12
A mid tight security, thou- sands of devotees offered prayers at the Lord Ayyappa temple when it opened for the annual Mandala-Makaravilakku puja on Saturday, though police said ten women were sent back from Pamba base as they were in the “barred” age group. The temple has reopened just days after a five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court referred to a larger Bench the matter related to entry of women into the hill temple and other issues related to various faiths. The State and temple precincts had witnessed protests by right-wing outfits and BJP workers last year after the LDF Government had decided to implement the Supreme Court verdict of September 28, 2018, allowing women of all age groups to offer prayers at the shrine. Though the apex court did not stay its earlier order allow- ing entry of women in the Lord Ayyappa temple, the LDF Government in Kerala this time said the shrine is not a ground for activism and made it clear that it would not encourage women who want to visit the temple for publicity. Police on Saturday evening said at least ten women, who were part of a 30-member group from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, were sent back from Pamba, five km from the shrine, as they were found to be in the age group of 10-50 years. Females in this age group have traditionally been barred from praying at the temple. D elhiites have neither fresh air to breathe nor safe water to drink. The drinking water supplied to residents in the national Capital has failed on all the 19 parameters — odour, iron, calcium, ammonia, chloride, anionic detergent and coliform among others. In con- trast, Mumbaikars may not even need to buy water puri- fiers or reverse osmosis (RO) units. The drinking water in India’s commercial capital passed all the tests of quality standards set by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). The other two metros, Chennai and Kolkata, too didn’t fare well, and are at the 13th and 14th place respectively. Of the 21 capital cities where water quality was tested, Delhi was at the bottom with all samples failing to meet the BIS norms. Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar bagged the joint second spot in the rankings with Ranchi coming in at third. Currently, it is mandatory for bottled water manufactur- ers to meet the BIS quality stan- dard. However, the BIS norm for tap water is voluntary for the public agencies which sup- ply piped water. Unlike Europe and other developed coun- tries, India doesn’t have any certification for potable water. The BIS lifted samples from the Capital cities across the country to test water qual- ity on several parameters. Announcing the findings, Union Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said, “All the samples lifted in Delhi have failed, but all samples of Mumbai are clear, and tap water of Mumbai is safest to drink.” In Delhi, the samples were taken randomly from 11 places like Krishi Bhawan, Janpath (residence of Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan), Pitampura, Ashok Nagar, Mukundpur, Burari, Karawal Nagar, Sonia Vihar, Seema Puri and Nand Nagari. In Krishi Bhawan, housing several Central Government offices, the sample failed to meet seven parameters of BIS norms, while water from Paswan’s residence failed on three parameters. All the 11 samples failed to meet the 19 parameters like odour, colour, turbidity, PH, total dissolved substances (TDS), hardness, alkanity, alu- minium, manganese, iron, cal- cium, nitrate, phenolic com- pounds, anionic detergent, ammonia, chloride, sulphide, coliform and e-coli that make up the BIS standard. The tap water is supplied by the Delhi Jal Board (DJB). In most places, water pipes are running alongside and crossing sewage lines and drains in Delhi, which make the water supply susceptible to sewage contamination, officials said. In Mumbai, all the 10 sam- ples met the standards set by the BIS. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) supplies water to the residents in Mumbai. In Kolkata, nine samples failed 10 quality para- meters while in Chennai, all 10 samples failed in nine para- meters. The samples in Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar failed in one parameter each — phenolic compounds and chlo- ramines respectively. In Ranchi, the potable water test failed on four parameters, while in Shimla on aluminum and Chandigarh on two parame- ters, “aluminium and coliform”. According to officials, test- ing was conducted for organoleptic and physical tests, chemical test, toxic substances and bacteriological tests in the first stage. In the next phase, they will also undergo viro- logical and biological tests for major disease carriers. The study, conducted by BIS for the Union Food and Consumer Affairs Ministry, tested 10 samples in 21 capital cities to see if they met the Indian Standard 10500:2012 (specification for drinking water). Paswan said he has written to State Governments asking them to clarify what helps his Government can provide to make tap water drinkable. JAJPUR: Many official files, documents and other papers were on Saturday found as the lockers and almirahs of deceased Panchayat Extension Officer (PEO) Smitarani Biswal were opened at the block office at Dharmasala , Panchayat office at Haridasapur and in her house at Choramuha of Jajpur district by the police in the presence of magistrates and husband of Smitarani Sushil Kumar Biswal. “We handed over all the files and documents to the Block Development Officer (BDO) of Dharmasala,” said Dharmasal Tehsildar Saroj Kumar Panda. All the docu- ments would be verified by the police soon, added the tehsil- dar. The mysterious death of Smitarani at the guesthouse of Rupesh Bhadra, husband of Madhusmita Bhadra, Sarapanch of the panchayat, on October 16 is snowballing into a major political issue in the State. PNS BHADRAK: The eyes of a dead youth were taken out at the SCB Medical College Hospital, Cuttack, without con- sent from his family members, alleged his wife on Saturday. The widow, Champa Gagarai, of Bagurai Adivasi Colony in Bhadrak dis- trict is illiterate and was unaware of the content of a form given to her by the hos- pital authorities prior to releasing the body of her husband Nanda Gagarai. Later, the hospital staffs took her thumb impression on the document without telling her what was written in it. According to reports, Nanda had con- sumed poison following a family dispute on November 7. He was admitted to the Bhadrak District Headquarters Hospital before being shifted to the SCB Hospital when his condition deteriorated. He died at the SCB on November 11. Later, Nanda’s wife and brother were asked to sign some documents. However, they gave their thumb impression on the documents without knowing their contents. When they brought the body to the village, other family members discovered that the deceased’s eyes were missing. Villagers told family members that the eyes of the youth have been donated after seeing the documents given by the SCB hospital. However, the youth’s wife and brother feigned ignorance about knowing the eye donation. “The SCB staffs have taken eyes out of my husband’s body without telling us. As we are illiterate, they asked us to give thumb impression on documents given to us. We did not know about the eye donation,” alleged the woman. PNS BHUBANESWAR: Claiming that the State Government has not given special attention to the Western Odisha Development Council (WODC) for removing regional imbalance, Congress members on Saturday demanded in the State Assembly that the Government increase the budgetary allocation for council from 100 crore to 1,000 crore per annum. Congress Legislature Party Leader Narasingha Mishra and other party members made this demanded while participating in a related Adjournment Motion brought by Mishra. “WODC was created for removing regional imbal- ance. While the council area occupies one-third of the State’s area and one-fourth of its people, it needs special attention. It is disappointing that while the State’s Annual Budget has touched 1,47,000 crore, only 100 crore is being allocated for the WODC to remove regional imbal- ance between western and coastal Odisha,” said Mishra. He too slammed the Government for not appoint- ing the Chairman and members of the WODC as per norms and not shifting the head office to the council area. “It has been turned into a rehabilitation centre of the rul- ing party,” he alleged. Mishra demanded that the Government increase the budgetary allocation to 1,000 crore. In his reply, Planning and Convergence Minister Padmanabha Behera said he would certainly purpose to the Chief Minister to increase the funds from the com- ing year. “The State Government has provided a total of Rs 1562.64 crore to the WODC since its inception. Many developmental activities in road, electrification, school, agriculture and irrigation and other social sectors have been undertaken since the 2000. The WODC is marching ahead with activities for overall development and removal of regional imbalance,” said the Minister. PNS N ow, defecating and uri- nating in open space under the jurisdiction of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) would attract penalty. The BMC in a notification on Saturday said, “The approved Solid Waste Management Bye-Laws, 2018 for Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation in its Schedule 6 indicates appropriate fine for defecating and urinating in open space to be imposed against person on 1st offence.” In this context, the corpo- ration has approved 200 and 150 as fine amount against person found defecat- ing and urinating in open space respectively within the area of BMC, added the noti- fication. S chool and Mass Education Minister Samir Ranjan Dash on Saturday told the State Assembly that all the brochures mentioning “Mahatma Gandhi died due to accidental reasons’ have been withdrawn and actions initiated against the officials responsible for printing misleading information about Gandhi. The Minister made this statement in response to a direc- tion given by Speaker Surjya Narayan Patro after protests made by Congress and BJD members on Friday. The Minster said that while an official has been suspended, show-case notice has been served to two officials for print- ing wrong messages in booklets distributed among students to mark the 150th year birthday celebration of Mahatma Gandhi. Terming the mistake as “unin- tentional”, the Minister said new brochures would be printed and distributed to students after required correction in a month’s time. Turn on Page 4

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Amid tight security, thou-sands of devotees offered

prayers at the Lord Ayyappatemple when it opened for theannual Mandala-Makaravilakkupuja on Saturday, though policesaid ten women were sent backfrom Pamba base as they werein the “barred” age group.

The temple has reopenedjust days after a five-judgeBench of the Supreme Courtreferred to a larger Bench thematter related to entry ofwomen into the hill temple andother issues related to variousfaiths.

The State and templeprecincts had witnessedprotests by right-wing outfitsand BJP workers last year afterthe LDF Government haddecided to implement the

Supreme Court verdict ofSeptember 28, 2018, allowingwomen of all age groups tooffer prayers at the shrine.

Though the apex court didnot stay its earlier order allow-ing entry of women in the LordAyyappa temple, the LDFGovernment in Kerala thistime said the shrine is not aground for activism and madeit clear that it would notencourage women who want to

visit the temple for publicity. Police on Saturday evening

said at least ten women, whowere part of a 30-membergroup from Vijayawada inAndhra Pradesh, were sentback from Pamba, five kmfrom the shrine, as they werefound to be in the age group of10-50 years.

Females in this age grouphave traditionally been barredfrom praying at the temple.

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Delhiites have neither freshair to breathe nor safe

water to drink. The drinkingwater supplied to residents inthe national Capital has failedon all the 19 parameters —odour, iron, calcium, ammonia,chloride, anionic detergent andcoliform among others. In con-trast, Mumbaikars may noteven need to buy water puri-fiers or reverse osmosis (RO)units. The drinking water inIndia’s commercial capitalpassed all the tests of qualitystandards set by the Bureau ofIndian Standards (BIS). Theother two metros, Chennaiand Kolkata, too didn’t farewell, and are at the 13th and14th place respectively.

Of the 21 capital citieswhere water quality was tested,Delhi was at the bottom with allsamples failing to meet the BISnorms. Hyderabad andBhubaneswar bagged the jointsecond spot in the rankingswith Ranchi coming in at third.

Currently, it is mandatoryfor bottled water manufactur-ers to meet the BIS quality stan-dard. However, the BIS normfor tap water is voluntary forthe public agencies which sup-ply piped water. Unlike Europeand other developed coun-tries, India doesn’t have any

certification for potable water.The BIS lifted samples

from the Capital cities acrossthe country to test water qual-ity on several parameters.Announcing the findings,Union Food and ConsumerAffairs Minister Ram VilasPaswan said, “All the sampleslifted in Delhi have failed, butall samples of Mumbai areclear, and tap water of Mumbaiis safest to drink.”

In Delhi, the samples weretaken randomly from 11 placeslike Krishi Bhawan, Janpath(residence of Union FoodMinister Ram Vilas Paswan),Pitampura, Ashok Nagar,Mukundpur, Burari, KarawalNagar, Sonia Vihar, Seema Puriand Nand Nagari. In KrishiBhawan, housing severalCentral Government offices,the sample failed to meet sevenparameters of BIS norms, whilewater from Paswan’s residencefailed on three parameters.

All the 11 samples failed to

meet the 19 parameters likeodour, colour, turbidity, PH,total dissolved substances(TDS), hardness, alkanity, alu-minium, manganese, iron, cal-cium, nitrate, phenolic com-pounds, anionic detergent,ammonia, chloride, sulphide,coliform and e-coli that makeup the BIS standard.

The tap water is suppliedby the Delhi Jal Board (DJB).In most places, water pipes arerunning alongside and crossingsewage lines and drains inDelhi, which make the watersupply susceptible to sewagecontamination, officials said.

In Mumbai, all the 10 sam-ples met the standards set by

the BIS. The BrihanmumbaiMunicipal Corporation (BMC)supplies water to the residentsin Mumbai. In Kolkata, ninesamples failed 10 quality para-meters while in Chennai, all 10samples failed in nine para-meters. The samples inHyderabad and Bhubaneswarfailed in one parameter each —

phenolic compounds and chlo-ramines respectively. In Ranchi,the potable water test failed onfour parameters, while inShimla on aluminum andChandigarh on two parame-ters, “aluminium and coliform”.

According to officials, test-ing was conducted fororganoleptic and physical tests,chemical test, toxic substancesand bacteriological tests in thefirst stage. In the next phase,they will also undergo viro-logical and biological tests formajor disease carriers. Thestudy, conducted by BIS for theUnion Food and Consumer Affairs Ministry,tested 10 samples in 21 capitalcities to see if they met theIndian Standard 10500:2012(specification for drinkingwater).

Paswan said he has writtento State Governments askingthem to clarify what helps hisGovernment can provide tomake tap water drinkable.

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JAJPUR: Many official files,documents and other paperswere on Saturday found as thelockers and almirahs ofdeceased Panchayat ExtensionOfficer (PEO) Smitarani Biswalwere opened at the block officeat Dharmasala , Panchayatoffice at Haridasapur and in herhouse at Choramuha of Jajpurdistrict by the police in thepresence of magistrates andhusband of Smitarani SushilKumar Biswal.

“We handed over all thefiles and documents to the

Block Development Officer(BDO) of Dharmasala,” saidDharmasal Tehsildar SarojKumar Panda. All the docu-ments would be verified by thepolice soon, added the tehsil-dar. The mysterious death of

Smitarani at the guesthouse ofRupesh Bhadra, husband ofMadhusmita Bhadra,Sarapanch of the panchayat, onOctober 16 is snowballing intoa major political issue in theState. PNS

BHADRAK: The eyes of a dead youthwere taken out at the SCB MedicalCollege Hospital, Cuttack, without con-sent from his family members, alleged hiswife on Saturday.

The widow, Champa Gagarai, ofBagurai Adivasi Colony in Bhadrak dis-trict is illiterate and was unaware of thecontent of a form given to her by the hos-pital authorities prior to releasing the bodyof her husband Nanda Gagarai. Later, thehospital staffs took her thumb impressionon the document without telling her whatwas written in it.

According to reports, Nanda had con-sumed poison following a family disputeon November 7. He was admitted to theBhadrak District Headquarters Hospitalbefore being shifted to the SCB Hospitalwhen his condition deteriorated. Hedied at the SCB on November 11. Later,Nanda’s wife and brother were asked tosign some documents. However, they gavetheir thumb impression on the documentswithout knowing their contents. Whenthey brought the body to the village, otherfamily members discovered that thedeceased’s eyes were missing. Villagerstold family members that the eyes of theyouth have been donated after seeing thedocuments given by the SCB hospital.However, the youth’s wife and brotherfeigned ignorance about knowing the eyedonation. “The SCB staffs have taken eyesout of my husband’s body without tellingus. As we are illiterate, they asked us togive thumb impression on documentsgiven to us. We did not know about theeye donation,” alleged the woman. PNS

BHUBANESWAR: Claiming that the State Governmenthas not given special attention to the Western OdishaDevelopment Council (WODC) for removing regionalimbalance, Congress members on Saturday demandedin the State Assembly that the Government increase thebudgetary allocation for council from � 100 crore to�1,000 crore per annum.

Congress Legislature Party Leader NarasinghaMishra and other party members made this demandedwhile participating in a related Adjournment Motionbrought by Mishra.

“WODC was created for removing regional imbal-ance. While the council area occupies one-third of theState’s area and one-fourth of its people, it needs specialattention. It is disappointing that while the State’s AnnualBudget has touched �1,47,000 crore, only ��100 crore isbeing allocated for the WODC to remove regional imbal-ance between western and coastal Odisha,” said Mishra.

He too slammed the Government for not appoint-ing the Chairman and members of the WODC as pernorms and not shifting the head office to the council area.“It has been turned into a rehabilitation centre of the rul-ing party,” he alleged.

