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Pramod Mahajan still critical

     Mumbai/Kolkata: Doctors attending on Pramod Mahajan who was critically wounded by his younger brother last week, on Friday conducted a CT scan to assess the extent of injury sustained by him, but maintained his condition remained "critical". Pramod Mahajan, a former Union minister and general secretary of the BJP was shot at by his youngest brother Pravin Mahajan, in his home, allegedly in a fit of rage. Mahajan underwent an emergency kidney operation on Sunday night at Mumbai's Hinduja Hospital and is now undergoing Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy or dialysis. "A CT scan was done to assess the injury to Mahajan and also to assess any collection in his body. The CT scan showed that the injuries are same as were assessed during surgery and managed. One bullet was located in the muscle of the back (Left Para spinal muscle L2), one in the subcutaneous tissue of the back and the third bullet in the body of T12 vertebra but it has not crossed to spinal canal," said Anupam Verma, Director Administration, Hinduja Hospital. "Over the night, his requirement of blood pressure, support drugs and ventilation have marginally gone up.... remaining treatment continues to be the same. He is still critical," said Verma. Mahajan is reported to have slightly recuperated from liver bleeding, one of his most serious injuries. Meanwhile Mahajan's supporters have not stopped offering prayers for his speedy recovery and are keeping a constant a vigil outside the hospital. They have also organized prayer meetings across the country in this regard. A similar prayer was held in Kolkata today, where people offered prayers for the BJP leader's well-being and recovery. Mahajan, a key backroom manager of the BJP, is regarded close to both former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Former Deputy Premier Lal Krishna Advani and is regarded a possible future head of the party.

Medical students continue OBC stir (Go To Top)

     New Delhi: Medical students in capital New Delhi on Friday continued their protest against the Central government's reservation proposal for socially backward students in the country's top medical, engineering and business schools. On Thursday, a meeting between Union Human Resource and Development Minister Arjun Singh, who proposed the move, and medical students failed to evolve any consensus and the latter decided to continue with their agitation. Undergraduate students from five medical colleges in New Delhi have been boycotting classes to protest the hike in the quota for Other Backward Class (OBC) in the higher educational institutions. Students said they would launch a countrywide agitation if their demand to revoke the quota was not met.

Sealing drive: SC strictures on Govt (Go To Top)

      New Delhi: The Supreme Court today criticised the Centre for the manner in which it handled the sealing of properties in the national capital. Referring to the Urban Development Ministry's mixed land use notification issued on March 28, the court said the Centre has further complicated the matter by its notification. The court said the masses are wavering as their hopes and aspirations were raised after the notification. "It is a deliberate failure because of extraneous considerations at the cost of citizens. The message you are sending out to the law-abiding citizens is that they must suffer," said the court. The proposed new mixed land use policy allowed commercial activity on the ground floor and also provided relief to banquet halls in the Capital by allowing them to operate in residential areas with certain conditions. Under the amended plan, mixed land use permits commercial activity on the ground floor of residential plots, running of banquet halls in residential, commercial and industrial areas and allows activities like pre-nursery schools, nursing homes, guest houses, banks and fitness centres in these area. It also allows professionals like doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, chartered accountants and designers to work from their residential premises. Professional activity would be permissible on any floor subject to a maximum of 25 percent of the floor area of the dwelling unit or not exceeding one floor in case of plotted development. Sealing of commercial establishment operating from residential areas in Delhi started on March 29 in accordance with the Supreme Court's order.

Seven Maoists shot dead in Andhra (Go To Top)

      Rayayaram (Andhra Pradesh): Seven Maoists have been shot dead in an encounter today by the police in a forest area near Rayavaram village in Kadapa district here. The Maoists were killed during a search operation conducted by the police in the morning. Four Maoists belonging to Praja Pratighatna Group of Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML) were on April 21 gunned down by police in a gun battle in Andhra Pradesh's Warangal district. The Maoist violence in the state has claimed more than 6,000 lives since the early 1970s. The Maoists have in 2006 blown up police vehicles and railway tracks, attack civilian self defence groups and even hijacked a train with over hundreds of villagers. The insurgency, named after the town of Naxalbari where it emerged in 1967, is thought to affect 165 of the country's 602 administrative districts in a "red corridor" stretching from the southern tip of India all along its eastern half and up to Nepal. The worst-affected states like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkand and Bihar have agreed to speed up development and land reforms in the impoverished rural hinterland where the Maoists thrive. New Delhi also offered them an additional 56 million dollars to beef up security over the next five years.

Priyanka Sonia's poll agent in Rae Bareilly (Go To Top)

      Mumbai: Congress President Sonia Gandhi has appointed her daughter Priyanka Vadra as her election agent for the Rae Bareilly by-polls, which is scheduled to be held on May 8. This is the second time that Priyanka will assume the role of a poll agent, the first time being during the 2004 general elections. Few days back, Rahul Gandhi, the Congress MP from Amethi also took the charge to lead the election campaign for his mother Sonia Gandhi for the coming polls in the constituency. Rahul, who had already addressed several meetings and met several people in the area, had claimed that whatever development was taking place in the area was due to the efforts of the Gandhi- Nehru family. On April 26, Rahul had said that he was ready to take charge of his party's affairs in the State. Sonia Gandhi, quit Parliament after the Opposition charged her with violating the Constitution by heading the National Advisory Council (NAC), an office of profit, while being a Member of Parliament (MP). But, she vowed to contest by-elections from her rural Rae Bareli constituency in Uttar Pradesh, which has been represented in Parliament by several generations of the famous Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty to which she is married into.

