KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress made a clean sweep in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation polls winning 98 of the 141 wards. Left Front managed to win 31 wards.
Congress, which fought the polls without any seat adjustment with the Trinamool Congress, was way behind.
In another prestigious municipality Bidhannagar (Salt Lake) adjoining Kolkata, the Trinamool Congress was well ahead of the Left Front leading in 18 out of a total 25 wards.
Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said that she is 'confident' of her party's victory in the civic polls.
The Congress retained the Katwa Municipality in Burdwan district.
The Left Front on Wednesday ruled out any post-poll alliance with the Congress.
More than 70 per cent of the voters had exercised their franchise in the polls, held two days after the Gyaneshwari Express rail disaster that claimed 148 lives in West Midnapore district.
The elections were held a year after the Lok Sabha polls that saw the Trinamool Congress-Congress combine along with the Socialist Unity Centre of India decimate the ruling Left Front.
But the political equations have substantially changed this time round.
A striking feature of these elections was the failure of the Trinamool Congress and the Congress to clinch a seat-sharing deal.
Both parties contested the polls by themselves in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and almost all the municipalities spread across the state.
The polls are seen as a semi-final before the 2011 Assembly elections. The way the people's will was stamped on the 2009 Lok Sabha poll scoreline was a lesson for the ruling Left Front.
26/11 case: US mum on Headley interrogation issue
CHICAGO: As a team of Indian investigators arrived in the US to question for the first time LeT operative David Headley, authorities here are tight-lipped about when and for how long the access will be granted to the Pakistani-American who has confessed to his role in the Mumbai attacks.
The US Attorney's office spokesperson here, Randall Samborn, said he does not have any comment on Headley's interrogation, adding if and when the US government has anything to say on the issue, it will be announced.
An FBI Chicago spokesperson also said that due to security reasons, no information will be released at this point regarding when and how the Indian team would be given access to 49-year-old Headley, who is currently being held at the federal lock up 'Metropolitan Correctional Centre'.
Headley's lawyer John Theis too said that he cannot comment on till when the team would stay in the US for the interrogation. He quipped it may stay for as much time as it needed to complete the questioning.
"At this time, I really cannot share any information about the meeting... I have seen news reports that India and US will give a joint statement regarding the interrogation," he told PTI.
The team from India arrived in the US on Tuesday to interrogate Headley, charged with helping Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists to carry out the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The team comprises officers of the National Investigation Agency and a law officer. Besides the Indian team, those expected to be present during the questioning would be Headley's lawyer and an officer of the FBI.
The questioning of Headley is going to revolve around the places he had visited after the Mumbai terror attacks and the people he had remained in touch with during his stay in India.
US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer, who is in Washington for the maiden bilateral strategic dialogue, was also tight-lipped about the questioning of Headley by Indian investigators, but hoped that the access to the Pakistani-American LeT operative would "soon" be granted.
He told reporters at a reception hosted by the US-India Business Council that access to Headley is "symbolic" of the extraordinary cooperation between India and the United States.
'BJP created ghost Naxalism'
Civil society members have denounced the arrest of a man for alleged Naxal links and illegal detention of a social worker, and said Naxalism in Gujarat was "a ghost" created by the BJP Government led by Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
"Gujarat is a state of ghosts. Every now and then these ghosts, be it of Naxalism, dacoits from Chambal or terrorism, are brought out based on the requirements of the ruling party," human rights activist and senior advocate Girish Patel said here today.
He was speaking at a gathering of members of civil society groups who have alleged that arrest of Sagar alias Shrinivas Venketachalia (35), working in an NGO here, for alleged Naxal link, was illegal.
They also alleged that the Crime Branch had illegally detained Amrit Vaghela, a social worker from Gomtipur here.
"In the 1960s some union leaders were arrested in the name of Naxalism, while in the 1980 the government had floated information that dacoits from Chambal have entered Gujarat," Patel said.
"There is no Naxalism in Gujarat, it just a ghost created by the State Government as the argument of Islamic terrorism was no longer accepted."
"This ghost has been created as all the encounters have turned out to be fake and are now haunting the police and the government," Patel said.
On one hand Chief Minister Narendra Modi had been talking about vibrant Gujarat and development, and on the other hand his administration was talking about Naxalism making way into the state, Patel said.
Another social activist Hiren Gandhi said the government, in the name of Naxalism, was targeting those working for the poor, Dalits and the oppressed.
"Modi, when outside Gujarat, says the Naxal problem needs to be tackled with talks, and look what his government is doing in Gujarat," Gandhi said.
Social activist Raju Solnaki said, "This is a conspiracy of the government to suppress voice of the Dalits and people working against communal forces."
