I n the wake of the ongoing tussle between the Centre and West Bengal, the Union Home Ministry on Tuesday took over the control of oper- ating trains for migrant labour- ers. Invoking powers vested in the Disaster Management Act, the Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla issued new Standard Operating Protocols (SoP) which entitles Railways to allow Shramik Special trains in consultation with Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) with- out any consultation with the State Governments. The Home Ministry has put the responsibility on the States to inform the migrant workers about the schedule of trains and bring the stranded people to nearby railway sta- tions. “Ministry of Railways (MoR) would permit move- ment of Shramik Special trains in consultation with MHA. All States/ UTs should designate nodal authorities and make necessary arrangements for receiving and sending such stranded persons. Based on the requirements of States/UTs, the train schedule, including stoppages and destination would be finalized by MoR. The same would be communi- cated by MoR to the States/UTs for making suitable arrange- ments for sending and receiv- ing such stranded workers,” the Home secretary has written in his note. Earlier, the railways decid- ed on the allotment of trains in consultation with the States. The problem started when the Centre accused the West Bengal Government of not taking steps to facilitate move- ment of trains to the State with migrant workers. “Publicity of train schedule, protocols for entry and move- ment of passengers, services to be provided in coaches, and arrangements with States/UTs for booking of tickets would be done by MoR. Sending States/ UTs and MoR would ensure that all passengers are com- pulsorily screened and only symptomatic passengers are allowed to board the train. Continued on Page 2 A comprehensive data analy- sis of the Covid-19 testing pattern places national Capital Delhi at the top in terms of number of test carried out per million population followed by Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The worst performer States are Bihar, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh in that order. Interestingly, West Bengal, which drew repeated criticism from the Centre for its alleged inept handling of the outbreak, is ahead of several other States in carrying out Covid-19 iden- tification tests. The data crunching also reveals while some States have taken the testing protocol very seriously, others have paid lit- tle heed to it. As a result, as much as 18-fold gap exists between Delhi and Bihar and six-fold difference between Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The analysis is based on tests carried out per million populations, which means the size of the State’s population and its geographical dimension do not impact the comparative outcome. The test numbers are of May 18. By Monday, Delhi carried out 1.39 lakh tests, which trans- lates into 7,052 tests per million populations. The national Capital has a very low mortal- ity rate of 1.57 per cent and recovery rate of 45 per cent. The second placed Andhra Pradesh has carried out 2,58,450 tests for a count of 4,949 tests per million. The southern State has a mortality rate of 2.5 per cent and recov- ery rate of 66 per cent. Tamil Nadu, which has seen big spike in cases on daily basis, has carried out 3,37, 841 tests for an average of 4,463 tests per million. Tamil Nadu’s mortality rate is one of the low- est in the country at 0.7 per cent and its recovery rate stands at 37 per cent. Delhi’s neighbour Rajasthan has carried out a total of 2,43,476 tests, which translates into nearly 3,151 tests for every 1 million people. The State has a recovery rate of 56 per cent and mortality rate of 2.41 per cent. Continued on Page 2 A s life in several parts of the country started limping back to normalcy on Tuesday following relaxation in lock- down norms, the country saw a massive spike in the number of coronavirus cases with the addition of nearly 6,119 new cases and 145 deaths on Tuesday. The total numbers of infec- tion across the country swelled to 1,06,446 with Maharashtra alone recording 37,136 cases and Tamil Nadu and Delhi contributing 688 and 500 new cases respectively. Rajasthan also added 338 new cases dur- ing the day. The overall addi- tion of new cases for the day stood at 5,931 with number still coming in around 10. 30 pm. The total death toll due to the virus in all the States and Union Territories touched 3,301, according to the Union Health Ministry. The number of active Covid-19 cases stood at 59,799 while 42,307 people have recovered, according to the Union Health Ministry. “Thus, around 38.73 per cent patients have recovered so far,” said the Health Ministry. Of the fresh deaths record- ed as on Tuesday Gujarat reg- istered high of 25, Bihar record- ed nine deaths, West Bengal six, Delhi six, Karnataka three and Odisha one. Tamil Nadu recorded a high of new 688 cases, Delhi 500, Gujarat 395, Rajasthan 338, Karnataka 149, Uttar Pradesh 145, West Bengal 137, Bihar 72 and Odisha 102. Maharashtra tops the list of States with highest number coronavirus cases in the coun- try (with its Capital accounting for 20 per cent of the cases) at 37,136 cases and a total 1,325 deaths while Gujarat has 12,141 cases and 719 deaths. Tamil Nadu has 12,448 cases and 85 deaths, Delhi has 10,554 cases and 166 deaths, Madhya Pradesh 5,465 cases and 258 deaths, Rajasthan 5,845 cases and 139 deaths, Uttar Pradesh 4,926 cases and 123 deaths, West Bengal 2,961 cases and 250 deaths, Odisha 978 cases and 15 deaths, Bihar 1495 cases and 9 deaths and Jharkhand with 228 cases and only three deaths. Mumbai situation is a cause of concern for the State as Mumbai’s Dharavi — the largest slum area — witnessed 1,353 cases. Similarly, another Capital city Ahmedabad is causing worry with 262 new coron- avirus cases in the city taking the number coronavirus cases to 8,945. Ahmedabad has recorded 576 deaths with 21 fresh ones on Tuesday. Likewise Chennai regis- tered two fresh deaths on Tuesday taking the death toll to 59 in the city with 552 new cases of coronavirus. Continued on Page 2 I n yet another sensational daylight killing during lock- down in Uttar Pradesh, a dalit Samajwadi Party leader, whose wife is also a sitting pradhan, was shot dead along with his son in Sambhal on Tuesday. The incident took place over laying of road in the area. Soon after the killing, senior officers rushed to the spot and heavy police force was deployed to avert confrontation between the two groups. Victim Chhote Lal Diwakar (45) is husband of Kamlesh Diwakar, who is a vil- lage pradhan of Fatehpur Shamshoi under Behjoi area. Chhote Lal had a dispute with a family of the village over the road construction work on Tuesday morning. The members of the other family opened fire at Chhote Lal and his son Sunil Diwakar (22), killing them on the spot. Surprisingly the local res- idents were engaged in making video of the killing instead of trying to save the victims from the assailants. S uper cyclone “Amphan” weakened into an extreme- ly severe cyclonic storm on Tuesday but still packed enough force to pulverise coastal districts of Odisha and West Bengal where lakhs of people were evacuated from vulnerable areas and shifted to safety, officials said. As it rumbled over the Bay of Bengal 510 km off the Digha coast in West Bengal, likely charting a north- north- eastward course, the two States were on high alert. At least three lakh people have been evacuated from coastal areas and all steps have been taken to deal with any eventuality aris- ing out of Amphan, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Tuesday. Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday spoke to Chief Ministers of West Bengal and Odisha — Mamata Banerjee and Navin Patnaik respectively — and assured them of all possible help to deal with the situation arising out of Amphan, officials said. During the telephonic con- versation with Mamata, Shah took stock of the situation in Bengal, where the cyclone is expected to make landfall on Wednesday. Continued on Page 2 T he twitter war between Chief Minister Yo g i Adityanath and Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi over the permission for operation of buses for the return of migrant labourers to their homes took a turn for the worse with the arrest of UP Congress chief Ajay Kumar (Lallu) in Agra and lodging of an FIR against Priyanka Gandhi’s personal secretary Sandeep Singh and the UPCC chief in Lucknow for furnishing wrong details about buses. The Congress has hit back at Chief Minister Yo g i Adityanath saying he was engaging in cheap politics. Government spokesman said Ajay Kumar Lallu, who was staging a dharna at Agra, was arrested while an FIR has been lodged against him under Section 420/467/468 IPC for furnishing false details about the buses purported to be for ferrying migrant workers. In a joint statement Additional Police Commissioner (Traffic) Lucknow, Pudendu Singh and RTO Lucknow, RP Dwivedi, said that the verification of the list of buses provided by Congress showed that over 100 numbers were that of tem- pos, ambulances or taxis. Continued on Page 2 A fter being closed for near- ly two months, shopkeep- ers in several markets across the national Capital opened their shops on Tuesday fol- lowing the “odd-even” formu- la while sanitising and trying to establish social distancing pro- tocols to contain the spread of coronavirus. Also, with relaxations being granted for public movement during the fourth phase of the lockdown, there was a significant increase in the number of vehicles on roads and traffic remained heavy at some places, especially the city borders on Tuesday. While popular markets like Connaught Place and Khan Market bore a deserted look in the first half of the day, traders in markets like Tilak Nagar, Karol Bagh and Sarojini Nagar were seen cleaning their shops. Sushil Khatri, president of the Tilak Nagar Main Market Association, said shops had opened but many were clueless about the odd-even rule. Continued on Page 2 T he tragic deaths of migrant workers in road accidents in several parts of the country have forced the Road and Transport Ministry to ask the Union Home Ministry and the States to earmark dedicat- ed lanes for the pedestrians. These lanes should have provisions for food and med- ical assistance at certain inter- vals to facilitate easy move- ments of migrant workers who have hit the roads to reach their destinations. Sources said the Home Ministry is in the process of issuing a separate advisory to the States to ensure safety measures for the migrants walking on roads to reach their home. As many as 1,253 road accidents claimed 456 lives between March 24 and May 19 and left 930 persons injured during the lockdown. A report submitted to the Centre by a road safety organ- isation has shown that 180 migrants lost their lives in road accidents which left 694 seriously injured. According to a study com- piled this week, a road crash is 10 times more fatal to someone than getting infected with coronavirus. Continued on Page 2 O ver dozen of migrant labourers were killed and many others injured in a truck and bus collusion in Naugachhia, near Bhagalpur in Bihar on Tuesday. According to reports, the truck fell off the road after the collision. The workers had started their journey on bicycles six days ago from Kolkata and they might have boarded the truck somewhere en route. The dri- ver and cleaner of the truck, which was coming from Bengal via Katihar, fled from the spot. Elsewhere, three migrant labourers were killed and over 12 injured after a vehicle fer- rying them overturned on the Jhansi-Mirzapur highway on late Monday night. Continued on Page 2 Mumbai: Hundreds of migrant labourers gathered on an approach road to Bandra Terminus here on Tuesday before the depar- ture of a Shramik Special train for Bihar, leading to chaos in the area for some time. The incident occurred over a month after hundreds of migrant workers had assembled near the Bandra station demanding transport for their repatriation to their native places in the wake of the lockdown. New Delhi: Providing huge relief to people, specially in the country’s small towns and cities, the railways will run 200 special passenger trains from June 1, the national trans- porter said on Tuesday. These trains will have non- air conditioned second class coaches and will run daily. They will be plied in addition to the Shramik Special and the air-conditioned special trains which are currently being operated on the Rajdhani routes connecting 15 major cities to Delhi. All categories of passengers will be allowed to book tickets which will be available online. Continued on Page 2
In the wake of the ongoingtussle between the Centre
and West Bengal, the UnionHome Ministry on Tuesdaytook over the control of oper-ating trains for migrant labour-ers. Invoking powers vested inthe Disaster Management Act,the Union Home SecretaryAjay Bhalla issued newStandard Operating Protocols(SoP) which entitles Railwaysto allow Shramik Special trains
in consultation with Ministryof Home Affairs (MHA) with-out any consultation with theState Governments.
The Home Ministry hasput the responsibility on theStates to inform the migrantworkers about the schedule oftrains and bring the strandedpeople to nearby railway sta-tions.
“Ministry of Railways(MoR) would permit move-ment of Shramik Special trainsin consultation with MHA. All
States/ UTs should designatenodal authorities and makenecessary arrangements forreceiving and sending suchstranded persons. Based onthe requirements of States/UTs,the train schedule, includingstoppages and destinationwould be finalized by MoR.The same would be communi-cated by MoR to the States/UTsfor making suitable arrange-ments for sending and receiv-ing such stranded workers,” theHome secretary has written in
his note.Earlier, the railways decid-
ed on the allotment of trains inconsultation with the States.The problem started when theCentre accused the WestBengal Government of nottaking steps to facilitate move-ment of trains to the State withmigrant workers.
“Publicity of train schedule,protocols for entry and move-
ment of passengers, services tobe provided in coaches, andarrangements with States/UTsfor booking of tickets would bedone by MoR. Sending States/UTs and MoR would ensurethat all passengers are com-pulsorily screened and onlysymptomatic passengers areallowed to board the train.
Continued on Page 2
������$���%����� *(3$(."0
Acomprehensive data analy-sis of the Covid-19 testing
pattern places national CapitalDelhi at the top in terms ofnumber of test carried out permillion population followedby Andhra Pradesh and TamilNadu.
The worst performer Statesare Bihar, Telangana and UttarPradesh in that order.Interestingly, West Bengal,which drew repeated criticismfrom the Centre for its allegedinept handling of the outbreak,is ahead of several other Statesin carrying out Covid-19 iden-tification tests.
The data crunching alsoreveals while some States havetaken the testing protocol very
seriously, others have paid lit-tle heed to it. As a result, asmuch as 18-fold gap existsbetween Delhi and Bihar andsix-fold difference betweenAndhra Pradesh and UttarPradesh.
The analysis is based ontests carried out per millionpopulations, which means thesize of the State’s populationand its geographical dimensiondo not impact the comparativeoutcome. The test numbersare of May 18.
By Monday, Delhi carriedout 1.39 lakh tests, which trans-lates into 7,052 tests per millionpopulations. The nationalCapital has a very low mortal-ity rate of 1.57 per cent andrecovery rate of 45 per cent.
The second placed AndhraPradesh has carried out2,58,450 tests for a count of4,949 tests per million. Thesouthern State has a mortalityrate of 2.5 per cent and recov-ery rate of 66 per cent.
Tamil Nadu, which hasseen big spike in cases on dailybasis, has carried out 3,37, 841tests for an average of 4,463tests per million. Tamil Nadu’smortality rate is one of the low-est in the country at 0.7 percent and its recovery rate standsat 37 per cent.
Delhi’s neighbourRajasthan has carried out atotal of 2,43,476 tests, whichtranslates into nearly 3,151tests for every 1 million people.The State has a recovery rate of56 per cent and mortality rateof 2.41 per cent.
Continued on Page 2
����� *(3$(."0
As life in several parts of thecountry started limping
back to normalcy on Tuesdayfollowing relaxation in lock-down norms, the country sawa massive spike in the numberof coronavirus cases with theaddition of nearly 6,119 newcases and 145 deaths onTuesday.
The total numbers of infec-tion across the country swelledto 1,06,446 with Maharashtraalone recording 37,136 casesand Tamil Nadu and Delhicontributing 688 and 500 newcases respectively. Rajasthanalso added 338 new cases dur-ing the day. The overall addi-tion of new cases for the daystood at 5,931 with number stillcoming in around 10. 30 pm.
The total death toll due tothe virus in all the States andUnion Territories touched3,301, according to the UnionHealth Ministry. The numberof active Covid-19 cases stoodat 59,799 while 42,307 peoplehave recovered, according tothe Union Health Ministry.
“Thus, around 38.73 per
cent patients have recovered sofar,” said the Health Ministry.
Of the fresh deaths record-ed as on Tuesday Gujarat reg-istered high of 25, Bihar record-ed nine deaths, West Bengal six,Delhi six, Karnataka three andOdisha one.
Tamil Nadu recorded ahigh of new 688 cases, Delhi500, Gujarat 395, Rajasthan338, Karnataka 149, UttarPradesh 145, West Bengal 137,Bihar 72 and Odisha 102.
Maharashtra tops the list ofStates with highest numbercoronavirus cases in the coun-try (with its Capital accounting
for 20 per cent of the cases) at37,136 cases and a total 1,325deaths while Gujarat has 12,141cases and 719 deaths.
Tamil Nadu has 12,448cases and 85 deaths, Delhi has10,554 cases and 166 deaths,Madhya Pradesh 5,465 casesand 258 deaths, Rajasthan5,845 cases and 139 deaths,Uttar Pradesh 4,926 cases and123 deaths, West Bengal 2,961cases and 250 deaths, Odisha978 cases and 15 deaths, Bihar1495 cases and 9 deaths andJharkhand with 228 cases andonly three deaths.
Mumbai situation is a
cause of concern for the Stateas Mumbai’s Dharavi — thelargest slum area — witnessed1,353 cases.
Similarly, another Capitalcity Ahmedabad is causingworry with 262 new coron-avirus cases in the city takingthe number coronavirus casesto 8,945. Ahmedabad hasrecorded 576 deaths with 21fresh ones on Tuesday.
Likewise Chennai regis-tered two fresh deaths onTuesday taking the death toll to59 in the city with 552 newcases of coronavirus.
Continued on Page 2
����� .4�/*�3
In yet another sensationaldaylight killing during lock-
down in Uttar Pradesh, a dalitSamajwadi Party leader, whosewife is also a sitting pradhan,was shot dead along with hisson in Sambhal on Tuesday.The incident took place overlaying of road in the area.
Soon after the killing,senior officers rushed to thespot and heavy police force wasdeployed to avert confrontationbetween the two groups.
Victim Chhote LalDiwakar (45) is husband ofKamlesh Diwakar, who is a vil-lage pradhan of FatehpurShamshoi under Behjoi area.
Chhote Lal had a disputewith a family of the village overthe road construction workon Tuesday morning. Themembers of the other familyopened fire at Chhote Lal andhis son Sunil Diwakar (22),killing them on the spot.
Surprisingly the local res-idents were engaged in makingvideo of the killing instead oftrying to save the victims fromthe assailants.
����� *(3$(."0
Super cyclone “Amphan”weakened into an extreme-
ly severe cyclonic storm onTuesday but still packedenough force to pulverisecoastal districts of Odisha andWest Bengal where lakhs ofpeople were evacuated fromvulnerable areas and shifted tosafety, officials said.
As it rumbled over theBay of Bengal 510 km off theDigha coast in West Bengal,likely charting a north- north-eastward course, the two Stateswere on high alert. At leastthree lakh people have beenevacuated from coastal areasand all steps have been taken todeal with any eventuality aris-ing out of Amphan, Chief
Minister Mamata Banerjee saidon Tuesday.
Union Home MinisterAmit Shah on Tuesday spoke toChief Ministers of West Bengaland Odisha — MamataBanerjee and Navin Patnaikrespectively — and assuredthem of all possible help to deal
with the situation arising out ofAmphan, officials said.
During the telephonic con-versation with Mamata, Shahtook stock of the situation inBengal, where the cyclone isexpected to make landfall onWednesday.
Continued on Page 2
��������������������.4�/*�3
The twitter war betweenChief Minister Yogi
Adityanath and Congressleader Priyanka Gandhi overthe permission for operation ofbuses for the return of migrantlabourers to their homes tooka turn for the worse with thearrest of UP Congress chiefAjay Kumar (Lallu) in Agra andlodging of an FIR againstPriyanka Gandhi’s personalsecretary Sandeep Singh andthe UPCC chief in Lucknow forfurnishing wrong details about
buses.The Congress has hit back
at Chief Minister YogiAdityanath saying he wasengaging in cheap politics.
Government spokesmansaid Ajay Kumar Lallu, whowas staging a dharna at Agra,was arrested while an FIR hasbeen lodged against him underSection 420/467/468 IPC forfurnishing false details aboutthe buses purported to be forferrying migrant workers.
In a joint statementAdditional PoliceCommissioner (Traffic)Lucknow, Pudendu Singh andRTO Lucknow, RP Dwivedi,said that the verification of thelist of buses provided byCongress showed that over100 numbers were that of tem-pos, ambulances or taxis.
Continued on Page 2
���������������� *(3$(."0
After being closed for near-ly two months, shopkeep-
ers in several markets acrossthe national Capital openedtheir shops on Tuesday fol-lowing the “odd-even” formu-la while sanitising and trying toestablish social distancing pro-tocols to contain the spread ofcoronavirus.
Also, with relaxationsbeing granted for publicmovement during the fourthphase of the lockdown, therewas a significant increase in thenumber of vehicles on roadsand traffic remained heavy atsome places, especially the cityborders on Tuesday.
While popular markets likeConnaught Place and Khan
Market bore a deserted look inthe first half of the day, tradersin markets like Tilak Nagar,Karol Bagh and Sarojini Nagarwere seen cleaning their shops.
Sushil Khatri, president ofthe Tilak Nagar Main MarketAssociation, said shops hadopened but many were cluelessabout the odd-even rule.
The tragic deaths of migrantworkers in road accidents
in several parts of the countryhave forced the Road andTransport Ministry to ask theUnion Home Ministry andthe States to earmark dedicat-ed lanes for the pedestrians.
These lanes should haveprovisions for food and med-ical assistance at certain inter-vals to facilitate easy move-ments of migrant workers whohave hit the roads to reachtheir destinations.
Sources said the HomeMinistry is in the process ofissuing a separate advisory tothe States to ensure safetymeasures for the migrantswalking on roads to reachtheir home.
As many as 1,253 roadaccidents claimed 456 livesbetween March 24 and May 19and left 930 persons injuredduring the lockdown.
A report submitted to theCentre by a road safety organ-isation has shown that 180migrants lost their lives inroad accidents which left 694
seriously injured.According to a study com-
piled this week, a road crash is10 times more fatal to someonethan getting infected withcoronavirus.
many others injured in a truckand bus collusion inNaugachhia, near Bhagalpur inBihar on Tuesday. According toreports, the truck fell off theroad after the collision.
The workers had startedtheir journey on bicycles sixdays ago from Kolkata and theymight have boarded the trucksomewhere en route. The dri-ver and cleaner of the truck,which was coming from Bengalvia Katihar, fled from the spot.
Elsewhere, three migrantlabourers were killed and over12 injured after a vehicle fer-rying them overturned on theJhansi-Mirzapur highway onlate Monday night.
Continued on Page 2
������������������� �������� ���
Mumbai: Hundreds ofmigrant labourers gatheredon an approach road toBandra Terminus here onTuesday before the depar-ture of a Shramik Specialtrain for Bihar, leading tochaos in the area for sometime. The incident occurredover a month after hundredsof migrant workers hadassembled near the Bandrastation demanding transportfor their repatriation to theirnative places in the wake ofthe lockdown.
New Delhi: Providing hugerelief to people, specially in thecountry’s small towns andcities, the railways will run 200special passenger trains fromJune 1, the national trans-porter said on Tuesday.
These trains will have non-air conditioned second classcoaches and will run daily.They will be plied in additionto the Shramik Special and theair-conditioned special trainswhich are currently beingoperated on the Rajdhaniroutes connecting 15 majorcities to Delhi.
All categories of passengerswill be allowed to book ticketswhich will be available online.
