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Five states to go to polls January-March

Elections will be held to the Goa, Manipur, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand assemblies between Jan 28 and March 3, 2012, and votes will be counted March 4.
Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Qureshi told media persons that while balloting in Uttar Pradesh will be spread over seven phases, the other four states will have a single-day voting.
The elections will kick off from Manipur Jan 28, followed by Punjab and Uttarakhand on Jan 30. Uttar Pradesh, the country's most populous state, will see polling spread over Feb 4, 8, 11, 15, 19, 23 and 28. Goa will go to polls March 3.
A total of 137 million people will be eligible to vote in all five states. Uttar Pradesh, with 403 seats, alone accounts for 111.9 million voters. Punjab (117 seats) has 17.4 million voters, Uttarakhand (70 seats) 5.7 million, Manipur (60 seats) 1.6 million, while Goa (40 seats) has just one million voters.
Qureshi said candidates would be required to open a new bank account from which alone they can spend money on their campaign. "This will help facilitate monitoring." A 24-hour call centre would be operational for the first time to register poll related complaints. It can be reached on telephone number 1950, which happens to be the year the Election Commission was constituted. He urged candidates and political parties not to seek votes in the name of caste and communities, and said no election campaign would be permitted in religious shrines.

Mullaperiyar: Protests mount, panic grips people, PM steps in

As political parties and voluntary groups in Kerala intensified protests on Mullaperiyar Dam issue, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stepped in on Tuesday and met four delegations from Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
The Congress and the DMK delegations from Tamil Nadu, which met Singh separately, accused political parties in Kerala of misleading people on safety of Mullaperiyar Dam and called their actions "false propaganda".
The Kerala high court on Tuesday asked the state government to inform it about the safety measures taken anticipating threat to the 116-year-old Mullaperiyar dam. The direction was issued on a petition by advocate Rajamannar seeking for a direction to Idukki district collector to take immediate steps for draining water from the dam and three other nearby dams on a war footing.
Political parties and voluntary groups in Kerala today continued protests and lobbied for a new dam at Mullaperiyar amid indications that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would convene a meeting of chief ministers of Tamil Nadu and Kerala to find an amicable solution to the vexed issue. Normal life was disrupted in four vulnerable districts, including Idukki, where the 116-year-old dam is located, as BJP and Kerala Congress(M) separately called for a dawn-to- dusk hartal.

The district administration assured that there was no reason to panic but opened  control rooms to monitor the situation and help people in case of emergency.
Kerala has escalated the demand for construction of a new dam at Mullaperiyar holding that the present structure posed a grim threat to nearly 3 million people, mainly in Idukki, Kottayam and Ernakulam districts.
Both the ruling Congress-led UDF and the opposition LDF have also sought urgent Central intervention to resolve the tiff between the two States by persuading Tamil Nadu to agree to the idea of a new dam.

Congress leaders led by state party chief Ramesh Chennithala submitted a memorandum to Governor M O H Farook highlighting the need for a new dam and to restrict the water level to 120 feet. An LDF delegation led by Opposition Leader V S Achuthanandan will visit Mullaperiyar tomorrow.

State Congress chief Ramesh Chennithala urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and AICC president Sonia Gandhi to immediately intervene in the issue holding that lives of three million people were at stake.
Meanwhile, at Vandiperiyar, the Janakiya Samithy blocked the national highway against the Tamil Nadu stand on opposing the new dam. The protesters burnt the effigy of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa.
More than 2000 people participated in the protest march. The local people said that they believed in no political party and will continue fight till a new dam is built at Mullaperiyar.
The Catholicos of the Indian Orthodox church urged the government to intervene in the matter and demanded to decrease the water level from 136 feet to 120 feet as the first step for safety.
Superstar Suresh Gopi said on Saturday that AMMA, the organisation of actors, would conduct agitations including a hunger stir if the judiciary and politicians fail to resolve the Mullaperiyar dam issue.

Pakistan orders US to leave airbase in row over deadly Nato assault
Pakistan has given the US 15 days to vacate an airbase used as a key launchpad for drone strikes in Afghanistan in retaliation for a mistaken attack on a Pakistani border outpost that killed at least 24 soldiers and injured many.
Pakistan announced that the government would "revisit and undertake a complete review of all programmes, activities and co-operative arrangements" with the US, and US-led forces in Afghanistan, "including diplomatic, political, military and intelligence".
The deaths of the Pakistani soldiers will fuel anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, a key US ally. Although there have been previous deaths of Pakistani troops caused by mistaken fire from coalition aircraft, the scale of the bloodshed this time was far greater.
Pakistan is considering boycotting an international conference on the future of Afghanistan in retaliation for the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers who came under attack from Nato helicopters at a border checkpost.