Andhranews

Hyderabad, Sept. 10: Hyderabad Urban Development Authority (Huda), which had gained notoriety as real estate broker of the State by acquiring lands from poor farmers and auctioning them at sky-high prices, is now on a mission to improve its public image. Huda had stated earlier that it would take up the construction of low-cost townships for the middle income section of society. Now, it has shortlisted at least five sites for the construction of these low-cost townships for middle class.

A formal announcement regarding the inauguration of this project is likely to be made by Chief Minister Dr Y. S. Rajasekhar Reddy on October 2. The process of identifying sites for these townships was delayed for various reasons. Official sources told this correspondent that these sites include lands at Jawaharnagar, Shamshabad, Kollur, Rampalli and Maheshwaram.“The officials have also identified some other sites at Tellapur, Saroornagar and Sahebnagar as a precautionary measure in case of any fresh litigations on the five identified sites,” sources said.

When contacted, Huda secretary P. Venkat Rama Reddy confirmed to this correspondent that they intend to have the project inaugurated by the Chief Minister on October 2. However, he refused to confirm the sites where Huda plans to set up the flats. Sources said Huda is reluctant to reveal the identified sites due to legal problems. “The Huda is on an image building exercise. The top officials of Huda are of the opinion that this project would help to improve the tarnished image which Huda now has among the public owing to land auctioning.” official sources said.

“So, Huda is bent upon grounding this project,” they added. As per the proposal, the low-cost township will have at least 2,000 units (flats). Each unit will be of 800 square feet and priced around Rs six lakhs. This way, Huda wants to construct at least four to five townships at different places in the outskirts of the city for the benefit of middle income group. “Huda plans to sell these flats in low-cost townships at Rs six lakhs each with a provision of installment facility to the allottees,” an official said. “However, the project, if inaugurated on October 2, will take another two years to be completed,” he added.

Hyderabad, Sept. 10: Hundreds of graduate doctors are moving to greener pastures abroad, forced by the inability of the State government to increase the number of seats in post-graduate medical colleges and poor salaries in government positions.Of the 3,000 students who complete their MBBS from 24 medical colleges every year in the State, nearly 1,000 are flying to the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, according to figures supplied by students associations. The government does not collate these figures.

Students from Osmania and Gandhi medical colleges are ahead of the rest. Of the 200 medical graduates from the latest batch, 130 have flown to foreign countries between January and August 2006. From Gandhi Medical College, 90 out of 150 students went abroad. They were followed by nearly 60 house surgeons out of 98 from the Andhra Medical College in Visakhapatnam.

The medical students have to go through the mandatory Graduate Record Examination (GRE), Test of English as a Foreign Language (Toefl) and US Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). A student spends about Rs 5 lakhs on average to clear the tests. Parents and students say that the returns will be higher. An assistant civil surgeon in the State earns Rs 14,000 a month. After his post-graduation, the doctor earns between $1,20,000 and $ 1,80,000 a year on contract. If they go abroad for their post-graduation, they can get up to $3,000 as stipend per month.

“No doubt, it is a financial burden initially. But after one settles in the US we can have a happy life,” said Maseer Khan, a student of Osmania Medical College. “If the situation does not change, I will have no choice except to go abroad,” said Nada Mohammad Riaz, a third year medico of Osmania Medical College. The students observed that the exodus of students has spiked over two years after the government increased the service quota from 15 per cent to 30 per cent in PG seats.

After setting aside seats for reservations for women, service candidates and other reserved categories, only a few of the 750 seats are left for general category students. The government has expressed its inability to increase the PG seats because of non-availability of teaching staff and infrastructure. Medical Council of India (MCI) will not permit colleges to run additional seats unless these issues are addressed, a senior official in the Medical and Health department said.“The government has to look into the problem immediately,” said Dr K. Suresh, president of Osmania Medical College Doctors’ Forum.

