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‘Mini Taj’ maker dies in UP hit-and-run

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 Faizul Hasan Qadri, who hit headlines for building a ‘mini-Taj Mahal’ in memory of his late wife in Bulandshahr district of Uttar Pradesh, has been killed in a road accident, police said on Saturday.

Qadri sustained serious injuries in the late Thursday hit-and-run incident in Kesar Kalan. The 83-year-old retired Postmaster was admitted in hospital where he died on Friday.

He had begun constructing his mini Taj Mahal in 2012 in memory of Taja Mulli Bibi. The couple was married in 1953.

He could not complete his ‘monument of love’ as he spent all his savings in the basic structure.

After the news of the ‘Taj Mahal’ spread, the then Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav summoned Qadri to Lucknow and offered him funds to complete the structure and get the marble work done.

Qadri politely declined the offer and asked the Samajwadi Party leader to establish a girls inter-college in his village instead.

The college is up and running and even was donated some land by Qadri.

His relatives said the former Postmaster had saved Rs two lakh and was set to purchase marble from Jaipur to end his edifice, but destiny intervened.

His relatives now plan to bury him alongside his wife, just like Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was by his Mumtaz.

They would also complete Qadri’s Taj Mahal in a grand manner. The family has refused post-mortem of his body.

 

IANS

BJP government greedy, wants to take away RBI reserves: Chidambaram  

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Congress leader and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Friday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government is greedy and wants to take away the central bank’s reserves.

“This government is greedy. No government in the past has asked for the reserve with the Reserve Bank of India,” said Chidambaram, who was in Guwahati to hold consultations for preparation of the party’s manifesto for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

He said that the RBI is not a limited company. “The RBI has a board of directors, but that cannot be compared with any private or public company. It is the central bank. The BJP government is trying to see the RBI as a limited company. They hardly have the understanding of the central Banks’s role and function,” he said.

Chidambaram said that the Centre was eyeing the RBI’s reserves, for it did not get anything out of demonetisation as most of the money came back to the banks.

Asked about the RBI’s board meeting scheduled for November 19, he said that even if the RBI Governor (Urjit Patel) resigns or complies with the government order of giving money from the reserves, the result will be catastrophic, and even worse than demonetisation.

“My information says that the government may force to pass a resolution at the RBI board meeting to transfer a large sum of money from the reserves. Two scenarios can emerge if such a situation happens. Either the RBI gives in or the Governor resigns. Both the situations will be a disaster and will have catastrophic impact on the country’s economy,” he warned.

“The Congress party believes that the RBI has the mandate to maintain monetary stability and nothing should be done to impair its ability to do so. The immediate goal of the government is to lay its hands on the reserves of the RBI and appropriate a sum of at least one lakh crore to meet its fiscal deficit target and to increase spending in an election year,” he added.

Earlier on Friday, the government dismissed reports that it had sought Rs 3.6 lakh crore from the RBI reserves. Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said that there was no such proposal and that the country’s fiscal deficit target was on track.

“Lot of misinformed speculation is going around in media. Government’s fiscal math is completely on track. There is no proposal to ask RBI to transfer (Rs) 3.6 or (Rs) 1 lakh crore, as speculated,” Garg said in a tweet.

 

IANS

The lesser known Maulana who sought ‘United India’ to the bitter end

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 Happens to be Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s birth anniversary, forgotten this year as it has been in the past. The Maulana is an inconvenient name to remember at a time when Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel towers above every national leader.

When former Vice President Hamid Ansari released the Hindi, Urdu and Malayalam translations of my book “Being the Other: The Muslim in India”, he quoted from a speech Patel had made on August 11, 1947, four days before Partition. Some TV channels went ballistic. The quote is actually quite well known: “To be United, India would have to be divided.” Patel was tracing how the consensus to “divide” India came about. No, but Ansari should not upturn conventional wisdom that “Jinnah was the culprit”. If it were the evil Jinnah who created Pakistan, it follows that the CWC, the Iron man included, were busting their guts to keep a United India and Jinnah outfoxed them.

