HEAD LINE:

• Congress calls for an end to Israeli attacks on Gaza (TOI)
• Pak should ban renamed JuD too: Pranab (TOI)
• Forces ready, Pak can't tell us to stand down: Antony (IE)
• Tamil Tigers' lair captured: Lanka (IE)

LEAD:

In less than a month since the United Progressive Alliance Govt announced a Rs 32,000 crore booster dose for the slowing economy, it came out with a more comprehensive and detailed stimulus package valued at over $50 billion or Rs 2,00,000 crore. Round II is also the last for this fiscal, said Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission. But this one focuses specifically on stressed sectors such as commercial vehicles, non-banking finance companies, real estate, infrastructure and small and medium businesses. Acknowledging that states also need to do their bit, the Centre provided them the leeway to borrow another Rs 30,000 crore this year to spend. (IE)

• COLOMBO: Sri Lankan troops captured the Tamil Tigers' headquarters town today in one of the biggest setbacks for the rebels in years, but in a quick apparent reprisal, a suspected suicide bomber killed three airmen in the capital Colombo. Troops fought their way into the separatist stronghold of Kilinochchi deep in the north, dealing a heavy blow to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Details of casualties from the fighting were not immediately available. "It was the constant dream of all Sri Lankans, whether Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim, who are opposed to separatism, racism, and terrorism, and have always, sought peace, freedom and democracy," President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a nationally televised address. "Today our heroic troops have made that dream a reality. A short while ago, our brave and heroic troops have fully captured Kilinochchi that was considered the main bastion of the LTTE." Within an hour of his statement, a suspected suicide attacker struck near the Sri Lankan Air Force headquarters, a spokesman at the Media Centre for National Security said. (IE)
• New Delhi: As India maintained its reactive posture, Pakistan is clearly running with diplomatic rhetoric on the airwaves, flooding it with sweet reasonableness. Warming to its task, the Pakistani foreign office even repeated a call to India to resume talks. India has scoffed at Pakistani suggestions, but short of refuting everything Islamabad says and sounding really churlish, there is little New Delhi can do except let different Indian leaders repeat the demands. In fact, India is fast losing patience with Pakistan's defiance despite clinching evidence that its soil was used to plan and launch the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai. Pakistan's foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said, "Our stand from day one has been that some LeT leaders have been detained and that Masood Azhar is not in our custody... It is (our) effort that we will try to get to him but he is not in our custody. We do not know his whereabouts." Refusing to extradite any of the wanted men, Qureshi went on, "There is no extradition treaty between India and Pakistan. We are keen on rebuilding our internal institutions. So if we engage in these issues, it will be harmful for Pakistan." (TOI)
• New Delhi: Declaring that no one has the right to tell the Indian Armed Forces to stand down after the Mumbai attacks, Defence Minister A K Antony has said the defence services are on full alert and prepared to meet any eventuality. Reacting to demands from Pakistan that India must .deactivate' its forward airbases and move back troops, the Defence Minister said there was no question of lowering the guard and the Armed Forces are in a state of "full preparedness" to meet any challenge. "Nobody will tell us that after 26/11 we must not be prepared for meeting any eventuality. Our Armed Forces are doing their duty. They are not escalating anything but are fully prepared to meet any challenges or threats from anybody," the minister said, talking to mediapersons at the sidelines of a defence function in the Capital. (IE)
• National Conference leader Omar Abdullah will get a full six-year term as the CM of J&K He is to be sworn in on January 5. Though expected, the formal statement came not from the alliance partner, the Congress, but from Abdullah who ruled out a rotation of the CM's post. "The rotation issue did come up during discussions. But Congress president Sonia Gandhi was kind enough to understand that rotation was damaging to the state and created uncertainty, confusion and instability There was no disagreement of any sort," Abdullah told mediapersons on Friday. Sonia would attend the ceremony during which Abdullah and a five-member ministerial team, which will include three from the Congress, would be sworn in. But her party is yet to identity a non-Muslim from the Jammu region for the deputy CM's post after Abdullah reportedly conveyed that he didn't want any tainted members in his team. "I won't comment on internal discussions. I've made my recommendations to the Congress which, I'm sure, will give it a serious consideration," he said. At a meeting at Union Minister Pranab Mukherjee's office on Friday, the Congress and NC decided on "an equal" representation in the govt. Besides the home ministry, customarily with the CM, the NC wants to keep finance and planning. (HT )
• New Delhi: Christians are far ahead of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs when it comes to gross enrolment ratio (GER) in under-graduate courses. Even Christian SCs and STs are far ahead of Hindu SCs/STs, Muslim OBCs and Sikh SCs when it comes to higher education. Among Christians, women have a better enrolment percentage than men. Two separate studies by Ravi S Srivastava and S Sinha for UGC based on NSSO data of the 61st round (2004-05) shows that Christians with GER of 20% are far ahead of Hindus at 13%. Sikhs have a GER of 12.69% followed by Muslims with GER of 7.7%. Incidentally, the category of .others' presumably consisting of atheists and those not following any institutionalised religion have a GER of 17.7%. NSSO's 61st round did not consist of Buddhists but if NSSO's 1999-00 data is anything to go by, their GER was far ahead of Hindus though less than Christians. Using the same data, Saraswati Raju has shown that the GER of Hindu SC women is among the lowest (3.26%) in rural India, their participation in higher education is not significantly different from other women belonging to general Muslim community (3.08%), and ST Hindus (3.97%). Rural OBC Hindu women have a slight edge (4.77%). (TOI)

BJP

Getting into poll mode, the top BJP leadership held a five-hour long meeting with RSS brass at leader of Opposition L K Advani's residence on Friday. Earlier in the day, the party's parliamentary board had met at BJP headquarters.

