning, he went to London – to have a proper consultation with his party mem-bers there. On the other hand, instead of tightening the noose – the court just indicted Sharif in absentia on graft charges. Even while declaring his sons absconding in cases of misap-propriating assets, the NAB court provided VIP treatment to the three-time Pakistan Prime Minister, by not freezing the assets and bank accounts belonging to his family members. Now, the million-dollar question, did the court fail in reopen-ing the Hudabiyya Paper Mills money laundering case against the Sharif ’s family? Even, turning the eye in the infamous Model Town massacre, in which Sharif ’s son Shahbaz’s role was proved dubious, the NAB court has proved that despite being dethroned Sharif still enjoys out-of-bound immunity from the establishment. Nonetheless, it seems that there is a climate of impunity in Pakistan with regard to enforced dis-appearances, and the authorities are not sufficiently dedicated to investigating cases of enforced disappearance that will hold the perpetrators accountable. Isn’t it the exact time to avoid irreparable damage to the rule of law in Pakistan? The poli-tics in Pakistan has always been mired in corruption while being dominated by the military. The military was also cor-rupt but it enjoyed impunity and many military officers sus-pected of corruption escaped punishment. This indictment is a rare instance in Pakistan and the judicial system must be complimented for not bowing to prevailing political pressure and political compulsions from influential circles.

Cold war brewing

Tainted Sharif and his special trial

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EC declares polls dates in states where Assembly terms are expiring not too far apart but de-linking of Assembly poll announcements in Gujarat and Himachal has raised many eye-brows from ex-CECs as well as Opposition led by the Congress. While explaining the rationale behind the delayed announcement for Gujarat over delinking of poll announcements in Himachal and Gujarat, traditionally, EC always gives due weight to requests sent by the state governments. The EC always makes decisions on the basis of the prevailing situation thereby does not regret its decision to delay Gujarat announcement despite the largesse and sops announced by the BJP regime in Gujarat in the past few days.

Blindness can be avoidable if the practice of eye donation is made a family tradition across India, writes Tanuja Joshi

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Increased awareness about eye donation can radically reduce prevailing cases of corneal blindness which are most common among children and youth (Representational Image)

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9mp in focusMILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

SHANTONU SEN

Education as a social institution is expected to create not only pro-ductive but also pro-

gressive manpower. According to Martin Luther King Jr, edu-cation helps ‘critical thinking seasoned with character’. But over the years, this ideal seems to have been overpowered by the reality that meritocracy, in the name of marks, ranks and qualifications seem to define education. From kindergarten to graduation, there is a cut-throat competition for secur-ing positions and respectable careers. The focus on a well-rounded development of per-sonality, which was once a priority, is now a thing of antiq-uity. A career-specific knowl-edge is all that students focus on. No more Shakespeare, Kalidas, classical music or fine arts; it is all a race for career and corollary comfort. Often, this race turns brutal, driving the ‘unsuccessful’ down the path of suicidal depression. In Telangana, recently, quite a few instances of such unfortu-nate incidences were reported. Unfortunately this ‘real’ is per-ceived as the ‘ideal’ of education and all seem to acquiesce to it. Reasons behind this phenom-ena are chiefly socioeconomic.

In most developing coun-tries, formal education is understood either as a means to secure white collared jobs or as a value addition to the existing family status. Besides, struggle for existence amid the geometric growth of popula-tion requires the ‘survival of the fittest’. Naturally then, meri-tocracy steps in. Originally a state’s monopoly as a social obligation, education gradually opened up to private entrepre-neurship which transformed it into an apt commodity for sale. ‘Good education’ naturally meant ‘good career’. Private schools, colleges, and coach-ing institutions began selling

dreams of success, assuring the best percentages and ranks; more than a half of the enrolled though, embrace disappoint-ment. As per the NSSO report (2016), spending on education in private unaided institutions was 22 times that of govern-ment institutions. Govern-ment schools and institutions are now only preferred by those who can’t ‘pay to learn’. As per the report, 7.1 crore students i.e. 26 per cent of the total num-ber of students had taken pri-vate coaching wherein 12 per cent of the family income was spent and 89 per cent people stated that the purpose was "augmenting basic education"; obviously for future jobs. No matter ‘beg, borrow or sell’ parents want their children to be meritorious so that they become ‘sahebs’ on cushy jobs. Anything less in the bargain is no education. Interestingly, a similar enthusiasm is absent in vocational or skill develop-ment courses as more than 50 per cent seats are left vacant.

Two more factors respon-sible for the malady are the engagement with family busi-ness and the awakening of the

middle classes. Professionals like doctors, lawyers and con-sultants largely run close-knit family businesses; degrees in the same subjects help the pas-sage for hassle-free succes-sion. Aspirants from middle classes aim for better careers than those of their parents to achieve inter-generational mobility. Not surprisingly, the market takes full advan-tage of the weakness of the clientele. Readymade guide-books with solved questions and answers and audiovisual tablets swarmed the market. Regimented rote replaced true learning and intellectual bank-ruptcy took deep roots behind short-term ‘achievements’.

Meritocratic orientation has also led to the subjuga-tion of the youth to the dic-tates of the parents. In the name of family traditions, which essentially are caste values with occupational prescriptions, choices of learning and earn-ing, as per aptitude, are largely denied. Instead of education grooming one’s values and out-look, the predetermined value regime of society does the job. For instance, around 52,000

posts have been vacant in our Armed Forces. One of the obvi-ous reasons is the presence of ‘attractive’ alternative careers. The presence of social hierar-chy disregards the dignity of labour. Unlike in the west, blue collared and unconventional jobs aren’t attractive here. The National Skill Development Mission Document admits that only 3.2 per cent of the ‘educated workforce’ is skilled, compared to 68 per cent in the UK, 75 per cent in Ger-many, 52 per cent in the USA, 80 per cent in Japan and 96 per cent in South Korea. Though there is no dearth of opportu-nities in skill-based areas such as tourism, hospitality, retail marketing, medical care, and a shortage of aspirants is evident in areas which do not prescribe to rigid entry tests.

Another conspicuous consequence is class polari-sation in to ‘haves and the have-nots’. The traditionally dominant classes with purchas-ing power could secure produc-tive qualifications which helped reinforce their economic and social power. The minority of ‘haves’ seized a lion share of

professions, trades, jobs and occupations. The ‘have-nots’, constitute the vast army of unemployed with unproduc-tive qualifications. The rural-urban divide has aggravated the problem further.

It may not be incorrect to state that education as an insti-tution, though made people literate, couldn’t at the same time, create a desired produc-tive manpower, let alone a pro-gressive one.

The subject is too compli-cated to have instant solutions. Though it is impulsive in a democracy to blame the State when things go awry, society cannot disown its own share. More than a reform regime we need a change in the per-ceptions of the people. The media can play a constructive role in galvanising the collec-tive thought process as it does on many social issues. Expan-sion in urbanisation is essen-tial as it positively influences occupational mindsets. A uni-form national education pol-icy, wider than the scope of the RTE, is an important consider-ation. Equally, in the meantime, interim measures to control the unfettered education market are also no less important.

Children and the youth need the freedom to learn and grow, devoid of pres-sure for securing appropriate marks and careers. As agents of modernity, they need to be endowed, not only with knowl-edge but also with sufficient reason. Einstein aptly said ‘I have no special talents, but I am passionately curious’. Aris-totle’s Golden mean is ever rel-evant as we need to maintain a balance between ‘excellence and virtue’; though marks and careers mean excellence, we cannot compromise the virtue i.e. the ideal of true education.

(The author is a senior IAS officer from Chhattisgarh. The

views are strictly personal.)

Many wrongs plague the CBI if one were to just list the strictures that the courts of trial and appeal have been freely making against the CBI’s investigating officers and prosecutors over a period of time. The most recent being the strictures by the Allahabad High Court in the Arushi Murder

Though it is impulsive in a democracy to blame the State when things go awry, society cannot shirk its own share. More than a reform regime, we need a change in the perceptions of people. The media can play a constructive role in galvanising the collective thought process

What ails thee?The CBI took off as an undeterred symbol of efficacy in the Indian state,

yet, over the years, its image has been tarnished by controversies

Marks, qualifications, and meritocracy

Our premier inves-tigation agency has long been bad-mouthed by politi-

cians and the media. But the public did not yet write it off. It continued to shower it with more respect than it did to the neighbourhood police. But after the Arushi verdict, that fig leaf is off. The lay public is dismayed, and as more revela-tions unfurl they are furious, and finally abusive. Like pus on the pimple, the Enforce-ment Directorate charge sheet against Moin Akhtar Querishi has arrived amid deep antago-nism. The finding that he has laundered bribe money into valuable foreign exchange for two of its Directors has CBI down for the count. The amounts too are large, Rs 5.75 crores for one and 1.75 crores for the other.

The CBI has, over time, earned a fabulous reputation as an investigation organisa-tion. By the mid-seventies, its findings were equated with the judgments of our High Courts. Humble beginnings, a tempo-rary set up in the early forties, fortified with an ordinance to curb corruption in India’s War Department, it earned perma-nent spurs as a Special Police Establishment. Its first Inspec-tor General in the early-fifties, Bambewale, was succeeded by DP Kohli. Both garnered tremendous foresight. They saw corruption as a menacing monster which will irrevoca-bly hamper India’s place in the comity of nations. DP Kohli and Lal Bahadur Shastri, our Home Minister, made it a per-manent police department and named it the Central Bureau of Investigation. This was on April 1, 1963.

Good manpower blossoms from the roots that have been planted. This truth impelled DP Kohli to start recruiting CBI officers from 1963 itself. He, by training, was a man with an eye for detail. He instinctively grasped the raw material pre-sented to him by the UPSC, needed to begin grooming detectives. The organisation

which he planned and metic-ulously worked on had envis-aged the creation of a pool of ace detectives. No longer was the field work of criminal investigation of sensitive cases restricted in the hands of the lower echelons of the police, or with those who were in higher ranks after several pro-motions, as it is in every state and now, even in the CBI. He had focused on UPSC selected inductees who would be spe-cially trained to take on the crucial investigations.

They would register the First Information Reports (FIR), hear the complainants, seal and search the scene of crime, record the statements of the witnesses, arrest the accused, obtain a remand for further investigation, write the case diaries, appear in person before the trial magistrate to answer before the court. In other words, important crime investigation was allotted to trained detectives, who sur-vived the tough process of UPSC screening. This is, how-

ever, no longer the practice.Every year five to seven

young UPSC selectees from 1963 to 1976 were so inducted into the CBI with opportuni-ties to rise and hold high posi-tions, including the top ranks in the CBI. In the next dozen years, after 1963, when the CBI’s stock went soaring high, DP Kohli’s magic was passed into the hands of Devinder Sen, who was the next long-serving Director of the CBI.

With Sen’s retirement in 1976, the scheme which

ensured that an annual stream of young and zealous enthu-siasts entered the CBI to be trained as detectives, hit a sud-den bump. Why, how, when and who is not relevant. But that the competent CBI then became sick is relevant. Around the same time in the appoint-ment of Directors, experience in the CBI became irrelevant. When Kohli retired in 1965, FV Arul with no experience in the CBI was appointed as the Director. He unambiguously failed the CBI. He was replaced

by Sen. He was then made the DGP of Tamil Nadu. He was a good DGP but an unfit Direc-tor of the CBI! Thereafter, till the 80s, all Directors of the CBI were those who have had tenures within different ranks in the organisation. They had imbibed the culture of the CBI before being elevated.

