New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Union In-formation & Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar has slammed the TRP or Television Rating Point driv-en journalism on Wednesday, urging the media industry to “find a way” to restrain itself.

“We believe in self-regulation and freedom of the media. But the media needs to re-think TRPs. There should be a better way to monitor popular-ity. Responsible journalism should not suffer due to the pressure of

TRP,” Javadekar said. He added that when BARC, the agency that current-ly monitors television ratings, came

into play, he had welcomed the move as he thought it would pave the way for self-regulation. But now those who created it are themselves coming and complaining about it, he added. Javadekar asked the audience to “remember” the kind of reportage that came out in the last “2 weeks or 2 months”. Javadekar said that the media industry, at some point, will need to “stop, rectify or come out with a better version” of the current TRP model.

New Delhi/Tokyo, Oct 7 (IANS) Recognizing the increasing role being played by digital technol-ogies, India and Japan on Wednesday highlighted the need for robust and resilient digital and cyber systems. The two coun-tries have finalised text of the cybersecurity agree-ment that promotes co-operation in security and

resilience in the areas of Critical Information In-frastructure, 5G, Internet of Things (IoT) and Artifi-

cial Intelligence (AI).External Affairs Min-

ister S Jaishankar held the 13th India-Japan

Foreign Ministers’ Stra-tegic Dialogue with his Japanese counterpart on Wednesday in Tokyo. Reaffirming the mutual trust and shared values, they reviewed the prog-ress made in India-Japan Special Strategic and Global Partnership and discussed convergence in various areas, includ-ing maritime security.

National English Daily

In memory of Dr Asima Kemal and Prof. Dr. Salim W Kemal

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Indian HorizonRNI NO:DELENG/2013/51507

Published from Hyderabad & New Delhi

BIHAR POLLS: BJP GIVES 11 SEATS TO VIP FROM ITS

OWN QUOTA

P-5 P-11P-9

TRUMP TO RESUME COVID-19 RELIEF

BILL TALKS AFTER ELECTIONS

KL SHOULDN’T BE BOTHERED WITH WICKET-

KEEPINGIN INDIAN SQUAD : BRIAN LARA

Chandigarh, Oct 7 (IANS) Over 100 protesting farmers were taken into custody and detained from Haryana’s Sirsa town on Wednesday for protest-ing against the contentious farm laws. Swaraj India leader Yogen-dra Yadav was also taken into custody by the police.

However, farmer organisa-tions said that they would con-tinue with the protests. “Why have you sunk to such incivility, my JJP friend?” Yadav tweeted. He told the media he has been detained for joining a peaceful sit-in protest. Nearly 100 farm-ers and leaders were arrested. The farmers had been squat-ting on a road close to Jannayak Janata Party leader and Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chau-tala’s private residence, de-manding his resignation from the post against the agricultural laws. The police said the protest-ers were detained as the block-

ade was causing inconvenience to the public. A day earlier, the police used water cannons to disperse groups of farmers as they were heading to Chautala’s residence. A stand-off between the police and protesters had continued for almost an hour near Chautala’s residence. Lat-er, the protesters were dispersed by the police.

“Dushyant Chautala has not spoken even a single word against the farm laws. We are protesting against the laws

brought by the Centre to dis-continue the MSP regime. His Jannayak Janta Party, which claims to be a party of farmers, is sitting on the BJP lap,” pro-tester Abhay Yadav had told the media. Dushyant should either withdraw his party’s support to the BJP government in the state or clear his stand on the issue, he had added. Hundreds of farmers and arhtiyas (middle-men) have been protesting dai-ly against the three laws across Haryana.

OVER 100 PROTESTING FARMERS DETAINED IN HARYANA

PM Modi bringing positive change in lives

of poor: Amit Shah

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is bringing a positive change in the lives of millions of poor, farm-ers, women and deprived sections of society by empowering them with various historic schemes and initia-tives. He expressed the views while congratulating the Prime Minister on the beginning of his 20th year as a public representative. In a series of tweets, Shah said “October 7 is a very important day in the history of our country. On this day in 2001, Narendra Modi was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, and from that day onwards, an unstoppable journey dedicated to the cause of the nation and public service was begun which has helped us in achieving new milestones in the country’s develop-ment every day”. The Home Minister said that “Inspired by the thoughts, vision and charismatic personality of PM Modi, every Indian today is work-ing towards re-establishing India as a ‘Vishwa Guru’.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The outstanding debt of Indias non-financial sector (NFS ) stood at Rs 322 tril-lion or 167.3 per cent of GDP in 1QFY21, up from around 153 per cent in the past few quarters.

According to a report by Motilal Oswal Institutional Equities, a 9.1 per cent year on year growth in NFS debt and 0.6 per cent year on year decline in annualized nominal GDP led to a jump in NFS’ debt-to-GDP ra-tio in 1QFY21. Within NFS, general government (Centre plus states) debt grew at a 30-quarter high pace of 14.3 per cent year on year, the report said. Moreover, non-government non-financial (NGNF4) debt grew 4.6 per cent YoY in 1QFY21 (against record-low growth levels of 4 per cent in 4QFY20). Within the NGNF sector, household debt grew at near-record lows of 6 per

cent YoY in 1QFY21 (8.9 per cent in 4QFY20, but slow-est growth of 5.7 per cent in 4QFY09). Additionally, non-financial corporate (NFC) debt grew 3.7 per cent, the second lowest to record-low growth levels of 1 per cent in 4QFY20.

“A look at long-term trends suggests the coun-try’s debt growth weakened to the single digits for the first time in two decades in 2QFY20, and COVID-19 failed to change this in 1QFY21,” the report said.Due to COVID-19 and the related collapse in econom-ic activity, a jump in the debt-to-GDP ratio across

nations was inevitable. However, the pickup

in India’s debt growth in 1QFY21 was only marginal versus the previous few quarters, the report said. NFS debt growth was the highest in 15 years in the US (at 11.7 per cent), the high-est in 11 years in the UK (at 10.2 per cent), the highest in 24 years in Japan (at 4.6 per cent), and the highest in 10 quarters in China (at 12.4 per cent). Since the credit guarantee scheme in India was announced in mid-May’20 (later v/s other major nations), NGNF debt could grow faster in 2QFY21, it added.

I&B Minister Javadekar slams TRP-driven journalism

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) India recorded a fresh spike of 72,049 nCoV cases during the past 24 hours, taking the country’s tally past 67 lakh mark, the Union Health Min-istry data said on Wednesday morning. Currently, the na-tion’s total case count stands at 67,57,132.

Also, the peninsular reg-istered 82,203 cured or dis-charged cases in the same duration which has pushed

the total recoveries so far to 57,44,693. Meanwhile, there were 986 deaths due to the highly contagious virus since Tuesday, pushing the death toll to 1,04,555 till date. Ac-tive case-load on the country has decreased by 11,140 since Tuesday and presently India is home to 9,07,883 active cas-es of the novel Coronavirus.

In terms of percentage, the active cases are 13.44 per cent, recovered at 85.02 per

cent, and the deaths 1.55 per cent. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), as many as 11,99,857 samples were tested in the past 24 hours, taking the total cu-mulative samples tested since the beginning of the pandemic till Tuesday to 8,22,71,654.Meanwhile, Maharashtra con-tinues to rem ain the worst affected state with maximum case count as well as in terms of maximum active cases.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) India can prove to be an excellent base for the de-fence and aerospace indus-try, for provision of repair, overhaul, maintenance and servicing facilities, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Wednesday.

The minister said that In-dia can also become a cen-tre for regional distribution and services. Addressing the Ambassadors’ Round Table Conference on Aero India 2021 through video conference, Rajnath said Aero India since inception has carved out a place for itself and has become a leading international event in the area of showcasing the capabilities of Indian defence and aerospace in-dustry. Aero India 2021, the

13th edition of the bien-nial air show and aviation exhibition is scheduled to be held from 3-7 Feb-ruary 2021 in Bengaluru. “India has one of the larg-est defence industrial eco-systems in Asia and we aspire to build further on our strengths,” the minis-ter said. He also said that

the private sector and pub-lic-private partnerships through joint ventures and foreign direct investment have also boosted the na-tional efforts in building the domestic defence and aerospace industry. “Aero India provides an ideal platform for businesses, decision-makers and poli-

cymakers to interact to ad-dress common concerns and contribute to global defence and aerospace ecosystems and position India as a defence manu-facturing hub,” he said.

With numerous business events and large number of participants, Aero In-dia will provide the intel-lectuals and industry new meeting grounds for de-veloping military industrial enterprise, the minister said. “India has one of the world’s largest technically qualified manpower and we do claim to be a force to reckon with in the field of Information Technology,” he said. The minister said that it would provide an excellent opportunity for leading companies world-

wide to enter into partner-ships with established In-dian companies for repair, overhaul, maintenance and other services.

He also talked about nu-merous government reforms which have been announced for ease of business. “It has been endeavour of our gov-ernment to constantly un-dertake policy initiatives to attract investments in defence and aerospace industry,” he said. He also highlighted that a new category of Buy global - manufacture in India has been further introduced in Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020. “The new category incor-porates manufacture of the equipment or (Maintenance Repair and Overall) facility for equipment, through foreign company’s subsidiary.

India, Japan vouch for robust and resilient cyber systems

Govt debt grows at 30 quarter high

India’s nCoV tally crosses 67L mark Recovery rate 85.02 pc

India can become base for defence industry: Rajnath

Indian, Pak army trade heavy fire on

LoC in J&K’s KupwaraSrinagar, Oct 7 (IANS)

Pakistan used small arms and mortar shelling to target Indian positions on the Line of Control (LoC) on Wednes-

day in Jammu and Kash-mir’s Kupwara district. De-fence Ministry spokesman, Colonel Rajesh Kalia said, “Pakistan initiated the un-provoked ceasefire violation along the LoC in the Keran sector of Kupwara district in the afternoon today by

firing mortars and other weapons.” The spokesman said,”Indian positions were giving befitting replies”. One JCO of the army was killed in Pakistan ceasefire violation on the LoC in Rajouri dis-trict of Jammu division on Tuesday.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Amid the Uttar Pradesh government's allegation of a "conspiracy" in the Hathras case, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has released a video of his conversation with the victim's family during his visit there on Saturday. In the purported conver-sation, Rahul Gandhi is heard saying to the vic-tim's family that "don't be in fear and do not leave the village" and his sole objective in coming to the

village was to ensure that the family is safe.

While the victim's fam-ily complained about the ill treatment meted out by the District Magistrate and how they were not al-

lowed to see their daugh-ter's body whose last rites were performed in the wee hours. A voice could be heard that "How could we know whose body they have burnt?" The Hath-

ras incident has put the UP administration in the dock and the opposition particularly Congress is blaming the Chief Minister for messing up the inci-dent to save himself. Rahul Gandhi and his sister, Con-gress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, along with three other party leaders, on Saturday visited the family of the 19-year-old Hathras girl who died after being alleg-edly gang-raped by upper-caste men.

Rahul releases video of interaction with Hathras victim's family

city Indian Horizonthursday, October 8, 20202

Restuarants in Delhi to open 24x7 soonNew Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS)

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday con-vened a meeting with a del-egation of the National Res-taurant Association of India (NRAI), several ministers and top officials of various depart-ments and directed them to remove the hassles for ease of doing business for the restau-rant industry in the national capital.

“On the request of the res-taurateurs to allow 24x7 busi-ness, it was agreed that the

restaurants will be allowed to operate at all hours subject to the condition that they sub-mit an undertaking that they will take care of the health and security of their entire staff,” a government statement said.

The government also said that this will help the indus-try generate more employ-ment in the national capital through increased demand.

“Delhi’s restaurants are the pride of the national capital and provide employment to lakhs of people. I have direct-

ed all the respective depart-ments to remove unnecessary hassles in the smooth running of restaurants in Delhi,” Kejri-

wal said after the meeting.Decisions were also taken

in the meeting to immediately amend archaic excise rules

to permit service in open ar-eas, balconies, verandahs etc. without any additional fee, to permit additional dispens-ing counters in the licensed premises without any addi-tional fee, to permit branding within the licensed premises, to permit licences for all types of music, including DJs, live bands and karaoke, to abolish the requirement of a designat-ed liquor store and to allow the stock to be kept anywhere in the licensed premises.

“It was decided that other

relevant suggestions related to amendments in excise regulations will be considered to be included in a new policy currently under preparation, permitting the extension of the operating timings of the restaurants on the weekends till 3 am,” said the govern-ment statement.

The Chief Minister also in-structed that the health trade licences, which are issued to the restaurants by the munic-ipal corporations, should be abolished within 10 days.

Putting forward their cause of concern, the restaurateurs said that the FSSAI, a body operating under the Govern-ment of India, already en-sures the issuance of food and safety hygiene licences, and the issuance of health trade licences by the local bodies made the task irrelevant.

The CM also reviewed a let-ter written by the FSSAI ad-dressing the municipal cor-porations to cease any further issuing of licences and directed the officials to do the same.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) As the entire nation was discuss-ing the Hathras horror where a 19-year-old was allegedly gan-graped that later resulted in her death, over the weekend, RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat advocated that RSS office bear-ers and volunteers work for the Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNT).

Though Bhagwat made no reference or remote suggestion

to the incident, the renewed thrust of the BJP’s ideological mentor on the nomadic tribes coupled with a political situ-ation where a BJP state gov-

ernment is made to look anti-Dalit, the focus is back on the Dada Idate Commission report which gave recommendations for the upliftment of the tribes amid speculation of giving it a fresh look.

While Bhagwat was told that a great deal of work has been done by the Rajasthan unit of the RSS for the DNT commu-nity in Jaipur and other parts of Rajasthan, the RSS supremo

urged the Sangh’s office bear-ers and volunteers alike to fo-cus on further helping the de-notified tribes.

Cow welfare, social har-mony, strengthening families were other wishes of Bhagwat in Jaipur that finds regular mention in his RSS lectures. But stressing on nomadics was significant, almost signalling to the government on what to do next.

Bhagwat’s nudge post Hathras, focus back on nomadic tribes

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The Delhi High Court on Wednesday referred a petition seeking direc-tions to the concerned authorities for the installation of fiber line for internet in all the cell operators in all the court complex situated in the national capital to a division bench.

After hearing the matter briefly, a single judge bench of the high court comprising Justice Navin Chawla transferred the matter to an appro-priate division bench of the court and slated it for further hearing on October 12.

The plea filed by Satyanarain Sharma, who is a practicing advo-cate and former secretary of the Ro-hini Court Bar Association (RCBA), said the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing nation-

wide lockdown hit the judiciary hard, deferring regular hearings and confining hearings only to ur-gent cases via video conferencing.

The plea also sought directions to the respondents to take necessary steps on an urgent basis to instal fi-ber cables in all court complexes in Delhi, including chamber premises.

It sought the indulgence of the court regarding the problem faced by the judges, lawyers and litigants due to poor/lack of internet con-nectivity.

The majority of the lawyers are facing the problem of poor/non-availability of internet in the cham-ber blocks situated in court com-plexes, which has resulted in grave hardship for the practicing advo-cates, the plea said.

Delhi HC refers plea seeking fiber net in all courts to division bench

Expressing concern over the menace of air pollution in Delhi during winters, the central pollution watchdog has asked the Arvind Kejriwal government to take immediate action on major pollution sources like construction and demolition activities and open garbage dumping.

Listing out a series of tasks to be accomplished across Delhi, the Central Pollution Control Board

asked in a letter to the Delhi government on Tuesday to take early action on dumping of mixed municipal solid waste at three dump sites in Bhalswa, Ghazipur and Okhla.

“It is observed that construction and demolition activities and open dumping of waste/garbage continue to be the major concern in most of the areas and therefore, special efforts are needed to curb these

activities”, the CPCB said. It said some tasks to

curb air pollution in Delhi have been accomplished but “more needs to be done”. Pointing out the shortcomings in action plans of 13 pollution hotspots in the capital, it said the updated status of Wazirpur hotspot has not been received while the target of greening and paving in the hotspot areas is not mentioned.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued a notice on a petition filed by an interfaith couple challenging the procedure of issuance of public notice inviting objections to the registration of the marriage for a period of 30 days under the Special Marriage Act.

A division bench of the high court presided by Chief Justice D. N. Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan directed the Centre and the Delhi government to file its response over the petition

filed by the couple and listed the matter for further hearing on November 27.

The petition, filed through advocates Utkarsh Singh, Mohd. Tauheed and Mohd Humaid, sought the setting aside of the impugned procedure of issuance of public notice for 30 days inviting objections to the marriage solemnization and registration under the Special Marriage Act, 1954.

“The petitioners, being directly affected and aggrieved by the impugned procedure for applying for registration of marriages

under Sections 6 and 7 of the Special Marriage Act, 1954 wherein public notice is issued inviting objections mentioned in section 4 of the SMA, 1954 to the marriage for next 30 days.

They are praying for declaration of said impugned procedure for applying for registration of marriages under the Special Marriage Act, 1954 as Null and Void and ultra vires to the constitution of India as the same are grossly illegal, arbitrary and ultra vires to the Constitution of India,” the plea said.

CPCB writes to Kejriwal govt for urgent action on major polluting sources, lists out pending tasks

HC notice on interfaith couple’s plea against 30-day notice period

Retired Lt. Colonel held for duping ex-service men in residential plots scam

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Delhi Police has arrested a retired Lieutenant Colonel for allegedly being the key conspirator in a property scam in which he duped many unsuspecting Army personnel. On the basis of credible information, the EOW team arrested the accused on Tuesday from one of his residences at Dwarka.

Officials said that during investigations, it emerged that the accused Rakesh Rana, Chairman-cum-Managing Director of SWO India was the main brain behind the offence. The accused, a retired Lt Colonel and Kirti Chakra

recipient, is also the authorised signatory of various accounts of the company.

During investigations it surfaced that Rana induced and gave false representation to army personnel that a residential plots project was of 20 acre land and the land had been purchased and the

necessary approvals taken.The company reportedly

provided allocation letter cum agreement on receipt of total amount, but the company neither provided the plots, nor did they return the money. The company in question has no land, requisite sanction or approval from concerned authority.

“Accused person by flashing rosy picture about various plot projects in different states including the Veer Aawas Bokaro Project assured army personnel that they are running an NGO in the name of SWO-INDIA for the benefit of Army personnel and is not earning any benefits from the projects.

