The Overseas Indian Citizenship (OCI) card scheme, launched by the government in January 2006, has been a great success and the demand for OCI cards has been very high. Stating this at a press conference, Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi said that close to 90,000 OCI cards have been issued ever since the scheme was announced at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2006, the annual conclave of the Indian diaspora, in Hyderabad. Persons of Indian origin (PIO) in countries that allow dual citizenship can apply for the card. An OCI cardholder enjoys all benefits that an Indian citizen enjoys except for voting rights and the right to hold constitutional posts like the president, vice-president or a judge of the Supreme Court or high courts. Asked about problems faced by applicants for the card, the minister said, "We have come across problems relating to our consular services in different countries. But then you have to understand that the size of the Indian diaspora has increased significantly. The number of our consular offices has not been adequate. We are in the process of boosting the number of our consular offices abroad." Another complaint of OCI cardholders, Ravi said, is that in places of tourist attraction like the Taj Mahal they are charged a high fee that is applicable to foreign tourists and not the fee that applies to Indian citizens. "I am in touch with the tourism ministry to end this problem," he said. Another problem faced by the people of Indian origin residing abroad is a technicality in applying for the Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) card. PIO card applicants are mostly descendants of Indians who had migrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries to work as indentured labour and are mainly concentrated in countries like Fiji and Suriname and the Caribbean region. PIO applicants are required to produce the embarkation cards that were issued to their forefathers when they had boarded the ships to different countries. However, applicants have found it difficult to locate these passes. "I am aware of this problem. I have come across people who I know for sure are of Indian origin but don't have the embarkation card. "We are consulting with the home ministry as it is a matter of national security and we hope to resolve this problem soon," he said.

The government launched an Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre (OIFC), a one-stop shop to help overseas Indians invest in India. An agreement to this effect was signed between the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) at a function here. The CII is the private sector partner and host institution of this not-for-profit neutral trust. Speaking at the launch function, Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi, who also launched a website of the new platform, www.oifc.in, said that the objective of the OIFC is to promote overseas Indian investment in India and facilitating business-to-business partnership between Indian businesses and overseas Indians. "Overseas Indians number around 25 million and are spread across 130 countries," Ravi said. "We want overseas Indians to benefit from the investment opportunities in India."(OI)

Sixty years after independence, India has entered a virtuous circle of long-term economic growth, strong fundamentals and a booming young population - forcing the world to sit up and take notice. After decades of being shackled by the so-called 'Hindu rate of growth' - well below five percent - the Indian economy has soared at an average rate of over seven percent every year in the last decade and at around nine percent in the last three years. The chairman of the Indian Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, C. Rangarajan, expects "the economy to grow at around nine percent in 2007-08 as well, while inflation is expected to be around four percent". And as more and more people shift from agriculture to manufacturing and move from villages to towns, economists expect the rate of growth to go up by a couple of percentage points more over the next decade.(OI) .

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh launched the country's first third generation (3G) mobile services in New Delhi that will provide high speed transfer of voice, data and video. He also inaugurated India Telecom 2008, India's leading international conference and exhibition for the entire telecom system. The two day event is jointly organized by Department of Telecommunications and FICCI. The Prime Minister released a report prepared by Capgemini, the knowledge partner for this year?s Telecom summit on the Indian telecom market. .

Kerala, The 13th International Film festival of Kerala began in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday. The State Chief Minister, Mr. V.S. Achutanandan inaugurated the festival which is dedicated to the martyrs who lost their lives in the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai. More than seven thousand delegates and film personalities from India and abroad are participating in the eight day long festival in the state. .

Islamabad: Pakistan pressed India to share evidence from the Mumbai attacks, warning that any effort to prosecute key suspects rounded up in Pakistan will be hamstrung without it. Under pressure from the United States to avoid a crisis, Pakistan has arrested two alleged masterminds of the assault and continued its crackdown on Jamaat-ud-Dawa on Friday.

