by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Srinagar : Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Leh town of the Ladakh region on Saturday beginning his day-long visit to Jammu and Kashmir amid hightended security as authorities suspended internet services and shut down schools and colleges for the day.
Modi was received at the Leh Airport by Governor N.N. Vohra and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti.
As separatists called for protest march to Srinagar’s city centre Lal Chowk against Modi’s visit, the authorities suspended mobile internet services across the Kashmir Valley as a precautionary measure, police said.
Restrictions were also imposed in several areas in Srinagar. All schools and colleges were shut for the day.
Separatists leaders, including Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Umer Farooq have been placed under house arrest while Yasin Malik has been taken into preventive custody.
The Prime Minister has a hectic schedule that includes the unveiling of a plaque to mark the commencement of work on the Zojila Tunnel, India’s longest road tunnel and Asia’s longest bi-directional tunnel.
The state-of-the-art Zojila Tunnel would provide all weather connectivity between the Ladakh region, that remains cut off from the rest of the country during the winter months.
It will cut down the time taken to cross the Zojila pass from three-and-a-half hours to just 15 minutes, besides providing all-round economic and socio-cultural integration of the region. It also has immense strategic importance, an announcement said.
Modi would also attend the closing ceremony of the birth centenary celebration of Buddhist spiritual leader Kushok Bakula Rinpoche in Leh.
He will also dedicate the 330 MW Kishanganga hydropower project to the nation, at the Sher-i-Kashmir International Conference Centre (SKICC) in Srinagar during the day. Besides, laying the foundation stone of the four lane 41.2-km long Srinagar Ring Road.
In Jammu city, Modi will lay the foundation stone of the Pakul Dul Power Project and the four lane 58.2-kilometre-long Jammu Ring Road.
Ring Roads in Srinagar and Jammu are aimed at reducing traffic congestion and making road travel safer, faster, more convenient and more environment friendly.
Modi will also inaugurate the Tarakote Marg and Material Ropeway of the Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board that will facilitate pilgrims visiting the shrine.
The Prime Minister will also attend the Convocation of the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in Jammu.
After a busy day, Modi will fly back to New Delhi in the evening.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Shashi Tharoor
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has suffered an “irreparable and irreversible reputational damage” in the last four years, says Congress leader and former foreign diplomat Shashi Tharoor.
In the state capital to attend an event of the Indian Professional Congress — an outfit of the grand old party aimed at reaching out to professionals, the two-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram said a momentum was building against the Narendra Modi government and in 2019, the general elections results were sure to go against it.
On a warm Sunday afternoon, as Tharoor spoke to IANS — before the chargesheet in Sunanda Pushkar death case was filed on Monday, he claimed the Karnataka Assembly polls were going the Congress way.
But not attaching much importance to Karnataka, which he said was just a “way station”, the 62-year-old Congress leader said that elections in Gujarat, where Congress inched “astonishingly close” to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in many constituencies, showed that the tide was now turning against the saffron camp.
The former Union Minister, who currently is the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, also pointed out how defeats of the BJP in party strongholds like Gorakhpur and Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh recently had rendered a body blow to the party’s dream to return to power in 2019.
“What the BJP government and Prime Minister Modi has done in the past four years in power?” he asked, slamming them on the twin issues of Goods and Service Tax (GST) and demonetisation.
“GST was a good idea, which implemented in haste and in bad taste, has affected the whole tax system,” he said while pointing out how even the best global economists had come down heavily on the GST, even calling it the most complex tax system.
“Only the ones eating out of their hands think otherwise,” said the erudite Congress Lok Sabha member, who is knowing for his quaint words and subtle expressions.
Sweating profusely due to the sweltering heat and humidity, when the diplomat-turned-politician was asked if this sweat was symbolic of the challenging task the Congress was facing to make a comeback in the state, Tharoor gave a big smile and ducked the question.
“Well there are ifs and buts here and there, but with growing resentment against the BJP-led government at the Centre and the Congress being the biggest opposition party, we are set to be the natural beneficiaries,” he said confidently.
On Monday, the Delhi Police filed charges against Tharoor in the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar, naming him as one of the accused. The charges were filed in the court of metropolitan magistrate under Indian Penal Code sections related to cruelty against a woman and abetment to suicide. Pushkar was found dead in a luxury hotel room in New Delhi on January 17, 2014.
In his interview he charged the Modi dispensation of rechristening the names of many schemes and welfare programmes of the Congress-led UPA governments and rolling them out as their own.
Asked to comment on whether Congress President Rahul Gandhi when pitted against Prime Minister Modi had a certain disadvantage, Tharoor was quick in his defense of the Gandhi scion, saying: “India has a parliamentary system and not a presidential one, which though has its own merits, does not fit in the Indian context.”
