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Death Toll of Balakot Air Strikes, Says No Number to Give Out : Defence Minister

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This is the first time that a senior minister has come on record to say that there was no official death toll. The government’s radio silence amid the mounting speculation had been questioned in various quarters, including by the opposition parties.

The defence minister’s statement is also an embarrassment for the BJP as its party chief, Amit Shah, had claimed two days ago that at least 250 terrorists were killed in the air strike on the terror camp in Balakot.

“Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale had not given any casualty figure in the airstrike and he had only given a statement, which was the government’s position,” Sitharaman told reporters, a week after the IAF breached Pakistani air space for the first time since 1971 and targeted the camps.

Gokhale had addressed a press conference hours after the strike, giving the first official government reaction on it. He had said that several Jaish leaders, commanders and trainers were killed, but had not given an exact figure.

Sitharaman also said the bombing of the Jaish site was “not a military action” as there was no damage to civilians.

“It was based on intelligence inputs on terrorist activities in Pakistan, to be unleashed against India. It was not a military action,” she said, adding that there was no relationship between the airstrike and elections.

Sitharaman’s remarks come amidst the Opposition seeking details of the death toll in the airstrike, even as the IAF, which carried out the attacks post the Pulwama suicide bombing, said on Monday the Centre would provide details on the casualty figures.

Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa on Monday said the IAF only focusses on whether targets are hit or not and doesn’t count the number of the dead.

Agencies

All options open in case there is another terror attack from Pakistan: Sources

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India Pakistan Terrorism

New Delhi: Issuing a categorical warning to Pakistan, India on Tuesday said all options will be on the table if there is another terror attack in the country. News agency P quoted official sources as saying that India will continue to insist on Pakistan to take concrete steps against terrorism and dismantle terror infrastructure.

Sources said since the Balakot air strike, the Indian government has been making all efforts to build maximum pressure on Pakistan to act against terrorism. They added that India has handed over to the United States the evidence with regard to the use of F-16 jets by Pakistan in retaliatory aerial combat. New Delhi is confident the US is looking into the issue of use of F-16s against India, they added.

Sources further said that India will not be deterred in its war against terrorism. “There has been no offer of mediation from any country. India has told the world that this is not an India-Pakistan issue, this is an issue of terrorism,” news agency quotes sources as saying.

The Indian Air Force has not taken any chances after the air strike in Pakistan’s Balakot on February 26 and kept all its bases in the western sector on maximum alert. The air strikes had targeted the biggest training camp of Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group.

A day later, Pakistan unsuccessfully tried to retaliate by sending its jets into the Indian territory in Jammu and Kashmir and target a number of military installations. Indian Air Force jets chased back the Pakistani F-16s, believed to be 10 in number, and downed one of them.

The Indian air strikes in Pakistan, termed a “non-military, pre-emptive” action, came after the deadly terror attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama, J&K, on February 14 in which 40 soldiers were martyred.

Meanwhile, sources said recent interviews by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister FM Shah Mehmood Qureshi confirm that the Pakistan government is in touch with JeM chief Masood Azhar and that there is no denial that Azhar is the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad. The sources added that “this makes India’s case to put Masood Azhar in UNSC 1267 sanctions list”.

On reports of Masood Azhar being unwell, sources said the Indian government takes such reports with a pinch of salt. “Earlier, we had seen similar reports on Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden as well. Our effort is to bring Masood Azhar to book,” they said.

With regard to Pakistan skipping the meet of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), sources said every OIC member country attended the plenary (where Indian minister Sushma Swaraj was the guest of honour) except Pakistan. “So, Pakistan stands isolated in what it calls its own backyard,” they stated.

Agencies

Train from Bengaluru to Jamshedpur catches fire in Andhra

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A train that was travelling from Bengaluru to Jamshedpur caught fire at around 2am on Monday in Andhra Pradesh’s East Godavari district. While no casualties were reported, the pantry car of the train was reportedly destroyed in the fire.

The fire started on the Yesvantpur-Tatanagar Superfast Express when the train was near Rajamundhry. Quick-thinking staff members first tried to douse the fire, but when they realised they would not be able to do so, they separated the pantry car from the rest of the train. The pantry car was destroyed in the fire. No casualties or injuries have been reported yet.

Officials are yet to determine what started the fire. Police officers have arrived at the location to identify the cause of the fire. Several trains scheduled to run between Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam regions in Andhra Pradesh, have been delayed as a result.

Earlier in December, two unused, abandoned coaches of a train caught fire and were destroyed at the Kazipet railway station in Telangana. Officials at the station had informed the fire department at once, who were able to quickly put out the fire, though they could not salvage the cars of the train which were gutted in the fire.

