Train attack suspect lees to Pak. from UAE - Current Affairs ONLY

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The Delhi police registeredan FIR against Shiv Sena MPRavindra Gaikwad on Fridayfor assaulting an Air Indiaemployee even as Air Indiaand six other domestic air-lines barred him from theirflights.

On Thursday, Mr.Gaikwad had assaulted anAir India duty manager, R.Sukumar, hitting him re-peatedly with his footwearas he had not been provideda business class seat in an all-economy Pune-Delhi flight(AI 852).

Mr. Sukumar had filed acomplaint with the Delhi po-lice on Thursday.

Based on it, the police re-gistered an FIR under Sec-tions 308 and 355 of the IPC,amounting to attempt tocommit culpable homicideand using criminal forcewith intent to dishonour a

person respectively. Thecase has been sent to theCrime Branch for a detailedprobe. The police also re-ceived a complaint from Mr.Gaikwad against Air India,which has been sent for legalexamination.

Air India cancelled his re-turn ticket to Pune on a 4p.m. flight. Following this,IndiGo also refused to givehim a ticket on their flight.

Mr. Gaikwad eventuallytravelled to Mumbai by trainin the evening.

“Air India and the mem-ber airlines of the Federationof Indian Airlines (FIA) thatincludes IndiGo, Jet Airways,SpiceJet and Go Air, con-demn the assault on an AirIndia staff member by a pas-senger, who happens to be aMember of Parliament, onMarch 23, 2017,” a joint state-ment from Air India and FIAsaid. Apart from Air Indiaand the member airlines ofFIA, two other airlines alsobarred Mr. Gaikwad fromtheir flights.

Tough action soughtThe airlines have demandedthat strict action be takenagainst Mr. Gaikwad by lawenforcement agencies. “Webelieve that an assault onany one of our employees isan assault on all of us and onordinary, law-abiding cit-izens of our country whowork hard to earn a living,”the statement said.

“We believe that exem-plary action should be takenin such incidents to protectemployee morale and publicsafety,” the FIA said.

“SpiceJet supports a no-flylist to bar unruly flyers whoare a safety hazard for notjust the crew but even thetravelling public. The gov-ernment needs to act on thissoon,” SpiceJet CMD AjaySingh said.

An IndiGo spokespersonalso said the airline supportsa no-fly list.

On Thursday, Mr.Gaikwad, who travelled byan Air India Pune-Delhi alleconomy flight (AI 852) hitAir India duty managerSukumar with his sandals,broke his spectacles andeven tried to throw him offthe aircraft. He refused tode-board from the aircraftfor an hour.

Airlines body bars Shiv Sena MPGaikwad had assaulted an AI staf for not providing him a business class seat

Staff Reporter

New Delhi

Ravindra Gaikwad *

SEE ALSO � DELHI METRO PAGE 1

‘Adityanath will be agood administrator’Mohsin Raza is the sole

Muslimmember in the newly-

formed Yogi Adityanath

Cabinet. A former irst-class

cricketer, Raza speaks about

the new government’s

priorities in an interviewwith

The Hindu.

NEWS � PAGE 8

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NEARBY

Probe into death ofBharatpur girlsJAIPUR

The Rajasthan government

has ordered an inquiry by the

divisional commissioner into

Tuesday’s incident in Panchi

ka Nagla village of Bharatpur

district in which twominor

girls drowned in a pond

following a police raid.

NATION � PAGE 4


Uttarakhand summercapital back on agendaDEHRADUN

In the irst State Assembly

session after the formation of

the BJP government here,

Uttarakhand Governor K. K.

Paul unfolded the BJP’s plan

of development for the State,

including Gairsain to be

declared as the State’s

summer Capital.

NORTH � PAGE 2


A woman software profes-sional from Andhra Pra-desh and her seven-year-old son were found dead intheir home in New Jersey,U.S., on Thursday. On acomplaint from the wo-man’s husband NarraHanumantha Rao, also anIT professional with a NewJersey-headquarteredMNC, the police launched aprobe into the killing of 40-year-old Sasikala and AnishSai at their home in Burl-ington.

Found in pool of bloodMr. Rao, on return fromwork, allegedly found hiswife and child “in a pool ofblood” and “with theirthroats slit,” according to anews report from NewYork.

Mr. Rao had dropped hisson at school in the morn-ing and his wife, whoworks from home, hadbrought him home in theevening.

Mr. Rao’s mother, SivaParvathi, was inconsolableand said her son was in astate of shock.

The couple had beenmarried for 14 years andhad lived in the U.S. for 10years, said Mr. Rao’s uncle,Ramesh, unable to come toterms with the horrific in-cident.

Ms. Sasikala’s parents, S.Venkateswara and Krish-nakumari, who live in Vi-jayawada, however, allegedfoul play in her death.

The couple, both retiredteachers, told the mediathat their daughter hadcomplained to them of be-ing ill-treated by Mr. Raoand that he was in an illicitrelationship. Mr. Rao’s par-ents denied the allegationsand said the police had re-leased their son after aninquiry.

(With inputs from PTI)

AP womantechie, sonkilled in U.S.S. Murali

ONGOLE

CONTINUED ON � PAGE 8

Shafi Sheikh, a suspected ISIagent who played key role inmobilising people in Nepaland India to plant explosivesat a railway track in Biharlast year, is said to have fledto Pakistan from Dubai,where he had been staying, asenior HomeMinistry officialsaid.

Before India and Nepal(where he is wanted in adouble murder case) couldrequest the UAE authoritiesto seek Sheikh’s custody, hehad already left for Pakistan.Sheikh has been on the radarof intelligence agencies forlong and has also been ac-cused of pumping in fakecurrency into India throughNepal.

Nepal contactShamshul Hoda, a Nepalesebusinessman who first metthe Pakistani national inMalaysia, then in Karachiand on several occasions inDubai, told a National Invest-igation Agency (NIA) team,which interrogated him inKathmandu last month, thatthe latter had asked him to“create mayhem” in India.

The Nepal police had ar-rested Hoda on his returnfrom Dubai on February 2for his alleged involvementin the murder of two people,who were initially hired tocarry out “spectacular incid-ents in India.”

While Hoda confirmedthat he had been asked bySheikh to plant explosives atGhorasan in Motihari, Bihar,on October 1 last year, he

told the NIA team that hewas unaware of any suchplan with regard to the Kan-pur and Kuneru railway de-railments.

Karachi visitHoda has told the Nepal po-lice that he went to Karachiseven months back onSheikh’s invitation, where heallegedly met three otherpersons.

“Hoda told us that he wasnot sure about the associ-ation of Shafi [Sheikh] andthree others with Pakistan’sISI but he says he was askedto do something spectacularin India. He says he stayed ina bungalow at Karachi fortwo days, where he wastreated well and asked torope in his local contacts to

create trouble in India,” aNepal police official said.

The NIA was tasked withinvestigating the three rail-way accidents for any terror-related conspiracy after Rail-way Minister Suresh Prabhushot off a letter to HomeMin-ister Rajnath Singh alleging“sabotage.”

Mr. Prabhu’s letter wassent after Moti Paswan, oneof three persons arrested bythe Bihar police in Januaryfor his alleged involvementin planting a pressure cookerbomb at Ghorasan, claimedto have planted the bomb inKanpur, which led to the de-railment of the Indore-PatnaExpress on November 20,2016.

Train attack suspectlees to Pak. from UAENIA was probing Shai Sheikh’s role as mastermind

Vijaita Singh

New Delhi


U.P. CM Yogi Adityanath

meets the family of

gang rape survivor

page 8

U.K. authorities start

the process to extradite

Vijay Mallya to India

page 9

Two more held in

connection with attack

outside U.K. Parliament

page 10

Shashank Manohar

defers decision to step

down as ICC chairman

page 13

For precious drops:Womenwait for their turn to scoop out water with a wooden ladle from a 12-foot-deep pit on the Gundarriverbed in Virudhunagar. The district in Tamil Nadu is facing a water crisis. * R. ASHOK

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Digging deep

The Finance Ministry haswritten to 10 public sectorbanks, including IDBI Bank,Bank of Maharashtra, UnitedBank of India, Andhra Bankand Indian Overseas Bank,making it clear that thelenders would only get fur-ther capital infusion oncethey submit a time-boundturnaround plan.

The Centre, which hasmandated State Bank of In-dia’s merchant banking armSBI Caps to vet each bank’splan, wrote to the state-owned lenders last weekstipulating that they wouldeach have to sign a Memor-

andum of Understanding(MoU) with the government,agreeing to stick to the turn-around plan.

“The government wants

10 public sector banks toturn around in the nextthree years, and we are pre-paring the plan for that,” apublic sector bank chief ex-

ecutive, who did not wish tobe identified, told TheHindu.

The government’s moveto crack the whip on lenderscomes after some banks re-ported losses in financialyear 2015-16 as well as for thenine-month period of thecurrent financial year. Badloans zoomed following theReserve Bank of India’s assetquality review, which re-quired banks to classifymany accounts identified bythe banking regulator as‘bad’. The RBI said it wantedto clean up banks’ balancesheets by March 2017.

Centre seeks banks’ turnaround plansFuture capital infusion dependent on a time-bound plan from the 10 lenders

MANOJIT SAHA

MUMBAI


The sleepy village ofKunnamthanam is set tobecome Kerala’s first‘Complete Yoga Village’, andhopes to set a nationalrecord. It is alreadyattracting churches, templedevaswoms, and socialorganisations with its offer ofuniversal training.

At the heart of the effort isthe local panchayat’s ‘Myvillage, healthy village’project launched inassociation with theThiruvalla-based PranavomYoga Centre (PYC), whichworks to popularise theancient health system.

The panchayat will givefree training to the entire

village. “Our aim is to makeyoga an integral part oflifestyle. The first phase oftraining will be at 28 placesin all the 15 wards till May31,” panchayat president K.K.Radhakrishna Kurup said.

PYC director and yogainstructor M.G. Dileep is

leading the hour-longsessions. The first yogatraining session was held atSt. Mary’s Sehion Orthodoxchurch in Kunnamthanamon March 22, with the Vicar,Fr. C.K. Kurien, also present.Training for every householdis the key goal to bid for the

‘Complete Yoga Village’ title,and make a declaration onWorld Yoga Day, June 21.

Mega yoga showMr. Kurup said thepanchayat and the PYCwould jointly host a megayoga show. As the membersmove towards the Junetarget, monasteries, templegrounds, church halls, oldage homes, housing coloniesfor the underprivileged,homes for the destitute anddisabled will all come alivewith yoga sessions.

The panchayat, which iscampaigning for ‘at least 30minutes of yoga along withdaily prayer,’ has sent theproject details to the PrimeMinister’s Office, Mr. Kurupsaid.

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Eat, pray, do yoga, says this panchayatKunnamthanam’s temples, churches and NGOs work for ‘Complete Yoga Village’ title

RadhakrishnanKuttoor

Pathanamthitta

Health sutra: A yoga class at the St. Mary’s Sehion OrthodoxChurch in Kunnamthanam * SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

DELHI METRO� 6 PAGES

The Indian Council of Histor-ical Research (ICHR) is set toundertake an archaeologicalexploration to find out

whether the Ram Setu is anatural or man-made phe-nomenon.

It will undertake the ex-ploration in October andNovember, before deciding

whether a detailed underwa-ter archaeological excava-tion is required to probedeeper, said ICHR chairmanY. Sudershan Rao.

VIKAS PATHAK

NEW DELHI

ICHR to study if Ram Setu is man-made

DETAILS ON � PAGE 9

CMYK

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NOIDA/DELHI THE HINDU

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NORTH

DELHI Timings

Saturday, March 25

RISE 06:19 SET 18:35

RISE 04:23 SET 15:52

Sunday, March 26

RISE 06:18 SET 18:36

RISE 05:05 SET 16:52

Monday, March 27

RISE 06:17 SET 18:36

RISE 05:46 SET 17:54

Man held with pollboycott postersSRINAGAR

A man has been arrested with

election boycott posters in

Awantipora area of Pulwama

district. Following a tip-off,

Mohammad Yousuf Wani was

arrested and a large number

of election boycott posters

were recovered from him, the

police said.PTI

IN BRIEF

A day after former Chief Min-ster Parkash Singh Badal ac-cused Punjab Chief MinisterCapt. Amarinder Singh ofbacktracking on the promiseof loan waiver to farmers,Capt. Amarinder on Fridayreacted sharply, saying“Badal father-son duo” seemto be suffering from selectivehearing and amnesia.

The Chief Minister calledthe latest statements of Mr.Parkash Singh Badal and Mr.Sukhbir Singh Badal contest-ing Congress government’scommitment to farm debtwaiver unfounded.

Relief for farmers“Unlike the Badal regime,which had failed to take upany measure for the welfareof the farmers in the Stateduring 10 years of their rule,his government had initiateda time-bound process ofwaiver of their loans in lessthan 10 days of taking overthe State’s reins, he said.

Speaking about his recentmeeting with Prime MinisterNarendra Modi on the issue,Capt. Amarinder pointed outthat this was not the firsttime he hadmet Mr. Modi forfarm loan waiver. He pointedout that he had been part of

the delegation, led by AICCvice- president RahulGandhi, that met the PrimeMinister before the assemblyelections to seek relief forthe distressed farmers in thecountry.

“However, Badals withtheir selective memory, hadconveniently forgotten aboutthis fact while accusing himof cheating the farmers onthe debt waiver issue,” headded.

Special packageAfter Capt. Amarinder hadasked the Centre for a spe-cial package to provide one-time loan waiver to the be-leaguered, debt-ridden farm-ers of Punjab — formerPunjab Chief Minister Par-kash Singh Badal had allegedthat the Congress govern-ment in Punjab was findingescape routes to run awayfrom their promise on loanwaiver to farmers.

“The demand for the fin-ancial package from theCentre should be de-linkedfrom the Congress pollpromise of loan waiver asthat promise was not madeon behalf Prime MinisterNarendra Modi but wasmeant to be fulfilled by theState government,” he hadsaid.

Amarinder, Badals tradecharges on farm loan waiver‘Father-son duo seem to be sufering from selective hearing and amnesia’

New Term: Pro-tem Speaker Rana Kanwar Pal Singhadministering oath as a legislator to Chief MinisterAmarinder Singh in Chandigarh on Friday. * AKHILESH KUMAR

VIKAS VASUDEVA

CHANDIGARH

The newly elected MLAs,including Punjab ChiefMinister AmarinderSingh, on Friday tookoath on the first day ofthe first session of 15thPunjab Assembly here.

However, former Pun-jab Chief Minister Par-kash Singh Badal and hisson, former deputy CMSukhbir Singh Badal,were conspicuous bytheir absence from the

House when it started itssitting this afternoon.

The oath was admin-istered by pro-temSpeaker Rana K.P. Singhof the Congress. Capt Am-arinder was the first to beadministered oath.

After him, senior mostCabinet minister BrahmMohindra took oath, fol-lowed by other Cabinetministers including Nav-jot Singh Sidhu, ManpreetSingh Badal andSadhuSingh Dharamsot.

Punjab MLAs take oathPress Trust of India

Chandigarh

In the first State Assemblysession after the formationof the Bharatiya Janata Partygovernment here, Ut-tarakhand Governor K KPaul unfolded the BJP’s planfor development of theState, including the contro-versial issue of Gairsain to bedeclared as the State’s sum-mer Capital and that ofhandling corruption.

The Governor’s addressto the Assembly was a rep-lica of the “Vision Docu-ment, 2017” the BJP had re-leased few days ahead of theState Assembly polls. Thevision document mentionedthat the BJP would “think”about declaring Gairsain, avillage in Chamoli district, asUttarakhand’s summerCapital.

In the State Assemblyhere on Friday, the Gov-ernor said: “After equippingGairsain with the needed in-frastructure, my govern-ment would soon take a de-cision on making Gairsainthe summer Capital [ofUttarakhand].”

Making Gairsain the Statecapital has been a demandof the Statehood agitators ofUttarakhand for the past 16years.

However, the Congress

and the BJP, which tend toengage in a blame gamewhen questioned on Gair-sain’s status, have been us-ing the issue for electoralbenefit.

The Harish Rawat govern-ment had initiated the con-struction of a Vidhan Sabhacomplex at Gairsain, and go-ing by the BJP’s claims theparty might proceed withthe works of the under-con-struction Vidhan Sabha thatwere initiated by the formerCongress government.

Corruption-free govtSoon after he was elected asthe State’s new Chief Minis-ter, Trivendra Rawat hadsaid that his efforts would be“towards forming a corrup-tion-free government, whichworks with transparency.”

On Friday, the Governorsaid that “the Lokayukta lawformulated in the year 2011shall be implemented and aLokayukta shall be appoin-ted for hearing of cases ofcorruption against theState’s chief minister andother public representat-ives, and governmentofficials”.

The new government willalso establish a specialhelpline where peoplewould be able to reportcases of corruption.

The Uttarakhand Lokay-ukta Bill was drafted underthe leadership of formerChief Minister and BharatiyaJanata Party (BJP) leaderB.C. Khanduri in 2011. Itlater became the Ut-tarakhand Lokayukta Act2013.

Cong, BJP have always used it for electoral beneit

Staff Reporter

Dehradun

Uttarakhand summercapital back on agenda

The vision documentmentions that the BJP would “think”about declaring Gairsain as Uttarakhand’s summer Capital.

Following sustained effortsfor two years under the“Child rights for change”project, five villages in Ban-swara district have been de-clared child labour-free withthe credit being given tocommunity-based institu-tions, children's groups andenlightened sections of thelocal tribal community.

At a function organised inBanswara on Thursday, ZilaPramukh Resham Malviyaapplauded the efforts ofSave the Children and othergroups for achieving the featand gave away certificates tothe representatives of childprotection committees ofthe five villages.

Ms. Malviya pointed outthat the tribal-dominatedBanswara district of south-ern Rajasthan, earlierknown as the hub of child la-bour because of migration offamilies to neighbouring Gu-jarat, was gradually shed-ding the tag as a result ofcommunity awareness andsupport system that hadevolved over the last coupleof years.

Unique achievement“This is a unique achieve-ment not witnessed in anyother district of the State,”said Ms. Malviya. IntegratedChild Protection Scheme'sAdditional Director DilipRokadia said a progressivesociety could be imagined

only if it could ensure pro-tection of child rights.

The project is operative inthe district with the statedobjectives of child labour ab-olition, increasing enrol-ment and retention inschools, stopping child mi-gration, ensuring pre-schooleducation and enforcementof the Right of Children toFree and Compulsory Edu-cation Act, 2009.

The five villages gettingthe new distinction areKamji Ka Kheda, Budha, Bar-badia, Jaitpura andPandiyapura. All of them aresituated in the Ghatol blockof the district. Four “childchampions”, who contrib-uted to abolition of child la-bour, were also felicitated.

Five Banswara villagesdeclared child labour-freeCommunity-based institutions, children's groups hailed

Special Correspondent

JAIPUR

The strategic Manali-Ro-htang-Keylong road wouldbe made functional againby May end, according toBorder Roads Organisationofficials.

Commanding Officer of38 Border Road Task ForceLt. Col. Mayank Mehta saidthe entire Manali-Leh roadwould be opened by Juneend. The restoration work,including snow-cutting op-erations, have started fromRahla Falls, about 28 kmfrom the tourist resort ofManali in Kullu, he added.

There are reports of 20-25 feet snow in and aroundthe 13,000-foot-high Ro-htang Pass. The operationwas delayed by about aweek due to very low tem-peratures in the higherhills. It takes months toclear the Manali-Keylongroad.

Tunnel under PassResidents of the tribal dis-trict of Lahaul-Spiti remaincut off from the State forabout six months. An all-weather road has nowbeen planned through atunnel underneath Ro-htang Pass. Work is on onthe 9-km-long tunnel forthe past few years and itwould reduce the distanceto Keylong by about 60 km.

After clearing the roadtill Keylong, the headquar-ters of Lahaul-Spiti, theBRO would move towardsSarchu in Leh, about 222km from Manali.

Work beginson Keylonghighway

Staff Correspondent

SHIMLA

Published by N. Ram at Kasturi Buildings, 859 & 860, Anna Salai, Chennai-600002 and Printed by S. Ramanujam at HT Media Ltd. Plot No. 8, Udyog Vihar, Greater Noida Distt. Gautam Budh Nagar, U.P. 201306, on behalf of KASTURI & SONS LTD., Chenn

Regd. DL(ND)-11/6110/2006-07-08 ● RNI No. TNENG/2012/49940 ● ISSN 0971 - 751X ● Vol. 7 ● No. 72


THE HINDU NOIDA/DELHI

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CMYK

EAST

Ghosh to direct ilm onSatyajit Ray’s storyKOLKATA

Film-maker Sujoy Ghosh has

said he is all set to make a

short-film on a story by

Satyajit Ray. The 50-year-old

director tweeted: “Finally...I

get to make a Satyajit Ray

story. Short-film but one step

at a time.” PTI

IN BRIEF

Mizo Assembly rejectsOpposition resolutionAIZAWL

The Mizoram Assembly on

Friday rejected a resolution

moved by Lalrinawma of the

Opposition MNF seeking

repeal of the Mizoram Liquor

Prohibition and Control Act,

2014. PTI

The Manipur Cabinet,chaired by Chief Minister N.Biren Singh, on Friday de-cided to set up an anti-cor-ruption cell at the Secretariathere to ensure greater trans-parency and accountabilityin governance.

An announcement in thisregard was made by MinisterT. Biswajit Singh, who is thegovernment spokesperson.

No frivolous complaintsWith this, the public cansend audio/video evidenceof corruption to a dedicatedmobile number —9402150000 — throughWhatsApp. The identity ofthe sender shall not be re-vealed. Frivolous com-plaints, however, will invitestrict action.

The public servants,meanwhile, have been askedto ensure transparency in allcases, except those that re-

quire secrecy to be main-tained.

The move is aimed atcurbing favouritism andnepotism in the discharge ofduty, and to ensure that nobribes are offered or taken.

Also, in line with theCentre’s policy, the Cabinethas decided to discontinueinterviews for direct recruit-ment to junior level posts(Grades III & IV) in all de-partments under the Stategovernment.

A mechanism is also being

worked on to ensure that alldepartments upload inform-ation about developmentalworks on the website of thePlanning Department. Thiswill include photographsthat show the status of pro-jects undertaken.

Students call strikeMeanwhile, the appointmentof non-indigenous MLA As-abuddin as a ParliamentarySecretary has triggered a re-action from the DemocraticStudents’ Alliance of Ma-nipur (DESAM), which plansto go on a 17-hour strike fromSaturday midnight.

Speaking to the media,the DESAM leaders said,“The government has accep-ted the support of a non-in-digenous MLA at a timewhen there has been a con-tinuous movement againstsuch people.”

As many as 10 peoplehave been killed in the Statein connection with move-

ments against non-indigen-ous people.

The BJP-led coalition gov-ernment, which had assuredof a blockade and strike-freeManipur, remained unavail-able for comments.

Defending Asabuddin, theManipur Muslim WelfareUnion said, “Asabuddin’sforefathers settled in Ma-nipur in the beginning of the20th Century. He has beenpradhan two times.”

B.K. Moirangcha, con-vener in-charge of the JointCommittee on Inner LinePermit System, said, “Thedocuments furnished by As-abuddin will take time toverify since they refer to oldrecords.”

State Congress vice-pres-ident Y. Surchandra said,“The Central government,which signed the agreementwith the National SocialistCouncil of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah, should clarify thecontroversy over it.”

Manipur government to setup anti-corruption cellPeople can send audio/video evidence of corruption throughWhatsApp

Iboyaima Laithangbam

Imphal

N Biren Singh

Seven places, mostly in thewestern region of Odisha,recorded temperaturesabove 40 degrees Celsius onFriday as summer startedtightening its grip across theState.

Titilagarh, known as thehottest place in Odisha, wasthe first to record over 40degrees Celsius this seasonon Thursday. The highesttemperature of 41.5 degreesCelsius was reported fromBalangir.

Angul with a maximumtemperature of 41.1 degreesCelsius and Talcher with 41degrees Celsius followedBalangir closely.

Other places where themercury soared beyond 40degrees Celsius include Titil-agarh (40.6 degrees Celsius),Jharsuguda (40.5),Bhawanipatna, (40.2) andSambalpur (40.2).

At least four other places,including the capital city ofBhubaneswar, recordedabove 39 degrees Celsius.

It is expected that seabreeze would provide tem-porary relief to people in thecoastal regions duringMarch 26 and 27, but therewould be no respite for den-izens in the interior pockets.

‘Non-occurrence of rain’“The rise in temperature isattributed to non-occur-rence of rain. The frequencyof western disturbances

which cause rain or snowfallin Himachal Pradesh andJammu and Kashmir has alsocome down. As a result, dryhot winds have been con-tinuously blowing from thewest and north-westernparts triggering a rise intemperature in interiorpockets of Odisha,” said S. C.Sahu, Director of theBhubaneswar Meteorolo-gical Centre.

Sea breeze may provide relief to people in coastal areas

Staff Reporter

BHUBANESWAR

Temperature breaches 40-degreemark at seven places in Odisha

Meghalaya doublesMLAs’ salariesSHILLONG

The salary of Meghalaya MLA

was doubled while that of the

Chief Minister was hiked 70%

after the Assembly passed

Bills on salary and allowances

and pension of ex-members.PTI

About 234 unaided madrasas inWest Bengal are facing acute fin-ancial crisis as they have not re-ceived Central grants for nearlythree years because of allegedprocedural lapses by the Stategovernment.

Even though these madrasasare affiliated to the West BengalBoard of Madrasa Education(WBBME), they do not receiveany financial support from theState government.

They are totally dependent onthe Central grant provided tothem under the Scheme toProvide Quality Education inMadrasas (SPQEM), run by theMinistry of Human Resource De-velopment (MHRD).

According to the MHRD, thescheme aims at bringing “qualit-ative improvement” in madrasasto “enable Muslim children at-tain standards of the nationaleducation system”.

In 2013-14, the madrasas inthe State received a grant of ₹6crore under the SPQEM. Afterthat, they did not receive anyfunds in 2014-15, 2015-16 and the

money for 2016-17 has also notbeen released yet.

The madarsa authoritiesblame this delay on the Stategovernment which allegedly didnot apply for the grant in time.“The callous attitude of the Stategovernment has put us in aspot,” said Abdul Wahab Molla,the secretary of UnaidedMadrasah Bachao Committee.

Request turned downAs per the minutes of a meetingof the Central Grant-in-Aid Com-mittee (CGIAC) held on August 8last year, the West Bengal gov-ernment’s request for funds un-

der SPQEM was turned down fornot sending the proposal in duetime and not submitting theCGIAC form.

According to the SPQEMguidelines, the State governmenthas to claim the funds within ayear of receiving the previousgrant.

“The Schemes (SPQEM)guidelines clearly mandate: ‘noclaim for recurring grants will beadmissible if such claim is notmade within one year of the pre-vious grant… Also the StateGrant-in-Aid committee formwas not submitted by the State.Hence the proposals could not

be approved,” the minute stated.Denying the allegations,

Bengal’s Minister of State forMinority Affairs and MadrasaEducation Giasuddin Molla putthe blame on the Centre. “They(Centre) keep changing the pro-cedure of the application for thegrant and have put the unaidedmadrasas in jeopardy. We aretrying to ensure that the fundsare released soon,” he told The

Hindu.He, however, did not specify

the “changes” introduced in theprocedure of applying for grants.

