RNI NO.: WBENG/2015/65962

VOL. 7, ISSUE 165 | Friday, 18 June 2021 | Kolkata | Pages 12 | Rs 3.00PUBLISHED FROM DELHI | KOLKATA

MILLENNIUMPOST.IN

RAIPUR: Police in Chhattis-garh’s Raipur have registered an FIR against yoga guru Ramdev for allegedly spreading “false” infor-mation about the medicines being used by the medical fraternity for the treatment of COVID-19, a police official said on Thursday.

The case was filed on Wednes-day night against Ramkrishna Yadav, alias Baba Ramdev, based on a complaint filed by the Chhat-tisgarh’s unit of the Indian Medi-cal Association (IMA), Raipur’s Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Yadav said.

Ramdev has been booked under Sections 188 (disobedi-ence to order duly promulgated by public servant), 269 (negligent act likely to spread infection of dis-ease dangerous to life), 504 (inten-tional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and others of the IPC and provisions of Disaster Management Act, 2005, he said.

Continued on P4

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: Sanjiv Goenka, Chairman of the RP-San-jiv Goenka Group, has yet again been nominated as the Chairperson of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

This will be for a period of one year beginning June 27, 2021, and ending on June 26, 2022. This is the fifth time that Goenka is nominated as the Chairperson.

“It is a real honour and a priv-ilege to be able to serve an iconic institution like the Indian Insti-tute of Technology Kharagpur,” he said in a statement issued by the Group.

Ramdev booked over allopathy

remarks

Sanjiv Goenka nominated

chairperson of IIT-Kgp Board

No Half Truths

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: Days after Gover-nor Jagdeep Dhankhar wrote to Mamata Banerjee complaining about her “studied silence” on cases of post-election violence in the state, the Chief Minister on Thursday targeted the Cen-tral government saying there is “no political violence” any-where in Bengal and that it is all “BJP’s gimmick.”

In the same breath, she lashed out at the BJP-led Cen-tre for all its efforts to “control” Twitter saying that they are “bulldozing” the micro-blog-ging platform failing to influ-ence it as they do to her.

The Chief Minister’s state-ment on post-poll violence comes at a time when not only BJP leaders are raising similar allegations but also the Gover-nor has written a letter to her in this regard.

Without taking names, the Chief Minister criticised his visits to different Central min-isters, including Union Home minister Amit Shah in Delhi. In reply to a question regard-ing Dhankhar’s meeting with Shah, Banerjee said: “Of course he can meet (Amit Shah). It is completely his personal matter. After all, he is their man.”

Giving a sharp reply against the question of BJP’s claims on post-poll violence in the state, Banerjee said: “All such claims are baseless. There is no polit-ical violence going on in the state right now. There may have been one or two spo-radic incidents but those can-not be called political violence. I would like to say clearly that we do not support any sort of violence. It is nothing but BJP’s political gimmick.”

The state government has also claimed that there was a stream of fake news and morphed videos concerning the scenario of post-poll vio-lence in Bengal on social media platforms.

Banerjee’s reaction against the Centre, BJP and the Gover-nor comes during a programme at Nabanna Sabhaghar from where the Krishak Bandhu scheme was relaunched by doubling the annual financial support to Rs 10,000 each.

Criticising the fight between

Twitter India and the govern-ment following Union minister for Electronics and Informa-tion Technology Ravi Shan-kar Prasad’s statement that the microblogging platform had purposely chosen not to comply with new intermediary guide-lines, Banerjee said: “I condemn it; they can’t control Twitter, so they are trying to bulldoze it. They (Centre) are trying to do so with everyone they are unable to manage. They can’t control me, and that is why they are trying to bulldoze my gov-ernment, too. Journalists, who do not get controlled (by them), are silenced.”

Reiterating that at no cost Bengal will get divided again as the BJP has demanded North Bengal as a separate Union Territory. Again, she recently received a video in which sup-porters of some groups claimed to be reinstating Maoist activi-ties in Jangalmahal. “CID, STF and police have already been instructed to take necessary action as we have received a video,” Banerjee said, adding that the police in Bengal works without leaving any stone unturned to ensure peace and harmony in the state. “They (Centre) only give tall talks against China, while on the other hand strengthen their hand. Continued on P4

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: Trinamool Con-gress chairperson Mamata Banerjee filed an election petition at the Calcutta High Court challenging the result of the Nandigram Assembly constituency in which she lost to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari by a slender margin. The case is set to be heard by the Bench of Justice Kaushik Chandra on Friday.

Banerjee, who had con-tested as a Trinamool Con-gress candidate from Nandigram, was first declared elected by a margin of 1,200 votes. Later the result was reversed in favour of Adhikari stating that he won by a mar-gin of 1,956 votes.

In this connection, Baner-jee had earlier said that the Election Commission had announced her as the winning candidate. The Governor had also congratulated her and all of a sudden she was declared as the losing candidate. She was also quite surprised with the election result of Nandi-gram when her party did so well across the state. She had alleged that there was a prob-lem with the server followed by a power cut at the counting centre on the day of counting. There was no link to the server for long hours and there was a complete blackout.

“They had done some sort of mischief with the EVMs,” she had alleged. She had demanded that the EMVs,

VVPATS and the postal bal-lots of Nandigram be kept separately.

The Trinamool Congress, shortly after the result was out, alleged that senior polling per-sonnel had been silenced at gunpoint. As no recounting was allowed despite repeated requests from the Trinamool

Congress, Banerjee had made an SMS message public in which a polling officer was found to state that he had to keep quiet as he was threat-ened with dire consequences.

The SMS written by the Returning Officer read: “If I allow recounting, then I will be killed. I am under tremen-

dous pressure from Delhi and BJP. I have a daughter. The pressure is mounting and I will have no option but to commit suicide.”

Banerjee is continuing as the Chief Minister for the third consecutive term with her party gaining a landslide victory. But she needs to get elected within six months to continue as the Chief Minis-ter for losing by a small mar-gin from Nandigram. In such a situation, former External Affairs minister Yashwant Sinha made a sensational claim revealing that the Elec-tion Commission has planned not to hold any elections for the next few months just to restrict her from entering the state Assembly.

Stretches waterlogged; heavy rain batters Kolkata, other parts of stateOUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: Several parts of South Bengal and low-lying areas in Kolkata were inun-dated on Thursday as heavy overnight rain continued to lash large areas, disrupting normal life. The Regional Meteorological Centre in Ali-pore issued rainfall warnings to various districts.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said necessary instructions have been issued to various districts, asking them to take precautionary measures. Several districts have received overnight rain-fall. Water level in Hooghly has gone up. There is a flood-like situation in Arambag, Khanakul and other areas in Hooghly. As Jharkhand and Bihar receive more rain-

fall, the water eventually gets diverted to Bengal as a result of which districts like Burd-wan, Midnapore, Howrah, Hooghly are vulnerable. Peo-ple have to remain cautious in the coastal areas. Lightning instances have been taking

place frequently due to global warming, said Banerjee.

There is a forecast of more downpours over the next three days under the influence of a vigorous southwest mon-soon and a cyclonic circula-tion. Orange alert has been

issued for East Midnapore, West Midnapore, Howrah, Hooghly and Bankura which will receive thundershowers and lightning. Yellow warn-ing has been issued for Mur-shidabad and Birbhum in South Bengal, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Kalimpong, Ali-purduar in the North.

The Regional Meteo-rological Centre recorded the heaviest downpour of this year and season as well. Base observatory at Alipore observed 144 mm rainfall in the past 24 hours, ending 8.30 am on Thursday morn-ing. This is the first three-digit rainfall for Kolkata during this monsoon season and takes the monthly rainfall to 286 mm, very close to the normal of 300.6 mm.

Continued on P4

Bengal violence claims BJP’s gimmick: Mamata

CONDEMNS CENTRE’S EFFORTS TO ‘CONTROL’ TWITTER Mamata moves Calcutta High Court challenging Nandigram election results TMC had sought a recounting of votes polled in Nandigram, a request that was turned down by the EC

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: A single-day rise of 67,208 new Coronavi-rus infections were recorded taking India’s total tally of cases to 2,97,00,313, while the active cases declined to 8,26,740, the lowest after 71 days, according to the Union Health ministry data updated on Thursday.

The COVID-19 death toll climbed to 3,81,903 with 2,330 fresh fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed.

The active cases declined to 8,26,740 comprising 2.78 per cent of the total infections while the national COVID-19

recovery rate has improved to 95.93 per cent. A net decline of 38,692 cases has been recorded in the COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

As many as 19,31,249 tests

were conducted on Wednesday taking the total cumulative tests conducted so far for detection of COVID-19 in the country to 38,52,38,220.

The daily positivity rate was

recorded at 3.48 per cent. It has been less than 5 per cent for the 10th consecutive day, the min-istry said, adding the weekly positivity rate has declined to 3.99 per cent.

Recoveries continue to outnumber daily new cases for the 35th consecutive day. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 2,84,91,670, while the case fatality rate has increased to 1.29 per cent, the data stated.

The 2,330 new fatalities include 1,236 from Maharash-tra, 270 from Tamil Nadu, 148 from Karnataka and 147 from Kerala. Continued on P4

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced on Thursday that the results of Madhyamik and Higher Secondary examinations in the state would be published in July. Banerjee further informed that the Education department will announce the evaluation modalities for both examinations on Friday.

The examinations were cancelled by the state gov-ernment on June 7 as the majority of people favoured

the cancellation amid the Covid situation. The Educa-tion department had sought opinion and received around 34,000 mails. Out of these, 79 per cent of opinions were against holding Madhy-amik while 83 per cent were against the conduct of the Higher Secondary examina-tions. The expert committee that was formed by the state government had also sug-gested against the holding of the examinations.

According to sources in the Education department, the

Madhyamik Board is likely to evaluate students by the inter-nal assessment of class X and the final examinations in class IX. However, the Board will give more weightage to the internal assessment of class X during the evaluation. In case of class XII, the West Bengal Council of Higher Second-ary Examination is likely to consider the students’ perfor-mance in practical and project work and the class X results in the evaluation. The class XI final results may also be taken into consideration.

India adds 67,208 new Covid cases, cumulative vaccine coverage exceeds 26.86 crore

Madhyamik & HS results to be published in July, says CM

Evaluation process for both tests to be announced today

CM ASKS DISTRICTS TO TAKE PRECAUTIONARY STEPS

Takeaways » The active cases declined to 8,26,740 comprising 2.78 per cent of the total infections while the national COVID-19 recovery rate has improved to 95.93 per cent » Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) is reportedly planning to start clinical trials of the No-vavax vaccine for children in July

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee speaks during a press conference in Kolkata on Thursday MPOST

Highlights » “All such claims are base-less. There is no political violence going on in the state right now. There may have been one or two sporadic incidents but those cannot be called political violence. I would like to say clearly that we do not support any sort of violence. It is nothing but BJP’s political gimmick” » “I condemn it; they can’t control Twitter, so they are trying to bulldoze it. They (Centre) are trying to do so with everyone they are unable to manage. They can’t control me, and that is why they are trying to bulldoze my government, too. Journalists, who do not get controlled (by them), are silenced” Commuters wade through a waterlogged road after heavy overnight

rain, in Kolkata, on Thursday PTI

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday accepted the formula of CBSE and CISCE to evaluate the Class 12 students, whose Board examinations were cancelled due to COVID-19.

A special Bench of Jus-tices A M Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari said after perusing the scheme presented by the concerned Boards, prima facie, “we have no hesitation in accepting the same and permit the Boards to proceed on that basis”.

The Centre told the Bench that CBSE will be adopting 30:30:40 formula to evaluate class 12 students based on the results of Class-

X, XI and XII examinations respectively.

The Central Board of Sec-ondary Education (CBSE) said for evaluating Class XII students after their Board examinations were can-celled for the academic year

2020-21, it has entered into the consultative process with stakeholders to know the fac-tual position of the students and the schools.

The CBSE added that the consultation process was held with principals of affili-

ated schools, feedback was obtained from 229 Saho-daya School Complex com-prising of 7,734 schools and a 13-members committee of experts. Based on the recom-mendation given by the Com-mittee, feedback received from Sahodaya School Com-plex, feedback received from school principals and rep-resentation received from various corners, CBSE has decided that the assessment of theory portion of Class-XII will be done by the schools, the CBSE affidavit filed in the top court said.

It said that theory paper evaluation formula will be of 30 per cent weightage will be given to class X marks, 30 percentage weightage to

Class XI marks and 40 per cent weightage to Class XII marks obtained in unit test/mid-term/pre-Board exams.

The CBSE said 20 marks will be given for practical in class XII and the result will be declared by July 31. The CBSE scheme further elabo-rated that for Class X-30 per cent marks based on average theory component of best three performing subjects out of main five subjects will be taken.

For Class XI-30 per cent marks based on the theory component of final exam will be taken and for Class XII-40 per cent marks based on unit test/mid-term/pre-board exams will be taken.

Continued on P4

SC accepts, approves schemes of CBSE, CISCE for evaluating Class XII students Scheme prepared after cancellation of exams due to 2nd wave of Covid; results by July 31

REPRESENTATIVE PICTURE

Govt extends validity of

motor vehicle documents till September 30

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The Minis-try of Road Transport and Highways has issued a noti-fication to make the PUC (Pollution Under Control) certificate for all vehicles uniform across the coun-try and also to link the PUC database with the National Register.

The government on Thursday also extended the validity of motor vehi-cle documents like Driving License (DL), Registration Certificate (RC) and per-mits till September 30, 2021, in view of the ongo-ing pandemic.

In regard to the PUC, after the changes in the Central Motor Vehicles Rules 1989 by the Road ministry, the QR code shall be printed on the PUC form and will have details of the vehicle, owner and the status of the emission.

“The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has issued a notification dated 14th June, 2021, for a common format of the PUC Certificate to be issued across the country, under Central Motor Vehi-cle Rules 1989,” an official statement said.

According to the state-ment, the new PUC will have vehicle owner’s mobile number, name and address, engine number and chassis number.

“The owner’s mobile number has been made mandatory, on which an SMS alert will be sent for validation and fee,” it said.

The statement said the concept of rejection slip is being introduced for the first time.

The Ministry of Road Transport and High-ways (MoRTH) said it has advised the enforce-ment authorities that the validity of fitness, permit (all types), license, regis-tration or any other con-cerned document(s) may be treated to be valid till September 30, 2021.

“This covers all docu-ments whose validity has expired since February 1, 2020, or would expire by September 30, 2021. This will help out citizens in availing transport-related services, while maintaining social distancing,” it said.

City: Pg 2Single-day cases drop to 3,018; at least 2,033 cured in past 24 hrs

Business : Pg 10‘21.15 lakh air travellers in May, 63% less than April’

Film: Pg 12‘Black Widow was so hyper-sexualised’

The Trinamool Congress, shortly after the result was out, alleged that senior polling personnel had been silenced at gunpoint

Single-day cases drop to 3,018; at least 2,033 cured in past 24 hrs

Augment inoculation infra: Hakim tells pvt hospitals

KOLKATA: After the havoc devastation caused by super cyclone YAAS, a city-based social enterprise Kolkata Society for Cultural Heritage (KSCH) in collaboration with Forest Department is plan-ning to implement a 4-lay-ered restoration program for Sunderbans, including food relief, shelter restoration, livelihood and Biosphere restorations.

KSCH has already organ-ised several relief camps in different areas of Sunder-bans in collaboration with South 24-Parganas Division, Directorate of Forest. So far, more than 56,500 packs of meals have been distributed among cyclone-hit people in the region and as many as 650 houses restored. A total of 8,520 cyclone-affected fami-lies have been benefited from the relief camps till now.

In a first, Forest Depart-ment collaborated with the city-based social enterprise

Kolkata Society for Cultural Heritage to provide relief mate-rials to the affected people. The South 24-Parganas division of Directorate of Forest collabo-rated with KSCH to provide the relief in the remote areas of Sunderbans hit by the cyclone. A relief camp was organised in Kultali and Mousuni recently in presence of Milan Mondal, DFO, Directorate of Forest, South 24-Parganas. The KSCH volunteers distributed 15 tons of materials among 2500 fami-

lies in 15 villages.Initially, Forest department

located the most damaged areas and selected the benefi-ciaries. After that, KSCH has been organising back-to-back relief programs to support the marginalised people. KSCH introduced paper packaging to reduce plastic pollution in Sunderbans Biosphere land.

Actors Swastika Mukherjee, Mir, Indrajit Lahiri joined their hands with Kolkata Society for Cultural Heritage. MPOST

4-layered restoration plan for Yaas-hit Sunderbans on anvil

About 8,520 families benefitted from relief camps

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: In its efforts to expedite the process of vaccina-tion in the city, Firhad Hakim, Chairman of Board of Admin-istrators, Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) on Thurs-day urged the private hospi-tals in the city to take necessary measures to augment their inoculation infrastructure.

“I have asked the private hospitals to procure more vac-cines so that more and more people can be inoculated. A number of private companies have come up with proposals of vaccinating their staff against payment. The private hospitals can have the list of these com-panies and arrange for their vaccination. If necessary, KMC is ready to help them with nec-essary infrastructure like stor-age of vaccines,” Hakim said, after holding a meeting with the top brass of the private hos-pitals to review the vaccination process in the city.

According to Hakim, there is a section of people who are ready to pay for their vaccina-tion but are unwilling to stand in queues for taking the jab

from the health centres of the civic body.

The private hospitals should procure more vaccine doses so that they can offer the jab to this section of the people.

About 21 lakh people in the city have already received the jab in the city and the dip in COVID-19 cases in the city

bear testimony to the fact that vaccination is playing a key role in this. “KMC is doing its bit to increase awareness among people about the ben-efits of taking the jab. The pri-vate sector should also do the same so that more people come forward and get themselves inoculated,”Hakim added.

INOCULATION DRIVE: ABOUT 350 ON-SITE WORKERS VACCINATED AT CITY MALLKOLKATA: Merlin Group, one of the leading real estate conglomerates in India, organised a vaccina-tion camp for the construction site workers and staff members on Thursday at Acropolis mall, Rash Behari Connector. This initiative was taken in collaboration with Credai Youth Wing (CYW) and Credai Bengal. The first camp was organised on the mall premises where over 350 on-site workers and staff members had joined in to get vaccinated. Vaccination camps will also be conducted at Merlin Urvam at Dumdum and Merlin the fifth avenue at Sector V, Salt Lake for Merlin workers in North Kolkata and New Town.

NEW TOWN ENCOUNTER: PLEA FOR 2ND AUTOPSY OF SLAIN GANGSTER JUNKEDKOLKATA: Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday dismissed plea for second post mortem of Jaipal Singh Bhullar’s dead body, who was killed in the Newtown encounter. Bhupinder Singh, father of Bhullar, who was killed along with accomplice in a joint operation of Punjab and West Bengal Police in Kolkata on June 9, had approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking directions to the State of Punjab to conduct a second autopsy of his son’s body either at PGIMER in Chandigarh or AIIMS, Delhi. He claimed that his son was badly tortured before his murder and shot from point blank range. There are many marks of injuries on the body. The reason behind conducting the second postmortem was to know the exact details and nature of the injuries caused due to police torture. The court also dismissed another plea for preserving Bhullar’s body at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER).

WOMAN GP CHIEF ASSAULTED BY MOBKOLKATA: Khairamari gram panchayat head Selima Khatun was beaten up by a mob in Jalangi block of Murshidabad on Thursday. The incident took place when Khatun, against whom a complaint was lodged for allegedly using government property for private purposes, went to the BDO office in Jalangi for ques-tioning. BDO said people were angry with Khatun.

SULAGNA SENGUPTA

KOLKATA: In an attempt to speed up vaccination in the state, the state government has decided to make provisions for door-to-door vaccination for elderly citizens from next month.

Already around 2 crore people have been vaccinated in the state. It was found that many elderly citizens are

unable to visit the nearby vac-cination centers. As a result, it was decided that KMC work-

ers and municipality workers will first map the houses of the elderly citizens and then visit their houses with vaccine doses.

Senior officials of the state government said the work for mapping the house of elderly citizens in each ward has started and it will finish this month. Based on the report, the process to provide vaccine doses at their door-

step will start.The outreach program will continue till every elderly citizen gets the vaccine doses. In districts, the local BDO’s have already collected a list of elderly cit-izens who are yet to be vac-cinated.Sources in the state government said so far about 1 lakh elderly citizens have been identified in the state who could not reach the vaccination centers.

About 5,000 buses have been identified to carry out the program. The bus will visit each and every household of the elderly citizen and the health workers will vaccinate them.

A senior official of the state government said: “Through this process we can at least complete the inoculation of 60 plus citizens with the first dose of vaccines.”

Door-to-door vaccination for elderly to start from next month

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: Single-day Covid infection dropped at 3,018 on Thursday from what remained at 3,187 on Wednesday. The total number of infected cases has therefore gone up to 14,74,249 Covid cases till Thursday.

Around 2,033 Covid patients have been released from various hospitals in the past 24 hours. Around 14,34,994 patients have so far been discharged from the hos-pitals after being cured. Num-ber of fatalities dropped to 64 on Thursday. The total tally of fatalities in the state reached 17,182. The number of active cases remained at 22,073 on Thursday.

Covid recovery rate stood at 97.34 percent. The percent-age of positive cases out of the sample tested remained at 5.42 on Thursday.

The percentage of occu-pancy of Covid beds in the State stood at 13.29. Bengal has so far conducted 1,35,23,710

Covid sample tests so far with around 55,671 samples being tested in the past 24 hours.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said that the state government from June 21 would start uti-lizing the vaccine which would be supplied by the Centre at free of cost. Prime Minister Narendra Modi a few days back announced free supply of vaccines to all the states. Incidentally, around 10 lakh Covishield has arrived in Kol-kata on Thursday from the

Serum Institute in Pune. All the vials were taken to the Cen-tral Health and Family Welfare Store in Bagbazar.

The state has so far vacci-nated 1,84,29,290 people out of which around 1,74,471 people were vaccinated in the past 24 hours. No adverse effects fol-lowing immunization (AEFI) were reported on Thursday.

The Bengal government has already conducted vaccinations on 20,23,681 people so far in the state which include those belonging in the age group

18-45 years and also those who have been identified as super-spreaders by the state govern-ment. On Wednesday, around 1,19,920 people were vacci-nated across the state.

Kolkata has registered 11 Covid deaths on Thursday while North 24-Parganas has seen 17 Covid deaths. South 24-Parganas has reported 8 deaths, Howrah 2, Hooghly 6, West Burdwan 1, East Burdwan 2, West Midnapore 2, Birbhum 1, Nadia 4, North Dinajpur 5, Jalpaiguri 2 and Darjeeling 3. Kolkata in the past 24 hours has registered 366 fresh cases and

North 24-Parganas 431. The total death toll in Kolkata has so far reached 4,812 whereas North 24-Parganas has lost 4,350 people so far.

No new confirmed mucor-mycosis cases were reported from the state on Thursday. The total number of mucormycosis infected cases has far remained 54 in the state.

Two new suspected cases have however been reported. One death among confirmed cases was reported on Thurs-day. Cumulative deaths among confirmed cases went up to 15 on Thursday.

ABOUT 64 DEATHS REPORTED IN A DAY

News at a Glance

2 millenniumpostCitympFRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021 | KOLKATA

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Covid-19 Stats » Number of deaths in past 24 hours 64 » Total death toll so far 17,182 » Tested COVID positive in the past 24 hours 3,018 » Total COVID positive cases so far 14,74,249 » Total patients recovered from COVID so far 14,34,994 » Discharged from hospitals in a day 2,033 » Total sample tested so far 1,35,23,381

At least 21 lakh have been vaccinated in the city

A student of South Point School getting inoculated at a vaccination camp held on the school’s premises recently PIC/MPOST

TARUN GOSWAMI

KOLKATA: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has for the first time issued notices to owners of “severely insecure” buildings and asked them to vacate the premises at the earliest.

The Building department of KMC has identified more than 100 such structures. Copies of the notices have been given to the Kolkata Police.

Most of the buildings are more than 100-year-old and have not been maintained for decades. Most of them are ten-anted and the tenants pay less than Rs 100 per month as rent. These structures are situated in south and north Kolkata and Behala.

