Archives for January 2020

On his Twitter handle, Chaurasiya uploaded a one-minute in which he was seen surrounded by protestors and later manhandled by them.

NEW DELHI: Deepak Chaurasia, the consulting editor of News Nation TV channel, was allegedly attacked by protesters at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh on Friday, police said.

They said Chaurasia, 51, complained to them saying he was beaten up and his camera was snatched by a mob at the protest site.

An FIR has been registered under sections 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery) and 34 (common intension) against unknown persons at the Shaheen Bagh police station, a senior police officer said.

On his Twitter handle, Chaurasiya uploaded a one-minute in which he was seen surrounded by protestors and later manhandled by them.

They tried to remove him from the spot and also snatched his mic. In another part of video, a group of men can be seen trying to snatch a camera from the cameraman.

In less than one year this is the third such incident connected to PUBG online game reported within the district.

The police soon arrived at the spot and tied him with ropes and moved to district hospital for medical care. The police soon arrived at the spot and tied him with ropes and moved to district hospital for medical care.
A teenager was tied with ropes and handed over to police after he was allegedly found throwing stones at houses and cars in Player’s Unknown Battle Ground (PUBG) style.

To the shock of the residents near Manuguli Agasi, in the afternoon hours of Tuesday, 17-year-old Mallikarjun Chandrakanth, a resident of Laxmi Nagar of Vijayapura City, was found roaming semi-naked and throwing stones at cars and houses.

The local residents alerted Jala Nagar Police Station as they panicked seeing the boy. The police soon arrived at the spot and tied him with ropes and moved to district hospital for medical care.

According to an eye-witness, who wished to be unnamed, “the teenager seems to be addicted to PUBG online game because the way he was throwing stones to car and houses had similar to the one we play in the game. Even in the game at the beginning players will be semi-naked and will have an option to throw apples to opposite players but not stones.”

“At least a couple of cars and houses were damaged with the wild act of the teenager. With the help of the police, we soon rushed him to the district hospital. However, we didn’t register any complaint as he was found deeply addicted to PUBG online game,” detailed a resident.

R So Janar, Police Sub-Inspector of Jala Nagar said that, “On the information given by the people we rushed to the spot and admitted him to a government hospital. As the residents didn’t file any complaint we didn’t initiate further action,” stated PSI Janar,

Meanwhile, District Surgeon Dr Sharanappa Katti revealed that “we gave him basic medical care and collecting the residential address alerted the parents. It seemed the teenager is dealing with mental illness. The parents rushed to the hospital and got him discharged on Wednesday morning stating that they will consult private hospital, “state Dr Katti.

In less than one year this is the third such incident connected to PUBG online game reported within the district. Recalling, four months ago, a youth, who was addicted to PUBG game, was found swimming in a moat which was filled with filthy water.

Dr Ajitha Desai, Psychiatry pointed that, “These kinds of mobile games develop violent and aggressive behaviour among the teenagers. As children will involve deeply in the game they will be ready to do anything in order to win the game. The online games create more excitement in virtual life than that of a real one. The teenagers who are addicted to the game need counselling instead of regular treatment and tablets in order to make them quit the PUBG game.”

“With continuous playing, the PUBG children enjoy killing as there is no emotions from the opposite. It will also motivate them to do the same in real life. It is none other than parents and teachers should educate them about the harms that cause due to excess playing of mobile games or similar to that of PUBG,” detailed Dr Ajitha.

Youth Congress has alleged that there is a menacing problem of unemployment in India.

NEW DELHI: To counter the BJP narrative on National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC), youth congress is going to start a campaign to highlight the growing unemployment in India by demanding a ‘National Register of Unemployed’.

The name of the register has been given NRU.

Youth Congress president B.V. Shrinivas said, “Indian Youth Congress is launching a nationwide campaign to highlight the issue of rising unemployment in India.

Youth Congress has alleged that there is a menacing problem of unemployment in India.

“We give a voice to the plight of young Indians, the Indian Youth Congress has started a campaign to demand National Register of Unemployed,” said Amish Ranjan Pandey, the spokesperson of IYC.

The demand for NRU is in response to the deplorable state of unemployment in India, which has reached at its highest level in 45 years.

The NRU will be launched on January 23 any and every unemployed Indian can support the demand for an NRU, by giving a missed call on a toll-free number.