The State’s Director ofMadrasa Education, Abid Hus-sain, said they have submitted allthe “necessary documents” inthe CGIAC meeting held on July12, 2016. “I cannot comment asto why the Centre has no re-leased the funds yet,” he said.The unaided madrasas in WestBengal were granted affiliationunder the WBBME between 2012and 2014 by the Trinamool Con-gress government. These intitu-tions currently employ around2,500 teaching and non-teachingstaff and have more than 40,000students.

Bengal unaidedmadrasas face fund crunchThey have not received Central grants for nearly three years, blame State government

Soumya Das

Kolkata

File photo of amadrasa in Cooch Behar inWest Bengal. *

More than a dozen police-men were beaten up andNational Highway-34, con-necting north and southBengal, was blocked forhours on Friday after amob, comprising mostly ofcollege students, went onthe rampage following anaccident

A Class XI student ofNew Farakka High School,Rupali Halder, was on herway to school on a bicyclewhen a lorry hit her frombehind, killing her on thespot. Soon after the acci-dent, students on FarakkaNurul Hasan Collegereached the spot and setfive buses on fire.

Reinforcements rushedWhen a team from theFarakka police stationreached the spot, they werechased by the mob withsticks and rods. Fifteen po-lice personnel, includingSDPO, Jangipur, Praveen

Prasad, were attacked.Later reinforcements wererushed to control the situ-ation.

This is not the first timethat police personnel havebeen attacked by a mob.Earlier on January 28, amob had attacked the Aus-gram police station in Bard-haman district, causing in-jury to police personnel.The mob also set the wait-ing room on fire.

Attacks on police per-sonnel in West Bengal is

one of highest in the coun-try, according to latest stat-istics released by the Bur-eau of Police Research andDevelopment.

The report points outthat of the 1,623 police per-sonnel injured across thecountry by mobs in 2015,641 (39.5 % ) weree fromWest Bengal alone. Keralacomes a distant secondwith 264. Of the ten police-men killed across the coun-try by violent mobs, threewere fromWest Bengal.

Cops beaten up, ive busestorched by students in BengalNH-34 blocked after a Class XI student dies in mishap


Kolkata

Amob threw stones at buses and trucks at Murshidabad inWest Bengal on Friday. * PTI

A 50-year-old passengerwas deboarded from theBhubaneswar-New DelhiRajdhani Express onThursday and handed overto the police for allegedlymolesting a college girl inthe train.

Railway Minister SureshPrabhu responded swiftlyto the traumatic experience

narrated by the victim on so-cial media, leading to the de-boarding of the accused atthe Tatanagar station.

Sources said the girl wassleeping on the upper berthwhen the man, identified asBani Prasad Mohanty, triedto grope her.

She confronted the man,whom she described asmiddle-aged and of her fath-er’s age, in front of the otherpassengers

Soon after the girl pos-ted the matter on herFacebook account, herfriend tweeted it taggingthe Union RailwayMinister.

While the accused wastaken into custody imme-diately, the victim’s state-ment was recorded onboard.

Mohanty hails fromKhurda on the outskirt ofBhubaneswar.

Railway Minister intervened following girl’s FB post

Staff Reporter

BHUBANESWAR

Molester deboarded from train

Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Eastern AirCommand, Air Marshal Anil Khosla, reviewed theoperational readiness and infrastructure devel-opment of advance landing grounds (ALG) in Ar-unachal Pradesh. The visit was his first since tak-ing up office in January this year, a defencecommunique said. During his three-day visit,Khosla visited ALGs at Vijaynagar, Walong,Pasighat, Tuting, Along and Mechuka.

Top IAF oicer reviewsArunachal airstripsPress Trust of India

Itanagar




NATION

‘Raje will complete hertenure as Rajasthan CM’JAIPUR

BJP State president Ashok

Parnami on Friday said that

Vasundhara Raje will

complete her tenure as Chief

Minister of Rajasthan, while

rejecting some rumours

circulated on social media

regarding a change in

government. He also exuded

confidence that the BJP will

win the Dholpur Assembly

by-poll. - PTI

IN BRIEF

Man arrested with4 kg of charasMotihari

Customs officials have

arrested a man with 4.17 kg of

contraband charas valued at

₹40 lakh from Ramgarhwa

village on the Indo-Nepal

border in Bihar’s West

Champaran district.

He was carrying the drug

from Nepal in nine packets in

the carrier of his motorcycle.

Woman, two daughterskilled by speeding truckKOTA

A 35-year-old woman and her

two minor daughters were

killed on Friday when they

were hit by a speeding truck

while waiting for a bus near

Baran on National

Highway-27 in the district.

The bodies were handed over

to the family members after

post-mortem in the

afternoon. - PTI

Class XI student commitssuicide over poor marksKANPUR

A Class XI student committed

suicide by hanging himself in

Kalyanpur here as he was

allegedly disappointed over

his poor performance in the

Physics paper, the police said

on Friday.

Seventeen-year-old Abhishek

was stressed after he was not

able to do well in the exam.- PTI

A 10-year-old boy fromJabalpur suffering from pro-geria was made chairman ofthe Madhya Pradesh StateCommission for Protectionof Child Rights (MPSCPCR)for a day on Friday.

Shreyansh Waghmare hadexpressed his wish to visitBhopal, and hence, a tripwas arranged by theCommission.

Progeria is a progressivegenetic disorder whichcauses a child to age rapidly.

“Shreyansh had ex-pressed desire to visit Bho-pal. So we decided to makehim the Commission chair-man for a day to make himhappy,” MPSCPCR chairmanDr Raghvendra Sharma said.

Shreyansh took part in aprogramme here as theMPSCPCR chairman, MtSharma said.

His father Arvind Wagh-mare said his son was veryhappy.

Shreyansh is child rights panel chiefPress Trust of India

BHOPAL

Shreyansh sufers fromprogeria. * A.M. FARUQUI

The Rajasthan governmenthas ordered an inquiry bythe divisional commissionerinto Tuesday’s incident inPanchi ka Nagla village ofBharatpur district in whichtwo minor girls drowned in apond following a police raid.

Additional Advocate-Gen-eral Brahmanand Sandhu onFriday told a division benchof the Rajasthan High Court,which took suo motu cognis-ance of the incident, that theinquiry would be completedin two months.

He claimed that a girl whohad survived in the pondhad given her statement infavour of the police.

The bench comprisingacting Chief Justice K.S.Jhaveri and Justice V.K. Vyasasked the State governmentto submit its detailed reportin the matter by April 10 andconfirm if the reports ap-pearing in newspapers aboutthe girls jumping into thepond in panic and fearingdetention were true.

The police have claimedthat the girls, aged 11 and 13,were near the pond to re-lieve themselves and hadslipped, but their familymembers stated that theywere at their homes and thepolicemen chased them to-

wards the pond in the forestarea. The police had raidedthe area while looking for analleged prostitution racket.

The matter also came upin the State Assembly onThursday, where Home Min-ister Gulab Chand Katariadefended the police actionand informed the House thatBharatpur Divisional Com-missioner Vikas Bhale wouldprobe the incident.

Mr. Kataria claimed that140 policemen, divided intothree teams, had raided thearea on getting reports thatsome girls were being forced

into prostitution.However, BJP MLA from

Bharatpur, Vijay Bansal, saidthe video clips shot by thesome local residents had de-picted the number of police-men to be around 400.

Financial aidBharatpur Collector N.K.Gupta has since handed overcheques of Rs.51,000 eachas financial assistance to thefamilies of the two girls.

The district administra-tion has maintained that theraid was conducted follow-ing information that some

girls from Uttar Pradesh andBihar had been trafficked toBharatpur and pushed intoprostitution.

The girls’ bodies werecremated on Wednesdayamid high drama, with Mr.Bansal reaching the villageand asking the people to de-mand action against police.Bharatpur Mayor Shiv Singhalso accompanied him.

However, Congress leaderVishvendra Singh, belongingto the erstwhile royal family,appealed to the local resid-ents not to settle politicalscore over the issue.

Probe ordered into death ofBharatpur girls by drowningMove comes after the Rajasthan High Court took suo moto notice of the incident

Tragedy:Grieving relatives of the twominor girls who drowned in a pond in Bharatpur’s PanchiKa Nagla village . * SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

Mohammed Iqbal

Jaipur Taking a cue from Uttar Pra-desh, the Bharatiya JanataParty (BJP) in Bihar on Fri-day demanded the forma-tion of anti-Romeo squadsfor the safety of women inthe State.

“The Bihar governmentshould also constitute anti-Romeo squads to deal withanti-social elements and forthe safety of women. Thesquads should be deployedat schools, colleges, univer-sities and markets,” BJPleader and former BiharDeputy Chief Minister SushilKumar Modi told the media.

‘Ban slaughterhouses’On Thursday, the Leader ofthe Opposition, Prem Ku-mar, had demanded a banon slaughterhouses operat-ing illegally in the State.

“Like Uttar Pradesh, thegovernment here in Biharshould put a ban on illegalslaughterhouses,” Mr. Ku-mar had said.

Responding to his de-mand, State Animal Hus-bandry Minister AwadheshKumar Singh had said a re-port had been sought fromthe district magistrates(DMs) on illegal slaughter-houses in their respectivedistricts “despite a ban oncattle slaughter in the State”.

“In every district there isa committee headed by thedistrict magistrate to mon-itor cattle slaughter. We’veasked the DMs to submit areport on illegal slaughter-houses so that such activitiescan be stopped,” the Minis-ter had said.

The Bihar Prevention andImprovement of Animal Act,1955 allows slaughtering ofonly those bovines that areeither more than 15 yearsold or disabled.

Besides, such animals canbe slaughtered only afteranti-mortem so as to preventspread of any disease.

Sources, however, toldThe Hindu that many cattle

slaughterhouses were oper-ating illegally in the districtsof Katihar, Kishanganj, Pur-nia and Araria.

Mobilisation of youthMeanwhile, BJP leaders saidbranches of the Hindu YuvaVahini, an organisation ofHindu youths founded byUP Chief Minister YogiAdityanath, would soon beopened in the border dis-tricts of Bihar.

“Branches of the HinduYuva Vahini will be openedin districts such as Kishan-ganj, Purnia and Katihar byJune or July,” said a BJPleader who works in theseareas.

Says move to ensure women's safety in the StateAmarnath Tewary

Patna

Newmove: Anti-Romeo squads ordered by newU.P. ChiefMinister Yogi Adityanath have started work in the State. * PTI

After UP, Bihar BJP seeksanti-Romeo squads

The Odisha government onFriday announced that it willadopt multi-prongedstrategies to eradicatepoverty from 20% of thegram panchayats within thenext two years.

State-Level EmpoweredCommittee (SLEC) chaired

by Chief Secretary AdityaPrasad Padhi discussed pro-posals for achieving aPoverty-Free Gram Panchay-ats (PFGP) by 2019.

First phaseThe State would to take up1,342 gram panchayats of thetotal of 6,234 in the firstphase and develop those as

model PFGPs by October 2,2019, when the country cel-ebrates Mahatma Gandhi’s150th birth anniversary.

Four-pronged approachAccording to a proposalpresented by D. K. Singh,Panchayati Raj Secretary, afour-pronged approachwould be taken.

Development pro-grammes would focus on en-hancing agricultural pro-ductivity, skill training ofyouth, creating opportunit-ies for high-order farm andnon-farm activities, and bet-ter targeting of safety-netschemes for combatingpoverty at the panchayatlevel.

Odisha to adopt new strategies to tackle poverty

‘20% of gram panchayats to be poverty-free within the next two years’Staff Reporter

BHUBANESWAR




CMYK

NATION

ED notices to Shah Rukh,wife and actor JuhiNEW DELHI

The Enforcement Directorate

on Friday issued show-cause

notices to Knight Riders

Sports Pvt. Ltd (KRSPL), its

director Gauri Khan, her

husband Shah Rukh Khan and

actor Juhi Chawla under

Foreign Exchange

Management Act (FEMA).

The ED alleges a loss of ₹73.6

crore in foreign exchange.

IN BRIEF

‘91 farmers ended theirlives in Gujarat in 5 years’GANDHINAGAR

The Gujarat government has

informed that Legislative

Assembly that about 91 ryots

have ended their lives for

various reasons in the State in

the last five years. The

suicides were reported across

14 different districts. PTI

CBSE to conduct NEETin 23 more citiesNEW DELHI

With over 40% increase in

the number of students

registering for the NEET this

year, the CBSE has decided to

conduct the exam in 23 more

cities. A mobile application

for locating the nearest test

centre has been developed.PTI

President Pranab Mukerjeeon Friday advised Bihar andJharkhand to invest in educa-tion as a developmentstrategy.

Mr Mukerjee was speak-ing at the inauguration of theSilver Jubilee InternationalConference of the Asian De-velopment and Research In-stitute (ADRI) on ‘Bihar andJharkhand: Shared History toShared Vision’.

“A logical requirement ofalternative developmentstrategy will be prioritisinginvestment on educationbeyond what would happenunder normal circumstances… one may also note herethat education does notmean economic advantagefor the educated personsalone,” the President said,addressing a gathering ofacademicians and scholarsfrom several countries here.

Historical burdenThe President said thestrategy had other importantadvantages such as people’sempowerment and in-creased participation in de-

velopment programmes andthe political process.

“Eastern region, of whichBihar and Jharkhand form apart, has been a victim of ahistorical burden whichcame first in the form of per-manent settlement and thenin the form of freight equal-isation policy ... this led tothe loss of the natural ad-vantage of the region. As aresult, the spirit of entre-

preneurship could not de-velop among the people,” hesaid.

Citing Bangladesh, once apart of the Bengal Presid-ency, President Mukherjeesaid the burden of history,however huge, could be shedby social mobilisation. “Thecountry, which has exploitedits natural advantages toachieve grassroots develop-ment, shows the way for

States like Bihar, Jharkhandand West Bengal,” he said.

“The role of governmentsis crucial for socio-economictransformation but their ef-forts could be bolstered byan initiative from civil soci-ety,” he added.

Role of civil society“In most of the developingnations, which attained in-dependence in the middle ofthe previous century, the in-stitution of state is con-sidered to be very pervadingwith very limited space fornon-state actors,” he said.

International develop-ment experience showedthat in the absence of suchnon-state institutions, the ef-ficiency of the state-led de-velopment process waslimited.

Praising Chief MinisterNitish Kumar, PresidentMukherjee said: “the Statehas been lucky in having as-tute political leaders whohave taken the State on thepath of development.”

Earlier, the Chief Ministerand Governor Ram NathKovind addressed theConference.

Invest in education, Pranabtells Bihar, Jharkhand‘It will empower people and ensure increased participation in political process’

Meeting of minds: President PranabMukherjee with BiharChief Minister Nitish Kumar in Patna * RANJEET KUMAR


Patna

In connection with WorldTuberculosis (TB) Day onFriday, a candlelight vigilwas organised at India Gate,paying tribute to the nearly 5lakh patients who suc-cumbed to the disease lastyear. The tuberculosis epi-demic affects 28 lakh Indi-ans; another 79,000 peoplesuffer from type of TB resist-ant to most antibiotics.

India has come under cri-ticism from the global publichealth community for givinginaccurate estimates of thetuberculosis burdenbetween 2000 and 2015. In aTED Talk on ‘India’s Tuber-culosis crisis’, Zarir F Udwa-dia, a leading expert on TBand chest physician at theHinduja Hospital & ResearchCentre, Mumbai, called it,“Ebola with wings.”

Contagious infectionTuberculosis is a contagiousinfection caused by Myco-bacterium tuberculosis andit usually attacks the lungs. Itcan also spread to other

parts of the body like thebrain and spine. Tubercu-losis is contagious andspreads through the air,much like cold or flu. Publichealth experts maintain thatthe unchecked rise of mul-tidrug-resistant tuberculosis(MDR TB) in India willthreaten the progress madeglobally. “Our real crisis isdrug resistance and nearly 1in every 5 cases I see hasprimary resistance. We donot have any preparation todeal with DR TB. I feel op-timistic that the governmentis showing interest but theHealth Ministry’s targets are

unrealistic with currentbudgets and strategies.There is no way India willeliminate TB by 2025,” saidChapal Mehra, a publichealth specialist.

According to the HealthMinistry, 17.5 lakh TB pa-tients and 33,820 DR TB pa-tients were notified in 2016from public and privatehealth. The two new WHOrecommended drugs for DRTB, Delaminid & Bedaquil-ine, are not currently avail-able in Indian national TBprogramme. WhileDelaminid is yet to be re-gistered in India, Bedaquil-

ine is available at only 6States in the country, undercompassionate use. “Peopleliving with MDR and XDR-TBare not receiving adequatetreatment in India. One drugis not registered at all. Theother one is available only in6 States and all too often pa-tients die before they can ac-cess the medication,” saidPaul Lhungdim, a patientactivist with The Delhi Net-work of Positive People.

National planMeanwhile, the Indian gov-ernment will soon be releas-ing the National StrategicPlan for TB Control (2017-2025), with an overarchingframework to achieving theelimination goal. Speakingon the occasion of World TBDay, Kalikesh Singh Deo, aMember of Parliament en-gaged with TB, said that, “In-dia cannot address its TBepidemic until it increases itsbudgets and transforms theTB programme. With an In-dian dying of TB at everyminute we can no longerwait,” he says in his message.

Drug-resistant TB a concernIn India, Health Ministry’s targets are unrealistic due to current budgets


NEW DELHI

Joining hands:Nursing students form a human chain toobserveWorld TB Day in Erode on Friday * M. GOVARTHAN

The Supreme Court on Fri-day called for the completerecords of 199 anti-Sikh riotscases closed by a govern-ment-appointed Special In-vestigation Team (SIT) evenas victims and their familiesaccused the probe body ofopacity.

The SIT was given a total293 cases riots that oc-curred in Delhi in the after-math of the assassination ofPrime Minister IndiraGandhi in 1984 by her Sikhbodyguards. Two years afterthey were given charge ofthe cases in 2015, the SIThas filed chargesheets in justfour of the cases.

A three-judge Bench ofJustices Dipak Misra decidedto investigate the reasonsfor the SIT to close such alarge number of the riotscases, despite protests byAttorney-General Mukul Ro-hatgi. He said in many of the199 cases, the SIT had noother choice but close itsprobe as the trail had gone

cold. “Sixty-two of them(cases) were untraceable,”Mr. Rohatgi illustrated.

Senior advocate ArvindDatar, for the petitionersdrawn from victims of the ri-ots, submitted that none ofthe closure reports werefiled in a court. “We intendto focus on the 199 cases inrespect of which decisionwas taken by the SIT to closeor not launch prosecution,”the court observed.

The court said there is“some dispute” on whetherclosure reports were filed.The court directed theUnion to place all records ofthe 199 cases and scheduledthe case for hearing on April25, 2017.

Slow progressOther than the 199 casesclosed, preliminary enquiryhas been completed in 28cases, while seven arepending for consideration.Of the 59 cases sent for fur-ther probe, 42 have beenclosed and 13 are pendinginvestigation.

SC to probe closure of

199 anti-Sikh riots cases

Records of cases closed by SIT sought

Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI

The Animal Welfare Board ofIndia (AWBI), a statutory ad-visory body under the UnionMinistry of Environment,Forests and Climate Change(MoEF), will now be perman-ently chaired by a seniorMoEF official, according to anotification made publicearlier this month.

In its 55-year history theorganisation has alwaysbeen chaired by somebody

outside government, such asveterinarians, animal wel-fare activists or retiredjudges. The 22-memberBoard’s three-year termended February 28 and onMarch 1, a new Board of 18members, chaired by SharadSingh Negi, Special Secretaryand Director-General(Forests), MoEF, came intoeffect. The March 3 notifica-tion specifies that for thenext three years, the Boardwould be chaired by the Dir-

ector-General (Forests) forits term.

Centre’s upper hand“This is the first time that agovernment official is chair-ing the body and shows thatthe Centre wants to ensureits diktats are implemented,”Dr. Chinny Krishna, who wasvice-chairman of the AWBIuntil February 28, told The

Hindu. “Previously, it was al-ways a stopgap arrangementduring the dissolution of the

Board’s tenure.”Differences between the

AWBI and the MoEF, espe-cially on the conduct of thejallikattu, which broughtChennai to a standstillearlier this year, was a keyreason for the Centre to ex-ert primacy in the manage-ment of the organisation,two people familiar with theAWBI’s workings told The

Hindu.The Chennai-based organ-

isation, which derives its

legal structure from the Pre-vention of Cruelty to Anim-als Act, 1960, frames a rangeof rules on how animalsought to be humanelytreated everywhere. It hasalso frequently litigated tohave stricter laws to ensureanimals were not undulyharassed or tortured. Severalgovernment organisations,along with animal rights act-ivists and parliamentarians,are represented on theBoard.

A petition by AWBI and a2011 MoEF notification wereinstrumental to the SC ban-ning jallikattu in Tamil Naduin 2014 on the grounds that itwas cruel to the animals andalso put participants at risk.

When AWBI lawyers chal-lenged a separate TamilNadu State law that allowedjallikattu, AWBI Secretaryand MoEF official, M.Ravikumar, said the chal-lenge “was not authorised”by the Board.

Environment Ministry oicial to chair animal welfare boardAfter diferences between AWBI and MoEF over conduct of jallikattu, Centre wants to ‘exert primacy’ over the board

Jacob Koshy

NEW DELHI

Expressing displeasure at theState’s inaction on a public in-terest litigation (PIL) petition re-lating to the physical fitness ofpolicemen, the Calcutta HighCourt on Friday drew attention tothe paunchy policemen on dutyon the High Court premises.

“Can’t you see the big tummieson the policemen in the HighCourt?” acting Chief JusticeNishita Mhatre asked. The Divi-sion Bench of Justice NishitaMathre and Justice TapobrataChakraborty is hearing a PIL peti-tion filed by former Border Secur-ity Force (BSF) personnel Kamal

Dey on mandatory physical fit-ness for all police personnel.

The petition was filed inDecember 2016 and the matterwas taken up for hearing in theHigh Court in January 2017.

The Division Bench asked theState counsel if the departmenthad a procedure to check theBody Mass Index (BMI) of police-men. The Court pointed out thata few days of training will nothelp in improving the situation. Itdirected the State government tofile an affidavit in two weeks. Thehearing will be held again onApril 7. The Court asked the Stategovernment to take the matterseriously.

Counsel representing theState, Tapan Mukherjee, in alighter vein, pointed out that thepetitioner himself had a paunch.The Division Bench retorted thatMr. Dey is not going to look afterthe law and order in the State.

The Bench then asked both theKolkata Commissioner of PoliceandWest Bengal Director Generalof Police to submit separate re-ports about the physical andmental fitness of the police forcein West Bengal.

“Due to such heavy bulges, po-licemen often fail to maintain lawand order, and the security andsafety of people is in jeopardy,”Mr. Dey told The Hindu.

Asks if procedure to check their Body Mass Index is in place


KOLKATA

Calcutta High Court seeksreport on pot-bellied policemen

Hate speech has the poten-tial to provoke individualsand society to commit actsof terrorism, genocides andethnic cleansing. It is an “in-citement to hatred” againsta particular group of per-sons marginalised by theirreligious belief, sexual ori-entation, gender, etc.

The Law Commission ofIndia laid out bare thedanger of hate speech to theCentral government in its267th Report released onFriday. The Commissionheaded by former SupremeCourt judge, Justice BalbirSingh Chauhan, called foraction from the governmentand Parliament.

The top law advisorybody to the governmenturged the expansion of thepenal law. It drafted a newlaw — The Criminal Law(Amendment) Bill, 2017 — in-serting new Sections to for-tify democracy against hatespeeches.

“Hate speech is any wordwritten or spoken, signs, vis-ible representations withinthe hearing or sight of a per-son with the intention tocause fear or alarm, or in-citement to violence,” thereport defined. The Com-

mission has proposed Sec-tion 153C, which penalisesincitement to hatred andSection 505A, which for thefirst time makes ‘causingfear, alarm, or provocationof violence in certain cases’a specific criminal offence.Section 153C punishes aguilty person with twoyears’ imprisonment or₹5,000 in fine or both. Sec-tion 505A provides a pun-ishment of one year impris-onment or ₹5,000 in fine orboth.

In its report, the LawCommission cautioned thegovernment that hatespeech is “considered out-side the realm of protectivediscourse.”

Devastating effects“Indisputably, offensivespeech has real and devast-ating effects on people’slives and risks their healthand safety. It is harmful anddivisive for communitiesand hampers social pro-gress. If left unchecked, itcan severely affect right tolife of every individual,” theCommission warned.

The SC in 2014 had re-ferred to the Law Commis-sion for means to arm theElection Commission tocrack down on hate speech.

‘Fortify democracyagainst hate speech’Provokes people, says Law Commission

Krishnadas Rajagopal

NEW DELHI The nearly 100-hour-longmass leave of resident doc-tors, which crippled publichealth services across Ma-harashtra, ended with ma-jority of them resumingduty on Friday midnight.Dr. Avinash Supe, Dean ofKEM Hospital, said all theresidents in the hospitalhave started signing the at-tendance muster. “Strikehas been called off.”

The day saw back-to-back meetings with ChiefMinister Devendra Fad-navis, who at first met rep-resentatives of the IndianMedical Association (IMA)and later the residents doc-tors. While theIMA wasprompt in taking back itsagitation after the CMpromised to give in to theirdemands, the resident doc-tors remained reluctant. Atthe time of going to press,400 out of the 2,000-oddresident doctors had re-sumed duty in variouspublic hospitals in the city.

The State on Fridaysanctioned 1,100 guardsfrom the Maharashtra StateSecurity Corporation, whoboast of police-like powersto make arrests and use aweapon to discharge theirduty.

Strike ends,doctors tojoin work


Mumbai

Around seven undertrialswent on the rampage in Gur-daspur jail here on Fridayafter attacking two mem-bers of jail staff, forcing thesecurity guards to open firein the air, to bring the situ-ation under control.

The inmates burnt downbeds and smashed CCTVcameras installed in the jailpremises, police said.Smoke could be seen com-ing out of the jail premises.

Two members of the jail

staff were thrashed by theprotesting inmates withplastic pipes, police said,adding that the undertrialswere upset over increasedsecurity measures. “Sevento eight undertrials werepossibly involved in this in-cident,” said Gurdaspur SSPBhupinderjeet Singh Virk.When other jail staff mem-bers saw their colleaguesbeing beaten up, they triedto stop the undertrials.“Three to four shots werefired in the air to control thesituation,” said the SSP.

Undertrials go on

rampage in Gurdaspur jail

Inmates protest new security steps

Press Trust of India

Gurdaspur




CMYK

A ND-ND

EDITORIAL

Well before inancial year 2017-18 begins, the

Lok Sabha has signed of on the Budget with

the passage of the Finance Bill of 2017. It in-

cludes multiple amendments proposed by the govern-

ment that did not igure in Arun Jaitley’s speech of Feb-

ruary 1, either in letter or in spirit. For instance, while

the speechdevoted420words toproposedmeasures to

improve transparency in electoral funding, amend-

ments have been made to the Companies Act of 2013

that actually turn the clock back on existing disclosure

standards. Till now, companies could only contribute

up to 7.5% of their average net proits in the past three

inancial years to political parties. They were required

to disclose in their proit and loss accounts the amount

of contributions and the names of political parties to

which they were made. The ceiling has now been

dropped, paving the way for a irm to deploy unlimited

capital into political cofers irrespective of its own in-

ancial and operational health. Companies would still

have to reveal the extent of their inancing of parties,

but no longer have to name their preferred parties. For

the sake of argument, one could say the 7.5% limit was

arbitrary and restricted willing and able corporate

donors’ ability to inluence political activity. But doing

away with the limit makes irms susceptible to funding

‘requests’ from local, regional or national political

formationswhile taking away excuses — such as it being

a loss-making unit, or breaching the funding cap.

