Chhattisgarh Maoists kill 4 cops, 6 others

      Raipur: Ten people, including four police personnel, were killed in a Maoist attack in the Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh. According to the Additional Home Secretary Chhattisgarh, B.K.S.Ray, no sooner a bus stopped before the Murkinar police post, than Naxals boarding it started firing indiscriminately killing four police personnel and six local members of the Special Police Force. Special Police Force consists of local people who are trained by the policemen to combat against the Maoist attacks and are paid rupees 1500 hundred monthly. Ray also said that four people have been seriously injured and that security has been beefed up in the adjoining areas. The Murkinar police post bordering Andhra Pradesh is 550 kilometres away from Raipur and is heavily infested with the rebel Naxals.

Security for Maoist-infested Bengal areas (Go To Top)

      West Midnapore (WB): Unprecedented security arrangements have been made ahead of the first phase of assembly elections in the Maoist-infested districts in West Bengal. Some of the Maoist areas are part of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura constituencies that go to polls on Monday. The region looks like a war zone with paramilitary forces marching through the dusty lanes of the villages. The villagers who are used to seeing banners, posters and slogan shouting by political parties before every election, are now taken aback by the presence of gun-toting security forces. Authorities say they have taken all steps to sanitize the area. "The border of Jharkhand will be sealed with police check points that will check the movements of vehicles and other things. To sanitise the area, the CMPF (Central Military Police Force) has already arrived. We are searching and combing operations in all the naxal-affected areas," said Ajoy Nanda, Superintendent of Police, West Midnapore, West Bengal.

       Millions of people will vote in West Bengal on Monday as part of the elections in five states whose results could further strain ties between the Left the ruling coalition it backs. The Communists are fighting the Congress, which heads the Central government, in three states including West Bengal, where they are expected to win power for the seventh straight time since 1977. All the polls are being held in several stages with counting due on May 11. Voting in Assam is already over. After two decades of wooing rural voters with land reforms and providing legal protection to farmers, the Communists in West Bengal switched tack in the late 1990s and began to court foreign and domestic investors to Kolkata, and other cities, which had seen capital flight three decades ago. Under reformist Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the state has received millions of dollars in foreign investment including cash from PepsiCo Inc. and IBM Corp. since 2000. Pre-poll surveys have forecast a Communist sweep in West Bengal, with the Left slated to win more than two-thirds of the seats in the 294-member state Assembly, and Congress fighting for second place.

Onion farmers in Nasik on suicide spree (Go To Top)
By Kirti Pandey

      Nasik: It is strange but true. While in cities like Delhi onion is selling at rupees 800 per quintal, farmers in Nasik and other places are just selling at Rs 112-122 per quintal. Most of the farmers who are unable to sell their products at remunerative prices are on the verge of committing suicides. One of such affected places in Maharashtra is Nasik's Lasalgaon onion market, which is also Asia's largest wholesale market. The farmers and traders here are currently bearing the brunt of an unprecedented fall in prices of the bulbous crop. Despite having a bumper crop of onions this year, the farmers are crying for help. As with the massive harvest, they are forced to confront a steep fall in rates per quintal for the crop. The crop fetching only Rs113-122 per quintal, a few farmers have not been able to arrange for the essential required money to pay back instalments of loans. Last year, compelled by a drought, followed by an erratic flooding, farmers had to bank on heavy loans to cultivate the onion crop. With hundreds of thousands rupees due for payments to various banks and local moneylenders, farmers are forced to sell assets like bullocks that help them in ploughing the fields. "If the farmers get a proper, assured remuneration for their crop, a sort of minimum rate per quintal, the loan overheads will not push them over the brink and the suicides rate will automatically drop. Even rupees 500 will be too low, they must assure us at least Rupees 780 to cover our expenses," says Narayan Gadakh, a farmer from Nasik. With the passage of each day, the farmers are finding it hard to believe that the State government would understand their pleas for a fixed rate of remuneration in time. The farmers say since the Agricultural Minister is himself a farmer, they had hoped he would understand their plight better. But that did not happen and desperate farmers interrupted his rally in the State with a hail of onions, only a fortnight ago. "It is no more affordable to the farmers to cultivate onions. The wages of the farm hands too seem too high with no proper returns for our crops. We can only afford to work ourselves in the fields. The rates have dropped so much that it is very depressing. If we have to account for all the expenses spent on cultivation, right from buying the seeds, sowing, the pesticides and fertilizers, wages and harvest, transport...it just adds to losses. We cannot afford it any more," said Ulka Somnath Tarle, a woman farmer.

