CM Yogi Adityanath interacting with President Ram Nath Kovind during a courtesy visit at the Rashtrapati Bhawan on Friday.

Yogi meets President, PM & BJP Chief in New Delhi

A ‘Compelled’ Yogi finally says ‘Yes’ to the Centre!

First India Bureau

New Delhi/Luc-know: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath re-mained on his heels throughout the day on Friday as he called on Bharatiya Janata Par-ty (BJP) heavyweights Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi and party na-tional president JP Nadda in the final leg of his two-day New Delhi visit. He also met President Ram Nath Kovind later in the day.

Yogi’s New Delhi trip, in the backdrop of recent Uttar Pradesh visit by BJP General Secretary BL Santhosh, and party state in-charge Radha Mohan Singh huddling with state leaders and meet-ing Governor Anandi-ben Patel, elements the likely of winds of

change in country’s po-litical heartland, Uttar Pradesh.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appreciated Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government for its efficient han-dling of a devastating second wave of Cov-id-19. The PM also praised how Uttar

Pradesh, under Yogi’s leadership handled the migrant crisis when there was an exodus of sorts from various parts of the country. The Premier has, in the past too, patted the CM Yogi led UP govern-ment on various issues including that of the handling of Covid-19 first wave. Turn to P6

Shashikant Sharma/ Vishal Srivastav

New Delhi/Lucknow: According to highly placed sources, after his two day long New Delhi visit, before returning to Lucknow on Friday evening, a virtually ‘compelled’ but powerful UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath finally suc-cumbed to central lead-ership’s pressure for a likely major cabinet re-

shuffle including the in-stallation of AK Sharma as deputy CM or a pow-erful cabinet minister with some key portfoli-os. Similarly, inspite of initial opposition Yogi also assured Narendra Modi-Amit Shah and JP Nadda that he will exe-cute Centre’s final move to divide the country’s most politically volatile state - Uttar Pradesh - in two or three states which may be named as

Purvanchal, Bun-delkhand, Western UP or Awadh Pradesh.

It is also possible that with view to dilute or deprive Mayawati to take any political credit from this move, the cen-tre may create only two new states rather than three, which was pro-posed by Mayawati as the UP Chief Minister in 2011 but after Sama-jwadi party came to power, the proposal was

kept on the back burn-er. But now the situa-tion is different and the Chief Minister, after having a 2/3 rd majority in assembly, can easily get through the move, which may be subse-quently cleared by Lok

Sabha and Rajya Sabha also, where BJP’s ‘Chanakya’ Amit Shah has masterminded the art of sailing through any critical proposal in the Parliament.

According to sources close to Yogi, his meet-

ing with the Prime Min-ister, which lasted for about more than 100 minutes, the ‘atmos-phere and sentiment’ was not very conducive and Yogi was reported-ly clearly told about 250 BJP MLAs’ ‘dissatisfac-

tion’ over the style and functioning of Yogi gov-ernment in general and the chief minister in particular. This fact has been revealed in a pow-erful BJP-RSS leader, Gen Sec (Organisation) BL Santhosh’s confi-dential report to the Prime Minister after having a one on one feedback from these MLAs during his two day long stay at Luc-know recently.

With a view to con-clude and to take for-ward Central leader-ship’s UP agenda, after Yogi’s departure to Luc-know, a high level meet-ing was convened be-tween Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit

Shah and party Presi-dent JP Nadda at the residence of the Prime Minister. According to sources, drawing a tough line,

the Prime Minister made it very clear that the leadership will not bow down to any pres-sure, come what may, and it will get imple-mented its ‘decided agenda’ in Uttar Pradesh and every step will be taken which will be deemed fit in the interest of the party. It means cabinet reshuffle will take place, AK Sharma will be inducted as depu-ty CM or as a powerful cabinet minister, Jitin Prasada as a cabinet col-league and the likely di-vision of UP Turn to P2

Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath with BJP National President JP Nadda during a meeting in New Delhi on Friday.

Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath with PM Narendra Modi during a meeting in New Delhi on Friday.

PM Modi appreciates Yogi’s performance but also does a ‘plain speak’ and gives a bit of his mind to Yogi

A ‘reluctant’ CM agrees to execute high command’s agenda on cabinet reshuffle including AK Sharma, Jitin Prasada

and the likely division of UP in two or three states!

LUCKNOW l SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2021 l Pages 12 l 3.00 RNI NO. UPENG/2020/04393 l Vol 1 l Issue No. 181

OUR EDITIONS: JAIPUR, AHMEDABAD

& LUCKNOW

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n Feeling ‘suffocated’ in Bharatiya Janata Party, Mukul Roy rejoins Trinamool Congress along with son Shubhranshu

n BJP GATES OPEN FOR REVERSE TIDE AS MAMATA SAYS MORE TO FOLLOW

n Suvendu’s appointment as LoP in West Bengal Assembly proved to be last nail in coffin

Mohd Fahad

Kolkata: Ending weeks of speculation, BJP na-tional vice-president Mukul Roy, along with his son and former MLA Subhrangshu, returned to the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) fold on Friday.

Earlier in the day, Roy arrived at the Trinamool Bhawan along with his son, where he held a meeting with Chief Min-ister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, MP Abhishek Banerjee, and other senior leaders be-fore formally rejoining the party.

Although Roy won the Krishnanagar North seat on a BJP ticket, he had been maintaining distance from the party after it lost the polls.

Once a close aide of Mamata Banerjee, Roy resigned from the TMC in September 2017 and was suspended by the party for six years for anti-party activities.

Turn to P6

OH ROY!TURNCOAT RETURNS HOME

Mukul Roy has re-turned to his roots. He could not work in

the BJP. During polls, he did not make any anti-TMC state-ments. He has found peace now. Mukul will continue to play same role in our party which he used to play earlier MAMATA BANERJEE, West Bengal CM

It feels good to see my former colleagues here. Bengal will restore its

glory under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee. I will issue a written statement on why I left the BJP. Under the present condition, no one can remain in the BJP MUKUL ROY, after joining TMC

BJP leader Mukul Roy with TMC National General Secretary Abhisekh Banerjee during his re-joining of TMC party, in the presence of West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata. —PHOTO BY PTI

WHAT MADE ROY TO RETURN

NOT JOINING TMC, SAYS PRANAB SON

Kolkata: Mukul Roy has been disillusioned with the BJP leadership for a while – it began even before the assembly elec-tion. TMC sources said that Roy was not in favour of fighting the assembly elections for the BJP, but was asked to fight the Krishnanagar seat, which he won. Roy also wanted to be part of union government, but PM Modi was apprehensive due to corruption charges levied against him in Bengal.