This would open up new opportunities in crony cap-

italism. Pressure could be exerted on a company await-

ing government clearances, or a loan restructuring

from public or cooperative sector inanciers. Even a

publicly listed company can set up subsidiaries just to

fund parties. This removes any pretence of transpar-

ency in the process as the donor will not have to dis-

close who he paid; the recipient has no such obligation

either. It is not surprising that India Inc. has remained

stoically silent so far. This abandonment of the 7.5% re-

quisite comes in tandemwith theproposal toloat elect-

oral bonds to give anonymity to political donors. The

scheme for such ‘bearer’ bonds is still beingworkedout

with the central bank, but how thiswillmeet the object-

ive of transparency isn’t clear yet. Thepush for cashless

modes for political contributions sounds worthy, but

reducing the ₹20,000 limit on cashdonations to ₹2,000

doesnothing to guarantee thatmonetarymuscle power

will dissipate fromelectoral processes. Insteadof, say, a

lakh of such donors, a party can now share 10 lakh ran-

dom names to justify cash holdings. Transparency is

not synonymous with anonymous transactions, unlim-

ited corporatedonations, relaxeddisclosurenormsand

the persistence of cash. The Budget’s promise of “re-

form to bring about greater transparency and account-

ability in political funding,while preventing future gen-

eration of blackmoney”, truly rings hollow.

Cloak of invisibilityChanges in political funding regulations are

a setback to eforts to bring in transparency

The attack in London’s Westminster that left ive

persons dead, including the assailant, was the

type of terror strike that British security oicials

have been expecting. For almost three years, the threat

level from international terrorism in Britain has been

“severe”, meaning an attack is deemed highly likely.

This incident was diferent from a conventional terror

strike, but bore similarity to attacks on European cities

in recent years claimed by the Islamic State. As the Ber-

lin and Nice assailants did last year, the London at-

tacker, Khalid Masood, turned a vehicle into a lethal

weapon by mowing down pedestrians on Westminster

Bridge and later killed a police oicer with a kitchen

knife at the Parliament compound. Britain has one of

the best counter-terror police and intelligence agencies

in Europe. Since the 2005 London bombings, the coun-

try has remained largely safe. In the last four years, Brit-

ish oicials have reportedly thwarted at least 13 terror

plots. The country has one of the strictest gun control

laws, and its borders, unlike countries in the European

Union, are not open. Still theWestminster attack shows

how a “lone wolf” without any conventional weapons

could bring terror even to themost guarded zones. This

is the security challenge the British establishment, as

other governments, face today. If terror plots are

planned by networks that use modern communication

systems and amass weapons, the chances of detecting

themarehigher. But after the rise of the IS, its followers,

mostly radicalised youth, have used diferent tactics.

They stay of the intelligence radar, wait, and use even

commonly used public goods as weapons to kill.

It is still not clear if Masood had communicated with

an international terrorist organisation. The IS, that

claimed responsibility for the incident, described him

as a “soldier” of the Caliphate who responded to the

“call” to attack Western nations, but stopped short of

saying it directed the attack. If such attackers do not

have any contact with terrorist groups, it makes it dii-

cult for intelligence communities to detect them. To its

advantage, the IS has created a narrative where every

‘believer’ has the responsibility to take up weapons

against the ‘crusaders’ and their allies. Given that the

group also has a dynamic online propaganda system,

the challenges of radicalisation it poses remain. Bri-

tain’s immediate response has been commendable.

Both political and community leaders, barring the far-

right fringe, sent out a message of unity. But the bigger

challenge is to prevent more such non-conventional at-

tacks, for which security oicials need to have better

human intelligence and community relations. Equally

important is to deny the far right the opportunity to use

such actions by a handful of individuals and target the

majority of British Muslims, exactly what the terrorists

want.

Terror in LondonWednesday’s attack once again underlines

the challenges posed by ‘lone wolves’

The liberal-intellectual estab-lishment has of late begunlamenting the steady (and

they feel, terminal) decline of theIndian National Congress. It has al-most unanimously concluded thatthe main reason for this declineand fall is its vice-president RahulGandhi’s leadership, and that tillhe is at the helmof afairs (notwith-standing the party president SoniaGandhi), the party is heading forextinction. Most pundits havealready called the 2019 election forNarendra Modi. It is argued thatthere is no alternative pole, nochallenging leadership and no par-allel narrative or script. So Mr.Gandhi is doomed, and with himthe Congress.

The idea of IndiaThere are, of course, some whostill say that the party which wasthe vanguardof the freedommove-ment, and led by giants such asMa-hatma Gandhi and JawaharlalNehru, cannot be junked in thedustbin of history. With or withoutRahul Gandhi, or without even theGandhi-Nehru family at its apex,the party will revive from today’slow point. Their argument is thatthe party is in essence the DNA ofIndia itself, that the centrist and in-clusive character as well as the sec-ular-liberal-welfarist agenda of theGrand Old Party of India are thethreads that bind the country to-gether. Unity in diversity is not asloganor a clicheddescription, butthe true idea of India.

But the Congress is ill-equippedto ight the Bharatiya Janata Party

(BJP). The BJP has an ideology ofHindutva, howsoever vagueandvi-cious it may be. The party has avast cadre built over 90 years bythe Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS). The RSS has iniltrated al-most all institutions in the last 70years, despite the long Congressrule — the bureaucracy, academicinstitutions, the media, the police,the intelligence services, thearmed forces, even the judiciary.As a result, even if there was a gov-ernment led by the so-called lib-eral-secular Congress, the statemachinery was often controlled,sabotaged, derailed and manipu-lated by various shades of safron.There have been sleeper cells ofthe Sangh Parivar everywhere. Butwhat they did not have a irm griponwas political power.

The Congress is a party withoutcadre, without a well-deined ideo-logy or core like the RSS has. Infact, for most of the time, that wasan asset for the Congress. Therehave been all kinds of trends andtendencies in the party. Therewere Marxists, socialists, rightists,capitalists too and Lohiaites,casteists, linguistic chauvinists,and even Hindutva followers. It

was an umbrella party, which, un-der the overall leadership of Nehruirst and later Indira Gandhi, man-aged these contradictions.

Losing touchBut the global decline of socialismand the rise of market forces, thedawn of globalisation and its tech-nological spread—with the inform-ation-communication revolutionexempliied by the mobile phoneand Internet — created anew socio-political environment. This info-tech revolution gave rise to con-sumerism, hedonism and hyper-individualism. The ideas of collect-ivism (trade unionism, for in-stance), austerity and simple life,compassion and piety (as relectedin Gandhian values in ilms such asJagte Raho, Do Aankhen BarahHaath and Pyaasa), idealism andfaith in goodness began to be seenas outdated.

Though the Congress was notpractising Gandhianism or social-ism, it had respect for the valuestherein and before the advent ofthe newmobile phone-driven con-sumerist capitalism, it was pos-sible to live a simpler and collectivelife. In the last nearly quarter cen-

tury, the Congress lost touch withthe emerging new world. Its liber-alism and pluralism were chal-lenged by identitarian Hinduism,and its semi-socialism was con-fronted by market forces driven byliberalisation, globalisation andprivatisation. Indeed, thesepolicies were actually unleashedby the Congress itself in 1991-92.But the party could not have seenthat these forceswereattacking thevitals of Congress culture, ethosand broad ideological architec-ture. The BJP at once integratedright-wing economics with conser-vative Hindutva. That has provedto be a near fatal blow to the idea ofthe Congress, with its left-of-centreprogramme and multi-cultural-Sarvadharma-Samabhava knownas its version of secularism.

For a space of its ownThe question therefore is notmerely of the leadership of RahulGandhi, or the so-called dynasticcharacter of the party. Just bybringing in a new face ( JyotiradityaScindia, Sachin Pilot or KamalNath), the party cannot overnightstart building its cadre to matchthat of the communists or the RSS.The party cannot give up its masscharacter. It had maintained masscontact without the structuredcadre system. It cannot give uppluralism and an inclusive ap-proach. It cannot and must not be-come a “soft Hindutva” party to at-tract the safronised middleclasses, in India or among the dia-spora. The Congress cannot sacri-ice its idea of social justice andwelfarism. The Congress still has anetwork, though weakened in thelast decade, across the country,with roots in the legacy of the free-dom movement and GandhismandNehruvism. Theparty has neg-lected these strong roots. It has todeine, campaign and set its ownagenda, and not become a reactive

party merely responding to andquestioning theBJP.That approachonly strengthens Narendra Modi.He has a Telon character, nothingsticks, and no megalomaniac canbe challenged on his turf. The Con-gress has to create its own politicalspace with or without Rahul or theGandhis.

Mr. Modi is a transient phe-nomenon. The Congress is not atransient idea. Mr. Modi is not thefuture of the BJP. Neither he, northe RSS can represent the magnii-cent multi-cultural, multi-reli-gious, multi-dimensional India.Modernity does not mean usingmodern gadgets as Mr. Modi ap-pears to think. Modernity lies invalues, ideas andattitudes. It lies inhumanism, paciism, respect forall religions and cultures, faith incivilisation and hope for a betterfuture for thewholeworld, not justin becoming a superpower or at-taining membership of the UN Se-curity Council. That is Nehruvismin the Gandhian mould. The efer-vescence of theModimood cannotreplace those values, and thereforecannot last for too long. Modi-ismand the RSS have a limited shelflife. The Congress is a long-dis-tance runner.

Unfortunately, the Congress haslost this faith and conidence in it-self. It has been alicted by astrange identity crisis, and in panicit is looking for existential survivalin the face of supposed extinction.Even the so-called dynasty is tran-sient. Each person who believes inthe secular religiosity of MahatmaGandhi, in the vibrant idealism ofPandit Nehru and in the profoundlegacy of the freedom movementwill help resurrect the Congress.Its form may change, but the con-tent and substancewill reshape theorganisation and leadership.

Kumar Ketkar is a veteran journalist

Rediscovering its marathon selfWith its strong roots, the Congress has to set its own agenda, and not merely respond to the BJP

kumar ketkar

PTI

In a two paragraph order de-liveredbyChief JusticeAjit Singh,the Gauhati High Court has dis-

missed a public interest litigationiled by Rita Mozumder seeking adirection from the Central govern-ment to notify a separate time zonefor the Northeast. The court cites ahigh-level committee study, consti-tuted by theMinistry of Science andTechnology, that recognised thedif-iculties faced by a single time zonein eastern India but concluded thatIndian Standard Time (IST) shouldnonetheless be retained. The issuesraised by the petition demandedmore than a cursory order dismiss-ing the petition given the import-ance of the issue. Legislators, activ-ists, industrialists and ordinarycitizens from the Northeast have of-ten complained about the efect ofIST on their lives, and pursued theissue of having a separate time zonewith the Central government,without much success. The petitionarose after repeated rejections bythe government.

The idea of a standard time zonehas become so integral to our livesthat we often take it for granted andassume it to be apart of natural phe-nomena.We tend to forget the com-plex contestations — including legalones — that go into its making. The

creation of a time zone signals thevictory of time over space with geo-graphical areas being brought un-der a single time zone rather thanrelying on local solar time. It entailsa denial of local time — or a separa-tion of time from space — a very sig-niicant fact if you consider what itmeans to the experience of socialand economic lives. In the case ofIndia, the time diference betweenthe westernmost part of India andthe easternmost point is approxim-ately two hours, the efect of whichis that the sun rises and sets muchearlier than it does in the rest of thecountry.

There is a strong caseIn the Northeast, the sun rises asearly as four in the morning and inwinter it sets by four in the evening.By the time government oices oreducational institutions open,many daylight hours are alreadylost. In winter this problem getsevenmore accentuated and the eco-logical costs are a disaster withmuch more electricity having to beconsumed. Profs. D.P. Sengupta,andDilipAhuja of theNational Insti-tute of Advanced Studies claim thatadvancing IST by half an hourwould result in saving 2.7 billionunits of electricity every year. Noneof the other proposals such as theintroduction of daylight saving timein India has met with any approvaland it is felt that having two timezoneswould be unsuitable. There isof course a strong political dimen-sion to granting a separate timezone in the Northeast given the re-gion’s long history of self-determin-

ation movements. The unstated as-sumption is that the grant of adiferent time zone is only the irsttemporal step towards concedingspatial autonomy. This appears tome to be a short-sighted perspect-ive. If socioeconomic developmentis indeed one of the formulae tocombat insurgency, might it not beworthwhile to consider the dis-astrous impact that IST has on pro-ductivity and eiciency in theregion?

A few years ago, then AssamChief Minister Tarun Gogoi, frus-trated with the decision of theCentre not to have a separateNorth-east time, unilaterally decided thatAssam would follow ChaiBagaantime. Bagaan time or tea time is areference to an informal practicefollowed in tea gardens in Assamwhich is an hour ahead of IST. Italerts us to the fact that there is in-deed a long history of the applica-

tion of diferent time zones in India.We ind evidence of this in the Con-stituent Assembly debates. OnDecember 28, 1948, responding toan amendment proposed byNaziruddin Ahmad, Dr. Ambedkarasked himwhat system of timing hehad in mind: “Is it the Greenwichtime, the Standard time, Bombaytime or Calcutta time?”

Ambedkar’s reference to “Bom-bay time” and “Calcutta time” re-minds us of an interesting aberra-tion in the history of IST. It wasinstituted in 1905 but after it hadbeen adopted, Bombay tradersfound it diicult to convert to IST.Because the conversion to IST wassought to be efected at a timewhenthere was considerable public re-sentment over the Tilak seditiontrial, the government found littlesupport for this shift among thepeople in Bombay. Bombay Timewas maintained right up to 1955with Bombay following its own timezone which was 38 minutes aheadof the rest of the country.

Our use of timeWhile the court may have been reti-cent to intervene in what it sawprimarily as an executive prerogat-ive, it also passed an opportunity toexamine a fascinating dimension oftemporal justice that Indian courtshave not had an opportunity to ad-dress, but other jurisdictions havehad to contend with. In the U.S.,battles over daylight-saving timeregularly went to court and it wasnot until 1966 with the passing ofthe Uniform Time Act that they hada uniform national period of day-

light-saving time. Todd D. Rakof inhisworkon the invisibility of time instructuring the law argues thatthere is a normative dimension oftime that seems to underwrite anumber of legal arrangements, andthequestionof howwe, as a society,structureour time ismirrored in thequestion how we structure ourlaws.

Responding to the various objec-tions raised about a separate timezone, journalist, writer and aca-demic Sanjoy Hazarika raises crit-ical questions and asks us to con-sider why it is that the developmentindex leans considerably in favourof western India as opposed to theeast, and what impact diferentialtimemay have on it. This I believe isa question that has a signiicant im-pact on the interpretation of ‘life’ inArticle 21 of the Constitution. Evenif the Gauhati High Court were un-willing to issue a substantive order,it certainly had the discretion to askfor a study on the legal impact of asingle time zone on the funda-mental rights of people. This is per-haps a question that the Law Com-mission may ind worthy ofinvestigating further. In the mean-time, we will have to be contentwith the tweaking of local orderschanging oice timings etc. And,most of east India will continue tofeel the vagaries of IST an incon-veniencewhile the further you go tothe Northeast, it will be experi-enced as the caprice of the state.

Lawrence Liang is a professor of law atAmbedkar University, Delhi, currentlyteaching at Yale University

One India, two time zonesThe insistence on observing IST vis-à-vis Northeast India’s needs ignores its social and economic impact

lawrence liang

GETTYIM

AGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

Westminster attackThe terror attack in theheart of London, andwhichhas claimed lives andinjuredmany, is anothergrim reminder that theroots of this malaise rundeep (“IS claimsresponsibility for U.K.attack”, March 24). Themodus operandi was similarto the deadly attack in Nicelast year.Whether it is alone wolf attack in theWestor suicide bombings inAfghanistan and other areasofWest Asia, terrorism isnow spreading its tentacles.World leaders need to speakin one voice and be unitedin this big ight. For India, itis vital that intelligenceagencies put every shoulderto the wheel and remainalert.Shatayu Sahai,

Unnao, Uttar Pradesh

Meat industry in limboThe kind of over-the-topdrive using police power

against petty shop ownerswho earn their livelihoodsellingmeat shows utmostdisrespect for theprofession and their way oflivelihood as well (“Meattraders shut shop acrosswestern U.P.”, March 24). Itis shocking that even shopswith proper government-issued licences have beencoerced to shut downwithout providing theowners and employees anyothermeans of survival.This is a decision that goesagainst the ethos of ourdemocratic values andrights, and can also be seenas a desperate attempt toimpose a certain choice offood on people.Md. Farijuddin Khan,

NewDelhi

MP’s behaviourResorting to violence andhigh-handedmeans at thedrop of a hat tomuzzlepeople and impose theirwhims and fancies with

scant regard for sentimentsand the due process of thelaw has been the hallmarkof bigots. The shockingincident, where Shiv SenaMP Ravindra Gaikwadmanhandled an Air Indiaemployee on not beingallotted a business class seatin an all-economy light, isan example of this (“ShivSenaMP beats up AIemployee”, March 24). Theshow of arrogance of powerby an elected representativeof a responsible politicalparty, without any sense ofremorse, makes theincident evenmoredespicable.Instead of always being inthe limelight for the wrongreasons, the Shiv Sena couldgain wider politicalacceptability bychampioning the cause ofthe downtrodden. Theparty needs to understandthat the politics of hate anddivisiveness is subject to thelaw of diminishing returns.

An evolution of amodelcode of conduct for allelected representativesmust be done on awarfooting.B. Suresh Kumar,

Coimbatore

■ The incident is sickeningand reprehensible.Whatevermay be thereason for the provocation,theMP cannot beat upsomeone and remaindeiant. His party shouldtake disciplinary actionagainst him. The privilegesthat MPs enjoy are limited totheir conduct in Parliament;outside its precincts, theyare ordinary citizens. Theirconduct should be amodelfor others and this includesbeing responsible andcourteous.K.R. Jayaprakash Rao,

Mysuru

Bleak futureIt is disheartening that thegovernment, which is

supposedly committed touphold the greatness ofIndia, seems to be givingleast importance topreserving our ancientheritage and traditionalknowledge, possibly infavour of industrybehemoths (“Ancientknowledge hub faces greyfuture”, March 24). Instead,it seems bent upon takingsymbolic and potentiallyrabble-rousing activitiessuch as cow preservation tothe extremes.This government needs totake amore inclusive viewof the great culture andheritage of India and for thebeneit of all Indians.Joseph Andrews,

Bengaluru

But for a clauseThere is certainly a case forHIV patients to feelunhappy about the HIV Bill(March 22). Theirdisappointment anddispleasure are reasonable

as the clause to “providetreatment as far as possible”takes them nowhere. It is asgood as saying “no” tothem.Whenwe try to helpthose afected by a so-farincurable disease, whydilute options to help them?J. Eden Alexander,

Thanjavur

Jumbo’s rescueA 10-year-oldmale elephantseems to have been a bitcareless by falling into a65-feet dry well inCoimbatore, but the factthat forest oicials swunginto action andworkedpatiently to rescue it is bothmarvellous andmemorable.The pictures thataccompanied the reportbreathed life into the story(“Jumbo rescue efort,spread over two days, hashappy ending”, March 24).P.U. Krishnan,

Udhagamandalam, The Nilgiris

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letters emailed to [email protected] must carry the full postal address and the full name or the name with initials.

more letters online:

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CMYK

A ND-ND




Shaik Navab Jani, 32, is busy cookingrice and fish on a 15-metre mid-sizedmechanised fishing trawler anchored atthe harbour in Veraval. The coastaltown in Gujarat is considered to be oneof the biggest fishing and seafood hubsin western India with more than 8,000registered fishing boats and dozens ofprocessing factories exporting frozenfish. Jani, even as he cooks, is also ar-guing on his mobile phone with his“seth” (employer) for the full salarywhich was committed to him and hisother mates. The seth, he claims, hascut ₹8,000 from his consolidated salaryfor eight months. “You cannot cut mysalary as you had promised the fullamount,” he wails in broken Hindi, im-mediately switching to Telugu to trans-late for his fellow travellers huddlednear the boat on a jetty. “The seth andthe tandel (captain) promised ₹80,000for the season,” he tells his mates, whoalso appear angry and dejected. Thenegotiations go back and forth, in acurious mix of Hindi, Gujarati andTelugu.

Jani is one of several thousand singlemigrants, addressed as “Madrasis”here, who have journeyed from Viz-ianagaram, Srikakulam and Visakhapat-nam on the east coast to Veraval 2,000km away to work on mechanised fish-ing trawlers from August to Marchevery year. Away from their families foreight months of the year, the rough seasare their home, a home they revere andfear.

“Our problem is with payment. Theypromise ₹10,000 per month when wecome and then reduce it when it’s timefor us to leave. It’s unfair,” says Jani,quickly adding, “Our seth is god for us.We have no other problem here. Theygive us free food, good basmati rice andfresh fish. They even let us take 10-15 kgdried fish back home when we leave.But the payment is a problem as at theend of season, the seth tries to cut thesalary under the pretext of low catch.”

Life in a boatNo official figures are available butroughly 15,000 fishermen from AndhraPradesh are hired by the Gujarati sea-faring Kharva community in Veravaleach season. Locals prefer day-longfishing, venturing out before dawn andreturning as dusk settles in, in smallboats. The fishermen from Andhracome in handy for the long haul, fordeep-sea trips that sometimes last aweek. The migrants have been main-stays of the fishing industry here formore than two decades now.

Each boat carries 8-10 persons. Thetandel gets paid ₹15,000 to ₹20,000 amonth while khalasis (sailors) are paid

₹7,000-₹10,000 a month plus free food.Typically, in a month they are 20-25days out at sea. After each week-longtrip in which they venture as far as Goa,Karnataka and even Kerala, they unloadtonnes of catch at the jetty and preparethe boat — loading it with ice, diesel andration — the very next day for the nexttrip. There’s no home to go to for recu-peration; they live on boats even whenthe boats are anchored at the harbour.“For eight months, the boat is ourhome, as we do everything in it,” says35-year-old tandel Rayithi Erraiah fromSrikakulam district, who has worked inVeraval for two decades.

Locally built traditional fishing trawl-ers are around 15-20 metres long,powered by engines of 75-100horsepower, and fitted with a radiotransmitter and navigational instru-ments like GPS and echo-location fishfinders. On every boat, cabins are con-structed at the back of the deck. Thesecabins, just about 8x6 ft big, houseeight men at a time, along with the nav-igation equipment and the fishers’ lug-gage, safety kits and even small TVs andDVD players.

Erraiah says the low income fromfishing in traditional boats in his homeState forced him and thousands of oth-ers to migrate to Gujarat. As tandel, heis the literally the man in the middlebetween the seth and the khalasis, whoare hired through word of mouth or, asis often the case with the likes of Er-raiah, from the vicinity of the native vil-lage. As per the informal system, theseth pays a lump sum of ₹7-8 lakh to thetandel, who then pays the khalasis forthe entire season in advance. At the endof the season, there is a final stocktak-ing — if the catch is good and the seth ispleased, there are bonuses to be had,but there’s no guaranteeing them.

The push and pull factorsSeveral migrants in Veraval complainabout the low wages but at the sametime, they insist that back home theydon’t even get one-third of what theyearn in Gujarat. Jangaya, 44, from Kun-

jurvanipeta near Arasavilli in Srikaku-lam, has been coming to Veraval for 15years. A tandel, he gets around ₹18,000per month. “There’s no income fromfishing on the Andhra coast,” he says.The shortage of skilled manpower forfishing in Veraval is perennial, and theAndhra fishermen plug the gap.

According to the International Col-lective in Support of Fishworkers(ICSF), poverty remains a major factordriving migration. Last year, the ICSFcarried out a detailed study, ‘MigrantFishers from Andhra Pradesh in the Gu-jarat Marine Fishing Industry’, whichfound that of the 1,60,000 fisher famil-ies in Andhra Pradesh, 97% are belowthe official poverty line.

Chikati Polisamma, 50, a resident ofD. Machilesam in Etcherla mandal ofSrikakulam district on the Andhra-Odisha border, has had her husbandKorlayya leave every year for Veravalfor a decade now; most of the 3,000-odd men of this village work there. LastAugust, their eldest son Hariappadualso headed for the Gujarat town afterthe graduate’s year-long search went invain. “I have not given up hope and amensuring that my two other sons arealso well educated. They are in school,”she says.

Left to fend for herself, Polisammasoldiers on with her growing-up sons in

their two-room tenement. Every morn-ing, she goes to the shore to buy fishfrom the local fishers and travelsaround in shared autos selling them inthe streets of Etcherla and its adjoiningareas — public transport to the villagewas withdrawn a couple of years ago.Her earnings at the end of a long dayare a meagre ₹100.

While they are goneThere are many Polisammas in thisbackward district, selling fresh or driedfish to make their daily ends meet andstaying connected with their men onthe other coast through occasional mo-bile-phone calls. There are often scares.“My husband Pakkala Lakshmi acci-dentally crossed the border area inPakistan two years ago and was de-tained by the authorities. The fishingcommunity in Gujarat finally managedto secure his release,” says Ramulammaof D. Machilesam village. The fallinghealth of their men due to continuousexposure to sunlight and the elementsat sea remains a matter of concern, butthere’s wry humour too. “We are happythat they are deprived of booze duringtheir stay in Gujarat,” points outKondapalli Gavaramma from Srikur-mam in Gara mandal, whose husbandand two sons work there.

Of late, insurance has been made

compulsory for all the fishermen butPandodu’s family wasn’t so lucky. “Myhusband died of ill-health but we didn’tget any ex gratia or compensation as hehad no insurance. My son Ramu is nowin Veravel. I look after my grandson andearn a few bucks by selling dried fish,”says Guramma of Badiwadipeta village.

Andhra fishermen who’ve opted toventure out to Gujarat since the early1990s say their own coast is a long-run-ning saga of depleting catch. Thoughthe Visakhapatnam fishing harbour is100-200 km away, they are treated asoutsiders there. With fishing at homeno longer sustainable, there are somewho still do not want to take the Gujaratroute. But jobs are difficult to come by.

“After finishing my intermediate incommerce, I went to Chennai to un-dergo a seamen’s course for six monthsby spending ₹1 lakh but have been look-ing for a job for the past two years. Con-sultants who act as placement agentsfor various merchant vessels are insist-ing on a payment of ₹50,000 towardsservice charges, a sum I’ve been unableto arrange,” says Barri Hari, 21, fromEtcherla. Another youth, Gangala Lax-man, from the same area, is making doas a tailor. “Our demand for ST statushasn’t been granted. I completed myBA and BEd in 2011-12 but haven’t beento get a job,” says the aspiring teacherwho has attempted the District Selec-tion Committee Test twice.

Then there are some like ChikatiAppa Rao who turned their back onVeraval after a stint. He saw two of hiscrew members — fellow villagers — diein a freak mishap while jumping fromone boat to another in 2002. “Now I amhappy whenever I get some work andmanage the family with meagre earn-ings at my native place,” he says.

