Muivah meets Chidambaram

NEW DELHI: NSCN(I-M) general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah met Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram here on Friday to discuss issues related to the Naga peace process.

SF women part of Beating Retreat B

ATTARI (AMRITSAR): For the first time in four decades, women personnel of the Border Security Force have been made part of the Beating Retreat ceremony at Wagah on the India-Pakistan border.

Relief over rising water level

THENI: Despite moderate showers in the catchment areas, water level in Periyar dam has been going up steadily providing a relief to farmers who were worried much about the fate of the first crop on 45,000 acres in Cumbum Valley. Storage level in the dam shot up by five feet within four days. Water level crossed 121.9 feet on Friday morning which was just 117 feet on Tuesday. Storage was 3,004 mcft.

But flow into the dam slumped to 2,541 cusecs compared to previous day’s flow of 3,643 cusecs.

Having assessed the inflow, Public Works Department engineers scaled down discharge from the dam. They have been drawing 1,175 cusecs of water only. (Discharge on Thursday was 1,200 cusecs.) With poor storage, farmers in Cumbum Valley had conducted prayers near the dam site recently for rain. Earlier, many had expressed grave concern over poor storage and doubted whether the present storage would be enough to irrigate the crop till harvest. Shortage of water would certainly affect the yield, they deplored. Storage level went up by one foot in the last 24 hours in the Vaigai dam brightening hopes of farmers in five southern districts, thanks to sizable discharge from the dam. Water level stood at 34.4 feet which was 33.32 feet on Thursday. Inflow into the dam was 666 cusecs and discharge was 521 cusecs.

Four laning work nearing completion

TIRUCHI: The four-lane project between Tiruchi and Thanjavur on National Highway 67 is expected to be completed by November, but for the construction of a couple of road over-bridges in the outskirts of Tiruchi City.

The 56-km long highway stretch is being four-laned at a cost of Rs.280 crore under the National Highways Development Project-Phase III.

The scheme is being executed by Madhucon Projects, under Build Operate and Transfer Scheme. While work on widening the highway has entered the final stages with several stretches already being four-laned, construction of two road over-bridges across the Railway level crossings at Ariyamangalam and Tiruverambur is yet to commence. According to sources, the land acquisition for the two bridges has been completed and site clearance works has been taken up at Tiruverambur.

Construction of the two bridges is expected to take about a year’s time. However, the sources said the remaining portion of the four-lane highway will be ready by November in the entire stretch.

Meanwhile, work on building a new by-pass road at Vallam along the highway is under way in full swing and is expected to be completed by October. The new by-pass road will run for about 4 km, starting from the outskirts of Thanjavur. The by-pass will help bring down the travel duration between Tiruchi and Thanjavur. Construction of a bridge across the Mudalaimuthuvari is currently under way. Service roads are being provided in stretches where lands are available.

Mobile muddle: Speaker orders DGP to pay fine

KOLKATA: West Bengal Director-General of Police Bhupinder Singh, summoned to the State Assembly on Friday by Speaker H. A. Halim, was asked to pay Rs.1,000 as fine for using his mobile phone camera during the course of the proceedings in the House on Thursday.

Unconditional apology

The police officer, who stood in the dock set up temporarily in the well of the House, claimed that his mobile phone camera got activated accidentally. He regretted the act and offered unconditional apology.

Asked by Mr. Halim whether or not he had taken a photograph in the House with his mobile phone, Mr. Singh replied that he had no intention to do so and the flash of the camera had gone off accidentally.

Asked whether or not he knew he had committed a grave mistake, he replied in the affirmative. “Do you regret it?” the Speaker asked. “I regret it and apologise unconditionally,” replied Mr. Singh.

Mr. Halim then ruled that since the DGP had admitted his mistake and apologised unconditionally, he would have to pay Rs.1,000 as a contribution to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund.

Mr. Singh would get his mobile phone back on production of the receipt for the payment to the Assembly Secretary, the Speaker said.

“This will not affect your service career,” Mr. Halim told the DGP, who is to retire on August 31.

Leader of Opposition and Trinamool Congress MLA Partha Chatterjee, speaking to journalists later, criticised the Speaker’s assurance to Mr. Singh that despite his misdeed his career would not be affected. He felt that the DGP had been let off lightly. “An inquiry should have been initiated against him for violating the strictures and appropriate punishment meted out to him.”

“The punishment should have been dismissal from service,” said Manas Bhunia, leader of the Congress Legislature Party and president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee.

Lack of kits halts HIV tests in State

Bangalore: Patients across the State are unable to get themselves tested for HIV/AIDS in government hospitals. Reason: unavailability of testing kits.