This unspoken guideline of the appointment of Direc-tors in the CBI has been thrown aside on several occasions after the 80’s. When it was not dis-missed, the CBI functioned

well. Each time it was, the institution suffered. So much so that the ill effects of the dam-age were institutionalised. They even inducted undesirable officers into the organisation. Some of them, in due course of time, became Directors and proclaimed no belief or faith in the CBI culture. What they have done to tarnish the CBI’s image is there for everyone to witness, as the chickens have come home to roost with the ED charge sheet against Moin Akhtar Querishi.

Many wrongs plague the CBI if one were to just list the strictures that the courts of trial and appeal have been freely making against the CBI’s investigating officers and pros-ecutors over a period of time. The most recent being the stric-tures by the Allahabad High Court in the Arushi Murder. The original sin is the devia-tion from Kohli’s vision of the nature of CBI detectives and his vision of the human material that should head the CBI. Kohli had inducted Sen as his succes-sor and FV Arul was appointed despite him. But timely recti-fication saved the CBI then. The presence of Kohli –Sen for seventeen years at the helm, marked the golden years of the CBI. Later, whenever the CBI had periods of greatness after the 80s, it was when their nom-ination in the CBI within the junior ranks achieved higher ranks including the very top rank in the CBI. Between the 80s and the 90s, there were not many but some who made it; Narasimhan, Lobo, Katre, Shekhar, and Dutta did the CBI proud. Others, who could have done their best, have failed the CBI. They either had no earlier tenure or a forgettable tenure in the CBI. The future of the CBI lies in restoring the Kohli-Sen vision of CBI, which is a permanent pool of detectives with a Director chosen entirely on the merit of his past record in the CBI. There is life after despair, said Satre.

(The author is former Joint Director of the CBI. The views

expressed are strictly personal.)

Though marks and careers mean excellence, we cannot compromise the ideal of true education, writes K.D.P. Rao

The original sin is the deviation from Kohli’s vision of the nature of CBI detectives and his vision (Representational Image)

Schools today focus more on securing marks rather than shaping personalities (Representational Image)

tweetRETWEET

Autonomy, dear Bhakts, has got nothing to do with car manufacturers.

SANJAY JHA @JhaSanjay

BJP will be grateful to PC after Assembly elections in Gujarat because his one statement has ensured BJP victory. Gujaratis are nationalists

SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY @Swamy39

Pay my tributes to Homi Jehangir Bhabha, regarded as the father of the Indian nuclear programme on his birth anniversary

SURESH PRABHU@sureshpprabhu

No 'Azadi' for Kashmir but desire 'Azadi' from this government: polarisation , bigotry, love-jihad , gau rakshaks. Let's begin in Gujarat .

KAPIL SIBAL@KapilSibal

mp world10MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi |Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

SKY ON FIRE

Silhouettes of electricity pylons and buildings contrast on a fire-red sunset, as the autumn darkness falls over Milan AP/PTI

CATALONIA INDEPENDENCE

Spain to take control of Catalan institutions

MADRID: Spain is set to put in place measures to take direct con-trol of Catalonia in response to the region’s declaration of independence last week.

On Friday, Madrid stripped Cat-alonia of its autonomy and removed Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont from office.

The temporary move will see as many as 150 of the region’s ministers replaced. Some have vowed to con-tinue to work.

Puigdemont and other Cat-alan officials may face crimi-nal charges, a move likely to lead to huge protests.

Spain’s central government is set to take control of Catalan institutions with Spanish officials expected to be put in place in the region’s ministries on Monday.

Madrid has called for the Span-ish constitutional court to revoke

Catalonia’s unilateral vote for inde-pendence. Puigdemont and his vice-president Oriol Junqueras say they do not accept the moves by Madrid, adding that they can only be removed from office by the citi-zens of Catalonia.

If Puigdemont and others refuse to step aside, they face possible arrest and prosecution on charges of rebel-lion — the maximum sentence for which is 30 years.

About 200,000 civil servants are due to arrive on Monday, but it is not clear how many will stay away or refuse to follow instructions.

The former Catalan Sustainability Minister, Josep Rull, said he was con-

tinuing with his “scheduled agenda” and posted an image on Twitter showing him at his desk.

“I’m at the office carry-ing out the responsibilities that the people [of Catalonia] entrusted to us,” he wrote.

However, Madrid has given Cata-lan ministers hours to pack up their belongings and leave their offices or Catalonia’s regional police force, known as Mossos, will “act”.

Spain’s Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis has said he expects the offi-cers to “act professionally”. Spain’s chief prosecutor has also been pre-paring criminal charges against any officials considered to have acted

against Spanish law in declaring independence following a referen-dum deemed illegal under the Span-ish constitution.

Meanwhile, Madrid has called for fresh regional elections on 21 December.

Puigdemont could run in new elections, according to Dastis, but only if the sacked Catalan leader has not been jailed.

On Monday, Dastis said he hoped the forthcoming elections would help to “restore legal gover-nance and rule of law in Catalonia”.

“We hope and believe that after these elections, Catalonia will again be the same society it was before: open and integrated,” he said dur-ing a press briefing in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.

Meanwhile, Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido has written to all police officers in Catalonia asking for their loyalty as a “new era” begins in the region.

Senior police officers have told the BBC that they have already com-plied with an order to remove framed photographs of Puigdemont from police stations across the region.

Spain has been gripped by a con-stitutional crisis since a referendum, organised by Puigdemont’s sepa-ratist government, was held earlier this month in defiance of a ruling by the constitutional court which had declared it illegal.

Friday saw the regional parlia-ment declare independence.

Meanwhile, Puigdemont has left Spain and travelled to Brussels, Span-ish government officials have said.

Puigdemont is facing sedition charges from the Spanish govern-ment after Catalonia declared inde-pendence under his leadership.

The move comes after Belgium’s asylum and migration affairs min-ister Theo Francken said the for-mer president could seek asylum in the country. The Spanish media reports that the former leader is accompanied by an unspecified number of other members of the Catalan government. AGENCIES

Questions, anger after young Russian model dies in China

BEIJING: A Chinese modeling agency that hired a 14-year-old Russian girl is denying media reports that a “slave con-tract” contributed to the teen’s sudden death.

The exact circumstances of Vlada Dzyuba’s death last week are still murky, and there are conflicting accounts from Russia and China. But media reports say there are concerns in Russia about working conditions in China for a growing number of young models being recruited to work in the country’s booming fashion industry.

The Siberian Times newspaper, with-out clearly noting its sources, reported that the girl died after falling into a coma after working a 13-hour day. That would violate a Russian law that says underage models can’t work more than three hours a week.

The paper said Dzyuba’s mother, Oksana, told NTV: “She was calling me, saying, ‘Mama, I am so tired. I so much want to sleep.’ It must have been the very beginning of the illness.” It ran the story under a headline reading “Fears over exploitation of Russian models sent on ‘slave labor contracts’ without par-ents to care for them.” An incomplete hospital record provided by the Chi-nese agency that hired Dzyuba, ESEE Model, listed multiple causes of death, including sepsis. AGENCIES

‘Xi Thought’ to be taught in

Chinese universities

BEIJING: Xi Jinping Thought will now be taught, researched and promoted in universities across China, ensuring that the leader’s eponymous philoso-phy is implanted into students’ hearts and minds.

At least twenty universities have established research insti-tutes for Xi’s ideology, which was enshrined in the Commu-nist Party’s constitution dur-ing its 19th national congress this month.

The distinction places Xi on a par with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. It means that his dogma — “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” — will become a mantra for a new generation. According to media reports Sunday, the research insti-tutes will not “hide in the ivory tower” but advocate the incorporation of Xi thought in all aspects of daily life. “We will gather many experts and professors to disseminate and preach Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Char-acteristics for a New Era in businesses, neighbourhoods and villages,” Jiang Hongxin, head of Hunan Normal Uni-versity’s newly-founded Xi Thought research centre, told the People’s Daily, the party mouthpiece.Jiang’s attitude

mirrors that of many institute directors, who in interviews with Chinese media over the weekend espoused a deep devotion to spreading Xi-isms.

“The (research) centre has a unique duty, which is to push forward Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Char-acteristics for a New Era in cur-riculums, in classrooms and in minds,” Chen Xianda, a pro-fessor at Renmin University of China, told the Beijing-based Guangming Daily.

One institute director said the centre was the school’s way of “answering Xi’s call” to educate young people, while another said the Xi Thought organisation would “guide the entire school, from top to bot-tom, in implementing the spirit of the 19th congress”.

“We must always keep in mind the generosity of Gen-eral Secretary Xi Jinping,” Zhou Qihong, a party secretary at Wuhan Donghu University, told the People’s Daily.

The lessons must “enter brains and hearts”, he said.

The education ministry also released guidelines Mon-day for mandatory elementary and high school extracurricu-lar programmes that include activities to “foster emotional attachment to the Chinese Communist Party”. AGENCIES

Saudi Airlines to operate first Baghdad flight in 27 yearsRIYADH: State-owned Saudi Arabian Airlines will launch its first flight to Baghdad in 27 years on Tues-day, state media said, amid a thaw in ties between the Arab neighbours. The airline, also known as Sau-dia, will depart from the Red Sea city of Jeddah bare-ly two weeks after Saudi budget carrier flynas made the first commercial flight from Riyadh to Baghdad since 1990. “Saudi Arabian Airlines will inaugurate regular flights between the kingdom and Iraq after an interruption of 27 years,” the official Saudi Press Agency reported on Sunday. “The resumption of flights is in line with growing ties between the two brotherly countries.” Flights between Iraq and Saudi Arabia were suspended in August 1990 after former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein ordered his troops into neighbouring Kuwait. After years of tense rela-tions, ties between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite-majority Iraq have begun looking up. AGENCIES

At least 11 killed in Nepal road

accidentsKATHMANDU: At least 11 people were killed on Monday and several others injured in two separate road accidents in Nepal.

In the first incident, seven people died and seven others sustained injuries in western Gulmi district when a micro-bus heading towards Tamghas in Gulmi skidded off the road and rolled down a hill, the police said.

The injured were admitted to Shringa Health Post, Palpa for medical treatment.

In the second inci-dent, four people were killed while six others were injured when a jeep en route to Jayaramghat from Katari Bazaar fell 400 meters in Katari Municipality along the Sid-dhicharan Lokmarga.

The accident took place after the driver lost control of the jeep at 1:30 pm, said police.

A woman, a child and the driver were brought to Katari Hospital after being rescued by police with the help of locals.

On Saturday, an over-crowded passenger bus veered off a road and plunged into a river in central Nepal’s Dhading district, kill-ing 31 people, including an Indian woman. AGENCIES

Kevin Spacey apologises after accusation of sexual advanceKevin Spacey, a two-time

Oscar winner, apologised on Sunday night for what he said “would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behav-ior” after the actor Anthony Rapp accused him of making a sexual advance on him 31 years ago, when Rapp was 14 years old.

Spacey, who has long been fiercely private about his per-sonal life, said in a statement that he did not remember any such encounter, but added that Rapp’s accusation “has encour-aged me to address other things about my life.” He then disclosed that he had “loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man.”

The rapid cycle of accu-sation and apology began on Sunday evening, when BuzzFeed published an article in which Rapp alleged that Spacey “was trying to get with me sexually” after a party at Spacey’s apartment in 1986. After all the other guests had left, Rapp said that Spacey, who appeared intoxicated, “picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold. But I don’t, like, squirm away initially, because

I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then he lays down on top of me.” Rapp, who is best known for playing the charac-ter Mark Cohen in the origi-nal Broadway production of “Rent,” confirmed the contents of the article and said he had decided to speak out at a time when several women have accused the producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harass-ment and assault.

