AGARTALA: Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha on Sunday claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s maan ki baat more popular among the masses than ‘Mahabharat’ and ‘Ramayan’ mega TV serials of the 1980s.

His assertion came after listening to the 108th episode of ‘Mann Ki Baat’ at his home constituency Town Bardowali along with party leaders and workers.

“In the 1980s too, people criticised women rushing to watch TV soaps and even now many criticise those who listen to ‘Mann Ki Baat’. But it makes no difference as people know what is what,” he added.

‘Mahabharat’ (1988) and ‘Ramayan’ (1987), two epic serials created by BR Chopra and Ramananda Sagar respectively, were telecast on Doordarshan and were widely popular.

JAIPUR: Two unidentified burglars cut an ATM of the State Bank of India here with a gas cutter and fled with ₹ 29 lakh, police said on Sunday.

Kotwali SHO Vikrant Sharma said two unidentified burglars cut the ATM installed on the Bajaj Road on Saturday night. Sharma said that based on a complaint lodged by the bank on Sunday, a case has been registered and an investigation is on.

He said that the burglars had also cut the ATM’s wire connections and sprayed black on the CCTV cameras installed inside and outside the ATM.

The SHO said that efforts are being made to identify the burglars from the surrounding CCTV footages. 

BHOPAL: Former Congress MP Lakshman Singh has said that rahul gandhi is an ordinary party worker and parliamentarian and he should not be highlighted so much.

Lakshman Singh, the younger brother of  was speaking to reporters at the Congress office in MP’s Guna city on Saturday.

When reporters claimed that Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s face is shown less on TV when he makes a statement in the Lok Sabha, Lakshman Singh said, “Rahul Gandhi is an MP, he is not the (party) president and is a Congress worker. Apart from this Rahul Gandhi is nothing”

 “You (media) people should not highlight Rahul Gandhi so much and neither should we,” he said.

Rahul Gandhi is only an MP and he is equal to the rest of the party’s parliamentarians, said Lakshman Singh, who has been a five-time MP and three-term MLA.

“One does not become (big) by birth but by one’s actions. Don’t consider Rahul Gandhi such a big leader, I don’t. He is an ordinary MP. It doesn’t matter whether you highlight him or not,” Lakshman Singh said.

In the Madhya Pradesh polls held last month, BJP’s Priyanka Penchi defeated Lakshman Singh by more than 61,000 votes from the Chachoura assembly seat in Guna district.

New Delhi : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had demonstrated his Jiu-Jitsu skills while engaging in a martial art bout with wrestler Bajrang Punia during his visit to the Virendra Akhara in Haryana’s Jhajjar district amid the row over Wrestling Federation of India elections.

Gandhi had a practice session with the wrestlers and displayed the Japanese martial art skills to them during the early morning visit on Wednesday.

In a video uploaded by Bajrang on ‘X’ on Thursday, Gandhi can be seen showing the ‘locks’ and ‘chokes’ technique in Jiu-Jitsu as he pinned Olympic Games bronze medallist Bajrang down on the mat.

Jiu-jitsu is a Japanese martial art form and a close combat sport.

The former Congress president also learnt some of the wrestling moves such as ‘dhobi pachaad’ and ‘dhak’ with Bajrang explaining him the difference between wrestling on the mud and on mat.

Gandhi is known to have an inclination towards combat sports and is also trained in Aikido, a modern Japanese martial art form.

According to Rahul’s aikido coach Sensei Paritos Kar, the Congress MP appeared for a test in 2013 which he passed and was subsequently awarded the black belt.

Gandhi had breakfast with the wrestlers during his meeting with them. He had milk, ‘bajre ki roti’ and ‘saag’ and was also offered some locally-grown vegetables which he took along with him.

“Today Rahul ji came to our akhada and we felt really good, he came to see how the wrestlers live and train and everyone was very happy,” Bajrang said in the video.

