The Civil Writ Petition No: 180/2004 challenging the validity of the Constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order 1950 paragraph 3 which says "no person who professes a religion different from Hinduism shall be deemed to be a member of the Scheduled Caste', is still pending in the Honourable Supreme Court of India for the past 8 years.

The Union of India has not filed its reply to the Supreme Court. Constantly organizations like the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India have been working on this issue through lobbying and advocacy.

Various demonstrations, rallies, hunger fasts, writing letters have been going on for the past many years.To press their demand to the Congress party and to the Union government, the CBCI office for Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes along with National Council of Churches in India and National Council for Dalit Christians is organising a nationwide post card campaign which started on 13th February 2013 at Kanyakumari.  

Every day at least 100 post cards will be posted to Sonia Gandhi and 100 post cards to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh until it teaches the target of one million post cards.   The campaign will be launched on February 18 at 3 pm at CBCI Centre, Ashok Place, New Delhi.

Ahead of the meeting of Parliamentarians from Gujarat on Saturday, Chief Minister Narendra Modi met former Deputy Prime Minister and senior BJP leader L K Advani in Ahmedabad.        

Parliamentarians from Gujarat are scheduled to meet tommorow in Gandhinagar, where they would discuss the issues of state importance. Advani is also in the city to attend this meet as he represents Gandhinagar constituency.        

Modi paid a courtesy visit to BJP leader Advani today on his arrival here from Delhi, an official communique said. A consensus on issues pertaining to the state and to be raised in the forthcoming budget session of the Parliament in New Delhi is likely to be drawn during the meeting, sources said.

Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai, whose reports on various scams had raised the hackles of those in the government, says people who have the mandate to rule are typical "bullies".    

Rai, who is due to retire in May this year, also said today that time alone will tell whether he will join politics. The government auditor while stating that public officials make the most oft repeated statement that law would be allowed to take its own course over detection of large number of misdemeanours regretted that this does not happen at all.    

Touching upon the rash of corruption case that has come to the fore, Rai said things have changed and the silent majority can no more be bullied by the minority.    

Describing 2012 as a defining year, the CAG said the year debunked the myth of silent majority.   "The myth that has been debunked is that of the silent majority. The majority is always silent because the minority feel that they have a mandate and they are exercising that mandate. They are more articulate and aggressive than the silent majority...... But, the times have changed....but the so called people who have the mandate, are typical what I would call, bullies. The majority has to be consistent in their efforts to see the changes in the system," Rai said in response to a question at a banking symposium in Mumbai.  

The protests in the state has placed the Congress Party in a moral dilemma. Protests were staged outside the Kerala Assembly demanding Kurien''s removal. The police had to fire teargas shells to quell the protests.

In an interview given Mathrubhumi News from an unknown location in Mysore, Dharmarajan revealed that on January 19, Kurien travelled to the Kumili guest house in his Ambassador car at about 6.30 pm from Vandiperiyar.

The Suryanelli rape case concerns a 16-year-old girl who was sexually harassed , assaulted and raped continuously for 40 days by 42 men in 1996.

In a series of terror attacks targeting security forces, at least 21 people, including six militants and five security personnel, were killed and over 40 injured in Pakistan's restive northwest on Thursday.        

A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden pick-up truck into a check post manned by policemen and Frontier Corps personnel in Hangu district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.        

Eleven people, including five security personnel and two children, were killed in the attack, officials said. Twenty-three injured people were taken to nearby hospitals. The blast created an eight-foot crater and the check post was destroyed.        

Authorities imposed curfew after the blast and additional security forces were sent to the area. The banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack.        

Earlier in the day, three persons were killed and nine more injured when a van was targeted with an improvised explosive device at Hasanzai Bazar in Orakzai Agency, one of Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous tribal districts.

Diego Maradona became a dad again for the fifth time yesterday at the age of 52 and he wasted no time in naming his newborn child after himself. His former lover Veronica Ojeda gave birth by caesarean to a boy called Diego Fernando shortly before midnight in a Buenos Aires hospital.

The World Cup winner was still in Dubai today where he works as a sports ambassador for the United Arab Emirates. It is not known when he will travel to Argentina to see his new son.

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A team of experts will train Egyptian president Mohammed Mursi in protocol and etiquettes after his ignorance of such matters caused huge embarrassment, in particular during his trips abroad.         

Leaks from the Egyptian presidency say current discussions are underway with the experts and firms specialised in protocol and etiquettes in order to recruit a team to train Mursi.         

The grave protocol mistakes Mursi made were the main topic for a famous satirical show watched by millions both inside and outside Egypt. Such mistakes included looking in his watch during the press conference with the German Chancellor, blowing his nose when meeting former US president Bill Clinton in addition to his very poor English language when meeting German investors in order to convince them to invest in Egypt.           

The team, when recruited, will be responsible for training the entire presidential team, including the news spokesperson Ayman Aly. The old spokesperson was replaced for his failure to address media in a manner satisfactory to the presidency.

BBC: The outgoing head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, has hinted he will withdraw into seclusion after stepping down at the end of this month. "Even if I am withdrawing into prayer, I will always be close to all of you... even if I remain hidden to the world," he told a meeting of Roman priests.

The pontiff, 85, shocked the world's biggest Christian Church on Monday when he announced his resignation. He cited his advanced age as the reason for resigning. According to the Vatican's semi-official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, the Pope took the decision to resign after his trip to Mexico and Cuba in 2012.

The Vatican confirmed on Thursday that Pope Benedict had hit his head during the March trip to Mexico, but denied the accident had any role in his decision.

Al Jazeera: Syrian rebels have shot down two military warplanes over the northwestern province of Idlib, a monitoring group has said.Both jets were hit with fire from heavy machineguns while the air force was carrying out a series of raids in the area, much of which is under the control of the rebels, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday.

The opposition fighters trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad also captured the town of Shadadah, near the Jbeysa oil field in hotly contested Hasaka province, according to Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Britain-based activist group.The oil field is in an energy-rich area along Syria's border with Iraq.

The eurozone recession deepened in the final three months of 2012, official figures show. The economy of the 17 nations in the euro shrank by 0.6% in the fourth quarter, which was worse than forecast.

It is the sharpest contraction since the beginning of 2009 and marks the first time the region failed to grow in any quarter during a calendar year.

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