Is Azharuddin witness to Shoaib, Ayesha staying in a hotel?

05/04/2010

Hyderabad: Are former Indian captain Mohammed Azharuddin and his wife Sangita Bijlani witness to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik and his 'first wife' Ayesha staying in a city hotel?
If one believes the family friends of Ayesha Siddiqui, who claims to be Shoaib's first wife, Azharuddin and Sangita were staying in the same hotel where the Pakistani cricketer and Ayesha were sharing a room after their 'marriage' in 2002.
The claims are significant as Shoaib, who is set to marry Indian tennis star Sania Mirza later this month, is refusing to accept Ayesha as his first wife. While admitting that he signed the 'nikahnama' or marriage document over phone in 2002, Shoaib said he presumed that the girl on the other side was the one whose photographs were sent to him.
The Pakistani cricketer has denied meeting Ayesha, the daughter of M.A. Siddiqui, a former official of Saudi Airlines.
However, Ayesha Sunday told some television channels that Shoaib met her several times during his visit to Hyderabad, they spent time together and that she has witnesses to prove this.
Ayesha also claimed that two employees of Taj Residency, where she shared a room with Shoaib, were ready to testify.
Siddiqui's family friends in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, said the couple, during their stay at the hotel, also met Azharuddin, now a Member of Parliament, and his wife Sangita.
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K.Venugopal
#1
Monday, 05 April 2010 13:36:42
It is quite obvious that an icon of sorts, being a top-notch Pakistani cricket player, played fraud on an innocent Indian girl. The police should forthwith arrest and jail Shoaib Malick. Sania Mirza, if she respects the dignity of women, should call off her marriage proposal with Shoaib Malick.

http://sports.in.msn.com/cricket/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3774488&pgnew=true&_p=9996d38c-ed8d-4e45-9919-34bdcb61f505&_nwpt=1#uc2Lst9996d38c-ed8d-4e45-9919-34bdcb61f505

I will always remain an India-born painter: MF Husain

London: Legendary artist MF Husain, who was recently granted Qatari citizenship, has said that he will not snap his links with the country of his birth and will always remain an Indian-born painter.


"I will always remain an Indian-born painter. There is no ban on me," Husain, who surrendered his Indian passport in Doha recently, told The Times.

But whether 94-year-old Husain will return India any time soon seems unlikely. There is the risk of further court cases - attended to by his lawyers - and the threat of violence remains, the paper said.

"The (Indian) Home Secretary called saying they would provide security. I said, Tell me, (former prime ministers) Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi - had they lesser security? Both were assassinated.

"I'm at the stage of my life where I like to work in peace and full comfort. At this age I can't just sit in one room and not go out," he said.

Husain said he is in talks with steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal about a new British museum. Last week he received a lifetime achievement award, presented by John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, on behalf of a British charity, Next Step Foundation.

Keith Vaz, MP, the patron of the charity said: "clearly he is an iconic figure in the history of art. He is the greatest living Indian artist. This is not about politics or religion, this award is about art."

Husain said: "I have done so many things over the years, poetry, films, painting. I hoped that one of them might click... Then came this uproar, which has lasted ten years. I told my friend, there was a doubt whether I'd go down in history for only paintings, but this has secured a permanent seat."

That uproar concerns works by Husain, considered by many as India's Picasso, in which Hindu goddesses are depicted in objectionable condition.

After a career spanning six decades, Husain suddenly became the focus of anger in 1996 when a magazine article titled M F Husain: A Painter or Butcher denounced him for obscenity.

Since then, Husain has faced concerted harassment from people who reject his claims that he meant no offence. His exhibitions were attacked, he received death threats and about 900 legal challenges.

Despite the Indian Supreme Court dismissing the charges, he has lived abroad since 2006, mainly in Dubai and London.

PTI

And he will also always remain the person who took artistic license to depict Hindu icons as he wished but did not take the same license to depict the icons of Islam - a hypocrite and coward at heart.

http://www.zeenews.com/news616314.html

Nitish Kumar for debate on graduation gown

Updated on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 18:40 IST Tags:Nitish Kumar, debate, graduation gown, convocation

Patna: Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar on Saturday called for a debate on wearing graduatation gown in university convocation, which union minister, Jairam Ramesh has termed as "a sign of colonial slavery."


"I suggest initiating a country-wide debate on wearing graduation gowns at convocations. I have attended several covocations and wore such gowns," Kumar told reporters here.

Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh yesterday discarded his square hat and red-yellow gown at the convocation of the Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal and dubbed such prasctice as "barbaric."

Reacting to Ramesh's action, Kumar said "It is an attempt to break tradition," and a debate should be held on the issue.

PTI


Jairam Ramesh ought to be congratulated for seeking to get rid of "a sign of colonial slavery." Maybe we could move on to the way our lawyers and judges dress, the way our corporate world dresses and also, in a big break with colonial slavery, reduce the importance of English as the medium of our nation's discourse. “Swadeshi” ought to be back in the lexicon as the operative word for nationalism.

http://www.zeenews.com/news616348.html

Couldn’t sleep all night, says a worried Sania

Updated on Saturday, April 03, 2010, 12:05 IST Zeenews Bureau

New Delhi: The ongoing controversy surrounding Shoaib Malik and his supposed ‘first wife’ Ayesha Siddiqui is giving the bride-to-be Sania Mirza sleepless nights.

According to her latest feed in the social networking site Twitter, the Indian tennis player said that though she knows what the truth is, the entire incident is actually bothering her.

“Haven’t slept all night, (I am) going to try and sleep for a couple of hours now… Again lots to do and face tomorrow,” post Sania.

The 23-year-old also said that all the allegations levied by Ayesha Siddiqui and her family do not matter to her as she already knows the truth. Although she did not mention Shoaib directly, her Twitter feed clearly supported her husband-to-be. “Me and my family know what the truth is, we’ve known it all along and we have confidence in god’s justice,” Sania said.


Sania further added that she never thought she would have to deal with so many things apart from the regular pre-wedding jitters. “Too much going on, never in my life thought that I’d had to worry bout anything Of this sort, rather than my mehendi!” she said.

“Leaves me with no choice but to laugh. I am pretty sure these are not the pre-wedding jitters or butterflies in the stomach my married cousins were talking about!” she quipped.

Meanwhile, the Malik-Siddiqui tussle reached the court on Saturday as the latter’s family sent a legal notice to Shoaib, asking him to give a public divorce to their daughter before getting married to Sania Mirza.

The Malik family, on the other hand, got in touch with their Delhi-based criminal lawyer Ramesh Gupta, who has been representing them in the battle with the Siddiquis for the past two years. The Maliks will file a case of defamation against the Siddiquis.

Gupta confirmed that Shoaib Malik’s kin, Imran Zafar contacted him on Saturday to solicit advice regarding the ongoing feud with Siddiquis. He, however, added that he has not been asked to start any legal proceedings as of now. Zafar is expected to arrive here next week.

Malik’s aspirations for matrimonial alliance with tennis sensation Sania Mirza seem to have hit troubled waters when Ayesha Siddiqui claimed in a telephonic chat that she has a Nikahnama (wedding certificate) in her possession and then sent the same through an e-mail to a Pakistani news channel.

The e-mail also purportedly claimed that she was married to Shoaib Malik for a Meher of Rs 500.

Ayesha’s family alleges that Shoaib married her over phone but dumped her later due to her weight problems. Shoaib, however, insists that it was the Siddiquis who cheated him.

The 28-year-old has said he was sent photographs of a girl who is not Ayesha and that he was only engaged to that girl but backed out after finding out that he had been duped.

The police in India should arrest Shoaib Malik for fraud on Indian girl Ayesha Siddiqui in the name of marriage.

http://www.zeenews.com/news616197.html

We are ready to take on China, says new Army chief

01/04/2010
New Delhi: As General VK Singh takes over as the chief of the Indian Army he asserted that India is ready for any challenge. Indian Army is well prepared to face any threat from China, he said.
The General also said that he will focus his attention on improving "internal health" of the force to weed out corruption. General VK Singh took over as the Army chief on Wednesday on the retirement of Gen Deepak Kapoor.
Commissioned into 2 Rajput in June 1970, Singh had been heading the army's Kolkata-based Eastern Command. A veteran of the 1971 India-Pakistan war and IPKF (Indian Peacekeeping Keeping Force in Sri Lanka) operations, Singh is a graduate of the US Army Infantry School and has also attended the US Army War College, Carlisle.
A senior army officer who has served with Singh said, "He is a stickler for rules and has zero tolerance for corruption. His personal conduct has been above the board."
General Singh ordered an inquiry into the Sukna land case and recommended strict action against four generals allegedly involved. Singh, a third-generation officer of the Rajput Regiment, hails from Bapoda village in Bhiwani.
An army spokesperson said Singh has vast operational experience in counter-insurgency operations, Line of Control and high-altitude environment.
General Vijay Kumar Singh will find any number of challenges that demand urgent attention. But the first and foremost task of the new Army chief is not difficult to discern. It is to restore the image of the army that has taken a battering in recent years amidst the many serious charges of corruption.

