by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
Trivendra Singh Rawat
By Rajnish Singh,
Dehradun : As Uttarakhand hosts the fourth International Yoga Day on Thursday, Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat feels that the event may help attract more tourists to the state, creating more job and business opportunities.
The reason Rawat thinks the yoga day will boost tourism is because of the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the mega event which he reasons was watched by people across the world.
“Hosting the main International Yoga Day event undoubtedly gave a new identity to Uttarakhand as 193 countries watched it.
“As Prime Minister Modi himself participated in the event, Uttarakhand will get a world class platform. It would really attract domestic as well as foreign tourists,” Rawat told IANS.
If tourism gets a boost, it will help in creating new jobs and business opportunities in the state.
“If everything goes well as we are expecting, Uttarakhand will get a new direction. The door to employment will open for youths.”
The Chief Minister said over three crore tourists, including 18 lakh foreigners, visit Uttarakhand every year. If the number increases, the state will earn more revenue.
Rawat said the attraction of foreign tourists towards Uttarakhand is mainly because it is famous as an yoga centre of India. After this event, the state’s fame will “definitely increase”.
He said more than 35 volunteers of foreign countries participated in this event and did yoga ‘asanas’ along with nearly 50,000 people in the sprawling lawn of Dehradun’s Forest Research Institute (FRI).
Over 45,000 people did yoga postures on mats while around 5,000 people, including security forces, witnessed the event.
“The successful hosting of the mega event would have surely sent a message to others watching the function in other countries. They would surely want to learn the yoga technique and visit Uttarakhand,” Rawat added.
Rawat on Wednesday wrote a blog thanking the Prime Minister for selecting the state capital as the host of the main event on International Yoga Day.
The tourism sector in Uttarakhand suffered badly in the aftermath of the 2013 devastating flash floods in the hills.
Officials in Uttarakhand administration said domestic tourist footfall in the state after the 2013 disaster fell by over 25 per cent while it went down by over 20 per cent in terms of foreign tourism.
Tourism has again picked up, and officials expect the International Yoga Day to give it a further boost.
(Rajnish Singh can be contacted at rajnish.s@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Commodities, Commodities News, Economy, Entrepreneurship, News, Politics, Success Stories, Your Business Plan
New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday appreciated the farmers of Uttarakhand’s Bageshwar district for making biscuits from their farm produce.
“In Bageshwar, the main crops are mandwa, chaulai, corn or barley. This being a hilly area, the farmers did not get a fair price for their produce.
“But the farmers in Kapkot village decided to come out of this situation. They adopted a value addition process and turned a loss-incurring equation into a profit-earning one,” the Prime Minister said in his monthly radio programme “Mann Ki Baat”.
Modi said he learned about the success story of these farmers from “Good News India” programme on Doordarshan.
He said their income doubled with the price of grain going up to Rs 50 per kg from Rs 25 per kg.
“With the hard work of these farmers, the annual turnover of the society has gone up from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 15 lakh and with more than 900 families getting employment here, people have stopped migrating to other places.”
“Impressed by the bold initiative of these farmers, the administration has linked this to the National Livelihood Mission,” he said, adding that these biscuits were now being supplied to Almora and Kausani besides being sold at about 50 Aanganwadi centres in the district.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Pakistani pilgrims ‘Zayarins’ arrive at Roorkee amid tight security for annual Urs
New Delhi : A total of 152 Pakistani pilgrims are visiting the Kalyar Sharif shrine in Uttarakhand for the annual Urs of Hazrat Khawaja Allauddin Ali Ahmed Sabir.
The Pakistanis, accompanied by officials of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Pakistan High Commission, laid the traditional ‘chaddar’ at Rouza Sharif and offered ‘dua’, a Pakistan High Commission statement here.
The visit follows a visit by group of 84 pilgrims who visited Sirhand Sharif for the annual Urs of Sheikh Ahmed Farooqi Sirhindi, Mujaddid Alif Sani, from November 16 to 23 in Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab.
Meanwhile, 119 Hindu pilgrims are visiting Pakistan for the Shree Katas Raj Dham from December 1 to 7.
Earlier, 107 Hindu pilgrims visited Pakistan to attend the 309th birthday celebration of Shiv Avtari Satguru Sant Shadaram Sahib at Sukkur from November 19 to 30.