However, the accused directed the investors to deposit money in SWO India Ltd (a company of identical name),” said OP Mishra, Joint CP EOW.

The army personnel believed fell for the trap and deposited at least Rs 88 lakhs in 2018 after which a case of cheating and other relevant sections was registered.“The alleged company through its director ensured that he would provide residential plots to the army personnel at Bokaro, Jharkhand on a no-profit-no-loss basis. But the accused persons did not purchase the land. They did not take necessary approvals in this regard either,” the officer added.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The National Green Tribu-nal has directed the Delhi government to take appro-priate steps and submit a compliance report on the enhancement of biomedi-cal waste treatment and disposal facilities in the national capital amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A bench of NGT Chair-person Adarsh Kumar Goel was hearing an application filed by International Re-hab Foundation seeking a direction to bridge the gap

between waste generation and disposal. It asserted that such unscientific dis-posal is the source of pollu-tion and causes damage to public health.

“Let the Delhi govern-ment take appropriate

steps in the matter and fur-nish a compliance report before the next date,” the bench, which also com-prises Judicial Member S.P. Wangdi and Expert Mem-ber Nagin Nanda, said. The matter will now be heard

on January 12, 2021.The International Re-

hab Foundation, repre-sented by advocates Ra-hul Khurana and Veena Bansal, have been direct-ed to furnish a set of pa-pers to the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, the Delhi Health Secretary, and the Chief Secretary, and file an affidavit of ser-vice within one week.

In a separate matter in April, the green tribunal had taken suo moto cog-nizance of the lack of bio-

medical waste treatment facilities and directed the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to take steps to ensure compliance of Biomedical Waste Man-agement Rules, 2016.

The NGT had also said that care should be taken in disposal of used person-al protective equipment, used bags, gloves, goggles without the same getting straightaway mixed with other municipal solid waste, causing contami-nation.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The Delhi High Court has issued notice on a peti-tion filed by the Delhi High Court Bar Association (DH-CBA).

Challenging the classifi-cation of the offices of the lawyers under the commer-cial property ambit for the assessment of property tax.

A division bench of the High Court presided by Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan sought a response from all the respondents including East, South and North Del-hi Municipal Corporation over the petition filed by DHCBA through its presi-dent and senior advocate

Mohit Mathur and Secre-tary Abhijat.

The plea has sought quashing of the order of November 29, 2018 passed by the South Delhi Munici-pal Corporation relating to self-assessment of proper-ty tax returns of lawyers of-fices under Sections 123-A and 123-B of the Delhi Mu-

NGT seeks compliance report from Delhi on biomedical waste disposal

HC notice on plea challenging commercial property tax on lawyers’ offices

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The Delhi Commission for Women has rescued a minor girl from southeast Delhi’s Jamia Nagar who was allegedly being mar-ried off. A call was received on the Commission’s 181 helpline on an anonymous complaint that the family was planning to

marry off the girl on October 10. The matter was escalated to DCW chief Swati Maliwal who along with member Kiran Negi immediately constituted a team to take action in the matter.

The complainant informed that the girl’s ‘Haldi’ ceremo-

ny was scheduled for October 5 and that would be the best time to catch the family red-handed. The team visited the given address along with Delhi Police and observed that the house was properly decorated and several marriage rituals were ongoing. When the team

enquired about the girl, the family refused to share any in-formation.

They said that the girl was not a minor but they failed to produce any documents to prove it. Police team then searched the premises and found that the girl was kept

locked up in a room.The girl along with the fam-

ily members were taken to Jamia Nagar police station. The girl was then taken to the hospital for medical examina-tion and was then shifted to a shelter home after her state-ments were recorded.

Police has registered an FIR against the family members of the girl and some of them have also been arrested. The girl is being produced before the child welfare committee.

Maliwal while speaking on the incident said, “Even in cit-ies like Delhi, girls are being

deprived of their childhood. They are being forcefully mar-ried off at a young age. Our team showed great proactive-ness in this matter and rescued the girl in time. We have got an FIR registered. I hope strong action is taken against people who get children married off.”

DCW rescues minor from being married off in Delhi’s Jamia Nagar

nicipal Corporation (DMC) Act.

The petition filed by ad-vocate Nikhil Mehta said that the order was illegal and arbitrary and added

that treating the legal pro-fession as part of commer-cial activity is illegal, arbi-trary and contrary to the law. The court will next hear the matter on November 20.

cityIndian Horizonthursday, October 8, 2020 3

AAP demands action against Punjab, Haryana over stubble burningNew Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Aam

Aadmi Party leader Raghav Chadha on Wednesday said that Punjab and Haryana are guilty of criminal negligence on the matter of air pollution and have not taken any serious comprehensive steps to stop stubble burning.

Chadha spoke about the Centre’s launch of the ambitious National Clean Air Plan (NCAP), and how Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced a budget of Rs 4,400 crore for the NCAP. Chadha said, “I want to ask the central government

where is this money? The Aam Aadmi Party wants to know why the central government has not given this money to the farmers. We also want to know why the central government

can’t come up with a suitable plan to stop stubble burning.”

“Today I want to tell you that this year the stubble burning started one month before October 15. In the first week of

October in Punjab, the stubble burning has increased nine-fold and in Haryana three-fold. In the first week of October, 606 cases of stubble burning were reported from Punjab and 137 cases in Haryana. We want to request the Supreme Court-appointed watchdog to take note of the matter and to take stern action against these states. The estimation is that nearly 35 million tonnes of stubble will be burnt this year combining Punjab and Haryana,” Chadha said.

The AAP leader said that the Delhi government is

also trying and working on developing a parallel method to avoid stubble burning and CM has also launched a plan to combat the city’s air pollution.

The air quality of the region dipped to the ‘very poor’ category on Wednesday. This marks the beginning of the highly-polluted season that goes on to last for about three months.

With stubble burning, the air pollution reaches a crescendo in Delhi-NCR every winter, when pollutants combine with the suspended water droplets in the lower atmosphere.

One runway of the Noida international airport will be built during the first phase of construction and around 90 per cent of the air traffic in the initial years will be domestic only, said a top official of Zurich Airport International on Wednesday.

Officials of the Uttar Pradesh government and Zurich Airport International signed a concession agreement on Wednesday to begin the construction of the Noida airport in Jewar on the outskirts of Delhi.

“We will obviously work with the local construction partners to build it (Noida airport) but we will be the main investor at the moment,” Daniel Bircher, Chief Executive Officer, Zurich Airport International (Asia) told PTI in an interview.

He said the company might get another financial investor

at a later stage to develop the airport further.

“As a strategic objective, we are looking at building a platform of airports in India in the mid-term. So, it could be that we will join hands with a financial investor in a later stage to make this platform (Noida airport) grow. At this stage of the development phase (of Noida airport), we will do it ourselves,” he added.

Zurich Airport International currently holds 100 per cent shareholding in the Noida airport project.

It had outbid the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), Adani Enterprises and Anchorage Infrastructure Investments Holdings Limited to win the 40-year concession for the Noida airport. The GMR group-led DIAL operates the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) in Delhi.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The roar you hear after every boundary hit or wicket taken in the ongoing Indian Pre-mier League (IPL) is virtual, compensating for the crowd that has not been allowed into the stadiums as a pre-cautionary measure due to the pandemic.

However, there are many who literally shout, cheer and get the adrenaline rush on every ball of the ongoing T20 cricket matches. They have money at stake and are running a dark network of betting on IPL matches with their setup of laptops, mo-biles and registers to main-tain records.

The Indian police in states like Hyderabad, Uttar Pradesh, Kolkata, Goa, Delhi and the NCR has actively launched a crackdown on betting syndicates, arresting several men who were caught red-handed from small flats to resorts in India. The Goa

police busted at least two gambling networks in Goa betting on the outcome of IPL matches. On October 2, the Goa Police Crime Branch raided a hotel and arrested three persons from Hyder-abad who were found ac-cepting bets on IPL matches from people across India.

The arrests came a day af-ter the police apprehended five persons from a villa at Candolim, a coastal village in north Goa. All those arrested were from Rajasthan except one who was from Nepal. None of those arrested be-longed to Goa. In Hyderabad, at least 13 persons were ar-rested from different parts of the city and more than Rs 22 lakh in cash was seized. Seven members of a gang organising betting for the on-going IPL matches were ap-prehended by the Cyberabad Special Operations Team of Balanagar zone on Sunday night

Noida airport to have one runway and 90 per cent domestic traffic initially: Zurich airport official

As virtual fans cheer in IPL, cops launch pan-India

crackdown on betting

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Wednesday held the Shaheen Bagh protest perhaps no longer remained the “sole and empowering voice of women”, as the presence of various groups of protesters had possibly resulted in them acting at cross-purposes.

Citing the report of interlocutors, a bench comprising Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Aniruddha Bose and Krishna Murari said that it appeared that an absence of leadership guiding the protest and the presence of various groups of protesters had resulted in many influencers who were acting possibly at cross-purposes with each other.

“Thus, the Shaheen Bagh protest perhaps no longer remained the sole and empowering voice of women, who also appeared to no longer have the ability to call off the protest themselves,” it said. The top court had appointed two interlocutors - senior advocate Sanjay R. Hegde and Sadhana Ramachandran, who is a mediator trainer, to meet the protesters at the site.

According to their first report, the top court found that the nature of demands was very wide and that it did look difficult to find a middle path towards at least facilitating the opening of the blocked public way.

The second report of the interlocutors suggested that the views reflected in private conversations with the protesters were somewhat different from the public

statements made to the media and to the crowd in attendance.

“While the women protesters had sat in protest inside the tent, there was a huge periphery comprising mainly of male protesters, volunteers and bystanders who all seemed to have a stake in the continuance of the blockade of the road,” the bench said.

During the site visit on March 20, before the lockdown to control the outbreak of Covid-19 was imposed, it was revealed that there were about 35-40 ‘takhts’ (platforms) inside the tent and each had 2-3 women occupying the space, resulting in a rough estimate

of about 75-100 women inside the tent, as well as 200 or more outside the tent having a connection with the protest.

“While the tent was occupying half of the carriageway, the remaining half of the carriageway had been blocked by creating facilities such as a library, a large model of India Gate and a big metallic three-dimensional map of India located upon a very strong metal scaffolding and anchored by heavy stones, making its removal very difficult,” the top court observed.

Noting that mediation through interlocutors did not produce a solution.

Shaheen Bagh protest didn’t remain sole voice of women, says SC

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Wednesday will be remem-bered as a red letter day in the nation’s history of protests when the Supreme Court said it cannot accept that an inde-terminable number of people can assemble whenever they choose to protest, and cited the distinction between the manner of dissent against the colonisers and the expression of dissent in a democratic system.

“What must be kept in mind, however, is that the erstwhile mode and manner of dissent against colonial

rule cannot be equated with dissent in a self-ruled democ-racy,” said the top court.

It was referring to the Sha-heen Bagh blockade that occupied an active road of the national capital for more than a month protest-ing against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

While many have breathed a sigh of relief at the apex court stepping in and bring-ing a semblance of balance between democracy and dis-sent, some fear the Capital’s protest culture may be at risk with shrinking space for pro-

test in Delhi.One of the Capital’s oldest

spots for mid to large-level protests has been the iconic Ram Lila Maidan. From Jay-aprakash Narayan’s anti-Indira Gandhi protests in the 1970s to the Anna Hazare-led anti-graft campaign during the UPA era, the sprawling and dusty ground saw some of the most eventful agita-tions in the national Capital.

However, over the years, getting a chance to protest in this Maidan has also become a tad tougher. The steep per day booking charge makes

many smaller protesting groups opt out of this loca-tion.

India Gate had been a fa-vourite protest site not so long ago. During the Nirb-haya rape case protests, In-dia Gate was brimming with public anger. But not any more. Whenever any protest call is made at India Gate, Section 144 is invoked, as it happened this time around when protesters wanted to go to India Gate demanding justice for the victim of the Hathras gang-rape. “No gath-ering is permissible around

India Gate due to imposition of Section 144 CrPC,” the Delhi Police tweeted.

Of course Jantar Mantar has been the favourite protest central that saw many small protests to bigger political dharnas and even resound-ing agitations like Anna Haz-are sitting on a fast demand-ing the passage of Lokpal Bill.

But in 2018, the Delhi Po-lice had come up with draft guidelines stating that only 1,000 people can be pres-ent there at the time of stag-ing protests. This after the Supreme Court had lifted

Boat Club to Jantar Mantar: Delhi’s shrinking spaces for dissent

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Two persons were crushed to death in a road accident in Delhi on Wednesday after a truck fell on a car, the police said. The two were killed when the large truck overturned in the Lajpat Nagar area.

The deceased were identified as 35-year-old Ankit Malhotra, a resident of Karkardooma, and 35-year-old Ranjan Kalra, a Lajpat Nagar resident. Both worked in an event management company and were on their way to the airport to board a flight to Kolkata.

“We received a call of an accident at around 3.50 a.m. Immediately, the police staff from the Lajpat Nagar police station reached the spot and found that a Honda city car

was crushed under a truck container at T-Point, under the flyover opposite Lal Sai Market Ring Road.

“The Container filled with rice bags was removed from the car with the help of cranes and JCB. Ambulances, fire brigade and crime teams were also called on the spot,” said R.P. Meena, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Southeast Delhi.

Both the injured were taken out of the mangled car and taken to the hospital, where doctors declared them brought dead.

A case under relevant section has been registered at the Lajpat Nagar police station and search for the driver of the truck, who fled the spot, is on.

2 crushed to death as truck falls on car in Delhi

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued notice over a petition against the rise in the examination fees demanded by the Central Board of Secondary Educa-tion (CBSE) from the students of Class X and XII for registra-tion in the Board Examina-tions. A division bench of the high court presided by Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Prateek Jalan issued notice to the CBSE, Delhi Government and the Central government over a plea filed by an as-sociation called the Parents Forum for Meaningful Edu-cation.

The plea filed through advocates P.S. Sharda and Kshitij Sharda the CBSE for the year 2019-2020 arbitrarily

enhanced its examination fee for Class X and Class XII Board examination by two folds as compared to the year 2017- 2018 and several folds as compared to the year 2014-2015.

The fee effectively trans-lates to about Rs. 2400 in case of practical science and ad-ditional subject option case and increases by 2400% in case of sc/st students, the pe-

titioner said.“Due to inability to afford

the blatantly arbitrary en-hancement of fee by poor stakeholders of government and aided schools under R2 (Delhi government), it wisely met the fee obligation to R1 for academic year 2019-2020 and assured the stakeholders that it would have the same sorted out for future to avoid repeat of this malady in fu-

ture,” the plea read.The plea further stated that

it has emerged that the Delhi government has not only failed to sort out the mat-ter as promised last year but this year it has declined to meet the steep fee obligation thereby abandoning lakhs of children in class X and XII in its schools.

“This has directly hit chil-dren hailing from economi-cally poor sections who are from economically weak and deprived sections of society studying in the government and aided schools in class X and Class XII under R2 and are consequently imperilled and if not rescued will get left abandoned which cannot be acceptable to any responsible state,” the plea stated.

The plea has sought court’s direction to the Delhi govern-ment to permanently sort out the matter of payment of the fee for students in its school for the Board Examination for Class X and Class XII with other Respondents 1 (CBSE) and 3 (Central government) to protect their eligibility to take the Board Examination conducted by the CBSE.

The plea also sought the court’s direction for estab-lishing an empowered com-mittee to examine and sub-mit a report to this Hon’ble Court for necessary stan-dards and standards for their implementation: for fixation of norms of fee for Board Ex-amination by R1 for the chil-dren studying in the schools run by the Delhi government.

NEW DELHI: Delhi assem-bly on Tuesday told the Su-preme Court that it had indeed warned a Facebook official of breach of privilege if he refused to depose before Raghav Chad-ha-headed Peace and Harmo-ny Committee inquiring into the social media platform’s al-leged role in dealing with hate

speech and derogatory content against minority community during Delhi riots.

However, the assembly in its affidavit, said that the warning was issued as the official, Ajit Mohan, had not responded to the earlier notice for appear-ance as witness before the Committee, which had been

HC seeks CBSE, Centre, AAP govt response on plea against rise in Board exam fees

Delhi assembly admits threatening Facebook official with breach of privilege

NAME CHANGE

MY ACTUAL name is Satish

Panchal S/O Sh. Harpal Panchal,

r/o H.NO. D-40, Gali No.-3. Near

Lalita Mandir, Ashok Nagar,

Shahdara, Delhi-110093 but by

Mistaken in my Son (Bharat

Panchal) School record my name

wrongly mentioned as SATISH

KUMAR. In future I will be

known as SATISH PANCHAL for all

purposes.

the ‘complete ban’ on holding dharna there that the NGT had imposed. Even now, a police permission is needed for holding a dharna there.

Another favoured spot for ex-pressing dissent in the capital has been the Boat Club. There is an iconic photo of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh addressing a rally at Boat Club with a sea of people.

told by witnesses with “incisive knowledge” about hate speech circulation through social me-dia during the Delhi riots tar-geting the minority commu-nity aggravated the situation.

It said that though the same official had appeared before a parliamentary committee, he refused to appear before the assembly committee and re-plied through another official of Facebook to the first notice and did not appear before it.

SOUTH Indian HorizonThursday, October 8, 20204

No compromise on Mhadei issue, Goa is on right track: CM

Panaji, Oct 7 (IANS) Goa will not compromise on the ongoing Mha-dei river water sharing row with Kar-nataka and the state is on the right track, especially with the filing of a contempt petition against the neigh-

bouring state for violation of apex court’s orders, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said on Wednesday.

“There is no compromise. We are strong in that regard. We have taken a stand. We are very much clear. We

have filed a contempt petition. We are strong on that and we will follow the matter in the Supreme Court. We are on the right track,” Sawant said.

The Chief Minister was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a func-tion organised by a government cor-poration in Panaji. The state govern-ment on Tuesday filed the contempt petition against Karnataka in the apex court alleging that the southern state is illegally diverting water from the Mhadei river basin via the newly constructed Kalasa-Banduri canal, despite a special leave petition filed by the Goa government in the apex

court vis a vis the contentious issue. The SLP, which was filed in July last year, also challenged the Mhadei Wa-ter Dispute Tribunal award in 2018, which allowed Karnataka to divert 13.42 TMC water from the river basin.