Mishra demanded that the Government increase thebudgetary allocation to �1,000 crore.

In his reply, Planning and Convergence MinisterPadmanabha Behera said he would certainly purpose tothe Chief Minister to increase the funds from the com-ing year.

“The State Government has provided a total of Rs1562.64 crore to the WODC since its inception. Manydevelopmental activities in road, electrification, school,agriculture and irrigation and other social sectors havebeen undertaken since the 2000.

The WODC is marching ahead with activities foroverall development and removal of regional imbalance,”said the Minister. PNS

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Now, defecating and uri-nating in open space

under the jurisdiction ofBhubaneswar MunicipalCorporation (BMC) wouldattract penalty.

The BMC in a notificationon Saturday said, “Theapproved Solid WasteManagement Bye-Laws, 2018for Bhubaneswar MunicipalCorporation in its Schedule 6indicates appropriate fine fordefecating and urinating inopen space to be imposedagainst person on 1st offence.”

In this context, the corpo-ration has approved � 200 and � 150 as fine amountagainst person found defecat-ing and urinating in openspace respectively within thearea of BMC, added the noti-fication.

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School and Mass EducationMinister Samir Ranjan Dash

on Saturday told the StateAssembly that all the brochuresmentioning “Mahatma Gandhidied due to accidental reasons’have been withdrawn andactions initiated against theofficials responsible for printing

misleading information aboutGandhi.

The Minister made thisstatement in response to a direc-tion given by Speaker SurjyaNarayan Patro after protestsmade by Congress and BJDmembers on Friday.

The Minster said that whilean official has been suspended,show-case notice has been

served to two officials for print-ing wrong messages in bookletsdistributed among students tomark the 150th year birthdaycelebration of Mahatma Gandhi.Terming the mistake as “unin-tentional”, the Minister said newbrochures would be printed anddistributed to students afterrequired correction in a month’stime. Turn on Page 4

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It is sad that Bollywood has forgotten tomake romantic movies. Gone are the dayswhen a boy met a girl. A villain tried to

separate them. But love conquered all and thehero and heroine were united in the end. Itwas happily ever after. Today, Bollywood isonly taking a leaf out of some of the earlierromantic movies made and giving them atwist to fit the 21st Century mood.

Unfortunately, Marjaavaan doesn’t evenhave that to offer to its viewers. It could bethat director Milap Zaveri failed to see EkVillain which had a similar starcast. The onlydifference was that instead of Tara Sutaria,the love interest was Shraddha Kapoor.

Those who have seen Ek Villain would seethe similarity. Siddharth Malhotra is from thewrong side of the society — a goon who doesall the bad work for his boss whom he is

indebted to. But falls in love with the girl andwants to turn good for her. In steps thevillain. Again Riteish Deshmukh. The leastZaveri could have done is to not take thesame starcast and make a movie on similarlines.

However, all is not lost here. Deshmukhinstead of doing movies like Housefull 4 thatdon’t make any sense to those like to watchmovies that have some content, shouldactually switch to doing roles where he playsthe bad guy. Like in Ek Villain, Deshmukhexcels here too as the bad guy somewhat witha twist in his character.

Siddharth Malhotra does what he doesbest. Flay the baddies at the drop of a hat; allthis with his bare hands, a tad difficult todigest given that the baddies that he isfighting are all armed with the latest machineguns. And yet, our hero is able to come out asthe winner. A total disconnect with reality.

Overall, it is a movie that is not worth awatch.

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It is unfortunate that an actor, the calibre ofNawazuddin Siddiqui, who has done films likeSarfarosh, Badlapur and Manjhi-The Mountain Man

would actually agree to sign on the dotted line forMotichoor Chaknachoor. One doesn’t understand thethought that went into him accepting the role. He can’t bethat desperate to play the lead.

Yes, here Siddiqui plays the hero with Athiya Shetty.There are a few things horribly wrong with this pairing atmany levels. First, the two actors have no chemistry; theyare awkward at best. Given that Shetty is doing thepursuing while Siddiqui just goes with the flow shouldhave had some laugh out loud moments. The only timewhen a smile comes is where Siddiqui has been given somefunny dialogues. ‘36 ke hain, kab tak brahmachari bankarbaithe rahe. Naati, kaali, patali, takli, kisi se bhi byah karlenge. Hamko mourdi hi chahiye bas’ the dialogue reeks ofdesparation but at least it is funny given the context inwhich it is said.

Then there is the whole loud message that is staring atour faces that of dowry. If that was the intention of thedirector Debamitra Biswal, to highlight the problem ofdowry in the country, he should ensured that the filmwalked that path and the content suited the purpose.

All that this film managed to do was to show that a 36-year-old man is desperate to get married. A strict no-no.

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�What’s your role in Flames2?

I play Rajat. This is thesecond season of the web seriesand the story is of youngromance unfolding. As it wasshown in Season 1 that Rajatand Ishita are now in arelationship, this season willshow what actually happensafter two people come into ateenage relationship —attraction and romance,understanding, discovering thedeep-rooted discomforts, trustand a gamut of emotions.�What prompted you to playRajat?

First, I found the storylineinteresting and appealing.Second, I just completedshooting for Laakhon Mein Ekand it was an exhaustingexperience because I played adark character in it. I wanted totake up something light-hearted that would beinteresting to do and this serieswas the best option.�You debuted with Ferrari KiSawaari, how did thathappen?

It happened all of a sudden.I was in Class VI and waspreparing for my Mathematicsexam. That’s when my fatherasked me to take a break fromstudy and we both went to amall. After doing our shopping,while we were returning homea person came to us and askedif I would like to be a part of afilm. He was Rohan Mathur,now a casting director who wasassisting in the film back then.At first, we thought it was a jokebut then he took us intoconfidence and the next day Iwent for acting workshops.That’s how I got the film.�Were there anyapprehensions in your family?

My parents have been verysupportive throughout. I amhere because of them. Theyalways asked me of what Iwanted to do before taking anydecision themselves. Evenwhen I was approached for thefilm, my father asked me tujhekarna hai kya? Knowing that Iwas so young still he asked formy decision whether I want todo it or not. They have alwaysbeen understanding and

comforting.�After doing the film, didyour friends treat you anydifferently?

I had a small group of closefriends and all of them wereextremely happy. Vidhu VinodChopra sir even held a specialscreening of the film for myfriends. There was no bigdifference in their behaviourtowards me because we kneweach other much before thefilm, so it was not a big deal.They are still the same.�Was acting always on yourcards?

No. I never thought ofbecoming an actor. I was aconfused child. Sometimes Iwanted to be a pilot andsometimes a doctor. I took partin school plays and always gotto play the lead, I still don’tknow why. May be because myteacher liked me very much.(laughs)�There were reports that youwere casted for a role in Super

30. Is it true?No. I was never a part of

the film. I don’t know why suchreports were doing rounds onthe internet, but I was neverapproached for any role in thefilm.�What things do you keep inmind before signing a project?

I try to choose strongscripts with good content. If thestory is good your role willdefinitely stand out and peoplewill love it. My focus never liesin playing only lead roles, thecharacter and the story shouldbe good and that’s all I look outfor.�Any actor or director thatyou would like to work with?

I would like to work withRanbir Kapoor as he is afabulous actor and I love thevibe that one gets to see in hisfilms. As for the director, Iwould love to work withRajkumar Hirani sir andSriram Raghavan, I love thekind of films they make.

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Page 3: ˆ - English News Paper | Breaking News | Latest Today

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Agroup of 15 girl students of aGovernment school in the Joda

area of Keonjhar district left theirhostel on Friday night and tookshelter in a nearby village allegingthat the school headmaster has beenmisbehaving with them.

The girls are from the BaladaGovernment Upper PrimarySchool.

As per their complaint,Headmaster Baneswar Patra hasbeen misbehaving with many girlstudents in inebriated condition. Healso engages the girls in variousworks in the school and hostel cam-puses.

On Friday evening, he onceagain misbehaved with the studentsin a drunken state. Moreover, heasked the girls to meet him in hisroom after dinner.

Getting information, theBamebari police reached the spot ofthe girls’ shelter and rescued them.The distressed girls were handedover to a woman teacher of theschool. The cops also detained theaccused headmaster and beganinterrogating him in this connec-tion.

Taking action against theheadmaster for his alleged offence,the Block Education Officer (BEO)suspended him from the job onSaturday.

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Craze for TikTok videos haslanded a woman teacher

of a residential school in trou-ble in Kendrapada district asstudents’ parents on Saturday staged a protest anddemanded her transfer alleging negligence in duty onher part.

The parents locked themain gate of the Kulasahi

Ashram School inPatttamundai block andstaged a dharna alleging thatthe teacher is showing TikTokvideos and mobile games tostudents instead of teaching.

“She is playing with thefuture of the students byindulging them in the videoapp and mobile games inclassroom,” alleged a parent.

“If this continues, thepurpose of sending our chil-dren to school will not beserved,” he added.

The parents warned thatthey would continue theirprotest until the teacher istransferred.

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An adventure coffee tablebook on the famous

Massai Mara wilderness,authored by Puri GajapatiKing Dibyasingha Deb, wasreleased by Chief MinisterNaveen Patnaik here onSaturday. The book is titled“Majestic Mara”.

The travelogue featuresthe Puri Gajapati’s rich illus-trations and memoirs fromhis expedition at the MaasaiMara National Reserve insouthwestern Kenya. It show-cases beautiful shots by pro-fessional photographers,Asish Dhir, Dillip DhirSamant and Amarjyoti SinghDeo, from Odisha duringtheir eight-day tour last year.The scene was video-graphedby the Gajapati.s

The Gajapati said, “InAugust 2018, a team fromOdisha had visited thefamous Maasai MaraNational Reserve in Kenyaand saw the great migrationof wildebeest. The profes-

sional photographers fromBhubaneswar clicked the stillphotographs.”

Later on the day, the filmwas screened and the pho-tographs of the safari wereshowcased at an exhibition at

the Lalit Kala Academy here.

All are invited to witnessthe exhibition and the filmfrom 11.30 am to 7.30 pm tillNovember 22, the Gajapatitold reporters.

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CUTTACK: Online ticket sale for an India-West IndiesOne Day International (ODI) cricket match scheduledto be held at the Barabati Stadium here on December22 would begin from December 5. However, offline tick-ets for the match would be available at the stadiumcounters from December 19.

Commissioner of Police Sudhanshu Sarangiinformed this following a high-level preparatory meet-ing held on Saturday.

According to sources, for the first time GST wouldbe applied to the tickets.

Both the teams would arrive at the Bhubaneswarairport on December 19. At the meeting, Odisha CricketAssociation (OCA) Secretary Sanjay Behera andCuttack-Bhubaneswar Traffic DCP Sagarika Nathwere present, among others. PNS

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���������"��� ����������"�55-''$��)��7��$���$�+,�'"&���)4��* BHUBANESWAR: Presence of mind of

a Gateman at the level-crossing near VSSNagar in the city between theBhubaneswar and Mancheswar railwaystations averted a major accident of theBhubaneswar-Anand Vihar SuperfastExpress on Saturday.

Reportedly, a herd of buffaloes wascrossing the railway line a few minutesbefore the train was supposed to passthrough the level-rossing near VSS Nagarat about 12.50 pm.

In anticipation about a possiblemishap, Gateman AK Tripathy swung intoaction and showed red signal to the locopilot, following which the train stoppedbefore reaching the level-crossing. PNS

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CUTTACK: The Orissa HighCourt, acting upon a PIL filedby Clap Legal Service Institutepresident Dr Bikash Das, onSaturday directed theGovernment of Odisha to con-sider declaring all child mar-riages void ab initio.

The HC directed theGovernment further that a rep-resentation made by Dr Das in

this regard earlier to it be con-sidered within four weeks.

It is pertinent to mentionhere that the Prohibition ofChild Marriage Act, 2006 wasenacted by the Parliamentrepealing the age old ChildMarriage Restraint Act, 1929.Since the colonial law did notwork in eradicating child mar-riage in the country, the newlaw was enacted.

However, the new law likeprevious Act did not make allchild marriages void and onlyin certain cases like traffickingfor marriage, etc., a marriagecan be declared void.

Realising the legal issue ofvoid and voidable marriages, theGovernment of Karnataka

amended its law making allchild marriages void in theState as per the recommenda-tion of former Judge of SupremeCourt Justice Sivraj V Patil.

Dr Das, in July , hadapproached the OdishaGovernment to followKarnataka and make a Stateamendment of the Prohibitionof Child Marriage Act 2006 tomake all child marriages void.However, the representationof Dr Das was not considered.

On behalf of the petition-er Advocates Dr Binod KumarMishra, Jashmin Mall, BijayaKumar Mishra, ChandradevPurohit and Priyanka Ojhaargued the case before thecourt. PNS

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After a protracted fightagainst the Posco project in

Jagtsinghpur district, whichfinally led to the decommis-sioning of the biggest FDI steelplant by the South Koreancompany, now another move-ment is gaining ground againstthe proposed JSW Utkal SteelLimited plant in the area.

Activists PrafullaSamantara, former MLARadhakanta Sethi, Manorama

Khatua and Tuna Mohantyhave alleged that the new steelplant project is more dangerousthan Posco. “The proposedproject is a 13 million ton peryear steel plant along withcement, cold and hot rolledmills and 900-MW power

plant. Each is a pollutant unit.There will be huge cumulativeeffect on environment and thepollution will invade air, agri-culture land as well as waterbodies.

This will have also a port atJatadhari which will be harm-

ful to agriculturalland and fishercommunity. Thecumulative pollu-tion will spreadmore than 20 kmradius for whichmore than 50,000villagers of nearbyvillages will beaffected anddeprived of liveli-hood,” theyalleged.

On the contrary, theydemanded a proper environ-ment impact assessment reportfor the new project and dis-carded the one already done,what they said to be lackingfacts.

They said that after Posco

left its project, the forcedacquired land has to bereturned to the farmers as perthe Land Acquisition Act, 2013.Similarly, the people whoopposed Posco are still facingfalse charges slapped by police.When the old issues are yet tobe settled, another plant isimposed on the people of thelocality. It is neither desirablenor necessary, they told.

They warned that therewill be intensive protest and thepeople won’t allow the projectto take off.

They also alleged that sincethe district Collector is a localperson, he is using his person-al connections to favour thecompany and demanded thathe should be transferred.

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Aman impersonating as a DeputyDrugs Inspector allegedly looted

cash worth � 1 lakh from ahomoeopathy clinic in the Umarkotearea of the district on Friday.

The incident took place at theclinic run by Dr Panchanana Mishraat his residence at Kandagaon Road.

The impersonator carried out asearch at the clinic and asked formoney from the doctor as fine forexpiry of the clinic’s registration date.When Dr Mishra refused to pay, thefraud opened the drawer, snatchedcash of Rs 1 lakh and left.

The face of the fraudster as wellas visual of frisking by the accused has

been captured on the clinic’s CCTV.

“A person visited the clinicbetween 12.00 pm and 1.00 pm yes-terday when my brother and sister-in-law were alone at home. Posing as theDeputy Drugs Inspector fromBhubaneswar, he entered the houseand asked for the clinic licence, whichhe claimed, was expired. He closed thedoors and switched off the camera too.He demanded money from my broth-er, threatening him to arrest and sendhim to jail. When my brother refusedto pay, he grabbed the cash from thedrawer and fled,” said the victim’sbrother.

An FIR has been lodged with theUmerkote police in thisconnection.

BALANGIR: A person was killed by an ele-phant at village Dhaunradadar, 27 km fromhere, in the Loisingha forest early in morningon Saturday while he had gone to his paddyfield to guard his crop.

The deceased was identified as SriramBiswal (40). According to reports, a herd ofseven elephants was moving in the area sincelast few days.

Balangir Divisional Forest Officer (DFO)Sameer Satpathy said, “Last night, our elephantwatcher tracked the animals’ presence on theother side of the Cheliapat Reserve Forest. Alone tusker crossing over the mountain movedinto the area and trampled Sitaram to death.”

