NEW DELHI: Former Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh met the BJP National president JP Nadda in Delhi on Monday. He will join BJP in Delhi today in presence of its senior leaders.

Singh will join the BJP in the presence of its senior leaders in Delhi on Monday, PLC spokesperson Pritpal Singh Baliawal had said. Details of the meeting were not immediately available.

The 80-year-old Singh will also merge his newly formed Punjab Lok Congress (PLC) with the BJP. Singh had floated the PLC last year after quitting Congress following his unceremonious exit as chief minister. The PLC contested the elections in alliance with the BJP and the Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa-led Shiromani Akali Dal (Sanyuk).

However, none of its candidates could register a win, with Singh himself losing from his home turf of Patiala Urban.

The former Punjab chief minister recently returned from London following spinal surgery and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

After his meeting with Shah on September 12, Singh said he held a very productive discussion on various issues related to national security, rising cases of narco-terrorism in Punjab and the future roadmap for the state’s overall holistic development.

The two-time former chief minister is the scion of the erstwhile Patiala royal family.

CHANNAPATNA: It has been three weeks since Ramanagara district was pounded by heavy rain, flooding many areas. But students and teachers of the Government Upgraded Higher Primary School in Thattekere area of Channapatna town still cannot enter their school as four feet of water is standing on the premises, making it inaccessible.

Local authorities have not taken any action to remove water from the school, while the students, left with no other option, are attending classes at a nearby temple. Thattekere is around 60 km from Bengaluru and 11 km from Ramanagara. The school has more than 60 students from Standards one to eight, five teachers and two staff members, including cooks to prepare mid-day meals.

Local residents said the school, which is over 30 years old, is spacious and has compound walls. The school was flooded on August 26, a week before the Gowri-Ganesha festival, after a small waterbody nearby breached. Lakshmi, who has been working as a cook at the school for the last 20 years, said all the grains kept for mid-day meals were spoilt.

The attendance books and other documents too have got damaged. “We cannot even enter the school as water is around four feet” she explained. “The school is in a low-lying area, making it easy for water to enter the premises. Even if water is removed, it keeps entering from the nearby lake,” she added. For drinking and cooking purposes, water is sourced from local residents.

NEW DELHI: In the latest development in connection with Delhi’s excise policy scam, the Enforcement Directorate has reportedly summoned Aam Aadmi Party’s MCD poll in charge and Rajinder Nagar MLA Durgesh Pathak.

Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia tweeted on Monday morning that the ED has summoned Pathak and criticised the probe agency, asking if the aim was to target the MCD polls instead of the liquor policy.

“Their target is excise policy or upcoming MCD election,” Sisodia tweeted. The ED has not commented on the matter as of now. The case is on the basis of the FIR of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The CBI has made Sisodia the accused number one in its FIR. The CBI’s FIR has been lodged under sections 120-B (Criminal Conspiracy) and 477-A (Falsification of accounts) of the IPC. The allegations against Sisodia is that liquor businessmen were allegedly given exemption of Rs 30 crore. The licence holders were allegedly given extension according to their own will. The policy rules were made by violating excise rules.

It also said that Sisodia and a few liquor barons were actively involved in managing and diverting the undue pecuniary advantage collected from liquor licensees to public servants, who have been made accused in the case.

“Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Arva Gopi Krishna, the then Commissioner (Excise), Anand Tiwari, the then Deputy Commissioner (Excise), and Pankaj Bhatnagar, Assistant Commissioner (Excise) were instrumental in recommending and taking decisions pertaining to the excise policy for the year 2021-22 without approval of competent authority with an intention to extend undue favours to the licencees post tender,” read the FIR, which has been accessed by IANS.

LUCKNOW: A large number of security personnel were deployed at the State Assembly as Samajwadi Party (SP) on Monday held a protest march against the UP government, raising various demands.

SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and many party legislators and leaders led the march from the party office to Vidhan Sabha highlighting issues in the state before the Monsoon Session of the state legislature commenced today.

“We have come here to protest on the various issues of public interest. This is our constitutional right, but the BJP is not letting the legislators go to the assembly,” said a party leader.

Hitting back at the protest led by Akhilesh Yadav, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prashad Maurya said that the march is not related to the benefit of the common people.

“SP’s protest is not related to the benefit of the common people. If they want to discuss this, they are free to do it in the Assembly. Our government is ready for discussions. Such protests will only create problems for people,” Maurya said.

Maurya also took a jibe at SP and said that the party is jobless now and they have nothing to do. Massive security deployment in Lucknow had been done in view of the march.

“They had not taken permission. Still, they were assigned a designated route which would not have caused traffic congestion. They refused to take that. We have no option but to stop them here. If they take the designated route, there would not be a problem,” Joint Commissioner of Police, Law and Order Piyush Mordia said.

LUCKNOW: At least nine people were killed here after the boundary wall of an Army enclave collapsed due to heavy rains, police said on Friday.

One person was pulled out alive from the debris, they said.

“Some labourers were living in huts outside an Army enclave in the Dilkusha area. Owing to heavy overnight rains, the boundary wall of the Army enclave collapsed,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Law and Order)

“We reached the spot around 3 am. Nine bodies were pulled out from the debris and one person was rescued alive,” he said.

NEW DELHI: The ED on Friday launched fresh raids at about 40 locations across the country as part of a money laundering investigation into alleged irregularities in the now scrapped Delhi Excise Policy, official sources said.

The searches are being conducted at premises linked to liquor businessmen, distributors and supply chain networks in Nellore and some other cities in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Delhi-NCR, they said.

This is the second round of raids being conducted by the federal agency in this case after it first conducted searches on September 6 at about 45 locations across the country.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) case of money laundering in the excise policy stems from a CBI FIR in which Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and some bureaucrats have been named as accused.

The excise policy has been rolled back now.

The CBI had conducted raids in the case on August 19, covering the Delhi residences of Sisodia (50), IAS officer and former Delhi excise commissioner Arava Gopi Krishna, and 19 other locations across seven states and Union Territories.

Sisodia holds multiple portfolios in the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government including excise and education.

The ED is probing if alleged irregularities were done in the formulation and execution of the Delhi Excise Policy brought out in November last year and if some alleged “proceeds of crime” in terms of tainted money was generated by the accused.

The agency also is expected to question AAP leader and minister Satyendar Jain in the Tihar jail in connection with this case on Friday after it obtained permission from a local court to do so.

T’PURAM/KOLLAM: Having drawn flak for excluding BJP-ruled Gujarat from Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, the Congress announced that its second phase would begin in the western state and end in Arunachal Pradesh in 2023.

“We’ll cover nearly 3,100km in 150 days in the second phase. This is the longest march undertaken by any political party in the world. Earlier it was the one undertaken by Chinese leader Mao Zedong. If the yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir turns successful, we’ll go ahead with the one from Gujarat to Arunachal Pradesh,” AICC general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said in Kollam.

The Congress had faced criticism from the CPM for spending 18 days of the yatra in Kerala and a mere two days in Uttar Pradesh. But the party’s national leadership maintained that, as per their itinerary, the UP padayatra was scheduled for five days. The war of words on their respective Twitter handle saw them raising allegations and counter allegations.