Sunday, March 28, 2010

Slow justice contradicts India’s democratic strengths: PM

Slow justice contradicts India’s democratic strengths: PM
NEW DELHI, March 27: India’s legal and judicial system reflects “great contradiction”, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Saturday urging that the justice delivery mechanism needed to be expedited to strengthen the country’s democratic roots.

“The Indian legal and judicial system is one of the solid pillars of our democracy... Our government attaches great importance to the legal empowerment of the common man,” Manmohan Singh said, addressing a day-long national convention of Law, Justice and the Common Man.

The Prime Minister said democracy held “little meaning for the common man” unless he or she is able to secure basic rights and gain easy access to speedy justice.

“The Indian legal and judicial system in some sense reflects great contradiction Our democracy and legal system have strengths that are admired all over the world. We have a free press, a true independent judiciary and independent institutions like the Election Commission and Comptroller and Auditor General of India, which underpin our democratic framework,” he said.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Sensex fails to maintain initial gains, up 51 points

STAFF WRITER 11:48 HRS IST

Mumbai, Mar 23 (PTI) The BSE benchmark sensex failed to maintain initial gains on profit-booking ahead of the expiry of the near-month March 2010 derivatives contracts on March 25.

The BSE benchmark resumed higher at 17,422.51 and shot up further to 17,530.79 on firm Asian cues before quoting at 17,461.26 at 1015 hours, still showing a gain of 50.69 points or 0.29 per cent from its previous close.

The market rebounded by a surprise hike in short term interest rates by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) which it announced after trading hours on last Friday, yesterday.

The NSE 50-share nifty also moved up by 16.70 points or 0.32 per cent to 5,221.90 at 1015 hours from its last close.

India could grow by 9 per cent by 2011-12, says PM

STAFF WRITER 10:33 HRS IST

New Delhi, Mar 23 (PTI) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today exuded confidence the Indian economy would grow by 8.5 per cent in the next fiscal and accelerate to nine per cent the following year from an estimated 7.2 per cent this fiscal.

Going forward, the country should step up the pace of economic expansion to above 10 per cent per annum in the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2107) to generate employment for the youth and remove poverty, the Prime Minister said at a conference on building infrastructure hosted by the Planning Commission.

"We expect to achieve 8.5 per cent growth rate in the year 2010-11... I hope we can achieve growth rate of 9 per cent in the year 2011-12," he said.

However, the country should do even better, he said.

No decision to provide India access to Headley, says US

STAFF WRITER 12:7 HRS IST

New Delhi, Mar 23 (PTI) In a surprise development, the US today said it has taken no decision to provide Indian investigators direct access to Pakistani-American David Headley, who has confessed to plotting the Mumbai terror attacks.

Four days after US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake publicly stated here that the Indian investigators will have access to Headley, American Ambassador Timothy J Roemer said in a statement that "no decision on direct access for India to David Headley has been made."

Following Blake's statement and a telephonic discussion with US Attorney General and Head of the Department of Justice Eric Holder, Home Minister P Chidambaram had directed NIA and other agencies concerned in the case to quickly prepare documents necessary to start a judicial proceeding in which Indian authorities could require Headley to answer questions and to testify.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Right Yaaa Wrong – Review


Starring: Sunny Deol, Irrfan Khan, Konkona Sen-Sharma, Esha Koppikar
Director: Neerraj Pathak

Don’t breathe. Don’t dare even blink. And please forget that visit to the loo. Damn, even the bag of popcorn will be forgotten on your clenched lap.

“Right Yaaa Wrong” is the surprise shocker of the year. If you’ve forgotten that jump-out-of-the-seat feeling then it’s time to nudge it awake again.

Debutant director Neerraj Pathak deserves a welcoming salute. He puts together a thriller that’s as much a homage to Alfred Hitchcock and Brian de Palma as our own Abbas-Mustan.

“And Right Yaaa Wrong” still emerges original and strong.

An intricate jigsaw that always stays a step ahead of the audience, “Right Yaaa Wrong” makes a penetrating comment on how the country’s legal system can be subverted by a clever hand. More importantly the taut and briskly-paced script suggests that the yin and yang concepts of right and wrong are not only ambivalent but also interchangeable when the context is right.

Sunny Deol, back in shape in every which way, plays a cop who in the first two reels loses the power to walk. But the narration simply sprints along through a series of unpredictable twists and turns that take the striking characters across a maze of intrigue and conspiracy.

Truly, the screenplay is far superior to its execution. And that’s entirely a comment on the above-average calibre of the writing.

