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New Delhi: The government is now under fire on account of a report by its auditor that says it lost 10.7 lakh crores because it undervalued coal deposits and did not auction coal fields between 2004 and 2009. Here is your 10-point cheat sheet to this story: 1) The losses are part of a draft report by the government's auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General, which was leaked to the media.
2) The draft report says 155 coal-fields were allocated to about 100 private and some state-run firms or public sector units in a manner that gave "undue benefits" to the companies. The report said the sale of the blocks was "subjective" and allowed "windfall gains", but does not make allegations of corruption or bribe-taking.
3) This afternoon, the CAG wrote to the Prime Minister's Office and said it was embarrassed by the leak. "The observations which are under discussion at a very preliminary stage ..and hence are exceedingly misleading," the letter allegedly states.
4) The Opposition attacks in Parliament, says the Prime Minister, who supervised the Coal Ministry for some of the period in question, must explain.
5) Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal says ads were placed to invite offers from interested firms, and that BJP state governments, like in Rajasthan, had opposed a process of bidding.
6) India is the world's third-largest coal producer in the world after China and the United States.
7) Analysts and experts say that an auction would raise power tariffs and that not all coal blocks are profitable or commercially viable. They say CAG has erred in its calculation of losses.
8) State-run power company NTPC says it made no windfall profits from the allocations and that the lower costs meant cheaper electricity for consumers.
9) The Indian subsidiary of ArcelorMittal, and steel makers Tata and Jindal Steel and Power, are among the companies named in the report. Jindal's controlling shareholder, Naveen Jindal, who is also a member of parliament, defended the policy of direct allocations, saying it had allowed private companies to jump-start production at mines left idle by state-run Coal India Limited, the world's single largest producer.
10) Coal fields are currently allocated by a screening committee. Interested firms are given points for different parameters- whether land and environmental clearances are in place, for example. Parliament last year approved amendment to Mines and Minerals Regulation and Development Act of 1957 to enable the government to auction coal blocks
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The BSE Sensex has plunged nearly 2.5% or over 400 points to a hit a new intraday low of 17,172. At 1510 hours, the broader Nifty index was down nearly 140 points at 5,230.
The Nifty, which has crucial support at 5,180 mark, might close below the 50-day moving average today. "Markets have been very volatile in the short term. If we close below 5,150-5,160, the medium term becomes negative and we may go down to 5,000-4,900 levels," Somil Mehta, Senior Technical Analyst (Equity) at Sharekhan told NDTV Profit.
Markets came under selling pressure near the day's end. Global markets also saw deep cuts. European indices were down and the Dow Futures saw a big discount.
All 14-sectoral indices on the BSE traded with deep losses. High beta realty (-4.4%) and metal (-3.5%) stocks led the declines. Banks (-3.5%), power (-3.7%), capital goods and consumer durables (-3.3%) indices also saw selloff.
Only two stocks - Coal India and Hero MotoCorp- traded higher on the 50-stock Nifty index.
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Mumbai:Not many are aware of the role played by Royal Challengers Bangalore coach Ray Jennings and Anil Kumble in the fruition of Virat Kohli. The Delhi lad always had his share of detractors. Ever since his debut in 2008, his off-field behaviour and attitude were scrutinised. Despite emerging as India's best batsman on the tour of Australia, a former cricketer said, "Virat has all the tools to achieve greatness. But his attitude is a worry."
It's not been easy for Kohli to impress all. In 2010, during the third edition of the Indian Premier League, Royal Challengers Bangalore coach Jennings and captain Kumble pulled up Kohli for what can be described as a subtle dressing down.
Kohli was told to mend his ways, control his aggression and fulfill his enormous potential. "I've had a relationship with him since he was 18. I congratulated him for beating us (South Africa) at the U-19 World Cup in Malaysia. I told people that this guy would not only captain India, but become the best batsman in the world one day," Jennings told MiD DAY.
"Few years later, Anil (Kumble) and I noticed a trend in him during IPL Season-3. He's an explosive character and always fired up. Sometimes that can lead to his downfall. Anil and myself are old enough to understand that sort of confidence was his strength as well as a weakness. We asked him to control his anger and focus his energy in the right direction. It's not about sitting down and telling him what to do at a meeting. I've been fortunate to work with him since 2007. I've seen the growth of Kohli," added Jennings.
Jennings was closely following Kohli's multiple brushes with controversy Down Under. He was even told about episodes that escaped media coverage. "I was talking to him regularly when he was in Australia. I kept reminding him that he was going to be the best. He would tell me, 'Ray, these things are bothering me,' referring to unnecessary media spotlight he was getting. What people need to understand is that he's a very different personality to Sachin Tendulkar.
Accept Kohli...
"We have to start accepting that Kohli is Kohli. Sachin might have been gentler in his younger days. People always wanted to know more about Tendulkar. But Kohli is more expressive. Kohli too respects people like Sachin, but he occasionally flips up. I don't hold that against him. He's not arrogant.
"Kohli should be allowed to develop. With people like Kumble around, we will help him along the way. I would hate to see him end up like how others in India want him to end up. When he gets on the field, he wants to win badly. Kohli will be a a mentor to people one day, and that maturity will be on display soon enough."
Jennings admits to be 'scared' of Kohli's drive to be the best: "I can never get him out of the nets. It's scary how much success he wants. These youngsters want things quickly. It's almost like he doesn't want others to succeed. That's an amazing quality. He wants to be the best. Those are aspects that can be looked at as faults by others, but are strengths that will make him a top cricketer."
Steel stocks fell 0.3 per cent, weighing down on the broader indexes, after the CAG draft said India lost up to $210 billion in revenue by selling coal deposits too cheaply.
The report from the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) office, leaked to an Indian newspaper, is making traders worried about a potential new scandal that could hurt foreign investments and hit a sector reliant on coal
"Steel, which is the backbone of country's infrastructure, will be in a big mess if this report by CAG is true, said Vivek Mahajan, head of research at Aditya Birla Money.
"This has the potential to scare off FDI as well as FIIs from India," he added, referring to the foreign investor flows that are crucial to Indian stock markets.
Jindal Steel And Power, one of the companies listed by the newspaper as benefiting from the reported sale of coal deposits, dropped 5.8 per cent.
A Jindal company official could not immediately be reached for comment despite several attempts at a response.
Copyright @ Thomson Reuters 2012
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She is only three films old in Bollywood. But actress Jacqueline Fernandez is flooded with offers from big production houses and her career moves are rumoured to be taken by actor-filmmaker Sajid Khan.
However, the model-turned-young actress denies it all, saying she takes her own decisions and no one is playing mentor to her.
When Jacqueline started shooting for her yet-be-released film, Housefull 2, helmed by Sajid, sparks flew and soon there were reports that they are dating and would get married this year. Most industry folks feel that Sajid keeps a watch on the films she signs.
"No.. he (Sajid) is not my mentor, I don't actually have one. I don't have any mentor. I am very professional person, I have never had any mentor. And no he never does tell me what films to do and what not. I think for me it is important that I make my own decisions," Jacqueline told PTI in an interview.
"As I am not from the industry..I am an outsider, so it is easy for me to make mistakes as I don't know how things work in the industry, how people function. It is important to make your own mistakes and learn from them and not based on someone else advice to know what you are doing is right," she said.
The 26-year-old made her debut in tinsel town with Aladin (2010) opposite Riteish Deshmukh. In her next film Jaane Kahaan Se Aayi Hai she was again paired opposite Riteish but both these films did no magic at the box office. This was followed by a cameo in Housefull and a full-fledged role in Murder 2.
More than her professional life, she was talked more about for her rumoured relation with Sajid which she thinks is unfair.
Iconic Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee said his being named for the Dada Saheb Phalke award - the highest honour in Indian cinema - is a recognition of his hard work in the last 53 years and expressed gratitude to directors like Satyajit Ray, Tapan Sinha and others for honing his acting skills.
Chatterjee, 77, said it was an “emotional moment” for him and he would receive the award on behalf of the doyens of the Bengali movie industry whose guidance helped him evolve as an actor.
“I am very happy. It is an emotional moment for me. I thank everybody. It is a recognition of the hard work I have put in for the last 53 years. The people of my country have recognised my toil,” said Chatterjee.
The Padama Bhushan awardee expressed his gratitude to directors like Satyajit Ray, Tapan Sinha and veteran actors like Chabi Biswas and Tulsi Chakraborty for honing his acting skills.
“I would like to thank many old people of this industry like (legendary movie directors) Satyajit Ray and Tapanda,” he said.
“Right now my mind is on a flashback mode. I would thank actors like Chabi Biswas and Tulsi Chakraborty. It would have been great if I could have handed the award to them. It is on their behalf that I will receive the honour,” he said.
Chatterjee regretted that the sublime work of actors like Biswas and Chakraborty went unrewarded.
One of India's most talented actors, Chatterjee made his debut in 1959 with Ray's super-hit movie "Apur Sansar". The film gave him the much needed platform, and he never had to look back.
Chatterjee soon became Ray's favourite, and played the lead roles in most of the movie maker's classics including "Sonar Kella", "Charulata", and "Ghare Baire".
Chatterjee's association with Ray is often compared with the chemistry between famous actor-director duos of the world such as Akira Kurosowa-Toshiro Mifune and Marcello Mastroianni-Federico Fellini.
Apart from Ray, Chatterjee has worked with all internationally acclaimed directors of his time, including Mrinal Sen, Tapan Sinha and Tarun Majumdar.
