Yangon, July 1 (DPA) UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is likely to meet Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit to the country later this week, an official said Wednesday.

“He (Ban Ki-moon) is supposed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi when he arrives here but we cannot definitely tell his schedule,” said an official who requested anonymity.

Ban is scheduled to visit Myanmar Friday and Saturday at the official invitation of the ruling junta.

He is expected to meet the country’s most powerful man, Senior General Than Shwe, head of the State Peace and Development Council, as Myanmar’s junta styles itself, officials said.

Besides Suu Kyi and Than Shwe, Ban also plans to meet with political parties and ethnic groups and travel to the Irrawaddy delta region that was devastated by Cyclone Nargis on May 2-3 last year, killing up to 150,000 people.

Ban last visited Myanmar in May 2008 to hasten international aid to the country, whose military rulers are notoriously paranoid about western interference in their internal affairs.

Ban’s talks with Myanmar’s senior leadership are expected to focus on a plea for the release of all political prisoners including Suu Kyi; resumption of dialogue between the government and opposition; and the need to create conditions conducive to credible elections planned in 2010.

“The secretary general believes that the sooner these issues are addressed, the earlier Myanmar will be able to move towards peace, democracy and prosperity. He looks forward to meeting all key stakeholders to discuss what further assistance the United Nations can offer to that end,” a UN statement said.

The first day of Ban’s visit will coincide with the resumption of the trial of Suu Kyi on charges of violating her house arrest, by allowing a US citizen to swim to her lakeside residence in Yangon.

Suu Kyi’s trial, being held at a special court set up in Yangon’s Insein Prison, is scheduled to resume Friday with testimony from defence witness Khin Moe Moe, an attorney.

The trial began May 11. While the prosecution was allowed to present 14 witnesses in the first week, the defence was initially allowed only one. Later, Khin Moe Moe was permitted to testify.

Critics say the military junta is using the case as a pretext to keep the 1991 Nobel peace laureate in jail during a politically sensitive period, leading up to next year’s general election.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won the 1990 general election by a landslide but has been blocked from power by Myanmar’s junta for the past 19 years.

The new trial of Suu Kyi, whose most recent six-year house arrest sentence expired May 27, has sparked a chorus of protests from world leaders and statements of concern from its regional allies in the Association of South-East Asian Nations.

Bangkok, July 1 (DPA) Thai police discovered about 10 million baht ($290,000) in cash hidden in the doors of a car belonging to an alleged drug trafficker which had been impounded and driven by officers for the past two years, media reports said Wednesday.

Department of Special Investigation chief Thawee Sodsong told a press conference Tuesday that police in Udon Thani province had recently found 9,998,000 baht packed inside the back doors of a Toyota Fortuner that had been seized in a raid on a suspected drug dealer’s house in Bangkok back in 2005.

The car belonged to Usman Salamaeng who faces charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. Usman, who holds Thai and Malaysian passports, is said to be living in Malaysia.

Usman’s well-padded vehicle was used by police in Udon Thani, 400 km north-east of Bangkok, for two years before they chanced upon the wads of cash.

“Police inquiries have found that Usman had hidden the money, believed to be acquired though drug trafficking, in the vehicle,” Thawee told the Bangkok Post newspaper.

Kolkata, July 1 (IANS) State-run Coal India Ltd (CIL) has decided to offer employment to Madhu, the poverty-stricken fifth generation descendent of India’s last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Madhu, 33, is the daughter of Sultana Begum and the late Muhammad Bedar Bakht, the great grandson of Bahadur Shah Zafar.

“On behalf of Coal India Ltd, I feel pleasure in offering employment to Madhu. It will be a great tribute to the last Mughal emperor who played a key role during the first war of independence in 1857,” Coal India Chairman Partha Bhattacharyya said.

“It is the duty of the country to repay its debt to the family of those who sacrificed their lives for the country’s freedom, especially in view of the recently concluded celebration of the 150th anniversary of the 1857 uprising,” he said.

The employment letter will be handed over to Madhu by Union Minister for Coal Sriprakash Jaiswal at a function to be held in the city next month.

The move by Coal India came in response to a plea by a Delhi-based scribe couple Neena and Shivnath Jha who had launched a nationwide movement “Andolan Ek Pustak Se” under the aegis of Bismillah: The Beginning Foundation.

The initiative was launched to rehabilitate the descendants of forgotten heroes who fought for the honour of India.