“We have sent our staffs to the spot. Wewill give 10 per cent of the total compassionateamount to the family of deceased after due pro-cedure,” said the DFO. PNS

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The Vigilance police on Friday arrestedLegal Metrology Department Senior

Inspector Bishrant Kumar Sethy in Paradipon graft charges. Vigilance officials inter-cepted Sethy in front of his office atMadhuban in Paradip.

A sum of � 1,71,070 was found in hispossession, which he could not account forsatisfactorily and was subsequently arrested.

Later, the Vigilance sleuths conductedsimultaneous raids at his rented residentialhouse and office on Saturday. Reportedly, theraid was underway till the last report camein.

Sethy was taking illegal gratificationsfrom different fuel station owners andkerosene oil tankers for renewal of calibra-tion certificates.

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BJP members on Saturday staged adharna in front of the Mahatma

Gandhi statue in the State Assemblypremises after staging a walkout fromthe House alleging that they are notbeing allowed to speak on the issue of“killing” of Jajpur district’sHaridashpur PEO Smitarani Biswal.

When the House met, Congressand BJD members participated in theQuestion Hour debate while BJPmembers kept standing at theirrespective chairs with their faces tiedwith black clothes.

As the Speaker requested themrepeatedly to take their seats and par-ticipate in the Question Hour, BJPLegislature Party Deputy LeaderBishnu Charan Sethi said, “When weare not being allowed to raise our voice

related to Smitarani killing, there is nouse for us to participate in the debate.Now, we are going to MahatamaGandhi statue to stage a dharna.”

Then all BJP members moved outof the House and sat at the Gandhi

statue. They didn’t participate in anyof proceedings held in the House onthe day.

Notably, BJP members had stageda silent dharna in the House by wear-ing black bands on Friday.

BHUBANESWAR: The StateGovernment has decided to set upa science park in each of the 30 dis-tricts and plans have already beenapproved for 10 districts.

Science and TechnologyMinister Ashok Chandra Pandainformed this in the StateAssembly to a question ofCongress MLA Tara PrasadBahinipati and a host of othermembers.

“Three science parks havealready been established atBhubaneswar in Khordha district,

Dhenknal and Bargarh districtsand lands have been identified inseven districts and direction hasbeen issued for release of funds forestablishment of such park inthese districts. The rest 20 districtswill get science parks gradually,”said the Minister.

He said Rs 6.5 crore has beenallocated for each park.

“The main objective of the sci-ence park is to promote scienceamong students and common peo-ple,” he said.

The Minister also informedthat if more than five acres of landis available in any district, theGovernment would certainly con-sider establishing a planetariumthere. PNS

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BHUBANESWAR: The Govardhan Mutt, Puri was excludedfrom the Odisha Hindu Religious Endowment Act 1952 and madean autonomous body by an amendment to the Act in the StateAssembly on Saturday.

“The Gobardhan Mutt, established by the AadiShankaracharya, is linked to the Shree Jagannat Temple in Manyways. The Shankaracharya is the head of the Mukti Mandap andhe has a special ritual at the Rath Yatra. Besides, theShankaracharya is accepted as the topmost Hindu religious leader.While Shankaracharya mutts at three of the four Dhams havebeen made independent, we also propose to make GovardhanMutt, Puri an autonomus body,” said Law Minister Pratap Jenawhile moving the amendment bill for discussion and passing.

Initiating discussion, Congress Legislature Party LeaderNarasingha Mishra opposed the Bill saying the presentShankaracharya is not naming self as “Debatirtha’ which is a req-uisite to head the Gobardhan Mutt. After a discussion, the Billwas passed. PNS

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The Jharsuguda political sce-nario is taking a new shape

with the appearance of a newpersonality. She is Deepali Das,daughter of Jharsuguda MLAand Health Minister NabaKishore Das.

In all Government andprivate meetings, Deepali isnow seen as the representativeof Minister Das. On comple-tion of higher studies fromoverseas, she is now steppinginto local politics with all sup-port from her father.

Over last few days, Deepaliis seen very close to her fatherin different meetings and pro-grammes in Jharsuguda. LastSaturday, she addressed a sem-

inar on homoeopathy in ahotel. On Monday also she wasnear her father in a high-levelmeeting held at the CircuitHouse here on health servicesin the district. Later in the day,she was in a paddy procure-ment meeting. When MinisterDas left the meeting in themiddle, he told to continue themeeting further with Deepali as

his representative.These days, Deepali

is invited to variousmeetings as guest ofhonour in place ofMinister Das.

Born in 1997,Deepali studied up toStandard-X in the BurlaDAV Public School.Thereafter, she com-pleted Standards-XI and

XII from the Modi Institute,Rajasthan. On completion ofB.Com from the KC CollegeMumbai, Deepali did her MBAin Communication & PublicRelations from the EU BusinessSchool at Barcelona (Spain).

With municipal electionsnearing, Deepali is expected toplay a vital role in the districtpolitics.

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The All India Progressive Women’sAssociation (AIPWA) held a meeting

here discussing the preparations for itsnational meeting at Udyapur, Rajasthan inFebruary and various issues concerningwomen, including rising violence, exploita-tion and population control of the poor andminority community families through imple-mentation of the Uniform Civil Code.

The AIPWA alleged that the BJP and RSShave no respect for the women’s rights and

equality. They are looking down upon the

Muslims and demanded a progressive law forwomen as per the recommendation of a com-mittee in 2015 to the Central Government.

The forum also objected to the NRC andexpressed solidarity with the Kashmirwomen, who are fightimng for their rights.It alleged that the Modi Government thinkschildren of the poor families as a burden onthe country and fails to provide them min-imum amenities of life. “The country hasenough wealth for providing food, shelter,education, health etc to the poor and let theGovernment stop waiving loans to the cor-porates,” said the speakers.

AIPWA president Rati Rao criticised thepopulation policy of the Centre. Among oth-ers, AIPWA national secretary Mina Tiwariand Mandakini Sethi and Saraswati Swainfrom State unit were present.

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Congress and BJD members onSaturday demanded a discus-

sion in the State Assembly on theimpact of the economic slowdownon the people of Odisha.

Raising the issue during theZero Hour, Congress LegislatureParty Leader Narasingha Mishraquoted a newspaper report andsaid, “Economic crisis that has

impacted people had not beenseen since 1972-72. People ofOdisha are now suffering as pricesof daily use consumable items andvegetables have skyrocketed.”

He slammed the Governmentfor giving permission opening ofmore liquor shops in the State.“Sale in liquor shops is soaring.The Government may not closedown all shops, but can stopopening new shops,” he suggest-ed.

BJD member Debi PrasadMishra urged that the Speakerallow a discussion on the impactof economic crisis in Odisha.

Congress MLA Santosh SinghSaluja demanded that either theChief Minister or the FinanceMinister make a statement in theHours on the issue.

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The Vigilance police arrest-ed a District Headquarters

Hospital HousekeeperSupervisor while he was takinga bribe of Rs 5,000 from awoman sweeper here onSaturday.

The accused was identifiedas Kabi Mohan Deep. He haddemanded the bribe from thecomplainant Margarika Bhatrato accept her biodata and otherrelevant documents to regu-larise her service as an out-sourcing sweeper in the DHH.

Earlier, the complaint hadinformed the Koraput DivisionVigilance officials about it andthe sleuths had laid a trap.

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Knowledge and innovativeresearch, backed by appro-

priate use of technology andpolicy decision, was needed forthe country to move forward,Union minister for RoadTransport and Highways andMSME Nitin Gadkari said hereon Saturday.

“A lot depends on vision,technology and knowledge asit can convert waste intowealth,” he said while address-ing the 6th Convocation of theSOA University here.

Governor, Prof GaneshiLal was the chief guest. The

convocation was also attendedby Union MinisterDharmendra Pradhan and

Odisha Minister for HigherEducation Dr Arun KumarSahoo.

SOA Chancellor ProfKhageswar Pradhan presidedover the function while Vice-

Chancellor Prof Amit Banerjeepresented the report.

Honoris Causa (Doctor of

Science) was presented to ProfDebiprosad Duari, a distin-guished scientist in the domainof astronomy and astrophysics,who is presently Director of the BirlaPlanetarium at Kolkata.

Pradhan described theSOA as a prestigious universi-ty, saying it has made a mark inthe field of higher educationand research.

Vice-Chancellor ProfBanerjee said the SOA hasbeen ranked among the top 25universities in the country fortwo consecutive years of 2018and 2019 while it had brokeninto world rankings by beingplaced in the 600 plus catego-ry by the Times HigherEducation (THE) WorldRanking.

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CUTTACK: Results of the Odisha Civil Services (Main)Examination-2018 are now out. The Odisha Public ServiceCommission (OPSC) released the list of candidates, who havequalified the test, on Friday.

The list of roll numbers of the qualifiers is available onthe OPSC’s official website www.opsc.gov.in and in its noticeboard.

The commission has decided to conduct verification oforiginal documents of the candidates from November 28 toDecember and personality test from December 17 toDecember 28 in its office. A detailed programme of the ver-ification of documents and personality test would be noti-fied shortly, said an OPSC notice.

Intimation letters of the concerned candidates and attes-tation and bio-data forms would be uploaded on the web-site. Candidates are required to download the same and fillup the details for submission on the day of document ver-ification.

For further information, candidates are advised to visitthe commission’s website. PNS

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Reiterating the KonarkCement’s brand philosophy

‘Khusiyon ki Buniyaad’, theDalmia Cement (Bharat) Limitedconnected with the masses at thehistoric Baliyatra in a grandstyle. Zonal Sales ManagerSurjayan Mukherjee and DeputyExecutive Director and PlantHead (KCMW & BCW)Manoranjan Sahoo inauguratedthe stall at the Baliyatra aimingto create a platform to share andpromote happiness in the society.

Two personalities RakeshSatpathy and Abheepsa Mishrawere felicitated at the event.Rakesh, who works as a librari-an in one of the renownedschools in Cuttack, is known for

his efforts in the field of childeducation in slums.

Abheepsa, pursuing her

Bachelors in Arts, has taken upto help stray dogs in the city ofCuttack.

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When we think about theborder disputes with

neighbouring States, the pictureof Harish Chandra Buxipatra,a former Minister and also aformer president of the UtkalSammilani, comes into ourmind.

Recently, to solve the bor-der problems, an AssemblyCommittee discussed themand their possible solutions.Out of them, the committeedecided to suggest to the HomeDepartment to set up a policestation in Kotia panchayat ofKoraput district. But after somedays, it was reported thatAndhra Pradesh Governmentis also searching a suitable plotof land to establish their policestation at Kotia.

This shows that AndhraPradesh is not leaving any

chance to have its jurisdictionin the area.

It is not only the disputebut other major disputes likethe Polavaram project withAndhra Pradesh. Similarly, wehave border disputes with WestBengal, Chhattisgarh andJharkhand too which are get-ting more complicated day byday. Harish Buxipatra had sin-cerely wanted to solve thesedisputes.

In 1956 when he was a stu-dent, he fought for Sadheikalaand Kharsuan, which are nowin the territory of Jharkhand.After Radhanath Rath becamethe president of UtkalSammilani, he also tried tomerge Sadheikala andKharasuan with Odisha.

The Kotia dispute is amajor issue with AndhraPradesh, which wants to grabthis area for its rich mineraldeposits. In the year 1962-63,Andhra Pradesh began raisingthe Kotia dispute.

In protest, the OdishaGovernment urged for justice

from the Supreme Court filinga case on December 1, 1968when late Rajendra NarayanSingh Deo was Chief Minister.The petition stated, “The right,title and possession over the 21villages of Kotia Grampunjaand to restrain the AndhraPradesh Government to inter-fere in the possession ofOrissa.”

After that the SupremeCourt allowed temporary stayon the area in 1988. But afterthe final hearing on March 30,

2006, the Supreme Courtpassed the order and stated,according to the Article – 131of the Constitution of India,that, the SC cannot solve thedisputes of the State boundary.“It is not within our purview.The power is with theParliament, so it will be decidein the Parliament,” said thecourt. Hence, since that day theproblem is not solved.

The West BengalGovernment is trying toacquire villages under Bhograiand Jaleswar blocks in Baleswardistrict. Now, Shankamedi vil-lage, Shahbajipur bus standand Udayapur sea beach areunprotected. In Shankamedivillage, nearly 100 Odia fami-lies are living and have theirown housing plots as well aslands for cultivation.

For that village theGovernment of Odisha runsOdia schools and the citizensare having BPL cards fromOdisha too and also availing allkinds of facilities from ourGovernment. But the villagers

of Shankamedi in Baleswardistrict don’t have patta (rightof records) for their lands since1989 settlement. So they arepractically not the owner oftheir land; as a result they arelosing the Government bene-fits under housing schemes.

In this critical situation,West-Bengal is taking theadvantages. Similarly, theSahabajipur Bus stand andUdayapur sea shore of Baleswardistrict are claimed by WestBengal.

As the Digha sea shore isnow losing its identity due torise in water level, so they aretrying to acquire Udayapursea beach which is inside ourterritory and highly famous forred crabs. The BengalGovernment is forcefullyacquiring Odisha’s road fromSahabajipur Bus stand toUdayapur sea shore. It is liftingsand from our river shores aswell.

In Chhattisgarh, the majorproblem is for Mahanadi riverwater. The Government of

Chhattisgarh is distributingOdisha lands to their landlesscitizens.

More Odia people are nowresiding in Chhatishgarh andJhadkhand. Chhattisgarh isalso making an attempt toacquire Odisha’s Gajamal hillby laying railway lines for con-necting an industrial unit.

In Jhadkhand, two bigOdia patches namly Sadheikalaand Kharasua are still undertheir occupation. We couldn’tacquire the two villagestill date. In this situation, we

need a leader like HarishChandra Buxipatra to solvethe problems. Thus, theGovernment should open aspecial department under thename ‘Seema Suraksha Bibhag’and an Odia officer should begiven the charge of it. Thedepartment needs to be keptunder the purview of the 5TDepartment.

(The writer is president,Utkal Sammilani,Mancheswar Industrial EstateBranch, Mob: 993853600)

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Women should allow to fol-low the tradition and

heritage of the Sabarimalashrine, BJP Tamil Nadu gener-al secretary Vanathi Srinivasansaid Saturday.

They should realise thisand allow to maintain the sanc-tity of the temple, Vanathi toldreporters here to a question onthe Supreme Court verdict inthe Ayyappa temple issue.

Endorsing Tamil NaduChief minister K Palaniswami’sview on actor Rajnikanth thathe was not a political leader, shesaid that it was for him to decide whether to join BJP ornot.

However, there is a politi-cal vaccum in Tamil Naduafter the death of MKarunanidhi and J Jayalalithaa,she said. Vanathi, who receivedthe applications from partyworkers for the local bodyelections, said the BJP has gained new strength in theState. Expressing deep sorrowover the suicide of IITM stu-dent Fathima Latheef, the BJPleader said the educationalinstitutions should prepare thestudents mentally also, notonly physically. Vanathi alsosought adequate compensa-tion for Rajeswari who was runover by a lorry, while trying toavoid a leaning flagpole in thecity.

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Arunachal Pradesh ChiefMinister Pema Khandu on

Saturday welcomed the Centre’sinitiative to solve the decades-old Naga problem and cate-gorically stated that there willbe no compromise on the ter-ritorial integrity of the state.

The Arunachal Pradeshgovernment will make clear itsstand on the Naga peaceprocess to the Centre whencalled for discussion, he said.Welcoming the Centres initia-tive, Khandu said New Delhi isserious to solve the issue oncefor all.

We will soon call an all-party meeting to discuss theissue besides taking the view ofother stakeholders. We will

submit our decision to theCentre before a frameworkagreement is signed, the chiefminister said while addressingthe National Press Day cele-bration here. We are clear inour stand and we want thatNaga peace process should notaffect the state at any cost, hesaid.