Testing has come to a halt in the past 10 days in all government-run Integrated Counselling and Testing Centres (ICTC), including Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital in Bangalore. A few centres that still have the kits are testing only emergency cases. This when the State testing centres need at least 4,000 kits a month.

“Many patients are upset. They shout at us and ask us if they have to use a politician’s influence,” said V. Prakash, counsellor at Bowring Hospital’s ICTC.

“There is shortage across the State. There are 565 ICTCs for the HIV-affected where they are tested for free,” said Fayaz Ahmed, an HIV/AIDS counsellor in an ICTC in Ramanagaram.

Testing kits are crucial because the calculated projection of the number of HIV-infected in the State this year is 2.75 lakh, say activists.

“Only about 1.4 lakh people have been tested at the ICTCs from 2002 till date. Many who suspect they have the disease come only reluctantly for testing. The shortage forces their being turned away, and 80 per cent never turn up again,” said an HIV activist.

“Each of the 565 centres has to test 500 cases every month and we were meeting at least half the target on an average. Now even that is not possible,” he said.

The shortage has badly hit the northern districts of Bijapur, Belgaum and Bagalkot. In the case of Mysore, people have been getting themselves tested in private hospitals for the past two months. Though the shortage has not affected private hospitals, many people in the poorer bracket cannot afford testing in these private laboratories.

M.B. Rudrappa, Joint Director of the Karnataka State AIDS Prevention Society (KSAPS), acknowledged the delay in supply of kits from NACO (National AIDS Control Organisation) this month. “It is not an emergency or an epidemic. People can be asked to come back later,” he said.

But counsellors are sceptical as there has been a shortage on and off for the past two months.

Babli: parties arrive at consensus

HYDERABAD: Ahead of their meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on July 26, political parties in the State arrived at a consensus during an all-party meeting held here on Friday to fight unitedly against construction of Babli and 13 other projects across the Godavari by Maharashtra.

Although Telugu Desam, the main Opposition, stayed away from the meeting, it announced that it would extend full support to all decisions taken by the government on the Babli dispute. Chief Minister K. Rosaiah chaired the meeting.

By a resolution supported by leaders of all the parties who attended, the meeting demanded immediate stoppage of construction of Babli project. It requested the Prime Minister to intervene and provide a “permanent solution” to the issue of construction of projects across the Godavari and the Krishna by the upper riparian States without Central clearances.

Through another resolution, the meeting deplored the lathicharge on Telugu Desam leaders by Maharashtra police when a delegation of its MLAs and others made a vain attempt to visit the site of the Babli project. As if to balance this expression of solidarity with the TDP, another resolution, apparently aimed at the Telugu Desam, condemned the provocative statements which threatened to create misunderstanding between Marathi and Telugu people.

The document containing these resolutions was signed by K. Chiranjeevi (Praja Rajyam), B. Vinod Kumar (TRS), K. Narayana (CPI), J. Ranga Reddy (CPI-M), S.A.P. Quadri (MIM), G. Kishen Reddy (BJP), P. Narsa Reddy (Congress) and N. Jayaprakash Narayana (Lok Satta). The resolutions incorporated the ones proposed by the Telugu Desam.

All the four Telugu Desam members, who turned up at the Secretariat, left even before the meeting began in protest against the government’s decision to allow only one representative of each political party. The Minister said Mr. Rosaiah expressed the hope that TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu would join the all-party team that would meet the Prime Minister.

Ban on meetings in public interest: court

Kochi: A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on Friday orally observed that meetings on public roadsides had been prohibited in the interest of the public.

The Bench comprising Justice C.N. Ramachandran Nair and Justice P.S. Gopinathan made the observation while hearing arguments on the petitions filed by the government and others seeking to review the verdict.

The government’s petition pleading with Justice C.N. Ramachandran Nair to refrain from hearing the review petition was also taken up for hearing. Declining the plea, the Bench made it clear that the verdict had been passed with a view to preventing an illegal act of holding meetings by the side of public roads.

The judges observed that they were in fact upholding the constitutional provisions.

The court said by holding wayside meetings, the organisers infringed upon the fundamental rights of the common man to move freely along the roads. Instead of using the roadsides, they could hold meeting on public grounds or stadiums.

The court further observed that the roads were meant for the common people as well and its verdict would really protect the common man. The organiser chose roadsides as meeting venue to get the attention of the people.

The Bench orally reminded the government that it did not care about the criticism levelled against it. It could not be cowed down by such criticism.

Taking a dig at those who criticised the judges, the Bench observed: “You described us as fools. How can you expect the fools to correct our judgment? Fools cannot be corrected.” Justice C.N. Ramachandran Nair said the court had already taken a view on the issue and he had only justified the verdict in his speech.

The Bench asked the government why it was insisting on reviewing the judgment even while judges had been declared persona non grata by the government and certain parties.

