India's IT minister resigns

India’s booming information-technology (IT) and telecom sectors have been hit by a bolt out of the blue. The sudden resignation of Dayanidhi Maran as minister for communications and IT and his replacement by Andimuthu Raja, a person with little expertise in the field, have triggered anxiety over the future of these sectors. There is concern whether Raja will be able to inject the kind of dynamic growth in the IT and telecom sectors that Maran had.

Maran resigned recently when a bitter feud within the Dravida Munetra Kazhagam (DMK) - an influential partner of India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance coalition and the party that governs the state of Tamil Nadu - erupted into the open.

Women leave ULFA

The ULFA was allegedly banking on a set of women to take its war against ‘occupational India’ along a different track. The outlawed outfit now has, not one but two, sets of angry women to contend with. When the wives of six missing ULFA leaders didtheir fast-unto-death, the Tarun Gogoi government was a trifle uneasy.

The security forces, though, played it down with Lt Gen RK Chhabra, GOC of the Army’s 4th Corps, dubbing it the ULFA’s “diversionary strategy” to draw public attention away from its misdeeds. The six women ended their hunger strike on April 26 after they were satisfied about the government’s efforts to locate their missing husbands. Taken by surprise, the People’s Committee for Peace Initiatives in Assam (PCPIA), a front of the ULFA, sniffed a trade-off behind withdrawal of the fast.

Move against sentence

Incarcerated RJD Lok Sabha member from Siwan Mohammed Shahabuddin recently moved the Patna High Court against a Siwan court order sentencing him to life imprisonment for kidnapping a CPI-ML worker in 1999. The appeal against the May 8 verdict of a special court in Siwan was filed by his counsel.
 
Rajesh Kumar Singh. In his petition, the controversial RJD MP described the lower court order as “unwarranted” and said he was convicted on the basis of the statement of a lone eyewitness, who identified him more than seven years and nine months after the incident in which a CPI-ML worker Chotelal Gupta was allegedly kidnapped by him.

Mosque blast probed

The Andhra Pradesh government recently recommended the central government to order a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) enquiry into the May 18 bomb blast at the historic Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad and announced a judicial probe into the subsequent police firing. The move is aimed at cooling tempers ahead of the Friday prayers as a thick security blanket has been thrown around the 17th century mosque to prevent any backlash. Chief Minister YS Rajasekahara Reddy’s decision comes after the Muslim community mounted pressure to order a probe into both the blast and the police firing.

SEZ scrapped

The Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh recently decided to recommend to the central government the scrapping of a Special Economic Zone promoted by Anil Ambani, known to be close to the previous Mulayam Singh Yadav regime, saying the plan violated the SEZ policy. The state cabinet decided against the project following “lapses” in allotting 1,200 acres of land at NOIDA to the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group. “As against a clear-cut policy to set up SEZs only on a continuous stretch of land, the previous government had allowed the proposed SEZ to be set up close to national capital New Delhi in two parts,” Uttar Pradesh Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh said.