For The Gain of the Many and For the Welfare of the Many
MOU to be signed between NTPC and Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam on November, 21st
Lucknow: November 20, 2007 With a view to bridge the gap between demand and supply of electricity, a memorandum of understanding for setting up 1320 MW Power Project is to be signed in the presence of U.P. Chief Minister Km. Mayawati between NTPC Ltd. and U.P. Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Ltd. at 5, Kalidas Marg, Lucknow tomorrow at 4 P.M. The NTPC Ltd. is setting up 2 units of 660 MW each at Meza in Allahabad district.
C.M. inaugurates U.P. Pavilion at International Trade Fair
Lucknow : November 20, 2007 The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Km. Mayawati while addressing the media on the occasion of “U.P. Day” at the International Trade Fair organised under the auspices of India Trade Promotion Organisation, said that U.P. being an agricultural state, there were limitless opportunities for the development of food processing and agro-based industries in the State. These industries had the capacity of creating employment opportunities besides export possibilities, she added. She also said that the State Government expected co-operation from the private sector for taking the full benefit of these possibilities. The Chief Minister was inaugurating the Uttar Pradesh Pavilion and the exhibition organised by the U.P. Government at the International Trade Fair at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi today. She said that her government was committed for encouraging food processing industries besides the small, cottage, traditional and handicraft industries. The State Government had also made budgetary provisions for the purpose besides increasing the financial assistance being given to entrepreneurs under different heads to encourage export, she added. It may be mentioned that the theme of International Trade Fair-2007 this year is “Processed Food and Agro Industries”. Km. Mayawati said that her government had implementing the single table system for providing facilities to entrepreneurs and making the procedure fully transparent, besides implementing the E-tendering and E-procurement system. As a result, six thousand entrepreneurs and industrialists had filed their memorandum on-line for setting up their industries this year. She said that capital investment was not possible in the absence of proper law and order and infrastructure facilities. She said that her government had given top priority to maintaining proper law and order, increasing power generation, besides strengthening transport facilities and road network. The Chief Minister said that since the State Government could not develop the required infrastructure on its own due to its limited resources, it had decided to take the co-operation of private sector, where the government would play the role of facilitator. She said that due to this decision proposals for new projects from private investors were coming under Public Private Partnership policy for the development in the state. Km. Mayawati said that her government had taken the decision for construction of 8-lane Taj Express Way from Greater Noida to Agra, besides the 1000 km. long Ganga Express Way up to Ballia. The implementation of ambitious and historical project of Ganga-Express Way was being ensured after its sanction in principle. This multipurpose link express way project which would connect the big cities of the state would be developed on the basis of private investment. This would also ensure the development of backward areas lying on the left bank of Ganga river and checking the menace of floods providing permanent solution to it. The Chief Minister said that the present government in the state had doubled the budget for energy reforms making it Rs. 9,209 crore and arranged for setting up of projects for generating additional 7000 MW electricity so far. The target had been fixed for ensuring additional power generation of 1,225 MW till March, 2008, she added. The Chief Minister said that with a view to removing regional imbalances and unemployment, her government had demanded from the Government of India Rs. 80,000 crore as Special Area Incentive package for the development of Bundelkhand and Purvanchal regions. It also included the demands of special exemptions for industries. Km. Mayawati said that the government was following the policy of “Sarvajan Hitai, Sarvajan Sukhai” to bring the poor, the exploited, the backwards and the economically weaker sections in the mainstream of development. Initiative had been taken for 10 per cent reservation for SC, 10 per cent for OBC which includes the backwards of religious minorities, and 10 per cent for the poor people belonging to upper castes on voluntary basis in private sector getting special government facilities, so that these sections could also get the benefit of the new employment opportunities. It may be mentioned that Uttar Pradesh remained the front line state in implementing the provisions of Medium, Small and Micro Industries Development Act, 2006 under which work has been started by setting up of Facilitation Council. The Chief Minister said