Junior Digest

Patna : “Only political reservations (seats reserved in Lok Sabha, state Assemblies) were to be reserved for 10 years and the policy review was to be made after that as mentioned by Babasaheb B R Ambedkar, and that is why after every 10 years, the Parliament extends political reservations,” JD(U) President Sharad Yadav said.

“The limit of 10 years was not laid down for reservations in education and employment,” he said.

In Gandhinagar, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan had reportedly said that “B R Ambedkar ji had said that give reservations for 10 years and after 10 years do a rethink.” She had, however, later explained that she was not expressing an opinion for or against reservations.

Yadav said reservations have been introduced for social uplift and while political uplift which means seats reserved in Lok Sabha and state Assemblies were to be reserved for 10 years and a policy review was to be made, this limit was “not laid down for reservations in education and jobs”.

During last year’s Bihar Assembly election, Yadav’s party JD(U) had made a big issue out of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s remarks that appeared to favour a review of the reservation system.

Speaking at the ‘Karpoori Thakur Jayanti Samaroh’ here today, Yadav said the height of caste discrimination is clear even today from the suicide case of Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad Central University, an incident which he termed as “national shame”.

“I am surprised that our government follows Europe and America for all purposes but when it comes to flexibility in religion and way of life, they are very strict,” he added.

“If we really want to get rid of economic, education and social disparities in the country, the abolition of caste system is the only solution and now the time has come to start a debate on this issue as soon as possible,” he said.

@Agency report.

New Delhi : Nepal on Wednesday declared that Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli would visit India in early February in his first official trip abroad after taking over as the Prime Minister last October.

Nepal’s Prime Ministers conventionally visit India on their first foreign trip, but reports had hinted in recent past that Mr.Oli might choose Beijing as his first foreign destination.

The announcement regarding the trip to India was made by Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa to a group of media persons in Kathmandu. “The preliminary preparations for the visit have been completed. India will be the first country for the Prime Minister to pay an official visit after assuming the office,” Mr Thapa was quoted saying in the Nepalese media.

Mr.Oli was invited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit India soon after the former’s election as Prime Minister of Nepal on October 11. It is expected that Mr.Oli will visit China soon after the Delhi visit.

It was after the end of commercial blockade in Birgunj, the biggest trading post on the Indo-Nepal border, Nepal on Saturday declared that Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli’s to visit India .

@ Agency report.

Washington : US Secretary of State John Kerry has urged Russia to implement a ceasefire in Syria, saying its bombing campaign was killing women and children in large numbers and “has to stop.”

“Russia has indicated to me very directly they are prepared to do a ceasefire,” Kerry told reporters, fresh from a trip to Europe focused on resolving the five-year Syrian conflict. “The Iranians confirmed in London just a day and a half ago they will support a ceasefire now.”

“We will have a much better sense in the next few days of how serious each party is,” added Kerry yesterday, a day after he implicitly blamed Russia’s bombing campaign against the Syrian opposition for the collapse of peace talks in Geneva this week.

Moscow, Damascus’s main ally, has stepped up bombing around the Syrian city of Aleppo in recent days, facilitating a government offensive that has forced tens of thousands of civilians to flee to the Turkish border.

Kerry accused the Russian military of using “dumb bombs.”

“They are not precision bombs, and there are civilians, including women and children, being killed in large numbers as a consequence,” he said, during a joint news conference with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

 Hanoi  : Vietnam warned China on Tuesday against drilling in disputed waters in the South China Sea, after Beijing steered an oil rig at the centre of a previous stand-off between the countries into a stretch where jurisdiction is unclear.

Vietnam closely tracks the movement of the oil rig which in mid-2014 caused the pair’s worst diplomatic breakdown in decades when China parked it for 10 weeks in waters Vietnam considers its own. The two communist neighbours share more than $60 billion in annual trade but anti-China sentiment is strong in Vietnam, where people remain embittered over what many see as a history of Chinese bullying and territorial infringements in the South China Sea.

Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said in a statement that the rig had moved on Saturday to a location where both countries’ continental shelves overlap. “Vietnam requests China does not conduct drilling actions and withdraw Hai Duong 981 from this area,” Binh said, referring to the rig by the Vietnamese name.

“Vietnam reserves all legal rights and interests to this area, which are in accordance with international laws.” There was no immediate response to requests for comment from China, where the $1 billion deep water rig is known as Haiyang Shiyou 981.

Vietnam’s concern over the rig follow its complaints, echoed also by the Philippines, over recent test flights by China on an artificial island in the disputed Spratly archipelago. China considers most of the South China Sea to be under its jurisdiction but Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have competing claims. About $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes through the waters each year.

@ Agency news.