Hyderabad, Sept. 10: The Railway Protection Force (RPF) on Sunday handed over the sensational train robbery case, in which women in the ladies compartment of Secunderabad-Guntur passenger train were robbed of cash and other valuables, to Mahbubnagar district law and order police. Unidentified persons had robbed women of their valuables on Saturday night. The Mahbubnagar police had launched a hunt to identify and nab the robbers.

However, the exact number of robbers have not yet been confirmed. While some the victims told the police that there was only one thief,a few others said that two others were standing at the door of the compartment on either side. However, the Mahbubnagar police have started questioning suspected robbers in the district.

The railway authorities meanwhile said it was not mandatory to post a RPF escort on the passenger trains. Robbers who struck in the ladies compartment of Train No. 405 between Rajapur and Gollapalli stations in Mahbubnagar district had made away with over 30 tolas of gold jewellery, 10 cellphones and cash.

Hyderabad, Sept. 10: The two prestigious flyovers starting from Panjagutta and Greelands Junctions which has already been delayed, would be opened for public in March. According to informed sources the completion of the two flyovers that are aimed at easing traffic on one of the busiest arteries of the city was delayed owing to the tackling of large chunks of rock sheets and the shifting of pipeline, cables.

When contacted Mr N. V. S. Reddy, additional commissioner of MCH for traffic and transport, conceded that there were difficulties since they had to handle “a few unexpected problems.” Huge drainage pipes and criss-crossing cables which were laid for various purposes were discovered at the foundation level. As there was a ban on blasting the rocks as they were located beneath multi-storied buildings, the only option left to remove those pipes was to have the rocks chisled. But that meant a huge delay in the construction process. So the engineers resorted to embedding these in the structure itself.

Mr Reddy said another problem with the Panjagutta Flyover is getting the desired shape of piers. It is hard to get the right curves when the radius of pier is 75 metres. “It is perhaps the steepest curve the engineers have ever worked on,” he added. The Rajiv Gandhi Statue-Panjagutta Junctions bridge which is 1235 metres long would lead up to Nagarjuna Circle from where one of its arm will connect it with Banjara Hills road number two and the other one would land to JVR Park. The Greenlands Junction Bridge which is 1,150-metres-long will merge with the existing overbridge and land near the gate of HPS. The total cost of the two bridges is estimated as Rs 53.5 crore.

Hyderabad, Sept. 10: A six-member gang which had kidnapped two persons and demanded Rs 1 crore ransom was arrested by the Central Zone team of the Commissioner’s task force. They recovered Rs 14 lakhs, two dummy pistols, four cellphones and a motorcycle from the gang members who have been handed over to Sanjeev Reddy Nagar police.

The gang members have been identified as T. Nagaraju, P. Ramakrishna, K. Ramulu, T. Pothuluri Brahmachari, D. Narender, and B. Radhakrishna. Police sources said, Nagaraju and Radhakrishna posed as realtors and invited one Ramesh of Vijayawada to see some land at Ramoji Film City. Ramesh went to see the site along with friend Srinivas on September 5.

Nagaraju and his gang then executed their plan, kidnapped the two and demanded Rs one crore ransom from their parents. Task force officers who came to know about the kidnap laid a trap according to which Rs four lakhs was taken to the designated place. Police arrested one of the gang members who had come to collect the amount and from him got details about the other gangsters. The task force has appealed to the public to inform the police at the earliest in case of such threatening calls or kidnaps.

Malegaon, Sept. 10: After the bomb blast in this powerloom town of Malegaon about 200 km from Mumbai on Friday afternoon, which claimed 31 lives and injured around 297, the city is briskly coming back on track. The whir of the powerlooms heralds normalcy and except for the liquor shops, all shops and restaurants were open, with people going about their usual routine.

Mr Abdul Sheikh, owner of the one of the powerlooms in the city, said, “It is very unfortunate that the blast took place, and that too at such a sacred place. We want to forget it. It was a bad experience. However, it does not mean that the police and government should also forget it. There should be proper investigation and the accused should be arrested as soon as possible.”