that in Uttar Pradesh a full fledge department of Food Processing Industries was working and the state was ready to take the benefit of International Trade Fair-2007 theme “Processed Food and Agro Industries”. In Uttar Pradesh 34,000 food processing units were working with an investment of Rs. 2600 crore and 2.68 lakh people were employed in them. The State had received the benefit of Rs. 1,500 crore through this industry from export in the previous year, she added. It may be recalled that the plan outlay has been increased from Rs. 08 crore to Rs. 33.38 crore this year for the development of small, cottage, traditional and handicraft industries in the state. Cluster development scheme had been implemented for solving the problems of traditional industries in the state. During the last 3-4 months, 58 clusters have been developed with the expenditure of Rs. 1.20 crore. ************ Some Important steps taken for Infrastructure Development 1- For the identification and development of Infrastructure projects a new “Infrastructure Development Department” has been set up. The department will coordinate with concerning departments for the development of projects on the basis of Public Private Partnership. 2- A transparent procedure has been adopted for setting up of projects on the basis of Public Private Partnership for which consultant is being selected and for the implementation of the project private investors are being selected on the directive of the Government of India. For bridge the budgetary gap transparent procedure has been prepared for disinvestment of public enterprises running into losses. 3- The construction of Ganga Express Way is proposed on the basis of public private partnership from Greater Noida to Ballia on the left banks of river Ganga connecting embankments for increasing transport facilities. It would also check the menace of floods besides the industrial and tourism development in the state. 4- Work is under progress for searching the technical and financial viability for the implementation of link express way projects, under the proposed project the World level controlled entry roads laying network in the state on the basis of public private partnership:- · From the West to the North border of the state; from Ghaziabad via Sharanpur to near Mohand, Yammuna or Hindon river bank (Uttrakhand- U.P. border). · From the South to the East border of the state; Jhansi-Kanpur-Gorakhpur (including Betwa and Ghaghra banks) and Lucknow-Barabanki-Nanpara link. · From Agra to Kanpur (including Yammuna river bank). · Bijnour-Moradabad to Fatehgarh (including the banks of Ram Ganga). 5- Decision taken for MOU with Union Government for participation in Asian Development Bank’s Technical Assistance Project for the technical development for Infrastructure facilities in the state on the basis of public private partnership. This MOU has been sent to the Government of India for his consent. 6- New policy issued after amending SEZ policy under which the selection of the developer would be made on basis of transparency and competition. As a result the land of farmers would not be acquired forcibly. 7- The State Government has sent five special economic zones (SEZ) proposals, four in Noida and one proposal of IT sector at Greater Noida to the Government of India for its approval, out of which the Union Government has sanctioned one proposal of IT SEZ. *********
Online edition of India’s National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 20, 2007
Jesus trail in India
Randeep Ramesh
| Film to cover the years left out of the New Testament |
Coming up in 2009: The Aquarian Gospel
Action adventure account of Jesus’ life
New Delhi: Hollywood is to fill in Jesus’ “missing years” in the Bible with a story about him as a wandering mystic who travelled across India, living in Buddhist monasteries and speaking out against the caste system.The Original Inhabitants of Jambudvipa that is The Great Prabuddha Bharath, irrespect of their religion started returning back to their own home ‘Ghar waapassee’.
Film producers have delvedinto revisionist scholarship to piece together what they say was Jesus’ life between the ages of 13 and 30, a period untouched by the gospels.
The result is The Aquarian Gospel, a $20-million movie which portrays Jesus as a holy man and teacher inspired by a myriad of eastern religions in India. The movie takes its name from a century-old book that examined Christianity’s eastern roots and is in its 53rd reprint.
Casting begins
The film’s producers say the movie will be shot using actors and computer animation like 300, the retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, and will follow the travels of Yeshua, believed to be the name for Jesus in Aramaic, from West Asia to India. Casting for Bollywood and Hollywood actors has begun.
“The Bible devotes just seven words to the most formative years of Yeshua’s life saying: ‘The boy grew in wisdom and stature’. The [film] will follow Christ’s journey to the east where he encounters other traditions, and discovers the principles that are the bedrock of all the world’s great religions,” said Drew Heriot, the director, whose credits include the cult hit The Secret.