BJP began 2009 by focusing on its ticket distribution for the coming Lok Sabha polls. The party has decided to complete most of its ticket distribution for the general elections by the end of January and has asked all its state units to send in their shortlist of names of contestants soon. Even if a few names are left out, the idea is to finalise contestants for almost all seats by the month-end, party sources said. In fact, ticket distribution is so high on the party's priority that prime ministerial candidate L K Advani also asked BJP chief Rajnath Singh to defer the party's national executive to February (6-8) instead of January 23 to 25, as had been planned earlier. Another factor for the postponement was that in nine states BJP is the ruling party and most state ministers and functionaries would have to attend Republic Day functions in their respective states and hence would be inconvenienced by the January 23-25 schedule.(TOI)

CONGRESS

Congress on Friday deplored the sustained Israeli attacks on Gaza Strip calling for an end to the "brutal bombarding''. Party spokesman Shakil Ahmed told reporters that the govt should take initiatives to build strong world opinion to pressure Israel to end the attacks. "Congress is concerned and hopes that the govt of India will talk to other nations and seek UN assistance to end the bombardment,'' Ahmed said. He said what mostly concerned India and other countries was the fact that a large number of children and women were among the casualties. Ahmed said party chief Sonia Gandhi had already condemned the Israeli attacks. (TOI)

STATES

DELHI

CM Sheila Dikshit wants the city's law and order as well as traffic under her govt. For the purpose, she has written to the Union home ministry proposing a trifurcation of Delhi Police law and order, traffic and VIP security. According to the proposal, the first two should be with the city govt, and VIP security and whatever else remains should stay with the Centre. In an exclusive interview on Friday to TOI, Dikshit spelt out her proposal for the first time. She said: "Under Article 239 (A) of the constitution, Delhi has a special status as a .Union Territory state'. As such we need to work our way around it and deal with the present security concerns in whatever way possible. That is why we have written to the ministry. We do not know if it (her proposal) will be accepted but if it is, that will solve our problems to a large extent.'' (TOI)

MADHYA PRADESH

While the BJP has already gone into campaign mode for general elections, the main opposition party is still struggling to name its leader in the Assembly, which will meet for a short session three days from now. Different factions in the Congress, which ruined the party's performance in the recent Assembly elections, ensured that there was no unanimity when the legislators met in the state capital and the choice was left to the high command. The 13th Assembly begins its first session on January 5, and the Congress party will have to name its leader before that. Jamuna Devi, who entered her 80th year in November, was the leader of the legislature party in the last House that had less than 40 Congress members. The number of Congress MLAs has risen to 71, but there is no corresponding improvement in the party unity. In contrast, the BJP has already begun its membership drive on Thursday by getting its senior leaders, including the state president Narendra Singh Tomar, to fill membership forms in Gwalior and Bhopal. (IE)

J&K

J&K CM-designate Omar Abdullah on Friday ruled out a rotational arrangement for governance with the Congress. Though the possibility of the two parties leading the coalition for three years each was discussed, he said Congress president Sonia Gandhi had seen his logic that such an arrangement would be damaging to any alliance. Briefing journalists after his second meeting in two days with the Congress central leadership at External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's South Block office here, Mr. Abdullah said there was no disagreement between the two parties on this issue. That a rotational arrangement was inimical to a healthy coalition was conceded by a senior Congress leader in the thick of the discussions. "It is a source of constant bickering." Mr. Abdullah will take oath on January 5 along with five others two from the National Conference and three from the Congress. The names of the early entrants in the ministry were not disclosed by either side. (TOI)

WEST BANGAL

THE ruling CPI(M) has a hectic schedule these days, preparing for the January 5 bypolls in Nandigram. After a royal drubbing in the trouble-hit hotspot, the Marxists are headed again for ground zero only this time, their arch-rival, the Trinamool Congress, is less potent than ever before. Just like last summer, this is going to be an acid test for both the CPI(M) and the TMC. The elections will bring to the fore whether the resistance movement at Nandigram and if its aftermath was a temporary phase or it's going to have a long-lasting impact on the state's politics. Already, political equations are changing. For instance, the Party for Democratic Conference in India (PDCI), a wing of Jamiat-e-Ulama-e-Hind, was a staunch TMC ally during the Panchayat polls in May 2008. This time, it has fielded its own candidate. In the Panchayat polls, the TMC went on to bag all the Gram Panchayat and Panchayat Samiti seats. The result was obvious and there were two reasons. First, the Opposition had united against the CPI(M), and secondly, the March 14 police firing in Nandigram was fresh in the minds of the voters. (IE)

EDITORIAL

After Kilinochchi: The Sri Lankan armed forces fought their way and managed to capture Kilinochchi, the LTTE's de facto "capital" on January 2. Significantly, it was the same day last year that the Govt of Sri Lanka decided to pull out of the ceasefire agreement (CFA) that was preventing them from declaring an all-out war against the LTTE. Since then, the advance of the Sri Lankan army has been good despite fierce resistance from the Tigers. How significant is the fall of Kilinochchi? Is this the beginning of the end of the LTTE? What is the way ahead? The fall of Kilinochchi, situated on the strategic A-9 road, is significant for the Sri Lankan govt and in turn a blow to the LTTE. Wresting Kilinochchi after a decade of its loss to the Tigers is a dream come true for the Sri Lankan forces. It is indeed a big morale boosting victory for the forces, especially after suffering huge casualties in the process. Credit for the capture partly goes to the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) and the Sri Lankan Navy (SLN) that ably supported the army in the advancement. (IE)