Modi refuses to speak at National Integration Council, hands speech text slamming UPA on terror

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi today stunned the meeting of the National Integration Council, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, when he “declined” to speak and submitted for the records the text of his written speech.

Belying expectations, Modi sat quietly, listening to the verbal duel between Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik over deployment of paramilitary forces in the state which is battling a wave of anti-Christian attacks.

Asked about Modi, P K Gera, Gujarat’s Resident Commissioner in Delhi, confirmed that the CM declined to speak.“Yes,he did not speak. Perhaps he didn’t find any reason to speak with so many airing their views.”

Modi’s “reluctance” to speak surprised the large gathering because he was expected to raise a storm over the issue of terror. “We were expecting he would create an uproar. We were taken a back when he refused to speak,” said a Union Minister.

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Blast-hit UPA wakes up to tougher law, faster courts

The UPA Government, under attack for seeming ineffective in the face of terror, for the first time has acknowledged the need for new counter-terrorism initiatives, including strengthening the existing law and introducing fast-track courts.

Before a two-hour emergency Cabinet meeting late tonight that discussed such measures, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking at the conference of Governors at Rashtrapati Bhavan today, had set the tone.

In an apparent rebuttal of the BJP charge that vote bank politics was the reason Congress was soft on terror, Singh said: “The public debate on the issue of terrorism has, unfortunately, tended to get driven by politics, and has centered on certain laws enacted or repealed by Governments of different political persuasions...Our Government has no fixed, inflexible or ideological view in this regard.”

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Terror email: To clear his name, Haywood on way back to Mumbai

US National Kenneth Haywood, who left India last month while being investigated in connection with the Ahmedabad bomb Blasts e-mail sent from his account, is set to return to Mumbai tonight in a bid to clear his name.

Source said Haywood, the Navi Mumbai -based employee of business skills coaching firm Campbell White, is flying back to his home in US through London on British Airways flight BA 139 due to land after midnight on Wednesday.

Sources said Haywood sent “feelers” to Mumbai Police that he regretted the way he left India despite a look-out notice. While he is not expected to be arrested since the Maharashtra Anti- Terrorism Squad (ATS) has since given him a clean chit, Haywood is expected to visit ATS on Thursday.

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Terror holds Jammu family hostage in 17 hour gunbattle

After weeks of being on the boil over the Amarnath land issue, Jammu was gripped with fear today after at least three militants, suspected to have sneaked in from Pakistan yesterday, killed four persons, including an Army junior commissioned officer, and held eight persons — four children, their mother and grandmother and two men — hostage for over 17 hours in a house on the outskirts of the city. The men were the children’s tutor and a neighbour.

The gunbattle between security forces and the militants, which began around 6 am in Chinnore barely 20 km from the international border — ended around 11 pm tonight when the last of the three militants, according to Jammu SSP Manohar Singh, was shot dead.

According to a jawan who went into the house around midnight, the children were said to be safe while one “male” was dead and another man had bullet injuries in the leg. Both women were safe — the grandmother escaped in the morning and the mother came out of the house after the encounter.

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To guard public health in emergency, Centre plans to change the Law

The Health Ministry is working on a Bill which, if all goes to plan, will place public health in times of natural disasters, epidemic outbreaks and acts of terror in the Concurrent List before the end of this year, giving the Centre the power to independently promulgate laws and lay down rules. Public health is so far a state subject, exclusively in the domain of state governments.

The recent outbreak of avian flu in West Bengal has convinced the Ministry that more powers need to be vested with the Centre. “During the avian flu outbreak, Panchayat elections were due in West Bengal. So the state government could not take certain steps which were necessary in those circumstances. The Ministry could not intervene as health is a state subject. Though the Health Ministry had for long felt the need to bring health under its control, this incident highlighted the urgency for such an amendment,” a senior Health Ministry official told The Indian Express.

The Bill being drafted by the Ministry will also lay down guidelines to be followed in case of natural disasters and epidemics. The Public Health Bill 2007 aims “to provide, prevent, control and manage epidemics or dangerous epidemic diseases, acts of bio terrorism and threats there of”.

The draft of the proposed Bill has already been examined by a Parliamentary committee and a Cabinet note has also been circulated. The proposed Bill is likely to be discussed in the forthcoming session of the House.

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