Archives for 2021

New Delhi: Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said people who have “suffered false rhetoric” in the past are not ready to believe the words of the prime minister on repealing the farm laws.

He said this as farmer unions decided to continue their year-long agitation at Delhi’s borders even after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the decision to withdraw the three farm laws.

“People who have suffered false rhetoric are not ready to believe the words of the PM. Farmers’ Satyagraha continues,” Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi, using the hashtag “#FarmersProtest continues”.

Farmers have been protesting on Delhi’s borders for the past year seeking the withdrawal of the three laws.

The farmer unions have said that they will continue their agitation till the three central laws are repealed by Parliament and legislation on a legal guarantee of MSP is brought in.

New Delhi: The Union Cabinet is likely to take up for approval on Wednesday the bills for withdrawal of the three farm laws, sources in the government said.

These bills shall then be introduced in the forthcoming session of Parliament, they added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Friday announced on the occasion of Gurupurab the government’s intention to withdraw the laws in the interest of the nation.

The winter session of Parliament would commence from November 29.

Demanding the withdrawal of the laws, agitating farmers sitting at three sites on Delhi’s borders since November last year have said they will stay put till Parliament repeals them.

The government will now bring bills for the withdrawal of the three farm laws in Parliament following the prime minister’s announcement.

Jaipur: Fifteen ministers 11 cabinet and four ministers of state were sworn in on Sunday in Rajasthan, in a much-awaited expansion of the Ashok Gehlot ministry.

Governor Kalraj Mishra administered the oath of office to the new ministers.

The 11 cabinet ministers include three Mamta Bhupesh, Bhajan Lal Jatav and Tikaram Jully– who have been elevated from minister of state (MoS) to cabinet rank, while two — Vishvendra Singh and Ramesh Meena — are those who were sacked last year for rebelling and have been reinducted as cabinet ministers.

Hemaram Choudhary, Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya, Ramlal Jat, Mahesh Joshi, Govindram Meghwal and Shakuntla Rawat were also sworn in as cabinet ministers.

Zahida, Brijendra Singh Ola, Rajendra Gudha and Murari Lal Meena were sworn in as MoS.

The council of ministers in Rajasthan now has 19 cabinet ministers and 10 MoS, apart from the chief minister.

Chief Minister Gehlot and members of his council of ministers were among those present at the function.

The number in the council of ministers in the the state has reached 30. The Rajasthan Cabinet can have a maximum of 30 ministers, including the chief minister.

Mohali/Hoshiarpuri: For 62-year-old Bhupinder Kaur, who has been part of demonstrations since last year against three central farm laws, the fight is far from over, even after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement that they will be repealed.

The fight will not be over till the laws are formally repealed in Parliament and farmers’ demand for legal guarantee of Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops is fulfilled, said Kaur as she along with other elderly women from Chilla village in poll-bound Punjab’s Mohali district prepared langar’ at a local gurudwara.

The prime minister in his address to the nation on Friday announced repeal of the laws, which triggered a year of protests by farmers, and had also said the constitutional formalities to revoke the laws will be done during the winter session of Parliament, which begins on November 29.

Kaur’s views were echoed by others as they discussed the nearly year-long protests against the laws while preparing food at a langar’.

Formally rollback the laws in Parliament and give legal guarantee of MSP on crops, these are the demands, they said, adding that families of farmers who lost their lives in protests, which began last year November, must be given financially compensation.

The prime minister’s announcement was warily welcomed on Friday by farmers’ unions spearheading the agitation but they said protests will continue till the measures are repealed in Parliament and MSP gets legal guarantee.

Chilla village has a population of around 2,000 people, and villagers, who are not aligned to any farmer outfit, are actively participating in the agitation against the laws at the Singhu border, attending it in batches.

The Singhu border between Delhi and Haryana was the fountainhead of the farmers’ protest, which started last year in November, two months after enactment of the laws. From there the movement gradually expanded to the Ghazipur border between Delhi and Uttar Pradesh and other sites.

The women of Chilla village along with their children also stand near a traffic light point every day to muster support for protesting farmers.

Similarly, residents of nearby villages of Manauli, Bhago Majra, Sante Majra, Chhota Raipur and Bada Raipur have also been going to protest sites on Delhi’s borders.

Bhupinder Kaur, who also has been going to the Singhu border regularly, told PTI: Till the three farm laws are repealed in Parliament, our struggle continues.

Malkit Kaur, who along with some other women was chopping vegetables for the langar, was sceptical about the prime minister’s statement and said the government should formally roll back the laws.

On Saturday, Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi had asked farmers to be cautious till the farm laws are repealed, saying Prime Minister Modi has only made an announcement on it.

However, the announcement on Guru Nanak Jayanti was enough to get villagers in Chilla to celebrate.

