Andhranews

New Delhi, Sept. 5: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked chief ministers on Tuesday to become proactive in toning up internal security all over the country. Addressing the annual chief ministers’ conference on internal security, held at Dr Singh’s 7, Race Course Road residence, in preference of the traditional venue, Vigyan Bhavan, the Prime Minister said, “Our understanding, however, is that the states are not doing enough, even regarding the filling up of existing vacancies in the police and other law and order agencies, or improving the quality of the state special branches, or toning up the law and order administration. Without effective law and order, economic development would be impossible. We must not, therefore, neglect this aspect.”

Buttressing his point, Dr Singh said, “I also recommend to you paying more attention to improving the ‘software’ needed for the maintenance of peace. I mean by this improving intelligence generation and collection, as also the overall strengthening of your intelligence mechanism. Analytical capabilities need to be enhanced. Proper benchmarks need to be established against which progress and performance can be measured. Unless you devote personal attention to these matters, results cannot be expected.”

Talking about Naxalism, he emphasised on intelligence gathering and said, “The real key in fighting Naxalite violence is ‘good’ intelligence. This would involve effective integration of strategic and tactical intelligence, properly leavened with ground level information available at the level of the police station. The police is the first responder in Naxal-related situations, and is a very important pole in this entire effort. Sensitising the police is, therefore, a critical requirement. Special training for forces engaged in Naxalite operations is, to my mind, equally important.”

Dr Manmohan Singh also suggested the creation of an “empowered group of ministers”, “which could be headed by the home minister, and include select chief ministers, to closely monitor the spread of the Naxalite movement. The group could meet at frequent intervals and review special measures that need to be taken, nature of assistance to be provided and exchange of personnel between states.”

He dwelt at length on the need for effective intelligence gathering and mentioned during the course that “intelligence agencies warn of a further intensification of violent activities on their (terrorists’) part, with the possibility of more ‘fidayeen’ attacks, use of suicide bombers, attacks on economic and religious targets, targeting of vital installations, including nuclear establishments, Army camps, and the like. Reports also suggest that terrorist modules and ‘sleeper cells’ exist in some of our urban areas, all of which highlight the seriousness of the threat.”

The Prime Minister was assisted throughout this day-long exercise by national security adviser M.K. Narayanan, Union home minister Shivraj Patil, whom he occasionally mentioned in his speech, Union minister of state for home Sriprakash Jaiswal, minister of state in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan and home secretary V.K. Duggal, as well as other senior officers.

New Delhi, Sept. 5: National security adviser M.K. Narayanan assured newspersons on Tuesday that taking serious note of the threat of “fidayeen” attacks on key installations, the government has completely revamped security at all nuclear establishments in the country.

The security arrangements put in place are “adequate” to meet the threat, he said at a press conference by Union home minister Shivraj Patil on the chief ministers’ meeting at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s residence. He was asked about the concerns expressed by Dr Singh during the conference on increasing activities of “externally inspired and directed terrorist outfits” in the country. The Prime Minister had said that intelligence agencies had warned of further intensification of violent activities with the possibility of more “fidayeen” attacks that could target nuclear establishments. “We have completely revamped security for all nuclear establishments,” Mr Narayanan said.

Meanwhile, Mr Patil also warned about the “nefarious designs” of certain elements wanting to create communal disturbance in the country. He said the conference was not aimed at finding faults but to evolve ways for closer cooperation between the Centre and states to tackle security threats and improve intelligence-gathering. One view that emerged in the meeting said Mr Patil was to seek the help of private individuals and other organisations to gather intelligence. Asked to identify the organisations, Mr Patil said that during the Diwali bomb blasts at New Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar last year, certain “traders’ associations” and “trade unions” had offered help.

New Delhi, Sept. 5: BJP leader Arun Jaitley accused the UPA government of underestimating the magnitude of Left-wing extremism, which has spread to 167 districts in 13 states. He said he was glad that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had, for the first time, accepted during the chief ministers’ conference in Delhi on internal security that Left-wing extremism has gone out of hand. But, he said, Dr Singh does not have any solution for the problem. He said the lesson for Dr Singh was to understand that they cannot ally with such parties for elections, like in Andhra Pradesh, where they had a ceasefire with extremists but finally realised they were being killed.