There were rumours about curfew being imposed on Sunday evening and this led to some tension at the Bada Kabristan. There were also rumours about people not being let in for prayers. The rumour was so strong that within minutes, thousands of people came to the kabristan. But the police kept everything under control with the help of the local people and there were no casualties. Police officials explained, “We are not letting people go inside because it was the same place where the blast took place. If we let people in, there might me strong possibility of evidence being tampered with and investigations getting hampered.”

Hundreds of people were helping police officials clear the mob, which numbered thousands. Mr Taus Pardesi, chairman of the Hum Hindustani, a social organisation which has members from both the Hindu and Muslim communities, said, “We are not here to create problems for the police but to help them. We think that those who committed this act don’t have any caste or religion. They only know how to take lives of people.
Our organisation is helping people in every manner possible. For instance, when the bomb blast took place and after that, there was scarcity of blood. Hundreds of people came forward to donate blood. At that time, people did not think about whether their blood would be given to a Hindu or a Muslim.”

Hundreds of people came to the hospitals in the city on Sunday to meet their injured relatives. Crowds were lined up at the Farana Hospital where 55 injured people have been admitted. Asif Ali, a teenager, said, “On Saturday Congress president Sonia Gandhi came here. I thought today also she might come, so I am standing here to have a glimpse of her. Yesterday I could not see her as I was at Nashik to meet my relatives.”

But anger can be seen in Malegaon against the state and Central government. Mr Mohammed Sheikh, who was injured in the blast, said, “There are no proper medical facilities available in the city. Injured people were transferred to the hospitals at Nashik and Dhule. Every time something happens in the city these politicians come here for their vote bank politics. When Mrs Gandhi came here in 2001, she had promised to build a civil hospital but till now nothing has been done.”

Meanwhile, the children admitted in the hospital have not been able to forget that day. Recalling what happened to him on the eve of Shab-e-Barat on Friday, 10-year-old Sheikh Mohbin Sheikh Ismail said, “I will never go there again. I am very scared. I had gone there with two of my friends because we wanted to see the fakirs who had come there in hordes. After the prayers, when we came out, there was a huge blast and we started running towards the gate. I was bleeding profusely and then my uncle took me to the hospital.”

2 held with detonators, 25kg of gelatine sticks

Mumbai, Sept. 10: Thirty-nine boxes, containing 50 pieces of detonators each, 11 boxes containing 25 kg of gelatine sticks each, five bags containing a total of 250 kg of ammonium nitrate and 75 pieces of fuse wire were seized by the Thane rural police from a Bolero jeep close to Tembhe village, near Khardi, on Sunday morning at around 10 am.

“The jeep had a Nashik number plate. Two persons travelling in the jeep have been detained and are being grilled by the police,” inspector-general of police, Konkan range, Satyapal Singh, told this reporter. The two detainees had been frisked by the police during a routine check near Tembhe village.

Top police sources said that the police had also recovered a licence required to carry these explosives from the possession of the two detainees. “There is a slim possibility that these explosives are meant for terror or have some links with Malegaon blasts, as these could also be used to carry out blasts at construction sites,” a top police official said.

New Delhi, Sept. 10: Youth who have appeared for UPSC examinations are agitating before the head office here for over seven days, demanding that the organisation maintain transparency and reveal the marks they obtained in various examinations for government jobs. Many of the examinees have applied to the UPSC under the Right to Information Act for obtaining the marks they obtained in the examination and the cut-off marks for the last successful candidate in both the general category and other reserved categories.

They have alleged that there are many irregularities in the examinations and that the UPSC has an indifferent attitude towards them. One Neeraj Gupta, who also appeared for an examination in UPSC, has applied for his marks to be reveal under the RTI, but so far the organisation has refused to comply. The delegation of youth met political parties, including the Congress, BJP, RJD, JD(U) and DMK, to seek redressal of their problems.

The Central Information Commission has even ruled that the UPSC should reveal the marks obtained by all candidates and the cut-off marks in each category in the interest of transparency but the UPSC has not complied with this directive.

