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External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna Monday said India was awaiting a report before providing additional security to Indians in Afghanistan and was tightening security at all its overseas missions in the wake of terror threats to this country’s assets abroad.

“We have spoken to the Afghan government. We are awaiting a final security report,” Krishna told reporters on the sidelines of an India-Africa business conclave. He was replying to a question on the security of Indians in Afghanistan.

“We are tightening security of the Indian missions,” Krishna said.

According to intelligence reports here, militants are planning a series of attacks on Indians and Indian consulates in Afghanistan.

The threat perception has increased after the Feb 26 Kabul terror attack that killed seven Indians, triggering calls for better security for around 4,000 Indians engaged in a score of reconstruction activities in the violence-torn country.

Given the fierce opposition from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Left parties, the government Monday decided against moving the contentious Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill in the Lok Sabha.

The BJP, opposing the bill “tooth and nail”, had moved a notice against it at the introduction stage itself.

However, Speaker Meira Kumar said the she had received an intimation from Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Prithviraj Chavan that the “government doesn’t intend to table the bill today”.

But the BJP demanded that the bill be withdrawn. “We request that the bill should be withdrawn,” Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj said.

“It is the duty of the government to inform the house about it. The house has the right to know. It was in the listed business. When was the list changed?” BJP leader L.K. Advani wondered.

Chavan was to move the bill in the Lok Sabha. It seeks to limit the liability a nuclear plant’s operator in case of an accident at Rs.500 crore.

The legislation also envisages the setting up of a commission that which will investigate and decide, if there is an accident, who was responsible for the error.

The passing of the bill in parliament is a crucial step that India is required to take under the 123 agreement with the US. Private companies in the US are not willing to sell nuclear equipment to India without such a law in place.

Government sources say that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is keen to get the bill passed in parliament ahead of his US visit in April.

The Left parties say the bill “is a harmful piece of legislation meant to serve the interests of the US and its nuclear industry”.

“It is a blatant attempt to protect US suppliers from claims of liability and compensation. Even if there is a manufacturing defect which causes a nuclear accident that can affect the lives of people, there is no liability for the supplier. The clauses of the bill are so devised as to practically make it impossible to assign liability to the supplier,” the Left parties said in a joint statement to oppose the legislation.

Senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said: “We will force the government to refer it to a standing committee.”

Defending the bill, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said: “It is necessary to integrate India with the rest of the world in terms of civilian nuclear energy.”

Tens of thousands of people from all over the country, including Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, gathered here Monday for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s rally to mark the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) 25th anniversary celebrations.

The silver jubilee celebrations at the Ramabai Ambedkar grounds coincide with party founder Kanshi Ram’s birthday.

It is estimated that there are nearly 20 lakh participants from across the country, party officials said.

The BSP, which was founded on April 14, 1984, completed 25 years last year, but the celebration could not be held then because of Lok Sabha elections.

“Apart from gearing up the cadre for the upcoming assembly elections, Behenji (Mayawati) will also highlight the achievements of her government in order to give a befitting reply to our opponents, who try every means to malign the party’s image,” a BSP functionary told IANS, on the condition of anonymity.

“In this rally, our opponents will get to know about our party’s ever-expanding base as people not only from the state but from different parts of the country are attending the rally,” he added.

According to party sources, nearly 15 waterproof, special pandals, each spread over 25,000 square metres, have come up at the venue to accommodate the participants.

Moreover, a 7,000 square metre dining hall has also been set up that will offer a variety of Indian delicacies and dishes to the rally participants, they added.

The 12 km route from Hazratganj, the heart of the city, to the rally venue at Ramabai Ambedkar grounds is draped in blue. Be it the decorative lights, the welcome arches, banners and hoardings, and even the lights around fountains at major road junctions, everything is painted blue.

The Rs.1,200 crore Ambedkar Memorial has also been decorated, while all advertisement hoardings all along the thoroughfare to the venue seemed to have been taken over by the BSP. Mayawati’s portrait was emblazoned on the freshly painted hoardings and announcements about the rally were visible everywhere.

Twenty six people, including 11 women, were killed and 34 injured early Monday when a bus fell over a bridge into a river in Rajasthan’s Sawai Madhopur district, police said.

The bus was carrying about 60 students and staff of Mother India Teacher Training College, Jhalawar.

The bus was on its way back from a picnic in Mathura and Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh.

The accident took place about 50 km from Sawai Madhopur.