Mountbatten’s June 3, 1947, plan sought a division of India largely along religious lines. The Congress Working Committee (CWC) swallowed the plan hook, line and sinker. Of the two Muslim leaders present at the CWC, Frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan wailed: “You have thrown us to the wolves.” Maulana Azad smoked a box of cigarettes and said nothing. Supposing the two, vehemently opposed to Partition, had walked out of the meeting in protest, what interpretation would future historians have placed on the remaining CWC composition?

Jawaharlal Nehru valued Azad for his intellect. Some of Nehru’s admiration for Azad comes across even in his intimate letters from Ahmednagar jail to his daughter Indira. “Maulana is an extraordinarily interesting person. The more I know him, and I have known him now for over 21 years, the more I find in him. He has an astonishing memory and his information on a variety of subjects is encyclopedic. He is soaked in the lore of the middle ages… he has Plato and Aristotle on his fingertips and is perfectly at home at Cordoba of Arab Spain… It seems such a pity that with such vast learning and a very unusually keen mind and a powerful style, he should have written so little.”

At one point Nehru reveals he is keen to learn Sanskrit from Acharya Narendra Dev and Persian from Azad. Nehru then gives vent to his afterthought: “But Azad is too erudite.”

The paradox is that despite such admiration for Azad, Nehru still found time to let him down repeatedly. It was a delicate package, that Azad, as Congress President, had negotiated with the Cabinet Mission and Viceroy Lord Wavell to keep India united. Nehru torpedoed it by raising contentious issues at a press conference in Bombay (Mumbai).

Azad was shocked when the entire CWC accepted the Mountbatten plan without fuss. “Partition over my body” kind of sham was instantly abandoned. In fact, Rajendra Prasad came down strongly on a suggestion Mountbatten and Azad had made: That a United Armed Forces for a short period would obviate the massacres which eventually followed. “Not for a day” after August 15, 1947, would the Congress government tolerate a United Army, Prasad thundered. He wanted Partition to be sealed irreversibly. It was no concern of the CWC that an Army, abruptly separated along sectarian lines, would be sucked into the horrendous violence that followed as a partisan force on both sides.

Mahatma Gandhi’s Secretary Mahadev Desai wrote about Azad: “There was no other in the Congress to match Maulana’s insights and wise counsel.” Stalwarts like C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru deferred to him on many issues. On his wisdom and erudition, Sarojini Naidu was at her wittiest, “Maulana was 50 years old when he was born.”

It was this vast reservoir of wisdom that Nehru relied on when Home Minister Kailash Nath Katju decided to bar foreign missionaries in India, “if evangelism is their purpose”. The statement created a furore among Christian missionaries. Nehru singled out Maulana to handle the situation. The letter that Azad wrote to Cardinal Valerian Gracias is reproduced on page 79 of my book, “Being the Other”. It is a masterpiece of reasoning and logic on the question of conversion. Azad had settled the issue over 60 years ago.

He made a distinction between religious conversion, which requires deep reflection on issues of theology and what the constitution calls “mass conversions”. The latter is a response to a social and political provocation.

It is possible that Maulana was not suited to the rough and tumble of politics which demands fickleness generally dressed up as flexibility. Maulana was incapable of deviating from his core principles — Hindu-Muslim unity as the bedrock of Indian nationalism.

Dr. Rajesh Kumar Pruthi, Director General of the National Archives, published a rare collection of the Maulana’s letters in Urdu. The preface by Dr. Pruthi is by itself quite masterly. As evidence of Maulana’s consistency he cites a passage from the Maulana’s address as President of the Congress at a session held in Delhi on 15 December, 1923:

“If an angel came down from heaven and, from the height of the Qutub Minar, announced that if the Congress abandons its platform of Hindu-Muslim Unity, Swaraj or independence would be granted in 24 hours, I would turn my back on that Swaraj. Shunning it for the cost being demanded may delay Swaraj and harm India’s interest for a short period but abandoning our unity for good as a price for freedom will be a blot on all humanity.”