The central gov-ernment has alreadyrejected terrorist out-fit NSCN-IM’sdemand for unifica-tion of Naga inhabit-ed areas in Manipur,Arunachal Pradeshand Assam.

All the threenortheastern Stateshave vehementlyopposed it.

The union homeministry had said in a state-ment that before any settle-ment is arrived at with Nagagroups, all stakeholders,including the States of Assam,Manipur and ArunachalPradesh will be duly consultedand their concerns will be taken into considera-tion.

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From Pag e 1 The two-page booklet

“Aama Bapuji: Eka Jhalaka”(Our Bapuji: A Glimpse) pre-sents a brief account of Gandhi’steachings, works and his linkswith Odisha.

The booklet stated that he“died due to accidental reasonsin a sudden sequence of events onJanuary 30, 1948 at Delhi’s BirlaHouse”.

Following the Minister’sstatement, Congress LegislatureParty Leader NarasinghaMishra pointed out that the statement would havebeen made by the ChiefMinister as he was theChairman of the “MahatmaGandhi’s 150th Year

Birthday CelebrationCommittee.”

“Yesterday, I had demand-ed that the Chief Ministershould tender an apology if themisleading message was unin-tentional and I had demandedhis resignation if the mistakewas committed knowingly,” saidMishra.

However, the Speaker askedhim not to hold further discus-sions as a statement has alreadybeen made by a Minister as perthe Rules of Business of theHouse.

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Reliance Communications chairmanAnil Ambani and four other direc-

tors have resigned from the company,which is going through insolvencyprocess, according to a regulatoryfiling.

The chief financial officer of thedebt-ridden company, Manikantan V, toohas resigned, the filing said.

“Anil D Ambani, Chhaya Virani,Manjari Kacker have tendered theirresignation as Director of Company onNovember 15th, 2019,” the filing said.

Ryna Karani and Suresh Rangachartendered their resignations on November14 and November 13, 2019, respective-ly. The development comes a day afterRCom posted a consolidated loss of�30,142 crore for July-September 2019due to provisioning for liabilities after the Supreme Court ruling onstatutory dues.

This was the second highest lossposted by any Indian corporate till date.

Ambani was once in the world’s topten rich persons list but now the com-pany is struggling to even sell assets forthe recovery of dues.

Page 5: ˆ - English News Paper | Breaking News | Latest Today

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The Congress on Saturdayannounced that its dis-

trict-level and State-level agi-tations against the Centre’s“anti-people policies” wouldculminate in a “massive rally”at Ramlila Maidan onNovember 30. It also hit out atthe Government over a BJPMinister’s remark that econo-my is doing fine with peoplegetting married and trainsfull, saying that such state-ments were being made in aplanned manner to divertattention from reality.

The Congress held a meet-ing of its general secretaries,chiefs of it frontal organisa-tions’, department heads, Stateunit chiefs and CongressLegislative Party leaders onSaturday. “The meeting wascalled to discuss the agitationprogramme... Against theCentral Government’s anti-people policies, especially eco-nomic slowdown, farmers dis-tress, huge unemployment andother issues,” CongressGeneral Secretary KCVenugopal said.

He said that the party hasdecided to hold a mega rallyagainst the anti-people policiesof the Central government onNovember 30 in Delhi’sRamlila Maidan. The meetinghas decided to name it as‘Bharat Bachao Rally’ becausepeople are suffering very much.

Venugopal said that theparty has planned to hold agi-

tations in various parts of thecountry from November 5 to15, during which it wouldtake out protests to highlightthe failures of the BJP-ledGovernment. “We decidedthat the agitations at districtand state levels will be com-pleted before November 25,”he said.

The Congress also lashedout at the Government UnionMinister Suresh Angadi’s state-ment on Friday dismissingthe Opposition’s criticism overthe state of economy, assertingthat “airports and trains arefull and people are gettingmarried” and this indicatesthat the country’s economy is“doing fine”.

Noting that the economyslows down every three yearsbut it will pick up soon, theminister of state for railwayssaid “some people” were trying

to malign the image of PrimeMinister Narendra Modi.

Hitting out at the minis-ter’s remarks, Congress’ chiefspokesperson RandeepSurjewala in a tweet said thatit seems such bizarre state-ments are made or areprompted to be made in aplanned manner to divertattention from the reality andprevailing circumstances.

“Airports are full, trains arefull, people are getting married.Some people are doing this fornothing else but to malign theimage of Narendra Modi,”Angadi had told reporters dur-ing an inspection of the soonto be commissioned TundaKhurja eastern dedicatedfreight corridor.

“Every three years there isfall in demand in economy. Itis a cycle. Then the economypicks up also,” he had said.

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The Centre’s initiative to pro-cure apples in Kashmir

through cooperative Nafed has“failed miserably” as only 0.01per cent (1.36 lakh boxes) of 11crore boxes has been purchaseddirectly from growers so far.

Returning from a field visitto the valley, the All India KisanSangharsh CoordinationCommittee (AIKSCC) demand-ed that the Centre should pro-vide compensation to apple andother horticulture crops grow-ers in Kashmir who haveincurred losses due to unsea-sonal heavy snowfall as well asfrom lack of transport and coldstorage assistance due to thepolitical turmoil in the newlyformed union territory.

The Centre decided to pro-cure apples in the region in thewake of terrorists threateningsome apple growers not to selltheir produce in the market fol-lowing abrogation of the special

status given to Jammu andKashmir under Article 370 andbifurcation of the state into twoUnion Territories.

“The Government autho-rised Nafed to carry-out pro-curement but this operationfailed miserably. Lack of expe-rience and infrastructure meantthat Nafed has procured 0.01 percent of the estimated produce(1.36 lakh boxes out of more

than 11 crore boxes),” theAIKSCC said in a statement.

Farmers have complainedthat the Nafed procurementhad disruptive effect since it hassold apple in the sale market atlower prices that brought downthe wholesale apple prices in theprocurement market, it noted.

Kashmir produces 75 percent of the country’s total appleproduction and the horticulture

industry of Kashmir has aturnover of Rs 10,000 croreannually.

“If 70 per cent loss (as isbeing claimed by the growersand representatives of com-merce and industry) is true, thenthis will devastate the livelihoodof the people of Kashmir foryears to come,” the farmers’body said.

Highlighting the plight of

farmers, the AIKSCC said itsdelegation which visited thevalley witnessed extensive dam-age to the apple crop in the val-ley due to untimely and heavysnowfall, it said and addedgrowers were unable to moveout and harvest the crop andstore it because of heavy snowfall. The impact on saffron cropwas much worse and yields areexpected to remain lower thisyear.

Besides heavy snowfall, thefarmers body said crops likepear, cherry and grapes whichwere harvested in August werestranded due to complete shut-down in the valley and could notbe marketed, leading to neartotal loss for the farmers.

Apple harvesting was tobegin in September but wasdelayed as farmers could not goout for picking. Once harvestingbegan, non-availability of tele-phones for first 60 days and non-access to internet even nowmeant that the communication

between apple growers, trans-porters and traders was snapped,causing a disruption in thedemand-supply chain, it said.

Further, farmers could notbring apples to the procurementmarkets since trucks were notallowed to go to the villages andfarmers were forced to bringtheir produce to the Highways.This caused delays, inconve-nience and additional costs, itadded.

As a result, transport costalmost doubled due to prevail-ing security threat and unavail-ability of trucks. Frequent trans-port blockades and closure ofhighways resulted in furtherdelays and loss of quantity andquality of apples during trans-portation, the AIKSCC noted.

AIKSCC, a nationwide plat-form of 250 farmers’ organisa-tions, urged the government toassess the actual loss and providerelief to apple growers as well asgrowers of saffron, pear, grape,cherry and sheep breeders.

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Ahead of Parliament’sWinter Session, Lok Sabha

Speaker Om Birla on Saturdayappealed to all political partiesfor cooperation for ensuringsmooth functioning of theHouse and add to the legisla-tive productivity of the session.

After an all-party meeting,which was also attended byPrime Minister NarendraModi, the Speaker said floorleaders of different partiesmentioned various issues thatthey wished to be discussedduring the Winter Session,beginning November 18. “Itold them that after discussingthese issues in the businessadvisory committee, we will tryto take up as many as possible,”he said.

“I appealed to floor leadersof all parties for their cooper-ation in smooth functioning ofthe House. As the House isanswerable to the people and Ihope parties will raise issues ofpublic interest. There should bedebate in the House, and forthat it should function,” he

added.There will be 20 sittings in

this session.Birla said, “All parties

have assured me that the ses-

sion will be smooth and will beas fruitful as the first session ofthe 17th Lok Sabha.” After theall-party meeting, TMC MPSudip Bandyopadhyay told

reporters that he raised thematter of the West BengalGovernor running a “paralleladministration”, which should-n’t be allowed to function.

“Issues of unemploymentand economic conditionsshould be discussed.Opposition should be givenspace,” he said.

BSP leader KunwarDanish Ali said the Houseshould discuss the issue of airpollution in north India,including Uttar Pradesh

The session, beginningMonday, is taking place in thebackdrop of a spate of SupremeCourt decisions on key issues,

including Ram temple andRafale deal as also major deci-sion of the government to doaway with the autonomy pro-vision of article 370 relating toJammu and Kashmir and henceexpected to figure prominent-ly in the month-long proceed-ings of the two houses.

Besides, Constitutionalamendment bill for Citizenship,the other key bills which maybe tabled during the sessioninclude regularisation of 1728unauthorised colonies in Delhi.Government will also bringbills to replace two ordinanceson corporate tax rate cuts andban on e-cigarettes.

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Amajor tragedy was avertedon Saturday as the pilot of

an Indian Navy MIG traineraircraft that crashed pointedthe plane away from populat-ed areas.

Both the pilots ejected safe-ly, said Indian Navy FlagOfficer, Goa, Rear AdmiralPhilipose George Pynumootil.

The officer said the aircraftwas on a regular training sor-tie when the incident occurred.

A villager said the aircraftcrashed on a rocky plateau onthe outskirts of Verna, 15 kmsfrom the state capital, aroundnoon. The wreckage of the air-craft lay strewn in one-km

area, he said.The aircraft is attached to

INS Hansa located nearDabolim in Goa.

Taking to Twitter, theIndian Navy spokesperson said,“During a training mission,after take-off from INS Hansaat Dabolim a MIG29K traineraircraft suffered an engine fire.The pilots Capt M Sheokhandand Lt Cdr Deepak Yadavejected safely”.

The pilots were providedfirst-aid and shifted to hospi-tal in Vasco.

The Indian Navy and theGoa Police have cordoned offthe site of the mishap and arein the process of clearing thewreckage.

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Aday after an official surveyreportedly pointed to a fall

in consumer spending for thefirst time in four decades in2017-18, the Congress onSaturday said there is a percep-tion that the Government isleading the country towards a“starvation-like situation”.

On Friday morning, amedia report cited the latestconsumption expenditure sur-vey by the National StatisticalOffice (NSO) to claim that con-sumer spending fell for the firsttime in more than four decadesin 2017-18, primarily driven byslackening rural demand.

On Friday evening, theStatistics and ProgrammeImplementation Ministry said it

has decided to not release theConsumer Expenditure Surveyresults of 2017-18 due to “dataquality” issues.

“Can you cover up onset ofpoverty and penury by hidingdata, Mr Modi? You should havecome forward, released the dataand told the nation, these are thesteps we propose to take, butthis government only seeks tohide employment data, farmer’ssuicide data, poverty data, slow-down data, consumption data,export and import slow-downdata,” Congress general secre-tary (organisation) KCVenugopal said.

“Hiding data is not a solu-tion, finding a solution is theway forward, but, the govern-ment refuses to do so,” headded.

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Armed with the SupremeCourt’s clean chit to the

Modi Government on theRafale deal, the BJP onSaturday held countrywideprotests against the Congress,demanding an apology fromits leader Rahul Gandhi formaking “baseless” allegations.

The BJP said in a state-ment that its workers heldprotests in district headquar-ters across the country while itsnational general secretaryArun Singh led the stir inBhubaneswar, Maharashtraparty chief Chandrakant Patilin Mumbai and Bihar unitpresident Sanjay Jaiswal inPatna, among other places.

It also organised demon-strations in Lucknow,

Chandigarh, Shimla, Jaipur,Varanasi andThiruvananthapuram, thestatement said.

The BJP has also referredto the Supreme Court’s deci-

sion to let off Gandhi in a con-tempt case for attributing falseremarks to it after he tenderedan apology. The partydemanded that he also offer anapology to the country.

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Vice President M VenkaiahNaidu on Saturday said

political parties and businessgroups are promoting theirvested interests and compro-mising the values of journalismby starting their own newspa-pers.

Highlighting the perils offake news, he said may be it istime for media bodies to comeup with a code of conduct forjournalists.

Naidu was speaking at anevent organised by the PressCouncil of India to observe theNational Press Day and conferNational Awards for Excellencein Journalism. Union Ministerfor Information andBroadcasting PrakashJavadekar also attended theevent.

With business groups andeven political parties setting upnewspapers and TV channelsto further their interests, thecore values of journalism aregetting eroded, the vice presi-dent said.

He stressed that if a news-paper is run by a political party,it should clearly mention so.

“Political parties and politi-cians started their own news-papers. They are called news-papers but they should be(called) newsletters.

“That is an undesirabletrend that has crept into oursystem. To protect and promoteyour business interest, to paintyour rivals in a negative man-ner, you are using it (media),”he said.

Naidu also urged journal-ists to exercise caution in thetime of sensationalism.

“Sensationalism hasbecome order of the day, sen-sational news means senselessnews,” he said.

The cardinal principle ofjournalism is to present fair,objective, accurate and bal-anced information to the read-ers and viewers without jour-nalists assuming the role ofgatekeepers, he said.

Instead of giving expres-sion to the popular feeling,some newspapers these daysare giving expression tocoloured and partisan views, headded.

Naidu said times havechanged in such a way that onehas to now read a minimum offour to five major newspapersto get a complete sense of thecurrent developments.

“Same is the case with thenews channels. Earlier, thatwas not the case,” he remarked.

Stressing on theneed to maintain objectivity,fairness and accuracy, the vicepresident said neutrality andsanctity of newsrooms shouldbe upheld at all times.

“This has become all the

more critical in the presenttimes after the advent of the‘fake news’ phenomenon andthe huge impact social mediais creating.

“With the electronic andsocial media providing news bythe minute with alerts and flash-es on smartphones, journalistswill have to exercise greatercaution and guard against ‘fakenews’, disinformation and mis-information,” he said.

Sensationalism, biasedcoverage and paid news havebecome the modern-day afflic-tions of the media, he said.

Javadekar said fake news isa bigger crisis than paidnews.”This is the day for thepress to understand its freedomas well as its responsibility.Today there is a crisis of fakenews more than paid news,” hesaid.

“A fake news was circulat-ed about child-lifters and itclaimed 20 lives. When there isdiscussion about lynching, onlyone lynching is talked aboutbut these 20 people also dieddue to lynching. That is nottalked about,” he said.

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The BJP on Saturday hit outat the Congress alleging

that family and commerce runhand-in-hand and are inte-grally linked for the party afterthe Income Tax AppellateTribunal rejected Congressleader Rahul Gandhi’s plea toconsider Young Indian (YI) asa charitable institution.

Briefing media, UnionMinister and senior partyleader Ravi Shankar Prasadsaid that �90 crores were givento the National Herald paperand Government propertiesworth �2,000 crores werehanded to the AssociatedJournals Limited which used torun the paper, even after thenewspaper ceased operations in2008.

Prasad said, in 2010, YoungIndia Limited was formed andwas exempted from IncomeTax in the name of a charitabletrust. He alleged the Congresshas hidden the facts for taxexemption. “There is a judicialaffirmation...That family and

commerce go hand in handand you (family) invoke dubi-ous methods for enrichment,”he added.

The Law Minister said, theBJP condemns this palpable,dubious transaction of undueenrichment which is corrup-tion.

There was no immediatereaction from the Congressbut it has earlier rejected a sim-ilar charge by the BJP andtermed the probe as a case ofpolitical vendetta.

