Qayam Ali

The BJP today appointed union minister Ananth Kumar as election in-charge of Bihar, where assembly elections are due later this year.

“President Amit Shah has appointed Ananth Kumar as election in-charge of Bihar and Dharmendra Pradhan as co-in-charge,” a party statement said.

As general secretaries of the party, both the leaders have worked in Bihar in the past and are well familiar with the state politics and this is the reason they have been assigned this responsibility, said a senior leader.

The flood situation in Assam worsened on Friday even as the meteorological department warned of more rains in the coming days. Two people have died due to the floods.

An official said one person died in Baksa district on Friday while another person was washed away a few days ago by the surging water in Lakhimpur district.

In the wake of incessant rain, the flood situation worsened in at least 16 districts affecting 2.11 lakh people.

The Railway Ministry said on Friday that Suvidha trains with dynamic fares will be introduced in July to address the rush during peak travel seasons.

These trains will have dynamic fare system and authorities said there will not be any downward movement of the fare, a statement said.

Depending upon the demand, these trains may be run during “peak seasons like winter rush, summer rush, Dussehra rush, Holi rush and on other occasions”.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday called on the civic bodies to make cities clean and garbage-free before moving towards the initiative of developing them as ‘smart cities’.

Addressing a day-long workshop of top functionaries of municipal corporations, municipal councils, zilla parishads and their executive heads in Nagpur, Mr Fadnavis said the state government will extend financial assistance from the reserve funds to the civic bodies on basis of their performance of unit in keeping cities clean and in waste management.

Suspected militants on Friday shot dead a shopkeeper in Sopore town of north Kashmir Baramulla district, police said.

The gunmen shot at and critically injured Khursheed Ahmad Bhat inside his shop at Bomai in Sopore, 52 km from Srinagar, at around 8.00 pm, the police said.

The 35-year-old was rushed to the nearest hospital but was declared dead by doctors on arrival, the police said.

No militant outfit has claimed responsibility for the killing so far, which was second in this week in Sopore area.

PTI

While declining comment on India’s surgical strike on militants in Myanmar, the US has asked India and Pakistan to take steps to reduce tensions and move toward resuming dialogue.

“I don’t have a comment on that specific operation,” US State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke told reporters Friday when asked if the US supported or was concerned over India’s cross border strike in Myanmar, a move that has raised hackles in Pakistan.

But “we encourage India and Pakistan to take steps to reduce tensions and to move towards resuming talks,” he said.

Australia and India have a “very large” bilateral agenda and ties have grown tremendously in the past few months, raising hopes that dialogues in defence and security sector would be further intensified.

“The relationship is really on the up and we have to invest a lot of time in doing work here,” the new Indian High Commissioner to Australia Navdeep Suri said.

“After Prime Minister’s (Narendra Modi) visit, our relationship has really grown and we are struggling to cope… It is a happy situation that there is a very large bilateral agenda,” Mr Suri added.

England skipper Eoin Morgan has backed changes to the Duckworth-Lewis system after rains and a revised target shattered England’s hope of defeating New Zealand in the second ODI at Kennington.

England were cruising to victory needing 54 runs from 37 balls when the weather gods played spoilsport. Post the rain break, England were given a new target of 34 runs from 13 deliveries.

Morgan said that he thinks Duckworth-Lewis would change as the game evolves, adding it was something that could potentially be looked at, the BBC reported.

The Tata-owned Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL) has got another three-month extension for operating the Taj Mansingh Hotel with NDMC planning to complete the auction of the property by September.

The last extension was given on March 25 and the current lease agreement, which expires on June 30, has now been extended till September 30.

The matter was placed before the civic body’s council yesterday during a special meeting where new chairman Naresh Kumar took oath of office.

Taking women security as first priority and it putting high on the agenda of his government, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday announces 35 per cent of jobs in the police department would be reserved for women.

“We will ensure that the police department will have 35 per cent of women staff”, KCR said during the TS-iPASS launch here on Friday. He also said that 1.1 lakh surveillance cameras would be installed across the city.

Strong winds and rain lashed the city on Friday evening, signalling the end of horrid summer and bringing much respite for denizens from the scorching heat at the same it also once again exposed the poor civic infrastructure in the city.

The overflowing open drains added to people’s woes. Vehicular traffic was thrown out of gear in several areas in the central part of the city as almost all the roads were waterlogged. .

A traffic police official said the water logging was mainly due to the outdated drainage system.

Pakistan Rangers on Friday violated the ceasefire by resorting to unprovoked firing at Border Security Force (BSF) positions in Jammu, an official said.

“Pakistan Rangers resorted to unprovoked firing at BSF (Border Security Force) positions in Pargwal area of Akhnoor sector today (Friday),” a senior police officer told IANS in Jammu on Friday,

“Pakistan firing started at 12 a.m. and lasted for half an hour. BSF effectively retaliated. No casualty or damage has been reported from our siad.