He maintained a decent silence on colleagues who had “blotted humanity”. But he did not cheat history. He kept away in the National Archives 30 pages which expose the men with feet of clay who faltered in the last lap towards freedom. Partition, he wrote in a press note, “would be unadulterated Hindu Raj”. These pages were made public in 1988 when he and all his colleagues had died. He may have had grievances with Nehru but that did not prevent him from dedicating “India Wins Freedom” to “Jawaharlal, Friend and Comrade”.

IANS

 

BJP government greedy, wants to take away RBI reserves: Chidambaram

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Congress leader and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Friday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP government is greedy and wants to take away the central bank’s reserves.

“This government is greedy. No government in the past has asked for the reserve with the Reserve Bank of India,” said Chidambaram, who was in Guwahati to hold consultations for preparation of the party’s manifesto for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

He said that the RBI is not a limited company. “The RBI has a board of directors, but that cannot be compared with any private or public company. It is the central bank. The BJP government is trying to see the RBI as a limited company. They hardly have the understanding of the central Banks’s role and function,” he said.

Chidambaram said that the Centre was eyeing the RBI’s reserves, for it did not get anything out of demonetisation as most of the money came back to the banks.

Asked about the RBI’s board meeting scheduled for November 19, he said that even if the RBI Governor (Urjit Patel) resigns or complies with the government order of giving money from the reserves, the result will be catastrophic, and even worse than demonetisation.

“My information says that the government may force to pass a resolution at the RBI board meeting to transfer a large sum of money from the reserves. Two scenarios can emerge if such a situation happens. Either the RBI gives in or the Governor resigns. Both the situations will be a disaster and will have catastrophic impact on the country’s economy,” he warned.

“The Congress party believes that the RBI has the mandate to maintain monetary stability and nothing should be done to impair its ability to do so. The immediate goal of the government is to lay its hands on the reserves of the RBI and appropriate a sum of at least one lakh crore to meet its fiscal deficit target and to increase spending in an election year,” he added.

Earlier on Friday, the government dismissed reports that it had sought Rs 3.6 lakh crore from the RBI reserves. Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said that there was no such proposal and that the country’s fiscal deficit target was on track.

“Lot of misinformed speculation is going around in media. Government’s fiscal math is completely on track. There is no proposal to ask RBI to transfer (Rs) 3.6 or (Rs) 1 lakh crore, as speculated,” Garg said in a tweet.

 

(IANS)

Probably time has come to burn PM Modi alive

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Former Karnataka Minister T B Jayachandra on Friday sparked a row by raking up Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement during demonetisation that he would not get bogged down even if he was burnt alive for the decision, drawing the BJP’s ire.

The Bharatiya Janata Party dubbed the Congress leader’s remark “outrageous and despicable.”

“The prime minister had sought 50 days time to set things right (after demonetisation). He had asked people to set him on fire alive if he failed to overcome this test ..probably the time has come to burn him alive,” Jayachandra said Friday at Tumkuru.

He was taking part in a protest marking the second anniversary of demonetisation of high currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 two years ago.

Making an emotional appeal at a function in Goa in November 2016, Modi had said there were certain forces up against him that may not let him live and destroy him due to his decision on demonetisation. He had asserted that he would not get bogged down even if he was burnt alive.

The former minister said if the prime minister has any faith in democracy, he should step down immediately.

The BJP’s Karnataka unit president B S Yeddyurappa condemned the statement, saying “This is absolutely an outrageous statement by any standard and by any parameter.

What is shocking is that such a despicable statement has come from Jayachandra, who had functioned as the law and parliamentary affairs minister of our state.”

Yeddyurappa wanted to know if Congress state unit president Dinesh Gundu Rao endorsed Jayachandra’s statement.