Giving them their dueVeraval produced 2.8 lakh tonnes ofmarine fish in 2014-15, out of which24,073 tonnes was exported, fetching₹361 crore in export earnings. Askedwhy they hand out a raw deal to theAndhra migrants, boat and fish pro-cessing unit owners deny any exploita-tion and take pains to explain how foodand medicines are never in short sup-ply. “We pay them handsome salariesand provide them ration,” claims TulsiGohel, president of the Veraval BoatOwners’ Association, who operates afleet of around a dozen boats and em-ploys over 30 migrant fishers. “I agreethat it’s hard work but they are paid ac-cordingly. It’s unlike Myanmarese bon-ded labourers on Thai fishing vessels,”says Kenny Thomas, who owns theJinny Marine processing units, drawingan eerie parallel. Thomas also claimsthat there has never been any com-plaint of labour abuse in Veraval.

Veraval’s fortunes in recent yearshave largely been built on the blood,sweat and tears of the Andhra migrants,and while they would feel short-changed every once in a while, thesobering reality is that this is their onlyescape from deprivation at home. Thisfishing season is at its end, and manyare preparing for the journey home andrelishing the prospect of being reunitedwith their families. But chances are thatcome August, most of them — andnewer recruits from their villages —would be retracing the rehearsed routefrom one coast to the other for anotherseason in the deep seas.

Second home: “Roughly 15,000 ishermen from Andhra Pradesh are hired by the Gujarati seafaring Kharva community in Veraval each season.” Hari, a migrant from Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh, works as a captain on a ishing boat in Veraval, Gujarat.(Below) Mylipalli Satyamma, from Etcherla mandal of Srikakulam district, speaks to her husband Lakshmaiah and sons who are now in Gujarat. * PRASHANT NAKWE; K.R. DEEPAK

The Andhra lavour in Gujarat’s ishEach ishing season, migrants from coastal Andhra Pradesh arrive in droves at Veraval.Mahesh Langa and Santosh Patnaik report on how this journey toescape poverty has built the fortunes of the coastal town in Gujarat

GROUND ZERO

CMYK

A ND-ND




NEWS

FROM PAGE ONE

However, when an NIA teamquizzed him, Paswan saidhe was only boasting abouthis involvement. “Bihar po-lice has told us that afterPaswan, recently two morepeople arrested for othercriminal offences confessedon their own to have com-mitted the Kanpur accident;we are not sure about theclaims and are investigat-ing,” said a senior NIAofficial.

During an election rallyin Gonda, Uttar Pradesh on

February 23, Prime MinisterNarendra Modi had said theKanpur accident was “a con-spiracy and conspiratorscarried it out sitting acrossthe border.”

However, Home MinisterRajnath Singh told Parlia-ment on Wednesday that“the Prime Minister did notdirectly mention ISI’s namein the Kanpur train derail-ment case” and investiga-tions in three train accidentswere yet to be completed bythe NIA.

Train attack suspectlees to Pakistan

Recalling the horror:Over 100 people were killed as theIndore-Patna Express derailed near Kanpur. * RAJEEV BHATT

In its financial stability re-port, RBI had said banksmay remain risk averse inthe near future as they cleanup their balance sheets andtheir capital position mayremain insufficient to sup-port higher credit growth.

According to RBI data,gross non-performing assetsof commercial banks in-creased to 9.1% of theirgross advances as ofSeptember 2016, from 5.1%a year earlier. Public sectorbanks share a dispropor-tionate burden of this stress.

In 2015, under the In-dradhanush plan, the gov-ernment had announcedcapital infusion of ₹70,000crore in public sector banksfor four years, starting from2015-16.

In the first two financialyears, ₹25,000 crore hadbeen earmarked per yearwith ₹10,000 crore to be dis-

bursed in each of the re-maining two years. Creditrating agencies had pointedout that the sum was insuffi-cient as banks needed tomeet Basel-III norms as wellas make provisions for risingbad loans.

Last week, United Bankof India, Andhra Bank, IOBand Dena Bank informedthe stock exchanges thatthey had received capital“as part of turnaround-linked infusion plan”.

Interestingly, for the firsttime, the employees’ unionshave been made a party tothe proposed agreement.The employees’ unions ofthese 10 banks met on Fri-day to decide the futurecourse of action.

The other lenders in-cluded in the list are Alla-habad Bank, Bank of India,Central Bank of India, DenaBank and UCO Bank.

Centre seeks banks’turnaround plans

The double murder againraised concerns among fam-ilies of Indian software pro-fessionals working in theU.S. as the incident comesclose on the heels of thegunning down of SrinivasKuchibhotla at Kansas andVamshi Reddy in California.

TDP MLA from Parchur Y.Sambasiva Rao got in touchwith the functionaries of theTelugu Association of NorthAmerica and requested CMN. Chandrababu Naidu tomake necessary arrange-ments for bringing back thebodies.

Mr. Naidu tweeted:“'Pained to hear about thekilling of Sasikala & son Saiin New Jersey, US. My con-dolences to the family mem-bers”.

The issue found an echoin Parliament with membersof both Houses demandingthat the matter be taken up

with the U.S. President bythe Prime Minister.

Raising the issue duringzero hour in the RS, Con-gress member T. SubbaramiReddy said the wife and theson of a software engineerwere “brutally killed” lastnight.

A.P. woman techie,sonmurdered in U.S.

The Uttar Pradesh police onFriday arrested two men forallegedly assaulting an acidattack survivor of the Dalitcommunity and forcing aciddown her throat while shewas on board a train toLucknow.

The two men had al-legedly gang-raped and at-tacked her with acid over aproperty dispute in herhome at Unchahar in RaeBareli in 2009.

The victim’s colleagues al-leged that she was forced todrink acid by the accused sothat she would not be able toraise her voice against them.

The police on Friday ar-rested the two accused,Bhondhu Singh and Guddu,residents of Rae Bareli, aftera case was registered at theGovernment Railway Police(GRP) station Charbagh un-der Section 326 (voluntarily

causing grievous hurt bydangerous weapons) and3(2)5 of the SC/ST Act.

Selfies invite flakFour RPF (Railway Protec-tion Force) jawans were sus-pended for negligence induty. The police has alsoordered action against threewomen constables after theyclicked selfies with the vic-tim by her hospital bed. Thepictures were widely circu-lated on social media.

A. Satish Ganesh, In-spector General Police (IGP)-Lucknow Zone, termed thethree constables “insensit-ive” and directed the DeputyInspector General (DIG) andthe Senior SuperintendentPolice (SSP), Lucknow, totake action. The victim, aresident of Rae Bareli, worksat a cafe in the State capital .She had gone home to RaeBareli on March 10 to takecare of her daughter, who is

appearing for Board examin-ations.

On Thursday morning,she was returning to Luc-know by the Ganga-GomtiExpress when, at the Mohan-lalganj railway station, twopersons attacked her andforced her to drink acid, po-lice said. The victim was ad-

mitted to the trauma centreof the King George’s MedicalCollege for treatment.

Chief Minister YogiAdityanath visited the victimat the hospital and promisedswift action against the cul-prits. “Necessary action willbe taken soon,” he tweetedsoon after his visit. The Chief

Minister also directed the po-lice to provide the victimwith security, while also an-nouncing ₹1 lakh assistanceto the woman.

Police ignored pleaThe victim’s colleaguesblamed the police for negli-gence, saying the womanhad sought police protectionin the past due to threats re-ceived by her but the officialsdid not pay heed to it.

According to Stop Acid At-tacks, an NGO working withacid attack survivors, the vic-tim was allegedly gang-rapedin 2009 by the two suspects.After she filed a complaint,the two accused allegedlyphysically assaulted her andon December 25, 2013 at-tacked her with acid. Thevictim also received a freshthreat letter on January 18,after which the police andadministration assured helpand security.

Rape victim forced to drink acid, 2 heldU.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath visits her at hospital, promises swift action against culprits

Reaching out: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath leaving thehospital in Lucknow on Friday * PTI

Omar Rashid

Lucknow

Mulayam kin, BSP leadermeet U.P. Chief MinisterLUCKNOW

U.P. Chief Minister Yogi

Adityanath on Friday had two

unexpected guests — SP

patriarch Mulayam Singh

Yadav’s younger daughter-in-

law Aparna Yadav and BSP

leader Ramvir Upadhya — at

the VVIP guest house here

where he was staying. Ms.

Yadav lost from the Lucknow

Cantt seat. The meeting,

termed a “courtesy call”, has

raised eyebrows as Ms. Yadav

had also attended a public

function of PM Narendra

Modi in the State capital

earlier. She arrived with a

bouquet of flowers and was

present for around 20

minutes. PTI

Delhi questions NYTeditorial on AdityanathNEW DELHI

The Ministry of External

Affairs responded strongly to

the New York Times editorial

on Thursday, which referred

to the election of Yogi

Adityanath as the Chief

Minister of Uttar Pradesh as a

“shocking rebuke to religious

minorities” of India. “All

editorials or opinion are

subjective by their very

nature. This case is

particularly so. The wisdom of

doubting the verdicts of

genuine democratic exercises

is quite questionable, both at

home and abroad,” said

spokesperson of the Ministry

of External Affairs Gopal

Baglay. The New York Times

editorial came a day before

another international

publication, The Economist,

referred to the new Uttar

Pradesh Chief Minister as

“Agent Orange”.

‘Will lions in U.P.’s zooslive on palak paneer?’NEW DELHI

A Congress member in the

Lok Sabha on Friday appeared

to be raking up the issue of

meat shortage in Uttar

Pradesh as he wondered if

lions in the State’s zoos

would have to survive on

“palak paneer“. Adhir Ranjan

Chowdhury said that he “felt

bad” after coming to know

that in several zoos in Uttar

Pradesh, lions were not given

meat, and instead were fed

with chicken. According to

reports, there is a shortage of

meat for animals kept in zoos

in Uttar Pradesh, with the

new BJP government in the

State cracking down on illegal

and mechanised slaughter

houses. PTI

Pious ofering: PrimeMinister Narendra Modi hands over a chaadar (shawl) — to be ofered atthe Ajmer dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti — to Parliamentary Afairs Minister MukhtarAbbas Naqvi (left) and UnionMinister Jitendra Singh in NewDelhi on Friday. * PTI

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From Delhi to dargah

The Supreme Court on Fri-day sought a responsefrom the Election Commis-sion on a plea seeking aprobe into allegations oftampering of ElectronicVoting Machines (EVMs)during polls, including therecent Assembly electionsin five States.

A Bench headed byChief Justice of India J.S.Khehar took on board thepetition filed by advocateM.L. Sharma wherein a dir-ection was sought from thecourt to probe the allega-tions of EVM tamperingand its possibility.

No notice to CBIThe court, however, didnot issue notice to the CBI,though it was arraigned asa party in the petition.

The plea sought examin-ation of the “quality, soft-ware/malware and hackingeffect in the EVMs from areliable electronic lab/sci-entist and software expertand to file their report be-fore this court for furtheraction/prosecution.”

The petitioner hadsought a direction for regis-tering an FIR to investigatethe alleged tampering ofEVMs “for vested interestby the political party andto file report before the Su-preme Court.”

The petitioner referredto allegations of EVM tam-pering in the recent As-sembly elections in fiveStates and Maharashtracivic polls.

SC seeks ECreply on EVMtamperingLegal Correspondent

NEW DELHI

It is necessary for the UnitedStates to keep its commit-ment to the United Nations,said India’s former diplo-mats at the UN, includingformer U.S. Under-SecretaryGenerals and key peace-keeping officials at a func-tion in the national capitalon Friday.

“The U.S., that has beenthe unipolar dominantpower at the U.N., remainedbroadly committed to itsU.N. responsibilities despitefeeling frustrated by the UNSecurity Council, so far. Butnow that has changed. Seri-ous questions like whetherthe U.S. will withdraw from

the U.N. are being asked,”said Mr. Shashi Tharoor,Member of Parliament, re-ferring to the Trump admin-istration’s reported plans tocut funding to the UnitedNations.

Budget cutAccording to a report pub-lished by online portal For-eignPolicy.com this week,the U.S. government plansto cut its U.N. contributionby as much as 40% in theupcoming budget year,which would severelycripple U.N. programmesgiven that the U.S. contrib-uted over $2 billion to theU.N.’s $8 billion budget lastyear.

‘U.S. should keep UNcommitments’

India’s former UN diplomats urge


NEW DELHI

Mohsin Raza is the soleMuslim member in the newlyformed Yogi AdityanathCabinet. He is a Minister ofState in-charge of Waqf andHaj departments along withScience and Technology,Electronics and IT portfolios.A former first-class cricketer,Raza speaks about the newgovernment’s priorities inUttar Pradesh. Excerpts:

Howdifferent are youexpecting your innings inpolitics?■ I think it will be successful.We have a good team, a goodcaptain and two good vice-captains. We trust ourcaptain and are confidentthat we would manage to geta lot of work done by the 50overs.

Whatwill be your firststep asminister?■ The directions togovernment officials areclear: to work on thepromises made by us in oursankalp patra (manifesto).We will keep all ourpromises made to people.

The BJP has fewMuslimrepresentatives. Tell usabout your associationwith the party.

■ I was first exposed to theBJP ideology in 1996. AtalBihari Vajpayee wascontesting election fromLucknow and I heard few ofhis speeches, which had adeep influence on me...Atalji charmed the audienceand connected with the lastperson in the line. He spokehis heart. As time passed,and he became PrimeMinister, I even madeattempts to meet him andhad the chance to do so afew times.

I decided that if I everenter politics, I will do itthrough this party.

What do youmean by the“BJP’s ideology?”■ The BJP thinks for the lastperson in society. Otherparties have kept Muslimsaway from the BJP for solong by inducing fear.

If you go back in history,what did the so-calledMuslim well-wishers do forMuslims? Those in theMuslim League sold us to beused by the Congress andmigrated to Pakistan.

Till date what has theCongress given to Indianminorities? They claim theyare secular, but they gave usmadrasas with the clearagenda of keeping us away

from the mainstream.

Don’tMuslims havereason to feel insecure bythe RSS’ ideology andgoal of a Hindu Rashtra?■ That is a big debate. This isnot true from any angle. Allthese unsubstantiated ideasare thrown about to triggerpanic among people. TheRSS is a social serviceorganisation. It was formedto serve the society. Howcan anyone think negativelyabout it? Can’t we all see thenew heights the RSS hasbrought to the countrytoday? And still people arelooking for faults. Shame onthem.

It is believed thatMuslimsare averse to beingassociatedwith the BJP.■ Because they have beentold so.Woh bechare tohhamare saath hai. (Thosepoor ones are with us).

Will youwork in thedirection to connectMuslims to BJP?■ Definitely. Our party isalready doing it. We raisedthe triple talaq issue. We willshow you in 2019 howMuslims will openly vote forthe BJP at the mass level.They voted this time behindthe veil. Our peoplethreatened them. They[Muslim women] could nottalk openly about it but theyvoted for the BJP. You willsee that more and moreMuslims will join the BJP infuture. What do they want,after all? Employment, notguns, pens and shovels.

BJP accuses SP, BSP andCongress ofMuslimappeasement.What isyour opinion?■ Which parties were talkingabout Muslims andscreaming their namesduring the election? Theyhad a hint that the BJP isgetting a good majority, sothey were all running an

agenda. But people did notlet them succeed. Peoplecontinued their support toModiji, stuck todevelopment and trust. BJPfaced allegations that it didnot field a single Muslim Isthis not sabka saath sabkavikaas, they accordedministerial berth to a personwho is not a member of anyHouse. What do they have tosay now? Don’t doubt theintention and policy of theBJP. Our intention is clear,that is why peoplesupported Modiji and AmitShahji.

Yogi Adityanath is anadvocate of Hindutva...■ He has never saidanything anti-Muslim. Heonly speaks of people whotalk such things. Who wouldnot?

What about theprovocative speechesmade by Yogi Adityanathfrom the stage?■ He is a mahant. How canyou ever expect that areligious man would do orlet wrong things happen?There can be no betteradministrator than him.

He is not at all anti-Muslim. He is a rashtravadi(nationalist).

‘No better administrator than Yogi’‘We will show you in 2019 howMuslims will openly vote for the BJP at the mass level’

Omar Rashid

<> Yogi Adityanath is

not at all anti-

Muslim. He is a

rashtravadi

(nationalist)

INTERVIEW | MOHSIN RAZA

The Supreme Court on Fri-day asked the Centre to re-spond to a petition seekingto bar convicted personsfrom contesting polls for lifeand preventing their entryinto the judiciary and theexecutive.

A Bench comprisingJustices Ranjan Gogoi andNavin Sinha asked the gov-ernment to file its reply intwo weeks and posted the

matter for further hearingon April 18.

Recently the ElectionCommission had endorsedthe plea filed by advocateAshwini Upadhyay, agreeingthat a uniform ban would bein the spirit of fundamentalrights of the Constitution, in-cluding the right to equality.

As of now, a person, onconviction, is debarred fromcontesting any elections forthe period of his or herprison sentence and six

years thereafter.The Commission in its af-

fidavit had said that it was“alive to the issues that con-cern the conduct of free andfair elections and function-ing of healthy democracyand as such asserting forbringing in electoral reformswhich further the cause offree and fair elections.”

The Election Commissionsaid it has already submitteddetails proposal for pollreforms.

Plea to bar convicts frompolitics: SC seeks govt. viewCourt posts matter for further hearing on April 18

Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI

Indicating at cross-borderterrorism emanating fromPakistan, India and Russiaon Friday pointed at “un-friendly countries” thatmight create hindrances inbilateral ties.

Discussion over the issuecame up during the meetingbetween Union HomeMinis-ter Rajnath Singh and Dir-ector of the Federal SecurityService of the Russian Fed-eration (FSB), AlexanderBortnikov.

“The Home Ministerhighlighted the sponsoringof terrorism by our neigh-bouring country, which is athreat not only to India andinternational communitybut to the humanity as awhole. Shri Singh reiteratedthat India has a policy ofzero tolerance for terror-ism,” said a government re-lease issued after themeeting.

The reference to terror-ism emanating fromPakistan signifies a continu-ity of India’s concerns.

Russia’s security chief,Rajnath discuss terrorSpecial Correspondent

NEW DELHI

Law enforcement officialshave denied the killingswere a hate crime or a res-ult of bias against the In-dian origin of the victims,according to a statementprovided to PTI by the Burl-ington County Prosecutor’sOffice. “The preliminaryprobe revealed the victimswere stabbed multipletimes,” the statement said.

Not a hatecrime: Police

In happier times:Narra Hanumantha Rao with his wifeSasikala and son Anish Sai. * SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

The State government willtake steps to make Goa In-dia’s first beggar-free State,Chief Minister Manohar Par-rikar announced in hisBudget speech on Friday.

“We will conceive a fullfledged rehabilitation centrefor beggars and destitute,”Mr. Parrikar told the StateAssembly while speaking on“social welfare, women andchild development, and tri-bal welfare” during thecourse of his Budget speech.

Mr. Parrikar said despitethe Goa, Daman and DiuPrevention of Begging Act,1972, “the number of beg-gars [are] increasing day-by-day”. He announced thescrapping of State PlanningBoard, and proposed tocome up with an alternativeto it.

The Chief Minister said inorder to tighten and stream-line the bureaucracy, he willimplement the Goa (Right ofCitizens to Time-bound De-livery of Public Services)Act, 2013.

‘Will make Goa beggar-free’Special Correspondent

PANAJI

CMYK

A ND-ND




NEWS

SC poser on witnessprotection schemeNEW DELHI

Questioning the failures of

Haryana and U.P. in

implementing the witness

protection schemes, the SC

on Friday asked them to give

security to the witnesses in

rape cases against Asaram

Bapu. “It’s high time, why are

you not implementing the

witness protection scheme.

The witnesses in criminal

cases need to be protected,”

said a bench of justices A. K.

Sikri and Ashok Bhushan. PTI

IN BRIEF

Sonia is back, hale andhearty, says CongressNEW DELHI

Congress president Sonia

Gandhi, who had gone abroad

for a medical check-up,

returned home on Thursday

night. Ms. Gandhi was

accompanied by her son

Rahul Gandhi. The 70-year-

old leader is doing fine, party

sources said. PTI

Govt. staff barred fromwearing jeans at workBAREILLY

Government employees in the

district have been asked not

to wear jeans and T-shirts at

work, while hospital staff

here will have their day’s

salary cut if they do not

adhere to the dress code. “All

govt. employees should come

in formal dress only,” the

order by District Magistrate

Surendra Singh said. PTI

Centre seeks apologyfrom NDTV IndiaNEW DELHI

The Centre on Friday insisted

in the Supreme Court that

Hindi TV channel NDTV India

tendered an apology for

allegedly violating telecast

norms during the Pathankot

terror attack last year. The

Supreme Court Bench posted

the matter for further hearing

on March 31. PTI

The British authorities havestarted the legal process toextradite wanted business ty-coon Vijay Mallya to India.However, it is not certain ifthe legal process would cul-minate in his return to Indiato face charges as India-U.K.Extradition Treaty allows awanted person to seek sev-eral guarantees before beingextradited.

“The U.K. Home Office,on February 21, 2017 hasconveyed that the requesthas been certified by the Sec-retary of State and sent toWestminster Magistrates’Court for a District Judge toconsider issuing an arrestwarrant,” said MEA spokes-person Gopal Baglay onFriday.

The MEA had made aformal request to extraditeMr. Mallya as per the treatywhich was handed over tothe British High Commissionin New Delhi through a dip-lomatic note of request or‘note verbale’ sent on Febru-

ary 8, 2017.Mr. Mallya, who led the

now defunct Kingfisher Air-lines, is wanted by a consor-tium of banks for defaultingon loans amounting to morethan ₹9,000 crore.

Positive developmentStarting of the legal processin London is a positive devel-opment in the case whichhas faced difficulties fromthe beginning. Mr. Mallya’spassport was revoked by theMEA on April 24, 2016. How-

ever, the U.K. had expressedits inability to deport Mr.Mallya as he has been livingthere on a valid U.K. visa.

The Hindu had earlier re-ported, Indian agencies areworried that Mr. Mallya, whoholds a legal residency ofU.K. since 1992, might followthe Lalit Modi example anddelay his extradition. In thatcase, India has not been ableto make headway in bringinghim back. Interpol has alsonot accepted the request fora Red Notice against him.

The Extradition Treaty,however, has several provi-sions under which a personcan seek exemption from ex-tradition to India citing sev-eral grounds. Indicating atthe slow process of extradi-tion from the U.K., Ministerof State for External AffairsV.K. Singh on Friday said inresponse to a question in theRajya Sabha that the U.K. hasextradited only one personin the last five years throughthe route laid down in the ex-tradition treaty which cameinto force in 1993.

“As on date, a total of 10extradition requests madeby the Government of Indiain respect of fugitive crimin-als namely Rajesh Kapoor,Tiger Hanif, Atul Singh, RajKumar Patel, Jatinder KumarAngurala, Asha Rani Angur-ala, Sanjeev Kumar Chawla,Shaik Sadiq, Ashok Malikand Vijay Vittal Mallya arepending with the U.K. gov-ernment,” Mr. Singh said inresponse to a questionraised by Rajya Sabha MPfrom Goa Shantaram Naik.

Mallya may be extraditedBritish authorities initiate process to send back business tycoon to India


NEW DELHI

The Indian Council of His-torical Research (ICHR) is setto undertake an archaeolo-gical exploration to find outwhether the Ram Setu is anatural or man-made phe-nomenon.

It will undertake the ex-ploration in October andNovember, before decidingwhether a detailed under-water archaeological excava-tion is required to probedeeper, said ICHR chairmanY. Sudershan Rao.

Also known as Adam’sBridge, Ram Setu is a stretchof limestone shoals runningfrom Pamban Island nearRameswaram in Tamil Naduto the Mannar Island nearthe northern coast of SriLanka. While there are geo-logical theories on its nat-ural formation, manyHindus believe it was builtby the army of Lord Ram togo to Lanka to wage war

with its king, Ravana.“In October and Novem-

ber, we will try to figure outwhether more is required onthis. We will also publish ourfindings,” Professor Rao toldjournalists.

The ICHR linked the ex-cavation to a two-week ses-sion on ocean archaeology itwill hold in May or June.Professor Alok Tripathi ofAssam University at Silcharis being roped in to impart

training to 15-20 researchersinto theoretical aspects ofocean archaeology. After thetraining, the researchers willbe roped in to undertake theexcavation of Ram Setu.

The plan for a Sethusamu-dram shipping canal projectto cut travel time for ships —as they could not cross theshallow Ram Sethu other-wise — is hanging fire as bothHindu groups and environ-mentalists have opposed it.

Exercise to determine if underwater excavation is required

Vikas Pathak

NEW DELHI

Myth or truth? A ile photo of dredging carried out in the PalkStraits as part of the Sethusamudram shippng canal project.

ICHR to study if Ram Setuis man-made or natural

The government on Fridaytook strong exception to theSupreme Court’s observa-tion on pensions for mem-bers of Parliament, assuringthe Lok Sabha that membersof Parliament had full rightsunder the law to legislate onthe matter.

Speaking for the govern-ment, Minister for Parlia-mentary Affairs Ananth Ku-mar said, “I think everymember of the House agreesthat the right of the House issacrosanct. Parliament hasevery right to decide aboutsalaries and allowances of

the MPs.” He told SpeakerSumitra Mahajan that “theentire House is with you onthe matter.” Mr. Kumar's re-sponse came after a numberof opposition MPs raise theissue of the Supreme Court's

reported comments that80% of former law markersare “crorepatis”.

On Thursday too, UnionFinance Minister Arun Jaitleyhad said in the Rajya Sabhathat Parliament alone hadthe authority to decide onhow much pension MPs candraw and inter-institutionaldiscipline has to berespected.

Transgressing rightsIn the Lok Sabha, it was Trin-amool Congress’s SaugataRoy who raised the issueduring Zero Hour, statingthat while the SC was trans-gressing its rights, Parlia-

ment was not asking whyformer judges were beinggiven pensions. “The SC istransgressing its rights. It isan exclusive right of Parlia-ment to decide on the issue.We are not asking why SCjudges are being paid pen-sion. We should take a standon the issue,” he said.

The Supreme Court hadon Tuesday reportedly saidthat pensions and perks toMPs seemed ‘prima facie’unreasonable and hadsought responses from theCentre and the ECI on a pleaseeking the scrapping ofpension and other perks be-ing given to MPs.

MPs irked as SC questions pensionsOnly Parliament can decide on perks for members, says Minister Ananth Kumar


New Delhi

Parliamentary Afairs MinisterAnanth Kumar speaking in theLok Sabha on Thursday. * PTI

The Centre assured the Ra-jya Sabha on Friday thatchildren would not be de-prived of midday meals ifthey did not have anAadhaar number.

“I want to tell this Housethat no one will be de-prived of midday meals.Everybody will get middaymeal and they will getAadhaar card as well,” Hu-man Resource Develop-ment Minister PrakashJavadekar said in responseto concerns expressed byCongress leader MotilalVora during Zero Hour.

Asserting that the gov-ernment had madeAadhaar mandatory underthe midday meal scheme,Mr. Vora said: “It seems thegovernment has decided totake away the free foodscheme from school chil-dren.” Mr. Javadekar said alarge number of beneficiar-ies already had an Aadhaarnumber and facilitieswould be made to enrolother students. Where fa-cilities for an Aadhaarnumber could not be madeavailable, the States wouldprovide unique numbers tothe students.

Middaymealseven withoutAadhaar: govt.


