Addressing a joint press conference with DFID head Michael Anderson, Stagg said the quality of life in slums has improved in Madhya Pradesh with the aid.

The two said that though the state government has not been as strong as it should have been in tackling malnutrition, it should also be kept in mind that malnutrition is not the problem of lack of food alone but a more complex problem.

‘Only supplementary feeding among the children in the age group of 3 to 6 years is not enough to tackle malnutrition. It should be taken to the household level among the children of 0 to 2 years age group’, they said.

The duo also visited the slum areas in Bhopal where the DFID assisted programmes are being implemented and expressed satisfaction over the pace of works.

The scheme was launched in Parwalia Sadak village in Bhopal district.

Under the scheme, Anganwadi and school children will get freshly cooked food, prepared in same place as for the mid-day meal scheme by self-help groups. The scheme will be monitored in coordination with panchayats (village councils) and the community.

Chouhan said his endeavour is to ensure that all children get education and no one is left out.

‘Earlier, these schemes were being conducted separately due to which their monitoring and quality were affected on one hand and on the other, profits were pocketed by contractors. The community kitchen scheme is being jointly implemented by the two departments (women and child welfare and the school education department), so that their benefits can be received by both mothers and children,’ he said.

The new system of combined kitchen will not only facilitate proper monitoring and improve quality, but will also provide employment to women’s self-help groups, Chouhan added.

Rajendra Singh Gurjar, for whose capture the state police had announced a reward of Rs.25,000, was hiding with his accomplices in Gopiapura village, police said.

The police raided the village and asked the dacoit to surrender but he started firing, Morena Superintendent of Police Santosh Kumar Singh told IANS.

‘Gurjar was killed after a two-hour gunbattle on the banks of Kwari river,’ Singh said.

At least half a dozen members of his gang escaped, he said. A .315 bore rifle and several cartridges were recovered from the site.

Vidhya, wife of Anil Magarde, was admitted to the Betul district hospital Oct 3. She has said in her complaint: ‘Dr. Renuka told me on Oct 5 that an operation will have to be conducted and demanded Rs.2,500 for the same.

‘I told her that Rs.1,000 has already been paid and the remaining amount would be paid after the delivery. I was taken to the operation theatre the same evening but left unattended by the doctor after administration of local anesthesia. Later, my family members took me to a private hospital where the delivery was conducted.’

Denying the charge, the doctor, Renuka Gohia, told IANS: ‘No extra money except Rs.100 towards registration charge was taken from her or her relatives. The patient’s family members shifted her from the hospital on their own without any reason. The delay in the operation was not for money but because her blood pressure had gone down after the administration of anesthesia.’

Vidhya has urged Betul Collector Vijay Anand Kuril that the doctor be asked to return the Rs.1,000 paid as well as Rs.25,000 spent in the private hospital. The collector has ordered an inquiry.

Civil society groups working to promote safe motherhood say Vidhya was lucky. In June this year, six women died within 15 hours in Bhopal’s Sultania Government Hospital.

As per the 2007 Registrar General of India survey, Madhya Pradesh has an MMR of 379 per 10,000 live births as against the national average of 301.

‘Seventy percent of the national budget allocated for health support goes back unutilised. The system is not delivering results and that’s where the problem lies,’ says Hamid El-Bashir, the Unicef representative in Madhya Pradesh.

‘The cause for the high MMR in the state is not lack of resources alone but failure of the system,’ says Seema Jain of Vikas Samvad, an NGO that works on safe motherhood. ‘No one is held responsible when a mother dies … most of the time it’s not even registered. It’s very important to keep a tab on a pregnant woman’s health.’

Besides negligent doctors, non-functional health centres, scarcity of blood banks, inadequate number of specialists in rural areas and poor transport system are other bottlenecks, she added.

‘Approximately, 10,000 women die every year in Madhya Pradesh during pregnancy or within 42 days of delivery. These deaths may be due to haemorrhage, infection, eclampsia or unsafe abortion. A majority of these could be prevented once the system is made accountable,’ says Rolly Shivhare, activist of the Right to Food campaign.