IANS

Former Odisha Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang today met BJP president Amit Shah and announced that he was joining the party.

While the party leadership is reported to have accepted his joining, his formal joining will take place later in Bhubaneshwar.

The 72-year-old tribal leader from Odisha, who quit the Congress on May 30, said he decided to join the BJP as he liked its political strategy.

As a young journalist working in Delhi, I find it always irritating to face the frequent question from people – even strangers – about my being a Kashmiri.

The questioners seem to believe that Kashmir is a hotbed of terrorist violence with gunfire resounding all through the day and night and that people of the valley are all pro-Pakistan. I always explain – and it is a pain – that my home state of Jammu and Kashmir is far from what they imagine. It is as safe as other regions of the country, particularly Delhi where I have been residing and working for a year now.

Nineteen Indian students who had entered Malaysia with false work visas have approached the Indian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur to urge early repatriation to India, the Lok Sabha was informed on Wednesday.

Minister of state for external affairs Gen. V.K. Singh (retd) said emergency certificates have been issued to the 19 students by the Indian mission as the students said their passports had been kept by the employer.

Delhi BJP demanded Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s resignation on Friday owning moral responsibility over AAP leader Jitender Singh Tomar’s arrest in the alleged fake degree case.

“We demand resignation of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s for defending his law minister JS Tomar facing charges of fraud and cheating. Now again he (Kejriwal) is trying to befool people with talks of expelling him from AAP.

“He should make Tomar resign from the Vidhansabha,” said Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay.

The coordination committee of various civil groups demanding the setting up of an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Jammu, on Friday began an indefinite dharna in Jammu.

“To press for their demand for an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Jammu, the AIIMS coordination committee supported by the members from other civil society groups today started its indefinite dharna here today,” said Abhinav Sharma, president of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar association.

A 35-year-old woman killed her husband on Thursday night by crushing his head with a grinding stone while he was asleep at their house near Vadipatti in Madurai district of Tamil Nadu.

The victim has been identified as Chellapandi, 38.

His wife, Selvi, and two children — a 15-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter — surrendered before the Vadipatti police on Friday.

The police said Chellapandi was into black magic and had a few extramarital affairs. This resulted in frequent fights between him and his wife.

The 1993 Delhi bomb blast case convict Prof Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar was shifted to Amritsar Central Jail from Delhi’s Tihar Jail on Friday after being brought by road from the national capital amidst tight police security.

“He went in an ambulance at around 4 am and was escorted by teams of armed Delhi police,” a senior Tihar jail official said, adding he was taken by road to Amritsar under heavy security cover.

Bhullar first underwent thorough medical checkup at Swami Dayanand Hospital in Delhi’s Shahdara city on Thursday before being brought to Punjab.

German prosecutors on Friday closed their investigation into the alleged tapping of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone by the US National Security Agency, saying they have been unable to find evidence that would stand up in court.

Prosecutors last June opened an investigation into the alleged monitoring of a cellphone Merkel used for party business, an issue that has weighed on relations between Germany and the US.

A Turkish policeman who tear-gassed a female protester at close range in one of the most iconic moments of 2013 anti-government protests has been ordered by a court to plant 600 trees, media reported on Thursday.

The tear-gassing of Ceyda Sungur was captured in dramatic images and she became known as the “lady in red” around the world due to the colour of the dress she wore. An Istanbul court found Fatih Z guilty of causing ‘intentional injury and professional fault’ and gave him two sentences of 10 months in prison.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Friday inaugurated government hospital buildings and other services in the health sector in the state at a cost of over Rs 94 crore.

This included inaugurating government hospital buildings constructed at an estimated Rs 80.92 crore, launching medical equipment and ambulance services, a government release said.

As many as 25 vehicles under the 108 Ambulance service, a free-of-cost initiative, were inducted to the existing fleet size of 726, it said.

Reliance Retail is planning a big push in the e-commerce segment this year through rollout of online stores for fashion and lifestyle, grocery and business- to-business verticals.

With an eye on Internet infrastructure of group firm Reliance Jio, the company is keen on creating “a differentiated e-commerce model” for India.

In modern retail, the company is looking to scale up its presence to over 900 cities from the current 200 across formats by the next year.

ABG Shipyard said it’s in talks with Privinvest Holding, a major player in global naval, commercial vessels and super yacht industry, for a strategic stake sale.

“We have received firm Expression of Interest from Privinvest… We are in discussion with them for a strategic stake sale,” the country’s largest private sector shipbuilding yard said in a regulatory filing to BSE.

Taking a dig at Pakistan over its assertions in the wake of India’s cross-border surgical strike in Myanmar, Shiv Sena on Friday said the neighbouring country should not make such comments when it had kept silent over the killing of Osama bin Laden by American troops.

An editorial in Sena mouthpiece ‘Saamana’ on Friday said that Pakistan first needs to tell the world why it did not dare to speak up against the US when its troops entered the country and killed dreaded terrorist Osama bin Laden in 2011.