Mr Jaitley said that this extremism was a combination of military tactics and the expanding socialist base of the Left-wing. He said that Maoist attacks were completely different from terrorist attacks by other groups, which indulged basically in subversive activities, like bombing a place or some vital installations. He said Maoists, on the other hand, first collect huge numbers of people, train and arm them, and then take over entire towns, like in the case of Madhubani and Jehanabad in Bihar.

Guwahati/New Delhi, Sept. 5: The Indian Army said here on Tuesday that banned United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) is reluctant to hold peace-talks and it was buying time to re-group it self. The Army, in a press release issued here on Tuesday, said: “There are indications from intelligence sources that Ulfa is taking peace talks as a cover to re-arm, re-group and resuscitate the organisation which has received a blow during operation ‘All Clear’ in Bhutan and the recent Army strikes.”

The Army, which has issued a press statement on the day when two Ulfa representatives are meeting the national security adviser M.K. Narayanan seeking Prime Minister’s intervention into the peace talks said: “The Ulfa is heavily depended on arms, finance and sanctuary in the neighbouring countries so it cannot act independently. It is being controlled by external forces. These external agencies are not Assam’s friend.”

The Army reiterated its charges that the Ulfa is not serious to hold talks. “It is more clear by the fact that Ulfa is neither ready to name their representative nor it was declaring any time frame for coming to the negotiation table,” the Army said in a statement. “Moreover the renewed extortion drive is another pointer to their hidden attention,” the statement added. The Army has also charged the Ulfa of being involved in peddling of fake currency in border areas of northeastern states to boost their finances and diversion of funds.

Charging the Ulfa of having nexus with Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence, the Army has sought to know from the outfit that why they are silent on steady influx of refugees from Bangladesh and induction of fake currencies into the state. The Army said, “Militancy has developed from being a small scale industry to a large scale one and the sheer economics of budgets of the militant groups are quite revealing. The purported budget of the Ulfa for the year 2005-2006 is Rs 70 crores, an 10 per cent increase from last year.”

The Army claimed that bulk of the budget is for procurement of weapons and for special operations. The Congress-led UPA government on Tuesday extended the ceasefire with the Ulfa till September 15. This is the third time that the ceasefire has been extended.

Mumbai, Sept. 5: Ms Supriya Sule, daughter of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, who filed her nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha byelections was able to bring the NCP and the Congress together with her when she went to the Vidhan Bhavan on Tuesday afternoon to sign the nomination papers for the byelection to be held on September 18.

This is a mini political coup by any yardstick. The Congress and the NCP had in recent byelections been betraying each other leading to the defeat of their respective candidates. In the last byelection the NCP supported industrialist Rahul Bajaj who stood as an independent supported by the Shiv Sena and the BJP. The Congress candidate got defeated.

This time the state unit of the Congress buried the hatchet to support Ms Sule, thanks to Congress president Sonia Gandhi who directed the state Congress to support Ms Sule’s candidature. The seat was vacant following the death of NCP member Vasant Chavan on July 11.

Ms Sule was accompanied by her husband Sadanand Sule and NCP leaders like her cousin Ajit Pawar, the state minister for water resources, Union civil aviation minister Praful Patel, deputy chief minister R.R. Patil, public works minister Chaggan Bhujbal, state minister for energy Dilip Walse-Patil and excise minister Ganesh Naik. The Congress was represented by the state president Prabha Rau and revenue minister Narayan Rane.

It was important for the NCP to get the support of the Congress and for the latter to support Ms Sule as the Brihanmumbai municipal elections (BMC) are next year and the two parties at the leadership level would like the coalition to stretch to the corporation elections. The BMC elections will be like a mini Assembly election with new forces at play.

