Nasheman News : Four days after a Delhi court ordered Robert Vadra to join the Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigation, he was questioned for over six hours on Wednesday.

Vadra, the brother-in-law of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, arrived at the ED’s office located in central Delhi’s Jamnagar House at 3.45 p.m and left at 9.35 p.m.

He was accompanied by his wife and Congress general secretary for Uttar Pradesh East, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to the agency office earlier in the day.

However, after dropping Vadra at the ED office, Priyanka left the premises.

It was the first time that Vadra was questioned by any investigative agencies.

He was questioned by a team of seven ED officials of the rank of Deputy Director and Assistant Directors under the sections of Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

According to a financial probe agency official, Vadra was asked questions relating to transactions, purchase and possession of certain immovable assets in London.

The case relates to the ownership of 1.9 million pounds of undisclosed assets abroad, allegedly belonging to Vadra.

The ED also lodged a money laundering case against Vadra’s close aide Manoj Arora after his role surfaced during a probe by the Income Tax Department into another case under the new Black Money Act and tax law against absconding arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari.

The London property was allegedly bought by Bhandari and sold in 2010 for the same amount despite incurring additional expenses on its renovation.

On December 7, as part of the investigation, the ED conducted searches at a number of premises in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru.

The ED counsel told the court earlier that the London property was part of the kickbacks received in a petroleum deal. The money was transferred by Santech International, FZC, a UAE-based company controlled by Bhandari.

There were a few more properties that needed to be probed, the counsel said.

The official said that Arora, an employee of Vadra’s Skylight Hospitality LLP, is a key suspect in the case as he is aware of the overseas investments and purchases made by his employer.

He also said that the agency also confronted Vadra with the statement given by Arora.

The questioning came in the wake of an order by a Delhi Court on February 2 directing Vadra to appear before the ED for questioning while hearing the anticipatory bail plea filed by him.

The court had on Saturday also granted interim bail to Vadra till February 16.

Earlier in the day, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who accompanied her husband to the ED office made a strong political statement.

“I stand by my family,” she later told reporters at the AICC headquarters where Congress workers shouted slogans hailing her. “Priyanka you fight on, we are with you!”

 Dosti Ke Side Effectss Releasing On 8^th Feb 2019 

The Share Happiness Films titled Dosti Ke Dide Effectss is all set to release on 8^th Feb, 2019. The credits of the film are produced by Joyal Daniel, directed by Hadi Ali Abrar, story by Reena Daniel, screenplay by Pankaj Uniyal, cinematography by Anil B.  Akki, music by Altaf Sayyed & Manny Verma, lyrics by Deepak Noor & Atiya Sayyed, background music by Amar Mohile, art by Kartik B. Vidhate, action by Rinku Bachan, choreography by Papu Malu, post production by Origin Picture Studioz Pvt Ltd, audio by Zee Music Company, media consultancy by Ekta & Himanshu Jhunjhunwala (Dwapar Promoters) & the film stars Sapna Choudhary, Vikrant Anand, Zuber K. Khan, Anju Jadhav, Khushi Anand, Neel Motwani & Sai Bhallal.

  The scripted scenario of Dosti Ke Side Effectss reveals that Shrishti (Sapna), Ranveer (Vikrant), Gaurav (Zuber) & Avni (Anju), are childhood friends belonging to different strata of society, but their innocence fails to see the class difference. Shrishti’s father, an honest teacher, committed suicide when falsely implicated in a question-paper scam & she was forced to leave the city. Ranveer was also forced to leave his city along with his mother, after it was found that his father was secretly married to another woman & had an illegitimate son. Thus, the friends were separated in the early days.

 After some years, all the 4 friends were reunited when they got admitted in the same college & the friendship bondage once again sprung up like their childhood. They used to hang together, have fun & shared their thoughts & have aims of lives amongst themselves. While Shiristi wanted to become an IPS officer (which was eventually the turning point of the movie), Ranveer wanted to join politics to fight his father, Gaurav wanted to become super rich & Avni simply planned to take the short-cut route to happiness by marrying an “already very rich” guy. However, in the final year of the college, when Ranveer decided to contest the election for college president, he found Gaurav as of one of the contesting candidates. Surprisingly, Gaurav won the election and as an aftereffect, Ranveer decided to avenge his defeat in the hard way. As a result, the bond of friendship was broken & the 4 friends took separate ways in their lives. However, at the end, some very stronger reasons developed in the story that eventually, brought all the 4 friends together again & this time, with a far bigger purpose & a greater cause. They decided to counter the evil head-on & annihilate it at the cost of everything humanly possible for them. What they decided & what they did finally constitutes the climax of the film.