The SLP had also said that Karna-taka was diverting more water than what was awarded.

Mhadei also known as the Mandovi river in Goa and Mahadayi in Karna-taka, is considered as a lifeline in the northern parts of Goa. It originates in Karnataka and meets the Arabian Sea in Panaji in Goa, while briefly flowing through Maharashtra.

Crucial days ahead for Jose Mani as Kerala’s ruling party beckons him

Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 7 (IANS) The coming weeks are going to be crucial for late K.M. Mani’s son Jose K.Mani, as the faction of the Kerala Congress (Mani) that he leads, is awaiting its entry into the ruling CPI-M led Left Democratic Front (LDF).

While the nod has come from the CPI-M, the ball is now in the court of Jose, whose crucial steering com-mittee meeting of the party is meeting on Friday.

The Jose faction suffered a rude jolt, last month af-ter one of its strong leaders, a former legislator Joseph M.Puthusserry decided to join the opposite faction led by veteran legislator P.J. Jo-seph. Jose is worried at more people leaving his flock as that could affect his ‘bargain-ing power’ with the LDF.

The CPI-M has asked Jose to make the first move to express his interest in join-ing the LDF. A similar situa-tion had emerged when late K.M. Mani had decided to

sit as an independent bloc in 2016 after breaking away from the Congress-led UDF. At that time, stiff opposition surfaced after the second biggest ally in the Left -- the CPI -- strongly opposed it. In 2018, K.M. Mani returned to the UDF after a Rajya Sabha seat was given to him. Quick to take up the offer, he asked Jose to resign from the Lok Sabha, a year before the term was to end, and contest the Rajya Sabha seat which he won.

After the death of K.M. Mani last year, the two fac-

tions emerged within the par-ty -- one led by party veteran legislator P.J. Joseph and the other by Jose K. Mani. In the Joseph’s faction, which had three legislators, the num-ber came down to two after the death of veteran legisla-tor C.F. Thomas last month, while his rival faction has also two.

Speaking to IANS, sitting legislator Roshy Augustine, who has been strongly rooted with Jose, denied all rumours that has started going around that he is not keen to join the LDF.

“All along I have been with our party chairman (Jose) and there is no basis in the pres-ent speculation that I will leave Jose. We have our party steering committee meeting on Friday,” said Augustine.

Meanwhile, the LDF has come to a broad consensus on the seats that should be given to Jose, which is essentially a pre-condition to his entry into the LDF.

In the 2016 Assembly polls, the erstwhile Kerala Congress (Mani) -- the undivided party -- had contested 15 seats and they have now been offered 13 seats.

With CPI-M taking the lead to bring in Jose, even though the CPI and NCP had ex-pressed their displeasure af-ter a few of their seats, which they contested, might be giv-en to Jose, the CPI-M is hope-ful that all such issues will be amicably settled.

However, if it happens, the CPI-M will have some explaining to do, more than Jose.

ED charge sheet in PMLA court: Swapna met Kerala CM 6 times

Odisha reports 2,995 new Covid cases

Cong alleges ‘Wayside Amenities’ project a rip

off by Vijayan

K’taka fishermen knock on PM’s door for help

Kochi, Oct 7 (IANS) The ED on Wednesday filed a charge sheet in a PMLA court in Ernakulam in its probe into the money trail in the gold smuggling case, triggering another slugfest in Kerala politics after it al-legedly revealed that prime accused Swapna Suresh had met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan six times.

The charge sheet was filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act

(PMLA), 2002 against PS Sarith, Swapna Suresh and Sandeep Nair in the District and Sessions Court (PMLA) in Ernakulam in the gold smuggling case. All three accused are in judicial cus-tody since July.

The ED charge sheet quoted Swapna as saying that she had met Vijayan on six occasions in the pres-ence of now-suspended IAS officer M Sivasankar and that the CM knew about her

appointment in the Space Park on a salary of over Rs 1.50 lakh per month. The Congress and the BJP lead-ership in the southern state were up in arms and de-manded the resignation of Vijayan.

“Vijayan had said he had no clue of how she got a job in the Space Park, but the ED charge sheet says he was aware. Vijayan then said his office is not a haven for such people.

Bhubaneswar, Oct 7 (IANS) Odisha has report-ed as many as 2,995 new Covid-19 cases and 18 deaths in the last 24 hours, informed the state Health Department on Wednes-day.

The total count of people infected with the virus in the state rose to 2,40,998. The death toll due to Coronavirus climbed to 958.

Four deaths were report-

ed from Balasore district and two each from Naya-garh, Puri and Sundergarh districts. One death each was reported from the districts of Boudh, Deog-arh, Jajpur, Kandhamal, Khordha, Koraput, May-urbhanj and Sambalpur.

Among the new cases, 1,737 have been kept un-der quarantine, while 1,258 are local contacts.

Khordha recorded the highest 568 fresh cases

followed by Cuttack (166) and Angul (142). Angul re-corded 142 cases, followed by Balasore (121), Balan-gir (94), Bargarh (93) and Bhadrak (28). At present, there are 29,770 active Co-vid-19 cases in the state with 958 fatalities.

With the new cases, the number of active cases in the state rose to 29,770. A total of 2,10,217 people have recovered from the virus in the state.

Chennai, Oct 7 (IANS) Tamil Nadu’s ruling AIADMK on Wednesday announced that Chief Minister K. Palaniswami will be the party’s chief min-isterial candidate for the 2021 Assembly polls.

The much expected an-nouncement was made by party Coordinator and Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneer-selvam at the party headquar-ters here.

Accepting the demand of Panneerselvam, the party has

also announced the setting up of a 11-member steering com-mittee to guide the party.

The formation of the steer-ing committee was announced by party Joint Coordinator and Chief Minister Palaniswami.

The members of the steer-ing committee are: Dindigul C. Sreenivasan, S.P. Velu-mani, P. Thangamani, C.Ve.Shanmugam, D. Jayakumar, R.Kamaraj, Manoj Pandian, J.C.D. Prabhakar, P. Mohan, Gopalakrishnan and Man-

ickam. Welcoming the an-nouncement party cadres burst crackers and distributed sweets at the headquarters.

At the recent meeting of the Executive Committee of the party, the issue of announc-ing the Chief Ministerial can-didate for the 2021 assembly elections was raised.

There were heated ex-changes between the sup-porters of Panneerselvam and Palaniswami.

Panneerselvam’s demand is

to set up a steering committee to guide the party as per earlier agreement.

All these years Palaniswa-mi was not agreeable for the steering committee and Pan-neerselvam remained silent.

After the party’s Executive Committee meeting, Deputy Coordinator K.P. Munusamy told reporters that the party’s Chief Ministerial candidate will be announced on Octo-ber 7 by Panneerselvam and Palaniswami.

Bhubaneswar, Oct 7 (IANS) Several persons were injured after a major fire broke out at a fuel station near Raj Bha-wan in Bhubaneswar following an explo-sion on Wednesday.

An underground CNG storage tank ex-ploded leading to the fire at the fuel sta-tion located barely a few hundred metres away from Raj Bhawan, said police.

The blast injured many people and damaged many vehicles at the petrol station.

As many as five fire tenders were pressed into service to douse the flames.

Police Commissioner Sudhansu Saran-gi informed that one of the fuel storage tanks exploded causing the fire to spread.

He said the entire stretch of road be-tween Raj Bhawan and Capital Hospital has been cordoned off by the police to avoid any untoward situation.

The intensity of the explosion was so high that it felt like an earthquake. The nearby houses also felt the strong shocks, said an eyewitness. Capital Hos-pital director Laxmidhar Sahoo said they have received eight injured persons for treatment.

Udupi, Oct 7 (IANS) Leading fishermen bodies in Karnataka have highlighted the need for the adoption of new technolo-gies in the states fishing sector.

They have also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi under the aegis of Indian Fish-ermen for Technology Adoption (IFTA), seeking his direct inter-vention to spur the adoption of new technologies in the sector.

Prominent boat owners and fishing community leaders in Gujarat had also written to the PM recently and highlighted similar issues.

Ganapati Mangre, Chairman of The North Kanara District Co-Operative Fish Marketing

Federation Limited, elaborating on the community’s challenges, said, “The lives of hundreds and thousands of fishermen are lost at sea every year due to the unavailability of modern con-nectivity technologies such as satellite based navigation sys-tems that can connect Indian fishermen with mobile devices offering timely SoS alerts and harvesting predictions to ensure better catches and safety while at sea. We urge the govern-ment’s help for the industry to adopt new technologies to ad-dress this great risk to our lives and livelihoods.”

Yashpal Suvarna, President South Kanara and Udupi dis-

trict co operative Fish Mar-keting Federation Limited Mangalore said, “The incident involving four fishermen who went missing at Malpe recently and the loss of lives from the Suvarna Tribhuja incident last year remain painfully etched in our collective memory and made us realise that our usual methods of communication and warnings were not ad-equate to respond to tragedies like these. It is high time that India adopts the highly-ad-vanced communications and connectivity technologies that are already available to ensure the fishing sector benefits from them in the longer term.”

“The Center must implement their adoption via standardising quality of technologies available across the states. We have test-ed BSNL’s transponder, which has two-way data communica-tion directly over satellite and works in the deep sea. We urge the Prime Minister’s direct in-tervention and request his gov-ernment to broadly deploy the latest technology immediately. We need a solution today as any delay will continue to endanger the safety and security of fisher-men at sea,” they added.

The adoption of next-gen-eration digital and satellite communications technologies would raise productivity of fish-ing harvests, create world-class competitiveness, apart from addressing the immediate and urgent challenge to ensure the safety of the state’s fishermen on the high seas.

Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 7 (IANS) Leader of Opposition Ra-mesh Chennithala on Wednes-day alleged that the latest rip off by the Pinarayi Vijayan govern-ment, which has just a few more months left in office, is a project of the Overseas Keralites Invest-ment & Holding (OKIH) which is nothing but handing over gov-ernment land to private players.

Chennithala told the media that OKIH is a company formed with 74 per cent participation by private investors from the Kerala diaspora and the rest by the state government.

“The company’s major proj-ect that has been announced is ‘Wayside Amenities’ -- to cre-ate wayside amenities starting with Alappuzha, Wayanad and Ernakulam districts. Land to the extent of 2 to 4 acres would be acquired to set this up. This is the first such project that has been announced and it’s by taking over the land of state PSU SILK near Alappuzha,” said Chennithala. He said recently a similar project was mooted by

the Public Works Department, but it was shot down by Revenue Minister E. Chandrasekheran.

“The decision to take over the prime land of SILK at Alappuzha is a rip off as this is a ploy where precious public land will finally land in the hands of private par-ties. We demand the Vijayan government to release the MoU signed in this Alappuzha project. We wish to know who are these two directors of OKIH -- O.V. Mustafa and Bajju George. Has the state cabinet cleared this project and the most important thing is why was a similar proj-ect that was mooted by the In-dian Oil Corporation not looked into,” asked Chennithala.

Vijayan had, during a diaspora meeting held here, announced that OKIH would be formed and the Kerala diaspora could in-vest in it. Among the objectives of OKIH are bringing global standards to Kerala in housing, tourism, health, skill develop-ment, infrastructure and edu-cation through Special Purpose Vehicles.

Explosion at fuel pump near Raj Bhawan in Odisha,

several injured

Palaniswami will be AIADMK’s CM candidate for 2021 Assembly polls

NationIndian HorizonThursday, October 8, 2020 5

Haryana aims to achieve zero burning of stubble

Chandigarh, Oct 7 (IANS) Haryana Chief Secretary Vijai Vardhan on

Wednesday directed all Deputy Commissioners to achieve the goal of zero burning of stubble, besides ensuring the availability of residue management machinery to small and marginal farmers.

He said those panchayats coming in the red zone will be rewarded at the state level for performing well in crop residue management. The panchayat that gets the first, second and third position will be reward-ed with Rs 10 lakh, Rs 5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh, respectively.

Presiding over a meeting with the Deputy Commissioners to pre-vent the burning of crop residues, Vardhan directed them to ensure adequate supply of crop residue management machinery in districts, and allocate 70 per cent machinery to custom hiring centres and the farmers. He directed the Deputy Commissioners to send the report of all these activities to the headquarters within three days. Every sarpanch should hold a meeting of the gram sabha and should pass a resolution not to burn stubble, he added. Additional Principal Secre-tary V. Umashankar said a system has been developed to monitor and control the incidence of residue burning under which a short message service will be sent twice a day to sarpanches, village secretaries, be-sides officials of the Agriculture and Revenue Departments if stubble is found burning within the range of 100 to 115 metres.

UP farmer killed by tiger in PilibhitPilibhit (Uttar Pradesh), Oct 7 (IANS) A young farmer was mauled to

death by a tiger in Mala forest range of the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve (PTR), officials said on Wednesday. Sukhveer Singh, 36, resident of Piparia Karam village, under Gajraula police station, was on his way home near the Mala forest range on Tuesday evening when he was attacked.

The farmer’s blood-stained body was later spotted by passers-by who informed his family. The farmer’s family took the body and placed it in the agricultural field, demanding a compensation of Rs 4 lakh.

However, the Forest Department was not convinced and said that the spot where the farmer was actually attacked was about a kilometre inside the forest. Naveen Khandelwal, Deputy Director of PTR, said the spot where the farmer was killed was duly verified by the forest team.

“However, we have deployed the field force for installing camera traps in the area to monitor the tiger’s movement. We have appealed to the villagers not to enter the forest area for their own safety,” he said.

AAP MLA booked for visiting Hath-ras after testing Covid positive

Hathras (UP), Oct 7 (IANS) Delhi AAP MLA Kuldeep Kumar has been booked under the Epidemic Act, after he visited the Hathras vic-tim’s family having tested positive for Covid.

Hathras Superintendent of Police Vineet Jaiswal said on Wednes-day that Kuldeep Kumar had taken to Twitter on September 29 to an-nounce that ‘due to my mild fever for the last two days, today I got Covid-19 test done, the report of which has come out to be positive, due to which I will be at home in isolation. Whoever has met me in the last 2-3 days should also get his test done’. Six days after he tested positive for the virus, Kumar went to meet the victim’s family. On Oc-tober 5, he had posted a video after meeting the family of the Hathras victim and wrote, “I have just returned after meeting the family of the Hathras victim. An atmosphere of fear is being created in the family. This is a murder of democracy and the constitution. There is no law in Yogi raj in Uttar Pradesh, jungle raj is going on!”

52 fresh corona cases in Agra takes tally to 6,054

Agra, Oct 7 (IANS) With one more succumbing to Covid-19, the total number of deaths in Agra now stands at 129. In the past 24 hours, 52 fresh cases were reported taking the total tally to 6,054, said the health officials. The number of active cases is 561 and 5,364 have recovered. The number of samples for testing has gone up to 2,04,350.

After the meeting of the state additional principal secretary, health, Amit Mohan Prasad with senior district officials at the Circuit House on Tuesday, a series of measures were being initiated to fight Co-vid-19. Prasad said it was important to trace the contacts and provide prompt medical support to critically ill patients. Each life mattered and was precious for the government, he added. An analysis of data relating to deaths at the Covid hospital in the S.N. Medical College clearly indicated a fatal combination of diabetes and Covid. Patients with uncontrolled sugar levels and high blood pressure succumbed to the deadly virus. Of the 610 patients admitted to the Covid hospital, 490 recovered, while 98 could not be saved as diabetes and high blood pressure complicated their conditions, doctors said.

Honour killing: Teen strangled, mutilated by father & brother in UP

Narrative in ‘horrific’ Hathras incident begins to change

Thanagaazi rape case: Victim’s family demands death penalty

Mafia don & ex-BSP MP to contest as Independent in

Malhani bypoll

Bihar polls: BJP gives 11 seats to VIP from its own quota

Shahjahanpur (Uttar Pradesh), Oct 7 (IANS) Hon-our killing was witnessed in Shahjahanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, where a 16-year-old pregnant Dalit girl was bru-tally attacked and killed by

her father and elder brother and then her body was muti-lated for ‘bringing shame’ to the family.

The father has confessed and arrested but the brother is on the run, police said. The

body was recovered on Tues-day and police cracked the case within hours. The girl had been missing since Sep-tember 23 but no complaint was lodged by the family.

According to reports, the girl was beaten and strangled to death. Her head was sev-ered from the body which was then buried near the river bed.

“The father has confessed to having killed his daughter because she was pregnant. People had started insulting him publicly. The girl’s elder

brother is also involved in the murder and we have booked both of them under IPC sec-tions 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence),” Shahjahanpur Se-nior Superintendent of Police (SSP) S. Anand told reporters.

“We have also questioned the mother and other rela-tives but their involvement has not been established,” he added.

During preliminary inquiry, the family told police that the girl was living with a relative.

The girl, who was never sent

to school, never informed her family about her sexual en-counter. It was only when her baby bump started showing that the family came to know about her pregnancy.

She did not reveal the name of the person responsible. Police are trying to find out about the person, who could be the rapist as she is a minor.

“We are also trying to iden-tify the person responsible for the girl’s pregnancy as hav-ing a sexual relationship with a minor girl is also a crime,” SSP Anand said.

Hathras (Uttar Pradesh), Oct 7 (IANS) As days roll by, the narrative in the ‘horrific’ Hathras incident has started changing and accused are now getting increasing sup-port from BJP leaders. The revelation of call detail records (CDR) of victim’s family that show that they had spoken 104 times in five months to the main accused, Sandeep Singh, has given a new angle the case.

Police sources said that the CDR proves that both the fam-ilies were on good terms.

Call records show that 62 calls outgoing and 42 incoming calls totalling 104 -- were made be-tween the two phone numbers. According to the police, the call records show that the victim and the main accused were

in touch. “The victim’s family has concealed this information from us all along. The matter will have to be investigated and we will be interrogating the girl’s brothers on this issue,” said a senior police officer on condi-tion of anonymity. The girl’s brother admits that the number belongs to him but vehemently denies having spoken to any member of the accused family.

The victim’s family’s refusal to undergo a narco-test has also put them under the cloud of suspicion. Thakur Somesh Singh, a local resident, said, “It is a case of honour killing. The government has confirmed that there was no rape. Medi-cal reports also have found that rape did not take place. So why would some other boys stran-

gulate her.” Rakesh Kumar, father of accused Ram Kumar, said that at the time of the al-leged incident, his son was on duty at a local milk plant where he works. “You can check CCTV footage and also the attendance register to confirm his presence at the milk plant,” he said.

