UNI May 31, 2009
Author of White Revolution
He was admitted to MPU Hospital due to old age related health problems, the sources said. Dr Kurien was brought to the city by a special chartered plane from Vadodara.
MUMBAI: The author of white revolution in the country V Kurien was admitted yesterday to Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai.
Hospital sources told UNI that 86-year-old Dr Kurien, who was admitted to the Muljibhai Patel Urological (MPU) Hospital in Nadiad ten days ago, was shifted to Breach Candy yesterday morning as his condition did not improve. He was undergoing treatment at the Intensive Care Unit of the Hospital.
He was admitted to MPU Hospital due to old age related health problems, the sources said. Dr Kurien was brought to the city by a special chartered plane from Vadodara.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Noted author Kamala Das is dead
Sunday,31 May 2009
Thiruvananthapuram, May 31: Kamala Das, well known poet and writer in Malayalam and English who converted to Islam a decade ago, died in Pune early Sunday, family sources said. She was 75.
She suffered from diabetes and was recently hospitalised with pneumonia. The end came in a private hospital, a family source said.
Born to V.M. Nair and Balamani Amma March 31, 1934, she spent most of her childhood in Kolkata where her father worked.
Influenced by her poetess mother and uncle Nalappatt Narayana Menon, a prominent writer, Kamala started writing at the age of 17 under the pen name Madhavikutty.
She was married to Madhava Das, 15 years elder to her, and the couple had three sons. Her eldest son, M.D. Nalapat, is a journalist.
Kamala's first literary success came at age of 42 with her autobiography "My Story".
Her popular English works include "The Sirens" (Asian Poetry Prize winner), "Summer in Calcutta" (Kent's Award winner), "The Descendants" (poetry), "The Old Playhouse and Other Poems" (poetry), "Alphabet of Lust" (novel), "The Anamalai Poems" (poetry), "Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories" (short stories) "Only the Soul Knows How to Sing" (poetry) and "Yaa Allah" (poems).
Her Malayalam works include "Pakshiyude Manam" (short stories), "Naricheerukal Parakkumbol" (short stories), "Thanuppu" (short story and Sahitya Academy award winner), "Balyakala Smaranakal", "Varshangalkku Mumbu", "Palayan" (all novels), "Neypayasam" (short story), "Dayarikkurippukal" (novel), "Neermathalam Pootha Kalam" (novel and Vayalar Award winner), "Chekkerunna Pakshikal" (short stories), "Nashtapetta Neelambari" (short stories), "Chandana Marangal" (novel), "Madhavikkuttiyude Unmakkadhakal" (short stories) and "Vandikkalakal" (novel).
Kamala was also a painter and many of her works fetched high prices in exhibitions.
"Her body will be flown to Kochi tomorrow (Monday) and placed at Thrissur, Alappuzha and Kollam for people to pay their last respects.
Thiruvananthapuram, May 31: Kamala Das, well known poet and writer in Malayalam and English who converted to Islam a decade ago, died in Pune early Sunday, family sources said. She was 75.
She suffered from diabetes and was recently hospitalised with pneumonia. The end came in a private hospital, a family source said.
Born to V.M. Nair and Balamani Amma March 31, 1934, she spent most of her childhood in Kolkata where her father worked.
Influenced by her poetess mother and uncle Nalappatt Narayana Menon, a prominent writer, Kamala started writing at the age of 17 under the pen name Madhavikutty.
She was married to Madhava Das, 15 years elder to her, and the couple had three sons. Her eldest son, M.D. Nalapat, is a journalist.
Kamala's first literary success came at age of 42 with her autobiography "My Story".
Her popular English works include "The Sirens" (Asian Poetry Prize winner), "Summer in Calcutta" (Kent's Award winner), "The Descendants" (poetry), "The Old Playhouse and Other Poems" (poetry), "Alphabet of Lust" (novel), "The Anamalai Poems" (poetry), "Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories" (short stories) "Only the Soul Knows How to Sing" (poetry) and "Yaa Allah" (poems).
Her Malayalam works include "Pakshiyude Manam" (short stories), "Naricheerukal Parakkumbol" (short stories), "Thanuppu" (short story and Sahitya Academy award winner), "Balyakala Smaranakal", "Varshangalkku Mumbu", "Palayan" (all novels), "Neypayasam" (short story), "Dayarikkurippukal" (novel), "Neermathalam Pootha Kalam" (novel and Vayalar Award winner), "Chekkerunna Pakshikal" (short stories), "Nashtapetta Neelambari" (short stories), "Chandana Marangal" (novel), "Madhavikkuttiyude Unmakkadhakal" (short stories) and "Vandikkalakal" (novel).