Prime Minister KP SharmaOli on Tuesday asserted that
Lipulekh, Kalapani andLimpiyadhura belong to Nepaland vowed to "reclaim" themfrom India through political anddiplomatic efforts, as hisCabinet endorsed a new polit-ical map showing the threeareas as Nepalese territory.
Addressing Parliament, Olisaid the territories belong to Nepal “but India has madeit a disputed area by keeping its Army there”. “Nepalis wereblocked from going there afterIndia stationed its Army,” hesaid.
“India has deployed itstroops in Kalapani since 1962and our rulers in the past hes-itated to raise the issue,” he said,asserting, “We will reclaim andget them back.”
The Prime Minister assert-ed that the Nepal Governmentwill make political and diplo-matic efforts to reclaim the ter-ritory.
Oli also expressed the hopethat India will “follow the pathof truth, shown by Satya MevaJayate, which is mentioned inthe Ashoka Chakra, the nation-al symbol of India”.
The prime minister'sremarks came a day after the
Cabinet headed by himendorsed a new political mapshowing Lipulekh, Kalapaniand Limpiyadhura underNepal's territory.
Foreign Minister PradeepKumar Gyawali said the officialmap of Nepal will soon bemade public by the Ministry ofLand Management. The moveannounced by Gyawali cameweeks after he said that effortswere on to resolve the borderissue with India through diplo-matic initiatives.
Nepal's ruling NepalCommunist Party lawmakershave also tabled a special reso-lution in Parliament demandingreturn of Kalapani,Limpiyadhura and Lipulekh toNepal. The Lipulekh pass is a farwestern point near Kalapani, adisputed border area betweenNepal and India. Both India andNepal claim Kalapani as anintegral part of their territory -India as part of Uttarakhand'sPithoragarh district and Nepalas part of Dharchula district.
Gyawali last week sum-moned the Indian Ambassador
Vinay Mohan Kwatra and hand-ed over a diplomatic note to himto protest against the construc-tion of a key road connectingthe Lipulekh pass withDharchula in Uttarakhand.
India has said that therecently-inaugurated road sec-tion in Pithoragarh district inUttarakhand lies completelywithin its territory. Indian Armychief Gen MM Naravane lastweek said that there were rea-sons to believe that Nepalobjected to India's newly-inau-gurated road linking LipulekhPass with Dharchula inUttarakhand at the behest of"someone else", in an apparentreference to a possible role byChina on the matter.
He said there was no dis-pute whatsoever between Indiaand Nepal in the area and roadlaid was very much within theIndian side.
The 80-KM-long strategi-cally crucial road at a height of17,000 KM along the borderwith China in Uttarakhand wasthrown open by DefenceMinister Rajnath Singh earlierthis month.
India and Nepal are at arow after the Indian side issueda new political map incorpo-rating Kalapani and Lipulekhon its side of the border inOctober last year.
8�$���*����������������������!�����7� ��5�6��
��$� %.� ������.�������%$��
Raipur: Former Congresspresident Rahul Gandhi, whoannounced the launch of theNyay scheme in Chhattisgarh,the implementation of thescheme has also started fromChhattisgarh itself. The RajivGandhi Kisan Nyay Yojanabeing launched by the ChiefMinister Mr. Bhupesh Baghelfrom May 21 can be seen as alink to it. The Nyay scheme thatCongress had promised toimplement in its manifesto wasaimed at ensuring minimumincome availability of the poorthrough direct bank transfer.Soon after the Govt formationin Chhattisgarh, work was start-ed regarding the economicstrengthening of farmers, tribalsand laborers.
by the Union Government’s“Vande Bharat Abhiyan specialflights from 10 countries.
Announcing this, ChiefMinister Uddhav Thackeraysaid here on Tuesday: “Thirteenspecial flights brought 822 peo-ple hailing from Mumbai, 1,025from rest of Maharashtra and125 from other States in thecountry”.
“We expect theGovernment to operate anoth-er 27 special flights to bring backthe people from Maharashtrastranded in different countriesover the coming weeks,” thechief minister said.
Till date, the highest num-
ber of 653 people came fromUnited Kingdom, 243 fromSingapore, 150 from thePhilippines, 107 fromBangladesh, 107 from SanFrancisco, 208 from New Yorkand 195 from Chicago (allUSA), 201 from Malaysia, 78from Ethiopia, 16 from Oman,12 from Afghanistan and 2from Kuwait, which is the low-est in the list. “All those whohave returned from abroad havebeen sent to precautionary insti-tutional quarantine for 14 daysby the state government, includ-ing those from other stateswhich are not ready to acceptthem,” Uddhav said.
“Arrangements have beenmade to send those from out ofMumbai to their respective dis-tricts,” he added.
#�$./�� ��� ���������������������� ��0� �1�����
From Page 1Maharashtra, which is the
worst affected State in thecountry, has carried out2,82,437 tests, which makes for2,312 test per million popula-tion. The State has a mortali-ty rate of 3.5 per cent and a lowrecovery rate of 24 per cent.
Karnataka, which hasopened up its economic activ-ities in a big way, has carriedout 1,51,663 tests, that comesto about 2,305for every 1 mil-lion people.
Similarly, Gujarat, whichhas also emerged as one of theworst affected States, has car-ried out 1,48,824 tests,accounting for 2,191 tests permillion. Gujarat has a veryhigh mortality rate of 5.9 percent and recovery rate at 41 percent.
Odisha, which largelyremained untouched by coro-
navirus before the return of themigrants, has carried out95,776 tests, which make for2,193 tests per million.
Kerala, which was the firstin the country to record a coro-navirus case on January 30 andwhich has since then done wellto control its spread, has car-ried out just 45,905 tests, whichaccounts for a mere 1,307 permillion population.
Punjab, another Statewhich did well to control coro-navirus spread before thereturn of the Sikh pilgrimsfrom Nanded in Maharashtra,has carried out 52,955 tests --- that is 11,774 tests per mil-lion, better than many small-er States of its size.
Assam, which is gatewayto North-East, where thespread of coronavirus wasconfined to a single digit inmajority of the States, has car-ried out 37,898 tests, that is1,105 tests per million.
Bihar will end with wood-en spoon in the rank of top 15
populated States, carrying just46,996 tests with only 393tests per million populations.The State has recorded lessthan 1,500 positive cases andnine deaths, but going by thedismal record on testing thereal number could be far big-ger. The days ahead could seesharp spike in cases fromBihar.
Telangana is the secondworst State in carrying outtests. The State has reportedjust 23,000 tests for a dismalcount of around 630 test permillion.
Uttar Pradesh is the thirdworst State in terms of para-meters of testing per millionpopulations. The State hascarried out just 1,76, 479 tests.This makes for only 784 testsfor every 1 million people inIndia’s biggest populated State.
Then comes the turn ofJharkhand, which has carriedout 35,359 tests, which makesfor 945 tests per million pop-ulations.
From Page 1During the last two months, the fatality rate
on road stood at 32 per cent compared to 2019when it was 30 per cent.
Organisations and NGOs working in thefield of road and highways safety have demand-ed certain vital measures which include a ded-icated lane free from motor movement to facil-itate safe movement of the migrant workers.
Experts have also sought kiosk, food andmedical facilities and a mini motorcade systemwhich can ferry the needy like old people, chil-dren, divyangs for some distance.
But the most significant and urgent demandof the experts is to allow only trained driverson long-distance highways and roads andrestrict the speed. In case of speed violation, the
owners of the vehicles and drivers should bebooked under Epidemic Act besides theirprosecution as per the provision under MotorVehicle Act.
“Yet another mass casualty crash inBhagalpur district of Bihar has broken the myththat Indian roads are safe during the lockdowndue to Covid. Over 450 people have lost theirlives and another 930 have been injured in roadcrashes since the lockdown began on March 24.As many as 39 per cent (180) of these deathsinclude migrant workers. The reasons for thesedeaths include driver fatigue, speeding, collisionsand pedestrian rundowns. State Governmentsneed to urgently implement measures to ensuretheir safety,” said Piyush Tewari, Founder & CEOSaveLIFE Foundation, working on road safetyand conducting research on road safety issuescomparing with Covid-19 lockdown.
From Page 1“Since many shops have opened after 56
days, many are cleaning them and settingthings in order. We have requested the police to allow us to open the shops fortoday. We are waiting for more guidelinesfrom the Delhi Police on the odd-even for-mula,” he said.
Policemen were seen making announce-ments, urging shopkeepers not to encroachon roads and ensure that crowding doesn’ttake place outside their shops.
Harminder Singh, who runs a kitchen-ware shop, said as a precautionary measure,customers will not be allowed inside shops.He also had a rope tied outside his shop andhad kept a sanitiser bottle as a precaution-ary measure.
Connaught Place, which is the com-mercial hub in Central Delhi, saw tradersmarking circles to ensure that visitors canensure social distancing.
From Page 1Social distancing to be
observed by all passengers dur-ing boarding and travel. Onarrival at their destination, thetravelling passengers will haveto adhere to such health proto-cols as are prescribed by the des-tination State/UT,” said MHASecretary’s letter detailing thenew SoPs in trains. In anotherletter also the Home Secretaryurged the States to have proac-tive coordination with Railwayson handling the migrant labour-ers movement and dispatchingthe labourers walking on roadto nearby railway stations. TheMHA asked States to run morebuses to ensure the smoothtransition, especially at the inter-State borders.
From Page 1The Home Minister assured the Chief
Minister of all possible help to deal with the sit-uation arising due to the cyclone, a HomeMinistry official said. Mamata has requested theRailways not to bring back migrant workers toWest Bengal on Wednesday, Thursday morn-ing as a precautionary measure. The IndiaMeteorological Department (IMD) said thesuper cyclone will cross West Bengal-Bangladesh coasts between Digha (West Bengal)and Hatiya Islands (Bangladesh) close toSundarbans on Wednesday afternoon withmaximum sustained wind speed of 155-165kmph gusting to 185 kmph. A part of it mayalso make a landfall between Kakdwip andSagar Islands in West Bengal’s south 24Paraganas. The State Governments in WestBengal and Odisha have been asked to suspendrail and road traffic. Massive devastation isexpected since the coastal areas that will beimpacted are densely populated.
From Page 1“The verification through
database of vehicles availableon NIC site confirmed that outof 1,049 registration numbersgiven by the Congress, 879 areof buses, 31 of auto/three-wheeler, 69 of other vehicleswhile there is no record avail-able of 70 registration num-bers,” they said.
The Government furtherclaimed that out of the above879 buses 79 were not havingfitness certificate, insurance of140 buses already expired while78 were not having both insur-
ance and fitness certificate.“The Congress has com-
mitted fraud as telling lies is inthe DNA of the party and theCongress leaders have fooledpeople to get political mileageout of this crisis,” UPGovernment spokesmanSidharth Nath Singh said in astatement. Enraged over theaccusation of giving the regis-tration numbers of autos andtwo-wheelers in the list of buses,the veteran Congress leaderand former MP Pramod Tiwarisaid that BJP people are tryingto malign the Congress and insuch a situation, the party willfile a defamation suit.
From Page 1About 17 people were trav-
elling in the vehicle and theinjured have been admitted tothe hospital.
In another tragic incident,four migrant workers werekilled and 15 injured when abus they were travelling infrom Solapur to Jharkhandrammed into a truck inMaharashtra’s Yavatmal earlymorning on Tuesday.
Three women died andfour other persons were criti-cally injured after a truck car-rying migrant workers over-turned in Mahoba district ofUttar Pradesh late Monday.
From Page 1“Indian Railways will run
200 non-AC trains daily as perthe time table from June 1,whose online booking will startsoon," tweeted RailwayMinister Piyush Goyal.
While the railways is yet tostate which routes these trains
will run on, officials said theycould cater to the smaller townsand cities. Earlier, the railwayshad cancelled all its regular pas-senger services till June 30.Railways said the move to startthese 200 trains would also behelpful for migrants who canavail these trains if they areunable to board the ShramikSpecial trains.
From Page 1More than 70 per cent of
the deaths are due to comor-bidities, the existence of mul-tiple disorders in the sameperson, it said.
Even as the number con-tinue to surge, the HealthMinistry maintained that interms of case mortality per lakhpopulation, India has so farabout 0.2 Covid-19 deaths perlakh population as compared toapproximately 4.1 deaths perlakh population for rest of theworld as a whole.
The "relatively low deathfigures" in India represent time-ly case identification and clin-ical management of the cases,said the Ministry.
Following the guidelines ofUnion Health Ministry, the
Delhi Government on Tuesdayissued an order on measures tobe adopted by healthcare work-ers deployed in Covid andnon-Covid areas of hospitals.
The Union HealthMinistry had on Friday issuedan advisory, asking healthcarefacilities to activate theirHospital Infection ControlCommittee (HICC), which isresponsible for implementingthe Infection Prevention andControl (IPC) activities andorganizing regular training onIPC for its workers.
The nodal officer will beidentified to ensure that health-care workers in different set-tings of hospitals use PPEsappropriate to their risk profile,as detailed in the guidelinesissued by the ministry, and theyhave undergone training onIPC and are aware of commonsigns and symptoms, need forself-health monitoring and
prompt reporting of suchsymptoms, a government offi-cial said.
The official further saidthat the move is taken as pre-ventive measures after theHealth Ministry issued guide-lines on various measuresincluding isolation and quar-antine for healthcare workersdeployed in Covid and non-Covid areas of hospitals.
According to health min-istry advisory, a nodal officer(Infection Control Officer)shall be identified by each hos-pital to address all mattersrelated to Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs).
The nodal officer also hasto make provisions for regular(thermal) screening of all hos-pital staff and ensure that allhealthcare workers managingCOVID-19 cases are providedwith chemo-prophylaxis undermedical supervision, the min-istry had said.
The advisory also suggest-ed on actions for healthcareworkers. “They need to ensure
that all preventive measures likefrequent washing of hands/useof alcohol-based hand sanitis-ers and respiratory etiquettes(using tissue/handkerchief
while coughing or sneezing)are followed at all times.
It also asked healthcareworkers to follow social dis-tancing and use masks to pre-
their medical condition to thehospital authorities for them to get posted only in non-Covid areas," the advisory said.
���������������� *(3$(."0
Following the second day oflockdown 4.0, there was a
huge traffic movement acrossthe National Capital, with traf-fic at snarls at Noida andGhazipur border ,as UP Policeasked for passes frommotorists, during morning hours.
Public transport resumedin Delhi on Tuesday with buses,auto-rickshaws and taxis plyingon the road, albeit with a lim-ited number of passengers.The Delhi TransportCorporation and Cluster busesresumed services with social-distancing norms and safetymeasures in place like use ofsanitisers and masks to checkthe spread of the deadly coro-navirus.
Chief Minister ArvindKejriwal on Monday hadannounced relaxations incurbs, including reopening ofpublic transport with social-distancing norms, during theextended lockdown that is slat-
ed to end on May 31.Following the traffic move-
ment since Tuesday morningand long vehicle queues atDelhi-Noida borders, theDelhi Traffic Police alertedthrough Twitter commuterstravelling to Noida to plantheir trip only if their vehicleshave movement passes issuedby the authorities concerned.
"As U.P. Police is allowingentry to NOIDA only for vehi-cle heaving movement passissued by D.M. NOIDA. Peopletravelling from Delhi to Noidausing Kalindi Kunj barrageflyover and DND flyover mayplan their trip accordingly," ittweeted.
A senior Uttar PradeshPolice official said scores ofpeople thronged the Delhi-Noida border Tuesday morn-ing.
"We are checking everyvehicle but sometimes itbecomes very difficult due tothe numbers of vehicles. Peoplewith valid passes are beingallowed. However, if someone
does not have a pass and is car-rying some important itemslike medicine, they are alsobeing allowed," he said.
The official said there weresome who had come out only
to roam in the area and theywere sent back with a warning.
According to a DelhiTraffic Police officer deployedat the Noida border, most of thevehicles were going from Delhi
to Noida in the morning.The scenario will change in
the evening when people willreturn to their homes, headded.
Meanwhile, a senior police
officers said over 2,000 trafficpolice personnel have beendeployed on the ground toensure the smooth flow ofvehicular movement across thecity and at the adjoining bor-dering areas.
In the wake of relaxationsduring the phase four of thelockdown, the volume of vehi-cles on the roads increased sig-nificantly and to manage themovement of traffic, the focusis being laid on regulation injunction management, said TajHasan, Special Commissionerof Police, Traffic.
"Police had presence onpickets earlier but now with theincrease in vehicles on theroads, we have also deployedour staff on traffic junctions forregulations to ensure smoothmovement of traffic and nojams," he said.
Several pickets of trafficpolice personnel, Hasan said,have been deployed across thecity and at the bordering areas.
On the eastern borderalone, at least 16 pickets from
the department have beendeployed to control traffic, headded.
Since rules were beingstrictly followed at the UPborder and many commuterswere not allowed entry, thosewho were on the stretch ofKalindi Kunj were asked to take
a U-turn, due to which therewas a heavy traffic movement,Hasan said.
Traffic officials said eventhough the volume of vehicleshas increased across the city butno reports no major jams havebeen reported so far.
���������������� *(3$(."0
New Delhi MunicipalCouncil (NDMC) on
Tuesday certified as 3 star rat-ing city under the garbage freecities category by Ministry ofHousing and Urban affairs.
In an event held at NewDelhi, Hardeep Singh Puri ,
Ministre of Statefor Housing andUrban affairsannounced theresult of smartrating ofgarbage free
cities in which NDMC certifiedas 3 star rating for the assess-ment year 2019- 2020, theNDMC said in a statement.
The ‘Star Rating Protocol’was launched by the Ministryof Housing and Urban Affairsin January 2018 to institu-tionalised a mechanism forcities to achieve Garbage Freestatus, and to motivate cities toachieve higher degrees of cleanliness.
���������������� *(3$(."0
A21-year-old man wasstabbed to death over a
petty issue in south Delhi's NebSarai area. Police said that theincident occurred on Saturdayand one accused has beenarrested while two juvenileshave been detained.
The victim has been iden-tified as Rohit (21), a residentof Sangam Vihar.
According to Atul KumarThakur, the DeputyCommissioner of Police(DCP), South district, onSaturday, police received infor-mation that a man had beenstabbed in Sangam Vihar.
"On reaching the spot, thevictim was found dead. OneVirender, who sustainedinjuries on his elbow, was alsofound at the spot," said theDeputy Commissioner ofPolice .
"During enquiry, it wasrevealed that eight to ninepeople were playing ludo onmobile phone in the junglebehind Sangam Vihar onSaturday evening. Meanwhile,
three to four persons camethere and started pelting stoneson them," said the DCP.
"When the other personsleft the spot, the accusedstabbed Rohit on his chest andalso injured Virender. Later, theaccused fled from the spot. Thedead body of deceased was sentto AIIMS Hospital," said theDCP.
"During investigation, theeyewitnesses revealed the nameof accused as Aarif (20), a res-ident of Sangam Vihar, and twojuveniles. On the basis of theinformation, raids were con-ducted at their possible hide-outs and Aarif was nabbed, theDeputy Commissioner ofPolice said.
"Interrogation revealed thata quarrel had taken placebetween Aarif and Rohit, fol-lowing which Aarif threatenedthe victim of dire conse-quences. Aarif also disclosedthat one Ram Babu and twojuveniles were also involved inthe crime. Thereafter, the juve-niles were also apprehended,"said the Deputy Commissionerof Police.
NEW DELHI: More than fourlakh people have registered atthe Delhi Government's websitefor going home, with the cityGovernment arranging trans-port for about 65,000 migrants,the official data said.
Speaking to IANS, an offi-cial said a fresh order has beenissued by the Delhi governmentdirecting for publicizing theweblink https://epass.jan-tasamavad.org among strandedpersons and also counsellingthe migrants against travellingon foot and walking on railwaytracks.
"More than four lakh peo-ple have registered at the web-site for going home. About65,000 have been sent to theirhome states since the travel wasallowed," the official told IANSon Tuesday.
The official said transportis being arranged for more andmore people as more requestsare coming each day.
"This is an ongoing process.After we receive a request, weforward it to their home stateand after their approval, thedemand for a train is forward-ed to the Ministry of Railways,"the official said.
The order, signed by theDelhi Chief Secretary, saidDistrict Magistrates shouldcheck around railway stationsand ISBTs to ensure thatmigrants are shifted to thenearest shelter homes in the dis-trict by buses arranged by theadministration.
"The Delhi Chief Secretaryhas directed that it has to beensured that the movement ofstranded migrant workers whoare willing to go their homestates is facilitated and thestranded migrant workersappropriately persuaded andcounselled that they shouldnot be walking on road andrailway tracks when they cantravel in buses, trains," the offi-cial said.
The order, according tothe official, also said that theinformation on the arrange-ments for travel in special busesand Shramik specials should bewidely disseminated amongmigrant workers. The ChiefSecretary, in the order, a copyof which is with IANS, also saidthat the provision of food andlodging should be made for themigrants and finally districtNodal Officers or additional
District Magistrates concernedshould make their travel planstate-wise and integrate themwith the scheduled trains leav-ing Delhi.
"Special buses from railwaystations, to ferry the passengersarriving by trains to their home,shall be engaged wherever pub-lic/personal transport is notavailable, subject to maintain-ing proper social distancingnorms."
The order said necessarysecurity arrangements shouldbe made by the police at allplaces in order to facilitatesmooth movement of stranded
persons."State Nodal Officers in
coordination with the State/UTspecific Nodal Officers andDistrict Nodal Officers shallassess the requirement of addi-tional trains for migrant per-sons and convey the same to theMinistry of Railways," the ordersaid.
The order came days afterthe Chief Secretary orderedthe officials concerned toensure that the migrant work-ers do not walk on roads or rail-way tracks and should be takento the nearest shelter facilities,if found doing so.
As per the official data, over18,000 people were housed inabout 340 shelters across thecity. The government has alsoarranged about 1,900 FoodCentres catering to over millionbeneficiaries daily twice.
Thousands of migrants arestuck at different places awayfrom home due to suddenannouncement of the lock-down from March 25.
The workers have startedreturning to their native villagesand hometowns on foot or inovercrowded vehicles, resultingin deaths and fatal accidents.
IANS
���������������� *(3$(."0
Indian Railways has become6th country in the world to
join the elite club of producinghigh horse power locomotive(12000 HP) indigenously under‘Make in India’ programme.
The locomotive manufac-tured by Madhepura ElectricLocomotive Pvt. Ltd. (MELPL)will help to decongest the sat-urated tracks by improvingaverage speed and loadingcapacity of freight trains
The Ministry claimed thatthe high horse power locomo-tive is operationalised on broadgauge track in the world for thefirst time. The locomotivemade its maiden commercialrun between Deen DayalUpadhaya Station to ShivpurMonday.