Somebody called me up and said congratulations. I thought it will be for Gurpurab but when he told me about repealing of the laws, I left my meal midway and went straight to the gurdwara and announced to villagers that we have won, Baba Sukhchain Singh, head of the gurdwara at Chilla village, said

Singh said it was a fight for existence and collective support of the people proved that they can stand against government decisions which are not acceptable.

He claimed that farmers have enough ration to stay at Delhi’s borders till 2024.

Jagtar Singh Gill said people, especially in rural areas, will remember that it took one year for the BJP-led government to repeal the laws. The anger against the BJP will not subside soon, he said.

Farmers will also not forget that they were called terrorists, Khalsitani etc, said Gill, claiming that 700 farmers died during the agitation .

On the Punjab assembly polls, slated early next year, Gill advocated the idea of farmers to take an electoral plunge.

Singh said villagers, including women, will go in large numbers to Delhi’s border on the completion of one year of the struggle.

In Hoshiarpur, farmers continued with their protests, demanding a law for legal guarantee for MSP and compensation to families of farmers who died during the stir.

Farmer Kuljinder Singh Ghuman of Jatpur village said the announcement to repeal the laws is a big success not only for the farming community but also for the common man.

Jangveer Singh of Rasoolpur village said had the farm laws been withdrawn earlier, there would not have been so many deaths.

In Amritsar, panchayat member Heir Sarbjit Singh said, Farmers are extremely happy with the announcement of repealing of the three central farm laws.

Another farmer Gurjinder Singh, who has 35 acres of land near Raja Sansi, said the government should have repealed the farm laws earlier.

Punjab has remained the epicenter of the protests against Centre — Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; Farmers’ (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.

But in November 2020, farmers from Punjab and Haryana moved to the Delhi borders to press the Central government to withdraw these laws.

They have also been demanding a new law to guarantee MSP for crops.

New Delhi: Schools in Delhi will remain closed for physical classes till further orders while online classes and board exams will continue, the Directorate of Education (DoE) announced on Sunday in view of the prevailing air quality situation.

The air quality remained very poor on Sunday morning, authorities here said. The city recorded its air quality index (AQI) at 382 at 9 am. The 24-hour average AQI was 374 on Saturday.

“The environment department has directed to close all the schools with immediate effect till further orders of the Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and adjoining areas. Therefore, all government and private schools will remain closed till further orders,” Additional Director of Education Rita Sharma said.

“However, online teaching learning activities and the examinations for board classes would be conducted as per guidelines issued earlier,” the official said.

The Delhi government had on November 13 announced closure of schools and other educational institutions in view of the deteriorating air quality in Delhi.

Schools had reopened for all classes from November 1, after nearly 19 months of closure due to COVID-19.

New Delhi: The petroleum ministry’s proposal to give away ONGC’s biggest oil and gas fields to foreign companies has met with strong resistance from the officers union of the company, which has said that the government should empower and give the company a level-playing field rather than giving away its prime assets to the private sector on a platter.

The Association of Scientific & Technical Offices of ONGC petitioned Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri against a proposal put by Amar Nath, additional secretary (exploration) in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, for giving away 60 per cent stake and operatorship of Mumbai High and Bassein & Satellite (B&S) offshore assets to international partners for raising output.

The union, which represents ONGC’s 17,000 officers, said the company and its employees are completely aligned with the government objective of raising domestic production to cut imports, and for this to happen ONGC should be given the same fiscal and regulatory regime as the private sector enjoys for exploring and producing oil and gas.

The government-dictated below market price gas price fixation for ONGC fields should be reviewed to make production from smaller and remote fields viable, it wrote to Puri on November 11. Also, ONGC should be given freedom to market small pools of natural gas which in present price regime are unviable.

Statutory clearances and authorities for ONGC need to be optimised and procedural aspects rejigged to help the firm take faster decisions.

Farming out stake in “existing fields shall not yield the desired results of enhancing domestic production, instead it will provide a level playing field and empower ONGC to further enhance productivity,” the union wrote.

“We would therefore request you that handing over producing fields on a platter to the private operator will not be successful and therefore, in our opinion, should not be pursued,” it added.

It said exploration of oil and gas is a highly risky endeavour where very few like to participate. “This is evident from the tepid response to the bids invited under OALP (bid rounds), where only ONGC and to some extent OIL are the only bidders.”

Private and foreign operators are unwilling to take the risk of investing millions of dollars in surveying and drilling wells to establish reserves. They instead want to enter into established fields.

“The private operators most probably are giving priority to commercial aspects, the prevailing business climate and therefore may not be taking the risk that ONGC is willing to take,” the union wrote.

