Nasheman News :  The NIA has arrested two suspected Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) members from West Bengal’s Hooghly district for their alleged involvement in the 2014 Burdwan blast case, the agency said on Tuesday.

The arrested members have been identified as Kadar Kazi alias Kadoor and Sajjad Ali.

“Both the JMB members were arrested in different operations on Monday. We arrested Kadar Kazi from Arambagh area in Hooghly district while his associate Sajjad Ali was held in a late night operation,” a National Investigation Agency official said. 

The official said that Kazi was wanted in the Burdwan blast case and was also declared a proclaimed offender while Ali was involved in the activities of the JMB, a Bangladesh-based terror group. 

Both the accused will be produced before a special NIA court in Kolkata later on Tuesday. 

A bomb had ripped through a house in Khagragarh locality of Burdwan on October 2, 2014, killing two people and exposing a web of Bangladeshis running a virtual arms-and-explosive network in West Bengal, Assam and Jharkhand. 

The NIA in March 2015 submitted a chargesheet in the case, saying terrorists were using territories in the three states to overthrow a democratic government in Bangladesh and replace it with a hardline Islamic regime.

Nasheman News : The Uttar Pradesh cabinet met at Prayagraj, the venue of the Kumbh, on Tuesday and cleared the decks to construct what is being touted as the world’s longest highway — the Ganga Expressway between Meerut and Prayagraj.

At the meeting, held outside the state capital for only the second time in history, and chaired by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, it was decided that the 600-km Expressway will be built at a cost of Rs 36,000 crore on a stretch of 6,556 hectares of land. 

The proposed Ganga Expressway will weave through Meerut-Amroha-Bulandshahr-Budaun-Shahjahanpur-Kannauj-Unnao-Rae Bareli-Pratapgarh and end at Prayagraj, earlier known as Allahabad. 

The cabinet also decided to make tax free the Bollywood film “Uri”, based on the Indian Army’s surgical strike on terror bases in Pakistan. 

Talking to reporters, the Chief Minister welcomed the move by the union government to move the Supreme Court seeking permission for revoking the status quo stay on the excess vacant land acquired around Ayodhya’s disputed site, accompanied by a request to the court that this land be handed over to the Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas. 

“We welcome this move by the Centre. We have all along been saying that we should get permission to use the undisputed land,” the saffron-robed Chief Minister said. 

Before the cabinet meeting held at the sprawling tented complex on the banks of the holy trinity of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati rivers, Adityanath prayed at an iconic temple of Lord Hanuman where he was greeted by Narendra Giri, the priest. 

He took part in an ‘aarti’ and performed rituals. He and his Ministers then went to the Aksyavat tree and ‘Saraswati Koop’ inside the fort here. 

The first meeting of the Uttar Pradesh cabinet away from Lucknow was held in 1962 in Nainital when Govind Vallabh Pant was the Chief Minister. 

Heavy security was enforced at the Kumbh for the high-profile visit and a vast area near the Sangam was declared out of bounds for pilgrims. 

A total of 28 Ministers took part in the cabinet meeting at the Integrated Control and Common Centre (ICCC), an official said. 

All of them are later set to take a holy dip in the Sangam as part of Kumbh festivities. 

Nasheman News : Congress President Rahul Gandhi tweeted about the Rafale audio tape and Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar’s possession of “explosive Rafale secrets” on Monday just because he is in Goa and wants to keep the issue alive, Agriculture Minister Vijai Sardesai said on Tuesday.

“For us, we want the issue to be over. He wants the issue to be alive. He is doing what he has to do,” Sardesai told reporters when asked to respond to Gandhi’s tweet on Monday.

Sardesai also said that perhaps because Gandhi was in Goa, he remembered about the controversy and so tweeted about it.

Rahul Gandhi is on a private visit to Goa with his mother Sonia Gandhi, also a former Congress President.

An audio clip featuring Goa Health Minister Vishwajit Rane and a local journalist — where the former claimed that Parrikar in a December 2018 cabinet meeting admitted to possessing a stash of files related to the Rafale deal — rocked Parliament this month.

Both Rane and Parrikar have said that the tape was doctored. However no formal probe has been launched by the police into the alleged doctoring despite a written request by Rane to the Chief Minister.

Nasheman News :The Centre on Tuesday announced additional assistance of Rs 7,214 crore to six states and Puducherry that were affected by natural disasters during 2018-19.

The decision was taken by a high-level committee chaired by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and will cater to the needs of those states that have faced floods, landslides, drought, cloudburst and cyclone. 

“The committee approved the additional central assistance of Rs 7,214 crore from National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF),” said a Home Ministry statement. 