      Meanwhile, farmer suicides have been on the rise since late 1990s due to poor harvests and liberalisation in India, where low-tech agriculture supports nearly 60 per cent of the total population of the country but only forms 20 per cent of the economy. Farmers lobby claim about 400 farmers have committed suicide in Maharashtra this year as a result of failed crops, import competition and crippling interest payments. Farmers struggle with poor irrigation, lack of cold storage and little access to foreign markets. On the other side, the government is in the process of offering subsidies to farmers to tide over the crisis. The Maharashtra Government has also decided to allow exports of 400,000 tonnes of onion. Currently, the badly hit onion farmers are seeking the re- introduction of a minimum support price. Apart from Nasik, onion crop is also primarily grown in Pune, Ahmednagar and Jalagaon districts of Maharashtra, forming the country's largest onion producing belt. Maharashtra produces 25-30 per cent onion of the total production in the country. In exports, about 80-85 per cent of the total onion export is contributed by Maharashtra alone. Out of the total onion production in the State, 10-15 per cent onion production is in Kharif season, 30-40 per cent production is in Late Kharif and 50-60 per cent production is in Rabi/Summer season.

Protests continue over Meerut fire (Go To Top)

       Meerut: With tears streaming down her face, a distraught Shagun pleads for help to locate her missing mother. More than sixfive days after the deadly blaze at a consumer fair in Meerut, Shagun's mother Vandana is still missing. What adds to Shagun's agony is that she has a newspaper photograph showing that her mother was not severely burnt, and was in fact carried away by a few people, including police personnel. Vandana's whereabouts have since been unknown, despite a frantic search from one nursing home to other. Relatives and friends of Vandana's family protested against the police and administrative inaction in trying to locate Vandana on Saturday. "They (police) are showing as if they are helping us but in fact they are not. We don't know anything about her. They say they have sent 20 teams to locate here. Where are the teams? We have found all the clues they have not done anything. Nobody knows anything. Nobody is helping us," said Shagun. Vandana's relatives also met the District Magistrate of Meerut and tearfully pleaded their case, saying they didn't even want any financial support for the treatment. Dozens of distraught relatives are pleading authorities to help find their loved ones who went missing in Monday's blaze, who are neither in the 36 confirmed dead nor in the official list of missing people.

       More than 25 people, locals say, have simply vanished as their relatives failed to trace them at any of the town's hospitals, mortuaries or graveyards. Authorities had initially said 51 people died in the fire that engulfed aircraft hanger-shaped temporary halls covered with plastic sheeting where around 2,000 people were browsing displays. But on Tuesday, officials revised the death toll down to 35. Three more victims succumbed to their burns taking the official toll to 38. The move triggered protests by people who said they were still looking for missing relatives, their anger fuelled by claims that bodies were run over by bulldozers in the aftermath of the blaze, and that some corpses were secretly cremated to scale down the disaster. Meanwhile, the District Administration has claimed that only four persons remained missing in Monday's fire tragedy at a trade fair in Meerut. District Magistrate Mukesh Meshram said that only four persons - Vandhana Girdhar, Rama Nand Gupta, Adesh Yadav and Malti were missing in the Victoria Park tragedy after others were located. A compensation of Rs 2.62 lakh each has been paid to families of those killed. A total of Rs 40 lakh has been given to those seriously injured and Rs 14 lakh to people with minor injuries, he said. He said that the hospitals and nursing homes in Meerut, Ghaziabad, Noida and Delhi have been ordered to treat the victims of the fire tragedy free of cost and get the money reimbursed from the Meerut administration. He said that Rs five lakh compensation would be given to the family of Mohammad Javed, who saved many children on Monday, but later succumbed to his burns in hospital.

