What's in a Name

We do have misconceived notion of the Muslims not accepting other people. This incident proves otherwise.

Two Christians were lost in the Sahara desert. One is David, the other is Michael. They were dying of hunger and thirst when they suddenly came upon an oasis, with what looked like an emirate of a mosque in the middle.

David said to Michael : "Look, let's pretend we are Muslims, otherwise we'll not get any food or drink. I am going to call myself Mohammed."

Michael refused to change his name, he said : "My name is Michael, and I will not pretend to be other than but what I am...Michael."

he Imam of the mosque received both well and asked about their names.

David said: "My name is Mohammed."

Michael said: "My name is Michael."

The Imam turned to the helpers of the mosque and said : "Please bring some food and water for Michael only."

Then he turned to the other and said: "Well Mohammed, Ramzan Mubarak!"

Sent by Sandip Mukherjee

Manmohan Singh is an honest PM, but is remote controlled: Hazare

Ralegan Siddhi (Maharashtra), May 1 (ANI): Social activist Anna Hazare on Tuesday described Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as an honest man, but one who was unable to freely take decisions, and is being remote controlled.

"No ruling or opposition party is working for the development and bright future of the country. All the politicians are running after money and power. There are some politicians with clean image in the ruling as well as the opposition parties and we accept this fact. But they are not allowed to do anything. Majority of people prevent them from doing good work. Our Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, is an honest man; I have never heard that he is involved in cases of corruption. But inspite of being honest, he is being run by a remote control, and is forced to remain quiet. Then what will the Prime Minister do. There are many politicians whose condition is similar," said Hazare.

The world's largest democracy has the dubious distinction of having the largest number of legislators with a criminal record and some state governments are brazenly admitting notorious individuals into the party-fold for electoral considerations.

Muscle and money power now dominate Indian politics and this is the trend that team of anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare had sought to quarantine by seeking a Lokpal legislation - a kind of citizen's ombudsman bill.

Hazare began his five-week long statewide tour on Tuesday from Shirdi for public awareness and stressed on the need to have an anti-graft bill to combat rampant corruption.

Exuding confidence, Hazare said that within these 35 days, he will visit 35 districts and would motivate people to continue their fight against corruption.

"I am confident that in these 35 days, I will go to 35 districts. I have faith in myself and that is the reason why I am moving out. If I was scared then I would have stayed in the hospital. So, I am hopeful, as I am healthy after doing naturopathy, and after the 35 days of campaign. I will tour the whole country and will continue to fight for an effective Jan Lokpal (Public Ombudsman) and Lokayukta (Provincial Ombudsman). Till the Jan Lokpal is not passed in the country and a Lokayukta is not formed in every state, I will continue to fight and I am ready to fight," said Hazare.

A series of high-profile scandals has eroded trust and stymied policymaking in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's administration in recent months.

Petty corruption is a fact of life for hundreds of millions of Indians who need to pay bribes for anything from a passport to a gas connection, but a string of billion-dollar scandals has sparked widespread anger against the government.

The Congress party has come under fire for what activists say is a cynical response to mass anti-graft movements that sprouted this year. The government says the protests were undemocratic and should not be allowed to dictate policy. The corruption saga has dented investor confidence and smothered reforms such as on land acquisition that could help maintain the momentum of one of the world's fastest-growing economies, which has showed signs of slowdown.

I am pleased that both Swami Ramdeo and Anna are combining forces to eliminate these corrupt politicians from the national scene. India has become the laughing stock of the whole world. The USA is just printing notes to sustain its economy and it is weak people like us who continue to lick their a****s just to get a hand at their paper. Why? Because of these corrupt politicians. Manmohan Singh may be honest but useless as he cannot take any decisions without looking over his shoulders whether he is pleasing madam.

Baba Ramdev begins third phase of India tour to awaken people to fight for their rights

By ANI

Raipur (Chhattisgarh), May 1 (ANI): Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev began the third phase of his nationwide tour on Tuesday from Raipur, Chhattisgarh, to fight corruption in public life and unearth unaccounted money stashed to off shore banks.

In June 2011, Baba Ramdev and thousands of his followers had staged a mass hunger strike in New Delhi to demand reforms, including the awarding of the death penalty for corrupt officials. Dozens were injured when the government sent a phalanx of police in with batons and tear gas to break up their peaceful protest.

Lashing out at the government for misappropriating trillions of national wealth, Baba Ramdev said his tour was part of the struggle of the common man to combat graft.

