Hyderabad, The CBI Thursday arrested Andhra Pradesh excise minister Mopidevi Venkataramna in an illegal assets case linked to YSR Congress leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy. Earlier, Minister for excise Mopidevi Venkatramna was questioned by CBI officials for over six hours at Dilkusha Guest House, the camp office of the investigating agency. The minister was questioned about the land allotments made to Vanpic company for a port project when he was minister for infrastructure and investment in the cabinet of Jaganmohan Reddy's father Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy. ...
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New Delhi, Tracking details of foreigners visiting India on valid travel documents, will become easier from Friday with the government inaugurating the central processing office of the Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration & Tracking (IVFRT) system which has, so far, connected as many as 60 Indian Missions and many immigration offices. Besides helping foreigners in getting visa quickly and sharing information across the concerned Indian agencies about foreign travelers, the IVFRT will also help in "software aided passenger profiling for identifying risky travelers at Missions, Integrated Check Posts (ICPs) and FRROs, and generation of automated alerts about over-stay of foreigners beyond their Visa period". The system envisages facilitation services to the travelers including on-line application forms, 24X7 on-line channel, phone support for grievance redressal and e-mail/SMS support for dissemination of information, application status and feedback. Union home minister P Chidambaram will inaugurate the central office of the IVFRT here at Delhi Information Technology Park, Shashtri Park on Friday. The new system has already been implemented and operationalised ...
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Bangalore, Microsoft today announced an innovative programme to aid ten early stage start ups by hosting them on Windows Azure and help their businesses that take advantage of the Cloud. Announcing the programme, Microsoft India (R&D) Managing Directoir Amit Chatterjee said Microsoft will neither have any stake or share IP with these ten start ups who would be provided technical and business guidance besides mentoring and connecting them with prospective investors and venture capitalists. He said these start ups who would be selected through a rigorous screening process would also have the benefit of working out of Microsoft R and D office here for four months, using resources of Microsoft's BizSpark programme and USD 60,000 in Azure credit. He said they would leverage the unlimited possibilities enabled by an open and flexible cloud platform, the metro user interface on Windows 8 and Windows phne, besides other technical inputs of Microsoft. He said over the next three years Indian tech smart entrepreneurs have a major play in the 'connected network and continued services' arena as business will flourish in the cloud environment. The start ups could be from ...
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Baghdad, Iran traded proposals with six world powers, including the US, on Wednesday in a new round of talks aimed at persuading it to curb its nuclear programme and ease concerns it wants to make atomic weapons. But divisions over sanctions complicated the discussions. The meetings opened with the so-called 5+1 group - the permanent UN Security Council members, the US, Russia, China, Britain and France, plus Germany - putting forward a proposal apparently aimed at reining in Iran's highest-level uranium enrichment. Many leaders fear the uranium, enriched to 20%, could be quickly turned into warhead-grade material . Other details of the plan were not immediately disclosed. Hours later, Iran made its move by offering a counterproposal that includes what one of its negotiating team member called "nuclear and non-nuclear issues". The official said he would not discuss details of the plan, but added that it would be discussed privately with diplomats from the EU and China, an Iranian ally. ...
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Mumbai, Maharashtra BJP spokesperson Madhav Bhandari today told the visiting Pakistani journalist delegation that if the BJP-led NDA came to power in the next general elections, they would continue with the policies adopted by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee while dealing with Pakistan. 'We will continue the same policies which were in use from 1998 till 2004 but were backtracked by the UPA in last eight years,' Mr Bhandari told the delegation of journalists during an interaction. The 17-strong media delegation from Pakistan, made up of representatives of various main line newspaper and TV channels inlcuding Dawn, Jung, ARY TV and Geo TV, are visiting Mumbai and Pune between May 21 and 27. The visit by the Pakistan delegation reciprocates a visit of 23 Mumbai Press Club members to Karachi in November, last year. ...