The Congress had its own brand of politics, while the BJP pursued the politics of one man, he said.
Asked whether it was not the “one family” brand of politics that prevailed in the Congress, he rebutted, saying that Rahul Gandhi, soon after his ascendancy. had made it clear that in Congress, every worker and leader mattered.
Coming to his favorite topic of international relations and foreign policy, the dapper Congress leader surprisingly had a back-handed pat for Modi.
“I must compliment the Prime Minister for his tireless efforts, boundless energy and personal time that he has put in the foreign policy and traveling, but sadly things have not moved beyond this.”
Sadly, he said, the foreign policy was being treated in an “episodical manner” by the NDA government, something which had given mistrust and a sense of insecurity in and around the immediate neighbourhood.
Asked how the transition from the United Nations to the hurly burly of politics in India had been when he was fielded as a Congress candidate in Kerala in 2009 and his face lighted up with a smile: “Initially it was pretty tough and I had very many stab wounds in the back and front… But that kind of has stabilized now,” he said.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
Smriti Irani has a word with MoS Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore at the Parliament. (File photo: PTI)
New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday effected a reshuffle in his Cabinet by replacing Smriti Irani as Information and Broadcasting Minister with Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who was a Minister of State in the ministry.
In other changes, portfolios of Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley, who underwent kidney transplant on Monday, have been temporarily assigned to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal.
Goyal will hold the portfolios during the period of Jaitley’s indisposition.
S.S. Ahluwalia has been relieved of the charge of Minister of State, Drinking Water and Sanitation, and assigned the portfolio of Minister of State, Electronics and Information Technology.
Alphons Kannanthanam, Minister of State, has been relieved of the charge of Minister of State of Electronics and Information Technology.
Rathore will be Minister of State (Independent Charge) of Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
Harsh Vardhan
Kolkata : The Narendra Modi government has been successful in creating a good synergy among the science and research departments all over the country, Union Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Monday.
He said rigorous efforts put in by his ministry to conduct regular meetings between heads of diverse departments and officials concerned in the last four years created this coordination that was missing earlier.
“When I took charge, my first impression was that there is hardly any coordination between what the researchers are doing in different institutes. There was a lack of coordination not just between departments like biotechnology, CSIR, applied science and agriculture which are interrelated, but even within the same department,” Harsh Vardhan said after formally inaugurating the new campus of National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) in Kalyani of West Bengal’s Nadia district.
“Our ministry has consistently spoken to all the departments. It held interactions with all the scientists, directors of the major institutes, departmental heads and respective secretaries regularly and rigorously. So today we can say there is a good quality synergy not just in the science ministry but also within other ministries,” he said.
Harsh Vardhan, who is also the Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, said the current government wanted a perfect level of coordination, collaboration, understanding and synergy among its departments as this is crucial for progress since the researchers can share each others’ knowledge andA know what others were doing.
“We held meetings with the departments after coming to power. I think it was these meetings where the directors of different institutes got themselves acquainted for the first time with what their colleagues in diverse sectors are doing,” he pointed out.
The minister also formally inaugurated the Kalyani-Kolkata biocluster, catalysed by NIBMG that brings together five other institutes including IISER Kolkata, Bose Institute, CSIR-IICB, Indian Statistical Institute and Tata Medical Centre with the aim of precipitating systems medicine in India, the minister said .
“It is a perfect example of how we can best use our knowledge, experiences and vision,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Kalaburagi (Karnataka) : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday urged the people of Karnataka to vote for a change in the Assembly elections, saying their mandate would decide the future of farmers and youths.
“This election is going to decide the future of Karnataka, its farmers and youth. It is about the safety of women. Do not assume that it is only about electing an MLA, it is much beyond that,” Modi told an election rally at Navodaya Vidyalaya Grounds in Kalaburagi, about 630 km northwest of Bengaluru.
Modi, who is campaigning for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for a second day, addressed the rally for some 30 minutes in Hindi.
Accusing the state’s Congress government of being indifferent to farmers, Modi said the state failed to ensure that the benefits of central government’s schemes reached the farmers.
“Kalaburagi is known for dal (pulses) cultivation. Our farmers are working hard here but the Karnataka government is insensitive towards their condition,” Modi said.
He said the BJP’s Chief Ministerial face, B.S. Yeddyurappa, was a farmer’s son who understood the concerns of the farmers.
“In Yeddyurappa, we have a leader who is devoted to the welfare of the farmers. For him, their (farmers’) welfare is top priority.”
Modi will later address rallies in the mining district of Ballari and in Bengaluru.
—IANS
