New Delhi: Linking the Gurdaspur attack to Pakistan, Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said the three terrorists had infiltrated from there to carry out the strike and asserted that the government will do everything possible to prevent cross-border terrorism.

Making a statement in Rajya Sabha on Monday’s attack in Punjab, he said “any effort by the enemies of our nation to undermine India’s territorial integrity and security or imperil the safety and security of our citizens will meet an effective and forceful response from our security forces.”

The government “has been and will remain resolute in this regard”, he said.

Singh made the statement amid din created by Congress members which was strongly disapproved of by Deputy Chairman PJ Kurien, who said it was “not politics” but a “statement on a terrorist attack” that concerns the security of the country.

However, as the unrelenting Congress members continued to shout slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Singh said, “I take this opportunity to assure the House that the government is firmly to root out terrorism from India.”

The Home Minister also assured the House that “the government will do everything possible to prevent cross-border terrorism aimed against India.”

Giving details of the attack in Punjab, he said, “preliminary analyses of GPS data indicates that the terrorists had infiltrated from Pakistan through the area near Tash in Gurdaspur district, where the Ravi river enters Pakistan.”

It is also suspected, he said, that the same terrorists had planted five IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) on the railway track near Talwandi village between Dinanagar and Jhakoladi which were subsequently defused by the bomb disposal squad. A night vision device was also recovered from the spot.

“The security forces in the border are alert but the difficult terrain coupled with recent heavy rains, resulting in excess flow in the rivers and canals along the border, could have been a factor, in this particular group sneaking into Punjab,” the Home Minister said.

He said that during the last one month, there were five attempts at cross-border infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir sector, out of which four were interdicted and eight terrorists neutralised.

In the remaining one instance, the terrorists went back after effective retaliation by the Indian forces.

Singh hailed Punjab Police for engaging the terorrists “effectively” and said all efforts were made to apprehend the attackers and prevent their escape besides avoiding any collateral damage.

The Army and NSG were placed on standby to support the Punjab Police opertions, he said, adding the Union Home Ministry monitored the situation closely and was in constant touch with the Punjab
government.

“In the end, all the three terrorists were neutralised in this successful operation,” Singh said and added with regret that Superintendent of Police (Detective) Baljeet Singh, “who was leading from front”, was martyred.

During the operation, the BSF and the Army were placed on high alert along the border, he said.
“I personally spoke to the Chief Minister of Punjab (Parkash Singh Badal) and assured him of all assistance from the central government,” Singh added.

While he spoke, the Congress members, carrying placards, were shouting slogans in the Well against the Prime Minister and his government over the terror attack.

The slogans included: “56 inch ki chhati hai hai (down with 56 inch chest)’ and ‘Narendra Modi hai hai (down with Narendra Modi)’ and ‘NDA government hai hai (down with NDA government).”

PTI

Ahead of the National Security Advisory level talks to be held between the two nations, Pakistan has claimed that India was involved in the horrific December 2014 Peshawar school massacre in which around 150 people, including 136 children were killed.

Pakistani Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attack, so Pakistan’s assertion that RAW was involved seems a bit strange. The Pakistani army had claimed in February that the terrorists involved in the attack were wiped out in retaliatory strikes.

According to various media reports, Pakistan is preparing a dossier on India’s role in supporting terrorism in Balochistan and Karachi, and the dossier will likely be carried by PM Nawaz Sharif’s advisor on foreign affairs when he meets Ajit Doval in Delhi next month.

Recently, Pakistan had claimed that it had shot down an Indian drone along the Line Of Control in Kashmir, a claim that India has denied. Even the Chinese firm that made the drone is believed to have said that it never sold the drone to any government.

On July 10, Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif had met in the Russian city of Ufa and decided to take bilateral ties forward through a meeting of the respective nation’s NSAs. The joint statement issued after the ice-breaking meeting of the two PMs stressed that one of the steps forward would include “a meeting in New Delhi between the two NSAs to discuss all issues connected to terrorism”.

Two IAF personnel were killed and as many civilians injured in these accidents, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in a written reply to Lok Sabha today.

As per the figures given by him, 2014-15 saw the maximum crashes which included one Sukhoi, four MiGs and two Jaguars.

In 2013-14, there were six crashes involving five MiGs and one Jaguar.

In 2012-13, one Sukhoi crashed besides two MiGs and one Jaguar.

“The main reasons for the crashes were technical defect and human error,” Parrikar said.

He added that the loss to the government, in terms of value of aircraft and service property, in respect of 12 accidents assessed so far is estimated at Rs 386 crore and loss to civilian property was over Rs 4.43 lakh.