The civil society members demanded that the government should specify about the kind of conspiracy was hatched by those arrested in the state for alleged Naxal links.
Twelve persons have been arrested in Gujarat in the last couple of months on charges of links with the Maoists.
Panel clears Balakrishnan as next NHRC chief
New Delhi: Decks were cleared on Tuesday for appointment of former Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan as Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
According to sources, the decision to appoint Balakrishnan, who retired on May 12, was taken at a meeting of the committee headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here on Tuesday. The committee includes Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, Home Minister P Chidambaram, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley and Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman K Rahman Khan.
Balakrishnan will have a tenure of five years or till he reaches the age of 70 years, whichever is earlier.
According to sources, some members present in meeting also raised the issue of the need to amend the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 to ensure that the post of chairperson doesn’t remain vacant for long due to paucity of eligible candidates. Under the present Act, only a person who has been CJI and is below 70 years of age is eligible. The post has been lying vacant since May 2009 after the retirement of Justice Rajendra Babu.
Responding to a PIL in the Supreme Court, the government said though the two former CJIs, R C Lahoti and Y K Sabharwal, were eligible, they couldn’t be appointed as they were either not inclined or not found suitable.
At one stage, the Centre was even considering amendment to the Act to allow retired judges of the Supreme Court to be considered and appointed to the post. However, the move was shelved at the planning stage itself.
Back to Bush talk: Obama 'deeply committed' to India's rise
WASHINGTON: The United States is heartily backing India's rise again after briefly flirting with the idea of a G-2 clinch with China.
Re-stating even more assertively the Bush era pledge to support India's rise as a global power, a top official of the Obama administration on Tuesday allayed New Delhi's apprehensions that it is being relegated to play second fiddle to Beijing while suggesting Washington is favorably disposed towards India's bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.
Speaking on the eve of the inaugural US-India Strategic Dialogue, US Undersecretary of State William Burns sought to dispel a raft of doubts and misgivings among South Asia pundits – primary among them, that President Obama had downgraded ties with India at the expense of Washington embrace of China, and US security objectives in AfPak region.
"The simple truth is India's strength and progress on world stage is deeply in strategic interest of the US," Burns told a packed audience of policy mavens at the Center for Foreign Relations next to the White House. "This Administration has been, and will remain, deeply committed to supporting India's rise and to building the strongest possible partnership between us."
In setting the stage for the strategic dialogue starting Wednesday, Burns insisted President Obama had never really taken his eye off the ball, joking that "India's rise and the promise of US.-Indian partnership – is one of those rarest of Washington species, a genuinely bipartisan policy priority."
He pointed out that a third of the US. Cabinet has visited India in the first sixteen months of the new Administration, with President Obama to follow later this year; Washington had followed through its commitments on the civilian nuclear deal; and the US was conducting more military exercises with India than any other country in the world.
"The only hyphen that we will pursue with respect to our relationship is the one that links the United States and India," Burns maintained.
Burns also indicated the Obama administration will soon take up the issue of expanding the UN Security Council and that India's time for a permanent membership may have come.
"We recognize very clearly India's increasing global role. We recognize the importance of reforming the UN Security Council," he said, adding "We're open to expansion of permanent membership of the Council and we believe India's going to have a central part to play in the consideration that's going to come."
Pressed repeatedly to elaborate or clarify, Burns danced around the questions while stopping short of explicitly supporting India's bid. But some officials present said there appeared to be subtle shift in the US approach with Washington seemingly more inclined towards India's bid for membership and an Obama scrutiny of the issue was on the cards.
In course of an upbeat assessment of the trajectory of US-India ties, Burns spoke expansively about India's growing role in East Asia, ostensibly in a bid to counter the perception that the US has come close to outsourcing South Asian security to China and regards it as the pre-eminent Asian power. President Obama's joint statement during a visit to Beijing in November that said US and China would "work together to promote peace, stability and development" in South Asia had rankled New Delhi.
Although Burns stopped short of describing India as an "Asia-Pacific power" as Senator John Kerry did a ToI op-ed ahead of the talks, he said, "it is very much in the American interest for India to build on this role (in East Asia) in the years ahead...and it is no coincidence that other large Asia-Pacific democracies –Japan, Australia, and South Korea – are also engaging more closely with New Delhi and cooperating more systematically on security issues."
"The United States supports broadened Indian participation in the institutional architecture of the Asia-Pacific region," he added, generating discussion that the Obama administration had quickly re-considered its assessment of China as the principal Asian power. The National Security Strategy released by the Obama administration last week too had formulations of a different tone from the primacy Washington typically gives China in South Asia and elsewhere.