“I came forward with my story, standing on the shoul-ders of the many courageous women and men who have been speaking out, to shine a light and hopefully make a dif-ference, as they have done for me,” Rapp said in an emailed

statement. “Everything I wanted to say

about my experience is in that article, and I have no further comment about it at this time.”

Spacey had not responded to requests for comment from BuzzFeed. But a few hours after the article was published, he posted a statement to Twit-ter, saying he was “horri-fied” but did not remember the encounter. Rapp said he met Spacey in 1986 when both were performing in Broadway shows. Rapp was a child actor in a new play called “Precious Sons,” while Spacey, then 26, was performing in a revival of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” AGENCIES

Puigdemont has left Spain and travelled to Brussels. He is facing sedition charges from the Spanish government

mp world 11MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi |Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

Iran skips UN conference on nuclear energy in Abu DhabiABU DHABI: Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers may hang in the balance, but you wouldn’t know it at the United Nations conference on atomic energy held on Monday in the United Arab Emirates.

Iran decided to skip the Abu Dhabi conference, leav-ing its seats empty as Yukiya Amano, the head of the Inter-national Atomic Energy Agency, avoided speaking about the nuclear deal at all in his address at the venue.

Iranian officials did not respond to a request for com-ment to discuss their decision to avoid the conference.

At a later news conference, Amano himself declined to dis-cuss it. “This conference is open to all the countries and we wel-come the participation of all the countries,” Amano said.

“But of course it depends on each country whether to attend or not. I do not comment on Iran’s participation. It is (up to) Iran to decide.”

Amano’s decision to avoid mentioning Iran earlier may have been tactical. He visited Tehran just the day before and

told journalists that Iran still honoured the 2015 accord.

Both the UAE and neigh-boring Saudi Arabia remain highly suspicious of the nuclear deal, which saw eco-nomic sanctions on Iran lifted in exchange for it limiting its enrichment of uranium.

The two Gulf Arab coun-tries say that new money flow-ing into Iran has aided its ability to back Shiite militias in Iraq and support embattled

Syrian President Bashar Assad.Also sharing that suspi-

cion is Israel, which sent a delegation t o the nuclear con-ference. The UAE, like many Arab countries, does not have diplomatic ties with Israel and remains opposed to its occupa-tion of lands Palestinians want for a future state.

Conference organisers asked journalists not to film the Israeli delegation.

Israeli officials did not

immediately return a request for comment. Their presence also nearly created a unique diplomatic conundrum, as conference organizers had seated them next to Iran. The Iran nuclear deal, struck in 2015, now faces one of its big-gest threats. President Donald Trump has declined to re-certify the deal, sending it to Congress to address. Trump’s refusal this month to re-certify the agreement has sparked a

new war of words between Iran and the United States, fueling growing mistrust and a sense of nationalism among Iranians. The European Union, Britain and other parties in the deal have all encouraged Trump to keep the accord in place. Amano reiterated that Iran remains in compliance with the deal again when pressed by reporters in Abu Dhabi. How-ever, he demurred when asked to discuss what actions Trump could take in the future.

“We do not speculate,” Amano said. “So I do not have any comments on the future action of the president of the United States.”

Meanwhile, Iran is fulfill-ing its commitments under the nuclear deal with world powers and UN inspectors are facing no problems in their verifica-tion efforts, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general said.

US President Donald Trump said earlier this month that he would not continue to certify the multinational 2015 agreement, reached under Barack Obama. AGENCIES

Vatican aims to head off US-North

Korea nuclear standoff

VATICAN CITY: The Vat-ican is hosting a confer-ence next week aimed at trying to head off a threat-ened nuclear confrontation between the US and North Korea, bringing together 11 Nobel peace laureates and top UN and NATO officials as well as ambassadors from key countries.

Vatican spokesperson Greg Burke said on Monday that the Nov. 10-11 confer-ence was part of the Vati-can’s long-standing effort to promote a nuclear weap-ons-free world.

But he denied that the conference, first reported by La Repubblica newspa-per, represented a mediation effort by Pope Francis.

Francis has already urged Washington and Pyongyang to step back from the brink of war and urged mediation efforts by others.

It wasn’t immediately clear if North Korea or China would be represented at the conference: Neither has diplomatic relations with the Holy See. Meanwhile, Senior defence officials from the United States, South Korea and Japan held trilat-eral talks. AGENCIES

Qandeel killed at the behest of cleric, father tells Pak courtLAHORE: Qandeel Baloch, the controversial Paki-stani social media celebrity, was killed at the behest of Mufti Qavi, her father on Monday told a court hearing her murder case, a media report said. Qa-ndeel, 26, was murdered last year, allegedly by her brother Muhammad Waseem, who said he killed her in the name of ‘honour.’ Waseem is alleged to have drugged and strangled her, saying that she “brought dishonour to the Baloch name” due to her risque videos and statements posted on social media. Her parents, Muhammad Azeem and Anwar Bibi, were present in the court of Judicial Magistrate Pervaiz Khan in Multan city in Punjab province. Mufti Qavi, who is currently in police custody after his pre-arrest bail was rejected by a court earlier in October was also present. Mufti Qavi’s selfies with Qandeel had gone viral on social media, causing a nation-wide furore, after which the cleric’s membership of the Ruet-i-Hilal committee and the National Ulema Mushaikh Council had been suspended. Azeem told the magistrate that he would not forgive anyone who was involved in his daughter’s murder. AGENCIES

China to block resolution naming Masood Azhar

as global terroristBEIJING: China is set to block a resolution at the UN this week to declare Paki-stan-based JeM chief Masood Azhar an international terror-ist, frustrating India and the US who want the chief plotter of a deadly attack on Indian military bases punished.

After Beijing blocked and put a technical hold on India’s application that lapsed last year, the US in January had put a fresh proposal - backed by France and the UK - to ban Azhar. Beijing again put a technical hold on the proposal till August, only to extend it further for three months.

The technical hold expires on Thursday.

Chinese Foreign Minis-try spokesperson Hua Chuny-ing said the 1267 Committee of the UN Security Council was still in disagreement to approve the application.

“As for the listing appli-cation by the relevant coun-try, there are disagreements. China put the technical hold to allow more time to deliberate on this matter,” Hua said.

“To our regret, the com-mittee so far has yet to reach consensus,” she added.China’s ‘no’ to the US proposal means that a new resolution will have to be moved.

Minus China, all the coun-tries of the 15-member Secu-

rity Council are on board to ban Azhar, who heads the Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit.

China is one of the five veto-holding members and its vote for and against the res-olution is decisive.

“We have made our posi-tion clear many times... Rel-evant resolutions of the Security Council have clear stipulations as to the man-date of 1267 committee and also clear stipulations when it comes to the listing of the ter-rorist organisations and indi-viduals,” Hua said.

“We believe that the com-mittee (UN) should follow the principles of objectiv-ity, professionalism and fairness and reach a deci-sion by consensus based on solid proof,” she said.

The listing of Azhar has become a sore point between China and India. In Septem-ber, China agreed to include Azhar’s outfit in the joint state-ment by BRICS members.

Asked if China was trying to defend Pakistan by veto-ing application against Azhar, Hua said: “I can understand why you raised this ques-tion but I cannot side with what you just said. Beijing has steadfastly shielded its “all-weather” ally Islamabad, which has been accused of harbouring terror outfits by India. AGENCIES

Trump-Russia inquiry heats up as Manafort

turns himself inWASHINGTON: The spe-cial counsel investigation into the Trump campaign’s links to Moscow unveiled its first charges on Monday, alleging collusion with Kremlin-linked Russians, money-laundering and conspiracy to defraud the US government by three of the president’s former aides.

George Papadopolous, a former campaign foreign policy advisor, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI investigators over his contacts last year with an unnamed Russian profes-sor with close ties to the Rus-sian government who offered “dirt” on Hillary Rodham Clinton and with a woman the professor identified as “Putin’s niece”. It is unclear from the charges, to which Papado-lous pleaded guilty on Octo-ber 5, whether the unnamed woman really was related to the Russian president, but Papadopoulos’s contacts with her and the professor led to extensive contacts with Rus-sian officials over organising a Putin-Trump meeting and other high-level exchanges.

The special counsel, Rob-ert Mueller, also charged Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort,

and another senior cam-paign operative, Rick Gates, with money laundering, tax evasion and failing to regis-ter as agents of foreign inter-ests. The indictments were the first issued by Muel-ler since he was appointed special counsel in May, with broad powers to investi-gate Russian interference in the 2016 election and possi-ble collusion with that effort by members of the Trump campaign.

Collusion itself is not a crime, unless it rises to the level of espionage or trea-son. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false state-ments to FBI agents about the extent and timing of his con-tacts with Russians, and about his awareness of their links to the Kremlin. AGENCIES

Paul Manafort

mp business12MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

SEOUL: South Korean prose-cutors demanded a 10-year jail term on Monday for the chair-man of embattled retail giant the Lotte Group for embezzle-ment and breach of duty.

The country’s fifth largest conglomerate has been bat-tered by boycott campaigns in China over South Korea’s deployment of a US missile defence system -- for which it provided the land -- and by criminal trials for members of its founding family.

Chairman Shin Dong-Bin was charged with embezzling USD50 million and illegally offering relatives business favours that cost the group about USD120 million.

Similar charges were lev-elled against his older brother and sister and their father, Lotte founder Shin Kyuk-Ho -- as well as the latter’s mistress.

“The family members tried to run the group as if it was their private property using all possible ways imaginable for such a long time,” the prosecu-tors said in a statement.

Dong-Bin awarded lucra-tive deals or paid “wages” worth millions of dollars to rel-atives who made little contribu-tion to management, they said, also urging he be fined 100 bil-lion won (USD89 million).

They sought jail terms rang-ing from five to seven years for

his brother and sister and their father’s mistress. They will announce their demand for the sentence on the founder, who was too ill to attend court on Monday, in November.

Judges are not bound by the prosecutors’ sentence recommendations.

The Seoul-based Lotte group, founded in Tokyo in 1948, has a vast network of businesses focused on food, retail and hotels in South Korea and Japan, with com-bined assets valued at more than USD90 billion.

But it has suffered a crip-pling blow to its business in China after swapping a golf course it owned with the Seoul government for the deploy-ment of the US Terminal High Altitude Defense (THAAD) system, seen by Beijing as a threat to its own military capabilities.

Since then Beijing has slapped a series of measures on South Korean firms seen as economic retaliation, while Chinese consumers waged boy-cott campaigns against Lotte.

Lotte last month announced

a plan to sell its supermarket unit in China, where it had invested over USD8 billion, amid snowballing losses.

Dong-Bin is on trial sepa-rately over the corruption scan-dal that brought down former South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, who was formally impeached in March.

He is accused of bribing Park’s powerful confidante, Choi Soon-Sil, in a bid to seek policy favours from Park. Both Park and Choi are on trial for charges including bribery and abuse of power. PTI

MUMBAI: Confirming fears of a ‘jobless growth’, domestic rating agency Care Ratings on Monday said employment gen-eration has not kept pace with GDP expansion,and termed it as a “major concern”.

Such a scenario calls for “proactive measures” from gov-ernment and the recent infra-structure building efforts will help, it noted and said “employ-ment growth has not kept pace with economic growth.” It can be noted that the Union labour ministry had also conceded and set up a task force to work on the same.