Kolkata: A Dispelling ru-mours, late former Presi-dent Pranab Mukherjee’s son, Abhijit Mukherjee, on Friday made it clear that he is not leaving the Congress unlike his friend Jitin Prasada. Televi-sion channels and a few newspapers had reported he would be joining the Trinamool Congress on Friday afternoon.

New Delhi: The United States has decided not to give emergency use au-thorisation (EUA) to Bharat Biotech’s Cov-id-19 vaccine, Covaxin.

The main reason for this is insufficient in-formation to make a de-cision on an EUA re-quest for this vaccine.

According to Ocugen, the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) has recommend-ed that it pursue full authorisation for Cov-axin through a biolog-ics license application (BLA). In its feedback, the FDA has “requested additional Turn to P6

Mumbai: NCP Presi-dent Sharad Pawar’s lunch with political strategist Prashant Kishor at the former’s residence in Mum-bai on F r i d a y has set the politi-cal pot s i m m e r -ing in the state, even as MP Supriya Sule and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar called it a private lunch and dis-pelled rumours.

Turn to P6

PK lunch with Pawar sets off political buzz ‘HAJ COMMITTEES, WAQF BOARD TO BE

ROPED IN TO REMOVE JAB HESITANCY’New Delhi: To clear hesitancy and miscon-ception against COVID vaccination, social and educational organisations like Haj com-mittees, Waqf board, Central Waqf Council and self-help groups would be roped in the “Jaan Hai To Jahaan Hai” campaign, said Mi-nority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

US FDA declines nod for Covaxin use

SC REJECTS PETITION ASKING FOR FRESH LOAN MORATORIUMNew Delhi: The Supreme Court rejected PIL demand-ing fresh moratorium on loan repayments in view of the second wave of Covid-19. SC declined to pass an order on fresh loan moratorium and said issues raised in the petition are in the realm of policy decisions.

GOVT MULLING PLEA FOR `4 LAKH TO COVID VICTIMS, SC TOLDNew Delhi: The Centre informed Supreme Court that it was considering a plea to provide compensation of Rs 4 lakh to kin of those who died due to Covid. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the government is contem-plating a policy, and sought two weeks to file its reply.

INDIA

UTTAR PRADESH

91,702new cases

3,403new fatalities

619new cases

74new fatalities

CORONA CATASTROPHE

$43 BILLION JUMP IN ADANI’S FORTUNE

z A rally in the stocks of companies controlled by bil-

lionaire Gautam Adani has added almost $43 billion to his wealth this year, catapult-ing him to the spot of the

2nd-richest person in Asia. Some analysts say the gains are fraught with risk.

z Adani’s net worth of $76.7 billion got a boost from a

330% jump in Adani Total Gas Ltd., a 235% rise

in his conglomer-ate’s flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd. and a 263% increase in Adani Transmis-sion Ltd this year.

Aditi Nagar

New Delhi: PM Naren-dra Modi held delibera-tions with Home Minis-ter Amit Shah and BJP chief JP Nadda amid speculation about a re-shuffle in the Union cab-inet around June 20. Jy-otiraditya Scindia, Chi-rag Paswan, Sarbananda, Trivendra Rawat, Jayant Sinha, Anupriya Patel, Sushil Modi, Meenakshi Lekhi, Mahesh Jethma-lani, Rajiv Ranjan and Lallan Singh can be made ministers at the Center, says sources.

Union cabinet reshuffle: PM meets Shah

UTTAR PRADESHLUCKNOW | SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2021

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Yogi SpeaksYogi Speaks

Uttar Pradesh CM has expressed his

condolences to the family of 2 men, who died of drowning in river Yamuna in Kalpi town of Jalaun district of Bundelkhand. He directed offi cials to make sure that adequate relief funds be provided to their families at the earliest and to make sure that all medical facilities are provided to the other three rescued youths.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has

directed offi cials to target 5 lakh vaccina-tions everyday in June and double it to 10 lakh jabs everyday in July, August months. The Chief Minister further added that the vac-cination pace in Uttar Pradesh is far better when compared with other states

YOGI PRESENTS HARVARD REPORT ON TACKLING MIGRANT CRISIS TO BJP BIGWIGSTHE REPORT IS A STUDY ON YOGI MODEL OF TACKLING THE INFLUX IN UP DUE TO LOCKDOWN IMPOSED IN 2020First India Bureau

New Delhi/ Lucknow:CM Yogi handed over a copy of the study of Harvard University to BJP bigwigs includ-ing PM Narendra Modi, and BJP’s Na-tional President JP Nadda on Friday. The study bears testimo-ny to the exemplary work done by his gov-ernment with regards to tackling the mam-moth migrant crisis caused by lockdown due to the pandemic spread. Yogi met PM Modi and Nadda on Friday.

When the entire world was grappling with the pandemic, mi-grants were amongst worst hit groups and witnessed deteriorating living conditions due to pandemic spread and loss of livelihood due to the lockdown.

Because of the vision-ary thought process of UP CM, the state earned praises and accolades from the many esteemed bodies representing the international commu-nity during the COV-ID-19 crisis.

CM Yogi was on a two-day visit to Delhi and met the Prime Minister on Friday morning. He

also took the opportuni-ty to thank the PM Modi for his support from the Centre and on his per-sonal behalf during the recent Covid wave.

Coming to the mi-grants’ rescue, CM yogi directed officials to work towards the multifold agenda of providing transportation facilities, delivering free ration and running healthcare centres for outbreak pre-vention. .

The Harvard Univer-sity study dealt with

how the ‘Yogi Model’ took care of migrants through a combined mechanism of preven-tion from COVID-19, sus-tenance of their fami-lies, employment ar-rangements along with skill mapping and other logistics.

Yogi presented two other books to Modi, one was a similar study by John Hopkins Uni-versityand the other was on suggested model of ascertaining GDP at the district level.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath reportedly had a two hour long meet with BJP’s National President JP Nadda during his visit to New Delhi on Friday.

PM’s $5 trillion economy goal: UP aims $1 trillion target

CM APPRISES PM MODI ON COVID MGMT, PARTIAL CURFEW, AGGRESSIVE TESTINGNew Delhi: The UP CM attributed the state’s successful Covid-19 response to the aggres-sive and early testing, vaccination, planned partial corona curfews, smooth oxygen supply management, prompt and proper treatment of Covid patients as a result of which the Ac-

tive cases have sharply declined by 96.41% and the state has managed to limit the fresh cases below 1,000 for fi fth day in a row. Yogi informed Modi that an average of 300,000 samples were being tested daily in UP and were the highest in the country.

Following its proactive approach under the mechanism of ‘Trace-Test-Treat’, UP has conducted as many as 5,27,80,680 COVID tests so far and efforts are being made to restore normalcy in with Partial Corona Curfews aimed at saving both ‘Lives and Livelihood’.