Guddu, father of the ac-cused Sandeep said that his son was giving water to their cows when some people came and said that the girl was lying unconscious. We even gave them water and a few hours later, my son was picked up by the police,” he said. Munni Devi, mother of another ac-cused Luvkush, said that she was working in a nearby field when there was some com-motion. “I went across and

saw the girl lying unconscious. I gave her water but later my son was taken away the po-lice,” she said. Upper caste panchayats are now being held in several villages around the Bulghari village where the incident took place and the local Thakurs and Brahmins are unanimously demanding the release of the four accused. The government affidavit sub-mitted in the Supreme Court on Tuesday which rules out rape, has further strengthened the campaign in favour of the

accused. The Hathras incident took place on September 14, when the victim was working in a field and was allegedly dragged by the accused to a nearby field and assaulted.

The family has alleged she was gang raped and strangu-lated. She was admitted to a hospital in Aligarh with seri-ous injuries on neck bones and spinal cord. She was later shifted to a Delhi hospital where she died on September 29 evoking outrage through-out the country.

Jaipur, Oct 7 (IANS) A day after a special court awarded life sentence to four persons convicted in the Thana-gaazi gang-rape case and sent the fifth accused, who made the rape video go viral on social media, to five years’ rigorous imprisonment, the fam-ily members of the victim expressed their dissatisfaction over the verdict and demanded death penalty for the covicts.

Speaking to the media here, the victim’s father, mother-in-law and brother-in-law said that the convicts should be hanged to death so that such heinous crimes are not repeated.

“We will appeal in the Supreme Court against the decision of the spe-cial court and demand death penalty for the convicts,” they said in unison.

While pronouncing the verdict on Tuesday, special court judge Brijesh Kumar had compared the crime to Drapudi’s ‘cheerharan’, saying the heinous act has shamed humanity.

The Thanagaazi gang-rape in Ra-jasthan was first reported on April 26, 2019 and it grabbed nationwide

attention as the accused had raped the woman in front of her husband, filmed the act and made the video vi-ral on social media.

A case was registered after the video went viral on May 2, six days after the crime. When the couple had earlier gone to lodge an FIR, the police had reportedly sent them back citing the busy schedule of the police due to the Lok Sabha polls.

The Rajasthan government drew flak from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bahujan Samaj Party chief

Mayawati during the Lok Sabha elec-tion campaign over the delay in lodg-ing an FIR in the case. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had also visited Thana-gaazi and met the family of the rape victim.

The four men sentenced to life are Indraj, Ashok, Chhotalal and Hansraj. The court has also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on them.

The fifth convicted person is Muke-sh, who made the video viral, and has been sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment.

Patna, Oct 7 (IANS) The BJP al-located 11 seats to the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) from its own quota on Wednesday for the coming Bihar Assembly elec-tions, choosing to contest 110 seats in all. VIP chief Mukesh Sahani has dubbed his alliance with the BJP as ‘ghar wapsi’ and said his party would fight under the leadership of Nitish Kumar.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state unit chief Sanjay Jaiswal announced the allocation of 11 seats to the VIP led by Sahani, who dramatically left the Grand Alliance on Saturday after the Rashtriya Janata Dal failed to

allocate it seats during the an-nouncement on seat-sharing in Patna.

He walked off in a huff, leaving the RJD, Congress and Left lead-ers stunned.

Sahani was expecting 25 seats from the Grand Alliance and the Deputy CM’s post which, he claimed, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav had promised him.

BJP sources said that Sahani was allocated 11 seats as a re-ward by Union Home Minister Amit Shah as he had openly challenged Tejashwi and other Grand Alliance leaders during the press meet on Saturday.

“Being a son of the most back-ward class, I was back-stabbed by Tejashwi Yadav. Prime Minis-ter Narendra Modi has put balm on my wound. I will contest the Assembly elections under the leadership of Chief Minister Nit-ish Kumar,” Sahani said.

“I began my political career in 2015 with the BJP and was in-fluenced by Modi. Due to some reasons, I switched to the Grand Alliance in search of social jus-tice. It was a mistake. It is a ‘ghar wapsi’ for me and I express my gratitude to the top leadership of the BJP, including Modi and Shah,” the VIP chief said.

Jaunpur (Uttar Pradesh), Oct 7 (IANS) With former Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP Dhananjay Singh preparing to con-test the by-elections on the Malhani (Jaunpur) Assembly seat as an Inde-pendent candidate, the contest on this seat has become rather interesting.

The Samajwadi Party has fielded Lucky Yadav, son of late Parasnath Ya-dav, while BSP decided to play Brahmin card by putting J.P. Dubey in the fray for the November 3 by-election.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is yet to announce its candidate.

Dhananjay, meanwhile, has started preparations to contest as an Indepen-dent candidate.

Earlier, it was said that he would be fielded by the Nishad Party and the BJP would support him.

However, the BJP did not agree to Dhananjay’s candidature after which the Nishad Party also backed off.

When contacted, Dhananjay said, “I am going to contest as an Independent candidate. The preparations are in full swing.”

He denied that he had sought a BJP ticket and said the Nishad Party had been trying to get him fielded as ruling party candidate.

The mafia don-turned-politician had won 2002 Assembly elections from Rari seat in Jaunpur as an Independent can-didate and retained the seat in 2007 on a JD(U) ticket.

In 2009, he ensured victory of his fa-ther from the seat while he joined BSP and won parliamentary election from Jaunpur.

In 2017, Dhananjay, contested as a Nishad Party candidate but Parasnath Yadav Samajwadi Party won the seat while Dhananjay ranked second.

Parasnath Yadav died in June this year and the Samajwadi Party has named his son, Lucky Yadav, as its can-didate on the seat.

6 Edit indian HorizonThursday, October 8, 2020

Thursday, October 8, 2020

Readers Response and contribution Welcome

indian Horizon

Underscoring criminal negligence at

all levels in the Bhai Mani Singh Civ-

il Hospital of Bathinda is the offence

of a deadly nature: that of infusing

HIV-infected blood into unsuspecting

patients. Making the transgression

graver is the fact that the fatal lapse

has been repeated as the officials con-

cerned had failed to put a stop to it

the moment it was detected. It blows

the lid off the hospital blood bank be-

ing negligent in the mandatory step of

checking the units donated for infec-

tion before passing them on to the re-

cipients.

The investigation into the charge

that the Civil Hospital failed to alert

the blood donor, the recipient and the

authorities even after learning about

the HIV-positive status of the donor

in May corroborates the systemic fail-

ure. Exemplary punishment to all —

from top to bottom — is called for.

For, it amounts to nothing short of

putting a patient’s life at risk. It con-

stitutes a breach of faith of the one

who comes to get healed. There are at

least two known unfortunate patients

who have been administered the in-

fected blood: a woman in May (who

was, criminally, not even informed

about the contaminated transfusion)

and now, a thalassemic child. As they

battle for life with compounded prob-

lems, the guilty must be given swift

and just retribution.

At the same time, the case raises the

importance of educating the blood do-

nors about the importance of ensur-

ing that they are infection-free before

they set out to make the noble and

life-saving deed. A study published in

2015 revealed that around 3 per cent

of the donors who come for blood do-

nation at the PGIMER, Chandigarh,

are infected with various diseases,

including HIV, hepatitis and venereal

ailments. Significantly, the infected

patients were notified about their sta-

tus that clearly spelt a no to using their

blood for transfusion. The study also

entailed upon the blood banks the ne-

cessity of embarking on post-donation

counselling that not only encompass-

es information on infection status but

also referral for medical care and their

treatment.

By Shyam SaranThe foreign ministers of the Quad

countries — India, Australia, Japan and the US — are holding talks in Tokyo. The earlier Quad meeting had taken place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in Sep-tember 2019, but the Tokyo meet-ing is the first stand-alone one and hence has enhanced political sig-nificance. The choice of venue is also important. Japan has a new PM in Yoshihide Suga. There have been doubts as to whether he would be as supportive of the Quad as his predecessor Shinzo Abe had been. With Japan playing host to the meet-ing, these doubts will be laid to rest. There are other reasons to believe that the Quad is moving towards a phase of consolidation. India has now established 2+2 bilateral meet-ings of foreign and defence minis-ters with each of its Quad partners. It has regular trilateral meetings at the ministerial level with the US and Japan and with Australia and Japan, respectively. A logical next step towards further consolidation may well be a Quad 2+2. This could even replace the existing trilaterals. This should be fairly easy to agree upon but perhaps for the Tokyo meeting it may be too soon. India has concluded bilateral security ar-rangements with each of the Quad countries, including on logistics which will enable interoperability among their military forces. How-ever, to be a credible and effec-tive military grouping, these bilat-eral arrangements may need to be multi-lateralised. This may not be a

major issue for Japan and Australia which already have a military alli-ance relationship of long standing with the US. It may be a bridge too far for India. The greater the sense of threat from China the greater the likelihood of India pondering over such an option. India’s preference remains not having to make such a choice.

The more exclusive and overtly military the Quad becomes, its at-tractiveness to a broader set of countries in the region and beyond may diminish.

India’s Quad partners consider it as the linchpin of their Indo-Pacific strategy aimed at ensuring a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’. India has committed itself to the freedom of navigation and overflights in the Indo-Pacific which is less controver-sial. India has promoted a more in-clusive concept of the Indo-Pacific, using the mantra of ‘open, inclusive and transparent’. Sometimes the word ‘balanced’ is added as one of its desirable features. This is based on the Indian preference for a mari-time security regime in the Indo-Pa-cific which keeps the door open to China. It may prove more attractive to other players such as the ASEAN countries, by putting in place a se-ries of mutual security assurance provisions instead of each country seeking its security through unilat-eral means. The Quad is a fallback if China continues to seek unilateral dominance as the means to ensure Chinese security. For the present one does not see China opting for a multilateral security regime in the

Indo-Pacific that will demand re-straints on its ambitions.

India has sought to define the geo-graphical limits of the Indo-Pacific as stretching from the Western Pa-cific to the eastern shores of Africa. Japan too subscribes to this. How-ever, both the US and Australia limit the Indo-Pacific from ‘Hollywood to Bollywood’. In practical terms India has implicitly accepted the narrower scope by emphasising that Indo-Pa-cific must take ASEAN centrality as a principle and work through ‘ASEAN-led institutions and processes’. This has had the merit of bringing ASEAN on board the concept of the Indo-Pacific.

During the past year we have had France and Germany also declare their own Indo-Pacific strategies and this has been welcomed by In-dia and other Quad partners. Both European countries have made it clear that in doing this they wish to move away from an overly China-centric Asian policy which they have pursued over recent years. It is re-ported that France and Germany are working towards an EU policy on the Indo-Pacific. This would be a significant step in creating a broader countervailing coalition to restrain Chinese power projection.

What this analysis demonstrates is the lack of clarity on how the Quad fits into a broader Indo-Pacific strategy. The more exclusive and overtly military the Quad becomes, its attractiveness to a broader set of countries in the region and beyond may diminish. None of the ASEAN countries, for example, wish to be

caught in a cross-fire between China and the US or between China and India for that matter. Therefore, is the Quad likely to become a more cohesive strategic core around which a broader coalition of stake-holders could gravitate? Will these developments convince China that rather than risk having to confront an expanded grouping of powerful countries determined to foil its over-weening ambitions, its interests may be better served by signing on to the more inclusive version of the Indo-Pacific advocated by India? There are no easy answers. The Quad will be determined by how the security situation evolves post-pandemic both in Asia and the rest of the world.

India has presented the Quad as one of the several ‘issue-based coali-tions’ it is part of, each serving some specific objective of its foreign policy. It has sought to suggest a certain par-allelism among its participation in the Quad, the Shanghai Cooperation Or-ganisation (SCO), Russia-India-China trilateral (RIC), Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) and vari-ous trilaterals with friendly countries. This parallelism is under strain as a result of the recent worsening of rela-tions between India and China in the wake of Chinese transgressions on the LAC in eastern Ladakh. Any further and serious deterioration of relations may raise questions about remaining in the SCO, BRICS and continue with the RIC forum. One hopes that this does not happen, but if it does, the Quad may take on a significance not envisaged so far.

IANS

Another step forward by Quad

BY N B HOMBAL The 10-day Dasara festival which

was supposed to bring a smile to the faces of flower sellers and flower decorators of the iconic Krishna Ra-jendra Market in the heart of the city has failed to cheer them up so far.

K. R. Market (Krishna Rajendra Market), also known as City Mar-ket, is the largest wholesale market dealing in various commodities in Bengaluru. It is named after Krishna-rajendra Wodeyar, a former ruler of Mysuru. The market is located in the Kalasipalyam area, adjacent to the Tipu Sultan’s Summer Palace.

K.R. Market was established in 1928. The location of the market is said to have been a water tank earlier and then a battlefield in the 18th cen-tury during the Anglo-Mysore Wars. Two buildings remain from the Brit-ish era, at the front and back of the market area.

A riot of colours, countless baskets of flowers, haggling customers, and a chaotic madness which is surprising-ly enjoyable, is what you will find in this market with numerous vendors lined up for business.

In this bustling market, the flower sellers are still sceptical about their business reaching the pre-Covid

levels but many feel that this festival might at least help them reach a rea-sonable level of financial stability.

Most of the flower sellers say that their business has fallen by almost 65 to 70 per cent compared to the pre-vious year. The worst affected in this segment are the flower decorators who say their business has fallen by 75 per cent to 80 per cent due to the closure of marriage halls, convention centres, schools and colleges.

Speaking to IANS, 45-year-old flower seller Shivarayappa said that people aren’t buying flowers as much as they used to in the past.

“I sell garlands near temples but it has not picked up yet, I am waiting for Aayudha pooja to bring back my business to earlier levels. I used to sell a minimum of Rs 3000 to Rs 4500 worth of garlands but now I am not even reaching Rs 1000 to Rs 1500 per day. I strongly feel that is partially be-cause of Adhika Masa (inauspicious month) followed by Pitrupaksha (an-other inauspicious fortnight), there-fore, I might not have sold flowers as much as I used to sell last year,” he explained.

According to him, Dasara is the only hope for the vendors to improve their business. Another vendor Mu-

niswamy who sells loose flowers said that rich shopkeepers and business-men who used to buy truck loads of flowers every day to decorate the dei-ties during the festival season, are not buying in such large quantities ever since the flower market reopened on September 1.

“I used to send huge quantities of flowers to Tirumala temple and Shirdi Sai Baba temple besides vari-ous other temples across the city, on the orders of businessmen to fulfil their vow to decorate such temples on a particular day of their choice,” he said.

A flower decorator based in the City market, Nizmatulla Sharief, said “with no marriages, parties and corporate offices functioning with the lowest possible number of staff, people are not even thinking of cele-brating Dasara in a big way this time. With less money in hand, flower decoration is the last priority for all, hence, no big decoration orders have come as yet.”

The owner of Maruti Flower shop in Indiranagar H. Pradeep who had come to purchase flowers in the wholesale market, said that his last satisfactory business was in February and thereafter due to the lockdown

he could not carry out any business. “Unless schools, colleges and corpo-rates start functioning to full capac-ity, the demand for flowers will con-tinue to be sluggish.”

Bengaluru Flower Merchants Asso-ciation president, G. M. Devaraj said that 2020 has been a very bad year for business. “City Market which thrives on customers is seeing very poor footfall. The current footfall is just 25 percent of what it used to be.

“Unless a Covid-19 vaccine is dis-covered, the market is likely to re-main sluggish. Flower, vegetable and fruit sales go hand in hand. Until marriages and big conventions with large gatherings make a comeback, our business will remain dull,” he added. According to him it is a chain link -- marriages, gatherings, reli-gious functions and political func-tions keep the kitchen fires burning.

“Perishable commodities largely depend on these and not home based customers. For instance, a person who works from home will al-ways consume less in his/her house in comparison to when he/she goes out for work or attends public func-tions,” he explained.

He added that the lockdown for nearly five months resulted in farm-ers who used to grow flowers opting for other crops. As a result of this, the quantity of flowers reaching the market has fallen to just 40 per cent compared to last year.

IANS

Bengaluru’s iconic flower market hit hard by pandemic, vendors await vax

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao JrIt is a fact of criminal psychology that

whether the crime is detected or not, punished or not, the criminal carries the burden of the crime, which is far heavier, like in the case of the sailor who killed an albatross and carried it forever around his neck. It is possible to believe that the two court verdicts — that of the Supreme Court last November and of the CBI special court in Lucknow re-cently — have ended the Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid matter, technically speak-ing, in favour of the Hindus, and based on these two legal verdicts, there was no wrongdoing of any kind on the part of Hindu groups.

But there are two clear acts of crime committed by Hindu groups. The first was trespass on the intervening night of December 23-24, 1949, when the idols of Ram Lalla were stealthily placed inside the mosque, and the second was the daytime demolition of the mosque on December 6, 1992. The Supreme Court verdict de-claring the site as belonging to the Hindu groups does not absolve them of the crime of trespass, nor does it clear them of the criminal act of demolition. The second verdict has only declared ‘lack of evi-dence’ against the 32 accused, including former Union ministers LK Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti. This does not imply that there was no wrongdo-ing, or that there were no criminals who brought down the mosque. The crimes

remain as clear as daylight. And they re-main a shameful aspect of the Ram tem-ple agitation. Ironically, the BJP, which was at the head of the agitation and had gathered a crowd which its leaders could not control in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, had the temerity and dishonesty to move a no-confidence motion against the demolition. Using his rhetorical flourish, Vajpayee said on December 17, 1992: “I am ready to go one step ahead and ask those kar sevaks who were small in number to come forward and openly confess that they have demolished the structure and for that they are prepared to face the music.” But by the time he ended his speech, Vajpayee almost jus-tified the demolition. But not even his cunning rhetoric could wipe away the crime.

The CBI special court, which had conducted the trial regarding the de-molition of Babri Masjid, ‘freed’ the 32 accused, including Advani, Joshi and Uma Bharti, for ‘lack of evidence’. The prosecution pressed the charge of a meticulously planned crime amount-ing to a conspiracy. There were inher-ent weaknesses in a conspiracy charge because it requires to be proved that there was a clear chain of events that led from hatching the plan to execut-ing it. Given the events preceding the gathering of around 200,000 people in Ayodhya and to the demolition that fol-lowed, it would have been difficult to

establish the trail of the crime. But de-molition remains a crime.

