Kudankulam relay fast continues

Chennai, Oct 26: Braving intermittent rains on Diwali, protestors continued their fast against the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) for the ninth consecutive day Wednesday in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu.

"Today, people from Voovery village participated in the relay fast. There were around 700 people at the protest venue," M. Pushparayan, convener of Coastal People's Federation, told IANS.

State-run Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) is building two 1,000 MW nuclear power reactors with Russian technology and equipment in Kudankulam, around 650 km from here. The first unit is expected to go on stream in December. The project is estimated to cost around Rs.13,000 crore.

Villagers protesting against the power plant laid siege to it Oct 13 and did not allow anyone to go in. The administration had asked officials of NPCIL to keep away till the situation normalised.

"Today (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday) are Diwali holidays for us and we are at home celebrating the festival. However, we have not heard anything from the district administration on the prospects of us going to office Friday," a senior NPCIL employee told IANS from Kudankulam.

--IANS

Media should be on people’s side: Katju

Submitted by admin4 on 26 October 2011 - 2:51pm

• Indian Muslim

By Shafee Ahmed Ko,

Bangalore: Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju has asked media to be on people's side. He criticized media for highlighting cricket, Hollywood and celebrity news instead of social issues such as poverty, unemployment and inflation. This attitude of media diverts mass attention from the real problems in the society.

Justice Katju, who was recently appointed Chairman of Press Council of India, was addressing the concluding session of three-day international conference on ‘Power of Media in Globalizing World’. The conference was organised by the Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) here from 14-16 October.

Three-day international conference on ‘Power of Media in Globalizing World’ was organised by Institute of Objective Studies (IOS) from 14-16 October in Bangalore

In his valedictory address, Justice Katju strongly opposed the media for blaming whole minority community for terrorist attacks. He said that every community, be it Hindu or Muslim, has negative elements in it but that does not mean the whole community is bad.

Earlier, the three-day international conference organized by IOS was inaugurated by Karnataka governor H R Bhardwaj on October 14 here at Sir Puttanna Chetty Town Hall in Bangalore. He spoke briefly about the power of media in political awareness. While K Rahman Khan, deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha, presided the inaugural session Salman Khurshid, Union Law Minister was the chief guest.

IOS chairman Dr Manzoor Alam addressed the gathering and spoke about media ethics and responsibility. Vinay Shiri Gautam discussed modernization of media with reference to several social networking sites and its service to people connecting different countries.

Former vice-chancellor of Mangalore and Goa Universities Prof B Sheikh Ali was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award on the occasion.

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