NEW DELHI

Amidst a buzz about earlyelections in Gujarat, BJPpresident Amit Shah will ad-dress booth workers of theparty and hold a series ofcrucial meetings with topleaders, including Chief Min-ister Vijay Rupani during histwo day visit to Gujarat nextweek. Mr Shah is also likelyto attend the Assembly pro-ceedings on March 30 as BJPMLA.

On March 29, Mr Shahwill address a convention ofthe BJP’s booth workers atthe Sabarmati riverfront inAhmedabad where he willalso be felicitated by theState party leaders for thelandslide win in the UttarPradesh and UttarakhandAssembly polls.

“Around one lakh boothworkers from across theState are expected to attendthe convention to be ad-dressed by the national pres-ident,” Gujarat BJP mediacell convener Dr HarshadPatel said.

This will be Mr. Shah'sfirst visit to his home State

after the BJP's mega elect-oral victories in politicallycrucial Uttar Pradesh wherethe party wrested powerfrom Samajwadi Party.

Tomeet CM, MinistersAccording to sources in thegovernment, Mr. Shah is ex-pected to have a long meet-ing with Chief MinisterRupani and other ministersand subsequently a largescale bureaucratic reshuffleis likely to gear up for the As-sembly polls.

“There will likely betransfers of district collect-ors, district development of-ficers (DDOs) and District

Superintendent of police(SP) in the beginning of Aprilbesides a few changes in thesenior bureaucracy as thereare many vacancies to befilled,” a senior official in thegovernment said.

Congress gears upMeanwhile, the main oppos-ition party, the Congress,has also launched Statewidepreparations with the as-sumption that Assemblypolls will be held betweenMay and June.

The party has appointedobservers to prepare a panelfor each of 182 assembly seg-ments in the State.

On March 20, the Opposi-tion party had organised ameeting of ticket aspirants inwhich more than 1,500party leaders and workersshowed interest in seekingtickets to contest in the As-sembly polls.

Large-scale bureaucratic changes likely ahead of elections


AHMEDABAD

Amit Shah

Amid buzz of early polls,Amit Shah to visit Gujarat

<> Around one lakh

booth workers

expected to attend

convention

Amit Shah

BJP president

Over three years after join-ing the Navy, the country’ssole aircraft carrier INSVikramaditya on Friday suc-cessfully carried out themaiden test of the newly in-stalled Barak short rangesurface-to-air missile.

“During the firing carriedout in the Arabian Sea, themissile was fired against alive, low-flying, high-speedtarget. The target was suc-cessfully engaged and des-troyed,” a Navy officer said.

The 44,500 tonne carrierwas commissioned into theNavy in November 2013 atSeverodvinsk in Russia and

was originally scheduled tohave the long range surface-to-air missile system underjoint development with Is-rael. But delay in its devel-opment resulted in the car-rier being inducted into theforce without its own air de-fence system, and forcing itto rely on support ships inthe carrier battle group forair cover.

The firing was conductedas part of the operationalreadiness inspection of theWestern Fleet by Vice-Ad-miral Girish Luthra, Flag Of-ficer Commanding-in-Chiefof the Western Naval Com-mand, fromMarch 21-23, theNavy said in a statement.

INS Vikramaditya iressurface-to-air missileNewly installed Barak missile tested


NEW DELHI

Chandu Babulal Chavan, theIndian soldier who was re-turned by Pakistan after fourmonths in captivity, said hewas so fed up with the tor-ture by Pakistanis that he of-ten prayed for death while intheir custody.

“I was assaulted. I toldthem: Kill me. I realised thatthis was the end of the roadfor me,” Mr. Chavan, whowas handed over to India onJanuary 21, said on Friday inan interview to a Marathichannel. The 22-year-oldhad crossed into Pakistan on

September 29, the day Indiahit terror launch pads acrossthe Line of Control, 10 daysafter an attack by suspectedPakistani militants on acamp in Uri that killed 19soldiers.

Describing the scenarioafter he was caught byPakistani soldiers for stray-ing across the border, Mr.Chavan said, “They checkedme, took out my clothes, puton black robes [on me] andtook me away in a vehicle.”

“When I used to bang myhead and ask them to killme, they gave me injectiondoses. They used to beat me.There came a time that Ididn’t have any more tearsin my eyes,” he said.

“I did not understandwhether it was day or night.I used to pray God to end mylife,” he said.

I prayed for death duringcaptivity in Pak., says jawanChandu Babulal Chavan was released in January this year


Mumbai

Chandu Babulal Chavan

Lok Sabha Speaker SumitraMahajan said on Friday thatas the presiding officer ofthe House, she could nottake suo motu cognizance ofthe incident involving ShivSena MP Ravindra Gaikwadthrashing an Air India offi-cial, as the incident hadtaken place outside thepremises of Parliament.

She did, however, addthat people should behaveproperly with each other.

“I cannot take suo motucognizance of the incidentas it occurred outside thepremises of Parliament.Lekin, hamare beech mainvyavahar theek hona chahiye(we should behave properlytowards each other),” shesaid when asked about theincident.

She said she had receiveda letter from the MP but itwas about the vyavastha (ar-rangements) of Air India.

Ministers condemnMinisters, however, weresharp in their criticism ofMr. Gaikwad.

Minister for Minority Af-fairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvisaid, “This is in bad taste. Ifan elected representative be-haves like this, it is a setbackto the trust of people. Actionis being taken as per law.This incident cannot be jus-tified in any way.”

Nationalist CongressParty leader and formerCivil Aviation Minister Praful

Patel said the MP should bebarred from flying.

“The question is firstwhat happened; then he isnot repenting. He does notwant to accept that he hasdone something wrong. Heshould not be allowed to flyon any airline, why only AirIndia. Even the police actionshould be very strict [againsthim] as there is a lot of evid-ence. He should be cen-sured... The Ethics Commit-tee should take action. Heshould not be defended bycolleagues in Parliament.People should realise thatdefending him will bringmore bad name to politi-cians and MPs. I agree withthe decision to put him onthe ‘no flight’ list and they[airlines] should not buckle

under any pressure,” Mr. Pa-tel said.

Congress leader Mallikar-jun Kharge termed the incid-ent as “condemnable” andsaid MPs from any party, beit the Shiv Sena, the BJP orthe Congress, should not be-have in such a manner. “Heis stating that he himself hasbeaten [the staff ]. This typeof behaviour is condem-nable. The Civil AviationMinister has condemnedthis act,” he said.

“People should not createa controversy in order tobring down the status andreputation of an institution.MPs should behave carefullyand politely and at the sametime other staff should alsobehave courteously,” Mr.Kharge said.

Speaker ducks action onSena MP’s assault of AI stafSays she can’t act as the incident took place outside House


New Delhi

Not so rosy: AamAadmi Sena activists hold roses and slippersas they protest against Shiv SenaMP Ravindra Gaikwad at theIGI Airport in NewDelhi on Friday. * PTI

CMYK

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Hosni Mubarak freedafter six yearsCAIRO

Egypt’s ousted PresidentHosni Mubarak returnedhome on Friday after winningacquittals and release from aCairo hospital, where he wasdetained for years. He wasacquitted over his role in thekillings of hundreds whodeied his rule. AP

ELSEWHERE

Man blows self upnear Dhaka airportDHAKA

A man carrying a bomb blewhimself up in front of a policecheckpoint near Bangladesh’sinternational airport onFriday, the third incidentinvolving explosives in Dhakain a week. No group claimedresponsibility for the blast,though it was reported onIslamic State’s news agencyAmaq. REUTERS

Tamil National Alliancehails UN resolutionCOLOMBO

The Tamil National Alliance,Sri Lanka’s main Tamil Party,on Saturday welcomed theUN Human Rights Councildecision giving the Sri Lankangovernment two more yearsto set up its accountabilitymechanism to probe thealleged war crimescommitted during the civilwar with the LTTE. PTI

11 dead as migrant boatsinks off Turkey coastANKARA

Eleven people drowned andfour were missing after amigrant boat sank offTurkey's Aegean coast onFriday, local media reported.The bodies of the dead werefound on a shore in thewestern province of Aydin,the private Dogan newsagency reported. AFP

The police on Friday an-nounced two “significant”arrests in connection withthe attack outside the BritishParliament this week, asthey sought to unravel themurky past of the 52-year-old assailant, who they saidwas born Adrian RussellAjao.

Mark Rowley, AssistantCommissioner of the Metro-politan Police, said that ninepeople were in custody andbeing questioned as part ofthe investigation into the as-sailant, identified onThursday by another namehe used, Khalid Masood.

Mr. Rowley said the toll offatalities from the attack hadrisen to four with the deathovernight of Leslie Rhodes,75, from the Streatham areaof south London. The vic-tims included at least 50wounded and came fromaround the world, a “poin-ted reminder”, he said, ofthe global reach of theassault.

Mr. Rowley said the policewere focusing on severalquestions regarding Masood,who had a criminal recordbut had never been con-victed of terrorism: What ledhim to be radicalised? Hadhe acted alone? Did he re-ceive direction from a sourceat home or overseas?

On Thursday, the IslamicState claimed responsibility

for the attack, but the extentof the militant group’s con-nections to the assailantwere unclear. Masood, whowas widely identified in Brit-ish news reports lateThursday by another name,Adrian Elms, threw the heartof the capital into chaos onWednesday when he drove asport utility vehicle into ped-estrians on WestminsterBridge and then killed a po-lice officer with a knife out-side the Parliamentcomplex.

Mr. Rowley emphasisedthat there was no evidence

of further security threats,adding that the counterter-rorism operation was largeand moving quickly, withhundreds of officersmobilised.

Seized materialThe police were searchingfive addresses, had con-cluded 16 searches and weresifting through 2,700 seizeditems, including hugeamounts of computer data,and video footage taken bypassers-by on WestminsterBridge at the time of the at-tack, Mr. Rowley said.

One person was arrestedovernight in the West Mid-lands region of England,where several people hadbeen detained earlier, and asecond was taken into cus-tody in the northwest of thecountry, he said. Another in-dividual was released.

Authorities had held offreleasing information aboutMasood, and Rowleythanked the news organisa-tions that had delayed pub-lishing details about the as-sailant in order to giveinvestigators more time topursue leads. NYT

Twomore held over London attackOne person was arrested fromWest Midlands while the other was held in northwest England

In solidarity: LondonMayor Sadiq Khan shakes hands with a police oicer outside the Housesof Parliament inWestminster on Friday. * AP

DAN BILEFSKY

LONDON

Belgian authorities havecharged a Tunisian manwith terror-related of-fences after he allegedlydrove his car at high speedaround a busy shoppingarea in Antwerp.

The Federal prosec-utor’s office said on Fridaythat Mohamed R., 39, wascharged with “attemptedmurder in a terror con-text”, and gun offences.After driving in the areaaround the Meir shoppingroad on Thursday, he wasarrested at the port docks.No one was injured. Au-thorities found knives, ashotgun and a gas can con-taining an unknown liquidinside the car.

Despite reports thatpeople had to jump out ofthe way of the vehicle, sev-eral shop owners in themain Meir shopping areacontacted by the Associ-ated Press said they heardor saw nothing unusual.

An official at the prosec-utor’s office said the sus-pect had been “under theinfluence”. AP

AntwerpdriverchargedAssociated Press

Brussels

Long before his short stintsin jail turned into years be-hind bars, Khalid Masoodwas known as Adrian Elms,with a reputation for drink-ing and an unpredictabletemper.

At least twice he was con-victed of violent crimes,well before he stabbed a po-lice officer to death Wednes-day with a motion one hor-rified witness described aslike “playing a drum onyour back with two knives”.

But as he checked out ofhis hotel to head towardLondon for his deadly ram-page, the manager of thehotel said he was struck byhis guest’s friendly and out-going manner.

Arrest recordIn all, Masood killed fourpeople and left more thantwo dozen hospitalised inwhat authorities called a ter-rorist attack.

Masood, who at 52 is con-siderably older than mostextremists who carry outbloodshed in the West, hadan arrest record dating to1983. The violence camelater, first in 2000 when heslashed a man across theface in a pub parking lot in aracially charged argumentafter drinking four pints ofbeer, according to a newspa-per account from the time.

The victim, Piers Mott,would keep the scar the restof his life, said his widow,Heather. The last convictionwas in 2003, also involving aknife attack. It’s not clearwhen he took the nameMasood, suggesting a con-version to Islam.

Masood’s mother. JanetAjao, lives in rural Wales, ac-cording to a website onwhich she sells handmadecreations like cushions andhandbags. When Masoodwas in school, he took hisstepfather’s name, Ajao. Hewas athletic and popular inhigh school, according toStuart Knight, a formerclassmate.

In one of the last placesMasood lived, a home inBirmingham, neighbours re-called him as a quiet manwhose wife was veiled andwho wore traditionalMuslim clothing.

Masood was cheerfulon eve of rampageNeighbours recall he was a quiet man

Associated Press

Birmingham

Khalid Masood

Russian President VladimirPutin held a surprise meet-ing on Friday with France’sfar-rightpresidential candid-ate Marine Le Pen, and dis-missed suggestions thatRus-sia aims to influence theelection inher favour.

Ms. Le Pen met Mr. Putinhours after a previously an-nounced visit to the LowerHouse of theDuma, theRus-sianParliament.

In the meeting with Rus-sian lawmakers, Ms. Le Penurged Russia and France towork together to save theworld fromglobalismand Is-lamic fundamentalism.

Such positions put her inparallelwithKremlinstancesand there has been widespeculation that Russia aimsto influence the upcomingFrenchelection.

But Mr. Putin dismissedthose claims. “We in no waywant to influenceevents, butretain for ourselves the righttomeetwith all representat-ives of all political powers,just as our partners inEurope and the U.S. do,” hesaid.

Moscow has courted far-right parties in Europe in aninfluence-buildingcampaignamid frictionbetweenRussiaand the West over the con-flicts inUkraineandSyria.

Putin meets Le PenAssociated Press

Moscow

Trump approvesKeystone XL pipelineWASHINGTON

U.S. President Donald Trumpdeclared it a “great day forAmerican jobs” on Friday ashe formally green-lighted theKeystone XL pipeline. Mr.Trump issued a presidentialpermit, clearing the way forthe $8 billion project byCalgary-based TransCanadaenergy company to finally becompleted. AP

The top UN human rightsbody agreed on Friday tosend an international fact-finding mission to investig-ate widespread allegationsof killings, rape and tortureby security forces againstRohingya Muslims in Myan-mar’s Rakhine state.

But Myanmar ambas-sador Htin Lynn, speakingbefore the decision wastaken by consensus, rejec-ted the move as “not ac-ceptable”.

Myanmar’s nationalcommission had just inter-viewed alleged victims whofled to Bangladesh andwould issue its findings byAugust, he said.

The UN Human RightsCouncil adopted a resolu-tion without a vote,brought by the EuropeanUnion and supported bycountries including theU.S., that called for “ensur-ing full accountability forperpetrators and justice forvictims”.

UN to probeMyanmar‘crimes’Reuters

Geneva

The CIA developed tools tospy on Mac computers by in-jecting software into thechips that control the com-puters’ fundamental opera-tions, according to the latestcache of classified govern-ment documents publishedThursday by WikiLeaks.

Apple said in a statementon Thursday evening that itspreliminary assessment ofthe leaked information in-dicated that the Mac vulner-abilities described in the dis-closure were previouslyfixed in all Macs launchedafter 2013.

However, the documentsalso indicated that the CIAwas developing a new ver-sion of one tool last year towork with current software.

The leaked documentswere the second batch re-cently released byWikiLeaks. The first groupof documents, published onMarch 7, suggested that the

CIA had found ways to hackApple iPhones and Androidsmartphones, MicrosoftWindows computers, Ciscorouters and Samsung smarttelevisions.

Since the initial release ofthe CIA documents, whichthe agency has not con-firmed are authentic, majortechnology companies havebeen scrambling to assesswhether the security holesexploited by the CIA still ex-ist and to patch them if theydo. NYT

‘CIA has tools to spyonMac computers’It injects software into chips: WikiLeaks

Vindu Goel

San Francisco

Apple says it has ixedvulnerabilities described inthe disclosures.

Pakistani police haveblocked a rally by clerics inIslamabad seeking to presstheir calls for the death of so-cial media activists accusedof insulting Islam.

Security forces sealed offand surrounded the RedMosque and the home of theleader, Maulana Abdul Aziz,preventing his followersfrom staging the gatheringon Friday.

Meanwhile, the Center forInquiry, a U.S.-based ad-

vocacy group, has appealedto Facebook not to considerdemands by Pakistan to helpidentify Pakistanis suspectedof blasphemy so that author-ities can prosecute them orpursue their extradition.

Pakistan has harsh blas-phemy laws under which in-sulting Islam is an offencethat carries the death pen-alty.

Pakistan’s media havebeen increasingly attackedby religious hardliners. Thegovernment has asked Face-book and Twitter to censor

religiously offensive materialemanating from Pakistan.

All-weather allyMeanwhile, China on Fridaysaid participation of itstroops in Pakistan Dayparade in Islamabad is astrong testimony to show-case the “all-weather” stra-tegic mutual trust andfriendship between twocountries and theirmilitaries.

“China and Pakistan areall-weather strategic and co-operative partners. The two

militaries maintain long-timefriendship,” Chinese ForeignMinistry spokesperson HuaChunying told a mediabriefing.

The Pakistan Day paradewas for the first time atten-ded by Chinese and Sauditroops, apart from militaryband ‘Meher’ from Turkey.

Ms. Hua said the People’sLiberation Army sent 90-member Chinese delegationto participate in the paradeat the invitation of Pakistan.

(With Press Trust of Indiainputs from Beijing)

Pak. police prevent rally against blasphemyAssociated Press

Islamabad

The Trump administrationhas instructed all its diplo-matic missions worldwide toidentify certain groups thatneed extra scrutiny and ad-opt a rigorous vetting processfor issuing visas.

Those applying for anAmerican visa, includingtourist and business visas,would be asked to furnish de-tails of their employmentand residence for the last 15years and all the phone num-bers they used in the previ-ous five years, a diplomaticcable issued by U.S. Secret-ary of State Rex Tillerson,said.

The cable was sent after

President Donald Trumpsigned a revised executive or-der restricting travel from sixMuslim-majority Muslimcountries onMarch 6.

The cable dated March 15says these additional proto-cols have been put in place toprevent the entry into theU.S. of foreign nationals whomay aid, support or commitviolent, criminal or terroristacts and ensure that those al-lowed to come in are rigor-ously vetted.

The classified cable asksall its overseas diplomaticposts to immediately draw aset of criteria for a rigorousvetting process for issuingvisas to foreign nationals.

It was not clear if themove

will have any impact on Indi-ans. The cable instructedvisa issuing officers to ask ad-ditional questions to the ap-plicants. It would also re-quire the applicant to sharewith visa officer all phonenumbers, emails and socialmedia accounts used in thelast five years.

Mr. Tillerson’s cable alsorestricts the number of inter-views one visa officer canconduct every day. “In orderto ensure that proper focus isgiven to each application,posts should generallyshould not schedule morethan 120 visa interviews perconsular adjudicator perday,” the cable said.

At the same time, it ac-

knowledged that this mightresult in interview appoint-ment backlogs. “Consular of-ficers should not hesitate torefuse any case presentingsecurity concerns,” Tillersonwrote in the cable. “All visadecisions are national secur-ity decisions,” he added.

Immigration attorneyssaid the latest move wouldslow down the visa issuingprocess and result inbacklogs.

Heathcare bill voteMeanwhile, the White Housesignalled that U.S. lawmakerswill go ahead with a show-down vote on Friday on theRepublican plan to replaceObamacare, despite signs the

bill may not have the votes topass. House Speaker PaulRyan, the chief champion inCongress of the plan knownas the American Health CareAct, personally briefed Pres-ident Donald Trump on thestatus of the embattled legis-lation, amid reports he letMr. Trump know they wereshort of the support needed.

The U.S. President hadearlier warned Republicansthat he is done negotiatingthe bill and wants a vote onFriday, warning that if the ef-fort fails, his predecessor’shealth care reforms willstand, lawmakers in an emer-gencymeeting said.

(With Agence France-Presseinputs fromWashington)

It is not clear if the move to rigorously vet applicants will have any impact on Indians


Washington

U.S. orders ‘increased scrutiny’ for visas

CMYK

A ND-ND

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NIFTY 50

PRICE CHANGE

ACC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1396.45. . . . . . . . -4.30

Adani Ports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323.25. . . . . . . . -2.35

Ambuja Cements. . . .. . . . . . 229.90. . . . . . . . -2.75

Asian Paints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1064.25. . . . . . . . . 2.65

Aurobindo Pharma . . . . . . 688.80. . . . . . . . . 2.00

Axis Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489.35. . . . . . . . . 1.10

Bajaj Auto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2843.00. . . . . . -22.95

Bank of Baroda . . . . . .. . . . . . 169.05. . . . . . . . . 6.85

Bharti Airtel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340.50. . . . . . . . . 2.00

BHEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167.05. . . . . . . . -0.90

Bosch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22972.90. . . . . . . . -9.30

BPCL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649.70. . . . . . . . -5.35

Cipla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593.95. . . . . . . . -2.30

Coal India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297.85. . . . . . . . . 1.95

Dr Reddys Lab . . . . . . . .. . . . 2628.35. . . . . . . . -2.85

Eicher Motors. . . . . . . . .. 24350.15. . . . . . -23.40

GAIL (India). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381.30. . . . . . . . . 4.40

Grasim Ind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1058.30. . . . . . -33.60

HCL Tech. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 873.05. . . . . . . . -3.60

HDFC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1462.60. . . . . . . . . 5.95

HDFC Bank. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1424.35. . . . . . . . -6.55

Hero MotoCorp . . . . . .. . . . 3375.25. . . . . . . . . 7.85

Hindalco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194.90. . . . . . . . . 1.20

Hind Unilever . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 900.20. . . . . . . . -1.80

ICICI Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274.75. . . . . . . . . 7.80

Idea Cellular . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90.90. . . . . . . . -0.70

IndusInd Bank . . . . . . . .. . . . 1389.55. . . . . . . . . 5.65

Bharti Infratel . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 310.40. . . . . . . . -3.15

Infosys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1031.40. . . . . . . . -9.05

ITC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281.00. . . . . . . . . 3.40

Kotak Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 879.35. . . . . . . 11.20

L&T . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1551.20. . . . . . . . . 7.30

Lupin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1487.80. . . . . . . . -2.45

M&M . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1275.80. . . . . . . . . 1.25

Maurti Suzuki . . . . . . . . .. . . . 6004.65. . . . . . -30.15

NTPC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164.60. . . . . . . . . 0.20

ONGC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191.90. . . . . . . . -1.70

PowerGrid Corp . . . . .. . . . . . 193.75. . . . . . . . . 0.70

Reliance Ind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1286.75. . . . . . . 13.45

State Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276.50. . . . . . . . . 8.00

Sun Pharma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703.90. . . . . . . . . 0.75

Tata Motors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470.40. . . . . . . . -2.50

Tata Motors DVR. . . .. . . . . . 280.85. . . . . . . . -0.75

Tata Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86.55. . . . . . . . -0.55

Tata Steel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493.20. . . . . . . . -2.30

TCS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2427.20. . . . . . -33.15

Tech Mahindra . . . . . . .. . . . . . 474.15. . . . . . . . -8.00

UltraTech Cement. .. . . . 3973.95. . . . . . . . -0.30

Wipro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513.25. . . . . . . . . 3.25

YES Bank. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1529.05. . . . . . . 10.45

Zee Entertainment . . . . . . 518.45. . . . . . . . -5.15

EXCHANGE RATES

Indicative direct rates in rupees a unitexcept yen at 4 p.m. on March 24

CURRENCY TT BUY TT SELL

US Dollar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 65.21. . . . . . .65.53

Euro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 70.42. . . . . . .70.76

British Pound. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 81.42. . . . . . .81.82

Japanese Yen (100) . .. . 58.73. . . . . . .59.02

Chinese Yuan . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . 9.47. . . . . . . . . 9.52

Swiss Franc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 65.71. . . . . . .66.04

Singapore Dollar . . . . . . .. . 46.59. . . . . . .46.82

Canadian Dollar. . . . . . . . .. . 48.82. . . . . . .49.06

Malaysian Ringitt . . . . . .. . 14.73. . . . . . .14.82

Source:Indian Bank

BULLION RATES CHENNAI

March 24 rates in rupees with previousrates in parentheses

Retail Silver (1g) . . . . . . . . . . . 44.30. . . . . (44.30)

22 ct gold (1 g) . .. . . . . . . . . . . 2,772. . . . . (2,780)

The Department of Telecom-munications on Friday is-sued a notification, directingall phone service providersto reverify details for all ex-isting subscribers throughAadhaar-based e-KYC (KnowYour Customer) process.

This follows a SupremeCourt order last month inwhich it had approved thegovernment’s plan to recordthe identification details ofmobile subscribers throughan e-KYC mechanism linkedto Aadhaar.

The move will impactmore than 100 crore mobilephone subscribers in thecountry, 90% of whom areprepaid card users.

The process is likely tocost about ₹2,500 crorewhich will be borne by theservice providers, accordingto industry body COAI.

“All licensees shall re-verify all existing mobilesubscriber (prepaid andpostpaid) through Aadhaarbased e-KYC process,” thedepartment said in a notific-ation, adding that the pro-cess should be complete byFebruary 6, 2018.

Data servicesMobile connections used fordata services will be verifiedusing the alternate number.

The department’s de-cision comes two days afterUnion Finance MinisterArun Jaitley moved anamendment to the FinanceBill 2017 to make Aadhaarmandatory for individuals toapply for a PAN (PermanentAccount Number) card andfor filing income tax returnsfrom July 1 this year.

Earlier this week, theCentre made it mandatoryfor beneficiaries to quotetheir Aadhaar number toavail themselves of benefitsunder the Pradhan Mantri

Kaushal Vikas Yojana forskill development, and theSelf Employment Schemefor Rehabilitation of ManualScavengers.

Grains to pensionThe Centre had identified 31schemes in which theAadhaar could be mademandatory. Notificationshave been issued in recentmonths by departments tomake Aadhaar compulsoryfor getting subsidised grainsunder the National Food Se-curity Act, jobs under theMGNREGA and pension be-nefits under the Employees’Pension Scheme.

The Department of Tele-communications in the noti-fication has instructed thatthe industry intimate theirexisting subscribers throughadvertisement in print andelectronic media as well asSMS “about the orders of theSupreme Court for reverific-ation activity and shall up-load the complete details ofthis activity on theirwebsite.”

The department has alsoasked that companies devisea mechanism to avoid public

inconvenience as well aslong public queues.

“Once a subscriber isreverified and the details inthe subscriber base are up-dated successfully as theeKYC process, the licenseecan destroy the old cus-tomer application forms ofsuch reverified subscribersunless the licensee is direc-ted to preserve the same bythe licensor or law enforce-ment agencies or judicialforums,” the notificationstated.

Address proofIt added that any subscriberacquired through proof ofidentity or proof of addressdocuments during theperiod of reverification willalso need to be reverified.

In January this year, theTelecom Regulatory Author-ity of India (TRAI) had re-commended the use ofAadhaar-based e-KYC forverification of existing mo-bile subscribers.

It had, however, pro-posed that this processshould be optional to theservice providers as well asmobile subscribers.

Aadhaar now neededfor mobile connectionThe move will impact more than 100 crore customers


NEW DELHI

Authentic veriication: The cost of the process, about ₹2,500crore, will be borne by the service providers.