  

Nasheman News :The BJP on Sunday lashed out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for allegedly denying permission to land Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s chopper in Uttar Dinajpur and dubbed her government as “undemocratic” and “fascist”.

“It is deeply regrettable and condemnable. The true to the undemocratic record of Trinamool Congress and its leader Mamata Banerjee, today the helicopter of Yogi Adityanath, who had gone to campaign for the party, was not allowed to land in Dinajpur area of West Bengal where he was to address two rallies,” Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters.

Adityanath was scheduled to address two rallies at Balurghat in Dakshin Dinajpur district and Raiganj in Uttar Dinajpur district, but the safforn party accused the West Bengal government of denying permission to his helicopter to land. He later addressed the gathering through mobile phone.

“It has not happened for the first time. The helicopter of our national President Amit Sah was also not allowed to land. Earlier, the entire yatra of the BJP was stopped. What is happening in Bengal?” the BJP leader asked.

Referring to Mamata Banerjee’s Kolkata rally attended by several opposition parties, Prasad said they accused us of being undemocratic but today’s incident was another glaring case of an “undemocratic, fascist behaviour” of the TMC.

“And all the opposition parties are silent,” he said.

He alleged that chief of the country’s ruling party was not being allowed to hold rallies and the Prime Minister’s meeting was disturbed. 

“The only reason is panic and the sense of fear in Trinamool Congress. All the rallies of BJP leaders are drawing massive crowd and the Bengal is gearing for a change,” he said.

The senior BJP leader also urged the Election Commission to take due notice of the incidents in West Bengal.

“Nothing can be more regrettable and condemnable that in India the ruling party’s leaders are not allowed to campaign by rank abuse and police powers. This is plainly unacceptable,” he said, adding that this kind of crushing of contrary opinion Bengal has never tolerated.

Nasheman News :Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is planning to visit India next month in the wake of criticism by the international community over his handling of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the country’s mission in Turkey last year, media reported on Wednesday.

Citing sources, the Nikkei Asian Review business journal reported from Riyadh that apart from India, Prince Salman is also likely to visit China and South Korea in February.

“The Crown Prince has drawn criticism from the international community, especially from the US and Europe, over his handling of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the report said.

“He apparently hopes to counter criticism from the US and Europe by deepening energy cooperation with Asia,” it stated.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, is a major energy security partner of India.

With the US imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia’s rival Iran over the latter’s nuclear programme, there have been concerns in New Delhi over India’s energy security.

Washington’s sanctions call for countries to stop importing oil from Iran.

However, the Trump administration has given a temporary relief to India on this matter.

Prince Salman is likely to further strengthen India-Saudi Arabia energy cooperation during the course of the proposed visit.

Bharatiya Janata Party’s warring ally Shiv Sena on Monday said that it would the big brother in alliance with the saffron party in Maharashtra and will stay the same.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting chaired by party chief Uddhav Thackeray, the Sena’s Rajya Sabha MP and chief whip in Parliament, Sanjay Raut, reiterated that the party will play the role of a big brother if an alliance is made for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

On reports of BJP and Shiv Sena to fight on an equal number of seats, Raut said, “There is no proposal from the BJP to form any alliance with the Shiv Sena. Those who wish to forge an alliance with us are talking about it. We are not waiting for any proposal to be offered to us”.

Raut also said that the party wanted the income tax threshold to be raised from the existing Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 8 lakh.

“Uddhav Thackrey Ji said on the 10 per cent EWS quota to General Category that people with annual income of 8 lakh must be exempted from paying Income Tax. Since you have labelled them poor, they must be exempted,” he said.

At the meeting held in Thackeray’s Matoshree residence in Mumbai’s Bandra, with party MLAs and MPs in attendance, the Sena also took some other key decisions.

During the meeting, Thackeray also discussed the drought situation and farm distress in the state with party legislators, Raut said.

Till 2014, the BJP and Sena, allies for long, used to have an understanding under which the former would contest a larger share of Lok Sabha seats and the latter would get a greater number of Maharashtra Assembly seats to fight.