There is Mr Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and Mr Rane in the Congress who has strongholds among the city’s Konkan population. Mr Thackeray has been trying his best to woo the Marathi-speaking population in the labour and working class areas of Lalbaug and Parel away from the Shiv Sena and Mr Rane. He has reportedly spent a lot of money on the Ganesh mandals in these areas. Both Mr Thackeray and Mr Rane are untested entities and there is a possibility that the MNS may align with one party or another.

Speaking soon after filing her nomination papers, Ms Sule said that she intended to continue to focus on issues related to education and health even after being elected to the Rajya Sabha. “I intend to spend 80 per cent of my time doing the social work I have been involved with in the past and will devote 20 per cent of my time to doing work for the party,” Ms Sule said. She added that if she was elected to the Rajya Sabha she would not let it interfere with her social work.

Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee president Prabha Rau said, “During the last byelections held for a Rajya Sabha seat, we were opposed to the nomination of Mr Rahul Bajaj (who was an independent candidate) but in this case since Ms Sule’s nomination has been cleared by the party high command, we will also support her nomination completely. We are alliance partners and Ms Sule besides being a woman is also a leader of the youth.”

New Delhi, Sept. 5: Emphasising that teachers are builders of the society and creators of enlightened citizens, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam administered a 10-point oath on Tuesday on the occasion of Teachers’ Day. Speaking at a function held here at Vigyan Bhawan to present the National Award to 313 teachers from across the country, the President said no profession could influence young minds the way teaching could.

Remembering his own experience as a teacher, Dr Kalam said “Teaching is the only profession you will be proud of if your student becomes the Prime Minister of the country, if your student becomes an ace scientist.” Giving details of his favourite teachers — Subramaniam Iyer, Iyadurai Solomon and Thothatri Iyengar — the President said that they gave him a “vision” and injected a mission in his life.

Addressing the gathering of award winning teachers, the President said after parents, a teacher is the happiest person when their ward gets great success. Also attended by HRD minister Arjun Singh and ministers of state M.A.A. Fatmi and D. Purandeswari, the occasion saw the President administering a 10-point oath to the teaching fraternity which among other things spoke of love for teaching.

The awardees pledged “Teaching will be my soul. Teaching will be my life’s mission. I realise by being a teacher, I am making an important contribution to the efforts of national development. I will always celebrate the success of my students. I will consider myself to be a great teacher only when I am capable of elevating the average student to a high level and when no student is left out as a non-performer.”

The 10-point oath also had teachers promising “I will organise and conduct my life in such a way that my life itself is a message for my students. I will encourage my students to ask questions and to seek answers in order to develop the spirit of enquiry, and that they blossom into creative enlightened citizens. I will treat all the students equally and will not support any differentiation on account of religion, community or language and I will continuously build my own capacities in teaching.”

Lucknow, Sept. 5: Apna Dal, a fledgling political party in Uttar Pradesh, has flung open its door for criminals “who have had a change of heart” for the forthcoming Assembly elections. “If a criminal repents his actions, decides to give up his past and enter the social mainstream, we are ready to welcome them with open arms. We made Babloo Srivastava our candidate in the last Lok Sabha elections because I was convinced that he wanted to turn over a new leaf and even now we will give a ticket to Babloo from wherever he wants to contest. If fact, Apna Dal, is ready to welcome 50 more Babloos into its fold,” said Apna Dal president, Dr Sonelal Patel at a function held here to mark the launch of the English version of a book written by Babloo Srivastava.

Asked whether Apna Dal would give a ticket to gangster Abu Salem who has expressed a desire to contest the Assembly elections from Mubarakpur in Azamgarh district, Dr Patel said, “Why not? If Abu Salem — or for that matter, any other criminal — wants to give up crime and lead a normal life as a law-abiding citizen, we will help them.”

Explaining his party’s stand further, Dr Patel said that conspiracy by the government or an individual often forced people to commit crime. “It is our duty to help them if they want to reform themselves. I do not know much about Babloo’s activities but ever since he has come into our contact, he is a changed man. Today, he is a man with an ideology and a good writer too,” he said.

