SOCIAL WATCH INDIA

Social watch process would be the key agenda setter for the government. It will redefine the politics of knowledge, and usher in a new dynamics in the process and quality of governance. It will reclaim the process of governance to the people at various levels -national, state, and panchayat.

	World Summit for Social Development
	Millennium Declaration
	IV World Conference on Women
	A civil society Benchmark for the 5-year Review of the Millennium Declaration
	MDG's Common minimum Programm, National Development Goals

BJP MP arrested at airport with "fake family"

Reuters India
April 19, 2007

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A parliamentarian was arrested on Wednesday for trying to smuggle a woman and a boy on a flight to Canada by using the passports of his wife and son, officials said.

Babubhai Katara was stopped by immigration officials at New Delhi airport along with Paramjit Kaur, 30, and a 14-year-old boy identified as Amarjeet Singh.

"He tried to pass them off as his wife and child," said police spokesman Rajan Bhagat.

They were caught trying to board an Air India flight to Toronto and detained by immigration officials, he said.

Kaur and Singh were taken into custody along with Katara, a member of parliament from Gujarat for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The MP and Kaur were likely to be charged with forgery and fraud, an airport official said, offences that carry jail sentences.

The BJP suspended Katara from the party.

Many Indian MPs are seen as corrupt and Social Watch India, a watchdog, said in a report last year that more than 30 percent of lawmakers aged between 36 and 45 years were facing criminal charges.