“The loco is namedWAG12 with Number 60027.
The train departed from DeenDayal Upadhyaya Station at14:08 hrs in long haul forma-tion for Dhanbad Division ofEast Central Railway, consist-ing of 118 wagons which trav-elled from Pt Deen DayalUpadhyaya Jn to Barwadih viaDehri-on-Sone, Garhwa Road,”the ministry said in a state-ment.
The Ministry said that itwas a proud moment forIndian Railways, as it became6th country in the world to jointhe elite club of producinghigh horse power locomotiveindegenously.
The Madhepura factory isthe largest integrated greenfield facility built to the high-est standards of quality andsafety with production capac-ity of 120 locomotives andspread across a massive 250acres.
“The locomotive with twinBo-Bo design having 22.5 T(tonnes) axle load is upgradableto 25 tonnes with design speedof 120 kmph. This locomotivewill be a game changer for fur-ther movement of coal trainsfor Dedicated FreightCorridor,” it said, adding thatthe locomotives can be trackedthrough GPS for its strategicuse through embedded soft-ware and Antennae being lift-ed through the servers onground through microwavelink.
“The locomotive is capableof working on railway tracks
with conventional OHE lines aswell as on Dedicated Freightcorridors with high rise OHElines,” it said.
The ministry further saidthat the locomotive has air-conditioned driver cabs oneither side. The locomotive isequipped with regenerativebraking system which pro-vides substantial energy savingsduring operations. “These highhorse power locomotives willhelp to decongest the saturat-ed tracks by improving averagespeed of freight trains,” itadded.
The design was completedfor the whole locomotive in arecord time of four to sixmonths and despite the initialhiccups and the onset of theCOVID-19 pandemic, it couldnot dampen the spirit ofAugust initiative of IR, sur-passing all odds we could
secure the permission of theBihar Government to resumeoperations at the MadhepuraFactory putting the projectback on track.
As part of the project, fac-tory along with township hasbeen set up in Madhepura(Bihar) with capacity to man-ufacture 120 locomotives peryear. “The project will createmore than 10,000 direct andindirect jobs in the country.More than Rs 2000 Cr has beeninvested in the project by thecompany,” it added.
The project started in 2018and the Prime Minister ofIndia inaugurated the projecton 10th April’ 2018. The pro-totype locomotive was deliv-ered in March 2018. Based onthe test results having designissues, the complete locomotiveincluding bogies has beenredesigned.
"�������� ���?��������� ��������� *��%>2�@�!��
����������������*(3$(."0
Delhi Traffic Police onTuesday said they have
issued over one lakh noticesthrough SMS and speed postfor compoundable offencescaptured on camera since thefirst phase of coronavirus lock-down.
According to police, thetraffic police has issued1,00,436 notices through SMSand another 80 noticesthrough speed post fromMarch 25 to May 17.
"During the same period,7,998 notices were sent for vio-lations regarding improperparking which were registeredthrough the 'violation on cam-era app," said police.
Traffic police officials saidin the coming weeks, theywould be prioritising actionagainst improper parking andlane violation to decongestdriving space on the road andto make driving safer.
Meanwhile, NS Bundela,the Joint Commissioner ofPolice, Traffic said that toprotect the health of its per-sonnel and to ensure publicsafety, the traffic police hasopted for electronic enforce-ment of traffic over physicalenforcement.
"It is now focusing oncontactless traffic enforcementdrive with maximum use ofcamera-based violation detec-tions through 'violation oncamera app', traffic sentinel,red light violation detectionand tripod mounted laserspeed gun cameras,"said JointCP.
"We have also distributed
immunity booster kits,encouraged practice of yogaamong traffic staff to ensuregood health. With the help ofpublic traffic ranges, thedepartment had also arrangedfood and distributed maskand sanitizers to the needy," hesaid.
Counselling session oncoronavirus has also beenorganised for traffic staffthrough webinars with thehelp of doctors from promi-nent hospitals, he said.
The DeputyCommissioner of Police(DCPs) of each traffic rangehave been nominated as NodalHealth Officer for briefingand sensitizing the staffregarding prevention and pro-tection from COVID-19, headded.
Besides, the traffic policein association with the Societyof Indian AutomobileManufacturers (SIAM),Indraprastha Gas Ltd andEicher Motor Ltd organized aroad safety and corona sensi-tization campaign for com-mercial vehicle drivers atBurari ground and more than3000 kits were also distributedto them, the senior officer said.
Safety kits were also dis-tributed to drivers at the bor-der areas by the concernedDCP traffic of south, outer,west and east range, he added.
For disposing of camera-based traffic violations, virtu-al court was established onMay 13 which will furtherstrengthen the traffic disci-pline in the city and till May18, it had received 32,722non-compoundable offencesfor disposal, officials added.
said till now , around 65,000migrants from Delhi have beensent to their home States bytrain. Delhi government isseeking permission from dif-ferent states to send back theircitizens stranded.
On migrants and con-struction workers issue, DelhiLabour Minister Gopal Raialso interacted with nodal offi-cers digitally.
Delhi government hasgiven Rs5000 financial assis-tance to construction workers.
While Delhi governmenthas allowed construction activ-ities in Delhi, Rai said thatworkers can register them-selves on web portal -www.edistrict.delhigovt.nic.into get assistance from the gov-ernment.
Rai said that 40000 work-ers have received financial assis-tance from the government tilldate. The Minister has direct-ed nodal officers to collectlabourers and construction
workers’ data so that timelyassistance could avail them.
This may be noted that inMay month, few constructionworkers could not get the assis-tance as they weren’t regis-tered with government’s e-por-tal thus Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi has launched theweb portal.
Meanwhile ,Delhi hasreported 500 fresh coronaviruscases in last 24 hours largest sin-gle - day spike. With this , thetotal number of coronacasesnow 10, 554 of which 5,638 areactive cases and 166 fatalities.
number of people sufferingfrom dengue in the nationalCapital has reached to 52 thisyear. Meanwhile, no new casesof malaria and chikungunyareported in last one week.
The number of peoplediagnosed with malaria andchikungunya stand at 39 and18 respectively.
Out of total dengue cases,18 patients who diagnosedwith the disease belong toDelhi while 23 patients tracedhere were from different statesand other 11 patients did not
provide their address.Mosquito-breeding has
been reported in at least 1619households and 1870 legalnotices have been issued thisyear, according to datareleased by the South DelhiMunicipal Corporation(SDMC).
The dengue breedingcheckers have checked3543681houses and alsoissued challans to 59 numbersof office and residentialpremises till May 16.
A senior SDMC officialsaid that all the preventivesteps have been taken toreduce the cases. “The key toprevention of Dengue isensuring there is no clean
stagnant water in homes andaround, which does not allowthe Aedes mosquitoes tobreed, and therefore denguecannot spread,” he said.
Union Health MinisterHarsh Vardhan had lastmonth chaired a high-levelreview meeting on preventionand control of vector bornediseases and stressed on theimportance of innovativeawareness drives, communityparticipation and coopera-tion of all the stakeholders inchanging the situation ofCovid-19 to prevent such dis-eases.
Dengue mosquito larvaebreed in clear, standing waterwhile those of malaria mos-
quito thrive even in dirtywater. Doctors have advisedpeople to take precautionsand ensure that there is nobreeding of mosquito larvaearound them. They haveurged people to wear full-sleeves clothes and use mos-quito nets.
The malaria parasite istransmitted by femaleAnopheles mosquitoes, whichbite mainly between dusk anddawn. According to WorldHealth Organisation malaria iscaused by the protozoan par-asite Plasmodium. Humanmalaria is caused by four dif-ferent species of Plasmodium:P falciparum, P malariae, Povale and P vivax.
As countries world over bat-tle the Covid-19 conta-
gion, a new epidemic in theform of mental health disorderis on the anvil.
Researchers in the UK havefound that one in three peopleinfected with coronavirus latersuffers symptoms of post-trau-matic stress disorder (PTSD), including depressionand anxiety.
PTSD is an anxiety disor-der caused by very stressful,frightening or distressingevents. The estimates are basedon an analysis of multiple stud-ies of SARS and MERS, twooutbreaks caused by differentstrains of coronavirus, as wellas the effects of SARS-CoV-2infection on people in hospitalswherein they developed men-tal health disorders after anaverage of almost three years.
One in four people hospi-talised with Covid-19 alsoexperience delirium duringtheir illness, which can increaserisk of death or extend time inhospital, the researchers said intheir study published in TheLancet Psychiatry.
While the long-term effectsof Covid-19 were not addressedin the study, the effects of pre-vious coronavirus outbreakssuggest long-lasting mentalhealth problems. Overall, peo-ple infected by one of themany types of coronavirus mayexperience psychiatric prob-lems, both while hospitalisedand potentially after theyrecover.
“Most people with Covid-19 will not develop any men-tal health problems, evenamong those with severe casesrequiring hospitalisation, butgiven the huge numbers of peo-ple getting sick, the globalimpact on mental health couldbe considerable,” said co-leadauthor of the study Dr JonathanRogers at the UniversityCollege London (UCL)Division of Psychiatry.
“Our analysis focuses onpotential mental health risks ofbeing hospitalised with a virusinfection, and how psychiatricconditions could worsen theprognosis or hold people back
from returning to their normallives after recovering.”
The team analysed 65 peer-reviewed studies and sevenrecent pre-prints that are await-ing peer review. These includ-ed data from more 3,500 peo-ple who have had one of thethree related illnesses.
When data for patientswith Covid-19 was examined,the scientists found evidencefor delirium in 26 of 40 inten-sive care unit patients andmore mild symptoms of agita-tion in 40 of 58 intensive careunit patients.
‘To avoid a large-scalemental health crisis, we hope
that people who have been hos-pitalised with Covid-19 will beoffered support, and moni-tored after they recover toensure they do not developmental illnesses…,’ seniorauthor professor AnthonyDavid, UCL Institute of MentalHealth said.
The study does have limi-tations, however — findingsfrom the SARS and MERS out-breaks may not be applicable toCovid-19, considering howmuch bigger the new disease isin terms of death rates and dis-ruption to day-to-day lives.
Indians too have beenmentally affected with the lock-down. A survey conducted bythe Indian Psychiatry Society(IPS) last month revealed thatthere has been a 20 per cent risein mental illness cases, with atleast one in five Indians suf-fering from it.
����� *(3$(."0
In view of the representa-tions received from various
students who were scheduled tojoin colleges abroad but are nowkeen to pursue their studies inthe country due to the changedcircumstances arising out ofCovid-19, the National TestingAgency (NTA) on Tuesdayannounced to give one lastopportunity to fill the form ofJEE (Main) 2020 till May 24.
This is also applicable toother students who have notbeen able to complete theapplication process or submitonline Application Form forJEE (Main) 2020 due to onereason or another.
While HRD MinisterRamesh Pokhriyal Nishankannounced the NTA decisionof dates’ extension, he alsolaunched a mobile app calledthe ‘National Test Abhyas’. TheApp has been developed byNTA to enable candidates totake mock tests for upcomingexams such as JEE Main, NEETunder the NTA’s purview.
A senior HRD Ministryofficial said the app has beenlaunched to facilitate candi-dates’ access to high quality
mock tests in the safety andcomfort of their homes sincethere was a demand for mak-ing up the loss to students dueto closure of educational insti-tutions and NTA’s Test-PracticeCenters (TPCs) due to thecontinuing lockdown.
Students across the coun-try can use the App both onlineand offline to access high qual-ity tests, free of cost, in a bid tobe fully prepared for theupcoming JEE, NEET andother competitive exams.
Speaking at the occasion,the HRD Minister said, “Thistimely launch is designed toensure that no student is leftbehind in getting exposure topractice testing, especiallywhen Student’s loss due to clo-sure of educational institu-tions is to be compensated
and NTA’s Test-PracticeCenters are shut due to theCovid-19 lockdown.”
Over the last year, edutechas a sector has witnessed a lotof innovation especially inleveraging advanced technolo-gies like Artificial Intelligenceand Machine Learning, goingbeyond simple digital distrib-ution of content.
Every student is uniqueand requires specific guidanceto detect and overcome gaps in knowledge and test tak-ing strategy.
The test report on the NTAMock Test App comes with adetailed breakdown of stu-dents’ performance throughwhich they can understandtheir personalised path toachieving better scores in theirentrance examination.
�����%� $���� *(3$(."0
Ambikapur in Chhattisgarh,Rajkot and Surat in
Gujarat, Mysuru in Karnataka,Indore in Madhya Pradesh andNavi Mumbai in Maharashtrahave got five-star rating forbeing garbage-free cities. TheNew Delhi Municipal Council(NDMC) has got three star rat-ing while Delhi Cantonment,Vadodara, Rohtak are among‘one-star garbage free cities’.
Incidentally, some of thefive-star rated cities are coro-na hotspots. According to theMinistry of Health and FamilyWelfare data, Surat, Rajkot,Indore, Mumbai (includingNavi Mumbai) and Mysorehave reported 1127, 80, 2565,21,385 and 89 confirmed casesof coronavirus so far.
The Ministry of Housingand Urban Affairs on Tuesdaycertified six cities as 5-Stargarbage-free cities, 65 cities as3-Star, and 70 cities as 1-Starcities. According to the min-istry, as many as 197 citiesapplied for 7 star rating andnone of them qualified. Thecities include Vijayawada,Trupati, Chandigarh,Gandhinagar, Ahemdabad,Karnal, Bhopal, Ujjain,Khargone, Katni, Bhurhanpur,Chhindawar, Singrauli, Thane,Shridi and Jalgaon were amongthe 65 cities accredited ‘3-Star’rating.The performance ofmunicipalities of Bihar, WestBengal and North eastern states
were not up to the mark.Chhattisgarh’s small town
Ambikapur, having popula-tion of less than two lakh,came to limelight last yearwhen the city got second in theSwachh City ranking.According to officials,Ambikapur is the only localbody in the country, whichruns a ‘garbage café’ for rag-pickers which will provide freefood in exchange for plasticwaste. The concept of this cafeis that people can get their plas-tic waste weighed and enjoy awarm meal in return. The cafehas been set up by AmbikapurMunicipal Corporation (AMC). Chhattisgarh’s nine cities gotthree star rating which includePatan, Bilaspur, Bhilai Nagarand Jashpur Nagar.
The NDMC, which got thethree star rating, had won the‘cleanest small city’ award forthe second consecutive yearunder Swachchh Survekshan2019 in the category includescities with populations of oneto three lakh.
Only 3 per cent of Delhi’sgeographical area and popula-tion come under the NDMC,but it is considered the seat ofpolitical power in India. Mysoreis the only city in south Indiawhich got five star rating.
Announcing the star ratingfor garbage free cities, UnionHousing and Urban Affairsminister Hardeep Singh Purisaid that the coronavirus crisishas brought forward the
importance of sanitisationalong with solid waste man-agement. It would not be anexaggeration to say that thepresent situation could havebeen much worse, had it notbeen for the critical part thatSwachh Bharat Mission-Urbanhas played in the last five yearsto ensure a high degree ofcleanliness and sanitation inurban areas, the Ministeradded.
In the recent phase of StarRating Assessment, 1435 citiesapplied. During the assess-ments, 1.19 crore citizen feed-backs and over 10 lakh geo-tagged pictures were collectedand 5175 solid waste process-ing plants were visited by 1210field assessors. While 698cities cleared the desktopassessment, 141 cities havebeen certified with Star Ratingduring field assessment.
Puri also launched therevised protocol for the StarRating of Garbage Free Citiesat the event. The protocol hasbeen devised in a holistic man-ner including components suchas the cleanliness of drains &water bodies, plastic wastemanagement, managing con-struction & demolition waste,etc. which are critical driversfor achieving garbage-freecities. This year 1,435 munic-ipal entities participated in thegarbage free ranking competi-tion, finally after several veri-fications 141 cities have beenranked
����� *(3$(."0
Based on inputs fromInterpol, the CBI has alert-
ed the States/UnionTerritories/Central Agencieson a threat from a malicioussoftware that uses a bankingTrojan Cerberus which deploysits app to trick users intoinstalling it on their smart-phones.
This Trojan uses an updaterelated to Coronavirus pan-demic and primarily focuses onstealing financial data such ascredit card numbers and two-factor authentication details.
“Based on inputs receivedfrom INTERPOL, CBI hasissued an alert relating to abanking Trojan known asCerberus. This malicious soft-ware takes advantage of Covid-19 Pandemic to impersonateand send SMS using the lure ofCovid-19 related content todownload the embedded mali-cious link, which deploys itsmalicious app usually spreadvia phishing campaigns to trickusers into installing it on theirsmartphones,” said the CBIwhich is the nodal agency forInterpol in India.
The dubious app can useoverlay attacks to trick victimsinto providing personal infor-mation and can capture two-factor authentication details,the agency said.
Last week, the CBI had
issued an alert relating to drugtrafficking in the garb of ship-ments for Covid-19 protectiveequipment. The alert was alsobased on inputs from theInterpol.
“Based on inputs receivedfrom INTERPOL, CBI hasissued an alert relating to inter-national drug trafficking activ-ities taking advantage of thisglobal pandemic scenario andof possible drug shipmentsconcealed in cargo relating toCovid-19 protective equip-ments,” the CBI had said in astatement last week.
The Interpol has alsowarned that criminal organi-zations are using food deliveryservices to transport drugs and other illicit goods ascountries are undergoing lockdown during the global Covid-19 pandemic.
�� ��%� ���� %�� *(3$(."0
The CRPF has ordered anenquiry after expired polio
vaccines were allegedly admin-istered to some infants at amedical camp organised by aprivate doctor at the campus ofSpecial Duty Group (SDG) atPushp Vihar in Saket here on Saturday.
The SDG mans the outercordon of Prime Minister’ssecurity ring both at his officialresidence as well as during out-door functions. The wife of ajawan, whose child was ‘immu-nised’ with such vaccine, hasalso written to the Union HomeMinister Amit Shah complain-ing about the incident throughcommunication that was alsosent to the paramilitary chiefAP Maheshwari, officials said.
“Immunisation programwas not official. Around 50 chil-dren of SDG/CRPF who weredue for vaccination could not beadministered the vaccines dueto lockdown. Parents of thesechildren had tied up with a clin-
ic that was facilitated into thecamp to vaccinate after observ-ing Covid-19 protocols,” aCRPF spokesperson said.
“It is learnt that four dosesout of 116 got expired on30.04.2020. An enquiry hasbeen ordered by CRPF MedicalDirectorate and report is like-ly to be received soon and find-ings of the report will be takento its logical end as per thefacts,” the spokesperson added.
The private clinic washeaded by Dr RK Sinha, a pae-diatrician who was earlier asso-ciated with Safdarjung Hospitaland Ram Manohar LohiaHospital, officials said.
Preliminary probe hasrevealed that no negative impli-cation has been found on thechildren immunised with theexpired vaccines. The MedicalDirectorate has gathered infor-mation from the manufactur-ers/pharma companies thathave suggested that the vaccinesdo not expire immediately afterthe expiry date and are effectivefor a few weeks.
��� � *(3$(."0
With dentists, auxiliariesand patients at high risk
of cross-infection in a dentalclinic during the Covid-19pandemic, the Union HealthMinistry has banned anyemergency dental proceduresin the Red zone while inOrange and Green zones suchservices will be allowed withrestrictions.
The same will, however,still remain closed inContainment zones complete-
ly but tele-consultancy can bedone for those seeking such facility.
Further, in case of emer-gencies, patients in this zonecan seek ambulance services totravel to the nearby Coviddental facility, according to theguidelines issued by theMinistry on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Healthand Family Welfare has furthersaid, “Due to the high riskassociated with the examina-tion of the oral cavity, oral can-cer screening under National
Cancer Screening programshould be deferred until newpolicy/guidelines are issued.”
“All routine and electivedental procedures should bedeferred for a later reviewuntil new policy/guidelinesare issued,” it further added.
Meanwhile, the guidelineshave also identified a list ofprotocols which need to be fol-lowed, in the clinics and den-tal hospitals irrespective ofthe zones.
The Ministry has asked thedental clinics to ensure venti-
lation and air circulation withnatural air using exhaust blow-ers, avoid ceiling fans. In caseof window or split air condi-tioning system, they should befrequently serviced.
Use of an indoor portableair-cleaning system with HEPAfilter and UV light has beenadvised. It also has encouragedtelephonic screening as thefirst contact to get all necessarymedical history and if thepatients show symptoms ofCoronavirus, the dental careappointment should be post-
poned for three weeks excepton dental emergencies.
The dental professionalshave been asked to encouragethe use of Aarogya Setu Appamong the patients. Earlier, theministry’s guidelines stated thatdental care settings invariablycarry the risk of Covid-19 infec-tion due to the specificity of itsprocedures, which involves face-to-face communication withpatients, and frequent exposureto saliva, blood, and other bodyfluids, and the handling ofsharp instruments.
.������������������$��������������/��
����� *(3$(."0
In the wake of opening up ofmore offices and workplaces
following lockdown relax-ations, the Union HealthMinistry has issued a set ofguidelines detailing Do’s andDon’ts on preventive andresponse measures to containthe spread of Covid-19 inworkplace settings.
As per the guidelines, thereis no need to close the entireoffice building and stall workin other areas of the office.Work can be resumed after dis-infection as per laid downprotocol if there are one or two
cases of coronavirus. The dis-infection procedure will belimited to areas visited by thepatient in the past 48 hours.
The Ministry said that ifthere is a larger outbreak, theentire building will have to besealed for 48 hours for thor-ough disinfection. All the staffwill work from home till thebuilding is adequately disin-fected and is declared fit for re-occupation.
“If any individual is foundto be suffering from symptomssuggestive of Covid-19, it mustbe immediately reported to theconcerned central or statehealth authorities as well as on
the helpline number 1075,” asper the guidelines.
“Any staff requesting homequarantine based on the con-tainment zone activities intheir residential areas shouldbe permitted to work fromhome” it said.
“A risk assessment will beundertaken by the designatedpublic health authority (districtRRT/treating physician) andaccordingly further advice shallbe made regarding manage-ment of case, his/her contactsand need for disinfection,” saidthe Health Ministry.
It said, “The necessaryactions for contact tracing and
disinfection of workplace willstart once the report of thepatient is received as positive.The report will be expeditedfor this purpose.”
Simple public health mea-sures like respiratory etiquettes,physical distancing of at leastone meter, mandatory use offace covers or masks and prac-tice frequent hand washingfor at least 40 to 60 secondseven when hands are not vis-ibly dirty and use of alcoholbased hand sanitizers for atleast 20 seconds are themandatory steps that the staffhas to be followed to keep thevirus at bay.