Congress president SoniaGandhi, Rahul Gandhi andothers have been accused ofpaying just �50 lakh throughwhich YI, a not-for-profitorganisation, had obtained theright to recover �90.25 crorethat the AJL owed to the

Congress.In July last year, the Income

Tax department asked the YI topay tax of around �145 crore.“In �50 lakh, you became theowner of property worth�2,000 crore. What kind ofmodel is this? This should beinvestigated,” Prasad said.

“When BJP used to discussRobert Vadra and his doingsearlier, it used to say that thereare various models of develop-ment - one of it is Vadra modelof development,” Prasad said.

“Under it (Vadra model ofdevelopment), you invest �20-�25 lakh, and you become theowner of big real estate prop-erties in Gurgaon,” he said.The minister said that afterVadra model of development,he used to think that a newmodel of development wouldnot come.

“But this (Young Indianmatter) is family model ofdevelopment. Pariwar model ofdevelopment. Invest �50 lakhand become the owner of prop-erty worth �2,000 crore,”Prasad said.

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Delhi’s air pollution hasmade the foreign diplo-

mats also worried.Dean of the Diplomatic

Corps Ambassador HansDannenberg Castellanos hasexpressed concern over thepoor air quality in Delhi andsaid the odd-even roadrationing scheme is a goodstart, but working closely withfarmers in Punjab on the issueof crop residue burning shouldalso be strongly considered.

Delhi was blanketed by athick smog for four consecutivedays till Friday as unfavourableweather hampered dispersionof pollutants.

The national Capital wit-nessed a dip in pollution levelson Saturday morning even as

the air quality in the cityremained in the “severe” cate-gory.

Amid the pollution crisis,the Dean of the DiplomaticCorps in India, AmbassadorCastellanos of DominicanRepublic, expressed concernover the air quality in Delhi.

“It (pollution) affects all ofus. And it does not have adiplomatic solution nor is theMEA the responsible one tosolve it. This is a problem ofmajor proportions to besolved by city and federalgovernment, not the MEA(Ministry of External Affairs).The odd-even scheme is agood start, but working close-ly with the farmers in Punjabon the issue of burning cropsshould also be strongly con-sidered,” he said.

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Singapore: A senior SingaporeMinister has expressed hopethat outstanding issues withIndia can be overcome by othercountries to get the large SouthAsian market into the RegionalComprehensive Economic

Partnership (RCEP).“We hope that India and

the other 15 countries canovercome the outstandingissues so that India can comeon board eventually. We lookforward to the region, includ-

ing India, moving aheadtogether as one,” Singapore’sSenior Minister andCoordinating Minister forNational Security, Teo CheeHean, said on Saturday.

PTI

New Delhi: The SupremeCourt’s judgement in the EssarSteel case would bring cer-tainty to the resolution processin India at par with the globalpractices, industry body Ficcisaid on Saturday.

The Supreme Court onFriday set aside an NCLATorder which gave equal rightsto the secured and unsecuredcreditors during the insolven-cy proceedings of debt-riddenEssar Steel, clearing the decksfor its takeover by LakshmiMittal-led ArcelorMittal.

“At a time when there ishigh level of interest amongforeign investors, the judg-ment would bring certainty toresolution process, in line withglobal practices and help Indiaretain its status of preferredinvestment destination,” FicciPresident Sandip Somany saidin a statement. Upholding ofthe doctrine that financial cred-itors will rank ahead of opera-tional creditors bodes well forthe Indian banking industry aswell as potential foreigninvestors, he added. The indus-try body also welcomed thecourt order that the commer-cial decisions of the Committeeof Creditors (CoC) will not beopen to judicial review. PTI

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The country’s GDP growth islikely to decline to 4.9 per

cent in the second quarter ofthis fiscal due to sustainedslowdown in virtually all thesectors, economic think-tankNational Council of AppliedEconomic Research (NCAER)said on Saturday. India’s econ-omy grew at 5 per cent in thefirst quarter of 2019-20 — theslowest pace in over six years.

For the full fiscal 2019-20,the Delhi-based NationalCouncil of Applied EconomicResearch (NCAER) has peggedGDP growth at 4.9 per cent asagainst 6.8 per cent in 2018-19.Going forward, NCAER saidthe monetary policy measuresare unlikely to revive growth atthis juncture and suggestedproviding fiscal stimulus, whichtoo can be challenging unless itcan be financed through betterrevenue generation.

“Whether the growth decel-

eration may be bottoming out ornot, we will know in next twoweeks based on the Q2 growthfigures of the Government.However, the current poorgrowth is mainly due to ademand problem. It can beaddressed through fiscal mea-sures,” NCAER DistinguishedFellow Sudipto Mundle told PTIon the sidelines of its event on‘Mid-year review of the econo-my’. Emphasising that the focusshould be on fiscal measures,Mundle said there is a need topump up expenditure withoutpushing up the fiscal deficit.

There are ways of doing it,he said, adding, “We have a boldleader. There is a huge fiscalspace which has not been used.It is myth that some say there isno fiscal space.” Mundle saidrevenue foregone is 5 per centof the country’s GDP and about1.5 per cent of GDP is locked upas excess appropriation of thebudget which has not beenspent, he said.

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The Government is workingon two policies to increase

MSME exports and bring downimports by encouraging localproduction, Union MSME andRoad Transport Minister NitinGadkari said on Saturday.

While addressing the gath-ering at Small Micro Enterprise(SME) conference at Nagpur,Gadkari mentioned that the

MSME sector has 29 per centcontribution in country’sgrowth and 48 per cent ofexport is done throughMSMEs. Similarly, about 10-11crore jobs have been created inMSMEs.

“The Government is work-ing on two policies.Firstly onthe industries which are intoexport business — how to sup-port and increase their export,”the minister said.

The leather industry has atotal turnover of �1,40,000crore of which �80,000 crore to�90,000 crore is domestic andaround �45,000-50,000 crore isfrom export.

“I have suggested them onworking on modernisation,upgradation, product designingand how to reduce the cost ofproduction and improve qual-ity, so that our share increasesin the international market. We

are working on a policy on howto strenghten export business,”Gadkari said.

He added secondly, thegovernment is working on pol-icy to increase indigenous pro-duction of products that arebeing imported. “The productsthat being particularly import-ed should get manufactured inthe country itself. We are intalks with the commerce min-istry on these two policies and

it is in the final stages,” saidGadkari. Gadkari emphasizedon three important factors —reducing capital cost, powercost and logistic cost — tobecome competitive in inter-national market and these factors have also been dis-cussed while making the newpolicy.

Gadkari also spoke aboutcontribution of MSMEs in thedefence sector.

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New Delhi: Finance MinisterNirmala Sitharaman onSaturday held meeting withchartered accountants, tradersand other stakeholders as partof efforts to further simplifyGoods and Services Tax (GST)forms and make the fillingprocess more user friendly.

To highlight the problemsfaced by GST filers, the stake-holders attempted to file specificreturns on a real-time basis inthe meeting and tried to showwhere they are facing difficul-ties. The Finance Ministerassured stakeholders that theirsuggestions on simplification ofGST filing will be implement-ed soon, Revenue SecretaryAjay Bhushan Pandey said afterthe meeting. New GST returnis available on the portal fortrial and consultations will beheld all across the country onDecember 7 to get feedback onthe new system, he said.

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President Donald Trump onFriday dubbed the

impeachment proceedingsagainst him as a “double stan-dard never seen” in US histo-ry as former US Ambassador toUkraine Marie Yovanovitchdeposed before a Democrats-controlled Congressional panelon the second day of publichearings against him.

“A double standard likenever seen before in the histo-ry of our Country?” Trumptweeted as Democrat lawmak-er members of the HousePermanent Select Committeeon Intelligence grilledYovanovitch on president’sinteraction with Ukrainians.

Ahead of the hearing,Trump also released transcriptsof his first phone to UkrainianPresident Volodymyr Zelenskyyafter his electoral victory, which,the US president said, is reflec-tive of his stand that he hasdone no wrong.

Yovanovitch deposed beforethe committee about the big“threat” she felt on suddenly hav-ing been sacked from theambassadorial position and aftercoming to know how the pres-ident had denounced her in hisJuly phone call with Zelenskyy

“I would say when you gointo a meeting with somebodyand they ask, are you going tobe leaving, that is concerning.So that probably —I don’tknow exactly when that start-ed happening — but (it was) inthat timeframe,” the former USenvoy to Ukraine said.

During the hearing, she saidTrump’s tweet about her diplo-matic performance is very intim-idating.”I can’t speak to what thepresident is trying to do, but Ithink the effect is to be intimi-dating,” she said when she wasshown the presidential tweet.

“Everywhere MarieYovanovitch went turned bad.She started off in Somalia,how did that go? Then fast for-ward to Ukraine, where thenew Ukrainian president spokeunfavorably about her in mysecond phone call with him. Itis a US President’s absoluteright to appoint ambassadors,”Trump asserted.

�#�F�/����.�����������<��������F�������; Washington: The White House

on Friday said “zero evidence”of any wrongdoing by PresidentDonald Trump was presentedat the impeachment hearing bya Congressional panel, assert-ing that the former US envoyto Ukraine deposed she wasunaware of any criminal activity involving the President.

“The second public hearingof Speaker Pelosi andCongressman Schiff ’simpeachment charade was asuseless and inconsequential asthe first. Zero evidence of anywrongdoing by the Presidentwas presented,” White HousePress Secretary StephanieGrisham said after the conclu-sion of the second public hear-ing on impeachment against Trump.

Former US Ambassadorto Ukraine Marie Yovanovitchtestified before the HousePermanent Select Committeeon Intelligence as partof the House-initiatedimpeachment hearing againstTrump.

Referring to her testimony,Grisham said Yovanovitchdeposed under oath that shewas unaware of any criminalactivity involving PresidentTrump.

“She was not on the July 25phone call and had no knowl-edge about the pause on aid to

Ukraine. It is difficult to imagine a greater waste of timethan today’s hearing, and yet unfortunately, we expect moreof the same partisan political theater next weekfrom House Democrats,”Grisham said.

On Friday, Yovanovitchwas the third witness to appearbefore the House Committeeheaded by Congressman AdamSchiff in the Democrat’simpeachment against Trump.

The public hearing of theprobe kicked off on Wednesdayas William Taylor, the actingambassador to Ukraine andGeorge Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of State forEuropean and Eurasian affairs,testified for more than fivehours before the HousePermanent Select Committeeon Intelligence.

Yovanovitch told lawmak-ers that she advocated the USposition that the rule of lawshould prevail, and Ukrainianlaw enforcement prosecutorsand judges should stop wield-ing their power selectively as apolitical weapon against theiradversaries and start dealingwith all consistently andaccording to law.

“Untrue are unsourcedallegations that I told uniden-tified embassy employees orUkrainian officials that

President’s Trump’s ordersshould be ignored because hewas going to be impeached orfor any other reason. I did notand I would not say such athing. Such statements wouldbe inconsistent with my train-ing as a foreign service officerand my role as an ambassador,” she said.

The previous Obamaadministration, she said, didnot ask her to help the Clintoncampaign or harm the Trumpcampaign, she said.

“Nor had I taken any suchsteps if they had. Partisanshipof this type is not compatible with the role of acareer foreign service officer,”she said.

The former diplomat saidshe never met Hunter Biden,the son of former VicePresident Joe Biden, nor shehad any direct or indirect con-versations with him.

“And although I have metformer Vice President Bidenseveral times over the course ofour many years in govern-ment service, neither he nor theprevious administration everraised the issue of eitherBurisma or Hunter Biden withme,” she said.

Responding to questions,Yovanovitch said fighting corruption in Ukraine was akey element of US policy. PTI

Washington: A StateDepartment official toldimpeachment investigatorsFriday that he overheardPresident Donald Trump talk-ing with a US ambassadorabout “investigations” inUkraine, according to peoplefamiliar with the testimony.

David Holmes, the politi-cal counsel at the U.S. Embassyin Ukraine, said Trump wastalking so loudly thatAmbassador Gordon Sondlandhad to hold the phone from hisear.

Holmes said that allowedothers at a restaurant in Kyiv tooverhear the call that’s now partof the impeachment inquiry,according to one of the people,who were unauthorized to pub-licly discuss the testimony andwere granted anonymity.

The conversation at theKyiv restaurant came the dayafter Trump’s July 25 phone callwith newly elected UkrainePresident Volodymy

Zelenskiy, in which theUS. President pressed his coun-terpart to investigateDemocrats and 2020 rival JoeBiden. A whistleblower’s com-plaint about that call sparkedthe impeachment inquiry.

Sondland opened the July26 conversation by tellingTrump that the Zelenskiy“loves your ass.” Trumpresponded, “So, he’s gonna dothe investigation?” “He’s gonnado it,” Sondland replied.

The Associated Press hasviewed key excerpts of Holmes’10-page statement and a personfamiliar with the documentconfirmed its authenticity. Theremarks were first obtained byCNN.

Holmes, a career foreignservice officer, told investiga-tors he did not seek the oppor-tunity to testify. Like others inthe inquiry, he was issued asubpoena to appear. He spentnearly seven hours with law-makers.

Rep Ted Lieu, D-Calif, saidHolmes is a key witness to theimpeachment investigationbecause he heard directly fromTrump. That countersRepublican complaints that theinquiry is based on hearsayfrom other officials testifying.

“He has firsthand knowl-edge of the conversationbetween Ambassador Sondlandand the president of the UnitedStates,” Lieu said. “He overheardthe conversation.” AP

Hong Kong: Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters defied awarning by China’s PresidentXi Jinping and took to thestreets again Friday, as thepolitical turmoil seeped out toLondon, where a territorialminister was confronted bymasked demonstrators.

Protests have swept HongKong since June as many in thecity of 7.5 million people havevented fury at eroding free-doms under Chinese rule.

Violence has escalated, andtensions have spread overseas,sparking friction betweenChina and Britain, which gov-erned Hong Kong until 1997.

Hong Kong JusticeSecretary Teresa Cheng fell inLondon Thursday after beingsurrounded by pro-democracyprotesters, in the most physicalconfrontation involving a min-ister since the unrestbegan.Cheng walked awaywithout signs of injury, butBeijing slammed the incident

as an “appalling attack” andaccused Britain of fuelling theprotest movement. Police inLondon said they were inves-tigating.

Former colonial powerBritain has urged Beijing andHong Kong to seek a politicalsolution to the crisis and hascondemned escalating violenceon both sides.

In Beijing, Chinese for-eign ministry spokesman GengShuang said if Britain “contin-ues to add fuel to the fire...

Then it will bring calamity onitself.”

Thousands of mainly officeworkers took to the streets ofthe Chinese territory, manychanting “Stand with HongKong” and raising an openhand with five fingers splayed— a reference to the five protester demands whichinclude the right to freely electHong Kong’s leaders and anindependent inquiry intoalleged police brutality. AFP

Hong Kong: A clean-up beganacross Hong Kong Saturdaywith pro-government groupsremoving bricks and debrisfrom roads after a week ofwidespread disruption and vio-lence as pro-democracy pro-testers changed tactics to sinkthe city deeper into chaos.

Their “BlossomEverywhere” campaign of road-blocks, vandalism and protestacross the semi-autonomousfinancial hub shut down largechunks of the train network,forced schools and shoppingmalls to close and stretchedpolice resources.

The tactic blocked majorintersections and highwayswith barricades made frombricks, furniture, bins and steelbarriers, while university cam-puses became bases for stock-piling petrol bombs and sup-plies.

On Saturday, hundreds ofGovernment supporters beganknocking down improvisedwalls concreted into the road by

pro-democracy protesters,whose demonstrations haverocked Hong Kong for morethan five months. AFP

Gaza City: Israel targetedHamas in strikes on Gaza earlySaturday after rockets werefired towards it from thePalestinian enclave, the armysaid, two days after a fragileceasefire began.

Hamas, the Islamist move-ment that has de facto controlover the Gaza Strip, had beenspared the brunt of Israelibombardment during thisweek’s flare-up which focusedon its hardline ally IslamcJihad.