Writers Girish Dhamija, Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan and Neerraj Pathak pack in a walloping punch in both pre-and post-interval hours.

The characters and their motivations address themselves to adventure-thriller-suspense world of James Hadley Chase and Sidney Sheldon. The men are brave and heroic, clever and fearless. Even when cuckolded, Deol is dignified in the embrace of betrayal.

Editor Ashfaq Makrani juxtaposes moments of tense suspense with glimpses of heightened poignancy. This is murder in mellow shades.

The cop’s wife played by Esha Koppikar is unabashedly wanton. Outwardly she’s the duty-bound cop’s home-bound wife with a perfect home and cute son (Ali Haji). Scratch the surface and there emerges a woman who’s sleeping with the cop’s kid-brother. Ouch.

Shades of Bipasha from Abbas-Mustan’s Race? Yes? But don’t let this hectic whodunit’s antecedents bother you. The storytelling takes wings from the word go. And we are swept ahead. As the characters go from ‘bed’ to worse. However the people in Pathak’s pacy plot are so hurriedly propelled to their nemesis that we never get close enough to any of them to understand their inner world.

The depths are discarded for the dips and curves. The performances are even and well-informed. Sunny Deol in a role that requires him to sublimate his pain in a status of stoicism gets it just right. Irrfan creates ample space for himself in a role that’s sketchy for starters but gathers substance as the yarn progresses.

Konkona Sen Sharma as the stereotypical sympathetic shoulder gets rid of her set expressions and comes up with a performance of restrained bravura in the courtroom.

And Esha Koppikar plays the thankless role of the unfaithful wife and a disgraceful mother with much relish.

Here’s a film that extends the borders of morality. It does so in the commercial language without resorting to crass situations and dialogues. For fans of Sunny Deol’s fist-friendly image here’s the actor telling us that strength is sometimes a matter of holding back rather than letting it all hang out.

Soruce:http://www.bollywoodworld.com

Bad floor management a UPA trait: BJP

Bad floor management a UPA trait: BJP

NEW DELHI, March 17: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Wednesday said it was opposed to marshals being brought into the two houses of parliament and blamed the government for bad floor management in the first half of the budget session during which key bills, including a legislation on women’s reservation, were tabled amid disruptions.
The leaders of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, criticized the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government for allegedly trying to pass without a discussion in the upper House the landmark bill that seeks to reserve 33 percent of all legislative seats in India.
“The complete absence of the floor management was the characteristic of the UPA during the first half of the budget session,” Jaitley told reporters at a joint news conference.
The nuclear liability Bill that was taken off from the Lok Sabha business list at the last minute Monday was another example of bad floor management, he said.
Apprehending opposition from the BJP and Left parties, the Government beat a hasty retreat in the Lok Sabha on the legislation that seeks to set up a legal mechanism to ensure that victims of a nuclear accident are able to claim financial compensation from the operator. The Bill is key on making the India-US nuclear deal operational. But is yet to be introduced in Parliament.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Walt Disney Enters India with its Ambitious Plans

Walt Disney Enters India with its Ambitious Plans

The Walt Disney Company is reported to be in a bid to boost its production initiatives in India as the company initiates with betting big on localization and charting a roadmap to make 14 new family-oriented films in India.

Among the projects, five of them are believed to be in advanced stages of planning.

Mahesh Samat, managing director, The Walt Disney Company (India) said: “We are pretty serious about India. Local content will make the Disney brand more relevant in India. Going forward our efforts will be to invest in Hindi films. Outside the US, India is the top market for investment in local content.”

The still-to-be-named South Indian epic fantasy is slated to release by January next year.

The Telegu-language movie, which is a dubbed version of it in Tamil, is anticipated to boost the company’s stand in the south Indian market.

http://www.topnews.in/walt-disney-enters-india-its-ambitious-plans-2256256


Declare paid news an electoral malpractice, say parties

Declare paid news an electoral malpractice, say parties
New Delhi, March 13: Senior leaders of the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) on Saturday suggested amending the Representation of People's Act (RPA) to declare paid news an electoral malpractice. At a seminar on paid news organised by the Editors Guild of India and the Indian Women's Press Corps, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj (BJP), CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat and Congress spokesman Manish Tewari called for steps to check the malpractice, which had been widely noticed in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
The suggestion to declare paid news an electoral malpractice came from Karat, who said self-regulation by the media would not be enough to solve the problem. The suggestion was supported by the other two parties. "Paid news should be declared an electoral malpractice. If existing laws do not allow this, then suitable changes can be made," he said, noting that the model code of conduct for elections does not cover the problem. Sushma Swaraj said that law would need to be amended to categorise paid news as an electoral malpractice. Citing the example of her own election from Vidisha, she said her media officials were approached with packages of Rs 1 crore.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

JD (U) divided over women’s quota

JD (U) divided over women’s quota

NEW DELHI/PATNA, March 6: Sharp divisions emerged among the opponents of the women’s reservation Bill with Bihar Chief Nitish Kumar supporting the measure pitting himself against his party president Sharad Yadav who is opposed to it.

