Centre ready with Article 355 rocket for Orissa, Karnataka

In a late-night move, the Centre was reported to be preparing the ground for a politically controversial move of invoking Article 355 against Orissa and Karnataka, the two NDA-ruled states which are witnessing large-scale targeted attacks on the Christian minority community over the last few weeks ostensibly in protest against conversions.

Article 355, one of the most rarely used provisions of the Constitution, enshrines on the Central Government a “duty to protect every state against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that the government of every state is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution”.

Article 355 is one of the three controversial “emergency provisions” in the Constitution along with Article 352, which empowers the Centre to impose a national Emergency, and Article 356, which enables it to dismiss a state government.

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Traced to Goa, Nazi war criminal tried to enter Karnataka, arrested on way and flown to Berlin

An 88-year-old Nazi war criminal identified as Johann Bach was airlifted to Berlin yesterday after he was tracked down to the Goa-Karnataka border by German and Indian intelligence agencies on the basis of information provided by an Israeli group involved in the search for war criminals and investigations in Goa.

Though local police and intelligence agencies in Karnataka said they were “unaware” of the operation, Karnataka Additional DGP for Intelligence, Shankar Bidari, said his office had received information of the arrest on Saturday morning. He also said the alleged war criminal had been moved to Germany.

Officials at the German embassy, when contacted, said they had received no information of the arrest in Goa. The German consulate in Mumbai had also not received any information, embassy officials said.

Reports from Hubli and Goa quoting a press release issued by Perus Narkp, said to be the intelligence wing of the Berlin-based German Chancellor’s Core, said Bach had been involved in the killing of nearly 12,000 Jews at the Marsha Tikash Whanaab concentration camp in East Berlin under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.

Bach has been identified as an absconding Waffen SS (Schutzstaffel) Colonel. He has also been identified as a senior adjutant at the East Berlin concentration camp.

Bach had been on the run over the last 50 years, hopping across countries like Argentina, Bulgaria, Yemen and Canada before arriving in Goa around five months ago. He had been under surveillance after people involved in the search for listed Nazi war criminals traced his location to Bardez in Goa, the Karnataka intelligence official said.

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