‘These deaths are completely preventable and that is the greatest tragedy. It is a silent tsunami,’ says Sachin Kumar Jain of the Madhya Pradesh Lok Sangharsh Sajha Manch.

‘We have to ensure increased presence of skilled birth attendants at the village level, provide care before birth, address sociological issues and bring about a change in attitude of health personnel,’ he said.

(Sanjay Sharma can be contacted at sanjay.s@ians.in)

A large number of people had gathered in and around the stadium as Salman was scheduled to play a cricket match organised to promote one of his films to be released shortly, police said.

But the Bollywood star reached the venue five hours late and left after few minutes without playing the match.

‘This enraged the people who went out of control and threw chairs all over the stadium… Police used a cane-charge to chase away the crowd which went berserk since Salman who was supposed to be here at 10 a.m. reached after 3 p.m. and that too for a very short while. The situation is now under control,’ said Indore Additional Superintendent of Police Akash Jindal.

The trouble started when the squad removed an illegally constructed temple before dawn in Char Imli area where a majority of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and other senior government officials live.

As soon as the news spread in the area, some residents, including the nearby slum dwellers, gathered and taking advantage of the pre-dawn darkness, pelted stones in which 14 cops were injured, Additional Superintendent of Police (New City) Ruchi Srivastava told IANS.

‘Heavy police force has been deployed in the area falling under Habibganj police station and the situation is now under control,’ the police official said.

Habibganj police station’s officer-in-charge S.K.Damle said that 15 people have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the stone-pelting.

‘The government has accelerated proceedings to replace its old chopper with a new one. It has constituted a four-member committee comprising principal secretary (home), principal secretary (finance), principal secretary (aviation) and director aviation to buy a new twin-engine helicopter and deliberate upon selling the old Bell 407,’ said an official on the condition of anonymity.

The state, at present owns one plane and two helicopters.

While the seven-seater Super King B 200 double engine aircraft was purchased in 2002, the Bell 407 (single engine) helicopter was purchased in 2003 and the Bell 430 in 1998.

The Bell 430 chopper, which has completed its 10 years lifespan as per Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) guidelines, hit the headlines in 2002 when it crashed near Indore with singer Anuradha Paudwal, then Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee president Radhakishan Malviya and others on board.

There were no casualties in the crash.

Though the Bell-430 has completed its lifespan, the authorities are mulling to sell the Bell 407 first since the DGCA has emphasized on using twin engine choppers for VIP trips.

‘The Bell-430, a twin engine light-medium helicopter had done 2,667 hours of flying till Dec 31, 2008. It is still fit to f1y since it has not completed the quota of f1ying hours to be phased out,’ said the official.

In fact, the state government was about to buy a new helicopter more than a year ago and had floated expression of interest in March 2008.

But the plan had to be deferred due to elections – first assembly and then Lok Sabha elections in May this year.

However, the government has expedited the process of purchasing the helicopter after the death of the Andhra Pradesh chief minister in a chopper crash, said the official.

The official fleet, especially Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s helicopter, has since been subjected to thorough checks as the state government doesn’t want to take ‘any chances’, the official said.

A senior official of the state government’s aviation department said: ‘There are three vital components of aviation – training of pilots, quality control of flying machines and judging the weather conditions at the time of flying – and the government never compromises on these.

‘As far as airworthiness of the machines is concerned, we have got our own quality control management and we strictly stick to the DGCA’s guidelines,’ he said.

The state’s Principal Secretary (Aviation) Iqbal Singh Bains though refused to comment on purchasing a new chopper and said: ‘There is nothing to worry about since we review the maintenance of the state choppers and plane regularly.’

The recommendation was made in its report ‘State of MP’s Children’, released by Justice D.M. Dharmadhikari, the chairman of the state Human Rights Commission, along with students Priya Singh & Abhinash Mishra and Unicef state representative Hamid El Bashir at a function here.