“The current growth is a job-less growth. Many European and Asian countries, includ-ing India, are facing it...growth is being reported but it is not reflecting in employment gen-eration,” the then labour min-ister Bandaru Dattatreya had said in May this year.

A jobless growth a situation in which an economy recovers from a recession but the jobs market does not.

From a sectoral basis, the agency said the services sector has extended some relief but manufacturing has failed to cre-ate jobs in recent times. Banks, IT, retailing, and healthcare con-tinue to create jobs, while min-ing, power and telecom have saw reduction in the employ-ees, it pointed out.

The agency did a study of employment in the corpo-rate sector for last five years

and asked for the findings to be taken with caution because the unorganised sector and smaller businesses account for a large share in employment generation.

“It is however believed that these numbers are broadly indicative of the trends wit-nessed in the last two years,” the report said.

Aggregate employees in 1,473 companies grew to 5.18 million in FY17 from 5.01 mil-lion in FY15, a growth of a lit-tle over 1 percentage point per year compared to over nearly 7 per cent economic growth. Banking is the highest among sectors when it comes to gener-ating employment, with a 21.3

per cent share, and is followed by IT, mining, healthcare and textiles.

Sectors which witnessed a fall in employment in FY17 from the previous fiscal included fast moving consumer goods, media and entertain-ment and paper.

Crude oil, infrastructure, trading, automobiles and ancil-laries, finance and hospitality, which had recorded negative growth in employment in FY16, also witnessed growth in FY17, it said. From a cost of employ-ment perspective, Care said average salary has risen for a sample of 1,473 firms to Rs 8.35 lakh in FY17 from Rs 7.13 lakh in FY15. PTI

NEW DELHI: With changes in investment rules for select small savings schemes includ-ing National Savings Certifi-cate (NSC), the government has said such accounts will be closed before their maturity in case status of the holder changes from resident to non-resident Indians (NRIs).

Such holders will earn only post office savings account rate of 4 per cent and not the higher rate on those instruments when the status was one of resident.

In the case of public provi-dent fund (PPF), the account is deemed to be closed the day the status of the account holder changes to NRI.

According to the amend-ment to the Public Provident Fund Act, 1968, “... if a resi-dent who opened an account under this scheme subsequently becomes a non-resident dur-ing the currency of the matu-rity period, the account shall be deemed to be closed with effect from the day he becomes a non-resident...” Interest with effect from that date will be paid

at the 4 per cent rate applica-ble to the post office savings account up to the last day of the month preceding the one in which the account is actu-ally closed, the Public Provident Fund (Amendment) Scheme, 2017, said.

The amended rules were notified in the official gazette earlier this month. With regard to NSC, a separate notification said it is deemed to be encashed on the day the holder becomes an NRI.

“...interest shall be paid at the rate applicable to the post office savings account, from time to time, from such day and up to the last day of the month preceding the month in which it is actually encashed,” it stated.

Last month, the government kept unchanged interest rates on small savings schemes for the October-December quarter.

Since April last year, inter-est rates on all small saving schemes have been recalibrated on a quarterly basis. PTI

NEW DELHI: Taking strong partnership between India and Africa to new heights, Min-istry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and World Bank are organising a five day ‘Knowledge Sharing Workshop’ for African delegation from six African countries namely Rwanda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sen-egal, Tanzania, and Ghana.

Capacity building and knowledge exchange support from India for African countries is the central theme of the work-shop. The five day workshop is a culmination of a conference on Partnership for Skills in the Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology (PASET) orga-nized in April this year in Nai-robi, Kenya.

The African countries that participated in the PASET Forum requested for support and knowledge exchange for African countries with India in the area of skills development (SD) and vocational education. The workshop includes discus-sions with Indian counterparts at the national level and field visits to two states, Maharash-tra and Rajasthan.

The workshop is being attended by key ministers from India and Africa. The five day workshop will have techincal sessions around Short Term and long term Skill Develop-ment system in India, Skills Qualifications Development and Certification, Skill Develop-ment and Challenges in African Countries etc. MPOST

NEW DELHI: Moving ahead with reforms in the public sec-tor banking space, the gov-ernment has constituted a ministerial panel headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that will oversee merger pro-posals of state-owned banks.

The other members of the panel include Railway and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

“Govt walks the talk on banking reforms; constitutes Alternative Mechanism for PSBs consolidation; Finance Minister to head,” Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar said in a tweet.

While announcing the unprecedented Rs 2.11 lakh

crore capital infusion roadmap for the public sector banks last week, Jaitley had said, this will be accompanied by series of banking reforms over next few months. The constitution of Alternative Mechanism (AM) is a movement in that direction.

The Union Cabinet in August had decided to set up

an Alternative Mechanism to fast track consolidation among public sector banks to create strong lenders.

The move to create large banks aims at meeting the credit needs of the growing Indian economy and build-ing capacity in the public sec-tor banking space to raise resources without dependence on the state exchequer.

The Alternative Mechanism will oversee the proposals com-ing from boards of PSBs for consolidation.

The decision to set up the Alternative Mechanism follows State Bank of India merging its five associate banks, as also the Bharatiya Mahila Bank, with itself. PTI

NEW DELHI: To boost the ‘Make in India’ initiative, the Union home ministry has lib-eralised the Arms Rules to encourage investment in the manufacturing of arms, ammu-nition and weapon systems in the country.

The liberalised rules will promote employment genera-tion in the field of manufactur-ing of arms and ammunition, according to an official state-ment here on Monday.

Under the new rules, the licence granted for manufac-turing will be valid for the life-time of the licensee company.

The requirement of renewal

of the licence every five years has been done away with.

Similarly, the condition that small arms and light weapons produced by a manufacturer should be sold to the cen-tral government or the state governments with the prior approval of the home ministry has been done away with.

The liberalised rules will apply to licences granted by the home ministry for small arms and ammunition, and those granted by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promo-tion (DIPP), under powers del-egated to it, for tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles,

defence aircraft, space crafts, warships of all kinds, arms and ammunition and allied items of defence equipment other than small arms.

The new rules, which came into effect on October 27, are

expected to encourage the manufacturing activity and facilitate availability of world-class weapons to meet the requirement of armed forces and police forces in sync with the country’s defence indigeni-sation programme.

Under the new rules, enhancement of capacity up to 15 per cent of the quantity approved under the licence will not require any fur-ther approval by the govern-ment. The manufacturer will be required to give only prior intimation to the authority, the statement said.

The licence fee has been

reduced significantly. Ear-lier the licence fee was Rs 500 per firearm which added up to very large sums and was a deterrent to seeking manufac-turing licenses. The licence fee will now range from Rs 5,000 to the maximum of Rs 50,000.

The fee for manufactur-ing licence will be payable at the time of the grant of license rather than at the time of application.

Single manufacturing licence will be allowed for a multi-unit facility within the same state or in different states within the country, the state-ment said. PTI

MUMBAI: The economy is likely to pick up to 6 per cent in the second quarter of the cur-rent fiscal, owing to an uptick in several macroeconomic indi-cators like trade, transport and communication, says a report.

“In the first quarter GDP grew at 5.7 per cent,causing a lot of heartburn, but we strongly believe that the second quarter growth is likely to trend higher and might be in the lower end of 6-6.5 per cent band with an upward bias,” SBI Research said in a report on Monday.

According to report, IIP growth for September may likely be over 5 per cent as min-ing and electricity growth is also to be significantly better as state electricity boards have pur-chased power because of festive

demand. Further, it noted that most of the lead indicators -- foreign tourist arrivals, interna-tional passenger and air freight traffic, railway traffic and tele-phone subscribers has showed an uptick in recent months.

Significantly, it also said that consumption facing sec-tors are currently witnessing an increase in investment opportu-nities which “bodes well for the investment cycle going forward”.

However, it observed that growth rate in agriculture sec-tor is a point of concern.

“Agriculture growth may be muted as rainfall in the first three months of monsoon was hugely deficit in key food grain producing states like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh,” it said. PTI

MUMBAI: Mortgage major HDFC on Monday reported a 17 per cent increase in con-solidated net profit at Rs 2,869 crore in the quarter to Sep-tember on better spreads and higher advances growth.

On a standalone basis, the lender reported a 15 per cent increase in net profit at Rs 2,101 crore helped by sta-ble spreads and higher loan growth.

“Profit was driven by stable spreads and larger volumes. Individual loan disbursements grew 23 per cent, which on a base as large as ours is a very substantial increase.

Total loan book growth was 18 per cent,” vice-chair-man and chief executive Keki Mistry told reporters.

The spread on the individ-ual loan book was 1.90 per cent while the same on the non-individual book was much higher at 3.1 per cent, he said.

“We expect our spread will remain in a band of 2.20 per cent to 2.35 per cent for the remaining part of the year,” he said, adding that it will help to have net interest margins of 3.9 per cent.

On an assets under man-agement (AUM) basis, growth in the individual loan book was 16 per cent and the non- indi-vidual loan book was 24 per cent. The growth in the total loan book was 18 per cent.

Individual loan disburse-ments grew by 23 per cent dur-

ing the half-year, and total loan book grew to Rs 3,24,077 crore from Rs 2,75,406 crore.

It sold individual loans amounting to Rs 3,530 crore in the quarter. Of this, Rs 3,165 crore were sold to HDFC Bank and Rs 365 crore to another bank.

Gross non-performing loans stood at Rs 3,701 crore, which is equivalent to 1.14 per cent of the loan portfolio.

Non-performing loans of the individual portfolio stood at 0.65 per cent while that of the non-individual portfolio stood at 2.18 per cent, he said.

Provisions stood at Rs 3,235 crore as against regula-tory requirement of Rs 2,500 crore.

Capital adequacy ratio stood at 15.1 per cent, of which tier I capital was 12.6 per cent and tier II capital was 2.5 per cent.

The scrip ended at Rs 1,705.50, up 0.44 per cent on the BSE, which closed at 33,266.16, up 0.33 per cent on Monday. PTI

S Korea prosecutors seek 10-yr jail for Lotte chief

‘Jobless growth is now a reality... not just a theory’

PPF to close, NSC to be encashed if holder decides to become NRI

NEW DELHI: The ‘Bharat 22’ Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), comprising 22 scrips of public sector units, will hit the capi-tal market next month to mop up over Rs 8,000 crore for the government.

The new fund offer (NFO), managed by ICICI Pruden-tial Mutual Fund, will open for anchor investors on November 14, while subscription for retail investors would begin from November 15 and continue till November 17.

An upfront discount of 3 per cent would be offered to all category of investors, the fund house said.

“Approvals are in place. It is likely to open for retail sub-scription on November 15,” said a Finance Ministry official.

The ETF will help govern-ment meet its ambitious Rs 72,500 crore disinvestment tar-get for the current fiscal.

The state-owned companies or PSUs that are part of the new ETF are ONGC, IOC, SBI,

BPCL, Coal India and Nalco.It also includes govern-

ment’s strategic holding in Axis Bank, ITC and L&T held through SUUTI (Specified Undertaking of Unit Trust of India).

The other Central Public Sector Enterprises on the list are Bharat Electronics, Engi-neers India, NBCC, NTPC, NHPC, SJVNL, GAIL, PGCIL and NLC India.

Only three public sector banks -- SBI, Indian Bank and Bank of Baroda -- figure in the Bharat-22 index.

The government had raised about Rs 8,500 crore through the two tranches of CPSE ETF last fiscal.

