Archives for October 2022

NASHIK: At least 11 persons were killed and 38 others injured as a private bus travelling to Mumbai caught fire after hitting a trailer truck in Nashik city of Maharashtra early on Saturday, officials said.ADVERTISEMENTAds by 

The accident took place at Nandur Naka on Nashik-Aurangabad highway around 5.15 am when the ‘sleeper’ bus was coming from Yavatmal in eastern Maharashtra, they said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed grief over the loss of lives in the bus tragedy and said ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh would be given to the next of kin of each deceased and the injured would be given Rs 50,000 each.

Chief Minister Eknath Shinde announced a financial assistance of Rs 5 lakh to the families of the dead and said the medical expenses of the injured would be borne by the state government.

“A luxury bus travelling to Mumbai from Yavatmal hit a trailer truck going to Pune at an intersection near Mirchi Hotel on Nashik-Aurangabad highway. Soon after ramming into the truck, the bus caught fire in which 11 passengers died,” Nashik Police Commissioner Jayant Naiknavare said.

The injured persons were admitted to the District Civil Hospital and another private medical facility in Nashik, he said.

Before catching fire, the bus also hit a mini cargo van, due to which it got overturned, the commissioner added.

Another police official said 38 persons were injured in the incident.

On being alerted, the police, fire brigade and other agencies reached the spot and launched a rescue operation and the fire was doused off.

However, the bus was completely gutted in the incident, he said.

Some eyewitnesses said the fire was so intense that they could not do anything to save the passengers for some time and had to stand there helplessly.

The death toll in the accident may go up as the condition of some of the injured persons is serious, the officials added.

In a tweet, PM Modi said, “Anguished by the bus tragedy in Nashik. My thoughts are with those who have lost their loved ones in this mishap. May the injured recover at the earliest. The local administration is providing all possible assistance to those affected.” 

“An ex-gratia of Rs.2 lakh from PMNRF would be given to the next of kin of each of the deceased due to the bus fire in Nashik. The injured would be given Rs.50,000,” he added.

President Droupadi Murmu also condoled the loss of lives in the accident and wished the injured a speedy recovery.

“I am deeply saddened to learn about the death of many people in a bus fire in Nashik. I express my deepest condolences to the families who lost their loved ones in this accident. I wish the injured a speedy recovery,” the President said in a tweet in Hindi.

MUMBAI: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat on Wednesday said people should develop entrepreneurial skills rather than depending on government jobs.“For a country as populous as Bharat, it is a natural expectation that economic and development policy making should be employment-oriented. “But employment does not mean simply jobs, this prudence should expand in our society,” said Bhagwat in his annual Dushera address in Nagpur.

“Enterprise-oriented actions have to be encouraged. Setting up of decentralised employment training programmes in every district, job opportunities in home districts, development programmes in villages as also education, health, ease of travel — these are common expectations from the government.” 

He also pointed out that population control and religion-based population balance are important subjects that can no longer be ignored. “The population policy should be applicable for all. Public awareness campaigns will be required for creating a mindset of total observance of this policy. Only then rules on population control will yield results,” he added.

Growing population can also be an asset, Bhagwat said. “We are at the stage of demographic dividend and this should work in our favour. China managed to control the population by implementing strict policies but now its population is old. Realising that they are now encouraging a two-child policy,” he said.

He said scare-mongering was being done that there was a danger to minorities, but asserted that this is neither the nature of the Sangh nor of Hindus. The Sangh, he asserted, resolves to stand on the side of brotherhood, amity and peace.

“There should be no recurrence of Udaipur and Amravati incidents (where a tailor and a pharmacist were killed after they supported suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma), Bhagwat said, adding that a particular community as a whole should not be taken as the root cause for it.

Empowering of women
Bhagwat also laid emphasis on women’s empowerment and said society cannot progress without women.  He also said the concept of Hindu Rashtra is now being taken seriously

MUMBAI: Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Wednesday asserted his rebellion was not an act of “betrayal”, but a “revolt” and asked Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray to kneel down at party founder Bal Thackeray’s memorial here and apologise for going against his ideals and aligning with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). 

Addressing a mega rally at the Bandra Kurla Complex’s MMRDA ground on the occasion of Dussehra, Shinde said voters in the state elected the Shiv Sena and the BJP in the 2019 Assembly elections, but Thackeray “betrayed” people by joining hands with the Congress and the NCP to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.

He said massive crowds at his Dussehra rally was proof enough to show who are true inheritors of Bal Thackeray’s legacy.

Slamming Thackeray, Shinde, who heads the rebel faction of the party, said the Shiv Sena was not a “private limited company” and maintained the 56-year-old outfit was built through hard work of common Sena workers.

The chief minister stoutly defended his rebellion against Thackeray’s leadership in June that brought down the MVA government. Shinde asserted his rebellion was not an act of “betrayal” (gaddari), but a revolt (gadar).

The Thackeray-led faction of the Shiv Sena has often targeted rebels as “traitors”.

The rally was attended by Jaidev Thackeray, brother of Uddhav Thackeray, and his estranged wife Smita Thackeray.

Nihar Thackeray, grandson of late Bal Thackeray, also attended the rally besides Champa Singh Thapa, a long-time personal aide of the Sena founder.

PANDAVAPURA: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday joined the Bharat Jodo Yatra here, participating in a public event of the party after a long gap

Amid cheers and slogan-shouting by party workers, Sonia Gandhi walked besides her son Rahul Gandhi and other leaders for a few kilometres in Mandya district of Karnataka.