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New Delhi, The government on Wednesday claimed that political parties were in the know of the move to refer the Lokpal bill to a select committee and that leader of opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley was consulted on its composition. "The committee was drawn up after consultation," parliamentary affairs minister Pawan Bansal said. The government claimed that there might have been a gap in communication within BJP as party MPs protested the move while Jaitley sat without intervening. Jaitley contested the government's suggestion that he was on board, saying that he had only been informed about the move to refer the bill to a select committee. "I was not consulted, the ministers merely told me about the government's plan," he said. He also said that when Bansal met him, he had told the minister that he intended to "raise objections with relation to the incompetent amendment to refer the bill to a select committee". He pointed out that in the House, he had asked the government to be upfront about its intent rather than getting a Samajwadi Party MP to move the amendment. Speaking to the media, Bansal said all parties were consulted over the composition of the ...
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Mumbai, BJP leader Sanjay Joshi, bete noire of the Gujarat chief minister, on Thursday resigned ahead of the party national executive meeting beginning here, a move seen as an effort by the party president to buy peace with Narendra Modi. "Joshi, who was invitee member of the national executive, has in a letter to party president Nitin Gadkari said that he is relinquishing his post in the larger interest of the party," BJP sources said hours before the inauguration of the two day conclave. The move by Gadkari is significant as the shadow of Modi could have hung over the conclave as speculation had mounted over the Gujarat strongman's absence amid no official word from Gandhinagar. Modi had also not attended the last meeting of the National Executive held in Delhi in December apparently peeved over the induction of Joshi into Uttar Pradesh election campaign by Gadkari. He had also not campaigned in the UP polls. As per official programme, Modi will be in Udaipur in Rajasthan today to attend the birth centenary celebrations of Maharana Pratap and will be returning to Ahmedabad. As per his associates in Gandhinagar, Modi could make it to Mumbai tomorrow in view of the ...
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New Delhi, Reacting to the steep petrol price hike, the main opposition party BJP demanded an immediate rollback of what it described as a cruel joke on the people. Spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said the hike was "atrocious and unbelievable" and announced that his party would launch a stir against the government decision. "We condemn the petrol price hike and seek its rollback. We will not allow it to happen. A strong democratic agitation is on the cards," Javadekar said. Strongly opposing the move, the Left parties called upon their units to immediately launch protests all over the country. "It is a cruel blow on people who are already suffering from severe price rise. The Left parties have called upon all party units to immediately organize powerful protest actions," CPM general secretary Prakash Karat said. His colleague Sitaram Yechury said the move was a "criminal additional burden" on people's livelihood. Leaders of the CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc also opposed the move, with CPI leader D Raja saying this was a "prelude to hike the prices of diesel and other petroleum products". "It is a disaster. It will further push up inflation to the skies, dampen ...
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New Delhi, As UPA completes three years in office, BJP on Tuesday claimed the government may fall anytime as coalition partners were unhappy and were not even ready to break bread together. During a discussion on the issue at the party's Parliamentary Party meeting here, BJP while referring to Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee refusal to attend a dinner hosted by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said the three years of UPA regime would be written in "black letters." "Its allies are not happy with it. A leader of the ally party does not even want to eat food together. You can imagine the state of affairs... The UPA is not even in a position of eating snacks. "I wonder what would be the flavour of the dinner hosted to celebrate the three years of completion of government," said BJP spokesman Shahnawaz Hussain after the party's meeting. He said, "The completion of three years of UPA regime will be written in black letters." Hussain said, "This government can anytime...(fall). The government claims to have a total majority of 272, but the actual figure seems 227 as even its allies are not happy with it." The party also discussed the "failures" of the present ...
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Chicago, U.S. President Barack Obama, during the NATO Summit in Chicago, made clear his frustration over Pakistan's adamancy over the reopening of NATO supply routes to Afghanistan. Obama expressed his frustration by publicly thanking Russia and other Central Asian countries for providing "critical transit" of war supplies into Afghanistan in the six months since Pakistan closed its ground routes following U.S. air strikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, reports the Los Angeles Times. Obama chose to ignore Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, who sat only a few feet away from him, and pointedly did not mention Pakistan and had initially refused to meet him one-on-one, the paper states. He also made no attempt to downplay the strained relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan which has been unstable since the U.S. raided the military garrison town of Abbottabad last May to kill Osama Bin Laden. "We need to work through some of the tensions (with Pakistan). I don't want to paper over real challenges," Obama was quoted, as saying. Obama said his staff members had known before they arrived in Chicago for the Summit that the dispute over access to supply lines would ...
