Higher ration plea for hills The Telegraph: Darjeeling, June 16: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has demanded 50kg of foodgrain for each family in the hills every month through the public distribution system. The demand was placed before Sharad Pawar, Union agriculture, food and civil supplies minister, at Krishi Bhawan in Delhi today. “The hills are non-producing areas. The weather conditions are also extreme. Since our people are largely dependent on tea and tourism where the average monthly earnings range between Rs 1,500 and Rs 3,000, we have demanded that the government distribute at least 50kg of food commodities to every family per month,” Roshan Giri, the general secretary of the Morcha, said over the phone. Jaswant Singh, the Darjeeling MP, was also part of the Morcha delegation. Sources said following the existing norm, a ration cardholder in the hills receives 800g of rice, 700g of atta (flour) and 250g of wheat every week. Minors are entitled to half of this quantity. This means that a five-member family in the hills currently receives about 35kg of food commodities through the PDS. According to the Morcha, every family should be given 22.5kg of rice and atta each and an additional five kilograms of wheat per month. PDS distributors have also complained that at times the state government does not allot the entire quota for the hills. The Morcha has also taken strong exception to the state government’s “erratic supplies”. “We told the minister that the state government is erratic in its supplies and we have demanded that the quantity of sugar also be doubled and ways must be worked out so that it is directly distributed by the Centre to the hills bypassing the state,” said Giri. At the moment, 10 lakh card holders from the hills get 100gm of sugar every week. The Union minister has reportedly told the Morcha delegation that he will try to implement a pattern like in the Northeast where food quantity allotted is slightly higher than the rest of the country. Minors rescued Statesan News Service: KURSEONG, 16 June: The Tindharia police rescued two minor girls, Rubina Pradhan (14) and Durga Chettri (16) from Siliguri from the clutches of an alleged kidnapper today. The police arrested one Upendra Chettri, resident of Tindharia for allegedly kidnapping the girls. He was produced in Kurseong court and sent to custody. Spit teacher & two suspended - SFI and DYFI take to streets for silsharma’s arrest The Telegraph: Siliguri, June 16: A discipline committee of the District Primary Education Council today suspended Ranjan Silsharma for spitting on the face of a schools inspector when he refused to put his initials on a list of demands last week. Two other teachers accompanying Silsharma have also been suspended for egging him on and abusing the inspector Riazul Islam. The development comes even as members of the SFI and DYFI came down to the streets and held road blockades in five places in and around Siliguri, demanding Silsharma’s immediate arrest. The decision to suspend Silsharma, Sikha Chatterjee and Anukul Dutta were taken in a meeting this afternoon. “We consider their acts indecent and decided to suspend them as they have failed to act like teachers,” said Biswajit Bhowmik, the chairman of the council. “Also, a one-member committee will be formed to investigate the incident and submit a report to us within a month. Based on this, appropriate departmental action will be taken against them. They will be on suspension till the committee submits the report.” According to Bhowmik, the six members of the discipline committee present today had endorsed the suspension. “I have been given the responsibility to choose the person who will head the probe committee. The panel will be finalised tomorrow and expected to start work by Thursday,” he said. While Silsharma is a teacher of Netaji (government sponsored) Pre-Primary School, Chatterjee is a staff member of Jagadish Chandra Vidyapith and Dutta of Rishi Aurobinda Primary School, all located in Siliguri. All three will not be able to attend their duty but will be on reduced salaries till the probe is completed. “The extent of salary slash will depends on the service rules. We have written ‘as per service rules’ in the suspension order,” said Bhowmik. A council source said following the inquiry, the three might face censor (an official warning) or their increments stopped or even dismissed from service. “There are two kinds of dismissal. In one case, the person concerned is eligible to apply for other government jobs while in the other case, he would be debarred from any government service,” the source said. Islam, whose face Silsharma had squirted with betel nut juice before a host of journalists and TV camera crew, said: “I feel the law should take its own course. The council, quite aptly, has decided to suspend them.” From the morning, members of the CPM’s student and youth wings, the SFI and DYFI, had been clamouring for the arrest of Silsharma, a Trinamul Congress councillor of the Siliguri Municipal Corporation. They set up blockades at Hashmi Chowk on Hill Cart Road, Salugara and Matigara on NH31 and Darjeeling More on NH55 and at Tinbatti More on NH31D. While the blockade at Hashsmi Chowk continued for more than two hours starting 12 noon, the protests at four other spots were withdrawn after half-an-hour at 1.30pm. “We were surprised to see that police failed to arrest him and his cohorts, even though eight days have passed after the obnoxious incident,” said Shankar Ghosh, the Darjeeling district DYFI secretary. “The dilly-dallying of a section of the police and administration prompted us to set up the blockades, even though it inconvenienced people.” “A deputy magistrate came to the spot and assured us that the administration would arrest Silsharma at the earliest but we insisted that he should be put behind bars in the next 