NEW DELHI: An EPIC or Aadhaar document will now be enough for any individual to obtain PAN card as the Income Tax Department has relaxed the cumbersome procedure of having multiple documents to prove one’s own identity.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the apex policy making body of the I-T Department, has recently issued a notification making the Elector’s Photo Identity Card (EPIC) and Aadhaar, issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India, valid proof of “date of birth” for obtaining PAN card.

Till now, both these photo ID cards were only considered as valid proof for substantiating the “identity” and “address” of an individual and not their date of birth.

“The new notification, in simple terms, means that henceforth having only an EPIC or Aadhaar will be enough a document for any individual to obtain the PAN card.

“These two documents will be valid as the proof an individual’s identity, address and date of birth, thereby reducing the cumbersome procedure of having multiple documents to prove one’s own identity. The EPIC and Aadhaar are now unique and all purpose identifiers,” a senior I-T department officer told PTI.

As part of the new notification, the government has also made a “photo identity card issued by the central government or state government or central public sector undertaking or state public sector undertaking or the central government health service scheme photo card or ex-servicemen contributory health scheme photo card” as the valid proofs for establishing the date of birth of an individual.

“So, effectively now, there are a total of 12 identity documents which could be used to establish the date of birth of an individual who is applying for a PAN card as compared to the eight earlier. But for a common man, who is not in government service, only an EPIC or Aadhaar is required,” the officer explained.

The officer said this new arrangement has been made possible as the government has embarked on a mission to bring the three unique identifiers – EPIC, Aadhaar and PAN – on one platform and have inter-links between their databases in order to thwart attempts of duplicity or forgery in any of these three documents which are the most essential when it comes to taking legitimate benefits of government schemes.

PAN is a ten-digit alphanumeric number, issued in the form of a laminated card, by the Income Tax Department, to any person who applies for it or to whom the department allots the number without an application.

The EC and the Income Tax Department had recently made announcements that they would be sharing their respective databases and getting on-board with the Aadhaar platform, whose numbers have swelled to 76.83 crore till February 15 this year.

An individual has to apply, either manually or electronically, with copies of proof of identity, address and date of birth along with the application form to obtain a PAN whose government stipulated fee is Rs 105.

The EPIC and Aadhaar fulfil all the three mandatory requirements.

NEW DELHI: FireFly Networks, an equal joint venture between Vodafone India and Bharti Airtel, has equipped the Supreme Court of India with a 24×7 Wi-Fi network with services currently being provided by the local unit of the British telecom major.

Airtel, India’s market leader, has also assured that its subscribers will be able to use Airtel Internet packs seamlessly with in six-eight weeks’ time using “Airtel Hangout” SSID within the premises.

“In order to overcome the difficulties being faced by the members of the Bar and the other visitors to the Supreme Court in having internet connectivity in the Supreme Court, as per directions, the matter was taken up with various service providers, including FireFly Networks,” for providing Wi-Fi services,” the Supreme Court of India said in a circular today.

The Wi-Fi service can be used by subscribers of any mobile service provider. The service can be used in SIM-based as well as without SIM devices, such as tablets and laptops, using the One Time Password received on any mobile number given by the subscriber while accessing the service. Users will get a complimentary Wi-Fi pack for a few days after the launch of the services which offers free trial usage for 20 minutes and upto 100 MB per mobile number per day.

After consuming the complimentary Wi-Fi pack, a subscriber can purchase from three other Wi-Fi packs – Rs 20 for 30 minutes; Rs 30 for 60 minutes; and Rs 50 for 120 minutes. Users will shortly be provided with more options with daily, weekly and monthly packs.

Firefly Networks is currently looking to get the maximum chunk of the Wi-fi deployments in New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) areas in Delhi, besides targeting other state-government’s Wi-fi plans, which have got traction due to Modi government’s Digital India and Smart City initiatives.

The venture has done some deployments in Delhi, which are yet to be launched commercially, including deployments in NDMC areas such as Khan Market.

ET had earlier reported that FireFly will also be involved in Indus Towers’ latest NDMC project, which will equip 3,000 street light poles in the entire NDMC area with2G/3G/4G technologies spread across a span of three years, with the investment of Rs 220 crore

One of Guinness World Records’ more unusual awards was presented at the National Maritime Museum yesterday. After a 100-day trial, the timepiece known as Clock B – which had been sealed in a clear plastic box to prevent tampering – was officially declared, by Guinness, to be the world’s “most accurate mechanical clock with a pendulum swinging in free air”.