A ceasefire has been inplace since Thursday morningfollowing the wave of tit-of-tatair strikes and rocket firebetween Israel and IslamicJihad — the territory’s secondmost powerful militant group.

The Israeli military saidSaturday it hit the rulingHamas in the Gaza Strip, whereAFP journalists saw the Israelistrikes.

The army said it launchedthe strikes after “two rocketswere fired from the Gaza Striptowards Israeli territory” andwere intercepted by airdefences. Palestinian securitysources said the Israeli strikeswere aimed at two Hamas sitesin the north of the territory.

“Among the sites targetedwas a military camp of theHamas terror organisation anda military compound used bythe Hamas naval forces,” anarmy statement said.

“In addition an underground terror infrastructure was also targeted.” AFP

Sacaba (Bolivia): Bolivia’spolitical crisis turned deadlyafter security forces opened fireon supporters of Evo Moralesin a central town, killing at leastfive people, injuring dozensand threatening the interimgovernment’s efforts to restorestability following the resigna-tion of the former president inan election dispute.

Most of the dead andinjured Friday in Sacaba nearthe city of Cochabamba suf-fered bullet wounds,Guadalberto Lara, director ofthe town’s Mexico Hospital,told The Associated Press. Hecalled it the worst violencehe’s seen in his 30-year career.

Angry demonstrators andrelatives of the victims gatheredat the site of the shootings,chanting: “Civil war, now!”

Morales, who was granted asy-lum in Mexico after his resig-nation Sunday, said on Twitterthat a “massacre” had occurredand he described Bolivia’sGovernment led by interimPresident Jeanine Áñez as a dictatorship. AP

Colombo: Sri Lankans votedSaturday to choose a new pres-ident amid multiple poll-relat-ed incidents, including anattack on the minority Muslimvoters, in an election that willdecide the future of the coun-try that struggles with securi-ty challenges after the EasterSunday bombings and increas-ing political polarisation.

A record 35 candidates arevying for the top post at theelection with the main con-tenders being former wartimedefence secretary GotabayaRajapaksa, 70, and the rulingparty candidate SajithPremadasa, 52. Anura KumaraDissanayake from the NationalPeople’s Power (NPP) coalitionis also a strong candidate.

Polls opened at 7 am localtime and would close at 5 pmwith some 12,845 polling sta-tions being set up throughout

the country for 15.9 millionvoters, who will choose a suc-cessor to President MaithripalaSirisina.

This election will makerecord as the election with thelargest number of polling sta-tions and the longest 26-inchballot paper.

The counting will startsoon after the end of voting.The first results are expectedafter mid night, officials said.The final results will come onMonday.

The election is taking placenearly seven months afterhomegrown radicals pledgingloyalty to the Islamic State ter-ror group detonated suicidebombs at three churches andthree posh hotels, killing 269people, seriously hitting thetourism industry, one of themain forex earning sectors ofthe country. PTI

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=���������!�������������������������Washington: Amid the ongo-ing impeachment hearingsagainst him by a Democrats-dominated Congressionalpanel, US President DonaldTrump has asserted that he hasthe right to speak and thefreedom of speech.

Trump made the assertionwhile accusing the oppositionDemocratic party of denying theRepublicans the due process inthe House-initiated impeach-ment proceedings against him.

In the history of our coun-try, there has never been a dis-grace like what’s going on rightnow. So, you know what, I havethe right to speak. I have the free-dom of speech just as other peo-ple do have. But they(Democrats) have taken away theRepublicans rights (to ask ques-tions),” Trump told reporters ina media interaction at the WhiteHouse. PTI

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&7+�.�55&"+)".��"4���'+)"6))2�&'�4��&.Hong Kong : Government sup-porters took to the streets ofdowntown Hong Kong onSaturday after a chaotic working week saw hardcore pro-democracy activists causewidespread disruption in the city and stretch police resources.

A “Blossom Everywhere”campaign of roadblocks andvandalism across the semi-autonomous financialhub shut down large chunks ofthe train network and forcedschools and shopping malls toclose.

Students and protestersoccupied several major universities around the city. AFP

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������ )5$&,.����+"&&5.�Beijing: China on Saturdaydeployed its troops in HongKong for the first time sincethe unprecedented pro-democracy protests began inthe former British colonymore than five months agoover a proposed extraditionlaw, with soldiers in plainclothes clearing the road-blocks.

Soldiers from the HongKong Garrison of People’sLiberation Army (PLA) —the world’s largest military —have been deployed for thefirst time in more than fivemonths of civil unrest in HongKong. PTI

��"�����������%��7&����������,���������-��#������������Colombo: Gunmen openedfire on a convoy of buses car-rying minority Muslim votersin northwest Sri Lanka onSaturday, hours before pollingin presidential elections gotunder way, police said.

There were no immediatereports of casualties, but apolice official said the attack-ers had burnt tyres on theroad and set up makeshiftroad blocks to ambush theconvoy of more than 100vehicles. “The gunmenopened fire and also peltedstones,” a police official ofColombo said. AFP

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India annihilated Bangladeshinside three days for a resoundinginnings and 130 run-victory in the

first Test, riding on one of the mosthostile fast bowling performances inrecent times.

The quick victory was on predict-ed lines.

Having bowled Bangladesh outfor 150 in the first innings, India bun-dled them out for 213 in the secondessay after declaring their first inningson their overnight score of 493 for six.

The victory also gave India 60points, and they strengthened theirposition in the World TestChampionship table with 300 pointsin their kitty.

The thrashing also completed ahat-trick of innings wins for them,having beaten South Africa in the sec-ond and third Test in the previousseries.

The gulf was huge between thetwo teams and it could only get worsefor Bangladesh from here onwards asthe Indian pace attack, in the upcom-ing Day/Night Test with pink ball, isexpected to cause more damage totheir batsmen’s psyche.

It was a game where MohammedShami (match haul of 7 wickets),Umesh Yadav (4 wickets overall) andIshant Sharma (3 wickets) scared thehell out of an opposition that showedlittle stomach for a fight, save seniorplayer Mushfiqur Rahim (64, 150balls, 7x4), who delayed the inevitable.

Ravichandran Ashwin (matchhaul of 5 wickets) complemented thepacers, chipping in with wickets atregular intervals.

Bangladesh may have lost a lot ofTest matches but the one in Indorehas left them with scars that willremain for a long time. An interna-tional team looked frightened in theface of relentless hostility.

There were no angry gestures orover-the-top celebrations but scorch-ing pace, mesmerising swing and thered cherry rearing at the throat fromgood length.

It created a spectacle andBangladesh didn’t have the where-withal to handle it.

The best part about this Indianattack is that its intensity is same evenin the third session as it is early in themorning. Mehidy Hasan Miraj (38 off55 balls), despite sharing a 59-runstand with Rahim, being bounced outby Umesh, was a case in point.

It was a ‘heavy ball’ in cricketingparlance that grew big on Miraj, hit-ting him on his chest and then tick-ling the stumps. It was pure intimi-

dation as the batsman looked inphysical pain as he left.

Ditto for Imrul Kayes, who got aperfect outswinger (inswinger for aleft hander) from Umesh in the firstsession. The ball tailed in and uproot-ed the leg-stump. Kayes had given upon the fight from the start as helooked nervous while facing each andevery delivery.

Shadman Islam may have been aheavy scorer in domestic cricket buthe has never faced a bowler ofIshant's calibre in his short Testcareer.

So when young Shadman got onefrom Ishant to nip back from length,he couldn't react in time to bring hisbat down, as the ball clipped the top

of middle stump.Bangladesh’s best bet, Mominul

Haque (7) was jittery from the startand survived a DRS call while tryingto leave a delivery pitched on the off-stump.

However, when Shami angledone into the opposition skipper, hewas adjudged plumb in-front eventhough Virat Kohli had to take areview, which turned out to be suc-cessful.

Shami’s guile again came to thefore when he hurried MohammedMithun with a bouncer and his mist-imed pull was easily taken at mid-wicket by Mayank Agarwal.

For the team’s oldest player (interms of age) Mahmudullah Riyad,

the issue was technical as well as tem-peramental.

A fluent player in white ball for-mat, not for once during the twoinnings did he look comfortable be itagainst the pacers or spinners.

In the post-lunch session, Shamijust bowled one fuller on the off-stump channel. The ball held its lineand all the veteran did was to offer atraining session slip catch to RohitSharma.

Amid the ruins, Rahim, after get-ting reprieve in the first session,showed his will to fight that was miss-ing in younger colleague Liton Das(35 off 39 balls), who showed T20skills when something else wasrequired.

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An extremely skilfulbunch with each speed

merchant bringing in a dif-ferent facet makes the cur-rent Indian pace unit bestin the world, feels team’sbowling coach BharathArun.

In another fabulousfast bowling performancewithout injured pace spear-head Jasprit Bumrah, theIndian troika of IshantSharma, Umesh Yadav andMohammed Shami collect-ed 14 wickets in an inningsand 130 runs victory overBangladesh in the first Test.

But more than thewickets, it’s the impact thatthe pacers have createdover the last 20 months hasleft a lasting impression.

“I think at present weare the no. 1 team in theworld. Getting there is dif-ficult, staying there is evenmore difficult. I think to dothat over a period of threeyears, you need to stayconstantly hungry,” Arunsaid after the match.

India’s most successfulbowling coach Arun thenspoke about each of thethree pacers.

On Ishant cominground the wicket to left-hander (Shadman Islamdismissal), Arun said:“Actually started workingon that variation from yes-terday. So if you look at theway he signalled after hegot the wicket, he was veryhappy that he could do

that.“Each time you try to

explore new avenues inyour bowling, you con-stantly look to improve.And this would give himthe much needed fillip toexperiment more and tryout,” he added.

It’s Ishant's experiencethat has made him thebowler that he is.

“Ishant is probably themost experienced bowlerwe have. He has playedover 90 Test matches. Hefelt that he needs the bats-men to play a lot more.

It was about him tryingto experiment with differ-ent angles. What he’s doingnow, suits his bowlingbest,” the bowling coachsaid.

When asked aboutUmesh, the bowling coachlavished praise on the“character” that he hasshown despite being in andout of the side due to spe-cific team combinations.

“Umesh showed a lot ofcharacter in coming back.But then that's also anembarrassment of riches(with Bumrah on his wayto recovery),” the formerIndia bowler said.

“You have five fastbowlers (BuvneshwarKumar) who are ready toplay for the country. Andover a period of time if youcan manage the workloadswell, we can ensure thateach one is nice and freshfor every game that weplay.”

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If professional chefs run restaurants today,history has come a full circle. In medievalIndia, the moneyed nobility employed thehighest-paid chefs and not the bazaarchefs who cooked the common man’s

chaat, kebabs and breads. Several accounts ofLucknow, including the early 20th-centuryGuzishta Lucknow by Abdul Halim Sharar, talkof highly paid rikabdars, or professional cooks,who specialised in unique dishes that left theirdiners amazed.

Shaikh Fida Ali was a rikabdar during thereign of Wajid Ali Shah, the last nawab ofAwadh. He once placed a transparent lampshadeon a table before a British dignitary. He placed alit candle inside the lampshade, then blew it out,broke what appeared to be the glass of the shadeand started eating it. ‘It was later learnt that theentire lampshade was made out of sugar candy,’wrote Aslam Mahmud, an old Lucknauwallahand bureaucrat, in his superbly researchedAwadh Symphony, which talks about life underthe nawabs. Centuries before molecular gastron-omy began to beguile us with its presentations,the rikabdars were already practising food as anart form.

Restaurant cooks, on the other hand, tradi-tionally didn’t know how to cook these nuanceddishes, and restaurant cooking has thereforealways been distinct from home cooking inIndia. This fact is crucial to any understandingof the country’s food- and restaurant-scape. Forthe first time, really, in the history of food retailin India, we are at a point where at least somerestaurant food cooked by chefs is being consid-ered more evolved and more desirable thanhome food. Experience-led dining that was con-fined to moneyed homes (as opposed to restau-rants that were more functional and catered tomass needs) has only relatively recently shiftedout of that private zone and into a public, socialone.

After the British assumed power in Indiaand Mughal might was lost, cooks who had tillthen laboured in the kitchens of aristocratsfound themselves out of work. Some of themfound work with new employers but discoveredthat these new sahibs and brown sahibs of theRaj did not understand the elite art. ChefMujeeb-ur-Rehman, a well- known chef fromLucknow popular for his high-end weddingcatering, tells me this delicious story behind thepopular Lucknow idiom, ‘Yeh moonh aurmasoor ki dal’, used to be dismissive aboutsomeone.

According to him, a chef who foundemployment after having served a nawab for along time asked his new employer what hewould like to eat that day. The employer toldhim to make something simple like masoor dal.The chef in turn handed the employer a long listof ingredients to be bought for the preparation,looking at which the employer’s face fell and hecomplained of the expense. The cook walkedout, scoffing, ‘Yeh moonh aur masoor ki dal’(loosely translated as ‘How can you, with thisface, appreciate my masoor dal’).

Used to a lavish, no-expense-spared way ofcooking, the talented cooks must have been at aloose end. Some of them and their descendantsset up small restaurants where they refashionedthe elaborate and exquisite foods of their formermasters as bites for common men. Qormas(hitherto cooked only within homes, niharibeing the street dish), dal and pulaos were thustweaked to become part of Mughlai menus at afew restaurants in cities such as Delhi, Calcutta,Lahore and Lucknow.

We find an example of this kind of shift inthe story of Karim’s, the iconic Mughlai restau-rant in Delhi. According to his descendants’retelling of their restaurant’s history, in 1913,Haji Karimuddin set up Karim Hotel in GaliKababian near Jama Masjid, contending he wasserving the ‘food of royals to the common man’.Haji Karimuddin traced his ancestry to a familyof Mughal cooks in Shahjahanabad that had toflee the capital after the last Mughal emperor,Bahadur Shah Zafar II, was exiled. The familyrelocated to Meerut. However, when India cameunder the British crown and the Delhi Durbarwas being held in 1911, Karimuddin movedback to the city with the idea of opening a smallrestaurant to take advantage of the crowd thatwould be descending on the city for the durbar.Karim Hotel in the beginning served just aloogosht, a home-style gravy of meat and potatoes,and dal to its patrons. The food was meant to bea substitute for home food.

In Calcutta, another cosmopolitan meltingpot, dishes of Mughal origin were reinvented bysmall restaurants to cater to the needs of workersand daily-wage earners. Anadi Cabin onEsplanade is reputed to be almost a hundredyears old. It has been around most certainly sincebefore Partition, and remains unchanged tilltoday, including in its use of the same iron tawaon which the cook shallow-fries Mughlai porotas(the Bengali term for paranthas), a belovedCalcutta street snack and Anadi’s signature dish.

The tiny restaurant turns out 400 porotasfrom 20 kg of four daily in a kitchen visible toall. The porotas could be covered in duck egg(which were considered vegetarian by tradi-tional meat-eating Hindu Bengalis who did notprefer chicken) or chicken egg, filled withkeema, folded and shallow- fried. These keemaporotas are an innovation often credited to thisrestaurant. Mughlai paranthas almost certainlyexisted in Lucknowi and Awadhi homes beforeWajid Ali’s exile to Calcutta along with cookswho brought Nawabi dishes to the City of Joy.The simple egg-coated Mughlai parantha ofAwadh, made with many layers or parat,underwent a metamorphosis to become thekeema-filled substantial snack of Calcutta,which could be picked up easily and eaten onthe go by daily-wage earners in the new city.

Many of these early restaurants thus cameup as businesses that were seeking not to pro-vide recreation but instead to cater to a need forcheap, filling meals as people moved from vil-lages and smaller towns to the cities to work fortheir colonial masters. However, colonialism inIndia brought with it more upscale restaurantand leisured experiences, catering to the elite.