Illustrative of the fact that the Obama administration is determined to correct any real or perceived slights towards India is gesture President Obama will make on Thursday when he is scheduled to drive down to the State Department in Foggy Bottom to attend Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's reception for her Indian counterpart S M Krishna and address the gathering. Obama had also spoken at the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue at the Ronald Reagan Building in July 2009; but he did not attend the US-Pakistan dialogue earlier this year.
Burns also spoke of US-India partnership in the neighborhood saying the two sides had "complementary interests on the Subcontinent," where some analysts fear China is trying to muscle in. Washington, Burns said, supports India's leadership in encouraging the emergence of a stable democratic government in Bangladesh... easing tensions in Nepal... and promoting peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka.
"Neither of us intends to outsource South Asia policy to the other, but more often than not our policy prescriptions converge," he added.
He also spoke of engaging India in affairs beyond its borders but in its sphere of interest such as Middle-East and Africa, which has seen growing Chinese influence. He obliquely twitted New Delhi for not realizing its own growing interests saying "some Americans, for their part, worry that it is India which "self-hyphenates" ... that India sometimes has a hard time realizing how far its influence and its interests have taken it beyond its immediate neighborhood ... that India is ambivalent about its own rise in the world, still torn between its G-77 and G-20 identities."
Business News
Sensex up 0.6 pct, RComm rallies
Mumbai: India's main share market index Sensex briefly turned negative on Wednesday morning after having risen as much as 0.6 percent, with lingering worries about debt crisis in euro zone weighing on investor sentiment.
The benchmark 30-share BSE index was up 0.1 percent at 16,595.15 points by 0501 GMT, after having fallen to 16,571.45, with 18 components in the positive zone.
Sensex rose in opening deals on Wednesday tracking steadier Asian markets, with Reliance Communications rising more than 3 per cent on a report about stake sale talks.
By 9:03 a.m., the Sensex was trading up 0.57 per cent at 16,669.27 points, with all but three components rising.
Shares in Reliance Communications rose as much as 3.4 per cent to 144.05 rupees after a report said that Emirates Telecommunications (Etisalat) was in advanced talks to buy a quarter of the mobile carrier for $3.8 billion.
The 50-share NSE index was up 0.5 per cent at 4,995.05 at that time.
Panel to assess costs of a unique identity
New Delhi: Every time the UPA government’s ambitious Unique ID project tries to take a step forward, it seems to hit a bureaucratic wall. Days after the UID Authority chief Nandan Nilekani complained to the Union cabinet about inadequate staffing, the government has constituted a high-level committee of top bureaucrats to iron out issues about duplication in its methodology and huge costs.
The committee would comprise top officials from the Prime Minister’s office (PMO), home ministry, planning commission and the UIDAI to look into the issues that have cropped up after the announcement of the National Population Register (NPR) and the inclusion of iris details in biometric data.
There are concerns that since the NPR is a standardised format, the UIDAI’s desire to talk to multiple registrars may result in duplication on a massive scale.
“The NPR would include every resident of the country and is a standardised format. So the need for iris details seems to arise only because the authority is talking to multiple registrars. This is contrary to the stand taken by the UIDAI in the EFC meeting earlier to consider the NPR proposal,” the source said. He further informed that since the UIDAI would have a number of registrars and numerous enrollment points, such standardisation was not possible.
Another major dilemma that the committee is expected to address is in ensuring accuracy in de-duplication. On ensuring accuracy through iris impressions, the bio-metric committee did not give any categorical recommendation.
sports news
Soderling stuns Federer at Roland Garros
Mumbai: Rafael Nadal's world laid to waste last year and now Roger Federer ruthlessly put to the sword, Sweden's Robin Soderling is clearly the undisputed champion-slayer of Roland Garros.
His 3-6 6-3 7-5 6-4 victory was the biggest upset at the claycourt grand slam since... well 12 months ago when he ended Nadal's four-year stranglehold on the French Open with an equally destructive show of force.
Soderling had lost all 12 of his matches against Federer, including last year's final when the world number one completed a career grand slam.
Tuesday's rain-interrupted contest seemed to be heading the same way until the Swede turned the tide and then seized the initiative near the end of a pivotal third set.
Federer's loss was even more of a bombshell as he had reached the semi-final of each of the last 23 grand slams, an incredible sequence dating back to 2004 when he lost in the third round at Roland Garros to Gustavo Kuerten.
Come Sunday, if Nadal goes on to reclaim his title, Federer could even lose his world number one ranking but he still managed to find some humor to lighten the mood.
GREAT RUN
"They all come to an end at some stage," their Swiss told reporters after a lengthy wait at doping control. "You hope it doesn't happen, but they do. I mean, it was a great run. Now I've got the quarter-final streak going, I guess.
"Conditions were on the rough (side) but he came up with some great tennis," added Federer.