It had first launched ETF in March 2014 and had garnered Rs 3,000 crore. The first CPSE ETF consisted of scrips of 10 PSUs -- ONGC, Coal India, IOC, GAIL (India), Oil India, PFC, Bharat Electronics, REC, Engineers India and Container Corporation of India. PTI

Bharat 22 ETF for PSUs to raise over `8,000 crore, to open on November 15

Govt eases Arms rules to boost manufacturing investmentHDFC Q2 net grows 17% on loan growth and better margins

Skill India holds knowledge

sharing workshop for Africans

Centre sets up panel on PSU bank mergers; FM to be head

Q2 GDP may grow by 6%: SBI Research

NEW DELHI: The government on Monday extended the due date by a month for filing of July GSTR-2 to November 30 and GSTR-3 to December 11.

GSTR-2 or purchase returns have to be matched with GSTR-1 which is the sales return. The original due date for filing GSTR-2 was October 31, while the last date for filing of GSTR-3, which is a match-ing form of GSTR-1 and 2, was November 11.

The last date for filing of GSTR-1 for July was October 1. Over 46.54 lakh businesses had filed July GSTR-1 returns.

The extension will facilitate about 30.81 lakh taxpayers for filing GSTR-2 for the month of July, 2017, the finance ministry said in a statement.

"The competent authority has approved the extension of filing of GSTR-2 for July, 2017 to November, 2017, for facilita-tion of businesses and all tax-payers," it said.

Businesses have been complaining of problems in matching invoices, while filing GSTR-2 on the GST Network portal. This is the first month of filing GSTR-2.

The extension of last date for filing will act as a breather for them as well as GSTN which can further streamline the utili-ties on the portal.Till Saturday, about 12 lakh businesses had filed GSTR-2 returns for the month of July. PTI

Last GSTR-2, 3 filing date

extended by a month

Many EU and Asian countries, including India, are facing this crisis... growth is being reported but it is not reflecting in employment generation, says a study

NEW DELHI: Optimistic of the country's long-term growth prospects, India-focussed off-shore funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have pumped in nearly $6 billion in the first nine months of the year.

In contrast, these funds had pulled out $1.73 billion in Janu-ary-September of 2016, accord-ing to a Morningstar report.

The offshore India fund -- not domiciled in India -- receives flow from overseas investors and in turn, invests the money in Indian markets.

India-focussed offshore funds and ETFs are a subset of the overall foreign portfolio investor (FPI) flows.

According to the report, India-focused offshore funds invested $4.96 billion during

January-September of the year while those of ETFs witnessed an infusion of $747 million, taking the total to $5.7 billion.

On a positive note, the money largely came into off-shore funds which signify long-term money as against offshore ETF, where the money is largely short-term.

"I still feel that the long-term story is intact and solid and we will continue to get long-term money through the fund

route," said Himanshu Srivas-tava, Senior Analyst Manager Research at Morningstar India.

During the July-September quarter, offshore funds and ETFs together witnessed an inflow of $935 million, which was lower than $2.77 billion seen in the preceding three months.

"One of the major reasons which is working against emerg-ing markets is the increased ten-sion on the Korean peninsula due to the stand-off between the US and North Korea," Sriv-astava said.

Besides, India is more impacted largely due to the delay in the pick-up of eco-nomic growth. This, coupled with expensive valuations, makes it a tricky situation, he added. PTI

Offshore India funds, ETFs bring $6 billion in Jan-Sept

mp business 13MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

CORPORATE KALEIDOSCOPE

JK Tripathy ,IPS, Director General of Police, Chairman, TNUSRB , the Chief Guest inaugurating the Vigilance Awareness Week Celebrations - 2017 at Learning & Development Centre, Neyveli. Also seen are Functional Directors, Rakesh Kumar, Subir Das, P Selvakumar , R Vikraman and CVO,NLCIL T Venkatasubramanian,IRSME

S Suresh, Member (Finance), officiating Chairman, AAI administering pledge of Vigilance Awareness Week 2017 in the august presence of Anuj Aggarwal, Member(HR), I N Murthy, Member(Operations), Sanjay Jain, ED(Admn), S N Borkar, GM (Vigilance) and AAI officials at Corporate Headquarters, Rajiv Gandhi Bhawan, Safdarjung Airport, New Delhi

Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) celebrated its 12th foundation day on October 29 in a function organised at Air Force Auditorium Subroto Park, New Delhi. The function was graced by Manoj Sinha, Minister of State for Railways and Ashwani Lohani, Chairman, Railway Board and Chairman, DFCCIL

SAIL has actively joined in the initiative of Govt of Jharkhand for development. It has participated in the Jharkhand Mining Show, Ranchi.Jharkhand CM Raghubar Das, inaugurated the SAIL pavilion on Monday

Deepak Kumar, IAS, Executive Director, India Trade Promotion Organization administered the pledge to mark Vigilance Awareness Week (October 30 to November 4, 2017) in the organisation at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi

NHPC Limited organised free eye camp in association with Centre for Sight, New Delhi at its Corporate Office Complex in Faridabad on 25th and 27th October 2017. The camp was inaugurated by Chairman & MD Balraj Joshi

NEW DELHI: India and Italy on Monday pledged to inject “renewed momentum” into bilateral economic engagement, especially in infrastructure, hi-tech manufacturing, textiles and automotive sectors.

The India-Italy joint state-ment issued after the meeting between Prime Minister Nar-endra Modi and visiting Ital-ian counterpart Paolo Gentiloni called for further strengthening of economic linkages between the two nations.

The two leaders committed to work in a “result-oriented and mutually beneficial manner by injecting a renewed momentum into the broad-based economic engagement between the two countries”, the statement said.

Modi called upon the Ital-ian industry to explore India’s untapped business opportu-nities in infrastructure, food processing, renewable energy and high-tech manufacturing sectors. Gentiloni also called upon the Indian industry to identify business opportunities in Italy’s textiles, automotive, leather, machinery and chemi-cal sectors.

The two leaders took note of the progress made by the 19th session of the Indo-Ital-ian ‘Joint Commission for Eco-

nomic Cooperation’ (JCEC) held at the ministerial-level.

Modi and Gentiloni agreed to convene the next session of the JCEC in India in 2018.

The statement further said the Prime Ministers announced the organisation of an Indo-Italian High Level Forum on Design, with a focus inter alia, on industrial design, auto design, architecture, interior design and fashion.

“The high-level forum will

endeavour to bring together prominent experts from the areas mutually identified, with the task of defining a program of activity for the Forum (exhi-bitions, workshops, contacts between young designers),” it said. The foreign ministries of the two countries will further discuss the objectives, structure, and host organisations for this High-level forum. The meeting of the High-level Forum is pro-posed to be held in March 2018.

Modi and Gentiloni also took stock of the on-going work on an additional protocol amending the bilateral agree-ment to avoid double taxation and encouraged the respective agencies/ competent authorities to continue negotiations with the objective of early finalisa-tion of the text.

The adoption of the new protocol, together with the entry into force of the Protocol signed in January 2006, will update the

bilateral Agreement of 1993, with tangible benefits for Indian and Italian companies.

“The protocol will enable better administrative coopera-tion, and enhance the ability to counter tax evasion and tax avoidance. Work will also con-tinue on Customs Cooperation to improve the mutual admin-istrative assistance under the EU legal framework,” the state-ment said.

The two leaders discussed the possibility of an operating mechanism to be established between the Italian investment bank - Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), which operates under Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance, and Indian counter-part entities to explore opportu-nities for enhancing investment cooperation in India’s infra-structure sector.

The statement further said the leaders recognised the immense possibilities for col-laboration in the food process-ing sector in India.

They noted with “satisfac-tion the imminent mission” of the Italian Deputy Minister for Economic Development, who will be leading a high level busi-ness delegation to ‘World Food India’, where Italy will be ‘Focus Country’. PTI

India, Italy to inject ‘renewed momentum’ to economic ties

NEW DELHI: State-owned Indian Oil Corp(IOC) has been given green nod for augment-ing its Koyali-Sanganer pipeline (KSPL) capacity up to 6 mil-lion tonnes per annum (MTPA) from existing 4.6 MTPA at a cost of Rs 273.23 crore, a senior gov-ernment official said.

The company’s proposal is to expand KSPL, which traverses from Koyali in Gujarat to San-ganer in Rajasthan, by augment-ing the capacity of pumping stations located at Vadodara, Pali and other allied facilities.

“Based on the recommen-dation of an expert panel, the environment ministry has given environment clearance for the IOC’s proposal on KSPL,” the official said.

The clearance is subject to compliance of certain con-ditions. The capital cost of the project is estimated at Rs 273.23 crore. The company has informed that no additional land would be required for the project as the augmenta-tion work is to be done in the existing stations only and not in pipeline route. Presently, the

entire demand for petroleum products of North Gujarat and Rajasthan is met from Koyali refinery through KSPL. Other modes of transportation are uneconomical.

With augmentation of KSPL, IOC in its proposal said, the current Viramgam-Mohanpura section of KSPL will receive product from one source at a time either from the Koyali refinery through Koyali-Viramgam section of KSPL or from Kandla port. That apart, Naphtha from Koyali refinery

would be transported up to Jaipur through existing KSPL, while other products from Koy-ali refinery would be delivered at Tap-off- Points (ToPs) en route KSPL. Also, Naphtha would be transported further to Panipat through new Jaipur-Panipat Naphtha Pipeline, it added.

Cross-country pipelines are globally recognised as the saf-est, cost-effective, energy-effi-cient and environment- friendly mode for transportation of Naphtha oil and petroleum products. PTI

IndianOil receives green nod to raise KSPL capacity to 6 mtpa

NEW DELHI: IDFC Ltd on Monday said the proposed merger between IDFC Group and Shriram Group has been called off as the two were unable to reach a common ground on the share swap ratio.

In July, infrastructure lender IDFC, which entered the bank-ing space in 2015, and Piramal Group’s financial services firm Shriram entered an agreement for a merger plan to create the largest retail-focussed bank in the country.

“This is to inform you that despite best efforts, IDFC Group

and Shriram Group have not been able to reach common ground on a mutually acceptable swap ratio for the merger,” IDFC Ltd said in a regulatory filing.

Following this, it said, both the parties have agreed to call off discussions on a “poten-tial merger and the exclu-sivity period pursuant to the CES Agreement entered into between the concerned parties stands terminated with imme-diate effect.”

There was a period of 90-days to explore merger options between the two entities.

As per the plans, almost all key businesses of the Shriram Group were to merger with either IDFC Bank or IDFC.

Analysts had already raised doubts on this plan saying it would not be easy to merge them given the Reserve Bank’s reluctance to allow corporate entity entering into banking sector as well as its norms cap-ping promoters’ stake to under 10 per cent.

They also cited Piramal Group’s large and successful real estate business as another hurdle. PTI

IDFC, Shriram call off merger over share swap disagreement

NEW DELHI: The index of mineral production of min-ing and quarrying sector for August increased by 9.4 per cent while the total value of the mineral output was estimated at Rs 18,015 crore.

“The index of mineral pro-duction of mining and quar-rying sector for August 2017 at 92.7, was 9.4 per cent higher as compared to the level in the month of August 2016,” the mines ministry said in a statement.

The total value of min-eral production — excluding atomic and minor minerals —during August was Rs 18,015 crore, the ministry said.

“The cumulative growth for April-August 2017-18 over the corresponding period of previ-ous year has been 3.3 per cent,” the statement added.