“Muhammad Bedar Bakht died in 1980 leaving his widow at the mercy of God to maintain herself and their children on the bank of river Hooghly in West Bengal’s Howrah district. At that time she was in her 30s. Nobody came to her rescue for the past three decades,” said Shivnath Jha.

“I don’t have words to express my feelings. The job will not only give an inner strength to a woman like me, but also protect me and my family,” Madhu said.

It was a sudden turn of fortune for the family languishing in extreme poverty and squalor in the Cowies Ghat slum of Howrah district. Madhu’s mother Sultana Begum runs a tea shop in the locality. It is her family’s sole source of sustenance.

Bahadur Shah Zafar was placed on the throne in 1837. He was the last of the Mughal emperors who ruled over the Indian subcontinent for some 300 years. The first War of Independence in 1857 started during his reign.

The sepoys declared Zafar the symbol of freedom and nominated him as their commander-in-chief. He was exiled to Rangoon (now Yangon) in 1858 where he lived for five years and died in 1862 at the age of 87.

Mumbai, July 1 (IANS) A key index of the Indian equities market rose at the opening bell Wednesday, putting on 57 points within five minutes of start of trade.

The benchmark index of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the Sensex, which opened higher at 14,506.43 points, was ruling at 14,551.24 points, 57.4 points or 0.4 percent above Tuesday’s close.

The S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) too moved up from the opening bell, rising 0.42 percent to rule at 4,309.2 points around the same time.

Broader market indices also rose, with the BSE midcap index ruling 0.36 percent higher and the BSE smallcap index moving up 0.27 percent.

Srinagar, July 1 (IANS) With a youth succumbing o injuries sustained in firing by security forces, the death toll in the violence in Baramulla town of north Kashmir rose to four Wednesday, police said.

Amir, 24, who had received a bullet injury when security forces opened fire on a mob in Khanpora locality Tuesday evening, died at the Soura Medical Institute here early Wednesday.

Tension again rose in the old town areas of Baramulla when the body of the youth reached Baramulla for burial, which was attended by thousands of mourners.

Fayaz Ahmad Gojri, 17, was also shot dead by a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) trooper while security forces were trying to control the stone pelting protesters Tuesday evening.

“Police have registered a case of murder against the CRPF trooper. Officers of the CRPF unit have been asked to hand him over to the police,” said a police officer.

In the wake of this incident, the state government late Tuesday decided to withdraw the CRPF from law and order duties in Baramulla town.

“The CRPF has been withdrawn from the town and it is being replaced by the local armed police,” another police officer said.

The government has already ordered a magisterial probe into the firing incident. The investigations would be completed within 10 days, official sources said.

Authorities have also announced ex-gratia relief and government jobs for the next of kin of those killed.

On Monday, two people were killed and 10 injured in firing by security forces following mob violence in the town.

The protests in Baramulla had begun following allegations by a local woman that she had been abused by a police officer inside a police station.

On Wednesday morning, authorities also imposed restrictions in the south Kashmir town of Anantnag, where people have been demanding to know the whereabouts of a youth who had reportedly been picked up by the army a few days back.

Meanwhile, normal life across the valley continued to be at a standstill for the second consecutive day because of the three-day shutdown call given by the hardline separatist Hurriyat group headed by Syed Ali Geelani to protest the rape and murder of two women in Shopian as well as the killing of youth in Baramulla town.

Public transport remained off the roads, and educational institutions, markets and banks remained shut in the state’s summer capital Srinagar and other major towns and cities of the valley.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo meets July 5-6 to grapple with the worrying problem of sectarianism in its Kerala unit. Few political observers believe it is in a position to act decisively.

Ranged on either side of the divide are two politburo members – party state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, 65, who has the organizational machinery in his grip, and Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, 85, the only living party man from the state who was among the 32 members who walked out of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India in 1964 to found the breakaway party.

Achuthanandan, who was state secretary from 1980 to 1992, played a big role in Vijayan’s elevation to that post in 1998. But they quickly parted ways.

Early on, it looked as though Vijayan was trying to modernize the party to bring it in tune with the times and Achuthanandan was trying to hold it back in the Stalinist path. Soon, however, their public images changed.

When the Congress-led United Democratic Front was in power, Achuthanandan, as Leader of the Opposition, travelled to the remotest corners of the state and identified himself with popular causes, earning in the process the image of a man of the masses. Vijayan, who tightened his hold on the party and mobilized resources for the party’s media and entertainment enterprises by tapping rich men of dubious background, came to be identified with the wrong kind of change.

