Jharkhand plans anti-graft law
RANCHI: The Jharkhand government would introduce an anti-corruption bill in the assembly’s winter session, likely to be held in December, Chief Minister Arjun Munda said Wednesday.”The government is working on a draft anti-corruption bill which will be introduced in the winter session,” said Munda in Jamshedpur, some 100 km from here.”The government is committed to checking corruption. The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is also in favour of fighting corruption both at the state and the national level,” he said.”We are planning to make provisions in the bill to attach properties of tainted people. Government officials could be sacked for corrupt practices,” he said.The assembly, in the just-concluded monsoon session, passed the right to service law which requires officials to complete public related tasks in a stipulated period.(IANS)
Gandhi accused Nalini breaks down
CHENNAI: Nalini Sriharan, serving life sentence for the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, Wednesday broke down as she was shifted back to Vellore jail where her husband, one of the three men on death row for the same crime, is lodged.Nalini was moved under heavy escort to Vellore, around 120 km from here.Nalini made a request to be moved back to Vellore jail after President Prathiba Patil rejected the mercy petitions of her husband Sriharan alias Murugan, T. Suthendraraja alias Santhan and A.G. Perarivalan alias Arivu, set to hang for the 1991 assassination.The three condemned men were linked to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). They were supposed to be hanged Sep 9 but got a reprieve as the Madras High Court stayed their hanging for eight weeks.Police and jail officials in Vellore told the media that Nalini broke down while entering the special prison meant for women convicts.She was shifted last year in June to the high security Puzhal prison here from Vellore after she alleged that prison authorities were trying to poison her food.She also complained that jail authorities were preventing other inmates from interacting with her.(IANS)
Village where BSNL phones do not ring
CHITKUL (Himachal Pradesh):Telephones do not ring in this remote, picturesque village in Himachal Pradesh.It’s being one year since the villagers close to the China border in Kinnaur district picked up the handsets to say ‘hello’.This is because the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) cables were damaged, and they are yet to be replaced.”For over a year, telephones in the entire village have not been working. Despite repeated requests, no BSNL official has turned up to repair the telephone lines,” resident Shyam Singh Negi told IANS.Chitkul, the last village connected by road in the area, has around 120 houses. The village, some 275 km from Shimla, has over 50 landline phone connections.”Since the mobile phones rarely work here and the landline phones are not working for long, we remain cut off from the rest of the world most of the time,” housewife Reeta Negi said.”For making a call, we have to walk miles to get the mobile signal,” she added.BSNL divisional engineer R.S. Kashyap in Rekong Peo, the district headquarters, said the telephones of Chitkul had not worked since December 2011 owing to damage to the underground phone cables.”During road widening the BSNL cables were badly damaged. Now, we are getting the new cables and these will be replaced on priority,” Kashyap told IANS.Chitkul, a picturesque spot with a backdrop of the snow-clad Kinner Kailash peaks, has a population of 650. It remains cut off from the rest of India for more than six months a year owing to heavy snowfall.(IANS)