 

PTI

 

Several Killed, 45 wounded in Somalia car-bomb attacks

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Array

Three car-bomb explosions on Friday outside a luxury hotel in the Somali capital left at least 14 people dead and 45 others wounded, media reported.

The al-Shabaab terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attacks, which took place during the afternoon rush hour on a busy street near a checkpoint that controls access to Mogadishu International Airport, reports Efe news.

Mohamed Abshir from Amin ambulance service told Efe that 14 people were killed, while the ambulance service said on Twitter that it had transported 45 injured people to hospitals.

The first two blasts took place almost simultaneously at 4 p.m. outside the Sahafi hotel, while the third came 20 minutes later in the garage of the adjacent Hayat hotel.

Several terrorists were killed trying to enter the Sahafi, security sources told Radio Dalsan.

The two hotels are located just a few meters away from Criminal Investigation Division headquarters in an area of restaurants and bars.

Among the dead was Sahafi owner Abdifatah Abdirashid, whose father was killed in a similar attack on the same hotel three years ago, according to Radio Dalsan.

 

IANS

US denies pursuing containment policy with China

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 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that Washington was not trying to contain China, but rather to persuade Beijing to adjust its approach in matters related to military expansion and respect for human rights.

“The US is not pursuing a cold war or containment policy with China. Rather, we want to make sure China acts responsibly and fairly in support of security and prosperity in each of our two countries,” Pompeo told a press conference at the State Department on Friday.

He appeared with Defence Secretary James Mattis; the director of the Office of Foreign Affairs of the Communist Party of China, Yang Jiechi; and Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe following their second round of talks about security and diplomacy, reports Efe news.

The conversations were held in an atmosphere of responsibility and respect, according to Pompeo, who acknowledged that China and the US face “significant differences between our nations” in such areas as trade, due to the mutual imposition of billions of dollars in tariffs.

In that regard, Yang believed their differences can be settled through dialogue.

“These issues,” Yang said, “can be resolved through dialogue and consultation. A trade war, instead of leading to any solution, will only end up hurting both sides and the global economy.”

The representatives of the US and China agreed on the need to work together toward the “denuclearization” of North Korea, a regional ally of Beijing, but clashed on such subjects as Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Pompeo expressed concern about the building of military installations on artificial islands and reefs of the South China Sea, while Yang asserted that Beijing has sovereignty over those waters even though other countries, including some allies of Washington, reject China’s claims.

On the other hand, Pompeo demanded that China respect the human rights of Buddhists and Muslims, for which Yang told the US not to interfere in “China’s internal affairs”.

The talks held on Friday in Washington were meant to prepare the way for a meeting of President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping later this month at the G20 summit in Argentina.

IANS

India makes climate change case for nuclear power, suggests promoting it

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India has declared that nuclear energy is vital for meeting the challenge of climate change and suggested supporting efforts to promote its public acceptance amid growing opposition to nuclear power and plans by some countries to phase out their atomic generation plants.

“Nuclear power remains an important option to meet the challenges of increased energy demand, address concerns about climate change, redress volatile fossil fuel prices and ensure security of the energy supply,” Sandeep Kumar Bayyapu, a first secretary in India’s UN Mission told the General Assembly on Friday.

Therefore, he said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should support efforts by countries to build public acceptance of nuclear energy and continue to help them start or expand nuclear energy programmes.

Nuclear reactors do not produce greenhouse gases like power plants using coal and, therefore, can increase electricity generation without contributing to climate change.

They can provide a steady supply of electricity because unlike solar and wind power sources, nuclear plants can operate when there is no sun or wind and are not affected by fluctuations in water availability like hydroelectric plants.

To meet one of the points of opposition to nuclear power plants, Bayyapu advocated building advanced fission reactors, including fast reactors, that use nuclear fuel more efficiently and reduce radioactive waste.

While speaking during the debate on the IAEA’s annual report, he presented thorium-based technologies as solutions to other objections to nuclear plants.

Bayyapu said that thorium-based fuel cycles and technologies are inherently less susceptible to be used for weapons production and can also provide enhanced passive safety features.