The film, due for release in 2009, sets out to be a fantasy action adventure account of Jesus’ life with the three wise men as his mentors. Although the producers say the film will feature a “young and beautiful” princess, it is not clear whether Jesus in the movie is to have a love interest.
The producers say they are hoping for commercial and spiritual gains. “We think that Indian religions and Buddhism, especially with the idea of meditation, played a big part in Christ’s thinking. In the film we are looking beyond the canonised gospels to the ‘lost’ gospels,” said William Sees Keenan, the producer, who is currently making Lindsay Lohan’s Poor Things. “We are looking at new themes. In our story Jesus was loyal to the untouchables and he defended them with his life by saying that everyone could read the Vedas,” said Mr. Keenan.
Earlier book
The theory that Jesus’ teachings had roots in Indian traditions has been around for more than a century. In 1894, a Russian doctor, Nicholas Notovitch, published a book The Unknown Life of Christ, in which he claimed that while recovering from a broken leg in a Tibetan monastery in the Ladakh region, close to Kashmir, he had been shown evidence of Christ’s Indian wanderings. He said he was shown a scroll recording a visit by Jesus to India and to the Tibetan region as a young man. Indian experts claim that documentary proof remains of this visit.
“I have seen the scrolls which show Buddhist monks talking about Jesus’ visits. There are also coins from that period which show Yuzu or have the legend Issa on them, referring to Jesus from that period,” said Fida Hassnain, former director of archaeology at the University of Srinagar.
Mr. Hassnain, who has written books on the legend of Jesus in India, says there was extensive traffic between the Mediterranean and India around the time of Jesus’ life. The academic pointed out that in Srinagar a tomb of Issa is still venerated. “It is the Catholic Church which has closed its mind on the subject. Historians have not.”
More dramatic are the claims that Buddhism had prompted the move from the “eye for an eye” ideology of the Old Testament to “love thy neighbour” in the New Testament.
In 1995 a German religious expert, Holger Kersten, claimed that Jesus had been schooled by Buddhist monks to believe in non-violence and to challenge the priesthood. Mr. Kersten’s book is a bestseller in India.
Church’s view
The Catholic Church in India dismisses the film as just “Hollywood filmmakers in search of a new audience rather than the truth.” Aware that religious passions are easily inflamed, after the Da Vinci Code film sparked protests among Indian Christians, its spokesman said that a movie about Jesus in India was “fantasy and fiction.”
“I have personally investigated many of these claims and they remain what they first seem: fiction,” said John Dayal, president of the All India Catholic Union. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007
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 Muslims in India are the only Muslims in the world who have enjoyed 60 years of uninterrupted democracy, according to eminent journalist and author M.J. Akbar.