Lucknow, Sept. 10: A group of activists belonging to the Akhil Bhartiya Yuva Morcha attacked the prestigious Loreto Convent on Sunday to protest against an “occult” session reportedly held in the school on September 6. Reacting to a report published in a local daily, Yuva Morcha activists forced their way into the school on Sunday eveni-ng, broke open doors, smashed window panes and smashed potted plants.

They burnt an effigy of the school principal and shouted slogans against the authorities. The protesters also hurled abuses at the nuns who shut themselves in to escape the mob fury. The protesters said they would not let the school function since it was involved into converting students. This act of vandalism continued for more than half an hour before the police arrived on the scene and shooed away the protesters.

The district magistrate of Lucknow, Mr Ramendra Tripathi, has ordered an inquiry into the allegations of an occult session after receiving complaints from parents. “I have directed officials of the education department to ascertain the facts and submit their report within three days. If needed, appropriate action will be taken after the report is submitted,” he told reporters.

Meanwhile, sister Tressia of Loreto Convent said that the alleged “occult” session was actually a routine programme and a prayer meeting related to personality development. “I do not know why facts are being distorted and what do people stand to gain from this,” she said.

Chennai, Sept. 10: Investigation into the seizure of arms, rockets and rocket launchers at Mahbubnagar and their Tamil Nadu connection, has been handed over to the Q branch of the Tamil Nadu police, which monitors activities of suspected militants. Tamil Nadu DGP D. Mukherjee, in a statement on Sunday, said that six teams had been formed to probe the case. He said there was a suspicion that there might be a Naxal angle to the transport of the arms through a transport office in Ambattur. Two teams led by inspector Rangarajan left for Andhra Pradesh on Sunday to conduct investigations.

Mr Mukherjee said that the 27 rocket launchers, 600 rockets and spare parts were sent from Chennai in three instalments between May 2005 and May 2006. Investigation had revealed that they were sent on Kranti Transport services from Ambattur on the outskirts of Chennai. Acting on a tip-off by their Andhra Pradesh counterparts, the police here has seized some documents from a godown of the company and learnt that it had sent some consignments, including two to one Srinivasa Reddy in Vijayawada and one to Ram Reddy in Nellore.

All the consignments were marked “cotton weaving machine spare parts”, he said adding that a case has been registered. Meanwhile, the city police has released a computer generated photograph of the man who is believed to have booked the arms parcel at the office of Kranti Transport. According to an employee of the company a Telugu speaking man by the name Srinivasa Reddy who wore spectacles, had booked the parcels. Senior police officials from Andhra Pradesh, including intelligence SP, inspectors from Mahbubnagar and Nellore have been in Chennai to hold discussion with their counterparts here.

Lucknow, Sept. 10: India is among the countries with the highest number of polio cases and it is suspected that Indians travelling abroad are spreading the disease, a senior Unicef official said on Sunday. “Investigation of strains of the polio virus and their genetic sequencing carried out in the African countries of Congo and Mozambique has revealed that they are of Indian origin,” Buren Bayar, the Unicef polio coordinator for Uttar Pradesh, said.

About 280 cases have been reported in the country this year, with Uttar Pradesh leading the list with 254. The State had reported only 29 cases last year. “It may be possible that people going for Haj pilgrimage from the country could have transmitted the polio virus to people of other countries,” Mr Bayar said. Noting that India as a whole was not responsible for the spread of the disease in other parts of the world, Mr Bayar said Uttar Pradesh was largely responsible for this trend.

“The State of UP specifically is turning out to be the exporter of the disease,” he said adding cases of polio reported in Bangladesh were also of Indian origin. Refuting the UP government’s argument that vaccination was not an effective method to control polio, he said, “the vaccines are safe. They were tested in May and June this year at Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh and were found to be safe and effective.” Bayar was, however, optimistic about the eradication of polio from the country but stressed the need to reach out to every child. “When Bangladesh can do it, why can’t India?” he asked. Mr Bayar said though the authorities were getting the cooperation of every section of society in the drive to eradicate polio, officials still faced “some resistance from the Muslim community”. Attributing the sudden spurt of polio cases in UP to children being missed out during vaccination drives, he said, “we could be missing out children, especially in the Moradabad district.”