“The incident occurred at around 3.30 a.m. when a bus of a teacher training school fell over the bridge in the Morel river. Rescue operations are going on and as of now we have recovered 26 bodies,” Superintendent of Police Vikas Kumar told IANS on the phone.

The injured have been admitted to a local government hospital.

India and the US hope to significantly expand bilateral cooperation in critical areas like defence/strategic trade, civil nuclear cooperation, biotechnology, nano-technology and civil aviation after two-day talks on high technology starting here Monday.

Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao arrived here Sunday to co-chair the seventh meeting of the India-US High Technology Cooperation Group (HTCG), its first since President Barack Obama took office, with Dennis F. Hightower, Deputy Secretary of Commerce.

“Both sides hope to consolidate the progress made in the last five years and move ahead to significantly expand bilateral trade in strategic and high technology areas,” said an Indian official before the meeting.

Officials bilateral talks between the two sides Tuesday will be preceded by a meeting Monday between top US and Indian business executives hosted by the US-India Business Council (USIBC) to discuss ways in which the two governments can facilitate trade in specific industry sectors. Suggestions emerging from this dialogue are expected to inform the official level talks.

Rao will also address the business-to-business session convened by the USIBC in partnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

The keynote address at the business session will be given by Michael Froman, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs and Development.

HTCG was conceived in November 2001 with a joint statement by then President George W. Bush and then Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who affirmed their commitment to transform and deepen US-India relations. Both countries agreed to take cooperative steps to create the requisite political, economic, and legal structures for successful high-technology commerce.

Apart from meetings in the Commerce Department, Rao will also be meeting senior members of the US administration as well as the US Congress during her stay in Washington.

At the State Department, Rao will review the progress made on various elements of the India-US Strategic Dialogue initiated during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to India last July. She is also expected to discuss the way ahead in preparation for External Affairs Minister S M Krishna’s visit to the US later for the next round of Strategic Dialogue.

Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit Saturday assured that there will be no power shortages during the summer or the Commonwealth Games to be held in October.

“The city will become power surplus and there will be no shortage of power during Commonwealth Games and thereafter,” Dikshit said at the two-day national seminar on power sector reforms.

Dikshit also told the discoms to purchase the power at whatever rates were available to avoid any shortages.

“It is a satisfactory fact that the per capita consumption in Delhi has increased from 1,259 units in 2000-01 to 1,615 units in 2007-08. The increased demand has been met successfully by arranging adequate power from various states,” Dikshit said adding, this is the result of privatization of the power sector.

“This is an era of power trading. Delhi will get more than 1,400 MW power from Bawana project this year, around 750 MW from Jhajjar and 900 MW from NTPC Dadri. This will definitely suffice our demand. Apart from this, work on 750 megawatt Bamnauli project will also be taken up soon,” Dikshit added.

Appreciating the private discoms for providing good service to consumers, Dikshit said: “Discoms in Delhi are now competing with each other to provide the best possible services to their customers.”

Dikshit also expressed satisfaction at the fact that transmission losses have come down from 50 percent to 18 percent and urged people to save electricity.

Pro-Telangana students Saturday heckled union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal at the Hyderabad Central University, prompting the leader to cut short his visit to the city and return to New Delhi.

The pro-Telangana students stopped the minister when he arrived at the university to address the vice-chancellors’ meet. They raised slogans of “Jai Telangana” and demanded that the government table a bill in parliament for the formation of a separate Telangana state.

The protesters also raised slogans against the Srikrishna committee formed by the government to look into the demands for and against creation of a separate state.

Police had to intervene to bring the situation under control. The minister cancelled his visit to the English and Foreign Language University (EFLU) on the Osmania University campus where he was to inaugurate a newly-constructed building of EFLU, and returned to the national capital.

Sibal’s junior D. Purandareswari was also scheduled to attend the function, which was cancelled following an advisory by the police who had anticipated trouble during the ministers’ visit.

Osmania University is the nerve centre of the Telangana agitation. A student early this week committed suicide to protest the delay in formation of a separate state.

The Delhi High Court Friday issued notices to eight colleges run by the central government for not implementing the disability quota for teachers despite directions.

A division bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Ajit Bharihoke asked the colleges to file their reply by April 16 and state why their orders were not complied with.

Bharti College and Lady Harding Medical College are two of the eight colleges that have not complied with the order.

Colin Gonsalves, counsel for NGO Sambhavana Trust, said: “There are only 39 colleges in Delhi University (DU) that have complied fully with the disability quota, 12 colleges have partially complied and 31 colleges have not complied at all.”

