India Mourns Y S Rajasekhar Reddy

Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy was found dead on Thursday along with four other occupants of the state government helicopter which flew into a hillock in the thick forests of the Nallamalai Hills in Kurnool district in inclement weather.

YSR's body, badly charred in the fire after the crash on Wednesday forenoon, was winched into an IAF helicopter and brought to Hyderabad, where it lay in state at his camp office at Begumpet in the heart of the city.

Thousands of people joined the cortege as it drove from the airport to the camp office. Tens of thousands of people, rich and poor alike, queued up to pay tribute to their leader, who was known as a champion of the poor.

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Independence Day Lashker e Tayyaba attack threat on 3 cities

After the lull following the 26/11 terror attack, Pakistan based terror outfit Lashker-e-Tayyaba is planning fresh terror strikes around Independence Day in three major cities -Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Specific intelligence inputs gathered by security agencies reveal that the LeT, responsible for innumerable terror strikes including 26/11 in Mumbai, is trying to sneak militants into the country with the aid of Pakistani authorities. "We don't see any indication that Pakistani authorities have reduced their support to the militants. A 400 500 metre long tunnel dug by the militants to enter the valley has been discovered by security agencies. This could not have been done without help from Pakistani authorities," a senior home ministry official said.

Pointing towards the increase in infiltration bids in the last few months, the official confessed that even as major bids have been foiled recently some militants might have been able to sneak into the country.

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Airport staff to begin stir tomorrow across India

The Airports Authority of India Employees Union (AAEU) has called for the start of "non cooperation", an euphemism for a strike, by its non-executive staff at airports across the country from March 12, in a move that could have an adverse impact on air traffic.

"We have called for non cooperation to protest on several issues, including the proposed closure of the existing airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore (for aeronautical purposes)," AAEU leader M.K. Ghoshal told this newspaper. The decision was announced and communicated by the AAEU to the government on Monday evening after talks with the government failed. Sources at Delhi airport said that a contingency plan was being prepared by the authorities to face the strike.

"We asked the government to defer, by three months, the proposed closure of the Bangalore and Hyderabad airports in view of the recent report of the parliamentary committee that had opposed the closure of the existing airports. The government indicated that this would be difficult.

So the talks have failed, and we have called for non-cooperation which will begin from the midnight of Tuesday Wednesday," Mr Ghoshal said. An AAEU source said this would mean a strike even though the word had not been used. The existing airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore are scheduled to be closed by the government the day the new greenfield airports in these cities are inaugurated. In Hyderabad, this is due by the weekend.

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