The first passenger train in India startedrunning between Bombay and Thane in April1853, pulled by three steam engines Sahib,Sindh and Sultan on a 34 km broad-gauge line.As British India’s rail network grew and therailways began to cover longer distances(Bombay to the capital in Calcutta was a muchpublicised route for first-class tourists), therewas need for refreshments and restaurants enroute.

Several British or Anglo-Indian travellers’accounts speak of impeccable crockery, tur-baned waiters and formal service, and food thatwas fairly similar all across the railways — thicksoups, cutlets and bread and butter. It was, how-ever, only Europeans or Anglo-Indian travellerswho were entitled to travel in first-class car-riages, and who could enjoy the catering in thedining cars. Conditions in the third class, inwhich the bulk of Indians travelled, were terri-ble. A 1929 Times of India report said that theGreat Indian Peninsular Railways was trying outa separate dining car for Indians: ‘It would prob-ably not have allowed the third class passengerswho made up the bulk of travellers, and whohad to either eat food they had brought or buyat station halts on the way.’

Since the catering was primarily forEuropeans, European- inspired dishes started

appearing on the menus in these restaurantsalong the rail network — things like chops, cut-lets, omelettes, tea and custard. These disheswould eventually get absorbed as restaurant andclub food in India, and we continue to eat someof this ‘continental’ food even today. The crock-ery and cutlery used were of the highest qualityand the service by liveried waiters was impecca-ble, in keeping with the expectations of thesahibs of the Raj. Even after India became inde-pendent, upscale dining would imitate this pat-tern of deferential service.

While the dining cars were available only tofirst-class European travellers, from 1901, sepa-rate refreshment rooms for Indians startedappearing at a few stations. This resulted in theemergence of other dishes that are now part ofold-fashioned or nostalgic restaurant food cen-tred around the Raj — for instance, the railwaymutton curry (which clearly was never a singlerecipe) or the egg curry.

Till much after Independence, railwayrefreshment rooms were thought to be fairlyhigh-standard restaurants, and railway cateringwould be relied upon for banqueting needswhen dignitaries visited. My grandfather, whowas in the catering division of the NorthernRailways for some time in the 1970s, had amus-ing stories of catering to the Nehru-Gandhis —delicious anecdotes that we savoured as allrestaurateuring tales must be.

But not all history is appetizing. The historyof restaurants in India is fraught with caste andreligious segregation — one reason that mayhave prevented a food retail boom earlier in thecountry’s history. Once they started catering toIndians, railway refreshment rooms were segre-gated not just as those meant only for Europeansbut also as those meant for Hindus versusMuslims. Even water from taps in the railwaystations was marked Hindu or Muslim in BritishIndia. There were ‘pure’ Hindu meals cooked bybrahmins, and those offering Muslim food likeqorma, kebab and pulao.

In the south, similarly, vegetarian brahminhotels and ‘military hotels’ serving meat (withthe suffix ‘Hindu’ added to signify that no beefor pork was served, though mutton was) cameup as well as Udupi restaurants serving ‘pureveg’ food run by brahmins from the region, tocater to students and officers who worked in theMadras Presidency.

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Restaurants like The NewWoodland Hotel came up inthe Madras Presidency, and

can be credited as popularising theUdupi-style food that continues tothrive today. Woodland, as it waspopularly called, was set up in 1938by K. Krishna Rao, a man from apoor family of priests from nearMangalore. Its customers then wereprimarily brahmins who worked forthe government, or upper-castereligious travellers who were vege-tarians. As we can see, for so muchof their history, restaurants in Indiawere not the inclusive businesses wesee them as today.

Partition changed much of that.It rent India’s social fabric in moreways than we can imagine. Itunleashed bloody, religious vio-lence, but with the old order beingtorn apart, space for the new wascreated. For the first time, as Iargued in a 2017 article, we goteateries that catered newly invent-ed restaurant food to all manners ofpeople — rich and poor, Hindu andMuslim. Butter chicken, dalmakhani and naan became thefirst restaurant foods to escape the

tag of religious identity.Refugees from Punjab had

arrived with less than nothing inDelhi. They brought with them ahardy spirit of survival and enter-prise, but also one very importanttool — the tandoor. A clay ovenused to bake bread in villages, thetandoor made its foray into Delhiwith refugees carrying memories ofthe sanjha chulha (the common vil-lage oven used to bake breads for allhouseholds) into this new harsh citywhere they had to fashion lifeafresh.

In 1947, an enterprising refugeefrom Peshawar, Kundan Lal Gujral,opened a restaurant called MotiMahal in Delhi’s Daryaganj area, ina building that had suffered badlyduring the rioting. Here, he set upa tandoor, in which the restaurantbaked naan, a bread popular in oldPeshawar eateries, and eventuallychicken. The fowl was not a meat

that Delhi was familiar with or fondof. ‘Neither Hindus nor Muslims ateit, and initially there was some resis-tance to tandoori chicken,’ saysAnil Chandra, one of Moti Mahal’searly patrons.

As food historian K.T. Achayanotes in his authoritative IndianFood: A Historical Companion, thechicken, as a scavenger, wasthought to be ‘unclean’, and sincethe oldest of times, there has beenresistance among brahmins andother upper-caste Hindus to eatingits meat. Delhi and Uttar Pradesh’scomposite culture meant that thesebiases were ingrained in upper-class Muslim culinary cultures too.

Goat meat was prized andMughlai dishes like shabdegh,silken qormas, gola and dil (heart)ke kebab, that required much dex-terity, were made of goat meat with-in homes by specialist cooks forweddings and special functions.

Specialist cooks like Hakim in oldDelhi, whom old-timers told meabout for my article for the Wire,and restaurants like Flora cookedthese and catered to shaukeen,gastronomically indulgentDilliwallahs, both Muslims andmeat-eating Hindus like theKayasths. This courtly culture,however, waned after Partition asthe Muslim elite moved away andrefugees poured in.

The new tandoori chicken wasIndia’s original fast food. Simplydone and fresh. Moti Mahal alsotakes the credit for inventing but-ter chicken: tandoori chicken piecesdunked in a tomato, yoghurt andbutter laden sauce, and perhapsIndia’s most famous restaurant cre-ation.

The advent of this new kind offood served by Punjabi restaura-teurs was to have a big impact onrestaurant food everywhere in the

country. In Delhi, restaurants suchas Kwality, which had come uparound the time of World War IIand served ice cream and simplecontinental eats to American sol-diers posted in Delhi, graduallyincorporated this new Punjabifood into their menus. Other sim-ilar restaurants came up, also runby migrants, serving bold Punjabiflavours with tomato and cream,dishes that had been concoctedwithin restaurants, and dishes suchas pindi chana (a style of drychickpeas popular in Rawalpindi)that came to Delhi and have beenpart of the city’s most famousstreet dish since then — cholebhature.

Excerpted with permissionfrom Business on a Platter: WhatMakes Restaurants Sizzle or FizzleOut, Anoothi Vishal, HachetteIndia, �550

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Amajor unpardonable pitfall ofIndia’s pre-islamic era was itsapathy of recording politicalchronology in a systematic way.On top of that, non-stop

destruction of its monuments, architecture,literature and centre of cultures thereafterin the hands of Islamic invaders from 12thcentury, a major part of Indian history wasonce deleted, fragmented, obscured andfinally fictionalised with legend and folklore.

From 18th century onward, whenEuropean traders started exploring thecountry, they were astonished to see sever-al archaeological ruins prevailing under mas-sive dilapidation in isolated places, attract-ing no attention from common people.

India of that time was a country withlittle sense of heritage of its pre-islamic era,though the country’s civilization dates back5000 years. This was a matter of great per-plexity to Europeans who were clearlyexcited to find amazing archaeologicalrelics, one after another, with mind blow-ing engineering marvel and excellent crafts-manship. However, none of those seemedto connect with any ready reference of writ-ten history.

For instance, in 1616, an Englishmannamed Thomas Coryat found an eccentricmonolithic stone pillar at Delhi’s Firoz ShahKotla. The pillar had some mystic inscrip-tion written in an unknown language. Thethrill of this discovery was extended whenon July 30, 1670, inside a pestilential jun-gle frequented by wild animals in Bihar nearthe Nepal border, John Marshal (not to beconfused by famous John Marshal of ASI)found a similar circular sand stone pillarwith mysterious edicts on its body.The pil-lar had a beautiful stone lion seated on anabacus crowned on its top as capital.

From the local people, John came tounderstand that this amazing engineeringmarvel was called “Bhim ka lathi” or thewalking stick of Bhima, a character of Hinduepic Mahabharata. The place, where this pil-lar was found, was 23 km from Bettiah town.

The place was then known as Mathia andtoday is known as Lauriya Nandangarh.Lauriya in local language means stick.

The two major victories against twoIndian rulers — one in 1757 in Bengal andanother in 1799 in Mysore — cemented theposition on East India Company in politi-cal theatre of India. They become the rulerin almost every sense over a vast geography.This attracted many Europeans to India inthe next 200 years. Many of them were ordi-nary office bearers and yet they proved tobe extra ordinary researchers with an acuteinterest in India’s history. In next 100 yearsor so, some of them gave Indian history anew insight with their exceptional hard workand outstanding academic brilliance.

By the end of 18th century, many suchmysterious stone pillars and rock stones withedict written on them in an unknown lan-guage were found from Peshawar to Mysore.European officials working in India, andhaving keen interest in oriental history, wereexcited to discover a new light of wisdomin these mystic pillars. Groping in the dark,many of them speculated these as conquestsof some victorious king, or boundary pil-lars of dominions, or edicts of religiousnature. The widest speculation was that thesewere secret codes of Greek treasures onceowned by Alexander. However, these weresoon discarded with the logic that the pil-lars were found in places like Delhi,Allahabad and Bihar, where Greek nevercould invade.

In November of 1780, Charles Wilkinssent a report to the Asiatic Society of Bengalabout a finding of another mysteriousdecapitated pillar with similar alphabetscarved on its surface at Buddal in northBihar. This place was 28 km from Bettiahtown, now known as Lauriya Araraj. Thispillar, though not found with a capital, cre-ated more excitement as its edicts were moreprominent and bold.

In 1783, Thomas Law, collector of Gayadistrict drew sketches of both the pillars andsent a report to William Jones in Calcutta.

The report heading read: “A short Accountof Two Pillars to the North of Patna”. InMarch 1814, while marching with 34thRegiment of East India Company to takepart in Anglo-Nepal war, Lieutenant JHorris saw Lauriya Araraj pillar and drewsome important sketches.

Now two stone pillars — one with a lioncapital on top and another broken at top,found in north Bihar near Nepal border withmysterious inscriptions on them — startedto rouse curiosity of the antiquarians. Suchinscriptions on similar kind of pillars foundin Delhi and Allahabad were already beingdiscussed. More people started exploring theplaces with an objective to decode the lan-guage. It was clear that the mystery wouldonly be unfolded once the edicts weredecoded.

At the beginning of 19th century,James Prinsep, a young man came toCalcutta to join Calcutta mint. Out of sheerpassion, he started serving Asiatic Societyof Bengal as journal editor. The journal wasa class by itself and very popular across theworld. Soon Prinsep built a fantastic networkwith people across India who started shar-ing information and documents with himon every single archaeological findings.Prinsep was confident enough to think thata new chapter of history would be uncov-ered if the edicts written on the pillar couldbe decoded.

After years of hard work, in 1837,

Prinsep managed to decode the script of theedict and opened the doors of knowledgeto India’s glorious past that remained hid-den for so long.

In 1820, Brian Hodgson, a British res-ident in the royal court of Kathmandu, senta copy of the inscription on LauriyaNandangarh pillar edict to Calcutta. Thisdocument was reported lost. Prinsep andHodgson started frequent correspondenceand soon became good friends, though it isassumed that they never met. Hodgsonagain sent him the copy of the inscriptionthat he once found in Lauriya Nandangarhand in October 1834, he sent him an eyecopy of Lauriya Araraj pillar edict.

Now armed with the information per-taining to all the four edicts, Prinsep man-aged to decode a name — “DevanamapiyaPiyadasi” — that seemed to appear in alledicts. Meanwhile, a discovery of an ancientbook by someone in Sri Lanka at almost thesame time revealed that “DevanamapiyaPiyadasi” meant — “The beloved to the Godand his name was Ashoka”. Overnight, Indiagot a colossal king whose transformation toa humanist after accepting Buddhism wasknown and the name Ashoka became a cultchapter of history.

Once the language was decoded, it waseasy to understand that these pillars werenot victory monuments, but a new and effec-tive way of communication. Much to theirastonishment, it was found that these werea public declaration of a king to come for-ward in acceptance of Buddhism and histransformation.

Discovery of the existence of Ashoka,the emperor, and his gargantuan contribu-tion to spread Buddhism across the worlddelivered a master stroke. The languagedecoded by Prinsep was Prakrit, written inBramhi script. This newly found script wasnamed as Ashoka Bramhi. This was the firstand biggest tangible evidence of Ashoka,India’s greatest king ever.

Out of these two pillars, the crown-lesspillar of Lauriya Araraj, erected in 349 BC

is a marvelous piece of art. Known as“Stambha Dharma”, the pillar is well pol-ished and 37.9 feet in height. The diameterof the base is 41.8 inches and weighs near-ly 34 to 40 tonnes.

The pillar at Lauriya Nandangarh ismajestic and perhaps the second best spec-imen of Mauryan architecture with animalcapital after Rampurva’s grounded pillars.

The pillar at Lauriya Nandangarh is asingle block polished sandstone with anexcellent lion capital built in black stone. Thelion built in a seated position on a circularabacus of arched bell is covered with lotuspetals.

The circular abacus of LauriyaNandangarh lion is again decorated withimage of geese. The face of the lion is bro-ken due to vandalism. In design, it is verysimilar to that of the lion capital which waslater found in Rampurva in 1876 by ArchieCarllyle, inside the deep forest of Tarai.Rampurva lion capital is now preserved inIndian Museum of Calcutta.

The six edicts in a single block foundon the pillar of Lauriya Araraj, revealedAshoka the beloved of the God’s declarationof Buddhist teachings of morality throughkindness shown to all subjects and animals.It also talks about the restriction of animalslaughter. However, in both the pillarsfound in Bihar, nowhere do the edicts talkabout Ashoka’s conquest of Kalinga and hisrepent. This is very interesting to note.

The lion capital found on Ashoka pil-lar of Lauriya Nandangarh is one of the old-est samples of Indian stone sculptures, influ-enced by Persian archaeology, whereas thediscovery of Ashoka Bramhi is the first tan-gible evidence of Buddhism that finallycemented the existence of ShakyamaniBuddha as a human being and discarded thetheory of him being a mythological figureas per many Hindu legends.

Two kilometres from NandangarhAshoka pillar, another archaeological won-der was discovered in 1862 by AlexanderCunningham — a huge mound of 15 stu-

pas made of mud, yellow clay and brick inthree levels in the shape of polygonal withthree flights of stairs. The 26 metre highstructure has a circumference of 460 metresand the dome is missing. It is imagined thatwhen intact, this would be one of the biggeststupa of India built in 300 BC.

Cunningham did very little excavationand later, Henry Garrick did a great job ofexcavating more mounds. In 1905, T Blockdid further excavation and found a gold leaf,a female statue and a small deposit of burnthuman bones with charcoal. These findingsare common with Buddhist stupa wherebone remains of Buddha are said to befound. However, till now, no solid evidencehas been found that tells us who theseremains belonged to. Many think that thiswas a pre-Mauryan structure and may be avedic burial ground. Nani Gopal Majumdarand Amalendu Ghosh, who excavated thesite from 1935 to 1939, are of an opinion thatthis stupa is very similar to the Buddhiststupa found at Piprahakot on UP-Nepal bor-der.

Cut to present, it is sad to note that twohundred years ago, when this site layundiscovered inside a dense forest with nohuman habitation around, a group ofEuropeans risked their lives to uncover thehidden treasures of India, uncovering a glo-rious part of our history, our present gen-eration attaches no value to these findings.

