Bullets amid kids and blood donors | |
| A STAFF REPORTER | |
Habra (North 24-Parganas), Dec. 20: Children wept in panic and blood donors ran helter-skelter as gunmen fired wildly at a drawing contest-cum-blood camp here today, killing two men and proving that no place was immune from political violence in Bengal. One of the dead being a Congress activist and the other a Trinamul Congress worker, fingers were immediately pointed towards the CPM, which denied any role in the attack during which four bombs too were hurled. Police were trying to verify claims that a young girl had taken a bullet hit while confirming gunshot and splinter injuries to five people. Links were quickly drawn to the campus violence raging across the state — on which the chief minister dwelt at length today — which means the stakes involved not Writers' Buildings but a college union room in this district town 60km from Calcutta. Trinamul Chhatra Parishad chief Baishanar Chatterjee said the two slain men — party activist Ranjit Roy and the Congress's Bapi Choudhury — had been working together to defeat the CPM student wing, SFI, at next month's elections at Habra Chaitanya College. "The CPM hired the killers," he said. The gunmen came around 12.45pm, just after Trinamul civic chief Tapati Dutta and local CPM MLA Pranab Bhattacharya had left, having spent 15 minutes sharing the dais at the inauguration. Seven people were donating blood and about 30 children, mostly aged six to 12, sat making sketches in a field near the clubhouse of organisers Yuva Sanskritik Chakra. The attackers, who came on three motorbikes, tried to drag away Congress activist Bapi, a rice exporter in his early 30s, at gunpoint, said blood camp president and local Trinamul leader Kanchan Ghosh. Ranjit, 24, intervened and was shot in the head. The gunmen began firing at random and exploded bombs, during which Bapi took a bullet in the chest, Ghosh said. "We ran for our lives. Those who were giving blood also ran." Class I student Payel Roy was drawing a landscape when she heard one loud explosion after another. "I was afraid and began crying. I was looking around desperately for my father. The children around me too were crying," she said. Father Prafulla, waiting with his bicycle at one side of the field, immediately ran towards her. "I picked her up and ran, leaving my cycle behind," he said. Ranjit was declared dead on arrival at a Habra hospital and Bapi died at a nursing home in nearby Barasat. Another Trinamul supporter, Bapi Bhattacharya, 22, is in the same nursing home with a bullet injury in his leg. Bapi Choudhury had been a key player in cementing the local alliance with Trinamul, district Congress chief Narayan Saha claimed. "The CPM killed them. Habra, once a CPM bastion, is slipping from their grip," alleged leader of the Opposition Partha Chatterjee, who visited the town with Trinamul colleague and Union minister Mukul Roy. "We are yet to identify the attackers," said S.K. Purakayastha, inspector-general (law and order). The Congress has called a 12-hour bandh in Habra tomorrow with Trinamul support. CPM leaders Amitava Nandy and Benoy Konar denied their party's involvement in the attack. Pranab Mukherjee said: "The government has to ensure peace (and) must get the political parties to act with restraint." In Raniganj, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee accused the Opposition of unleashing violence in colleges: "After winning a few Lok Sabha seats, they think they will take control of student unions by using force in college elections." | |
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Word scan on climate deal |
| G.S. MUDUR |
| New Delhi, Dec. 20: How much ground India conceded at the climate summit will depend on which of two sets of words packed in a single sentence of the Copenhagen Accord dominate in the negotiations ahead, experts have said. The Copenhagen Accord indicates that actions by developing countries to curb emissions of greenhouse gases would be open to interna tional consultations and analysis. India has in the past asserted — as articulated by environment minister Jairam Ramesh in Parliament earlier — that it would submit only actions supported by foreign finance and technology to the process of international scrutiny. It has said information about non-supported emission-curbing actions would be communicated to Parliament and to the UN climate agency. But a sentence in paragraph 5 of the accord says developing countries will communicate their actions through "national communications with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines that will ensure that National Sovereignty is respected". "We need to be careful that the words 'international consultations and analysis' are not used to apply intrusive inspections on actions or trade sanctions," a senior member of India's climate change negotiating team said. The accord — a political statement in place of the original goal of a legally binding document — is intended to be translated into legal form through further negotiations over the next six to 12 months. India's negotiators would have to ensure that the reference to "national sovereignty" in the accord trumps the provisions for international consultations and analysis, a climate policy expert said. "What has been agreed to may not have been termed international scrutiny, but during the process of consultations, objections could be raised about the adequacy of India's emission-curbing actions. This could lead to bickering." The consultation process may bring on India the same intensity of pressure that industrialised countries could face under the monitoring, review and verification regime, he said. The government is expected to present before Parliament tomorrow the outcome of the Copenhagen meeting. With the Left already sharpening its knives, the government is expected to draw attention to the reference to "sovereignty" in the accord. |
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Headley haunts visa watch - Clampdown by Indians after uncomfortable questions | |
| K.P. NAYAR | |
Washington, Dec. 20: If Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or BJP parliamentary party chairman L.K. Advani were US citizens and were to apply for a visa to travel to New Delhi now, they would in all probability be refused permission to visit India. The reason: both of them were born in what is now Pakistan, never mind if they are not Pakistanis or have had no ties with Pakistan for decades since they emigrated to the US or anywhere else in the West. Typically locking the stable doors after the horses have bolted, a near-total ban has been imposed on Americans born in what is now Pakistan getting visas from India. Such draconian steps will not prevent another David Coleman Headley from obtaining an Indian visa at the Indian embassy here or at Indian consulates in the US. Shashi Tharoor, the minister of state for external affairs, told reporters in New Delhi yesterday that Headley "is an American citizen born in Washington. It would have been unusual for us to deny him a visa. So he got a visa." But the minister's explanation does not exonerate the Indian consulate in Chicago which issued Headley's multiple entry visa or excuse the systems and checks that made it possible. Americans who apply for an Indian visa are required