Fifth seed Soderling thoroughly deserved his victory, a reward for persistence if ever there was one.
He has clearly acquired a taste for battering egos.
"Of course, it's nice to beat the world number one two years in a row on the center court," Sweden's only man in the world's top 100 told reporters. "I think both times I played really good tennis. It's a great feeling.
"This is a big win, but it's not the final."
Soderling will start as favorite in his semi-final against Czech Tomas Berdych who will make a long overdue appearance in the last four of a grand slam tournament after a straight sets thrashing of Russia's Mikhail Youzhny.
HEART ATTACK
Elena Dementieva will not be treading new ground though.
The Russian fifth seed, playing in her 46th consecutive grand slam tournament, surged past a limping Nadia Petrova 2-6 6-2 6-0 in a match played out in light rain.
Dementieva, 28, runner-up at Roland Garros in 2004, will contest her ninth grand slam singles semi-final Thursday when she takes on another of the "late 20s" brigade Francesca Schiavone.
Schiavone, at 29 the oldest player to in this year's women's quarter-finals, had too much claycourt nous for Danish teen-ager Caroline Wozniacki, winning 6-2 6-3 to become the first Italian woman in the Open era to reach the last four of a grand slam.
"Heart attack," was her succinct response when asked to describe her feelings. "I think in that moment you remember many things from when you were young. It is special because it is your space, your time, your opportunity."
Federer had not lost a set on his serene progress into the quarter-finals and yet another Sunday showdown with Nadal was rearing headlong into view when he won the first set against Soderling with just two points dropped on his serve.
His opponent had other ideas, though. He sped into a 3-0 lead in the second set and when he served at 5-3 to level the match he bombarded Federer's defenses with three first serves registering 220kph plus on the speed gun.
The match hinged on the end of the third set. Federer engineered a set point at 5-4 on the Soderling serve and almost converted it with an audacious backcourt smash straight out of his box of tricks but the Swede was equal to it.
Then, after a lengthy rain break at 5-5, Soderling returned to take charge, first breaking his opponent's serve and then sealing the third set with a fizzing ace, one of 14 he fired down, that had Federer throwing his hands to the sky.
Soderling ran riot in the fourth set with a baseline blitz that had his Swiss opponent clinging on desperately but the determined Swede would not relent and raised his fist in celebration when Federer wafted a backhand over the baseline.
'T20 riches killing Pak Test cricket'
Former Pakistan captain Mohammad Yousuf has asked the Cricket Board (PCB) to raise the Test match fees or face the possibility of a further slump in the rankings of the game's five-day version.
Yousuf told the inquiry committee of the PCB, constituted few months back to probe into the national team's disastrous tour of Australia, that Pakistan was facing a shortage of quality Test players.
"The truth is we don't have enough quality Test players. We are now just good at Twenty20 cricket. We are not producing players who are technically strong and capable of long innings," Yousuf said in a leaked video recording of the proceedings held earlier this year.
"Nowadays the players are only interested in playing ODIs or T20 matches. And why not when he can earn between 200,000 to 300,000 rupees for one ODI or T20 match, whereas he gets only 250,000 rupees for a Test match," he argues.
"The board must raise the Test match fees immediately to crate interest among the players and offer them appropriate financial compensation for playing Tests compared to limited overs matches," he said.
Yousuf himself was indefinitely banned by the inquiry committee for his failed captaincy on the Australian tour, which later forced him to announce his retirement from international cricket in protest.
The former skipper was also critical of the standards of Pakistani Test players.
"The fielding was also atrocious and one of the main reasons we lost the series. We should have never lost the Sydney Test but we couldn't even chase down a target of 172 runs. You tell the players to play carefully and selectively and next ball they are playing a loose shot and throwing away their wicket," Yousuf had told the committee.
They don't have Test match mentality," he said.
BCCI rebuffs Asian Games, won't send Team India
Mumbai: The BCCI on Tuesday announced that it will not send either the men's or the women's cricket team for this year's Asian Games in China where the game makes its debut in its Twenty20 format.
The 16th edition of the Games will be held in Guangzhou, China from November 12 to 27 and the BCCI's decision means loss of potential medals for the country.
"We would not be able to send our team, both men and women, for the Asian Games in China because of international commitments," BCCI chief administrative officer Ratnakar Shetty told reporters here.
"We have communicated the same to the Indian Olympic Association," he said.
Cricket's debut at the Games was approved at the Olympic Council of Asia's General Assembly in Kuwait recently and yesterday was the last day to confirm participation.
Indian men's team will have a busy time in November as they host New Zealand for three Tests and five ODIs.
This year's Asian Games will feature 42 disciplines, 14 more than what takes place in the Olympics.
Countries which are expected to send cricket teams for the Games include Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
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