Today, Bettiah is a dusty, over populat-ed and unplanned town, situated veryclose to the Nepal border. The locals holdno pride in India’s rich history. Marks of van-dalism are clear on the pillars and unrestrict-ed entry is palpable. Bettiah now hasAmericanised pizza restaurants, which getover crowded every evening, whereas it’s astruggle to get the auto drivers to take you,or for that matter even seek directions, toLauriya Nandangarh or Araraj.

It is sad indeed that we never knew ourheritage back then two centuries ago, andand today, it seems we still haven’t learnt thelesson to protect it.

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Afortnight has already goneby since the deadline, fixed

by the Union Government,for the Nagaland peace pactlapsed on October 31, 2019.Even as the peace talks areinconclusive, the good news isthat the both sides — UnionGovernment’s interlocutor andNagaland Governor RN Raviand Naga groups, including theNSCN factions — have notstopped negotiations for apeace pact.

The ongoing Naga peaceprocess, which was started in1997, turned 22 this year. Itcould happen only after aceasefire agreement was signedbetween the National SocialistCouncil of Nagalim-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) and theGovernment of India.

Interestingly, the Nagainsurgency has its roots in1918. Against the backdrop ofthe First World War, the Nagashad decided to form NagaClub to bring Naga tribesunder a single umbrella. Theseed for the unique identity wasgerminated outside India —when various members of thescattered Naga tribes, recruit-ed in the British Labour Corps,thought of forming a group oftheir own. And this Clubapproached the SimonCommission and informed itin 1929 “to leave us alone todetermine for ourselves as wedid in ancient times”.

It simply indicated thatthe Nagas did not want to sur-render themselves either tothen British imperial regime inIndia or any futureGovernment of India. Also itshowed its desire to live as theywant. All these indicate that theNagas never wanted them-selves to be subservient to anynon-native “foreign” domina-tion. This precisely demon-strates the very idea of “Nagaself-determination”, alive for acentury now.

Later, when the struggle forIndia’s independence movedtowards its final stage, theNagas under the leadership ofcharismatic AZ Phizo formedthe Naga National Council(NNC). And eventually, theNNC declared independencefor the Nagas on August 14,1947, just one day before Indiaachieved hers. The NNC con-ducted a referendum in May1951 which it claimed to havethe backing of almost 99.9 per

cent of the Nagas for full inde-pendence.

On record, the peaceprocess with the Nagas startedbefore independence in June1947. Then Assam GovernorSir Akbar Hydari signed aNine Point Agreement with themoderate leaders in the NNC,but the hard-core leaders likePhizo refused to accept theagreement. Almost a year later,Phizo, not seeing any furthercooperation from theGovernment of India, formedan underground Naga FederalGovernment (NFG) and theNaga Federal Army (NFA).But then the Governmentresponded with armed powerand enacted the Armed Forces(Special Powers) Act in1958. InJuly 1960, the basis of a SixteenPoint Agreement led to the cre-ation of a separate State in theUnion of India for the Nagas.This actually came into exis-tence on December 1, 1963.Here it must be noted that thepeace agreement was signedbetween the Naga PeaceConvention, a group of mod-erate Naga leaders, and theGovernment of India. TheNNC refrained from signingand agreeing to form a separateState under the Indian Union.

After the formation of theState of Nagaland, a PeaceMission was constituted in1964to advance talks with the NNC,but this could not produce anyresult despite a series of sixrounds of historic negotia-tions. Finally, the mission wascancelled in the year 1967.

In the midst of this tur-moil, the NNC split in 1975during the heyday of the Indiraregime. And the breakawaygroup from the NNC formedthe NSCN. Unfortunately, thishappened during the period ofa peace deal between theGovernment and the NNC inShillong. As per the ShillongAccord, the NNC leadershipagreed to give up arms. Butthen, many of its front-lineleaders, including Isak ChishiSwu, Thuingaleng Muivah andSS Khaplang did not accept theterms and conditions of thepeace deal and hence theytogether established the NSCNin 1980. But after more than adecade of the formation of theNSCN, differences cropped upamong the leaders. As a result,the NSCN broke into two fac-tions in the year 1988, one led

by Isak and Muivah, named asNSCN-IM and other led byKhaplang, known as NSCN-K.

Later on these two groupsfought fiercely, even killingtheir own cadre and damagingthe chances of coming togeth-er. In fact this schism betweenthe NSCN factions helped dif-ferent political establishmentsat the Centre to deal withthem separately. Further,NSCN-K made its operationalarea mainly restricted toArunachal Pradesh and theNSCN-IM based its activities inNagaland and Manipur. Inlater years, the NSCN-IM tookthe centre stage and held thecentre of the “Naga sovereign-ty” movement.

In the year 1997, theNSCN-IM leadership signed aceasefire agreement with theGovernment, preceding roundsof talks since 1995. The keyprinciple of the agreement wasthat there would be no counter-insurgency operations againstthe NSCN-IM and in turn itwould not attack Indian secu-rity forces. And this truce hassurvived for long.

Finally, the historicNagaland FrameworkAgreement, popularly knownas Nagaland Peace Accord,was signed between the NSCN-IM and the Narendra ModiGovernment in August 2015.The accord was inked afterover 80 rounds of talks betweenthe Government and variousstakeholders of the Nagalandmovement. The NagalandPeace Accord brought lots ofhope to the Naga people acrossthe region and they thought alasting solution would soonemerge. Interestingly, in 2017,after two years of signing theNagaland Peace Accord, otherNaga armed groups joined thispeace process under the ban-ner of Naga National PoliticalGroups (NNPGs). All of themnow form one single group andtake part in the ongoing dis-cussions with the Government.

The 2015 FrameworkAgreement says: “TheGovernment of India recog-nises the unique history, cul-ture and position of the Nagasand their sentiments and aspi-rations. The NSCN under-stood and appreciated theIndian political system andgovernance.”

Though details of theNagaland Peace Accord are

not available in the publicdomain, it has been understoodthat the Naga leadership hasaccepted the broad terms andconditions to live under theIndian Union. With this, theirdemand for an independentNagaland diminishes for now.

Interesting turn in thisentire saga of struggle is thatthe senior-most leaders of theNSCN — Isak and Khaplang— died in 2016 and 2018respectively. This left onlyMuivah to deal with the IndianGovernment for any futurenegotiations.

After the demise of Isak,who was the only Naga leaderfrom Nagaland, the support fora Greater Nagalim has gradu-ally waned within the region.(Khaplang was a Naga hailingfrom Myanmar).

However, among a fewside effects of this disenchant-ment is the wavering commit-ment of the Nagas fromNagaland towards the peaceprocess. And finally, Muivah, aNaga belonging to Manipur,might face hurdles in negoti-ating the last remaining detailsof the truce.

Today, Centre’s interlocu-tor and Governor of NagalandRN Ravi, who has been han-dling the Naga peace processfor long, says that the procras-tinating attitude of the NSCN-IM is simply delaying the ink-ing of the deal. It is because theorganisation is now insisting ona separate flag and a constitu-tion for Nagaland.

Surely, the UnionGovernment will not accept itand the NSCN-IM may handlesuch controversial issues toocarefully. If NSCN-IM is side-lined at this moment and othergroups take the centre stage, itsefforts of nearly half a centurywill result in fiasco.

Since the Naga issue hasbeen regarded as the oldestinsurgency in the country, it isworth noting the thorny prob-lems that may unfold violencein the North East.

First of all, the NagaNational Political Groups(NNPGs) are advocating asolution for the Nagas withinthe State of Nagaland, where-as the NSCN-IM wanted toinclude all the Naga-inhabitedareas across the region in theNagalim or Greater Nagalandwherein it thought their prob-lems could be addressed.

Second critical aspect ofthe truce between the Nagasand the Government is the ter-ritorial issue in regard to theGreater Nagaland. As the Nagagroups desire and demand toinclude all Naga-inhabitedareas into the GreaterNagaland, it has been increas-ingly making some of the Statessuch as Assam, ArunachalPradesh and Manipur restive.

Already ArunachalPradesh Chief Minister PemaKhandu has welcomed theCentre’s initiative to solve thedecades-old Naga problem,but categorically stated thatthere will be no compromiseon the territorial integrity of theState. “We are clear in our standand we want that Naga peaceprocess should not affect theState at any cost,” Khandu saidon November 16.

Also the Union HomeMinistry has assured thatbefore any settlement is arrivedat with Naga groups, all stake-holders, including the States ofAssam, Manipur andArunachal Pradesh will beduly consulted and their con-cerns will be taken into con-sideration. Earlier during a“lengthy discussion” withUnion Home Minister AmitShah, Assam Chief MinisterSarbananda Sonowal hadurged the Centre to to take intoconsideration the interests ofthe people of Assam whilegoing for any accord.

The core issue is that afuture Nagalim could redrawthe boundaries of these threeNaga-inhabited States. It isreported that the proposedNagalim includes 1,20,000 sqkilometre area which expandsbeyond the territorial limits ofthe North East into Myanmar.Even before the signing of theFramework Agreement in2015, the Nagaland StateAssembly itself endorsed thedemand of the “integration ofall Naga-inhabited areas on fiveoccasions: December 1964,August 1970, September 1994,December 2003 and July 2015”.This shows how the popularlyelected Nagaland Assembly isin full support of the demandfor a Nagalim.

Third, though the UnionGovernment had simply fixedOctober 31 this year just toconclude the Naga peaceprocess, it completely failed todo the same. To be precise,

finalising such imaginary dead-lines would not help bringingvarious Naga groups to agree tosome watertight solutions.

Already differences areemerging between the NSCN-IM and the NNPGs.

Today, the Nagas are on aroller-coaster ride. Whatevermay be the outcome of the cur-rent peace process, it wouldcertainly not satisfy all thestakeholders involved in theprocess, particularly, theNSCN-IM.

The Government musttake maximum caution as anyattempt at sidelining or ignor-ing the NSCN-IM may force itscadre to take up arms or mayhelp regrouping majority of theNaga tribes in the long run.Also playing any trick to dividethe leadership of the NSCN-IMmay fuel anti-India sentimentsonce again in the Naga domi-nated areas across the North-Eastern region.

The moot point is whetherthe Government can accept theNaga demand for a separateflag and a Constitution? Is itpossible to say “yes” to a sharednotion of “sovereignty” as theNSCN-IM has been demand-ing for a long time?

Precisely, looking at thecurrent political strength of theUnion Government, PrimeMinister Modi will definitelysay no to both these demands.The Government has alreadymade it clear that thesedemands are not acceptable.

Considering the ModiGovernment’s resolute deci-sion to abrogate Article 370 —which had long guaranteed aspecial status, flag and a sepa-rate Constitution to the State ofJammu & Kashmir — theNSCN-IM and the NNPGsshould not be too hopefulabout their demand for ashared sovereignty.

However, the UnionGovernment should takeutmost caution to ensure thepatience the Nagas have showntowards a amicable solutionshould not go in vain.

Today, most of the ultras ofthe region have either laiddown their arms or some ofthem are in talks with theGovernment for the peacefulsolution. That’s why a regionwhich was encountering fierceviolence accompanied by anti-India sentiment has witnessedrelatively calm and quiet

atmosphere recently. But, withglobalisation and proliferationof global terrorism wideningthe net wide, the Governmentmust not take any chance withthe NSCN-IM and other Nagaterror groups.

Much beyond externalfinancial support and armssupply from our neighbouringcountries, the global jehadielements such as the ISIS andthe al-Qaeda may pitch intosuch troubled spots to recreatedisturbances for the country.Considering the favourablegeopolitical scenario for Delhiat the moment, a global con-sensus to fight the menace ofterrorism, and friendly neigh-bouring regimes on India’seastern front, the ModiGovernment has an absoluteadvantage to deal with theNNPGs and the NSCN-IM. It’stime to wrap up the Nagapeace process.

While talking about sharedsovereignty for the Nagas, theNSCN-IM must remember:“Starting a revolution is likelighting a match; it risksbecoming extinguished asquickly as it was lit. Sustaininga revolution, however, is likestarting a fire, and ensuringthat it has the fuel to burn aslong as necessary. As an agentof change, I need that fire foras long as it takes for results toemerge. Otherwise, I risk burnout.” (Stephanie Van Hook).

However, the grit anddetermination that has beendisplayed by the Naga leader-ship is truly commendable.Succinctly, its survival for thelast 100 years bears this testi-mony. But then a revolution tosustain for such a long durationmust have to encounter itscourse of ups and downs. And,the Naga revolutionaries havefaced a number of contradic-tions, both violent and non-violent in the long history oftheir movement.

The common people inNagaland still hope for the bestas the peace negotiation isgoing on. What makes sensefor them today is the promisefor an early solution even asthe October 31 deadline haslapsed. Unnecessary intransi-gence would make the longroad to freedom not only dif-ficult but purely unattainable.

(The writer is an expert oninternational affairs)

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Guru Nanak divides our spiritualpath into five distinct stages:moral living and rightful actions,

search for divine knowledge, spiritualunfoldment, divine grace, and the finalentry into the realm of Eternal Truth.Each stage is unique and vital. Thesestages appear as part of a sequence, and itis not possible for us to bypass any ofthese steps. For example, moral living is aprecondition for the search of divineknowledge. A person who leads a morallydecadent life will inevitably see no needto search for experiences of any kind, letalone spiritual knowledge. Also, our spiritcannot unfold unless we have accumulat-ed sufficient spiritual energy during thefirst two stages. Any movement from thispoint onward is possible only when wereceive divine grace, which is not ourright but a ‘reward’ for good deeds.Leading a virtuous life is the very founda-tion of our spiritual quest. To go any fur-ther on the spiritual path, we need tomake truthful and moral living an essen-tial part of our life. It is only through suchliving that we make ourselves worthy ofGod’s compassion and grace.

Growing up in a world where moneycan buy more comforts than it was possi-ble at any other time in human history,how can we agree on a set of values andbehaviours that would provide a reliableguide to a virtuous life? We need toacknowledge that there are some thingswhich are moral, ethical, doable, andright under any circumstances. We mayhave a difference of opinion on whether itis moral to charge interest. But thereshould be no controversy on things likeviolence, falsehood, and exploitation ofthe poor and helpless. We need to identi-fy some core values based on themes thatcut across societal and cultural bound-aries. The seven core values, based onGuru Nanak’s teachings, are:

Non-violence Avoiding violence thathurts the innocent, kills, or insults (in theform of rape or other degrading actions)the victim, mass killings of innocent peo-ple in a war or a political conflict.

Truth Letting reality appear in itspurest form, separating facts from opin-ions, not using falsehood of any kind todeceive other people, treating honest liv-ing as a sacred obligation.

LoveShowing sympa-thy and compas-sion for a victimof oppression,having a sense ofjustice, keeping acharitable spirit,sharing one’swealth and goodfortune with thepoor and theneedy.

Virtue The pursuit of highest person-al morality in one’s daily life, respectingthe honour and integrity of one’s partner,taking responsibility for one’s children,catering to their material, emotional, andintellectual needs, caring for the needs ofelders in the family.

Communitarianism Being a goodcitizen, participating in electoral process-es, raising voice against misdeeds of thosein authority, using public office for publicgood, protecting the natural environ-ment, giving one’s employer a fair shareof one’s time, talent, and ability.

Equality Treating all people as equal

despite differences of colour, race, gender,or ethnic origins, respecting cultural andspiritual traditions of other people.

Theism Having faith in theunbounded love, mercy, and compassionof the Creator for all things and allbeings. It is not an attempt to define anew morality. It has not been easy formoral philosophers, who have struggledwith these issues over the ages.

We can look at various opinions, orwhat our belief system has to say aboutthese matters, but, in the end, we need tohave an objective look at how we are cop-ing with difficult moral and ethical choic-es in our life. This freedom for self-evalu-ation is not a blank cheque, meaningwhatever serves our needs or purposes isacceptable. We need to cultivate, in thewords of Albert Einstein, a moral attitudein and towards life based on the totalityof our being-body, mind, and soul. Notdoing this selfevaluation in a seriouslymindful way would indicate our reluc-tance to follow a spiritual path.

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