The data of the last 3 years shows that ONGC has been consistently drilling more than 100 exploratory wells every year even when the international crude prices had hit an all-time low. During the low price regime most of the international and private E&P companies had stopped their exploratory plans and had drastically reduced their development investments.

“ONGC, however, bucked the trend and continued to aggressively invest in exploration and development activities,” it said, adding private exploration and production (E&P) companies have been very quick to give up fields with falling commercial returns.

“The example of Panna, Mukta and tapti fields (in western offshore) where international E&P operators did not renew their leases even though the recovery factor from these fields had not even reached 20 per cent, in fact in one case it was even less than 10 per cent,” it said pointing to ONGC’s recovery factor – percentage of reserves being recovered – at 28 per cent in Mumbai High and Bassein fields.

ONGC took over the Panna, Mukta and Tapti fields after the exit of Shell and BG Group and is producing more than the approved profile of the field.

Similarly, the Ratna field, which was given to the private sector, was put to production by ONGC. PY-3 field too was lying idle for years before ONGC took over.

“Despite the impact of COVID-19, ONGC has been able to maintain the production levels as envisaged in the annual plans. Mumbai high has been producing since 1976 and has been the cornerstone of the country’s oil production. Bassein and Satellite have been the frontrunner for gas since 1987,” the union wrote.

“ONGC has been optimally producing from these fields keeping into consideration the health of the reservoir,” it noted.

With time, ONGC has also accreted reserves in these fields and has enhanced the recovery factor.

“ONGC has plans to further enhance the production from these fields and in coming years, we shall see substantial increase from these fields,” the union wrote.

“All these efforts are in public domain and we are sure that the same must have been scrutinised by the Board of ONGC of which senior officials from the ministry are an integral part,” it added.

The Union sought an opportunity to meet Puri personally and present its suggestions for augmenting domestic crude oil and natural gas output.

“Farming out 60 per cent interest and operatorship in these fields shall have a major negative impact on ONGC’s performance, whereas such efforts in the past have not yielded desired results, for example Panna, Mukta, Ratna, Tapti and PY-3,” it added.

New Delhi: The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) will hold another meeting on November 27 to decide future course of action while the planned march to Parliament by farmers on November 29 will go ahead as per schedule, farmer leader Balbir Singh Rajewal said on Sunday.

Addressing a press conference at Singhu border following a meeting, Rajewal said, “We discussed the repeal of farm laws. After this, some decisions were taken. SKM’s pre-decided programs will continue as it is. Kisan panchayat will be held in Lucknow on November 22, gatherings at all borders on November 26 and march to Parliament on November 29”.

SKM, an umbrella body of the agitating unions, met earlier on Sunday to decide on the next course of action, including on the MSP issue and the proposed daily tractor march to Parliament during the upcoming Winter Session.

Farmer leaders have been maintaining that the protesters will stay put at border areas of Delhi until the Centre formally repeals these laws in Parliament after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise announcement on Friday and have indicated their stir for a statutory guarantee of MSP and withdrawal of the Electricity Amendment Bill will continue.

New Delhi: Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Sunday condoled the loss of lives in floods in Andhra Pradesh and urged party workers to extend all possible help to those affected.

“Floods have been causing serious damage in Andhra Pradesh. My condolence to those who’ve lost loved ones,” Gandhi said on Twitter. “Dear Congress workers, please help in all ways possible,” he also said.

Floods have caused extensive damage in Andhra Pradesh.

At least 25 people have been killed and 17 others were reported missing in rain-related incidents in Kadapa and Anantapuramu districts since Friday.

Jaipur: Congress leader and former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot on Sunday said the Cabinet reshuffle initiated by the Ashok Gehlot government has sent a positive message across the state and denied any factionalism in the party.

Pilot, who was sacked as the deputy chief minister due to rebellion last year, said he is happy that the issues he had raised, including increasing the representation of Dalits in the Cabinet, have been addressed.

“Four Dalits have been included in the Cabinet. This is a big message. At the same time, the representation of tribals and women has been increased. This was a necessary step and the party and the government worked hard to take it forward,” Pilot told reporters.

He said the committee which was formed last year to look into the issues raised by him has delivered the first result .

When asked about members from his group who have been given a place in the Cabinet, Pilot said there was no factionalism in the party and all will work unitedly to win the 2023 Assembly elections.

“There is only one faction — the faction of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and we all are the members. It will be our endeavour to move forward collectively and win the next assembly elections,” he said.

On a question about his role in the new setup, Pilot said that he will follow what the party decides for him.

Fifteen new Rajasthan ministers will take oath at 4 pm at the Raj Bhavan in Jaipur. The new cabinet will see 12 new faces, including five from the Pilot camp.

This is the first cabinet reshuffle of the Gehlot government which came to power in December 2018.