New Delhi, Jun 3 (PTI) Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Bangladesh, Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma today strongly pitched for setting up more border ‘haats’ or markets along the Indo-Bangla border to encourage trade and commerce between the two countries.

Sangma also hoped that the Prime Minister would discuss with his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina the possibility of jointly developing road networks so that the land-locked Northeastern states could use Bangladesh’s Chittagong port for exports.

“The Meghalaya government has plans to set up 22 border haats along the Indo-Bangladesh border to encourage trade and commerce and people-to-people contact. Currently, we have just two border haats. The Union Commerce Ministry must take initiatives to set up more border haats along the international border,” Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma told PTI here.

Prime Minister Modi and Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina will jointly inaugurate a border haat at Kamalasagar in Tripura’s Sipahijala district, which borders Brahmanbaria district of Bangladesh, this weekend.

The ‘haat’ would be jointly inaugurated through video conferencing from Dhaka during Modi’s two-day visit to Bangladesh beginning June 6.

Two border haats were set up in 2012 on the Meghalaya sector of Indo-Bangladesh border — at Kalaichar (India)-Baliamari (Bangladesh) and at Balat (India)-Dalora (Bangladesh).

Around 15-16 local agricultural and horticultural products, spices, minor forest produce (excluding timber), fresh and dry fish, dairy and poultry products, cottage industry items, wooden furniture, handloom and handicraft items are allowed to sell in the border haats, where people of both the countries can participate in trading on designated days and time every week.

Sangma advocated jointly developing road networks of India and Bangladesh so that the Chittagong port in the neighbouring country could be used by the Northeastern states for export of various products.

“I hope that the Prime Minister will take up the issue with his Bangladesh counterpart,” he said.

India and Bangladesh share a 4,096-km border along West Bengal (2,216 km), Tripura (856 km), Assam (263 km), Meghalaya (443 km) and Mizoram (318 km). The two neighbours have 2,979 km of land border and 1,117 km of riverine boundaries.

New Delhi, Jun 3 (PTI) Private schools in the city have been warned of strict action by the Education Directorate if they bar parents from carrying mobile phones in school premises due to fears that they could be used to collect evidence against demands for capitation fees.

The directive has come following complaints that parents have been stopped from carrying mobile phones by the school managements fearing it could be used to collect audio-video evidence against demand of capitation fee.

“Collection of capitation fee by a school while admitting a child in a school is illegal and punishable as per the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009,” according to a circular issued by P Lata Tara, Deputy Director Education (ACT I).

The Directorate in its order dated February 23 had directed managements of all private unaided recognised schools not to charge any capitation fee at the time of admission.

Delhi Government had also advised general public to collect evidence against demands of capitation fee by schools through audio-video recordings in such cases.

“lt has come to the notice of the department that managements of some private unaided recognised schools are not allowing parents visiting schools for admissions to enter premises with their mobiles and that their mobile phones are retained at the entry gate of the school which causes hindrance for parents to collect evidence of such malpractices,” said the official.

“All the school managements of private unaided recognised schools have been directed that, parents/guardians must be allowed to carry their mobile phones within school premises failing which strict action will be taken against the defaulter schools,” she said.

The RTE Act defines capitation fee as ‘any kind of donation or contribution or payment other than the fee notified by the school.’ Section 13(1) of the Act prohibits taking of capitation fee by the schools.

Chennai, Jun 3 (PTI) After taking up the cause of farmers in Punjab and Telangana, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi will visit Tamil Nadu for a similar campaign, the party’s state unit said today.

A resolution to this effect was passed at the TNCC Executive here, which met under AICC General Secretary Mukul Wasnik and state chief E V K S Elangovan.

“Rahul Gandhi has accepted to tour the state and meet farmers following a plea made by the TNCC. Congress workers should make all efforts to make it a success,” it said but did not mention when the Congress leader would visit Tamil Nadu.

“The Centre and State government are hand-in-glove in taking steps inimical to farmers’ interests. The AIADMK government by supporting the Land Bill has earned the wrath of farmers,” it alleged.

Among others, the party slammed the ‘anti-people’ approach of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre and vowed to strive for a regime change in Tamil Nadu next year by galvanising people’s support against the “corrupt AIADMK government.”

Assembly polls in the state are due next year.

The party also condemned the “oppression by communal forces,” in IIT, Madras, where a study circle was derecognised for violation of code of conduct for allegedly criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Thiruvananthapuram, Jun 3 (PTI) Defying the Centre’s uniform fishing ban, traditional fishermen affiliated to a state fishermen’s body today put out to sea off Chetuva coastal hamlet in Thrissur district and ventured upto 15 nautical miles for their catch.