“When I was a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee, I had given a dissent note (more than a decade ago). Now the time has come to give women reservation in Parliament and State Assemblies. I will talk to Sharadji and appeal to him to ensure passage of the bill,” Mr. Kumar told reporters in Patna.

However, JD(U) President Sharad Yadav, a strong opponent of the Bill ever since its introduction in 1997, said his party’s opposition to the measure in its present form would continue

India tops exporting generic medicines

India tops exporting generic medicines

BHUBANESWAR: India tops in the world in exporting generic medicines worth of Rs 50,000 crore and currently, the Indian pharmaceutical industry is

one of the world's largest and most developed, according to union minister of state for chemicals and fertilisers Srikanta Jena.

The country, today, exports to more than 200 countries around the globe including the highly regulated markets of US, Europe, Japan and Australia. India exported drugs worth around $8 billion in 2008-09, most of which to the US and Europe, followed by Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa.

"The Indian pharmaceutical industry, now a Rs one lakh crore industry, has shown tremendous progress in terms of infrastructure development, technology, human resource with a wide range of products. It has established its presence and has shown determination to flourish in a changing environment", Mr Jena on Sunday told "The ET".

Mr Jena was here to launch Jan Ausadhi Abhiyan, the National campaign to ensure universal reach of generic medicines across the population.

The country now ranks 3rd worldwide in volume and 14th in terms of value. The industry now produces bulk drugs belonging to all major therapeutic groups requiring complicated manufacturing technologies.

"Formulations in various dosage forms are being produced in Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) and WHO compliant facilities. Strong scientific and technical manpower and pioneering work done in process development have made these possible", Mr Jena remarked adding that the Department of Pharmaceuticals is working with the vision to make India one of the top five global pharmaceutical innovation hubs by 2020.

The economic and social returns of investments made towards this aspiration could be significant, and this could help India create more than 500,000 high value jobs for its youth and provide the country with low cost healthcare for chronic and life threatening ailments like malaria and tuberculosis," he added.

Talking about Jan Aushadhi campaign, Mr Jena said the government will facilitate setting up of 'Jan Aushadhi' Stores where unbranded quality generic medicines are sold and made available at lower prices with the objective to reduce the healthcare costs of which medicines form a major part.

The word 'generic' is used to describe a product, particularly a drug, which does not have a trademark. For example, 'paracetamol' is a chemical ingredient that is found in many branded painkillers and is often sold as a generic medicine in its own right. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com

Friday, March 5, 2010

CAT quashes Barua’s appointment as DGP

GUWAHATI, March 5 – In a crucial judgement, the Central Administrative Tribunal, (CAT), Guwahati today declared the appointment of Shankar Barua as the Director General of Assam Police as null and void. Shankar Barua was appointed Assam DGP on July 28 last year. The CAT today also directed the State Government to constitute a fresh panel as per the requirement of Section 6(2) of the Assam Police Act, 2007 within a month considering all eligible officers fairly and justly.

“Till then Shankar Barua is allowed to remain in position,” the judgement stated.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Sensex sluggish in morning trade

MUMBAI: A benchmark index for Indian equities was sluggish in morning trade on Thursday and was 37 points lower about an hour into trade.

At 9.57am, the 30-scrip sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), which opened at 17,013.68 points, was ruling at 16,962.64 points, 37.37 points or 0.22 percent lower than its previous close at 17,000.01 points.

At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the broader 50-share S&P CNX Nifty was ruling at 5,067.3 points against the previous close at 5,088.1 points, a loss of 0.41 percent.

Broader markets, however, saw some buying interest with the BSE midcap index ruling 0.58 percent higher and the BSE small cap index 0.47 percent up.

TOI

Rupee gains 5p against US dollar in early trade

STAFF WRITER 9:40 HRS IST

Mumbai, Mar 4 (PTI) The rupee appreciated by five paise to 45.77 a dollar in the early trade today in line with other rising Asian currencies amid increased capital inflows by foreign funds into the firming domestic equities market.