Some of his notable movies are "Jhinder Bandi", "Koni", "Kaapurush", "Akash Kusum", "Aranyer Din Ratri", "Joy Baba Felunath", "Teen Bhubaner Pare", "Ganashatru" and "Sakah Prashakha".
The Padama Bhushan awardee has also worked with other famous directors such as Aparna Sen, Goutam Ghose and Rituparno Ghosh.
Besides films, Chatterjee is also known for his passion for the stage where he has both acted and directed plays. He is also one of the all-time best elocutionists of Bengal.
He has also received 'The Officier des Arts et Metiers', the highest award for arts from France and lifetime achievement award from Italy.
New Delhi: Mamata Banerjee has had her way. The new Railways Minister, Mukul Roy, announced in Parliament today that there will be no fare hike in the sleeper class, AC 3-tier and AC chair car.
He, however, kept untouched the increase of 15 paise per km and 30 paise per km respectively in passenger fares in AC 2-tier and AC First Class, announced by his predecessor Dinesh Trivedi in the Railway Budget last week.
That announcement cost Mr Trivedi his job - a furious Ms Banerjee, who is the chief of Mr Trivedi's party, asked the Prime Minister to remove him, creating an unprecedented political crisis with a minister stepping down before his budget was discussed in Parliament. Mr Trivedi defied Ms Banerjee for four days, then finally resigned on Sunday night. He was replaced by her party's Mukul Roy.
Mr Roy described the rollback as "in the interest of the common man." Mr Trivedi had suggested an increase ranging from 2 paise per km to 30 paise per km. With 19 Lok Sabha MPs, Mr Banerjee is a senior member of the ruling coalition but has often clashed with the government she belongs to. Ms Banerjee had said that an increase in passenger fares would hurt the aam aadmi or common man. The rollback greatly dents the government's image by proving that with a shaky coalition, the Prime Minister is in no position to introduce even small reforms like increasing train ticket prices. Ms Banerjee forced the Prime Minister late last year to suspend his reforms in retail - his government wanted to allow 51% foreign direct investment or FDI in multi-brand stores which would have allowed international super-chains like Wal-Mart to sell directly to Indian consumers.
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The BSE Sensex buckled under broad based selling pressure, plunging 405 points or 2.3% to end at 17,196. The broader Nifty index declined 136.50 points to close at 5,228.
The Nifty closed below the 50-day moving average today, something that does not auger well for bulls. It is now trading close to the crucial support of 5,180.
"Markets have been very volatile in the short term. If we close below 5,150-5,160, the medium term becomes negative and we may go down to 5,000-4,900 levels," Somil Mehta, Senior Technical Analyst (Equity) at Sharekhan told NDTV Profit.
A mix of domestic and global factors hurt sentiments. A rollback in passenger fare prices did not go down well with investors hoping the government to move towards fiscal consolidation. The leakage of a draft CAG report, which alleges the government of extending undue benefits to commercial entities by giving them 155 coal acreages without auction during 2004-09, also weighed on sentiments. China's manufacturing sector contracted for a fifth straight week. China, the second largest global economy, is the powerhouse of global economy.
All 14-sectoral indices on the BSE traded with deep losses. High beta realty (-4.2%) and metal (-3.3%) stocks led the declines. Banks (-3.4%), power (-3.6%), capital goods (-3.4) and consumer durables (-3.1%) indices also saw selloff.
JSPL (-7.2%) was the top Nifty loser. The stock came under the hammer on the back of the CAG report. Other steel and power companies also came under selling pressure. JSW Steel (-7.6%), Reliance Power (-5.9%) and Tata Steel (-4.8%) ended with deep cuts.
These stocks sold off despite market analysts saying that there was nothing wrong with the government not taking the auction route.
"CAG is telling one-sided story. This is a normal practice followed everywhere in the world. It's the same thing as giving incentives such as excise duty exemption, lower interest rate, etc. I don't think we should read too much into it," Rakesh Arora, MD & Head of Research at Macquarie Capital Securities (India) told NDTV Profit today.
Only two stocks- Coal India (2.3%) and Hero MotoCorp (1%)- closed with gains on the 50-stock Nifty index.
Market bellwether Reliance Industries (-4.1%) slumped and added nearly 70 index points on the Sensex on the downside.
Shares of gold loan companies plunged today after a Reserve Bank of India directive capping the loan-to-value ratio at 60%. Muthoot Finance (-9.9%) shares hit 52-week low while shares of Manappuram Finance plunged 18.5%.
The market breadth was extremely weak and only 15% stocks closed with gains on the BSE 500 index.
Earlier in the day analysts had told NDTV Profit that Indian markets lacked the fundamentals for sustained up move from these levels. "The huge international liquidity which has flowed into India has ignored a lot of negativity at the grassroots level. The one big positive is some easing stance of monetary policy which can give some firepower to markets. However, I am not very confident from structural perspective. I don't see any measures that can boost investment growth in the country," Vikas Khemani, EVP & Head of Institutional Equities at Edelweiss Securities said.
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Writer-director Reema Kagti has quashed reports that the release of her Aamir Khan starrer Talaash has been postponed because the film bears similarities with Kahaani.
"I am rather surprised about these rumours. We have moved the release of the film to November because we didn't want it to clash with Aamir's TV show but some chose to build their own stories. I have heard a lot about Kahaani. Sujoy Ghosh is a good friend and I am sure it would be fantastic. But there is nothing that is similar about the two films," Kagti told PTI.
Kahaani, starring Vidya Balan, is a thriller and the trailers of Talaash also indicate that the film belongs to the same genre but Kagti believes that comparing the two films is too much. She believes that the rumours started making the rounds after Talaash release was postponed soon after the release of Kahaani.
"Let Talaash release and the film will speak for itself. People will realise on their own that there is no similarity whatsoever."
The film, a co-production of Aamir Khan, Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, has been in news ever since it was announced around two years back.
With Kareena Kapoor and Rani Mukherji joining the cast, the film became all the more special. There is lot of curiosity about Talaash because it is releasing almost three years after Aamir's 3 Idiots.
Kagti, who started her career with the impressive Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd, is not worried that the film, originally slated to release last December, has been delayed by a year and would now hit the screens on November 30.
"Such things happen. A film getting delayed is not uncommon. The film is ready and the first edit is also in place. I am not bothered that the film will arrive a few months later. I am chilled out.
"The sets of Aamir's TV show had caught fire. After that it was inevitable that there would be delay and it was bound to have a ripple effect on Talaash. It is just that the announcement has come now.
The director also denies that they had to re-shoot certain portions of the film because of Kahaani.
"There is just a little patchwork of a couple of shots to be done which would take half a day. Anyone familiar with little bit of filmmaking would know that it is common for most of the films but you can't change the film's storyline in such a short time."
Now that there are few more months before the release, Kagti is happy to have some extra time to promote the movie.
"Aamir will see the first edit soon. There are other ideas that are being firmed up for the film's marketing and promotion. There is still some time before they are unveiled," she said.
Baba Sehgal who carved out a niche as an Indian rapper with songs like Dil Dhadke, Thanda Thanda Paani and Manjula is back with a bang. The singer's latest song Praji Kunjam Kunjam Control on 'Save the Girl Child' is making waves on Twitter.
Baba Sehgal has given the song a distinct flavour by conveying a social message in a fun, amusing manner. The song urges the society to stop female infanticide, in Baba Sehgal's distinct style.
“In the scenario where Bollywood music rules the chart, it's a welcome change to launch this single on 'Indi Pop Radio' on PlanetRadiocity.com. This song is also very special to me as it conveys a message of 'Save the Girl Child'. I am sure listeners will love this song and will groove to its tunes,” Baba Sehgal said in a press note.
Baba trends on Twitter
@rjt00: If you haven't seen this yet, See it now, or else your life is use-less. One and Only Baba....Baba Sehgal naam hai inka
@SupraMario: Baba Sehgal has discovered the secret of time-travel, since he *clearly* went back to the '90s to make the 'Praji kunkam kunjam' video.
@viragthakkar: Was Baba Sehgal finally able to clone himself to "Main bhi Madonna" ? Why is he trending?
@RjSucharita: Yes. Female feoticide it is. Sigh. Baba Sehgal, when will you learn?
@TangdaLyaagi: Who says twitter isn't kind.. Baba Sehgal is trending in India..
@saptarshisaha: Baba Sehgal makes a comeback. Had he come without a song, he might well have stayed.
New Delhi: There are two men in Delhi who are determined to return to Karnataka as Chief Minister. Both have met their party president, Nitin Gadkari. "I am confident the BJP will do the right thing," said BS Yeddyurappa, one of the contenders. He made it clear what the correct thing would be. Referring to his forced resignation as Chief Minister in July on the basis of corruption charges, he said that a court last week had dismissed those charges. The man he hand-picked to replace him, V Sadananda Gowda, was intended to serve as a seat-warmer, who would make way for his mentor once Mr Yeddyurappa extricated himself from a series of corruption cases. The problem is Mr Gowda has had a change of heart, "The BJP high command has told me there is no leadership change at present in Karnataka," said Mr Gowda today, known for his infectious smile. The party says that Mr Gadkari will consult with other senior leaders before taking a call.
As part of his campaign, Mr Gowda met this morning with some of those leaders like LK Advani, Rajnath Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi.
The BJP doesn't have very long to decide who will be its main man in Karnataka, where the party is in power for the first time. If it sides with Mr Yeddyurappa, it will lose all moral ground in its anti-corruption campaign. In Delhi, the party has been attacking the Congress for a series of scams. Mr Advani conducted a rath-yatra last year to highlight the need for clean governance, and to suggest that the BJP can provide that. Mr Yeddyurappa was cleared of some corruption charges by a court last week; but he has other cases pending against him for handing public land to his family at huge discounts. Last year, he spent nearly a month in jail.