Kamala was also a painter and many of her works fetched high prices in exhibitions.
"Her body will be flown to Kochi tomorrow (Monday) and placed at Thrissur, Alappuzha and Kollam for people to pay their last respects.
Manmohan's Team
May 28, 2009 T
Manmohan govt strength goes to 79
At a glittering ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President administered oath of office and secrecy to 14 Cabinet ministers, seven Ministers of State with Independent charge and 38 Ministers of State. As Prime minister Manmohan Singh and 19 cabinet ministers had taken oath on May 22, with today's expansion, the strength of council of ministers has reached to 79, including 33 Ministers of Cabinet rank.
NEW DELHI: The seven-day old UPA Council of Ministers was extended today with President Pratibha Devisingh Patil administering oath to 59 ministers increasing its total strength to 79.
At a glittering ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President administered oath of office and secrecy to 14 Cabinet ministers, seven Ministers of State with Independent charge and 38 Ministers of State. As Prime minister Manmohan Singh and 19 cabinet ministers had taken oath on May 22, with today's expansion, the strength of council of ministers has reached to 79, including 33 Ministers of Cabinet rank.
The 59 ministers who were sworn in included 43 from the Congress, seven from the DMK, seven from the Trinamool Congress, two from the NCP and one from the National Conference. The Congress has kept the lion's share of 60 of the 79 ministers, including 28 Cabinet, 6 Ministers of State with Independent charge and 26 MoS positions.
The expanded Council of Ministers now has nine former Chief Ministers Virbhadra Singh (Himachal Pradesh), Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sharad Pawar and Sushil Kumar Shinde (Maharashtra), Dr Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad(Jammu and Kashmir) and S M Krishna and Veerappa Moily (Karnataka) and A K Antony (Kerala).
The new ministry has three DMK nominees of the cabinet rank -- DMK supremo M Karunanidhi's son M K Azhagiri, grand newphew Dayanidhi Maran and his trusted aide A Raja. Mr Raja was a Cabinet Minister in the outgoing ministry while Mr Maran was also a minister in the first UPA government for about three years.
AICC General Secretary Mukul Wasnik and Senior Congress leader from Karnataka Mallikarjun Kharge have also been included in the Cabinet.
Kumari Selja, Pawan Kumar Bansal, G K Vasan, Kantilal Bhuria, Dr M S Gill and Subodh Kant Sahay, who were all Ministers of State in the first UPA government, have been elevated to the Cabinet rank.
NCP nominee Praful Patel will continue to be Minister of State with Independent charge. Senior Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh Salman Khurshid has been inducted as the Minister of State with Independent charge.
Prithviraj Chauhan, Sriprakash Jaiswal, Dinsha Patel and Jairam Ramesh, who were all Ministers of State in the first UPA government, have been elevated to MoS Independent charge. Ms Krishna Tirath, one of the seven MPs from Delhi, has been made a Minister of State with Independent charge.
Of the 38 Ministers of State sworn in, eleven were Ministers in the first UPA government. They are : E Ahamed, V Narayanaswamy, D Purandareswari, Panabaka Lakshmi, Ajay Maken, K H Muniyappa, Namo Narain Meena, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasad, M M Pallam Raju and S S Palanimanickam.
Former UN Under Secretary General Shashi Tharoor, daughter of former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma, Agatha Sangma and Congress leader Sachin Pilot have been inducted as young faces of the government.
The other Ministers of State who have been sworn in are Srikant Jena, Mullappally Ramachandran, A Sai Prathap, Gurudas Kamat, Mahadev Khandela, Harish Rawat, Prof K V Thomas, Saugata Ray, Dinesh Trivedi, Sisir Adhikari, Sultan Ahmed, Mukul Roy, Mohan Jatua, D Napoleon, Dr S Jagathrakshakan, S Gandhiselvan, Preneet Kaur, Bharatsinh Solanki, Tusharbhai Chaudhary, Arun Yadav, Prateek Prakashbapu Patil, R P N Singh, Vincent Pala and Pradeep Jain.
The Constitution allows a maximum of 79 ministers working out to ten per cent of the combined strength of 793 Members of Parliament including 543 of the Lok Sabha and 250 of Rajya Sabha.