BSF, BDR exchange fire in Darjeeling (Go To Top)

       Sujarpur (West Bengal): Tension prevailed at the Surjapur village, located along the Indo-Bangladesh border in West Bengal's Darjeeling district, after the Indian and Bangladeshi border security forces exchanged fire. This was the fourth incident within a fortnight, when the border forces of the two countries exchanged fire. The incident took place after Border Security Forces (BSF) personnel shot down a Bangladeshi national, trying to illegally sneak into Indian Territory on Saturday, provoking Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) to exchange fire with the BSF personnel. "We will take action as per the law. We will hand over the body to the police and lodge the FIR," said R.P. Daga, Company Commander of BSF. The BDR, however, has ruled out that the person killed was a Bangladeshi national and refused to accept the body. "It (body) is not from our country. If it would have been from our side then there would have been a lot of hue and cry in our side," said Subedar Abdur Sattar of Bangladesh Rifles. India has been deploying thousands of new troops on its frontier with Bangladesh and setting up hundreds of border posts to check illegal migration and movement of armed militants. New Delhi began to bolster its eastern border defences in last September to crack down on militants moving in from Bangladesh, although Dhaka denies anti-India elements are using its soil. India and Bangladesh share a 4,096-km (2,544-mile) frontier, regarded as one of the world's most fluid borders. It is guarded by about 45,000 troops of the BSF. New Delhi estimates there are up to 20 million illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in India -- mostly poor people who come in search of jobs. The normally friendly relations between India and Bangladesh have sometimes been marred by border skirmishes.

Pak visas for Sikh pilgrims (Go To Top)

       Lahore: Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has announced that unlimited visas would be issued for the Sikh pilgrims who would be visiting the Gurdawara Dera Sahib in Lahore, on the occasion of 400th martyrdom of fifth Guru Arjun Dev, on June 16. The decision was taken last evening at a meeting held between Aziz and a visiting Sikh pilgrims in Islamabad. According to sources, the Pakistani prime minister also agreed to attend the main function on June 16 besides issuing of memorial stamp on the occasion. The Sikh delegation told him that more Sikh pilgrims wanted to come to visit their holy places in Pakistan especially on 400th martyrdom day of fifth guru and for that the visa policy should be changed and free visas be issued to them. The prime minister immediately agreed to the demand of liberal visa policy and assured them that he will issue necessary directions to the Foreign Office in this regard and all the Sikh pilgrims, who apply for visas for June's function, would be given visas, reported The News. Aziz said that his government was making every effort to make the visit of Sikh pilgrims comfortable so that they face no difficulty in visiting their holy places. He also greeted the delegation on the sacred occasion of Basaikhi. He also reportedly agreed to set up a visa centre at Amritsar, provided the Indian government agrees to facilitate the pilgrims travelling on Nankana Sahib-Lahore-Amritsar bus service. He told the delegation that three big hotels will be constructed each at Lahore, Nankana Sahib and Hasanabdal to make the stay of pilgrims more comfortable besides other facilities.

Bird flu at poultry farm near Islamabad (Go To Top)

      Islamabad: A new report of Avian influenza outbreak has been confirmed at a small poultry farm some 25 kilometres away from Islamabad, said Dr. Muhammad Afzal, Commissioner Livestock and Animal Husbandry. He said the outbreak was reported from the small farm in Sihala during the on-going surveillance for Avian Influenza in the region, adding the clinically, the disease has been suggested as Avian Influenza. "During the on-going surveillance for Avian Influenza, a suspect outbreak was reported at a small poultry farm in Sihala in the evening of April 14," The News quoted Dr. Afzal as saying. He said immediately after the report of the disease, samples were taken for test and a whole flock of 3,500 layer pullets was destroyed with the cooperation of the owner, Pakistan Poultry Association and government agencies as a precaution to curtail any chances of its further spread. He said surveillance has been mounted on all farms within a distance of three kilometres of the infected farm and the poultry, sampled for the virus.

Indian team leaves for Abu Dhabi (Go To Top)

      Mumbai: The 15-member Indian cricket team left for Abu Dhabi on Sunday morning to play two One-Day Internationals against Pakistan to raise funds for the victims of October 8 earthquake. The Rahul Dravid-led Team India will take on their archrivals Pakistan on April 18 and 19. The two matches between India and Pakistan will be the first bilateral series on a neutral venue after a gap of six years. The match is being played to raise funds for those affected of the October 8 devastating earthquake in India and Pakistan. The last one-dayer in the United Arab Emirate was held in April 2003 in Sharjah. The Indian team: Rahul Dravid (captain), Robin Uthappa, Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Mohd Kaif, Suresh Raina, Mahendra Singh Dhoni (wicketkeeper), Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Ramesh Powar, Ajit Agarkar, Munaf Patel, Venugopal Rao, S Sreesanth and RP Singh.

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