Bharat Area (DBA) havingjurisdiction over the States ofTamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala,Andhra Pradesh and Telanganaare underscoring the adages‘Once a Soldier Always ASoldier’ and ‘I am a soldier. Ifight where I am told and I winwhere I fight’.
This time around, theirfight is against coronavirus.Since the civilians in theseStates are well served by therespective Governments, theDBA, more popular by itsname Southern Command,took up another challenge. TheArmy establishment throughits words and deeds sent a mes-sage to the retired soldiers, offi-cers, war widows in these Statesthat they were not alone in thisworld and the soldiers andofficers respect and adore them
though the veterans and theirdependents are away from theregiments and brigades.
The DBA launched aWhats App messaging systemand reached the retired sol-diers, war widows and thoseabove 70 years of age in par-ticular to enquire about theirneeds and well being. The mis-sion was named OperationNaman and the objective wasto offer moral support to thosewho had devoted their lives forthe nation and to resolve their
concerns, if any.“The focus was to assist
them in addressing healthissues, delivering essential sup-plies and groceries to needyveterans, offer help in com-mutation and extending can-teen facilities on priority basis.The Rajya Sainik Boards andZilla Sainik Boards played cru-cial role in making the opera-tion a success” said a release bythe Army’s SouthernCommand.
A Special Cell was estab-
lished at Madras RegimentalCentre, Wellington in the pic-turesque Nilgiris from wherethe serving officers and soldierscontacted all Ex Service Menand War Widows and enquiredtheir well-being similar to themanner in which youngsters inthe family asking their grandfathers and grand mothersabout their health and wellbeing.
“Special activities are beingcarried out by Karnataka &Kerala Sub Area (KKSA). Awar widow who has uterus can-cer requires regular bloodand platelets. She got admittedin a delicate condition duringlockdown. She has been givencontinuous support by the
Headquarters. Special arrange-ments have been made to pro-vide blood and platelets supply.23 service personnel have beensent for blood transfusion.Also a case has been taken upfor one-time financial grant totide away the present financialdifficulties,” said the release.
Captain K Gopakumarwho retired from Indian Navywho is in charge of the Navalpersonnel in Kerala told ThePioneer that he was in contactwith soldiers and sailors toensure that all is well withthem. “Our Whats App Groupis tracking the well being of allour former personnel and theirfamilies and attend to theirneeds,” said the Captain.
Elderly veterans especiallyabove the age of 80 were in fora surprise when the soldiersdelivered a cake along with acard on behalf of GeneralOfficer Commanding DakshinBharat Area.
����������������������������������
$����%��������/��"0
Uncertainty stares onmore than six lakh
workers employed in thecotton knitwear industrialclusters in Tirupur districtin Tamil Nadu. Tirupuraccounts for 90 per cent ofcotton knitwear exportsfrom India, employs morethan 6,00,000 workers andearns more than �200 bil-lion by way of exports everyyear.
These are all going tobe history as the industrialunits are on the verge ofclosure following therefusal of Banks to grantmoratorium of ninemonths on the term loansand working capital loansavailed by the industrialunits.
“The units remainclosed since March 24 aspart of the national lock-down and there has beenno business. It will takeanother nine months forthe revival of business. Tillthen the Governmentshould ‘hand hold’ theindustrial units, declare amoratorium of ninemonths on equated month-ly instalments (EMI) aswell as on the principalamount. We will pay backthe entire amount withinterest but what we areasking is some kind ofbreathing peace,” Raja MShanmugham , president,Tirupur ExportersAssociation, told ThePioneer.
The TEA chief haswritten yet another letter toPrime Minister Narendra
Modi highlighting the pre-carious situation faced bythe industrialists inTirupur. “The ReserveBank of India had issued adirective permitting amoratorium of threemonths on payment ofinstalments in respect of alloutstanding term loans ason March 1, 2020.
The Banks wereallowed a deferment ofthree months on paymentof interests in respect of allsuch facilities outstandingas on March 1, 2020. Ourconcern is that the mora-torium of three monthsperiod will get expired by31 May 2020 and the com-mencement of repaymentstarts by June 1, 2020including the compoundinterest calculated for themoratorium period,” said
Shanmugham.He pointed out that
the industries have notbeen permitted to operatefor the last two months. :Ifwe take into account theglobal market closure dateit would be actually threemonths. The leading glob-al retail stores wouldreopen only from June andthey would place the ordersgradually, that too in anincrement manner,” he haswritten in a letter to PrimeMinister on Monday.
Pointing out the sen-sitive nature of the currentsituation the TEA hasasked the Government ofIndia and The RBI for amoratorium on servicing ofinterest and principal byanother nine months forthe knitwear industry andMSMEs.
���������������������� ��$�����������������������
$����%�������� /��"0
Kerala which won interna-tional acclaim for its effec-
tive handling of the covid-19 islooking like losing the battle tothe pandemic during the lasttwo days.
The State which claimedthat it had flattened the coro-navirus curve a fortnight agoreported 12 new cases of thepandemic on Tuesday.
Chief Minister PinarayiVijayan in his daily press brief-ing on Tuesday said that all the12 persons who tested positivefor coronavirus were thosewho returned to the Staterecently. “While eight personswere expatriates who returnedto the State recently, theremaining eight were fromMaharashtra (six) and Gujarat(two). It has to be said that thepandemic has come back to theState through the expatriates,many of them returned to the
State without any valid reasons.This is highly objectionable,”said the Chief Minister.
Vijayan said there were642 persons in the State whohave been confirmed of coro-navirus pandemic. “There are142 persons undergoing treat-ment in various hospitals inKerala. 72,000 persons areunder observation out of which71,545 are in their own hous-es. On Tuesday, 119 personshave been admitted to hospitalsfor suspected covid-19,” hesaid.
The hospitals in the Statesaw unprecedented crowd overthe last two days because of therevival of the pandemic, saidthe chief minister. He asked theexpatriates to return to the Stateonly if there was any emer-gency situation. “The State saw74, 426 persons returning tothe State from outside. Wehad contained the disease tillthe expatriates returned to the
State. It was with their returnthe State saw the pandemicresurging,” said the chief min-ister.
He also declared that vio-lation of rules governing thewearing of masks and socialdistancing would be dealt withsternly by the police. “Legalproceedings have been initiat-ed against 2036 persons for notwearing masks. It has come tothe notice of the Governmentthat many private tuition cen-tres are functioning in the Stateviolating the guidelines. Legalactions will be initiated againstsuch centres,” he said.
The public examinationfor SSC students would beheld from June 1 and theGovernment has made allarrangements for the smoothconduct of the examination.Liquor outlets would becomeoperational for online sale ofspirits by this weekend, said theChief Minister.
Atotal of 688 persons tested pos-itive for coronavirus in Tamil
Nadu on Tuesday taking the totalnumber of covid cases in the Stateto 12,448, according to a releaseissued by directorate of public healthand preventive medicine. Out of the688 persons tested positive onTuesday, 87 were those whoreturned from West Asia (36),Maldives (1), Maharashtra (49) andKerala (1).
The number of cases testedpositive on Tuesday has come as adisappointment to health profes-sionals because the State has beenshowing a reduction in the numberof covid cases during the last oneweek. On May 12, the number ofpersons tested positive were 716 andsince then the number of cases fluc-tuated from 509 to 536 which wasregistered on Monday evening. The688 cases tested on Tuesday is the
highest number ofpositive cases sinceMay 12.
Chennai city alonetested 552 positivecases taking the totalnumber of cases in thecapital city to 7,672.The death toll in Tamil Nadu stoodat 84 as three more persons suc-cumbed to the pandemic onTuesday.
The day also saw 489 personsleaving hospitals fully recoveredtaking the total number of patientsdischarged from the hospitals tillTuesday evening 4,895. This meansthe total number of active cases inthe State is 7,553.
3,48, 174 samples and 3, 32, 352persons were tested in the State tilldate. There are 63 laboratoriesworking round-the-clock in theState to test samples.
Meanwhile the Tamil NaduState Board Examinations for Class
10 students scheduledto begin on June 1 hasbeen postponed to June15. KA Sengottaiyan,School educationMinister told reporterson Tuesday that theexamination would be
held from June 15 to June 25.The earlier decision of the
Government to hold the examina-tion from June 1 had drawn criti-cism from M K Stalin, president,DMK, who had questioned thelogic behind the move in the back-drop of the pandemic prevailing inthe State.
Sengottaiyan said that his inter-action with stakeholders was the rea-son fore the postponement of theexamination. “Many red zones andhotspots in the State would changeto green zone by mid-June and thiswould help to reduce the tension ifany among the students, parents andteachers,” said the Minister.
011�����������-��������#+�221
��$ ������ $����� /�./=!=
The Bengal administration evac-uated more than 3 lakh people
to safer areas even as super cycloneAmphan raced towards the Statesources at the State administrativeheadquarters Nabanna said addingChief Minister Mamata Banerjeehad decided to stay back at the sec-retariat till Wednesday evening bywhen the storm is expected hit theland.
Appealing to the people toremain indoors the Chief Ministersaid that the cyclone was believedto be stronger and more severethan Aila or Bulbul or other suchstorms that hit the region inrecent times.
“I request everyone to stayindoors and at safe areas till thecyclone subsides. Please do not go
close to beach areas. Instructionshave been given to all DistrictMagistrates, SPs, PoliceCommissioners.
We have evacuated people toshelter homes,” the Chief Ministersaid adding despite the large-scaleevacuation the administration wastrying to maintain social distanc-ing norms considering furtherproliferation of corona pandemic.
Three districts of North andSouth 24 Parganas and EastMidnapore apart from Kolkata arelikely to bear the maximum bruntof the storm, sources in the weath-er office said.
Reporting large-scale evacua-tion she said, while in South 24Parganas, 2 lakh people have beenevacuated about 50,000 peoplehave been removed to safer places
in North 24 Parganas.Some 40,000people have been evacuated in EastMidnapore and another 10,000have been removed to safe areas inWest Midnapore, she maintained.
Earlier the Chief Minister hada brief conversation with UnionHome Minister Amit Shah whocalled up Banerjee to expressassurance, sources said.
According to the weatheroffice Amphan is expected tocross Bengal-Bangladesh coastsbetween Digha in this side of theborder and Hatiya islands on theother side sometime post noon onWednesday.
The very severe cyclonic stormwill hit the land area with a max-imum sustained wind speed of 155to 165 kmph gusting to 180 kmph.
����� /�./=!=
Bengal Chief MinisterMamata Banerjee on
Tuesday said that a lot of issuesincluding speedy relief andhandling of the corona pan-demic would be discussedwhen the leaders of Oppositionparties meet via a video con-ference on May 22.
“The leaders of Oppositionparties including SharadPawarji, Sonia Gandhiji, MKStalin, Sitaram Yechury andothers would hold discussion-son corona pandemic througha video conference at 3 pm onMay 22… It will be a discussionsimilar to the ones taking placebetween various governmentfunctionaries,” Banerjee saidadding “all the sides during thediscussion will share theirviews and experiences on howthey are handling the crisis andwhat problem they are facing intackling the crisis.”
Such discussions betweentop leaders of the country werenothing new considering thesituation, she said. “We havebeen discussing the issues atvarious levels. So there is noth-ing wrong if we discuss it herethrough video conferencing,”she said.
The State BJP howeverslammed the Chief Minister for“playing politics during thishour of crisis.” Referring to theFriday meeting State BJP pres-ident Dilip Ghosh said, “in2019 these parties came togeth-er to defeat the BJP. They stageda big tamasha in Kolkata butended up losing so many seats.
“After being decimated inthe elections they are trying tostay afloat by creating newtypes of controversies. Insteadof cooperating with the centralGovernment and strengtheningthe hands Prime MinisterNarendra Modi who has drawnworld-wide acclaim for defthandling of the corona crisisthese people are trying to fishin the troubled waters.
“You can see what theCongress has been doing. Firstthey offered buses to rescue themigrant workers and whenUP Chief Minister JogiAdityanath ji wanted theirnumbers she provided themwith the numbers of vehiclesthat included auto rickshawsand even scooters… hence thepeople will ignore such gim-micks and they will watchModiji perform.”
��$�����������*�� �# ����������������
����� %$���%��� �4�<=0F
Doing a balancing act, theMaharashtra Government
on Tuesday declared MumbaiMetro Metropolitan Region(MMR) and areas falling undernine Municipal Corporations,including that Pune, Solapur,Nashik and Aurangabad, as“Red zones”, while it mergedboth green and orange zones ofrest of Maharashtra into oneand termed it as “Non-Red”zone to implement theLockdown-4 norms.
Announcing the newguidelines for the Lockdown -4 along the lines the indicationsgiven by Chief MinisterUddhav Thackeray earlier, theMaharashtra Governmentdeclared the MMR (whichamong other areas comprisesMumbai, satellite towns likeThane, Kalyan-Dombivli, NaviMumbai, Panvel, Vasai-Virar,Mira-Bhayandar andUlhasnagar), the municipalCorporations of Pune, Solapur,Aurangabad, Malegaon,Nashik, Dhule , Jalgaon ,Akolaand Amaravati as “Red Zones”.
The State Governmentdeclared the Green and OrangeZones falling in remaining partof the state “Non-Red Zone” forthe implementation of lock-down-4.
The Chief Minister, it maybe recalled, had on Mondaynight that State Government
would enforce the lockdown-4norms more strictly red zoneareas as it would have to tideover the coronavirus crisis inthe state before the onset of themonsoon. “We can lift the lockdown at any time. But I knowwhat will be consequences oflifting the lockdown at thisstate. I do not want to push thestate into a crisis. I am ready toface any kind of crisis of criti-cism. I am not going to take thedecision of lifting the lockdownin a hurry,” he had said.
As part of the new guide-lines released on Tuesday, theState Government authorisedthe Municipal/district author-ities to “demarcate” the con-tainment zones within the Redand Non-Red Zones, “aftertaking into consideration theguidelines of the Ministry ofHome Affairs (MHA)”.
“Municipal commission-ers & district collectors areempowered to decide the con-tainment zones... In contain-ment zones only essential activ-ities shall be allowed. Thereshall be strict perimeters toensure there is no movementof people in & out of thesezones. except medical emer-gencies & for maintainingsupply of essential goods,” theState Government guidelinesstated. In “Red Zones”, thestate government among otherthings, allowed: all essentialshops permitted earlier, non -
essential shops as per relaxationand guidelines issued earlierand operation of liquor shopsif permitted, home delivery orother wise,
“The shops/ malls/ estab-lishments /industries whichare not allowed to open in thered zones, will be permitted toremain open from 9am to5pm. only for the purpose ofupkeep & maintenance ofmaterial/machinery/furnitureetc. and for pre-monsoon pro-tection activities of propertyand goods. However no otheractivity (commercial/ produc-tion) will be permitted,” thenew guidelines stated.
The Government permit-ted e-commerce activity foressential as well as non-essen-tial items & material and allindustries, work at all con-struction sites ( Public/ private),all such pre-monsoon works(Public/private).
However, the state gov-ernment continued to banTaxi/Cab/ Aggregator andautorickshaw, while it permit-ted plying of four wheelers (1+2) and two wheelers ( onlyone rider) for essential worksand home delivery of foodfrom restaurants/ Kitchen
All emergency staff, includ-ing health & medical treasury, Disaster Management, policeFood & Civil supply, Municipalservices can operate at thelevel as per the need.
��� � '=��4
With one moredeath and 28
positive cases thetotal number ofcoronavirus casesreached 1,317 while the deathtoll touched 17 in the Unionterritory of Jammu andKashmir on Tuesday. At thesame time, 38 patients were dis-charged from different hospi-tals after they recovered fully.
According to officialsources, a 55-year-old cancerpatient from Rafiabad died atSKIMS taking the death toll inKashmir to 15.
Five Covid-19 positivepatients have died in the last 3days in Kashmir— 1 onSunday, 3 on Monday, 1 onTuesday. Out of 1,317 cases, thetotal number of active casesstood at 653, 551 from Kashmirand 102 in Jammu division.
A total number of 647patients have recovered so far.So fat, Anantnag district hasreported the highest number of247 cases while Srinagar hasrecorded 169 cases and Kulgam166 cases.
Meanwhile, the Jammu &Kashmir Government Tuesdayissued the fresh classification ofdistricts in order to imple-ment the lockdown 4.0 fromMay 20, 2020.
The order was issued byChief Secretary, who is also
chairman of SECand it stated that allthe districts ofKashmir province,except Ganderbaland Bandipora arelisted as Red zones,
while as Kathua, Samba andRamban districts of JammuProvince have been declaredRed zones.
Similarly, Bandipora,Ganderbal, Reasi, Udhampurand Jammu districts have beenclassified under Orange cate-gory. Likewise, Doda, Kishtwar,Poonch and Rajouri districtshave been put in Green cate-gory.
The decision was takenafter a detailed review of thecurrent Covid-19 situation inJ&K was conducted withFinancial Commissioner,Health; DivisionalCommissioners of Jammu &Kashmir divisions and otherofficers on the basis of “an over-all assessment of the situationpertaining to the spread ofCovid-19 in Jammu &Kashmir; the trend in newcases particularly the recentspread/ spike in new cases inview of the movement ofstranded persons to Jammuand Kashmir, which is still acontinuing exercise, and therisk perception of the Healthdepartment vis-à-vis each dis-trict; the parameters laid downby MOHFW, Govt. of India”.
�%��� ���%��� � '=��4
Junaid Asharf, youngest son of Tehreek-eHurriyat Chairman Mohd Ashraf Sehrai,
was gunned down by the joint teams of secu-rity forces along with his associate in NawaKadal area of downtown Srinagar in a twelvehour long operation on Tuesday.
Four jawans of security forces, includingthree CRPF personnel and one policeman alsosustained injuries and were admitted in thecommand hospital.
An MBA graduate of Kashmir University,Junaid had joined ranks of Hizbul Mujahideenshortly after his father was appointed chair-man of the separatist group after Syed Ali ShahGeelani in March 2018. Junaid, originallyhailed from Tikipora village of Kupwara.
Director General of Jammu and Kashmirpolice, Dilbagh Singh in Srinagar said, “theoperation was launched in down town areasof Srinagar late on Monday night on the basisof specific input about the presence of ter-rorists in the area”.
It was after a gap of more than two yearslocal residents in Sher-e-Khas areas werewoken up to the sounds of gun shots and
grenade blasts as the security forces establishedfirst contact with the hiding terrorists.
The jawans of the Special OperationsGroup of Jammu and Kashmir police andcommandos of CRPF executed the operationwith precision to avoid collateral damage inthe thickly populated area.Several local res-idents were escorted by the security person-nel to prevent loss of human life during theexchange of fire.
DGP, Dilbagh Singh said, “ after zeroingon the exact location both the terrorists wereeliminated by the security forces during thenight long operation”. DGP Singh also con-firmed only two terrorists were present in thearea while clarifying initial reports which hadclaimed some terrorists might have escapedthe cordon. He identified one of the killed ter-rorist as Junaid Ahmed Sehrai son of MohdAshraf Khan of Srinagar and another as TariqAhmed Sheikh, resident of Pulwama.
Singh said, “Junaid was active in centralKashmir and acting as self styled divisionalcommander of Hizbul Mujahideen for last twoyears”. On the other hand his associate was afresh recruit as he had joined ranks of HMonly three months ago.
��� � *(3$(."0
The Supreme Court Tuesday asked LG Polymers India toapproach the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to raise the issue
regarding setting up of multiple committees to probe the May7 gas leakage from its plant in Visakhapatnam.
The company also questioned the NGT's jurisdiction in ini-tiating proceedings on its own (suo motu) in the matter whenthe Andhra Pradesh High Court was already seized of the inci-dent. The leakage of hazardous gas, Styrene, happened earlymorning of May 7 from the company's plant at R R Venkatpuramvillage in Visakhapatnam resulting in the death of at least 11people and impacting thousands more.
A bench headed by Justice U U Lalit was hearingthrough video-conferencing a plea filed by LG Polymers IndiaPvt Ltd against the May 8 order of the NGT which had takenup the matter suo-motu (on its own) on the basis of media reportsabout the gas leakage and set up a five-member committee toprobe the incident.
New Delhi:The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to quash theinitial FIR against Republic TV Editor-in-chief Arnab Goswamiover his news show on the Palghar mob lynching but gave somerelief by setting aside related multiple FIRs and complaints hold-ing they had a “stifling” effect on the exercise of freedom andexpression.
Observing that free citizens cannot exist when the news mediais chained to adhere to one position, the court said journalis-tic freedom lies at “the core” of the fundamental right to freespeech and India's freedom will rest safe as long as journalistscan speak to power without being “chilled by a threat of reprisal.”
Seeking to balance the rights of journalists and accountability,the court, however, said exercising the fundamental right to speechand expression is not absolute and is answerable to the legalregime. PTI
Maharashtra, a delegation of theOpposition BJP, led by formerChief Minister DevendraFadnavis, on Tuesday com-plained to Governor BhagatSingh Koshyari about the“ineffective handling” of theCovid-19 spread in the State bythe Shiv Sena-led MVAGovernment and submitted amemorandum listing its variousdemands.
Talking to media personsafter meeting the Governor,Fadnavis said: “The health sit-uation in Maharashtra is wors-ening in the state. Today, wehave highest number of Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra. Nearly30 to 33 per cent of total infect-ed cases are in Maharashtra,while the state accounts for 40per cent of total deaths. Infectedcases and deaths are multiply-ing ever6y day”.
“ In Mumbai, patients arenot getting beds and ambu-lances. They are going from onehospital to another. Patients aredying on the way to hospital. Ina way, tThe health situation istotally crippled in the state,” theBJP leader said.
Fadnavis said that the con-dition of farmers in the statewas also grim. “In our memo-randum, we have requestedthe Governor to ask the gov-ernment to start the purchaseof agricultural produce from thefarmers. In addition, we havealso requested the Governor toask the state government to stopthe walking migrant workersgoing to their states going byfoot and send them back totheir respective states by busesand trains”.
Fadnavis urged the stategovernment to announce arelief package for daily wagedworkers, along the lines of theone given by the Modi govern-ment.
Already riding high, China hasused the Corona pandemic toextend its political influence inNepal. Chinese President XiJinping spoke to Nepalese
President Bidhya Devi Bhandari andinquired about the COVID-19 situation,despatched flight loads of succour andstaved off the collapse of the Governmentover there. Then on May 9, Union DefenceMinister Rajnath Singh inaugurated a newIndian road to the disputed Lipulekh, trig-gering off a political storm in Nepal. Thiswas accompanied by protests and the cus-tomary exchange of diplomatic notes.Indian Army Chief Gen MM Naravane,who is the honorary General of Nepal Army,in response to a question on the protestssaid, “Nepal’s protest over India’s road inLipulekh might be at the behest of some-one else”, alluding to China, though it couldalso have been Pakistan. Last year inNovember, there was a tsunami of protestswhen India reproduced a map depictingnew political boundaries in Jammu &Kashmir, including Kalapani, an areaclaimed by Nepal in its territory.