As the GOC-in-C of Eastern Command, General V.K. Singh squarely confronted a major scandal -- the Sukna landscam case -- and prevailed on the establishment to do the right thing. As chief, he must now initiate steps that will significantly dampen if not eliminate the sources of corruption in the Indian Army.
To be sure, no institution can be immune to the larger trend of declining ethical standards around it. Yet there is a strong case for ensuring that the armed forces, responsible for the defence of the country, are as insulated as possible from negative trends in the rest of the nation.
As the ultimate instrument of protection for the republic from threats abroad and at home, the Indian Army enjoys a very special respect and legitimacy. Delhi can't afford to lose the people's trust in the Army. This in turn will require not only systemic reforms that will take time to implement, but also immediate measures that can reinforce public confidence in the army and its leadership.
Civilian primacy over the military in our democracy does not mean that the chiefs of our armed forces have to be mute in the face of persistent neglect of national defence by incompetent bureaucrats and indifferent ministers.
A second task for General Singh is to make the Army an attractive career for young men and women.
Unless it takes urgent and special steps, the Army's officer shortage, now said to be running at more than 11,000, will only grow. The traditional regional and social catchment areas of the Indian army officer corps have long since begun to dry up. The Army must thus find ways to reach out to new sources. One possible approach might be to take the Sainik schools to regions and communities that have had little exposure to career possibilities with the army. By providing the opportunity to, as well as imparting the capability to, compete for positions in the armed forces, a targeted expansion of the Sainik school system could at once help spread the roots of the Indian army as well as make it an attractive vehicle of social mobility for many marginal sections of society.
A third task for the Army leadership is to develop more effective ways of intervening in policy debates within the government and improving its outreach to the public. The tendency for the chiefs to make impromptu pronouncements to reporters and TV crews has landed some of Singh's predecessors in political trouble.
Meanwhile, resentment within the Army and the other armed services is mounting at the perennial short shrift they get from the civilian bureaucracy, where the capacity to manage the nation's military appears to be eroding rapidly. The answer to this lies in the Army improving its institutional capacity to frame policy issues, to engage other governmental agencies, and to better communicate with the public -rather than the occasional public venting by the chief.

The biggest challenge, however, is the urgency of rapid modernisation. It won't be long before Singh finds himself as frustrated as his predecessors in the Army and colleagues in the Air Force and the Navy by the "masterly inactivity" that has now enveloped the defence ministry. So long as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi are willing to tolerate the current drift in the Ministry of Defence, which returns year after year money meant for weapon purchases and undermines the efforts to build a modern defence industrial base, it would seem there is little anyone can do.
But it behoves the new Army chief, after he reviews the state of affairs on the needs of the Army, to point to the dangers to national security from further delays in the modernisation of the armed forces. Civilian primacy over the military in our democracy does not mean that the chiefs of our armed forces have to be mute in the face of persistent neglect of national defence by incompetent bureaucrats and indifferent ministers.
If he can make the Army's case calmly and in a sustained fashion, within the government and to the public, the new chief can make a huge difference to the national discourse on defence policy. And that surely is the least we should expect from the head of an institution that is among the oldest and the most professional the nation has had.
Source: The Indian Express and PTI
PreviousNext
K.Venugopal
#1
Thursday, 01 April 2010 14:45:36
Whether ready or not, we have to take on China if the situation so arises. So there is no need for any incoming army chief to particularly declare this. If it is meant to reassure the nation, I think the nation is not much reassured about anything these days - what with indifference and corruption widespread at all levels in our society. If he can indeed make the "internal health" of the army robust, then he would have gone a long way in reassuring the nation that we can take on anyone. Best wishes and luck to our new Chief.

http://news.in.msn.com/internalsecurity/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3764813&page=0

Swami Nityananda quits as head of his ashram, its trusts

Bangalore: Self-styled godman Swami Nityananda, who was purportedly caught in a sleazy video footage, today announced his decision to resign as head of his Dhyanapeetam ashram and from all trusts associated with it, living a life of "spiritual seclusion" for an indefinite time.