“The youth Congress worker will go to every house and collect data of unemployment to give a push to this issue,” said Krishna Aravalu, Secretary AICC.

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi will join the process on January 28 when he will raise the issue of economic distress and unemployment.

MUMBAI:  As his son Aaditya Thackeray’s ‘Night Life’ proposal got mired into controversy, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, in a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, renamed the proposal as ‘Mumbai 24 hours’.

Uddhav said that the tourism minister’s idea is good to keep open the malls, hotels and restaurants 24 hours.

“But I do not like the name ‘Night Life’. I will change the name. This move will not only generate revenue, but also employment in Mumbai,” he said.

Sources said the word ‘Night Life’ has different connotations.

“BJP was giving it a different colour, saying dance bars will be back in Mumbai. Wine and liquors shops will be open 24/7 resulting in a spike in crime. Therefore, Uddhav decided to give ‘Mumbai 24 hours’ name,” said a source.

Interestingly, NCP boss Sharad Pawar’s grandnephew Rohit Pawar has openly come out in support of Aaditya.

“As the opposition has nothing better to do with all their free time, they are talking negatively about the nightlife of a cosmopolitan city like Mumbai. This is a new experiment by the government and we should patiently wait for the results before commenting,” Pawar said.

The PM talked about the matter at the National Ganga Council (NGC) meet held in Kanpur last month.

NEW DELHI: With assembly polls due in three heartland states — Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh — in three consecutive years beginning 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants people’s representatives from the BJP to take the Ganga route to win the hearts of the people.On the lines of the public outreach of Union council of ministers to Jammu and Kashmir, the PM has recommended preparation of roster for night stays in villages along the holy river by Union ministers, chief ministers and elected representatives. Also on the agenda is rath yatras to encourage people’s participation.        

The PM talked about the matter at the National Ganga Council (NGC) meet held in Kanpur last month. He recommended organising rath yatras and padyatras and including topics such as river rejuvenation and water conservation in school/college curriculum. 

“The 2,500-km stretch of Ganga may be suitably divided and the Union ministers may be requested to visit a particular stretch, stay in villages, participate in cleanliness drive, undertake educational and public outreach programmes and motivate the public at large. State ministers, MPs, MLAs, eminent local persons may also be invited to join and contribute towards Ganga rejuvenation. Chief Ministers may also independently decide to stay on the banks of Ganga for few days,” said Modi, according to minutes of the meeting accessed by this newspaper. 

The Niti Aayog has been tasked to develop a framework to all Ganga districts focus areas for monitoring various developments under the Namami Gange Programme on the lines of the Aspirational Districts Progarmme. A competitive ranking framework will also be developed to evaluate the performance of the Ganga river districts, towns and villages.   

According to sources, the idea is to reach out to maximum people who live on the banks of the river and sending a message that the country cared for them. Bihar, West Bengal and UP are electorally key states for the BJP. The Union water resources ministry will also reach out to two non-BJP ruled Ganga states — West Bengal and Jharkhand — to carry forward the work. Union Jal Shakti Ministry has been asked to set up a digital dash board for effective and real time monitoring of work done for Ganga cleaning.  “Special campaigns be undertaken in Ganga villages through interventions of different ministries and departments. This will, in turn, motivate the villagers to be more responsible towards Ganga and its conservation,” read the minutes.

At several places, including in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh and in Lucknow, women have been leading the protest against the law, alleging it is discriminatory and fearing it targets the Muslim.

KANPUR: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday criticised the ongoing protests against the new citizenship law, saying it is “shameful” that the men sitting in the comfort of their homes have sent the women and children out on the streets to agitate.

Addressing a rally in support of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Kanpur, Adityanath said, “These people do not have courage to participate in the protests themselves. They know if they indulge in vandalism, their property will be seized. Now what have they done?” 

“They started making the women sit at roads. The children have been made to sit. It’s such a big crime that the men are sleeping under the quilt and the women are made to sit at roads. It is shameful,” he said.

At several places, including in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh and in Lucknow, women have been leading the protest against the law, alleging it is discriminatory and fearing it targets the Muslim community.

Some of the protests turned violent in Uttar Pradesh last month in which about 20 people died and the Adityanath government cracked down on those who indulged in arson.

The UP government issued notices to the protesters, seeking compensation for the damage they caused to the public property.