In the lull before a second spike in theterritorial issue, a week-long political cha-rade around May Day, to dethrone NepalesePrime Minister KP Oli, fizzled out as his betenoire, the Nepal Communist Party (NCP)executive chairman, Pushpa Kamal Dahal‘Prachanda,’ switched sides and let Oli claimvictory. In turn, Oli promised to make hispolitical foe and party vice-chairman BamDev Gautam a lawmaker.
It was China and not the traditionalplayer in Nepal, India, which came to therescue of an embattled Oli. Sensing inter-nal crisis within the ruling NCP and the OliGovernment, Beijing’s popular envoy inKathmandu, Hou Yanqi, followed upon Xi’s45-minute-long conversation on April 27with his Nepalese counterpart Bhandari.What followed next were mediations for thenext two days, meeting with Bhandari, Oli,Dahal, former Prime Minister MadhavKumar Nepal and according to one report,even with Sher Bahadur Deuba, the leaderof the Nepali Congress Opposition party.By May 2 evening, at the fateful Central sec-retariat meeting of the NCP where Dahalhas a majority, surprisingly, he declared atruce. He called for party unity when it washe who had asked Oli to step down nam-ing Madhav Nepal as his replacementthree days earlier at the same forum.Friends of India saw the rescinding ofMadhav Nepal’s (sometimes jokingly calledMadhav India) name as the Prime Ministeras a defeat for us.
Kathmandu fears China’s new politicalmantra of compliance, which was recentlydemonstrated in the admonition of the edi-tor of the Kathmandu Post by the ChineseEmbassy. This was not so in mid-2016 whenChina valiantly tried to prevent Dahal frombreaking away from the Oli-led coalition
Government but very brieflymonths later, India succeeded inorchestrating his exit with thelure of premiership in a Deuba-Dahal Government. It is anoth-er matter that even as part ofthis Government, Dahal surrep-titiously entered the Beijing-inspired Left alliance, which wasexpected to sweep the federal,provincial and local polls thatfollowed. In this new “GreatGame” in Nepal between Indiaand China, Beijing demonstra-bly has an upper hand.
It is worth recalling thatduring the pre-2006 people’srevolution and civil war periods,Chinese diplomats inKathmandu, while alluding toNew Delhi, would claim thatBeijing does not interfere in anycountry’s internal affairs. Theywould describe Dahal-Maoistsas “anti-state rebels”, “miscre-ants” and “hijackers” of Mao’sfair name. After the Maoistscame to power in 2008, Beijingconveniently discovered ideo-logical identity and congruitywith them, saying all was fair inlove and war.
In contrast, India has had amonopoly in making andunseating Prime Ministers aswell as preventing their appoint-ments. Like in 2009, after PrimeMinister Dahal was removedfrom office, he was neverallowed to become the premieragain till 2016, when he was
thought to have been tamed.During the decade ofConstitution-writing, MadhavNepal and Baburam Bhattarai,both considered to be friends ofIndia, became the PrimeMinister and so did Jhala NathKhanal. But Khanal, who’s neverpassionate about India, was notinvited to New Delhi on a Statevisit.
Oli, once an Indian blue-eyed boy, has risen to becomethe most powerful PrimeMinister and party chairman ofNepal on a wicket of national-ism and anti-India sentimentfollowing the economic block-ade of 2015. China’s help inforging first the Left alliance andthen the merger of the two Leftparties ensured Oli’s sputnikrise. Lord John Dalberg-Acton’sdictum that power tends to cor-rupt and absolute power cor-rupts absolutely fits the Olistory well as he sits in Baluwatar(the Prime Minister’s red-stoneresidence) on a gilded chairunder his own towering portraitat the back. In designer clothes,he appears to be in the pink ofhealth even after a second kid-ney transplant.
Dahal and Oli joined thebattle early following a gentle-man’s power-sharing agree-ment, whose existence Olidenied. Mutual sniping washalted when Bhandari brokeredan agreement last year, which
nominally elevated Dahal as theexecutive chairman of the NCPeven as Oli became its co-chairman but remained a spokein Dahal’s wheel. What fol-lowed next were widespreadreports of disillusionment andfrustration with Oli’s autocrat-ic style and shenanigans cappedwith misgovernance and cor-ruption. This, even during thepurchase of medical equipmentin the midst of the pandemic,passage of two controversialpolitical ordinances, which hewithdrew and in transactingdue to which Bhandari becamecomplicit. Through such high-handedness, Oli sought to gar-ner more power: Secure two-thirds majority in Parliamentand make Constitutionalappointments with simplemajority.
That is when on April 24,the proverbial straw broke thecamel’s back and Dahal trig-gered off plan Alpha — leader-ship change — which has beenin the works for some time now.It envisages replacing Oli withMadhav Nepal as the PrimeMinister, appointing Dahal asthe undisputed party executivechairman and Khanal in time asthe President of Nepal. WhileOli kept clutching at the strawsat the party central secretariatmeetings and divulged his ownleadership reshuffle plan, hesent a May Day call to Yanqi.
During the crucial secretariatmeeting on May 2, Dahal did asomersault, declaring theimportance of party unity andletting Oli stay as the PrimeMinister as the latter promisedto make Gautam a law-makersoon. That was a demotion forGautam as earlier, Oli hadoffered him premiership towriggle out of the crisis.
Dahal has pressed the pausebutton on plan Alpha, surpris-ing its key players. Undoubtedly,there will be rewards for Dahalfrom Oli and Beijing. The rul-ing political class has shadow-boxed what Nepalese are callinga political Corona instead ofseriously combating theCOVID-19 pandemic, thusproving that power is the ulti-mate aphrodisiac.
Kalapani and Lipulekh arepart of a disputed packagerevived in 2015 after a tradeagreement was signed betweenChina and India. The newpolitical map and a road toLipulekh have sown fresh seedsof discord, whose principalbeneficiary is Beijing.Nimbleness was needed fromNew Delhi in defusing the cri-sis.
(The writer, a retired MajorGeneral, was Commander IPKFSouth, Sri Lanka and foundermember of the Defence PlanningStaff, currently the IntegratedDefence Staff.)
Sir — This refers to the editorial,“Moving out of lockdown” (May18). With the country entering thefourth phase of the lockdown, bynow people must have becomeaccustomed to following basichygiene habits like wearing masksand washing hands. And if main-taining social distancing and allsafety protocols have not becomepart of our daily routine in the lasttwo months, we have only our-selves to blame. So, lockdown 4.0was actually not warranted now.If the Central Government has leftit on the States’ sole discretion ofdeciding the zones, then it sure-ly should have left the extensionas well to the States.
Even a day of extended lock-down has a huge economic cost,which despite the huge reliefpackage cannot be completelycompensated. So, all focus shouldnow be on reviving the economy.Coming to individual companies,they know better whether theycan manage work effectively byallowing employees to work fromhome or getting them back to theoffice.
Bal GovindNoida
��������� ��������
Sir — This refers to the editori-al, “Moving out of lockdown”(May 18). The DelhiGovernment’s decision to resumethe public transport system is astep in the right direction. Given
the halt in all economic activitiesthat have led to unemploymentbesides causing massive damageto India’s economic prospects,other States must take a cuefrom Delhi and gradually openthe transport system so that com-muters do not face problems inreaching their place of work.
Of course, this should bedone keeping in mind the safetyof the travellers and those involvedin transportation activities. It willbe difficult to enforce social dis-tancing. This is why State admin-istrations must take adequatemeasures to ensure strict compli-ance. With the number of passen-
gers remaining low initially, it maynot be difficult for the authorities.Of utmost importance will betheir ability to track and monitorthe impact of mobility relax-ations. Until a vaccine or a cure tothe Coronavirus is found, suchmeasures are essential.
Devendra KhuranaBhopal
����������������
Sir — From the beginning of thepandemic, a lot of discussion hasbeen going on co-morbidities andthe elderly. The average age ofdeath due to Corona in India is 75years and 83 per cent of thedeaths are of those already suffer-ing from co-morbidities.Protecting and taking care of theold and sick who are most vulner-able is our moral duty. We need toadopt social, behavioural changes.Elders in our houses should not beallowed to go out unless there’s amedical emergency. Even for med-ical requirements, a person mustaccompany them.
After a long wait of about seven weeks, sincethe nationwide lockdown began on March25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi
announced the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’, aspecial package of �20,00,000 crore, about 10 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), torevive the economy. Finance Minister NirmalaSitharaman unveiled the details in five tranches dur-ing press conferences held between May 13 and 17.The package aims at giving relief to all strata of soci-ety impacted by the sudden stoppage of econom-ic activities viz. farmers, workers, migrant labour-ers, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs),vendors, small merchants, self-employed people,the middle class and so on. Given its mega size, animmediate question that comes to mind is whetherall the components add up to �20,00,000 crore?
The PM Garib Kalyan Yojna (PM-GKY)unveiled on March 26, that focussed mostly on foodand other bare minimum needs, offered supportof �1,70,000 crore. Besides, the announcements bythe Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor,Shaktikanta Das on March 27 and April 17, togeth-er provide a liquidity injection of about �8,00,000crore. These add up to �9,70,000 crore and areincluded in the mega package total of about�21,00,000 crore (as informed by the FM in herpress conference on May 17).
The balance �11,30,000 crore focusses most-ly on MSMEs, NBFCs, power distribution compa-nies, migrant labour, agricultural credit and lowermiddle class, agriculture infrastructure and farmreforms, structural reforms in coal, minerals, civilaviation, defence and MGNREGA, health and StateGovernments’ resources and public sector reforms.
Taking the total of about 40 crore workers inthe informal sector, �21,00,000 crore works out to�52,500 per worker or about �17,500 per month(assuming a three-month lockdown). The amountis nearly four times the national minimum wagefor an informal worker, which is �4,550 per month(�175 per day and 26 working days).
This back of the envelope calculation isintended to show what a mega package such as thiscan do; provided the money is actually made avail-able to the beneficiaries. But where is it? For a farmhousehold in which a woman (also head of the fam-ily) is a Jan Dhan (JD) account holder, has a rationcard, gas connection in her name and a job underMGNREGA, the total benefit comes to �3,055 permonth. This includes the value of 25 kg rice (for afamily of five people at five kg per person) at �35per kg, plus one kg pulse at �80 per kg or �955; �500ex-gratia in JD account; �500 value of subsidisedgas cylinder; �600 hike in wages under MGNRE-GA and �500 under PM-KISAN (�2,000 being oneof the three lots of four months each in a year, pro-rata monthly amount is taken).
Thus, even for a family blessed with access toall the schemes, the amount is just about two-thirdof the minimum wage of �4,550. Further, consid-ering that the number of beneficiaries under eachscheme varies: 80 crore under the National FoodSecurity Act; 20 crore under JD; 8.3 crore WomenUjjawala beneficiaries; PM-KISAN 8.69 crore andMGNREGA five crore, it is inconceivable that allthose impacted by the lockdown would get any-where near this amount. The workers in the infor-mal sector who can’t avail of PM-KISAN, JD andWomen Ujjawala would get at the most about�1,500.
However, the Government arguesthat the prime focus of its package is toenable the enterprises where workers areemployed or those who are self-employedto resume operations which in turn, willgenerate jobs and increase income. It isarranging fresh loans at lower interest,collateral-free, backed by sovereign guar-antee (either for full amount or partial).It is giving such enterprises relief fromservicing of existing loans, their treatmentas non-performing assets (NPAs) and ini-tiation of proceedings under theInsolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).Additionally, it is giving tax incentives(such as 25 per cent less tax deductionfrom various payments) to leave morecash with people.
None of the above measures can sub-stitute cash in the hands of the millionsof workers whose income source has beencompletely smashed for now. TeamModi is trying to rebuild this verysource by arranging loans at concession-al rates. But in the present highly-excru-ciating circumstances, when COVID–19is not letting factories and businesses toreopen, preventing markets from reopen-ing and blocking consumers’ reach to themarket, neither will there be an increasein supply nor will demand materialise(this won’t happen even if theGovernment puts enough cash in thehands of the people).
In this backdrop, none of the mech-anisms contemplated by the Governmentwill work. To get a sense of this, let us lookat the following: The Centre is goadingbanks to give collateral-free loan worth�3,00,000 crore to MSMEs for three years(borrowers with up to �25 crore outstand-ing and �100 crore turnover are eligible)to benefit 45,00,000 units. They also getone year moratorium on repayment.However, considering that these firms
already owe �15,00,000 crore, the banksface huge risk and may not lend. TheGovernment’s promise of indemnifyingthem in the event of default won’t instillconfidence in the banks.
Look at the loan of �75,000 crore, theGovernment wants to be given to non-bank finance companies (NBFC), hous-ing finance companies (HFCs), microfinance institutions (MFIs). Of this,�30,000 crore is fully covered by sover-eign guarantee and for the remaining�45,000 crore, it has given a guaranteecover only to the extent of 20 per cent.Put simply, for 80 per cent of the amount�36,000 crore, the banks will be left in thelurch from the word go.
Consider the special loan of �90,000crore it wants Rural ElectrificationCorporation (REC), Power FinanceCorporation (PFC) — both centralundertakings — to give to discoms. It iswell-known that the latter are bankruptand are just not in a position to pay back.Yet, any pressure on REC/PFC to lend todiscoms will be at the cost of creatingNPAs on the former’s books.
Likewise, it is asking the NationalBank for Agriculture and RuralDevelopment (NABARD) to give �30,000crore additional emergency workingcapital (upfront) for crop loans in addi-tion to �90,000 crore that is already beinggiven for such financing. Being a direc-tive from the Government, it may haveno other option but to disburse funds, butthe risk of the loan becoming an NPA isreal. The Government also wants to helpstreet vendors by arranging bank creditfacility for initial working capital of upto �10,000 (expected to benefit five mil-lion vendors) and micro-enterprises thatavail loans up to �50,000 under theMUDRA Shishu scheme by giving twoper cent interest subvention for 12
months to the borrower. These crutch-es will work but only if the vendors/enter-prises get a chance to resume their nor-mal activities.
The conditions created by COVID–19 are rendering all efforts to pump morecredit/liquidity into the economy infruc-tuous. This may also be seen from the factthat many businesses/enterprises have gotloan sanctions worth hundreds of thou-sands of crores but are unwilling to actu-ally draw the funds. This has led to ananomalous situation whereby despite theRBI making plenty of liquidity availablewith banks, borrowers are not comingforward to avail the loans. This has forcedbanks to keep money with the RBI underthe so called “reverse repo” window earn-ing 3.75 per cent.
Currently, the amount lying unusedin this window is a gargantuan about�8,50,000 crore. Sitharaman is reportedto have pleaded with banks to release thismoney for spurring economic activity.But, what do you do when the enterpris-es themselves are not coming forward.
Faced with a steep decline in its rev-enue and increase in expenditure com-mitment, the Modi Government hasopted for a package which is dependentpreponderantly on loans. This helps inpreventing immediate fiscal stress. Itcould have done more by increasingdirect cash support beyond what it hasgiven. But, there is no guarantee that thisby itself would have helped in spurringdemand. There is dire need for all stake-holders viz. industries, businesses andmost importantly the public to strictly fol-low “social distancing.” This is the onlyway the virus can be reined in, bypaving the way for revival of the econo-my, restoration of jobs and incomes.
Suman Devi is a member of a self-help group (SHG) in HasanpurGram Panchayat, Barabanki, Uttar
Pradesh (UP). Ever since she heard thenews on the television about theCOVID-19 pandemic and the need formasks, she has been stitching the facecovers for women in her own group,their children and the elderly in hercommunity. Kajal, who belongs to theNari Shakti Samuh in Bijnore, has beenworking to raise community awarenessabout the disease through her rango-lis. She believes that it is a very effec-tive way to make her community seethe importance of frequent handwashing, adhering to the lockdownand social distancing norms. Like
Suman and Kajal, today, all across UP,women in SHG groups have becomean important part of the Uttar PradeshState Rural Livelihood Mission’s(UPSRLM’s) COVID-19 responsestrategy. Further, their involvement hasnot been on a small-scale. This means,it is not limited to a few individualmembers of SHGs or a few SHGs andthis movement has now rapidly spreadacross districts. The SHGs are nowdeeply involved with several aspects ofthe UP Government’s COVID-19strategy. Take the production of masksfor example. As the news of the pan-demic broke, some members of SHGs,like Suman, began production to pro-tect their own communities. But todaywe have thousands of SHGs across theState involved in mass production ofmasks. What began with just fiveSHGs, in one district, producing 2,000masks daily, has now swelled to 12,683SHG members of 52 districts, produc-ing around 50,000 masks daily and thenumbers are only growing each day.
While the SHGs are producingmasks at scale, the district administra-tion has been working to keep the sup-ply chains of raw material going. In
fact, the use of Khadi as a raw mater-ial for making of masks is now under-way. Uttar Pradesh’s Khadi and VillageIndustries Board has pledged to givesix lakh metres of fabric to SHGs todeliver 50 lakh Khadi masks, to bemade and sold for �13.60 each to var-ious Government departments.
In another case, the Indian Armyhas placed an order to procure 2,000PPE kits which are also being manu-factured by SHGs. Estimates suggestthat till date, more than 50 lakhmasks, 25,000 PPEs and 7,700 litres ofsanitisers have been produced through4,000 SHGs. Meanwhile, theGovernment has been ensuring that itsprocurement is under due process.This has also meant an additionalsource of income for SHGs.
The involvement of SHGs is notlimited to making COVID-mitigationitems only. They have been mobilisedto roll out several awareness-buildingcommunication campaigns and facil-itate the implementation of food dis-tribution and delivery efforts duringthis crisis.
On the awareness-building front,a radio message was created to educate
SHG didis (sisters) about precaution-ary measures against the virus, whichalso urges the women to furtherspread awareness regarding this intheir communities. Further, existing‘Prerna Canteens’ managed by SHGs— which were set up a couple of yearsago by UPSRLM to ensure nutrition-al self-sufficiency in households —have been transformed into commu-nity kitchens and are working hard toensure continuous cooked food sup-ply to vulnerable households, quaran-tined people and front-line healthworkers.
This quick re-orientation of‘Prerna Canteens’ to communitykitchens during this crisis has takenplace across 54 Village Organisations(VOs) which are a set of 12-15 SHGs.Further, a Samuh Sakhi selected fromthe SHGs is coordinating these effortsbetween SHGs and VOs. In certainareas where SHGs work closely withthe local administration, members areproviding meals to panchayat-runhospitals. There is now even a plan inplace for a partnership of SHGs withprivate and other development agen-cies to ensure delivery of essentials and
post-harvest procurement of agricul-ture commodities.
This very early success of theSHGs as partners in UP’s COVIDresponse has been widely acknowl-edged by all stakeholders. In a radioaddress, UP’s Rural DevelopmentMinister Rajendra Pratap Singhthanked and urged the Samuh Sakhisto continue building on their efforts.
Over the years, UPSRLM hasbeen focussed on investing in andbuilding this community institution asa mechanism to help them achieve sev-eral mission objectives, includingenabling rural poor to augment theirhousehold income via sustainablelivelihood enhancements andimproved access to financial and pub-lic services.
SHGs have received book-keep-ing, financial literacy and even lead-ership training.They form the base ofa three-tier organisational structureenvisioned by the UPSRLM whichorganises SHGs into VOs and Cluster-Level federations. The mission has theambition to mobilise more than 10million women in the next 10-15 yearsin a phased manner.
Like other States, post the lock-down, the challenges UP faces are notlikely to recede quickly. While thesesteps were necessary, it has also meantthat economic activities around thecountry have come to a grinding haltand livelihoods of millions continue tobe under stress. UP is no exception.Here, we are confronted by severalchallenges. These include: Assuringrations for an extremely large propor-tion of vulnerable rural households fac-ing food shortages; providing forreturning and stranded migrantlabourers; and alleviating the impactof severe shock to agricultural, live-stock, fisheries, and other supplychains — all of which have hit house-hold incomes hard.
Estimates already suggest thatover and above the residents — vul-nerable populations, returning migrantlabour, whose number is expected tobe around 2.6 to three million — willneed food and finances to help themre-establish their livelihoods. Thismeans that the Government’s humanresources capacity will be over-stretched for the foreseeable future.
Over the years, there has been
growing evidence coming in from var-ious States of how SHGs can functionas an important mechanism which canbe leveraged to implementGovernment schemes, build localcommunity capacity and roll out pol-icy interventions. Further, in manycases, we have seen that their involve-ment has led to better health outcomesand successful financial inclusionefforts. They have been especiallyeffective in driving behaviour changecampaigns, often acting as role mod-els and galvanising other communitymembers.
In UP we have seen how the SHGplatforms have acted as effectiveresponders to the pandemic. This hasalso shown us the importance oflocalised and community-drivenresponse. In the case of COVID-19, weare seeing SHGs drive behaviourchange communication as well asquickly set up last mile delivery mech-anisms to provide essential items thatare needed to mitigate this socio-eco-nomic hardship, hand in hand with theState Government.
(The writer is an IAS officer andMission Director, UPSRLM)
London: An influential group ofBritish lawmakers on Tuesdayaccused Prime Minister BorisJohnson’s Government of failingto conduct enough tests for thenew coronavirus, saying thelapse helped COVID-19 cut adeadly swath through UK nurs-ing homes.
As official statistics revealedmore than 11,000 coronavirusdeaths in British nursing homes,the House of Commons’ Scienceand Technology Committeesaid “testing capacity has beeninadequate for most of the pan-demic so far.” In a letter to theprime minister, committeechairman Greg Clark saidBritain’s limited testing capaci-ty “drove strategy, rather thanstrategy driving capacity.”
UK authorities initiallysought to trace and test every-one who had been in contact
with people infected with thecoronavirus. But they aban-doned that strategy in mid-March as the number of infec-tions overwhelmed the coun-try’s testing resources.
Johnson’s Conservative gov-ernment has faced growingcriticism as Britain suffers oneof the world’s worst coron-avirus death tolls. The govern-ment’s official tally of deathsamong people who tested pos-itive for the virus stands at34,796, second only to the U.S.When suspected as well as con-firmed cases are added, the tollis well over 40,000.
More than 11,000 of thosedeaths occurred in nursinghomes in England and Wales,according to figures compiledby the Office for NationalStatistics.
Clark, a lawmaker from
the governing ConservativeParty, said the “pivotal” decisionin March to stop testing for thecoronavirus outside of hospitalsmeant that nursing home resi-dents and staff weren’t tested “ata time when the spread of thevirus was at its most rampant.”