But this week, Mr Yeddyurappa proved his might with any lack of restraint. A group of nearly 70 of the BJPs 110 MLAs in Karnataka showed their allegiance to him by moving into a five-star resort on the outskirts of Bangalore, which was once owned by actor Sanjay Khan and hosted the wedding of his daughter to actor Hrithik Roshan. They reported to work at the Karnataka Assembly only when Mr Yeddyurappa granted his sanction.
However, that didn't end the BJP's troubles in the state where it is running its first government. In a critical by-election yesterday, the BJP lost the Lok Sabha seat from Udipi-Chikmagalur - the former constituency of Mr Gowda. The defeat is a victory in disguise for Mr Yeddyurappa who chose not to campaign there, allegedly because his party had reservations about the corruption cases against him, and whether that would affect voters.
The dispute between the current and former Chief Minister has caste overtones as well. Mr Yeddyurappa, a Lingayat, chose a Vokkaliga to replace him. Both are dominant communities in the state - and the BJP is in a bind now in case they have alienated the Lingayat vote bank. Would one time Yeddyurappa foe turned ally, Jagadish Shettar, another Lingayat, be a potential Chief Ministerial choice that would satisfy Mr Yeddyurappa if he is given the chair himself? And how would the Vokkaliga community react to a Chief Minister from their community being dumped on the demands of the volatile Mr Yeddyurappa? Elections to the state Assembly are due in 2013.
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New Delhi: Amidst demand for removal of its Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia for pegging the poverty line at Rs 28.65 per day per person for cities, the Planning Commission is likely to constitute an expert group to re-evaluate its claim that poverty has declined in India.
"The Commission is likely to shortly constitute an expert group for reevaluating the poverty numbers and the methodology used to arrive at the number," a source said.
As per the Commission's estimates, the poverty ratio has been pegged at 29.8 per cent in 2009-10, down from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05. These are based on the daily per capita consumption of Rs 28.65 in urban cities and Rs 22.42 in rural areas.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh had sought removal of Ahluwalia as the Deputy Chairman of the Commission which set the poverty line standards.
"The Prime Minister is responsible as he is the Chairman of the Commission. He should remove the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission from the post," Mulayam Singh had said on Wednesday.
The estimates announced by the Commission had faced criticism in Parliament for its description of the poor and the subsequent number of people below the poverty line.
The Opposition parties, including BJP, blamed the government for making a "dishonest" attempt to conceal reality through "fraudulent" estimates.
However, Ahluwalia had said that there is serious discrepancy in the NSSO data and national accounts which led to pegging of such a low poverty line.
The Commission, on Wednesday, released poverty data based on the 66th round of the National Sample Survey (2009-10) data on household consumer expenditure survey. The national accounts, which provide data for national income, is prepared by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO).
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New Delhi:Less than 24 hours after Team India's exit from the Asia Cup, the players were engaged in their next assignments. Although 'rested' for the Asia Cup, regular vice-captain Virender Sehwag was the first to engage in Indian Premier League (IPL) promotional events. Sehwag was not inclined to talk on his team's recent showing in Australia and Bangladesh, but eventually conceded that performing abroad had become tougher in recent years even for the best teams.
"Every team goes through such phases. Even the mighty Australians have not been an exception. England lost 0-3 in Pakistan. There is always a home advantage, and every team is exploiting that now. I think our time will come, and results will change for Indian cricket too," Sehwag said.
The IPL thrives on young blood, but Sehwag insisted that age had little to do with performance, before dismissing talk of the seniors' impending retirement. "I think when a player thinks that his time is up, then he should decide on his retirement. As long as the player is enjoying, performing and winning games, he should be allowed to continue.
"It's up to the individual. Nobody can force them to retire. Cricket is not like a government job where retirement age is fixed at 60. A cricketer can retire at 30 or 60; it's up to the player. (Sanath) Jayasuriya played till 42," Sehwag said.
Before signing off, Sehwag admitted that he regrets missing the celebrations of Sachin Tendulkar's 100th international century, having waited for the milestone for more than 12 months.
New Delhi: The government has been accused of a massive coal scam by the opposition - both Houses of Parliament were adjourned this morning. The latest crisis for the government is based on a draft report on coal mining by the government's auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). The leaked draft finds fault with the allocation of 155 coalfields to about 100 private and some public sector units or state-run firms between 2004 and 2009 instead of auctioning them off to the highest bidder. The losses, according to the draft report, add upto Rs 10.7 lakh crore. The auditor does not make accusations of corruption, but says the government had extended "undue benefits" to the companies, and that in the absence of an auction, the sale of the coalfields was "subjective" and allowed "windfall gains." (Excerpts from coal scam report by Govt auditor (CAG)
The Prime Minister oversaw the coal ministry for some of the period in question in the draft report. The government says it has so far not received a copy of the report. The Prime Minister's Office says that it got a letter from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India this afternoon. The letter allegedly states that "In the extant case the details being brought out were observations which are under discussion at a very preliminary stage and do not even constitute our pre-final draft and hence are exceedingly misleading...Pursuant to clarification provided by the Ministry in exit conferences held on 9.02.2012 and 9.03.2012, we have changed our thinking .... In fact it is not even our case that the unintended benefit to the allottee is an equivalent loss to the exchequer. The leak of the initial draft causes great embarrassment as the Audit Report is still under preparation." (Prime Minister's Office on CAG report on coal mining)
The emphasis by the CAG on an auction echoes the Supreme Court's recent order which said the government must use an auction to distribute all natural resources. That order came as the Supreme Court cancelled 122 telecom licenses that were sold, not through a bidding process, but to companies that were allegedly favoured in a distorted first-come-first-served process. In its draft report, the auditor says that the coal offered to firms was severely under-valued by the government and an auction of the coal-blocks would have helped ensure that the benefit of the low costs of coal production is passed on to the public. India is the world's third-largest coal producer in the world after China and the United States. State-run power company NTPC told Reuters it had made no windfall profits from the allocations and that the lower costs meant cheaper electricity for consumers. Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said that the government used advertisements in newspaper ads to invite offers for the coal fields in question. He also said that all state governments were consulted before the allocations were completed, and that BJP or Left led governments in states like West Bengal and Rajasthan had expressed reservations about an auction. "The coal blocks are allocated through a screening committee which is chaired by Coal Secretary," he said. Before that, he explained, "We gave advertisements for allocation of coal blocks and invited applications...after the applications were received by us (Coal Ministry), the state governments were consulted and thereafter the coal blocks were allocated."
The Indian subsidiary of ArcelorMittal and steel makers Tata and Jindal Steel and Power, are among the companies named in the report. Jindal's controlling shareholder, Naveen Jindal, who is also a member of parliament, defended the policy of direct allocations, saying it had allowed private companies to jump-start production at mines left idle by state-run Coal India Limited, the world's single largest producer
The UPA has spent the last year trying unsuccessfully to beat its image as a government operating in a continuum of corruption and crisis, unable to implement reform or introduce transparency. "The Congress-led UPA government is looting the country. We can't allow this to happen. We have given notices under various rules today and will discuss with the leaders today and decide our next course of action," said Prakash Javadekar, BJP spokesperson as the party demanded a CBI probe into the alleged scam. Gurudas Dasgupta of the Left said, "This is a government of scams. All CAG reports indicate about misuse of public money...ministers, politicians are involved."
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He made his directorial debut with Aakrosh (1980) that bagged the National Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi and the Golden Peacock at the International Film Festival of India. It was based on a play by Vijay Tendukar, a dark satire supposedly inspired by a Page 7 incident about the victimisation of the have-nots and the corruption in our judiciary.
Thirty-two years later, Govind Nihalani is planning a Marathi film on another Tendulkar play, Jhala Anant Hanumant . “It’s a contemporary urban fantasy, a searing satire on the commercialisation of everything including human beings who are being sold in the market as products. It’s the ‘ultimate’ marketing gimmick and something that doesn’t seem impossible in today’s scenario,” he explains.
The Tendulkar-Nihalani connection dates back to 1971, when the latter co-produced a Marathi film with Satyadev Dubey, based on a Tendulkar play. Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe, directed by Dubey, with Nihalani debuting as full-fledged cinematographer, was Tendulkar’s first screenplay.
He went on to write several landmark films, including Shyam Benegal’s Nishant (1975), Jabbar Patel’s Umbartha (1982) and Nihalani’s own Aakrosh (1980) and Ardh Satya (1983). “Jhala Anant Hanumant hasn’t been adapted on screen before because it requires expensive production inputs. The costs would be pretty high, but I’m planning big.
My film will incorporate animation, music and a huge amount of special effects. I have my fingers crossed,” says the filmmaker, adding that the project should go on the floors soon and he plans to release it this year itself.
Kanpur: As the Kalka Mail train pulls into Delhi railway station at dawn, it is every man, woman and child for themselves.
Before the train has stopped, crowds elbow and jostle into packed compartments destined for Kolkata, 1,500 km and 25 hours away on one of the largest, most decrepit and dangerous rail networks in the world.
Bare-footed women with children shout to be let into carriages while an old woman in an orange saree shuffles along the platform, bent over a walking frame. Above the melee, suitcases glide toward the train, borne aloft on the heads of porters.
Some passengers pause to brush their teeth on the platform, which stinks of excrement. Near a "No Spitting" sign, an infant squats in the open, defecating as her mother watches over her.