So, the sarcastic comments of critics that ‘no one demolished Babri Masjid’ and that it fell on its own show more anger and frustration, which is under-standable, but which do not qualify to be a reasoned view. The unfolding of events on December 6 shows that the demolition was plausible given the overwhelming crowd which turned into a frenzied mob. The CBI special court did not condone the demolition because it had to fix the responsibility of who did it. This does not also mean that no one did it because the 32 ac-cused were acquitted.

Where legality ends, the moral and psychological burden of the criminals and conspirators begins. Should Ad-vani, Joshi, Bharti and the rest of the BJP and Vishwa Hindu Parishad lead-ership own moral responsibility for the demolition? Should they apologise to the Muslim community that it was a moral wrong and a legal crime to have demolished a place of worship, whatev-er the dispute at stake? They should for their own sake and for the sake of com-munal amity in the country. Winning legal battles is not the end of the story. There is a need for gestures of goodwill to end the rancour that hangs in the air at the end of legal feuds.

Of course, we recall Advani’s state-ment at the end of the day on Decem-

ber 6: “This is the saddest day of my life.” Advani had clearly maintained that it was not the intention of the or-ganisers of the kar seva on December 6, 1992, to bring down the mosque. There are enough arguments, and one can even admit plausible ones, that Advani was just being hypocriti-cal, that he was happy the mosque was destroyed. The critics of the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao also claim that Rao, too, was happy in the cynical sense that the demoli-tion had simplified the dispute. But beyond Machiavellian, or if you pre-fer Chanakyan, calculations, there is a need for reconciliation between the contending communities of Hindus and Muslims. The triumphalism of the Hindus must be reined in, and the resentment and despair of the Muslims should be addressed and removed.

The communal leaders on both sides have made the Babri Mas-jid issue a bitter dispute between the two communities. The Hindu groups can turn Ayodhya into a tourist spot, but it will never attain the sanctity of Rama’s birthplace because it was achieved through two acts of crime. There must be enough contrition on the part of Hindu groups before they can breathe easy and sleep well.

IANS

Overcome rancour after end of legal feuds

Criminal negligenceTransfusion of HIV-infected

blood is unpardonable

7OP-EDIndian HorizonThursday, October 8, 2020

The views expressed in these columns are the writers’ own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Indian Horizon or its management.-Editor

Americans must vote against him. Lives and livelihoods depend on it

By Thomas L. Friedman The most important question today

is not what President Donald Trump has learnt from his bout with COVID-19. Trump is one of those leaders who never learns and never forgets, as the saying goes. The most important question is what has America learnt?

Because the debate over Trump him-self is over. The verdict is in: He cast himself as Superman, but he turns out to have been Superspreader — not only of a virus but of a whole way of looking at the world in a pandemic that was dan-gerously wrong for himself and our na-tion. To re-elect him would be an act of collective madness.

But while I see it that way, and maybe you see it that way, will enough Trump voters see it that way? That will depend on Joe Biden’s ability to help them see all the big and small things where Trump has been so fundamentally mistaken.

Caution in a pandemic is not a sign of weakness but of wisdom. Face masks in a pandemic are not cultural markers, just common-sense protection that says nothing other than “I’m a responsible person who wants to protect myself and my grandparent, myself and my cus-tomer, myself and my co-worker, my-self and my neighbour from an invisible pathogen.” Machismo in a pandemic is not strength. Resisting mask-wearing in a pandemic is not safeguarding free-

dom. Lockdowns in a pandemic are not an abridgement of our rights of assem-bly or speech. Blue states aren’t more attractive to the coronavirus than red states. Scientists are not politicians. Politicians are not scientists. Everything is not politics. Lysol is a disinfectant for cleansing counters, not your lungs. Our choices were never masks OR jobs but masks FOR jobs — the more your em-ployees and customers wear them, the more your business can stay open and flourish.

The big things Trump got wrong were twofold. The first was how to lead in a pandemic. The quality of our leadership in general is always a serious business, but in a pandemic, it becomes a matter of life and death. Leaders at every level — teachers, scientists, principals, presi-dents, school superintendents, hospital directors, CEOs, mayors, governors, me-dia, parents — are all being looked to for direction today more than ever because so many people feel disoriented and un-moored.

Morally reckless leaderDonald Trump proved to be the worst

kind of leader in a pandemic: a morally reckless leader. “When it comes to living in the face of uncertainty, people tend to fall along a spectrum, reflecting their attitudes toward individual freedom ver-sus responsibility and their disposition toward risk-taking,” explained Dov Seid-

man, the founder and chairman of LRN, an ethics and compliance company, and the How Institute for Society, which pro-motes values-based leadership.

You can see this spectrum starkly in how people contracted the virus and dealt with COVID-19, Seidman said. “First, there were those along the spec-trum who were just unlucky and unfor-tunate — wrong place, wrong time when a tiny invisible pathogen was present.”

Second, he added, “there were front line workers, heroes, who bravely ran toward the virus to help save others and were infected by it in the process. Third, there were individuals who were reck-less and did not wear masks or stay 6 feet apart, harming themselves, their family, friends and co-workers, too.”

And finally, said Seidman, there were the leaders: “There were those in posi-tions of power and authority — whom people were trusting for life saving guid-ance. Some shouldered their responsi-bility, knowing that in this time of crisis more people than ever would heed their advice and emulate their example, if they behaved accordingly. Other lead-ers, though, did not lead that way; they actually encouraged people to ignore the science and let down their guard. That is moral recklessness.”

That was TrumpAs a result, Seidman concluded, “to-

day, we have a real crisis of leadership

and authority — people don’t know who to trust and what to believe. But what is clear is that leaders who can put more truth into the world than they muddy and put more trust into

the world than they erode matter now more than ever — those are the lead-ers we admire and whom history will remember well.”

Gulf News

Trump proved to be the worst kind of leader in a pandemic

Byh Margareta MatacheYears before fast sailing ships with en-

slaved people from Africa made it to the shores of North and South America, the Roma people on the territories of modern-day Romania had already been forced into a system of chattel enslavement. My ancestors were among them. Today, this 500-year sys-tem of exploitation and domination of Roma remains utterly forgotten in Romania and in the global history of slavery, race and racism.

Roma people were coerced into this system of chattel enslavement beginning in the 1370s or perhaps earlier by three

types of enslavers: the Crown (and later, the state), the Orthodox church, and the nobility. By law, the enslavers owned the slaves as their property or possessions, and slaves without a “master” would be-come the “property” of the Crown.

In the Romanian territories, the Indian origins and skin colour of the Roma made it possible to distinguish them as non-Ro-manians and non-Christians. Ethnic dis-tinctiveness or race was one of the original reasons for enslaving Roma.

The institution of slavery ended in 1855 in Moldova and 1856 in Walachia. After the

final act of abolition in 1856, the 250,000 Roma slaves who became legally free, some 7 percent of the Romanian popula-tion, received no reparations for the inhu-mane treatment they had suffered. As also happened on other continents, after five centuries of exploitation, the abusers re-ceived monetary compensation for freeing their Roma slaves.

October marks 635 years since the first written attestation of the enslavement of Roma people in Romania. In October 1385, Dan I, prince of Wallachia and an enslaver, gifted to the Tismana Monastery 40 Roma families, among other “assets”.

Year after year, this date has passed unnoticed and unacknowledged, while Romanian institutions and the Orthodox Church have shown little interest in tak-ing responsibility for Roma enslavement. They have not even issued a formal apol-ogy for the enslavement.

This disregard is not surprising, given the pervasive anti-Roma racism in Roma-nia and elsewhere in Europe. Roma slav-ery has been denied in Romanian history books, while global cultural and knowl-edge production rarely mentions it.

At a recent online event on race and rac-ism organised by the Romanian cultural institute in New York City, for example, several attendees engaged in invalidat-ing the Roma enslavement and equating it with the experiences of Romanian serfs. Some historians have gone as far as argu-ing that the Roma were “lucky” to have been enslaved, as this system helped them maintain their identity and “protected” them. Apart from these dismissive voices, countless progressive Romanians contin-

ue to perceive the process of truth-telling about Roma enslavement as a threat to the image of Romania.

Across the world, descendants of enslav-ers have been uncomfortable in accepting the truth of their forefathers as oppres-sors. Accepting the ancestors’ legacy may be complicated. Thus, instead, many de-scendants of enslavers hurry to justify the structural inequalities and wealth gaps that the descendants of enslaved people face today, through race and cultural prej-udice.

In the case of the Roma, the construc-tion of the racecraft of “g*psy criminal-ity”, an idea made-up during slavery, has constituted a central justification for anti-Roma racism. More so, progressive politicians, bureaucrats and scholars have long focused the public discourse on what they see as Roma “backwardness”. It must be more comfortable for them to address Roma integration, enrolment in primary education, poverty, and vulnerability than to directly tackle the problem and end an-ti-Roma racism.

But the agenda of Roma integration is not enough for us, any more. We now de-mand justice, reparations, and anti-racist policies.

For half a millennium, our ancestors were coerced into gruelling, uncompen-sated labour. And it is self-evident that the history of 500 years of economic exploita-tion stripped Roma people of any prospect of accumulating intergenerational wealth.

A large portion of the wealth gap in Ro-mania stems from this little-known history of economic exploitation. The forced la-bour of Roma slaves constituted a central

element in the development and growth of the Romanian economy; it was a critical source of wealth for the Romanian state, the Orthodox Church, and the aristocracy.

Let us take, for example, the case of Orthodox Church property. Many of its churches and monasteries have been built using the free, highly skilled Romani work-force. For instance, the Casin monastery in Bacau was built in the 1650s by 800 Ro-mani slaves. Should the Orthodox Church not pay back the Roma for having built Casin and other properties from scratch?

The aristocracy also accumulated wealth through the enslavement of Roma people. In the village where I grew up, there was still dependency and a culture of respect for boyars (landowners), and during my childhood, people were still using the term “boieri”. In fact, my mother’s sister once hinted at our past. I asked her why she never went to school when she was a child in the 1940s. She looked at me like the an-swer was obvious and said: “I was working on the lands of the boyars.”

In 1906, her grandparents – my great grandparents, Maria Nicolae and Marian Ghita – were still identified in their marriage certificate as “emancipated Romanians”, which in the language of those times, meant former Romani slaves. They themselves were not slaves, as the enslavement ended in 1855, but their parents had been. The term “emancipated” remained in the books for two to three more generations after the abo-lition. Thus, what Romanians perceive today as a distant past is very much a legacy of dis-possession and dishonour which still affects many Romani families today.

Gulf News

It is time reparations are paid for Roma slavery

By Dr Ibrahima Soce FallAt the beginning of the COVID-19

epidemic, even before it was a pan-demic, the World Health Organiza-tion (WHO) began advising countries about testing and contact tracing.

While most countries got on board with testing, many in the developed world were less receptive to contact tracing.

Some countries believed they were well organised enough to be able to manage any epidemic. They saw contact tracing – something used successfully to help track and contain outbreaks of Ebola in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Con-go, and the Plague in Madagascar – as a mechanism only poor countries use.

They were completely wrong.In its simplest form, contact trac-

ing is about finding and testing all the people who have had “contact” with an infected person. And in doing this, we can more effectively track the spread of a virus and help to contain an outbreak.

The reason we need to do con-tact tracing is to rapidly detect the secondary cases around an infected person. When we do that, we are able to stop transmission. And by finding these contacts, these new infected cases from the primary person’s con-tact list, we give each of them more

time to survive the disease because they are detected early enough to get the right care.

Contact tracing is not an isolated intervention, however. It fits within the overall context of field epidemiol-ogy. We do contact tracing knowing we are already able to do an investi-gation around every single case.

For our interventions to be suc-cessful, we need to link a commu-nity-based surveillance system with a centrally-based system in every country. This means we cannot just have a national system. We need a decentralised operation, to make sure that people can analyse infor-mation locally and take action to ad-just the response on a daily basis.

I worked in the DRC during the world’s second-largest Ebola epi-demic which began there in 2018. The DRC is a country plagued by a very poor healthcare system, con-flicts involving armed groups, politi-cal violence, poverty and poor infra-structure. It was a challenging health intervention.

There were something like 3,000 informal health facilities in the Ebo-la-affected region. So in doing con-tact tracing, we had to have a satellite operation with big teams, all working with the community which was also fully involved. At some point, our teams were following up to 300,000

contacts. And if you took the con-tacts of contacts, there were millions of people to watch and monitor. At a certain point, even the most re-nowned global experts were com-pletely discouraged, telling us we could not stop the outbreak because it was endemic. But we never gave up.

Despite all the challenges, health workers managed to control the Ebo-la outbreak. And contact tracing was crucial to identifying cases, finding contacts, and contacts of contacts, and helping to break the chain of transmission.

Many health systems around the world are hospital-based systems. This means that by the time a case reaches a hospital, it is already too late because the patient has contami-nated many other people in their community.

For a pandemic like COVID-19, we need an approach accompanied by surveillance and contact tracing. There has to be real risk communi-cation with citizens, and capacity building for communities to get lo-cally organised to protect themselves and protect others. While respond-ing on a national level, governments should also invest in preparedness in areas that are less affected or not affected, and not just focus on the hotspots. This will help prevent the

introduction of new flare-ups. The lessons from other disease outbreaks we have dealt with show us that work has to be done in the community and in hospitals. We need a comprehen-sive package of real field intervention to be able to stop an outbreak.

Some developed countries, like Germany, started doing contact trac-ing near the outset, and this helped them identify and monitor potential cases. But many societies that do not have a culture of responding to epidemics are not used to the infra-structure of surveillance and contact tracing. If we look at Europe, for ex-ample, before COVID-19 we cannot remember the last time they had an epidemic, apart from perhaps the seasonal flu.

It is also very difficult, in some countries, to mobilise the population and get individuals to do the right thing. It is only when people start seeing so many cases and then they start accepting that they need to wear masks and socially distance.

In not understanding the imme-diate benefits of things like contact tracing, most developed countries did not put systems in place for it. Eventually, these countries tried to start, but in some cases, they felt it was too late or complex. But it is nev-er too late for any country to adjust such a tactic using the community.

Even when there is no struc-ture in place for a community to get organised, people should be able to self-monitor themselves and their contacts. There are new technologies, the widespread use of mobile phones and even spe-cific applications in some coun-tries. Even in a low-resource set-ting like the DRC, we are able to use technology that only needs a phone and some data to share information. Applications them-selves are just tools to help us. But we can never replace the hu-man resources needed to do con-tact tracing. Essentially, we need

people who understand the pro-cess to interact with the commu-nity, with individuals, to ensure the right approach is being used for that setting, to analyse the in-formation the process yields and to ensure quality control.

Everybody will have to go about contact tracing. Because if you give up contact tracing, it means you give up investigation. Without con-tact tracing, we do not know exactly where we are; we do not have the right data; we do not have the evi-dence we need to divert the course of the virus.

Gulf News

Contact tracing is essential to break COVID-19 transmission

International8 Indian HorizonThursday, October 8, 2020

2 women scientists win Nobel in chemistry for gene editingStockholm, Oct 7 (IANS) In a

historic moment, two women scientists have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chem-istry for developing the tools to edit DNA, the Royal Swed-ish Academy of Sciences an-nounced on Wednesday.

Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier and US biochem-ist Jennifer Doudna are the fi rst women to share the prize (fi rst time without a male col-laborator) for their discovery

known as Crispr-Cas9 genetic scissors.The winners will share the prize money of 10 million krona ($1,110,400).

“I wish that this will provide a positive message specifi cally for young girls who would like to follow the path of science... and to show them that wom-en in science can also have an impact with the research they are performing,” said Charpentier.“This is not just for women, but we see a clear

lack of interest in following a scientifi c path, which is very

worrying”.Researchers need to modify genes in cells if they

are to fi nd out about life’s in-ner workings.This used to be time-consuming, diffi cult and sometimes impossible work. Using the CRISPR/Cas9 genet-ic scissors, it is now possible to change the code of life over the course of a few weeks.“There is enormous power in this ge-netic tool, which affects us all. It has not only revolutionised basic science, but also resulted in innovative crops and will lead to ground-breaking new

medical treatments,” said Claes Gustafsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chem-istry.Using the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, researchers can change the DNA of ani-mals, plants and microorgan-isms with extremely high pre-cision.This technology has had a revolutionary impact on the life sciences, is contributing to new cancer therapies and may make the dream of curing in-herited diseases come true.

Washington, Oct 7 (IANS) US President Don-ald Trump has said he is ending negotiations over a Covid-19 relief bill, and will only resume talks after the election.

“Immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stim-ulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans,” he tweeted one day after leaving hospital, the BBC reported.

Budget talks between Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secre-tary Steven Mnuchin had been under way.US stock

markets fell immediately after Trump’s announce-ment.It comes as cases rise in several parts of the country, and the outbreak hits top Pentagon military offi cials, White House staff and Republican senators.Lawmakers from both par-

ties had hoped for another round of Covid-19 relief spending to pass ahead of the November 3 election, but Trump’s tweet appears to have abruptly suspended that prospect.

In his tweet, the president cast blame for the talks’ collapse on Pelosi, saying that she was seeking $2.4tr “to bailout poorly run, high crime, Democrat States”.He said he counter-offered $1.6tr but Pelosi “is not ne-gotiating in good faith”.“I am rejecting their request, and looking to the future of the Country,” he wrote.

Seoul, Oct 7 (IANS) Military tensions have been continuing between the two Koreas over killing of a South Korean fi sh-eries’ offi cial by North Korea, as Pyongyang issued threats over Seoul’s search operations without responding to calls for a joint investigation, Seoul’s Defence Minister Suh Wook said on Wednesday.

On September 22, the 47-year-old fi sheries offi cial was fatally shot by the North Korean military while being adrift in North Korean waters, according to the South Ko-rean military.He went miss-ing the previous day while on duty near the Yellow Sea border island of Yeonpy-

eong, Yonhap news agency reported.“Regarding the inci-dent, North Korea expressed an apology and vowed to take steps to prevent recurrences, but it has not responded to our

call for a joint investigation and made threats against our normal search operations un-der way in our waters,” Wook said during a parliamentary audit of the ministry.

The communist country warned the South on Septem-ber 27 not to intrude into its waters in the search for the body of the offi cial.