The country’s testingcapacity has now been scaledup to more than 100,000 testsa day, and the governmentplans to reintroduce a “test,track and trace” policy as partof plans to control the virus andease a nationwide lockdownthat was imposed March 23.But the science committee alsosaid that “it is not clear that thelessons of the delays to testinghave been learned.” It called forauthorities to publish the evi-dence that led to the decisionto abandon community testingin March. AP
���� �����3
Russia’s prime minister hasfully resumed his duties
after recovering from the coro-navirus.
Mikhail Mishustin, 54,announced that he had beeninfected in a televised callwith President Vladimir Putinon April 30.
On Tuesday, Mishustin’soffice said that he has checkedout of the hospital and returnedto his duties in the Cabinetheadquarters. He is set to takepart in a video conference withPresident Vladimir Putin laterin the day. Several Cabinetministers and Putin’sspokesman Dmitry Peskov alsohave been infected. Peskov saidthat he had double pneumoniacaused by the virus. He notedthat he hadn’t met with Putin inperson for more than a month.
Washington: US PresidentDonald Trump has disclosedthat he is taking antimalarialdrug hydroxychloroquine dailyto ward off the deadly coron-avirus, though health expertshave warned it may be unsafe.
Speaking at a meeting ofrestaurant executives onMonday, Trump said he begantaking the drug after consult-ing the White House doctor,though stopped short of sayinghis physician had actually rec-ommended it.
“A couple of weeks ago, Istarted taking it,” the presidentsaid. “Here’s my evidence: I geta lot of positive calls about it,”Trump told shocked reporters.
“I have been taking it(hydroxychloroquine) forabout a week and a half,” hetold reporters, asserting that hehas zero symptoms of the dead-ly COVID-19, which has killedover 90,000 Americans in thepast three months.
There is no evidencehydroxychloroquine (HCQ)can fight off coronavirus,though clinical trials are underway. Medical experts and the
US Food and DrugAdministration (FDA) havequestioned the efficacy of theantimalarial drug and warnedof the potentially harmful sideeffects, including heart prob-lems.
Trump, 73, said he con-sulted his doctors but was notexplicitly recommended by theWhite House physicians.
“White House doctor did-n’t recommend. I asked him,what do you think? He saidwell, if you’d like it. I said yeah,I’d like it. I’d like to take it,” hesaid.
Trump said he has beentaking a pill of the antimalari-al drug daily.
“I take a pill every day. Atsome point, I’ll stop. What I’dlike to do is I’d like to have thecure and/or the vaccine, andthat will happen, I think, verysoon,” he said.
Hydroxychloroquine isone of the oldest and best-known antimalarial drugs.Trump has called hydroxy-chloroquine a “game-changer”drug in the fight against thecoronavirus. PTI
(���$���!��������! �/!��������� ���!��������"��
Washington: In an ultimatumto the WHO, US PresidentDonald Trump has said hewould “reconsider” America’smembership of the UN healthbody and threatened to “per-manently freeze” the funding toit if it failed to demonstrate its“independence” from Chinain the next 30 days.
Trump halted America’sfunding of up to $500 millionannually to the World HealthOrganisation last month whilea review was being done toassess its role in “severely mis-managing and covering up” thespread of the deadly coronaviruswhen it first emerged in the cen-tral Chinese city of Wuhan.
In a four-page letter toWHO Director General DrTedros Adhanom, Trump said,“It is clear the repeated misstepsby you and your organisationin responding to the pandem-ic have been extremely costlyfor the world. The only way for-ward for the WHO is if it canactually demonstrate indepen-dence from China.”
“My administration hasalready started discussions withyou on how to reform theorganisation. But action isneeded quickly. We do nothave time to waste,” he wrote inhis letter, which he tweeted onMonday night.
“That is why it is my duty,
as President of the United States,to inform you that, if the WHOdoes not commit to major sub-stantive improvements withinthe next 30 days, I will make mytemporary freeze of UnitedStates funding to the WHO per-manent and reconsider ourmembership in the organisa-tion,” the president said.
Trump, who is seekingreelection in November, said hecannot allow the American
taxpayer dollars to continue tofinance an organisation that, inits present state, is so clearly notserving America’s interests.
More than 300,000 peoplehave died due to the coron-avirus pandemic and over 4.8million people infected aroundthe world. The US is the worst-hit country with over 90,000deaths and over 1.5 millionconfirmed COVID-19 cases,according to Johns HopkinsUniversity.
In his letter dated May 18,Trump alleged that the WHOhas failed to publicly call onChina to allow for an inde-pendent investigation into theorigins of the virus, despite therecent endorsement for doingso by its own EmergencyCommittee. PTI
��$����"���������������/����6�%��$�����
Geneva: World HealthOrganisation member statesagreed on Tuesday to an inde-pendent probe into the UNagency’s coronavirus responseas US criticism mounted overits handling of the pandem-ic.Countries taking part in theWHO’s annual assembly,being held virtually for thefirst time, adopted a resolutionby consensus urging a jointresponse to the crisis. The res-olution, tabled by the
European Union, called for an“impartial, independent andcomprehensive evaluation” ofthe international response tothe pandemic, which has sofar infected more than 4.8 mil-lion people and killed over318,000.
It said the investigationshould include a probe of “theactions of WHO and theirtime-lines pertaining to theCOVID-19 pandemic”.
The US did not disassoci-
ate itself from the consensus assome had feared afterWashington chastised theWHO on the first day of theassembly Monday and lashedout further against China overits role in the outbreak.
Tuesday’s resolution at theWHO assembly also called fornations to commit to ensuring“transparent, equitable andtimely access” to any treat-ments or vaccines developedagainst COVID-19. AFP
6�%��������������������������
Beijing: China on Tuesdayaccused President DonaldTrump of using it “as an issue”to shift the blame from his“incompetent response” tocontain the coronavirus athome, hours after he threat-ened to pull the US out of theWorld Health Organisation ifit failed to demonstrate “inde-pendence” from China.
“The US tries to use Chinaas an issue to shift responsi-bility and bargain on its inter-national obligations to WHO”,which is a miscalculation,
Chinese Foreign Ministryspokesman Zhao Lijian told amedia briefing here.
He was responding toquestions on Trump’s letter toWorld Health Organisationchief Tedros AdhanomGhebreyesus threatening to“permanently freeze” the USfunding to the UN healthagency if it failed to demon-strate its “independence” fromChina in the next 30 days.
“The US leadership’s openletter is full of vague expres-sions such as probably etc,”
Zhao said.“It tries to mislead the
public to smear China andshift the blame from its ownincompetent response” to stopthe spread of the virus in theUS, he said.
“It is futile. Currently,COVID-19 is still spreading inthe US and many otherplaces,” he said, adding thatthe US politicians should stopthe blame game and workwith the international com-munity to stop the spread ofthe virus. PTI
Brussels: The EU on Tuesdayurged all countries to back theWorld Health Organisation(WHO) after President DonaldTrump threatened to perma-nently cut US funding.
European Commissionspokeswoman Virginie Battu-Henriksson said global coop-eration is “the only effectiveand viable option to win thisbattle”.
She said, “This is the timefor solidarity. It is not the time
for finger pointing or under-mining multilateral coopera-tion.” In a letter to WHO’sdirector-general TedrosAdhanom Ghebreyesus, Trumpwrote the agency’s “repeatedmissteps” in its response to thepandemic have proven “verycostly for the world”.
Trump threatened to cutUS’ WHO funding unless itcommits to “substantiveimprovements” in the next 30days. AP
United Nations: Nearly 13 percent of the museums aroundthe world may never reopen,the UN’s cultural agency haswarned, as about 90 per cent ofthem globally have had to closetheir doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the occasion ofInternational Museum DayMonday, two studies by the UNEducational, Scientific andCultural Organisation(UNESCO) and theInternational Council ofMuseums (ICOM) said thatmuseums have been especial-ly affected by the COVID-19pandemic, with nearly 90 percent of them, or more than85,000 institutions, havingclosed their doors for varyinglengths of time during the cri-sis.
Furthermore, in Africa andthe Small Island DevelopingStates (SIDS), only 5 per centof museums were able to offeronline content to their audi-ences.
“Nearly 13 per cent ofmuseums around the worldmay never reopen,” the agen-cies said in a statement.
The two studies, involvingmember states and museumprofessionals, were aimed atassessing the impact ofCOVID-19 on museums andmuseum institutions.
They also aimed to find outhow the sector had adapted to
the pandemic and explore waysto support institutions in itsaftermath.
“Museums play a funda-mental role in the resilience ofsocieties”, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said.
“We must help them copewith this crisis and keep themin touch with their audiences”.
The study conducted byICOM highlights the fact that
museums that have beendeprived of their visitors willface a decrease in their income.
Professions related tomuseums, their operations andtheir outreach could also beseriously affected.
“We are fully aware of andconfident in the tenacity ofmuseum professionals to meetthe challenges posed by theCOVID-19 pandemic,” saidICOM President Suay Aksoy.
“However, the museumfield cannot survive on its ownwithout the support of thepublic and private sectors. It isimperative to raise emergencyrelief funds and to put in placepolicies to protect profession-als and self-employed workerson precarious contracts.”
In a tweet, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres saidthat museums may be tem-porarily closed, but they remaina source of knowledge anddiscovery for many - nowthrough virtual tours in par-ticular. PTI
Beijing: A 5-magnitude earth-quake has struck China’s south-western Yunnan province,killing at least four people andinjuring 24 others, according toofficials.
One person was trapped indebris, state-run Xinhua newsagency reported.
It said that rescue andrelief teams, including fire-fighters and emergencyresponse, have been sent to thequake zone.
According to the ChinaEarthquake Networks Center,the 5-magnitude shallow quakestruck Qiaojia county at 9.47PM on Monday.
The tremors were felt inQujing city’s Huize county aswell as in the cities of Zhaotong,Xuanwei and Chuxiong YiAutonomous Prefecture. PTI
Washington: US Secretary ofState Mike Pompeo has calledon China to immediately makepublic the Panchen Lama’swhereabouts and uphold itsinternational commitments topromote religious freedom,saying he is one of the mostimportant figures in theTibetan Buddhism with spiri-tual authority second only tothe Dalai Lama.
His remarks came on theoccasion of the 25th anniver-sary of the disappearance of the11th Panchen Lama.
The Department of Statehas made the promotion andprotection of religious freedoma priority, especially in China,where people of all faiths facesevere repression and discrim-ination, Pompeo said.
“As part of that mission onMay 17, we marked the 25thanniversary of the disappear-ance of the 11th PanchenLama, Gedhun ChoekyiNyima, who has not appearedin public since the PRC
(People’s Republic of China)government abducted him in1995 at age six,” he said in astatement.
“The Panchen Lama is oneof the most important figures inTibetan Buddhism with spiri-tual authority second only to theDalai Lama. But China’s perse-cution of the Panchen Lama isnot unusual,” Pompeo said.
He called on the Chinesegovernment to immediatelymake public the PanchenLama’s whereabouts and touphold its own constitutionand international commit-ments to promote religiousfreedom for all persons.
The United States, he said,remains deeply concernedabout PRC’s ongoing cam-paign to eliminate the religious,linguistic and cultural identityof Tibetans, including throughthe ongoing destruction ofcommunities of worship andlearning, such as the LarungGar and Yachen Gar BuddhistInstitutes. PTI
���� �=�(#41.(��!"�2
Lesotho’s Prime MinisterThomas Thabane has
resigned after losing a strugglewith leaders of his party whowanted him out over allega-tions of his involvement in the2017 murder of his estrangedwife, Lipolelo.
The 80-year-old Thabanehad said he would go at the endof July, but rivals in his AllBasotho Convention partyreached a deal with the mainopposition DemocraticCongress to form a new gov-ernment in the southernAfrican nation.
A Council of State meetingon Monday advised King LetsieIII to swear in Finance MinisterMoeketsi Majoro onWednesday, according to theking’s senior private secretary,Monehela Posholi.
That left Thabane no
choice but to leave in a historicsmooth transfer of power with-out a no confidence vote orelections.
“The time to retire fromthe great theater of action,take leave from public life andoffice has finally arrived,”Thabane said in a televisedaddress Monday. He asked cit-izens to give his successor the“utmost support.”
Thabane served as prime minister from 2012 to2015 and from 2017 to now.The first stint also ended pre-maturely as he was pushed outby opponents allegedly for fail-ure to deliver on electoralpromises.
Despite his requests toregional Southern AfricanDevelopment Communitymediators, Thabane leaveswithout any guarantees fromimmunity from prosecutionfor the 2017 murder.
Bangkok: Narcotics police inMyanmar have seized a largeamount of liquid fentanyl, pro-viding the first evidence thatthe synthetic opioid is beingproduced in quantity inSoutheast Asia’s infamousGolden Triangle region.
The discovery during aseries of drug raids inMyanmar’s Shan state suggestsa market for the drug has beencreated in the region, theUnited Nations Office onDrugs and Crime said Monday.
“Big international syndi-cates already active in theGolden Triangle are well posi-tioned to take advantage ofregional heroin demand andproduce synthetic opioidsalongside other drugs,” theagency’s regional representa-tive, Jeremy Douglas, said in astatement.
The U.N. Agency warnedthat the development suggeststhat Southeast Asia is poised tobecome a significant source ofsynthetic drugs for other partsof the world.
Massive amounts ofmethamphetamine and otherdrugs and their componentswere also seized in what theagency described as “one of thelargest and most successfulcounter-narcotics operations inthe history of the country andregion.” The Golden Triangle,a remote jungle area where theborders of Myanmar, Laos andThailand meet, was once amajor source of the world’sopium and heroin. In recentyears it has also become amajor producer of metham-phetamine. Fentanyl is a syn-thetic opioid estimated to be 50to 100 times more potent thanmorphine and 30 to 50 timesmore powerful than heroin. Ithas been blamed for a largepart of the waves of deathsfrom opioids that have sweptthrough the United States inthe past few years. Experts sayfentanyl is easier to make and
smuggle than heroin, and farmore profitable to sell. U.S.Authorities accuse China,Myanmar’s northern neigh-bor, of being the source of fen-tanyl imported to the UnitedStates, a claim denied byBeijing.
The agency said the raidswere carried out between Feb.20 and April 9 in Kutkhaitownship of Shan state, in east-ern Myanmar.
Shan state, like many bor-der areas of Myanmar, is nottightly controlled by the centralgovernment, and armed ethnicminority militias and guerril-la groups hold sway over muchof the territory.
The U.N. Agency saidwithout elaborating that “evi-dence of militia involvementwas uncovered during theoperation which resulted in thearrest of 33 Myanmar and for-eign nationals.” According tothe agency, in addition to3,748.5 liters (990 gallons) ofmethyl fentanyl, police seized193.5 million methampheta-mine tablets weighting 17.4tons; more than 500 kilograms.(1,100 pounds) of crystalmethamphetamine; 292 kg.(644 lb.) of heroin; 588 kg.(1,296 lb.) of opium; 49 kg. (108lb.) of morphine; and 6.8 kg.(15 lb.) of ketamine.
Also seized were variousprecursor and pre-precursorchemicals used to make thedrugs, along with sophisticat-ed laboratory and productionequipmennt. AP
Islamabad: An anti-terror-ism court in Pakistan has sen-tenced two Islamist militantsto death for their involve-ment in a 2017 suicide bomb-ing at a Sufi shrine in Sindhprovince in which 82 peoplewere killed.
According to police, theaccused — Nadir Ali andFurqan — were identified bythe eyewitnesses and judicialmagistrate Mushtaq Ali Jokhiothrough CCTV footage. Theduo were found guilty in the2017 bombing case in SehwanSharif area of Sindh province.
As many as 82 people werekilled and over 250 otherswere injured when a suicidebomber launched a grenadebefore blowing himself up atthe Sufi shrine of Lal ShahbazQalandar in Sehwan Sharif onFebruary 16, 2017. PTI
�����$�����;���"��@���4��"����$�A�;����
Beijing: China said onTuesday that a boy who dis-appeared 25 years ago afterbeing picked by the DalaiLama as Tibetan Buddhism’ssecond-highest figure is nowa college graduate with a sta-ble job.
Very little information hasbeen given about GedhunChoekyi Nyima or his familysince he went missing at age6 shortly after being namedthe 11th Panchen Lama.
China, which claims thatTibet is part of its territory,named another boy to theposition, Gyaltsen Norbu, whois rarely seen and is believedto spend most of his time inBeijing. He is generally viewedas a political figure underBeijing’s control and shares
none of the Dalai Lama’s glob-al fame.
Foreign ministryspokesperson Zhao Lijian saidGedhun Choekyi Nyima“received free compulsoryeducation when he was achild, passed the collegeentrance examination andnow has a job.” Zhao said nei-ther the now-31-year-old manor his family wishes to be dis-turbed in their “current nor-mal lives.”
No other details weregiven.The tussle betweenBeijing and the Dalai Lama,who fled into exile in 1959,concerns who will determinethe future of TibetanBuddhism, which still com-mands heavy sway over thepeople of the Himalayan
region that China says hasbeen its territory for cen-turies but which manyTibetans believe was largelyindependent. Tibet’s self-declared government-in-exilein India marked the 25thanniversary of GedhunChoekyi Nyima’s disappear-ance by calling on Beijing onSunday to account for hiswhereabouts.
“China’s abduction of thePanchen Lama and forcibledenial of his religious identi-ty and right to practice in hismonastery is not only a vio-lation of religious freedom butalso a gross violation ofhuman rights,” the Tibetanparliament in northern India,known as the Kashag, said ina statement. PTI
Islamabad/Karachi: SevenPakistani soldiers and a civiliandriver were killed in two sepa-rate terror attacks in the restiveBalochistan province, an officialstatement said on Tuesday.
Terrorists targeted a vehicleof the Frontier Corps usingimprovised explosive devices inthe Pir Ghaib area on Mondaynight, killing six Pakistan Armysoldiers, including a junior com-missioned officer, said Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR),the media wing of the Pakistanimilitary.
The soldiers were identifiedas Naib Subedar Ihsan, UllahKhan, Naik Zubair Khan, NaikIjaz Ahmed, Naik Maula Buxand Naik Noor Muhammad.
A civilian driver AbdulJabbar was also killed in theattack. In a separate incident inBalochistan’s Kech, anothersoldier, identified as SepoyImdad Ali, was killed during an
exchange of fire with the mil-itants.
The incident took placeearly in the morning whensecurity personnel were clearingthe area for fencing the border.
This is the second terrorattack on the Pakistani soldiersin 10 days in the restive province.
On May 9, six soldiers,including a major, were killed inBuleda area when their vehiclewas hit by an improvised explo-sive device.
Resource-rich Balochistanin southwestern Pakistan bor-ders Afghanistan and Iran, butit is also Pakistan’s largest andpoorest province, rife with eth-nic, sectarian and separatistinsurgencies.
Baloch nationalists areactive in the Balochistanprovince and often target thesecurity forces and people fromother provinces, especiallyPunjab. PTI
Partial opening of domesticretail markets in several
states, along with positive glob-al cues on the back of a prob-able new anti Covid-19 vaccine,pushed India’s key stock indiceshigher on Tuesday.
The rise was in line withthe gains in the Asian markets.
Analysts cited the furtheropening up of the economy
under lockdown 4.0 as a major factor for the upwardmobility.
The Sensex closed at30,196.17, up by 167.19 pointsor 0.56 per cent from the pre-vious close of 30,028.98.
It had opened at 30,450.74and touched an intra-high of30,739.96 and a low of30,116.82 points.
The Nifty50 closed at8,879.10, higher by 55.85 points
or 0.63 per cent from the pre-vious close.
Sectorally, top gainers werethe BSE Telecom, Power andAuto indices, while the toplosers were the BSE CapitalGoods, Realty and Bankexindices.
“Markets ended withdecent gains on Tuesday aftera sell off from the highs. TheNifty had opened on a positivenote and touched a high of
9,030 before witnessing a selloff,” said Deepak Jasani, Headof Retail Research at HDFCSecurities.
“Technically, with the Niftyfailing to sustain at the highs,the bears do seem to have anupper hand. Further downsidesare likely once the immediatesupports of 8,855-8,806 arebroken.” According to VinodNair, Head of Research atGeojit Financial Services:
“Markets around the worldrallied on the back of a positivevaccine trial in the US, becauseof which Indian markets alsowitnessed a positive opening. Itlater pared gains to end up byjust around 0.6 per cent.”“Although trial of the vaccineseemed to give positive results,the development of this is stillin the very initial stage and issome time away from approvalsand production.
������ �4�<=0
Moody’s Investors Serviceon Tuesday said the
Covid-19 outbreak will accel-erate the deterioration in assetquality of non-bank financialinstitutions (NBFIs).
The investor service saidthat weakening solvency atNFBIs will, in turn, pose risksto the stability of the broaderfinancial system, given banks’large exposures to NBFIs. Atpresent, NBFIs are moreexposed than banks to thecoronavirus-led downturn,given their focus on riskier seg-ments, and in particular, cor-porates and the real estate sec-tor which were facing liquidi-ty constraints even before theoutbreak.
Consequently, to alleviateborrower stress, the ReserveBank allowed financial institu-tions to provide three-monthmoratoriums on loan repay-ments.
These measures representa significant drain on near-term liquidity at NBFIs, asmost primarily manage liq-uidity by matching cash inflowsfrom loan repayments withcash outflows to repay theirown liabilities.
While the Centre’s move todirectly subscribe to �300 bil-lion of NBFI debt will providesome near-term relief, this will not be sufficient to addressthe NBFIs’ structural fundingissues.
“We expect a significantweakening in asset quality atNFBIs, that will worsen the liq-uidity stress triggered by thethree-month moratorium oncustomer loan repayments,”says Srikanth Vadlamani, aMoody’s Vice President andSenior Credit Officer.
“The weakening solvencyof NFBIs will also increasepressure at banks at a timewhen risks to systemic stabili-ty are already elevated follow-ing the Yes Bank default, whichtriggered deposit outflows atsome smaller banks,” he added.
����� *(3$(."0
Shares of Bharti Airtel onTuesday zoomed over 11 per
cent after the company report-ed a consolidated revenue of �23,722.7 crore during thereported quarter on broad-based strength, with all seg-ments registering healthyunderlying growth. The tele-com company, however, post-ed a consolidated loss of �5,237
crore for the January-Marchquarter of 2019-20 financialyear, mainly on account ofmaking provision for payingstatutory dues.
Its stock surged 11.34 percent to close at �599.15 on theBSE. During the day, itadvanced 12.05 per cent to Rs603 - its 52-week high. On theNational Stock Exchange(NSE), it jumped 10.80 per centto close �596.20.