“Indian Muslims are the only Muslims in the world who have enjoyed six decades of uninterrupted democracy,” Akbar said, delivering a speech on ‘India and the Strength of its Diversity’ at the Indian Consulate General here Sunday. The speech was part of a series of programmes being organised by the Indian mission here to mark 60 years of India’s independence. Delving into the issue of Muslims being a minority in India, Akbar said, “In demographic terms, Indian Muslims have always been a minority, whether historically they were in power or not. When the Mughals were in power or when the Nizams ruled Hyderabad, did the Muslims of India think of themselves as a minority?” According to him, the issue of minority and majority in India is not about numbers but about empowerment. “That is why, the Indian Muslims’ struggle for empowerment is very justified,” he said before an audience of around 200 Indian diaspora in this Gulf metropolis. He said the real minorities in India were the Dalits and the untouchables. “And this is why the rise of Mayawati (to power in Uttar Pradesh) is a triumph of Indian democracy. What has happened to Dalit activism in the last 50 years eventually must happen to the Muslim political consciousness,” he said, adding that Indian Muslims are getting a new assertion today, which was a healthy sign. According to Akbar, the answer to the problem of minority and majority is equality. Describing the strength of Indian democracy in this context, he said, “The Brahmin has always been less than one percent (in demographic terms) since the time of Brahma. But have they (the Brahmins) ever thought of themselves as a minority? “What our constitution has done is to put the Dalits and the Muslims on equal footing with the Brahmins.” On the flip side of this equality and multiculturalism, Akbar said, India is the only country in the world where every religion, except Buddhism, has produced a terrorist. “However, the good consequence of that is that despite all the deaths, despite all the violence, we do not use terms like ‘Islamic fascism’ or blame a faith for the killings.” According to the editor of the Asian Age and the Deccan Chronicle, India changed when it managed to overcome the Sikh violence in Punjab. “Who thought that the Sikh would try to separate from India? Other such events in Kashmir and the northeast were predictable. But nobody expected what happened in Punjab. Yet, India had this ability to reabsorb the Sikhs and turn those events into a bad memory,” he said, pointing out this inherent strength of India’s multiculturalism. |
m&c
India News
Uttar Pradesh initiates law to end ‘jungle rule’
Oct 31, 2007, 15:08 GMT
Shortly after tabling the UP Control of Organised Crime Bill (UPCOCA) at the state assembly, Mayawati told a press conference that a special law was required for \’curbing, controlling and trampling organised crime in the state\’.
She termed the proposed law as a fulfilment of her commitment to bringing an end to prevailing \’rule of the jungle\’ in the country\’s most populous state.
The chief minister said: \’The new law is aimed at pinning down contract killers, kidnappers, economic offenders including hawala traders, producers of spurious drugs, illicit liquor, drug smugglers and even gun-toting contractors.\’ The proposed enactment also curbs display of arms at public places.
Similar special laws were in force in half a dozen other Indian states including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi.
\’The proposed Act would curb the tendency among people to make a loud display of weapons with the intent of intimidating others,\’ Mayawati said.
Referring to the misuse of state security services by outlaws, she said: \’Government security to persons with criminal antecedents would be history once the new law comes into force.\’
According to the chief minister, \’the new law would also be able to curb grabbing of government contracts through use of force and pressure by organised crime gang-lords.\’
She said: \’If any contractor approaching a particular government organisation for submitting his tender is found to be accompanied by gun-toting supporters, he will be liable to be prosecuted under the new law.\’
The bill proposes setting up of a state level organised crime control authority under the chairmanship of the principal home secretary, with powers to cancel contracts grabbed by force.
The proposed law will also bring much-needed respite to the old and the infirm whose property was often grabbed by force or through fraudulent means.
The law will help get a grip over criminals fleeing the country after committing a crime.
Unlike existing laws where penalties are mild and easily affordable, heavy fines have been proposed under the new law. \’Besides a minimum fine of Rs.500,000 together with life imprisonment, even capital punishment has been proposed along with a fine of Rs.1 million against hardened habitual offenders,\’ the chief minister pointed out.
A provision has been made for hearing all UPCOCA cases by a special court on a day-to-day basis.
However, in order to prevent misuse of the law, prior permission of the divisional commissioner and deputy inspector general of police has been made mandatory. The police will lodge a report under the proposed act only after receiving permission.
A state-level tribunal to be headed by a retired high court judge will hear appeals against invocation of the act. The three-member tribunal will include a director general of police and an officer of the rank of principal secretary to the state government.
© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service‘;
PrintArticle();//–>
Lucknow, Oct 31 (IANS) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati formally initiated enactment of a new anti-crime law Wednesday with the stated aim of ridding the state of ‘organised crime’ that has seriously impeded its overall growth,
Shortly after tabling the UP Control of Organised Crime Bill (UPCOCA) at the state assembly, Mayawati told a press conference that a special law was required for ‘curbing, controlling and trampling organised crime in the state’.
She termed the proposed law as a fulfilment of her commitment to bringing an end to prevailing ‘rule of the jungle’ in the country’s most populous state.