Senior civic officials said the notices had been given as the owners had refused to vacate the houses. Every mon-soon, portions of old buildings collapse leading to loss of lives. As the laws do not permit, the KMC cannot pull these struc-tures down. The rain water system of these buildings has become inoperative because of lack of repair. So, when it rains heavily, the water that gets accumulated on the roof exerts pressure on the buildings. As they have not been maintained for years, the structures fail to

bear the additional load and collapse leading to loss of lives. In the past 10 years, more than 100 people living in old dilapi-dated buildings had died when portions of the structures fell on them, the officials said.

The KMC has identi-fied more than 2000 insecure buildings in the city and put up boards outside the prem-ises. But despite that the owners continue to live in them risking their lives. The civic authori-ties have even requested them to pull down the old struc-tures and construct new ones with proper arrangement for the tenants. The KMC will give additional FAR in such cases. Though some owners have approached the KMC and sanctioned plans for new buildings, the response is not very high.

The officials said the civic authorities had failed to iden-tify the owners of many old structures in the city particu-larly in north Kolkata.

The buildings have been encroached upon and the tres-passers do not pay property tax. The Borough offices have been asked to intensify vigil on old dilapidated buildings and the KMC has kept the demo-lition squad ready as many of them collapse following heavy shower.

Restaurants do brisk business after reopeningKOLKATA: Several popu-lar restaurants in Kolkata had full or near-full occupancy on the first day of opening for eight hours after the one-and-half-month closure due to restrictions imposed by the state government to check the spread of coronavirus, owners said on Thursday.

They said that the response is “absolutely amazing” as there are still curbs on the movement of people, no public transport is available and the weather was not conducive to eating out.

As the Covid situation improved, the state adminis-tration allowed restaurants to operate with 50 per cent seat-ing capacity and vaccinated staff from noon to 8 pm from Wednesday.

“The footfall was 50-70 per cent across all the popular eat-ing joints on the first day and even today despite rain and waterlogging. It augurs well for the pandemic-hit food and beverages industry,” a spokes-person of the Hotels and Res-taurants Association of Eastern India said.All members of the Association are follow-

ing Covid-19 protocols of the state government rigorously, the spokesperson said.

“The response was abso-lutely amazing. We had a full house from lunch onwards till closing, off course with 50 per cent occupancy for social dis-tancing,” Nitin Kothari, the owner of Mocambo, told PTI.

Debaditya Chaudhury, a director of restaurants Chow-man, Oudh 1590 and Chapter 2, said, “We were not expect-ing such a big figure. The main Chowman and Oudh 1590 out-lets in the city fetched a total of 400 customers. On Jamai Sasthi, people prefer to have home-cooked food. So, it was pretty much a success.” AGENCIES

‘CBI can’t go against state’

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: The defense counsel of Narada tape case on Thursday argued that CBI cannot go against State (based on law and order) and seek an order which affects the accused without hearing them.

Sidharth Luthra, defense counsel, submitted that there must be error, omission or fail-ure of justice. The remedy for CBI was to seek quashing of bail order. “If what they did is permitted, then if an individual minister is accused, will they simply file plea against state and not make the minister a party and get an order against the minister,” Luthra argued.

The five-judge Bench, comprising Acting Chief Jus-tice Rajesh Bindal, Justice I.P. Mukerji, Justice Harish Tan-don, Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Arijit Banerjee, heard the plea moved by the CBI to transfer the Narada tape case in which two cabinet minis-ters Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee along with Trin-amool Congress MLA Madan Mitra and former Kolkata Mayor Sovan Chatterjee have been granted interim bail on a personal bond of Rs 2 lakh and two sureties on May 28, 2021.

Actors Swastika Mukherjee, Mir, Indrajit Lahiri (Foodka) joined their hands with KSCH for relief works PIC/MPOST

KMC serves notices to owners of ‘severely

insecure’ buildingsOccupants asked to vacate the premises

TAKING STOCK

Minister Firhad Hakim inspects water at Khidirpur area PIC/MPOST

Maintenance work: ER

cancels few trains

KOLKATA: Eastern Railway had canceled a few trains due to re-girdering of bridge, traf-fic and power block.

“For re-girdering of Bridge No. 397, there will be 660 min-utes ( 07:00 am to 6:00 pm) Traffic and Power Block in Down Line between Tildanga and Bonidanga. 360 minutes (08:00 am to 2:00 pm) Traffic Block and 660 minutes (07:00 am to 6:00 pm) Power Block in UP Line between Tildanga and Bonidanga have been planned on June 20, 2021 (Sun-day),” said an official of Eastern Railway.

Consequently 03053/03054 (Howrah-Radhikapur-How-rah Special) journey com-mencing on June 20, 2021 will remain cancelled. 03173 (Seal-dah - Agartala Special) jour-ney commencing on June 20, 2021 will be diverted via Nal-hati-Gosaingram-Poradanga-New Farakka with stoppage at Nalhati station. 02262 (Haldi-bari - Kolkata Special) journey commencing on June 20,

2021 will be diverted via New Farakka-Poradanga-Nal-hati-Rampurhat with stop-page at Nalhati station. 02256 (Kamakhya - Lokmanya Tilak Special) journey commenc-ing on June 19, 2021 will be diverted via New Farakka-Azimganj-Katwa-Bandel-Howrah. MPOST

Representative image PTI

KOLKATA: The All India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) has called a nation-wide protest against spiraling fuel price hike by the Central Government on June 28.

“We conducted a meeting with our members on June 16, 2021 on the issue of continu-ous surge in diesel prices and the government’s apathy to the plight of the transport frater-nity which is struggling for sur-vival and sustenance. During the meeting we decided that there will be a nationwide pro-test on June 28, 2021 across the country and this day will be observed as Black Day,” said Kultaran Singh Atwal, presi-dent of AIMTC. MPOST

Fuel price hike: Call for ‘Black Day’

KMC workers and municipality workers will first map the houses of the elderly citizens

Representative Image

3millenniumpost City mpKOLKATA | FRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021

State transfers Rs 290 cr in accounts of 9.78L farmers

State to witness 1L job creation in 3 months

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation will take measures to mobilise those places within 48 hours from where dengue cases will be reported or breeding ground for Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes will be found to prevent further spread of the disease.

The instructions were issued to all vector control teams associated with field level supervision at a recent sensiti-sation meeting that was chaired by Member Board of Admin-istrators Atin Ghosh, who is in-charge of KMC’s Health department with the onset of monsoon.

From January 1 till June 13, 46 dengue cases have been reported in the city which is much less than previous year’s figure of 74 in this correspond-

ing period.“Our activities in curbing

dengue have been going on a regular basis since January. We have developed the best infra-structure to fight dengue and we try to visit every single household in a gap of ten days. The results are evident from the figures but there is no place for complacency,” Member Board of Administrators, KMC in-charge of Health department Atin Ghosh said.

Chief Vector Control Offi-cer, KMC Debasish Biswas said this year from January 1 till June 13, there has been 493.3 mm rainfall against 798.7mm in the corresponding period last year.

“We will continue our sustained efforts in spread-ing awareness against dengue and spraying of larvicide to destroy each and every breed-ing ground for mosquitoes to keep dengue cases under con-

trol,” Biswas added.The KMC had made a data

bank in 2013 comprising 9048 pages that contained the loca-tion of every single house located in 144 wards in the city. The breeding ground for mos-quitoes in and around all these residences were identified and the KMC keeps on upgrading this list on a daily basis.

As per database of the civic body, there are 48142 masonry tanks, 16014 wells, 1246 open overhead tanks,5548 vacant plots , 5539 slum clus-ters, 17007 surface drains and 4947 under construction build-ings where the vector control team have to keep strict vigil to ensure that they do not turn into breeding ground for Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes.

There are 15 dengue detec-tion centres under KMC where tests are carried out free of cost.

Within 48 hrs, KMC to mobilise areas witnessing cases of dengue

Between Jan 1 & Jun 13 about 46 cases have been reported in city

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: Bengal is all set to witness the creation of at least 1 lakh job within three months after Mamata Banerjee became Chief Minister for the third con-secutive term.

This comes with Flipkart going to initiate functioning of its biggest logistic hub in the country at Haringhata in Nadia.

The setting up of the logis-tic hub by the e-commerce company of the US-based retail chain Walmart would be helpful in attracting more investment in the state.

The state government had given 140 acres land to the group at the Haringhata Industrial Park where the construction of the logistic hub had started from 2019. With initiation of the functioning of the logistic hub, there will be creation of around 10,000 direct and around 80,000 indirect jobs.

It was on October 10 in 2018, the then Industry minis-ter and the present Finance min-ister Amit Mitra had said that the there is around 358 acres of

land in Haringhata Industrial Park and decision was taken in board meeting of the West Bengal Industrial Develop-ment Corporation (WBIDC) that around 140 acres out of it to be given to Flipkart to set up the logistic hub.

The process of recruiting people has been initiated and their training would also begin soon. Though Mitra had then said that there will be an invest-ment of Rs 991 crore to set up the logistic hub, the company is yet to come up with any state-ment in this regard.

But it is considered that the investment would further go up with the decision taken later to create bigger infrastructure than planned and due to the Covid situation.

At the same time there was also increase in the cost of raw materials..

In a media interview, Rajneesh Kumar, senior vice president and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, said: “We are planning to start our country’s biggest logistic hub at Haring-hata in Bengal in the next two months. It will lead to lakhs of job opportunities for the local peopleand help opening new doors of opportunities for the MSME entrepreneurs in Ben-gal and the entire North East”.

Mitra had earlier said: “Flip-kart will be an anchor investor in Haringhata Industrial Park. With the setting up of its logistic hub, more industries will come up in the remaining part of the industrial park.”

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: The Mamata Banerjee government has set a milestone by directly transfer-ring Rs 290 crore in the bank accounts of 9.78 lakh farm-ers on the first day itself when she relaunched the Krishak Bandhu scheme by doubling the annual financial support for all farmers.

Around 62 lakh farmers will now receive an increased financial support from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 for one acre or more of cultivable land and those having less than one acre will now receive a minimum of Rs 4,000 per annum. It was Banerjee one of the 10 “ongi-kars” (assurances) given ahead of the Assembly polls.

Giving a detailed infor-mation on various schemes including Krishak Bandhu of her government for benefits of farmers, Banerjee took a dig at the Centre saying that very less number of farmers get the

benefit of “their scheme” (PM-Kisan). “Their scheme is for farmers having more than 2 acres land and sharecroppers are not included. But share-croppers too get the benefit out of our Krishak Bandhu scheme. Moreover the farmers here get the benefit against self declara-tion only,” she said adding inci-dents of “farmers’ agitation and farmers’ unnatural deaths” do not take place in Bengal.

Banerjee attended the programme virtually from

Nabanna Sabhaghar when dis-trict magistrates given out cer-tificates to the beneficiaries in all 22 districts.

She said that benefits have been transferred to the bank accounts of more than 9.78 lakh farmers on the first day of relaunching of the scheme itself. “A total of Rs 290 crore has been transferred,” Banerjee said, adding that the benefits will reach the remaining ben-eficiaries in the next few days.

The state government has

so far provided financial assis-tance of Rs 4,500 crore to 61.21 lakh farmers since the incep-tion of the scheme on Febru-ary 1 in 2019.

The farmers will be get-ting the financial benefit in two instalments of Rs 5,000

each and the state government will also continue to give Rs 2 lakh to next of kin in case of the death of a farmer of age group 18 to 60 years. Around 28,000 people have been pro-vided with death benefits of a total Rs 555.32 crore till date. At the same time the state gov-ernment also has a scheme to provide monthly financial assistance of Rs 1,000 to each of 1 lakh farmers.

Banerjee also announced her government’s initiative of distributing 2 lakh packets, each containing 6 kg Nona Swarna seeds, for cultivation of paddy at the areas where agri-cultural fields got inundated with saline water due to Yaas.

She also said that as many as 115 lakh farmers were provided with immediate crop rehabili-tation relief after any natural disaster since 2011-12 at a cost of Rs 3667 crore.

Banerjee on Thursday also provided jobs to a large section of Covid warriors as well.

1ST DAY OF ENHANCED KRISHAK BANDHU ROLL OUT

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: Stating that she had written to Prime Min-ister Narendra Modi thrice to relieve Governor Jag-deep Dhankhar from the post of the state’s Constitu-tional head, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thurs-day called him as the “Cen-tre’s man”.

While reacting to the Governor’s visit to different Central ministers including Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Delhi, Banerjee sar-castically said: “Of course he can meet (Amit Shah). It is completely his preroga-tive whom he likes to meet. After all he is their (Centre’s) man only.”

“I wrote to the Prime Minister thrice to relieve him from the post of state’s Governor,” Banerjee said when asked whether she wants Dhankhar to con-tinue in his present post. It needs mention that there are speculations that Dhankhar would be soon relieved from the post of state’s Governor soon.

Trinamool Congress leadership have repeatedly hit out at the Governor rais-ing allegations against him of “acting on behest of the BJP”. He also received the Chief Minister’s flak for not giv-ing due respect to the chair of the state’s constitutional head.

After returning to power for the third consecutive term with a landslide vic-tory, Banerjee even wrote to Dhankhhar accusing him of “ignoring her advise” to refrain from “surpassing the Chief Minister and her Council of Ministers and communicating with and dictating” the state govern-ment officers “in excess” of his “power under the constitution”.

This came amidst the strained Raj Bha-van-Nabanna rela-tion over the claims counterclaims over post poll violence.

Replying to the question that whether she is aware whether the Governor would be changed, Banerjee on Thursday said: “How will I know? Do they inform us anything? Despite there is a provision to consult the state government before appoint-ing the Governor, it was not done before sending him (Dhankhar). They did not consult the state this time as well.”

“A child can be cajoled into silence but not an elderly man. In this case, speech is silver; silence is golden,” Banerjee said when asked about the Gover-nor’s repeated claim about post poll violence despite the state government hav-ing clearly stated that there are no such incidents in Bengal.

She has also stated that the expense of the Gover-nor’s house has also gone up. But she would be able to give a concrete figure on the same only after a thoroughh calculations.

Besides meeting Shah on Thursday, Dhankhar also called on Union Min-ister for Culture and Tour-ism Prahlad Singh Patel and Union Minister of Coal, Mines and Parliamentary Affairs of India Pralhad Joshi.

Governor is ‘their man’, says Mamata on Dhankhar’s Delhi trip‘I wrote to the Prime Minister thrice to re-lieve him from the post of state’s Governor’

Highlights » Around 62 lakh farmers will now receive an increased financial support from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 for one acre or more of cultivable land » ‘Their (Centre) scheme is for farmers having more than 2 acres land and sharecroppers are not included » She also said that as many as 115 lakh farmers were provided with immediate crop rehabilitation relief

Flipkart to set up country’s biggest logistic hub in Nadia

Major thoroughfares choked as city clocks at least 200 mm of torrential downpour

MOST OF THE STREETS BECAME WATER-FREE BY THURSDAY AFTERNOON

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: Even as efforts were underway to pump out water from city streets, some low-lying areas and thor-oughfares in the city were still water-logged as heavy rains continued to lash the city and other parts of the state on Thursday. Though additional pumps had been pressed into action to clear stagnant water, Chairman, Board of Adminis-trators of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), Firhad Hakim, said the civic body has a capacity to clear water if it rains maximum up to 80mm. But, the city had received about 200mm of rainfall till 2pm on Thursday, Hakim added.

However, most of the streets became water free late on Thursday afternoon. Only some pockets in South Kolkata and southern fringes, East and North Kolkata and northern suburbs were still waterlogged.

Hakim said water had receded from most of the streets in south and north Kol-kata. However, some pockets in Behala and North Kolkata were still waterlogged. Hakim tendered apology to the resi-dents of Behala and assured them that water-logging in the pockets would be minimal from 2022 as laying of under-ground pipes to clear accumu-lated water would be completed by then. A new pumping sta-tion is also coming up at Kid-derpore, which will reduce the duration of water-logging.

Hakim regretted that because of the lackadaisical attitude of the state Irrigation

and Waterways department—which was previously headed by Suvendu Adhikari— most of the channels surrounding the city were full and unable to carry more water. Hakim said he would take up the mat-ter with the minister in-charge to ensure that all the channels were cleared before monsoon.

Officials of Drainage and Sewerage department said Mominpur in southern fringes had received 187mm rainfall followed by Kalighat 182.6 mm rainfall. Behala received 173.5mm rainfall followed by Chetla (160mm), Kamdahari (146mm), and Palmer Bridge (127mm.)

It rained from 10pm on Wednesday to 6 am on Thurs-day in most parts of the city and southern and northern fringes. The city woke up to an overcast sky with most of the important roads under knee to waist-deep water.

Stretches on SP Mukher-jee Road, Asutosh Mukherjee

Road, Chirratanjan Ave-nue, Sarat Bose Road, South-ern Avenue, Gariahat Road, Amherst Street, Thanthania and its neighbourhood, North-ern Avenue, Shilpara, Sarsuna Main Road and Shakuntala Park were water-logged.

The owners of some pri-vate cars who were on emer-gency assignment faced trouble after their cars stopped due to waterlogging. Traffic came to a halt in some areas as vehi-cles moved slowly through the

flooded thoroughfares.Senior civic officials mon-

itored the situation from the KMC control room round the clock. As the day advanced, rain stopped and this helped the civic authorities to clear the accumulated water from the streets.

Water was cleared from most of the important roads in the city by 3pm. Areas sur-rounding Shilpara and Sar-suna in Behala were still water-logged. Water receded from Thanthania and northen Avenue. Civic officials said if there was no further rain, then water from most areas in the

city would be cleared by 10pm. But, the Met department has predicted more downpour over the next three days under the influence of a vigorous south-west monsoon and a cyclonic circulation.

Canning in South 24 Par-ganas district registered max-imum rainfall in the state during the 24-hour period at 178.6 mm, while Bankura received 133.2 mm rain, the Met department said.

Moderate to heavy show-ers were also recorded in some places of north Bengal. Darjeel-ing experienced more than 70 mm rainfall.

(Clock-wise from above) Commuters seen stranded at NSC Bose Road, locals fishing with mosquito nets at Patuli and a vegetable seller at Prince Anwar Shah Road on Thursday PICS/MPOST

TMC members to move no-trust motion against turncoat Sabhadhipati

CM defers N Bengal

tour

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: Trinamool Con-gress (TMC) has brought a no-confidence motion against the Sabhadhipati of Malda Zilla Parishad.

TMC members have writ-ten a letter to the Divisional Commissioner of Malda in this regard. The Zilla Parishad (ZP) was under the control of TMC. But, before the Assembly elec-tion, 15 TMC members crossed the floor to join the BJP under the leadership of Sabhadhipati Gourchandra Mondol. Hence, TMC had lost majority to the BJP following the defection of Mondol and some other mem-bers to the BJP.

Mausum Benazir Noor, president of Malda TMC said to keep the ZP under control, 19 seats were needed in the 37-member ZP. She said TMC

now had 23 members. With this it would not be difficult for the party to have control over the ZP, she added.

Sarala Murmu, who got a Trinamool ticket in the Assem-bly election, joined BJP. She is the Karmadakshya of the ZP. Murmu has written to Mamata Banerjee expressing her willingness to come back to the TMC.

She tendered an apology and said it was her mistake to join the saffron party. It was learnt that seven TMC members who had joined BJP had expressed their willingness to come back to the party. Dolirani Mondol, a ZP member, has already writ-ten to Banerjee expressing her willingness to come back to Trinamool.

The Divisional Commis-sioner has not yet fixed the date of no-confidence motion.

AMITAVA BANERJEE

DARJEELING: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has deferred her four-day tour of North Bengal, owing to the flood-like situation in the State.

“The Chief Minister was scheduled to arrive in North Bengal on a tour on June 26. I had a talk with her today. She has deferred her tour for the time being owing to her busy schedule in overseeing the flood like situation in the state along with the Pandemic,” stated Gautam Deb, TMC leader and Chairman, Board of Admin-istrators, Siliguri Municipal Corporation.

With incessant rainfall since Sunday the situation is grim in North Bengal too, stated Deb. Most of the rivers including the Kaljani river are in spate in North Bengal. “To add to the woes a Bhora Kotal (spring tide) is scheduled to take place in Kolkata and South Bengal around 26th June. The Chief Minister has always been leading from the front, whether in times of cyclone Amphan or Yass. So she has expressed desire to be present in Kolk-ata during that time,” stated Deb.

He stated that on the Pan-demic front, positive cases are on the decline. “There are cer-tain restrictions still in place. The State Government has had a very proactive part to play in the control of the second wave. Hence when things are nor-mal both on the Pandemic and the flood like situation front, the Chief Minister will defi-nitely visit North Bengal. We are eager for her visit and to hear her,” added Deb.

Key Points » The setting up of the logistic hub by the e-commerce company of the US-based retail chain Walmart would be helpful in attracting more investment in the state » The state government had given 140 acres land to the group at the Haringhata Industrial Park where the con-struction of the logistic hub had started from 2019

‘The civic body has a capacity to clear water if it rains maximum up to 80 mm. But, the city had received about 200 mm of rainfall till 2 pm on Thursday’

MALDA CIVIC BODY

Representative pic

File pic

‘A child can be cajoled into silence but not an elderly man. In this case, speech is silver; silence is golden’

Mamata Banerjee at Nabanna on Thursday

Highlights » MEA Arindam Bagchi also said that no amount of justification can make cross-border terrorism acceptable » India, Pakistan have cleared all pending assignment visas: MEA » India asks Pak to address shortcomings in bill relating to case of Kulbhushan Jadhav » Early completion of disengagement in remaining areas in eastern Ladakh could pave way for de-escalation: MEA

4 millenniumpostNationmpFRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021 | KOLKATA

MamataOur police are active enough and

can take immediate action,” Baner-jee said.

Visits of teams of a series of Cen-tral agencies and bodies from Delhi to Bengal also drew flak from the Chief Minister. She stated that they are free to go anywhere but they must also visit Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh where bodies of Covid victims were being dumped in River Ganga and Covid data being manipulated.

In connection with the Shiv Sena’s claim of selling of a land, which was bought at Rs 2 crore, to Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust for Rs 18.5 crore, Banerjee said the party must be having evidence when they have made the claims.

Heavy rainThis also is the third highest 24

hours rainfall in the last decade, the highest being 162.6 mm recorded on June 26, 2018.

“A low pressure has formed over Gangetic Bengal and the nearby areas and there has been an incursion of moisture from the sea. As a result, all the districts in South Bengal will receive rainfall in the next 24 hours. The intensity of rainfall will be higher in the western parts on Friday. There will be more rainfall in North Bengal districts on Saturday,” said Sanjeeb Bandyopadhyay, head of the Alipore MeT office.

Several districts in South Bengal received rainfall throughout the day; many areas in Jhargram and other districts almost witnessed the flood-like situation. Water level in the Sub-arnarekha river rose as well. Villagers in Gopiballavpur I and II blocks are apprehending that the villages may get flooded if it rains further. Vari-ous districts in South Bengal received rainfall till late Thursday evening. Several stretches in Howrah also went underwater due to heavy rain-fall. A portion of the road caved in

Kalinagar triggering fear among the local residents.

People in various districts may also witness gusty winds. An alert has been issued asking the fishermen not to venture into the sea. People in the coastal areas have been urged not to go out during rain. Various North Bengal districts may receive light to moderate rainfall, the weather office said.

Several places in Kolkata were also inundated. The southern parts of the city received more rainfall than the north, leaving streets and alleys waterlogged in Ballygunge Circular Road, Loudon Street, Southern Ave-nue and places in Kasba, Behala and Tollygunge.

Covid casesThe total number of vaccine doses

administered in the country so far has crossed 26.86 crore of which five crore were given to beneficiaries in the age group of 18 to 44 years, the ministry said on Thursday.

In this 18 to 44 year age group, 18,94,803 were given the first dose of a vaccine and 88,017 the second shot on Thursday. In total, 4,93,56,276 people of this age group in 37 states and Union Territories have received their first dose and 10,58,514 their second dose since the beginning of the third phase of the vaccination drive.