Bharti Airtel was the topgainer on both the Sensex andthe Nifty.
The company’s market val-
uation also rose by � 33,279.72crore to � 3,26,869.72 crore onthe BSE. Bharti Airtel was alsoboosted by rise in average rev-enue per user (ARPU) in itsearnings report.
“Revenue grew 16 percent quarter-on-quarter to �12,950 crore, which could beattributed to strong ARPU(average revenue per user)increase,” according to a reportby Motilal Oswal. In terms oftraded volume, 21.10 lakhshares were traded on the BSEand over 7 crore shares on theNSE during the day.
����� �4�<=0
Benchmark indices gave upmost of their early gains but
managed to break the three-session losing streak by closingin positive territory on Tuesday,tracking enthusiasm in globalmarkets over a potentialCovid19 vaccine.
After rallying over 700points in a volatile session, the30-share BSE Sensex finished167.19 points or 0.56 per centhigher at 30,196.17.
While, the NSE Niftyadvanced 55.85 points or 0.63per cent to end at 8,879.10.
Bharti Airtel emerged asthe stock of the day, surgingover 11 per cent, boosted byrise in average revenue per user(ARPU) in its earnings report.
Analysts said the ARPUincrease speaks of BhartiAirtel’s ability to command aprice premium in the market.
Other major gainers onthe Sensex were ONGC,UltraTech Cement, ITC,PowerGrid and NTPC.
On the other hand,IndusInd Bank, RelianceIndustries, L&T and SBI wereamong the laggards.
Of the Sensex constituents,22 closed in the green and 8 inthe red.
Sectorally, BSE telecom ral-lied 10.41 per cent, followed byteck, power, utilities, and autoindices that rose up to 2.49 percent. On the other hand, cap-ital goods, energy, realty andbanking indices ended lower. Inthe broader market, BSE midcap rose 0.52 per cent,while smallcap index fell 0.20per cent.
“Markets around the worldrallied on the back of a positivevaccine trial in the US, becauseof which Indian markets alsowitnessed a positive opening.Although trial of the vaccineseemed to give positive results,the development of this is still
in the very initial stage and issome time away from approvalsand production,” Vinod Nair,Head of Research at GeojitFinancial Services, said.Meanwhile in India, with con-firmed coronavirus infectionscrossing the one lakh mark andthe stimulus measures gettingcold response from variousquarters, investors are movingcautiously as the uncertaintiesstill persist, experts said.
Globally, investor senti-
ment was boosted over opti-mism that the global economywould recover quickly follow-ing a successful early-stagetrial of a coronavirus vaccine.In a significant developmenttowards developing a vaccinefor the coronavirus, anAmerican biotechnology com-pany Moderna has said its ini-tial vaccine tests in peoplehave shown promising resultsand can stimulate an immuneresponse against the virus.
������ *(3$(."0
In yet another big reforminitiative aimed at bringing
more capital into the insurancebusiness, the Government maysoon open the sector to 74 percent foreign direct investment(FDI) under the approval routeto bring parity with the bank-ing sector.
The proposed changes inthe FDI limit for insurance ispart of another round of over-haul of the FDI policy that theGovernment is looking toimplement to make the policyprogressive and less restrictive.This has become importantpost Covid-19 outbreak.
Currently, FDI up to 49 percent is permissible in insuranceunder the automatic route withthe condition that insurancecompany’s ownership and con-trol remains at all times in thehands of resident Indian entities.
In banking, however, 74per cent FDI is permitted withup to 49 per cent investmentunder automatic route whileanything above that, underGovernment approval route.
Sources said, like in bank-ing, the Government is nowlooking to raise FDI limit ininsurance up to 74 per cent giv-ing the control and manage-ment to the foreign investor.However, to ensure strongIndian presence in majorityforeign owned and managedentity, the company may bemandated to appoint an IndianCEO.
The decision on changes inthe FDI limit could beannounced by the Departmentof Promotion of Industry andInternal Trade (DPIIT) soon.The Secretary, DPIITGuruprasad Mohapatra, earli-er told ISNS that there arealways some policy considera-tions going on regarding sev-eral sectors, but refused tocomment on specifics.
New Delhi: Achieves theTarget 12 days in advance withproduction of 3000 PPE Kits ina single day.A total number of44,000 PPE Kits Fabricated tilldate Northern Railways work-shops are working 24x7 tofight against COVID-19.
In its continuous effort tofight against COVID-19, lead-ing from the front NorthernRailways Workshops have fab-ricated 44,000 number of PPEKITS till date for our covidworriers of Railways andachieved the target of produc-tion of 30,000 kits 12 days inadvance. Apart from this ,Northern Railway workshopsachieves the highest recordproduction of PPE Kits in a sin-gle day today with productionof 3000 PPE Kits.
����� *(3$(."0
Reliance Industries will usethree-fourth of proceeds
of its mega rights issue forrepayment of some of its bor-rowings, according to offerdocument. The companyexpects net proceeds of�53,036.13 crore from therights issue that opens on May20 and closes on June 3. Out ofthese, �39,755.08 crore wouldgo towards “repayment/ pre-payment of all or a portion ofcertain borrowings availed bycompany,” it said. The remain-ing �13,281.05 crore would beused for general corporate pur-poses. Shareholders will have topay only 25 per cent for sub-scribing to the company’s mega�53,125-crore rights issue, andthe balance will have to be paidin two installments in May andNovember next year, the com-pany said. One share will beoffered for every 15 sharesheld at �1,257. Of the �1,257per share price, only 25 per centis to be paid at the time of sub-scription.
����� *(3$(."0
The Finance Ministry hasextended the deadline for
fulfillment of contractual oblig-ations of all Government pro-jects, including public-privatepartnerships (PPP), which weredue for completion on or afterFebruary 20, by up to six months in view of Covid-19 crisis.
The ExpenditureDepartment, under the min-istry, had in February said thatCOVID-19 outbreak in Chinawould be considered a ‘forcemajeure’ situation, which refersto extraordinary events and cir-cumstances beyond humancontrol or a natural calamity,giving relief to companieswhich have contracts with theCentral Government.
In a recent office memo-randum, the department saidsubsequent to this, further dis-ruptions have affected trans-portation, manufacturing anddistribution of goods and ser-vices in the country.
“Limitations placed on themovement of men and mater-ial by the Ministry of HomeAffairs.
�98�9D�<7�9���&C�)(��8���!�� ���������>E��$��
����� �4�<=0
The rupee appreciated by 25paise to settle at 75.66
against the US dollar onTuesday as reports of initialsuccess in COVID-19 vaccinetrials boosted investor senti-ment world over.
Forex traders said besidesthe encouraging results in aCOVID-19 vaccine trial, gainsin domestic equities and aweak greenback in the overseasmarket supported the localunit. At the interbank foreign
exchange, the rupee openedhigher at 75.71 against the pre-vious close of 75.91. The unitgained further ground to set-tle at 75.66 against theAmerican currency, registeringa rise of 25 paise. During thetrading session, the domesticunit saw an intra-day high of75.63 and a low of 75.79against the greenback.
The dollar index, whichgauges the greenback’sstrength against a basket of sixcurrencies, was trading 0.16per cent down at 99.50.
The Adamas University on May 19,2020 today launched a special cri-
sis manual report ‘#AU CombatsCOVID” through a virtual press con-ference. The digital launch of thisreport is one of its kind initiative as itis not done by any other universities everin Eastern and North Eastern part ofIndia.
The momentous launch was done inthe presence of Prof Samit Ray,Chancellor, Prof Dr Deependra KumarJha, Vice Chancellor, Prof Ujjwal KChowdhury, Pro Vice Chancellor, ofAdamas University among many othernotable professors and academicians.
The report highlights how the uni-versity has quickly and radically alteredits teaching, learning, evaluating activ-ities during this crisis.
It also captures how the universityprioritised the safety of the students anddecided to close the campus as early asMarch 15, 2020 onwards. It had imme-diately adopted a series of humanitari-an measures which included contribu-tion of �10 lakh to the CM Relief Fundby Prof Samit Ray.
Additionally the university offeredits campus to be used as a quarantinecenter with a maximum of 1000 beds forisolated persons, along with quarters fordoctors and health professionals despitebeing a non-medical university.
����� *(3$(."0
With uncertaintiesprevailing all
around especially forstudents, online cours-es and webinars arecoming to their rescueduring the lockdown.Vidyadaan, an onlineplatform seeking tobring gurus and shishyastogether to fosterknowledge, growth anddevelopment, is organ-ising a series of ses-sions/interactive pro-grammes to keep the
students communitymotivated & also imparteffective skilling in themedia & entertainmentindustry.
To connect withthe media and enter-tainment industryfmany sessions wereplanned including onewith TerenceLewis, Indian dancerand choreographer,who is set to launchCreative WarriorsOnline Courses begin-ning with a MasterClass.
The COVID-19 pandemic pre-sents a huge challenge for the
management team of an organisa-tion. As digital workplaces becomethe new normal and employeesgrapple to adapt to their newwork routines, managing employ-ee morale becomes more impera-tive than ever. It is in crisis likethese when the organisational cul-ture is put to test.
Culture is what holds anorganisation together and createsa sense of belonging amongemployees. The more thoughtfuland empathetic organisations areabout supporting their employeesthe better chance they have of rid-ing out this storm together. Theright culture not only helps anorganisation survive in difficulttimes but also innovate, leverageopportunities, and thrive.
The strongest pillar of anorganisation’s culture is good gov-ernance. The ethical values andconduct of a business build deeprooted resilience and determina-tion that help the company dealwith crises more effectively.
Openness forms a key dimen-sion of a strong culture. Timely,transparent, and engaging com-munications can go a long way in
building a sense of community andtrust. These are extraordinarytimes for all of us. One should becognizant of the fact that employ-ees are not merely working fromhome, but they have been com-pelled to work from home in a cri-sis. And hence they require morecompassion and support.
Innovation and agility are keyto adapt to new challenges andensure business continuity. Thepandemic has suddenly put thespotlight on digital transformationwith organisations having to tran-sition to a work from home modelovernight. Enabling remote accessinfrastructures for your entire
workforce is not easy, thus puttingthose organisations with a strongtechnology core at an advantageover others.
One can never undermine theimportance of performance-ori-entation while cultivating a robustorganisational culture. A perfor-mance-oriented approach empow-ers your employees to continuouslylearn and excel.
Customer-centricity is equal-ly important in shaping the rightculture. This will help employeesplace the customer at the heart ofeverything that they do irrespec-tive of the scenario. Lending a help-ing hand to communities, espe-cially during testing times likethese speaks volumes about theorganisation.
These are challenging anduncertain times for everyone. Anda strong and resilient organisa-tional culture can help one navigatethrough this crisis. There is nopandemic-proof model. But this isan opportunity for leadership tointrospect and take steps that canhold them in good stead for thefuture.
The outbreak of COVID-19 hasdrastically changed everythingaround us. Social distancing is
the norm now and there would defi-nitely be a new normal. Looking at thepositive side, we now have a world thatis safe and healthier and in a much bet-ter prepared to deal with — if some-thing like this ever re-ignites. Digitalis the future post-COVID-19. Whatwould have happened in a decade interms of advancement of technology,may now happen in two years becausetechnology has taken over our livescompletely in such a short duration.The education sector is also seen cop-ing up well with the change and thesudden lockdown. This is the time tore-think and re-define the ways to edu-cate Generation Z, Alpha and beyond.
Law is one of the popular careerchoices in our country from a verylong time especially for those whosefamilies have been into this professionfor generations but this ideology ischanging and those who do not havea family of lawyers are opting for lawbecause of the wide career option gatesthat law has opened. The diversecareer options that a law degree offersare unmatched by any other profes-sional degree. The National LawUniversities have brought in a con-siderable change in the preference ofthe people and intriguing students topursue the career.
Furthermore, the Bar Council ofIndia, not only regulates legal educa-tion but also legal practice in the coun-try and a higher degree in law is recog-nised by the University GrantCommission (UGC). There are manyLaw Colleges in Delhi NCR recognisedby the Bar Council of India offering fiveyears integrated BA LLB/BBA LLB/BScLLB/BCom LLB. A candidate canstart preparing for the entrance exameither in Class XI or Class XII. Studentsaspiring to pursue law from NationalLaw Schools have to appear for CLAT(Combined Law Admission Test), to beheld on June 21, 2020, which will fur-ther test them based on their generalenglish, legal aptitude, logical reason-ing, general awareness and elementarymathematics.
It is the most stressful phase of anyparents’ life when their wards after theClass XII exams have to make a careerchoice for themselves depending onwhat intrigues them. Looking at thebrighter side of this lockdown, studentshave more time to prepare for CLATand other law entrance tests. Here are
a few tips to help one crack the test. �Clarity: One needs to be clearwhether they wish to be an engineeror a lawyer. No entrance test is goingto be easy so it’s always better to havethe clarity and focus on one thing.Weigh the pros and cons before mak-ing any decision and assess themselvesif they are fit for a particular profession. � It’s never too late: Stop procrasti-nating and make the best use of thetime left. It’s never too late to startpreparing. Use this lockdown to shapethe career and make it to the best lawschool in the country. �Make a plan: One needs to have aplan for everything; be it cracking acompetitive exam or starting their ownbusiness. Merely knowing and havingclarity that they want to be a lawyer willnot help. Students need to have a visionof how they want to go about it. �Know the syllabus: Students needto know how much is enough andwhat is enough. Being directionless
won’t help, rather it would only steerthem further and further away fromtheir goals.� Stay updated: Inculcate a goodhabit of staying updated with what'shappening in and around the world.Never miss reading the morningnewspaper. Students have easy accessto e-papers and e-magazines availableduring the lockdown. Since there isn’tmuch happening these days apartfrom COVID-19, students are luckythat the general knowledge segmentwon’t be tough or too elaborated.� Time management: Prepare aschedule and stick to it. Studentsneed to know how much time theyneed to devote to preparation keepingin mind that they are going to com-pete with the best in the country. Onecannot be studying all the time too soit's important to manage your time welland give yourself necessary breaks torelax and be at leisure.� Practise makes a person perfect:
Practising hard is the key, specifical-ly when the CLAT pattern has changedand it’s more of comprehension now.One may do very well in mock testsbut they may not do well when theyactually attempt the exam because theyare under so much pressure to give inthe best and nobody is going to givethem another chance. Practise is whatwill help them get through this withflying colours and make you moreconfident. �Know your flaws: Students need toknow their weak areas and strong areasso that they can devote more time toturn their weak areas into strongones. A lawyer definitely knows howto turn a disadvantageous situation tohis/her own advantage. This wouldalso help them understand how theyshould be attempting the paper to getthe best results. � Plan on how to attempt the paperon the final day: Students should gofor what they feel works the best for
them. Panicking is not an option, sostaying calm and ensuring themselvesthat they can go through all questionsis something which might help themget through this. They should beginwith your strongest section. Beginningwith what they are good at wouldboost their confidence and keep themmotivated throughout the paper. � Believe: Lastly, students shouldalways trust their hard work, passionand spirit. It is not to be forgotten thatthe inner conscience is always withthem to motivate and inspire them.
Cracking CLAT isn’t somethingimpossible, rather if one is strongenough to undergo a pandemic, theyare definitely strong enough to clearan examination. All students requireis to focus and have some faith inthemselves and they are good to go.
Artificial intelligence is the new rev-olution in our life, a game-chang-
er like electricity that transformedevery industry and created huge eco-nomic value with the potential to dis-rupt almost all aspects of human exis-tence. Every industry from manufac-turing to IT, education & healthcareto finance has been aggressivelyinvesting in it from all over theworld. It has been estimated that by2030, AI, in all its applications, is pre-dicted to contribute $15.7 trillion tothe global economy.
Every technological advancementcomes with its own drawbacks. As thepursuit for AI succeeds, it has thepotential to become more intelligentthan any human. Till date all the tech-nologies have been developed toassist humans, and not to outsmart us.Designing superior AI programmes,which itself is a cognitive task; wouldundergo superfast self-improvement,triggering an intelligence explosionleaving human intellect far behind.
The workplace too is changingfaster than ever, and acquiring newskills has become far more importantthan having the right credentials. AsAI is being increasingly incorporatedinto our workplaces and daily lives, itis poised to fundamentally upend theway we live and work. AI will replacea lot of jobs that humans do, as wellas create many different job oppor-
tunities in related fields. To keep upwith everyone, one must have somebasic knowledge regarding AI. Thereis going to be huge demand for AIexperts all across the globe. Worldover the demand of AI professionalsis increasing and there is already ahuge gap in supply and demand. Thisgap is going to widen rapidly in thecoming years. There is a 60 per centrise in demand for AI experts in 2019.And 76 per cent of Indian companiesfeel the shortage of AI skilled profes-sionals.
School going students need tolearn about AI to be able to under-stand the latest development in tech-nology and be motivated to directtheir learning in a way which can helpthem develop AI and related tech-
nologies in the future. OurGovernment has taken a lot of ini-tiatives in the field of AI education,especially at school level. It hasalready been introduced as a voca-tional subject for classes VIII and IXin more than 20,000 CBSE schoolsacross the country. Students arealready doing a lot of projects andinnovations in the field of AI at schoollevel.
There are a lot of online educa-tion platforms which provide pre-designed as well as live AI sessions forschool and college students. AI ses-sions help in development of com-putational thinking and analyticalmindset in young ages leads to careeropportunities for college students.
has led to massivedestruction on the economyand the lives of the poorunderprivileged people. Theunderprivileged children arethe ones who are suffering themost as the pandemic’s out-break has congested all thesocial activities. It has leftpeople with no choice but tostay at their homes.
As the number of casesincreases day-by-day, a majorchunk of the population isunable to fulfill their basicneeds. “They are not in a posi-
tion to isolate or distancethemselves and are deprived offood and essential safety mea-sures. Many children relied onthe meals that they used to getfrom schools or NGOs butsince the lockdown has beenimposed all around, every-thing has come to end forthese children,” says RichaPrasant, Founder of SunaayyFoundation.
The closure of schoolsmay protect these childrenfrom the virus but the impacton them is going to be on theirmind for a long run. “On one
side these children don’t getthe opportunity due to pover-ty but some of them who goin NGO’s education drive andGovernment schools.
Now they are losing outon their daily interactionswith their other kids andteachers, and it will be longbefore they go back to school,”Prasant adds.
Due to closure of schools,learning is certainly going tobe disrupted, more so forunderprivileged children, wholive in slums, whose parentsare not literate. They dont
have food to eat so how can weexpect that they will haveaccess to internet-based learn-ing. In the current situa-tion,there is no certainty as towhen schools will resume; aprolonged gap is going toaffect these children’s interestto go to schools.
The unprecedented lock-down has stung millions ofpoor children leaving them ina horrible situation. It is sig-nificant to take appropriatesteps for all those childrenwhose families cannot affordeven basic facilities.
The Vellore Institute ofTechnology’s (VIT) 2021
Campus placement started ofwith a century this week asmore than 100 students gotselected for PG internships.Intel and Qualcomm havecompleted their selectionprocess this week. Intel hasselected 106 MTech studentswith a stipend of �40,000 permonth, on conversion afterthe internship; the CTC wouldbe �18 lakh per annum.Qualcomm has selected fiveMTech students with a stipendof �45,000 per month, on con-version after the internship; theCTC would be �29 lakhs perannum. The entire selectionprocess was conducted remote-ly through remote online testsand interviews.
More than 20 companieshave confirmed their partici-pation for remote internshipprocess which include the bignames like Vmware, Mediatek,I n f i n e o n , P h i l i p s ,Novartis,Volvo, Cerner, etc.,Other companies who wouldlike to visit the institute for oncampus interviews, will visitafter the lock down.
The selected PG studentsfrom second year MTech,MTech (Software Engineering)and MCAs would join thecompanies by first week ofAugust for a 10 month intern-ship. The stipend ranges from�15,000 to �50,000 and if con-verted after the internship,their compensation wouldrange from �5 lakh to �29 lakhper annum.
COVID-19 has not affect-ed the placement process atVIT. The process of applyingfor the job is going to be thesame , but the entire selectionprocess would be done online.The placement office shares theresumes of the eligible andinterested students to the com-panies. The companies wouldconduct online tests which canbe taken remotely by the stu-dents. There are tools that areinbuilt into the online testplatforms used by the compa-nies that monitor the studentswhile taking the tests whichprevent copying and othermalpractice during the testprocess. Students who areshortlisted from the test will gothrough an online interview.
! ������������� ��
@)1(A�11%��������� ����� *(3$(."0
The JK Business School (JKBS) invites applications foradmissions to its full time Bachelor of Business
Administration.Duration: Three yearsEligibility: Candidate must have passed Class XII level
(with minimum 50 per cent in any stream). Students who havecleared the Class XII exams or equivalent examination fromCBSE/Board of School Education, Haryana/or other recognisedboard/or its equivalent are eligible to apply for these pro-gramme.
Selection procedure: Screening on the basis of Class XIIresults, group discussion, personal interview & JKBS WrittenAptitude Test (WAT)
How to apply: Log on to www.jkbschool.org.Last date to apply: May 20, 2020.
The current health crisis hasaffected all sectors of thecountry as well as the world
at large. While everything has cometo a standstill at the moment, it isnot possible to say when this crisiswill get over. Due to the shutdownimposed due to the COVID-19March 23, 2020 onwards, not onlymany supply chains have seen mas-sive disruption but also the prepa-ration schedule of many studentswho have naturally started feelingdemotivated and seem to have lostinspiration to work hard as theywere doing earlier. However, in themidst of this uncertainty and theimposed lockdown, they should notlose hope and keep themselvespositive at all times.
As per the latest notificationsfrom NTA and Ministry of HRD,the NEET exams will now takeplace on July 26, 2020. The studentshave to pick themselves up againfrom where they left and need toaccelerate their preparation in orderto score well in the upcomingexam. While most of the schools aswell as coaching institutes are doingtheir best to help students throughonline classes, it is also importantthat students make full use ofonline teaching and study with apositive mindset.
To make the student’s life eas-ier in this time of difficulty, here aresome quick tips.
Make an effective timetable:Now that you are at home, you can
easily divide your timetable in a bet-ter manner and increase the pacesteadily for a strong preparation.Follow NCERT books as they arethe best books for your preparation.Keep your study material preciseand follow it completely. Don’t gofor too many books as you might getconfused.
Online classes: Online classesare given by all schools, colleges aswell as coaching institutes. As thecourse batch timings are convenient,so students can take classes com-fortable & at a suitable time. Hence,students are advised proper timemanagement at home to make thebest of their online tutorials. Theyshould not hesitate to ask questionswherever required. They should alsomake short notes from the onlineclasses to gain a hold of importantconcepts. The students are alsogiven an access to contact teachersat any point of time. They shouldalways get their doubts cleared.