The central government has defended the law, saying it grants citizenship to religious minorities escaping persecution in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan and who have come to India by December 31, 2014.

It has reassured people that the new law does not take anyone’s citizenship.

On Wednesday, Adityanath also accused the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Left parties of doing politics at the cost of the nation.

“Those who do not know what the CAA is are staging sit-ins. If you go and ask anyone why are they sitting on ‘dharna’, they will say the men of the house feel that they have become so incompetent that they cannot do anything, so they want the women to go and sit on ‘dharna’.

“For them, the country is not important. The Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis are not important. Now, for the Congress, even the Christians are not important. And they have said the protests will continue against the CAA until the ISI agents are given entry into India,” he alleged, adding, “This is a shameful statement made by Congress leaders”.

He said protesting peacefully is everyone’s right but if a person damages public property, “we will recover the damage caused from that person’s property and will punish them so that the next generation remembers it.”

“I would like to say from the soil of India, and especially from the soil of Uttar Pradesh, that if pro-Azadi slogans are raised here in the name of protests, like there used to be in Kashmir, then it will come in the category of sedition and stringent action will be taken by the government,” Adityanath said.

Nobody will be allowed to hatch a conspiracy against India while living in India, he added.

The TMC’s declaration comes amidst mounting criticism by the major anti-BJP parties in the state for not passing a resolution opposing CAA.

KOLKATA: The ruling Trinamool Congress on Tuesday announced that it will bring a resolution against the amended Citizenship Act in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly on January 27, the third such move after the Kerala and Punjab Houses against the contentious law.

The TMC’s declaration comes amidst mounting criticism by the major anti-BJP parties in the state for not passing a resolution opposing CAA.

State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee said the TMC had submitted a resolution under rule 169 to the Assembly Speaker on January 20, which will come up in the house on coming Monday.

Faced by a lot of “rumours and canards” from the fellow opposition parties over its position regarding CAA and National Population Register, Chatterjee said they “do not need lessons from others on how to continue its fight against CAA-NPR-NRC.”

“We have submitted a resolution to the speaker on January 20 regarding it. The resolution against CAA will be placed in the state assembly on January 27. Our government in principle is opposed to CAA,” Chatterjee said.

He said they would appeal to all the opposition parties to extend support to the resolution so that its approved unanimously.

Adoption of the resolution in the house would not be a difficult task considering the fact that Mamata Banerjee’s party on its own enjoys an overwhelming majority in the 295- member Bengal assembly.

The development comes just a day after West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee had said that an anti-CAA resolution would be placed in the assembly very soon.

When asked whether the government was also mulling to move to the Supreme Court to challenge the law, Chatterjee said “the government and the party will fight it out on the streets and then take a call, if needed, whether to move a court or not”.

Kerala and Punjab assemblies have already passed resolutions against the new citizenship law.

If the resolution is adopted, West Bengal will the third state to do so.

The Left Front and the Congress have been criticising the TMC government for not adopting a resolution against the CAA.

The West Bengal state assembly has earlier passed an all-party resolution, baring BJP, against NRC in September last year.

In January this year, during a one-day special session, opposition Congress and Left Front wanted to bring a resolution against CAA.

But their demand was turned down by the government, drawing sharp criticism from both the parties which had termed TMC as “B team” of the BJP in Bengal.

Banerjee’s meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kolkata on January 11 had further sharpened the charge of a “political match-fixing between the two parties”.

The TMC had trashed the allegations as baseless.

Congress and the Left Front have welcomed the TMC’s move to bring the resolution as a “positive step”.

Praising the initiative, Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly, Abdul Mannan of the Congress said it’s better than the TMC realised the necessity for such a resolution.

“When we had said, they had opposed it. But it’s better TMC has decided to bring it, at least they have realised the need for such a resolution,” Mannan said.

Left Front Legislature Party leader Sujan Chakraborty said “we want an anti-CAA resolution be passed but, would not take a call unless and until we have a look at the resolution brought in by the TMC government”.

BJP legislature party leader Manoj Tigga said they would oppose the move as it is “unconstitutional” to bring a resolution against a law (CAA) which has been passed in the Parliament.

The new legislation to give citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim refugees from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, has emerged as the latest flashpoint in the state, with the TMC opposing the contentious legislation tooth and nail, and the BJP pressing for its implementation.