Bihar, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Mad-hya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajast-han, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal have administered the first dose to more than 10 lakh beneficiaries in the 18 to 44 year age group, the ministry said.

The cumulative number of COVID-19 vaccine doses admin-istered in the country has reached 26,86,65,914 according to a 7 pm provisional report.

Meanwhile, a study by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi and the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday revealed that the third wave of the Coronavirus pandemic is not more likely to disproportionately affect children than adults.

This comes as several states ramp up their infrastructure to prepare for the third wave with a special focus on protecting children.

The SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity rate among children was just as high as compared to the adult popula-tion in an interim study that involved 4,509 participants from five locations in four states.

Seropositivity is a percentage esti-mate of the number of people with antibodies towards the Coronavirus and hence a past infection.

Out of 4,509 participants for whom data is available, 700 were less than 18 years of age, and 3,809 were aged 18 and above.

On the vaccine front, Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) is reportedly planning to start clinical trials of the Novavax vaccine for chil-dren in July.

SII is yet to receive raw materials from the US needed to produce the Novavax vaccine, reports suggest.

CBSE, CISCEThe marks of practical/internal

assessment of Class XII will be on an actual basis as uploaded by the school on the CBSE portal, the CBSE said, adding that the total marks awarded should be in consonance with the past performance of the school in class-XII Board examinations.

The Board said each school shall form a result committee compris-ing of five members (principal of the school as chairperson, two-senior most teachers of the school, teach-ing class-XII and two teachers from neighbouring senior secondary school teaching class-XII) and it may decide weightage be given to each exam based on credibility and reli-ability of the assessment.

It said the marks of class XI and class XII component will be awarded at school level; they will strictly not be comparable across schools due to variations in the quality of ques-tion papers, the evaluation, standard and processes, the mode of conduct of exams.

Therefore, to ensure standardisa-tion, each school will have to inter-nally moderate the marks to account

for the school level variations by using a reliable reference standard, the CBSE said, adding that the his-torical performance of the school, in terms of the best overall performance in the previous three years’ Board examination, will be taken as the reference for moderating the marks assessed by the schools for 2020-21.

The Board further said that in case, any student is not able to meet the qualifying criterion; he/she will be placed in the essential repeat or compartment category.

Students who are not satisfied with the assessment, done based on the policy will be given an opportu-nity to appear in examinations to be conducted by the Board when con-ditions are conducive for holding the examinations. As per this policy, marks scored in the later examina-tion will be considered as final, the CBSE said.

The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) has also informed the top court that it will declare the Class XII results by July 20, after evaluating the students based on its well defined objective criteria.

The components adopted by CISCE for arriving at the evalua-tion formula is — marks percent-age in class X Board examinations, the Project and Practical Work in the subjects, the performance of the can-didates in the school examinations in the subjects in classes XI and XII, measured through their best marks obtained in the two years (referred to as raw marks) and the best per-formance of the school in the last six years.

It has said that assessment of stu-dents would be done based on their marks obtained in Class X examina-tion, performance in school examina-tions in class XI and XII along with practical and performance of the school in the last six years.

The CISCE has maintained that among the factors used in the com-putation include the best year for school-from among the years 2015-2020, the best year for a school is the year when the school achieved the best average percentage in terms of the total scores (out of 500).

Like CBSE, CISCE has also said

students who are not satisfied with the evaluation criteria may opt for giving the examination to be held when the pandemic situation in India improves.

Ramdev bookedFurther investigation into the

matter is underway, he added.Chairman of Hospital Board IMA

(CG) Dr Rakesh Gupta, IMA’s Raipur President and Vikas Agrawal were among the doctors who had earlier lodged the complaint.

As per the complaint, since over the last one year, Ramdev has been allegedly propagating false informa-tion and his threatening statements on social media against medicines being used by the medical fraternity, Government of India, Indian Coun-cil of Medical Research (ICMR) and other frontline organisations in the treatment of Coronavirus infection.

There are several videos of him on social media in which he had alleg-edly made such misleading remarks, it said.

At a time when doctors, para-medical staff and all branches of gov-ernment and administration have been together battling COVID-19, Ramdev has been allegedly mislead-ing people about established and approved treatment methods, the complaint said.

Ramdev’s remarks on modern medical facilities and allopathy medi-cines, which have been curing over 90 percent of the patients, would put the lives of people in danger, it alleged.

“During the investigation of the complaint, it was found that his state-ments amount to a violation of the notification of the Chhattisgarh gov-ernment dated March 13 last year,” the official said.

The notification states that no person/institution/organisation will use any print or electronic media for information regarding COVID-19 without prior permission of the state’s Health Department. This is to avoid the spread of any rumour or unau-thenticated information regarding COVID-19.

From Page 1

MPOST BUREAU

DEHRADUN: The Uttara-khand government on Thurs-day lodged a case against a company and two private labs for fudging coronavirus test reports during the Haridwar Kumbh Mela in April.

The firm, Max Corporate Service, Nalwa Laboratories Private Limited of Hisar and Delhi-based Dr Lalchandani Lab have been accused of issu-ing fake negative test reports.

The Uttarakhand High Court had directed the state government to test 50,000 sam-ples daily to control the spread of Covid during the religious congregation, for which the Health Department awarded the contract to Max Corpo-rate Service, who further hired the two labs. Confirming the lodging of the case, DGP Ashok Kumar said the com-plaint was lodged on behalf of Haridwar Chief Medical Offi-cer Shambhu Kumar Jha.

He said the company and both labs have been booked under the Epidemic Diseases and the Disaster Management Acts besides Sections 120-B

(criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code.

The matter had come to light after a man complained to the Indian Council of Med-ical Research (ICMR) that he received a message on his mobile phone about his test report coming negative at the Kumbh even though he had not given a sample for it.

After receiving the com-plaint from the ICMR, the Utta-rakhand government asked the Haridwar district magistrate to investigate the matter and a three-member panel was con-

stituted for it.Preliminary investigations

revealed that many private labs roped in by the district Health Department issued fake Covid test reports in the name of random people on the basis of their identity cards and phone numbers.

It is suspected that more than one lakh such test results had been issued by the private labs, sources in the department had said. The labs apparently did so to meet the daily testing quota of 50,000 tests set by the Uttarakhand High Court, the sources said.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: India on Thurs-day said that Jammu and Kash-mir is an integral part of it and no amount of questioning can change the reality, an assertion that came following a letter by the Pakistan foreign minister to two top UN officials alleging a design by New Delhi to change the demographic structure of the region.

Spokesperson in the Minis-try of External Affairs (MEA) Arindam Bagchi also said that no amount of justification can make cross-border terrorism acceptable.

"The Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is an inte-gral part of India. No amount of questioning can change the reality. Also cross border ter-rorism is unacceptable and no amount of justification can make it acceptable," he said at a media briefing.

Bagchi was asked to com-ment on Pakistan Foreign Min-ister Shah Mahmood Qureshi's latest letter to the president of the United Nations Secu-rity Council and the United Nations Secretary-General.

In the letter, Qureshi alleged that India was chang-ing the demographic structure of Kashmir through the issu-ance of fake domicile certifi-cates and other measures.

He urged the UN Security Council to call upon India to reverse its actions, including those initiated on and after August 5, 2019.

Ties between India and Pakistan nosedived after a ter-ror attack on the Pathankot Air

Force base in 2016 by terror groups based in the neighbour-ing country. Subsequent attacks on an Indian Army camp in Uri further deteriorated the relationship.

Since then, India has not been having bilateral talks with Pakistan, saying talks and ter-ror cannot go hand-in-hand.

The relationship further dipped after India's warplanes pounded a Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp deep inside Pakistan on February 26, 2019, in response to the Pul-wama terror attack in which 40 CRPF jawans were killed.

The relationship hit rock bottom after India announced withdrawing Jammu and Kash-mir's special powers and bifur-cating the state into two union territories in August 2019.

Since then, Pakistan has been unsuccessfully trying to rally international support against India on the Kashmir issue.

India has been maintaining that the onus is on Pakistan to create an environment free of terror and hostility.

MEA also said that India and Pakistan have cleared all pending assignment visas.

“These are routine admin-istrative matters. I understand both sides cleared all pending assignment visas yesterday,” Bagchi said.

India has also asked Paki-stan to address the “shortcom-ings” in a bill brought out to facilitate reviewing the case of Indian death row convict Kulb-hushan Jadhav, saying the pro-posed law does not create a

mechanism to reconsider it as mandated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Bagchi criticised the provi-sion in the bill to invite munici-pal courts to decide whether any prejudice has been caused to Jadhav by Pakistan on account of its failure to pro-vide consular access in accor-dance the verdict of the ICJ.

He said the Review and Reconsideration Bill 2020 does not create a mechanism to facilitate effective review and reconsideration of Jadhav’s case as mandated by the judgement of the ICJ, adding municipal courts cannot be the arbiter of whether a state has fulfilled its obligations in international law.

India on Thursday also said early completion of the

disengagement process in the remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh could pave the way for both Indian and Chinese troops to consider de-escalation and ensure full restoration of peace and tran-quillity in the border areas.

Bagchi said such a step could enable progress in bilat-eral relations between the two countries.

“Early completion of dis-engagement in the remaining areas could pave the way for both sides to consider de-esca-lation of forces and ensure full restoration of peace and tran-quillity, and thereby enabling progress in bilateral relations,” he said replying to a question.

The 11th round of Corps Commander-level talks between the two sides was held on April 9 while the last edition of diplomatic negotia-tions under the framework of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordina-tion (WMCC) on border affairs took place on March 12.

It is learnt that another round of WMCC talks could take place soon.

India and China were locked in a military stand-off at multiple friction points in eastern Ladakh since early May last year. However, the two sides completed the withdrawal of troops and weapons from the North and South banks of Pangong lake in February fol-lowing a series of military and diplomatic talks.

The two sides are now engaged in talks to extend the disengagement process to the remaining friction points.

NEW DELHI: With Sri Lanka moving ahead with the China-backed Colombo Port City project, India on Thursday said it expects that the island nation will remain mind-ful of their "excellent bilateral cooperation", including for mutual security in the mari-time domain.

Asked about the project at an online media briefing, Min-istry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said India has been closely fol-lowing the recent developments from its security perspective.

The country has also taken note of the concerns raised in

Sri Lanka regarding several aspects of the framework for the Colombo Port City, he said.

"We expect that Sri Lanka will remain mindful of our excellent bilateral cooperation, including for mutual security in our shared environment, which includes the maritime domain," Bagchi said.

His remarks come weeks after the Sri Lankan Parliament approved the controversial Colombo Port City Economic Commission Bill, with the gov-ernment saying the Chinese-backed project would bring in investment and boost the island-nation's economy.

The opposition parties, however, had alleged that the bill would lead to the cre-ation of a Chinese colony in Sri Lanka.

The USD 1.4-billion Colombo Port City project, expected to play a key role in China's ambitious "Maritime Silk Road" project in India's backyard, is said to be the sin-gle-largest private sector devel-opment in Sri Lanka.

China has built the port city on reclaimed sea, adjoining the Port of Colombo.

On India-assisted proj-ects in Sri Lanka, Bagchi said the country has a very exten-

sive portfolio of partnership development projects in the island nation and it is in regu-lar contact with the Sri Lankan authorities regarding their implementation.

To a separate question on whether Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi could visit the United States before year-end, he said he does not have any informa-tion on this and an announce-ment of such kind of visits is made at an appropriate time.

On reports that some senior leaders from Myanmar have taken shelter in the northeast-ern states, Bagchi said the home ministry should be contacted

for queries of this nature."As regards the situation

in Myanmar, we support the ASEAN initiative and are in touch with the ASEAN coun-tries," he said. To a question on media reports about US-based Pakistan-linked chari-table organisations collecting funds in the name of helping India during the COVID-19 crisis, which could be used for sponsoring terror attacks, Bag-chi said, "We have seen media reports in this regard. I do not have any further details to share for the moment and we are try-ing to ascertain more informa-tion." MPOST

MPOST BUREAU

NEW DELHI: Several mem-bers of a parliamentary panel on Thursday questioned top Petro-leum Ministry officials over rising prices of petroleum prod-ucts and what is being done to check it, sources said.

Petroleum Secretary Tarun Kapoor and top officials of state-run firms IOCL, BPCL, HPCL and GAIL appeared before the Parliamentary Standing Com-mittee on Petroleum and Natu-ral Gas Affairs.

Several committee mem-bers, primarily those from opposition parties, posed questions on the frequent rise in prices of petroleum prod-ucts and said that it was severely impacting household budget of common people, according to the sources.

Ministry officials told the panel that prices of petroleum products are linked to interna-

tional crude prices, sources said.A member from the oppo-

sition strongly countered the officials' argument and said that even when the interna-tional crude prices come down, the prices in domestic mar-ket remain on the higher side, sources said.

Some members also said the decision on revising petroleum prices is often taken based on elections.

According to the sources, it was raised in the meeting that petrol price is above Rs 100 per litre in as many as seven states while it is hovering around Rs 100 in many others.

NEW DELHI: Around 3.5 lakh doctors of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) will partici-pate in a nationwide protest on Friday demanding a central law dealing with violence against medicos. IMA national presi-dent Dr J A Jayalal said besides its members, a number of organ-isations such as the Association of Physicians of India, the Asso-ciation of Surgeons of India, the Medical Students Network, Junior Doctor Network will par-ticipate in the protest.

In Bihar and central Kerala, doctors will close their clinics in the morning to press for the demand of a central law against violence against doctors. In the evening, public interaction has been arranged to form a coor-dination team in each branch of IMA to stop such violence from taking place.

Listing plans for Friday's protest, the IMA said memo-randums will be submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and senior ministers. AGENCIES

Parl panel questions top govt officials

over fuel price riseSome members also said the decision on revising petroleum prices is often taken based on elections

Case against firm, 2 pvt labs for fake test reports during Kumbh

Confirming the lodging of the case, DGP Ashok Kumar said the complaint was lodged on behalf of Haridwar Chief Medical Officer Shambhu Kumar Jha

J&K integral part of India: MEANo amount of questioning can change reality, asserts the Ministry

Assertion came following a letter by Pak foreign minister to two top UN officials alleging a design by New Delhi to change the demographic structure of the region

Expect Lanka to remain mindful of bilateral ties: India

IMA docs in nationwide

protest today

KOCHI: The Kerala High Court on Thursday reserved orders in the anticipatory bail application filed by Ayesha Sulthana who was booked on sedition charges in Lak-shadweep, but granted relief to the filmmaker by direct-ing police to grant interim bail in the event of her arrest after interrogation. The court also directed her to appear before the Kavaratti police for interrogation on June 20.

In the event of arrest after interrogation, she should be granted interim bail, Justice Ashok Menon said.

The allegation is that the filmmaker, while participat-ing in a debate telecast by a Malayalam news channel on June 7, made an assertion that the Central Government has used biological weapon against the people of Lakshad-weep. When the matter was taken up, Sulthana tendered an apology for making such a statement.

The filmmaker submitted that she never realised that usage of the word bio-weapon is an offence and the remark was made not intending to create hatred in the minds of the people. She said she was ready to appear before the police for interrogation but sought protection from arrest.

Opposing her anticipatory bail plea, the Lakshadweep administration submitted Sulthana promoted separatism and communalism even in the minds of school children by making such a statement. Counsel for Lakshadweep administration said the police never intended to arrest her and she should cooperate with the investigation. Only thereafter decision regarding arrest will be taken, coun-sel said. The crime was registered on June 9 for offences under Section 124-A (sedition) and 153 B (hate speech) of IPC on the basis of a petition lodged by a political leader residing at Kavaratti. AGENCIES

Kerala HC grants interim bail to Lakshadweep

filmmaker

O2 Express: Over 32,000 tonnes of LMO delivered in 54 days

NEW DELHI: The Railway ministry on Thurs-day said Oxygen Express' trains have deliv-ered 32,017 tonnes of liquid medical oxygen (LMO) in more than 1,830 tankers across the country in the last 54 days. While 443 Oxygen Expresses have completed their journey so far and brought relief to various states, one more is on the run with more than 78 tonnes of LMO in four tankers, it said in a statement.

PTI

5millenniumpost Nation mpKOLKATA | FRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021

Advance of monsoon unlikely in parts of northwest India: IMD

Sonia Gandhi taken both doses of vaccine: Cong

HEROIN WORTH RS 7 CRORE SEIZED, 2 ARRESTED IN ASSAM DIPHU (ASSAM): Two persons, including a wanted woman drug dealer, were arrested and heroin worth Rs 7 crore was seized from their possession in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district on Thursday, police said. Based on inputs provided by arrested peddlers about a Dimapur-based woman running a large drug racket, police personnel posed as potential customers who wanted to buy good quality heroin, an officer said. Though the woman was initially reluctant, she agreed to deliver the drug consignment and was nabbed, along with another person, with 164 packets of high-quality heroin weighing 2.12 kg at Janak Pukhuri in Khatkhati police station area, he said.

5 INJURED IN BLAST AT FIRECRACKER FACTORY IN PALGHARPALGHAR: At least five persons were injured, some of them seriously, in an explosion in a firecracker factory at Dahanu in Maharashtra’s Palghar district on Thurs-day morning, an official said. The incident took place at Dehne village around 11 am, said chief of the District Disaster Cell Vivekanand Kadam. The explosion was followed by a fire, he said. The area is over 125 km away from Mumbai. Fire engines from Dahanu and surrounding industrial areas were rushed to the spot, Kadam said.

KERALA: LOCKDOWN CURBS EASED, PUBLIC TRANSPORT OPENS THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: After 40 days of CO-VID-19 induced lockdown, Kerala on Thursday limped back to normal as the government eased the curbs allowing shops to open in a restricted manner andper-mitting public transport on a limited basis. In the major towns, where the Test Positivity rate (TPR) was less, people could be seen venturing out as the state was under lockdown since May 8. The chief minister had earlier said thatthere will be relaxation on the curbs in the state based on the average weekly TPR in Local Self Government bodies.

Nation Briefs

NEW DELHI: The Editors Guild of India (EGI) on Fri-day demanded that the FIR lodged by the Uttar Pradesh Police against a news portal and some journalists for circu-lating a video clip of an elderly Muslim man on social media be withdrawn immediately.

It said this wanton use of the law to criminalise reporting and dissent to harass indepen-dent media was condemnable.

The EGI condemns the fil-ing of the FIRs by the Uttar Pradesh government against The Wire and several jour-nalists, for their tweets on an assault on an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad on June 5, the EGI said in a statement.

It demanded that the FIRs be withdrawn immediately.

The Uttar Pradesh Police on Tuesday had filed a first infor-mation report (FIR) against Twitter Inc, Twitter Commu-nications India, news portal The Wire, scribes Mohammad Zubair and Rana Ayyub and senior journalist and author Saba Naqvi as well as Con-gress leaders Salman Nizami, Masqoor Usmani and Sama Mohammad for sharing on social media a video clip in which an elderly Muslim says he was thrashed by some peo-ple and forced to chant Jai Sri Ram .

Several media organisa-tions and journalists, besides

the ones charged by the police, posted this video on their social media feeds, the Guild said.

Subsequently, there was an alternative version offered by the Uttar Pradesh Police claiming that the assault was borne out of a dispute regard-ing a talisman' that the elderly man had sold to some peo-ple, which was also reported by these media organisations and journalists, it added. The Guild is deeply concerned by the UP police's track record of filing FIRs against journalists to deter them from reporting serious incidents without fear of reprisals, the EGI said.

The Guild said it is the duty of the journalists to report on

the basis of the sources and in case the facts become con-tested, later on, to report the emerging versions and facets.

For the police to wade into such professional calls by the journalists and attri-bute criminality to their actions is destructive of free-dom of speech, which is con-stitutionally protected and is an entrenched feature of the rule of law, the EGI said. Further it is quite evident that the police have been discriminatory in targeting those media organ-isations and the journalists when thousands had tweeted the video that has been critical of the government and its poli-cies, it added. AGENCIES

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Conditions are not favourable for further advance of the monsoon into Rajasthan, some parts of Pun-jab and Haryana, the India Meteorological Department said on Thursday.

However, there could be slow progress into some more parts of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh during the next two to three days, it said.

The Northern Limit of Monsoon (NLM) continues to pass through Diu, Surat, Nandurbar, Bhopal, Now-gong, Hamirpur, Barabanki, Bareilly, Saharanpur, Ambala and Amritsar.

"Large-scale atmospheric conditions are not favourable for further advance of the mon-soon into Rajasthan, remaining parts of Punjab, and Haryana and Delhi," the IMD forecast read.

Last year, the wind system had reached Delhi on June 25 and covered the entire country by June 29, according to Sky-met Weather, a private forecast-ing agency.

Mahesh Palawat from Sky-

met Weather said westerly winds have been blocking the advance of the monsoon in northwest India for the last three to four days.

"These winds will persist for another week. Hence, chances

are that Delhi will get mon-soonal showers only around the usual date of June 27," he said. The IMD said, "Moder-ate to severe" thunderstorms and frequent "cloud-to-ground lightning" are very likely over Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, east Madhya Pradesh, Chhat-tisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand on Thursday and Friday.

"This may cause injuries leading to casualties to people and animals outdoors," it said.

Fairly widespread rain-fall with isolated heavy to very heavy showers are very likely over Uttarakhand dur-ing the next two days under the influence of a Western Dis-turbance, the weather depart-ment forecast.

"A cyclonic circulation lies over Gangetic West Bengal and neighbourhood. Under its influence, widespread rain-fall with isolated heavy to very heavy falls are very likely over

Bihar, Jharkhand, West Ben-gal, Sikkim and Odisha during the next two to three days," the MeT office said.

Isolated heavy to very heavy rainfall is very likely over east Uttar Pradesh in the next two-three days under the influ-ence of a cyclonic circulation over east Uttar Pradesh and neighbourhood.

Isolated "extremely heavy" rainfall is predicted over Konkan and Goa and central Maharashtra during the next 24 hours as a result of an off-shore trough running from south Karnataka to north Ker-ala coast.

Rainfall recorded below 15 mm is considered light, between 15 and 64.5 mm is moderate, between 64.5 mm and 115.5 mm is heavy, between 115.6 and 204.4 is very heavy. Anything above 204.4 mm is considered extremely heavy rainfall.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Sonia Gandhi has taken both doses of the Covishield vaccine, the Con-gress said on Thursday follow-ing questions from the BJP and asked the government to follow the raj dharma' of vaccinating all Indians instead of creating non-issues.

The Congress president's daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has taken her first dose of the vaccine and her son and Rahul Gandhi will take his shot post Covid recovery as advised by doctors, party chief spokes-person Randeep Surjewala said while hitting out at the BJP for raising doubts on whether the Gandhis had got their jabs.

Several BJP leaders have raised questions over the Gan-dhis' vaccinations and accused them and the party of creat-ing "vaccine hesitancy" in the country.

"Instead of beating around the bush and creating non-issues, the Modi government should concentrate on vac-cinating 80 lakh to one crore

people daily in order to meet the target of 100 crore Indians by December 31, 2021. This is the only 'raj dharma' they need to follow after failing the people of India during the sec-ond wave of Covid," Surjewala said after the BJP sought vacci-nation details of the Congress' first family.

Harsh Vardhan is India's health minister and "he should know that Congress president has taken both the vaccination doses of Covishield", the Con-gress leader said.

"Shri Rahul Gandhi was scheduled to take the vaccina-tion on April 16, 2021. As he had minor flu symptoms, he was tested first and the RT-PCR test came positive on April 18,

2021. Post recovery from Covid and as advised about the vac-cine gap by doctors, he would be vaccinated," he said.

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi has also taken the first vaccination dose, he said. Thereafter, her husband tested positive on March 28 and since she was exposed, she and her husband will take the nec-essary vaccination shot after the mandatory vaccination period has elapsed, Surjewala said. He alleged that the Modi government and the health minister are "guilty of Hima-layan mismanagement of vac-cination" in India.

"The obduracy and incom-petence of the prime minis-ter and health minister have endangered the lives of millions of Indians leaving us unpre-pared and unprotected of a possible third wave of corona-virus," he said.

In the six months between January 16 to June 16, he said, only 3.51 percent of India's total population of 140 crore have been vaccinated with both doses.

