As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) launched its nationwide door-to-door awareness campaign on Sunday in a bid to gather support for the amended Citizenship Act (CAA), Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in Lucknow and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Gorakhpur met people from different walks of life to clear the air on the issue. The 10-day campaign is expected to reach out to three crore families and the BJP leaders will tell the people “how the Congress and other Opposition parties are spreading lies about the CAA and inciting rebellion and anarchy in the country for their politics of appeasement”. Defence…
Author: Our Correspondent
Violence swept the Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday as several masked individuals, both male and female, thrashed students, including girls, and teachers inside the varsity campus with wooden and metal rods. Two officer-bearers of the Jawaharal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), including President Aishe Ghosh – who was reportedly hit over the eye with an iron rod, received severe injuries. They accused RSS’ student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for the rampant violence in the campus. “I have been brutally beaten up by masked people. I don’t know who they were,” Ghosh said as she broke into tears while…
Amid the escalating US-Iran tensions, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Sunday urged the Central government to take urgent steps to ensure the safety and security of the 10 million Indians in the Gulf region. India cannot afford to simply wait and watch, or to just monitor the situation, given the rising stakes in view of the threats and counter-threats between the US and Iran, Singh said, in the context of the Ministry of External Affairs’ statement that it was keeping a close watch on the situation. The Chief Minister emphasised that the Indian government should immediately direct their embassies…
Hitting out at the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday said that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal only tried to “mislead” residents of the city and that the victory of the BJP in recent MCD and Lok Sabha elections are indicators of party’s victory in Assembly polls, which are expected to be announced any time soon. His assertion came while addressing BJP’s booth-level workers at Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium here on Sunday. Noting the crowd at the event, Shah said it shows “who is going to form the government in Delhi in February”. “BJP…
Accusing Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and former Congress President Rahul Gandhi of misleading people on Citizenship (Amendment) Act, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday reiterated that the Act has no provision through which Indian minorities would lose their citizenship. Referring to Friday’s mob attack on Nankana Sahib, a revered Gurdwara in Pakistan where Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev was born, Shah said this is an “answer” to those opposing the amended Citizenship Act – known as CAA. Shah said, “I want to ask people of Delhi if they want to choose a…
Uttar Pradesh is all set to become the first state in the country to start the exercise of shortlisting migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, eligible for citizenship under the new Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The exercise will also identify those who are living illegally in the state. According to additional chief secretary (home) Avanish Awasthi, all 75 district magistrates have been asked to track down migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who have settled here for decades, without citizenship. The official said that though the number of people from Afghanistan living in UP would be minimal, estimates indicate there…
India on Sunday slammed Pakistan over the killing of a Sikh youth in Peshawar, days after the attack on Nankana Sahib Gurdwara by a Muslim mob, and conversion of a minor Sikh girl after her abduction. “India strongly condemns the targeted killing of minority Sikh community member in Peshawar that follows the recent despicable vandalism and desecration of the holy Gurdwara Sri Janam Asthan at Nankana Sahib and the unresolved case of abduction, forced conversion and marriage of a Sikh girl Jagjit Kaur,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement. Two days after the attack on Nankana…
Two days after the Nankana Sahib Gurudwara in Pakistan’s Punjab province was attacked by a Muslim mob, a member of the Sikh community, Parvinder Singh, was murdered in Peshawar by ‘unknown’ gunmen. Sources based in Peshawar told IANS that Parvinder Singh was the younger brother of a local journalist Harmeet Singh. A businessman in Malaysia, Parvinder was in Peshawar to shop for his wedding in February, Harmeet told the media. Anguished by the murder of his brother, Harmeet added that “without minorities, no country can flourish and progress. Pakistan is beautiful because of minorities but each year, we end up…
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla met the families that recently lost their children due to alleged irregularities and mismanagement in the J.K. Lon Hospital, in Kota on Saturday. Birla, an MP from Kota, visited the families in Anantpura, Subhash Vihar, Vigyan Nagar, Prem Nagar and Soorsagar areas of the city, offered condolences and help to them. Calling infant deaths in the hospital a serious issue, Birla said, “I wrote two letters to the Rajasthan Chief Minister to check if adequate steps were being taken.” The central team of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has initiated the investigation into…
Left unchecked, the combined effects of deforestation and human-induced climate change could eliminate Madagascar’s entire eastern rainforest habitat by 2070, impacting thousands of plants, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians that are endemic to the island nation, warns a study. Madagascar — a biodiversity hotspot where 80 to 90% of its animal and plant species are exclusive to the area – has been devastated by decades of deforestation and overharvesting. The activities have destroyed much of the land cover that provides habitat for a variety of unique animals, including currently endangered varieties of lemurs, said the study published in the journal Nature…