Meanwhile, the function held at a local five-star hotel to mark the release of Unfulfilled Dreams — the English version of Adhura Khwab, a book authored by Babloo — had the don’s friends and publishers gushing over his literary skills. The publisher, Nitin Garg of Radha Publications, said that the book had an initial print order of 10,000 copies but there was already a demand for an additional 10,000 copies even before the formal release of the book.

Satish Verma, publisher of the Hindi version that was released in October 2005, said that the demand for the book from foreign countries had forced the publishers to go in for an English version. “The original Hindi version of the book, priced at Rs 85, sold 40,000 copies and we have now come out with a cheaper version that is available at Rs 60,” he said.

New Delhi, Sept. 5: The George W. Bush administration needs to pursue a “moral, not moralistic, foreign policy” and it should end its blind pursuit of transformational diplomacy and rethink its obsession with imposing democracy on the unwilling after what has happened in Iraq and West Asia, according to a former United States secretary of state.

Dr Madeleine K. Albright, who served in the Bill Clinton administration, on Tuesday said democracies were not built by thunderbolts raining down from above. “Our presence in Iraq is both solution and problem. Violence is continuing in Iraq and the growing influence of Iran is a major unintended consequence (of the US intervention in Iraq),” she observed before going on to ask countries to help evolve an exit strategy for the US in Iraq.

Earlier, delivering an address on “America, India and Democracy in the 21st Century” as part of The Aspen Institute India’s democracy series, Dr Albright said democracies should be built bottom-up, not top-down as the Bush administration likes to believe. “Democracy must grow from within and has to be inclusive,” she said, hastening to add that it was “wrong strategy to ban Islamist groups.”

“Excluding them gives them a stake to destroy” the possibility of promoting democracy, Dr Albright said referring to the Hamas in Palestine and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Criticising President Bush and secretary of state Condoleeza Rice for their “overblown rhetoric” about how democracy was vital for stability and security in the West Asia. She said there was nothing inherent in the West Asia that countries there could not become democracies.

It was “totally ridiculous” to believe that democracy was a western value, she said, but cautioned that terrorism posed a serious challenge to open societies and countries on their own should devise ways to strike a balance between freedom and security. “We don’t know how to fight terrorism because we don’t know what creates terrorists,” she observed and called for greater cooperation between and among democracies of the world. She called for a global approach to promotion of democracy.

“The list is lengthening,” she said, referring to Latin America, Pakistan and the former Soviet republics besides China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Sudan and Venezuela.
Dr Albright teaches at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. She chairs the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. She is also principal of The Albright Group, an international advisory firm. Dr Albright was the first woman secretary of state and the highest ranking woman in the history of the US government.

New Delhi, Sept. 5: It is one address, where many believe, not even birds can fly. For many, 7, Race Course Road is the official address of country’s Prime Minister.
But very few people know that the address is also home to around 45 peacocks, some of which have been living here for more than 15 years. While the peacock population has been drastically decreased elsewhere in the country, Lutyen’s Zone is the only place in the capital, where peacocks are found in abundance. The Prime Minister’s residence at Race Course Road is one place, where peacocks are found all through the year.

Famous for being ferocious eaters, they have damaged kitchen garden and other flower bearing plants many times. But since, these peacock and their forefathers have been living here, ever since the bungalow was constructed, their presence is given much respect as they enjoy the status of the national bird.

While, 7, Race Course Road has the maximum number of peacocks, other places where these birds are found in good number are official residence of former Prime Ministers, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee and Mr I.K. Gujral and the Chief Justice of India.
Protected not only by religious sentiment but also under Wildlife (Protection) Act, peacocks population has decreased by 50 per cent as compared to their number in 1947. Address within Lutyen’s Zone, where peacocks can be found in abundance and their shrieks can be heard almost all through the year are 5, Krishna Menon Marg, 6-A, Krishna Menon Marg, 11, Thyagaraj Marg, 3, Kamraj Marg and 6, Motilal Nehru Marg. With a life span of 20 years, many pheasant experts are of the view that these peacocks and their ancestors have been living here for almost a century, when the capital was more or less under complete forest cover.