48 hours. We will watch the administration for the next two days and if there is no action, our movement will resume,” Ghosh said. Foreign flight to land at Bagdogra - Customs, immigration facilities & health bay in place at airport Bagdogra Airport Bireswar Banerjee, The Telegraph: Siliguri, June 16: The first international flight to Bagdogra Airport will land on Thursday. The flight — to be operated by Drukair — from Paro in Bhutan will arrive at Bagdogra and then leave for Bangkok. The Bhutan airline had been scheduled to land on March 29, but the service did not take off, as the customs department had not set up its counter at the airport. A customs officer said all arrangements had been made and the department was only awaiting a formal communication from the higher-ups in Delhi to open the counter. “Drukair will be the first international airline to operate from Bagdogra. Its services will be four days a week. While the flights from Paro will land and take off on Tuesday and Saturday, the return flights’ arrival and departure will be on Sundays and Wednesdays,” said K.K. Bhowmik, the airport director of Bagdogra. “We have put in place immigration and customs counters and health bay, which are essential for an international airline to operate, at the airport.” The Bhutan national carrier, he said, would use Airbus 319 with a capacity to seat 114 passengers on the route. “The Central Board of Excise and Customs Department, which comes under the Union ministry of finance, will give the clearance for the counter any time,” said R. Manga Babu, additional commissioner of customs, north Bengal. “Once we receive it, there will be no hindrance to launching the international flight on Thursday,” he said. The officer said the department had set up a separate counter at the airport and an inspector, a superintendent and around 20 other employees would be posted to check passengers’ baggage. “On June 18, the first flight will land at 10.30am from Paro and depart for Bangkok at 11am. On the return trip, the aircraft will arrive at 9am and leave for Paro after 30 minutes,” said Bhowmik. He added that external affairs minister S.M. Krishna would be on the inaugural flight from Paro. Krishna will later leave for Delhi. JAITLEY QUITS BJP POST AHEAD OF CRUCIAL PARTY MEET Thaindian News:New Delhi, June 16 (IANS) Amid turmoil in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over its poll debacle, Arun Jaitley has resigned as its general secretary, though the party maintained Tuesday he was only following the one-man-one-post tradition. But speculation was rife that the party had made his resignation public now in a bid to pre-empt trouble at the meeting of the national executive, slated for June 20-21, with several party seniors insisting that responsibility be fixed for the poll defeat. Jaitley was the BJP’s chief campaign manager for the April-May elections and a section of party leaders are angry that he was June 3 rewarded with the post of leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha. They also allege that the party leadership was avoiding a discussion on the poor results. The party’s tally came down to 116 seats in the Lok Sabha from 138 in 2004 though it was expecting to touch 160. BJP media cell convenor Nalin Kohli told reporters that Jaitley had stepped down in keeping with the party’s one-man-one-post tradition and that he had quit June 3 itself when he was made leader of opposition in the upper house - a position vacated by Jaswant Singh after his election to the Lok Sabha. Asked why the party made his resignation public now, Kohli told a television channel: “Not much should be read into the timing of his resignation.” The resignation has come when Jaitley himself is vacationing out of the country and is not expected to attend the national executive meet. When reminded that L.K. Advani had remained the leader of opposition in the lower house for some time while he was still the party president, Kohli said one-man one-post was a “general principle that is followed” but not enforced. Kohli denied that Jaitley’s resignation had anything to do with the national executive meeting, amid speculation that the conference might be put off in view of the unrest within the party. “The national executive meeting will be held as scheduled and since it is being held in the aftermath of the elections, the outcome will be analysed. But a detailed analysis would take place at the chintan baithak (brainstorming session) in August,” Kohli said. Jaitley has been the target of several senior leaders ever since the party’s prime ministerial candidate Advani picked him as leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha. A senior leader, not wishing to be identified, disclosed that “the party expects a lot of fireworks at the national executive and his (Jaitley’s) resignation might be to pre-empt this”, given that there was a clamour for Jaitley’s head especially after he was made the leader of opposition in the upper house. The announcement of Jaitley’s resignation has come when the party is facing a “volcanic situation” as described by another leader Sushma Swaraj while speaking to a section of the media in Bhopal Monday. Three days ago, senior leader and former central minister Yashwant Sinha resigned from all party posts demanding that the BJP should fix responsibility for the debacle and reconstitute the party. Sinha resigned as party vice-president, national executive member and in-charge of party affairs in Karnataka. Earlier last week, former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh spoke of a disconnect between “parinaam and puraskar (results and rewards)” at a meeting of the party’s core group. According to party insiders, he wondered at the meeting that Jaitley, who was in charge of the elections, had been rewarded despite the party’s poor show in elections. INDIA REPORTS 31st