Commuters wade through a waterlogged road after heavy rain, near Dashashwamedh Ghat in Varanasi, on Thursday

Sonia Gandhi

There could be slow progress into some more parts of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh during the next two to three days, says Met dept

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Suggesting PM Narendra Modi to acknowl-edge his mistakes, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thurs-day said that rebuilding India will begin only after the PM accepts his mistakes and seeks help from experts as living in denial will not solve anything.

While citing a report quot-ing World Bank’s data on pov-erty where India has a share of 57.3 per cent in rise in global poverty during the Covid pan-demic, the Congress leader said, “This is the result of the government’s pandemic mis-management, but we must look at the future now. Rebuilding our country will begin when PM acknowledges his mis-takes and seeks help from the experts.”

Gandhi quoted a graph of the report, which claimed that India has contributed most to the rise in global poverty dur-ing the pandemic and its share of global change is 57.3 per cent and 59.3 per cent for poor and middle-income groups

respectively.In an another develop-

ment, the three rebel MLAs of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), who formed Punjab Ekta Party, met Rahul Gandhi in Delhi and announced the merger of their outfit with the Congress.

The MLAs who met Rahul Gandhi include former Leader of Opposition (Punjab) Sardar Sukhpal Singh Khaira (MLA, Bholath); Sardar Jagdev Singh (MLA, Maur); and Pirmal Singh (MLA, Bhadaur).

The merger is seen as a shot in the arm of Punjab chief min-ister Amarinder Singh who is at the target of Navjot Singh Sidhu-led camp in the state. Amarinder Singh, ahead of his meeting with the party high command in New Delhi on June 3, had inducted three AAP rebel legislators –Sukh-pal Khaira, Pirmal Singh and Jagdev Singh Kamalu –into the party.

Notably, Khaira, who was a critique of Amarinder Singh, had quit the Congress and joined the AAP in December 2015.

Acknowledge mistakes to rebuild India: Rahul Congress leader targets PM Modi

SHIMLA: With Covid-19 second wave weakening in Himachal Pradesh, the state government has ramped up its vaccination drive reporting a coverage of the state's 39.6 per-cent population. State health department on Thursday released latest data about vaccination coverage in the state, besides districts showing the highest num-ber of people having been inoculated in the age group of 18 years and above.

Mission Director, National Health Mission, Dr Nipun Jindal said 21,88,947 persons have been administered the first dose of COVID-19 vac-cine, out of which 4,38,750 have also been given second dose of the vaccine.

These also include 85650 health care workers and 1,78,047 frontline workers have

received their 1st dose in the State. After the launch of vacci-nation drive for 18 to 44 years age group in the State on May 17 2021, a total of 2,03,487 peo-ple have been vaccinated within one month and this number

would further rise in the coming days. He said that from the commencement of the vaccination drive

in the country, a total of 9,84,687, 45+ age group and

7,37,076 of 60+ age group peo-ple have received their 1st dose of vaccine.

In the district wise details, Hamirpur has vaccinated the highest percentage of its popu-lation with first dose of the vac-cine covering 49.5% followed by Kinnaur and Bilaspur, in which 46% and 45.6% of the projected population of 18+ have been inoculated with the first dose of the vaccine. MPOST

40% vaccination done in Himachal Pradesh

‘Govt should inoculate all instead of creating non-issues’

‘FIR filed against journalists for sharing video of Muslim man be withdrawn immediately’

NEW DELHI: AAP’s UP in-charge and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh stated that for Ram temple, 12080 square meters of land was bought for Rs 18.50 crores, while 10370 square meters of land next to it was bought for only Rs 8 crores, this clearly shows that there has been corruption in the purchase of land.

“Even if the rate of 10370 square meters of land for 8 crores is considered cor-rect, then about 26000 square meters of land could be bought for Rs 18.50 crores, whereas only 12080 square meters of land was bought for 18.5 crores. The agreement, which Ram Janmabhoomi Trust, BJP and Vishwa Hindu Parishad were repeatedly referring to, was canceled on March 18, Ravi

Mohan Tiwari's name was not there in it, so why was his name included in the Bahanama later on. BJP Mayor Rishikesh Upad-hyay and Ravi Mohan Tiwari are relatives, Ravi Mohan Tiwari is the brother-in-law of Mayor Rishikesh Upadhyay. Ravi Mohan Tiwari's name was put in the agreement so that crores of rupees could be wasted by putting money in his account,” he claimed.

“Bharatiya Janata Party Mayor Rishikesh Upadhyay bought land worth Rs 1.90 crore from Mahendra Nath Mishra in the name of nephew Deep Narayan Upadhyay on June 7, its sources of income should be investigated. The accounts of Sultan Ansari and Ravi Mohan Tiwari should be investigated. If 17 crores went

to their account, where did they go? In Uttar Pradesh, if any purchase of more than Rs 50 lakh is done in the regis-try department, information is given to the Income Tax Department, in such a situation why was the information not given in this case of purchase of land worth 18.50 crores, 8 crores and 2 crores. The temple

of Lord Shri Ram is not being built because scam and corrup-tion is being done, the people of BJP and Ram Janmabhoomi Trust have eaten the money of Prabhu Shri Ram Mandir,” he said. Singh made a new dis-closure on Thursday regard-ing the land sold to the Ram Janmabhoomi Trust. He said, “Ever since I have disclosed that the agreement which the BJP, Ram Janmabhoomi Trust and Vishwa Hindu Parishad were repeatedly referring to, it was actually canceled on 18 March. 9 people were named in that agreement but Ravi Mohan Tiwari's name was not there. When Ravi Mohan Tiwari's name was not in the agreement, then why was his name included in the agree-ment later on. MPOST

ABHAY SINGH AND RAHUL SINGH

NEW DELHI/GHAZIABAD: Delhi Police on Thursday received a complaint against actress Swara Bhaskar, Jour-nalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Manish Maheshwari of Twit-ter India, and one Mohammad Asif in connection with their tweets related to the incident where an elderly was thrashed and his beard was chopped in Ghaziabad.

The complainant in the case, an advocate, told the Tilak Marg police station that some people have uploaded a viral video clip on social media which showed an old man identified as Abdul Samad Saifi being beaten up and his beard forcefully chopped off. It was also contended that the miscreants were from Hindu religious groups and they made Saifi chant "Jai Shree Ram" and "Vande Matram" against his wishes - a version consistently maintained by the victim and his family.

"The users of social media platform Twitter namely Md. Asif Khan (having Twitter han-dle @imMAKO2), Arfa Kha-num Sherwani (having Twitter handle @khanumarfa), on June 14 and Swara Bhaskar (having Twitter handle @ReallySwara) on June 15 through their Twit-ter handles got inspired from the incident and started propa-ganda to spread hate amongst the citizens," he wrote in his complaint.

This follows the Ghazi-abad Police FIR against Twit-ter, Washington Post columnist Rana Ayyub, Alt-New co-founder Mohammed Zubair and several others for allegedly tweeting information that the assault might have a commu-nal angle to it - a proposition considered by the police until recently.

While initial reports and material indicated a commu-nal angle, two of the arrested accused were also found to be Muslim, following which Zubair had retracted his tweets. Despite this, the police booked him.

While the victim and his family have maintained that Abdul was attacked because of his religion, the Ghaziabad Police have said that the attack was purportedly over an amu-let that Abdul allegedly sold to the prime accused Pravesh Gurjar.

Abdul's family has, how-ever, said that he does not sell amulets and neither had he done so ever.

The grounds on which the complainant in Delhi has sought an FIR against Bhasker and The Wire's senior jour-nalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani along with others is the same as the grounds on which the Gha-ziabad Police initially booked Zubair, Ayyub, Twitter, The

Wire and others.Naming Twitter, the com-

plainant in Delhi said, "More-over, Twitter Inc., Twitter Communication India Private Limited (TCIPL) and Mr Man-ish Maheshwari (Managing Director Twitter India) did not take any action to remove these false tweets knowing the fact that the incident did not have any kind of communal angle."

He further expressed his disappointment that the social media company had not tagged these posts as "manipulated" as it does according to its policy for several misleading or fac-tually incorrect information.

Significantly, an almost identical complaint has been filed with the Ghaziabad Police against the same peo-ple by Loni’s BJP MLA Nand Kishor Gurjar.

Meanwhile, the Ghaziabad Police on Wednesday night arrested two more accused - Intezaar and Bauna alias Sad-dam - in the assault case and is now searching for a local Sama-jwadi Party leader Ummed Pehalwan Idrisi, whom the police have charged with pro-moting enmity by circulating the video online.

While Facebook has not been accused in the FIR like Twitter, police mentioned that Facebook also did not make any efforts to fact-check Ummeed's and others' posts and let the misleading video circulate.

This follows another FIR against the SP leader in Bulandshahr on Thursday under sections of the Disas-ter Management Act, after he had made a visit to the victim's home, thereby allowing crowds to gather.

A senior police officer of the Loni border police station told Millennium Post that Ummeed was also booked in a case of cow slaughtering in 2017.

SP leader booked, plaints filed against

senior journo, Swara

GZB ASSAULT

Corruption in purchase of land for Ram temple: Sanjay Singh

12080 square metres of land was bought for Rs 18.50 crore, while 10370 square metres of land next to it was bought for only Rs 8 crore

NEW DELHI: Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari was questioned by the Delhi Police last month in connection with its probe into the 'COVID tool-kit' case, officials said Thursday.

They did not divulge fur-ther details, but said he was also questioned about the compa-ny's policy behind flagging tweets by users as "manipu-lated media".

This came after Twit-ter labelled as "manipulated media" a tweet by BJP spokes-person Sambit Patra on a Covid toolkit', attributed to the Con-gress, on how to target the Modi government over its han-dling of the coronavirus crisis.

A senior police officer said Thursday that a Delhi Police's Special Cell team, which is probing the matter, was sent to Bengaluru on May 31 where Maheshwari was questioned.

The row over the purported toolkit' escalated after the Delhi Police's Special Cell 'visited" two Twitter India offices on May 24 and served a notice, asking it to share information based on which it had classi-fied Patra's tweet as "manipu-lated media".

The police action drew sharp criticism from the oppo-sition Congress and Left which had accused the government of trying to stifle free speech and indulge in intimidation.

Protesting the Delhi Police "visit" to its offices, Twitter had said it was concerned about its employees and the potential threat to freedom of expression.

In response, Delhi Police had issued a release terming Twitter's statements "menda-cious", and designed to impede a lawful enquiry and seek "dubious sympathy". MPOST

‘Toolkit’ case: Twitter India MD questioned

Actress Swara Bhaskar

Police said that Facebook did not make any efforts to fact-check Ummeed’s and others’ posts and let the misleading video circulate

AAP leader Sanjay Singh during a press conference in New Delhi

UP FARMER FOUND DEAD WITH FEET TIED, MOUTH GAGGEDBAGHPAT (UP): The body of a 66-year-old farmer with his feet tied and mouth gagged was found in a village here on Thursday, police said, adding he was stabbed to death. The incident took place in Titrauda village and a case was registered in this regard at Singhawali Ahir police station. The victim used to of-fer loans to people at interest, police said, adding Rs 60,000 and a diary in which he maintained his accounts were missing. There were hilt mark injuries on his head and the body was sent for postmortem. A dog squad and forensic team visited the spot, Circle Officer Anuj Mishra said, adding further investigation in the case was on.

7 HELD WITH RS 1 CR MEPHEDRONEAHMEDABAD: The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in Gujarat arrested seven persons for alleged possession of 994 gm of mephedrone, a banned psychotropic substance, worth Rs 1 crore, on Thursday, an official said on Thursday. Acting on a tip-off, an NCB team caught drug suppliers and buyers who were in the process of striking a deal near Vadodara city, zonal director of the NCB’s Ahmedabad unit S K Mishra said. At least seven persons, including two women, were apprehended with 994 gm of mephedrone, he said, adding that the team also seized over Rs 7.5 lakh in cash and three vehicles from the accused. While all the accused were from different parts of Gujarat, the drug consignment is suspected to have originated from Maharashtra, Mishra said.

AMBANI SECURITY SCARE-HIRAN MURDER CASE

Nation Briefs

6 millenniumpostNationmpFRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021 | KOLKATA

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KIMIN (ARUNACHAL): In a statement seen as an implicit message to Beijing, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said that though India is a peace loving coun-try, it has the capability of reply-ing to aggression.

Dedicating 12 strate-gic roads constructed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) to the nation here, Singh described India as a priest of world peace but added any serious disturbance to peace and tranquility in border areas would have adverse implica-tions. “We seek world peace (but) if someone shows us an aggressive attitude, we will respond,” Singh said, adding the “new roads will help secure international borders.”

Singhs statement comes in the backdrop of China continu-ing to hold on to positions in Hot Springs and Gogra Post on the border, after clashes between the armies of the two

Asian giants in the bleak Gal-wan valley in Ladakh a year ago.

The defence minister said “last year in Galwan Valley, our soldiers displayed exemplary courage and valour in line of duty. I salute all brave soldiers who laid down their lives fight-ing for the nation.”

China also claims most of Arunachal Pradesh as its terri-tory and has dubbed it `South Tibet in internal maps.

The northern neighbour

which fought a bloody border war with India in 1962 when it invaded parts of Arunachal pradesh including Tawang, often sends border patrols into areas controlled by India.

In September last year, five young Arunachali hunt-ers were allegedly kidnaped by Chinese troops from Sera-7, in Upper Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh. The youth were later released in Anjaw district, around 800 km from

the state capital, after several days in Chinese custody.

With no let up in India-China border tension, the Modi government is now looking to expedite work on border infra-structure, especially on roads leading to forward areas in the frontier state.

Singh said, the 12 stra-tegic roads including 10 in Arunachal Pradesh and one each in Ladakh and Jammu & Kashmir, inaugurated during the day, would not only give a boost in connectivity but would facilitate faster movement of troops along the international border.

“The capability of BRO in constructing world class roads despite challenges, in tough and hilly terrain, (underlines) the mantra of Atma Nirbhar Bharat,” Singh said while laud-ing the road construction unit for its dedicated work. He said the road projects are part of the Act East Policy, envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“The budget for BRO has

increased manifold since 2013 and today stands at Rs 11,000 crore. The BRO since 2014 had developed a record 4,800 kilo-meters of border roads in the country,” the Defence Minis-ter said.

He added that the coun-try’s defence sector in the last few years had witnessed major changes including appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff for the first time. “Our vision is to produce our own weapons and if necessary export them to other countries,” he said.

The defence minister also claimed that development work in Northeast India had picked up pace under the Narendra Modi Government.

The development of the region remained stagnant after independence. However, after NDA came to power in 2014, the region witnessed acceler-ated development.

There are many chal-lenges due to its close prox-imity with foreign countries, Singh said.

PATNA: Rebel Lok Janshakti Party MP Pashupati Kumar Paras appeared to have scored a point on Thursday when he was unanimously elected as the new national president even as the faction headed by his cor-nered nephew Chirag Paswan dug in its heels and vowed to teach the “traitors” a lesson.

Paras was declared elected unopposed after no other can-didate filed his nomination

papers for the top post in the party which has been in turmoil since the Hajipur MP pulled off a stunning political coup ear-lier this week, catching Chirag off guard.

Addressing a crowded press conference later, Paras fumed when asked what would have late Ram Vilas Paswan, the par-tys founding president whose legacy is being invoked by both factions, made of the “chacha-

bhatija” (uncle-nephew) fight.“Things are decided in a

political party as per demo-cratic norms. And what would the uncle do if the nephew was hell-bent on making a tama-sha (spectacle) of himself ”, he shot back.

Paras, Ram Vilas Paswans youngest brother, has of late been critical of the stance adopted by Chirag, the late lead-ers son. MPOST

HYDERABAD: Chief Justice of India N VRamana on Thurs-day said he has sought the help of his counterpart in Singapore for establishing an International Arbitration Centre here to adju-dicate commercial disputes, as the city is well connected to the world geographically.

Chief Justice Ramana, who is camping in Raj Bhavan, in an informal chat said he also suggested that Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao provide support in terms of necessary infrastructure for the proposed facility initially.

"I spoke to the Chief Justice of Singapore... He wants some assistance from India about the artificial intelligence..

He wants to know how the Supreme Court is using Artificial intelligence.. And I requested him to help us estab-lish the International Arbitra-tion Centre because the world's best arbitration centre is in Sin-gapore. For that he agreed," he said. The CJI pointed out that most companies go to either London or Singapore to settle their disputes while Hyderabad is centrally located and well con-nected to the Gulf, European and Asian countries.

Established in 1991 as an independent, not-for-profit organisation, SIAC has a proven track record in providing neu-tral arbitration services to the business community. MPOST

MUMBAI: The Bombay High Court on Thursday extended the stay of Jesuit priest and activist Stan Swamy, an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, at a private hospi-tal in the city till July 5 after the medical facility submitted a report saying his health con-dition remains "critical".

Swamy (84) was shifted to the Holy Family Hospital in suburban Bandra for medical treatment from Navi Mumbai's Taloja prison, where he was lodged as an undertrial, fol-lowing HC's order on May 28.

Swamy, who suffers from several ailments, including Par-kinson's disease ( a brain disor-der) had moved the HC earlier this year through his counsel, senior advocate Mihir Desai, seeking treatment and interim bail on health grounds.

He had tested positive for COVID-19 at the private hos-pital and was shifted to the ICU. A bench of Justices SS Shinde and NJ Jamdar said on Thurs-day that Swamy's latest medical report submitted by the pri-vate hospital said while he had recovered from COVID-19, his health condition continued to be "critical" and he "required continued intensive care." "As per the report, there are seri-ous medical issues. In view of aforesaid report, we deem it appropriate to extend the stay of appellant till July 5," the HC said.

It directed that the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the prosecuting agency in the case, be given a copy of the medical report.

The bench directed the NIA to go through the report and make its submissions on Swa-my's plea on July 3, the next date of hearing.

The octogenarian tribal rights activist, who hails from Jharkhand, was arrested in October 2020 and has been in jail since then.

Meanwhile, The National Investigation Agency (NIA) told the Bombay high court Thursday that the agency has denied the claims of tampering of electronic evidence in the Elgar Parishad-Maoists Links case that were made by a US-based forensic firm. MPOST

OUR CORRESPONDENT

MUMBAI: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday arrested former `encounter specialist’ police officer Pradeep Sharma in the case of Antilia bomb scare and Mansukh Hian murder, claiming that Hiran was killed at Sharma and Sachin Waze’s behest as part of a “larger conspiracy”.

It also arrested two others, who allegedly killed Hiran, a Thane businessman. Sharma, a fifth police official (serving or former) to be arrested in the case, and the other two were remanded in the NIA’s custody till June 28 by a court here..

So far the central agency has arrested ten persons in the case. An explosives-laden SUV was found near industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s south Mum-bai residence ‘Antilia’ on Febru-ary 25. Mansukh Hiran, who claimed that the vehicle had been stolen from his posses-sion, was found dead in Mum-bra creek on March 5.

An NIA team picked up

Sharma from Amby Valley near the hill station of Lonavla on Wednesday night and brought him to its office in south Mum-bai for questioning, said an official.

The agency also conducted a raid at his residence in J B Nagar in Mumbai’s Andheri (East) suburb around 6 am and later placed him under arrest. Besides Sharma, the NIA also arrested Satish alias Tanni bhai alias Vicky Baba, and Manish Soni from suburban Malad.

The central agency got “con-crete evidence” against Sharma after the interrogation of San-tosh Shelar and Anand Jadhav who were arrested on June 11, said special public prosecutor Sunil Gonsalves while seeking custodial remand in the court.

Satish and Soni killed Hiran in a red Tavera car where Shelar and Jadhav were also present, and later the body was dumped in a creek, the NIA told the court. Fur-ther, the “murderers” called up Waze and Sharma right after killing Hiran on March 4, it said.

OUE CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The National Green Tribunal has stayed an office memorandum of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) which lists ports, harbours, jetties and dredging operations as non-industrial operations and states that it does not fall under the "red" category.

The Ministry had brought out notifications in 1989, with the purpose of prohibition/restriction of operations of certain industries to protect ecologically sensitive areas. The notification introduced the concept of categorization

of industries as " Red", "Orange" and "Green" with the purpose of facilitating decisions related to location of these industries.

The green panel said the office memorandum issued by the MoEF needs to be re-examined/revisited undertaking assessment and evaluation by an expert group of impact of setting up port on overall ecology of the area in question, comprising of at least five renowned experts, including expert in Marine Biology/ Ecolog and Wildlife Institute of India which may visit the site and interact with stake holders.

Ex-cop among 3 arrested by NIA

‘India priest of world peace, but capable of replying to aggression’

Swamy's stay at

pvt hosp extended

Pleas filed by accused based Arsenal report not maintainable: NIA

Paras formally elected LJP chief

CJI seeks Singapore's help for setting up Int’l

Arbitration Centre

Memorandum declaring port activities as non-industrial ops stayed

‘I salute soldiers who laid down lives fighting for nation in Galwan Valley’

Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh during inauguration of Kimin-Potin Road in Assam PIC/PTI

Stan Swamy

OUR CORRESPONDENT

KOLKATA: In the recently-concluded state Assembly polls, the BJP was able to win only 60 seats out of 126 state Assem-bly seats which fall under the 18 Lok Sabha constituencies won by the BJP MPs in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. However, in 2019 Lok Sabha polls BJP had managed to take a lead in 96 assembly segments in these 18 parliamentary constituencies.

This indicates a poor perfor-mance by the BJP MPs in Bengal in comparison to that of 2019 Lok Sabha polls. A thorough analysis of the assembly wise seats that falls under the par-liamentary constituencies of 18 BJP MPs, who had won during 2019 Lok Sabha polls, revealed that the saffron party has per-formed the worst in Hooghly and Jhargram district.

BJP has lost in all the seven assembly seats that come under MP Locket Chatterjee in Hooghly district and Kumar Hembram in Jhargram district. During Lok Sabha polls, BJP had led in all these assembly seats.

In the Medinipur parliamen-tary constituency that comes under BJP state president Dilip Ghosh, the saffron party man-aged a lead in only 1 assembly constituency whereas during Lok Sabha 2019, BJP had a lead in 5 seats. In the Asansol Lok Sabha constituency under Union minister Babul Supriyo where BJP managed a lead in all the seven assembly seats in 2019 has secured lead in only two seats this time.

In Barrackpore Lok Sabha in North 24 Parganas under Arjun Singh, BJP managed to win a single assembly seat while during 2019 it had a lead in 5 assembly constituencies.

The two MPs in south Ben-gal who could retain their lead in six seats even in this assem-bly polls are Jagannath Sarkar of Ranaghat and Santanu Thakur of Bongaon. The saffron party that had secured lead in all the seven ACs under Jyotir-moy Mahato in Purulia in 2019 managed to win in five this time while in the Bankura Lok Sabha seat where Subhas Sarkar led in all the seven seats, BJP managed lead in 4.

In Bishnupur where Soumi-

tra Kha is the MP, the saffron party secured lead in 5 seats in comparison to 6 in 2019. In Burdwan- Durgapur , BJP MP S.S. Ahluwalia managed to lead in three assembly seats but it slided down to a lead in a soli-tary seat this time.

The party MPs in North Bengal, however, have per-formed much better than their counterparts in South Bengal. BJP led in all the seven seats of John Barla in Alipurduar and in Cooch Behar where Nisith Pramanik is the MP , the saf-fron brigade led in six seats this time against 5 in the Lok Sabha.

BJP retained their lead in all three seats under MP Sukanta Majumder’s parliamentary con-stituency in Balurghat and Kha-gen Murmu’s in Malda North.

In the Raiganj parliamen-tary segment that comes under Union minister Debasree Chow-dhury BJP had a lead in 4 seats but managed to win in only two seats this time. In the Jalpaiguri seat under MP Jayanta Kumar Roy, BJP led in only 3 seats this time against six seats in 2019 while in Raju Bista’s Darjeel-ing, the party managed to win in five seats this time against six in 2019.