"This is the third phase of Bharat Swabhiman Yatra (tour to protect India"s integrity). We vow to start the Yatra (Tour) on the Labour Day, as this is the struggle of the common man. The important aspect of our struggle is to protect the natural resources, which are worth 20,000 lakh crores rupees (200 trillion). Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa are main centres of natural resources," said Ramdev.

He blamed the Congress party for looting the country and exploiting natural resources of the tribal area. "We have to fight for the rights of the tribals and I support it. It is because large amount of wealth is hidden below the land which belongs to the tribals and it includes iron, coal, gold and silver, diamond. The country has been looted by committing corporate crime. Our struggle is against this corporate and political crime. But we are fighting in a democratic way," he added.

The world"s largest democracy has the dubious distinction of having the largest number of legislators with a criminal record and some state governments are brazenly admitting notorious individuals into the party-fold for electoral considerations.

Muscle and money power now dominate Indian politics and this is the trend that team of anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare had sought to quarantine by seeking a Lokpal legislation - a kind of citizen"s ombudsman bill. Baba Ramdev asserted that India"s anti-graft campaign brought millions of people onto the streets and they would teach a lesson to the corrupt officials.

"If we talk about black money, corruption or changing the various corrupt systems, the governments have stooped to low levels and that is why we have taken the assistance of the people and they will teach them a lesson," Ramdev further stated.

Reportedly, before heading to Delhi to join the protest with Hazare, he would also visit Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

A series of high-profile scandals has eroded trust and stymied policymaking in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh"s administration in recent months. Petty corruption is a fact of life for hundreds of millions of Indians who need to pay bribes for anything from a passport to a gas connection, but a string of billion-dollar scandals has sparked widespread anger against the government.

The Congress party has come under fire for what activists say is a cynical response to mass anti-graft movements that sprouted this year. The government says the protests were undemocratic and should not be allowed to dictate policy. The corruption saga has dented investor confidence and smothered reforms such as on land acquisition that could help maintain the momentum of one of the world"s fastest-growing economies, which has showed signs of slowdown. (ANI)

I support both Baba Ramdeo and Anna Hazare and the Supreme Court in their fight against corruption. Whatever action the governments are taking against corruption are because of these stalwarts and their associates.However these are but baby steps and the government will go back to its old ways as soon as the pressure is released. The pressure should continue to be mounted. We have seen how parliament with the active connivance of the Vice President Hamid Ansari scuttled the Lok Pal Bill. And this gentleman, Hamid Ansari would like to become the President of India. I am all for Dr. Abdul Kalam Azad being given a second term.

Crime: you are a CPM leader

Durgapur, April 30: Trinamul Congress workers allegedly beat up a DYFI member in Durgapur when he refused to switch to the ruling party and threatened his elderly mother, a CPM leader, that they would set her house ablaze if she too did not follow the directive.

On Saturday, the Trinamul workers also ordered another woman owing allegiance to the CPM in the same locality to either join the party or sell her house and leave the area.

Prasanta Roy, the 37-year-old DYFI activist who had to be hospitalised after the alleged attack, said he was called to the Trinamul office at Benachity by local party leader Uttam Sarkar. “I refused to enter the party office and told Uttam and his aides that they could say whatever they wanted to outside. Uttam and around 20 of his aides came outside and beat me up with belts and sticks. They told me that I was being assaulted because my mother was a CPM leader. They said they wanted to free the area from the ‘pollution created by the CPM’,” Prasanta said.

After being kicked and punched for nearly 15 minutes, he slumped to the ground. Then the Trinamul workers allegedly hurled Prasanta’s bicycle at him, locked up their office and left.

Doctors said he suffered a head injury and prescribed a CT scan. “The back of my head and left ear are still paining. I can’t hear properly in the left ear,” Prasanta, who was released from Durgapur sub-divisional hospital this afternoon, said.

Hours after the attack, Trinamul workers led by Uttam went to Prasanta’s house and allegedly threatened his mother, CPM branch committee member Gayatri Roy, 60, that they would set her house on fire if she did not sever ties with her party. “They told me to either join Trinamul or sell my house and shift elsewhere. They threatened to set my house ablaze,” said Gayatri, a functionary of the CPM’s women’s wing.

“They also whitewashed the walls of my house, saying they had ‘booked’ them to write graffiti for the upcoming civic polls,” she added.

The Trinamul workers then went to the house of Champa Dey, 55, another CPM branch committee member, and asked her to either quit the party or leave the area.

Prasanta said neither he nor his neighbour, Champa, had mustered courage to lodge a police complaint. “The Trinamul workers led by Uttam threatened my widowed mother with dire consequences if we went to the police,” he added.