Beijing : China on Sunday hit out at US’ “irresponsible” move to send a warship near a disputed island in the strategic South China Sea to challenge its sovereignty, warning that America’s deliberate provocations would have “extremely dangerous consequences” to regional stability.

The Chinese armed forces will take whatever measures necessary to safeguard China’s sovereignty and security, no matter what provocations the US side may take, China’s Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said.

Yang’s statement came hours after the USS Curtis Wilbur, a guided missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of the Zhongjian Dao (Triton Island), part of the Xisha Islands (Paracel Islands)– an archipelago claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam.

“This operation was about challenging excessive maritime claims that restrict the rights and freedoms of the United States and others, not about territorial claims to land features,” a US Defense Department spokesman Commander Bill Urban said in Washington on Friday.

But Yang described the US move as “very unprofessional and irresponsible” for the safety of the troops of both sides, and may cause “extremely dangerous consequences”. He said the US act severely violated Chinese law, sabotaged the peace, security and good order of the waters, and undermined the region’s peace and stability. The Chinese Defense Ministry is firmly against this, he said.

The South China Sea is rich in natural resources. It is also a major shipping lane. Over half of the world’s commercial shipping passes through the Indo-Pacific waterways. China claims almost the whole of the South China Sea, resulting in overlapping claims with several other Asian nations like Vietnam and the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

They accuse China of illegally reclaiming land in contested areas to create artificial islands with facilities that could potentially be for military use. In October, USS Lassen, a guided missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island China is building in the Spratly Islands.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Foreign Ministry also came out with a separate statement, calling on the US to respect and abide by China’s laws, and not to undermine the mutual trust and regional peace and stability.

“The US warship violated Chinese law and entered China’s territorial sea without authorisation. The Chinese side conducted surveillance and vocal warnings to the US warship,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.

Defence Ministry spokesman Yang claimed that China’s law on the territorial sea and contiguous zone accords with the international law and practice. “The US side is fully aware of this, yet it still sent its warship into China’s territorial sea without authorisation. It is a deliberate provocation,” Yang said, adding that Chinese military “warned and expelled” the US warship from the South China Sea area “swiftly”.

@Agency news.

  Colombo : UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has reiterated the need for international participation in accountability probes into alleged human rights abuses and war crimes during Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war.

Ban’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York yesterday that the Secretary General had reaffirmed the importance of a credible justice process and international participation in the judicial mechanism.

The UN chief’s comments came as Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena last week in an BBC interview ruled out the participation of foreign judges in the inquiry.

@ Agency news.

  Taipei :  President Ma Ying-jeou is visiting Taiwan’s largest island holding in the South China Sea, defying criticism from his country’s biggest ally, the United States.

Ma departed the capital Taipei early today aboard an air force C-130 cargo plane bound for Taiping Island, also known as Itu Aba.

Taiping is the largest naturally occurring island in the highly disputed Spratly island group, an area where Taiwan shares overlapping claims with China, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.

However, the island has been eclipsed in size by China’s ongoing program of creating man-made islands out of reefs and shoals.

Taiwan stations about 200 coast guard personnel, scientists and medical workers on the island.

The US State Department said yesterday the visit could exacerbate tensions in the strategically vital region.

@Agency news.

“It means taking a stand against bigotry in all its forms, and rejecting our darkest impulses and guarding against tribalism as the only value in our communities and in our politics,” he said. “It means heeding the lesson repeated so often in the Torah: To welcome the stranger, for we were once strangers, too.”

Obama was introduced at the event by Steven Spielberg, the Oscar-winning director of the Holocaust film “Schindler’s List” and the founder of a Holocaust history foundation.

@Agency report.

GUWAHATI: Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today presented a Rs 33,687.43 crore interim Budget for the first six months of 2016-17 financial year urging the Centre for more support to tide over the state’s financial crisis.

“To defray the obligatory and other necessary expenses, I seek Vote-on-Account on the demand for grants for an aggregate amount of Rs 33,68,743.21 lakh for the period from 1st of April, 2016 to 30th September, 2016,” Gogoi said during his presentation speech in the assembly.

New Delhi : The Centre has written to B R Ambedkar’s grandson, Prakash Ambedkar and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis seeking permission for re-publication of the writings and speeches of B R Ambedkar.

The Centre is commemorating Ambedkar’s 125th birth anniversary year as a part of which it wants to publish the Collected Works of Bhimrao Ambedkar (CWBA) so his message and ideology can be disseminated far and wide. A National Committee headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been constituted for overseeing the birth anniversary celebrations.

“In accordance with the announcements made by Prime Minister, the 125th birth anniversary of Dr Ambedkar Jee is being celebrated from April 14, 2015 to April 14, 2016 and various programmes, stamp releases and symposiums are being organized.