In this way, both parties took the role of the elder and younger sibling in the general and state polls in their political “brotherhood”.

The 2014 Assembly polls, however, ended this “sibling” agreement as the BJP, on the back of a strong Narendra Modi wave and contesting alone, won 122 seats against the Sena’s 63 in Maharashtra.

The BJP went on to form a government in the state under Devendra Fadnavis and the Sena had to contend being the junior partner.

Agencies

Nasheman News : Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday said his sister Gita Mehta has every right to decline the Padma Shri award.

“My sister has a right to do whatever she desires,” Patnaik told the media here.

Noted writer Gita Mehta, Patnaik’s elder sister, had declined to accept the Padma Shri last week, saying its timing was questionable as the general election was set to take place and the award may cause embarrassment to both the Odisha government and her.

Mehta had been named for the Padma Shri in the ‘Foreigners’ category for her outstanding contribution to the field of art and literature.

The Chief Minister also rubbished the allegations of Congress President Rahul Gandhi that he was remote-controlled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his government’s involvement in corruption.

“Bilkul Bakwaas (absolute trash),” responded the Chief Minister.

He also reviewed the pending issues with the officials of Union government at the Odisha Bhavan here.

He said the Centre is yet to transfer Rs 6,400-crore due to the state, with only one month left for the financial year to end.

This includes more than Rs 1,000 crore for housing, Rs 375 crore for health, Rs 400 crore under the rural job scheme and Rs 650 crore for agriculture, Patnaik said.

While the state government is spending more than Rs 3,000 crore on drinking water from the state budget, the Centre has allocated Rs 180 crore, of which only Rs 80 crore has released.

For poverty alleviation, out of Rs 200 crore, the state has received only Rs 6 crore, he said. 

Nasheman News : Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Monday said that the protest against Prime Minister Narendra in Madurai reflect the mood of the nation.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) President said if Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah were to visit Andhra Pradesh, they would face stronger protests than the one witnessed in Madurai.

In an interaction with TDP leaders through teleconference here, he said Modi had to face public protest in Madurai on Sunday for not coming to the rescue of Tamil Nadu in dealing with the devastation caused by Gaja cyclone.

Naidu alleged that Modi had done more injustice to Andhra Pradesh than to any other state.

TDP sources quoted Naidu as saying that the last meeting of ‘Dharma Porata Deeksha’ to be held in February in Amaravti will be attended by leaders of various national and regional parties.

The TDP chief asked the party leaders to organize the meeting at par with United India Rally organised by Trinamool Congress at Kolkata which was attended by leaders of 23 parties.

‘Dharma Porata Deeksha’ is the series of meetings organised by TDP to protest the denial of special category status to Andhra Pradesh by the Modi government.

Referring to his co-brother Daggubati Venkateswara Rao joining the YSR Congress Party, Naidu alleged that he had done this for the sake of power.

Pointing out that Venkateswara Rao’s wife D. Purandeswari is in the BJP, the TDP chief said he suspected the BJP could be behind his move.

Naidu also referred to TDP founder and his father-in-law N. T. Rama Rao’s second wife Lakshmi Parvati joining the YSR Congress and remarked that all opportunists who had used the late NTR for their vested interests were joining hands with YSR Congress.

Nasheman News :  At a time when over a third of the world’s population is set to vote in coming months including in India, Facebook has restricted external transparency campaigners from accessing and scrutinising political ads on its platform.

According to a Guardian report late Sunday, the social media giant has changed its codes that restrict external groups’ ability to collect data on why users are being targeted by political campaigners.

The third-party monitoring tools have helped expose several advertising tactics used by politicians in the past, the report added.

Two such external agencies are the British group WhoTargetsMe and the US investigative journalism website ProPublica.

“Ten days ago, our software stopped working, and efforts to fix it have proved much harder than before,” WhoTargetsMe Co-founder Sam Jeffers was quoted as saying.

According to Facebook, the changes were part of a crackdown on third party plug-ins.

“We regularly improve the ways we prevent unauthorised access by third parties like web browser plug-ins to keep people’s information safe,” a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying.

Data collected by WhoTargetsMe has helped show how the Conservatives were focusing on personal criticism of shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott during the end of the 2017 campaign.

Facebook’s move comes in a year “when over a third of the world’s population has the opportunity to vote, with elections across the EU, India, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Israel and Ukraine to name a few,” said Jeffers.