"I have decided to live a life of spiritual seclusion, for some indefinite time....and to enable the Dhyanapeetam to function with such amended agenda as may be necessary, I am resigning as the head of the Dhyanapeetam and from all the trusts associated with it," he said addressing his followers on his official website.

"In view of the developments in the last three weeks following the media reports about me as the head of Dhyanapeetam, (located at Bidadi near Bangalore), I had met some of the leading acharyas of Hindu Dharma at Haridwar Kumbh Mela," Nityananda, facing criminal cases, including that of rape, said.

He said he had briefed them about what was fact and what was fiction. "Candidly discussing what had happened, I had sought their spiritual and moral support, guidance for me, and their views on the future course of Dhyanapeetam."

I had also undertaken that I would act entirely in accordance with their counsel," the swami, whose purported sleazy acts in company of a Tamil actress were aired by TV channels on March 3, said in the message, also telecast on Youtube.

"I have decided to live a life of spiritual seclusion, for some indefinite time, to which the acharyas have agreed in principle," said the swami, whose plea for anticipatory bail and quashing of the cases against him has been turned down by the Karnatka High Court.

"In view of this, and to enable the Dhyanapeetam to function with such amended agenda as may be necessary, I am resigning as the head of the Dhyanapeetam," the 32-year old Nityananda said.

"A board of trustees consisting of sadhakas of Dhyanapeetam who are non-controversial, will henceforth manage Dhyanapeetam," he said.

Urging his devotees to continue on the path of spiritualism, he said, "Whenever if required I will return and talk about all that had happened as an independent witness to my conduct with a clean heart and clean soul and also in a less prejudiced atmosphere."

The swami, whose whereabouts are not known, has claimed that the images in the video have been morphed and he had not done anything illegal.

In his petition in the High Court, he alleged that one of his former disciples and driver Kurup Lenin (who he has claimed to have leaked the sleaze video) conspired to defame him and his ashram by levelling such charges against him.

The court termed as "unfounded" Nityananda's apprehension that he could be arrested and directed him to to approach the proper forum to seek bail.

Karnataka CID police yesterday sought information from "victims" of the godman against whom it has launched a probe.

Nityananda has been booked under various sections of IPC relating to deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religious beliefs, rape, unnatural sex, cheating, criminal intimidation and criminal conspiracy.

PTI

The swami continues to be wishy-washy. What was required was a clear cut statement on whether he had sex or not. If yes, his position as a religious head claiming the path of sanyas is not tenable. If no, he has to go for the kill against those who sought to malign not just him but the institution of sanyas. As swami has vowed a life of "spiritual seclusion" and has resigned from his posts, it is assumed that he has tacitly acknowledged that the CD is genuine. What prevents him from conceding to his faults instead of seeking to be mystical about the whole thing and thereby running away from the truth?

http://www.zeenews.com/news615136.html

Congress to Amitabh: Do you endorse Modi's role in riots?

29/03/2010

New Delhi: Firing a salvo at Amitabh Bachchan, Congress today asked whether he endorses Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's "role" in the 2002 "pogrom" or condemns it.

"Does he (Amitabh) condemn the role of Narendra Modi in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom of 2002 or he endorses it?...What does he say about the Gujarat massacre and fake encounters that took place since Modi took over," Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari asked at a briefing here.
His salvo at the brand ambassador of Gujarat came after Modi hit out at Congress, saying those opposing Bachchan were "taliban of untouchability".

Tewari said "if he (Bachchan) is sensible and right-thinking, he will come out strongly against it (the riots)."
He said Bachchan "should not build the Chinese Wall between Modi and the sands of Rann of Kutch by justifying" brand ambassadorship of Gujarat.
Source: PTI

K.Venugopal
#1
Tuesday, 30 March 2010 00:13:12
The Congress is assuming Modi’s role in the Gujarat riots was negative. Actually Modi's actions ensured that the riots were quickly brought under control and therefore his role is a positive one. Therefore everyone who is not prejudiced would endorse Modi's role. We have to remember that Modi or the Hindus did not start the riots. The riots were a backlash against Muslims for burning 59 Hindu pilgrims in a train bogey. It would have been a larger catastrophe and would have spread all over India but for Modi’s timely actions.

http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3755342&page=0