I am no US 'poodle', says Musharraf (Go To Top)

      London: Facing a surge of anti-American sentiment and admitting that his popularity in Pakistan was on the wane, a defiant President Pervez Musharraf told The Guardian in an interview that he was "not a poodle" of President George Bush. Insisting that he was his own man, Musharraf told the paper that his fight against the spread of terrorism in his country was not being done for the benefit of the United States or Britain, but for Pakistan. "I'm doing it for Pakistan. It's not a question of being a poodle. I'm nobody's poodle. I have enough strength of my own to lead. Pragmatism is required in international relations," the paper quoted Musharraf as saying. He also rejected suggestions that he was running a military dictatorship. "It is ironic that I'm sitting in uniform talking of democracy ... but to bring democracy into Pakistan I thought I needed it," he said. Musharraf insisted that there was no question of Pakistan submitting to American scrutiny and said claims that his government acted at Washington's bidding were nonsense. "There is no need of any checks - that is the reality," he said. As far as the situation in Baluchistan was concerned, he defended his tactic of using military force instead of negotiation to quell the violence and said some collateral damage was inevitable when militants' hideouts were attacked. Musharraf said his mission was to democratise Pakistan. "My popularity has gone down ... but at this moment my country needs me. I've put a strong constitutional democratic system in place. That will throw up a successor. I'm a strong believer in democracy," he said.

Pak's nuke-waste threatening lives (Go To Top)

      Lahore: Though Pakistan has entered the league of nuclear nations, it still has a long way to go as far as disposal of nuclear waste in a proper and safe manner is concerned. The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) has started dumping "radioactive nuclear waste" near human habitation in Baghalchur and the toxic waste has started taking its toll on the people there. Ismail Leghari, a dweller of a village in the vicinity of Baghalchur, said livestock mortality and diseases among people had been on the rise for the last one-year, and no one from the administration has bothered to inform them the pros and cons of dumping atomic waste in their area. The locals though illiterate, know the threats posed by radioactive wastes and have even taken the matter with the authorities, but all their pleas have fallen on deaf ears. "It is not that we have not lodged complaints with local PAEC authorities and the tribal area administration, but in fact no one is inclined to pay heed to our concerns," the Dawn quoted Ghulam Farid Leghari, a local resident as saying. Interestingly, Leghari was detained for two months on the orders of political assistant for making a hue and cry over the issue. Locals said that when tribal elders living in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad remained indifferent to their concerns, they moved the Dera Ghazi Khan district and sessions court to stop the PAEC from dumping its waste in a populated area.

1015 honour killings in Pak last year (Go To Top)

      Karachi: Honour killings are understood to have attained alarming proportions in Pakistan, with nearly 1015 people succumbing to the barbaric practice during 2005. Of them, 58 people, both men and women, were killed simply because they had married on their own will. More than 473 incidents of honour killing were reported from Sindh, 337 from Punjab, 129 from Balochistan and 76 from NWFP during 2005. Those killed included 563 married women, 75 unmarried women, 373 men and six children. And, this is just a tip of an iceberg, since only 10 percent of such cases are reported to the police. A report prepared by the Madadgaar Help Line database says that despite the enactment of a law to curb violence against women, cases of karo kari or honour killing are still going on unabated. The report is based on clippings from 26 newspapers.

Second premiere of Taj Mahal in Karachi (Go To Top)

     Karachi: The second premiere of Bollywood's monumental love epic, Taj Mahal, was held in Karachi late on Thursday, a day after the film's first premiere in Lahore. Jubilant Pakistani and Indian guests thronged the cinema hall where men dressed in Mughal attire received them. Zulfi Syed and Sonya Jehan, the main stars of the film, and other famous Indian actors and actresses were among the guests. "Let the people watch the film, make their decision, but we are very hopeful it's a strong, very strong film," said Satish Anand, the sole distributor of the film in Pakistan. The 21st century celluloid version of the love story of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan and Mumtaz is the most expensive film to be made by India's multi-billion rupee Hindi film industry of Bollywood costing over half a billion rupees. Directed by Akbar Khan, the younger brother of filmmakers Feroze and Sanjay Khan, the film stars newcomers Sonya Jehan, the granddaughter of yesteryear actress-cum-playback singer Noorjehan, who plays the ethereal Mumtaz. Zulfi Syed, a former Mr. India, plays the role of a young Shah Jahan. Till last year, Pakistani cinemas were banned from showing Indian films. With President Pervez Musharraf personally lifting the ban for films like Mughal-e-Azam and Taj Mahal, there is a feeling in the film industry that this will lead to a general lowering of barriers. This is the second Indian film to get official sanction from Islamabad. Mughal-e-Azam was screened on Sunday with the public screening of a 1960 classic beloved on both sides of the border. The story of a doomed love affair between Prince Salim, the wayward son of Emperor Akbar, and a slave girl called Arnakali, Mughal-e-Azam is often characterised by critics as India's answer to the American Civil War epic "Gone With The Wind". While sporting links have flourished thanks to a mutual love for cricket, Pakistan and India have conspicuously failed to make the most of a common cultural heritage, despite more than two years of peace talks between the nuclear rivals. India's most popular art form -- the movie is lapped up in Pakistan, though it is only available through pirated videotapes and discs, and some independent cable television channels.