As for the arguments of the government that festivals such as the Attukal Pongala could not be held because of the verdict, the court orally pointed out that the pongala could be prepared at any stadium available in Thiruvananthapuram. Besides, this Bench, which was also hearing Devaswom matters, would look into the issue and pass appropriate directive.

The court expressed the hope that the verdict would be enforced.

Amarnath Yatra suspended for second day; over 20,000 stranded

SRINAGAR: The annual Amarnath pilgrimage remained suspended for the second day on Friday due to incessant rains along the route to the holy cave. More than 20,000 pilgrims are stranded at various places. No yatri was allowed to leave Jammu.

The pilgrimage was suspended on Thursday owing to heavy rains, Additional Chief Executive Officer of the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB) Saugat Biswas told TheHindu.

The decision to resume the yatra will be taken after assessing the weather conditions.

Adequate arrangements were being made for the stranded yatris, he added. Authorities stopped pilgrims from moving ahead from the Jammu base camp, as 2,244 pilgrims who had left on Thursday, were stranded at Ramban on the Srinagar-Jammu national highway.

“Once they are cleared, the new batch will be allowed to move,” an official said.

Officials at the Police Control Room confirmed that over 20,000 yatris from the Baltal and Nunwan base camps were stranded. As many as 7,427 were stuck at Shehsnag on the Pahalgam side, while 5,801 were stranded at Baltal. Pilgrims are also stranded at Piso Top, Zojibal, Nunwan, Chandanwari, Panjtarni and the holy cave.

Efforts are on to make their journey safe. “There is nothing to worry, all of them will reach their respective destinations,” an official said.

Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra, who is also the chairman of the SASB, is monitoring the situation. The SASB is in touch with Meteorological Department to assess the weather conditions, sources said.

The pilgrimage commenced on July 1 and so far more than 2.9-lakh pilgrims have paid obeisance at the shrine. The yatra is scheduled to conclude on August 24.

Three pilgrims die

Three pilgrims on way to the shrine have died due to cardiac arrest at Baltal and Sheshnag, sources said. Pardeep Kumar Jaswal (22) of Uttar Pradesh died at Sheshnag on the Pahalgam-Amarnath route on Thursday.

Badkar Parvinder (55) of Madhya Pradesh died at Baltal, and Suthi Lal Gupta (55) of Varanasi died at Dumel near Baltal.

Forty pilgrims have died so far.

Language gets a new face

VISAKHAPATNAM: Champa, a teenager, is happy that her spoken language has now got a script. A Bagatha tribal from the Araku Valley of Visakhapatnam district, she said a paper chart containing the script was presented to her husband, and that she will now spend some time learning it.

19-year project

Champa has Prasanna Sree, senior professor in the Department of English in Andhra University, to thank for designing it. The professor has been working on the project for 19 years.

There are about 35 tribal groups spread over different regions in Andhra Pradesh. Out of them, 16 to 19 groups inhabit the hill regions of the Eastern Ghats.

Professor Sree picked 10 major tribes such as the Bagathas, the Gadhabas, the Jathapus, the Valmikis, the Kolams, the Porjas, the Koyas, the Konda-Doras, the Kotias and the Gonds, and designed distinctive and individual scripts for them.

On the process, she said, “ Matru Matra is my style of devising a character for a language. Matru means maternal; Matra means alphabet or a letter. Each script designed by me is separate and with a distinct style.”

A combination

Professor Sree has combined elements and influences of religion, culture and lifestyle of the respective tribes, and oriented them to the sound structures of each spoken language.

“One of the main characteristics of folk speech is that it is more restricted to oral circulation, commonly known as oral literature, which is also called ‘verbal art’ or ‘expressive’ literature. Considering the sound structure of this oral form, I tried to identify them with easy identifiable symbols from their daily life. I have also used a few designs from Oriya, Telugu, Hindi, Devanagari, Bengali and Tamil scripts, as they do have an influence over the oral language spoken by the tribals,” she said.

At times, she faced hostility, both from members of the primitive tribal groups (PTGs) and Maoists.

“The Porjas are shy and aggressive people. It took many months for me to get acquainted with them. The sound from my tape recorder [when replayed] terrified them. Camera flash upset them,” she said. Professor Sree said her work was only the beginning.

“The major task lies ahead — introducing the script to the natives. Nearly 132 tribal volunteers, supervised by 10 motivators, are now shouldering the responsibility of teaching these alphabets in the primary schools, to women of self-help groups and at adult education centres in 167 villages.”

Global acclaim

Globally, her work has been widely acknowledged and appreciated by Tim Brookes, creator and director of endangered alphabets project, Champlain College, Vermont, and Simon Ager, director of Omniglot, a United Kingdom-based researcher in writing systems and languages of the world.