Nagpur, Sept. 10: A retired professor based in Nagpur has claimed to have given two solutions to Fermat’s Last Theorem (FLT), the nearly 400-year-old problem that has puzzled mathematicians the world over. Prof V.K. Gurtu, former head of the mathematics department at Laxminarayan Institute of Technology, offered two solutions — one based on the techniques prevalent during 17th century French judge and mathematician Pierre de Fermat’s time and another using modern methods.

The 66-year-old professor had presented the solutions at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid last month, which was attended by leading lights from the world of maths. In his 28-page paper “On Fermat’s Historic Marginal Note: Some Left Out Grains of Truth Leading to New Proof of FLT”, Prof. Gurtu claims to have revealed facts which were left out by earliest researchers including Euler, Gauss, Dirichlet and Legendre who have proved the FLT to the fifth power of any number.

FLT has its origin in the Historic Marginal Note (HMN) Fermat (1601-1665) had written against the backdrop of the Pythagoras Theorem in its arithmetic form in the book Arithmetica of Diophantus in 1637. Fermat, in his margin note, claimed to have a solved the problem. However, no correct proof was found for 357 years until it was finally proven using very deep methods by Andrew Wiles in 1995 after a failed attempt a year before.

In the first proof, Prof. Gurtu uses identities known in Fermat’s time and his well-known method of infinite descent, while in the second, non-natural numbers have been used for a very limited purpose. Prof. Gurtu claims that his techniques are the closest to Fermat’s thought process and has sent the paper to an American peer review journal for publication, which is considering the solution.

“The first solution consists of a generalised form of representation of a number as a sum of two squares and Fermat’s well-known method of infinite descent,” Prof. Gurtu told PTI.
He said he had to introduce non-natural numbers of the form of square root for a limited purpose to prove the problem for odd prime numbers. “The non-natural numbers eliminate themselves in the course of the solution of the equation without any difficulty,” he said.

Prof. Gurtu said he pursued an investigative approach to the problem which was not based on the assumption that FLT had a solution. The retired professor said he had been working on the problem since 1989 and had offered a solution in 1998 to the Indian Mathematical Society, which had raised certain queries. Prof. Gurtu claims to have found satisfactory answers to the queries in the past eight years.

New Delhi, Sept. 10: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Sunday said India would want to play a role in revitalising the Nonaligned Movement (Nam) and all the 116 members of Nam should show solidarity to meet the challenges of living in a transformed world. “Mutual support and solidarity among Nam members is of prime importance as we confront several common challenges such as making globalisation more inclusive, the scourge of terrorism and addressing widespread hunger, poverty and disease,” Dr Singh said before leaving for Brazil and Cuba on a nine-day tour.

Referring to Nam as a “great movement”, Dr Singh told reporters that as a founding member, India will play its part in “helping Nam to revitalise itself so as to pursue the shared interests of its member states”. Dr Singh said India and other members of Nam would rededicate the five-decade-old organisation to the universal causes of peace, disarmament and the progress and prosperity of all humankind.

The Prime Minister said he looked forward to “fruitful interactions” with a number of leaders from the developing world during his visits to Brasilia and Havana. He is expected to convey India’s concerns over continued cross-border terrorism to General Pervez Musharraf and ask him to act in a “substantive” manner to eliminate the scourge.

On his three-day Brazil leg of the tour, the Prime Minister expressed hope that his trip to the Latin American country would “consolidate an extremely positive trend” in relations. He said India considers Brazil “one of the main partners in Latin America”. With regard to IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa) Forum, he said it has already emerged as a shining example of South-South cooperation.

The discussions of the first IBSA summit, to be attended by South African President Thabo Mbeki, besides Dr Singh and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, are expected to focus on issues of global concern including energy security and terrorism.

