Govt lifts ban on onion export

Faced with protests from farmers, the government on Tuesday decided to lift the ban on onion exports.
The decision to permit shipment of onions was taken by the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) on food headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee here.
“Ban on onion export has been lifted,” union minister for science and technology Vilasrao Deshmukh told reporters while emerging from the meeting.
Those who attended the crucial meeting included agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and food and consumer affairs minister K V Thomas.
The government had imposed a ban on onion exports on 9 September to check its spiralling prices which touched Rs. 25 a kg in retail in the national capital.
The minimum export price (MEP) on onions has been fixed at $475 per tonne, the same level when the government decided to prohibit the shipment of onion, Deshmukh said.
“The situation will be reviewed after a fortnight,” he said.
While the ban on exports had an instant impact in bringing down the wholesale prices of the onions by Rs. 2-5 per kg in Delhi, the decision had triggered protests from farmers in the key producing regions of Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Farmers in Nashik district and Bangalore had refused to bring their produce to markets protesting the drop in their profit level due to ban on onion export.
The farmers’ agitation forced the government to take a fresh look on the onion export ban.

Modi ends ‘harmony’ fast

 Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi on Monday ended a three-day fast seen as an attempt to bury his controversial past and promote him as a serious prime ministerial contender.
The Gujarat chief minister, accused of complicity in anti-Muslim riots that swept the state in 2002, broke his self-styled “harmony” fast by sipping juice given to him by Hindu, Muslim and Christian supporters.
“My fast may have ended but my mission has not. My ‘harmony´ mission has united all of India,” Modi declared to a crowd in an air-conditioned auditorium in Gujarat’s main commercial city of Ahmedabad.

Modi sets PM race on fast forward

India’s next general election is almost three years away, but the race for prime ministership may have already begun.
Many top leaders of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is India’s main opposition party, attended the launch of the fast in Ahmedabad.Narendra Modi, the controversial chief minister of Gujarat, started a three-day fast on Saturday—his 61st birthday—purportedly to bring peace, prosperity and harmony to a state he has ruled for nearly a decade. But the manner in which the fast has been played up as a national event reflects its larger political significance.
Some other parties in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) also sent representatives.
The fast, analysts say, is Modi’s springboard from which he is launching himself as the BJP’s, and possibly the NDA’s, prime ministerial candidate at a time when the ruling Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is battling a spate of corruption scandals and a leadership crisis.
Using the fast as a launch vehicle has symbolic value: the UPA recently buckled under the pressure of an indefinite fast by activist Anna Hazare to bring crucial changes to a proposed corruption law.
The stated purpose of the fast, bringing harmony to Gujarat, also deals with what many perceive to be Modi’s Achilles’ heel—his poor record in maintaining inter-community relations in the state.
The 2002 blot
Within six months of Modi taking over as chief minister in October 2001, Gujarat faced its worst hour. More than 1,000 people were killed in months-long communal riots that started after the burning of a train carrying Hindu devotees at the Godhra station in February 2002.
Many victims of the riots were Muslims, and critics accused the Modi government of not just failing to keep them safe but also of tacitly supporting Hindu rioters in an attempt to polarize the electorate and win state assembly elections due later that year.
Whether the polarization was intentional or incidental, Modi then reaped its rewards. The BJP won by a handsome margin, and he became the poster boy of its hardliners, or the supporters of its right-wing Hindutva ideology.

Congress core group discusses Delhi blast

The Congress core group met here Friday to discuss the government's response to Wednesday's blast near Delhi High Court that killed 13 people.

The meeting, held at the residence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, also discussed the Lokpal bill which is being examined by a parliamentary standing committee.

Sources said Home Minister P. Chidambaram briefed the committee on progress in investigations concerning the blast near Delhi High Court Wednesday.

Chidambaram had told the media earlier that there were 'promising' but no conclusive leads in the blast so far.

Opposition attacks government for security failure

Opposition parties attacked the government over Wednesday's Delhi High Court blast and asked how it failed to be vigilant despite a bomb attack at the same court four months ago.

While opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari attacked Home Minister P. Chidambaram, saying he should concentrate on security than politics, Left parties joined blamed the government for the security lapse that led to the blast.

'Shri (Nitin) Gadkari has urged the union Home Minister Shri P. Chidambaram to stop training his guns against political opponents and concentrate his energies in tackling the menace of terrorism,' an official statement from the BJP party office said.

Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj blamed the government for not being vigilant despite a blast taking place outside the high court four months back.

'Four months back a low intensity blast occurred; if the government had been vigilant, this tragedy could have been averted,' Sushma Swaraj said and criticised the authorities for not having placed CCTVs at the court.

'If in four months, even this much security cannot be updated it means the government is responsible somewhere. If they are so lazy that they cannot put CCTV cameras in four months, then how can we say the government is vigilant,' she said.

BJP general secretary Ravi Shankar Prasad said 'Terrorists come and attack at the busiest gate of the high court, and Delhi Police and government have no information. It is regrettable.'

The Left parties were in agreement and said it was a failure of the home ministry and Delhi Police.

'I find this a failure of the home ministry,' Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D. Raja said.

'We need to probe how such a thing could happen again and again. The government should probe whether it was a failure of intelligence or failure of policy,' he said.

CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta called it a failure of Delhi Police. 'Delhi Police is responsible for being negligent.'

The powerful blast, which took place around 10.30 a.m. the peak rush hour, injured at least 76 people, some of them critically.

The bomb went off around 10.15 a.m. just outside Gate No 5 of the complex near India Gate in central Delhi where passes are issued for 

Rs.3 crore, 30 kg gold seized from Janardhana Reddy's house

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Monday seized Rs.3 crore in cash and more than 30 kg of gold from the residence of former Karnataka minister and mining baron Gali Janardhana Reddy at Bellary in Karnataka.

The CBI, which arrested Janardhana Reddy in an illegal mining case, also found several incriminating documents during searches at his residence.

Janardhana Reddy, director of Obulapuram Mining Company (OMC), and managing director Srinivas Reddy were arrested and later brought to Hyderabad to be presented in a court.

Unconfirmed reports say CBI also seized Janardhana Reddy's helicopter. According to a CBI statement in New Delhi, cash of more than Rs.1.5 crore and several incriminating documents were found at the premises of Srinivas Reddy.

It was on Dec 7, 2009 that CBI Hyderabad had registered a case under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, Indian Forest Act, and the Mines and Minerals (Development & Regulation) Act, regarding the alleged illegal mining by OMC and others.

The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Dec 14, 2009 granted an interim stay on the CBI investigation. On a writ appeal filed by CBI, a division bench of the high court vacated the stay on Dec 16, 2010. However, the court ordered CBI to limit itself to the illegal mining activity of the said firms and not to probe the boundary disputes till they are decided by the committee constituted on the orders of the Supreme Court.

After vacation of the stay, the CBI Hyderabad started investigation of the case and till now around 1,530 documents and 112 iron ore samples had been collected and around 85 witnesses/suspects have been examined, said the CBI statement.