Agencies

2 militants killed in encounter in J&K’s Pulwama

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Two militants were killed in an encounter between militants and security forces in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district, Army sources said Tuesday.

The encounter broke out at Tral area on Monday. The security forces had cordoned off the area and launched an operation to flush out the militants, a police spokesperson had said.

“A brief exchange of fire took place between security forces and terrorists in Tral area,” the spokesperson had said.

Ban on Lashkar’s financial wings: eyewash says India

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Under pressure from the Financial Action Task Force, Pakistan issued an order to ban the financial wings of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba. The ban was imposed on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and Falah-i-Insaniyat. Hafiz Saeed Delhi however is skeptical and says that this is another eyewash by Pakistan as it has done in the past. The ban is just an eyewash and will be lifted over a period of time, an officer speaks media.

The official also said that we have seen several times in the past, the ban being lifted or the courts in Pakistan coming to the rescue of these Hafiz Saeed run outfits. India does not read much into this and officials say that there have been many such bans in the past, but the fact is that no action is being taken on Saeed, who continues to roam around freely. In fact this is more of a protective measure in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack. Pakistan has this tendency to protect its terrorists under the cover of a ban and it had taken similar action following the 26/11 attack. However the Lashkar-e-Tayiba did not stop its activities, the official explained.

Pakistan’s action against the JuD and also the Falah-e-Insaniyat also being run by Saeed has been taken in the backdrop of a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force in Paris that is reviewing Pakistan’s steps to counter terror financing.

India also took note of the fact that no such action has been taken against the Jaish-e-Mohammad, which was involved in the Pathankot, Uri, Nagrota and Pulwama attacks. There have been bans in the past, but the Jamaat-ud-Dawa has managed to over come it in various ways. Both the Lahore High Court and the Supreme Court had cleared the JuD in the past and allowed it to operate. While the bans have been in place in the past as well, the JuD has always managed to overcome it either by going to court or carrying out its activities by coming up with newer outfits. The JuD is the parent group of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba. However in the year 2000, there was another parent group of the Lashkar which was known as the Markaz Dawa wal-Irshad. This was the group that carried out the alleged charity work and raised funds for the Lashkar.

Those were early days of the Lashkar and the Markaz had played a vital role in funding it. However in the year 2002, the Markaz was banned for funding terror activities. Did it make any difference? Not at all and Saeed immediately floated the JuD. Similarly Saeed floated the FeF after the JuD was banned. Eyewash of the past: Following the 26/11 attack, investigators in India found the funding of the attack to have been carried out by the JuD.

There was international pressure and this forced a ban on the JuD. In fact the then interior minister, Rehman Malik had informed that the JuD had been banned with immediate effect. Although the statement sounded strong, Pakistan was not going to take any chances and directly confront the JuD. It did not impose the ban directly but asked various authorities such as the UN to impose sanctions on the JuD. Paksitan’s eye wash was evident in the year 2008. It sealed 100 offices of the JuD and even Saeed was placed under house arrest only to be released later. During all this Pakistan made a shocking statement in which it stated that there was no need to issue any notification banning the JuD when the UN has already added it to the list of banned outfits. Courts to the rescue: There was some more eye wash by Pakistan. It claimed that it had sealed the 200 acre campus of the JuD in Murdike. It also stated that an administrator in Pakistan had taken over the operational facility of the JuD. All this led to the JuD seeking legal recourse.

The petition drafted by top bureaucrats of Pakistan sought a directive to first release Saeed who was under house arrest. The court allowed the petition and in the days to come even the ban on the JuD was lifted. It is quite surprising that the Pakistan government was asked to return the property of the JuD and also its other assets when there was never any official notification The JuD has a sprawling campus at Murdike spread over 200 acres of land. It has teaching facilities catering to 3000 students and also residential complexes. The investigations post 26/11 showed that the ten terrorists were housed in this complex and underwent training over here. The funds according to investigators came in from Saudi Arabia right from 1998 and till date the majority of the funding is from there. With the help of these funds the JuD has been accused of recruiting youth from Kashmir and Pakistan and train them to undertake strikes against India. Further it has also been found that the JuD in a bid to attract possible recruits from southern Punjab also held camps in Kasur district. This particular camp had come under the radar of the Indian agencies.

The fact that the JuD enjoys the complete backing of the military can be seen in various instances. Following the Quetta earthquake the JuD was openly seen assisting the military in relief works. This was quite surprising as Pakistan had claimed that it had banned the JuD. Even when former President Pervez Musharaff had claimed to have curbed the outfit and clipped its wings, he was no where to be seen or heard when Saeed held a rally in Lahore at the same time.