First India Bureau

New Delhi: In a bid to contribute to PM Nar-endra Modi’s aim to make India a USD 5 tril-lion economy, Chief Minister Yogi Adity-anath reiterated the aim to make Uttar Pradesh a USD 1 trillion dollar economy. He also discussed ways in which the state is pre-paring itself to achieve the target with PM Modi.

The UP government has been formulating a district-wise strategy to transform the state into an investor-friendly place conducive to in-dustrialisation with proactive measures, particularly to develop the neglected regions. He presented details of an innovative plan set-ting district-wise GDP targets in the state, based on each district’s opportunities and chal-lenges, linking it to the PM’s goal of a $5 trillion mark for the Indian economy by 2025.

Cabinet Reshuffle in UP Soon after Yogi’s Delhi trip !Continued from p1

in two or three states, as and when it is deemed fit by the central leader-ship. However, the top RSS leadership will also be taken into confi-dence or kept in loop in all major UP matters because all said and done, Yogi still contin-ues to be RSS’s poster boy and the face of the saffron party in the vol-atile state of Uttar Pradesh.

In response to PM’s ‘concern or displeas-ure’, Yogi turned the tables on the state BJP leaders specially the disgruntled group, by saying that unfortu-nately his own party is trying to play as a vil-lain to defame and dis-credit him and also cre-ating a narrative of the failure of the Yogi gov-ernment on various

fronts including Corona management. Yogi’s viewpoint was that Co-rona is not confined to only UP, it is all over the nation including West Bengal, Bihar, MP, Pun-jab and so on. Rather his government has ex-celled in the area of co-rona management across the state.

Subsequently, Yogi met with BJP President JP Nadda for about an hour or so and briefed him on the highlights of his discussions with the Union Home Minis-ter Amit Shah on Thursday and with the Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi on Friday noon. A seasoned politi-cian Nadda, who is try-ing to play the role of a bridge between Yogi and the Central leader-ship, also persuaded Yogi not to insist or go beyond a point to ‘ex-

press’ his hard stand on certain sensitive issues like cabinet reshuffle and the likely division of UP, the idea which has already been en-dorsed by the top lead-ership of RSS, which feels that a further divi-sion of Uttar Pradesh, on the lines of Uttara-khand will certainly speed up the develop-ment process and ad-ministratively also, it will be easier to manage the new states.

Prior to his meetings with Narendra Modi and JP Nadda, Yogi ex-pressed a similar ‘dis-contentment’ to Amit Shah also about the role of some negative forces in UP BJP to project him as a flop chief min-ister. At this point Yogi reportedly blamed me-dia and a section of BJP leaders for underplay-ing his government’s achievements. But in response to Yogi’s view-point, a ‘knowledgea-

ble’ Home Minister Amit Shah advised Yogi to properly take care of his media management (though Yogi had al-ready recently assigned his government’s media management job to a highly experienced and capable officer Navneet Sehgal).

At one point, Yogi also expressed his dis-appointment saying that when he was ex-tremely busy in finalis-ing the Chairmen of District Panchayat boards, after a phone from B L Santhosh, he had to come to Delhi and stayed for two days. He was also of the view that the Chief Minister of a state like UP must have the liberty to come and meet the Un-ion Home Minister or the Prime Minister at any time, as and when required.

First India Bureau

Noida: Rehabilitation of villagers whose land has been acquired for the first phase of the Noida International Airport is targeted to be completed by June 30, according to govern-ment officials involved in the project.

A total of 3,003 fami-lies are to be rehabili-tated and resettled in Jewar Bangar, a town-ship being developed for villagers whose land

has been acquired, and so far, 600 of them have been moved there, the officials said.

Monetary compensa-tion has been paid to the families whose land has been acquired by the Uttar Pradesh gov-ernment for the Green-field airport under the Right to Fair Compen-sation and Transpar-ency in Land Acquisi-tion, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act, 2013, project’s nodal of-ficer Shailendra Bhatia

informed. On Wednesday,

Meerut Divisional Commissioner Suren-dra Singh visited the six villages whose land has been ac-quired for the air-port. The commis-sioner then instruct-ed the officials to ex-pedite the rehabilita-tion work and com-plete it by June 30, Bhatia added.

However, according to people privy to the airport development

project, some villagers are delaying their relo-cation due to financial constraints in building houses on the developed land plot provided to them by the govern-ment. The delay may stretch the target of completing the rehabil-itation by a fortnight or so, they said. Villagers have been told to raise any their griev-ances with government officials and have been assured of their prob-lems being resolved.

Jewar airport: Rehabilitation works may extend by a fortnightDEVELOPMENTAL SPREE

Some villagers are delaying

their relocation due to financial

constraints in building houses

on developed plot provided to

them by the government

The road to ‘Jewar’ may open new economical avenues for the UP government.

‘Govt making all efforts to better Yamuna’First India Bureau

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government is making concerted ef-forts to ensure uninter-rupted flow of the Ya-muna with focus on its cleanliness, said state

Jal Shakti minister Dr Mahendra Singh here on Friday.

“Like the Namami Gange Programme, all drains would be inter-linked and connected to sewage treatment plants,” the minister

told reporters after tak-ing stock of anti-flood measures here.Dr Mahendra Singh said the loss of lives and property due to floods can be avoided if measures are taken on a timely basis.

WATER WOES!

Cleanliness staff in action to get rid of water logged in front of Charbagh Railway station due to the recent rains that lashed Lucknow.

UTTAR PRADESHLUCKNOW | SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2021

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COVID-19 UPDATEDECLINE CONTINUES

WITH DECLINING COVID CASES, BLACK FUNGUS CASES ALSO COME DOWN

As number of cases of Covid-positive infections were declining cases of black fungus or mu-

cormycosis were also waning. Mucormycosis is a disease that has a mortality rate of 50 per cent and was increasingly being seen in recovering Covid-19 patients across the country.The disease, which can lead to blackening or discolouration over the nose, blurred or double vision, chest pain, breathing dif-fi culties and coughing blood, is strongly linked to diabetes. Experts believe the high concentration of di-abetics in India can be one of the causes for the large number of cases. Meanwhile, there is still a shortage of liposomal Amphotericin B, the primary drug used to treat black fungus. Mucormycosis is considered a rare fungal infection, but covid-induced Mucormycosis is being attributed to excessive and irrational use of steroids, that raise sugar levels in patients.

COVID ORPHANSTARGET OF MALICIOUS KIN

49 NEW CASES IN LKO

17,01,668TOTAL CASES

619 CASES IN A DAY

21,667TOTAL DEATHS74 DEATHS IN A DAY

16,68,874TOTAL RECOVERED1,642 RECOVERED IN A DAY

11,127ACTIVE CASES

75 MAX CASES IN GB NAGAR

Janardan Misra

Lucknow: Expressing concerns over the mo-tive behind persons coming forward to adopt children who lost their one or both par-ents in the corona epi-demic, the District Child Welfare Commit-tee member Sangeeta Sharma here said that people were behind as-sets, benefits of govern-ment schemes behind their heightened inter-ests in adoption.

