Newsreel: 27.07.03

• WHAT it took just a few hours to ground is costing the nation its age-old patience. After protracted debates over the hows and whys o...

• WHAT it took just a few hours to ground is costing the nation its age-old patience. After protracted debates over the hows and whys of building a Ram temple on the land where the Babri Masjid was brought down on December 6, 1992, the Parliament gets hijacked by the ‘Babri-whodunnit’ issue.

On the first day of the Monsoon Session, Opposition corner the government on the CBI’s ‘‘dropping of criminal conspiracy’’ charges against Dy PM L K Advani and other senior Sangh leaders. The government, on its part, defends claiming that the ‘‘conspiracy charge’’ was not included in the original 1993 chargesheet filed during Narasimha Rao’s Congress regime.

• ANOTHER Pandora’s Box gets opened as the Supreme Court, in a verdict pertaining to succession in Christian families, makes an observation in favour of a uniform civil code in the country — a law common to all communities in personal matters such as marriage, divorce, inheritance and succession.

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Parties rally together against any move for a single law, though predictably, BJP welcomes the SC observation. ‘‘It is a matter of regret that Article 44 of the Constitution has not been given effect to,’’ says a three-member bench headed by Chief Justice of India V N Khare.

• The Indo-Pak thaw declares freedom from the grenade pin. Or so it seemed, as Defence Minister George Fernandes clarifies that the two gruesome incidents in Jammu in which over 12 people including five Vaishno Devi pilgrims and a Brigadier were killed won’t derail the peace process.

In the first, militants set off explosives at a base camp at Katra near Vaishno Devi killing five and injuring 36. The real shock comes within 12 hours when militants attack the Tanda camp of the Northern Command killing Brig V K Govil and injuring GoC Lt Gen Hari Prasad.

• THAT the peace process is out of the ICU gets reflected in the Indian and Pakistani press as two cross-border visitors continue to hog the headlines. Overwhelmed by the public sentiment evoked by Noor Fatima, the two-and-a-half-year-old who came to India from Lahore via the Sada-e-Sarhad, the Government of India offers free treatment to 20 more Pakistani children waiting at the border. Side by side, evoking reactions ranging from surprise to suspicion, hardline Jamiat-ul-Ulema leader Maulana Fazal-ur Rahman stirs up the peace pot further.

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• UNDER pressure to deliver justice to the families of the five innocent people killed in a fake encounter at Panchalthan over three years ago, the Mufti Mohammad Sayeed-led Jammu and Kashmir government announces action against two policemen — an SSP and an SHO — doctors and others.

Five villagers were killed by a joint team of police and Army on March 20, 2000, and later described as Lashkar-e-Toiba mercenaries responsible for the massacre of 35 Sikhs at Chittisinghpora.

• A week after PM A B vajpayee publicises the freezing of the Nalco disinvestment process, the Punjab government approves the bid made by Commonwealth Development Corporation, the wholly-owned company of government of the UK, to buy 23.49 per cent share of Punjab State Industrial Development Corporation (PSIDC) in Punjab Tractors Ltd (PTL). The acquisition of PTL, country’s second largest tractor maker, comes at Rs 153 per share. Meanwhile, minister Arun Shourie informs the Lok Sabha that the total proceeds from the disinvestment proceeds between April 1991 to March 2003 stands at Rs 29,487 crore.

• India’s season of non-cricketing success in the sporting arena continues. After hockey, tennis, volleyball this was the week for football and archery. At the under-19 Milk Cup at Ireland, India defeated Dynamo Kiev youth side. This is followed by East Bengal’s historic run at the Asean Cup Club Championship with Baichung Bhutia on a goal-scoring spree. Indian archery moves beyond Limba Ram at the World Championship at USA. The men’s team (minus Limba) and the women’s squad qualify for the Athens Olympics.

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• The two sons of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein — Uday and Qusay — are killed during a four-hour-long gunbattle with US soldiers who raid an opulent stone mansion after being tipped off by an informant. Qusay Hussein, 37, the onetime heir apparent who led Iraq’s elite Special Republican Guard military force, and elder brother Uday Hussein, 39, who commanded the Saddam’s Fidayeen militia, die during a military operation in Mosul, about 220 miles north of Baghdad.