Another day on Indian Railways has begun - another day on which the nation's aspirations to become a wealthy economy risk being derailed by a neglected asset whose potential remains to be unlocked by bold political leadership and fresh capital.
Indeed, if that potential was unleashed, estimates suggest it could add as much as 2 per cent to India's flagging economic growth.
By the end of the day, about 40 people on average will have died somewhere on the network of 64,000 km (39,800 miles) of track. Many will be slum-dwellers and poor villagers who live near the lines and use them as places to wash and as open toilets. Some will have fallen off overcrowded commuter trains.
Of the 20 million people who travel daily on the network, many will arrive hours, even a day, behind schedule, having clattered along tracks and been guided by signalling systems built before Independence.
Businesses, including foreign firms and exporters, will be exasperated, as their freight is obliged to give way to the slow-running and congested passenger services. Country-wide, trains hauling goods and raw materials such as coal will have to wait in sidings for hours until given the all-clear.
Last week, after many false dawns, the railways appeared to have finally found the political will to tackle the problem head-on, announcing the first rise in rail fares in eight years as part of a plan to improve network safety and efficiency.
The government's resolve did not last long -- Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi was forced to quit within days because of opposition to the move within the ruling coalition, raising expectations his decision on fares will soon be reversed.
"I'm worried about safety. I did what I did because of safety," Trivedi said almost apologetically in announcing his resignation.
In a paradox familiar to reform-minded Indians and foreign investors, the most hostile reaction to the planned fare hike came from Trivedi's own party boss, Mamata Banerjee, who only three years earlier had called for bold action when she was railways minister.
West Bengal's 90 million people rely on Indian Railways' extraordinarily cheap tickets to find work in more affluent regions. She opposes higher fares for the masses.
Not a hopeless case The Kalka Mail is crowded with poor people from across the sweep of northern India's Gangetic plains, including Minar, a 30-year-old cycle-rickshaw driver who works in the old part of New Delhi and heads home every three months to Kolkata, the 19th century colonial capital also known as Calcutta.
His face framed by a shock of black hair and a moustache, Minar wears a cream shirt and dirty brown trousers and sits hunched on the floor inside a hot and crowded general-class carriage where a fare costs just 200 rupees.
Although his ticket is among the cheapest in the world, thanks to heavy cross-subsidies from the network's freight operations, it is still worth at least half of the 300 to 400 rupees he has saved from pedalling people around the capital.
"What can I do if they raise the fares?" Minar said, as nearby six people crammed onto a hard wooden bench meant to accommodate three or four. "I want them to go down."
But even here, in a cramped carriage cut off from the other classes of travel by iron shutters, there is some support for a hike, provided the money is invested in a safer network.
"Dinesh Trivedi is a good man," West Bengali fish trader M.B. Zia ul-Haq says of the ex-railway minister who is his local member of federal parliament.
"He raised prices for the sake of the railways."
Arvinder Agnihotri, who owns an electronics business in Kanpur, a faded industrial city in Uttar Pradesh state about halfway along the route to Kolkata, is like-minded: "Why shouldn't they increase fares, if they improve the services?"
In second class, which ferries more than 90 percent of Indian Railways' passengers at prices that are also unprofitable for the state-owned network, the view is even more supportive - offering hope to the few optimists who believe India will soon be forced to drag its railway into the 21st century.
"The railways need money," says J.N. Shukla, a portly, bespectacled India Railways official who is travelling as a passenger this day. He is one of some 1.36 million employees of Indian Railways, a number that makes it one of the top 10 employers in the world.
"Every year they are increasing the number of trains, but not the number of tracks. That's why there are so many accidents and why the trains take so long."
Shocking crash In July last year, the Kalka Mail never made it to its final destination. Its engine suddenly stopped, derailing more than a dozen carriages, killing 71 people. It shocked an increasingly affluent India, though it had followed a long list of rail disasters, including several more deadly ones, since the 1980s.
For many Indians, who have seen their nation develop rapidly since the late 1990s to become Asia's third-largest economy with sophisticated high-tech, drugs and telecoms industries, the ramshackle state of Indian Railways has become an embarrassment.
That is felt especially keenly when comparisons are made with neighbouring China, where bullet trains zip across the country at around 300 km (186 miles) per hour and safety concerns stem from overly rapid development rather than too little. By contrast, India's fastest train runs - on just one stretch - at a top speed of 161 km (100 miles) per hour.
Critics regard Indian Railways as emblematic of the nation's problems overall: stifling bureaucracy, inefficiency and most importantly a lack of public funding and a political unwillingness to open up to abundant private capital.
A recent report submitted to the government concluded that modernising the rail system could potentially add 1.5-2.0 percent to economic growth, creating new jobs, saving energy, improving the environment and moving people and goods more efficiently around the country.
The Congress party-led government has not stood completely idle - it has announced a $90 billion freight corridor between New Delhi and Mumbai - but critics say policy implementation is slow to non-existent, even though local and foreign investors are quietly queued up, waiting for a signal.
"India hasn't gone fast enough," says Pratyush Kumar, head of the India transportation business of General Electric, maker of diesel-electric locomotives and signalling systems.
"If you look at the track record of what has been implemented from what has been talked about, that's not a very pretty picture. They have to move away from talking to doing."
Wanted: $20-30 billion a year At least $200 billion will need to be spent on Indian rail over the next decade alone, according to consultancy McKinsey, though it suggests closer to $300 billion should be spent, including the creation of five high-density freight corridors.
With India heading for a budget deficit of 5 percent of gross domestic product in 2012/13, and economic growth slowing, investors hope New Delhi will have no choice but to fully embrace public-private partnerships and open the network wider to foreign capital - or risk the economy decelerating further.
Indian media have speculated that wily U.S. investor Warren Buffett - whose penchant for railroad investments led his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to pay $26.5 billion for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp in 2010 - may be interested in buying Indian railway investment bonds.
Buffett's office has so far declined to comment on the reports, though it is more likely that foreign capital will come from infrastructure firms in the form of direct investment.
British private-equity firm 3i Group Plc has already launched a $1.2 billion India infrastructure fund, though railways is not listed for now as one of its major focuses.
"There is a lot of scope to come in and a huge amount of investments can come in from the private sector but the railways have to open up. Till now the Indian railways had been very closed," says Hemant Kanoria, chairman and managing director of India's Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd.
Opening up, though, may require a new mindset among ruling classes - a matter of politicians no longer treating rail as a crowd-pleasing form of ultra-cheap state transport, and of lifelong railway bureaucrats giving way to the private sector.
"The bureaucracy of the organisation is lacking business sense," a senior civil servant in the railways ministry said on condition of anonymity, just before minister Trivedi quit, to be replaced by another of Banerjee's West Bengal politicians.
"The political leadership has (also) not taken a business-like outlook. That is why the railways are suffering."
Many Indians are fed up with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's coalition, so fragile it is unable to push through critical reforms - not even a modest increase in rail fares - before the next election due in 2014. Indeed, speculation is mounting the government will collapse before its term is up.
As if to underline the sense of paralysis, hours before the government installed another of Banerjee's West Bengal politicians, Mukul Roy, as its new railways minister on Tuesday, a train crashed into a van at a level crossing in Uttar Pradesh state, killing 15 people.
The clock is ticking for the railway network, a vital but broken asset that could yet help put the Indian economy back on track - if only there was the political will.
But there is little sign of that inside Delhi's old railway station, a red fort-like building built by the British at the turn of the last century, whose overcrowded platforms now reek of multiple odours.
A train returning from Kolkata is running five hours late. "The inconvenience caused is deeply regretted," announces a voice from loudspeakers.
Copyright Thompson Reuters 2012
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Shabana Azmi liked Vidya Balan's performance in Kahaani so much that she could see glimpses of herself in her. At the same time, she feels the young actress should avoid the pitfall of accepting only central parts.
"Somewhere I feel Vidya has made the daring but right career choices. I see glimpses of my own involvement with my roles in Vidya Balan," say Shabana appreciatively after watching Balan in Kahaani.
Shabana is currently playing a wily politician in Rajkot for Vishal Bhardwaj's Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola. She took time off from her shooting to watch Sujoy Ghosh's masterpiece that is still going houseful.
"I had to watch Kahaani because of Vidya. I was bowled over by her performance. As an actor, I could see she was making all the right moves throughout the film. There was not a single artificial note in her performance," said Shabana, known for powerful performances in Arth, Masoom, Fire and Godmother.
But Shabana sounds a note of caution in the euphoria surrounding Vidya's rise to the top.
"If she continues to dominate her films, she might very soon face a scarcity of co-stars. Heroes might be apprehensive about being paired with her," said the 61-year-old who faced that situation when films featuring her in the central role co-starred Vinod Mehra or Marc Zuber.
In Kahaani, Vidya found the Bengali star Parambrata Chatterjee sportingly supporting her heroine-centric presence in the film. But would she run out of co-stars in her future efforts at hero-giri?
"Vidya should avoid the pitfall of only doing central parts. She should also enjoy doing peripheral parts as much as the pivotal ones. Being the centre of attention could be addictive. She must learn to also be part of a cinema that doesn't focus on her but has something important to say," suggested Shabana.
Stavanger: In a huge setback to the Indian couple fighting for the custody of their children in Norway, the Child Welfare Services (CWS) has categorically said the children cannot go back to family now and the case will be dropped.
In a statement, the CWS said, "New developments involving two Indian children make it impossible to carry out the hearing in Stavanger District Court that was scheduled for Friday, March 23. The conflicts over the last few days between the parents and their respective families mean that the conditions for entering into an agreement of this kind are no longer present."