Toyota’s luxury brand Lexusmade its debut in India onFriday with the introductionof three models - RX 450h,ES 300h, and LX 450d.While the RX 450h is pricedat more than ₹1.07 crore, theES 300h is priced at morethan ₹55.27 lakh.

The price for LX 450d willbe announced at a later date.

The company will also bebringing out sports versionof the RX 450h which will bepriced at ₹1.09 crore.

The company also un-veiled the all new Lexus LSwhich will be made availablein 2018.

“How India experiencesluxury is evolving with its af-fluence,” Lexus India SeniorVice President AkitoshiTakemura said.

“Lexus will be providingthe Indian consumer with anamazing experience throughour vehicles and service.

“We are excited aboutwhat we can bring to the lux-

ury market in India, wherewe see opportunitiesmapped to the remarkablegrowth the country is experi-encing,” Mr. Takemura said.

The models will be avail-

able at guest experience cen-ters located in New Delhi,Gurgaon, Mumbai and Ban-galore. In addition, aftersales service facilities willalso be available in Chand-

igarh, Hyderabad, Chennaiand Kochi. Mr. Takemurasaid the company will seethe response before beforetaking a call on manufactur-ing locally in India.

Toyota’s Lexus debuts in IndiaThe Japanese marque will introduce a sports version of the RX 450h for ₹1.09 cr.


NEW DELHI

Eyeing deep pockets: Toyota unveiled the all new Lexus LS which will become available in 2018.

market watch

24-03-2017 % CHANGE

Sensex dddddddddddddddddddddd 29,421 ddddddddddddddd0.30

US Dollardddddddddddddddddddd65.41 ddddddddddddddd0.16

Gold ddddddddddddddddddddddddddd 29,350 ddddddddddddddd1.20

Brent oil ddddddddddddddddddddd50.57 ddddddddddddddd0.41

U.S. brewer MillerCoorshas sued India’s fourth-largest software servicesexporter, HCL Technolo-gies and its U.S. arm, overexecution of an IT projectand is reportedly seeking$100 million in damages.

“MillerCoors filed a law-suit against HCL seekingcompensatory damages be-cause HCL failed to satis-factorily perform the jobMillerCoors hired HCL todo,” the Chicago-basedfirm said in an e-mailed re-sponse to The Hindu.

HCL Technologies didnot immediately respondto e-mails seeking com-ment on the matter.

U.S. brewerMillerCoorssues HCLSanjay Vijayakumar

CHENNAI

The Securities and ExchangeBoard of India has issued adisgorgement order of ₹447crore against Reliance Indus-tries Ltd. for insider tradingin Reliance Petroleum Ltd.

In a 54-page order on Fri-day, the regulator said RILshould disgorge an amountof ₹447.27 crore along withinterest at 12% per annumfrom November 29, 2007, tillthe date of payment.

SEBI has also barred RIL,and 12 other entities, fromdealing — directly or indir-ectly — in the equity derivat-ives market for one year

from the date of the order.They have been allowed tosquare off or close out anyexisting positions.

According to SEBI’s in-vestigation, RILmade unlaw-ful gains amounting to ₹513crore “which could not havebeen made but for the fraud-ulent and manipulativestrategy/pattern adopted bythem.”

RIL said the trades in RPLshares were “bonafide trans-actions” and added that itwould appeal SEBI’s order.

In March 2007, RIL de-cided to raise resources byselling about 5% of its hold-ings in RPL. While RIL was

dealing in the shares of RPLin the cash segment, it enlis-ted 12 entities as agents tooperate on its behalf in thederivatives segment. Theseentities took substantialshort positions in the deriv-atives segment. All orderswere placed by SandeepAgarwal, an employee of asubsidiary of RIL. As perSEBI, trades in cash and de-rivatives segments weredone so as to “bring downthe price in the cash seg-ment and consequently thederivatives segment of theRPL scrip” and make “un-due extraordinary profits”on the open short positions.

SEBI slaps RIL with ₹447 croredisgorgement order over RPL‘RIL made unlawful gains through fraudulent strategy’


MUMBAI

CMYK

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IN BRIEF

‘Low tarifs limit telcos’capacity to invest’NEW DELHI

The decline in telecomoperators’ revenues due tofalling tariff impacts theircapacity to invest and thiscan also lead to delay inspectrum payment, theRajya Sabha was informedon Friday. “As of now, thereis no delay in spectrumpayment to the governmentand all deferred paymentdues of 2012, 2013 and2014 auctions have beenrealised by their respectivedue dates,” TelecomMinister Manoj Sinha said ina written reply . PTI

Sanmar Chemplast, the flagship company of the Chennai-based$1.5 billion Sanmar Group, is gearing up to celebrate its goldenjubilee. The company was in the spotlight when Canadian bil-lionaire Prem Watsa invested $300 million through Fairfax In-dia, an investment vehicle of the Fairfax Group dedicated to In-dia. In an interview, Vijay Sankar, deputy chairman, SanmarGroup, spoke about the company’s 50-year journey. Editedexcerpts:

What does the chemicalbusiness portend for youas a company?

■ Chemicals is a very matureand balanced industry.We are very committed to it.On a per capita basis, it is alargely under-served in-dustry in India ... whetheryou look at polymers, speci-ality chemicals or any othersegment.Chemicals are a basicproduct used in day-to-daylife right from shirts to cars.However, it does not attractthe attention it deserves.Automobile and IT (informa-tion technology) sectors at-tract all the noise. Our in-dustry is, however, moreimportant than those.

Why is the chemicalindustry not getting thatmuch attention?

■ A lot of it is business-to-business (B2B) largely. Thatcould be one of the reasons.So, it is not a business-to-consumer (B2C) product likeautomobile or IT. Also, thechemical industry has got anegative connotation withthe environment, which isunjustified, in my opinion.

Do you have acomfortable presence inthe industry?

■ It is a very broad industry,with different players work-ing for different areas. Weare in the polymer, chlorine,

poly vinyl chloride (PVC) seg-ments. The opportunitythere is large. We want to bea dominant PVC companyand also speciality chemic-als. Financially, we arestrong now. This can backour expansion plans. Oursuspension PVC capacity is300,000 tonnes, and we arelooking to treble it in stages.Besides this, we are planningtwo projects – one for Hydro-gen peroxide and another forchlorinated PVC.

You have been in businessfor 50 years. Have thingsbecome easier for you tooperate?

■ Earlier, when we started,we had to import everything.Now, the fabrication capabil-ities and other support sys-tems are available in India.So, in some ways, it is easier.Despite being the singlehighest contributor to GDP(gross domestic product),the chemical industry doesnot get enough attention.Even our mother ministry is... in many ways ... neglected

most of the times, and a lotof the resources are dictated[upon] by Ministry of Oil andGas. This makes it difficult toget a policy focus when com-pared to other countries. Wealso don’t have duty differen-

tial advantage. The govern-ment’s plan to have a petro-leum, chemicals andpetrochemicals investmenthub has not taken off.With the Prime Minister on astronger wicket now, wehope our industry will getthe necessary attention.

What has changed in yourgroup in 50 years?

■ We are one of the earliestcorporate houses to profes-sionalise our management.We strongly believe that it isthe quality professionalswho have driven our group.For us, our reputation ismore important. We don’tmind being dull or boring.Even ten years down theline, I want to see the samevalue system continuing. Ifour reputation is not dented,I would be very happy. Ourfirst priority is reputation.Then comes sustainable,profitable growth.

What do you think of theavailability of funds?

■ The biggest challenge is wedon’t have a good industrialfinance option unlike theU.S. or Europe. We have lostour big project financing in-stitutions, which have nowbecome banks. I believe de-velopment finance institu-tions make a lot of sense.They can address the con-cerns of industries better interms of project delays andensure long-term financing.

First priority is reputation, then comes growth‘Even 10 years down the line, I want to see the same value system. If our reputation is not dented, I will be happy’

<> The chemical

industry does not

get enough

attention

INTERVIEW | VIJAY SANKAR

K.T. Jagannathan

Sanjay Vijayakumar

IDFC Bank board toconsider fundraisingNEW DELHI

Private lender IDFC Banksaid on Friday its boardwould meet next month toconsider raising fundsthrough non-convertibledebt securities on privateplacement basis. “The 22ndboard meeting of IDFC BankLtd. will be held...to discussand approve, among otheritems... fund-raisingthrough issue of non—convertible debt securitieson private placement basis,if required, [in] iscal 2017–18,” it said in a iling. PTI

DataWind eyes VRgoggles, wearablesHYDERABAD

Tablet and smartphonemaker DataWind Inc. plansto add virtual realitygoggles and wearables toits portfolio of afordableproducts. The new productswill likely be assembled inHyderabad. Though theunit has reached itscapacity of 10,000 units aday, the irm may settle forit in view of the Stategovernment’s industry-friendly policies, Mr. Tulisaid. More space wouldopen up at its Hyderabadplant, near the airport,once the call centre theremoves to a location withinthe city, he added.

Reliance Cap demergescommercial inance armMUMBAI

Reliance Capital hascompleted the transfer ofits commercial inancedivision into a wholly-owned subsidiary —Reliance CommercialFinance — after receivingthe required approval, acompany statement said onFriday. The transfer,efective April 1, was aimedat enhancing independentmanagement focus,providing lexibility to raisecapital and unlocking valuethrough stake sale, it said.

Japan’s Toshiba Corp. hasinformed its main lendersit is planning for U.S. nuc-lear unit WestinghouseElectric Co. LLC to file forbankruptcy on March 31,people briefed on the mat-ter said on Friday.

Toshiba expects aChapter 11 filing for West-inghouse would expandcharges related to the U.S.unit in the current financialyear to around 1 trillionyen ($9 billion) from itspublicly flagged estimate of712.5 billion yen, thepeople also said.

A move to file, however,allows the TVs-to-construc-tion conglomerate to limitrisks from future losses atWestinghouse, which hasbeen plagued by huge costoverruns at two U.S. nuc-lear projects. The decisioncomes only three monthsafter Toshiba first warnedof multi-billion dollarcharges for Westinghouse.

The ensuing financialmaelstrom has alreadycaused Toshiba to put upits prized memory chipunit for sale.

Toshiba unitheaded forbankruptcy

Reuters

Tokyo

Global ride-hailing firm UberTechnologies is rethinkingits car leasing strategy in In-dia, its second-biggest mar-ket, as drivers have returneddozens of leased cars earlyafter the company cut in-centives, people familiarwith the matter told Reuters.

Uber had planned to buy15,000 new cars last yearand lease them out in a bidto attract more drivers - astrategy it has used in othermarkets - but it suspendedthe scheme for a while inDecember after leasing just athird of that total.

After burning throughmil-lions of dollars over threeyears in a battle for marketshare with local rival Ola,backed by Japan’s Softbank,Uber has cut the incentives itgives to drivers and raisedpassenger fares.

Free smartphonesThe incentives - from freesmartphones to cash bo-nuses worth as much asdouble a day’s fares - meantdrivers could earn as muchas ₹120,000 a month.

Those incentive paymentshave been pared back, insome cases to as little as 10%of fare income. Ride fareshave risen to ₹1.5 per minuteof travel from ₹1.

The incentives and, to an

extent, the leasing schemeaimed at drivers withouttheir own cars, boostedUber’s driver numbers, help-ing it rapidly gain around30%market share.

Uber has faced challengeselsewhere in Asia, but thestakes are high in India’s $12billion taxi market, a keyarea after it exited China lastyear, and one where CEOTravis Kalanick has said it ex-pects to be profitable soon.

Uber has said its servicesare in 29 Indian cities and ithas more than 250,000drivers on its platform, but itlags Ola, which says it oper-ates in more than 100 citieswith about 550,000 drivers.

Two people with know-ledge of the matter said Ubermiscalculated the impactthat the reduced incentiveswould have on drivers’ earn-ings, especially those making

lease payments.At an open meeting for

staff in December, aroundthe time the incentives werebeing reduced, Uber’s Indiachief Amit Jain said the buy-ing-for-lease scheme was be-ing temporarily suspendedwhile the company evalu-ated its leasing strategy, oneof the sources said.

Uber didn’t comment onReuters queries related toMr. Jain’s announcement orthe impact of the incentivescuts on its leasingprogramme.

Raj Beri, business headfor leasing in India, said thescheme was set up to helpdrivers without cars get onits platform and makemoney. “We are very pleasedwith our progress towardthis goal so far, and look for-ward to introducing the op-portunity to more prospect-

ive driver partners this year,”he said in a statement.

In a recent blog post onUber’s website, Mr. Jain de-fended the cuts to driver in-centives and signalled a stra-tegic shift for India. “We canshift from start-up mode to amore sustainable businessmodel,” he wrote.

Driver retentionLeasing is only a small partof Uber’s overall supply inIndia, but is seen as a way tolock drivers on to its plat-form for longer, and stopthem switching to Ola.

To lease a new small carthrough Uber’s scheme,drivers pay a ₹33,000 ($499)deposit - less than what theywould pay to buy a car froma dealer with a bank loan.But weekly payments ofabout ₹5,500 over threeyears add up to nearlydouble what drivers wouldpay to service a car loan.

That wasn’t an issue whenincentives were high. SeveralUber drivers said they feeltrapped as a surge in thenumber of cars on the plat-form has led to fewer rides,at a time when incentiveshave been cut, making itharder to keep up lease pay-ments. “I’ll not be able tosave even ₹10,000 a month,”said Arjun Chouhan, 38, anDelhi Uber driver who hasleased a car.

The company cuts driver incentives, raises ride fares, suspends lease scheme

Reuters

NEW DELHI

Wheels of fortune:Uber has faced challenges elsewhere inAsia, but the stakes are high in India’s $12 billion taxi market.

Uber reviews leasing scheme in India

Commerce and IndustryMinister Nirmala Sithara-man on Friday said Amer-cian phonemaker Apple’sdemand for tax incentives toset up a manufacturing unitin the country will belooked at after the Goodsand Services Tax (GST) isrolled out.

“GST will be comingsoon. So, tax-related incent-ives demanded by Applewill have to be looked froma different angle,” Ms.Sitharaman told PTI on thesidelines of Chemexcil func-tion here. The governmenthas not accepted most ofthe demands of the iPhonemaker, she added.

Apple plans to set up amanufacturing unit inBengaluru this year, whereit will assemble its products,probably only iPhone 6 and6s models, according to re-ports in a section of themedia.

The American techno-logy giant has sought vari-ous concessions on taxationand import of componentsfor setting up the unit.

The Cupertino-basedtechnology giant currentlymanufactures in China andBrazil. Apart from tax sops,

Apple also wants relaxationin the mandated 30% localsourcing of components.Earlier reports had said thecompany would be import-ing all its components onthe grounds that it is bring-ing in cutting-edge techno-logy to the country.

Apple also wants to openfully-owned retail outlets inthe country.

In January, Apple had in-dicated to the governmentthat it was ready with a blue-print to begin manufactur-ing iPhones, but wants fiscalconcessions, including acustoms duty waiver on im-ported components.

‘Apple may have towait for GST rollout’The irm wants concessions in India

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

MUMBAI

Apple plans to set up amanufacturing unit inBengaluru this year * REUTERS

Cochin Shipyard (CSL) hasfiled its Draft Red HerringProspectus with the mar-ket regulator SEBI seekingpermission for its InitialPublic Offering (IPO).

The company is thelargest public sectorshipyard in India in dockcapacity, as of March 31,2015, according to a Crisilreport. It caters to the de-fence sector as well as com-mercial sector worldwide.

The IPO comprises of33,984,000 equity sharesconsisting of a fresh issueof 22,656,000 equityshares.

The equity shares willhave a face value of ₹10 andthe price band will be de-cided in consultation withthe Book Running LeadManagers.

The net proceeds fromthe fresh issue will be util-ised towards setting up of anew dry dock within theexisting premises of thecompany, setting up of aninternational ship repair fa-cility at Cochin Port Trustarea and for general cor-porate purposes.

SBI Capital Markets,Edelweiss Financial Ser-vices and JM Financial In-stitutional Securities arethe lead managers.

CSL seeksSEBI nod forshare saleSpecial Correspondent

Thiruvananthapuram

Fair trade regulator Com-petition Commission of In-dia (CCI) has imposed apenalty of₹591.01 croreupon Coal India Limited(CIL) on finding that CILand its subsidiaries viol-ated the Competition Actby imposing unfair and dis-criminatory conditions inFuel Supply Agreements(FSAs) with power produ-cers for supply of non-cok-ing coal.

Apart from ordering CILand its subsidiaries to“cease and desist” fromanti-competitive practices,the CCI also directed modi-fication of the FSAs, a gov-ernment statement said.

It added that CIL hadalso been directed to en-sure uniformity betweenold and new power produ-cers as well as betweenprivate and PSU powerproducers.

The order follows theCompetition AppellateTribunal remanding thematter back while settingaside the CCI’s original or-der in which a penalty of₹1,773.05 crore was im-posed on the coal major.

According to a state-ment from CIL, “The orderis being studied and appro-priate action may be takenat the proper forum.”

CCI imposespenalty onCoal IndiaSpecial Correspondent

New Delhi

Former Reserve Bank of In-dia Governor Y.V. Reddy saidthat the issue of non-per-forming assets, most ofwhich are with public sectorbanks, needed more thanjust recapitalisation as acure, and that the publicsector banks were key to themodernisation of India’s fin-ancial sector.

“The common threadbetween fiscal policy, mon-etary policy, and financialsector policy is public sectorbanks,” Mr. Reddy saidwhile delivering the SixthDr. Raja Chelliah MemorialLecture organised by theNational Institute of PublicFinance and Policy.

“The future of the finan-cial system and indeed mod-ernisation of the financialsector of India depends onhow we overcome the in-tractable problem of thepublic sector banks.”

“There seems to be apolitical economy con-sensus for no change orminimal change,” Mr. Reddyadded.

The former RBI Governorand chairman of the 14th Fin-ance Commission said thatthe effectiveness of monet-ary policy depended notonly on the actions of the

monetary authority but alsoon other related policiesand the efficiency of trans-mitting institutions.

“With over 70% of thebanks and overwhelmingproportion of the financialsector in the public sector,there are issues of incent-ives and accountability andpolitical interference,” Mr.Reddy said.

“The fact that the over-whelming proportion of thenon-performing assets arewith the public sector banksshows that the reform willhave to go beyond simply re-capitalising the banks.”

The former RBI governoradded that a professionalapproach and a capacity toevaluate lending proposalscould not be expected frompublic sector institutionsthat are bailed out fromtime to time with taxpayers’money.

‘PSU banks hold key toinancial sector rejig’

‘Recapitalisation alone is not enough’

special Correspondent

NEW DELHI

Y.V. Reddy

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The expectations are mind-boggling. India must win thefourth Test at any cost, withor without Virat Kohli, andre-confirm the belief thatthis is a team that is besttrained to dominate thelongest format of the game.

Irrespective of how hardAustralia tries to make astrong statement of its en-durance and depth, the onusis on India’s young brigadeto ensure a finish that wouldgive the home team theseries that began on a tem-pestuous note following theheavy loss in the opener atPune.

There is little buzz aboutthe event here — the first-ever Test at this captivatingvenue. Those busy havebeen the ground staff, as al-ways, and the players, thecentral characters as always.

It will be a moment ofreckoning for India as itlooks to dominate in circum-stances that most proclaimsuit Australia more. The ref-erence to the pitch beingbouncy and thus favouringthe visiting side is, however,the least worrying factor for

the Indian camp.This is a team that has

been nurtured by Kohli andcoach Anil Kumble to as-sume an all-weather reputa-tion. There are specialists toperform specific roles andnow is the time to test them.

Even as the ground staffworked furiously to scrapethe grass off the pitch onewas left wondering if Indiancricket had made the pro-gress to be rated a combina-tion that can cause a crickettremor, a team for allseasons.

Handling the conditionsTo exploit home advantageis acceptable to a certain ex-tent. Which team would notdo so? India has come upwith playing surfaces thattypify the existing nature ofthe pitches in the sub-contin-ent — slow and low. Havingbeen bred on such pitches itis natural for the batsmen toadopt a different approachwhen confronted with a sur-face that allows more thanaverage pace and bounce.

That is the challenge thatconfronts them on the eve ofthe Test. What if the ballclimbs at their throat? What

if it deviates alarmingly andmocks at their technique totackle seammovement?

These are questions thatmay need to be addressed.Keeping in mind India’s im-pending assignments over-seas in the next few years —Australia, England, New Zea-land and South Africa — it isimperative that the teamtakes a realistic assessmenttest here.

One encounter may notreflect the actual strength ofthe team. The immediategoal is to win this series con-tested in extreme acrimonythat has taken the sheen offthe action in the middle. Butthe trigger point has beenthe happenings on the field.

Gripping actionObviously, it can be put onhold since India and Aus-tralia are teams bestequipped to produce crack-ing stuff in contemporarycricket.

The series has generatedheat on and off the field,evoking sharp responsesfrom traditionalists, whoprefer the game to maintainits dignity in times whenTest cricket is struggling to

fight the encroachment bythe T20 brand.

It would be naive to evensuggest that Test cricket maylose its sheen against therising stature of the shortestformat, but then it is for In-dia and Australia to prove ithere by producing actionthat befits the character anddignity of Test cricket.

They owe it to their le-gions of fans.The teams (from):

India: Virat Kohli (Capt.), K.L.Rahul, M. Vijay, Cheteshwar Pu-jara, Ajinkya Rahane, KarunNair,Wriddhiman Saha (wk), R. Ash-win, Ravindra Jadeja,Bhuvneshwar Kumar, UmeshYadav, Ishant Sharma, JayantYadav, Kuldeep Yadav, AbhinavMukund,MohammedShami andShreyas Iyer.Australia: Steve Smith (Capt.),David Warner, Matt Renshaw,Shaun Marsh, Peter Hand-scomb, Glenn Maxwell, Mat-thew Wade (wk), Pat Cummins,Steve O’Keefe, Nathan Lyon,Josh Hazlewood, Ashton Agar,Mitchell Swepson, JacksonBird,Usman Khawaja and MarcusStoinis.Umpires:Marais Erasmus and IanGould. Third umpire: ChrisGaffaney.

Match starts at 9.30 a.m.

Onus on India to prove itis the world’s best Test sideWith the series level 1-1, the decider is a moment of reckoning for Kohli’s men

Setting the stage:Groundsmenwork diligently on the playing surface for the inal Test in Dharamshala, the newest and 27th Testvenue in India. * V.V. KRISHNAN

Vijay Lokapally

DHARAMSHALA

Vani Kapoor winsseason’s second titlePUNE

Vani Kapoor carded three-

over 74 on the final day to

claim her second title of the

season in the sixth leg of the

Hero Women’s Professional

Golf Tour at the Poona Club

Golf Course here on Friday.

Gaurika Bishnoi and

Amandeep Drall were tied

second with identical scores

of 225 after 54 holes. PTI

IN BRIEF

Shami, Shreyas insquad for final TestDHARAMSHALA

The all-India senior selection

committee, on Friday, added

fast bowler Mohammed

Shami and middle-order

batsman Shreyas Iyer to the

Indian squad for the fourth

and final Test starting at the

HPCA Stadium here on

Saturday.

Shreyas was flown in as cover

for Virat Kohli who is

recovering from a shoulder

injury, while Shami’s inclusion

was driven by a possibility to

include him keeping in mind

the nature of the pitch.

In a major relief for veterancricket administrators in theBCCI and State cricket bod-ies, the Supreme Court onFriday confirmed that thosewho have served as office-bearers in State cricket asso-ciations for nine years wouldnot be disqualified fromcontesting or holding postsin the BCCI and vice versa.

A Bench of Justices DipakMisra, A.M. Khanwilkar andD.Y. Chandrachud said it hadto be made “as clear as thecloudless sky” that anyonewho has served for nineyears in any capacity in theBCCI shall be further dis-qualified from being an of-fice-bearer in the Board.

Similarly, anyone who hasserved in any capacity in aState cricket association fornine years would be disqual-ified from further resumingoffice or contesting for a po-sition in the association.

“... If a person has held aposition of an office-bearerin a State association for aperiod of nine years, he willnot be disqualified fromcontesting or holding a postof the BCCI,” Justice Misradictated in the order.

The clarification cameafter Attorney-GeneralMukul Rohatgi, appearingfor Universities, Armed Ser-vices and Railways, said theformer Comptroller andAuditor-General Vinod Rai-led Committee of Adminis-trators had misinterpretedSupreme Court's orders.

The court further direc-ted the CoA-run BCCI tohonour the contract itentered into with the Hi-machal Pradesh StateCricket Association (HPSCA)for conducting the fourthTest between India and Aus-tralia on March 25.

Seeking urgent reprieve,the HPSCA submitted theCoA had withheld a ₹2.5crore payment due to it forthe use of its cricket stadiumin Dharamshala.

“The CoA is saying theywill not pay it unless Iamendmy constitution. Thisis a contract signed by theCoA... They have to honourthe contract,” Additional So-licitor-General Tushar Me-hta submitted.

CoA counsel and senioradvocate Parag Tripathi saidthe HPSCA was cash-richand was “sitting on ₹90crore”.

To this, Mehta saidHPSCA was not asking forany largesse. “Just because Iam financially affluent doesnot give you an excuse to nothonour a contract. I may besitting on ₹1,000 crore, butyou have a distinct and sep-arate obligation to honouryour contract,” Mehta said.

Tripathi said HPSCA wasrun by a “gentleman whowas accused of perjury”. ButJustice Misra said thatformer BCCI presidentAnurag Thakur, the gentle-man in question, hadalready offered an uncondi-tional apology.

“The association shouldnot suffer because of aman,” Justice Misra reacted.

“You have entered into acontract and promised topay. You cannot say 'holdthe match in March and Iwill pay you in Septemberafter I hold my AGM',”Justice Khanwilkar said.

The court ordered theBCCI to honour the termsand conditions of all indi-vidual contracts it hasentered into in letter andspirit, including the tri-partite contracts for the IPLdue to begin on April 5,2017.

Apex Court wants to make it ‘as clear as the cloudless sky’Krishnadas Rajagopal

NEW DELHI

SC relief for administrators

The International CricketCouncil, on Friday, con-firmed that Shashank Mano-har — who had resigned aschairman on March 15 —would continue in office tillJune.

It took the persuasivepowers of 12 directors of theICC board to get Manohar tocarry on till the annualconference.

The directors — nine fullmembers and three associ-ate members — impressedupon him to withdraw hisresignation or defer his de-cision till the changes to the

ICC constitution and finan-cial model are carried out.

It was on the day of Mano-har’s resignation that DaveCameron, the West IndiesCricket Board president,spoke to the other members,and set in motion an initiat-ive to impress upon Mano-har to take the leadership ofa fresh administrative andfinancial reforms projectthat had rejected the 2014resolution vesting all execut-ive powers with the Indian,Australian and Englishboards.

None of the memberswere ready to accept the“personal reasons” explana-

tion from Manohar for hisresignation.

Australia’s David Peever,England’s Giles Clarke,Pakistan’s Shahryar Khan,South Africa’s Chris Nenzaniand Haroon Lorgat, ICC CEODave Richardson and Singa-pore’s Imran Khawaja werein constant touch with Man-ohar, reasoning that he is vi-tal to the final execution ofthe Special Working Group’sproposals.

On the evening of March23, Manohar received a callfrom Khawaja, conveying thedecision taken by the 12members, that included thenine full voting members —

Australia, England, SouthAfrica, Zimbabwe, India,Pakistan, Bangladesh, Eng-land and the West Indies —and the three associatemembers — Singapore, Ire-land and Namibia. Sri LankaCricket did not respond tothe initiative.

