LOST CAUSE: Sangma quit the panel in a huff

Three years since he quit the Congress opposing Sonia Gandhi's bid to become prime minister, former Lok Sabha speaker P.A. Sangma has been pursuing one goal: seekingexclusion of non-natural born citizens from high constitutional offices. In February 2000, when the Government appointed him to the Constitutional Review Committee, it seemed almost certain that it was sharing his goal.

Until early March when Sangma discovered that the panel had not included his proposals in its final report. He had an inkling of this when Attorney-General Soli Sorabjee vetoed his proposals a month ago. Four of the 11 committee members opposed his proposals on the ground that it targeted an individual. Since there was a tie, Sangma hoped the absentee member B.P. Jeevan Reddy would tilt the balance. That didn't happen, so Sangma quit the committee precisely three weeks before the panel's term ends on March 28. "The very purpose of constitutional review has been defeated. All other provisions could have been modified through constitutional amendment," he rues and worries that naturalised citizens will feel encouraged to bid for high offices.

Fellow panelists disagree. "Don't prejudge the report. Sangma's proposals may be incorporated in a different language," says a member. For now Sangma feels like a hero. "Ordinary citizens are thanking me for keeping the issue alive."

-Lakshmi Iyer

Case Dismissed

The Rajasthan High Court has dismissed a quirky petition relating to Chief Justice of India (CJI) S.P. Bharucha. Bharucha was reported as having said that 20 per cent of the country's judges were corrupt. Petitioner P.D. Purohit, a lawyer, asked the high court to direct the CJI to give a list of corrupt judges. He also said if the CJI's statement were deemed contempt of court, appropriate action should be taken.

The high court dismissed the petition observing that "every newspaper report cannot be taken to be authentic". It added that since Bharucha had said 80 per cent of judges were honest, the press may have misconstrued that to mean the rest were dishonest. As for the contempt business, the bench noted courts were not supposed to be too sensitive to stretch the law of contempt too far. Over to Ms A. Roy in Delhi.

-Rohit Parihar

Bigger than Ben

India's Silicon Plateau is clocking a record of a different, "old economy" kind. A giant clock, bigger than London's Big Ben, began ticking recently in the Omkar Hills area, on the outskirts of Bangalore.

The Bangalore Ben is a horological wonder as well as a statistician's delight. It took three years and Rs 20 lakh to build. An HMT product, it has a diameter of 24 ft-a full foot more than Big Ben-and the numerals are 2.5 ft tall. The hour and minute hands weigh 40 kg each. The clock tower combines 20 tonnes of steel with 200 cubic metres of concrete. When the bell strikes every hour, you could be three kilometres away and still hear the sound of a conch followed by a reverberating "Om". The clock marks the 54th birthday of Shivapuri Swamiji of the Omkar Ashram Mahasamthana. As they say, men of God have a grand sense of timing.

-Stephen David

Modern Midas

MAN OF GOLD: Agarwala

Eccentric? Genius? Plain crazy? All of the above? Take your pick with J.P. Agarwala, a chemical engineer who announced in Chennai that he could make gold from the sea. His "immobilised liquid membrane" method, which Agarwala says was used to separate lead from drinking water, will cost Rs 2,300 per 10 gm of the yellow metal.

That's less than half the market price. "The oceans have about six billion tonnes of gold in soluble form," says Agarwala, who tells you he won-what else?-a gold medal at IIT Kharagpur before going on to his doctorate in the US. He's written to the Government. "If it rejects my idea," he warns, "I'll destroy the technology." His next project involves making "smart plastics" that can think. Wonder what happened to Ramar Pillai and his herbal petrol.

-Arun Ram