The new ministry gives representation to 20 of the 28 states and three of the seven Union Territories of the Indian Union. Coalition compulsions obviously took up the number of representations in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra to nine each followed by West Bengal which gets eight ministers including seven of Trinamool Congress of Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Bihar, which sent only two Congress MPs to the Lok Sabha, has got lone representation in Meira Kumar as the Congress has ignored claims of RJD President Lalu Prasad spurning his unconditional support of four MPs in the Lower House.
Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have been accorded six ministerial berths each, followed by Uttar Pradesh which gets five, while Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka get four each.
Gujarat and Punjab have three ministers each in Dr Singh's government, followed by two each from Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Meghalaya.
Jharkhand, Orissa, Haryana and Uttarakhand are represented by one minister each.
Among the three Union Territories which have come on board the new government, Delhi gets the lion's share of three ministerial berths while Chandigarh and Puducherry have been rewarded with one berth each.
The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah has been rewarded with a Cabinet berth, while Mr E Ahmed of Indian Union muslim League (IUML) has been retained as a Minister of State. The cabinet has retained 12 old faces, including Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram and A K Antony, and elevated six but dropped several big guns like Arjun Singh, H R Bhardwaj and Saifudin Soz, all from Congress. Former Surface Transport Minster T R Baalu of DMK has also been dropped, while his party colleague Dayanidhi Maran stages a comeback.
Other prominent leaders who could not make it to the Council of Ministers were Sisram Ola, Oscar Fernandes and Ashwani Kumar, who held portfolios of Mines, Labour and Industry respectively in the previous government.
Prominent among those elevated to the Cabinet rank are Anand Sharma, Bijoy Kumar Handique, Subodh Kant Sahay, Manohar Singh Gill, Pawan Kumar Bansal and Kantilal Bhuria.
Mani Shankar Aiyar, Renuka Choudhary, Santosh Mohan Dev, Shankarsinh Vaghela, A R Antulay, all ministers in Dr Singh's last government, could not make it to his new government as all of them were defeated in the elections.
Manmohan govt strength goes to 79
At a glittering ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President administered oath of office and secrecy to 14 Cabinet ministers, seven Ministers of State with Independent charge and 38 Ministers of State. As Prime minister Manmohan Singh and 19 cabinet ministers had taken oath on May 22, with today's expansion, the strength of council of ministers has reached to 79, including 33 Ministers of Cabinet rank.
NEW DELHI: The seven-day old UPA Council of Ministers was extended today with President Pratibha Devisingh Patil administering oath to 59 ministers increasing its total strength to 79.
At a glittering ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President administered oath of office and secrecy to 14 Cabinet ministers, seven Ministers of State with Independent charge and 38 Ministers of State. As Prime minister Manmohan Singh and 19 cabinet ministers had taken oath on May 22, with today's expansion, the strength of council of ministers has reached to 79, including 33 Ministers of Cabinet rank.
The 59 ministers who were sworn in included 43 from the Congress, seven from the DMK, seven from the Trinamool Congress, two from the NCP and one from the National Conference. The Congress has kept the lion's share of 60 of the 79 ministers, including 28 Cabinet, 6 Ministers of State with Independent charge and 26 MoS positions.
The expanded Council of Ministers now has nine former Chief Ministers Virbhadra Singh (Himachal Pradesh), Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sharad Pawar and Sushil Kumar Shinde (Maharashtra), Dr Farooq Abdullah and Ghulam Nabi Azad(Jammu and Kashmir) and S M Krishna and Veerappa Moily (Karnataka) and A K Antony (Kerala).
The new ministry has three DMK nominees of the cabinet rank -- DMK supremo M Karunanidhi's son M K Azhagiri, grand newphew Dayanidhi Maran and his trusted aide A Raja. Mr Raja was a Cabinet Minister in the outgoing ministry while Mr Maran was also a minister in the first UPA government for about three years.
AICC General Secretary Mukul Wasnik and Senior Congress leader from Karnataka Mallikarjun Kharge have also been included in the Cabinet.
Kumari Selja, Pawan Kumar Bansal, G K Vasan, Kantilal Bhuria, Dr M S Gill and Subodh Kant Sahay, who were all Ministers of State in the first UPA government, have been elevated to the Cabinet rank.
NCP nominee Praful Patel will continue to be Minister of State with Independent charge. Senior Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh Salman Khurshid has been inducted as the Minister of State with Independent charge.
Prithviraj Chauhan, Sriprakash Jaiswal, Dinsha Patel and Jairam Ramesh, who were all Ministers of State in the first UPA government, have been elevated to MoS Independent charge. Ms Krishna Tirath, one of the seven MPs from Delhi, has been made a Minister of State with Independent charge.