Prasanta said he was so “scared” that he did not send his two daughters to school today. “It is as if we have committed a crime by being associated with the CPM. Trinamul workers teased and taunted my daughter-in-law when she went to a nearby grocery shop today. None of us dared to venture out of the house after that,” Gayatri said.

Champa said: “I have been living here with my husband and two sons since 1989. But now, Trinamul workers are trying to hound us out of the area if I do not join the party.”

Uttam denied the charges and claimed a “conspiracy” had been hatched against Trinamul. “It is a conspiracy to malign Trinamul before the Durgapur civic polls. The people will give a fitting reply. No Trinamul worker beat up Prasanta. No one from our party went to the two houses and threatened the CPM leaders,” he said.

Let me explain at the outset that I am no CPM supporter and do not hold any brief for that party. I was one on the stronger critics of the party through our blog. However, when the party which claimed "poribortan" after coming to power, the above is not a good harbinger of change for the good of Bengal. They are following the same policy as the CPM. These are the very acts for which the CPM was thrown out. Mamta Banerjee is hastening towards her fall.

Arabul surrenders, walks out on bail

TNN | May 1, 2012, 03.22AM IST

BARUIPUR: Former Bhangar MLA and president of Bhangar College governing body Arabul Islam and his son Hakibul Islam on Monday surrendered before the additional chief judicial magistrate Suruteswar Mondal's court in Baruipur. Clad in white-and-blue shirt and trousers, Arabul entered the court around 10am on a Scorpio, packed with his supporters. The father-son duo was produced before the court at 1.55pm, and they walked out on bail bonds of Rs 1,000 each within 10 minutes.

Arabul and Hakibul were booked under section 506 (criminal intimidation), 509 (insulting the modesty of a woman), 143 (unlawful assembly), 341 (wrongful confinement), 323 (hurt) and 448 (house trespass). The duo were produced before ACJM . The magistrate granted the duo bail on Rs 1,000 bail bonds.

Two senior lawyers Hafizul Rehman and Siddhartha Ghosh pleaded for the former MLA and his son, who is the general secretary of the college students' union. They said their clients were respected political persons and their surrender showed they respect the judiciary system.

The lawyers also raised serious objections against the word "hoodlum" used by the complainant. According to the lawyers, use of such words is tantamount to defamation of their "reputed clients". "We are exploring the possibility of taking legal steps against use of such derogatory words," said one of them.

Last Tuesday, Arabul Islam allegedly hurled a jug at college teacher Debjani Dey after she expressed her displeasure over the whip issued by the governing body president for voting in favour of Trinamool candidates in the WBCUTA election. Arabul, however, denied the allegation saying he had never hurled any jug at her. He only objected against her wagging finger at him and a simple thing was blown out of proportion, Arabul claimed.

However, the government took stock of things and initiated action after the teachers met the governor. First, the teachers lodged a complaint with the additional SP (rural) of South 24-Parganas. Then, Arabul got a serious drubbing from the top brass of Trinamool Congress. Things started rolling fast. The administration also organized security at the college campus to avert any untoward incident.

On Monday, college teachers appeared satisfied with the developments as they could enter the college without any hassle. "We faced no problem in taking classes," said a teacher.

It does not speak very highly of our government, police and judiciary where a Jadavpur University professor Ambikesh Mahapatra was incarcerated in jail for 16 hours but a hoodlum was let off within 10 minutes. I see some lawyers have objected to the word "hoodlum" being used for their clients. Well, hoodlums are not born or go to college to get the degree of "hoodlum" Their actions make them "hoodlum". And without doubt, the act of Arabul Hussain of throwing a jug at a lady does deserve a title of "hoodlum"

Two passports to same person set off security alarm

Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay, TNN

KOLKATA: The bizarre coexistence of two passport systems in the city has delivered exactly what security agencies feared most - multiple passports to the same person.

Manoj Ginodia, an employee at a trading firm in Burrabazar and a passport-holder for the last 25 years, now holds another passport that bears his name and date of birth - April 28, 1964 - but carries the photograph of a little boy. The detection of a multiple passport-holder comes just four days after a report in Times City on April 26 highlighted how two passport processing systems in the city that do not share data with each other were proving a nightmare for security agencies.