“He (Gandhi) said he practices Jiu-Jitsu, he was telling us the moves and how it starts and I showed the basics of our game like ‘dhobi pachaad’ and ‘dhak’.”

Dhobi pachaad is a famous move in which a wrestler lifts his opponent on the shoulders and then slams him to the mat, and in dhak, the wrestler holds his opponent in a headlock before throwing him to the ground.

Gandhi’s visit to the wrestling academy came days after Punia, who has been at the forefront of the protests against former WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, returned his Padma Shri to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Punia took the decision following the election of Brij Bhushan’s close aide Sanjay Singh as the president of the WFI. The government suspended the new committee last Sunday.

“If we don’t raise the voice of our daughters and such people continue to curb them, then no daughter or sister will be able to raise their concerns in future in our country,” Bajrang said.

“I didn’t wan’t to leave it (Padma Shri).. if our sisters and daughters are not safe then what I will do with these laurels. They are our pride, if they are safe then we will get our pride on its own.”

On December 21, Sanjay was elected as the WFI president as the panel led by the close aide of Brij Bhushan won 13 of the 15 posts.

The wrestlers had demanded that no close associate of Brij Bhushan should enter the WFI administration.

Following the election, Rio Olympics bronze medallist Sakshi Malik announced that she would quit the sport, while World Championship medallist Vinesh Phogat returned her Khel Ratna and Arjuna Award to the government in protest against Sanjay’s election.

Bajrang, Vinesh and Sakshi had led the five-month-long protest of wrestlers at Jantar Mantar after accusing former WFI chief Brij Bhushan of sexually exploiting several women grapplers.

Hours after getting elected as WFI President on Thursday, Sanjay Singh had announced that age group national championships will be held from December 28 in Gonda, UP.

It prompted the Sports Ministry to suspend the newly-elected panel for not following the provisions of its own constitution while taking decisions. Also, it asked the IOA to constitute an ad-hoc panel to manage the affairs of the sports body.

New Delhi: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was elected Janata Dal (United) president at the party’s national executive meeting here on Friday, with incumbent Lalan Singh stepping down and proposing his name, party leader K C Tyagi said.

The national council meeting of the party, scheduled to be held later in the day, is likely to ratify decisions taken in the executive meeting.

Sources said most key leaders within the party were of the view that Kumar being its most prominent face should take charge of the organisation at this crucial time in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.

The party is part of the opposition INDIA bloc.

Singh’s leadership style was also criticised by several leaders within the party in their recent interactions with Kumar, the sources said.

Jerusalem (AP): The Israeli-Hamas war has already driven around 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people from their homes, levelling the northern part of the territory and heightening fears about a similar fate for the south as Israel’s air and ground offensive widened Friday.

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have streamed into the town of Rafah in the southernmost end of Gaza in recent days, according to the United Nations, crowding into an already overwhelmed area of the embattled territory.

More than 20,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants among the dead.

Currently:

Israeli strikes across Gaza kill dozens of Palestinians, even in largely emptied north

As Gaza war grinds on, tensions soar along Israel’s volatile northern border with Lebanon

Number of wounded Israeli soldiers grows, representing a hidden cost of war

On foot and by donkey cart, thousands flee widening Israeli assault in central Gaza

New Delhi: Delhi Police has sought the help of its Lucknow counterparts to trace a “cyclist cobbler” who created cavities in the shoes of Parliament security breach case accused Sagar Sharma and Manoranjan D to fit smoke canisters in them, sources said.

Police want to make the cobbler a witness in the case, they said.

Sagar first tried to modify the shoes himself but approached the cobbler, who visited Alambagh in Lucknow on a bicycle, after he was unsuccessful, the Delhi Police sources said.

A Delhi Police team visited Lucknow to search for the cobbler earlier this month.

In a major security breach on the anniversary of the 2001 Parliament terror attack on December 13, Sagar and Manoranjan jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the public gallery during Zero Hour, released yellow smoke from canisters and shouted slogans before they were overpowered by some of the MPs.