Most BJP MPs in Bengal fail to deliver in last elections

BJP won only 60 of 126 seats under 18 Lok Sabha constituencies the party had bagged in 2019

MPs 2019 2021

Dilip Ghosh (Medinipur) 5/7 1/7

Locket Chatterjee (Hooghly) 7/7 0/7

Babul Supriyo (Asansol) 7/7 2/7

Debasree Chowdhury (Raiganj) 4/7 2/7

Jyotirmoy Mahato (Purulia) 7/7 5/7

Subhas Sarkar (Bankura) 7/7 4/7

Soumitra Kha (Bishnupur) 6/7 5/7

Nisith Pramanik (Cooch Behar) 5/7 6/7

Arjun Singh (Barrackpur) 5/7 1/7

Santanu Thakur (Bongaon) 6/7 6/7

Jagannath Sarkar (Ranaghat) 6/7 6/7

Sukanta Majumdar (Balurghat) 3/7 3/7

S.S Ahluwalia (Burdwan-Durgapur)

3/7 1/7

Kumar Hembram (Jhargram) 5/7 0/7

Raju Bista (Darjeeling) 6/7 5/7

Khagen Murmu (Malda North) 3/7 3/7

John Barla (Alipurduar) 7/7 7/7

Jayanta Kumar Roy (Jalpaiguri) 6/7 3/7

Report Card of 18 BJP MPs

Represented by Locket Chatterjee, Hooghly is the worst-performing constituency where the party didn’t win even a single seat

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: The Indian gov-ernment is actively engaged with Dominica to seek early deportation of fugitive dia-mond merchant Mehul Choksi and his handover to India, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday.

A Dominican magistrate court adjourned till June 25 the hearing into alleged illegal entry of Choki into the Carib-bean island nation, local media there had reported earlier this week.

Asked about Choksi at an

online media briefing, Minis-try of External Affairs Spokes-person Arindam Bagchi said he continues to be in the custody of authorities in the common-wealth of Dominica and legal proceedings are underway.

“Government of India is actively engaged with the Dominican government to seek the early deportation and handover to India of Mehul Choksi to face justice in our country,” he said. “The criminal charges that Mehul Choksi faces in India and the facts relating to his continued Indian citizenship have been suitably brought to the atten-tion of the authorities in the commonwealth of Dominica,” the MEA spokesperson said.

On Monday, the magistrate court was to start hearing the case of Choksi’s “illegal entry”

into the country on May 23 but he was a “no show”, a media website Natureislenews had reported.

Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi had fled India in the first week of January, 2018, weeks before the scam in the Punjab National Bank rocked the Indian banking industry.

Nirav Modi escaped to Europe and was finally held in London where he is contesting his extradition to India, while Choksi took citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda in 2017 where he was staying since his escape from Delhi.

Govt actively engaged with Dominica for Mehul Choksi’s early deportation, says MEA

Mehul Choksi

KOLKATA/ NEW DELHI: There have been zero cattle smuggling incidents to Bangla-desh this year from one of the country’s most notorious fronts in West Bengal, a first since the Modi government declared in 2014 that the crime has to stop at any cost.

The Kolkata-based south Bengal frontier of the Bor-der Security Force (BSF) is tasked to guard 913.32 kms of the India-Bangladesh interna-tional border (IB) out of the total 4,096 kms, running across five states and it has recorded official figures to claim that no cattle was smuggled from its side till May, 2021.

Former Union home min-ister and current defence min-ister Rajnath Singh, while officiating as the chief guest of the 49th BSF raising day on December 1, 2014 in Delhi, had first told the force that it “should stop the smuggling of cows and cattle at this border at any cost.”

He reiterated this stand at various other public events even as similar assertions were made by other ministers and BJP chief ministers.

The data shared with the BSF headquarters in Delhi and the Union home ministry has been accessed by the news agency and it says that there has been a “significant” curb on this crime under this front, that used to have a 75 per cent share out of the total cattle smuggling prevalent along this border.

This frontier has jurisdic-tion over five border districts of West Bengal: North 24 Parga-nas, South 24 Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad and Malda, and only 405 kms or 44.34 per cent of the boundary is fenced as a large part is riverine, has char-

lands and at certain places vil-lages are right on the IB.

The data said while 710 cat-tle heads were seized by BSF personnel till May this year, a consistent decline was noticed with 51,443 seizures in 2017, 38,657 in 2018, 29,720 during 2019 and 5,445 cattle seized last year.

It adds that zero number of cattle reached Bangladesh from this front this year till May and a similar decline in these num-bers was noticed beginning with 8.69 lakh in 2017, 5.22 lakh in 2018, 1.23 lakh in 2019 and 3,628 last year.

The data report said as no cattle was smuggled, no gov-ernment auction of cattle could take place this year in Bangla-deshi corridors opposite this frontier like Jessore, Kushtia and Rajshahi.

Frontier chief Inspector General (IG) Ashwini Kumar Singh said the figures are believable when asked about the authenticity of the data. PTI

‘Cattle smuggling to B’desh halted from S Bengal front’Ex-HM had appealed to Army that it ‘should

stop smuggling of cows, cattle at any cost

7millenniumpost Editorial mpKOLKATA | FRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021

Future in the remaking

Undoing injustice

The proposed MPD could make incremental progress but is likely to leave larger issues of management, governance, resource upgrade and structural problems unanswered

Goa has come a long way in improving its economic situation in the 75th year of its independence from the exploitative clutches of Portugal

Governments by their very nature are sta-tus quoist in tem-perament. At best,

only when driven by external pressures, do they opt for a change, that too an incremen-tal one only. Bureaucratic ver-biage allows for this change to be called transformative or a futuristic vision, depending on who is to be addressed in the PTB (powers that be). As a PR pitch, the big words also come in handy for the citizens to dream of living in a world-class city, on some day in the future.

The vision for the city, as contemplated in the new Master Plan Document, is as it should be. It is stated with solemnity ‘to foster a sustain-able, livable and a vibrant Delhi by 2041’. No one can argue with this ambition. Indeed, Delhi should have been all of this by now. Sadly, it is not. Thirty per cent of the city’s popula-tion still lives in illegal colo-nies, amidst unhealthy and unhygienic conditions. These residents actually contribute to the needed services of the city dwellers and bring conve-nience to their lives. Neverthe-less, the vision ‘to foster…’ is highly desirable and there can be no argument on that.

The proposed MPD is a set of objectives to be fulfilled over the next two decades. This is the fourth such set of a vision document that the city seeks to outline as its guidance for the next two decades. Previous three Master Plans had many good features, but those fell short of the city’s needs. Pri-marily, in each of these efforts, we have been beaten by the volumes. Population estimates have been wide off the mark on each occasion, putting every civic facility in a huge defi-cit. Delhi has attracted every kind of seekers of education, jobs and businesses. The city offers economic opportunity in terms of schools and univer-sities, healthcare and employ-ment at every level. The city is relatively safe, at least in the populated areas, and has a good transit system for com-muters. But, even now, the pro-posed strategies will fall well short of what the city needs.

Even though the rate of pop-ulation increase may have slowed, the absolute num-bers will continue to impose pressure on all civic services for a long time in the future. We need to devote attention towards augmentation of pri-mary civic infrastructure — both in quantity and quality. The qualitative dimension assumes greater significance if we have to combat pandemic-like disasters in the future. Only ensuring hygiene and sanitation is the way forward.

The intention to make the city a 24-hour live and vibrant one is very welcome. It really should have been one, some 15 years ago. Yes, cultural spaces, heritage sites and leisure ven-ues ought to have been mul-tiplied many times over. The ones that we have are subject to so much conditional usage that it becomes a nightmare to use any venue, because to get clearances and permis-sions for programmes and other things is a difficult task. Much more convenient is to go to any farmhouse on the outskirts and arrange a social evening by paying under the table a ‘do-not-disturb’ fee. Why should some of the her-itage sites not be usable for cultural and social events is a mystery. It would fetch reve-nues, offer great venues to the populace and, in the end, mul-tiply leisure spaces. Why sports

centres across the city should not have a competent manage-ment and why can’t there be an upgradation of its open spaces for better cultural space and dining on a pay and use basis? Why should their manage-ment be in the hands of gov-ernment agencies not familiar with the ‘service culture’? No matter how hard it tries, a gov-ernment facility will always fall short of best service standards — be it a hotel, or a cultural unit. Anyway, these are issues of detail, it suffices to say that only an imaginative bureau-cracy can create public assets and then withdraw into the shadows leaving good systems to flourish. It needs foresight and oversight frameworks. At best, these are managerial issues and can happen easily if there is a political and bureau-cratic will. We hope that there is plenty of both in the future as the evidence from the past is lacking. Even though their own facilitative and enabling roles have been recognised but, to make this a reality, there is a need for a heavy dose of humil-ity in the bureaucracy.

The city has multiple issues — from governance to manage-ment and resource upgrades to fundamental structural prob-lems. Possibly the proposed MPD cannot address them. Multiplicity of city manage-ment agencies, poor civic man-agement for an array of reasons

and other unseen layers that stall decision making in the public interest remain linger-ing hindrances. The proposed solutions will result in incre-mental change at best, while the deficits of civic infra will continue to multiply. The main question is: What kind of a city do we want? Surely clean, green and user-friendly top the list of desires. To get these, it is the administrative framework that needs to be tightened. We have to simplify and digitise governance systems. There are ambitions to expand and dwell on land pooling and transit-oriented commercial and res-idential development. Some SOPs have been added like the higher FARs. But what should be of concern is the kind of net result that we intend. Both land supply and land use have been issues of vital concern and have never been addressed in a holistic manner. The most notable consequence of leav-ing the management of mas-ter plans in the hands of the authorities or the municipal bodies is that we have a city where 90 per cent of the build-ings, including DDA’s own complexes, are in violation of existing norms. No correc-tion is possible even if a very brave heart were to attempt it. Can we not simplify the bye-laws to make them more com-patible with the needs of the increasing pressure on decent

housing. There is now even a selectivity in expanding FARs in transit nodes specifically reserved for development. Why should FAR expansion and height limits be rational-ised and balanced all around. FAR management is key to the city’s growth, coupled with increased connectivity. Going vertical has, once again, not found favour with the plan-ners. Evidently, the limitations of the fire services continue to be the stumbling block. This ceiling on the potential of the city’s development options has to be broken. There are solu-tions and we have to get them.

We have once again laid an emphasis on waterfront devel-opment, with walkways and amusement parks. Waterfronts in any part of the world are a prime and precious asset of cit-ies and they need to be trea-sured as such. Our efforts to clean the Yamuna have been a string of failures for various reasons. We have allowed the flood plains of the Yamuna to be subjected to all kinds of heartless abuse. Our ‘nullahs’ are extremely toxic, letting out foul air and pollutants. Can we pay attention here instead of the beatification of small acre-age? The river Thames took the authorities fifty years to do the cleanup. Certainly, investment is needed. Monetisation options are available to the authorities and those need to be used.

The plan as proposed is fine as far as it goes. At one level, it recognises the limitations and legacy deficits, but shows lit-tle confidence to resolve them. What we need is a convergence of thought, energy and action amongst the layers of admin-istration that currently keep on padding and reinforcing their ivory towers. Funda-mental issues need frank and honest answers. The current opportunity is, in all probabil-ity, the last one before the city goes down irretrievably and no brand of cosmetic will ever make it sparkle again. There-fore, we need to think on the scale of magnificence, and dare to implement that scale.

The writer is the now retired-Director of the India

Habitat Centre. Views expressed are personal

RAJ LIBERHAN

SATISH SINGH

Log on to write letters to the editor or send them to letter2editor.mp@gmail.com. You can also send your comments to The Editor,

Millennium Post, Pratap Bhawan, 5 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, New Delhi 110 002

DearEditor

This is in reference to the editorial ‘Small victory’. In an attempt to bolster its image as a ‘majboot sarkar’, this government treats dissenters and activists as anti-nationals and has no hesitation in charging them under the tough sedition laws where it is hard to obtain bail, resulting in a long suffering for the accused. Even after the bail was granted to the accused by the HC referred to in the edit piece with some scorching comments, the police have found some excuses not to release them. The alacrity with which the Uttar Pradesh government has gone after the well-known government baiters for their tweets does not bode well for the future of the nation. Sane voices in the nation are silent fearing trouble. These are ominous signs for democracy in the country!

Goans are celebrat-ing the 75th anni-versary of the Goa Liberation Move-

ment today. The state achieved independence from 450-year long colonial rule by the Portu-guese on December 18, 1961,

The liberation movement was started by Ram Mano-har Lohia on June 18, 1946. Juliao Menezes, who was origi-nally an inhabitant of Goa, also played a crucial role along-side Lohia. They together pio-neered the civil disobedience movement against Salazar’s dictatorial regime in Goa, and led many other movements against the Portuguese further.

Menezes attended Berlin University in the 1920s and graduated in medicine; he met Lohia at the same university. On 10th June 1946, Lohia vis-ited Menezes at his Goa home in Assolna, where they dis-cussed the prevailing situation in the state and decided to pro-test against the ban on public meetings imposed by the Por-tuguese government. This is said to be the first civil disobe-dience movement against Por-tuguese rule. The movement that started with small revolts in the 19th century, gained greater momentum during the period between 1940 and1961.

The Portuguese defeat in Goa could be attributed to cer-tain causes. Firstly, the Por-tuguese commerce across western Portugal lost its empire due to the changing world order resulting from the second World War; colonial-ism was no longer accepted

across the world. Secondly, the power centre shifted from Europe to America. Thirdly, the Portuguese administration in Goa was very corrupt, brib-ery had become a norm, and Portuguese officers were self-ish. Also, the top generals had died in the war, and lower rank officers were incapable of con-tinuing the Portuguese rule.

Delving deeper into the history, in 1492, Goa became a part of Adil Shah’s Bijapur Sul-tanate with Goa Velha declared as the second capital. The Por-tuguese, under the leadership of Afonso de Albuquerque, the second viceroy, invaded Goa in 1510 for defeating the Bija-pur Sultanate and succeeded in the attempt with the help of the Hindu Vijayanagar empire.

Goa was the base for Albu-querque’s conquest of Malacca in 1511 and Hormuz in 1515. Even, Albuquerque started a

Portuguese mint in Goa. Albu-querque wanted to make it a colony and a naval base. Goa was also made capital of the Portuguese Kingdom in Asia.

Portuguese control over the sea of South Asia enabled control over the lucrative spice trade during the 16th century. At that time, agriculture was the main source of income for two-thirds of the population of Goa. Apart from this, mango, cashew, coconut, banana, pine-apple, jackfruit, paddy, ragi, sugarcane, groundnut, brin-jal gourd, long beans etc. were cultivated in Goa.

Goods from all eastern countries were available at the Goa market. Bahrain’s pearls, China’s porcelain and silk, Por-tugal’s velvet, and drugs etc. were among the products.

Portugal had a service-based mixed economy in which the government had pri-

vatised many state-controlled firms. However, their econ-omy was running with the help of revenue and trade benefits which particularly came from Goa. Their main goal was to trade, and not conquest.

Portuguese made no capi-tal investment in Goa. They instead went for reckless exploitation of mineral wealth in this small area. As many as 375 mining leases for the extraction of iron and manga-nese ores were made. Despite being the world’s richest coun-try at the time, Portugal didn’t use the revenue and profits rationally. As a result, they gradually became one of west-ern Europe’s poorest countries in the 20th century.

After independence, Goa accelerated its efforts for improving the economic con-ditions. The state’s economy is now in good condition. Agri-

culture remains the backbone of the economy by providing livelihood to two-thirds of the population. Northern Goa borders Maharashtra while the southern area is bordered by Karnataka. Goa has a good treasure of biodiversity, spices and other agricultural pro-duce. Besides, Goa also has a strong presence in mining, tourism, and pharmaceutical sectors.

According to the Eco-nomic Survey, the gross state domestic Product (GSDP) of Goa showed a 12.14 per cent growth during 2017-18 over the previous fiscal. The state government, during the bud-get 2019-20, estimated the state GDP at Rs 84,889 crore. The GSPD estimates at cur-rent prices for the year 2020-21 (advanced) is estimated at Rs 92,261 crore. Goa’s per capita income (advanced) at current prices is Rs 5.92 lakh which is the highest in the country.

Goa’s economic growth is driven by the splendid per-formance of industrial sec-tors such as mining, tourism, and pharmaceuticals. In the sector of power generation also, Goa is steadily becoming self-reliant. For example, as of November 2020, Goa had a total installed power genera-tion capacity of 584.83 Mega-watt (MW).

There is no doubt that the economic condition of Goa was not good at the time of the Portuguese, but today, the economic condition of Goa is constantly improving.

Views expressed are personal

Thirty per cent of Delhi’s population still live in illegal colonies, amidst unhealthy and unhygienic conditions

— ANTHONY HENRIQUES, MUMBAI via email

The 450-year long Portuguese rule in Goa had been a story of reckless exploitation

EDITORIALFor the future

In his speech at the recent G7 outreach meeting, PM Modi portrayed India as an ally of the G7 nations in defending ‘shared values’ from the threats of authori-tarianism and violent extremism. In another ses-

sion on ‘Building Back Together: Open Societies and Economies’ PM Modi stressed that the importance of ensuring advances in cyberspace remain in service of democratic values and not against them. In yet another session on ‘Building Back Greener: Climate and Nature’, the PM emphasised how developing nations need better access to transparent climate finance to promote a green shift as the world builds back its economy after the pan-demic. In yet another session still, PM Modi presented his mantra of ‘one world, one health’ wherein he empha-sised the central role of transparent and democratic soci-eties to prevent future pandemics. As such, he also used the occasion to once again seek support for India and South Africa’s endeavour at the WTO to get an intellec-tual property waiver on COVID-related technologies. All in all, even while he did not physically attend the confer-ence due to India’s ongoing COVID situation, PM Modi had a busy time at the recently concluded G7 summit. As may be gathered from the name of the sessions, the broad theme of this year’s G7 summit is to “Build Back Bet-ter”. But beyond assertions of simply doing better and a promise of future actions, this G7 summit did come with a tangible plan that may prove to be a bit of a dilemma for India. As it were, this summit was also the stage for the US and its allies to launch what could become a flagship proj-ect for the group — the Build Back Better World initia-tive of B3W for short. B3W is being envisaged as a massive global infrastructure initiative that will directly compete with China’s existing Belt and Roads Initiative (BRI). The launch of B3W is clearly tied in with the Biden admin-istration’s plan to counter China on relevant fronts. BRI is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship project aimed at cementing China’s place at the centre of much of the world. China’s ambitious project to connect China to the world through infrastructure currently spans over a hun-dred countries and could potentially cover as much as one-third of the total volume of global trade. China has spent trillions around the world funding infrastructure projects as part of BRI, frequently referring to the initiative as a ‘win-win’ deal. But many countries are understandably concerned by the BRI and China’s assertions of mutual benefit. Many of the countries where China is invest-ing money for infrastructure projects are poorer nations that cannot afford such projects by themselves. Instead of offering such projects as part of grants, China offers no-hassle loans based on opaque contracts. Many countries, including the US and its allies, have raised concern over China using ‘debt diplomacy’ to trap poorer nations into owing China money and favours. Concerns have also been raised about the disruptive nature of this development as the build-up of certain infrastructure locks the country into environmentally unsustainable activities. India too has significant concerns regarding the BRI and its hidden motives. Beyond suspecting China of using debt diplo-macy and other underhanded means, India also suspects China of using BRI development to slowly surround India with its military infrastructure. India has watched on at the alarms as China has made inroads into India’s neigh-bours and regional allies like Sri Lanka to secure facili-ties that could be used by the Chinese military to encircle India. India has, naturally, declined to join the BRI citing its objection with the fact that a part of the China-Paki-stan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that is being developed as a part of BRI goes through Pakistan-Occupied Kash-mir. But, even if India itself declines to join the BRI, it can-not afford to ignore it. Beyond the security concerns that the project poses to India, BRI is also a way for China to gain diplomatic goodwill and relations in India’s back-yard. India alone cannot take on BRI with its ever-expand-ing reach and extreme amount of capital. This is where the B3W could come in. The B3W plans for the G7 and its partners to mobilise private sector finance in four key areas: climate, health security, digital technology and gen-der equity. All this will be delivered with finance that will emphasise transparency. By itself, this could be an attrac-tive deal for India. While India stayed away from BRI for a number of reasons, there is no denying that India could benefit from being a part of such infrastructure devel-opment initiatives. But, more importantly, it will give India support only found in numbers to take on China and tackle its attempts to wean away India’s allies using the allure of its BRI. That said, India, by all accounts, is not jumping on the opportunity with unbridled enthusi-asm. Indeed, India has reacted with a cautious assertion that it will ‘study’ the proposal in detail before it can make a statement on where it stands with B3W. While India could join the initiative for security concerns as it joined the Quad, there is still much that isn’t clear about this new proposal. How will it be funded? What is the time-line? What will be the stipulations a country must fulfil to acquire infrastructure loans under this initiative? The G7 countries, particularly the US, would be particularly keen for India to join the initiative as Indian participation could give a huge boost to the B3W in India’s neighbourhood. But, for a country that values prudence and sovereignty in its foreign relations, there are important questions that India must get the answers to before it chooses to dive in.

Our ‘nullahs’ are extremely toxic, letting out foul air and pollutants. Can we pay attention here instead of the beatification of small acreage?

Despite being the world’s richest country at the time, Portugal didn’t use the revenue and profits rationally, gradually becoming one of the poorest western European countries in the 20th century

millenniumpost.in

TROUBLED TIMES

8 millenniumpostWorldmpFRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021 | KOLKATA

Vaccine effort turns into slog as infectious variant spreads

WASHINGTON DC: As cases tumble and states reopen, the potential final stage in the US campaign to vanquish COVID-19 is turning into a slog, with a worrisome variant gaining a bigger foothold and lotteries and other prizes failing to per-suade some Americans to get vaccinated.

The last half, the last mile, the last quarter-mile always requires more effort, Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Cen-ter for Disease Control and Pre-vention, said Wednesday.

While two of the states slammed hardest by the disas-ter, California and New York, celebrated their reopenings this week with fireworks and a mul-timillion-dollar drawing, hospi-talisations in parts of Missouri are surging and cases are rising sharply in Texas, illustrating the challenges the country faces this summer. One major concern is the highly contagious and potentially more severe Delta variant of the Coronavirus that originated in India.

While health officials say the vaccines are effective against it, the fear is that it will lead to outbreaks in states with lower vaccination rates.

The Delta variant has increased from 2.7 per cent of all cases in May to 9.7 per cent this month, Dr Rochelle Walen-sky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Pre-vention, said during a call for governors on Monday, accord-ing to details provided by the Washington governor’s office.

At the same time, states are convening focus groups to bet-

ter understand who is declining to get vaccinated, why, and how to convince them that getting the shot is the right thing to do.

It’s a race between the vac-cines going into people and the current or future variants, said Kansas Health Secretary Dr. Lee Norman. Average deaths and cases per day have plummeted 90 per cent or more across the US since the winter. But the pic-ture is uneven. Health experts cite two factors driving the surge there: the faster-spreading Delta variant and a reluctance among residents to get vaccinated.

The US is expected to fall short of President Joe Biden’s goal of dispensing at least one dose to 70 per cent of Ameri-can adults by July 4. The figure stands at about 65 per cent.

Elsewhere around the world, there have been glimmers of

hope, as India reopened the Taj Mahal amid a decline in new infections. In France, where virus cases are below 4,000 per day down from 35,000 in the spring authorities eased the requirements on wearing masks outdoors and said the nightly curfew will end this weekend.

Meanwhile, South Africa imposed tighter restrictions on public gatherings and liquor sales as hospital admissions due to COVID-19 increased by 59 per cent over the past two weeks, authorities said. New cases there have nearly doubled.

The recorded US death toll from COVID-19 hit 600,000 on Tuesday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Worldwide, it stands at 3.8 million, though both numbers are thought to be a significant undercount.

Meanwhile, the US Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion has classified the Delta, a highly transmissible COVID-19 variant first identified in India, as a “variant of concern.”