In that hearing, the Indian authorities were supposed to recommend to a court in Norway that the children - three-year-old Abhigyan and one-year-old Aishwarya - be placed in the custody of their uncle. What's worse is that there is no indication that there will be a new hearing.
The CWS "is no longer confident that the parties wish to enter into a genuine agreement. Over the last few days, the parties to the agreement have provided conflicting and different information, both to the Child Welfare Service and to the media, on their positions in the case," CWS chief Gunnar Toreseen said.
He emphasised that the CWS was well aware that there was a great deal of external pressure on the family, and that this made it difficult for them to agree on a clear position. "But in the light of the great uncertainty that now prevails, the Child Welfare Service cannot maintain that a move to India would be in the best interests of the children."
"Even if the parents and the children's uncle should nevertheless now want to sign an agreement, the Child Welfare Service does not have sufficient confidence that an agreement would be fulfilled as intended, because the necessary consensus and understanding between the parties and their families does not exist," he said.
The children were placed in foster care against in Norway last May against the wishes of their parents, Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya. However, reports emerged that after a fight with his wife, Anurup had told Norwegian officials that he would prefer for Abhigyan and Aishwarya to stay in Norway. Different newspapers quoted him as saying that he wanted to separate from his wife who allegedly attacked him over the weekend and has a record of being violent towards him. But yesterday, Anurup said that his goal remains to bring back his children to their country. "I, Anurup Bhattacharya have not filed for separation or divorce... Whatever our personal differences, we are united in our sole principal aim, which is to get the children back to India," he clarified in a press release. That plan includes placing the children in the formal care of his brother.
During the custody battle, the CWS had agreed to give children to their uncle, a dentist named Arunabhas. But over the last few days, according to CWS, the parents and the uncle of the children have changed their position several times on the agreement that had originally been reached.
"This has caused the Child Welfare Service to doubt their motives as far as the agreement is concerned. The Child Welfare Service does not have sufficient confidence that an agreement would be fulfilled as intended because the necessary consensus and understanding between the parties and their families does not exist," the CWS statement said.
For months, the Indian government has thrown its weight behind the Bhattacharyas. But these new developments have embarrassed the Indian government which had been pressuring Norway to send the children back with their parents. A series of Indian diplomats were sent to Oslo to talk to authorities there to plead the Bhattacharyas' case. "The government has tried its best to bring the children home so that they have a future in the country. But a new situation has developed.... we cannot interfere. The visit of a Joint Secretary (to Norway) has been postponed," Minister of State for External Affairs, Preneet Kaur, told reporters yesterday.
Sources have told NDTV that with the family dispute out in the open, the government is in a difficult position and is unable to have a diplomatic edge to take a strong stand. The government rushed its First Secretary in the Indian Embassy in Norway to Stavanger to sort out the mess but at this stage future intervention from the Indian government is uncertain. Anurup's visa expires this month. He was posted to Norway on an official assignment. The family insisted that Child Welfare Service officials who had placed the children in foster care had mistaken cultural differences for poor parenting. So Sagarika argued that she was being penalised for feeding her young daughter by hand, or for letting her son sleep in his parents' bed
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"I’ve been emulating superheroes all my life; a recurring childhood dream was to fly. After doing that in my dreams for all these years, it’s suddenly coming true in real life,” says Hrithik Roshan, who is back to playing the masked crusader in Krrish 3, the 3D science-fiction sequel to Krrish (2006).
While the 38-year-old actor is jumping off skyscrapers, his six-year-old son, Hrehaan, wants to hop off stools. According to the star father, he has just about begun understanding the art of slow-motion fighting. “I had to sit him down and explain the laws of gravity,” he laughs.
Last year, Hrithik’s father, producer-director Rakesh Roshan, almost considered scrapping the sequel after watching his son writhe in pain from a knee injury and a double slip disc. “I was in a dark place that was full of negative vibes,” reminisces Hrithik, who consulted friends, therapists, surfed the Internet and finally connected with trainer Kris Genthin and his nutritionist wife Marcia Johnson to get back into shape.
Isn’t it heartbreaking to lose the hunky body for another film role, which may require him to gain weight (Guzaarish, 2010) or get a leaner look (Agneepath)? “No, there’s no attachment to the image of a Greek God because I know it’s all transitory. For me, this body is just a torso, a pair of hands and legs and a stomach, that everyone has. The idea is to use food and the gym as tools to sculpt a body and lifestyle, which can benefit me professionally and personally.”
Impressed with Kris and Marcia’s routine, the actor has hinted that he would like to share the know-how with other health enthusiasts soon. But he doesn’t say how, exactly. “Once we wrap up Krrish 3 in August-September, I’ll take time off and work on that. For now, it’s about dreaming big with Krrish and Rohit Mehra (name of Krrish’s father in the film), and about completing the trilogy that began with Koi Mil Gaya (2003).”
The Rs 100 crore club Karan Johar’s Agneepath, which made Rs 125 crore at the box-office, has marked Hrithik’s entry into the elite Rs 100 crore club. “I’m happy. Though I have started understanding the business now, I don’t get into figures. Money for me is not a motivator, it’s the creativity that counts,” he says, adding, “I’m just elated with the response my portrayal of Vijay Dinanath Chauhan has elicited.
I’ve had to work hard for a year-and-a-half to enter this club, but it was worth it. It’s reaffirmed my belief in the power of a good script and a director’s vision, while nullifying my reservations about remakes.”
According to a recent newspaper report, India has replaced China as the world’s top importer of arms between 2007 and 2011. China is a joint third with Pakistan, with 5 per cent imports, South Korea marginally ahead with 6 per cent, while 70 per cent of India’s total defense requirements are being imported. Emraan Hashmi’s eagerly awaited sequel, Jannat 2 talks about this changing face of gun trade.
His filmmaker uncle Mahesh Bhatt explains that while researching the subject, they learnt from the Delhi police that nawabs and kings had employed skilled artisans to make arms for them to wage frequent wars, but the British banned them, wanting exclusive control over arms and ammunition in India. Centuries later, with sales of arms escalating, the next generation was tapped for their skills and made part of the flourishing illegal trade.
While the subject is dark and real, the actor insists Jannat 2 is a commercial film but admits that like with the earlier film, he took a break from shoots to travel with director Kunal Deshmukh to meet with people connected with the trade and the police.
“As part of the research, I even got to fire a gun,” says Emraan who since he was a child, has been hooked to action movies. “I used to fire toy guns earlier. Firing the real thing was a high, but I also realised how much power it puts into your hands. It is used by the police to protect, but if it gets into the wrong hands, it can destroy too. It brings out the dark side in some people and can become a fatal obsession.”
Beijing: A Chinese telecommunications equipment company has sold Iran's largest telecom firm a powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile and internet communications, interviews and contract documents show.
The system was part of a 98.6 million euro contract for networking equipment supplied by Shenzhen, China-based ZTE Corp to the Telecommunication Co. of Iran (TCI), according to the documents. Government-controlled TCI has a near monopoly on Iran's landline telephone services and much of Iran's internet traffic is required to flow through its network.
The ZTE-TCI deal, signed in December 2010, illustrates how despite tightening global sanctions, Iran still manages to obtain sophisticated technology, including systems that can be used to crackdown on dissidents.
Human rights groups say they have documented numerous cases in which the Iranian government tracked down and arrested critics by monitoring their telephone calls or internet activities. Iran this month set up a Supreme Council of Cyberspace, headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said it would protect "against internet evils," according to Iranian state television.
Mahmoud Tadjallimehr, a former telecommunications project manager in Iran who has worked for major European and Chinese equipment makers, said the ZTE system supplied to TCI was "country-wide" and was "far more capable of monitoring citizens than I have ever seen in other equipment" sold by other companies to Iran. He said its capabilities included being able "to locate users, intercept their voice, text messaging ... emails, chat conversations or web access."
The ZTE-TCI documents also disclose a backdoor way Iran apparently obtains US technology despite a longtime American ban on non-humanitarian sales to Iran - by purchasing them through a Chinese company.
ZTE's 907-page "Packing List," dated July 24, 2011, includes hardware and software products from some of America's best-known tech companies, including Microsoft Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Oracle Corp, Cisco Systems Inc, Dell Inc, Juniper Networks Inc and Symantec Corp.
ZTE has partnerships with some of the US firms. In interviews, all of the companies said they had no knowledge of the TCI deal. Several - including HP, Dell, Cisco and Juniper - said in statements they were launching internal investigations after learning about the contract from Reuters.
Li Erjian, a ZTE spokesman in China, declined to answer any questions, writing in an email, "We are not going to make any comments about Iran."
TCI officials in Tehran either didn't respond to requests for comment or could not be reached.
The United States, Europe and many Arab countries accuse Iran of attempting to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies. But Beijing, along with Moscow, has repeatedly vetoed attempts to strengthen sanctions against Tehran. China is Iran's largest trading partner with business between the countries surpassing $45 billion last year, up $16 billion from 2010, according to Iran's FARS news agency.
ZTE, China's second largest telecom equipment maker, is publicly traded but its largest shareholder is a Chinese state-owned enterprise. The fast-growing firm, which says it sells equipment to more than 500 carriers in more than 160 countries, reported annual revenue of $10.6 billion in 2010.
TCI is owned by the Iranian government and a private consortium with reported ties to Iran's elite special-forces unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
In a recent interview Mahmoud Khosravi, managing director of Iran's government-controlled Telecommunications Infrastructure Co., boasted that sanctions have had no effect on Iran's telecom industry. "We have the latest technology in our networks," he said.