An ICC press release said:“ICC chairman ShashankManohar has today agreed todefer his recent resignationfollowing a Board resolutionto request him to remain inpost was passed with over-whelming support earlierthis week.

“In a significant show ofsupport for Mr. Manohar, the

Board asked him to with-draw his resignation, or atthe very least, defer it untilthe ongoing process relatingto governance and financial

restructuring arecompleted.”

Speaking to The Hindu

from Goa, Manohar said: “Ihave told them that I will re-main as chairman only forthe transition period.”

The ICC also quoted Man-ohar in its release, who said,“I respect the sentiments ex-pressed by the directors andthe confidence they have re-posed in me. In the light ofthis, and although my de-cision to depart due to per-sonal reasons has notchanged, I am willing to con-tinue as chairman till the re-sponsibility as per the resol-ution is complete. I have a

duty to work with my col-leagues to enable a smoothtransition and continue ourwork on the governance ofthe ICC.”

The reactionsReacting to the decisionPeever said: “This resolutionis a clear indication thatwhilst the Board may not yetagree on the detail of our re-form process, we are com-mitted to the overarchingphilosophies of it.

“We all believe thatShashank should be the manto see it through and whilstrespectful of a decisionmade for personal reasons,

we are delighted that he hasagreed to stay until the com-pletion of the 2017 annualconference where we canelect a successor.”

Vikram Limaye, BCCI-CoA, said, “It is importantthat the current issues areresolved to everyone’s satis-faction. We had a productivemeeting with Manohar re-cently (prior to his resigna-tion) wherein we outlinedBCCI’s concerns on the fin-ancial model and gov-ernance issues and our sug-gestions for resolution. Weare committed to workingwith ICC for a satisfactoryresolution of these issues.”

Shashank Manohar prevailed upon to remain ICC chairman until JuneIt took the persuasive powers of 12 directors of the Board to get him to carry on at least till the annual conference

G. Viswanath

Mumbai

ShashankManohar. * PTI

Virat Kohli came preparedfor a volley of questions re-lated to his fitness and beingtargeted by the Australianmedia.

“It’s (the criticism) some-thing that is happening onthe outside. I think what I tryto do is look inside as towhat are the things I need toimprove on as a cricketerand as a person, what myteammates and close peoplethink of me.

Not affected“These things do not matterto me so much. They havenever mattered. I faced thisinitially in my career. I’vefaced this many times beforeso I have nothing to go backand change.

“The only thing is, I’msurprised, so many peopleare getting affected by justone individual, so good luck

to them. If it’s selling theirnews, good luck to them,” hesaid.

What about the supportfrom former cricketers? “Ascricketers you understand

exactly what goes on — dur-ing a series, in the game, onthe field. I’m sure those guyscan relate to it. Everyone’sdoing their job.

“If they want to write

something good or bad it’syour personal choice. I’mnot going to sit here and saywrite good things about meor bad things about me, it’syour choice. Everyone hastheir own conscience tosleep with at night and it ap-plies to everyone.”

No special treatmentAsked about his availability,Kohli said, “There is no spe-cial treatment for anyone.Obviously, only if I am hun-dred per cent fit for thegame, will I take the field.The rules are the same foreveryone. The physio can ex-plain better.

“I don’t know the mag-nitude of the risk. All I knowis that if I pass a fitness test, Iwill take the field. One thingI am really delighted to see ishow the guys have stood upin difficult situations andbatted through for theteam.”

Will play only if declared it: KohliThe rules are the same for everyone, says the India skipper


DHARAMSHALA

Getting a break: Shreyas Iyer couldmake his Test debut if ViratKohli is forced to sit out because of itness issues. * V.V. KRISHNAN

Australia captain SteveSmith expects Ajinkya Ra-hane to fill in as Virat Kohli’sreplacement in the Testhere.

“I think they’ll be fine. Ithink Ajinkya Rahane willprobably step up to captaintheir side. I thought he did apretty good job last weekwhen he was out on the fieldin Virat’s absence, so, I’mconfident he’ll be able to doa good job for them.”

Reflecting on the team’sperformance in the series,Smith noted, “We’ve workedvery hard, guys have beenpretty clear in the waythey’ve wanted to play andthe game plans they’ve beenable to formulate. For me,the most pleasing thing iswe’ve been able to take itout in the middle.

“We’ve talked a lot, formany years, and we’ve saidthe right things and we’ve

got plans in place, but oncewe’ve got out in the middle,we haven’t been able to putthem together.”

Dismissing favourite tagAsked about the pitch, Smithobserved, “Although there issome grass out there, it stilllooks a bit dry underneath. Ithink it’ll take a reasonable

amount of spin as the gamegoes on. I’m not reallybothered if we are the fa-vourites or underdogs to behonest.

“It is a game of cricket, 1-1in the series and everythingto play for in this game. I’mjust focused on controllingwhat we can and take it oneball at a time.”

We have managed to walk the talk, says SmithSpecial Correspondent

DHARAMSHALA

‘Executed our game-plans well’

Welcome! The Dalai Lama greets Steve Smith in the traditionalmanner by rubbing noses with the Australia skipper. * AFP

Shashank Manohar, whohas been persuaded to re-turn as ICC Chairman, hasalways maintained that thechange in the 2016 rev-enue-sharing model willreceive almost full supportfrom the ICC Board be-cause the revised model isa vast improvement on the2014 model that gave awhopping 22% to theBCCI.

The Committee of Ad-ministrators (CoA) wasready to accept Manohar’srationale to change theprevious revenue-sharingmodel, but told him that itwould still vote against it.

Opposition to reformsLast Sunday, the CoA alsoinformed the ICC that itwould oppose the reformsand that the BCCI has theoption to exercise one ofthe clauses in the Mem-bers Participation Agree-ment (MPA) signed in2014.

One of the options is towithdraw from the ICCevents.

The ICC Special Work-ing Group-proposed finan-cial and revenue model re-ceived a thumping supportat the Board meeting inFebruary; it’s unlikely thatthere will be any majorchange in April and Junein the context of numbers,especially with nine fullmembers pledging fullsupport to Manohar.

But there is a possibilityof a couple of proposals inthe ‘governance and rev-enue sharing model’ beingtweaked.

Bangladesh, Sri Lankaand Zimbabwe are un-happy that the voteweightage of the 10 fullmembers is being reducedand the independent dir-ector (female) being givena vote.

Zimbabwe has also ex-pressed misgivings aboutthe relegation rule beingapplied to the existing fullmembers.

Will the ICCtweak itsconstitution?G. Viswanath

MUMBAI

Following Friday’s SupremeCourt clarification on hold-ing of a post in State associ-ations and BCCI, many ad-ministrators heaved a sigh ofrelief.

While BCCI joint-secret-ary Amitabh Choudhary saidhe was “never confused”about the tenure clause, IPLchairman Rajeev Shukla wasdelighted. “I am glad theconfusion is over,” Shuklatold The Hindu.

Shukla, by attending theIPL auction in Bengaluruhad raised eyebrows, espe-cially in the wake of the CoAhaving put the onus of eli-gibility on respective indi-viduals. Friday’s develop-ment has put the matter torest.

A former BCCI office-bearer, requesting anonym-ity, referred to the develop-

ment as “a slap on CoA’sface.” But he wondered if itwould lead to “moreconfusion”.

It would be interesting tosee if Choudhary and treas-urer Anirudh Chaudhry cancontinue as office-bearers.On January 2, the ApexCourt had directed theycould continue providedthey submitted an affidaviton implementing the re-forms within four weeks.

If the duo is eligible, itwould also put a questionmark over BCCI’s represent-atives at the ICC Board meet-ing in April.

The CoA has authorisedchief executive Rahul Johriand a CoA member to attendthe CEO’s and Board meet-ings respectively. However, ifthey are allowed to con-tinue, Chaudhry and Choud-hary can stake a claim forrepresenting the BCCI.

Senior oice-bearerswelcome decisionAmol Karhadkar

MUMBAIGood news for retiredwomen cricketersMUMBAI

In a welcome development

for India’s retired women

cricketers, the BCCI

Committee of Administrators

(CoA) has approved a one-off

payment on a three-slab

scale. Those in the 1-9 Tests

(41 cricketers) will receive ₹15

lakh, those in the 10-24

bracket (18) will receive ₹25

lakh and those who have

played 25 or more (6) would

receive ₹30 lakh. The CoA has

also approved a monthly

gratis of ₹15,000 for those

who have played 1-4 Tests (31

cricketers) or an aggregate of

ODIs equivalent to 1-4 Tests.

Three ODIs are considered as

one Test. Retired women

cricketers (those who have

played five and more) have

been receiving monthly gratis

from 2008.

CMYK

A ND-ND




SPORT

SUDOKU

B U T T E R U P A C C E S S

Y H X P C R V I

T R U M P E T O V E R A L L

R N E O N V S E

I N D I C T O C C A S I O N

A E T E E S V C

L O R D A N G R Y S C E N E

A M I T E I

N E W F A N G L E D A S K S

D H R M D S E G

E C O F R E A K S T U D I O

R E Y T P U A L

R A V I O L I E X C I T E D

O E F C R C E E

R A R E F Y E M B L D E NO

Solution to puzzle 11963 Solution to yesterday’s Sudoku

DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

An incident known only to Rama and Sita is narrated toHanuman by Sita when she gives her jewel, Chudamani tobe handed over to Rama. It had happened in Chitrakutawhen they were alone and Rama had placed his head onSita’s lap and slept. Indra’s son Jayanta who appeared in theform of a crow had taunted her repeatedly. When Ramawoke up, and realised the evil intention of the crow, heaimed an arrow that pursued the victim tenaciously. Afterseeking refuge with many, the crow finally had to come backto Rama for pardon.

In a discourse, Kalyanapuram Sri Aravamudhachariardrew attention to Vedanta Desika’s text Abhaya PradanaSara that showcases the Ramayana as exemplifying the doc-trine of surrender.

Together Rama and Sita are seen to uphold their vow tonot only protect the erring souls from the various kinds ofdistress they may face in life but also offer the promise ofsalvation to those desirous of it. The Kakasura incident re-flects the plight of all jivatmas who finally have to seek thisultimate refuge, says Vedanta Desika.

It is also shown that the Divine Mother is a cut above theLord in her love and concern for all jivatmas and untiringlypleads with the Lord for their forgiveness and protection. Inthe case of Ravana, Sita though a captive who is constantlythreatened by him, is unafraid to advise Ravana to mend hisways and not continue with the grave sin of coveting an-other man’s wife. She indicates Rama’s Paratva for He aloneis the refuge to all.

She tells Ravana that even if he does not surrender, itwould be wise if he merely adopts a friendly stance towardsHim. This would save Lanka and his people from further de-struction. Trijata sees Sita as a refuge and entreats the rak-shasis to seek her feet instead of threatening her.

FAITH

Doctrine of surrender5 Daughter gets rid of the new

lags for some necklaces (8)

6 Molluscs on nuclear

submarines (7)

7 Could a golden one be an apt

parting gift? (9)

8 Letters from Britain

solemnising part of a 3 Dn.

(6)

13 See perk tossed after

gathering climber cultivated

as a brewing aid for a

tradesman (10)

14 Improper size? Get it to show

the prevailing mood (9)

17 Taking that path might not

yield success (8)

19 Evasive note on king getting

entertained by the return of

the Christmas season (7)

21 Part of a 3 Dn. found in a

small island, reportedly (6)

22 Volunteers coniscating

uranium smuggled by Ram

get hurt (6)

25 Part of a 3 Dn. getting rid of

the anger of one who's out

for blood? (4)

12 Bill counter packs

disassembled rake for a raid

(5-2)

15 Restore, say, part of a 3 Dn.

(4)

16 Rat in hotel chewed part of a 3

Dn. (6,4)

18 Leaping insect in a funnel-

shaped container at the end of

a thoroughfare lacking

shoulders (10)

20 Flog the opening bat,

dismissed by a wide, with part

of a 3 Dn. (4)

23 Division of one-fourth of a

gallon by a queen (7)

24 A selection of free verses for

town officer (5)

26 Tesla and Oscar walk back for

part of a 3 Dn. (6)

27 Drug addicts repairing

submarines made half of the

miners quit (7)

28 Biblical theatre production in a

sty? Reply may be ordered

(7,4)

■ DOWN

2 Loss of power resulting from

shock after abandoning

resistance (6)

3 Piece of footwear found by son

climbing up the pipe (4)

4 Meddler at home burnt petrol

with hesitation (10)

1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8

9 10

11 12

13 14

15 16

17

18 19 20 21

22

23 24

25

26 27

28

(set by Neyartha)

■ ACROSS

1 Quarrel over transport for

attending religious services

(11)

9 Article on a military alliance

trapping a model with an

orange-red dye (7)

10 Hippie's target for piercing is

part of a 3 Dn. (6)

11 String follower revealing false

expectations? (5)

THE HINDU CROSSWORD 11964

Beckenbauer appearsbefore prosecutorsBERLIN

German football legendFranz Beckenbauer appearedbefore Swiss prosecutors aspart of a corruption probeinto the awarding of the2006 World Cup to Germany.“Today (Thursday) I wasinterviewed as part of a longscheduled hearing by theSwiss federal prosecutor andI answered his questions,” theformer chairman ofGermany’s 2006 bidcommittee said. AFP

IN BRIEF

Alli banned for threeEuropean matchesLONDON

Tottenham midfielder DeleAlli was banned for threeEuropean club matches byUEFA on Friday for hissending off against Gent lastmonth. Alli received astraight red card for hishorror tackle on Gent’sBrecht Dejaegere. Allispeared his right foot highinto Dejaegere’s shin. TheBelgian midfielder was ableto continue but had to belater substituted, limping offwith a bloodied shin. AFP

Karman & Antonitschin inalHERAKLION (GREECE)

Karman Kaur Thandi and MiraAntonitsch made the doublesfinal of the $15,000 ITFwomen’s tennis tournamenthere, beating CarolineIlowska and Natalija Kostic6-4, 7-5 on Friday.

Other results: Quarterfinals:Mira Antonitsch & KarmanKaur Thandi bt CharlotteRobillard-Millette & CarolZhao (Can) 3-6, 7-5, [10-4].

$15,000 ITFwomen, SharmEl Sheikh: Quarterfinals:Emilie Francati (Den) & NinaKruijer (Ned) bt Kong Qianxin(Chn) & Ramya Natarajan 2-6,6-2, [10-5].

Benzema refuses to giveup on France recallPARIS

Karim Benzema wantsshowdown talks with Francecoach Didier Deschampsabout his international futureand said on Thursday hehadn’t given up hope of arecall. The Real Madrid strikerhas not been picked byDeschamps since October2015 after being embroiled ina sex-tape blackmail scandalinvolving formerinternational teammateMathieu Valbuena. “For now Ihaven’t ended myinternational career, I don’twant to give up,” Benzematold RMC radio station. AFP

Prajnesh Gunneswaran andSriram Balaji lived up totheir seedings, setting up atitle-round clash in the In-dian Oil-ITF Futures tennistournament at the TTCcourts here, with imperioussemifinal wins on Friday.

With his unseeded rivalDalwinder Singh faltering atevery turn, the top-seededPrajnesh ran out a 6-0, 6-3winner while Balaji was notunduly stretched either,beating third-seeded VishnuVardhan 6-3, 6-2.

Balaji started off with abreak, and went up 3-1. Hecontinued with his domin-eering display of big servingand brilliant volleying, andwent on to get himself an-other break in the ninthgame to close out the set.

Vishnu remained erraticin the second set too, drop-ping serve in the second andeighth games as Balajicantered home effortlessly.

His own serving frailtiesproved Dalwinder’s undoing— he got only 37.5 per cent ofhis first serves in — and thatcoupled with his misfiringbackhand left Prajnesh

needing only to play it safeto pocket the first set.

The top seed was in anuncompromising mood inthe second set too when Dal-winder seemed to get his acttogether.

Prajnesh broke in the fifth

game to go up 3-2, and afterthat it was all a mereformality.

In the doubles final, topseeds Balaji and Vishnuscored a 6-3, 7-5 win over Jui-Chen Hung and Hong KitWong.

The results: Semifinals: Pra-jnesh Gunneswaran bt Dal-winder Singh 6-0, 6-3; SriramBalaji bt Vishnu Vardhan 6-3,6-2. Doubles final: Sriram Bal-aji & Vishnu Vardhan bt Jui-Chen Hung (Tpe) & Hong KitWong (Hkg) 6-3, 7-5.

Prajnesh to meet BalajiTop seeds Sriram Balaji & Vishnu Vardhan clinch doubles title

Overmatched: Vishnu Vardhan, left, and Sriram Balaji were too good for Jui-Chen Hung andHong Kit Wong in the doubles inal. * S. MAHINSHA

Special COrrespondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

MUMBAI: The 3-y-o filly God’s Own,who is in good shape, may scoreover her rivals in the JimmyBharucha Trophy, the feature eventof Saturday’s (March 25) afternoonraces.Rails will be placed 3 metres widefrom 1400m to 1200m and 7metreswide from 800m upto the winningpost.

1 RAZAALI PLATEDIV. II (1,200m),Cl. V, rated 1 to 26, 2.30 p.m.: 1.

Isinit (2) Daman 59.5, 2. Headlines(7) A. Imran Khan 59, 3. Super Bolt(6) S. Amit 58, 4. Deccan King (9)Nadeem 58, 5. Milwalkee (4) Zee-shan 57, 6.Wildhorn (8) Ajinkya 57,7. Rich N Rare (1) Kuldeep 54.5, 8.Olivia Kaspen (5) Altaf Sayyed 51, 9.Shivalik Princess (3) Bhawani 51 and10. GoldenGlory (10)Merchant 50.1. HEADLINES, 2. ISINIT, 3. SUPER

BOLT

2 RADHA SIGTIA TROPHY

(2,400m), Cl. II, rated 60 to 86,3.00: 1. Frosty (2) Neeraj 59, 2. Pala-tial (3) Sandesh 56.5, 3. Raees (1)C.S. Jodha 55 and 4. Sabiq (4) Tre-vor 55.1. RAEES, 2. PALATIAL

3 SAMUEL NATHAN PLATE

(1,600m), Cl. III, rated 40 to 66,3.30: 1. Vision Of Romance (5) S.Sunil 60.5, 2. Uncle Scrooge (3) Par-mar 59.5, 3. Elegant Beauty (1) Tre-vor 56.5, 4. Glorious Eyes (2) C.S.Jodha 53 and 5. Nelsons Blood (4) J.Chinoy 51.5.1. ELEGANT BEAUTY, 2. NELSONS

BLOOD

4 TULIPA PLATE DIV. II (1,400m),Cl. IV, rated 20 to 46, 4.00: 1.

Spiridon (4) A. Imran Khan 60.5, 2.Gregorian Chants (8) S. Sunil 56.5,3. Dolphin (6) C.S. Jodha 54, 4.Brothersofthewind (9) Trevor 53.5,5. Sail Past (7) Raghuveer 52.5, 6.Viking (10) Neeraj 52.5, 7. Windfall(1) S. Amit 52.5, 8. King Of Killen (2)Sandesh 51.5, 9. Nightfall (3) Mer-chant 51 and 10. Blavatsky (5) AltafSayyed 50.5.1. VIKING, 2. KING OF KILLEN, 3.

SPIRIDON

5 JIMMY BHARUCHA TROPHY

(1,200m), 3-y-o only, 4.30: 1.Kramer (3) Trevor 57, 2. God’s Own(2)Dashrath 55.5, 3. TimelessDeeds(6) J. Chinoy 55.5, 4. Cambridge (7)K. Kadam 53, 5. Rincon (5) C.S.

Jodha 53, 6.Wilshire (3) Neeraj 53and 7. Arashi (1) Parmar 51.5.1. GOD’S OWN, 2. KRAMER

6 TULIPA PLATE DIV. I

(1,400m), Cl. IV, rated 20 to46, 5.00: 1. Angel Girl (9) Daman62, 2. Silk Baby (10) Bhawani60.5, 3. Brabourne (3) Sandesh58.5, 4. Zanzibaar (5) S. Amit59.5, 5. Bidstone Hill (2) Parbat57.5, 6. Sir Desmond (8) AkshayKumar 54.5, 7. Arabian Storm (1)Trevor 54, 8. Grappa (4) Parmar54, 9. Kalina (6) Nazil 525 and 10.Midnight Romance (7) AltafSayyed 52.5.1. BRABOURNE, 2. ARABIAN

STORM, 3. ANGELGIRL

7 RAZA ALI PLATE DIV. I

(1,200m), Cl. V, rated 1 to 26,5.30: 1. Adams Beginning (2) Da-man 60.5, 2. ArcticWhizz (7) Par-mar 60.5, 3. Queen Ria (6)Nadeem 60.5, 4. Advance ToContact (4) C.S. Jodha 60, 5. Bri-tain (3) A. Imran Khan 60, 6.Eternal Love (9) Vishal 60, 7.Ridgewood Star (5) Trevor 60, 8.Super Icon (11) Tograllu 59.5, 9.Hunayn (10) Pradeep 59, 10. Para-

dise (1) Raghuveer 56.5 and 11.Symphonic (8)Merchant 54.5.1. ADAMS BEGINNING, 2. ARCTIC

WHIZZ, 3. ADVANCE TOCONTACT

8 DIEGO RIVERA PLATE

(1,200m), Cl. IV, rated 20 to46, 6.00: 1. Maduro (7) Bhawani61.5, 2. Airlift (14) C.S. Jodha 61, 3.Lady In Red (9) Trevor 59, 4.Sporto (13) Daman 58.5, 5. Fash-ionable Gait (6) Agarwal 55, 6.Abbeyroad (3) S.J. Sunil 54, 7. Ir-ish Boss (2) Merchant 54, 8. Trev-elyan (10) Neeraj 54, 9. RoyalBlood (8) Nirmal Jodha 53.5, 10.Triple Threat (12) Ayyar 53.5, 11.Highland Princess (11) Shahrukh53, 12. Kookaburra (4) Zeeshan52.5, 13. Voulez Vous (5) Kuldeep52.5 and 14. Star Witness (1)Vishal 49.1. AIRLIFT, 2. SPORTO, 3. LADY IN

RED

Day’s best:VIKING

Double: BRABOURNE—AIRLIFT

Jackpot: 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8.

Treble: (i) 5, 6 & 7; (ii) 6, 7 & 8.

Tanala: All races.

Super jackpot: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8.

God’s Own for feature event

US teen Frances Tiafoedowned Russia’s KonstantinKravchuk 7-5, 5-7, 6-1 at theMiami Open, to book asecond-round match against18-time Grand Slam cham-pion Roger Federer, here onThursday.

In the women’s draw,second seed KarolinaPliskova cruised into thethird round, the Czech beat-ing American qualifierMadison Brengle 6-1, 6-3 onThursday.

Important results: Men: Firstround: Frances Tiafoe bt Kon-stantin Kravchuk 7-5, 5-7, 6-1;Borna Coric bt Marcel Gran-ollers 7-6(6), 4-6, 6-3; RobinHaase bt Mikael Ymer 7-5, 7-6(3); Andrey Kuznetsov bt DenisIstomin 6-4, 7-6(0); AdrianMannarino bt Benjamin Becker7-6(6), 6-3; Tommy Robredobt Nikoloz Basilashvili 3-6, 6-4,6-2; Andrey Rublev bt FlorianMayer 6-1, 6-1; MikhailKukushkin bt Mikhail Youzhny6-4, 6-1.

Women: Second round:

Dominika Cibulkova bt Veron-ica Cepede Royg 6-3, 6-2; Mir-jana Lucic-Baroni bt KaterynaBondarenko 6-2, 2-6, 7-6(2);Agnieszka Radwanska bt WangQiang 7-6(3), 6-1; Kirsten Flip-kens bt Ana Konjuh 7-6(4), 6-7(6), 6-2; Caroline Wozniacki btVarvara Lepchenko 6-1, 6-2;Lucie Safarova bt Daria Gav-rilova 6-2, 6-2; Zhang Shuai btSara Errani 4-6, 6-4, 7-5; Karo-lina Pliskova bt MadisonBrengle 6-1, 6-3; JanaCepelova bt Coco Vandeweghe6-2, 3-6, 6-1.

Tiafoe sets upFederer clashKarolina Pliskova cruises

Frances Tiafoe is all pumpedup. * AFP

Agencies

MIAMI

The Indian boys scored a3-0 victory over Syria in aplay-off match in the AsiaOceania World Junior un-der-14 tennis tournamentin Bangkok on Friday.

India will now playKorea for fifth place.

The results (play-off): Indiabt Syria 3-0 [Nishant Dabas btTaym Alazmeh 7-5, 7-6(4);V.M. Sandeep bt Pierre Dja-roueh 6-0, 6-0; Nishant Da-bas & V.M. Sandeep bt AousAbou Hassoun & TaymAlazmeh 6-4, 7-6(4)].

India beatsSyriaSports Bureau

BANGKOK

Shamim Khan scored aneven par final round andwon the Kolkata Classicchampionship by five strokesat the Royal Calcutta GolfClub (RCGC) course here onFriday.

Overnight leader Shamimgathered a four round totalof 10-under 278 to record hisfirst victory at the RCGC andone of the biggest at thevenue.

Shamim claimed the win-ner’s purse of ₹6 lakh fromhis 13th victory in a careerspanning 18 years.

He also jumped fromfourth to the top place on theProfessional Golf Tour of In-dia (PGTI) Order of Merit.

Two-time Indian Openwinner S.S.P. Chowrasia

came a distant second aftermanaging a two-under 70 foran aggregate of 283.

Even as most of the pros

witnessed fluctuating for-tunes, Shamim stood firmwith his solid game — relyingheavily on chipping and put-

ting. The 38-year-old im-proved his driving to find 10fairways and picked up bird-ies on second, 10th and 15thholes.

His most spectacular puttcame on the 10th, where hesank from about 25 feet.Shamim missed some shortputts to bogey on sixth, sev-enth and 17th.

UnluckyHe was a tad unlucky to see a25-foot birdie putt lip out onthe 18th green. However, hehad almost secured the titleby that time.

“Since Mukesh (overnightsecond) was not doing sowell, I had no pressure. Ihave always played well atthe RCGC and am happy towin my first title here,” saidShamim.

Mukesh, who had sevenbogeys against three birdies,ended at tied fourth follow-ing his final round of 76.

Chowrasia, who hit adouble bogey and an eaglefor a two-under card in an-other inconsistent round,could not make an impactdespite improving his posi-tion from joint-fifth.

The scores: 278: Shamim Khan(70, 68, 68, 72); 283: S.S.P.Chowrasia (71, 70, 72, 70); 284:Shankar Das (71, 73, 68,72);285: Om Prakash Chouhan (69,74, 71, 71), Sujjan Singh (70, 71,73, 71) and Mukesh Kumar (69,68, 72, 76); 286: HarendraGupta (70, 74, 71, 71), MithunPerera (70, 72, 70, 74) andGaurav Pratap Singh (70, 72, 71,73); 287: Mohammad Sanju (71,75, 70, 71) and Feroz SinghGarewal (69, 73, 73, 72).

Shamimwins Kolkata Classic by ive strokesS.S.P. Chowrasia inishes a distant second

Y.B. Sarangi

KOLKATA

Well done: Shamim Khan, right, the winner of the KolkataClassic, is greeted by S.S.P. Chowrasia. * PTI

Parikshit Somani of Assamand Yubrani Banerjee ofBengal are poised to windouble crowns by progress-ing to the under-18 boys’and girls’ singles finals re-spectively after winning thedoubles titles in the Rendez-Vous A Roland Garros-BTA-AITA National series tennishere on Friday.