The party’s national leadership has been seized of the sectarian problem since 2005 when the two sides went in for a showdown, rejecting General Secretary Prakash Karat’s plea to approve an agreed list of state committee members. The measures it has taken to put down sectarianism have not yielded results, mainly because it has been treating the symptoms, not the malady.

The state party leadership did not want Achuthanandan to contest the assembly elections but the politburo, responding to public demonstrations of support to him, allowed him to contest and become chief minister. The state party then effectively reined him in by packing the cabinet with Vijayan loyalists. With the politburo’s help, it ensured that the chief minister did not keep the sensitive portfolios of home affairs and vigilance.

The national leadership has been at pains to give the impression that it holds the scales even between the feuding leaders. As they indulged in a public spat, it suspended both from the powerful politburo but allowed them to stay in their respective posts. The suspensions were withdrawn after a few months.

As the situation deteriorated, the national leadership adopted a policy of procrastination. There was no action on Achuthanandan’s repeated requests for a politburo meeting to discuss state party affairs. Complaints from the two factions levelling charges against each other piled up at the party’s headquarters.

After the party’s disastrous performance in the Lok Sabha elections the national leadership could no longer look the other way. However, its election review was marked by self-righteousness rather than self-criticism. The Central Committee refused to acknowledge the damage caused by the party’s brazen attempt of shield Vijayan from prosecution in the Lavalin case and by the alliance with Abdul Naser Mahdani’s People’s Democratic Party, which is widely seen as a communal outfit. It attributed the electoral debacle simplistically to the confusion caused in the public mind on these issues by the opposition, hostile media and a section within the party.

The politburo has before it two demands – one from the Vijayan faction seeking Achuthanandan’s ouster from the chief minister’s post and the other from the Achuthanandan faction for Vijayan’s removal from the state secretary’s post pending his clearance by the judiciary in the corruption case. Theoretically, it can accept either or both of these demands.

The national leadership is in the unenviable position of being damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. In taking a decision, it has to consider how its action will affect the Kerala party, which is its largest unit. If Achuthanandan is ousted, it will not be able to find a chief minister with comparable popular appeal. If Pinarayi is removed, it will be hard put to find an equally competent successor.

Party documents have revealed that about 10 percent of the full members and close to 25 percent of the candidate members in the state have been dropping out each year. Large-scale desertions, even when the party is in power, suggests deep disillusionment among the rank and file.

Despite a high dropout rate, the party continued to grow until 2006 thanks to the onrush of new entrants. However, in 2007, the last year for which figures are available, there was a net drop in membership. It fell from 341,006 in the previous year to 336,644.

(01.07.2009 – B.R.P.Bhaskar can be contacted at brpbhaskar@gmail.com)

Bhubaneswar, July 1 (IANS) Four companies of central paramilitary forces posted in Orissa’s Kandhamal district following communal violence last year were withdrawn Wednesday, an official said. They were the last of the central forces posted there to keep the peace.

“The deployment date of the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) personnel was up to June 30. They have now been withdrawn,” Inspector General of Police Arun Sarangi told IANS, adding that an adequate number of state police personnel have replaced them.

At least 4,000 central security personnel were deployed in the district, about 200 km from here, in the aftermath of the communal violence that erupted following the killing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and four of his aides Aug 23 last year.

At least 38 people were killed and over 25,000 Christians forced to flee after their houses were attacked by rampaging mobs in the aftermath of the attack on Saraswati. Nearly 1,200 people are still living in three government relief camps.

No communal violence has been reported from the region since October last year. The central government had directed the state government earlier this year to initiate withdrawal of the paramilitary forces in phases.

Kolkata, July 1 (IANS) A 28-year-old married man committed suicide in Malda district of West Bengal after being separated from his girlfriend, police said. He had left home to search for her.

Narad Boiragi was admitted to the general hospital in Malda after consuming poison and died there early Tuesday.

Boiragi, a resident of Kolkata’s neighbouring North 24 Parganas district, left his home Friday in search of his beloved in Malda district. He went to Salaidanga under Gajol police station area, a tribal dominated region, to meet his girlfriend.

But the girl rejected him and her family took her away.