The contribution of coal was highest at Rs 6,158 crore (34 per cent), followed by petroleum (crude) Rs 5,489 crore, natural gas (utilised) Rs 2,225 crore, iron ore Rs 1,921 crore, lignite Rs 615 crore and limestone Rs 562 crore.

Together they contributed about 94 per cent of the total value of mineral production in August 2017.

The Mining industry in India is a major economic activity which contributes sig-nificantly to the economy of India. The GDP contribution

of the mining industry varies from 2.2% to 2.5% only but going by the GDP of the total industrial sector it contributes around 10% to 11%. Even min-ing done on small scale con-tributes 6% to the entire cost of mineral production. Indian mining industry provides job opportunities to around 700,000 individuals. AGENCIES

August mineral output up 9.4%, valued at ̀ 18,015 cr

NEW DELHI: Commuters using autorickshaws can now enjoy free Wi-Fi on board the three-wheeler vehicle when they book their rides using cab hailing app Ola.

The SoftBank-backed com-pany on Monday said it has piloted its proprietary ‘Auto-Connect Wifi’ feature for ‘Ola Autos’ in major cities and will extend it to 73 cities in the country over the next few weeks.

These include the four met-ros as well as cities like Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Jai-pur and Hyderabad, among

others.“With Auto-Connect Wifi,

we are reinventing the 3- wheel-ers and enabling a connected experience for our customers,” Ola Senior Director and Cat-egory Head (Auto) Siddharth Agrawal said. PTI

Online cab firm Ola adds free Wi-Fi to autorickshaws

NEW DELHI: Mobile tower firm Bharti Infratel on Mon-day said it will explore options to acquire country's largest tele-com infrastructure firm Indus Towers.

"The board of directors of Bharti Infratel Limited, in their meeting held on October 30, 2017, has decided to explore and evaluate acquisition of stake in one or more tranches in Indus Towers Limited with the aim of making it a subsid-iary or wholly owned subsidiary of Bharti Infratel Limited," the mobile tower firm said.

Indus Towers, a joint venture between Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular, has portfo-lio of around 1.23 lakh mobile towers across 15 states in the country. Bharti Infratel has consolidated portfolio of over 90,000 telecom towers, which includes over 39,000 of its own towers and the balance from its 42 per cent equity interest in Indus Towers.

The three leading wireless telecommunications service providers in India by revenue - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular - are the largest customers of Bharti Infratel and for Indus Towers too.

Meanwhile, Bharti Infratel

on Monday reported a 17.57 per cent drop in consolidated net profit to about Rs 638 crore for the second quarter ended Sep-tember 30. The net profit stood at about Rs 774 crore in the same quarter last fiscal.

The revenue during July-September quarter jumped nearly 11 per cent to Rs 3,648 crore from Rs 3,292 crore in the year- ago period, according to a company statement.

Bharti Infratel Chairman Akhil Gupta said the company and Indus Towers (where Bharti Infratel owns 42 per cent stake) are “well positioned” to grab their fair share of market and “create sustainable value for all stakeholders”.

“Indian telecom has embraced the data centric model and is emerging as the showcase of digital technology with operators rolling out 4G networks and India planning a leadership role on upcoming 5G technology and associated applications,” Gupta said.

At the same time, leading operators have outlined plans to infuse more investments in strengthening the digital infra-structure at the recently-con-cluded India Mobile Congress, he pointed out. PTI

NEW DELHI: As the govern-ment promotes use of LEDs to save energy, lighting manu-facturers' body ELCOMA has raised concern over "spurious" LED products, which do not comply with the safety stan-dards of Bureau of Indian Stan-dards (BIS).

Market research firm Nielsen found that 76 per cent brands making LED bulbs and 71 per cent of those making LED downlighters are not fol-lowing the safety standards.

The study, based on survey of 200 retail outlets in four cit-ies - Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmed-abad and Hyderabad- in July this year found majority of the LED (light-emitting diode) brands below the norms of BIS and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

"These spurious products pose a serious safety hazard for consumers besides causing sig-nificant loss in tax revenues for the government as they are ille-gally manufactured and sold," said Electric Lamp and Com-ponent Manufacturers Asso-ciation (ELCOMA).

According to the associa-tion, the total LED market in India is valued around Rs 10,000 crore and LED bulbs and downlighters constitute nearly half of the overall LED market.

"It threatens fair com-petition in the LED lighting market, especially for those companies that are compli-ant to all mandatory con-sumer safety standards," said ELCOMA President Rakesh Zutshi. PTI

76% LED bulb makers not following safety norms

NEW DELHI: The apex con-sumer commission has asked the ICICI bank to refund over Rs two lakh to a customer who lost the amount through an ATM fraud in 2006-07.

The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commis-sion (NCDRC) has asked the bank to also pay a compensa-tion of Rs 2,000 to Haryana resi-dent Karam Singh who lost Rs 2,07,368 during November 11, 2006 and February 2, 2007.

Singh had alleged that dur-ing the three months period, he failed to receive any transaction

message from the bank.The NCDRC has upheld the

decision of lower foras asking the bank to pay a compensation of Rs 2,000 to Singh.

"The State Commission as well as the District Forum have based their conclusion on the issue of deactivation of the service of sending messages to the complainants for each transaction.

"It is clear from record that the SMS alert service had been provided by the Bank to the complainant. It is not under-stood, however, why the said

service was not operational during the period in question, i.e., from November 21, 2006 to February 25, 2007," the NCDRC presiding member B C Gupta said. According to the com-plaint, the last transaction made

by Singh was on November 20, 2006 and at that time, the bal-ance amount left in the account was Rs 2,07,627. It further said that on February 26, 2007, when he wanted to withdraw some amount from the account, the ATM machine showed the bal-ance amount as Rs 203 only.

It is alleged that the amount was fraudulently drawn from his account by somebody dur-ing the period November 21, 2006 to February 25, 2007, but he did not receive any message on his cell-phone during the said period. PTI

Consumer panel orders ICICI Bank to return ̀ 2 lakh to ATM fraud victim

Industry captains at the India-Italy CEOs’ Roundtable organised by Ficci, the Ministry of External Affairs and CII in New Delhi on Monday PIC/ PTI

NEW DELHI: Allahabad Bank, one of the leading nationalised Banks of the country is observing Vigilance Awareness Week from Octo-ber 30 to November 4 with the theme “My Vision - Corrup-tion Free India”.

Bank is organising debate, slogan writing, poster mak-ing, drawing competition etc. at various schools and colleges across the country for increas-ing vigilance awareness among the youth.

Rural and Semi-urban branches of Bank are organis-ing “”Awareness Gram Sabhas” for dissemination of awareness in Gram Panchayats to sensi-tize citizens on the ill-effects of corruption. MPOST

Allahabad Bank is observing

Vigilance Week in spectacular style

Bharti Infratel may buy top telecom infra

firm Indus Towers

mp sport14MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi |Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

MANOJ KUMAR STRIKES GOLD, SHIVA THAPA SETTLES FOR SILVER AT NATIONALSVISAKHAPATNAM: Manoj Kumar claimed his second successive National Championships’ gold but Shiva Thapa settled for a silver on an eventful day of summit clashes in the premier domestic boxing event. Manoj (69kg), competing for the Railways Sports Promotion Board, got the better of Services Sports Control Board’s Duryodhan Singh for his second successive gold at the event in a 4-1 decision.

SOUTH AFRICA MEN’S TEAM QUALIFIES FOR HOCKEY WORLD CUP IN INDIA NEW DELHI: South Africa men’s team has qualified for the Hockey World Cup to be held next year in Bhubaneswar after winning the Africa Cup of Nations. South Africa defeated hosts Egypt in the final in the Africa Cup of Na-tions held at Ismailia. South Africa women’s team has also qualified for the World Cup to be held in London next year.

WERDER BREMEN DISMISS COACH ALEXANDER AFTER WINLESS TOURNAMENTBERLIN: Werder Bremen sacked its coach Alexander Nouri after failing to win a single match in the Bundesliga this season, the Ger-man football club announced on Monday. The dismissal came after Sunday’s 0-3 home defeat against Augsburg that left Werder in the 17th position in the Bundesliga table, with five points after 10 games in which it suffered five defeats and five draws, reports Efe.

Will not lose sleep over chasing World No. 1 ranking: Srikanth

PARIS: Star Indian shuttler Kidambi Srikanth might be inching towards the coveted World No 1 ranking after his record-equalling Super Series win here but he says he does not want to lose sleep over chasing it.

The eighth seeded Indian beat Japan’s Kenta Nishimoto 21 -14 21-13 in the final to become the first Indian and fourth men’s singles player in the world to win four or more Super Series titles in a calen-dar year.

The win last night ensured Srikanth, who has played five Super Series finals this season, bag his second consecutive title in two weeks after winning the Denmark Open in Odense last week.

His performance will see him jump in the rankings when the BWF released the chart on Thursday.

Asked if he was looking at the number one spot, he said: “I don’t know (if I will be No. 1). Definitely, I will go up higher in

the rankings but I am not sure where I will be. I have not been pursuing it.”

Before Denmark and French titles, Srikanth had won back-to-back titles at Indone-sia and Australia in June. Sri-kanth said World No 1 Viktor Axelsen of Denmark is still way ahead of him in terms of points.

“I think there is a lot of dif-ference between me and Vik-tor (Axelsen) for sure before Denmark Open. I don’t think I will be number one, I might improve a rank or two,” he said.

“It is good to be there defi-nitely but I am not thinking about it now. I don’t really have any tournament to defend any-where, so I don’t want to push myself for the ranking and just want to enjoy playing, that’s it,” he added.

Talking about the last couple of weeks, Srikanth said: “I am just happy with the way I performed in the last couple of weeks. There were some close matches. I feel I was little lucky to pull off those

matches, otherwise I am pleased how it went for me.”

With back-to-back titles in Denmark and France, Sri-kanth has sealed his place at the top of Destination Dubai Rankings and would be a prime contender for the Super Series Final title in December.

Destination Dubai Rank-ings is a yearly ranking system that considers the performances of players in the 12 Super Series events and determines which eight players get to play the sea-son-ending championships.

Srikanth said he has not yet given a thought how he will plan his schedule.

“Not really sure how I will go about the next tournaments, I have to go back and talk to my coach and decide what tournaments I will play before the Super Series finals,” said the Indian, who had reached the finals at Singapore Open as well.

Asked about his prepara-tion for the match against his Japanese opponent, Srikanth

said: “I think he (Nishimoto) has been playing really well throughout this week. He beat Lee Chong Wei, he came from qualifiers and he has beaten Andersen. I was expecting a tough match. I am just satis-fied the way I played. In the quarters and semi-final, I felt I really started off really slow, so I wanted to make a good start, start off a little better than what I did before. He is an attack-ing and aggressive player, so I did not want to give him any chance and it worked out for me.”

The 25-year-old from Gun-tur played a long semi-final match against compatriot H S Prannoy and was a tad con-cerned how he would recover for the summit clash.

Asked if he was happy with his fitness, Srikanth said: “I am surprised myself a little, but yeah the way we have been training last 9-10 months, it is really playing its part now.

So I have to just keep work-ing hard now.” AGENCIES

Indian eves beat China 4-1 in Asia Cup

KAKAMIGAHARA: Indian eves dished out an all-round performance to stun China 4-1 and register their second con-secutive victory at the women’s Asia Cup hockey tournament on Monday.

Goals from Gurjit Kaur (19th minute), Navjot Kaur (32nd), Neha Goyal (49th) and skipper Rani Rampal (58th) enabled the Indians to keep their winning momentum in Pool A at Kakamigahara Kawa-saki Stadium.