Sangeeta Sharma said that when welfare team reached 127 chil-dren who have lost their parents in corona period in Lucknow, it was revealed that pa-ternal and maternal side of the children were fighting for cus-tody of kids.

While the kids were confused as they were unaware of intensions of relatives, motive of relative was to grab benefits of the govern-ment schemes.

She said in several cases it was observed that people with wrong intensions were keen to take custody of girl child.

It was duty of every responsible citizen to inform about such or-phans on Children Wel-fare Committee hel-

pline number 1098 and save them from wrong hands, she underlined adding that identity of the informer will be kept secret.

In a virtual meeting organised by Centre for Advocacy and Re-search (CFAR) Women and Child Welfare De-partment advisor Neeraj Mishra ex-plained Uttar Pradesh government’s Bal Seva Scheme.

First India Bureau

Lucknow: The fourth integral pillar of the UP Model of Yogi Adity-anath--aggressive vacci-nation, is leading by ex-ample under Mission June. The cumulative doses of vaccine admin-istered in UP against covid has come close to 2.20 crore. UP has given over 37 lakh doses in just 10 days from the start of the Mission June 1.

Daily vaccination fig-ures are at a record high since the start of ‘Mis-sion June’.The CM has already issued orders to set up special booths for street vendors and driv-ers from Monday, which is likely to increase the pace of vaccination. Preparations are on a war-footing to inoculate these vulnerable sec-tions of society in each district so as to elimi-nate vaccine hesitancy

among them and their families.

On Thursday, CM Yogi asked the officials

to ramp up the current daily vaccination rate to 5 to 6 lakhs within 2-3 days. Working in the same direction, the gov-ernment administered 4,28,523 vaccine doses in the last 24 hour.

UP, after successfully tackling the second wave of covid, is now conducting aggressive vaccination of the 18+ category to protect max-imum people against the anticipated III wave.

First India Bureau

Lucknow: Chief Sec-retary Rajendra Kumar Tiwari on Friday pre-sided over a meet which was directed at timely payment of dues and compensation to the de-pendents of govern-ment workers who lost their lives to the corona pandemic.

The Chief Secretary reviewed the cases on a department-to-depart-ment basis and directed officials to provide the dues to dependents on a priority basis. Officer related to the concerned department will be held

responsible in case of any lapse, he said.

The meeting consist-ed of Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) Home, Awanish Kumar Awasthy, ACS (Appoint-ment and Personnel) Mukul Singhal, ACS( Urban Development) Rajnish Dubey, ACS (Ir-rigation) T. Venkatesh, ACS (Secondary Educa-tion), Anuradha Shuk-la, ACS (Revenue and Basic Education) Re-nuka Kumar, Principal Secretary (PWD) Nitin Ramesh Gokarn, Prin-cipal Secretary (Awaas) Deepak Kumar and other officials.

Lucknow: Seventy-four more people died from coronavirus in Uttar Pradesh on Friday while 619 fresh cases were reported, taking the state’’s total infection tally to 17,01,668, said Navneet Sehgal, ACS Information. Since the outbreak of the covid pandemic last year, the infection has claimed 21,667 lives in the state.Of the fresh 74 deaths, 15 were reported from Kanpur, six from

Gorakhpur and fi ve each from Jhansi and Bareilly, Sehgal added.The maximum of 75 fresh cases were reported in Gautam Buddha Nagar while 49 cases surfaced in Lucknow and 27 in Agra, it added. In the past 24 hours, 1,642 patients have recovered from the infection, taking the number of recoveries to 16,68,874. The count of active covid cases in the state stands at 11,127.

Relatives eye govt doles as they fight to take custody of covid orphans, says child panel member

Hundreds of children in the state have been orphaned due to the covid pandemic. —FILE PHOTO

CS RK Tiwari chairing the review meet in Lucknow on Friday.

The welfare teamfound that paternal

and maternal side of the children were

fighting for custody

HOPE FLOATS

A boatman repairs his boat after authorities approve to start boat operations in River Ganga with covid guidelines, in Varanasi on Friday. Also, in Lucknow, the district administration has ordered the opening of all parks for the public from June 14.

Vax Populi: UP jabs 2.2 cr ppl on a spree CS reviews payout to kin of C-hit govt staff

Drug peddlers held, `1cr hemp seized First India Bureau

Lucknow: UP State Women’s Commission chairperson Vimla Batham on Friday said she was contemplating to give a show-cause no-tice to a panel member, who had suggested that girls should be kept off mobile phones by fami-lies who don’t want them “running away” with boys.

“Girls should not be given mobile phones

and if given, families should keep tabs on them. Girls talk with boys over the phone and later run away with them,” member Meena Kumari had told report-ers in Aligarh on Thurs-day when asked about the rise in crime against women.

“The statement was unfortunate and should not have been issued. I had asked her to apolo-gise for it and she ten-dered an apology for it

before the media on Thursday, Vimla Batham said.

Batham said Meena Kumari said her state-ment “was not inten-tional and was in the context of the cases which had come before her and were linked to mobile phones”.

The commission chairperson said she is contemplating giving a show-cause notice to the member to ensure that such things are not re-

peated in future.Batham said in the pre-sent times, mobile

phones have become a necessity as even classes are being held online.

First India Bureau

Lucknow: UP STF ar-rested three members of a drug peddling gang in Mirzapur district and recovered about 500 grams of hemp from them costing around Rs 1 core in the internation-al market.

STF sources said act-ing on tip-off STF team arrested Shravan Singh, Rajveer Singh and Tiru-pati Kanknala near

Bandhuva crossing in Mirzapur district. Along with 534 grams hemp, their identity cards and vehicle registration cards were recovered from them and their truck was seized.

During interrogation the accused said their gang used to fetch huge consignment of contra-band from Odisha and Andhra Pradesh and dis-tributed it in several dis-tricts of UP.

SWC may censure member for mobile phone comment

SWC member Meena Kumari —FILE PHOTO

‘WRONG VIEW’

Neeraj Mishra said CM Bal Seva scheme was started to benefit children who have lost their parents or one of their parents during the corona period after March 2020. Under the scheme Rs 4,000 will be transferred to account of legal guardian of children from zero to 18 years of age.

He said that eligible child must be regis-tered in school to get benefit of the scheme. Also, girls identified under the scheme will get Rs 1.01 lakh for their marriage at appropri-ate age and and chil-dren of 9th and above standard who will be perusing professional courses will get tablets or laptops for further studies. The state gov-ernment will make ar-rangements for security of assets of such chil-dren, he pointed out.