Nearly 60 fishermen in six traditional craft set out to sea in protest against the Centre’s decision to impose 61-day fishing ban from June 1 to July 31.

“We went upto 15 nautical miles for fishing operations.

This agitation to press for the rights of traditional fishermen was a success,” Kerala Pradesh Malsya Thozhilali Congress leader T N Prathapan, MLA, told PTI over phone from sea.

The stir was above caste, religion and politics, he said, adding it was an agitation by ‘neglected’ people.

Congress led UDF government in Kerala had opposed the Centre’s ban on fishing activities in the Exclusive Economic Zone for 61 days from June 1 to July 31 and had maintained it would be imposed only for 47-days from June 15 to July 31 as in earlier years.

Yesterday, Fisheries Minister K Babu had made it clear after a top level meeting that Kerala was not for a confrontation with the Centre over the issue and that the ban would be in force for 45 days in coastal areas from June 15.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had met Modi at the latter’s residence on May 29 and discussed issues concerning fishermen, two days after Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi slammed the Centre’s decision to extend ban on trawling.

Fishermen in Kerala are protesting the NDA government’s decision to extend trawling ban from 45 to 61 days to protect marine health and certain provisions of the Meenakumari report on deep sea fishing in coastal areas.

Hyderabad, Jun 3 (PTI) The samples of Maggi instant noodles are being tested at a lab here as part of the nationwide exercise over the alleged presence of mono-sodium glutamate (MSG) and lead in their food products.

“We have taken 22 samples from our state. We have sent them for screening. Actual reporting time is two weeks maximum,” K Amarender Reddy, Director of Institute of Preventive Medicine (IPM), Telangana, told PTI here.

The samples were lifted on Monday last, he said.

The testing is being done as part of the nationwide drive on the directives from the Central food safety body, Reddy said.

“It is a directive, not from the state government.

Directive from the Central food safety… The directive has gone to all states to lift the samples. We look for those two items, mono-sodium glutamate and lead,” he said.

Andhra Pradesh shares the lab here with Telangana, IPM official for AP government Dr Manjari said.

Raipur, Jun 3 (PTI) A 32-year-old man allegedly killed his two minor daughters by throwing them into a well as he wanted a male child in Balod district of the state, police said today.

The accused Chandradev Kongera has been arrested for the murder of his daughters- Madhuri (9) and Puja (4)- near his native place Fadaradih village under Suregaon police station limits on Monday afternoon, Balod Superintendent of Police Sheikh Arif Hussain told PTI.

“Chandradev, a farmer, was returning along with his two daughters on a bicycle from his in-laws’ village Sareli to Fadaradih on June 1. On his way, he stopped by a field before his native place and pushed the girls into a well there,” Hussain said.

Thereafter, he returned to his village and narrated a false story to the villagers that some persons tried to kidnap his daughters and when he resisted them, they threw the minors into a well, the SP said.

However, the villagers suspected that something was amiss and informed the police.

“When police questioned him, Chandradev broke down and confessed to have killed his daughters,” the SP said.

Bodies of the girls were fished out of the well on Monday night.

During interrogation, the accused revealed that he wanted a son, but his wife refused to go for a third child after two daughters, which prompted him to commit the offence.

“He?wanted to convince his wife for the third?child after the death of their two daughters,” the SP said.

The accused has been booked under IPC section 302 (murder), he said, adding that further probe was on.

On Friday, Sepp Blatter stood before the 209 members of the “Fifa family” that have become his fiefdom and giddily beamed: “Let’s go Fifa! Let’s go!”

Just a few days later, he stood before a sparsely attended, hastily convened press conference in Fifa’s £150m HQ and gloomily announced he would step down, bringing down the curtain on four decades at world football’s scandal-hit governing body and 17 as president.

Less than a week ago, Blatter was touring the meetings of the various confederations in Zurich and appeared supremely confident of victory in an election that he had promised never to contest. On Wednesday morning at 6am, his world came crashing down as Swiss police raided the Baur au Lac hotel.

Sepp Blatter to resign as Fifa president after 17 years in role
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Some of those close to him say that privately he was more concerned than he let on as rumours, fed by the networks of private investigators employed by Blatter and his rivals, swirled on the progress of the FBI investigation into alleged money laundering and tax evasion.

It is testament to his record of Machiavellian manoeuvring down the years that even as he delivered his shock resignation, senior figures in world football were starting to speculate on what his masterplan might be and whether he would work to shoehorn a favoured candidate into the role when he is replaced between December 2015 and March next year.

His closest advisers insisted that there was no single silver bullet that precipitated a change in mood from his bullish, predictable attacks on the British media and the US justice system on Saturday to the contrite, diminished figure standing on the dais on Tuesday.