Top seeded Parikshit beatAbhimanyu Vannemreddyof Karnataka in straight setsin the boys’ singles final toset up a title clash withsecond-seeded RishabhSharda of Chandigarh.

Rishabh got the better ofTelengana’s Rithvik Choud-hary Bollipalli.

Third-seeded Yubranioutclassed Tamil Nadu’s G.S

Vasavi in a straight-set win.She will face fourth-seededPratibha Prasad Narayan ofKarnataka.The results: Boys singles(semifinals): Parikshit Somani(Asm) bt Abhimanyu Vannem-reddy (Kar) 6-0, 6-3, RishabhSharda (Chd) bt Rithvik Choud-hary Bollipalli (Tel) 6-3, 6-7(3),6-3.Doubles (final): Parikshit &Atharva Sharma (Mah) bt DipinWadhwa (Del) & Akshat Agar-wal (Ben) 7-6(5), 6-4.Girls singles (semifinals): Prat-ibha Prasad Narayan (Kar) btSmriti Singh (Har) 6-4, 6-1,Yubrani Banerjee (Ben) bt G.S.Vasavi (TN) 6-2, 6-1.Doubles (final): Yubrani Baner-jee & C. Shivani Sravya (Tel) btBhakti Shah (Tel) & RiyaUboveja (Del) 6-7(3), 6-2,10-4.

Parikshit, Yubraniin line for doubleSpecial Correspondent

KOLKATA

The huge crowds at theNehru Stadium for ISLgames have been a joy to be-hold. But with the FIFA un-der-17World Cup coming upin October, Kochi has beenfirmly told to get its act to-gether if it wants to host thebig event. “We are very con-cerned about the state of therenovations. Since my lastvisit, there are areas wherethings have improved butthere are many areas wherethe requirements have notbeen met and where workhas not been completed,”

said JaimeYarza, FIFA’sHeadof Events, after inspectingthe stadiumonFriday.

Much of the work insidethe stadiumwas supposed tohave been finished by nowand the FIFA team has givenKochi a newdeadline.

“We have set up a newdeadline, May 15, to con-clude these works so wewillsee how the situation devel-ops,” said Yarzawho headedthe eight-member FIFA del-egation. The Kerala SportsMinister A.C. Moideen as-sured all works would becompleted before the newdeadline.

FIFA team nothappy with KochiSpecial Correspondent

KOCHI

India’s P. Harikrishna re-gistered a thumping vic-tory over England’s Mi-chael Adams in theShenzhen LonggangGrandmasters chess tour-nament to jump to the topspot here on Friday. TheWorld No. 14 is now on 1.5points after two rounds.

The World No. 14 Indianhas a tally of 1.5 points inthis elite event after tworounds. Playing black,Harikrishna unleashed histrademark aggressive gameto keep the higher ranked(world number 12) Adamsunder constant pressure. Aseries of exchanges saw thetwo left with a pawn eachon the board.

But Harikrishna had anextra knight too, which hemanoeuvred perfectly tocreate the stage for an out-right win.

Adams had no choicebut to concede the point.

Harikrishna will take onthe top-rated player of thetournament, Anish Giri ofNetherlands, next. Giri, theWorld No.11, is currentlyplaced fifth after tworounds. Incidentally,arikrishna is only player tohave won a match so far.

The Shenzhen Master,which is being played in adouble round—robinformat, features sixGrandmasters.

Harikrishnabeats AdamsPress Trust of India

SHENZEN

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SPORT

Aldridge stars as Spursdown GrizzliesWASHINGTON

LaMarcus Aldridge scored 23

points and Kawhi Leonard

added 19 to power San

Antonio Spurs over visiting

Memphis Grizzlies 97-90 in

the NBA on Thursday.

Australian reserve Patty Mills

netted 15 points and French

guard Tony Parker

contributed 13.Other results: Trail Blazers110 bt Knicks 95; Mavericks97 bt Clippers 95; Nets 126 btSuns 98; Raptors 101 bt Heat84. AGENCIES

IN BRIEF

Korea beats Indiain play-of matchNEW DELHI

India was beaten 2-0 by

Korea in the play-off match

for the lower placings in the

Asia Oceania Junior Fed Cup

under-16 girls tennis

tournament at the DLTA

Complex on Friday. India will

play Malaysia for the 11th

place. Japan and Thailand

won their semifinals and

qualified for the World Group

Finals to be staged in

Budapest in September.

Chinese Taipei and Australia

will fight for the third place

which will also take the team

to the World Group stage.The results (play-off): Koreabt India 2-0 (Back Dayeon btSalsa Aher 6-3, 6-2; YunHyeran bt Humea Shaik 6-0,6-4).

in theEmergingTeamsCup inBangladesh, preferred totrain at Vizianagaram on Fri-day and in bowling left-armspinner Rahil Shah and leg-spinner Murugan Ashwin,couldwell be tested.

And, the biggest motiva-tion for all is the fact that it isthe lastmajor 50-over tourna-ment before the ChampionsTrophy inEngland.

The teams (from):

India Blue: Harbhajan Singh(Capt.),MandeepSingh,MayankAgarwal, Ambati Rayudu,ManojTiwary, Rishabh Pant (wk),Deepak Hooda, Krunal Pandya,Shahbaz Nadeem, SiddarthKaul, Shardul Thakur, PrasidhKrishna, Pankaj Rao and RuturajGaikwad.

India Red: Parthiv Patel (Capt. &wk), Shikhar Dhawan, ManishPandey, Ishank Jaggi, GurkeeratMann,AxarPatel,AkshayKarne-war, Ashoke Dinda, KulwantKhejroliya, Dhawal Kulkarni,Govinda Poddar, Sreevats Gos-wami, Chama Milind and Har-preethSinghBhatia.

For the fewdie-hard fanswhoturned up at the Dr. Y.S. Ra-jasekhara Reddy stadiumhere, venue of the PaytmDe-odhar Trophy limited-overcricket tournament from Sat-urday, the sight of India Testdiscard Harbhajan Singhbowling well in the nets re-kindledmemories of his glor-ious past.

And, when he leads IndiaBlue in its first match againstIndia Red on Saturday, it isquite natural that the teamlooks up to him to play a de-cisive role.

More importantly, a fitHar-bhajan looked impressiveand clearly in the mood toserve a reminder that he isnot yet a spent-force.

India Blue which will bewithout the services of in-jured star batsman RohitSharma and Shreyas Iyer,who has been summoned forNational duty as stand-by for

theDharamshala Test againstAustralia, has a competentbowling attack with the likesof Siddharth Kaul, ShardulThakur, Pankaj Kumar Raoand Prasidh Krishna backedby the slow bowlers ShahbazNadeem and HarbhajanSingh.

In batting, Blue hasseasoned players such as Am-bati Rayudu, Manoj Tiwary,Mandeep Singh, allrounderKrunal Pandya and wicket-keeper-batsman RishabhPant.

In a changeof line-up,May-ank Agarwal has beenmovedfrom IndiaRed to India Blue.

India Red is led by ParthivPatel, who should not be faul-ted if he is wondering whatmorehehas todo indomesticcricket to book a permanentslot in the Indian team.

A struggling ShikharDhawan should be itching fora couple of big scores to beback in the reckoning for theNational team.

Clean-hitting Ishank Jaggi,

Gurkeerat SinghMann,Man-ish Pandey are all capable ofcoming up with explosiveknocks.

In bowling, pacers AshokeDinda, Dhawal Kulkarni, left-armer Kulwant Khejroliya,tipped as one of the best pro-spects, are expected toprovide early breakthroughsto set the stage forAxar Patel.

In-formKarthikOn the other hand, TamilNadu, the newly-crownedVi-jayHazareTrophy champion,should bank once again onthe in-form wicketkeeper-batsmanDineshKarthik.

Openers Ganga SridharRaju and Kaushik Gandhihold the key to Tamil Nadu’scampaign on pitches, whichNational Senior SelectionCommittee chairman M.S.K.Prasad feels shouldhave goodbounce and be good for bat-ting, too.

Tamil Nadu, without B.Aparajith and Aswin Crist,who will be playing for India

India Blue looks up to Harbhajan SinghDeodhar Trophy is the last major tournament before the Champions Trophy in England

Ready for return?: Harbhajan Singh may want to use the Deodhar Trophy to serve a warning to hisrivals. * K.R. DEEPAK

V.V. Subrahmanyam

VISAKHAPATNAM

Formula One: Australian GP,SS Select HD 2, 8.25 a.m. &11.25 a.m.India vs Australia: 4th Test,STAR Sports 1, 3 & HD 1, 3,9.30 a.m.Sri Lanka vs Bangladesh:1st ODI, TEN 3 & TEN 1 HD,2.30 p.m.WC Qualifiers: Sony Six,Sony ESPN & Sony Six HD,Sony ESPN HD, 1 a.m.(Sunday)NBA: Sony Six & Sony Six HD,6 a.m. (Sunday)

TV PICKS

Army Service Corps (ASC),Karnataka, ousted an off-col-our Customs and Central Ex-cise (Kerala) 73-46 for a placein the men’s semifinal of the31st Federation Cup basket-ball championship at thePSG Indoor Sports Complexcourts here on Friday.

The Kerala men blew anychance they had as early asin the first session.

They could easily havetightened the defence andtrimmed down the fast-tick-ing scoring rate of the spir-ited ASC men, who werefirst-time qualifiers for thetournament. Instead, theyallowed the ASC forwards,especially Issac T. Thomasand Jeethandar, to roamfreely, which proved costly.

ASC made best use of thespace and the situation tofire from all sides, and the

Customs men were seen run-ning for cover. Of course,they did not have theirstrongest, who were nursinginjuries, to shield them fromthe sudden onslaught.

With a big lead in theirbag, ASC played the last twoquarters with a great deal ofcreativity and flair. Theyshowed no mercy and con-tinued to attack and, withnothing left in the tourna-ment, the Customs mensoon threw in the towel.

“The strong result is basic-ally because we have young-sters who have great pro-spects to represent thecountry,” said ASC coachG.R.L Prasad.

IAF fights backIn another match, the IndianAir Force (IAF), which lostthe opener, staged a brilliantfightback midway throughthe third quarter to defeat

Ludhiana BasketballAcademy 95-80 and bookthe second semifinal berthfrom Group A.

ONGC and IOB men alsosealed their semifinal berthfrom group B.

Kerala shown the doorIn the women’s section, de-fending champion Keraladespite scoring a 73-61 winover host Tamil Nadu had topack its bag having finishedthird in its group (B).

The champion outfit,which lost to West Bengalthe other day, had to beatthe host by a 14-point mar-gin. It looked comfortablefor most part enjoying a leadof 19 but lost the plot in thedying minutes and agon-isingly fell short by twopoints at the whistle.The results: Men: Army ServiceCorps (Karnataka) 73 (Issac T.Thomas 18) bt Customs & Cent-

ral Excise (Kerala) 46; Indian AirForce 95 (G. Narender 26, Hem-ant Sheoran 23) bt Ludhiana BA80 (Arshpreet Singh 24, JaipalSingh 22).

Central Railways 68 (Rakesh16, Amit 15) bt Income Tax (Gu-jarat) 63 (Dishant 23, Kasi 21).

Women: Kerala 73 (P. Anjana26, P. Surya 12) bt Tamil Nadu 61(R. Varshana 21, S. Srividhya 13).

On Thursday: Indian Air Force87 (G. Narendra 23, K. Nikhil 13)bt Customs & Central Excise(Kerala) 52 (Eudrick Pereira 22).

Women: Southern Railway 65(Raja Priya 15, Amita Minj 14) btPunjab 52 (Gagandeep Kaur 16,Amanpreet Kaur 14); WestBengal 79 (Sitamani Tudu 19,Anjana 15) bt Delhi 50 (Sahiba11, Princy 11).

On Thursday: Tamil Nadu 80(Keerthi 18, Sri Vidya 13) btDelhi 66 (Garima 12, Sahiba 11).Southern Rly. 74 (P. Anitha 24,Raja Priya 18) bt Telangana 57(Divya Palanivel 19, Aswathy13).

ASC guns down Customs to enter semiinalsRayan Rozario

Coimbatore

Makeway! ASC’s Vrinder Singh, right, goes past a Customsdefender. * M. PERIASAMY

Lionel Messi converted apenalty as Argentina la-boured to a 1-0 win overChile in a World Cup quali-fier on Thursday that put itback in the automatic qual-ifying spots for next year’sfinals in Russia.

Messi beat ClaudioBravo from the spot in the16th minute after Angel DiMaria had been pushedfrom behind in the firstquarter of a poor, tensematch on a terrible RiverPlate pitch.

The results: Argentina 1(Messi 16-pen) bt Chile 0; Ur-uguay 1 (Cavani 9-pen) lost toBrazil 4 (Paulinho 19, 51,90+1, Neymar 75); Paraguay 2(Valdez 12, Alonso 65) btEcuador 1 (Caicedo 70-pen);Colombia 1 (Rodriguez 83) btBolivia 0.

Messi savesArgentinaAGENCIES

BUENOS AIRES

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WEEKEND SPORT

CMYK

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LIFE

World’s oldest Vespamay fetch €3,00,000LONDON

The world’s oldest Vespa is

up for sale on online aution

site Catawiki and is expected

to fetch up to €3,00,000.

The scooter, with chassis

number 1003, is the third

Vespa ever made by Piaggio,

the Italian manufacturer. The

scooter is from Piaggio’s “0

series”, which comprised 60

prototypes. The first two

prototypes are no longer in

existence. PTI

IN BRIEF

Ellis Island Medal forsix Indian-AmericansHOUSTON

Six Indian-Americans are

among the 88 recipients

named for the 2017 Ellis

Island Medal of Honor by the

U.S. National Ethnic Coalition

of Organisations. PepsiCo

CEO Indra Nooyi, writer

Fareed Zakaria and

cardiologist Annapoorna S.

Kini are on the list. PTI

U.S. born panda Bao Baomakes China debutDUJIANGYAN

U.S.-born giant panda Bao

Bao made her debut before

the public in southwestern

China on Friday following her

move there from Washington,

D.C. Bao Bao was born at the

National Zoo in Washington

to pandas on loan from China.

Under the loan agreement,

such panda cubs must be

returned to China. AP

About two thirds of cancersare caused by random typosin DNA that occur as normalcells make copies of them-selves, a finding that helpsexplain why healthy indi-viduals who do everythingthey can to avoid cancer arestill stricken with the dis-ease, U.S. researchers havereported.

“These cancers will occurno matter how perfect theenvironment,” said Bert Vo-gelstein, a cancer geneticistat Johns Hopkins Universityin Baltimore, whose studywas published in the journalScience.

The new findings arebased on genetic sequencingand cancer studies from 69countries around the world.They follow a controversial2015 study published in Sci-

ence by the same researchersat Johns Hopkins that looked

just at cancers in the U.S.That study, by Dr. Vogel-

stein and mathematicianCristian Tomasetti, assertedthat random DNA mistakesaccounted for a lot more ofthe risk of developing cancerthan previously thought.

The finding caused an out-cry from cancer experts,who have traditionally heldthat most cancers werecaused by preventable life-style and environmentalfactors or inherited geneticdefects.

Although most peopleknow about the hereditaryand environmental causes ofcancer, few appreciate therisk from random mistakesthat occur each time a nor-mal cell divides and copiesits DNA into two new cells,Mr. Tomasetti said.

Such mistakes are “a po-tent source of cancer muta-tions that historically havebeen scientifically underval-ued,” Mr. Tomasetti said.

The new work offers thefirst estimate of what pro-portion of cancers arecaused by these randommistakes.

Mathematical modelTo get there, the team de-veloped a mathematicalmodel using DNA sequen-cing data from The CancerGenome Atlas and diseasedata from the Cancer Re-search U.K. database, look-ing specifically at mutations

that drive aberrant cellgrowth in 32 different cancertypes. Though there wasvariation within specific can-cers, overall, the researchersestimated that 66% of muta-tions in these cancers resul-ted from copying errors,29% were caused by lifestyleand environmental factors,and the remaining 5% wereinherited.

Although most of thesemutations cannot be preven-ted, the team stressed thatearly detection and treat-ment can prevent many can-cer deaths, regardless of thecause.

Though most cancers aredue to “bad luck”, peopleshould not ignore soundpublic health advice that canhelp people avoid prevent-able cancers, includingmaintaining a healthy weightand avoiding environmentalrisk factors such as smoking,the team said.

Two thirds of cancers causedby random genetic typos: studyMistakes can occur when a normal cell divides and copies its DNA into new cellsReuters

Chicago

Culture of cancer cells asseen under a microscope.

* NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE/AP

Astronauts ventured out ona spacewalk on Friday toprep the International SpaceStation for a new parkingspot.

NASA’s Shane Kimbroughand France’s Thomas Pes-quet emerged early from theorbiting complex, then wenttheir separate ways to startwork. Their main job in-volves disconnecting an olddocking port.

This port needs to bemoved in order to makeroom for a docking devicecompatible with future com-mercial crew capsules, andprovide more clearance.

The new docking device

will fly up late this year orearly next and hook ontothis port.

If all goes well, flight con-trollers in Houston will relo-

cate the old docking port onSunday, using the station’srobotic arm. Then nextThursday, the crew will con-duct another spacewalk to

secure the unit. SpaceX andBoeing are developing cap-sules capable of flying astro-nauts to and from the spacestation.

Until the SpaceX CrewDragon and Boeing Starlinerare ready possibly next year,U.S. astronauts will have tokeep riding Russian rocketsto orbit.

Before working on thedocking port, Mr. Kim-brough replaced a com-puter-relay box with an up-graded version.

Mr. Pesquet, meanwhile,looked for signs of a smallammonia coolant leak inoutdoor plumbing. A GoProcamera caught his everymove for playback later.

Astronauts take a walk in spaceKimbrough and Pesquet are getting the ISS ready for a new docking portAssociated Press

Cape Canaveral

Full focus: A screenshot fromNASA TV shows ESA astronautThomas Pesquet working outside the ISS on Friday. * AFP

Going retro: French cabinetmaker Michel Robillard poses in his handbuilt wooden 2CV Citroen Car built as an exact replica, nearLoches, in France. The car made out of Touraine fruitwood is equipped to take the road. * AFP

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Cool wheels

Once home to a family ofSyrian refugees, a UnitedNations tent has found anew life as a dress still bear-ing the marks and stains ofits past.

“Dress for Our Time”,the brainchild of fashiondesigner Helen Storey, hasturned a discarded tentfrom the Zaatari refugeecamp in Jordan into ahooded dress featured onstage at the GlastonburyFestival and in the confer-ence halls of Dubai.

Now on display at theDubai International Hu-manitarian Aid and Devel-opment conference and ex-hibition, the project aims tointroduce the reality ofrefugee life to audienceswho may be physically andpolitically removed fromthe conflict.

“We’re using fashion assort of a Trojan horse, andfrom that you’re able to talkabout something that’smore serious... a crisis thatinvolves all of us,” said Pro-fessory Storey, who workson fashion science at theUniversity of the Arts,London.

“It was important for methat it did have a historyand it was genuinely theshelter to a family, and Ithink it’s that narrative thathelps give the piece reson-ance with people.”

The tent was discardedwhen the UN refugeeagency, the UNHCR, beganto install cabins at theZaatari camp on the borderwith war-ravaged Syria.

Professor Storey pre-served the condition of thetent as she had found it: astained piece of beige tarpimprinted with the blueUNHCR logo, the remainsof a message scribbled in

orange marker faded butstill visible.

The dress has in the pastyear made its way down thesidewalks of London to Gla-stonbury, where Maliansinger Rokia Traore wore iton stage last year.

Mixed reactionsReactions to the dress haverun the gamut, from con-fused to amused totouched. “In Londonthere’s a lot of stopping andstaring,” said project am-bassador Louise Owen,who also modelled thedress at the conference inDubai.

“We had a Syrian artisthere burst into tears whenshe saw me in the dress,”Ms. Owen said.

“It had touched her in a

way it wouldn’t anybody inLondon.”

And while the garmentwill continue to take itsstory around the world,one place it will not be re-turning is the Zaatari camp.

“I’ve taken the view thatit’s inappropriate to take itback,” said ProfessorStorey. “It’s our part of theworld that needs educa-tion. It’s really a tool to helpthe Western part of theworld be less defensiveabout this.” Syria’s devast-ating civil war, now in itsseventh year, has renderedmore than half the coun-try’s population refugees.

The conflict has leftmore than 3,20,000 peopledead, according to the Syr-ian Observatory for HumanRights.

Agence France-Presse

Dubai

Dress for our times: Louise Owenmodels a refugee tentconverted into a gown by designer Helen Storey, at aconference in Dubai. * AFP

Syrian refugee tent indslife as dress with a storyFashion used as a Trojan horse to discuss refugee crisis

NASA’s Hubble space tele-scope has detected a super-massive black hole that hasbeen kicked out of thecentre of a distant galaxy bywhat could be the power ofgravitational waves.

Weighing more than onebillion suns, the rogue blackhole is the most massiveblack hole ever detected tohave been kicked out of itscentral home.

Researchers estimate thatit took the equivalent energyof 100 million supernovasexploding simultaneously tojettison the black hole.

The most plausible ex-planation for this propulsiveenergy is that the monsterobject was given a kick bygravitational waves un-leashed by the merger oftwo hefty black holes at the

centre of the host galaxy, ac-cording to the scientists.

Hubble’s observations ofthe black hole surprised theresearch team. “When I firstsaw this, I thought we wereseeing something very pecu-liar,” said team leader MarcoChiaberge of the Space Tele-scope Science Institute(STScI) and Johns HopkinsUniversity, in Baltimore,Maryland, U.S.

Combined research“When we combined obser-vations from Hubble, theChandra X-ray Observatory,and the Sloan Digital SkySurvey, it all pointed to-wards the same scenario,”said Mr. Chiaberge.

Hubble images taken invisible and near-infraredlight provided the first cluethat the galaxy was unusual.

The images revealed a

bright quasar, the energeticsignature of a black hole,residing far from the galacticcore.

“Black holes reside in thecentre of galaxies, so it’s un-usual to see a quasar not inthe centre,” Mr. Chiabergeadded. The team calculatedthe black hole’s distancefrom the core by comparingthe distribution of starlightin the host galaxy with thatof a normal elliptical galaxyfrom a computer model.

The black hole had trav-elled more than 35,000 lightyears from the centre, whichis more than the distancebetween the sun and thecentre of the Milky Way, ac-cording to the study.

First predicted by AlbertEinstein, gravitational wavesare ripples in space that arecreated when two massiveobjects collide.

Hubble images provided the irst clue of the phenonomenon

Indo-Asian News Service

Washington

Gravitational waves kick outblack hole from galactic core

Scientists have developed atechnology to make thenormally brittle material ofglass bend and flex, addinga new level of flexibility tothe microscopic world ofmedical devices.

The research at BrighamYoung University in theU.S. opens up the ability tocreate a new family of lab-on-a-chip devices based onflexing glass.

“If you keep the move-ments to the nanoscale,glass can still snap backinto shape,” said AaronHawkins, Professor atBrigham Young University.

“We have created glassmembranes that can moveup and down and bend.They are the first buildingblocks of a whole newplumbing system thatcould move very smallvolumes of liquid around,”said Professor Hawkins.

Nanoscale workWhile current membranedevices effectively functionat the microscale, Pro-fessor Hawkins’ researchwill allow equally effectivework at the nanoscale.

Chemists and biologistscould use the nanoscaledevices to move, trap andanalyse very small biolo-gical particles like proteins,viruses and DNA.

According to lead studyauthor John Stout, glass isstiff and solid and not a ma-terial upon which thingsreact, it is easy to clean,and it is not toxic.

“Glass is clean for sensit-ive types of samples, likeblood samples,” Mr. Stoutsaid.

“Working with this glassdevice will allow us to lookat particles of any size andat any given range. It willalso allow us to analyse theparticles in the samplewithout modifying them,”Mr. Stout added.

The researchers believetheir device could alsomean performing success-ful tests using much smal-ler quantities of asubstance.

Flexible glassfor medicaldevicesPress Trust of India

Washington

For the 11th year running, cit-ies worldwide will turn theirlights off on Saturday tomark Earth Hour in a globalcall to action on climatechange.

But the moment of dark-ness should also serve as areminder, activists say, of an-other problem that gets farless attention: light pollu-tion. More than 80% of hu-manity lives under skies sat-urated with artificial light,scientists recently calcu-lated.In the United Statesand western Europe, that fig-ure goes up to 99 percent ofthe population, most ofwhom cannot discern theMilky Way in the night sky.

Artificial lighting has beenshown to disturb the repro-ductive cycles of some anim-als and the migration of birdsthat navigate using the stars,

and to disorient night-flyinginsects.

For humans, circadianrhythms that regulate hor-mones and other bodily

functions can also be thrownout of whack by too muchlight at night.

Even the most ardent crit-ics of light pollution are not

saying cities should go dark,or that lighting is not an es-sential element of urban life.

But society needs to ad-dress a growing list of con-cerns, they suggest. “In gen-

studies showing that peopledrive more carefully — andmore slowly — on roads withless or no lighting at night.

Health and safetyOver the last 15 years, biolo-gists, doctors, non-govern-mental organisations andeven UNESCO have joinedthe fight against light pollu-tion by detailing negative im-pacts to health and well be-ing — for humans and otheranimals. In 2012, the Amer-ican Medical Association(AMA) concluded that expos-ure to “excessive” night light“can disrupt sleep and ex-acerbate sleep disorders”.

And it called for more re-search into possible links tocancer, obesity, diabetes anddepression.

Last year, the AMA raisedanother red flag, this timeabout light-emitting diodes,better known as LEDs.

Local governments inwealthy countries are racingto replace existing street-lights with LEDs, which con-sume less energy and lastlonger. In the United States,fully 10% of public lightinghas already switched over toLED.

That is good news for thefight against global warming,cutting on fossil-fuel burningfor electricity, but it may bebad news for health, theAMA cautioned.

“Some LED lights areharmful when used as streetlighting,” AMA board mem-ber Maya Babu said in astatement.

Not only do the bluish,high-intensity lights create aview-obscuring glare, theyhave “five times greater im-pact on circadian sleeprhythms than conventionalstreet lamps,” the AMAconcluded.

eral, it’s getting worse,”Diana Umpierre, presidentof the International Dark-SkyAssociation, said of light pol-lution in her home state ofFlorida. And things are mov-ing in the wrong direction,she said. “We are predictedto have 15 million more resid-ents in the next 50 years” —with all the extra lightingthat entails.

By contrast, in Chad, theCentral African Republic andMadagascar — not coincid-entally among the poorestcountries in the world —three quarters of peoplehave a clear view of the heav-ens.

One of the biggest chal-lenges in fighting light pollu-tion is convincing peoplethat “brightness” is not syn-onymous with “safety”, saidMs. Umpierre.

“Sometimes it’s just theopposite,” she argued, citing

Light pollution: Another reason to lip the switch ofCircadian rhythms that regulate hormones and other bodily functions can be thrown out of whack by too much light at night

Agence France-Presse

Paris

Beat the glare: Brightly lit apartment buildings and oice blocks at night in Hong Kong, one ofthemost light-polluted cities in the world. * LAM YIK FEI/GETTY IMAGES

Train attack suspect lees to Pak. from UAE - Current Affairs ONLY

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