BAL SEVA SCHEMEStarted to benefi t children who have lost their parents or one of their parents during the corona period after March 2020, the CM Bal Seva ensures Rs 4,000 is transferred into account of legal guardian of children from zero to 18 years of age.

ACS, Information Navneet Sehgal

3.7M GET BOTH VACCINE DOSESThe cumulative number of vaccine doses administered reached 2,19,99,548. Of this, 1,82,70,797 have been given the fi rst dose, while the remaining 37,28,751 have received both doses of vaccine.

PERSPECTIVELUCKNOW | SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2021

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l Vol 1 l Issue No. 181 l RNI NO. UPENG/2020/04393.

Printed and published by Anita Hada Sangwan on behalf of First Express Publishers. Printed at Amar Ujala Ltd. B-5 Amausi

Industrial Area Kanpur Road Luc-know. Published at 98, Friend’’s Colony, Raheem Nagar, Dudouli Road, Madiyaon, Lucknow (UP).

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Promoted by First India News International Pvt. Ltd.

Prakash Javadekar @PrakashJavdekar

Mr. @ArvindKejriwal First you couldn’t give oxygen, then you

couldn’t store oxygen You said will vaccinate Delhi in 3 months, couldn’t procure one dose. Now, you want to deliver ration at doorstep. Implement #OneNationOneRationCard in Delhi,

then feel free to advertise.

Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank @DrRPNishank

#ProsperousFarmers The new farm laws make it compulsory for buyers to pay farmers within three days of a transaction. These new laws have

empowered small and medium farmers to sell to the highest buyer anywhere in

India. #7YearsofSeva

SPIRITUAL SPEAK

Reshape yourself through the power of your will;

never let yourself be degraded by self-will.

—Ved Vyasa, The Bhagavad Gita

IN-DEPTH

VACCINATING THE WORLD

he science and health-care communities have mobilized on a scale never before seen in our lifetime,

taking the fight to a deadly virus that is still sweeping the world and leaving a trail of personal loss and economic devastation in its wake. This unprecedented global response has led to the de-velopment of multiple highly ef-fective vaccines in record time, allowing for more than 2 billion doses to have been administered globally as of this writing. Astra-Zeneca has contributed 500 mil-lion doses to this global effort.

The vaccination effort has been nothing short of extraordi-nary. Thousands of lives are be-ing saved every day as a result of urgent and committed global collaboration.

Death rates remain unaccept-ably high, and the continued spread of the virus threatens the progress we have made. Our goal must be to eradicate COVID-19. That means reducing its inci-dence to zero everywhere, not just within the borders of specific countries. In the face of an evolv-ing virus that will continue to acquire new mutations, a rise in cases anywhere threatens us all.

TOP TWEET

T

n West Bengal there has been a ghar wapsi of Tri-namool Con-gress’s prodigal

son, Mukul Roy, four years after he left the party. Roy was among the first Mamata Banerjee’s loyalists to cross over to the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2017, soon after his name surfaced in the Sarad-ha scam. It was said that he joined the BJP to save his skin from the CBI and En-forcement Directorate. Re-cently when the CBI arrested some TMC MLAs for their alleged involvement in the scam it was pointed out that Roy was not being investi-gated because he was with

the BJP. Now that he is back with the TMC, will the CBI reframe its charge-sheet?

Roy’s return to the TMC fold is but a minor setback for the Bharatiya Janata Party which, only a day ago, was gloating over the defec-tion of Congress leader Jitin Prasada. The BJP, interest-ingly, is being paid back in the same coin. If there are

some more Congress leaders waiting in queue for entry into the BJP, it is expected that more TMC leaders will follow in Roy’s footsteps. Roy, a BJP vice-president, was clearly miffed at being sidelined during the state elections.

The exit of Roy, and a few others, will not affect the BJP which has grown from zilch to 77 seats wiping out the Congress and Left. Had Roy left the BJP before or during the assembly elections it would have had a greater im-pact. However, the message that has gone out with the defectors’ homecoming is that the BJP is no longer at-tractive enough.

RETURN OF TMC’S PRODIGAL SON

The exit of Roy, and a few others, will not

affect the BJP which has grown from zilch to 77 seats wiping out the

Congress and Left

I

PAKISTAN’S TALIBAN MONSTER

he late head of Pakistan’s pow-erful Inter-Services Intelli-gence (ISI) agency, Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, was fond of boasting that when Afghan-istan’s history came to be writ-ten, it would record that the ISI, with the help of America, defeated the Soviet Union. And next, he would slyly add, historians would state that the ISI, with the help of America, defeated America.

Gul’s boast was not the sort of empty rodomontade that military men are notorious for once they hang up their uni-forms and recall their past as being more glorious than the details might warrant. He was right to argue that it was the ISI’s tactic of sponsoring mili-tants and terrorists – amply armed, supplied, and financed by the United States – against the Red Army in Afghanistan that forced the Kremlin to withdraw ignominiously.

Subsequently, using the same approach and initially many of the same personnel and methods, Pakistan creat-ed and sponsored a mujahi-deen group calling themselves the Taliban, or “students” of Islam, who swiftly took over Afghanistan and ruled it as a wholly owned ISI subsidiary. Things were rosy for Gul and his ilk until Osama bin Laden, a former mujahideen fighter who enjoyed the hospitality of the Taliban’s new “Islamic Emirate,” ordered the Sep-tember 11, 2001, terrorist at-tacks against the US from his Afghan hideout.

America’s furious response resulted in the overthrow of the Taliban and the exile of bin Laden, under ISI protec-

tion, to refuge in a Pakistani military redoubt. The ISI had even less to crow about when the US tracked down bin Lad-en to a secure compound in Abbottabad and special forces killed him there in 2011.

But as America wearied of being bogged down intermi-nably in Afghanistan, and the ISI helped its Taliban cli-ents to rearm, reorganize, and resume their operations against the US-backed re-gime in Kabul, the tide turned in the ISI’s favor. Pres-ident Joe Biden has an-nounced that US forces will withdraw completely from Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The date that long symbolized Ameri-ca’s determination to strike at the root of the terrorist at-tacks against it now signifies its lack of will to continue.

Whatever face-saving suc-cessor arrangements the US may put in place to mask its capitulation, its withdrawal from Afghanistan, with none of its long-term objectives achieved, is a defeat. With the Taliban more powerful than ever and poised to reclaim power in Kabul, the only exter-nal victor will be the ISI. As Gul foresaw, it will have de-feated America with Ameri-ca’s help. Pakistan has now received two decades’ worth of US military assistance, to-taling an estimated $11 billion.