Mock tests: Take a mock testdaily and if you don’t have the cur-rent mock tests, attempt previousyear papers. It is strongly advisableto stick to the notes and resourceswhich you have prepared during the
past two years or so. Do not fall preyto free resources provided online asthey will only confuse you furtherand could also give misleadinginformation.
Subject wise study: Choose thesubject which needs more prepa-ration first and focus on your weakpoints. Spend more time on theweak topics and solve questions ona daily basis to overcome the chal-lenging topics.
Revision: Revise the formulas,method of calculations; and testyour speed according while timingin order to prepare for the exams.
For NEET exam preparation,the students must include followingtopics in their exam study:
Physics: Thermodynamics,Electrostatics, Optics, ElectronicDevices, Units & Measurements,Current Electricity
Botany: NCERT revision, MoreClass XII than XI. Morphology bio-logical classification morphology inflowering plants plant physiology,Genetics, ecology
Zoology: Animal Diversity,Structural Organisation in animals,Cell Biology & Cell Division,Biomolecules, Human Physiology,Human Reproduction &Reproductive Health, Origin &Evolution, Animal husbandry,Human Health & Diseases andBiology in Human Welfare.
The students should continuefollowing standard hygiene to stayfit and away from the virus. Don’tforget to wash your hands with soapor sanitize them throughout the day.Since the exam date is out, theyshould increase their focus on stud-ies and follow a strict and healthyregime.
Eat nutritious food and immu-nity building diet. Last but not theleast, I advise all students to staypositive and not stress. Indulge inan indoor sport every now and thenwith your family and practice med-itation.
It is a service that helps schoolsand institutions seamlessly get theirclassrooms online in just a week. Ourvirtual classroom enables 100 per centlearning up-time for students andprovides an online extension forclassrooms. �How does the gateway e-campuswork?
Our integrated e-campus allowsschools and institutions to streamlinetheir operations online using thestate-of-art ERP solution. TheEdumarshal ERP is a one-stop solu-tion to all the institution's needs. Thesolution is closely integrated with ourvirtual classroom module that allowsonline, asynchronous as well as hybridlearning. School staff and studentsconnect to the learning managementsystem seamlessly in a single click.Online classes can be conductedusing a secure platform that can becustomised to the needs of the school.�Given that we are used to doingthings offline, how tough is it goingto be for students to use onlinemode?
We make learning an enjoyableexperience by providing a platformwith a clean, intuitive layout that iscreated with the learners’ needs inmind. Learners are already used tousing the web for a variety of activi-ties including watching videos, read-ing e-books, surfing the internet forinformation and using video chatapplications. Our platform utilises theexisting skills of learners to enable amore directed learning. �What challenges do you foresee?
Online learning is picking pace inIndia. However most schools are stillmanaged and operated by profes-sionals that have gone through theclassic form of education. Making ashift to an online classroom willneed a consolidated effort by spe-cialists providers of online learningsolutions.�Since the lockdown a lot of thingshave gone online when it comes to
education. How are you different?With COVID-19 taking the world
by storm and no solution in sight, itwill be a while before schools re-openand when they do we will be wel-comed to a new normal. Onlinelearning is here to stay.�Are we looking at a totally newsystem when it comes to education?
The medium of education istransforming, while its core principlesremain the same. We are not replac-ing the classroom, but bring it onlinein a blended way. �Why should students use e-cam-pus portal?
Students can have access to courseinformation anytime, everywhere andeasily keep track of their schedule.This helps students become more self-directed learners. The learning por-tal provides a consolidated learningspace where students can join class-es, participate in discussion forums,learn from their peers, keep track oftheir grades, reinforce their learningthrough assessments and collaborateon projects. Our mobile first approachensures every student can access con-tent and join their classes using amobile phone. It’s learning, anytimeand anywhere.
The Durham Universityis offering up to 20IAS Fellowships for
the academic year 2020/21.Applicants of all nationalitiesare eligible to apply for thesefellowships. Applicants of allnationalities are eligible.
Eligibility: Applicantsfrom any discipline canapply; Should be fromresearchers or non-acade-mics who have a well-estab-lished or strongly emerginginternational reputation,have made major contribu-tions to their field, and canprovide evidence of researchleadership and/or publicimpact; Must submit a com-plete application as describedin the application proce-dures. Incomplete and lateapplications will not beaccepted or considered; Mustagree to the conditions of theIAS fellowships.
Need: A letter of applica-tion, A CV, two references, Afellowship proposal.
English LanguageRequirements: The universi-ty accepts IELTS, TOEFLiBT, Cambridge Proficiency(CPE), Cambridge Advanced(CAE) and the Pearson Testof English (PTE) Academicas preferred EnglishLanguage proficiency tests.
How to apply:
Applications must beemailed to the IASAdministrator, Linda Crowe.
Application deadline:July 13, 2020.
The University ofCanterbury invites applica-tions for bursary to helpinternatinal in their studiesby covering some of theirstudy expenses for the firstyear programme.
Award: The universityprovides financial assistanceat a value of $15,000.
The grant is paid to therecipient’s University tuitionfees account at the time ofenrolment in a programme.
Eligibility: A curriculumvitae, a copy of the passport,and academic transcriptsshould be submitted.
Candidates are expectedto complete their 12 years ofacademic education beforeapplying to this course.
They can apply for anundergraduate degree pro-gram in any subjects offeredby the university. Candidatesmust be full-fee-paying inter-national students.
Language requirement:You are bound to take IELTSor TOEFL test, only ifEnglish is not your local lan-guage.
How to apply:Applicants have to takeadmission in an UG degreecourse and complete onlineapplication for the grant.
He earned his India debutafter waiting for far too
long and Mayank Agarwal saysbatting great Rahul Dravid’smotivating words helped himkeep negative thoughts at bayand continue with his quest.
His big moment camewhen he made his Test debutagainst Australia at theMelbourne Cricket Ground(MCG) during the 2018/19series.
“I was getting runs youknow. I got massive runs thatRanji Trophy season and forIndia A. I did have a word withRahul bhai. I told him I wasgetting thoughts of sometimesnot getting picked,” Agarwaltold Sanjay Manjrekar in avideocast onESPNcricinfo.
Agarwal gothis interna-t i o n a lcareer offto a finestart witha fighting 76against a high-qualityAustralian bowlingattack.
In 17 innings sofar, he has scored 974runs at an average of57.29 with three cen-
turies at the top of the order.But he had to endure a long
wait to get there having per-formed consistently in thedomestic circuit for Karnataka.That’s when former India cap-tain Dravid, doing duty as theA team coach, helped Agarwalwith his wisdom.
“I very clearly rememberhim telling me ‘Mayank theseare the things that are in yourhands. You have worked hard,you have gotten here. You areas close as you can get.Selection is not in your hands’.
“And I totally agreed withhim. Theoretically you under-stand that but practically it’s noteasy.
“But he put forth fewthings — ‘What is to say thatthe coming October and
November is not going to bedifferent from September. Ifyou think otherwise youwill get into a negative mind
frame it’s you who is going tolose out and nobody
else’. So I remem-bered that talk
and that keptme going,”M a y a n kadded. “WhenI got the call I
was elated and Icalled him up
and thanked him.”
@����� Kai Havertzscored twice as BayerLeverkusen ended the firstround of Bundesligamatches in over twomonths with a 4-1win at WerderBremen on Mondaywhich moved themwithin a point of the topfour.
After a slow start to thegame in an eery atmos-phere, the encounter burstinto life with three goals infive minutes.
Havertz noddedLeverkusen into a 28th-minute lead, beforeBremen right-back
Theodor Gebre Selassielevelled on the half-hourmark.
But Havertz restored
Leverkusen’s advantagethree minutes later withanother header, fromKerem Demirbay’s free-kick.
Peter Bosz’s sidewrapped up a comfortablevictory with second-halfgoals from Mitchell Weiserand Demirbay.
The heavy defeat leavesBremen stuck in the dropzone, five points adrift offthe relegation play-off spotand nine from safety, albeitwith a game in hand. AFP
����� !4#0*
Cristiano Ronaldo returned to train-ing with Juventus in Turin on
Tuesday after an absence of over twomonths because of the coronaviruspandemic.
The 35-year-old arrived atthe Juventus Training Centre ina Jeep with tinted windowsaround 09:20 (0720 GMT),leaving three hours later with asmile and thumbs up for waitingphotographers.
Ronaldo underwentmedical and physicaltests before joining upwith his teammatesfor the first time in 72days for individualtraining, accordingto media reports.
C o a c hMaurizio Sarri hasbeen conductingtraining in small groups
since Monday, pending the final healthprotocol to be agreed with the ItalianGovernment.
Juventus players got back to indi-vidual training on May 4, the dayRonaldo returned to Italy after spend-
ing lockdown in his native Portugal.For the past two
weeks, he has been inquarantine in his villain Turin.
The five-timeBallon d’Or winner is
the firstJuventus for-
eign player, among thosewho left Italy duringthe lockdown, to returnto the team’sContinassa trainingcentre.
League leadersJuventus are leadingLazio by one point as
they target a ninthconsecutive Scudetto.
����� .�*$�*
Watford captain Troy Deeney will notreturn to training this week over
fears he could pass coronavirus on to hisfive-month-old son.
Deeney has consistently voiced hisconcerns over the speed with which thePremier League hopes to return to play-ing matches despite the United Kingdomhaving the second-highest death toll in theworld. England’s top-flight clubs are dueto return to training in small, socially dis-tanced groups on Tuesday.
Training will then be stepped up tofull contact with the aim of resuming theseason by the middle of next month.
“We’re due back in this week. I’ve saidI’m not going in. It’s nothing to do withfinancial gain,” Deeney said on the TalkThe Talk podcast.
“My son is five months and he’s hadbreathing difficulties. I don’t want to comehome and put him in more danger.”
All players and staff will be regular-ly tested, but Deeney highlighted the con-tradiction of contact sport returning at atime when the public are told to contin-ue following social distancing guide-lines. The 31-year-old also added he iswilling to take a financial hit if not play-ing results in a reduction in wages.
“While we are being tested and whilewe are going to be in a very safe environ-ment, it only takes one person in thegroup. I don’t want to be bringing thathome,” he added.
“I just said the simplest thing. I can’tget a haircut until mid-July, but I can goand get in a box with 19 people and jumpfor a header.
“I don’t know how that works. “I’ve lost more or less everyone that
I care about. So that, to me, is more impor-tant than a few quid in my back pocket.”
������West Indies captainJason Holder has said hewon’t force his players intotravelling to England for athree-Test series amid theCovid-19 pandemic.
The West Indies wereoriginally scheduled to playthe Test series from June 4but the fixture had to bepostponed due to the coro-navirus outbreak.
However, the ECB hopethey can kickstart season byrescheduling series in July.
“Each player has to becomfortable in making thestep. It’s been made clear ifwe are to hop on a plane andgo over to England to play, itmust be safe” Holder toldBBC Radio 5.
“Certainly from my per-spective, I won’t be forcinganyone to go anywhere,”Holder added.
Last week, ECB director
Ashley Giles said they haveto create an environmentwhere West Indies andPakistan both feel safe whiletravelling to the UnitedKingdom. He assured that acomplete risk assessmentwould be done before takingthe plunge.
The 28-year-old reiterat-ed that health and safety will
be the first priority.“The first priority is
everybody’s safety,” saidHolder.
“We’ve been assured thatthe only way the tour canpossibly go ahead is if every-one can be comfortable withthe measures the ECB areputting in place to roll thecricket out,” he added. PTI
����� .�*$�*
ABritish Grand Prix would be“impossible” this year if
elite sport is not exempt from14-day quarantine restrictionswhen entering the UnitedKingdom, Formula One said onTuesday.
Silverstone is planning tohost two races behind closeddoors this summer, subject toGovernment approval, to makeup for some of the lost time inthe 2020 F1 season with 10 racesalready either cancelled or post-poned. However, the UKGovernment’s coronavirusrecovery strategy document set
out an intention to introduce a14-day quarantine rule for inter-national arrivals.
“A 14-day quarantine wouldmake it impossible to have aBritish Grand Prix this year,” anF1 spokesperson said.
“Additionally it has a majorimpact on literally tens of thou-sands of jobs linked to F1 andsupply chains.
“We would be travellingback to the UK on F1-onlyoccupied aircraft and all staffwould be tested making a quar-antine totally unnecessary.
“If all elite sport is to returnto TV then exemptions must beprovided.”
����� �=$#0$
Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and InterMilan will stage a new competition
called the European Solidarity Cup in 2021to raise money for medical facilities in Italyand Spain.
The three clubs will play each other ina round-robin group, with Inter againstBayern held in Milan, Real facing Inter inMadrid and Bayern hosting Real inMunich.
Proceeds from the fixtures will bedonated to medical facilities in Italy andSpain, two of the world’s worst-hit coun-tries by the coronavirus pandemic.
The aim is “to send out a message ofsolidarity and fraternity to the people ofEurope”, said a statement from RealMadrid.
Dates for the tournament have notbeen decided. The timing will “depend onthe match calendar and when football canbe played in front of fans again”, the clubssaid.
Bayern will invite 5,000 nurses, carersand doctors to the Allianz Arena for theirmatch against Real Madrid.
“Nurses, carers and doctors in partic-ular are doing an outstanding job for soci-ety at the moment,” said Bayern chairmanKarl-Heinz Rummenigge.
“We, the three clubs, want to showthese heroes our appreciation, respect andgratitude.”
“The great commitment of all health-care workers has been essential to allowus to look to the future,” said Inter presi-dent Steven Zhang.
��� � .�*$�*
Six positive cases for coron-avirus have been detected at
three Premier League clubs afterplayers and staff were testedahead of a return to training,England’s top flight said Tuesday.
“The Premier League can today confirmthat, on Sunday 17 May and Monday 18 May,748 players and club staff were tested forCOVID-19,” the league said in a statement.
“Of these, six have tested positive fromthree clubs.” No details were released overwhich individuals or clubs are affected.
“Players or club staff who have tested pos-itive will now self-isolate for a period of sevendays,” added the league’s statement.
����%�� Babar Azam wants to take a leaf out ofImran Khan’s aggressive captaincy and besidescricket, he is also brushing up his English tobecome a “complete leader” like the World Cup-win-ning all-rounder.
Last week, the star batsman took over the reinsof Pakistan’s white-ball cricket after being appoint-ed as the ODI skipper.
“Imran Khan was a very aggressive captain andI want to be like him. It is not an easy job captain-ing the Pakistan team but I am learning from myseniors and I have also had captaincy experience sincemy under-19 days,” Azam said.
He said that to be a complete captain one mustbe able to interact comfortably with the media andexpress oneself properly in front of an audience.
“These days I am also taking English classesbesides focussing on my batting,” he said.
The 25-year-old Babar said he was not satisfiedwith Pakistan’s current standing in international crick-et. “I am not happy with where we stand and I wantto see this team go up in the rankings.”
Babar said captaincy would be a challenge for himbut it would not affect his batting.
“It is an honour to lead one’s national team so itis not a burden for me at all. In fact, after becomingcaptain, I have to lead by example and be moreresponsible in my batting.”
Babar hoped the T20 World Cup is held this yearin Australia as he wanted to lead his team in the ICCevent. “It would be a disappointment if the event wasnot held or rescheduled because I am looking for-ward to playing in the World Cup and doing well init,” he said.
About plans for Pakistan to fly to England in Julyto play three Tests and three T20 internationals amidthe Covid-19 pandemic, Babar said a lot of hard workand planning would be required to make the play-ers feel comfortable and safe.
“Touring England won’t be easy. Health and safe-ty of players is of great importance and the tour willonly be possible when proper arrangements are inplace,” he said.
“Both England and Pakistan team fans, alongwith the cricketers, are missing cricket because of thepandemic.”
“We will still try to perform to the best of ourability despite no support from the fans in the sta-dium,” he added. PTI
���� � *(3$(."0
India skipper Virat Kohli hassaid he never doubted his abil-ities during match situations
and as a child went to sleep think-ing he could gun down a total forthe country and win a particulargame he has been watching.
“To be honest, I never doubt-ed myself in game situations.Everyone who is human hasdoubts and weaknesses. Havetheir negatives. So in practiceduring tours, if you haven’t had agood session you feel you don’thave that flow,” Kohli said duringa Facebook Live session withBangladesh ODI captain TamimIqbal.
“Yes, doubts creep in then andit’s at the back of your mind. Keyis to keep going and get into thatzone till you feel that it was justdistraction. If I believe I am goodenough, then I am good enough.
“Best part about match situ-ation is that you don’t need tothink so much. You react to situ-ations knowing your role. Negativevoices always come off the fieldwhen you are not in competitionmode,” said the 31-year old pro-lific batsman.
Kohli added that when heused to watch India matches, he
would invariably think he had itin him to chase down the total.
“Honestly, when I was a kid,I used to watch India games andsee them lose I would go to sleepthinking I could have won thatmatch. If I am chasing 380, I neverfeel that you can’t achieve it.
“In 2011 in Hobart, we had tochase 340 in 40 overs to qualify. Atthe break I told (Suresh) Raina thatwe will approach this match as two20 over games. 40 overs is a bigduration. Let’s first play 20 and seehow many runs are scored andthen play another T20 game.”
Kohli also lauded throwdownspecialist D Raghavendra, sayinghis ability to pump in speeds inexcess of 150-155 kmph with thesidearm enormously contributedto Indian batsmen's improvementagainst fast bowling in recentyears.
“I believe the improvementthis team has shown while play-ing fast bowling since 2013 hasbeen because of Raghu. He hasgood concepts about footwork, batmovement of players. He hasimproved his skills so much thatfrom sidearm he can easily hurlthe balls at 155 kmph. After play-ing Raghu in nets, when you gointo the match, you feel there is alot of time.”
Kohli also spoke about how hehad to change his approach to bat-ting to suit his requirement.
“I changed because I wantedto hit all around the ground. Thestatic position was making my
options limited. My basic funda ofbatting is that if your hips are inperfect position then you canplay any shot. Static position was-n’t working well for me.
“But it works for a lot of play-
ers. Like Sachin Tendulkar had astatic stance all his life and henever had a problem. His tech-nique was far superior with excel-lent hand eye coordination.
“For me I had to change itaccordingly to suit my needs. Itried little, little things in my bat-ting as you would never know ifyou don't try,” he said.
���%������ManchesterUnited have warned fansto stay away from match-es played behind closeddoors at Old Trafford if thePremier League restarts.
Solskjaer’s side are setto resume small grouptraining on Wednesdayas Premier League clubsstep up the Project Restartplan to finish the season.
But all 92 remainingmatches will have to beplayed in front of emptystands due to the pandem-ic, leading United to acti-vate a refund or rebate toticket holders for theirremaining home fixtures.
If the Premier Leagueget their wish to play atclubs’ normal stadiumsrather than at neutralvenues, then United willhave four home leaguematches to play.
Aware of the dangerof supporters gatheringin large groups during the
health crisis, United havepleaded with their fans tostay away from matchesand watch on television.
“We share your disap-pointment that you willnot be able to watchUnited in person fromwithin the stadium, but wewould encourage you to
give your continued loyalsupport from the comfortand safety of your home,”United said in an email tosupporters on Tuesday.
“To help with that, thePremier League and theirmedia partners will workto deliver the very bestbroadcast coverage of ourgames.
“We also ask for yourco-operation not to trav-el to any stadiums atwhich we are playing onmatchdays.
“By supporting fromhome, you will be playingyour part to keep allUnited fans safe. AFP
����� /�./=!=
Some East Bengal play-ers, including foreign
recruits, and physicaltrainer Carlos Nodar,who are still stuck hereamid the coronavirus-forced national lockdown,have been asked to“vacate their flats” provid-ed by sponsors QuessCorp.
Most of East Bengal’sforeign players have lefthome but a few are stillhere along with theSpaniard Nodar who hadpreferred to stay back.
“This is the worstthing to happen. Where
will we go now especial-ly when there’s nation-wide lockdown in force,”a player told PTI, con-firming the development.
“There is no way wecan vacate at this point oftime but the managementis just ignoring our calls.
Let’s wait and watch.”The Bangalore-based
Quess group, which isexiting the club on May31, had last month acti-vated the Force Majeureclause, citing Covid-19pandemic, to terminateall the contracts with
effect from May 1. Theplayers had approachedthe Football Players’Association of India.
The East Bengal play-ers said they havereceived a message fromthe ‘QEBFC admin team’which has circulated themessage. “As per notifica-tion from the owners ofthe residential accommo-dations in Rosedale,Uniworld and other resi-dences, we will be hand-ing over the apartmentsto the respective ownersby 25th May, 2020,” readthe message purportedlysent by Quess manage-ment.
Never doubted myself in game situations: Kohli����������������������������������������A�?���"�������� *(3$(."0
Former Indian cricketerGautam Gambhir feels there
would be apprehensions in theminds of the players once they goback on the field and take part incompetitive sport post the Covid-19 lockdowns.
“It depends from individualto individual (fear in mind ofcricketers). But yes there will belittle apprehensions, when they goout and play. Probably after sometime, it will go in the heat of thegame once players are on the pitchand will ease into the game andwill be excitement to be out andplaying,” Gambhir said.
One of the talking points ofpost-Covid cricket has been theban on the usage of saliva to shinethe ball when the sport resumesin order to stop the transmission
of the virus. In fact, the ICCCricket Committee has also rec-ommended the ban on salivausage and a decision on the samecan be expected next month.
However, Gambhir fears therecommended saliva ban couldfurther take the game — which isalready titled towards the batters— away from the bowlers.
“It will be the hardest thingfor the bowlers. The ICC have tocome out with an alternative.Without shining the ball, I don’tthink it will be an even contestbetween bat and ball,” Gambhirsaid.
“If they don’t allow using sali-va, they will have to come up withan alternative to help the bowlersto shine the ball. It’s going to bevery important otherwise therewould be no fun watching crick-et,” he added.
'��������������@�� ����������� �� �� � �)/� /*�2� � �.�� �3����The Italian Football Federationannounced on Monday night that all itscompetitions, including Serie A, willremain suspended until June 14.
The Lega Serie A had hoped for areturn on June 13 but the FIGC haspushed back the date in line with a Govtdecree that all sports competitions besuspended until next month.
The FIGC said the choice wasmade “pending any further... decisionby the authorities”, suggesting the pos-sibility of a restart on June 13 might stillexist.
A meeting is planned in the nearfuture between Conte and Italian foot-ball bosses. The Government’s techni-cal and scientific committee will decidein the coming days if it accepts the newhealth protocols proposed for a returnto group training and competition. AFP