Over 2,600 Sikh pilgrims visited Pakistan in connection with the 548th birthday anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak (November 2-11).
Islamabad remains committed to facilitating visits of pilgrims as part of people-to-people exchanges between Pakistan and India, the statement said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
Haridwar : Over a dozen labourers were injured in a factory here in Uttarakhand after part of a crane broke and molten iron ore fell on workers there, police said on Monday.
Two of the injured in the late Sunday night incident at the Rana Bar factory in Landhaura area, are said to be critical and are “battling for life”.
A case has been registered against the factory management for negligence and obstructing government work as they did not allow the police to enter the premises and delayed rescue and relief operations.
There was also a blast as the molten iron ore fell on a cylinder. A generator too caught fire, adding to the blaze.
Sub-Inspector Pramod Kumar said that the security guards did not let the police in for considerable amount of time. It was only after additional reinforcements were called, that they were able to get inside and rescue the workers.
A factory official has been taken into custody and a probe is on.
The injured have been identified as Sattar, Waseem, Khushnaseeb, Inam, Ankit, Sachin and Rajiv.
Identification of others is underway, an official said. Four of the injured workers are from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, the police officer said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
The state of Uttarakhand has been placed under President’s Rule, within two months of dismissal of the Arunachal Pradesh government on January 26.
Dismissing Harish Rawat’s regime in Dehradun under Article 356 of the Constitution appears to be yet another addition to the catalogue of constitutional sins committed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government at the Centre.
By doing so, Modi has followed the footsteps of the Congress reign at the centre. Yet, he had promised a different kind of polity.
The provisions of the Article 356 — giving sweeping powers to the central government — is essentially aimed at restoring constitutional propriety after breakdown of governance in a state, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer had once observed.
But settling partisan scores seems to have become the order of the day under the present disposition.
Abuse of Article 356, though, is nothing new in Indian politics. A few BJP leaders have tried to build up an argument that the Congress had no business to talk about constitutional decorum as the grand old party had several times dismissed non-Congress governments across the country and era.
“Congress is forgetting how many state governments it has dismissed in the last 60 years,” Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kailash Vijayvargiyasaid.
In 1992-93, the P.V. Narasimha Rao government at the Centre dismissed four BJP governments — in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh — following the demolition of Babri Masjid on December 6.
After the Rao regime dismissed the Nagaland government led by Vamuzo in 1992, the chief minister said that the imposition of President’s Rule did not surprise him. “After all, the Congress has always considered itself as imperial power and treated the states as colonies,” the late Vamuzo was quoted as having said.
In 2005, during Manmohan Singh’s regime, Goa Chief Minister Manohor Parrikar — now the Defence Minister — was dismissed by Governor S.C. Jamir.
Incidentally in 1990, Jamir, then Nagaland Chief Minister, was himself dismissed by Governor M. M. Thomas after 12 ruling Congress legislators defected from the Congress camp.
Like Rawat, Jamir had demanded trial of strength in the assembly and had managed the backing of the Speaker, late T.N. Ngullie.
However, Governor Thomas, during the V.P. Singh regime at the Centre did not summon the assembly and had even declined to meet two Congress observers, Rajesh Pilot and S.S. Ahluwalia, saying the views of Congress MPs were not required on a political situation in Nagaland.
Even a government led by hardcore socialist Chandrashekhar at the Centre was no different. In 1990, it dismissed the DMK ministry of M. Karunanidhi in Tamil Nadu, despite lack of any adverse report from the state governor, to seek support from Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress which was wooing Karunanidhi’s rival, J. Jayalalitha of the AIADMK.
Ironically, the Congress party is now at the receiving end of the imperial character of governance, protesting “murder of democracy”.
That brings to fore the debate whether Article 356 allowing the Centre to dismiss state governments should have some legal restraints.
By its action, the Modi government and the Bharatiya Janata Party have put other Congress governments — in Manipur, Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Karnataka on notice — that it will practice the same art that the regime before it did.
Modi may do well to recall that the 2014 the mandate was also about ushering in change in way of politics.
Voters may have hoped that a proponent of development would care about constitutional propriety since the BJP is fond of talking about “Cooperative Federalism” with the states.
But their action in Uttarakhand, and Arunachal Pradesh, seems to have belied that hope.
(Nirendra Dev can be contacted at nirendra.n@ians.in)
