ECI sets new dates for Chinchwad, Kasba bypolls

First India Bureau

Mumbai: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has changed the date of the Kasba and Chinchwad by-polls. According to the information provided by the ECI, the by-polls to Kasba and Chinchwad constituencies will now be held on February 26, 2023, a day earlier than the prior set date of February 27, 2023. This revision comes in the wake of Class 12 and graduate exams in the state. The counting of votes for all by-polls will be held on March 02.

The election in these constituencies was necessitated by the deaths of BJP leaders Mukta Shailesh Tilak last December and Laxman Pandurang Jagtap on January 03, respectively.

Earlier, the ECI also announced the schedule for Assembly elections in Tripura, Meghalaya, and Nagaland to be held in February-March this year. The results of the three states will be declared on March 02.

“The gap between the poor and rich is rising. In our country, the poor are becoming poorer, while the rich are becoming richer,” Maken said, adding that the 100 top businessmen in the country earned Rs13 lakh crore during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pune (PTI): Dr Raman Gangakhedkar, former head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research, has discounted the need for the fourth dose of COVID-19 vaccine given the current evidence about the novel coronavirus and its variants.

If a person has taken a third dose of the anti-COVID-19 vaccine, it means his Tcell immune response has been trained thrice, Dr Gangakhedkar said on the sidelines of a function here.

“The core virus (of COVID-19) has not been changed so much that a new vaccine would be needed, so try and have trust in our T-cell immune response,” he said.

“Looking at the current evidence (of variants of the virus), it is not that big that there is any need for the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine,” he said.

“For the fourth dose, I think, there is still time to think, because if any new var- iant comes, it would not be from the SARSCOV2 family. It could be a completely new variant and when it comes, we will think about it as our genomic surveillance is still going on. No need to get worried now,” he said.