The ISI has long been ob-sessed with the idea that con-trolling Afghanistan would give Pakistan the “strategic depth” needed to challenge its main adversary, India. A Taliban regime (or even a Taliban-dominated coalition government) in Kabul is the best guarantee of that. The Taliban factions are so be-holden to their Pakistani benefactors that, as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ac-idly remarked, their deci-sion-making bodies – Quetta

Shura, Miramshah Shura, and Peshawar Shura – are named after the Pakistani towns where they are based.

But Gul’s successors would be wise to tone down their celebrations. First, the US withdrawal from Afghani-stan removes a vital source of leverage for Pakistan in Washington. It may not be good news for Pakistan if the Americans need it less.

Furthermore, as the ISI knows, the problem with cre-ating and sponsoring militant groups is that they do not al-ways remain under your con-trol. The lesson of Mary Shel-ley’s Frankenstein – that the creatures we give life to can develop minds and needs of their own – has been apparent elsewhere as well, not least in Israel’s role in building up Hamas as a rival to the Pales-tine Liberation Organization.

The same thing has hap-pened in Pakistan, where the period of sullen cooperation between the Pakistani author-ities and the US during the post-9/11 American crack-down in Afghanistan spawned the rebellion of the “Pakistani Taliban.” While the Afghan Taliban needed Pakistani ref-uge, ISI safe houses, funding, and arms to mount the insur-gency that has brought the US to the point of withdrawal, the Pakistani Taliban have at-tacked their own erstwhile godfathers for insufficient fe-

alty to militant Islam.The ISI no doubt hopes

that once US forces are gone and the Afghan Taliban is se-curely entrenched in Kabul, it can persuade the Pakistani Taliban to forgive and forget the agency’s previous trans-gressions. If that happens, the thinking goes, peace will be restored, the ISI will con-trol Afghanistan, and the Pa-kistani mujahideen will stop targeting Pakistani army installations and convoys, and join the ISI in intensify-ing attacks on the “real ene-my,” India.

But a nightmarish alterna-tive scenario for the ISI is also possible. Pakistani militant groups, emboldened by the success of their brethren in Afghanistan, might no longer be prey to the military’s blan-dishments. Instead, they could launch terror attacks with the aim of emulating in Pakistan what the Taliban have achieved in Afghani-stan. If Afghanistan can be run as an Islamic emirate, they may ask, why can’t we do the same in Pakistan? Why dance to the ISI’s tune when we can call our own?

In such a scenario, the ISI’s heady moment of triumph on 9/11 this year could seem in-creasingly hollow, as the vi-pers it has nurtured strike at its own breast. True, the Pa-kistani Taliban – without a state sponsor of their own – has less chance of success than their Afghan counter-parts. But they can still do considerable damage, in the process intensifying the Pa-kistani public’s disenchant-ment with the military’s domination of their country.

Should that happen, we will need to extend Gul’s ac-count and say that the ISI, as the agent of the Pakistani military, helped to “defeat” or at least discredit itself.

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY

THE AUTHOR ARE PERSONAL

T

SHASHI THAROOR The author is a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for

Human Resource Development, is an MP for the Indian National Congress

Whatever face-saving successor arrangements the

US may put in place to mask its capitulation, its

withdrawal from Afghanistan, with none of

its long-term objectives achieved, is a defeat. With the Taliban more powerful

than ever and poised to reclaim power in Kabul,

the only external victor will be the ISI

The ISI no doubt hopes that once US forces are

gone and the Afghan Taliban is securely

entrenched in Kabul, it can persuade the

Pakistani Taliban to forgive and forget the

agency’s previous transgressions

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ED NOTICE TO WAZIRX, FOR RS 2,790 CR TRANSACTIONNew Delhi: WazirX is a cryptocurrency exchange based in India that allows users to trade a variety of digital currencies. Un-der the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) 1999, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) issued a show-cause notice to cryptocurrency exchange WazirX and its directors Nischal Shetty and Sa-

meer Mhatre on June 11 for transactions involving cryptocurrencies valued Rs 2,790.74 crore. The FEMA inquiry was launched by the ED as part of an ongoing mon-ey laundering investiga-tion into Chinese-owned “illegal” online betting applications, according to a statement from the agency.

I SHOULD BE REMOVED AS PCC CHIEF: SUNIL JAKHARMohali (Punjab): Punjab Congress Chief Sunil Jakhar on Friday said that he should be removed from his post if someone else can strengthen the party. Interacting with media persons, Jakhar said, “Congress will fi ght the assembly elections in Punjab with full strength. I have been saying since day one that if appointing someone else as the Punjab Congress Chief strengthens the Con-gress party, then, it should be done and I should be removed.” According to sources. Sources say Navjot Singh Sidhu can be given an imp post.

ED CONDUCTS SEARCHES AT NAGESWARA RAO’S OFFICESNew Delhi: Enforcement Directorate offi cials on Friday conducted searches at some of the of-fi ces of Madhucon Group belonging to TRS MP and its Lok Sabha fl oor leader Nama Nageswara Rao, sources said. The searches are related to alleged fund diversion of Ranchi Expressway Limited, a Madhucon Group company, they said. The searches were conducted at Madhucon offi ces in Jubilee Hills, sources said. The CBI, in March 2020, booked the promoters of the Ranchi Expressway Ltd.

PREZ KOVIND, PM MODI CONDOLE DEATH OF PROF RADHA MOHANBhubaneswar: Padma Shri awardee environ-mentalist and Odisha’s former information commissioner Professor Radha Mohan died while undergoing treatment at a private hospital here on Friday, family sources said. He was 78 and is survived by three daughters. The Gandhian was in the ICU for the

last few days after being diagnosed with pneu-monia, hospital sources said. President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik were among those who condoled his death. Radha Mohan and his daughter Sabarmatee were conferred the Padma Shri last year.

Uttarakhand: The gov-ernment here has or-dered an inquiry against all the private labs doing rapid anti-gen tests after discrep-ancies were found in COVID-19 testing data during Mahakumbh earlier this year.

State government spokesperson Subodh Uniyal said that orders have been issued to the Director-General of Health in this regard and all districts have been asked to investi-gate COVID-19 testing labs properly before making any payment. The government had hired private labs for conducting COVID-19 tests during Maha-kumbh.

An official spokes-man said that before making the payment, the lab would be asked from where and how many test kits they have bought. The lab would also be asked to present proof for this so that any kind of discrepan-

cies can come forward.On the other hand,

Haridwar District Magistrate C Ravis-hankar has formed a three-member inquiry committee to investi-gate the labs after cas-es of discrepancies in devotees and locals were witnessed during Kumbh. The commit-tee will submit the in-vestigation report to the District Magistrate in 15 days.

U’khand to probe kumbh Covid testingThe Uttarakhand government has ordered an inquiry against all the private labs doing rapid antigen tests

Naga Sadhu during Mahakumbh held in Uttarakhand earlier this year.