They said that he had simply spent the weekend since a combative post-election press conference, at which he was forced to deny that he handled a $10m (£6.5m) bribe, being told by those closest to him that the walls were closing in and it was time to go.

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In the face of a promise from US investigators that more indictments would follow and reading the scale and magnitude of the case being built up by the FBI and the US justice department, they say he finally listened.

In particular, his daughter Corinne is believed to have encouraged him to stand down.

Nor can he have been unaware of the fact that those closest to him over four decades at Fifa were being picked off one by one.

But something about that picture doesn’t quite ring true. Blatter has long been addicted to the power and prestige afforded him by his job and terrified of life beyond it.

US investigators have been cooperating with Swiss prosecutors for months and Blatter is sure to have been in their sights. He must have felt the noose tightening.

Existing in a bubble of private jets, five-star hotels and the endless, meaningless babble of Fifa – handshakes for peace, Nobel Foundation initiatives, Football for Hope and all – he clung on to power at all costs through a jaw-dropping succession of scandals revealed by dogged investigative reporters.

At times he appeared divorced from the reality of his organisation as the rest of the world sees it and the dark heart of corruption among its most senior figures, so vividly outlined last week in a Brooklyn address by the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch.

When he is not living the life of a head of state, Blatter has been salting away a salary never disclosed but which almost certainly totals more than $10m (£6.5m) a year.

To see the reasons for a dramatic U-turn in keeping with Blatter’s flair for the grand gesture, it is perhaps necessary to understand his desire to retain at least a modicum of control over the organisation he sees as his own.

Darjeeling- Madan Tamang, the chief of the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League, was hacked to death in Darjeeling on while overseeing preparations of a meeting. When he was asThe CBI has indicted the entire top leadership of Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM), the ruling party in Darjeeling, for the murder of All India Gorkha League (AIGL) president Madan Tamang. The agency, which has been probing the murder since 2011, filed the final supplementary chargesheet in the case at a Kolkata civil court on Friday. GJM president and chief of Gorkha Territorial Administration (GTA),

Bimal Gurung, and Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri — who have been charged with “criminal conspiracy for murder” — are among the nine top leaders named in the charge sheet.

Apart from Gurung and Giri, the chargesheet names GJM women’s wing chief and Gurung’s wife Asha Gurung, GTA chairman Pradip Pradhan, Morcha vice-president Benoy Tamang, MLA Harka Bahadur Chhetri, GTA deputy chief executive Ramesh Alley and Gurung’s two close associates — Dinesh Theeng and Devendra Sharma. Fourteen other Morcha members have also been charged. Significantly, Bimal Gurung, Asha Gurung and Roshan Giri were also named in the FIR lodged by Bharti Tamang — Madan Tamang’s wife after his murder on May 21, 2010. In all, CBI has chargesheeted 51 Morcha members in the case. While top leaders including Bimal Gurung, Roshan Giri, Benoy Tamang, Harkabahadur Chhetri, Pradip Pradhan and Ramesh Alley have been charged under Section 120b (criminal conspiracy), 302 ( murder), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 150 (hiring or conniving at hiring of persons to join unlawful assembly) of the IPC, Asha Gurung and 14 others have been charged for murder, rioting and for being armed with deadly weapon.

Now it is to be seen if the law will take its own course or political influence by GJM will have all the accused go Scot free.

Women now are gearing up or already in professions where they did not venture only a decade aga. Be it in the navy, air force or different engineering professions. But at the same time we have a section of the society where women still cannot dare to wear jeans openly. We even hear responsible politicians commenting on cases eve teasing, molestation or rape that women should not wear jeans or dresses which exposes their body.

In this matter the North East females could set an example to the rest of India to their freedom of speech, liberty to wear what they find suitable and also participating in major family decisions.

In this regard Real News of India was in Darjeeling. KFC restaurant in Darjeeling is a fully women empowered fast food restaurant maybe in the whole of India. From the cash counter to the kitchen staff every single staff is a female. The customers take pleasure in receiving such excellent hospitality surrounded by young ladies.

This should set an example to the rest of India. Cheers to the Darjeeling girls.

Even as police remains clueless about Aruna Shanbaug’s assailant, a local newspaper in Maharashtra claimed to have traced him to a village in Uttar Pradesh where he is working as a labourer and said he cannot recall what happened on that fateful day.

Walmiki, who throttled Aruna with a dog leash rendering her a cripple at the prime of youth, said he cannot recall anything about what had happened on that day. However, he asked the journalist “why are you people calling it as rape”. He claims that someone else raped Shanbaug.

Walmiki says that he and Shanbaug had a fight where he may have hit her, reports The Indian Express. He says that there was bad blood between the two. He claims that Shanbaug would ask only him of all the ward boys to feed the dogs and clean their cages despite his fear of the canines.