Lakhs of people waving the tricolour on Friday assembled Assam’s Kokrajhar to participate in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally to celebrate the recently-signed Bodo peace accord. Amid stringent security, people have been coming since Thursday night to the rally venue of Jangkritai Fwtar, which is about 216 km from Guwahati. Around 7,000 volunteers have started receiving people coming via trains and vehicles for Modi’s first visit to Assam since the state saw major protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act last December. Kokrajhar has been decked up ahead of Modi’s trip with banners, festoons and big hoardings seemingly omnipresent to “thank”…
Author: Our Correspondent
Whistleblower Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at a hospital in Wuhan, the city at the epicentre of the outbreak, was one of eight people reprimanded by Wuhan police last month for spreading “illegal and false” information about the coronavirus. The Wuhan hospital where Li worked said in a statement on its Weibo account that he died at 2.58 a.m. local time on Friday. The coronavirus is a large family of viruses that causes illnesses ranging from the common cold to acute respiratory syndrome. Li, who was 34, had told a group of doctors on Chinese social media and messaging platform WeChat…
Confirming that a Public Saftey Act (PSA) has been slapped on former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, her daughter Iltija Mufti on Thursday said that her mother received a PSA order sometime back. “Slapping the draconian PSA on 2 ex J&K CMs is expected from an autocratic regime that books 9 year olds for aseditious remarks’. Question is how much longer will we act as bystanders as they desecrate what this nation stands for?” Iltija Mufti, who operates Mehbooba Mufti’s Twitter account, tweeted. Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti are likely to be booked under the…
In yet another setback to Islamabad, Saudi Arabia has once again declined Pakistan’s request for an urgent meeting of the council of foreign ministers on Kashmir at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). In December, Pakistan had trumpeted that it secured a diplomatic win by prevailing on Saudi Arabia to hold a special session on Kashmir at the OIC. However, officials in New Delhi had expressed skepticism about the news, saying that the OIC did not make any official announcement or issue any confirmation of the meeting. On Thursday, Pakistani media reported that Prime Minister Imran Khan’s plea for a…
Confirming 12 cases of coronavirus in the US, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spearheading the US response said that they are preparing to battle the coronavirus outbreak “as if it is a pandemic”. “We are preparing as if it is a pandemic, while hoping it is not,” Nancy Messonnier, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on Thursday. The 12th and latest case in the US comes from Wisconsin. The patient is a woman who travelled to Beijing and “interacted with family members who had coronavirus”. All US patients are…
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Kokrajhar in Assam on Friday to participate in an event to celebrate the signing of the Bodo agreement. Modi is scheduled to address a gathering there around 12:30 pm to ‘hail the historic Bodo agreement’. More than four lakh people from the Bodo autonomous tribal districts and other areas of the state are expected to attend the programme. This will be the prime minister’s first visit to the Northeast since protests erupted against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act last December in which three people were killed. “Tomorrow, I look forward to being in Assam. I…
Chandrakant Bhai Sompura, the man who had designed the Ram temple model 33 years ago, is likely to be a member of the trust for the construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya, sources tell IANS. The temple trust will have to select two prominent persons by a majority resolution to be part of the trust. One of them could be Chandrakant Bhai Sompura. The 76-year-old architect was given the responsibility to design the temple by then Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) chief Ashok Singhal. The VHP on Wednesday claimed that the 80 per cent of the work of the temple is…
Remaining firm on the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that the National Population Register (NPR) was a general administrative exercise and will help in effective delivery of government services, hinting his resolve to carry out the Census. Replying to the debate on Motion of Thanks to the President’s address in the Rajya Sabha, Modi said the opposition was protesting against NPR for their narrow political gains, noting that all state governments had earlier given their approval through a gazetted notification, but some of them were now making U-turns. After the Prime Minsiter’s speech…
As many as 14 MoUs were signed between Russian original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and Indian companies on Thursday at Defexpo currently on in Lucknow. The MoUs were signed during the fifth round of India-Russia military industrial conference which was co-chaired by Ajay Kumar, Defence Secretary, and Oleg Ryazantsev, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of Russian Federation. During the conference, 14 MoUs were exchanged between the Russian OEMs and the Indian companies. The first ‘Request for Proposal’ for manufacturing of parts in India under the provision of inter-governmental agreement was also handed over by the Indian Navy to the identified…
Senior BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday claimed that the saffron party will from the government in the national capital with more than 45 seats. Just before the campaigning for the February 8 Delhi Assembly election was to come for a halt, Shah tweeted: “From the support we have seen for the BJP in Delhi, it is clear that on February 11, the BJP is going to form the government by winning more than 45 seats in Delhi.” This is probably the first time, Shah — the former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president, gave out a…