New Delhi, Sept. 10: In a move to overcome the vulnerability of its formations to threats from the air, the Army plans to induct the Israeli quick-reaction Spyder air defence system, officials sources said. The Army has finalised plans to acquire four regiments of the Spyder systems equipped with Derby surface-to-air radar guided missiles and Python-5 infra-red missiles from Israel’s Rafael armament company.

The Army, according to the sources, has finalised the contract and the deal worth about Rs 1,100 crores is awaiting the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Security. The Spyder systems will be mounted on indigenous Tatra trucks and replace the Army’s Russian-made OSA-AKM and Strela-10M missile systems.

The road-mobile Spyder system was developed by Rafael along with the MBT missile division and ELTA radar division. It is capable of countering threats from helicopters, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and precision guided munitions. The system can target aerial threats from one km to 35 km away. A Spyder squadron consists of a mobile command-and-control centre and four mobile firing units, each carrying up to six missiles.

Mumbai, Sept. 10: Thirteen years after serial explosions rocked the city, a Tada court here is slated to deliver verdict on September 12, which will decide the fate of 123 accused, including actor Sanjay Dutt. On August 10, the designated TADA judge P.D. Kode had begun dictating the verdict and had said that court would pronounce judgment on September 12.

All the accused in March 12, 1993 blasts, including those out on bail, have been asked to be present. Pne of the accused, Abu Salem has moved the Supreme Court challenging the order of Tada court separating his trial from the main blasts trial. The top court will hear the plea on September 18.

Out of 123 accused people, 94 are on bail and 29 in custody. The court recorded testimonies of 686 witnesses, running to over 13,000 pages of evidence — a record of sorts in Indian legal history. The CBI had named 198 people as accused in the case initially, but when the investigations of blasts were over, 29 were discharged due to lack of evidence, while 29, including prime accused Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon and Mohammed Dossa, were shown as absconding. Of the remaining 140 accused, 11 died during the trial while Abu Asim Azmi and Amjad Mehr Baksh were discharged by the Supreme Court. Another accused, Riaz Khatri jumped bail.

Pune, Sept. 10: The kingpin of the fake stamp paper scam Abdul Karim Telgi has termed reports on his narco-analysis test beamed by TV channels as “false and baseless” and denied having either met Union minister Sharad Pawar and Maharashtra minister Chhagan Bhujbal or having paid any money to either of them.

“I am shocked and mentally disturbed after reading the news of the narco-analysis test which was done in the Bangalore Forensic Science Laboratory in 2003 that [claims that I mentioned] the names of Sharad Pawar and Chhagan Bhujbal as having received money from me,” Telgi said in a three-page letter written to his lawyers Harshad Nimbalkar and Milind Pawar.

Telgi, who swore by Allah, said in his letter: “This is absolutely false and baseless. I have never stated this in my narco test. This is nothing but a gameplan of some political persons to involve them in the fake stamp case.” Addressing a press conference with Milind Pawar, Mr Nimbalkar said: “Telgi is ready to undergo further tests and even interrogation by any agency anywhere to clear this issue.”

The press conference was convened to give Telgi’s reaction to the telecast of the purported footage of the narco-analysis test by some TV channels. The duration of the narco-analysis test was 35 minutes and Telgi remembers all the questions that were put to him by the FSL scientists, the lawyers said. He was shown the footage of the test and heard audiocassetteswhile in custody.

New Delhi, Sept. 10: With public servants in many instances becoming victims of false and frivolous complaints, a petition filed before the Supreme Court has sought the laying down of guidelines for magistrates for taking cognisance of such allegations. The petition, filed by an officer of the Bihar Administrative Service, said laying down of guidelines was necessary to protect public servants and to enable them to discharge their duties without any fear or circumspection.

He contended that the chief judicial magistrate, Bettiah, West Champaran, had taken cognisance of a false complaint filed by a person against whom a team led by him had proceeded for encroaching public land.