TRIVANDRUM, 27 February 2006 — Terming the union railway budget totally disappointing for Kerala, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy yesterday said an all-party delegation would rush to Delhi to get justice for the state. He said though his government had put forward 16 demands, including for a special zone and new trains, most of them were ignored. An all-party delegation would be sent to New Delhi soon to take up the matter with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Reacting sharply to the budget proposals left parliamentarians from the southern state said they would also meet Manmohan and lodge a complaint against Railway Minister Lalu Prasad that he had neglected the state in the budget. “The budget has meted out severe injustice. While he proposed a 32 percent increase in allocations for infrastructure development, the state’s share came down drastically,” Communist Party of India-Marxist member N.N. Krishnadas said, while threatening the government not to vote in its favor.
Indo-Arab Conference
More than a dozen Arab diplomats, including the Kingdom’s ambassador to New Delhi, Saleh Mohammed Al-Ghamdi, will be attending the Indo-Arab conference in the port city of Cochin today, the Cochin Chamber of Commerce and Industry that organizes the event said in a statement. It will highlight the investment opportunities and tourism potential of the state. “This is for the first time the Kerala port city is hosting so many ambassadors from the Arab countries,” CCCI Secretary Dominic J. Mechery said. Apart from the deliberations with the ambassadors by the members of the chamber, Jiji Thomson, the secretary of the government department for non-resident Keralites, and Kerala Tourism Director B. Suman will make a presentation on the tourism potential and the problems of non-resident Keralites.
Ahamed’s Call
Junior foreign minister and Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader E. Ahamed has appealed to voters to return the United Democratic Front (UDF) to power for strengthening the country’s integrity, secularism and religious harmony. “We are for strengthening the pluralistic character of society and while ensuring the constitutional rights to the 150 million Muslims in India,” he said while inaugurating an IUML convention in the northern town of Cannanore. He said the Manmohan Singh government’s bid to enumerate the number of minority community members in defense forces was to ascertain exact strength and BJP’s opposition on the issue was in bad taste.
Airport Share Skyrockets
The 10-rupee share of Cochin International Airport Company Limited, subscribed by nearly 10,000 NRIs, now attracts as high a price as Rs. 350 with the airport infrastructure companies making a bid for its control before it goes public later this year. Among those who are willing to pick up the NRI stakes are the consortium led by GVK Industries Ltd and the Airports Company of South Africa that was awarded the work for the Bombay airport, and the Hyderabad-based GMR Group that successfully bid for Delhi airport modernization, besides the companies headed by the two Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil. Cochin is the first and only corporate airport in India. Four Gulf-based NRI directors, Geo Group’s N.V. George, retail chain owner M. A. Yusuf Ali, Galfar’s P. Mohammed Ali, and E.M. Babu, who heads the Dubai-based trading company Majeed Bukatara Trading, jointly own 36 percent of the company.
Recruitment to Iraq
Several unregistered employment agencies in Kerala are recruiting workers for Iraq despite a 2004 ban imposed, reports said. The federal government had ordered that a temporary emigration seal stating “Not Valid For Travel in Iraq” be stamped on the passports of emigration clearance required (ECR) category workers traveling to the Gulf. But illegal agents use corrupt means to ensure that the emigration seal banning travel in Iraq is not affixed on the passports of workers they recruited. These agents, who are actually recruiting workers for Iraq, ask their clients to falsely declare their place of work as Kuwait, Jordan or the United Arab Emirates. The absence of the temporary seal makes it easier for the agents to move Indian workers into Iraq through bordering Gulf countries. Since December, emigration authorities at the airport here have prevented at least eight workers from traveling to the Gulf on the suspicion that they were bound for Iraq.