A number of senior Congress leaders, including former chief minister Siddaramaiah and PCC president D K Shivakumar, walked along with the Gandhis.

Security personnel had a tough time controlling the crowds which jostled to get a glimpse of the Congress president.

This is the first time that Sonia Gandhi has joined a public event after recovering from COVID-19 earlier this year.

The Congress president had contracted coronavirus twice and was also hospitalised

Sonia Gandhi has not been electioneering or participating in public events of the party for a long time due to health reasons.

She had last participated in a roadshow in Varanasi in August 2016 where she sustained a shoulder injury and later underwent a surgery.

The 3,570 km long Bharat Jodo Yatra began from Kanyakumari on September 8.

With the Yatra, the Congress said it wants to combat the alleged divisive politics of the BJP-led Central government.

PALAKKAD: Nine persons including 5 students died after a tourist bus on a school tour from Mulanthuruthy in Ernakulam hit a KSRTC bus at Vadakkancherry in Palakkad in the early hours of Thursday.

The other victims included a school teacher and three passengers of the KSRTC bus.

The tourist bus was taking 41 students of Baselios Vidyanikethan Senior Secondary School, Mulanthuruthy on a school trip to Ooty. The tourist bus hit the Kottarakkara-Coimbatore superfast bus from behind at Vadakkancherry after midnight Wednesday.

Initial reports indicate that the tourist bus was overspeeding before the driver lost control and crashed into the KSRTC bus from behind.

Transport Minister Antony Raju blamed the driver of the tourist bus for the tragedy.

The deceased were identified as Vishnu V K (33), Anjana Ajith (17), Immanuel C S(17), Chris Vinter Born Thomas (15), Diya Rajesh (15) and Elna Jose (15).

The deceased KSRTC passengers were identified as Rohith Raj (24), O.Anoop (22) and Deepu (25) from Thrissur.

The driver of the tourist bus, Jomon, who went missing from the spot surrendered at the police station in Vadakkencherry, Palakkad. He said that in the impact of the crash, he was thrown off the bus and fell outside. He was later admitted to a hospital as he was injured.

NEW DELHI: As many as 820 students are said to have benefitted from the hacking by Russian national Mikhail Shargin of the iLeon software platform, the CBI told a Delhi court on Tuesday

Shargin, 25, was  arrested at IGI Airport late Monday night. Following his production in court, Shargin, who was described as a “professional hacker”, was remanded to two-day CBI custody.

The students who took advantage of the hacking, which aided them to cheat in last year’s JEE (Mains) exam, is now suspected to be more than the number earlier estimated, the CBI said to have found in the course of its interrogation of Shargin who was detained by sleuths after he alighted from a plane from Almaty. 

When Shargin told the court that the CBI could access his electronic devices in his presence, the agency sought the court’s direction for the Russian national to share his usernames and passwords. The CBI is not ruling out the possibility of other foreign nationals being involved in the hacking.

The JEE(Mains) is taken by aspirants seeking admission into top engineering colleges, including the IITs. Sources said “teachers” and “coaches” outside test centres were able to take charge of aspirants’ computers and solve questions.

HYDERABAD: The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) is likely to be renamed as ‘Bharata Rashtra Samiti’ (BRS) and the state government’s welfare schemes would be showcased across the country to help it emerge as a national force, ruling party sources said here on Tuesday.

TRS president and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is expected to announce the new name for the party on Wednesday, considered auspicious in view of Vijayadasami.

The rechristening exercise and the plan to reach out to people by pitching its “Telangana good governance model” is part of party’s efforts to foray into national politics and effectively take on the BJP.

The TRS general body meet, scheduled to be held on Wednesday at ‘Telangana Bhavan’, the party headquarters here, would pass a resolution effecting the name change, sources said.

The Election Commission would be apprised of the change as per the Representation of the People Act and relevant rules.

In its outreach initiative, the party would focus on welfare schemes being implemented in Telangana like ‘Rythu Bandhu’ support scheme for farmers and ‘Dalit Bandhu’ (Rs 10 lakh grant to every Dalit household to start any business or trade).

Similar schemes are not devised and implemented at the national level and the BJP has also dubbed welfare initiatives as “freebies.”

Electricity has not been provided in all the villages, across the country and all such aspects would be taken up in the campaign to expose the ruling party at the Centre, they said.

The name change would be conveyed to the Election Commission through e-mail and later in person on October 6, the sources said.

In September, the party had said that “very soon, the formation of a national party and formulation of its (national party) policies will take place”.

Recently, Rao, also known as KCR, had announced that free power would be supplied to farmers across the country, if a “non-BJP government” was voted to power in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Rao, during his recent meeting with his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar, called for a “BJP Mukt Bharat” (BJP-free India) blaming the national party’s government at the Centre for the “many ills plaguing the country.

“The TRS, in its foundation day event in April this year, had resolved that the party should play a key role in national politics in the interest of the country as the BJP was “exploiting communal sentiments,” for its political convenience.

Meanwhile, senior JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy and several party MLAs, arrived in Hyderabad this evening to attend the TRS’ general body meeting.

The JD(S) delegation was received at the Begumpet airport here by TRS Working President K T Rama Rao, son of Chief Minister Chandrasekhar Rao, TRS sources said.

TRS MLC Padi Kaushik Reddy tweeted that he received Tamil Nadu’s VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan in Hyderabad.