India Says

Today, last day of the month of March 2008 was actually a bad day for Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati. The Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) President Mahendra Singh Tikait challenged Mayawati from Muzaffarnagar. According to some media reports, he even abused the Dalit CM by hurling castiest remarks against her.

Tikait was addressing a farmers’ rally in Bijnore district, suddenly he started abusing Mayawati in his speech. Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Ajit Singh trying to stop him from using such remarks against Mayawati but he was unstoppable. Other leaders present at dais promptly asked the BKU leader to stop saying like that. Then only he ended his speech and people saw how Ajit Singh threw down his arms and expressed his anger against him.

But the damage has been done and Mayawati government vowed to arrest farmer leader Mahendra Singh. Later, the police failed to arrest Tikait due to the protest from his supporters. The police party returned with empty handed and it was double blow for Mayawati.

In another blow to Mayawati, the Supreme Court, today, refused the petition filed by the state government against the High Court’s decision on Amitabh Bachchan in the Barabanki land deal case. On Sunday, the SC had dismissed the petition challenging the Allahabad High Court’s decision not to initiate any criminal, civil or revenue proceedings against Amitabh Bachchan in the case.

Lastly, Congress president Sonia Gandhi criticised the BSP Government in Uttar Pradesh and said that Rahul Gandhi is ready to go jail to protest against the misrule of Mayawati in UP. She said, while addressing the two-day Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee convention in Kanpur, that this was the time to seek an account from the state government on how it has spent central funds.

However, Mayawati is famous for taking political revenge in style and it will be interesting to see what happens with Tikait, Bachchan and Rahul Gandhi in UP in coming days.

For the time in the history of religions, Muslims have officially outnumbered Roman Catholics in the world. Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican’s 2008 yearbook of statistics, said that it happened for the first time that the Roman Catholics were not at the top in numbers. The Muslim population has overtaken Roman Catholics.

According to the report, Muslims across the world make up 19.2 per cent of the total population of the world while Roman Catholic makes17.4 per cent of it.

It might be a good news for Muslims but not so bad news for Christians because Christians on the whole still make a major part of the world population. Monsignor Formenti said that if all Christian groups, Orthodox churches, Anglicans and Protestants, Christians, come in a group, it makes 33 per cent of the world’s population. It means they are about two billion in number in which the number of Roman Catholics is about 1.13 billion. On the other hand, the number of Muslims in the world is around 1.3 billion.

Monsignor Formenti said later that there is no negative sign in the population growth of Catholics but the percentage of Muslims has been growing because of higher birth rates.

Via: Indian Express

Sir Richard Branson ultimately declares its intention to enter Indian telecom market with formal launch of the Virgin Mobile brand as a partner of Tata Teleservices.

The inside arrangements so far revealed that Virgin Mobile will keep on getting a royalty fee from Tata Teleservices for every user buying the services.

Anil Kumar Sardanah Managing Director of Tata Teleservices at a news conference in Mumbai told that Virgin Mobile will not enter India as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO)

Virgin Mobile operates across global markets as an MVNO and does not have its any infrastructure .It offers its wireless telecom services on lease basis.

Virgin Mobile India Ltd a new company with a view to providing new branded services has been established by both these partners. They have not yet come out with details of investments

According to Sir Richard the investment target by ;2012 will be to the tune of Rs 350bn.He also views to achieve about five million subscribers within first three years and,by the time, his project attains profit earning status.

What Sir Richard says reads as ‘The estimated population in India of people between 15 and 30 years is 400mn, almost six times the whole of the UK population and these numbers promise to be a lot of fun. In the beginning Virgin Mobile will be launched in 50 cities and in a years time it will touch about 1000 cities he added.

The newly designed handsets to be floated in markets would range Rs 2000 to 5000 when offered by Tata Teleserveces .Customers yet can opt for any other CDMA handsets as Virgin Mobile would be offering SIM-card based CDMA service and would be a first such offer in India.

The further step as per Branson would be to take care of the users of GSM .”In another nine months when the new GSM players start rolling out their services, we would look to offer similar services on GSM as well’ he added.

Source Indiainfoline.