PTI

The apex court bench headed by Chief Justice HL Dattu while rejecting the plea by Students Islamic Organisation of India, said: “If you appear in an examination without a scarf, your faith will not disappear.”

Describing the plea as “nothing but an ego”, the court said that candidates can wear the headscarf after the exam is over.

The court also observed that faith is something different from wearing a particular type of cloth.

The SC observation came three days after the Kerala High Court granted conditional permission to two Muslim girls to appear for the July 25 AIPMT wearing hijab, a customary religious dress.

Passing orders on their petition, Justice K Vinod Chandran had said the students shall appear before women invigilators half-an-hour before the examination.

The court had refused to interfere with the dress code prescribed by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) for students appearing for AIPMT to prevent malpractices and said the petitioners would be subjected to any mode of personal search on any suspicion expressed by the invigilator.

If required, the headscarfs and full sleeve garments will be removed and examined, for which the petitioners shall cooperate, the court had said.

Sugar exports from India will climb more than forecast previously as mills accelerate sales to clear $2.8 billion debt to cane growers.
Shipments will surpass 1 million metric tons in the 12 months through September, said Yatin Wadhwana, managing director of Sucden India Pvt. Mills may export about 400,000 tons of mainly white sugar between now and September, he said. Wadhwana’s forecast for full-year sales compares with 800,000 tons predicted by the Indian Sugar Mills Association last month.
Inventories in India are poised to jump to a seven-year high after production outpaced demand for a fifth year and a slump in global prices slowed exports. With another bumper crop in the making and government threatening action against producers for not paying farmers, mills are selling below production cost to clear dues to growers. That may weigh on futures in New York which slumped to a six-year low this week.
“Mills are forced to sell at a loss because of government’s pressure to pay farmers on time,” Sanjeev Babar, managing director of Maharashtra State Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation, said by phone from Mumbai on July 20. “We don’t have enough money to run the mills.”
Factories owed farmers about 181 billion rupees ($2.8 billion) as of June 15, according to the mills association. Under the law, factories are required to pay farmers within 14 days of supplying cane, Babar said. Failure to pay up on time would entitle growers to 12 percent interest on dues and the government can seize sugar stockpiles and auction them to pay the farmers, he said.
Futures Tumble
Prices on the ICE Futures U.S. fell to as low as 11.35 cents a pound on Monday, the lowest level since January 2009. The contract for October delivery rose 1.1 percent to 11.55 cents a pound in New York on Wednesday while prices in Mumbai were 0.9 percent lower at 2,165 rupees per 100 kilograms (220 pounds).
Mills in Maharashtra state, the nation’s biggest producer, sold about 300,000 tons of white sugar in the past two weeks to mobilize money to pay farmers, Babar said. Mills there owed farmers 33 billion rupees as of June 15, he said.
“Mills were helpless due to the sword hanging on them in the form of cane payments,” said Kamal Jain, managing director of brokerage Kamal Jain Trading Services Pvt.
Factories sold sugar at prices between 19 rupees a kilogram to 19.50 rupees a kilogram, the lowest since May 2007, when the rate was 10.68 rupees a kilogram, Babar said. The production cost is as high as 34 rupees a kilogram, he said.
The slump in prices forced the government to subsidize exports and waive interest on bank loans to processors. Stockpiles of 10.2 million tons at the start of new crop season from Oct. 1, the highest since 2008-09, will add to supplies of about 27.25 million tons in 2015-2016 estimated in a Bloomberg survey last month.
(An earlier version of this story corrected to say farmers not mills are owed debt.)

India’s top court has rejected a final appeal by Yakub Memon, a key plotter of bomb attacks that killed more than 200 people in Mumbai in 1993, paving the way for his execution.

Media reports on Tuesday said Yakub Memon would hang on July 30 after the Supreme Court rejected his final plea, more than two decades after the deadliest attacks ever to hit India.

Crimes such as these deserve maximum punishment. But we believe that the maximum punishment should not be the death penalty because it is inherently inhumane
Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch

The blasts targeted the Bombay Stock Exchange, the offices of Air India and a luxury hotel, and left 257 people in India’s commercial capital dead.

The attacks were believed to have been staged by Mumbai’s underworld in retaliation to anti-Muslim violence that had killed more than 1,000 people.

Memon was the only one of 11 people convicted for the 1993 attacks to have his death sentence upheld on appeal. The sentences on the others were commuted to life imprisonment.