Rivals pull out Sanctions on Iran have focused on banking, terrorism, Iran's oil industry, and individuals and companies that Western capitals believe are involved in the country's nuclear development program, which Iran maintains is peaceful. Although sanctions have not specifically targeted Iran's telecommunications industry, its future growth is expected to suffer from "severe fluctuations in the currency, the rial, as international sanctions begin to impact the economy," according to a report this month by Pyramid Research in Cambridge, Mass.
Last month, European Union diplomats said the bloc's 27 governments had reached an agreement in principle to target telecommunications equipment that can be used by Iranian authorities for monitoring anti-government dissent. But no final decision has been made and there is no target date for implementing such a ban.
Like most countries, including the United States, Iran requires telephone operators to provide law enforcement authorities with access to communications. Some telecoms equipment makers that previously provided Iran with gear capable of intercepting communications have cut back sales.
After Iran's controversial election in June 2009 sparked the country's biggest demonstrations in decades, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks, a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens, said they would reduce their business there. NSN had provided TCI with a monitoring center capable of intercepting and recording voice calls on its landline and mobile network. Ericsson had sold equipment to Iranian telecoms that included built-in interception capabilities.
Even the giant Chinese telecommunications equipment firm Huawei Technologies said it has curtailed new business in Iran. In August 2009, Huawei and British company Creativity Software beat out ZTE to win a contract to supply Iran's second largest mobile phone carrier, MTN Irancell, with a "location-based services" system, according to a press release from Creativity.
Such systems can be used to track phone users' whereabouts. Last December Huawei said that "due to the increasingly complex situation in Iran, Huawei will voluntarily restrict its business development there by no longer seeking new customers and limiting its business activities with existing customers."
"Interception solution" ZTE's pursuit of the surveillance market is no secret. Its subsidiary, ZTE Special Equipment Co., or ZTEsec, specializes in security and surveillance systems and often co-sponsors an international trade show called ISS World where companies peddle their wares to governments and law-enforcement agencies. According to the trade show's website, a ZTEsec official gave a training seminar in Brazil last July on "ZTEsec Deep Insight Solution - Comprehensive and Intelligent Interception Solution."
The packing list for ZTE's TCI contract refers to "Equipment Model: ZXMT," a system the Chinese firm's marketing documents refer to as an "integrated monitoring system" and a "turnkey solution for lawful interception" that simultaneously monitors telephone networks and the internet.
Reuters asked project manager Tadjallimehr and a former ZTE network engineer who helped to install the ZXMT system in another country to review the ZTE packing list. Both men said that among the items were parts for a surveillance system that can monitor voice, text messaging and internet communications. The former ZTE employee said the system does not use any US-made parts or software.
Both men said the ZXMT system utilizes "deep packet inspection," a powerful and potentially intrusive technology that can read and analyze "packets" of data that travel across the internet. The technology can be used to track internet users, search for and reconstruct email messages that have been broken up into data packets, block certain types of traffic and even deliver altered web pages to users.
Andrew Lewman, executive director of The Tor Project, which distributes software so that dissidents in places like Iran and China can surf the internet undetected, says the group has collected evidence showing that Iran has been using deep packet inspection since 2010 to monitor and block internet traffic.
"They seem to be rolling it out countrywide and they seem to be willing to experiment with blocking more and more traffic," said Lewman, the project's executive director.
Tor, which has nearly 50,000 daily users in Iran, repeatedly has had to tweak its circumvention technology to outfox Iranian censors. Lewman said after using deep packet inspection to isolate and block specific traffic like Google's Gmail, the Iranian government can then record every online request for the service and trace individual users. "They can figure out the households," he said.
ZTE markets its monitoring system as low-cost and user-friendly. In May 2008, the firm made a presentation to the government-controlled Iran Telecommunication Research Center about its latest networking products, including the "ZTE Lawful Intercept Solution," according to Privacy International, a London-based non-profit that advocates the right to privacy and obtained a copy of the presentation.
In a 91-page document called "Talking to the future," ZTE noted that its ZXMT system was applicable to military and national security agencies. Citing "10 Reasons to Select ZXMT," it said the system offered "High security and good secrecy" and was "Invisible to the targets."
"A very serious matter" The ZTE parts list includes items apparently not connected with its surveillance system. Among them are the US products, including HP computer parts and printers, Microsoft Windows software, Cisco switches, Dell flat-screen monitors, Oracle database products and Symantec anti-virus software.
According to a spokesman for the US Treasury Dept., a US company would violate sanctions "if it exports products requiring a license to a third party with the knowledge that its products will end up in Iran."
In the case of the US products on the ZTE packing list, many - and possibly all - do not require an export license and the companies say they did not know they were being shipped to Iran. Several said their agreements with foreign companies like ZTE stipulate that their products cannot be distributed to embargoed countries.
For example, an HP spokesperson said, "HP's distribution contract terms prohibit the sale of HP products into Iran ... As a matter of company policy, HP investigates any credible allegations of breaches of these contractual obligations by our partners or resellers and we are actively examining this situation."
Cisco said, "Products such as these, which are not subject to individual export licenses, can be purchased from distributors and resold without Cisco's knowledge or control. We continue to investigate this matter, as any violation of US export controls is a very serious matter."
ZTE'S contract with TCI is also signed by ZTE's Iranian subsidiary, ZTE Parsian, and another Chinese company - Beijing 8-Star International Co., which the documents state is responsible for providing certain "relevant third-party equipments." Reuters did not have access to an annex to the contract that identified the third-party products to be supplied by Beijing 8-Star.
A Reuters reporter recently visited the company's office in eastern Beijing. Two male workers there described Beijing 8-Star as a trading company with business all over the world. The otherwise sparse office contained several crates of French wine marked Bordeaux, which the workers said had been imported from France.
A man who answered the phone at Beijing 8-Star declined to answer any questions about the Iranian contract or confirm his identity. "This part of my company's business is a commercial secret," he said, adding, "I think on this matter, you'd better not ask me. Because it's my commercial secret, I don't wish to tell you."
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Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Health Minister DL Ravindra Reddy has submitted his resignation to Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the party's defeat in the by-polls.
He has cited the dismal performance of the Congress party as the reason behind his resignation and has reportedly owned moral responsibility for the party's defeat.
The Telangana Rashtriya Samiti or TRS won four of the seven assembly seats in the by-poll results declared yesterday. Voting was held on Sunday. Six of the seven seats are located in Telangana.
The TRS, headed by K Chandrasekhara Rao (KCR), defeated the ruling Congress party and main Opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Station Ghanpur, Kollapur, Adilabad and Kamareddy constituencies. Both the TDP and the Congress are accused by the Telangana movement of not supporting its demand of statehood.
The results pose a serious survival threat for the ruling Congress and also make the writing on the wall clear: That the demand for a separate Telangana state cannot be wished away.
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Geneva: The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has begun the crucial debate on a US resolution urging Colombo to probe alleged excesses committed during its operation to eradicate LTTE.
The voting holds significance as Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh recently made a statement in Parliament that India is inclined to support the resolution which has been moved by Norway, the US and France.
The resolution comes in the background of another Channel 4 documentary allegedly showing LTTE commander Prabhakaran's son with five bullet wounds in his chest, following which Tamil parties pressured the Indian government to support the resolution.
The government has been under huge pressure from its ally, the DMK, which has warned that it could withdraw its ministers from the Cabinet if India either abstained or supported Sri Lanka during the vote.
Sri Lanka's Foreign Minister called External Affairs Minister SM Krishna and asked him to reconsider the decision.
Rights groups say up to 40,000 civilians died in the final months of Colombo's military campaign to crush the Tamil Tigers, who waged a bloody decades-long campaign for a separate homeland for minority Tamils.
The US resolution has been dismissed by Sri Lanka, while activists have accused Colombo-backed elements of "intimidation" against them in Geneva, Switzerland.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a non-government organisation activist told AFP that while attending the council's meetings, they were photographed by people who appeared to be with the Sri Lanka delegation.
"It was done in a very obvious manner and we felt uncomfortable," said the activist, adding that the team "contemplated leaving the session".
The group brought a complaint to the presidency of the UN Human Rights Council, and later decided to stay as a probe was launched into the matter.
A UN rights spokesman confirmed the complaints and investigation.
"There was a complaint by a number of NGOs that their photographs had been taken," said the spokesman, Rolando Gomez. "We have investigated these incidents, but I can't give more details."
The Sri Lanka mission was not immediately available for comment.
Its chief government whip in Parliament, Water Supply Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, had earlier called the US resolution "ill-timed, ill-conceived and borne out of ignorance".
The US resolution urges Sri Lanka to ensure "justice, equity, accountability and reconciliation" and says Colombo's own probe, the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, did not adequately address concerns.
International rights activists said the US resolution was tabled because Sri Lanka has "done too little" to deal with claims of violations during the final months of its conflict with the Tamil Tigers in 2009.
"If adopted, the resolution sends a strong signal to Sri Lanka that it needs to move from cosmetic actions to real steps to hold those responsible for abuses on both sides to account," said Human Rights Watch Geneva director Julie De Rivero.
"By calling for Sri Lanka to urgently present a plan of concrete steps to address accountability, and asking the High Commissioner to assist and report on this process, the HRC will finally provide the many victims of Sri Lanka's long civil war hope of obtaining justice," she added.
The UN estimates some 100,000 people died during Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict between 1972 and 2009.