Pyongyang has long dis-puted the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean maritime boundary, turning the front-line waters into a major flashpoint of the peninsula.Wook made it clear that all responsibili-ties regarding the incident lie with North Korea, stressing

the need for a joint probe, as the North’s explanations dif-fer from Seoul’s assessment in key parts.

The South Korean military said the North is presumed to have incinerated the offi cial’s body, but the North claimed that what it set on fi re was not his body but a fl oating mate-rial he used.

As for concerns raised by a lawmaker over the disclosure of classifi ed military informa-tion acquired by South Korean and US assets regarding the in-cident, Minister Suh said that US Forces Korea (USFK) Com-mander Gen. Robert Abrams “voiced some concerns” about the excessive exposure.

London, Oct 7 (IANS) The Brit-ish government on Wednesday announced further details for new innovative Freeports in the post-Brexit period.

“Next steps set out today for the creation of Freeports, driving investment and creating jobs after the end of the transition period (December 31, 2020),” the Trea-sury said in a statement.

The bidding process for loca-tions of the Freeport in England will open by the end of 2020, said the statement, adding that “the fi rst Freeports are on track to be open by the end of 2021.”

The core of the new Freeports policy is an “ambitious new customs model,” said the state-ment, improving upon both the existing and previous customs arrangements.

“They will attract investment from around the world as we em-brace new opportunities following our departure from the EU and will be a key driver for economic recovery as we build back better post-coronavirus,” said Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak.

The government is seeking to build “at least one Freeport in each nation of the UK,” added Sunak, referring to the four devolved administrations includ-ing England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.A package of tax reliefs for business investment will be introduced in the Freeports, according to the statement, with speeding up planning processes to “accelerate development” through a wide range of fresh measures, as per media reports.

UK announces new plans for

post-Brexit Freeports

Islamabad, Oct 7 (IANS) The Pakistan Democratic Move-ment (PDM), an alliance com-prising 11 of the country’s op-position parties, will formally launch its anti-government campaign with a public meet-ing in Gujranwala on October 16, instead of Quetta.

The PDM’s steering commit-tee at its meeting on Monday released a schedule of six pub-lic meetings in the four prov-inces as part of the fi rst phase of its movement in line with decisions taken at the Septem-ber 20 multiparty conference (MPC) in Islamabad, reports Dawn news.The decisions tak-

en by the steering committee were announced by its conve-ner Ahsan Iqbal of the Paki-stan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) with leaders of other PDM component parties at a media briefi ng.According to Iqbal, the PDM would hold its second public meeting in Ka-

rachi on October 18, third in Quetta on October 25, fourth in Peshawar on November 22, fi fth in Multan on November 30 and the last one in Lahore on December 13.

While the alliance has ap-pointed Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fa-zlur Rehman as its fi rst phase President, Iqbal said that mem-bers of the steering committee had unanimously elected Raja Pervez Ashraf of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) as senior vice-president, whereas PML-N’s Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had been nominated as its secre-tary general.

Pak oppn alliance to launch anti-govt campaign on Oct 16

Trump to resume Covid-19 relief bill talks after elections

Tensions continue with North over killing of South citizen : Minister

London, Oct 7 (IANS) Scotland Yard in London launched a probe after three members of an In-dian origin family were found dead in their fl at at Golden Mile House on Clayponds Lane, Brent-ford.The bodies of Poorna Kaameshwari Sivaraj, 36, and her three-year-old son Kailash Kuha Raj were

found when offi cers from the Metropolitan Police entered their fl at on Tues-day, as per media offi cials.

In a press statement, the police said the wom-an’s husband, Kuha Raj Sithamparanathan was found with severe stab injuries and died at the spot soon after the offi -cers forced entry.The cops

suspect it to be a case of murder-suicide, believing that 42-year-old Sitham-paranathan fatally injured himself and killed his wife and child.

An autopsy of the bod-ies will be conducted on Thursday.“Although we are in the infancy of this investigation, it appears that Poorna and Kailash

had been dead for some time,” Detective Chief

Inspector Simon Hard-ing, who is leading the in-vestigation, said.He said neighbours had not seen the family for some days, perhaps since September 21.“We know the family often walked their dog, a poodle cross breed, in and around the local area and I would ask anyone who saw them at any time in

the last month to contact police so we can begin to build a full picture of their lives,” Harding said.

“I know I speak on be-half of all the offi cers in my team that words can-not suffi ciently sum up the devastation that this horrifi c incident will have on the families of those involved.”

Tokyo, Oct 7 (IANS) Japan’s Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi on Wednesday said he has told his US counterpart, Mark Esper that Tokyo is seeking to come up with an alternative to the scrapped deployment of the US-developed Aegis Ashore missile interception system by the end of the year.

Kishi spoke over the phone with Esper, with the two agree-ing to work together closely to push ahead with substitute for the scrapped deployment, the Defense Ministry said.

Japan is examining three sea-based plans in place of the land-based system, which was aimed at protecting the country from the threat posed by North Korean missiles, reported Japan times.In June, the government under then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Kishi’s elder brother, decided to abort the plan to deploy the Aegis

Ashore system in Akita Prefec-ture and Yamaguchi Prefecture due to technical problems and ballooning costs.The three alter-natives under consideration are the introduction of destroyers equipped with an interception system, utilization of ships that belong to the private sector and an offshore structure similar to those used to drill for oil.The phone conversation came a day after foreign ministers of the two countries plus those of Australia and India met in Tokyo, dur-

ing which the participants reaf-fi rmed their maritime security cooperation in the Indo-Pacifi c region amid China’s growing as-sertiveness there.

Kishi told reporters he indicat-ed his willingness in his talks with Esper to hold a similar meeting involving defense chiefs from the four major Indo-Pacifi c democ-racies, collectively known as the ‘Quad.’“It would be very mean-ingful if the four countries could exchange their views in the fi eld of defense as well,” he said.

During his fi rst consultation with a foreign counterpart since taking offi ce last month, Kishi also discussed with Esper re-gional issues including those in-volving the East and South China seas, where China is engaged in territorial disputes with its neigh-bors, and North Korea’s military threat, according to the ministry.

Global Covid-19 cases top 35.7mn

Washington, Oct 7 (IANS) The overall num-ber of global coronavirus cases has topped 35.7 million, while the deaths have increased to more than 1,048,700, accord-ing to the Johns Hopkins University.As of Wednes-day, the total number of cases stood at 35,733,340 and the fatalities rose to 1,048,742, the Univer-sity’s Center for Systems

Science and Engineering (CSSE) revealed in its lat-est update.

The US is the worst-hit country with the world’s highest number of cases and deaths at 7,500,964 and 210,886, respec-tively, according to the CSSE.India comes in second place in terms of cases at 6,685,082, while the country’s death toll soared to 103,569.

Trade official: China ‘great example’ for Mexico

Will decide on Aegis Ashore alternative by year end: Nobuo Kishi

The other top 15 countries with the maximum amount of cases are Brazil (4,969,141), Russia (1,231,277), Colombia (869,808), Peru (829,999), Spain (825,410), Argentina (824,468), Mexico (794,608), South Africa (683,242), France (675,736), the UK (532,779), Iran (479,825), Chile (473,306), Iraq (387,121), Ban-gladesh (371,631), and Saudi Arabia (337,243), the CSSE figures showed.

Brazil currently accounts for the second highest number of fatalities at 147,494.

The countries with a death toll above 10,000 are Mexico (82,348), the UK (42,535), Italy (36,030), Peru (32,834), Spain (32,486), France (32,383), Iran (27,419), Colombia (27,017), Argentina (21,827), Russia (21,559), South Africa (17,103), Chile (13,070), Ecuador (11,702), Indonesia (11,374) and Belgium (10,092).

Beijing, Oct 7 (IANS) Undersec-retary for foreign trade at Mexi-co's Economy Ministry, Luz Ma-ria de la Mora on Wednesday said that China is a "great example" for Mexico when it comes to de-velopment, growth, innovation, inclusion and economic recov-ery.Participating in a virtual cer-emony commemorating the 71st anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, De la Mora said the two countries have common ground that promotes a

rules-based open trading system unfettered by unilateral restric-tions, reported Globaltimes."We are sure that we have a partner to boost our economic recovery and emerge from this pandemic as soon as possible," the offi -cial said, adding that there are a lot of investment opportunities for both sides.De la Mora also thanked the Chinese government for its support in Mexico's fi ght against the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that bilateral cooperation

is a key in overcom-ing the global health c r i s i s . " B e l i e v i n g you can tackle the pandemic on your own as a country is not understanding the issue," she said.Since the establish-ment of diplomatic relations between China and Mexico in 1972, both countries have maintained a strategic intimity in search for economic cooperation with common objectives on various fronts, De la Mora said.

As an example, she noted that both countries often sup-port initiatives with-in the framework of the World Trade Or-ganization (WTO) to combat unjustifi ed barriers to global trade."Mexico and China have an im-portant institutional framework for the development and strengthening of our bilateral economic ties," she added.

INDIAN ORIGIN COUPLE, SON FOUND DEAD IN UK FLAT

BusinessIndian HorizonThursday, October 8, 2020 9

UP govt, Zurich Airport International sign pact to develop Jewar airportNew Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The

government of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday signed the concession agreement with representatives of Zurich Air-port International to com-mence the development of the Noida International Air-port at Jewar.

The concession agree-ment was signed by Arun Vir Singh, CEO, Noida Interna-tional Airport Limited (NIAL) and Christoph Schnellmann, Chief Executive Officer, Noida International Airport, said an official statement. The con-

cession agreement grants Zurich Airport International the licence to design, build and operate Noida Interna-tional Airport for a period of 40 years.

Noida International Airport will be developed as a Public Private Partnership (PPP). NIA will operate as a fully digital airport, providing a safe and contactless travel experience and customised commercial offerings for passengers, said the statement, adding that it will be the first net zero emis-sions airport in its class, set-

ting a new standard for sus-tainable aviation.

S.P. Goyal, Additional Chief Secretary, Civil Aviation De-

partment, Government of Uttar Pradesh said: “Infra-structure development will be key to economic recovery, not

only in the state but also for the country. The construction of Noida International Airport will support economic growth through job creation in the state, while making it the most preferred destination for domestic as well as global investors in the upcoming years.”

“We look forward to sup-porting the Zurich Airport International team to jump-start this mega project,which will reinforce the economic progress of the state of Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

Daniel Bircher, Chief Ex-ecutive Officer, Zurich Airport International (Asia) said: “The signing of the concession agreement marks an impor-tant milestone in the devel-opment of the Noida Interna-tional Airport. When phase 1 development is completed in 2024, we will provide capacity for 12 m (million) passengers per year.”

Arun Vir Singh, Chief Exec-utive Officer, Noida Interna-tional Airport Limited (NIAL) noted that the upcoming “world-class” airport will not

only connect western UP re-gion with other domestic and international destinations, but also provide additional capacity to Delhi-NCR region.

“Together, we look forward to building India’s leading airport which boasts of qual-ity, efficiency, technology and sustainability. We are very excited to begin work as we move ahead with a vision to co-create a world-class facil-ity,” the NIAL CEO said.

Last November, Zurich Air-port International AG (ZAIA) won the contract to build and

Mumbai, Oct 7 (IANS) The key Indian equity indices turned green on Wednesday after an initial subdued trade, with the BSE Sensex gaining over 300 points.

The Sensex traded near the 39,900 mark and the Nifty50 on the National Stock Exchange was trading above 11,700.

Manish Hathiramani, technical analyst with Deen Dayal Investments said: “The markets have opened on a flat note.

However, it is still expected to achieve a target of 11,750-11,800. If it can sustain those

levels, we can expect a new target of 12,000 during the course of this month. A strong support has been formed around the 11,300 level.”

At 10.29 p.m., the Sensex was trading at 39,897.85, higher 323.28 points or 0.82 per cent from the previous close of 39,574.57.

It opened at 39,633.19, and has so far touched an intra-day high of 39,903.73 and a low of 39,450.82 points.

The Nifty50 was trading at 11,722.80, higher by 60.40 points or 0.52 per cent from the previous close.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Diesel and petrol prices remained unchanged on Wednesday with the oil marketing companies continuing to press the pause button in wake of stable global oil market.

This is the fifth consecutive day when both petrol and diesel prices have remained unchanged. In fact, petrol prices have remained steady for the last 15 days.

The development is in line with the movement of global oil prices. Crude prices remained soft for most of the previous week and fell almost 10 per cent to close to $ 40 a

barrel. In the last couple of ays it has risen and is now around $ 42.5 a barrel.

Continuing coronavirus pandemic has impacted the oil demand and pushed down prices in the absence of any other trigger to lift the markets.

In the national capital, diesel continues to be priced at Rs 70.46 per litre. Similarly, prices of the fuel in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, is also stable at Rs 76.86, Rs 75.95 and Rs 73.99 respectively.

The price of petrol in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata remains at Rs 81.06, Rs 87.74, Rs 84.14 and Rs 82.59 per litre respectively.

Equity indices turn green, Sensex nears 39,900

No change in petrol, diesel prices for 5th consecutive dayNew Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS)

The outstanding debt of In-dias non-financial sector (NFS ) stood at Rs 322 trillion or 167.3 per cent of GDP in 1QFY21, up from around 153 per cent in the past few quar-ters.

According to a report by Motilal Oswal Institutional Equities, a 9.1 per cent year on year growth in NFS debt and 0.6 per cent year on year decline in annualized nomi-nal GDP led to a jump in NFS’ debt-to-GDP ratio in 1QFY21.

Within NFS, general gov-ernment (Centre plus states) debt grew at a 30-quarter

high pace of 14.3 per cent year on year, the report said.

Moreover, nongov-ernment non-financial (NGNF4) debt grew 4.6 per cent YoY in 1QFY21 (against record-low growth levels of

4 per cent in 4QFY20).Within the NGNF sec-

tor, household debt grew at near-record lows of 6 per cent YoY in 1QFY21 (8.9 per cent in 4QFY20, but slow-est growth of 5.7 per cent in

4QFY09). Additionally, non-financial corporate (NFC) debt grew 3.7 per cent, the second lowest to record-low growth levels of 1 per cent in 4QFY20.

“A look at long-term trends suggests the coun-try’s debt growth weakened to the single digits for the first time in two decades in 2QFY20, and COVID-19 failed to change this in 1QFY21,” the report said.

Due to COVID-19 and the related collapse in economic activity, a jump in the debt-to-GDP ratio across nations was inevitable.

However, the pickup in In-dia’s debt growth in 1QFY21 was only marginal versus the previous few quarters, the report said. NFS debt growth was the highest in 15 years in the US (at 11.7 per cent), the highest in 11 years in the UK (at 10.2 per cent), the high-est in 24 years in Japan (at 4.6 per cent), and the high-est in 10 quarters in China (at 12.4 per cent). Since the credit guarantee scheme in India was announced in mid-May’20 (later v/s other major nations), NGNF debt could grow faster in 2QFY21, it added.

Mumbai, Oct 7 (IANS) The administrator of the now-bankrupt Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd. (DHFL) has filed an appli-cation in the NCLT against promoters Wadhawans, Inter-Corporate Deposit en-tities and others for fraudu-lent transactions worth Rs 2,150.84 crore during the company’s stake sale in Pra-merica Life Insurance Com-pany Limited to DHFL Invest-ments Limited and in respect of certain Inter-Corporate Deposits (ICD) given by the company to certain entities.

The fraud was unearthed in the transaction audit of the company done by Grant

Thornton India LLP.On the basis of the report

filed by Grant Thornton, the administrator has filed ap-plication against Kapil Wad-hawan, Dheeraj Wadhawan, Aruna Wadhawan, Wadha-wan Global Capital Limited, the ICD entities and certain other entities claiming the

amount from them along with the interest for the re-maining period.

As per the transaction au-ditor’s report, ‘the monetary impact of the concerned transactions covered un-der the application include -- Rs 1,864.84 crore, includ-ing principal of Rs 1,739.57

crore and accrued interest of Rs 125.27 crore, being the amount outstanding in the books of the company as on November 30, 2019, notional loss in interest of Rs 58.34 crore due to lower inter-est rate charged while giv-ing ICDs and Rs 227.66 crore transferred in the form of ICDs and used to repay a pro-moter linked entity’.

As per the report prepared by the transaction auditor, the concerned transactions occurred during financial years 2016-17 to 2018-19.

“The Administrator has filed an application in respect of agreements executed at the time of selling the Company’s

stake in Pramerica Life in-surance Company Limited (erstwhile DHFL Pramerica Life Insurance Limited) to DHFL Investments Limited and in respect of certain In-ter-Corporate Deposits given by the company to certain entities (ICD entities) before the Mumbai bench of the Na-tional Company Law Tribu-nal under Section 45, Section 46, Section 49, Section 60(5) and Section 66 of the Code on October 05, 2020 against Kap-il Wadhawan, Dheeraj Wad-hawan, Aruna Wadhawan, Wadhawan Global Capital Limited, the ICD entities and certain other entities,” said a regulatory filing.

Mumbai, Oct 7 (IANS) De-spite the addition of new members with diverse aca-demic backgrounds, persis-tently high inflation will deter the Reserve Bank’s MPC to administer a dose of lending rate cut, experts opined.

The expectations from the penultimate policy review of 2020 outcome comes as the MPC commenced its meet on Wednesday.

The original schedule of the penultimate meet was September 29-October 1. However, it was postponed as there were three vacant posts of external members in the MPC which the government had to appoint.

The quorum for the meet-

ing of the MPC is four mem-bers, with each member hav-ing one vote.

Three members of the pan-el are from the RBI, including the Central bank’s Governor and the rest three are exter-nal or independent mem-bers. The four-year terms of three external members of the MPC, appointed in 2016, ended last month and the va-cant posts are yet to be filled by the government.

Nevertheless, the Cen-tre on Monday appointed Ashima Goyal, Jayanth R. Varma and Shashanka Bhide as members of the MPC. “The new MPC composition comprises diverse academ-ics which could bring a wider

perspective to the monetary policy arena. The upcoming policy nonetheless will be a damp squib on the conven-tional policy action front,” said Madhavi Arora, Lead Economist, FX and Rates for Edelweiss Securities.

“The new external mem-bers are likely to keep the continuity of policy tone set by the previous MPC in Octo-

ber policy and their thought process and biases would be firmly established over the course of time.”