According to the Department of Atomic Energy, India is planning to more than treble its nuclear electricity generation from the current 6,780 megawatts to 22,480 megawatts by 2031.

Of the nine reactors under construction, one is an advanced fast breeder reactor with 500 megawatt capcity being built at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu.

The fast breeder reactor uses thorium to create uranium 233 for power generation.

A test reactor of the fast breeder type is already operating in Kalpakkam.

Thorium is more abundantly found in India compared to uranium, for which the country has to rely on imports.

India has seen opposition to nuclear power plants, especially the one at Kudankulam in southern Tamil Nadu.

Many countries in Europe are moving away from nuclear energy citing its risks.

Germany is committed to phasing out all nuclear power plants by 2022 and Belgium, Italy and Switzerland also plan to shut theirs down.

 

IANS

UK police officer jailed for killing Indian-origin shopkeeper

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 A police officer in the UK has been jailed for 18 months for causing the death of an Indian-origin shopkeeper by dangerous driving.

Balvinder Singh, 59, died in hospital from his injuries after the van he was driving was hit by off-duty Jason Bannister’s vehicle in Wolverhampton in December 2016.

Bannister, 45, of Wombourne, was treated for minor injuries following the collision and had pleaded guilty in a hearing in September.

He was sentenced to 18 months of imprisonment by a Birmingham Crown Court on Friday, the BBC reported.

Bannister is currently suspended from duty. The Staffordshire police said they would launch misconduct proceedings now the court case had concluded.

Bannister was also banned from driving for three years and nine months. He will be required to complete an extended driving test in order to regain his licence, the report said.

Bengaluru court declines anticipatory bail to mining baron Janardhana Reddy

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 A city court on Friday declined to grant anticipatory bail to Karnatakaa’s mining baron Gali Janardhana Reddy, who fears arrest by the state’s Central Crime Branch (CCB) in a Ponzi scheme-related case.

“Additional Sessions Court Judge Vidyadara Shirahatti said he cannot grant anticipatory bail to my client (Reddy) without hearing the prosecution side and adjourned the case to Monday (November 13),” Reddy’s senior counsel C.H. Hanumantharaya told reporters here.

Though the CCB summoned Reddy for interrogation in the Ponzi scam, in which he is accused of shielding its perpetrators from being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Hanumantharaya alleged that the CCB had wrongly framed his client in the case, as his (Reddy’s) name was not in the FIR filed against Ambidant Marketing Ltd suspected to be behind the scam.

When the judge asked the counsel the urgency in seeking anticipatory bail as Reddy was legally bound to appear before the CCB in response to its summons, the counsel said the police was searching for Reddy and raided his residence in the city and Ballari on Wednesday and Thursday in connection with the scam.

Reddy, a former BJP Minister in the state, is on bail in the multi-crore mining scam that rocked the southern state for over a decade from 2002-12.

“The judge has issued notice to the prosecutor for filing objections, if any, against Reddy’s petition for anticipatory bail,” said his counsel.

Reddy’s counsel also sought a court directive to the CCB for changing the investigation officers, as the Ponzi case does not come under their jurisdiction.

The ED on Thursday charged Ambidant owners Syed Fareed Ahmed and his son Syed Afaq Ahmed with running a potential Ponzi scheme offering huge interest to investors in the name of ‘Islamic banking’.

“Investigation revealed that the city-based Ambidant Marketing Ltd has been operating a potential Ponzi scheme and duping hundreds of investors in the name of Islamic banking and ‘Halal’ investment,” the ED said in a statement here.

Since its inception on December 20, 2016, the company is alleged to have received a whopping Rs 954 crore as investments under Haj/Umrah and Ultimate plans.

Interrogation of the Ahmeds (father and son) revealed that the duo had allegedly gifted Reddy 57 kg gold valued at Rs 18 crore through his personal assistant Ali Khan for bailing them out of the cases from the police and the ED.

 

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