The court was hearing a public interest petition seeking an implementation of the law on quota for disabled candidates for teaching posts.

Sambhavana Trust, a registered society of disabled persons, had alleged that the varsity and its colleges had not implemented the law even 15 years after parliament passed it and six years after the court’s direction in this regard.

It was also submitted that the university, after enactment of the law, had passed a resolution in 1996 to provide three percent reservation for the disabled, out of which two percent was to be given to the visibly handicapped and one percent to orthopaedically handicapped.

Tension continued in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district, parts of which have been under curfew for 12 days, following the fresh outbreak of trouble in which 15 people were injured the day before, police said Saturday.

“We are reviewing the situation almost after every one hour… Still, the situation is tense, but it is well under control,” Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) (Bareilly range) Rajiv Sabharwal told reporters here.

“Now, we have also started making arrangements to supply vegetables, milk, other edible and daily use items to the public. Special arrangements have been made for women, who want to buy such items in the curfew-hit localities,” Sabharwal added.

Police said no violence had been reported since Friday evening when at least 15 people, including a senior police officer, were injured after clashes with protesters agitating against the release of a Muslim cleric who had been arrested for his alleged role in the communal clashes on March 2.

“We have deployed adequate security personnel in all the sensitive areas of the district. At present, there are nearly 18 officials of the rank of SP (superintendent of police)/Commandant, four deputy SPs, seven inspectors, 265 constables and 10 Station House Officers (SHOs), deployed in parts of the district,” a senior police officer told IANS.

The five areas hit by communal violence were Subhashnagar, Kotwali, Kila, Prem Nagar and Baradari.

On Friday, some groups vandalised property while protesting the release of Maulana Tauquir Raza Khan, president of the Ittehad-e-Millat Council.

Khan gave a “rabble rousing speech” that led to communal violence in parts of Bareilly last week, police said.

A minor communal clash followed by sporadic arson March 2 afternoon led the administration to clamp curfew in several parts of Bareilly city.

Trouble sparked off over the passage of a Barawafat procession. What started with exchange of hot words between members of rival communities, almost instantly snowballed into a violent clash as members of a particular community went on an arson spree, burning down a few shops.

Students so depressed that they want to commit suicide, hapless teachers at a loss to comfort pupils, harried parents…Calls have been pouring in at the Delhi government’s Yuva counselling helpline for the past month thanks to the Class 10 and 12 board exams.

“There has been a sharp rise in the number of distress calls that we have been getting from students in need of counselling these days. This is mainly because of the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) board exams that are on,” Manju Kumar, consultant at the Yuva counselling helpline centre in Defence Colony, told IANS.

“Last week we received three calls on one day from students who were so depressed that they wanted to commit suicide. It took us almost three hours of counselling and then calling back after some time to ensure that they were fine and in a better state of mind,” Kumar said.

All three, Kumar said, were students of Class 12 who couldn’t perform well in their business studies exam. Two of them were girls.

“It shocks you at times…the kind of calls that come. Children are so much under strain because of exams; then there is peer pressure and parental pressure. We get 80-100 calls every day and most of them are from students at a loss on how to deal with the pressure of exams,” she said.

While the toll free helpline (1800116888) is functional the whole year around, it’s during the Class 10 and 12 examination period – February and March – and during the admission time in Delhi University – around June – when the calls start pouring in again.

Poonam Gupta, one of the counsellors, said that besides students, teachers and parents also call up for help.

“At times parents call us for advice on how to make their kids study and help them be more competitive. Yesterday I got a call from a parent asking how to make her 10-year-old child study. Even teachers call us, asking us how to help their students deal with examination jitters,” Gupta told IANS.

The helpline, which is functional from 7.30 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day, has just six counsellors working on a rotation basis in morning and afternoon shifts. All counsellors – most of who are women – are professionally trained in counselling.

The helpline was started in 2007 by the Directorate of Education and in 2009 it was brought under the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).

While most of the calls are from Delhi, Kumar said they get a considerable number of calls from outside the capital too.

“About 10 percent of our calls are from outside Delhi like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. One unifying trend is that most calls are from students of public schools. It may be because students of public schools are more aware,” she said.

“A new feature which we have started now is counselling youngsters with special needs and their parents. The queries could be career-related or more private like how to deal with different situations. In either case, whether it’s youngsters with special needs or otherwise, we always give the callers an option for individual counselling in our centre here and some do come to us,” Kumar said.