It was an intriguing enough award. But what is really astonishing is that the clock was designed more than 250 years ago by a man who was derided at the time for “an incoherence and absurdity that was little short of the symptoms of insanity”, and whose plans for the clock lay ignored for two centuries.

The derision was poured on John Harrison, the British clockmaker whose marine chronometers had revolutionised seafaring in the 18th century (and who was the subject of Longitude by Dava Sobel). His subsequent claim – that he would go on to make a pendulum timepiece that was accurate to within a second over a 100-day period – triggered widespread ridicule. The task was simply impossible, it was declared.

But now the last laugh lies with Harrison. At a conference, Harrison Decoded: Towards a Perfect Pendulum Clock, held at Greenwich yesterday, observatory scientists revealed that a clock that had been built to the clockmaker’s exact specifications had run for 100 days during official tests and had lost only five-eighths of a second in that period.

“It is a quite extraordinary achievement and a complete vindication of Harrison, who suffered ridicule over his claim to be able to achieve such accuracy,” said Rory McEvoy, curator of horology at the Royal Museums Greenwich. “This is a wonderful device.”

Harrison was a self-educated carpenter and clockmaker who achieved considerable fame in the mid-18th century for the marine chronometers that he designed to solve the problem that sailors then faced in determining their longitude while at sea. Pinpointing where they lay on the notional lines that run vertically on a map proved extremely difficult for navigators. However, Harrison – in response to a government challenge – developed watches that contained a pair of counter-oscillating weighted beams connected by springs that turned out to be remarkably precise and allowed navigators to determine their position accurately. This was done by measuring local time and then comparing it with the time at Greenwich (which was provided by the chronometer).
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Harrison was eventually awarded a considerable sum of money for his efforts and he died a rich man. Not long before his death, however, he produced a book in which he lambasted some of his rivals and proclaimed that he could build a timepiece for use on land that was more accurate than any built by his rivals. This machine – which would have a large pendulum arc, relatively light bob, and a recoil grasshopper escapement – would be able to keep time to within a second over 100 days (though it would need to be wound regularly).

Unfortunately for Harrison, the book was savagely criticised, with The London Review of English and Foreign Literature describing it as “one of the most unaccountable productions we have ever met with”. Harrison’s claim that he could build such a clock were also ridiculed.

As a result, his ideas for his super-accurate pendulum clock were forgotten until the 1970s, when interest in the clockmaker and his remarkable timepieces was re-awakened. The artist and clockmaker, Martin Burgess, – working on attempts to decipher Harrison’s plans – produced two versions of his great clock. It is the second of these, Clock B, that has been the focus of attempts to bring it to its maximum accuracy in the past year. “Essentially we have been fine-tuning the clock so that we can bring it to its full potential and accuracy,” said McEvoy.

Last year, the first trial of the clock –overseen by the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers and the National Physical Laboratory – was carried out at the Observatory. This showed it was capable of performing to the standard that Harrison claimed. “This year’s final test began on 6 January, when the clock was sealed in a clear plastic container that had been made tamper-proof by the application of wax seals across wires that lock the case’s fixing bolts shut and is the official trial of its accuracy,” added McEvoy.

At the start of the trial, it was noted by witnesses that the clock was running quarter of a second behind Greenwich Mean Time. At the end of the trial yesterday morning, the clock read 7/8ths of a second behind GMT. It had lost 5/8ths of a second in the 100-day trial.

Given that mechanical clocks of this accuracy were not developed until the 20th century, Harrison’s remarkabledesign can now be seen for what it was: a masterpiece. “What is particularly exciting about this trial is the fact that it presents history in a physical and not a verbal or theoretical manner,” added McEvoy. “It brings real immediacy to a historical issue: in this case the measurement of time.”

One of Saddam Hussein’s former intelligence officers masterminded Islamic State’s takeover of northern Syria after becoming embittered by the US-led invasion of Iraq, according to a report by the German magazine Der Spiegel

Documents uncovered in Syria reveal meticulous planning for the group’s structure and organisation, the report says, with the 31 pages of handwritten charts, lists and schedules amounting to a blueprint for the establishment of a caliphate in Syria.