At the Interbank Foreign Exchange (Forex) market, the rupee rose by five paise to 45.77 a dollar. The domestic currency had closed 19 paise higher at 45.82/83 in the previous session ? highest level in the past six weeks.

Forex dealers said rupee gained against the US currency in line with other Asian units and dollar selling by banks and exporters.

Besides, fresh capital inflows by foreign funds into firming local stock markets also supported the Indian rupee, they added.

Meanwhile, the Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex rose by 24.95 points to 17.024.96 in the opening trade today.

Sensex erases early gains on profit-selling

STAFF WRITER 10:5 HRS IST

New Delhi, Mar 4 (PTI) Erasing early gains, the Bombay Stock Exchange Benchmark Sensex dipped below the 17,000 level after losing over 53 points at 1000hrs today on emergence of profit-booking at existing higher levels.

The 30-share Sensex, which had opened nearly 25 points higher, fell back with a loss of 53.11 points to 16,946.90 points in first one hour of trading.

The wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty also lost 21.30 points at 5,066.80 points.

The Sensex had gained nearly 750 points in last three trading session.

PM, Advani lock horns; Opposition tears into Pawar

PM, Advani lock horns; Opposition tears into Pawar

NEW DELHI, March 3: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani locked horns in the Lok Sabha Wednesday over “secret talks” on Kashmir and the implementation of one-rank-one-pension scheme for defence personnel while the opposition tore into Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar in the Rajya Sabha on an alleged sugar scam.
The prime minister attacked Advani for trying to create a “rift between service personnel” and the government. The BJP leader had alleged that a promise made in the 2009 budget - on the one-rank-one-pension scheme for ex-servicemen - had not been implemented completely.“Whatever I have promised, my government has done. Whatever the finance minister stated in the budget, it has been implemented,” Manmohan Singh said.
Advani also referred to a Newsweek report, which quoted Indian and US sources as saying that India and Pakistan have restarted “secret back-channel talks” over Kashmir, and asked the prime minister for an explanation.
Manmohan Singh said: “How many times did Jaswantji (who was external affairs minister in the NDA government) talk with US government representatives? How many times you informed the house? Why are you expecting me to answer hypothetical questions?”

Monday, March 1, 2010

Australian foreign minister arriving to discuss attacks

Australian foreign minister arriving to discuss attacks
New Delhi, March 1: Assurance to India about its keenness to tackle incidents of attacks on Indian students high on his agenda, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith arrives here on Tuesday to discuss with Indian authorities the steps taken by his government to solve the problem. “(I) will brief the Indian government on the actions taken by authorities to create a safe and rewarding study environment for Indian students in Australia,” Smith said in a statement in Melbourne. Smith will also watch an Australia-India hockey match at the ongoing World Cup here on Tuesday. The three-day visit comes a month after External Affairs Minister SM Krishna met Smith in London to express concern over mounting attacks, including some racial, on Indian students in Australia. This will be Smith’s third visit as foreign minister since 2007. “I will meet with Krishna, following on from our meeting in London in January. Krishna and I will discuss Australia’s and India’s close cooperation in trying to solve the recent problems faced by some Indians in Australia,” Smith said. There has been a flurry of visits to India by top Australian authorities, including Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his deputy Julia Gillard, in the recent past. The visits were aimed at reassuring India that Australia was a safe destination for Indians to study and work in. Over 100 cases of attacks on Indians in Australia have been reported since last year. The assaults have affected bilateral ties and have also hurt Australia’s education sector. Also on Smith’s agenda is the security preparedness for the Commonwealth Games to be held in New Delhi October 3-14. The concerns follow terror threats by Pakistan-based militants to international sporting events in India, including the ongoing Hockey World Cup.

India Aviation 2010 to take off tomorrow

India Aviation 2010 to take off tomorrow

Hyderabad: India Aviation 2010 will be officially kicked off at the old airport in Begumpet, Hyderabad tomorrow and the show will be open for business visitors till March 5.

The organisers of the event, the government and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci), have decided to keep the venue open to common people on March 6 and 7.

“Our partner this year is France. As a practice, the partner countries will become focus countries in the next edition,” said Vivek Kodikal, Ficci’s regional director.

There will be 115 overseas companies and the rest from India. For the first time, Antonov UAC- Russia will display the AN 148 aircraft in India.

There will be country pavilions from Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Russia and the Netherlands.

With recovery signs visible across the global markets, the organisers are confident that the platform would be used to conclude several key business deals.