“The B.1.1.7 (Alpha), B.1.351 (Beta), P.1 (Gamma), B.1.427 (Epsilon), B.1.429 (Epsilon), and B.1.617.2 (Delta) variants circu-lating in the United States are classified as variants of concern. To date, no variants of high con-sequence have been identified in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement on Tuesday. The CDC said the Delta vari-ant shows increased transmis-sibility, potential reduction in neutralisation by some mono-clonal antibody treatments under emergency authorisa-tion and potential reduction in neutralization from sera after vaccination in lab tests. AGENCIES

US CDC classifies Delta variant as 'variant of concern'

WHO warns of fresh

Indonesia surge fed by

virus variantsJAKARTA: Indonesia's pres-ident ordered authorities to speed up the country's vacci-nation campaign as the World Health Organisation warned Thursday of the need to increase social restrictions in the country amid a fresh surge of Coronavi-rus infections caused by worri-some variants.

We need vaccination accel-eration in order to achieve com-munal immunity, which we hope can stop the COVID-19 spread, President Joko Widodo said in a remarks while visiting a vaccination center just outside the capital, Jakarta.

Widodo said he ordered his cabinet ministers and local gov-ernments to increase the num-ber of people vaccinated each day to 1 million by next month. He said Indonesia is currently vaccinating half a million peo-ple a day.

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, aims to inoculate more than 181 mil-lion of its 270 million people by March 2022, but authori-ties have only fully vaccinated 11.8 million people and par-tially vaccinated another 9.6 million others.

National COVID-19 task force spokesman Wiku Adisas-mito said the slow progress can be put down to limited global vaccine supply, the unprepared-ness of the national health sys-tem and vaccine hesitancy. The government has received 92.2 million vaccine doses so far.

Indonesia saw its number of confirmed new cases climb to nearly 10,000 a day on Wednes-day, an increase blamed on travel during last month's Eid al-Fitr holiday as well as the arrival of new virus variants, such as the the Delta version first found in India. In Jakarta the number of hospital beds occupied has shot up to 75% this week from 45% last week, government data shows.

The WHO in its situation report Thursday noted that Indonesia's drastic increase in bed occupancy rates is a major concern and necessitates in the implementation of stricter pub-lic health and social measures, including large-scale social restrictions.

With increased transmis-sion due to variants of concern, urgent action is needed to con-tain the situation in many prov-inces, it said.

Indonesian health officials say they've detected the Delta variant in Jakarta, Central Java and East Java provinces. They say they have spotted three of the four variants of concern flagged by the WHO. AGENCIES

US govt ends strict Trump-era asylum rules for violence victimsWASHINGTON DC: The US government on Wednes-day ended two Trump admin-istration policies that made it harder for immigrants fleeing violence to qualify for asylum, especially Central Americans.

Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a new policy saying immigration judges should cease following the Trump-era rules that made it tough for immigrants who faced domestic or gang vio-lence to win asylum in the US. The move could make it easier for them to win their cases for humanitarian protection and was widely celebrated by immi-grant advocates.

The significance of this can-not be overstated, said Kate Melloy Goettel, legal director of litigation at the American Immigration Council. This was one of the worst anti-asylum decisions under the Trump era, and this is a really important first step in undoing that.

Garland said he was mak-ing the changes after President Joe Biden ordered his office and the Department of Homeland Security to draft rules address-ing complex issues in immigra-tion law about groups of people who should qualify for asylum.

The changes come as US immigration authorities have reported unusually high numbers of encounters with migrants on the southern bor-der. In April, border officials reported the highest number of encounters in more than 20 years, though many migrants were repeat crossers who pre-viously had been expelled from the country under pandemic-related powers. The number of children crossing the border alone also has been hovering at all-time highs.

Many Central Americans arrive on the border fleeing gang violence in their coun-tries. But it isn't easy to qualify for asylum under US immi-gration laws, and the Trump-era policies made it that much harder.

More than half of asylum cases decided by the immigra-tion courts in the 2020 fiscal year were denials, according to data from the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review. Four years earlier, it was about one in five cases.

In the current fiscal year, people from countries such as Russia and Cameroon have

seen higher asylum grant rates in the immigration courts than people from El Salvador, Gua-temala and Honduras, the data shows.

One of the Trump admin-istration policies was aimed at migrants who were fleeing vio-lence from non-state actors, such as gangs, while the other affected those who felt they were being targeted in their countries because of their fam-ily ties, said Jason Dzubow, an immigration attorney in Wash-ington who focuses on asylum.

Dzubow said he recently represented a Salvadoran family in which the husband was killed and gang mem-bers started coming after his children.

While Dzubow argued they were in danger because of their family ties, he said the immi-gration judge denied the case, citing the Trump-era decision among the reasons.

Dzubow welcomed the change but said he doesn't expect to suddenly see large numbers of Central Americans winning their asylum cases, which remain difficult under US law. AGENCIES

Delta variant doubling every 11 days in England, finds study

LONDON: The number of people infected with the Coro-navirus is increasing rapidly in England, doubling every 11 days, which coincides with the Delta variant of COVID-19 becoming dominant in the country, a new study reports on Thursday.

The Imperial College Lon-don led Real-time Assessment of Community Transmission (REACT-1) analysis, based on over 100,000 home swab tests taken between May 20 and June 7, estimates that 0.15 per cent of people have the deadly virus, or roughly 1 in 670.

It found that the link between infections, hospi-talisations and deaths had

been weakening since Febru-ary, but since late April, the trend has been reversing for hospitalisations.

We found strong evidence for exponential growth in infection from late May to early June in the REACT-1 study, with a doubling time of 11 days on average for England, said Professor Paul Elliott, direc-tor of the REACT programme from Imperial's School of Pub-lic Health.

These data coincide with the Delta variant becoming dominant and show the impor-tance of continuing to moni-tor infection rates and variants of concern in the community, he said.

The findings come days after UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a month-long delay to an end to lock-down restrictions, citing the rising number of cases of the Delta variant first identified in India.

These findings highlight the stark context in which we took the difficult decision to delay Step 4 of the roadmap out of lockdown, said UK Health Sec-retary Matt Hancock.

Cases are now rising, but thanks to our incredible vac-cination programme and enhanced response pack-age including surge testing, we have the tools to curb the spread of this virus. AGENCIES

Iran nuclear deal with world powers hangs in balance as Islamic Republic votesDUBAI: Iran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers hangs in the balance as the country prepares to vote on Friday for a new president and diplomats press on with efforts to get both the US and Tehran to reenter the accord.

The deal represents the sig-nature accomplishment of the relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani's eight years in office: suspending crushing sanctions in exchange for the strict monitoring and limiting of Iran's uranium stockpile.

The deal's collapse with President Donald Trump's deci-sion to unilaterally withdraw America from the agreement in 2018 spiralled into a series of attacks and confrontations

across the wider Middle East. It also prompted Tehran to enrich uranium to highest purity lev-els so far, just shy of weapons-grade levels.

With analysts and polling suggesting that a hard-line can-

didate already targeted by US sanctions will win Friday's vote, a return to the deal may be pos-sible but it likely won't lead to a further detente between Iran and the West. "It's certainly not as complex as drafting a deal from scratch, which is what the sides did that resulted in the 2015 deal," said Henry Rome, a senior analyst focusing on Iran at the Eurasia Group.

But there's still a lot of details that need to be worked out.

He added: I think there's a lot of domestic politics that go into this and an interest from hard-liners, including the supreme leader, to ensure that their favoured candidate wins without any significant disrup-tions to that process.

The 2015 deal, which saw Iranians flood into the streets in celebration, marked a major turn after years of tensions between Iran and the West over Iran's nuclear programme.

Tehran has long insisted that its programme is for peaceful purposes. However, US intel-ligence agencies and Interna-tional Atomic Energy Agency say Iran pursued an organised nuclear weapons programme up until 2003. In order to ease the threat seen by the West, Iran agreed under the deal to limit its enrichment of ura-nium gas to just 3.67 per cent purity, which can be used in nuclear power plants but is far below weapons-grade levels of 90 per cent. AGENCIES

Internet outages briefly disrupt access to websites, apps

HONG KONG: A wave of brief internet outages hit the websites and apps of dozens of financial institutions, airlines and other companies across the globe Thursday.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange said in a post on Twitter Thursday afternoon Hong Kong time that its site was facing technical issues and that it was investigating. It said in another post 17 minutes later that its websites were back to normal.

Internet monitoring web-sites including ThousandEyes, Downdetector.com and fing.com showed dozens of disrup-tions, including to U.S.-based airlines.

Many of the outages were reported by people in Aus-tralia trying to do banking, book flights and access postal services.

Australia Post, the coun-try's postal service, said on Twitter that an external out-age had impacted a number of its services, and that while most services had come back online, they were continuing to monitor and investigate.

Many services were up and running after an hour or so but the affected companies said they were working overtime

to prevent further problems.Banking services were

severely disrupted, with West-pac, the Commonwealth, ANZ and St George all down, along with the website of the Reserve Bank of Australia, the coun-try's central bank. The Reserve Bank cancelled a bond-buying operation due to technical dif-ficulties facing several banks that were to participate. AGENCIES

Japan announces easing of virus emergency

TOKYO: Japan on Thurs-day announced the easing of a Coronavirus state of emer-gency in Tokyo and six other areas from next week, with new daily cases falling just as the country begins final prepara-tions for the Olympics starting in just over a month.

Japan has been struggling since late March to slow a wave of infections propelled by more

contagious variants, with new daily cases soaring above 7,000 at one point and seriously ill patients straining hospitals in Tokyo, Osaka and other met-ropolitan areas.

Daily cases have since sub-sided significantly, paving the way for Prime Minister Yoshi-hide Suga to downgrade the state of emergency when it expires on Sunday to less strin-

gent measures. The new measures will last

until July 11 just 12 days before the Games.

Suga said the relaxed mea-sures will focus on early clo-sures of bars and restaurants.

If another surge occurs and strains hospitals, we will quickly take action, includ-ing strengthening of the mea-sures," Suga said, addressing

concerns by medical experts.Holding the Olympics

before elections in the fall is also a political gamble for Suga, whose support ratings have tumbled over dissatisfac-tion with his handling of the pandemic, a slow vaccination drive and a lack of explanation about how he intends to ensure the virus doesn't spread during the Olympics. AGENCIES

The new measures will last until July 11 just 12 days before the Games

Palestinian teen shot by Israeli troops diesJERUSALEM: The Palestinian health ministry said Thursday that a Palestinian teenager who was shot by Israeli troops in the West Bank a day earlier has died of his injuries.

The Israeli military said Wednesday that a soldier sta-tioned near a wildcat settler out-post near the West Bank city of Nablus saw a group of Palestin-ians approaching, and that one hurled a suspicious object at him, which exploded adjacent to the soldier. The army said that the soldier fired in the air, then shot the Palestinian who threw the object. The Palestin-ian health ministry said Ahmad Shamsa, 15, died of a gunshot wound sustained a day earlier.

Earlier on Wednesday the Israeli military shot and killed a Palestinian woman whom it said tried to ram her car into a group of soldiers guarding a

West Bank construction site.In a statement, the army said

soldiers fired at the woman in Hizmeh, just north of Jerusa-lem, after she exited the car and pulled out a knife. The state-ment did not say how close the woman was to the soldiers, and the army did not release any photos or video of the incident.

In recent years, Israel has seen a series of shootings, stab-bings and car ramming attacks against Israeli soldiers and civil-ians in the West Bank. Most have been carried out by Pales-tinians with no apparent links to organized militant groups.

Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups say the soldiers often use excessive force and could stop the assailants without killing them. In some cases, they say that innocent people have been identified as attackers and shot. AGENCIES

Officer and suspect killed in shooting in north GeorgiaHOLLY SPRINGS: A police officer and a suspect were killed in a shooting that began with a traffic stop in north Georgia, authorities said early Thursday.

The encounter between the Holly Springs officer and a male suspect began in Holly Springs, a small city about an hour's drive northwest of Atlanta, accord-ing to a statement from the Georgia Bureau of Investiga-tion. The statement offered no more details. We are in the pro-cess of notifying the officer's family members and attempt-ing a positive identification of the suspect, Holly Springs police spokeswoman April Van Alstine said in a statement.

POLICE: 1 KILLED, 5 WOUNDED IN BALTIMORE SHOOTING

One person was killed and five others were wounded when gunmen walked up a street and opened fire on a Baltimore block from an intersection, the city’s police commissioner said.

Commissioner Michael Harrison said the shooting on Wednesday erupted in a west Baltimore neighbourhood and the conditions of the five wounded ranged from seri-ous to critical. He declined to release the identities of those who were shot.

Officers responded to reports of gunshots after 2 pm Wednesday and found two peo-ple shot, Harrison said. AGENCIES

Joe Biden PTI

The changes come as US immigration authorities have reported unusually high numbers of encounters with migrants on the southern border

Hassan Rouhani PTI

TENDER Tenders are invited from the intended individual, organisations, co-operative and companies for supply of food kit to SAM children of Nadia District for the period July’2021 to March’2022.

For details visit the office Notice Board at District Khadya Bhavan, 1st floor, Patra Bazar, Lichutala, Krishnaghar, Nadia.

By order District Controller (F&S),

Nadia

GOVERNMENT OF WEST BENGAL NOTIFICATION

PO & BDO, Ratua-II invites tender vide NIT No-01(e) of 2021-22/Ratua-II, Dt 14-06-2021. For details visit www.malda.gov.in

Sd/-

PO & BDO,

Ratua-II Malda

Memo No 359(2) DICO/MLD

Dt- 17.06.2021

GOVERNMENT OF WEST BENGAL Online application are invited in the website www.dakshindinajpurhealth.org from the eligible candidates of Medical Microbiologist, M.T. (Lab.), DEO. For details, please visit: http://www.wbhealth.gov.in, http://www.ddinaipur.nic.in & www.dakshindinajpurhealth.org.

Sd/-CMOH, D/Dinajpur

GOVERNMENT OF WEST BENGAL Notice Inviting E-Quoatation

EE, Kolkata South-II Division, H. Dte., 21, Bharat Sabha Path,Kolkata-12, invites e-Quotation (online) for the work videQuotation ref. nos.WBHOUSING/EE/KSII_D/e-NIQ_04, WBHOUSING/EE/KSII_D/e-NIQ_05 OF 2021-22& Tender ID Nos. 2021_HSD_333018_1to9, 2021_HSD_333020_1to5 respectively. Bid submission end date (Online) is 05.07.2021 at 1.00 PM.Detail inf./download/upload will be available from the website http://www.wbtenders.gov.in ICA- T6971(2)/2021

ICA- T6931(3)/2021

ICA- T6940(4)/2021

ICA- T6947(2)/2021ICA- T6954(3)/2021

ICA- T6956(4)/2021ICA- T6974(3)/2021

ICA- T6975(3)/2021

ICA- T6979(3)/2021

ICA- T6982(3)/2021

GOVERNMENT OF WEST BENGALWEST BENGAL HOUSING INFRASTRUCTURE

Memo No.:M-652/HIDCO/ADMN-3683/2019 Dated 17/06/2021 NOTIFICATION

The scheduled dates of lottery for 400 Cooperative plots on 28/06/2021 & 29/06/2021 and that of 80 EWS Flats on 30/06/2021 stand postponed in tune with the order of Govt. of West Bengal 753-ISS/2M-22/2020 dated 14/06/2021.The revised schedule for the said lotteries will be communi-cated in due course.

General Manager (Marketing) WB HIDCO Ltd.

ICA- T6977(3)/2021

9millenniumpost Business mpKOLKATA | FRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021

NAGPUR: Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday expressed disappointment over delays in development works due to stay orders issued by courts and said timely inter-ventions can help bring such matters to the notice of courts.

Speaking at the inauguration programme of Butibori flyover in Maharashtra’s Nagpur, Gad-kari said the work on the flyover had been stalled for some time, as the Bombay High Court had ordered a stay on the construc-tion, and the delay resulted in several accidents at the spot.

Gadkari said he had asked the concerned BJP MLA to intervene in the matter and bring the issue to the notice of the court, following which the stay was lifted.

I feel sad that very often work at accident-prone spots gets stalled due to stay orders from courts. If such things are brought to the notice of courts, then definitely such stay orders will get lifted. Many a times, work gets delayed, people have to face troubles and innocent people lose their lives because of such stay orders, he said.

Gadkari praised MLA Sameer Meghe, who inter-vened in the matter in the

Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court, and the stay order was vacated, paving way for the flyover to be completed. He also spoke about other devel-opment projects in Butibori, and informed that he would be adopting the Butibori munici-pal council.

Meanwhile, Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said his target is to reduce the num-ber of road accidents and resul-tant deaths by 50 per cent before 2024 and that efforts are also being made to improve the qual-ity of roads. He also lamented that cooperation from insurance companies with respect to road safety activities is negligible.

He made the remarks while addressing a virtual event organ-ised by industry body Ficci. PTI

NEW DELHI: Labour and Employment Minister San-tosh Gangwar on Thursday said India is committed to improv-ing employment outcomes for the youth in India.

According to a labour minis-try statement, Gangwar has said India is committed to improv-ing employment outcomes for the youth in India, including women and vulnerable section of the people, through an endur-ing, long-term commitment for

better opportunities. He said the government is making all-out efforts to improve the bridge between education and employ-ment, and to prepare young people for the future of work.

A number of policies and schemes have been undertaken for upliftment of the youth through skills development, employment generation and entrepreneurship programmes.

Gangwar was speaking after the signing of the Statement of Intent between the ministry and UNICEF here on Thursday.

He said that by leveraging the strengths of the ministry, UNICEF and associated net-work members, “we hope to

enable abundant choices for our young generation to contribute and shape our country’s future”.

He appreciated the idea of partnership between the labour and employment min-istry and UNICEF for empow-ering the youth to gain relevant skills and guidance. He said the collaboration is a starting point to facilitate direct dia-logue and feedback mechanism between the youth and other stakeholders. PTI

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI/ZURICH: Funds parked by Indian individu-als and firms in Swiss banks, including through India-based branches and other financial institutions, jumped to 2.55 bil-lion Swiss francs (over Rs 20,700 crore) in 2020 on a sharp surge in holdings via securities and similar instruments, though customer deposits fell, annual data from Switzerland’s cen-tral bank showed on Thursday.

The increase in aggregate funds of Indian clients with Swiss banks, from 899 million Swiss francs (Rs 6,625 crore) at the end of 2019, reverses a two-year declining trend and has taken the figure to the highest level in 13 years.

It stood at a record high of nearly 6.5 billion Swiss francs (CHF) in 2006, after which it has been mostly on a down-ward path, except for a few years including in 2011, 2013 and 2017, as per the Swiss National Bank (SNB) data.

The total amount of CHF 2,554.7 million (Rs 20,706 crore), described by the SNB as ‘total liabilities’ of Swiss banks or ‘amounts due to’ their Indian clients at the end of 2020, included CHF 503.9 million (over Rs 4,000 crore) in cus-tomer deposits, CHF 383 mil-lion (over Rs 3,100 crore) held via other banks, CHF 2 million (Rs 16.5 crore) through fiducia-

ries or trusts and the highest component of CHF 1,664.8 mil-lion (nearly Rs 13,500 crore) as ‘other amounts due to custom-ers’ in form of bonds, securi-ties and various other financial instruments.

While the funds classified as ‘customer account deposits’ have actually declined from CHF 550 million at the end of 2019 and those through fiduciaries also more than halved from CHF 7.4 million, the money held via other banks rose sharply from CHF 88 million in this period.

However, the biggest differ-ence has been a surge in ‘other amounts due to customers’ from India, which rose over six times from CHF 253 mil-lion at 2019-end.

All four components had declined during 2019.

These are official figures reported by banks to the SNB and do not indicate the quantum of the much-debated alleged

black money held by Indians in Switzerland. These figures also do not include the money that Indians, NRIs or others might have in Swiss banks in names of third-country entities.

According to the SNB, its data for ‘total liabilities’ of Swiss banks towards Indian clients takes into account all types of funds of Indian customers at Swiss banks, including depos-its from individuals, banks and enterprises. This includes data for branches of Swiss banks in India, as also non-deposit liabilities.

On the other hand, the ‘locational banking statistics’ of the Bank for International Settlement (BIS), which have been described in the past by Indian and Swiss authorities as a more reliable measure for deposits by Indian individuals in Swiss banks, show an increase of nearly 39 per cent during 2020 in such funds to $125.9 million

(Rs 932 crore).This figure takes into

account deposits as well as loans of Indian non-bank clients of Swiss-domiciled banks and had shown an increase of 7 per cent in 2019, after declining by 11 per cent in 2018 and by 44 per cent in 2017. It peaked at over $2.3 billion (over Rs 9,000 crore) at the end of 2007.

Swiss authorities have always maintained that assets held by Indian residents in Switzerland cannot be considered as ‘black money’ and they actively sup-port India in its fight against tax fraud and evasion.

An automatic exchange of information in tax mat-ters between Switzerland and India has been in force since 2018. Under this framework, detailed financial information on all Indian residents having accounts with Swiss financial institutions since 2018 was pro-vided for the first time to Indian tax authorities in September 2019 and this is to be followed every year.

In addition to this, Switzer-land has been actively sharing details about accounts of Indians suspected to have indulged in financial wrongdoings after sub-mission of prima facie evidence. Such exchange of information has taken place in hundreds of cases so far.

Overall, customer deposits in all Swiss banks rose in 2020 to nearly CHF 2 trillion, which

included over CHF 600 billion of foreign customer deposits.

While the UK topped the charts for foreign clients’ money in Swiss banks at CHF 377 bil-lion, it was followed by the US (CHF 152 billion) at the sec-ond spot -- the only two coun-tries with 100-billion-plus client funds. Others in the top 10 were West Indies, France, Hong Kong, Germany, Singa-pore, Luxembourg, Cayman Islands and Bahamas.

India was placed at 51st place, ahead of countries like New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Hungary, Mauritius, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Among BRICS nations, India stood below China and Russia, but above South Africa and Brazil.

Others placed above India included Netherlands, UAE, Japan, Australia, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Ireland, Turkey, Mexico, Austria, Greece, Egypt, Canada, Qatar, Belgium, Ber-muda, Kuwait, South Korea, Portugal, Jordan, Thailand, Sey-chelles, Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia and Gibraltar.

The countries for which Swiss banks reported a decline in amounts due to clients included the US and UK, while the money parked by individu-als and enterprises from Bangla-desh also declined during 2020.

However, the amount almost doubled in the case of Pakistan to over CHF 642 million.

OUR CORREAPONDENT

MUMBAI: The devastating second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in April-May is esti-mated to have cost the nation Rs 2 lakh crore in terms of out-put, revealed an assessment made by the Reserve Bank.

The second wave’s toll is mainly in terms of the hit to domestic demand on account of regional and specific con-tainment rather than a nation-wide lockdown, it said.

“The impact of the sec-ond wave is hence estimated at about Rs 2 lakh crore of lost 2021-22 output,” said a recent article on the ‘State of Econ-omy’, written by functionaries of the central bank.

Moreover, this wave has fanned into smaller cities and villages, sapping rural demand.

The support from govern-ment spending may also mod-erate from the extraordinary expansion undertaken last year, it said.

“On the brighter side, sev-eral aspects of aggregate supply conditions such as agriculture and contactless services are holding up amidst pandemic protocols. Industrial produc-tion and exports have surged on strong base effects, but there is also evidence of positive momentum,” the authors said.

They further said that “at the cost of reiteration, it is vac-cination which will shape the recovery.”

The article, published in the RBI’s monthly Bulletin, stressed that speed and scale

of vaccination against COVID-19 will shape the path of eco-nomic recovery which has the resilience and the fundamen-tals to bounce back from the pandemic and unshackle itself from pre-existing cyclical and structural hindrances.

Observing that vaccines by themselves will not end the pandemic, the article said “we have to learn to live with the virus, complementing vac-cines with ramping up invest-ment in healthcare, logistics and research.”

“The pandemic is a real shock with real consequences. Hence, there is a need to ensure that the recovery is built on a solid foundation of business investment and productivity growth,” it added.

The RBI said views expressed in the article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Reserve Bank of India.

For 2021-22, the Reserve Bank has projected real GDP growth of 9.5 per cent on the assumption that the impact of the second wave will be lim-ited to the first quarter of the fiscal in which strong base effects from last year’s pre-cipitous contraction will come into play.