Of the 38 Ministers of State sworn in, eleven were Ministers in the first UPA government. They are : E Ahamed, V Narayanaswamy, D Purandareswari, Panabaka Lakshmi, Ajay Maken, K H Muniyappa, Namo Narain Meena, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasad, M M Pallam Raju and S S Palanimanickam.
Former UN Under Secretary General Shashi Tharoor, daughter of former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma, Agatha Sangma and Congress leader Sachin Pilot have been inducted as young faces of the government.
The other Ministers of State who have been sworn in are Srikant Jena, Mullappally Ramachandran, A Sai Prathap, Gurudas Kamat, Mahadev Khandela, Harish Rawat, Prof K V Thomas, Saugata Ray, Dinesh Trivedi, Sisir Adhikari, Sultan Ahmed, Mukul Roy, Mohan Jatua, D Napoleon, Dr S Jagathrakshakan, S Gandhiselvan, Preneet Kaur, Bharatsinh Solanki, Tusharbhai Chaudhary, Arun Yadav, Prateek Prakashbapu Patil, R P N Singh, Vincent Pala and Pradeep Jain.
The Constitution allows a maximum of 79 ministers working out to ten per cent of the combined strength of 793 Members of Parliament including 543 of the Lok Sabha and 250 of Rajya Sabha.
The new ministry gives representation to 20 of the 28 states and three of the seven Union Territories of the Indian Union. Coalition compulsions obviously took up the number of representations in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra to nine each followed by West Bengal which gets eight ministers including seven of Trinamool Congress of Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Bihar, which sent only two Congress MPs to the Lok Sabha, has got lone representation in Meira Kumar as the Congress has ignored claims of RJD President Lalu Prasad spurning his unconditional support of four MPs in the Lower House.
Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have been accorded six ministerial berths each, followed by Uttar Pradesh which gets five, while Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka get four each.
Gujarat and Punjab have three ministers each in Dr Singh's government, followed by two each from Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam and Meghalaya.
Jharkhand, Orissa, Haryana and Uttarakhand are represented by one minister each.
Among the three Union Territories which have come on board the new government, Delhi gets the lion's share of three ministerial berths while Chandigarh and Puducherry have been rewarded with one berth each.
The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah has been rewarded with a Cabinet berth, while Mr E Ahmed of Indian Union muslim League (IUML) has been retained as a Minister of State. The cabinet has retained 12 old faces, including Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram and A K Antony, and elevated six but dropped several big guns like Arjun Singh, H R Bhardwaj and Saifudin Soz, all from Congress. Former Surface Transport Minster T R Baalu of DMK has also been dropped, while his party colleague Dayanidhi Maran stages a comeback.
Other prominent leaders who could not make it to the Council of Ministers were Sisram Ola, Oscar Fernandes and Ashwani Kumar, who held portfolios of Mines, Labour and Industry respectively in the previous government.
Prominent among those elevated to the Cabinet rank are Anand Sharma, Bijoy Kumar Handique, Subodh Kant Sahay, Manohar Singh Gill, Pawan Kumar Bansal and Kantilal Bhuria.
Mani Shankar Aiyar, Renuka Choudhary, Santosh Mohan Dev, Shankarsinh Vaghela, A R Antulay, all ministers in Dr Singh's last government, could not make it to his new government as all of them were defeated in the elections.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Mamata returns Tata's Rs 27 lakh cheque
Friday,29 May 2009
New Delhi: Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee, whose stir against use of farmland forced Tata to move its Nano car project out of West Bengal, has returned a cheque of over Rs 27 lakhs from a Tata trust after the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections.
"The cheque has already been returned to the trust. I am writing a polite letter (in reply)," Banerjee said here today. "I am writing a polite letter and the cheque has already been returned to the trust," she said. The money, totalling Rs.27,64,925 was offered on May 20 by the Tata Electoral Trust, set up by Tata Sons Limited, after the Lok Sabha results were out. Trinamool Congress has bagged 19 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, compared to just one it had in 2004. "We do not accept any donations from corporate houses so that we do not have any obligations towards them. We have obligations towards the common man, workers, farmers and poor people," Sisir Adhikary, Trinamool MP and Rural Development Minister, told PTI. He said the party secretariat met at the residence of Banerjee and a decision was taken to reject the offer. The Tata Motors blamed Banerjee for their pulling out the Nano project out of the state.