Electronic Vaccine Intelligence used to monitor utilisationNew Delhi: The Union Health Ministry on Fri-day informed that India is using a digital plat-form Electronic Vac-cine Intelligence Net-work system, which tracks the vaccines and facilitates real-time, in-cluding monitoring of storage temperatures across 29,000 cold chain points at the national, state, and district level.

According to the Min-istry of Health and Family Welfare, the eVIN system is part of the COVID-19 Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN).

"Any reduction in wastage means inocu-lating more people and leads to strengthening the fight against COV-ID-19. Each dose saved means vaccinating one more person. India is using the COVID-19

Vaccine Intelligence Network (Co-WIN) with the inbuilt eVIN (Elec-tronic Vaccine intelli-gence network) system, a digital platform, which not only regis-ters the beneficiaries but also tracks the vac-cines and facilitates re-al-time monitoring of storage temperatures across 29,000 cold chain points at the national, state and district level," the ministry said. "Vac-cination against COV-

ID-19 is important in protecting the people from infection and as-sociated mortality and morbidity. Equitable access to safe and effec-tive vaccines is critical in ending the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccine de-velopment takes a lot of time and demand for these vaccines exceeds the supply many times. Thus, it is important to monitor and use judi-ciously," statement added. —ANI

Mumbai: A special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substanc-es (NDPS) court in Mumbai on Friday asked NCB to file a re-ply by June 16 on the bail application filed by actor Sushant Singh Ra-jput's flatmate Sid-dharth Pithani in con-nection with the drug case linked to the ac-tor's death.

Pithani is arrested by

NCB for procuring and consuming contraband in a case related to Sush-ant's death. Pithani has sought bail on the grounds of parity as ear-lier accused arrested in this case on same charg-es are given bail by the court. Earlier on June 4, Pithani was sent14-day judicial custody in con-nection with the drug case linked to the ac-tor's death. —PTI

NDPS court asks NCB on Pithani’s bail plea

New Delhi: A Delhi Court on Friday extend-ed the judicial custody of wrestler Sushil Ku-mar till June 25 in con-nection with the Chhatrasal Stadium brawl matter leading to the death of 23-year-old wrestler Sagar Dhankar. Earlier on June 2, he was remand-ed to judicial custody till June 11.

He was earlier re-manded to six days of police custody which was later extended to four days in connection with 23-year-old wres-tler Sagar Dhankar murder case.The 38-year-old wrestler, Su-shil Kumar, a prime suspect in the murder case and his associate Ajay Bakkarwala were arrested by a team of Special Cell, Delhi Po-lice on May 23 in the Mundka area of the na-tional capital.

A non-bailable war-rant was issued against Kumar and others in the case relating to the alleged killing of Sagar Dhankar at Chhatrasal Stadium on May 4.Ear-lier, a Delhi Court dis-missed an anticipatory bail application filed by Sushil Kumar in con-

nection with the case.According to Delhi

Police, Kumar had been on the run trying to evade his arrest. He had crossed the borders of as many as seven states and union territories in the past 18 days. He also constantly changed his SIM cards in an effort to avoid arrest, informed the Delhi Police.Sagar, died during treatment.

Delhi court extends judicial custody of Sushil till June 25

SAGAR DHANKAR MURDER CASE

Mumbai: Taking suo motu cognizance of the Malad Building col-lapse, which claimed the lives of 12 people, the Bombay High Court on Friday said politics on the matter is not fair and courts cannot be blamed for this. The court will hear the mat-ter on Friday after-noon. Bombay High Court's observation comes after Brihan-mumbai Municipal

Corporation (BMC) of-ficials on Thursday said the evacuation of dilapidated buildings could not be done due to the Covid pandemic and the court's restric-tions on that.

The high court said it categorically said in its order in April to continue with evacua-tion drive of dilapidat-ed buildings.

The High Court said that in April 2021, it

made clear that action (demolition or vacat-ing the structure) re-garding dilapidated

structures can be tak-en. So the corporation or any other govern-ment body cannot put

the blame for not being able to take the action on the court.

Notably, the Bombay High Court last year put a temporary stop on demolitions because of the lockdown. However, the order as per the court was lifted by April 2021. HC said it was sur-prising that despite be-ing order in place, the government body is putting the blame on the court. —ANI

Court can’t be blamed; politics not fair: HC

SITHARAMAN TO CHAIR 44TH GST COUNCIL MEETING ON SATURDAY New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Si-tharaman will chair the 44th meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council on Saturday which is ex-pected to take a deci-sion on relief in respect of COVID-19 related individual items based on the report of Group of Ministers. Minister

of State for Finance Anurag Thakur along senior officials will participate.

Road accidents are like silent pandemic: Rajnath SinghNew Delhi: BRO on Friday launched four new software for works management, road in-frastructure digitisa-tion, human resource management and re-cruitment manage-ment. Voicing his con-cerns over rising road accidents, Union De-fence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said India accounts for near-ly 11 per cent of the to-tal road accidents in the world and it is no less than a silent pandemic. Addressing the ‘Kar-mayogis’ of Border Road Organisation (BRO) via video confer-encing, the Union De-fence Minister said, “Accidents on the roads are a cause of great con-cern for us today.”

New Delhi: The Su-preme Court on Friday ordered the postpone-ment of the National Importance Combined Entrance Test (INI CET) 2021 examination for admission to post-graduate medical courses in AIIMS, JIP-MER, PGIMER and NIMHANS, scheduled

for June 16, by at least one month in view of the Covid-19 situation.

A Bench of Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice MR Shah di-rected the All India In-stitute Of Medical Sci-ence (AIIMS) to post-pone the exam by atleast a month observ-ing that the fixation of

the exam date on June 16 is "arbitrary". The Bench said, "Consider-ing that the candidates have been rendering Covid duties far away from Centres chosen and inadequate time for preparation, we are of the view that fixation of the date on June 16 is arbitrary.

SC orders postponement of INI-CET

COVID VICTIMS MAY GET `4 LAKH

MORE ARRESTS

A Residential building in Mumbai’s Malad area collapsed recently.

Sushil Kumar

MUMBAI BUILDING COLLAPSE

Siddharth Pithani

Nirmala Sitharaman

Sushant Singh

Rajnath Singh

Delhi govt controled by “ration mafia”: BJPNew Delhi: The BJP, on Friday, al-leged that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government is un-der the control of “ration mafia” and claimed that its proposal of home delivery of subsi-dised grains is merely a show to promote a “scam”. Addressing a press conference, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the Kejriwal government cannot violate the Food Se-curity Act, and fair price ration shops are at its core for the supply of subsi-dised grains to the poor as they are covered under the law’s provisions.