Executions are only carried out for “the rarest of rare” cases in India, but President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected a number of mercy pleas in recent years, ending an unofficial eight-year moratorium

Greece’s prime minister easily won a crucial vote on a third bailout programme for the debt-stricken nation early on Thursday, hours after the European Central Bank infused cash-starved Greek banks with further emergency liquidity.

A total of 230 MPs backed the economic reforms programme demanded by Greece’s creditors, while 63 voted against the plan at the late-night vote.

Alexis Tsipras again faced down rebels within his own party who oppose a third bailout. Thirty-six Syriza MPs either voted no or abstained, three fewer than at a similar vote last week.

Yanis Varoufakis, the high-profile former finance minister, supported the measures. Last week he had voted against the first set of bailout conditions, including VAT rises and pension cuts, after resigning his post. But in this case, Varoufakis said, the specific measures being voted on included reforms he had previously put forward himself.

The vote clears the way for Greece to begin formal talks with its lenders on a three-year package of loans that could be worth €86bn.

Before the vote Tsipras had urged MPs to support the bailout, which will save Greece from bankruptcy and preserve its place in the eurozone.

“We made difficult choices and now we must all adapt to the new situation,” he told MPs, repeating that he did not agree with many of the reforms but would do his best to implement them.

Greece to fall deeper into recession as bailout moves closer – as it happened
Rolling coverage of the Greek debt crisis, the world economy and the financial markets, after Athens takes another step towards a third bailout
Athens was thrown further emergency assistance when the European Central Bank (ECB) increased liquidity for Greek lenders ahead of the crucial vote.

The ECB’s governing council agreed on Wednesday to raise the cap on emergency assistance for the country’s fragile banking system by €900m (£629m). The move was immediately received with relief. Greek banks, newly opened after three weeks of enforced closure, have become a weather vane for normality in a country whose close brush with bankruptcy has kept it on the frontline of Europe’s debt drama.

The decision – the second such injection of emergency funds since late June – will allow Greece’s cash machines to keep operating as the tourist season gathers pace, despite the continued imposition of capital controls across the banking sector. The ceiling on funds was previously set at €89.5bn.

With continued membership of the eurozone still far from assured, the Greek finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, kicked off a raucous debate in the 300-seat parliament imploring MPs to support the bailout plan. The passage of reforms, including a new code of civil procedure that would overhaul Greece’s notoriously slow judicial sector, were demanded by the EU and the International Monetary Fund in exchange for opening talks on a third rescue package.

Business live: Greek parliament approves bailout reform package – as it happened
MPs in Athens have voted to accept a second package of economic measures tonight, despite another Syriza rebellion
Read more
Tsakalotos told MPs: “It is extremely important to wrap up this procedure of prior actions so that we can start negotiations on Friday.”

A new bailout programme will provide as much as €86bn in loans for Greece, tiding it over for the next three years. But the stringent terms attached to the package have divided the ruling leftwing Syriza party and raised fears of political instability. With at least a third of the governing party vehemently opposed to the measures, and advocating a euro exit and a return to the drachma, the late-night vote was always expected to be a test of the authority over Syriza of Tsipras.

Hardliners, including the flamboyant former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, have described the policies as unworkable in a country already labouring under record levels of poverty and unemployment. But on Wednesday night even Varoufakis voted yes.

Costas Isychos, the former deputy defence minister who resigned in outrage over the measures, said: “The coping strategies of a large part of society ran out long ago. The road map foreseen by the accord not only cannot be enforced, I believe large parts of society will fight back.”

Ahead of the ballot, anti-austerity protestors took to the streets, with the civil servants union ADEDY and militants from the communist-affiliated PAME organising rallies against reforms denounced as the harbingers of yet more destitution.

Insiders said it was essential that Tsipras at least retained control of the 110 MPs who last week voted in favour of tax rises and pension cuts – measures spurned by the young prime minister until his spectacular U-turn in the face of possible eurozone ejection.

Chances of Greek bailout rest on MPs’ vote
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The controversial policies were passed with the help of “pro-European” opposition parties, including the main centre-right New Democracy, which have argued that Greece must remain at the heart of Europe, and in the eurozone, at any cost.

But across the political spectrum MPs said it was impossible for the government to continue counting on the opposition for support.

Antigone Limberaki, an MP with the centrist Potami party, said: “Tsipras cannot cohabit with at least a third of his political group and more than half of his central committee totally opposed to the measures [outlined] in the third memorandum. Everything now depends on how he handles the problems in his party. It is very clear that he is burning bridges with the other side, that he feels he is on a one-way track and is going down the road of moderation.”