SWINE FLUE CASE THAINDIAN NEWS: June 16th, 2009 - 9:04 pm ICT by IANS : New Delhi, June 16 (IANS) Worried after another fresh case of swine flu cropped up, of a nine-year-old boy who arrived from the US, the Indian government Tuesday said there should be “some kind of screening” in the US for outbound travellers as most of the infection cases in India have come from that country. The number of confirmed cases stands at 31. The boy, who arrived in Hyderabad two days ago by a British Airways flight from New Jersey, has been quarantined at the Andhra Pradesh Chest Hospital, the nodal centre to deal with influenza A(H1N1) cases.With this, the swine flu cases in Hyderabad have risen to 13, the highest in India. It was exactly a month ago that India’s first swine flu case was confirmed in the metro.In New Delhi, Minister of State for Health Dinesh Trivedi said: “The US is the main source (of swine flu) as far as India is concerned.” “In Mexico, when people leave the airport, they are properly monitored and screened. Similarly, Americans should also provide some kind of screening at the point of departure,” Trivedi told reporters. Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has already requested the external affairs ministry to prevail upon swine-flu affected countries to start screening of passengers bound for India to cut down spread of the highly infectious virus in India, Trivedi said. “The government is ready to handle the situation and there is no need to panic,” he assured. Of the 31 cases, 13 were reported in Hyderabad, eight in Jalandhar, five in Delhi, two each in Mumbai and Coimbatore and one in Goa. Of these, 28 people got the infection from the US, while one got it from Britain and the remaining were through human-to-human contact. In Hyderabad, the patients include six children. A 20-month-old boy and a six-year-old girl who came from New York are among those being treated. In Jalandhar, eight students, who were part of a group that returned from an educational trip to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US, have tested positive. Two more were hospitalised with the symptoms in the city Tuesday. So far, 315 people have been tested for the infection, of whom 31 tested positive. Eleven people who contracted the flu have been discharged after treatment, a health ministry statement said. The Jalandhar students were part of a group of 31 from the Guru Amar Das Public School that also included three escorting teachers. They returned from the US Saturday aboard a Qatar Airlines flight via Doha. The officials of the US consulate in Hyderabad Tuesday met K. Subhakar, coordinator, HINI influenza nodal centre, and other Andhra Pradesh health officials and held talks with them. The consulate officials also inquired about the condition of four Indian Americans, who tested positive for swine flu. The talks were significant as almost all the people found infected had come from the US. On Monday, Health Minister Azad had said that “till this disease is not controlled globally, I would like to request young people from educational institutions going abroad to suspend their visits for the time being”. “They can go after two-three months,” he had told reporters after seven children from Jalandhar who had arrived from the US tested positive. Union Health Secretary Naresh Dayal also raised the same matter at a high level forum on Advancing Global Health in the Face of Crisis organized by the United Nation in New York Monday. “…I would like to say that the developed countries would do a great service to the developing countries if they could contain and check the spread of infection in their own countries. I would therefore, urge them to take action to stop the spread of the infection,” he said in a statement. He said India has three indigenous vaccine producers in the private sector ready to produce the vaccine as soon as WHO makes available the “virus isolates and the seed”. A Swedish national was also quarantined with symptoms of the HINI infection in Bangalore. The Swede, along with an Indian, arrived from Thailand Tuesday. In northeastern India, authorities stepped up precautionary measures against the spread of swine flu and also banned the import of pigs and pork products from adjoining countries. The northeastern states share unfenced borders with Myanmar,Bangladesh, Bhutan and China. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which last week raised its alert against swine flu to the highest level - Phase 6, about 76 countries have officially reported 35,928 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection, including 163 deaths. Most of these deaths are reported from Mexico (108) and the US (45). The swine flu pandemic is the first since the Hong Kong flu pandemic in 1968, which killed one million people. Talks yes, but with leaders only: Morcha

VIVEK CHHETRI, The Telegraph:

Chidambaram and the Morcha team at the meeting in Delhi. A Telegraph picture Darjeeling, June 15: Jaswant Singh and a seven-member delegation of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha today met Union home minister P. Chidambaram and demanded that the next tripartite meeting on their demand for a separate state should be held at the political level. Singh, the BJP MP from Darjeeling who won the parliamentary election riding piggyback on the Morcha, had earlier assured Bimal Gurung’s party that he would help its members meet the central leaders. Today, however, the hill team largely deliberated on the damage caused by the May-26 landslides that killed 28 people and left hundreds homeless. They said a high-powered central survey team should visit the hills. Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri said over the phone from Delhi: “We want the next tripartite meeting to be held at a political level and the Union minister has assured us that he will discuss the issue with the state government.” The first and the second tripartite meetings which were held on September 8 and December 29 last year were at secretary levels. The Morcha leadership had sat across the table with the Union home secretary and the Bengal chief and home secretaries. Giri said the next round of talks should be between the Morcha and political parties in Bengal and their national leaders. The Morcha, while reiterating its demand for a Rs 1000-crore package, has demanded that expansion and setting up of satellite townships in the hills be given due importance. “Apart from demanding a high-powered technical team comprising experts from the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Geological Survey of India, we have said we want the entire sewerage system in the hills to be revamped.” The Morcha also wants alternative routes to connect far-flung areas to the district headquarters. “We want protection, restoration and strengthening of jhoras so that landslides can be stopped to some extent,” said Giri. Protection work on the national highways (NH31A and NH55) along with the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway track was also discussed, said Giri. Chidambaram reportedly told the delegation that the government would closely follow the report submitted by the inter-ministerial team that visited Darjeeling recently. “He was also of the opinion that teams from specific ministries like surface transport, could be sent to the hills if required,” said Giri. He was accompanied by Pradip Pradhan, Amar Lama, Harkabahadur Chhetri, Rohit Sharma, Trilok Dewan and Swaraj Thapa. The Morcha delegation also met N.C. Vij, the vice-chairman of National Disaster Management Authority, to give him a first hand information about the extent of damage. “He said the NDMA could explore the possibility of setting up a National Disaster Response Force for our region,” said Giri. Wanted: Plot for soccer school OUR CORRESPONDENT, The Telegraph, Bhaichung with his choreographer Sonia at the news conference in Darjeeling on Monday. (Suman Tamang) Darjeeling, June 15: Bhaichung Bhutia needs a plot of 30 acres to start a football academy. “I don’t want to start just another academy. I believe that 30 acres of land is needed for a football academy and if anyone provides me with that land, I will definitely start one,” the Indian captain said at a news conference here today. Bhaichung did maintain that “three-four state” governments were showing interest but he refused to name any state of his choice. This, however, does not mean that he is thinking of hanging his boots. “I will retire the day I start feeling that I don’t want to score or take to the field. This could happen in one month or it may not happen in the next 10 years,” he added. Brushing aside any plans of launching a career in the entertainment industry, the ace footballer made it clear that the Darjeeling jig at the Gymkhana Club was his last of its kind anywhere. “I entered the (dance) competition just for an experience and that is it. The Darjeeling dance was the last of its kind for me. I am not dancing any more.” Since the star footballer took part in a reality show contest aired by a satellite channel, his club, Mohun Bagan, had showcaused him for his absence. Bhaichung had, however, said that he had informed the club of his schedule and that the authorities were fully aware of his itinerary. Bhaichung refused to comment on the recent fiasco with his club. “I will not take any questions on it until I sort out the issue in Calcutta,” he said. He, however, said he was open to playing anywhere in the country — be it in Bengal or outside the state. The Indian captain also refused to read much into Bengal’s 2-4 drubbing at the hands of Goa in the Santosh Trophy finals yesterday. Bengal has not been able to win their Santosh Trophy title for the past 10 years. “I still believe Bengal is a good team. In football these things happen and you don’t win when you want to win,” he said. Jet Airways slash rate Siliguri, The Telegraph, June 15: Jet Airways has come with a special offer for passengers on all its flights operating from Bagdogra. Passengers can buy tickets to Delhi, Calcutta and Guwahati from Bagdogra by paying only Rs 2,700, Rs 1,729 and Rs 1,650. The tickets can be purchased only on Tuesday and passengers buying them have to fly between July 1 and September 30 this year. Cop kills self with revolver Cooch Behar, The Telegraph, June 15: A constable of Cooch Behar police station committed suicide by shooting on his head with his service rifle on the verandah of a Shiva temple within the police station campus around 3pm today. Probhas Chhetri, the 36-year old constable, was on patrol duty at that time. “We heard a sound of firing and ran out to find Probhas lying in a pool of blood. We immediately took him to the district hospital. But he was declared brought dead,” an officer of the police station said. District superintendent of police Devendra Prakash Singh said it was too early to say what had provoked him to kill himself. COOCH BEHAR, 15 JUNE: A police constable allegedly shot and killed himself with his service rifle at the Cooch Behar Kotowali police station today. The police are investigating to find out if it was suicide or an accidental death. The Cooch Behar SP, Mr Devendra Singh, said the victim, Pravas Chhetry, was suffering from depression, but it was not clear whether he had shot himself or the bullet went off accidentally. “Prima facie, he committed suicide,” the SP said. Chhetry (32) joined duty today at about 1 p.m. Hearing a gunshot policemen rushed to a temple inside the police station complex. They saw the constable is lying in a pool of blood. He was shifted to a nearby hospital where the doctors declared him brought dead. A few policemen said they suspect Chhetri committed suicide by firing at his throat. Statesman News Service