| Guwahati | ||
March 25 : The uncertainty over the future of the 95-year-old Bishnu Ram Medhi Government Law College has deepened with the Bar Council representing the Northeast states opposing immediate lifting of the ban on admission into its three-year law course. The college has already lost a year as it could not conduct admission for the academic session 2008-09. Many poor students had to take admission in other colleges by paying hefty fees. Last year, the Bar Council of India (BCI) imposed a ban on the college against admitting students for the year 2008-09 as the institution failed to fulfil certain basic conditions like a permanent campus, permanent teachers and a standard library. The chairman of the Bar Council of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, G.N. Sahewalla, told this correspondent that the college was yet to fulfil some basic criteria and another fresh investigation must be conducted before lifting the ban. “Following instructions of the BCI, I made an inspection of the college recently and examined the present status of the institution. Though the college has made some progress in infrastructure and other facilities, the basic criterion like appointment of permanent teachers has not been fulfilled yet. The preliminary process of appointment of the teachers has not started. Appointment of permanent and qualified teachers is very important to become a standard law institution,” he added. He said under these circumstances, lifting of the ban on admission into the three-year law course would not be appropriate. According to him, the BCI must conduct a fresh inquiry and the college should be given a specific time frame to fulfil basic criteria like appointment of permanent teachers. “I have submitted my report to the BCI and it is up to the council to take the final decision,” Sahewalla said. Sources said with the model code conduct in force ahead of the parliamentary elections, the law college could not start the appointment process immediately. “There is no chance of starting the preliminary process of appointment before June. The admission for the 2009-10 academic session should start by August. Given the present circumstances, the college will fail to start the admission in time,” a source said. Principal H. Munir, while admitting that the process of appointment of permanent teachers was yet to start, said certain other conditions like the construction of a permanent campus had been met. |
Silchar, March 3: The Union ministry of road transport and shipping has sanctioned a Rs 91.50-crore scheme to upgrade a 129-km stretch of the Barak, the second longest river in the Northeast, to national waterway.
A bill to upgrade the stretch of the Barak between Lakhipur (a sub-divisional town in Cachar district) and Bhanga (in Karimganj district), via the Cachar district headquarters of Silchar, to NW6 was passed in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
According to the Central Inland Waterways Transport Corporation (CIWTC) officials here, 2011-12 has been fixed as the deadline to upgrade the new waterway.
The waterway will facilitate transport of goods and passengers in the remote Barak valley districts and also help to link the valley with Myanmar and Bangladesh.
The scheme includes, among others, the setting up of at least four terminal stations for loading and unloading goods and passengers on the Barak waterways. The stations are Lakhipur, Silchar, Badarpur and Bhanga.
Congress MP and the Union minister from Cachar, Sontosh Mohan Dev, had been waging a relentless move to upgrade the river into a national waterway over the past few years.
Better navigation and dredging will be part of the scheme, as the river is now congested with mud, slush and garbage.
The Barak springs from a stream on Saramati hills on the Nagaland-Manipur border and flows through Manipur and south Assam to merge with the Surma. Thereafter, it enters Bangladesh, before emptying out into the Bay of Bengal.
Cargo vessels having an average weight of 10 tonnes can ply through this national waterway at a cheaper cost than those ferried by the Railways and road transport, the CIWTC officials said.
Besides, the annual floods in the Barak valley districts would be considerably minimised once ships start plying on the Barak, they added.
Guwahati, Feb 1: Assam today gave itself two years to become the first cleft-free state in the country. Health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced this at the launch of the first international mission of Operation Smile in the Northeast.
A team of doctors and volunteers from different countries is screening patients at the Mahendra Mohan Choudhury Hospital here. Surgeries will be performed on the children from February 1 to 6.
“We already have 400-500 children at the hospital but surgeries will be conducted only on 200 of them now,” Sarma said. The backlog will be completed in May. The state health department has offered MMCH as the venue for conducting cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries free of cost.
Chief minister Tarun Gogoi said Assam could provide the best of facilities to international doctors and thanked the visiting team for doing a great service to humanity. Chairman of the India chapter of Operation Smile, Ranjit Barthakur, hoped it could become the first cleft-free state in the country.
KALYAN BAROOAH
NEW DELHI, Jan 3 – Bowing to pressure India is likely to ask Bangladesh to crack down on the Indian Insurgent Groups (IIGs), with New Delhi deciding to rush External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee to Dhaka later this month. Highly placed sources said the External Affairs Minister has a two-point agenda. He would be taking up the issue of shelter being enjoyed by the North-East militants and urgent need to mount a crackdown, besides cross border trade, sources added.
Mukehrejee is likely to seek to expulsion of select ULFA and NDFB leaders including Anup Chetia, Arabinda Rajkhowa, Paresh Barua and Ranjan Daimary, said said.
India and Dhaka does not have an extradition treaty and hence New Delhi is insisting on handing over the militant leaders.
India is unlikely to send any representative to Dhaka to attend the swearing – in ceremony of Sheikh Hasina, tentatively scheduled on January 5. Instead Mukherjee is going towards later part of January to do some plain speaking.
However, India is unlikely to talk tough at this stage, sources clarified, adding that New Delhi wants the new government to settle down first. The date for Mukherjee’s visit has not been firmed up because the new government is yet to take over charge in Dhaka, sources said.
The recent incidents of blasts in Assam and the emerging links of involvement of the fundamentalist elements based across the border has led the North Eastern States to mount pressure on the Centre to prevail upon Dhaka to end the free run enjoyed by the militants.
Though Mukherjee is going to seek the expulsion of the militant leaders, sources in the Home Ministry said they are not hopeful of securing the custody of any one of the top guns of ULFA and NDFB.
Reports with the Centre suggested that ahead of the December 29 polls, top leaders of ULFA, Arabinda Rajkhowa, Paresh Baruah and Raju Baruah left Bangladesh for Thailand. They are now suspected to be holed somewhere in South East Asia.
Intelligence inputs suggest that the ULFA leaders have been shuttling between Bangladesh, Thailand, Myanmar and East Timor. Ranjan Daimary for instance has reportedly bought some property in East Timor.
India, meanwhile, has adopted several measures to seal the Indo-Bangladesh border in the aftermath of spiralling violence in Assam. The Ministry of Home Affairs decided to replace fencing under Phase-I along Indo-Bangladesh border. The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has approved extension of time for this project up to March 31, 2010.
Sources said in pursuance of the decision of the Government to replace the entire 861 Km of fencing constructed under Phase-I in West Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya, which got damaged due to adverse climatic conditions and repeated submergence. At least 364 Km of fencing has been replaced so far, sources said.
sinlung.com
Labels: assam, bangladesh, new delhi, northeast
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