India news

‘bJP can’t handle kashmir, they only know how to do dirty politics’, says Arvind kejriwal

Delhi News Live Updates Today 5 June 2022: Addressing the 'Jan Aakrosh Rally', Arvind kejriwal asked the Centre to "cancel bonds signed with Kashmiri Pandits that say they cannot work outside Kashmir."

DELHI News Live Updates Today: The Aam Aadmi Party organised a protest at Jantar Mantar in Delhi on Sunday against the recent spurt in targeted killings in Kashmir and slammed the BJP-led Union government for the situation. Several AAP workers and leaders, including Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, Environment Minister Gopal Rai, Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh and other MLAs attended the ‘Jan Aakrosh Rally’ and raised anti-BJP slogans. Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal addressed the rally and said that Kashmiri Pandits are being forced to leave their homes in a repeat of what happened in 1990s.

Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal Saturday said that his government has formed volunteers-based committees to look after all the 500 highmast tricolours that are being installed across the city under its ‘Deshbhakti Budget’. He added that each Tiranga Samman Samiti will have five members and they must mobilise an army of 1,000 young volunteers in their areas and commit to social welfare works.

Meanwhile, at least 12 people died and more than 13 people were injured in a chemical factory fire at Uttar Pradesh’s Hapur on Saturday afternoon, with preliminary information suggesting that a boiler had exploded at the site.

karti moves delhi hc over rejection of anticipatory bail

JUSTICE Poonam A Bamba of the high court will hear the matter on Monday. A special CBI court, on Friday, rejected the Congress MP's anticipatory bail plea.

Congress MP Karti Chidambaram moved the Delhi high court on Saturday, challenging the trial court’s June 3 order denying him pre-arrest bail in a case registered by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the alleged Chinese Visas scam.

The matter is listed for hearing on Monday before Justice Poonam A Bamba of the high court.

The federal agency had recently registered a moneylaundering case against Karti and at least two others in the alleged scam of Rs.50 lakh on the issuance of visas to 263 Chinese nationals in 2011 when his father P Chidambaram was the Union home minister.

The case was registered based on a first information report (FIR) registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on May 17. The agency alleged that Karti, abusing the official position of his father, granted project visas to the Chinese in exchange for Rs.50 lakh.

The CBI also alleged that approval for re-use of more than 250 project visas had been granted by the then Union home secretary and the then Union home minister Chidambaram, and the same had been granted “in utter and gross violation because the prescribed guidelines did not have any provision for such re-use of the project visas”.

On Friday, while rejecting the anticipatory bail, Special judge MK Nagpal said that despite there being no specific provision contained in the guidelines for permitting the reuse of project visas, approval was granted “blanketly”, compromising the security of the country.

“….approval for re-use of more than 250 Project Visas to Chinese Nationals was granted “blanketly” against payment or acceptance of a bribe amount of Rs.50 Lacs and not only a threat was posed to the said power project being established by M/s TSPL, but even the security of the country was compromised by the above illegal acts of the accused, which have been committed in furtherance of a larger conspiracy,” the judge said in a 30-page order, which was released on Saturday.

The court, while denying relief to Karti, his CA S Bhaskar Raman and coaccused Vikas Makharia, said that sufficient documentary evidence in the form of an exchange of e-mails between the three accused was collected by the probe agencies.

Noting the previous criminal antecedents of the accused, the court said that even though Makharia does not have any criminal background, the two other accused, Karti and Bhaskar Raman, have four cases registered against them by the CBI and the ED in connection with the INX Media and Aircel Maxis cases.

“…they both were even arrested in one of the cases and were subsequently granted regular bail, though anticipatory bail was granted to them in the other cases,” the court said.

The agencies have alleged that all the cases, including the previous ones, have a similar modus-operandi where approvals were granted for some financial transactions against the existing guidelines and policies for illegal considerations or bribes and Bhaskar Raman was involved even in transactions of those cases for payment of a bribe to Karti for influencing his father, who was holding another portfolio of Union minister at that time, for granting those approvals.

The judge also accepted the submission of the ED counsel that the actual magnitude or volume of the processed or laundered amount of money in the present case is yet to be established during the investigation.

heatwave conditions likely in northwest, central india in next 2-3 days: imd

THE national capital is likely to witness clear skies in the day and heatwave conditions are expected at a few places, the weather office said.

Parts of Northwest, Central and East India will be experiencing heatwave conditions in the next 2-3 days, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said Saturday.

“Heatwave conditions are likely in isolated places over Rajasthan, Jammu Division, Himachal, Uttarakhand, south Punjab and south Haryana-Delhi on June 4 and 5. Similar conditions will also prevail over Vidarbha, Jharkhand, interior Odisha and Chhattisgarh from June 4-6 and over southern Uttar Pradesh and north Madhya Pradesh from June 4-8.

National capital Delhi witnessed thunderstorm along with rainfall over the past few days that provided relief amid a scorching May which saw temperatures hovering around 40 degrees.

Delhi is likely to witness clear skies in the day and heatwave conditions are expected at a few places, the weather office informed. However, the IMD has issued a yellow alert, warning of a heatwave, at isolated places in the capital. The mercury may rise to 44 degree Celsius at the Safdarjung observatory, it added.

The IMD uses four colour codes for weather warnings — green (no action needed), yellow (watch and stay updated), orange (be prepared) and red (take action). A heatwave is declared when the maximum temperature is over 40 degrees Celsius and at least 4.5 notches above normal.

corbevax gets approval as first mix-and-match booster vaccine

vACCInE manufacturer Biological E’s protein subunit Covid-19 vaccine Corbevax has become the first to be approved by the country’s drug regulator as a heterologous booster in adults, meaning those who have received Covishield or Covaxin as their first or second dose can take it as a third booster shot.

So far, mixing-andmatching of Covid-19 vaccines was not allowed in India and the third dose had to be the same vaccine used for the first and second dose.

With the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) now approving the heterologous booster, the government will have to take a call on whether it should be included in the country’s free vaccination drive.

India has so far administered 193.9 crore doses of vaccine in total, of which 101 crore are first doses, 89 crore second doses, and 3.5 crore precaution doses, according to data from the government’s CoWIN portal.

In a statement Saturday, the Hyderabad-based company said, “BE’s clinical trial data showed that CORBEVAX® booster dose provided significant enhancement in immune response and excellent safety profile required for an effective booster.”

The approval came after a trial involving 416 people who were administered Corbevax or placebo (an agent with no therapeutic value) six months after having received two doses of either Covaxin or Covishield.

The company, in its statement, said the levels of neutralising antibodies – antibodies that specifically attack or block the SarsCoV-2 virus – increased significantly as compared to the placebo.

Currently, the vaccine is in use for immunisation of children between the ages of 12 and 14 years under the government programme. It is also available on payment for children between 12 and 17 years at private vaccination centres.

The company said that so far 51.7 million doses of the vaccine had been administered to children across the country, with 100 million doses having been supplied to the government.