Ginodia received his second passport this March. Though personal details like name, place of birth and date of birth are same on both documents, Ginodia's original passport bears his signature while the one with the little boy's photograph has a thumb impression. The original passport was issued on May 4, 2011 and the other on February 2, 2012."I applied for a renewal and received the fresh passport in June 2011. But I never applied for this second passport. All details on both passports are correct, except the photographs," Ginodia said on Monday. Aware that the duplicate passport was a security threat both for the country and himself, he decided to report the matter to the authorities. But even as a senior official at the Regional Passport Office (RPO) said a thorough probe would be conducted, security agencies did not rule out the existence of many such multiple passport-holders and the possibility of the documents being misused.

Relieved that his trauma was finally over, Ginodai said, "I would have landed in jail by this time had my passport reached some criminal's hand."

The two parallel passport processing systems came into existence because the Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) was unable to serve a large number of applicants and the Central Passport Organization (CPO) had to open extra counters. These counters used the NIC software of the CPO, though the new passport kendra is run by TCS. A senior CPO official said there was no data-sharing between the two systems. Police and passport officials said lack of data-sharing was just one security lapse and urged an overhaul of the system used by the PSK, citing security loopholes.

Ginodia says he got his passport done through a travel agent. When he applied last year, the PSK was yet to be started. "I contacted a Bentinck Street travel agent to get my passport as I needed to travel to Bangkok urgently. I received my passport in June, within 40 days of applying," he said.

A senior RPO official said, "This should not have happened at all. We will investigate it." Under the new system, printing of passports is automatic - once the police update the status of verification reports as "clear", the passport is allotted and printed by the system. "Passport-signing authorities are not provided with the relevant files," said an official.

I had earlier mentioned the problems I had to face for getting passports for my family. It seems things have improved very much since then. People have started receiving two passports instead of one. Another marketing stunt - i for i Free

Robbery at will in Salt Lake

By A STAFF REPORTER

Calcutta, April 30: A bank manager, his wife and their three children were tormented by six robbers, including a woman, at their Salt Lake home last night but police could not help the victims who were within a three-minute drive from the nearest police station.

"The robbers were so desperate that they beat us up with rods, slashed me with a chopper and even held our kids at gunpoint. We were so scared," said Surender Singh Dabla, 51, a chief manager with Allahabad Bank.

The robbers took away cash and jewellery worth Rs 3.5 lakh from the family that had shifted from Haryana to Calcutta 10 months back.

The family's one-storey address ' AD 125 ' is barely 1.5km from Bidhannagar North police station. The township was brought under a new commissionerate from January 20 this year.

The Telegraph has learnt that despite three calls to 100 ' the police helpline ' personnel from the nearest police station reached the spot almost half an hour after the robbers had fled. The first call was made by Snigdha Dey, a next-door neighbour, at 3.19am when she saw some people with their faces covered inside the Dabla residence. The police reached at 3.45am, Surender said. (See Metro)

The police denied the allegation of late reaction to the call.

According to the family, the gang of six robbers hacked the lock on the main grilled door before breaking open two wooden doors to enter the house. The family ' Surender, his wife Sudha, 42, and their three children Akshita, 10, Shaesta, 8, and Shaksham, 2 ' were sleeping in the same room as it has an air-conditioner.

"Around 3.05am, I woke up after I heard a huge thud.… The moment I opened the door of the bedroom, some people pounced on me and started beating me up with iron rods. I slumped on the bed and they entered the room," recounted the banker, who suffered a slash on his right hand when he tried to resist the machete-wielding robbers.

The commotion woke up the rest of the family and the children started crying. As Sudha tried to move towards her husband, whose right hand was bleeding, a robber whipped out a pistol and held it to her head.

"I stopped, but another man in the gang hit me on my left shoulder with an iron rod. They did not even spare the kids… The woman in the gang kept slapping and hitting them while another person pointed a gun at them," said Sudha.

As both Surender and Sudha pleaded with the robbers not to harm the kids, they told the couple to hand over all the valuables at home. Sudha took out her gold bangles and earrings and showed them the almirah, where a gold chain and Rs 35,000 in cash were kept in the safe.

"After taking away the valuables and the cash, they tied up my wife and me, gagged and blindfolded us and left the house. The kids untied us after the robbers left," said Surender, who then called twice on the police helpline at 3.25am and 3.35am.

In their complaint with the police, the family has mentioned that all the members of the gang were in their mid- or late twenties. "It seems that the gang members are professionals. We have started the investigation," said Rajiv Kumar, commissioner, Bidhannagar City Police.

Hindi movies show the same thing, the cops arriving after the hero ha thrashed the villain. Unfortunately, the villains in this case escaped. What has our Maa Mati Manush Didi to say about this. She will again issue a warning and suspend a cop or two. Or probably she will say it is a conspiracy to defame her government and that the robbers were CPM supporters.

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