New Delhi: Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee, whose stir against use of farmland forced Tata to move its Nano car project out of West Bengal, has returned a cheque of over Rs 27 lakhs from a Tata trust after the just-concluded Lok Sabha elections.
"The cheque has already been returned to the trust. I am writing a polite letter (in reply)," Banerjee said here today. "I am writing a polite letter and the cheque has already been returned to the trust," she said. The money, totalling Rs.27,64,925 was offered on May 20 by the Tata Electoral Trust, set up by Tata Sons Limited, after the Lok Sabha results were out. Trinamool Congress has bagged 19 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, compared to just one it had in 2004. "We do not accept any donations from corporate houses so that we do not have any obligations towards them. We have obligations towards the common man, workers, farmers and poor people," Sisir Adhikary, Trinamool MP and Rural Development Minister, told PTI. He said the party secretariat met at the residence of Banerjee and a decision was taken to reject the offer. The Tata Motors blamed Banerjee for their pulling out the Nano project out of the state.
Tharoor hand-picked by PM for MEA
29 May 2009
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New Delhi, May 29: A few days ago, Shashi Tharoor, a former UN bureaucrat and a newly elected Congress MP, said he wanted to be involved with the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs. Now his wish has been surpassed as Tharoor begins a new innings as a junior minister in India's foreign ministry.
This is clearly the the high point in the life of the 53-year-old Tharoor, who lost narrowly to South Korea's Ban Ki-moon for the UN top job in 2007, resigned from his position and plunged into the hurly burly of Indian politics barely a few months ago.
The former UN undersecretary-general is expected to effectively complement External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna as a minister of state at a time when India's global stature is growing the and the country's neighbourhood is seething with problems.
Tharoor is also expected to make up for relative inexperience of Preneet Kaur, Congress MP from Patiala and wife of former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh, who has also been named as a junior foreign minister, or minister of state.
In an interview to IANS last week before his name was included in the council of ministers, Tharoor, the first-time Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, had indicated his interest in being part of foreign affairs committee of parliament and playing a proactive role in it.
A quintessential diplomat by temperament, he had, however, tactfully skirted questions on his chances of making it to the external affairs ministry. But deep down he knew it was coming his way.
Tharoor advocates a realistic foreign policy, purused by the Manmohan Singh government in its first term, that is "both autonomous and independent and at the same time is pegged to development and security needs of our people".
"We need a realistic calculation of our national interests. Well, people say it's pro-US, pro-West or pro-Israel, but they are all meaningless labels. The only pro any of us can be is to be pro India," Tharoor had said in a wide-ranging conversation.
Tharoor, who knows the UN system from inside, is all for India reviving its campaign for a seat in an expanded UN Security Council and playing a larger role on the global stage.
He, however, cautioned against India playing the role of "a great power in the military sense or in terms of hard power," but using its enormous creative energies through soft power.
Being a minister will not, however, detract from what he sees as his core mission to transform Thiruvananthavuram, Kerala's capital, into a global city.
"Making a difference to people in my constituency is ultimately what I am going to be judged by," he said. The challenge, as Tharoor said, will be now to juggle his new responsibility at the center with the grassroots issues of his constituenc
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New Delhi, May 29: A few days ago, Shashi Tharoor, a former UN bureaucrat and a newly elected Congress MP, said he wanted to be involved with the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs. Now his wish has been surpassed as Tharoor begins a new innings as a junior minister in India's foreign ministry.
This is clearly the the high point in the life of the 53-year-old Tharoor, who lost narrowly to South Korea's Ban Ki-moon for the UN top job in 2007, resigned from his position and plunged into the hurly burly of Indian politics barely a few months ago.
The former UN undersecretary-general is expected to effectively complement External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna as a minister of state at a time when India's global stature is growing the and the country's neighbourhood is seething with problems.
Tharoor is also expected to make up for relative inexperience of Preneet Kaur, Congress MP from Patiala and wife of former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh, who has also been named as a junior foreign minister, or minister of state.
In an interview to IANS last week before his name was included in the council of ministers, Tharoor, the first-time Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, had indicated his interest in being part of foreign affairs committee of parliament and playing a proactive role in it.
A quintessential diplomat by temperament, he had, however, tactfully skirted questions on his chances of making it to the external affairs ministry. But deep down he knew it was coming his way.
Tharoor advocates a realistic foreign policy, purused by the Manmohan Singh government in its first term, that is "both autonomous and independent and at the same time is pegged to development and security needs of our people".