Last month, the National Statistical Office (NSO) revised India’s real GDP for 2020-21, revealing a shallower contrac-tion (-7.3 per cent) than earlier estimated, with brighter out-come for the fourth quarter (January-March 2021).

Indians’ funds in Swiss banks jumps to over `20,000 crore

Funds witnessed increase on surge in securities & institutional holdings, while ‘customer account deposits’ have actually declined

2nd Covid wave shaved off `2 lakh crore output: RBI

‘The pandemic is a real shock with real consequences. Hence, there is a need to ensure that the recovery is built on a solid foundation of business investment and productivity growth,’ it added

NEW DELHI: The Indian economy requires a Rs 3 lakh crore fiscal stimulus, includ-ing cash transfer to households through Jan Dhan accounts to spur economic growth amid the pandemic, industry cham-ber CII said on Thursday and pitched for appointment of a ‘Vaccine Czar’ for speedy vac-cination coverage.

CII President T V Naren-dran also said the chamber expects GDP to grow at 9.5 per cent in 2021-22 as the strong growth in the second half of the fiscal year will be supported by robust external demand and large-scale coverage of vacci-nation, allowing resumption

of economic activity. He also advocated for appointment of a “Vaccine Czar” for speedy vaccination coverage. The new president said suitable fiscal measures to alleviate the stress of people impacted by the sec-ond wave of COVID-19 are the need of the hour.

The Indian economy is a consumption-led economy and the pandemic has impacted the consumer demand and due to this, the chamber has called for measures such as cash transfer as a number of actions are needed to deal with this demand shock, he told reporters. “Fiscal stimulus of Rs 3 lakh crore is required...

There is room for adminis-tering additional fiscal stimu-lus of up to Rs 3 lakh crore,” he said adding the Reserve Bank should expand its bal-ance sheet in order to accom-modate the increased stimulus so that lending costs remain contained.

Measures suggested by it include enhanced MNREGA allocations; short-term and focused GST cuts to boost demand; time bound tax relief/interest subvention/stamp duty concession for home buyers; LTC cash voucher scheme like last year; and extension of the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana till March 31, 2022. PTI

CII pitches for `3 lakh crore fiscal stimulus to push economic growth

NEW DELHI: The petroleum ministry has proposed amend-ments to existing law to include cleaner sources of energy like hydrogen within the definition of ‘mineral oils’ for which the government gives out licence to explore and produce.

Seeking stakeholder com-ments, the ministry said the Oilfields (Regulation and Devel-opment) Amendment Bill 2021 proposes to amend the present Act to “create opportunities for exploration, development and production of next-generation cleaner fuels and mitigate reg-ulatory challenges and risks.”

It also proposes a new defi-nition of ‘mineral oils’ by includ-ing within its ambit modern and cleaner sources of energy like hydrogen.

Conventionally, mineral oil is understood to mean hydro-carbons in various forms including natural gas and petro-leum oil.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Paris Climate Change Agree-ment, the global community is committed to developing and using clean energy sources. Hydrogen gas is one such clean source of energy, which can

be produced, distributed and regulated in conjunction with natural gas, it said.

“Presently, the Oilfields (Regulation & Development) Act, 1948 deals with ‘mineral oils’ as understood in the con-ventional sense. In order to facilitate the development and production of alternative/deriv-ative clean energy sources that are being or may be developed in future, this Bill seeks to rede-fine ‘mineral oil’,” the draft said.

The term as defined in the Bill includes not merely hydro-carbons but also the next-gen fuels viz. ‘other gases which are

Petroleum Ministry proposes amendments in existing law to include hydrogen in mineral oil

capable of being used as fuels occurring in association with mineral oils or can be produced from mineral oils such as hydro-gen’. The Bill also seeks to foster investment in the exploration and production of oil and gas by offering a lease on stable terms and enabling the government to prescribe a compensation mech-anism to protect the investment.

The compensation shall be payable in case of suspension, revocation or cancellation of the lease or in case of restriction of access to the leased area. PTI

NEW DELHI: State-owned Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) on Thurs-day posted over six per cent rise in its consolidated net profit to Rs 3,526.23 crore for the March 2021 quarter, mainly on the back of higher revenues.

The company’s consoli-dated net profit had stood at Rs 3,313.47 crore in the quar-ter ended on March 31, 2020, according to a BSE filing. Its total income during January-March increased to Rs 10,816.33 crore, from Rs 10,507.65 crore in the year-ago period.

For the full financial year 2020-21, the consolidated net profit stood at Rs 12,036.46 crore, compared with Rs 11,059.40 crore in 2019-20. Total income for the fiscal stood at Rs 40,823.53 crore, up from Rs 38,670.96 crore in 2019-20.

The company’s board in its meeting on Thursday recom-mended a final dividend of Rs 3 per share for the financial year 2020-21, subject to the share-holders’ approval at its ensuing annual general meeting (AGM).

The final dividend would be paid within 30 days from the date of its declaration at the AGM. This final dividend is in addition to the first interim dividend of Rs 5 per share paid on January 8 this year, and second interim dividend of Rs 4 per share paid on March 30 this year, for the financial year 2020-21. PTI

PGCIL’s Q4 net profit

rises 6% to `3,526 crore

Timely intervention can help lift stay on development works: Gadkari

‘India committed to improving employment outcomes for youth’

Labour and Employment Minister Santosh Gangwar was speaking after the signing of the Statement of Intent between ministry & UNICEF on Thursday

DOMESTIC AIR PASSENGER TRAFFIC

10 millenniumpostBusinessmp FRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021 | KOLKATA

NEW DELHI: In a year marred completely by COVID-19 pan-demic, Khadi and Village Indus-tries Commission (KVIC) has just recorded the highest ever turnover in its history.

In the year 2020-21, KVIC registered a gross annual turnover of Rs 95, 741.74 crore, as com-pared to Rs 88,887 crore turn-over in 2019-20, and thus registering an increase of 7.71 per cent.

KVIC’s record performance in 2020-21 assumes great sig-nificance as production activi-ties remained suspended for more than three months dur-ing the nationwide lockdown announced on March 25 last year. During this period, all Khadi production units and sales outlets too remained closed that severely affected the production and sales.

However, KVIC swiftly rose to the Prime Minister’s clar-

ion calls for “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” and “Vocal for Local”. The innovative marketing ideas of MSME Minister Nitin Gad-kari further diversified KVIC’s product range, scaled up local production and paved the way for Khadi’s successive growth.

Compared to the year 2015-16, the overall production in Khadi and Village Industry sec-tors in 2020-21 has registered

a whopping growth of 101 per cent while the gross sales during this period increased by 128.66 per cent. A host of initiatives like launch of Khadi e-portal, Khadi masks, Khadi footwear, Khadi Prakritik Paint, Khadi hand san-itizers, etc., setting up of a record number of new PMEGP units, new SFURTI clusters, govern-ment’s push to “Swadeshi” and KVIC’s historic agreements with

Paramilitary forces for supply of provisions increased the turn-over of village industry sector during the pandemic. Com-pared to the production of Rs 65,393.40 crore in 2019-20, the production in village industry sector increased to Rs 70,329.67 crore in 2020-21.

Similarly, in FY 2020-21, the sales of village industry products stood at Rs 92,214.03 crore as compared to Rs 84,675.29 crore in 2019-20.

The production and sales in the Khadi sector, however, declined by a small margin as spinning and weaving activities across the country took a major hit during the pandemic. The overall production in the Khadi sector in 2020-21 was recorded at Rs 1904.49 crore as compared to Rs 2292.44 crore in 2019-20, while the overall Khadi sales stood at Rs 3527.71 crore as compared to Rs 4211.26 crore in the previous year.

KVIC Chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena said during the Pandemic people responded enthusiastically to the calls of “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” and “Vocal for Local”.

“During this period, KVIC’s main focus was to create sus-tainable employment for arti-sans and unemployed youth. Faced with economic distress, a large number of youths took up self-employment and manufac-turing activities under PMEGP which increased the produc-tion in the village industry sec-tor. At the same time, the sales of Khadi and village industry products grew significantly following the Prime Minister’s appeal to buy Swadeshi prod-ucts. This is evident from the fact that Khadi’s single-day sale at its flagship store at Connaught Place in New Delhi crossed Rs 1 crore mark four times in October - November last year,” Saxena said. MPOST

OUR CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI: Around 21.15 lakh domestic passengers trav-elled by air in May, which is 63 per cent lower than the 57.25 lakh who travelled in April, the country’s aviation regula-tor said on Thursday.

According to the Director-ate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), 78.22 lakh people travelled within the country by air in March.

The drop in domestic air traffic in May was due to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that had badly hit the country and its aviation sector.

While IndiGo carried 11.69 lakh passengers in May, a 55.3-per cent share of the domestic market, SpiceJet flew 1.99 lakh passengers, accounting for a 9.4-per cent share of the mar-ket, according to data shared by the DGCA.

Air India, GO FIRST (pre-viously known as GoAir), Vis-tara and AirAsia India carried 4.29 lakh, 1.38 lakh, 97,000 and 64,000 passengers respectively in May, the data showed.

The occupancy rate or load factor of the six major Indian airlines was between 39.3 per cent and 64 per cent in May, it stated.

The occupancy rate at SpiceJet was 64 per cent in May, the DGCA noted.

The occupancy rates for IndiGo, Vistara, GO FIRST, Air India and AirAsia India were 51.2 per cent, 40.9 per cent, 63.3 per cent, 39.3 per cent and 44.4 per cent respectively, it added.

India resumed domes-tic passenger flights on May 25 last year after a gap of two months due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Indian airlines are allowed to operate a maximum of 50 per cent of their pre-pandemic domestic flights.

The DGCA data men-tioned that in May, IndiGo had the best on-time per-formance of 98.7 per cent at four metro airports — Beng-aluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

Vistara and AirAsia India were at the second and third positions at these four airports

in May with 98.1 per cent and 97.4 per cent on-time perfor-mance respectively, the DGCA said.

The aviation sector has been significantly impacted due to the travel restrictions imposed in India and other countries in view of the pandemic.

All airlines in India have opted for cost-reducing mea-sures such as pay cuts, leave without pay and layoffs in order to tide over the crisis.

OUR CORRESPONDENT

MUMBAI: Domestic equity benchmarks retreated for the second straight session on Thursday, mirroring weakness in global markets after the US Federal Reserve surprised investors by signalling faster-than-expected rate hikes.

The 30-share BSE Sensex ended 178.65 points or 0.34 per cent lower at 52,323.33. The broader NSE Nifty declined 76.15 points or 0.48 per cent to 15,691.40.

Banking and finance stocks accounted for most of the losses, while the IT pack saw brisk buying, fuelled by a weak rupee.

IndusInd Bank was the top loser in the Sensex pack, shed-ding 2.91 per cent, followed by Dr Reddy’s, NTPC, Maruti, Bajaj Auto, Axis Bank, Bharti Airtel and HDFC.

On the other hand, Ultra-Tech Cement, Asian Paints, TCS, Infosys, Tech Mahindra and HCL Tech were among the major gainers, spurting up to 1.86 per cent.

“Domestic equities traded weak today on account of weak global cues led from the FOMC meeting outcome as investors focused more on the US Fed-eral Reserve raising the coun-try’s economic growth forecast while noting its projection to hike interest rates sooner than expected.

“The Fed raised the US growth forecast to 7 per cent this year, while officials moved their first projected rate increases from 2024 into 2023 and opened talks about

when to pull back on the USD 120 billion in monthly bond purchase program,” said Vikas Jain, Senior Research Analyst at Reliance Securities.

Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services, said a fast normali-sation of the US economy and strong job market can lead to the Fed tapering its bond buying.

“This can lead to tighten-ing of bonds yields which will impact the pricing of equity asset,” he added.

Sectorally, BSE power, metal, realty, industrials and utilities indices ended up to 2.38 per cent lower, while IT, teck and FMCG indices closed

with gains.Broader BSE midcap and

smallcap indices fell up to 1.29 per cent.

Elsewhere in Asia, bourses in Shanghai and Hong Kong ended on a positive note, while Seoul and Tokyo were in the red. Stock exchanges in Europe were also trading with losses in mid-session deals.

International oil bench-mark Brent crude was trading 0.09 per cent higher at $74.46 per barrel.

Foreign institutional inves-tors were net sellers in the cap-ital market on Wednesday as they offloaded shares worth Rs 870.29 crore, as per exchange data.

‘21.15 lakh air travellers in May, 63% less than April’Drop in domestic air traffic in May was due to 2nd wave of Covid that had badly hit country & its aviation sector

According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), 78.22 lakh people travelled within the country by air in March

Highlights »While IndiGo carried 11.69 lakh passengers in May, a 55.3-per cent share of the domestic market, SpiceJet flew 1.99 lakh passengers, accounting for a 9.4-per cent share of the market

» Air India, GO FIRST (previously known as GoAir), Vistara and AirAsia India carried 4.29 lakh, 1.38 lakh, 97,000 and 64,000 passengers respectively in May, the data showed

Markets retreat for 2nd straight session as Sensex sinks 179 points

KBK graphicsInfo

Intra-day on June 17, 2021

9am 10 11 12 1pm 2 3 4 9am 10 11 12 1pm 2 3 4

Previous

close:

52,501.98

Previous

close:

15,767.55

NSE NIFTYIntra-day on June 17, 2021

BSE SENSEX

High:

15,769.35

Open:

15,648.30

High:

52,523.88

Open

52,122.25

:Low:

52,040.51Low:

15,616.75Close:

15,691.40

Close:

52,323.33

-76.15

(-0.48%)-178.65

(-0.34%)

Sectorally, BSE power, metal, realty, industrials and utilities indices ended up to 2.38 per cent lower, while IT, teck and FMCG indices closed with gains. Broader BSE midcap and smallcap indices fell up to 1.29 per cent

MUMBAI: The Indian rupee continued its down-ward journey on Thursday, sliding another 76 paise to close below the 74 per US dollar level, tracking a strong greenback overseas after the US Federal Reserve surprised the market by signalling rate hike sooner than expected.

At the interbank forex market, the domes-tic unit opened weak at 73.65 against the Amer-ican currency, then lost further ground and finally closed at 74.08, showing a fall of 76 paise over its previous close.

On Wednesday, the rupee had settled at 73.32.

The local unit witnessed an intra-day high of 73.57 and a low of 74.08 against the greenback.

The domestic currency has lost 128 paise in the eight trading sessions to Thursday.

Meanwhile, the dol-lar index, which gauges the greenback’s strength against a basket of six currencies, rose 0.60 per cent to 91.67. MPOST

Rupee sinks 76 paise, settles

below 74/$

NEW DELHI: The government has reduced the tariff value for import of edible oil, includ-ing palm oil, by up to $112 per tonne, a move which experts said can lead to lower domes-tic prices.

The Central Board of Indi-rect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), through a notification, has cut the tariff import value of crude palm oil by $86 per tonne, and of RBD and crude palmolein by $112 per tonne each.

It also reduced the base import price of crude soya-bean oil by $37 per tonne. The changes in tariff value of edible oil are effective from Thursday (June 17).

Tax experts said the reduc-

tion in tariff value could result in softening of edible oil prices in the domestic market as cus-toms duty payable on the base import price would come down.

AMRG & Associates Senior Partner Rajat Mohan said there is a big gap between domestic production and consumption of edible oils in India, which leads to massive imports and last few months have seen the retail prices rising.

“The ripple effect of this slashing of base import price could be seen in the retail prices, provided the entire supply chain, including the manufac-turers, distributors, and retail-ers, are ready to pass on this benefit to the ultimate con-

sumer,” Mohan added.Domestic edible oil prices

have more than doubled in the past year. India meets about two-thirds of its edible oil demand through imports.

EY Tax Partner Abhishek Jain said tariff value is a deemed value fixed by the government for the purposes of payment of customs duty. This is to say that irrespective of the transaction value, customs duty will have to be paid on the tariff value so fixed. “This reduction in the tariff value of edible oils by the government will imply a lower Customs duty payment, thereby entailing a reduction in cost for the importers and end users/ consumers,” Jain added. PTI

Govt slashes tariff for edible oil import, domestic prices may fall

MUMBAI: Export-Import Bank of India (Exim Bank) on Thursday said it has extended $100 million worth of line of credit (LOC) to the Sri Lankan government for financing projects in the solar energy sector.

With the signing of this agreement, Exim Bank, so far, has extended nine LOCs to Sri Lanka, on behalf of the Indian government, taking the total value of LOCs extended to $1.68 billion, a release said.

Projects covered under the finance extended to Sri Lanka include the supply of petro-leum products, railway proj-ects, defence and infrastructure projects, it added.

Exim Bank has now in place 272 LOCs, covering 62

countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Common-wealth of Independent States (CIS), with credit commit-ments of around $26.84 billion, available for financing exports from India.

Besides promoting India’s exports, Exim Bank’s LOCs enable the demonstration of Indian expertise and proj-ect execution capabilities in emerging markets. PTI

Exim Bank extends LOC worth $100 mn to Sri Lanka

NEW DELHI: India’s sugar production rose 13 per cent till June 15 in 2020-21 marketing year at 306.65 lakh tonnes on higher sugarcane production, according to trade data.

Sugar marketing year runs from October to September.

“Sugar mills across the country have produced 306.65 lakh tonnes of sugar between 1st October 2020 and 15th June 2021. This is 35.54 lac tonnes higher than 271.11 lac tonnes produced at the same time last year,” Indian Sugar Mills Association (ISMA) said in a statement.

Only five mills are cur-rently operating in the country.

In Uttar Pradesh, sugar production stood at 110.61 lakh tonnes till June 15 of 2020-21 as against 126.30 lakh tonnes in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Sugar output in Maharash-tra rose to 106.28 lakh tonnes from 61.69 lakh tonnes dur-ing the period under review.

In Karnataka, sugar pro-duction increased to 41.67 lakh tonnes from 33.80 lakh tonnes.

As per port information and market reports, ISMA said mills have contracted for 58 lakh tonnes of export of sugar so far against the govern-ment quota of 60 lakh tonnes of sugar for 2020-21.

Out of this, about 45.74 lakh tonnes of sugar have been physically exported out of the country. It is also reported that another about 5-6 lakh tonnes of sugar is in pipeline to be physically exported in June 2021. In addition to the above, the sugar industry had exported 4.49 lakh tonnes of sugar in Oct-Dec 2020 quar-ter against the export quota of the 2019-20 marketing year.

ISMA said that sugar demand may cross 260 lakh tonnes in the 2020-21 mar-keting year as against 253 lakh tonnes in the previous year. It pegged sugar exports at 70 lakh tonnes. PTI

KVIC records highest ever turnover in FY2020-21 despite Coronavirus pandemic

NEW DELHI: India main-tained 43rd rank on an annual World Competitiveness Index compiled by the Institute for Management Development (IMD) that examined the impact of COVID-19 on econo-mies around the world this year.

The 64-nation list was led by Switzerland, while Sweden has moved up to the second position (from sixth last year), Denmark has lost one place to rank third,

the Netherlands has retained its fourth place and Singapore has slipped to the fifth place (from first in 2020).

At eighth, Taiwan reached the top-10 for the first time since the ranking began 33 years ago (moving up from 11th last year). The UAE and the USA remain in their same spots as last year (9th and 10th, respectively).

The top-performing Asian economies are, in order, Sin-

gapore (fifth), Hong Kong (sev-enth), Taiwan (eighth) and China (16th).

The IMD World Competi-tiveness Ranking ranks 64 econ-omies and assesses the extent to which a country promotes the prosperity of its people by measuring economic well-being through hard data and survey responses from executives. This year, the rankings expose the economic impact of the pan-

demic across the globe.Among the BRICS nations,

India is ranked second after China (16), followed by Russia

(45th), Brazil (57th) and South Africa (62th).

India has maintained its position for the past three years but this year, it had significant improvements in government efficiency, IMD said.

“India’s improvements in the government efficiency fac-tor are mostly due to relatively stable public finances (despite difficulties brought by the pan-demic, in 2020 the government

deficit stayed at 7 per cent) and to the positive feedbacks we registered among Indian busi-ness executives with respect to the support and subsidies pro-vided by the government to the private companies,” IMD said.

It, however, added that the short term performance of India’s economy will depend on its ability to address the pandemic. The report finds that qualities such as invest-

ment in innovation, digitali-sation, welfare benefits and leadership, resulting in social cohesion have helped coun-tries better weather the crisis the best and thus ranked higher in competitiveness.

The report said top-per-forming economies are char-acterised by varying degrees of investment in innovation, diversified economic activities, and supportive public policy,

according to the experts at the World Competitiveness Center.

“Strength in these areas prior to the pandemic allowed these economies to address the eco-nomic implications of the crisis more effectively,” the report said.

Competitive economies succeeded in transitioning to a remote work routine while also allowing remote learning. Addressing unemployment has been fundamental. PTI

India maintains 43rd rank on IMD’s World Competitiveness Index64-nation list was led by Switzerland, while Sweden has moved up to the second position (from sixth last year), Denmark has lost one place to rank third

PATIALA: A series of heavy storms hit different parts of Punjab on 10 June, 11 June and 13 June caused huge damage to the power transmission & distribution infrastructure of the state and assessed finan-cial loss around 25 crores to PSPCL. This was informed by CMD A.Venu Prasad in a press note issued here today.

He disclosed that more than 15,000 workers of PSPCL have so far addressed more than 1.8 lakh power complaints affect-ing more than 50 lakh consum-ers across Punjab, mainly from Patiala, Kapurthala, Faridkot, Bathinda, Gurdaspur, Khanna, Ropar, Mohali, Sangrur, Bar-nala, due destruction caused by heavy storms in the last two weeks. He said that the storms resulted in breakdown of around 900 of 11 kV & 66 kV feeders damaging around

20 Nos. 66 kV Towers, more than 13000 Poles, around 2500 Transformers and more than 100 Km of conductor, besides other associated equipment & accessories.

CMD said that with the continuous 24x7 monitor-ing, systematic patrolling of feeders and clearing of lines, PSPCL has been able to restore power supply of majority of the affected area within 72 hours. He said that PSPCL consumers, especially in rural areas, also came forward to help PSPCL in all possible ways.

He, lauded the efforts of PSPCL officers who had sen-sibly outlined their priori-ties for restoring power with the highest priority given to the critical infrastruc-ture, such as hospitals, med-ical facilities and oxygen manufacturing units. MPOST

PSPCL redressed 1.8 lakh complaints in record 3 days: CMD

NEW DELHI: SBI has invited bids for two NPA accounts with outstanding dues of nearly Rs 60 crore. “In terms of the bank’s policy on sale of financial assets, in line with the regulatory guide-lines, we place these accounts for sale to ARCs/ banks/ NBFCs/ FIs, on the terms and condi-tions indicated there against,” SBI said in a sale notice.

The bank has put up for sale the accounts of N S Engineering Projects, with loan outstanding of Rs 36.98 crore, and Chintes-hwar Steels Pvt Ltd, which owes Rs 22.72 crore to SBI.

The reserve price for these non-performing assets (NPAs) for the purpose of sale has been fixed at Rs 17.19 crore and Rs 10.50 crore, respectively.

The e-auction for these two accounts will take place on July 7, 2021. PTI

SBI to sell 2 NPAs in July to recover

`60 cr dues

This year, the rankings expose the economic impact of the pandemic across the globe

Sugar production up 13% so far this market year at 307 lakh tonnes

11millenniumpost Sport mpKOLKATA | FRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021

No surprises in team India’s playing eleven for WTC final

ISHANT PREFERRED OVER SIRAJ

SOUTHAMPTON: India on Thursday went for tried and tested players, preferring veteran Ishant Sharma over Mohammed Siraj in the play-ing eleven for the World Test Championship final against New Zealand.

On expected lines, the team picked two specialist spinners in Ravindra Jadeja and R Ash-win, who are also more than handy with the bat.

The three pacers are Ishant, Mohammad Shami and Jasprit Bumrah, leaving no space for the impressive Siraj. Wicket-keeper-batsman Rishabh Pant will bat at number six.

The match will begin on Friday at the Ageas Bowl.

India's Playing XI: Virat Kohli (Captain), Rohit Sharma, Shubman Gill, Chetesh-war Pujara, Ajinkya Rahane, Rishabh Pant, Ravindra Jadeja, R Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Ishant Sharma and Moham-mad Shami.