India had earlier defeated Singapore 10-0 in their tour-nament opener.

The Indians were quick to get off the blocks as they won a penalty corner in the first 15 minutes of the match to put China on the back foot.

The first quarter ended in

a stalemate after India wasted the chance.

But four minutes into the second quarter dragflick spe-cialist Gurjit Kaur convert a splendid goal to give India a 1-the lead.

Two minutes after the change of ends, India doubled their through Navjot Kaur’s field strike.

But a defensive error in the circle saw India concede a pen-alty corner in the 38th min-ute and the Chinese were quick to capitalise on the opportu-nity and pulled one goal back through Qiuxia Cui’s success-ful conversion.

Down by a goal, China pushed hard in search of the equaliser in the final quarter but failed to break the resolute Indian defence. AGENCIES

FOOTBALL ON A HIGH

India’s highest football tournament begins in Leh. All the matches are to be played on grounds located at about 14,500 ft to 11,000 ft in Ladakh. The low oxygen of the cold desert makes this tournament the most challenging one in the world. The aim of this event is to identify talent in Ladakh and connect them with the mainstream teams of India. It is being funded by the Ministry of Home Affairs to promote football and health awareness in the border areas. MPOST

CENTRAL PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENTPRESS NOTICE

NOTICE INVITING e-TENDERS

The Executive Engineer(E), DCED, CPWD, 20-Subhash Road, Dehradun-248001 invites Percentage rate bid on behalf of President of India from Approved and eligible registered contractors in Composite Category in appropriate class in CPWD for the following work:-1. NIT No. 112/DCED/2017-18. Name of Work:- MOEI and fans i/c street light in resdl & NR area at ARC Sarsawa. (SH:- Replacement of Electrical Fixtures in Residential buildings 15 qtrs each of T-I,T-II T-III and T IV i.e. Total 60 Qtrs.).Estimated Cost: Rs. 10,90,124/-Earnest Money Rs. 21,802/- and Period of Completion: 02 Months, Last Time & date of submission of bid: 07-11-2017 at 3:00 PM. & the same shall be opened on the same day at 3.30 PM.The tender forms and other details can be obtained from the website www.tenderwizard.com / CPWD or www.cpwd.gov.in, CENTRAL PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT

PRESS NOTICENOTICE INVITING e-QUOTATION

The Executive Engineer(E), DCED, CPWD, 20-Subhash Road, Dehradun-248001 invites online e-quotation on behalf of President of India from Approved and eligible registered contractors in Composite Category in appropriate class in CPWD for the following work:-.Name of Work:- Replacement of LT distribution main panel in MPO campus at HBE SOI, Dehradun.Earnest Money Rs. 3,000/- and Last Time & date of submission of bid: 04-11-2017 at 3:00 PM. & the same shall be opened on the same day at 3.30 PM.The tender forms and other details can be obtained from the website www.tenderwizard.com / CPWD or www.cpwd.gov.in,

millenniumpost NO H ALF TR U THS

millenniumpost.in

I hitherto known as Shashi Bala D/o Late Sh Madan Lal residing at address 42/3 Railway Colony Kishan Ganj Delhi have changed my name and shall hereafter be known as (New Name) Shashi Sharma. It is certified that I have complied with other legal requirement in this connection.

CHANGE OF NAME

Corrigendum No. 1 to e-tender enquiry no. REC-206 HARYANA VIDYUT PRASARAN NIGAM LTD

Shakti Bhawan, Panchkula CIN no. U4010HR1997SGCO33683

The last date of online bid submission is extended upto 06.11.2017 with date of opening on 07.11.2017 Detail NIT and tender document is available at website https://haryanaeprocurement.gov.in, https://www.hvpn.gov.in

Sd/- Superintending Engineer/MM—I,

PRDH-Advt. No:-1052/11/2695/1718/56983 HVPNL Panchkula

lk cka foHkkx ‘kklu fu.kZ; dza-lh,Vh 2017@iz-dz-8@bekjrh&2@fnukad 12 ,fizy 2017 izi=&1

GOVERNMENT OF MAHARASHTRA EXECUTIVE ENGINEER

PUBLIC WORKS DIVISION, AKOLA email:- akola.ee@mahapwd.com Phone No.:- 07242435195

SHORT E-TENDER NOTICE No.30 / 2017 -2018 O.No. 8870/ TC/ E-TN- 30 /2017 / Date .16.10.2017

Online E-Tender in B-1 / B-2 form are invited by Executive Engineer, Public Works Divi-sion, Akola (Telephone No. 0724-2435195) e-mail-akola.ee@mahapwd.com for following works from the Competent and Interested contractors.(Not Necessary Registered With P.W.D) If Global Company having its Branch / Sub Company in India, They can Participate in Tender ) Tender can be downloaded from the http://pwd.maharashtra.gov.in Other instructions can be seen in the tender form. Competant Authority Reserve the Right to Reject All or any one of the tender. Conditional tender will be not be Accepted.

Terms & Conditions. 3 For Sr. No.1 Tender download & prepration of Bid from Dt. 26.10.2017 at 10.00 Hrs to

Dt.28.11.2017 at 23.00 Hrs. ( Futher tender timetable as on per online schedule) For Sr. No.2 to 6 Tender download & prepration of Bid from Dt. 26.10.2017 at 10.00 Hrs to

Dt.08.11.2017 at 23.00 Hrs. ( Futher tender timetable as on per online schedule) 4 for Sr.No.l Pre-Tender Conferance will be held on Dt. 18.11.2017 at 11.00 Hrs. in the office

of the Chief Engineer P.W.Region Amravati. 5 Tender opening as per online schedule 6 Tender Information is available on following Website. 1 .http://mahapwd.com 2.http://pwd.maharashtra.etenders.gov.in 7 (please note changes regarding above work will be available only on the above website no.2 . 8 contractors registration of Public works Department is not Compalsury for submition of

Tender.fr. Sr.no.1 to 4. 9 Tender Notice For Notice Board of Office.

( Mithilesh R Chouhan ) Executive Engineer

DGIPR?2017/2018/3877 P.W.Division, Akola

mp sport 15MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi |Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

Hamilton claims fourth world title, Verstappen wins in Mexico

MEXICO CITY: Lewis Ham-ilton clinched his fourth driv-ers’ world championship in unexpected but dramatic fash-ion when, after a first lap col-lision with title rival Sebastian Vettel, he finished ninth in the Mexican Grand Prix.

The 32-year-old Briton, who would have needed to finish in the top five to be sure of the title if Vettel had won the race, battled from last posi-tion in his Mercedes yesterday after suffering a puncture that needed an opening lap pit-stop as Dutchman Max Verstappen won the race for Red Bull.

Vettel, already a four-time champion, came home fourth for Ferrari after driving through the field from 19th following his part in the early crash with Hamilton. He also pitted for a new front wing.

Hamilton’s title triumph made him the first Briton to be a four-time champion, ele-vating him clear of Jackie Stew-art, and alongside Vettel and Frenchman Alain Prost.

Only German Michael

Schumacher with seven titles and Argentine Juan-Manuel Fangio on five have claimed more championships than the Englishman.

“I don’t know what hap-pened at turn three, I gave him plenty of room,” said Hamilton.

“It doesn’t feel real man. It’s not the race you want when you’re 40 seconds down, but I never gave up.”

After five wins in the previ-ous six races, it was a disappoint-ing way for Hamilton — who said he wanted to win the title in style — to win the crown.

Verstappen won the race convincingly ahead of Ham-ilton’s Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas and his Finnish compatriot Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari.

“I’d like to say a big thanks to everybody in this Mercedes team,” said Hamilton. “What you’ve done the past couple of years is incredible. I’m so grateful.” Vettel finished fourth ahead of Frenchman Esteban Ocon of Force India, Williams’ Canadian rookie Lance Stroll

on his 19th birthday, and local Mexican hero Sergio Perez in the second Force India.

Dane Kevin Magnussen finished eighth for Haas ahead of Hamilton and two-time champion Fernando Alonso, who battled hard to resist Hamilton before finishing 10th for McLaren.

Verstappen led from the first lap once Hamilton and Vettel had clashed.

“The start was very crucial, I went around the outside and from then on I was just look-ing after the car and the tyres,” said the Dutchman after a third race win.

“Big thanks to Red Bull, without them it was not pos-sible. After last week (when he received a five-second penalty in Austin which lost him third place), it was a perfect race.”

Mercedes’ non-executive director Niki Lauda, a three-time world champion, hailed Hamilton’s achievement.

“Lewis won it, he deserves it,” said Lauda who said Vet-tel was at fault for the opening

lap collision.“I don’t know why Sebas-

tian drove so aggressively to destroy his race. Lewis was in front and Vettel hit him with his front wing, I just don’t understand it.”

The race was run in near-perfect conditions at the Auto-dromo Hermanos Rodriguez, with an air temperature of 21 degrees Celsius and the track at 24, Vettel making a decent start from his 50th pole position.

But with a long 890-metre straight run to Turn One, both Verstappen and Hamil-ton made attacks, the Dutch-man fighting his way round the outside to snatch the lead.

Hamilton followed him and as he passed Vettel, the pair collided, the German’s Ferrari running into Hamil-ton’s rear right wheel and caus-ing a puncture amid a flurry of flying debris.

Both had to limp back to the pits where Vettel took a new front wing and Hamil-ton, slower to complete the lap, took a new set of tyres.

They rejoined in 19th and 20th places with the English-man a long distance from the field ahead.

Simply, simply lovely,” said a delighted Verstappen on his Red Bull team radio as he pulled out a comfortable advantage ahead of Bottas.

“Did he hit me deliber-ately?” asked Hamilton. “Not sure, Lewis,” came the reply.

As a result of that collision, Hamilton’s hopes of taking the title with a win were severely deflated, but not those of being champion - Vettel needing to win, or finish second, to keep his challenge alive.

Remarkably, for Hamilton, he was lapped for the first time since the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix before he and Vettel began to pass their way through the field to set up a tense closing period. Knowing Vettel was unlikely to climb to second, Hamilton knew he would be champion, but he fought hard to score points and took ninth place with a battling pass of Alonso in the closing laps. AGENCIES

WADA wants BCCI’s compliance to conduct

anti-doping tests

NEW DELHI: If the Board of Control for Cricket in India refuses to subject itself to the jurisdiction of the National Anti-Doping Agency, as is mandated, should the latter be penalised by the World Anti-Doping Agency?

This is the question that has come up following the reported communication from WADA that NADA could be risking its compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code in case it was not capable of being fully effective in carrying out tests across all sports in the country.

The WADA undertook an audit of India’s anti-doping measures last April, flagged several points and sought cor-rective measures from NADA and the Sports Ministry. The process could be going on, as it is with several other coun-tries, but one of the conten-tious issues happened to be the “independent” functioning of the BCCI anti-doping machin-ery and its refusal to come under the NADA umbrella.

WADA’s letter to the Sports minister has reportedly sought urgent assistance from the minister in helping NADA implement the anti-doping programme in cricket with the co-operation of the BCCI.

WADA has told the minister that it was “following up” with the International Cricket Coun-cil. The ICC needs to be told to fall in line with the WADA rules before any “follow-up” action can become meaningful from a long-term perspective.

It was always difficult to understand how WADA could deem the ICC as Code-com-pliant. It is all the more so now when one looks at the ICC’s complicity in legitimising BCCI’s refusal to recognise NADA’s exis-tence and its authority through an amendment to its own anti-doping code.