"We need a realistic calculation of our national interests. Well, people say it's pro-US, pro-West or pro-Israel, but they are all meaningless labels. The only pro any of us can be is to be pro India," Tharoor had said in a wide-ranging conversation.
Tharoor, who knows the UN system from inside, is all for India reviving its campaign for a seat in an expanded UN Security Council and playing a larger role on the global stage.
He, however, cautioned against India playing the role of "a great power in the military sense or in terms of hard power," but using its enormous creative energies through soft power.
Being a minister will not, however, detract from what he sees as his core mission to transform Thiruvananthavuram, Kerala's capital, into a global city.
"Making a difference to people in my constituency is ultimately what I am going to be judged by," he said. The challenge, as Tharoor said, will be now to juggle his new responsibility at the center with the grassroots issues of his constituenc
'VS had plans to form a new party'
28 May 2009
Thiruvananthapuram: A senior member of the CPM Thursday came up with a serious allegation against Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan who is facing a volley of charges following the party's defeat in Lok Sabha elections.
According to sources CPM state committee member C.M. Dinesh Mani allgedly disclosed that there was a plan to form a new party under the leadership of V S Achuthanandan when the party ticket was denied to him in the run up to the assembly elections.
He said the planning was done at a meeting held in the house K.Chandran Pillai. Fisheries Minister S. Sarma was also present during the meet. There was also a plan to start a new newspaper, he added.
The state scretariate has decided to raise the issue with the politburo.
Thiruvananthapuram: A senior member of the CPM Thursday came up with a serious allegation against Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan who is facing a volley of charges following the party's defeat in Lok Sabha elections.
According to sources CPM state committee member C.M. Dinesh Mani allgedly disclosed that there was a plan to form a new party under the leadership of V S Achuthanandan when the party ticket was denied to him in the run up to the assembly elections.
He said the planning was done at a meeting held in the house K.Chandran Pillai. Fisheries Minister S. Sarma was also present during the meet. There was also a plan to start a new newspaper, he added.
The state scretariate has decided to raise the issue with the politburo.
Meira Kumar, the lone Bihari in Union Cabinet
29 May 2009
New Delhi: Meira Kumar, who was today appointed as Union Minister of Water Resources, is the lone face from Bihar in the new cabinet. Daughter of Deputy Prime Minister and late Dalit leader Babu Jagjivan Ram, Kumar (64) joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1973 and served at embassies in Spain, United Kingdom and Mauritius. She entered electoral politics in 1985 and was elected from Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh. She was a member of the eleventh and twelfth Lok Sabha from Karol Bagh in Delhi. She lost her seat in the BJP wave of 1999 but was able to get reelected with a record majority from her father's former constituency of Sasaram in Bihar.
As the new Water Resources minister, she will have to work on the near-stalled River Inter-linking Project. The falling ground water table in several parts of the country would be another major challenge for her ministry.
As Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment in the previous government, her brief was the enactment of Reservation Act and 'affirmative action' for reservation in the private sector. The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 is considered her major achievements in the previous government. But on the other hand, the SC/ST (Reservations in Posts and Services) Bill, listed during the last Lok Sabha session, was stalled. Her attempts to give SC status to a child even if only the mother belongs to SC category also fell flat. The proposal to amend the SC&ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act remained stuck in the files.
New Delhi: Meira Kumar, who was today appointed as Union Minister of Water Resources, is the lone face from Bihar in the new cabinet. Daughter of Deputy Prime Minister and late Dalit leader Babu Jagjivan Ram, Kumar (64) joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1973 and served at embassies in Spain, United Kingdom and Mauritius. She entered electoral politics in 1985 and was elected from Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh. She was a member of the eleventh and twelfth Lok Sabha from Karol Bagh in Delhi. She lost her seat in the BJP wave of 1999 but was able to get reelected with a record majority from her father's former constituency of Sasaram in Bihar.
As the new Water Resources minister, she will have to work on the near-stalled River Inter-linking Project. The falling ground water table in several parts of the country would be another major challenge for her ministry.
As Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment in the previous government, her brief was the enactment of Reservation Act and 'affirmative action' for reservation in the private sector. The Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007 is considered her major achievements in the previous government. But on the other hand, the SC/ST (Reservations in Posts and Services) Bill, listed during the last Lok Sabha session, was stalled. Her attempts to give SC status to a child even if only the mother belongs to SC category also fell flat. The proposal to amend the SC&ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act remained stuck in the files.
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