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New Delhi, With the government sending the controversial Lokpal Bill to a Rajya Sabha select committee for further scrutiny and discussion on Monday, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has accused the former of not being sincere in its efforts to pass anti-graft proposal. "This has become quiet clear, that the intentions of the government over bringing the Ombudsman (Bill) were not correct since the very beginning. The government has once again exposed its corrupt face protecting corrupt people," Naqvi told media here. Expressing displeasure over sending the bill to a select committee, BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said: "Any search proposal for select committee can come only and only by the minister in charge who is in possession of the entire proposal. It could not have come from anyone else." "This kind of procedure was most unwarranted. We deeply regret it, and also condemn it. The present consideration is also permissible in terms of Article 252 of the Constitution, where such considerations are permissible only when two state assemblies empower the Rajya Sabha to consider such a proposal," he added. Communist Party of India (CPI) ...
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New Delhi, The crisis in Air India continued as pilots' strike entered its fifteenth day on Tuesday. The national carrier had on Monday sacked 30 more of its striking pilots, taking the number of pilots who have lost jobs so far up to 101. Earlier, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh has sought support of all Air India unions to restore the airline's financial health and its past glory. In a meeting with leaders of Air India unions, Singh said the recommendations of the Dharmadhikari Committee, which went into all issues like pay parity and career progression, would be implemented only after all the unions are consulted. Meanwhile, General Secretary of the Air India Engineering Association, Pradeep Bhogale, said that the minister had appraised the unions about the government's intentions for a turnaround plan to improve the ailing national carrier's sagging position. "He (Singh) informed us about the 30,000 crore rupees equity infusion by the government of India. He informed that with this equity infusion, there is a turnaround plan, and that there are milestones (which) we have to cross, and we have to bring back the glory (that) was with Air India," Bhogale ...
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Ingredients: nonstick cooking spray 2 eggs 2 tbsp. skim milk 1 tbsp. onion, chopped 2 tbsp. red tomato, diced 1 tbsp. cheddar cheese Utensils: stove (you'll need help from your adult assistant) skillet bowl whisk or fork spatula Directions: Spray a skillet with nonstick cooking spray. Heat the skillet on low heat. Whisk eggs and milk until they start to foam, approximately 3 minutes. Pour the beaten eggs into the pan and cover the pan. Cook over medium-low heat for about 4 minutes, until bottom is golden brown and top is set. Sprinkle cheese, onions, and tomato over the top. Fold omelet in half with a spatula. Cook for about 1 more minute. Remove from skillet and ...
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Washington, In a rebuff to Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari, US president Barack Obama did not meet him on the margins of the NATO Summit in Chicago as the two countries failed to strike a deal on reopening the NATO supply lines to Afghanistan. Zardari, who flew to Chicago with hopes of lifting his stature with a meeting with Obama, was preparing to leave empty-handed as the two countries continued to feel the repercussions of a NATO air strike last November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, an incident for which the US President has offered condolences but no apology. As the two-day NATO summit opened in Chicago last evening, Obama remained at loggerheads with Zardari, refusing even to meet him without a deal on the supply routes, which officials in both sides acknowledged would not be coming soon, US media reported on Monday. But White House deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes said that Obama could not meet Zardari as he had a "full slate of summit meetings to attend." "The two bilateral meetings, really, that he did, or President (Hamid) Karzai for obvious reasons given the focus on Afghanistan here, and the Secretary General of NATO given that it's ...
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Lucknow, In an apparent move to expand its base beyond the geographical and political boundaries of Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party is preparing to contest the Gujarat assembly elections, scheduled to be held later this year. The larger plan is to contest assembly elections in all the four states, where elections are to be held before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls to test the political waters in these states and also push for a national status for SP, which is still a state party. Eyeing on a substantial migrant population from Uttar Pradesh settled in the industrial belts of Bharuch and Vapi in south Gujarat apart from Ahmedabad and Vadodra in central Gujarat, SP national president Mulayam Singh Yadav is expected to address a meeting of the party workers in Ahmedabad on June 7. The party is expected to make the final announcement of its plans to contest the assembly elections in Gujarat at this meeting. According to party insiders, a host of senior SP leaders including chief minister Akhilesh Yadav will also hold meetings thereafter. South Gujarat general secretary of Samajwadi Party, Gulab Singh met Mulayam recently in Delhi, and it was decided that SP supremo will visit ...