One had not noticed this amendment since the version of the ICC anti-doping code became effective from Decem-ber 15 2016. AGENCIES

WI cricketer Gayle wins Australia

masseuse caseSYDNEY: West Indies cricket star Chris Gayle won a defama-tion case against an Australian media group which claimed he exposed his genitals to a mas-sage therapist.

The lurid accusations were made by Fairfax Media news-papers The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Can-berra Times in a series of sto-ries in January last year.

They claimed the all-rounder exposed himself to team masseuse Leanne Rus-sell in a dressing room at the 2015 World Cup in Sydney and “indecently propositioned” her.

Gayle denied the allega-tions, saying the journalists behind the story wanted to “destroy him”.

His teammate Dwayne Smith, who was in the chang-ing room at the time, also denied the incident took place.

A NSW Supreme Court jury ruled in Gayle’s favour, finding Fairfax was motivated by malice.

The media group had defended the articles on the basis the allegations were substantially true and in the public interest.

“At the end of the day I’m very, very happy,” Gayle said after the verdict, according to the Herald, adding that com-ing to court had been “very emotional”.

“I’m a good man. I’m not guilty,” he said. The publica-tion of the stories followed an uproar after Gayle attempted to flirt with an Australian pre-senter on live TV, asking her out for a drink and telling her: “Don’t blush, baby.”

During the week-long hear-ing, a tearful Russell stood by the allegations, saying she had gone to the room looking for a towel and came across Gayle. AGENCIES

Virat Kohli claims back ICC top spotDUBAI: Indian cricket team captain Virat Kohli on Mon-day returned to the top of the ICC ODI rankings for bats-men after logging career-high rating points, going past the iconic Sachin Tendulkar in the process.

Kohli has moved back to the top within 10 days of los-ing it to South Africa batsman AB de Villiers after the rank-ings were updated following India’s 2-1 home series win over against New Zealand.

The 28-year-old Delhi bats-man, who scored 263 runs in the series, has reached 889 points, which is the best ever by an India batsman.

“The previous highest points tally of 887 was managed by Sachin Tendulkar in 1998 and by Kohli earlier this year,” the ICC said in a statement.

India opener Rohit Sharma’s 174 runs in the series has seen him reach a career-high rating of 799 points, even though he remains in seventh position.

Former captain Mahen-dra Singh Dhoni has risen one place to 11th in the latest rankings.

The list for bowlers con-tinues to be led by Pakistan pace bowler Hasan Ali while India fast bowler Jasprit Bum-rah has reached a career-best third after finishing with six wickets in the series against New Zealand.

Other bowlers to move up include Mitchell Sant-ner of New Zealand (up two places to 14th) and Pakistan’s Imad Wasim (up 14 places to 27th). Adam Milne has also made gained 11 slots to reach 42nd position. AGENCIES

Nadal and Halep continue to be on top

MADRID: Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal remained in the number one spot in the men’s Association of Ten-nis Professionals world singles rankings released on Monday.

Nadal, 16-time Grand Slam champion, was followed by Switzerland’s Roger Federer, who won the Swiss Indoors Basel on Sunday, reports Efe.

Britain’s Andy Murray came in third, while German Alex-ander Zverev jumped to the fourth position, ahead of Croa-tian Marin Cilic, who dropped to the fifth. After winning the Swiss Indoors Basel, Federer announced that he would not take part in the upcoming Rolex Paris Masters, so he practically has no chance to snatch the top spot from Nadal this year.

Meanwhile, Romania’s Simona Halep continued to lead the Women’s Tennis Asso-ciation rankings released on Monday while Denmark’s Car-oline Wozniacki came in third.

Wozniacki, 27, climbed three spots after she beat American Venus Williams,

who occupied the fifth place, to win her first WTA Finals title in Singapore on Sunday, leav-ing Ukrainian Elina Svitolina in the sixth spot, reports Efe.

Spaniard Garbiñe Mugu-ruza remained in the second spot while Czech Karolina Plis-kova fell to the fourth. AGENCIES

SPANISH SHOOTING ATHLETES DETAINED AT ABU DHABI AIRPORT MADRID: Four members of Spain’s shooting team have been detained at an airport in the UAE because of problems with their weapons’ documentation. The Spanish shooting federation confirmed the news about the detainees on Monday. AGENCIES

CENTRAL PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENTPRESS NOTICE

NOTICE INVITING e-TENDERS

The Executive Engineer(E), DCED, CPWD, 20-Subhash Road, Dehradun-248001 invites Percentage rate bid on behalf of President of India from Approved and eligible registered contractors in Composite Category in appropriate class in CPWD for the following work:-1. NIT No. 113/DCED/2017-18. Name of Work:- MOEI & fans i/c street light & RMO pump sets in Resdl and NR bldgs at Special Group, Sarsawa.(SH:- Wiring, Rewiring,cable laying and misc work).Estimated Cost: Rs. 9,05,456/-Earnest Money Rs. 18,109/- and Period of Completion: 02 Months, Last Time & date of submission of bid: 07-11-2017 at 3:00 PM. & the same shall be opened on the same day at 3.30 PM.The tender forms and other details can be obtained from the website www.tenderwizard.com / CPWD or www.cpwd.gov.in,

OFFICE OF MUNICIPAL COMMITTEE, DHARUHERA (REWARI) SHORT NOTICE INVITING E-TENDER

On the behalf of President, Municipal Committee, Dharuhera invites online tenders (through e-Tendering system on website http:// etend-ers.hry.nic.in ) for Civil works (Retender) in M.C. Dharuhera from the eli-gible contractors/firms/Societies enlisted in appropriate class/category in Municipal Committee, Dharuhera, PWD B&R, PHED, HUDA, MES & any other Govt. Departments of Haryana on 25-10-2017 Details & terms and conditions including the tender documents are available on the website http:// etenders.hry.nic.in and also in office Municipal Com-mittee, Dharuhera. Start of Tender download is from 25-10-2017 from 5.30 P.M to 01-11-2017 up to 5.00 P.M. and date of manual submis-sion is on 02-11-2017 till 5.00 P.M. and date of opening of the tender is 03-11-2017 at 10.00 A.M. Others terms and conditions can be seen in the office of Municipal Committee, Dharuhera in any working day.

Sd/- Secretary Municipal Committee,

PRDH-Advt. No:-1078/11/5806/1718/56973 Dharuhera

16MILLENNIUM POST | New Delhi | Tuesday, 31 October, 2017

mp Entertainment

SYEDA EBA

Shreyas Talpade couldn’t include his name in the list of the main-stream actors but successfully proved himself as a versatile per-

former over the years. His debut movie Iqbal not only won him applause from the critics but a good fan following as well.

Despite being appreciated for per-forming such an intense character, we rarely got to see him in any such roles later. Talking about the same, the Iqbal actor said in an interview, “There is an interesting story behind me switching to comedy movies. There was a senior filmmaker who saw my audition for one of the movies and said, tera Iqbal wala image itna strong hai ki log tujhe com-edy me accept nhi krenge (people won’t accept you in comedy roles as they are under the strong influence of that seri-ous image of yours in Iqbal). It struck me hard and I took it as a challenge. With the intention to prove everybody who carries the same perception wrong, I signed Golmaal Returns and fortu-nately, it worked. People really loved my performance and wanted to see more of it.”

He further adds that though he enjoys doing comedy, as an actor he wants to experiment with other genres and do challenging films like Iqbal in future. The actor didn’t deny that he did few films just out of the need of money

or because a senior person from the industry asked him to work in it. “But then, 90% of the choices I made in my career was because they appealed me. It’s very important that you love what you do in order to be successful.”

Revealing his mantra of sustaining in any industry, he says that one needs to stick to their basics and that’s all. “My guru used to say that if you want to make a century, the basic thing you need to do is to stay on the pitch. There are going to be a couple of overs where you will feel that the other person is playing better, and you are not really scoring. But you will get your chance. You will get all those loose balls which you can hit for fours and sixes. Just be there. You need to work on your craft and skills and make sure that when you get the opportunity to prove your poten-tial, you should be ready with some-thing new and better. So, I am trying to follow that rule. Probably, that has helped me to stay strong even amidst such a tough competition.

Sharing his experience of direct-ing the movie Poster boys starring Deol brothers, Shreyas says that he felt like cheating on his first love, which is act-ing. “I immensely enjoyed directing the movie. It is that kick which any filmmaker can get because you get involved with every aspect of filmmak-ing thereby broadening your under-standing capacity. Also, working with Sunny and Bobby and the entire process

of moulding them was another chal-lenge. But altogether, it was amazing to work and bring out something interest-ing for the audience.”

Since the actor is highly influenced by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, he feels that the element of humour will always be an integral part of his storytelling.

WHEN SHREYAS TOOK COMEDY AS A CHALLENGE

“I switched to comedy films when a senior filmmaker said that people won’t accept me in comic roles as they are still under the influence of that serious boy in the movie Iqbal”

MUMBAI: Actor Taapsee Pannu, who has made her mark with films like Pink, Naam Sha-bana and Judwaa 2, says she is yet to crack the code of being an “A-list” in the Hindi film indus-try. The year 2017 has not been great for Bollywood, but Taap-see’s Naam Shabana can be counted as one of the highest grossing female-centric films, and Judwaa 2 has also raked in the moolah. Yet, Taapsee wonders why she isn’t counted among the “top”.

“I am yet to find out the definition of being an ‘A-listed’ actor. What does that mean? See, as an actor, I am happy that people are offering me good roles and I am earning success critically and commercially. But it bothers me when a designer says, ‘No, Taapsee can’t be my muse or the show stopper, I want an ‘A-lister’ actor for this collection.

It happened with the brand endorsements as well. So, I am saying that I am ready to give the entrance exam of entering the club of ‘A-listed’ actors, but can someone please tell me the formula... Maybe awards? I do not know.”

Taapsee transitioned from the south Indian film indus-

try to the Hindi movie world. She made her debut in Bolly-wood with Chashme Baddoor in 2013, and landed roles in films like Baby, Running Shaadi, The Ghazi Attack, Pink, Naam Sha-bana and Judwaa 2. She does not fear failure.

Remembering her early days in the Telugu film indus-try, Taapsee said: “You know, it is funny now, but in the begin-ning of my career, some of the films failed at the box office and filmmakers stopped casting me saying I am bringing bad luck to their film.

The funny thing is that in

those films, my contribution was nothing but three songs and five scenes. I have seen so much failure in the south that I know that we cannot control our suc-cess rate. It’s not about our desire to perform in a great story. At the end of it, box office result matters. And the weird thing is that we do not know the formula of that.” She says she has been “really lucky” to have worked in commercial potboilers as well as content-driven. But I think it is the responsibility of an actor to find the balance because the film industry is ready to give you a tag in no time,” she said. IANS

Yet to find definition of being A-list: Taapsee

LONDON: Filmmaker Roman Polanski is planning to attend a retrospective of his life’s work in Paris in spite of planned pro-tests. French feminist organ-isation Osez le feminisme has organised a petition against Polanski’s appearance, and now plans a demonstration outside the Cinematheque Francaise, reported The Guardian.

The petition claimed Polan-ski’s appearance would be “indecent” and insulting to all

the victims of sexual harass-ment mobilised by the recent #metoo online campaign.

“It’s an affront to all rape victims, and particularly Polan-ski’s victims. Polanski deserves dishonour, not honours,” the petition read. The petition also questioned the timing of the Cinematheque honours in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandals.

Polanski has been living in Europe 1970s. PTI

Polanski to attend Paris retrospective despite protest