India, a traditional Sri Lanka ally, signalled on Monday that it was "inclined" to back the US resolution.
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In 1965, under military General Ayub Khan’s rule, a ban was imposed on Bollywood films set against the backdrop of the ongoing Indo-Pak conflict over Kashmir.
After that, Pakistanis had to make do with illegally smuggled VHS tapes. On April 22, 2006, the colourised Mughal-e-Azam (1960) premiered at Lahore’s Gulistan Cinema. Akbar Khan’s Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story (2005) and Umesh Mehra’s Sohni Mahiwal, an Indo-Russian co-production, followed soon after. Mahesh Bhatt’s Awarapan (2007) and Sunny Deol’s Kaafila (2007) were also allowed access because the Indian films had been shot abroad, had a Pakistani co-producer and featured local artistes. In 2007, General Parvez Musharraf lifted the ban and My Name Is Khan (2010) was officially released.
However, there continued to be casualties, the latest being Saif Ali Khan’s Agent Vinod. The film’s distributor Abdul Rashid is apprehensive that it could hurt national and religious sentiments with its references to Pakistani officials, the ISI and shots of Karachi taken without permission. Rashid’s India Mortgage Guarantee Co. had imported 30 Indian films in 2010 and 15 in 2011.
This is the second Saif-Kareena Kapoor starrer after Kurbaan (2009) to be banned, despite its star producer asserting that unlike past blockbusters, this one doesn’t indulge in commercial Paki bashing, but has a heroine who is a good Pakistani. Sighs Saif, “It’s a shame the movie is banned there with no offence to anyone. The idea is to have open films between the two countries.”
His co-producer Dinesh Vijan is equally disappointed: “Pakistanis make up a significant part of our audience and we had consciously attempted to make this film with the right sentiments. The ban will only mean loss of revenue for both industries and encourage piracy, which we’re trying to combat together.”
How big is this territory? “It’s only one per cent and can earn us a maximum net gross of Rs 1 crore,” says overseas distributor Ganesh Jain of Venus. Trade analyst Amod Mehra agrees: “We are not making films for Pakistan, we are making them for India and the overseas market. What we earn in Pakistan is a bonus.”
Last seen on the big screen in 2006 box office dud Zamaanat, actor Karisma Kapoor, 37, is excited about filmmaker Vikram Bhatt’s Dangerous Ishq, which marks her return to films after a long hiatus. The actor, who married businessman Sunjay Kapur in 2003, says the gap was to devote all her attention to raising her kids — daughter Samaira (7) and son Kiaan (2).
Read on as Karisma — who’s recently been roped in as the brand ambassador of real estate brand Avalon Group — talks about her kids, career and sister Kareena Kapoor’s much-anticipated marriage with Saif Ali Khan, while choosing not to comment on her own marriage.
Karisma speaks: On her film I have a strong role in Dangerous Ishq. It was challenging to work in 3D format
On item song I am not doing any item song in Rowdy Rathore or for that matter, any film at the moment
On work-life balance It is all about prioritising things in one’s life. It is not difficult to strike that balance
On break from films It’s nice to do films. But I wanted to focus on my family and kids, so I chose TV over films
On Saif-Kareena Whenever they will decide to get married, they will announce it to everyone including the media. Nothing is planned as of now.
On future projects I would like to do more films for sure. The roles have to be very interesting. I am reading scripts, but things are yet to be finalised.
Geneva: India is among 24 countries that voted against Sri Lanka today at a session of the United Nation Human Rights Council in Geneva. The UN's top human rights body has passed a resolution, sponsored by the US, that Sri Lanka must properly investigate alleged war crimes during its 26-year conflict with the rebel Tamil Tigers.
15 countries including China and Russia backed Sri Lanka, which had rejected the resolution, saying it unduly interfered in the country's domestic affairs and could hinder its reconciliation process. Eight countries abstained from today's vote.
Both the Sri Lanka government and the rebel Tamil Tigers have been accused of atrocities during their country's lengthy civil war. Sri Lanka has rejected the resolution and has said today that the criticism at the level of the United Nations is not justified.
Earlier this week, Dr Manmohan Singh said in Parliament that India "is inclined to vote in favour of the resolution." The Prime Minister had been warned that if India did not vote against Sri Lanka, his key ally, the DMK, would pull out of the government.
Sri Lanka has asked India to reconsider its position. Members of the Sri Lankan delegation to Geneva said today that they understand India's domestic compulsions, but as the super-power in this region, India must recognise that Sri Lanka needs time to investigate the allegations against its defence forces as well as the LTTE, before settling accountability.
Human rights groups say nearly 40,000 civilians were killed in the final months of the war. The Sri Lankan government had created a committee, the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission Process, to study the allegations of war crimes. The US delegation in Geneva today referred to the government's "lack of action to implement the recommendations" of that commission. It described the resolution it has moved as one "that encourages Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of its own LLRC and to make concerted efforts at achieving the kind of meaningful accountability upon which lasting reconciliation efforts can be built." China has thrown its weight behind Sri Lanka, saying it is against any country putting pressure on others in the name of rights violations. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Sri Lanka and its people were capable of dealing with their own affairs. China, in recent years has made big investments in Sri Lanka besides assisting the island with major projects like building a modern port at Hambanthotta. Earlier this month, Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa visited Beijing to seek its support to stave off the US-led move.
The US delegation's statement on the resolution on Sri Lanka:
"The United States is pleased to introduce draft resolution L.2, on Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka for consideration and approval by this Council. This resolution enjoys the broad support of 40 co-sponsors. A copy of the text, including slight revisions, is being circulated in the room today.
It is almost three years since the end of Sri Lanka's long and painful conflict. For the past three years, my government has worked bilaterally, and with like-minded countries, to engage officials at the highest levels of the Sri Lankan government on the steps that are necessary to build a peaceful future for the Sri Lankan people. For those three years Sri Lanka has had the time and space to develop its own roadmap for lasting national reconciliation and accountability. Most recently, we have encouraged Sri Lanka to address actions taken on both sides of the conflict through its domestic Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Commission Process. We looked forward to the Commission's report, and understood that Sri Lanka would develop its own action plan to implement the LLRC recommendations.
We have also worked bilaterally, and with like-minded countries, to encourage Sri Lanka to take advantage of the resources of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. And we have encouraged Sri Lanka to engage with the Council, and to benefit from the broad range of experiences of Member States that have dealt successfully with their own post-conflict situations.
Mme President and Distinguished delegates, an enduring peace will be unsustainable without meaningful steps to foster national reconciliation and accountability.
Given the lack of action to implement the recommendations of the Sri Lankan government's own LLRC, and the need for additional steps to address accountability issues not covered in the LLRC report, it is appropriate that the UNHRC consider and adopt this moderate and balanced resolution. It is a resolution that encourages Sri Lanka to implement the recommendations of it own LLRC and to make concerted efforts at achieving the kind of meaningful accountability upon which lasting reconciliation efforts can be built.
In addition, this Resolution urges Sri Lanka to work with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and draw from helpful expertise the Office can offer.
These proposals are reasonable, constructive, and carefully tailored to the needs of the situation. At our informal session on March 8, none of the many delegations present offered proposals for specific textual modifications.
To close, I wish to emphasize that this resolution is intended to help the people of Sri Lanka achieve a lasting and equitable peace that is marked by equality, dignity, justice and self-respect.
Thank you.
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New Delhi: When BS Yeddyurappa was forced by his party to quit as Karnataka's Chief Minister, he picked V Sadananda Gowda to replace him. The understanding was that Mr Gowda would serve as a seat-warmer, who would make way for his mentor as soon as Mr Yeddyurappa extricated himself from a series of corruption cases. Mr Yeddyurappa now wants his office back, but Mr Gowda has had a change of heart. So both the current chief minister and the chief minister-in-waiting are now in Delhi to meet with their party leaders and convince them about their right to the top job in Karnataka, where the BJP's first term in power has been mangled by bitter political in-fighting. Mr Gowda has met this morning with his party's most senior leaders - LK Advani, Rajnath Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi and finally, BJP president Nitin Gadkari. "We are also going to place in detail the political scenario that is happening in Karnataka and we seek immediate interference by the Centre to see that everything is set right," said Mr Gowda, known for his infectious smile. Mr Yeddyurappa, meanwhile, is holding a series of meetings with his loyalists.
Last night, Mr Gowda said in Bangalore before taking a chartered plane to Delhi that he had been promised by Mr Gadkari that there would be no change in leadership in Karnataka. But the BJP's quandary is a large one. If it sides with Mr Yeddyurappa, it will lose all moral ground in its anti-corruption campaign. In Delhi, the party has been attacking the Congress for a series of scams. Mr Advani conducted a rath-yatra last year to highlight the need for clean governance, and to suggest that the BJP can provide that. Mr Yeddyurappa was cleared of some corruption charges by a court last week; but he has other cases pending against him for handing public land to his family at huge discounts. Last year, he spent nearly a month in jail. This week, Mr Yeddyurappa has proved his might aggressively to his party. A group of nearly 70 of the BJPs MLAs showed their allegiance to him by moving into a five-star resort on the outskirts of Bangalore, which was once owned by actor Sanjay Khan and hosted the wedding of his daughter to actor Hrithik Roshan. On Tuesday, Mr Yeddyurappa's supporters refused to report to work at the Karnataka Assembly for the budget session. After negotiations on Tuesday night with the party's central leadership, Mr Yeddyurappa and his large team showed up in the Assembly on Wednesday. That meant that the current chief minister could present his budget without the embarrassing absence of most of his MLAs. However, that didn't end the BJP's troubles in the state where it is running its first government. In a critical by-election yesterday, the BJP lost the Lok Sabha seat from Udipi-Chikmagalur - the former constituency of Mr Gowda. The defeat is a victory in disguise for Mr Yeddyurappa who chose not to campaign there, allegedly because his party had reservations about the corruption cases against him, and whether that would affect voters.