The chief minister said: ‘The new law is aimed at pinning down contract killers, kidnappers, economic offenders including hawala traders, producers of spurious drugs, illicit liquor, drug smugglers and even gun-toting contractors.’ The proposed enactment also curbs display of arms at public places.
Similar special laws were in force in half a dozen other Indian states including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi.
‘The proposed Act would curb the tendency among people to make a loud display of weapons with the intent of intimidating others,’ Mayawati said.
Referring to the misuse of state security services by outlaws, she said: ‘Government security to persons with criminal antecedents would be history once the new law comes into force.’
According to the chief minister, ‘the new law would also be able to curb grabbing of government contracts through use of force and pressure by organised crime gang-lords.’
She said: ‘If any contractor approaching a particular government organisation for submitting his tender is found to be accompanied by gun-toting supporters, he will be liable to be prosecuted under the new law.’
The bill proposes setting up of a state level organised crime control authority under the chairmanship of the principal home secretary, with powers to cancel contracts grabbed by force.
The proposed law will also bring much-needed respite to the old and the infirm whose property was often grabbed by force or through fraudulent means.
The law will help get a grip over criminals fleeing the country after committing a crime.
Unlike existing laws where penalties are mild and easily affordable, heavy fines have been proposed under the new law. ‘Besides a minimum fine of Rs.500,000 together with life imprisonment, even capital punishment has been proposed along with a fine of Rs.1 million against hardened habitual offenders,’ the chief minister pointed out.
A provision has been made for hearing all UPCOCA cases by a special court on a day-to-day basis.
However, in order to prevent misuse of the law, prior permission of the divisional commissioner and deputy inspector general of police has been made mandatory. The police will lodge a report under the proposed act only after receiving permission.
A state-level tribunal to be headed by a retired high court judge will hear appeals against invocation of the act. The three-member tribunal will include a director general of police and an officer of the rank of principal secretary to the state government.
© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service
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‘Puris’ banned in mid-day meals in Uttar Pradesh
November 02, 2007 | RSS 
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Lucknow: ‘Puris’ have been banned with immediate effect in mid-day meals served in schools across Uttar Pradesh.
This follows a preliminary study that revealed that the bulk of the 600-odd children who fell ill in the current academic session had consumed ‘puris’ during their mid-day meals in government-run primary schools in the state.
“The bulk of the cases occurred after consumption of meals on Thursdays when ‘puris’ are served as a matter of routine. We have reasons to suspect that the cooking medium used for making ‘puris’ was sub-standard. As such we have banned ‘puris’ with immediate effect,” Uttar Pradesh principal secretary for basic education Rohit Nandan told IANS.
“We had already taken measures to disallow use of loose oil as the cooking medium,” he said. “In place of ‘puris’ children will now get ‘rotis’ or ‘dalia’ (wheat porridge).”
Nearly 23 million children are covered under the daily mid-day meal scheme in the state.
While taking note of recurrence of illness among children after consumption of mid-day meal in the Uttar Pradesh schools, Chief Minister Mayawati shot off a letter a week ago to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggesting drastic changes in the entire mid-day meal exercise carried out by the central government. IANS
Maya favours quotas for poor upper caste
19 Nov, 2007, 0021 hrs IST,
“I have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the need to amend the Constitution to provide reservation to the poor among upper castes,” BSP supremo Mayawati told a rally here. “We are still waiting for a response from him,” the Uttar Pradesh CM said.
Mayawati recalled she had also met the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee over the same issue. She said her party was never against the upper castes and was concerned over the plight of the poor among them. “We will continue to fight for their rights and will strive hard to improve their lot,” Mayawati said.
Mayawati said the UPA government had also not responded to her letter demanding reservation for SCs and STs in the private sector. “In UP, we have have already announced 10 per cent reservation in private sector jobs for SCs and the poor among upper castes,” she said. Mayawati said her party would provide reservation to the poor among upper castes if it was voted to power at the Centre.
Urging people to vote her party to power in Jammu and Kashmir and at the Centre, she said: “It is high time we all should join hands to install a BSP government at the Centre.”