Virat Kohli carries the expectations of a billion while cricket romantics will pin their hopes on Kane Williamson when India and New Zealand engage in a battle to create a lasting legacy in pristine whites in the inaugural World Test Championship final starting here on Friday.

For the connoisseurs of the glorious game, Test cricket is the ultimate format and despite its aura, the 144-year-old his-tory needed a facelift along with a context which the World Test Championship provided despite various bottlenecks, including the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Kohli, India’s most suc-cessful Test captain, a trophy-less cabinet doesn’t do justice to the champion performer that he has been for a decade.

Lest one forgets, he has been a fine leader in his own right even though Mahen-dra Singh Dhoni may forever remain a sentimental favourite.

Kohli needs a global tri-umph. Every captain needs it but perhaps the Indian captain wants it more.

It’s how history will remem-ber him just like it remembers Dhoni with a lot of respect and utmost fondness for those heroic World title wins.

Williamson stands in his way with a bunch of fine crick-eters and the most amiable set of players that one would come across in international cricket.

They are India’s rivals but when Williamson hits those cover drives, Devon Conway teases a Ravichandran Ashwin or Ravindra Jadeja, Trent Boult gets one banana inswinger aimed at Rohit Sharma’s boot-laces, the crazy fans of a cricket-mad nation wouldn’t possibly be able to hate them.

These are ‘Gentlemen Cricketers’ who have grown on the fans bit by bit with their cricket and their conduct. It’s difficult not to love them, espe-cially after their gut-wrenching World Cup defeat at the Lord’s two summers back.

If Williamson happens to stand with the ICC Test Mace on the Hampshire Bowl bal-cony, one might just smile and think that perhaps “Nice guys don’t always finish last”.

But after two years and half a dozen series later, a battle-hardened Indian team will give its all in a match, from which the winning team will also walk away with a USD 1.6 million windfall.

There are a number of cricketers, who wouldn’t prac-tically have a shot at any other global trophy and for them it’s their ‘World Cup’ which they want to lay their hands on.

Cheteshwar Pujara would be ready to take more bruises on his body if Neil Wagner starts bowling short. Ajinkya Rahane has grown in stature after a series for the ages and he will squeeze that extra ounce of energy to make it count.

Ravichandran Ashwin is unlikely to play a white ball World Cup again and wouldn’t mind one bit if he can fool Wil-liamson, Ross Taylor or the dogged Henry Nicholls with a

carrom ball or a slider.Ishant Sharma has grown

14 years older since that epic WACA spell to Ricky Ponting and India’s senior-most player deserves to win a World Cham-pionship as much as anyone else. Man to man, there is very little to choose between the two teams even though play-ing New Zealand in conditions that aid seam and swing isn’t the easiest of tasks.

England found it out recently by losing a Test series and India have had a torrid experience, albeit in New Zea-land where they lost two Tests inside three days.

But a final has its own set of pressures and no one would feel it more than Rohit Sharma and Shubman Gill, who would have the hardest job currently in Test cricket.

They would face the most under-rated but perhaps the best new ball pair in the busi-ness in Boult and Southee, who would make the new ball jag around and the old ball talk.

Rohit has had lot of suc-cess in India but the real battle would start with the WTC final followed by the England Test series where both his technique and temperament will be tested big-time. AGENCIES

Kohli eyes legacy, Williamson prize for consistency

Indian openers present fight after England post massive 396/9BRISTOL: Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana provided India Women a confident start but the visitors still have a mountain to climb after Eng-land Women posted a mam-moth 396 for nine in their first innings in the one-off Test, here on Friday.

It was the highest-ever total scored by a team against India in Test cricket and the visitors are still trailing by 333 runs with Verma (35 not out) and Mand-hana (27 not out) taking India to 63 for no loss at tea on the second day.

Verma was at her usual aggressive self as she cut and pulled in her own inimitable style. The 17-year-old not only presented the straight bat for defence with grace, she also hit a six off Nat Sciver with remark-able ease.

It was only the second six hit by an Indian woman in Test cricket.

Mandhana was cautious yet fluent. She got her first bound-ary when she punched one off Sciver in the cover region. When she got the opportunity, Man-dhana did not hesitate to pull.

Her elegant drives were a delight to watch. She raised the team's fifty with one such well-timed shot off Kate Cross.

Cross missed a chance to dismiss Mandhana (when on 23) when she dropped the left-hander in her follow through.

This was after Indian bowl-ers were made to put in some hard yards for the second con-secutive day.

Debutant Sophia Dunkley (74 not out) led the charge with a resolute unbeaten half-century

and two crucial partnerships with tail-enders after England resumed at the overnight score of 269 for six.

Dunkley first added 56 runs for the eighth wicket with Sophie Ecclestone (17) and then forged a 70-run stand with Anya Shrubsole, who punished the Indian bowlers in her career-best 47. England declared their innings when Shrubsole was bowled by Sneh Rana, who ended up as India's best bowler with a four-wicket haul.

Shrubsole was aggressive in the post-lunch session, punish-ing spinner Rana for two hours and a six. She also creamed off boundaries off pacer Shikha Pandey.

In the morning session, Eng-land lost overnight batter Kath-erine Brunt, who was trapped by veteran pacer Jhulan Goswami in the 12th ball of the day.

With that wicket, at 38 years and 204 days, Goswami became the oldest India player to get a Test wicket since Sachin Ten-dulkar in his penultimate Test. She also became the oldest India pacer to get a Test wicket since Lala Amarnath in 1952.

It remained a short-lived joy for the Indians as Dunkley and Ecclestone dug their heels in to test the patience of the visitors.

Dunkley stood out with her footwork and strokes on the off-side while Ecclestone was comfortable on both front and back-foot.

Dunkley completed after maiden Test fifty soon after get-ting an umpire's decision over-turned. She was adjudged leg before off the bowling of Rana when she was on 46. AGENCIES

Rafael Nadal says he will not play at Wimbledon

or Tokyo OlympicsMADRID: Rafael Nadal will not play at Wimbledon or at the Tokyo Olympics, saying Thurs-day he has decided to skip the two tournaments after "listen-ing" to his body.

Nadal, who reached the French Open semifinals this month but lost to Novak Djokovic, won the title at Wim-bledon twice.

He also won the Olympic gold medal in singles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

"The goal is to prolong my career and continue to do what makes me happy, that is to compete at the highest level and keep fighting for those pro-fessional and personal goals at the maximum level of compe-tition," Nadal said.

He said the fact there

was only two weeks between Roland Garros and Wimble-don "didn't make it easier" on his body to recover from "the always demanding" clay-court season. AGENCIES

One game over 5 days isn't going to reflect how we are as team, says Kohli

India name 8 debutants in women's hockey team for Olympics

BENGALURU: India on Thurs-day named eight Olympic deb-utants and as many veterans in its 16-member women's hockey squad for the Tokyo Games to be held from July 23 to August 8.

The squad is a perfect mix of youth and experience and includes as many as eight play-ers who had represented India in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

The team will be captained by star striker Rani Rampal in the quadrennial Games.

The eight Olympic debutants include drag-flicker Gurjit Kaur, Udita, Nisha, Neha, Navneet Kaur, Sharmila Devi, Lalrem-siami, the first player hailing from Mizoram in the team, and Salima Tete. Tete had led the Indian team at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games at Buenos Aires to a silver medal performance.

The eight experienced play-ers, who were part of the last Olympics, include skipper Rani, goalkeeper Savita, Deep Grace Ekka, Sushila Chanu Pukh-rambam, Monika, Nikki Prad-han, Navjot Kaur and Vandana Katariya. These eight players have amassed a total experience of 1,492 caps between them.

The selected squad has just one goalkeeper in Savita, four defenders, six mid-fielders and five forwards.

This will be the Indian wom-en's hockey team's third appear-ance at the Olympic Games and their second consecutive outing, with previous appearances com-ing in 1980 and 2016.

Since Rio 2016, the women's team has been on a steady rise and won the Asian Champions Trophy that same year, the 2017 Asia Cup and silver medal at the 2018 Asian Games. They also created history by entering the quarterfinals of the 2018 Wom-en's World Cup for the first time.

"This team has worked very hard over the last few years and has made progress consistently. There is a good mix of experi-enced players and new talent, which is excellent," Indian wom-

en's hockey team chief coach Sjoerd Marijne said.

"We look forward to tak-ing on the best in the world in Tokyo. This is a team with a lot of potential and drive which we hope to channelise our energies to give our best performance."

Hockey India president Gyanendro Ningombam wished the selected players success and hoped for a fine show in Tokyo.

"Over the past few years, leading up to this edition of the Olympics, the women's team has worked very hard to achieve their current form. I am confi-dent that this team will give a tough competition to any oppo-

nent. I wish them all the very best for their preparation and performance," he said.

The Indian women's hockey team made history in 2016 Rio Games when it qualified for the Olympics after 36 long years.

The squad is currently pre-paring for the Games at the ongoing national camp at the Sports Authority of India (SAI) Centre here.

Squad:Goalkeeper: SavitaDefenders: Deep Grace

Ekka, Nikki Pradhan, Gurjit Kaur, Udita.

Midfielders: Nisha, Neha, Sushila Chanu Purkhrambam, Monika, Navjot Kaur, Salima Tete.

Forwards: Rani Rampal, Navneet Kaur, Lalremsiami, Vandana Katariya, Sharmila Devi. AGENCIES

SOUTHAMPTON: India cap-tain Virat Kohli on Thursday asserted that one Test match is not a "true reflection" of his team even if it happens to be the World Test Championship final against New Zealand here and he is treating it as "just another" game.

For the Indian captain and his team, the WTC final is like their Test debuts as young play-ers trying to come up the ranks.

"One game over five days. It's not going to reflect any-thing and those who under-stand the game know and also what has gone over the period of last four to five years," Kohli said on the eve of the big final against the Black Caps.

"If we win, cricket will not stop and if we lose also, cricket won't stop. We are playing in

quest of excellence and under-stand who we are as a team," the eloquent Indian captain added.

He was not forthcom-ing when a question on team combination was posed based

on a previous answer that the team would select a composi-tion "with all bases covered" regardless of the weather fore-cast of rain on opening day.

"... A team with enough batting depth and bowling

resources," he said when asked if he would factor in the rain and overcast conditions.

He was also dismissive when asked if this was the big-gest cricketing event of his illustrious career.

"No," pat came the reply."This is just another Test

match. All these things (WTC final) look good from the out-side. One game can't become a do-or-die game. It's a great moment but cricket goes on just like life goes on."

"The occasion needs to be enjoyed and no more impor-tant than the first Test that we all played as young players try-ing to rise through the ranks.

"We need to have belief in our abilities and keep things simple. It's a contest between bat and ball." AGENCIES

Italy impress again in 3-0 win over Switzerland at Euro 2020

ROME: The wingers sprint for-ward like Ferraris. The mid-fielders are just as capable at scoring as the forwards. And the reserves look like starters.

A new-look Italy is impress-ing with its offensive flair at the European Championship.

Midfielder Manuel Locatelli scored two goals Wednesday and the Azzurri beat Switzer-land 3-0 to become the first team to reach the last 16 at Euro 2020, and they did it with a game to spare.

They also did it with their 10th consecutive victory.

I'm fortunate to have great players who enjoy playing soc-cer, like to have fun and take some risks which is the essence of soccer, Italy coach Roberto

Mancini said.As usual and perhaps the

only characteristic carried on from Italy teams of the past the defense was impenetrable.

It's quite a turnaround for a team that failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

Italy extended its unbeaten streak to 29 matches one shy

of the team record and kept its 10th clean sheet in that run.

Mancini, however, sug-gested that Italy still trails France, Portugal and Bel-gium on the list of tournament favorites.

One of them is the World Cup champion, one is the European champion and one has been first in the ranking for quite a while, Mancini said.

They've been shaped over time and it's only normal that they're ahead of us. But any-thing can happen in soccer. It's not such a sure thing.

Locatelli's first goal came following a textbook exchange with Sassuolo teammate Domenico Berardi midway through the first half. AGENCIES

Midfielder Manuel Locatelli scored two goals and the Azzurri beat Switzerland 3-0 to become the first team to reach the last 16 at Euro 2020

Real Madrid announce

exit of Ramos after 16 years

MADRID: Sergio Ramos is officially leaving Real Madrid after 16 years and four Cham-pions League titles.

Madrid have called a news conference for Thursday as an institutional act of tribute and farewell to our captain Ser-gio Ramos. The 35-year-old defender has failed to agree a new contract and will leave as a free agent.

Ramos missed much of the past season with injuries and was not selected by Spain for the European Championship.

He was a member of the Spain team which won an unprecedented title hat trick at Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012. AGENCIES

US Open tennis tournament to allow 100% fan capacity in 2021NEW YORK: The U.S. Open tennis tournament will allow 100% spectator capacity throughout its entire two weeks in 2021, a year after spectators were banned from the event because of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. Tennis Association announced Thursday that all tickets for courts and grounds passes will go on sale in July.

The year's last Grand Slam tournament is scheduled to be held at Flushing Meadows in New York from Aug. 30 to Sept. 12. The USTA's decision to return to its usual number of people on-site is the latest step in a return to normal for New York and for fans of vari-ous sports as the world emerges from more than a year of COVID-19 restrictions.

On Tuesday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said many of the state's remaining social dis-tancing rules would be eased because 70% of its adults have received at least one dose of a Coronavirus vaccine.

The New York Mets announced Wednesday they will return to full capacity next week. A sellout crowd of 52,078 attended a baseball game at Dodger Stadium in Los Ange-les on Tuesday night. The Indi-anapolis 500 on May 30 sold around 135,000 tickets, which is 40% of capacity at Indianapo-lis Motor Speedway.

For tennis, the U.S. Open will be the first Grand Slam tournament to have full atten-dance since the Australian Open in January-February 2020 shortly before the Coro-

navirus outbreak turned into a full-blown pandemic.

The USTA held the 2020 U.S. Open with no spectators at all, significantly altering the atmosphere and the compet-itive conditions at an event where raucous crowds are a part of the scenery, especially during night sessions at 23,771-seat Arthur Ashe Stadium.

More than 700,000 people attended the 2019 U.S. Open.

The recently concluded French Open let more than 5,000 spectators into the Roland Garros grounds each day during Week 1, and that rose to more than 13,000 peo-ple by the end. The main sta-dium, Court Philippe Chatrier, was limited to 5,000 fans about a third of capacity for the sin-gles finals last weekend. AGENCIES

Argentina and Uruguay riddled with doubts for Copa clashSAO PAULO: Argentina and Uruguay go into Friday’s Copa America encounter with nei-ther team having won in three games since November.

The two sides seem unsure about which players to select for the Group A game at the Mané Garrincha stadium in Brasilia.

The winner could ultimately go on to top the group and avoid an early knockout-stage meeting with defending champion Bra-zil, which is in Group B.

Argentina coach Lionel Scaloni has received criticism since his team’s opening 1-1 draw against Chile on Monday, a game that came a few days after a 2-2 draw with Colombia in World Cup qualifying.

Scaloni appears unsure whether to use three or four defenders against Uruguay. He could also bring back Cristian

Romero in the center of his rear-guard in place of Lucas Mar-tínez Quarta.

If he opts for a line of three defenders, left-back Nicolás Tagliafico may miss out.

Scaloni is also undecided who should accompany Lionel Messi up front. Lautaro Mar-tínez has been short of goals for Argentina while new Bar-celona signing Sergio Agüero is eager to start. Uruguay will have Luis Suárez and Edison Cavani in attack for its first game in the group, but coach Oscar Tabárez has not yet decided who will play in midfield between Giovanni González, who nor-mally plays as a defender for Peñarol, Lucas Torreira, Rodrigo Bentancur, Nicolás de la Cruz, Federico Valverde, Matias Vecino, Facundo Torres and Jonathan Rodríguez. AGENCIES

The squad is a perfect mix of youth and experience and includes as many as eight players who had represented India in the 2016 Rio Olympics

Indian cricket team players along with staff pose for photographs ahead of the World Test Championship (WTC) final match against New Zealand, at The Ageas Bowl in Southampton PTI

A general view of action, during day two of the Women's International Test cricket match between England and India, at the Bristol County Ground, in Bristol, England PTI

Rafael Nadal

Kohli needs a global triumph. Every captain needs it but perhaps the Indian captain wants it more

CARDI B TALKS ABOUT HER ‘POWERFUL’ CHARACTER IN F9

12 millenniumpostLeisure

Entertainmentmp

FRIDAY, 18 JUNE, 2021 | KOLKATA

MUMBAI: Akshay Kumar’s digital debut ‘The End’ will start production either towards the end of the year or early 2022, producer Vikram Malhotra said.

The action-packed thriller series for OTT streamer ‘Amazon Prime Video’ was first announced in 2019, but the production was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During a special event of ‘Sherni’, backed by Malhotra’s ‘Abundantia Entertainment’, the pro-ducer said that his team is currently working on several series with ‘Amazon’, including ‘The End’ and ‘Hush Hush’.

Malhotra’s banner had previously produced thriller series ‘Breathe’ and its second season as well as Bhumi Pednekar-starrer ‘Durgamati’.

“Creators like us look for platforms that become homes and understand our sensibil-ities and creative efforts. We found a warm home in ‘Amazon Prime Video’. Apart from ‘Breathe’, there are other series in development like ‘Hush Hush’, which is in the middle of the production. We had to pause it because of the pandemic. There is a show called ‘The End’ fea-turing Akshay Kumar. It is set to start later this year or early next year, depending on how the situation is,” said Malhotra.

‘The End’, which will mark Kumar’s debut in the OTT space is reportedly a survival thriller set in the future. PTI

LOS ANGELES: Scarlett Johansson, who is getting a stand-alone movie in the ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’ with ‘Black Widow’, is happy that the charac-ter has transformed from its early days of ‘hyper-sexualisation’.

The 35-year-old actor made her debut as Black Widow in the Robert Downey Jr-starrer ‘Iron Man 2’, in 2010 and 11 years later the superhero is getting a solo outing in July this year.

Talking about the character’s journey, the Oscar-nominated actor reflected on the changes that have come with time for Black Widow as known as Natasha Romanoff, a highly trained former KGB assassin, who becomes an Avenger later.

“It has changed and I think part of that change is hard because I’m inside it, but probably a lot of that is actually from me too. I will be 35 years old and

I’m a mom and my life is different. 10 years have passed and things have hap-pened and I have a much different and more evolved understanding of myself,” said Johansson.

She added, “As a woman, I’m in a dif-ferent place in my life, you know? And I

felt more forgiving of myself, as a woman and yet sometimes it was not enough. I’m more accepting of myself, I think. All of that is related to that move away from the kind of hyper-sexualisation of this character. I mean, you look back at ‘Iron Man 2’ and while it was really fun and had a lot of great moments in it, the character is so sexualised, you know?”

Scarlet said that her char-acter is talked about in ‘Iron Man 2’ like ‘she is a piece of something, like a possession or a thing.’ PTI

Cardi B is all set to make her ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise debut with

‘F9’ and not only her fans, but the rapper herself is also super excited about it.

In a new BTS clip of the film, the rapper could be seen discussing her character in the film as well as the story of how she was approached for the famed franchise. In the clip, the rapper teased what the fans can expect from her charac-ter, Leysa.

Describing her charac-ter, Cardi B said, “I like the fact that I’m representing such a powerful and strong woman.”

Further revealing her char-acter’s sassy side, the ‘Money’ singer said, “She is just that sassy.”

The BTS clip also showed her rehearsing a scene with Vin from the upcoming film.

Adding about how excited she was to take on the proj-ect, Cardi revealed, “I remem-ber when I saw Ludacris in ‘Fast and the Furi-ous’, then Tego Calderón and Don Omar. It makes the hood have hope. Being around Vin, he is just so nice and so dope. He makes you feel so comfortable. I’m just so excited. He is just such a badass.”

Not long after the BTS clip was released, the rapper also took to her ‘Twitter’ handle to express her excitement as she wrote, “I cannot wait to watch ‘Fast and furious 9’. I have not seen my scenes yet! That is the best part about it when you watch the movie and see yourself coming in. I’m so proud of myself. God is good!” AGENCIES

‘Black Widow was so hyper-sexualised’

The actor reflected on the changes that have come with time for Black Widow

Akshay’s ‘The End’ to start production by early 2022

Veteran Ben-gali actor Swatilekha

Sengupta died at the age of 71 in a Kolkata hospital on the afternoon of June 16.

“She was suf-fering from kid-ney ailments,” the

late actor’s daughter Sohini said.

She added, “She was being treated for kidney-related prob-lems at a private hospital in Kol-kata for the last 24 days.”

Swatilekha was a recipient of the ‘Sangeet Natak Akademi

Award’.Mourning the actor on ‘Twitter’,

renowned Bengali film director Srijit Mukherji wrote, “Anti, gone. RIP Swatile-kha Sengupta.”

Raj Chakrabarty, whose forthcoming project ‘Dharmajuddha’ will mark Swatile-kha Sengupta’s last film, tweeted, “A huge and irreparable loss. Veteran actor and the-atre personality Swatilekha Sengupta is no more. May her soul rest in peace.”

“I’m very sad to hear about Swatilekha Sengupta. RIP. I was fortunate enough to work with her briefly as a producer for our film ‘Chauranga’. Unfortunately, the desire to direct her will remain unfulfilled. Gone too soon. Will remain immortalised for her performance in ‘Ghare Bhaire’,” wrote film-

maker Onir, who produced Sengupta’s 2016 critically-acclaimed film ‘Chauranga’.

Swatilekha’s performance as Bimala in Satyajit Ray’s 1984 film ‘Ghare Baire’ along-side Soumitra Chatterjee is still remem-

bered by many.Both the late actors had also co-starred

in Shiboprasad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy’s blockbuster ‘Bela Seshe’. The duo also worked together in Shiboprasad Mukher-jee and Nandita Roy’s upcoming film ‘Bela Shuru’, which will mark their last project together.

Swatilekha Sengupta was also one of the spearheads of the theatre group ‘Nan-dikar’, which she used to handle with her husband Rudraprasad Sengupta and daugh-ter Sohini.

She was last seen in Sudip Chakraborty’s 2019 film ‘Barof ’. AGENCIES

The veteran actor was suffering from kidney ailments

‘The End’, which will mark Akshay Kumar’s debut in the OTT space is reportedly a survival thriller set in the future

Scarlett made her debut as Black Widow in ‘Iron Man 2’, and 11 years later the superhero is getting a solo outing in July this year

Swatilekha Sengupta, who was last seen in Barof, was a recipient of the prestigious ‘Sangeet Natak Akademi Award’

‘Leysa is just very sassy’

OUR CORRESPONDENT

After a string of well-appreciated singles that chronicled differ-

ent shades of the pandemic life in 2020, singer-songwriter/pro-ducer Rohan Solomon shared his learnings and fervent desire for ‘shift’ in the ways of the world in a single titled ‘We Demand Change’, on June 15, 2021. The collective sentiment of the single was born out of emotions of outrage, despair, hope and a prayer for a strife-free world that Rohan was feel-ing along with the rest of us, over the course of the last few testing months.

‘We Demand Change’ is Rohan’s first release of the year and the title itself reveals the song talks about the urgent need for change in the world, be it racism, corruption, vio-lence or the lack of empathy. The collective sentiment of the single was born out of emo-tions of outrage, despair, hope and a prayer for a strife-free world that Rohan was feeling along with the rest of us, over the course of the last few test-ing months.

Rohan is Delhi/ New York

based singer-song-writer, composer, vocal coach and audio engineer, all rolled into one. In between the time he spent in his home-town New Delhi and The Big Apple, his love for pop-choruses grew along with his reputa-tion of being a ‘con-scious song-writer’.

Rohan releases a compelling new single ‘We Demand Change’ In a new BTS

clip, she could be seen dis-cussing her character

Sen shares a beautiful picture from Cape Town, where she is shooting for a reality show

Anushka

Industry pays tribute to Swatilekha

Rohan is Delhi/ New York-based singer-songwriter, composer, vocal coach and audio engineer, all rolled into one

His song talks about the urgent need for change in the world, be it racism, corruption or violence