right at the top of their application forms to state their names at birth. Headley's name at birth — Gilani — was a dead giveaway. Not only because the Prime Minister of Pakistan is a Gilani or because Headley, as it turns out, is half brother of the Prime Minister's public relations officer, Danyal Gilani, but because Gilani is a common enough name across the border to have aroused the suspicions of consular officials in Chicago. Besides, on the second page of the Indian visa form, an applicant is required to fill in his father's name and nationality. In Headley's case, the answers respectively would have been: Syed Saleem Gilani and Pakistan. If Headley's name at birth did not alert those who processed his visa application, the father's name and nationality certainly should have been cause for a second look and a reference to the Union home ministry in India for clearance. Had the consular officials in Chicago been attentive and Headley's application referred to New Delhi, it is more or less certain that he would not have been cleared by the Union home ministry. This is because Syed Saleem Gilani was a Pakistani journalist and was fairly well-known in India in his time as a broadcaster for Voice of America. In the Indira Gandhi era, the US government-run radio service was considered by India's Left-of-Centre politicians as a front for the CIA. In the Indian system, there are special procedures for clearing the visa applications of Pakistanis who have media links and, more often than not, their applications for Indian visas are denied. Although Headley was not a journalist, the extensive scrutiny of his father that a North Block search would have entailed may have led officials in New Delhi to an alert about Headley's drug convictions: a definite visa denial in that case. There is intense co-operation between India and the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — for which Headley is believed to have worked as a double agent. The DEA even has a bureau at the US embassy in New Delhi, which would have given information about Headley, if only his visa application had been referred from Chicago to New Delhi. But more important now than the route that his visa form took is this question: if consular officials in Chicago had been more alert, would it have made any difference to the plot for the November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai? That question demands an answer. A sommelier in a watering hole, patronised by officials of the Indian embassy here, Indian journalists and visitors from India on state business, recently applied for a visa to go to New Delhi. He is a US citizen, who considers himself Indian because when he was born, there was no Pakistan although the place of his birth is now in Pakistan. This man has never been a Pakistani citizen because his family left for the US when he was young. But when his application reached the desk of a visa officer here, the man was called, accused of hiding on the application form the fact that he was a Pakistani, and blacklisted by the Indian mission. The poor man's plea that he was Indian at the time of his birth and that he had little to do with Pakistan cut no ice with those processing his visa application. If that was the innocent sommelier's experience, was it really because of an oversight in Chicago that Headley's application — that too for multiple visits to India — was so easily cleared? Did it have anything to do with the fact that Headley was actually working undercover for Americans when he went to India, and did the Americans have anything to do with the ease with which he got his visa? Did the Americans want Headley to visit India so that his credibility with his Pakistani minders would go up? These are questions to which answers would hopefully be found once Headley's visa application is probed in New Delhi. Since October 1, 2007, applications for Indian visas issued by the embassy here and the four Indian consulates in the US — including Chicago — have been handled by Travisa Outsourcing, an American company owned by a one-time refugee from Prague, Jan Dvorak. |
Maoists hope for hung House | |||
| NISHIT DHOLABHAI | |||
New Delhi, Dec. 20: Elections in Jharkhand may have passed off peacefully thanks to the large presence of security forces, but a blitzkrieg against the Maoists does not appear to be on the cards any time soon. Eager as it is to act against Maoists, the Centre will calibrate a response depending on the election results that will determine whether it will be a stable state government or a return to political volatility in the state. So for now, it is "wait and watch", home ministry sources said. More than 20,000 paramilitary personnel have been deployed in Jharkhand for the elections, over and above the existing six battalions of the CRPF already in the state for counter-insurgency operations. With more than 25,000 men in active deployment and planning against Maoists tested successfully during the course of the elections, the security forces are on standby. "If any party comes with a mandate, there could be operations any day. But if there is a mixed verdict, then governance issues and political volatility may make things difficult," said a home ministry official. If the Congress or BJP get a comfortable majority in the 81-seat Assembly, then it will be time for the Maoists to take defensive action. However, in case of a split verdict, the advantage will lie with Maoists who reportedly, would be happy with political uncertainty. For instance, if the JMM, with its group of legislators, including former Maoist leaders, takes part in government, then operations will depend on what Shibu Soren feels would be politically and practically, expedient. Since August 17, when chief ministers or representatives from seven Naxalite-affected states met in Delhi with the home minister, there has been anxiety about anti-Naxalite operations. Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra are already co-ordinating operations against Maoists at the inter-state tri-junctions. However, full-scale operation in the hinterland depends on situations in every state. In this case, it is Jharkhand's political situation that will play a role in North Block's decision. "The BJP is on the same page as the Congress on action against Maoists but if it is a mixed verdict, it could delay operations for a while in Jharkhand," said a senior police officer in central India. More than 60,000 paramilitary troops are deployed across the seven states and more will be sent. The year has been a watershed in terms of Maoist violence. Minister of state for home affairs, Ajay Maken admitted this in Parliament last week. "The Left-wing extremism scenario in the country is characterised by growing spatial spread, increased intensity of violence, targeted attacks on police and alleged 'police informers', rapid militarisation and stepped-up efforts at mass mobilisation," he told the Rajya Sabha. It is due to this reason that the UPA government is doubly anxious about and is attaching more importance to the final outcome of elections in Jharkhand.
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Palash Biswas
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http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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