The group, set up in November 2007, also advocated the establishment of child rights centres, clubs, forums and parliaments in schools to encourage child participation in issues of children.

The group also stressed the need of sustained participation of the local community and civil society and engaging local elected bodies in solving the issues of children.

‘The state has in the last ten years progressed in literacy, education and provisioning of schooling, yet it lacks on indicators like infant mortality rate, malnourishment, basic poverty and infrastructure,’ says the report adding that the state also has challenges in school dropouts and high rates of crime against children.

In his address, Justice Dharmadhikari said children in the state face many challenges and there is need to engage civil society organisations, and capitalise on their support to bring change for favour of children. El Bashir said the report will benefit policy makers, help in promoting debate on children and create a movement for development of children in the state.

Priya of class 8 and Abhinash Mishra of class 9 called upon the state to encourage their participation and provide for protection of their rights.

Principal Secretary, Women and Child Development Tinoo Joshi spoke about the state government’s initiatives for child development, nutrition and protection, while Child Rights Observatory president Nirmal Buch stressed that the report calls for zero tolerance for child rights violation in the state.

‘A cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan here decided to raise the retirement age of nursing employees/officers working under public health and family welfare department from 60 to 65 years’, Madhya Pradesh Industries Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya told reporters.

The cabinet has also sanctioned 744 posts of assistant teacher for education guarantee schools, the minister said.

He said the cabinet also decided to increase the capacity of Bharat Oman Refineries Limited’s Crude Oil Refinery to 9-12 million tonnes per annum to ensure ample availability of low-aromatic naphtha.

Besides, the cabinet wound up 25 divisions/sub-divisions of the public works department with immediate effect and decided to accommodate the staff elsewhere.

The team has been interrogating suspects in the Malwa region of western Madhya Pradesh for five days, the sources said Friday.

‘A team of CBI officials and Rajasthan ATS is camping in Malwa in connection with the Malegaon, Samjhauta Express and Ajmer dargah blasts. It has so far questioned 10 people to find out whether the perpetrators in all the three cases were linked,’ a police source told IANS on condition of anonymity.

The official said at least four of the 10 suspects questioned are alleged to be members of Abhinav Bharat.

The team has also found that some of them had links with the slain RSS leader Sunil Joshi and absconding Malegaon blast accused Ramji alias Ram Chandra Kalsangra.

‘Intelligence sleuths had chanced upon Joshi’s telephone diary a few months ago. Call details of a mobile number found in his diary led investigators to Madhya Pradesh in search of the suspects,’ said a source.

‘All those who were interrogated at Indore were in touch with Joshi and those questioned at Shajapur were linked to Ramji,’ said a police official.

The Malegaon blasts took place in Maharashtra in September 2006, killing six people. The Samjhauta Express train bombings occurred in February 2007 in Haryana and claimed 66 lives, while the Ajmer Sharif blast in Rajasthan killed three people in October 2007.

Before coming to Madhya Pradesh, the Rajasthan ATS had collected the statements, narco-analysis report and brain mapping tests done on Lt Col S.P. Purohit – who has been linked to Abhinav Bharat – and other accused in the Malegaon blast case.

‘Purohit had allegedly told the investigators during narco-analysis that Dayanand Pandey, also an accused in the Malegaon blast, had planned the Ajmer dargah blast that claimed three lives,’ the official said.

Those interrogated so far are Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha’s (BJYM) Indore unit leader Pranav Mandal, Anandraj Kataria, Vinod Patidar of Mhow, Arjun Yadav of Dewas, Deepak Yadav and Rajesh Mishra of Pithampur. The officials are expected to interrogate a few more Hindutva activists at Dewas, Mhow and Pithampur.

Madhya Pradesh DGP S.K. Raut, while confirming the presence of the joint CBI and ATS team in the state, said: ‘No arrests have been made so far’.