Agencies

Belur Gopalkrishna’s statement goes viral

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Congress leader Belur Gopalakrishna has courted controversy after a video of his saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be shot dead, went viral on Tuesday.  A month-old video showing a portion of Gopalakrishna’s speech at an event organized by the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee was circulated on social media, with the BJP demanding legal action against him for “instigating the assassination” of the prime minister.

“Those who speak for Nathuram Godse, the man who killed Mahatma Gandhi, should not be in this country, friends. If they try to kill the country’s democracy, if you have the guts, you should shoot and kill your Modi. You won’t have to kill anybody else Gopalakrishna is heard saying in the video

Gopalakrishna was speaking at an event the party had organised on February 4 to condemn a Hindu group that enacted Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. 

In a tweet, BJP said Gopalakrishna had posed “a national threat” and urged Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Bengaluru City police commissioner to take action. “This is a national threat & this man is waging a direct war on the nation,” BJP leader and former minister Aravind Limbavali said in a tweet.

Gopalakrishna was earlier with the BJP. He joined the Congress in April 2018 after he failed to get the BJP ticket to contest from the Sagar Assembly constituency. Gopalakrishna had contested on the BJP ticket and defeated his relative and Congress candidate Kagodu Thimmappa in 2004 and 2008. He unsuccessfully contested on the JD(S) ticket in 2013.

Agencies

Terrorists Reportedly Being Trained To Attack From Sea

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Weeks after the Pulwama terror attack, Navy Chief Admiral Sunil Lanba on Tuesday warned that there are reports about terrorists being trained to carry out operations through sea.

Addressing a gathering of global experts at the Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue in New Delhi, Admiral Lanba said that the Pulwama terror attack was carried out by terrorists who were “aided by” a country that seeks to destabilise India.

“We also have reports of terrorists being trained to carry out operations in various modus operandi, including through the medium of the sea,” he said.

The 26/11 terror attack was carried out by 10 sea-borne terrorists of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who hijacked an Indian fishing trawler to reach Mumbai.

The navy chief said this part of the world had witnessed multiple forms of terrorism in recent years and few countries in the region had been spared.

The global nature that terrorism has acquired in the recent times has further enhanced the scope of this threat, Admiral Lanba said.

India, however, faces a “far more serious” version of “state-sponsored” terrorism, he said.

We recently saw the horrific scale of the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir about three weeks ago. This violence was perpetrated by terrorists aided and abetted by a country that seeks to destabilise India, the navy chief said without naming Pakistan.

On February 14, a suicide bomber of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed or JeM exploded an explosive-laden vehicle near a CRPF bus in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district, killing more than 40 soldiers. 

“We have seen how quickly terror groups evolve across the globe. A particular brand of terror can well become a global problem in near future,” Admiral Lanba warned.

The Indian security establishment is continuously working to address this menace, he said, noting that “it is imperative that the global community works in concert to contain and eliminate terrorism in all its forms”.

Admiral Lanba also emphasised the importance of the Indo-Pacific Region. “There is a renewed focus of the world on the seas. This is principally due to the geoeconomic and geopolitical significance of the maritime domain.”

India is a maritime nation and, recently, there have been an increasing attention to harness potential of the maritime domain for the country’s growth and regional development, he said.

This event seeks to “identify and conceptualise challenges and opportunities that lie in the waters, and evolve strategy for mutual benefits of all stakeholders,” Admiral Lanba said.

“It is widely accepted that (the) Indo-Pacific Region has been growing in geopolitical significance in recent years due to economic, political and other reasons,” he said.1

Admiral Lanba underlined the region’s ancient and historical link with India and its significance for the country.

DMK to contest in 20 seats, 20 shared with allies: Stalin

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Nasheman News : DMK President M.K. Stalin on Tuesday said his party will contest in 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in Tamil Nadu and the remaining 20, including Puducherry’s sole seat, had been allocated to allies.

Stalin told reporters here: “We have taken a decision whereby in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, the Congress would get nine seats in Tamil Nadu and the Puducherry seat, MDMK one Lok Sabha seat and one Rajya Sabha seat, CPI, CPI-M, VCK two Lok Sabha seats each and the IUML, IJK and KDMK one Lok Sabha seat each.

According to him, on Thursday, the party will discuss with allies the constituencies they would contest from.

Queried about the election symbol under which the MDMK would contest the Lok Sabha polls, Stalin said: “We have conveyed our feelings and our views. They will discuss and take a decision.”

Stalin said he will address a DMK rally to be held on Wednesday at Virudhunagar.