“It has been learnt that during the meeting of ‘Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Source Material Publication Committee’ held on October 8, 2013, questions were raised on the permission accorded for re-publication of the Sampoorn Dandmay (Writings and Speeches) English Edition.

“Due to this, the Principal Secretary at Dept of Higher and Technical Education, Govt of Maharashtra, notified vide letter dated July 7, 2014 that the re-publication of the Sampoorn Dandmay (Writings and Speeches) English edition of Dr Ambedkar has been restricted,” said the letter written by Social Justice Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot.

Gehlot said in his letter that the matter was discussed between him and Prakash Ambedkar over telephone and that the latter had agreed to accord permission.

“Therefore, you are requested to kindly cooperate in getting the permission for re-publication of the Sampoorn Dandmay (Writings and Speeches) English Edition (1 to 17) of Dr Ambedkar, which was earlier published by Dept of Education, Govt of Maharashtra, by Ambedkar Foundation,” he said.

According to a senior official in the Ministry, Maharashtra government had accorded permission for reprinting of writings and speeches of Ambedkar in English on May 9, 2013 after which Dr Ambedkar Foundation had published around 1,000 copies, all of which were sold.

However, permission was later withdrawn by Maharashtra government in July, 2014.

“Since April last year we have been asking for NOC from Maharashtra government and Prakash Ambedkar, who is the copyright holder of these works, but we are yet to get it. We want to republish the English originals as there is a huge demand for them,” the official said.

Dr Ambedkar Foundation has already undertaken translation of Collected Works of Bhimrao Ambedkar from English into different languages — Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Odiya, Telugu, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi and Urdu and their publication.

@Agency news.

Amit Shah was elected Bharatiya Janata Party president for a second term on Sunday.

Prime Minister Modi home minister Rajnath Singh, several other Union ministers and BJP-ruled state chief ministers had proposed Shah’s name for BJP chief’s post during the nomination process earlier in the morning.

Shah was the only leader in the fray and his re-election was widely seen as a mere formality. This will be the first full term, for three years, for Shah who had taken over as party chief midway during Rajnath Singh’s term after the latter joined the cabinet in May 2014.

Reacting to Shah’s election, Union minister Venkaiah Naidu said that he is the most capable person who is committed to BJP’s ideology.

“He is the most capable person,he has organisational ability, good strategies and above all, a commitment to our ideology, “ said Naidu.

Senior party leaders LK Advani and Murali Manohar Joshi were, however, notably absent on the occasion.

Under Shah’s leadership, the BJP scaled new heights by coming to power in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir. However, the party had to face defeats in Delhi and Bihar assembly elections.

 LONDON : A United Nations panel has ruled as ‘unlawful detention’ the three-year period of political asylum sought by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. This was reported by Reuters on Thursday evening quoting a Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

The ruling by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that will be formally communicated to Mr. Assange tomorrow will be a major boost to the long fight mounted by Mr. Assange and his supporters against the Swedish and British governments’ efforts to arrest and extradite him to Sweden. The Australian human rights campaigner was arrested in London in 2010 under a European arrest warrant issued by Sweden on charges of sexual assault and rape.

Mr. Assange sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 when the UK Supreme Court upheld the extradition orders. He has remained confined within the Embassy for the last three-and-a-half years with a posse of policemen on 24-hour vigil outside to arrest him if he stepped out. Mr. Assange has strongly denied the charges of which two were dropped but not that of rape. He refused to be tried in Sweden fearing that he would be extradited to the United States, where he faces official secrecy charges for the publication by Wikileaks of thousands of classified documents

In a statement posted on the Wikileaks Twitter account earlier in the day Mr. Assange had said “Should the U.N. announce tomorrow that I have lost my case against the United Kingdom and Sweden, I shall exit the embassy at noon on Friday to accept arrest by British police as there is no meaningful prospect of further appeal.

However, should I prevail and the state parties be found to have acted unlawfully, I expect the immediate return of my passport and the termination of further attempts to arrest me.”

In his submission to the panel Mr Assange argued that living in a 30 square metres room in the Ecuadorean Embassy with no sunlight or fresh air had taken a “significant toll” on his physical and mental health.

BBC reports Downing Street as saying that the panel’s ruling would not be legally binding in the UK.

It quotes a government spokesperson saying “We have been consistently clear that Mr Assange has never been arbitrarily detained by the UK but is, in fact, voluntarily avoiding lawful arrest by choosing to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy.”

“The working group is the highest authority on detention in the UN, globally respected for their trials of high profile cases. The starting point is that the countries [Sweden and Britain] participated in the process and submitted evidence to the panel. I would be shocked if they played the game and then didn’t like the outcome,” Mr. Shenkman said.