“Boiragi committed suicide by consuming poison. He came to Malda June 26 and took the poison the very next day after being rejected by his girlfriend,” said Malda Additional Police Superintendent Kalyan Mukherjee.

Astana, July 1 (IANS) India is a very important player in the two-day global conference of faiths and civilisations that opened in this Kazakh capital Wednesday, a top diplomat says.

“India is a very important country (for the meet). In fact, India is a country that is even more multi-faceted (than the event’s hosts),” Doulat Kuanyshev, ambassador-at-large in the Kazakhstan foreign ministry, said of the third Congress of World and Traditional Religions that Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev inaugurated.

Noting that both Hindus and Muslims were representing India at the Congress, he said: “They (the two communities bring specific inputs to the discussions.”

In this context, he singled out the contribution of Kala Dhananjay Acharya, the director of the Somaiya Bharatiya Sanskriti Peetham, who is both a delegate at the congress and a member of its permanent secretariat.

“I am fascinated by Acharya’s work with the secretariat. She has been able to bring both a theoretical and scientific language into its work. I find her most rationalistic,” Kuanyshev added.

India is represented at the meet by 17 delegates. Five each are representatives of Hindus, Muslims and Zoroastrianism, while three from the Swaminarayan sect are special invitees.

Academics, clerics and leaders from 60 nations, including India, have gathered for the two-day meet to deliberate on the prospects of peaceful coexistence among the world’s religions amid growing extremism and violence.

Being held at a unique pyramid-shaped building here, the conference is a bold reminder to the world that people of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds can and should live together in peace, its organisers say.

The nine-storey monument, Palace of Peace and Concord, rising more than 200 feet high has been built specially for the meeting of world religions.

At the end of the inaugural congress in 2003, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jew, Hindu and Tao leaders adopted a declaration stating that “extremism, terrorism and other forms of violence in the name of religion… are threats to human life and should be rejected”. The second Congress was held in 2007.

(Vishnu Makhijani can be contacted at vishnu.makhijani@ians.in)

Bangalore, July 1 (IANS) The proposed oversight body for higher education is a “welcome development”, says Pushpa Bhargava, former vice-chairman of the Knowledge Commission. According to him, the present regulatory system is so inept that it is easy for anybody to set up a private professional college in India and fool regulators by hiring professors for three days.

“All you have to do is to rent a building, write to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for recognition, and then hire an ‘event manager’ – the same guy who arranges weddings and conferences,” Bhargava, a renowned biologist, told IANS.

The AICTE, which is the regulatory body for professional technical education, takes a couple of months to send its inspection team to see if the college has the required infrastructure, staff and equipment, he said.

“During that gap, the events manager obtains on rent everything from equipment, tables and chairs, office staff, books for a library and, of course, professors who can spare three days to be present in the building when the inspection team arrives,” Bhargava said.

“After that, recognition follows and the college is free to enrol students charging heavy tuition fees.” Most private professional colleges are money-spinning factories, he said.

“The going rental rate for a professor in Hyderabad a year ago was Rs.30,000 per day,” Bhargava said, adding that he came to know about this racket when an event manager “asked me to suggest names of professors who could come for three days and make Rs.90,000″.

Private engineering colleges in India account for over 80 percent of seats – a jump from 15 percent in 1960, according to data from AICTE. Nearly 50 medical colleges in the private sector have received recognition in the last six years.

The National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) proposed by the Yash Pal committee will replace AICTE, the Medical Council of India and about a dozen other professional councils and regulatory agencies including the University Grants Commission of which Yash Pal was once chairman.

Bhargava, who was founder director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, says the Yash Pal committee’s recommendations should be put into action promptly. The challenge, he says, is to find the right people to run the NCHER.

But renowned chemist C.N.R. Rao, former science adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, says he is not sure whether creating one more regulator at the top will revitalize the higher education system or make it just more bureaucratic.

It will be all right if the proposed NCHER stays an advisory body, he told IANS. But if it is going to take on the role of regulating the entire stream of educational sectors from agriculture and medicine to technology and law “it is going to become a huge elephant and unmanageable”.

Rao said he had already expressed his concerns to Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal and hoped to discuss with him the possible ramifications if the plan was implemented in haste.

Goverdhan Mehta, former director of the Indian Institute of Science and member of the Yash Pal committee, says the report released June 24 was the result of interactive meetings “with thousands of fellow academics and all stakeholders including private players”.

(K. S. Jayaraman can be contacted at killugudi@hotmail.com)