According to him, the Virudhunagar rally was decided earlier and there was no possibility of the leaders of alliance parties taking part in that. However, local leaders of those parties will participate.

Stalin added that he would also attend a rally to be addressed separately by Congress President Rahul Gandhi.

Stalin said the DMK election manifesto will be released once the election dates were announced.

According to him, the MMK was told about the DMK’s inability to share any Lok Sabha seat this time but was requested to support the alliance candidates.

Imran Khan promises terror crackdown.

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Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday promised terror crackdown and asked its government to seize assets of all banned terror outfits. Pakistan on Monday promulgated a law to streamline the procedure for the implementation of the UN sanctions against individuals and organisations, amid mounting pressure from the global community to rein in the terror groups operating on its soil and curb their financing.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan The Foreign Office said that the government issued the UN Security Council (Freezing and Seizure) Order, 2019 in accordance with the provisions of Pakistan’s United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Act, 1948.

“The objective of the UNSC (Freezing and Seizure) Order 2019 is to streamline the procedure for implementation of Security Council Sanctions against designated individuals and entities,” it said in a statement. Interpreting the order,

Foreign Office spokesperson Mohammad Faisal said it means that the government has taken over the control of assets and properties of all banned outfits operating in the country, Dawn reported. He added that the government will now also seize the charity wings and ambulances of such banned outfits. The imminence of an action against extremist groups was confirmed by Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry while talking in DawnNews programme Do Raaye.

The information minister however refused to give any timeline for the operation against militant groups like Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), accused of masterminding the Pulwama attack that triggered the latest crisis with India and took both nuclear-armed rivals close to war, and Jamaatud Dawa (JuD) and its charity wing Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF).

15th Annual National Conference on Electoral and Political Reforms

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L The second day of the two-day long 15th Annual National Conference, organized by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and the Uttar Pradesh Election Watch (UPEW) at DDU State Institute of Rural Development on the 2nd and 3rd March 2019, was successfully concluded.

The first session of the day focused on “Information & Communication Technology (ICT) for Better Governance”, chaired by Maj. Gen. Anil Verma (Retd), Head-ADR and National Election Watch. The panel members included Mr. Jaskirat Singh, Trustee – ADR/NEW and Founder – CRAMAT, Mr. Chandrakant Naidu, Chief Editor at NewsNest, Ms. Shelley Thakral, Head of Programs, Facebook and Mr. Rakesh Reddy Dubbudu, Founder Factly.in and ADR State Coordinator – Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The issues raised during the discussion by some of the panelists focused on technology as a force multiplier for improving the lives of people, by helping them perform better and faster as well as on its role in promoting good governance. At the same time, the issue of misuse of ICT by spreading fake news was also discussed. The panel agreed that simplification of government process, reduction of human intervention, improving transparency and timely delivery of services are some of the goals of ICT.

Mr. Rakesh Reddy Dubbudu said ICT works better in absence of human intervention in instances like online ticketing while it fails where human intervention is needed as in case of online grievance redressal.

Ms. Shelley Thakral asserted that sharing the right information is key. She added that a bottom-up approach is needed for ensuring that ICT is used for better governance.

The discussion concluded with panel members collectively advocating the need for digital literacy by educating masses about how to use information technology.

The second and the final session of the day was a discussion on “Role of Youth & Voter Awareness: In preparation for General Elections 2019” chaired by Dr. Vipul Mudgal, Director of Common Cause and Trustee ADR.

Shri Lakku Venkateshwarlu, IAS, Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh, Shri Heera Lal, IAS, District Magistrate & Collector, Banda and Mohd Zeeshan, Founder of YES Foundation, Lucknow were some of the panel members.

Strengthening democracy through awareness among voters especially the youth, increasing voter participation and responsible and ethical voting were some of the issues raised by the panel members and audience during the discussion.

Speaking on the efforts to improve the voter turnout in Banda, Shri Heera Lal spoke about fixing a target of 90 per cent voter turnout in the upcoming elections in Banda, including reaching out to disabled voters. He talked about using cultural programs as a means to reach out to voters.

Concluding the discussion, Shri Lakku Venkateshwarlu said that politicians are driven by vested and sectarian interests and are not committed to public cause.

Speaking on the Resolutions and ‘Next Steps for National Election Watch (NEW)’, Prof. Trilochan Sastry (Founder member & Trustee – ADR/NEW) recommended that in order to prevent electoral malpractices, an example needs to be set by suspending elections in five such constituencies where Model Code of Conduct is violated.

The two-day national conference concluded with Maj. Gen Anil Verma (Retd) thanking all the panelists, participants, DDU State Institute of Rural Development, and ADR team for making the event a success.

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