Of the total, the committee has decided to provide Rs 317.44 crore to Himachal Pradesh (floods and landslides), Rs 191.73 crore to Uttar Pradesh (floods), Rs 900.40 crore to Andhra Pradesh (drought), Rs 127.60 crore to Gujarat (drought), Rs 949.49 crore to Karnataka (drought), Rs 4,714.28 crore to Maharashtra (drought) and Rs 13.09 crore to Puducherry (cyclone).

Union Ministers Piyush Goel, Radha Mohan Singh and senior officers of the Ministries of Home Affairs, Finance, Agriculture and NITI Aayog were present in the meeting.

Nasheman News : A Delhi court on Tuesday issued summons to journalist Priya Ramani in a defamation case filed by former Union Minister M.J. Akbar.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal asked Ramani to appear before the court on February 25.

Akbar’s counsel and senior advocate Geeta Luthra and lawyer Sandeep Kapur told the court that Ramani had damaged Akbar’s reputation which he had built over the years through hard work.

Ramani was the first in a long list of women journalists to accuse the former Minister of State for External Affairs and journalist-turned-politician of sexual harassment.

The statements of seven witnesses, including that of Akbar, who is now with the Bharatiya Janata Party, have been recorded.

The Rajya Sabha member has denied all charges against him as “false, wild and baseless”.

Nasheman News :  Eleven northeastern political parties came together here on Tuesday against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016 and decided to appeal to the Central government to scrap the legislation.

The parties from seven states excluding Sikkim participated in a two-day convention and unanimously decided to oppose the Bill that seeks to grant citizenship to migrants from six non-Muslim minority groups from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma, the convener of the convention, said the parties will send a delegation to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Ram Nath Kovind seeking to scrap the Bill passed in the Lok Sabha on January 8.

“We have decided to jointly oppose the Bill which will endanger the lives and identity of the indigenous people,” he said.

Asked if the parties will come out of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led North East Democratic Alliance, Sangma told the media that the convention was not a political one but it was for the concerns of the people of the region. 

“I hope the government will also understand the sentiments of the people of the region over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016,” Sangma said.

The Chief Minister said that if the Centre does not pay heed to their demand, the parties would meet again to decide on a future course of action.

Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga echoed Sangma’s remarks saying that if the Bill was passed, it would be “dangerous and harmful for us”.

“We all need to think together on steps to oppose it.”

Nasheman News : A court here has rejected the Delhi Police’s closure report and ordered an investigation into an alleged hate speech case against All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader and parliamentarian Asaduddin Owaisi, sources said on Tuesday.

In an order on Monday, Metropolitan Magistrate Prayank Nayak asked an Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) to supervise the investigation so as to avoid any further delay in the matter.

The court observed that no efforts had been made by the police with respect to the venue of the alleged speech or to inquire about any person who was present in the audience or otherwise at the time of Owaisi’s address.

“It is also expected for the police to take all the available provisions in order to find out about the video on the basis of which the present case was filed,” the court said in its order.

In its closure report, the Delhi Police said that a news channel could not provide any particulars or the copy of the video.

It is also stated that an inquiry was sent to the video sharing website, YouTube to find out the details of the IP address and the source of the video. But no information was provided.

In the protest petition, complainant Ajay Gautam said that the Delhi Police has not investigated the case properly.

An FIR was lodged in February 2015 based on a complaint by Gautam, a social activist, who alleged that in June 2014 Owaisi had used “derogatory” and “inflammatory” words to describe the Central government.

Nasheman News : Amid the growing strains in its ties with the JD-S, the Congress on Monday sought to play down Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamys threat to quit, saying issues are being resolved.

“I am ready to quit if my style of functioning is not acceptable to anyone. The Congress must control its MLAs and resolve the issues,” an exasperated Kumaraswamy told the media in Bengaluru following criticism of his work by the Congress.

The Chief Minister’s remarks came after two Congress ministers and a legislator on Sunday alleged here that no development works took place in the last seven-eight months under Kumaraswamy’s administration and claimed that former Congress Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was their leader and was a better administrator.

While Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal and in-charge of party affairs in the state asserted that the party high command has “full faith in Kumaraswamy”, a party leader in Delhi claimed “all was well” within the coalition. 

“In a coalition, there are and there will be issues. But our coalition is strong and whatever issues there are will be resolved. The leadership of both the parties are discussing and soon things will be amicably resolved,” a Congress leader told IANS here. 

A hung verdict in the May 2018 Assembly elections led the Congress with about 80 lawmakers support the JD-S with 37 legislators to form a coalition government after the BJP with 104 MLAs failed to prove a simple majority in the 225-member House.