They gained entry into the Parliament using visitors’ passes facilitated by two-term Lok Sabha member from Mysuru Pratap Simha.

During interrogation, Sagar revealed that he tried to design shoes with a cavity after he found out that they were not checked during entry into the Parliament, the sources said.

“When he did not succeed in his attempts, he went to a cobbler in Alambagh. He has told the interrogators that he bought two pairs of shoes for Rs 595 each from a shop near his house and approached the cobbler, who visited Alambagh on a bicycle,” a source said.

“The cavity was found created by cutting the inside sole of the left shoe. The thickness of the sole of shoes is also found increased by affixing additional rubber sole at the bottom to support the cavity. The inside sole of the right foot shoe was also found partly cut,” according to the FIR.

A team of the Delhi Police Special Cell visited Lucknow earlier this month to search for the cobbler but was unable to trace him. The team also questioned several cobblers in Alambagh based on disclosures made by Sagar during his interrogation, the sources said.

Delhi Police wants to make the cobbler a witness in the case and is now taking the help of its Lucknow counterparts to find him, they said.

During its visit, the team recovered a pair of shoes, shoe soles and a ruler for measuring shoe size from Sagar’s house in Ramnagar in Lucknow’s Alambagh, according to the sources.

A diary and some books on freedom fighter Bhagat Singh were also recovered from his house.

Sagar’s family has told the investigators that he admires Bhagat Singh. His social media profile also showed that he used to share content related to Bhagat Singh and Cuban Marxist revolutionary leader Che Guevara.

Earlier, police said the accused persons in the Parliament security breach case wanted to replicate Bhagat Singh’s act of throwing bombs inside the Central Assembly during British rule in India.

A class 12 pass-out, Sagar worked as an e-rickshaw driver in Lucknow. His father Roshan Lal Sharma is a carpenter and his mother is a housewife.

The police team has already recorded the statements of Sagar’s family members, friends and the owner of the shop from where he bought the shoes.

Besides Sagar and Manoranjan, Delhi Police have arrested four people — Neelam, Amol Shinde, Lalit Jha and Mahesh Kumawat — in the Parliament security breach case.

All six have been booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

Davanagere (KTK): Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi on Friday said the BJP national leadership will decide whether to take action against senior party MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal, who has been publicly making statements and allegations against party’s state leaders.

He also urged partymen and leaders to raise their issues with national president J P Nadda or other central leaders and stop airing their concerns in public or before the media.

“He (Yatnal) is a sitting legislator, our national president and national unit will decide on whether to call and talk to him or take action,” Joshi said in response to a question whether there will be any action against Yatnal.

Yatnal, a former union minister and a known bete noire of former Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa has been publicly making allegations against the veteran leader and his son B Y Vijayendra for some time now. He had even openly criticised the party’s decision to appoint Vijayendra as its state president.

Yatnal had recently alleged that funds to the tune of Rs 40,000 crore was misappropriated at the time of Covid-19, during the previous BJP regime, under the leadership of then Chief Minister Yediyurappa

A section of party leaders have been demanding action against Yatnal.

Responding to another query about voices in the party that Yediyurappa camp has had an upper hand with respect to appointment of state office bearers, as his confidants have been appointed, Joshi said, “everyone in the party belong to BJP, and there is nothing like — someone is close to someone, while others are not.”

“If anyone has any issues or concerns they can bring it to the notice of the state president, and if it cannot be shared with the state president, it can be discussed with the national president. Instead, making open statements will not be good for the party. I want to tell all those making public statements that if they consider the party’s interest, stop making open statements; it’s not right,” he added.

Noting that the party’s national leadership has newly appointed a young state president (Vijayendra), Joshi, a Member of Parliament from Dharwad constituency, said, the appointment was made by the national president in consultation with the PM and other leaders, and it’s the decision of the central unit of the party.