The documents were the work of a man identified by the magazine as Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, a former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s air defence force, who went by the pseudonym Haji Bakr, Spiegel says.
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The files suggest that the takeover of northern Syria was part of a meticulous plan overseen by Haji Bakr using techniques – including surveillance, espionage, murder and kidnapping – honed in the security apparatus of Saddam Hussein.

Bakr was “bitter and unemployed” after the US authorities in Iraq disbanded the army by decree in 2003, the article says. Between 2006 to 2008 he was reportedly in US detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib prison.

The Iraqi national was reportedly killed in a firefight with Syrian rebels in January 2014, but not before he had helped secure swathes of Syria, which in turn strengthened Islamic State’s position in neighbouring Iraq.

“What Bakr put on paper, page by page, with carefully outlined boxes for individual responsibilities, was nothing less than a blueprint for a takeover,” the story by Spiegel reporter Christoph Reuter says.
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“It was not a manifesto of faith, but a technically precise plan for an ‘Islamic Intelligence State’ – a caliphate run by an organisation that resembled East Germany’s notorious Stasi domestic intelligence agency.”

Between 2006 to 2008, Bakr was reportedly in US detention facilities, including Abu Ghraib prison.

In 2010, however, Bakr and a small group of former Iraqi intelligence officers made another former US detainee, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the official leader of Islamic State, with the goal of giving the group a “religious face”, the report says.

Two years later, the magazine says, Bakr travelled to northern Syria to oversee his takeover plan, choosing to launch it with a collection of foreign fighters that included novice militants from Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Europe alongside battle-tested Chechens and Uzbeks.

Iraqi journalist Hisham al-Hashimi, whose cousin served with Bakr, describes the former officer as a nationalist rather than an Islamist. The report argues that the secret to Islamic State’s success lies in its combination of opposites – the fanatical beliefs of one group and the strategic calculations of another, led by Bakr.

Spiegel said it had obtained the papers after lengthy negotiations with rebels in the Syrian city of Aleppo, who had seized them when Islamic State was forced to abandon its headquarters there in early 2014.

India Navy’s new stealth destroyer, Visakhapatnam, designed indigenously and fitted with advanced features, was launched here today, boosting the maritime force’s firepower capability.

The Kolkata-class warship, the first of P15-B stealth destroyers, was launched by Minu Dhowan, wife of Chief of Naval Staff Admiral R K Dhowan, at Mazgaon Docks Ltd (MDL).

Top Navy and MDL officials were present on the occasion.

The ship, weighing approximately 3,000 tons during the launch, is slated to be christened as ‘INS Visakhapatnam’ on commissioning.

The 163-metre-long vessel will be propelled by four gas turbines, and is designed to achieve a speed of over 30 knots at a displacement of approximately 7,300 tons.

The indigenously designed stealth destroyer will have state-of-the-art weapons, sensors, an advance Action Information System, in Integrated Platform Management system, sophisticated Power Distribution System and a host of other advanced features.

It will be fitted with supersonic surface-to-surface missile system. The system enables the ship to engage shore-based and naval surface targets at long range, making it a lethal platform for strike against enemy targets.

The ship’s air defence capability, designed to counter the threat of enemy aircraft and anti-ship cruise missiles, will revolve around the vertical launch and long range surface to air missile system.

Four 30 mm rapid-fire guns will provide the ship with close-in-defence capability, while an MR gun will enable her to provide effective naval gunfire support.

Indigenously developed twin tube torpedo launchers and rocket launchers will add punch to the ship’s anti-submarine capability. The vessel is follow-on of P15A Kolkata-class destroyers with enhanced features.

The vessel is expected to be commissioned in the Navy in 2018.

The indigenisation content in P15-B class destroyers is a notch above her illustrious predecessors in line with the ’Make in India policy’ of the Government.

The P15-B stealth destroyers have been designed by the force’s in-house unit — Directorate of Naval Design.

The design of Project 15B destroyers is testimony of the Navy’s firm commitment towards achieving indigenisation by using high-end technology in the field of weapons/sensors/ machinery and stealth.

Mazagaon Docks, the country’s premier warship building yard, is engaged in producing sophisticated world—class warships and submarines. At present four destroyers and six submarines are under various stages of construction at MDL