Facebook leads auto meter movement - Site users to hit streets on February 27

Residents will hit the streets on February 27 to put pressure on autorickshaw drivers to install electronic fare meters and abide by the rates fixed by the administration.

A group of people have already started a Facebook campaign titled “Honk your Voice”, inviting people on the social networking site to raise their concern.

“We will meet on February 27 at 3pm and launch a peaceful movement. We appeal to residents from all walks of life to join the movement because it is the general public who are suffering the most,” young activist Megha Kashyap, who started the online campaign, said today.

Students shine in youth festival - GU team bags prizes at Kalyani University

Students of Gauhati University shone in a national-level inter-university youth festival organised in Calcutta recently. Representing the state in the festival they bagged three prizes in different categories.

A 23-member student team, under the leadership of Radha Charan Rabha, director of students’ welfare of the university, participated at the 28th Inter University National Youth Festival 2012-13 at Kalyani University in Calcutta and bagged three prizes.

The team bagged the third prize in the cultural procession, fourth in folk music orchestra and third in theatrical-mimicry.

Altogether 1,000 students from 71 universities from across the country participated in the festival where Bombay University emerged as the best team and the Guru Nanak University as the second best.

Ragging slur on senior boarders - Varsity asks hostel girls to keep mum

Gauhati University today shrugged off its responsibility of conducting a proper inquiry into a complaint of “mental torture” by some boarders of a girls’ hostel, dubbing the complaint as an “internal matter” of the university.

Sources in the university said 15 boarders of AT 2 Law College Girls’ Hostel on Saturday filed a complaint to the association of the hotel wardens of the university alleging that their seniors had tortured them mentally the previous night.

A source said the victims were reprimanded by their seniors for not giving enough time in organising Saraswati puja. They were asked to keep standing for hours as punishment. The victims had refused to participate in organising the puja as they needed to prepare for their examinations.

A crore a day loss after abduction

North Eastern Coalfields (NEC), a subsidiary of the Coal India Ltd, has been incurring a loss of nearly Rs 1 crore daily following the closure of Tikak colliery at Margherita in Tinsukia district bordering Arunachal Pradesh.

The colliery was shut down in January after four workers of a private company engaged there were abducted by suspected Naga militants.

A senior NEC official told today that the Tikak colliery, which was one of the four operational coalfields under the North Eastern Coalfields, was producing nearly 2,000 metric tonnes of coal daily. This translated into Rs 1 crore daily at the rate of Rs 5,000 per tonne minimum price.

Illegal trade in SIM cards emerges as a new threat

An emerging threat has been identified by the city police, through recent breakthroughs made in and around the city. The new danger involves a network of people who are carrying on illegal trade in SIM cards and activating those without any verification which is mandatory.

The trade, according to sources, involves multiple players and contains serious implications not just for end users, but also has the potential to abet criminal activities to a large extent.

Only today, dozens of SIM cards were recovered from a woman in a rented accommodation in west Guwahati, which were to be sold to customers willing to pay not less than Rs 200 for each card. In this particular instance, the person was picked up after police gathered credible inputs from their sources. It is believed that with this breakthrough the police will nab more people in the days ahead. It is likely that police will also be questioning personnel working for two major cell service providers.

Book spills beans on China-NE ultra nexus

China has never acknowledged aiding insurgents from the North-east, but a new pictorial book shows several batches of rebels undergoing training in the neighbouring country.

A newly released pictorial book – Lens and the Guerrilla: Insurgency in India’s North-east – has produced graphic images showing Naga and Mizo rebels in Beijing, Yunnan, Tibet and near the Great Wall.

Author Rajeev Bhattacharyya claims that his pictorial book has documented MNF armed wing with Chinese soldiers in Yunnan in 1973, another shows its foreign secretary Lalthangliana with two Chinese guides at a studio in Beijing.

The author said he gathered the photographs from erstwhile senior leaders of the Mizo outfit who had also undergone training in China. “They were quite reluctant to give them (photographs) and I really had a tough time convincing them that they would not be put to sinister use,” he said, adding that there were more photographs on China which could not be acquired.

Assam Govt to ban sale of smokeless tobacco

The State government is going to ban the sale of all types of smokeless tobacco in the State. State Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, while announcing this today said that the government would bring a bill regarding this in the coming budget session of the State Legislative Assembly in March.

“Till now, various State governments across the country are banning gutka, which is a mix of tobacco and pan masala, whereas the pure forms of tobacco are still being sold in such States. Assam would be the first State in the country to introduce a complete ban on the all forms of smokeless tobacco,” Sarma said addressing the media here.