Other economists and in-dustry experts also cited el-evated inflation levels as a key determinant for a pause in policy easing. Notably, the expected move comes at a time when industrial output is at historic low due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A policy easing, if admin-istered, would have theo-retically allowed commercial banks to reduce their lending rates thereby helping both consumers and the industry to get cheaper finance.

Subsequently, the in-creased money flow in the

hands of consumers would have helped to boost de-mand, and for the industry provided a higher flow of cap-ital investment on the back of lower cost.

Nonetheless, retail infla-tion has been at an elevated level during July-August.

Lately, data showed that India’s August retail inflation stood at an elevated level.

The retail or consumer price index stood at 6.69 per cent in August. It had risen to 6.73 per cent in July.

As per the data, retail infla-tion level has reached the up-per limit of the medium-term CPI inflation target of four per cent. The target is set within a band of + / - two per cent.

Government debt grows at 30 quarter high

DHFL administrator moves NCLT against Wadhawans in Rs 2,150-cr fraud

Despite new members, MPC expected to maintain old stance

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) As Indian CEOs prioritise in-vestments in new technolo-gies to become future-ready in the pandemic times, only 33 per cent are confident of the growth in their domestic economy and just 42 per cent are optimistic about growth prospects of their company, a KPMG in India report said on Wednesday.

This figure was 78 per cent and 84 per cent at the begin-ning of the year, respectively.

This weakened view on the growth prospects is in line

with that of CEOs globally.“The CEOs in India are also

less confident of their compa-nies’ earnings. About 19 per cent CEOs in India expect the earnings of their companies to either remain flat or de-cline,” revealed KPMG in In-dia’s ‘2020 India CEO Outlook : COVID-19 Special Edition’.

However, CEOs in India seemed to be better posi-tioned than their global coun-terparts in terms of growth prospects of their companies’ earnings with 23 per cent CEOs globally foreseeing their

companies’ earnings, stagnat-ing or declining.

CEOs globally feel a greater need to re-evaluate their pur-pose amid Covid-19, than CEOs in India.

Nearly 79 per cent of CEOs globally have had to re-eval-uate their purpose, as com-pared to only 37 per cent of CEOs in India, highlighting the confidence that CEOs in

India are placing on their cur-rent leadership approach and purpose.

“Looking forward, similar to their global counterparts, CEOs in India are less con-fident about global and do-mestic economic growth than they were at the onset of the year. Their earnings outlook is clearly challenged,” said Arun M Kumar, Chairman and CEO, KPMG in India.

The findings revealed that the agenda of leaders has rad-ically shifted since the begin-ning of the year, as existing

trends like cost-optimisation strategies, rethinking of sup-ply chain strategy, enhancing ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) programmes and aligning with the new work realties have accelerated.

One-third of the CEOs in India have confidence in the country’s economic growth and 62 per cent CEOs altered their own compensation, as part of the broader objective of cost optimisation and cost management to sail through the pandemic.

“If anything, COVID-19 has only acted as a catalyst to accelerate digital trans-formation with companies today spending more than what they originally planned for on digitisation in spite of uncertainty in earnings,” said Vikram Hosangady, Partner and Head, Clients and Mar-kets, KPMG in India .

In India, Covid-19 has led to a dramatic shift in how business leaders are assess-ing potential risks now, com-pared to the pre-pandemic times.

Only 33% Indian CEOs confident of growth in domestic economy

Business Indian HorizonThursday, October 8, 202010

Hopes of positive Q2 results lift markets, auto stocks rise New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS)

Broadly positive global cues, along with likelihood of a stimulus package and hopes of healthy quarterly Q2 re-sults, pushed the Indian equity markets higher on Wednesday.

Both the key indices, the S&P BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty50, made healthy gains during the day’s trade session.

Buying was witnessed in auto, FMCG and IT indices, whereas media, realty, met-als, pharma and energy indi-

ces ended lower.Globally, Asian markets

ended the day’s trade on a positive note as investors shrugged off US President Donald Trump’s abrupt can-cellation of negotiations on a new coronavirus relief bill and lower commodity prices.

He later tweeted about his willing to pass several inde-pendent stimulus measures, including a new round of stimulus cheques.

Consequently, the S&P BSE Banking index closed at

39,878.95, higher by 304.38 points, or 0.77 per cent, from its previous close.

The Nifty50, on the Nation-al Stock Exchange, traded at 11,738.85, higher by 76.45

points, or 0.66 per cent, from its previous close.

“After the initial gains, Nifty failed to rise materially post 10.30 a.m. suggesting sector and stock rotation,” said Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research at HDFC Se-curities. “A negative advance decline ratio also suggested partial profit taking by inves-tors. The next resistance for the Nifty continues to be at 11,782 points.”

“Reliance Industries ended 2.2 per cent higher with large

volumes while Vedanta fell 11.3 per cent with large vol-umes even as the delisting offer by its promoters closes on Oct 9.”

According to Ruchit Jain, Senior Analyst - Techni-cal and Derivatives, Angel Broking: “Our markets have continued with the ongo-ing momentum to add more gains to the recent rally.

This week, the index heavy-weights have led the charge one by one wherein the IT giants took the lead on Mon-

day, HDFC twins on Tuesday and today the heavyweight Reliance propelled the index higher.”

“However, the market breadth showed a bit diver-gence today as the number of stocks declining outnum-bered the advances. The over bought momentum readings on the lower time frame chart and divergence in the broad-er markets indicates stock specific action and thus, traders should be selective in stock picking.”

Bengaluru, Oct 7 (IANS) Amazon India said on Wednesday that it has partnered with Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), to provide their customers with the facility to book reserved train tickets on Amazon.

With this new offering, customers will be able to check seat and quota availability across all train classes on the

Amazon app.They can pre-load money

into their Amazon Pay Balance wallet to make this experience

even smoother and pay in a single click.

With this launch, Amazon Pay has added another travel

category, thereby offering its customers a one-stop-shop for booking flights, bus and train tickets.

“We are excited to partner with IRCTC and move another step forward in making life easy and convenient for our customers. Last year, we launched flights, and bus ticket bookings on Amazon,” Vikas Bansal, Director - Amazon Pay, said in a statement.

Amazon India partners with IRCTC for train ticket bookings

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) High-lighting Savlon as an example of creating value from acquisitions, the ITC said on Wednesday that Savlon is on course to become a Rs 1,000 crore brand.

Sameer Satpathy, CEO, ITC’s Per-sonal Care Products Business, said that going by the growth trends in the first six months of the year, Savlon is set to be a Rs 1,000 crore brand. It will be the first Rs 1,000 crore brand in ITC’s personal prod-ucts category. Savlon was a Rs 50 crore brand in turnover when it was acquired by ITC from Johnson & Johnson around five years back.

Satpathy said Savlon has grown 3-4 times in sales over last year when it had clocked sales of Rs 250 crore. The heightened hygiene and safety needs of the consumers have

led to a boom in this category. Sav-lon and its variants are selling more in a month now than it was selling in a full year earlier.

Satpathy added, “We are hungry for value accretive acquisitions. Savlon is an example of creating value through acquisitions. We will look at opportunities where we feel we can multiply, take the brand and expand it to create value for all our stakeholders.” ITC’s floor cleaner brand Nimyle, which also was an acquisition, has crossed Rs 150 crore and is being expanded as a vegetable wash solution with 100 per cent natural ingredients.

Satpathy said ITC has a complete portfolio of health and hygiene products. He said the personal care brands are high margin brands which are growing fast.

ITC’s Savlon to become a Rs 1,000 crore brand

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Bharti Airtel and Ericsson on Wednesday announced to renew their multi-year contract to supply and de-ploy 5G-ready radio and transport solutions from the Swedish telecommunication giant.

The ‘make in India’ 5G-ready Ericsson radio system products will enhance the network experience of Airtel customers, the companies said in a statement.

“We are delighted to deepen our partnership with Ericsson as part of our en-deavour to build a network

ready for 5G and beyond,” said Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel.

In July this year, Bharti Airtel renewed another agreement with the Swed-ish gear maker to provide pan-India managed network operations. The three-year deal will see Airtel launching ‘Ericsson Operation Engine’ this year.

“The products manufac-tured in India will continue to benefit Indian users by enhancing Airtel’s network capacity and enabling it to cater to the country’s fast-growing data traffic needs,” said Nunzio Mirtillo, Head of Ericsson South East Asia, Oceania and India.

The agreement builds on the 25-year collaboration between Ericsson and Airtel in India. Airtel and Erics-son’s long-standing technol-ogy and services partnership has spanned 2G, 3G, 4G pro-vision and more recently, live 5G trials.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has so far issued refunds of over Rs 1.21 lakh crore to nearly 36 lakh taxpayers in the current financial year (2020-21).

It has issued income tax refunds of over Rs 33,000 crore in more than 34 lakh cases and corporate tax refund of more than Rs 88,000 crore in over 1.83 lakh cases.

“The CBDT issues refunds of over Rs 1,21,607 crore to more than 35.93 lakh taxpayers between April 1 and October 6.

Income tax refunds of Rs 33,238 crore have been issued in 34,09,246 cases and corporate tax refunds of Rs 88,370 crore in 1,83,773 cases,” the Income Tax Department said in a tweet on Wednesday.

The Finance Ministry

had earlier said that in view of the issues arising out of the coronavirus pandemic, emphasis was on release of all refunds in the earliest possible time.

Airtel, Ericsson extend ties to deploy 5G-ready radio network

Direct tax refunds of over Rs 1.21 lakh cr issued since April

Nearly one-third Indian workers face increased burnout at work: Microsoft

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) As the work-life balance get blurred globally in the pandemic times, India came out top with over 41 per cent of workers citing the lack of separation between work and personal life negatively impacting their wellbeing, resulting in increased stress levels, a Microsoft study revealed on Wednesday.

Close to one third of workers in India cited increased rates of burnout over the past six months, according to Microsoft’s latest ‘Work Trend Index’ report.

“As businesses adapt to a new way of working, it is important to examine the

multifaceted impact that the new working conditions are having on employees. This is helping us provide relevant and timely solutions to all our customers and users,” said Samik Roy, Country Head, Modern Work, Microsoft India.

Surveying over 6,000 information and first-line workers across eight countries globally including Australia,

Japan, India and Singapore, the study found that India had the second highest percentage of workers facing increased burnout in Asia, at 29 per cent.

The findings showed that no commute may be hurting, not helping, remote worker productivity.

A massive 92 per cent those surveyed said meditation can decrease work-related stress.

Microsoft recently announced a series of updates within Teams to support employee wellbeing, including virtual commute experience and a curated set of mindfulness and meditation experiences.

The study found that 29 per cent of workers in India are experiencing increased burnout at work, owing to its increase in workday span by one hour.

“While workers in Australia saw the highest increase in workday span in Microsoft Teams at 45 percent, with a medium increase in burnout, India had the longest workday span of surveyed markets”.

Bengaluru, Oct 7 (IANS) E-commerce platform Flip-kart said on Wednesday that it has added over 3.4 million square feet space across its supply chain as-sets including fulfilment centres, mother hubs and delivery centres through-out the country in prepa-ration of the upcoming festive season and the Big Billion Days sale event.

With this addition, the total warehousing space for Flipkart now totals to over 18 million square feet in addition to lakhs of square feet of assets from partner

brands.Flipkart said that it has

increased its last-mile reach with more than 3,000 facili-ties across the country to provide a fast and efficient e-commerce experience to consumers this festive

period. This expansion will also help lakhs of sellers, MSMEs and artisans from smaller towns to connect with a pan-India consum-er base through Flipkart’s supply chain.

“The pandemic has ac-

celerated the expansion of our supply chain across the country, particularly small-er cities, to meet growing demands for e-commerce services,” Amitesh Jha, Se-nior Vice-President, Ekart and Marketplace, Flipkart, said in a statement.

“Also, keeping in mind the growth of e-commerce over the next few years, this expansion will enable us to connect millions of con-sumers across the country with lakhs of sellers and ar-tisans in a fast and efficient manner.”

Flipkart said that it is cre-

ating nearly 70,000 direct jobs and lakhs of indirect seasonal jobs through its pan-India supply chain as it gears up for the festive sea-son and the Big Billion Days sale from October 16-21.

“During the festive sea-son, this additional space and infrastructure invest-ment will also boost local employment, particularly for people who went back to their hometowns due to the lockdown, and cre-ate opportunities for local businesses to scale up their operations significantly with Flipkart,” Jha said.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) The Indian real estate sector seems to be recovering from a slump in demand during the nationwide lockdown as sales during the July-Sep-tember quarter jumped over 100 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter basis across sev-en major cities, according to a report by PropEquity.

Housing sales across these seven cities during the third quarter of 2020

stood at 50,983 units, com-pared with 24,936 units in the previous quarter.

NCR-Delhi witnessed 295 per cent home sales growth in Q3, while other cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Hy-derabad, Kolkata, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, and Pune clocked 86, 131, 159, 89, 70, and 72 per cent re-spectively.

However, on a year-on-year basis, sales fell by 35

per cent and new launches were down by 30 per cent.

“The Indian real estate sector is showing some recovery as many proj-ects were launched in the last quarter. With various schemes and offers, de-velopers were able to clear significant inventory. As we move into the festive sea-son, we forecast this recov-ery to continue with more offers, discounts, and at-

tractive payment schemes to attract more custom-ers,” Samir Jasuja, Founder and Managing Director at PropEquity, said.

Speaking on the National Capital Region market, Ankush Kaul, President of Sales and Marketing at Am-bience Group, said: “The NCR market, being one of the biggest in the country, continues to be resilient and presents a new level of

optimism to the industry. Being well-supplied across all segments of housing, it caters to all categories of home buyers like those seeking affordable, pre-mium, or luxury homes. This remains the biggest USP of this market. On ac-count of the upcoming fes-tive months, it is likely that the sector will see a further revival in terms of sales numbers.”

Flipkart expands supply chain in India to meet festive demands

Housing sales doubled in July-Sep period: PropEquity Report

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Enterprise software major SAP has piped giants like Salesforce, Oracle and Adobe when it comes to serving the B2B digital commerce market globally, according to the IDC.

After a thorough evaluation of SAP’s strategies and capa-bilities, IDC has positioned

the company in the Leaders’ category within its latest ‘2020 IDC MarketScape for B2B dig-ital commerce platforms’.

According to the IDC re-port, SAP offers a broad and deep portfolio of customer ex-perience applications, includ-ing CRM, marketing, CPQ, and service.

“Customers we interviewed rated SAP above average when asked whether SAP Commerce Cloud is ‘built for the future’. One customer commented, ‘This is where SAP is really good. They were a bit late to market here but have gotten ahead,” the re-port mentioned.

The company’s B2B digi-tal commerce product, SAP Commerce Cloud, is a B2B and B2C digital commerce platform that was originally acquired by SAP with the ac-quisition of hybris in 2013.

SAP has launched a new multi-tenant SaaS and mi-croservices-based digital

commerce application in June 2019 called “SAP Up-scale Commerce” (which was not considered in this IDC re-port). “Consider SAP if you are an enterprise looking for an all-in-one digital commerce platform that can handle complex enterprise require-ments and can support both

B2B and B2C business models or you use SAP for other CX applications,” the IDC Mar-ketScape report mentioned.

“Selecting the right cloud B2B digital commerce plat-form can be extremely hard; there isn’t a one-size-fits-all vendor, and the market is evolving extremely fast,” said

Jordan Jewell, research man-ager, Digital Commerce pro-gramme at IDC.

According to the IDC, SAP’s context-driven services pro-vide deep personalisation ca-pabilities to tailor commerce experiences.

There are, however, some challenges too.

SAP pips Oracle, Adobe in B2B digital commerce market

Sports Indian HorizonThursday, October 8, 202011

FRENCH OPEN: NADAL OVERCOMES

SINNER TEST

Paris, Oct 7 (IANS) Twelve-time champion Rafael Nadal overcame a stern test against Italian teenager Jannik Sinner to enter the semi-finals of the ongoing French Open.

On Tuesday evening, Nadal -- playing his 100th match at the Roland Garros -- defeated 19-year-old Sinner 7-6(4), 6-4, 6-1 in a match that lasted two hours and 49 minutes on Court Philippe-Chatrier.

“He’s a very, very young talent with great shots. For two sets it was very tough. At the end of the first set I was very lucky. It was very difficult for me to pull him out of position,” said Nadal after he booked his 13th last-four place in Paris.

“In the third set I improved, I was much better being much more aggressive. That’s the only way. I’m very, very happy to be back in the semi-finals of Roland-Garros again. It’s no doubt the most important place for me, the most beautiful place to play,” he added.

His record now stands at 98 wins and just two defeats, 237 hours and eight minutes on the court, just 27 sets lost, 427 of 602 break points saved, according to the tournament’s website.

The Spaniard will next face Diego Schwartzman, who beat Dominic Thiem on Wednesday in a five-set quarter-final that lasted more than five hours.

STEVE SMITH FINED FOR SLOW OVER

RATE AGAINST MUMBAI INDIANS

Abu Dhabi, Oct 7 (IANS) Rajasthan Royals captain Steve Smith has been fined Rs 12 lakh for maintaining slow over-rate during his side’s 57-run loss against Mumbai Indians in their latest Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 encounter.

“As it was his team’s first offence of the season under the IPL’s Code of Conduct relating to minimum over-rate offences, Mr. Smith was fined Rs 12 lakh,” stated an IPL media release.

Earlier, Delhi Capitals skipper Shreyas Iyer and Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Virat Kohli were also fined for maintaining slow over-rates during their respective matches against SunRisers Hyderabad and Kings XI Punjab.

On Tuesday evening, Royals were bowled out for 136 during their chase of 194 at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium.Smith could only manage six runs and was one of four wickets that Jasprit Bumrah took.

Chennai, Oct 7 (IANS) International Master (IM) in chess Atanu Lahiri will be training around 50 junior chess players -- both girls and boys -- in Guyana for three months initially.

Lahiri has been appointed as the Training Consultant by the Guyana Chess Federation for three months starting October 2020 with an option to extend the assignment in 2021.

“Initially I will be training about 50 junior chess players, a mix of girls and boys. The numbers may go up by another 10 or 20 players. The players are in the age group of 7-16 years,” Lahiri told IANS.