The dispute between the current and former Chief Minister has caste overtones as well. Mr Yeddyurappa, a Lingayat, chose a Vokkaliga to replace him. Both are dominant communities in the state - and the BJP is in a bind now in case they have alienated the Lingayat vote bank. Would one time Yeddyurappa foe turned ally, Jagadish Shettar, another Lingayat, be a potential Chief Ministerial choice that would satisfy Mr Yeddyurappa if he is given the chair himself? And how would the Vokkaliga community react to a Chief Minister from their community being dumped on the demands of the volatile Mr Yeddyurappa? Elections to the state Assembly are due in 2013.
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Mumbai: Senior IAS officers Pradeep Vyas and Jairaj Phatak have been placed under suspension pending investigation in the Adarsh Housing Society scam, Maharashtra government informed the Bombay High Court today.
While Mr Vyas was the Collector of Mumbai, Mr Phatak was City Municipal Commissioner when the scam took place.
According to the CBI, Mr Vyas (49), during his tenure as Collector from August 2002 to May 2005, allegedly connived with other accused and accepted false documents as proof of income and granted membership to those who were not eligible.
His wife Seema Vyas, also an IAS officer, has a flat in the posh Adarsh building.
Mr Vyas, a 1989 batch officer was arrested for his alleged role in the scam yesterday.
Mr Phatak is alleged to have allowed the height of the building in upmarket Colaba to be raised beyond 100 metres without the approval of the High-Rise Committee of the municipal body. His son received a flat in the Adarsh Society building allegedly as quid pro quo.
The High Court is hearing a batch of public interest litigations filed by social activists Simpreet Singh and Pravin Wategaonkar seeking monitoring of the probe by the High Court and invoking provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the case.
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Srinagar: Two former treasurers of the Jammu & Kashmir Cricket Association (JKCA) have made fresh allegations against Union minister Farooq Abdullah in connection with what is now being called as the J&K cricket scam. Mr Abdullah, who is a senior National Conference leader, heads the association. Speaking to NDTV, Mir Manzoor Gazanfar, who resigned as the treasurer of JKCA in 2008, has claimed that Mr Abdullah visited his hotel in Srinagar and made him sign blank cheques. "I was taking my father to the doctor. All of a sudden, a call comes from the worthy president. He says he will be coming to see me. He came with Ehsan Mirza. He said the association has become defunct because I don't sign the cheques. I denied, but after he insisted, I signed a few cheques," he said, adding that he admits what he did was wrong. "I did it on the insistence of the worthy president. I had trust in him. I still trust him. He is also being misled and I am also misled," he added. Ehsaan Mirza, the man Mr Gazanfar claims accompanied Mr Abdullah when he visited him, is also a former treasurer of the JKCA. He is accused of defrauding the association of over Rs. 30 crore after allegedly opening bogus bank accounts on its behalf. He was later sacked on charges of embezzlement. He, however, claims that he has been made a scapegoat. NDTV has accessed documents that purportedly show that Mr Abdullah recommended a loan of almost Rs. 2 crore in favour of Mr Mirza. The documents comprise copies of bank account statements and a letter purportedly signed by Mr Abdullah recommending that Mr Mirza be given a loan of Rs. 1.90 crore against deposits of the cricket association at the Khanyar Branch of J&K Bank. The account in this branch is allegedly one of the many bogus accounts being operated from four banks by Mr Mirza. Most of the money, which had been sent by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for the promotion of the sport in the state, was landing in the 'shadow' accounts of the cricket association.
Mr Abdullah has however denied that there was "any embezzlement of funds." He has also clarified that Mr Mirza had extended an interest-free loan to the cricket association during the time its accounts had been sealed by the courts. It was this amount, to the tune of Rs. 1.91 crore, which was cleared by the association through a resolution to pay back Mr Mirza. "I have never taken a penny from the Jammu & Kashmir Cricket Association in any form," he said. Farooq Abdullah's National Conference rules Jammu and Kashmir and his son Omar Abdullah is the chief minister of the state.
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The government has been accused of a massive coal scam by the Opposition - both Houses of Parliament were adjourned this morning with the BJP demanding "It is a serious scam, the Prime Minister must answer." The Prime Minister was in the Rajya Sabha when Opposition aggressively demanded a discussion on the alleged swindle. The BJP says the Prime Minister held the coal portfolio when the massive scam - worth 10.67 lakh crores according to the government's auditor - took place.
The allegations are based on a report on coal mining by the government's auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). The report, accessed by a newspaper, says the government extended "undue benefits" totaling Rs. 10.67 lakh crore to commercial entities by allotting 155 coalfields without an auction during 2004-09. The beneficiaries include 100 private companies and public sector units.
Here are the excerpts from the CAG report:
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Idinthakarai (Tamil Nadu): There is significant improvement at the Idinthakarai village, Ground Zero of the protests against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu. The check post blocking the entry into the village has been removed. The police are allowing the entry of vehicles into the area which has been seeing heated protests over the nuclear plant.
The cops have also removed pickets on the roads leading to Idinthakarai.
There was speculation last night that the police could arrest Dr S P Udhayakumar, the man who has led the charge against the controversial power project. That did not happen but the villagers continued to remain vigil the whole night. There are reports that he may be arrested today.
Mr Udhayakumar is facing charges of sedition and waging war against the country. He is on an indefinite hunger strike in Idinthakarai ever since Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa gave the go-ahead to begin work at the controversial plant earlier this week. Villagers who have been protesting along with him for the last seven months say that they too would court arrest with him. But the police allege that the activist is using the locals as a human shield to evade arrest.
The anti-nuclear campaigner, meanwhile, said they are all prepared to be arrested. "If police want to arrest us, let them arrest all of us here. All of us here are overstepping the law, so let them arrest all of us. It is not appropriate to arrest one or two of us. We are all prepared to be arrested."
"I have not stolen any public money. I have not done anything wrong to anybody... I am not a politician... why should I be arrested?" he added. The villagers too have said that they will not give up their non-violent campaign.
The check posts were removed after allegations that the police had stopped essential supplies like milk and drinking water from reaching the village. The Tamil Nadu police chief, however, denied these allegations.
The upcoming Kudankulam nuclear plant is within a radius of a kilometre from the village where regular work has resumed after the state government order. Nearly 300 scientists keep moving into the plant on regular shifts. According to V Narayanasamy, Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office, the work will be completed within two months.
Meanwhile, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) came up for hearing in the Madras High Court against the prohibitory orders clamped in the area. The court will deliver its verdict on Monday.
The petition, filed by P Pugalenthi, an advocate and Director of Prisoners Rights Forum, contended that depriving the people of their fundamental right of free movement in the name of maintaining public peace and tranquillity was a violation of constitutional norms.
The petitioner sought an order to declare as null and void the prohibitory orders in force till April 2.
Dr Udhayakumar points to the recent Fukushima tragedy in Japan to bolster his argument that the Kudankulam plant is not safe for those who live in close proximity. He has struck a chord with the villagers and that has catapulted him to be the face of the anti-nuclear campaign in the area.
In September, the state Cabinet had passed a resolution demanding that the Prime Minister order a halt of operations at Kudankulam till those living in the area were convinced that they are not at risk. Dr Manmohan Singh then deputed experts and ministers to assess the plant and answer the questions of villagers. Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa had also commissioned her own panel of experts to study the plant. Her clearance for the project came right after an important by-election in the Tirunelveli district, where the plant is located. In an attempt to pacify the area, she announced a Rs. 500 crore package to improve roads and infrastructure in the area.
The nuclear power project, worth Rs. 13,000 crores and being set up with assistance from Russia, will upon completion have six reactors, making this will India's largest power-generating complex. A pair of two 1,000-megawatt reactors will kickstart production.
The protesters, mostly fishermen from three districts, are worried that the seaside plant may damage the ecosystem with nuclear waste and ruin their livelihoods.
The Prime Minister's recent remarks that protests against Kudankulam were possibly receiving foreign funding provoked much anger among NGOs.
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Not many are aware of the role played by Royal Challengers Bangalore coach Ray Jennings and Anil Kumble in the fruition of Virat Kohli. The Delhi lad always had his share of detractors. Ever since his debut in 2008, his off-field behaviour and attitude were scrutinised. Despite emerging as India's best batsman on the tour of Australia, a former cricketer said, "Virat has all the tools to achieve greatness. But his attitude is a worry."
"Few years later, Anil (Kumble) and I noticed a trend in him during IPL Season-3. He's an explosive character and always fired up. Sometimes that can lead to his downfall. Anil and myself are old enough to understand that sort of confidence was his strength as well as a weakness. We asked him to control his anger and focus his energy in the right direction. It's not about sitting down and telling him what to do at a meeting. I've been fortunate to work with him since 2007. I've seen the growth of Kohli," added Jennings.
Less than 24 hours after Team India's exit from the Asia Cup, the players were engaged in their next assignments. Although 'rested' for the Asia Cup, regular vice-captain Virender Sehwag was the first to engage in Indian Premier League (IPL) promotional events. Sehwag was not inclined to talk on his team's recent showing in Australia and Bangladesh, but eventually conceded that performing abroad had become tougher in recent years even for the best teams.