A similar ad monitoring tool by ProPublica in the past highlighted “negative stories for the social network such as exposing how oil companies are sidestepping Facebook’s new ad transparency tools among other issues”.

Facing intense scrutiny over the misuse of its platform globally during elections, Facebook in December announced fresh steps to increase ad transparency and defend against foreign interference ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in India.

“Anyone who wants to run an ad in India related to politics will need to first confirm their identity and location, and give more details about who placed the ad,” said the social networking giant.

Nasheman News :The much awaited hearing on a batch of cross petitions challenging the 2010 Allahabad High Court verdict trifurcating the disputed site scheduled for January 29 will not take place due to the non-availability of Justice S.A. Bobde — one of the five judges in the reconstituted bench.

A notification issued on Sunday by the top court registry said that due to non-availability of Justice S.A. Bobde on January 29, 2019, the sitting of the constitution bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice S. A. Bobde, Justice D. Y. Chandrachud, Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice S. Abdul Nazeer “stands canceled”.

“…the constitution bench matter will not be taken up for hearing on January 29,” said the notice by the top court registry put on its website.

The top court had on January 25 reconstituted the five-judge bench as Justice Uday Umesh Lalit recused himself from hearing the matter after it was pointed out by senior counsel Rajeev Dhavan that he had earlier way back in 1997 as a lawyer appeared for former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh in a Babri Masjid-related matter. 

Kalyan Singh is at present the Governor of Rajasthan. 

Besides Justice Lalit, the new bench did not have Justice N.V. Ramana. The original bench had Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice S.A. Bobde, Justice N.V. Ramana, Justice Lalit and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud.

Both Justice Bhushan and Justice Nazeer were on the three-judge bench headed by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra that had on September 27 by a majority of 2:1 declined one of the Muslim petitioners’ plea that the challenge to the high court judgment on the title suit be heard by a five-judge constitution bench.

Referring the matter to a three-judge bench, Justice Bhushan also speaking for then Chief Justice Misra had said that “we are of the considered opinion that no case has been made out to refer the constitution bench judgment of this court in Ismail Faruqui case for reconsideration”, which had said that mosque was not essential to Islam for offering namaz.

However, in his dissenting judgment, Justice Abdul Nazeer had said that the judgement in the 1994 Ismail Faruqui case needed reconsideration and the matter should be referred to a larger constitution bench.

Justice Nazeer had also said that whether mosque was an essential part of Islam for offering namaz was to be decided considering the religious beliefs and requires detailed consideration.

The Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court by its 2010 judgment, now under challenge, had divided the disputed site in three parts giving one each to Lord Ram Lala, Nirmohi Akhara and original Muslim litigant.

Nasheman News : The death toll in Tuesday’s attack on a luxury hotel complex in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi has increased to 21, police have confirmed.

“We wish to inform that six other bodies were found at the scene and one police officer succumbed to his injuries,” Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet told the media late Wednesday. 

Twenty-eight people were admitted to hospitals and “five terrorists were eliminated”, Efe news quoted Boinnet as saying.

The victims comprise 16 Kenyans, one Briton, one American, and three people of African descent who have not yet been identified, said Boinnet.

“We have arrested two individuals who we have very strong reasons to believe facilitated the attack and are in our custody assisting the police with their investigations,” he said. 

The Kenyan Red Cross said in a statement late Wednesday that their psychosocial teams had reached 341 people with more expected to receive counselling through a hotline and at Chiromo mortuary. 

Earlier Wednesday, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta declared the police operation at the 14 Riverside complex over, with all terrorists “eliminated”. 

He added that he had met with the national security council and assured that anyone involved in planning, financing and executing the act would be brought to justice.

The Somali jihadi group al-Shabaab, which joined Al Qaeda’s international network in 2012, claimed responsibility for the attack in a broadcast on its radio station Andalus.

Nairobi had not seen any such attack since September 2013, when in an operation similar to Tuesday’s, at least four al-Shabaab terrorists stormed the Westgate Mall not far from the 14 Riverside complex that is frequented by foreigners and Kenyans.

In the Westgate attack, 67 people died during the four days the terrorists remained holed up in the building.

The worst terrorist attack in Kenya was the 1998 bombing at the US embassy in Nairobi which left more than 200 dead and thousands wounded.