Though decisions of the panel are not binding, it will affect the international credibility of both governments if they ignored the decision of the panel, says Mr. Shenkman. “Both countries rely on the working group. It would be very detrimental for them to now ignore the opinion. I would say that it is a path that they do not want to go down.”

Mr. Assange has been suffering from severe shoulder pain was unable to do the diagnostic tests his doctor recommended.

@Agency report.

Lisbon : Portuguese voters headed to the polls Sunday to choose their president.

Although the post is largely ceremonial, the president has make-or-break power over the nation’s fragile ruling alliance and the power to dissolve parliament in the event of a crisis.

Since inconclusive elections in October, Portugal’s minority Socialist government has been relying on a delicate coalition with the extreme-left to run the country of 10.4 million people.

The overwhelming favourite for the next head of state is a TV pundit, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

Known as “professor Marcelo” to his fans, he comes into the race with a popularity that has been built thanks to decades in the public eye.

@Agency report.

Islamabad : Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has come under attack from Islamist parties and groups supporting militancy in Kashmir that accused him of being soft on India and advocating peace.

The groups led by Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) chief and Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed held a conference outside National Press Club here to mark ‘Solidarity Day’ with Kashmiris yesterday.

It was Saeed’s first major public appearance in the capital after three years, showing defiance towards government.

While taking to task the government, Saeed praised army chief General Raheel Sharif.

“The Prime Minister is bound to follow the path of Quaid-i-Azam (Mohammad Ali Jinnah), Liaquat Ali Khan and the founding fathers. He should not betray the Kashmir cause,” Saeed said.

He asked Sharif to own the “Kashmir cause” and praised the United Jihad Council (UJC) which had claimed the Pathankot attack.

“They (UJC) came to the rescue of Pakistan after the Pathankot attack and it is time that we too own the Kashmiris,” Saeed said.

He also stated that the army chief was right when he said “Kashmir is an unfinished agenda of partition”.

Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman Khalil of Ansarul Ummah, Mian Aslam of Jamaat-i-Islami, Senate Deputy Chairman and central leader of JUI-F Abdul Ghafoor Haidary and a former legal aide of former president general Parvez Musharraf — Ahmad Raza Kasuri — also participated in the conference.

Haidary said there could be no peace in the region without resolution of the Kashmir issue.

“Both India and Pakistan are pitching their resources in defence while hundreds and thousands of citizens do not have food and shelter,” he said.

Criticising Pakistan, Kasuri said the country had confined the Kashmir cause to a ceremonial day only.

“We need to look ahead and after developing a consensus among political parties there should be a full-fledged assault by Foreign Office against India,” he said.

Dawn reported that not only was the conference heavily attended by workers and followers of JuD, it also showcased the high degree of technical advancements made by the group.

JuD security personnel stationed at various positions wore jackets of different colours — clearly defining their duties.

Last year, only a few rallies were organised to mark the Kashmir Day and JuD held a rally from Zero Point to Aabpara chowk led by its leader Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki who criticised the UN and the US for their indifferent attitude towards alleged Indian human rights violations in Kashmir.

@Agency report.

The second volume of Mukherjee’s memoirs, ‘The Turbulent Years: 1980-96’ was released on Thursday by Vice President Hamid Ansari.

Addressing a gathering at his book release event, Mukherjee said he did not deliberately speak on matters which are highly confidential and it was for the readers to read and come to their own conclusion.

“Many people in their memoirs including Churchill (Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) and many others have written many of the State facts but I had a bit conservative approach as and when facts will be released by the government that people should come to know not from somebody’s account who was in the government,” the President said.

He made a mention of his old habit of writing a page daily in a diary, which has some secrets.

“That is why I have advised my daughter who is the custodian of this diary that never release this. You should digitise this but never release it. If you digitise it as and when government will find it necessary to release then they will release.

“Even some time I have been confronted with but I avoided that. But I would like to stick to this view and, as I more than often say, some facts are to be buried with me and this can never be revealed and I stick to it,” Mukherjee said.The basic material for the President’s book has come from his own diaries.

Mukherjee has held many sensitive posts in his long public life and was bound by oath not to divulge any information he may have received as a Minister.

“It is his conviction that some facts are never to be revealed,” a press release quoted him as having said.

Speaking on the occasion, Vice President Hamid Ansari, who released the memoir, said the book is a commentary on our times and the age in which we live. It has several pertinent observations on the nature of Indian polity and Indian federalism which needs to be read carefully.

Commenting on the book, Karan Singh, Member of Parliament, said the book is of great value because of the assessment of various personalities in it, description of major events of the period and the light it throws on important economic issues of that time.