It clamped down on the Islamic charity after the United Nations branded it a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the powerful guerrilla group blamed by India for the Mumbai attacks. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Friday that Pakistan firmly believed that its territory should not be used to commit any act of terrorism. “However, our own investigations cannot proceed beyond a certain point without provision of credible information and evidence pertaining to Mumbai attacks,” Qureshi said in a televised statement.

India says Pakistan must dismantle the militant group blamed for last month’s attack, which left 173 dead, including nine gunmen, and sharply raised tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Indian authorities have released what they said were the names and Pakistani hometowns of the 10 gunmen who assailed India’s commercial capital over three days. Having interrogated the lone gunman captured alive, Indian investigators allege that the gunmen were trained in camps in Pakistan.

Pakistan complains that its own investigation has had to rely on Indian news reports due to the lack of information coming from authorities. However, Dawn, a respected Pakistani newspaper, reported Friday that its correspondents had tracked down the family of the surviving gunman.

The English-language daily quoted Amir Kasab as saying he was the father of Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, the 21-year-old suspect now held in India. Interviewed in his village of Faridkot, Amir Kasab said his son had disappeared around four years ago.

“I was in denial for the first couple of days, saying to myself it could not have been my son,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “Now I have accepted it.” The United States says Lashkar, which grew out of the 1980s resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, has developed ties to al-Qaida. India accuses it of involvement in a string of attacks on its territory and alleges that Pakistani intelligence continues to back it - a charge vehemently denied in Islamabad. However, Lashkar’s main focus has been fighting Indian troops in Kashmir.

Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa says it cut its ties with Lashkar when the latter was banned by then-President Pervez Musharraf in 2002. But the United Nations on Wednesday said Jamaat-ud-Dawa was no more than a front.

The next day, Pakistani authorities put the charity’s leader, Lashkar founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, under house arrest, sealed its offices around the country and ordered banks to freeze its assets.

The clampdown continued Friday, with police and officials from the charity reporting that dozens of its offices were closed in northwest and southern Pakistan. Attique Chohan, a Jamaat-ud-Dawa spokesman in North West Frontier Province, claimed scores of activists were arrested. .

WASHINGTON: US President George Bush’s administration plans to sign a nuclear cooperation deal with the United Arab Emirates, the first such agreement with a Middle East country, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The paper cited an unnamed senior US official for the report, saying the White House wanted to use the deal as a model for promoting peaceful nuclear energy as a contrast to Iran’s disputed nuclear programme.

“This is a real counterexample to what Iran is doing,” the senior US official was quoted as saying.

“We’re seeking commitments from nations within the Middle East that they’re going to rely on the markets for nuclear fuel.” The Bush administration has accused Iran of pursuing a clandestine effort to build nuclear weapons and demanded Tehran suspend uranium enrichment work.

The administration also was pursuing nuclear cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Bahrain.

The deals call for the United States to share nuclear fuel, technology and know-how in return for commitments to follow the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and UN safeguards, the Journal wrote.

The UAE has already signed agreements with two US engineering companies, Thorium Power and CH2M Hill, to help with develop nuclear power plants, the paper wrote. And the country has also recruited a former official from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to help run its own atomic regulatory agency, it said.

It was unclear if president-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on Jan 20, would back the proposed agreement and lobby Congress to ratify it.

Some lawmakers are wary the agreement could feed the spread of nuclear weapons in the region.

The Bush administration had hoped to have the accord with the UAE, which is Iran’s largest trading partner, signed last month, the paper reported.

But UAE officials decided to postpone the signing given Obama’s election victory in November and possible opposition in Congress, unnamed officials told the Journal. The UAE is sensitive to congressional reaction after its state-owned company DP World had to cancel plans in 2006 to buy US port holdings from British P&O due to stiff opposition from American lawmakers.

The staunch US ally also signed a deal with France for help in developing nuclear energy for peaceful ends during a visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Abu Dhabi in January. .