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New Delhi, In yet another twist, the controversial Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill was on Monday referred to the select committee of Rajya Sabha, further delaying the setting up of the anti-graft ombudsman which has been hanging fire for 42 years. The bill, on which debate had remained inconclusive in the Rajya Sabha during the last winter session, was referred to the select committee through a motion soon after minister of state for personnel V Narayanasamy moved it for consideration and passage. Interestingly, the motion for referring the bill to the select committee was moved initially by Samajwadi Party member Naresh Agrawal. This was strongly objected to by BJP, Left parties and BSP, with their members arguing that only the minister concerned could move such a motion and accusing the ruling coalition of "using the shoulder" of "friendly opposition" party. After high drama marked by arguments and counter-arguments over whether rules permitted any other member to move such a motion, the government yielded and the motion was moved by Narayanasamy which was immediately passed by voice vote. He said the 15-member committee would have to submit its report by the first day of ...
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New Delhi, The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is probing the complaints of money laundering against Indian Premier League (IPL), Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the Rajya Sabha Monday. Speaking during question hour, Mukherjee said: "There are certain irregularities which are being looked into, particularly relating to some complaints received that there are foreign investments in IPL." "Those are being looked into by the Enforcement Directorate because those are the criminal activities like money laundering," he said. Mukherjee said the IPL is a body of the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) and till 2006, the BCCI enjoyed income tax exemptions. He said the BCCI lost exemption registration in 2006 following the verdict of the Allahabad High Court and since then, it is subject to tax. "Tax demands were raised for the assessment years 2007-08 and 2008-09 amounting to Rs.118 crore and Rs.257 crore respectively. As much as Rs.249 crore has already been recovered from the BCCI," he said. The matter was also raised in the Lok Sabha and replying to queries, Sports Minister Ajay Maken said that the ministry has written to the ED to look into the money ...
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New Delhi, The government Monday released the much-awaited white paper on black money, which makes a strong pitch for setting up the Lokpal and Lokayuktas but carries no official estimate of the illicit money stashed by Indians abroad. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee tabled the white paper in the Lok Sabha. The paper carries no estimates on the quantum of money stashed abroad, but quotes figures released by different agencies. "There are no reliable estimates of black money generation or accumulation, neither is there an accurate well-accepted methodology for making such estimation," the paper said. It pointed out that among the estimates made so far, there is no uniformity, unanimity, or consensus about the best methodology or approach to be used for this purpose. "There have also been wide variations in the figures reported, which further serves to highlight the limitations of the different methods adopted." The paper made a strong pitch for setting up the Lokpal and Lokayuktas to effectively deal with the menace of black money and other corrupt practices. In the foreword to the report, Mukherjee pointed out that in this past year the government has ...
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New Delhi, Asserting that the Central Government is not serious about passing a strong Lokpal Bill, social activist Arvind Kejriwal has said Team Anna would decide its future course of action after the budget session of parliament ends. "We are waiting for the parliament session to get over. Our future strategy and agitation will be announced after that," Kejriwal told media here. "We do doubt their (government) intentions. When the budget session was so big then why did they not get the bill earlier? Why on the last day? They could have got it 15-30 days earlier, so defiantly there is a doubt over their intentions," he added. Earlier, former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer and Team Anna member Kiran Bedi has said the Central Government is not serious about endorsing an effective Lokpal Bill, since it would be like sounding the death knell for corrupt politicians. "The Lokpal Bill is a very tough law for people who are corrupt and they also happen to be in power. They also know that there is enough proof against them. It will be very difficult for them as they will be investigated and like former telecom minister A Raja they will go to jail because whistleblowers ...
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New Delhi, The nation today paid homage to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was killed in a suicide bomb attack on this day 21 years ago. President Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the departed leader's wife and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi went to the late leader's memorial 'Vir Bhumi' here and paid their respects. Rahul and Priyanka also paid floral tributes at the memorial of their father, who was assassinated on May 21, 1991 at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu during a poll campaign. Vice President Hamid Ansari, Delhi Lt Governor Tejinder Khanna, Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, Parliamentary Affairs Minister P K Bansal and Urban Development also paid homage to Gandhi. Priyanka's husband Robert Vadra was present on the occasion. School children waving national flags were also present at the memorial. A speech by the late prime minister, during which he talked about preserving the dignity of institutions, was played at the ...
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