“There are also plans to take chess to schools in Guyana by training the teachers there. That will take some time to happen,” he

added.He said the Guyana Chess Federation had got in touch with the Indian High Commission there for a trainer and the matter got referred to the All India Chess Federation (AICF) which in turn suggested his name.

This is not the first that Lahiri is training overseas chess players.“I have trained chess players in Thailand, Mongolia, Nepal and Bhutan. The Mongolian Chess Federation has made me an honorary member,” Lahiri said.

India’s Chess IM Atanu Lahiri to train Guyana colts

NBA FINALS : LAKERS ONE GAME AWAY FROM CHAMPIONSHIPS

KL shouldn’t be bothered with wicketkeeping in Indian squad : Brian Lara

New Delhi/Patiala, Oct 7 (IANS) Sixteen elite women and men boxers will travel to Italy and France for their overseas training and participation in international competition after the Covid-19 hiatus.

A 28-member contingent, that includes 10 male boxers and six female boxers along with the support staff, will travel for a period of 52 days from October 15 to December 5.

The teams will be training at Assisi, Italy. All the four events (men’s 57 kg, men’s 81 kg, men’s 91 kg, women’s 57 kg) where India are yet to win a quota, will have boxers who will be a part of the travelling contingent.

They will be accompanied by eight coaches and support staff in the men’s team and four coaches and support staff in the women’s team.

Thirteen boxers from the contingent will also participate in the ‘Alexis Vastine’ international boxing tournament to be held in

Nantes, France from October 28 to 30, stated the Sports Authority of India (SAI) in a release.

Amit Panghal, Ashish Kumar, Satish Kumar, Simranjit Kaur, Lovlina Borgohain and Pooja Rani from among the contingent have earned quotas for the Tokyo Olympics.

“It is very good that we will be getting a feeling of competition again. I am very excited about this. With 10 months to go before the Olympics, getting to compete against European opponents will be really helpful,” said Lovlina.

Ashish said that this is good preparation as they would be coming up against opponents who they might face at the Olympics.

“It will be very helpful for us to play against competitors from abroad. We were already at camp in Patiala and regained our fitness, going abroad will really help. When we meet new competitors, we will get an idea of our level.

16 elite boxers to train in Italy & compete in France

Want to prove my potential in every single session, says Rajkumar Pal

Bengaluru, Oct 7 (IANS) Attacking hockey midfielder Rajkumar Pal made a dream debut earlier this year.He was given an opportunity by chief coach Graham Reid to show his potential against world champions Belgium at the FIH Hockey Pro

League. The young lad from Uttar Pradesh’s Karampur village ensured he did not disappoint.Now a regular feature in the Indian core probable group, Rajkumar is aiming to become an integral part of the national team.

“My aim now is to prove

my potential in every single session, in every single opportunity I get. We have a very strong pool of players and there is a healthy internal competition to make the final squad.

I have received great support from the senior players who encourage me to play to my potential. I look forward to build on this momentum,” he said.Speaking about his experience over the past six months, Rajkumar feels the team management’s efforts to keep the players motivated through the Covid-19 induced lockdown was extremely important.

“With no activities at all, it was very difficult to feel motivated but the team management, especially chief coach and scientific advisor ensured we were kept occupied with online activities, English classes and a regular fitness regime. They also ensured we were not fatigued mentally,” the midfielder said.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Legendary West Indies cricketer Brian Lara believes KL Rahul is a "great batsman" and that's why she should concentrate on his batting and not bother about wicketkeeping when it comes to the Indian team.

Rahul, who is currently leading Kings XI Punjab in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020, has scored 302 runs -- including one hundred and two half-centuries -- in five matches so far.

"Well, first of all I would like to say that KL Rahul should not be bothered with wicketkeeping when

it comes to that Indian squad. He's such a great batsman that I feel that he should concentrate on that and put in a lot of runs on the board," Lara said while speaking on Star Sports Cricket Connected show.According to the former West

Indies captain, Rishabh Pant is the number one choice to replace MS Dhoni behind the

stumps in the Indian team.Pant has been in good form in the ongoing tournament, scoring 171 runs in the five matches he has played so far for the Delhi Capitals.

"Rishabh Pant a year ago, I would say no, but I feel that he has stepped up in terms of his responsibility as a batsman.

Look at how he plays for Delhi Capitals, it looks like he wants that responsibility, he wants that onus on him to score runs, build an innings and get big scores," said Lara. "If he continues that way, I think that he should the number one," he added.

GIRO D'ITALIA: ARNAUD DEMARE

PIPS PETER SAGAN TO

WIN STAGE 4

Villafranca Tirrena (Italy), Oct 7 (IANS) Frances Arnaud Demare picked up his eleventh win of the season in a fiercely contested bunch sprint finale on the Sicialian coast ahead of Slovakia's Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) and the Italian Davide Ballerini (Deceuninck Quick-Step) at the ongoing Giro D'Italia.In a crazy, messy conclusion to Stage 4 on Tuesday, Sagan

opened up the sprint and looked to have netted a maiden stage win on the Giro -- and a first victory in over 15 months -- only to be denied by the in-form Demare's superior lunge.

After a painstaking wait, Demare's victory was confirmed as Sagan was forced to settle for second place and the maglia ciclamino, which he took

from the shoulders of Italian Diego Ulissi.It was a difficult day for Ulissi's UAE-Team Emirates after their sprinter Fernando Gaviria was distanced on the day's major climb at the mid-point of the 140-kilometre stage, the Colombian failing to rejoin the peloton despite a prolonged chase by his teammates.Italians Ballerini, Andrea Vendrama (AG2R La

Mondiale) and Elia Viviani (Cofidis) completed the top five as Portugal's Joao Almeida (Deceuninck Quick-Step) safely finished in the pack to retain the pink jersey.

Earlier, Almeida had zipped clear to take two bonus seconds in the second intermediate sprint after an entertaining little tussle with Stage 3 winner Jonathan Caicedo (EF Pro Cycling).

Orlando, Oct 7 (IANS) After facing a loss in Game 3 -- mostly due to an exceptional performance from Jimmy Butler -- LA Lakers' star duo LeBron James (28p, 8a, 12r) and Anthony Davis (22p, 4a, 9r) helped their team take one step closer to the Championships with a 102-96 victory over Miami Heat in Game Four of the ongoing NBA Finals.

The Lakers, who lead 3-1 in the series, are now just one win away from their record-equalling 17th NBA title.James, who got off to a slow start on Tuesday evening, picked up pace with 20 points in the second half, had sent a text to

his teammates before the game to let them know the kind of zone he was in.

"When I woke up from my nap this morning after our team meeting, I just felt that. I felt that vibe. I felt that pressure.

I felt like for me personally, this was one of the biggest games of my career. I just wanted to relay that message to my teammates," said James.

The Lakers drew first blood when they inched ahead at 27-22 at the end of the first quarter. However, the Heat fought back and took the lead at 33-39 in the second quarter as Butler

moved into double figures.Nevertheless, the Heat couldn't hold onto their lead as the Lakers took a two-point lead at the end of the first half.

As James and Davis improved their shooting from distance in the second half, the Lakers closed out the game comfortably.

Lakers head coach Frank Vogel expressed that the way James and Davis defended against Butler set the tone for the match.

"That was a big part of our plan, the adjustments from last game to this game was to try to keep those guys on him as much as possible.

New Delhi, Oct 7 (IANS) Star badminton players Saina Nehwal and Parupalli Kashyap have withdrawn from the Denmark Open.

The Super 750 tournament, which is expected to signal the restart of the sport’s international calendar, is set to played from October 13 to 18 in Odense.“Yes,

we have pulled out of the tournament,” Kashyap, husband of Saina, told IANS. Saina pulling out of the tournament means that there would be no Indian participation in the women’s singles event, as reigning world champion PV Sindhu had pulled out in September.

The Indian squad for the Denmark Open now comprises former world No.1 Kidambi Srikanth, Lakshya Sen, Ajay Jayaram, and Shubhankar Dey.

The Badminton World Federation (BWF) had earlier intended the Thomas Cup and Uber Cup team events to mark the restart of the badminton calendar, but the tournaments were cancelled after several countries pulled out due to safety concerns arising out of the Covid pandemic. The BWF also cancelled the Denmark Masters, which was set to start two days after the end of the Denmark Open.

Saina, Kashyap withdraw from Denmark Open

badminton

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ENTERTAINMENTIndian HorizonIndian Horizon

Thursday, October 8, 2020

ANANYA PANDAY BELIEVES IN 'LESS

ATTITUDE, MORE GRATITUDE'

BIGG BOSS 14 HOUSEMATE

JASMIN BHASIN ON OPPORTUNITIES IN

B'WOOD FOR OUTSIDERS

Ananya Panday has shared a mantra she believes in on

social media.Ananya took to Insta-

gram, where she is seen posing on a beach with the sea in the backdrop.

In the picture, she looks stunning in a ca-sual white and navy blue sweatshirt.

"Less attitude, more gratitude," wrote the actress alongside the im-age, who is currently in Goa to shoot for Shakun Batra's untitled fi lm.

Ananya's latest release is "Khaali Peeli". The fi lm also stars Ishaan Khatter.She will also be seen in a pan-Indian fi lm opposite Vijay Deverakonda.

IANS

Jasmin Bhasin, who is currently seen as a housemate in the 14th

season of reality show Bigg Boss, says she never felt the Hindi fi lm industry has been unfair to her."I have never felt it (Bollywood) has been unfair because I

got calls for good auditions and projects and I got work, too. I think it is an industry where the best who is suit-ed for a role gets chosen. Everybody gets opportu-nities," Jasmin told IANS.Jasmin rose to fame play-ing Teni Bhanushali in the

show "Dil Se Dil Tak", and her contention contradicts what actress Hina Khan had said earlier."Nepotism ex-ists everywhere and it does exist in our industry, too. If you are a star and you want to launch your kid, it's ab-solutely okay.But, it is not

fair when you don't give an equal chance to outsid-ers.TV actors hardly make it big in Bollywood, just because we don't get a fair chance. At least, give us a chance to prove ourselves," Hina had said.

IANS

WHEN HRITHIK ROSHAN CALLED KATRINA KAIF A

'LABOURER'!

Hrithik Roshan who gave hit fi lms like 'Bang Bang' and 'Zindagi Na

Milegi Dobara' with Katrina Kaif shares a deep connection with the actress.

The actor once revealed that he believes Katrina is a die-hard 'Labourer' who works with extreme dedication and determination.

Talking about the same, in an interview with a lead-ing portal, Roshan said "This is something that I've always told Katrina, which she kind of takes as an insult, but which I mean as an incredibly well-intentioned compliment.

I regard Katrina as a maz-door; she is a labourer, she is a worker. She is one of the best labourers and workers that I've ever come across.

"He further said, "I'm tell-ing you, deep inside Katrina is a mazdoor; she just happens to be beautiful and hot and all

of those things.Those are just the decorations, but deep inside, she is a worker. Having said that, she is so super talented, it becomes very easy for her, it becomes very easy for me when I'm working with her.

`Other B-town stars have also praised Katrina for her hard work. Tabu is one of them who happens to be Katrina's co-star in Fitoor, said, `Katrina is the most hard-working actress I have ever met, seen and worked with.

Katrina will soon be seen in Sooryavanshi with Akshay Ku-mar. The fi lm was supposed to release in March but was indefi -nitely delayed due to the corona-virus pandemic.

Courtesy : Santa Banta

instructs 'LSC' team to employ women driven

Sakha cabs for Delhi shoot schedule!

AAMIR KHAN

Aamir Khan along with his entire team is cur-rently in Delhi shooting

for his upcoming movie 'Laal Singh Chaddha'. Aamir has in-structed LSC team to employ women driven Sakha cabs for their entire Delhi schedule.Aamir fi rst introduced Sakha

cabs in Satyamev Jayate appre-ciating their remarkable work of providing employment op-portunities to women who have been victims of domestic abuse and harassment.Ever since then, Aamir Khan has been providing them patron-age and is an ardent supporter

of their service. He promised them that whenever he would visit Delhi, he would use their service.For the past 10 years, Aamir has kept his promise. Due to COVID-19 and keeping the safety of everyone in mind, he has instructed the entire team to even make special

arrangements for the female drivers including their stay and other necessities, for the entire 45 days as they will be needed throughout.It's truly inspiring when a star like Aamir Khan uses his elite status and power to help uplift others.

Courtesy : Santa Banta

RRR: 5 things in the Ram Charan, Jr. NTR, Alia Bhatt, Ajay Devgn starrer to watch out for

After the monstrous suc-cess of the Baahubali franchise, director SS

Rajamouli announced another pan-India project titled RRR (Raama Roudra Rushitam), featuring Ram Charan and Jr. NTR in lead roles.

While the film garnered im-mense buzz right from its an-nouncement, after Alia Bhatt and Ajay Devgn came on board, the expectations and excitement for this project went to another level.SS Rajamouli's mega creation

SS Rajamouli is a master sto-ryteller, who knows the nerve of his audience and that's why he enjoys a high success ratio at the box offi ce. While the motion poster and introduction promo of Ram Charan has already

shattered records on YouTube, we are feel that this project, which is made on a budget of Rs. 350 crore, could transcend the Baahubali franchise.

Ram Charan and Jr. NTR combo with Alia Bhatt

Watching two superstars of Tollywood, Ram Charan and Jr. NTR, will be a treat for all

movie-buffs. Plus, the audi-ence is looking forward to see the fresh pair of the Rangast-halam actor and Alia Bhatt, who will be making her Tolly-wood debut.Ajay Devgn and Shriya Saran's cameos

Drishyam stars Ajay Devgn and Shriya Saran will have special cameos.

As per reports, they will be seen as husband and wife in the period drama. Talking about Ajay's character, Raja-mouli earlier said, the actor exudes honesty and integrity and that's why he is apt for the part.High-octane stunts and action sequences

Well, just like Baahubali and Magadheera, we are expect-ing some high-octane stunts

SS Rajamouli's RRR features Ram Charan,

Jr NTR, Alia Bhatt, Ajay Devgn and Olivia

Morris in pivotal roles. The period

drama is made on a budget of Rs. 350

crore and will release in Telugu, Tamil,

Hindi, Malayalam and Kannada languages.

and mind-boggling action sequences in RRR.Out of the world VFX

VFX is one of the highlights of SS Rajamouli's projects as envisaged in Baahubali, Eega and Magadheera. With good quality VFX work, we expect the filmmaker to transport the audience to his own world in RRR.

Courtesy : Bollywoodlife

Bhumi Pednek-ar is proud of her work. She

says she searches for extraordinary stories, and will constantly pick projects that hit home for her.

"I search for ex-traordinary stories of extraordinary women! I think that really guides my fi lm choices. Right from my debut, I have tried to bring to life stories of powerful, strong, inde-pendent women who have a voice and they want to be heard by society," Bhumi said.She added: "Cinema can spark conversations and all my fi lms, in their own, unique way, have been about achieving parity."Bhumi has shown that she is not afraid to explore roles and diverse genres because she wants to start a

positive conversa-tion about being a woman in India.She said: "I'm proud of my body of work and I know I will constantly pick proj-ects that hit home for me. Such sub-jects are extremely close to my heart be-cause I do feel I have a responsibility to portray women dif-ferently on screen.

IANS

BHUMI PEDNEKAR : I WILL CONSTANTLY PICK PROJECTS

THAT HIT HOME FOR ME

In the midst of facing criticism over his remarks on Sushant's death probe, Akshay Kumar thanks his fans for this reason!

On October 5th, Ak-shay Kumar un-veiled the teaser of

his upcoming spy-thriller fi lm, 'Bell Bottom' based on the storyline of plane hi-jacks that rocked the world back in the 1980s.Although recently, the actor shared a video on social media while breaking his silence over the drug consump-

tion in Bollywood and the anonymous death of the late Sushant Singh Rajput. But it seems like his video did not sit well with the netizens and slammed the actor for raising his voice so late. Along with troll-ing, #BanLaxmmiBomb was also started trending on the micro-blogging site and it was stated that his

step of speaking on the on-going controversies wasn't the right time as his fi lm 'Laxmmi Bomb' is all set to release on November 9th, 2020 and he also has released the teaser of Bell Bottom.But ignoring ev-erything, Akshay Kumar took to Twitter to share the news that the 'Bell Bottom' teaser has been watched by

25 million people within 24 hours on the social media platforms. The actor tweet-ed, "Aapka Pyaar Sar Aank-hon Par! Grateful for your love and support #Bell-bottomTeaser have you watched it yet?"Directed by Ranjit M Tewari, 'Bellbot-tom' is being co-produced by Vashu Bhagnani, Jackky Bhagnani, Deepshikha

Deshmukh, Monisha Ad-vani, Madhu Bhojwani and Nikkhil Advani. Along with Akshay Kumar, the fi lm also stars Vaani Kapoor, Lara Dutta and Huma Qureshi in pivotal roles. The fi lm was announced in the year 2019 and is slated for release on April 2nd, 2021.

Courtesy : Santa Banta

Hours after she was granted bail, Bolly-wood actress Rhea

Chakraborty on Wednes-day evening walked out of the Byculla Jail, having spent 28 days in custody since her arrest on Septem-ber 8.In full media glare with tight police security, she quickly stepped into a vehicle and was driven off

to her home in Santacruz in the western suburbs.

Earlier this morning, Justice S.V. Kotwal of Bom-bay High Court granted her conditional bail on a surety of Rs 1 Lakh, along with late Sushant Singh Ra-jput's staffer Dipesh Sawa-nt and his house manager Samuel Miranda.However, her brother Showik and

drug peddler Abdul Basit Parihar were refused bail.

Welcoming the court order, her lawyer Satish Maneshinde said "truth and justice have pre-vailed" and ultimately the submissions on facts and law have been accepted by Justice Kotwal"."The arrest and custody of Rhea was totally unwarranted

and beyond the reach of law. The hounding and witch hunt by three cen-tral agencies - the CBI, ED and NCB - of Rhea should come to an end. We remain committed to Truth. Satyameva Jayate," he added.In the evening, Maneshinde expressed relief saying Rhea will fi -nally get to sleep on her

own after a month in the jail.Meanwhile, Deputy Commissioner of Police Sangram Singh Nishan-dar again warned the pa-parazzi against chasing or obstructing any vehicles in which persons called for investigations travel in view of safety of all the stakeholders.

IANS

Rhea Chakraborty walks out of jail after 28 days