He attacked the Delhi government for not implement-ing the “One nation one ration card” scheme. —ANI

Ravi Shankar Prasad

Tirumala: Chief Justice of India NV Ramana offered prayers at Lord Balaji temple on Thursday night. He will visit the temple again on Friday. The CJI along with his wife reached Tirumala earlier.

CJI RAMANA OFFERS PRAYERS AT LORD BALAJI TEMPLE

—FILE PHOTO

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Apex Court refuses to hear Param Bir Singh’s pleaNew Delhi: The Su-preme Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea of former Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh seek-ing transfer of all in-quiries against him to an independent agency outside Maharashtra.

A Bench of Justice Hemant Gupta and Jus-tice V Ramasubrama-nian refused to enter-tain the plea of Singh for transfer of probe from state police to an-other agency, saying

“You have been in the police force for 30 years. You can’t now say you want your inquiries outside the state.”

“You served the state for more than 30 years

and you are now saying that you have no confi-dence in the state po-lice. You can’t have doubts over your own force. You are part of a Maharashtra cadre and now you don’t trust the functioning of your own State? This is a shocking allegation,” the Bench remarked to-day.

It told Singh that “A person who lives in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones on oth-ers.” —ANI

RAJIV ASSASSINATION: PMK PLEA TO MK STALIN

BJP has become ‘Bharatiya Jhagda Party’: Sisodia

Chennai: PMK found-er- president S Rama-doss has urged Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin to write to the Governor for the release of the Rajiv Gandhi assassina-tion case convicts. He said that the state gov-ernment must petition the Governor to imme-diately take action on the request made by the earlier Palaniswami government.

In a letter written to the CM on June 11, he said that the state gov-ernment must request Raj Bhavan and not

Rashtrapati Bhavan for the release of 7 convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi as-sassination case.

The PMK leader said that June 11 marks the 30th year of the arrest of the seven convicts and alleged that Raj Bhavan is playing a game of hide and seek on the release of the convicts.

In reference to CM MK Stalin’s letter to the President in May re-questing his interven-tion for the release of the seven convicts, Ramadoss said. —IANS

New Delhi: Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Fri-day hit out at the BJP calling it “Bharatiya Jhagda Party” and ac-cused it of constantly “abusing” state govern-ments and chief minis-ters including Arvind Kejriwal.

Addressing a virtual press conference, Siso-dia made veiled refer-ences to remarks made by Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

“A very senior minis-ter of the Central gov-ernment held a press

conference right now. I saw it too. He abused Arvind Kejriwal on ra-tion, vaccines and many other things. These days, central govern-ment ministers have only one job – to abuse Kejriwal.”

Manish Sisodia

New Delhi : The Cen-tral government on Fri-day told the Supreme Court that it has depos-ited Rs 10 crore with the top court paid by the Republic of Italy as compensation to the families of the two Ker-ala fishermen who were shot dead in 2012 by two Italian Marines aboard the Enrica Lexie ship, in lieu of closure of criminal cases against the two navy personnel in India.

Justice Indira Baner-jee and Justice MR Shah after taking note the submissions made by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that com-pensation of Rs 10 crore has been deposited with the court for disburse-ment to the victims, re-served the order for June 15.

The Central govern-ment and Italy asked

the Bench that the court can close all proceed-ings and can formalise the aspect of disburse-ment in its final order.

The Bench said it will pass the final order on Tuesday.

The Bench was hear-ing an application filed by the Centre seeking to close the criminal cases against the two Italian Marines in India, after accepting the compen-sation of Rs 10 crores

offered by Italy to the victims of the 2012 sea-firing incident at inter-national waters of Ker-ala.

“We have deposited the amount. There was an award by Interna-

tional Tribunal, which as a Nation we have ac-cepted. The agreement is between Italy, the Government of India and Kerala,” Mehta says. Advocate appear-ing for the Republic of Italy said that criminal proceedings pending before a Delhi court must also be dropped in terms of the award by the International Arbi-tral Award.Mehta sub-mitted that Kerala is saying those who didn’t suffer injury but were on Board should also be compensated. “We don’t have an objection that can be looked into by Kerala on how the mon-ey has to be appor-tioned,” Mehta said.Senior advocate KN Balagopal appearing for Kerala contended that the victims were identi-fied so compensation could be paid. —ANI

CENTRE DEPOSITS ̀ 10-CR RECEIVED BY ITALY IN SCCompensation to Kerala fishermen who were shot dead by Italian Marines in 2012

Nusrat case has no link with politics, says TMCKolkata: Nusrat Jahan’s public statement regard-ing her relationship with Nikhil Jain has no connection with the party and politics, Trinamool general secretary Kunal Ghosh has said. The party is busy working for people, the TMC leader said adding that BJP’s Amit Malviya should not comment on this ei-ther as it would not be good for the BJP too if a debate starts now. On Thursday, BJP leader Amit Malviya questioned Nusrat Jahan’s statement on her marriage with Nikh-il Jain. —AGENCY

Sedition case against Aisha Sultana lodgedThiruvananthapuram: Lakshadweep police registered a case against filmmaker Ai-sha Sultana with charg-es of sedition and hate speech on Thursday.

The FIR was regis-tered against the film-maker on the complaint of BJP Lashadweep wing president C Abdul Khader Haji.

According to the com-plaint, Aisha Sultana during a news debate on a Malayalam channel al-leged that the Centre had used COVID-19 as a “bio-weapon” against the people of Lakshad-weep.

The case has been registered in the Ka-

varatti police station under Section 124A, 153B of IPC.

The FIR against Sul-tana comes at a time when there is an uproar against Lakshadweep administrator Praful Khoda Patel over the new reforms introduced by him, which people al-lege are against the in-terest of the islanders.People are protesting against the draft legisla-tions like Lakshadweep Prevention of Anti-So-cial Activities Regula-tion (Goonda Act), Lak-shadweep Animal Pres-ervation Regulation and Lakshadweep Panchayat Regulation, 2021 among others. —ANI

Pak’s House passes Bill to give right of appeal to Jadhav

Cong slams Assam CM for population control remarks

Islamabad: Pakistan’s National Assembly has passed a government-backed bill that will provide the right of ap-peal to Indian death-row prisoner Kulbhush-an Jadhav, according to a media report.

The National Assem-bly passed the ICJ (Re-view and Re-considera-tion) Bill, 2020 on Thursday aimed at al-lowing alleged Indian spy Jadhav to have con-sular access in line with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) verdict, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Jadhav, the 51-year-old retired Indian Navy officer, was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charg-es of espionage and ter-rorism in April 2017.

India approached the

ICJ against Pakistan for denial of consular access to Jadhav and challenging the death sentence.

The Hague-based ICJ ruled in July 2019 that Pakistan must under-take an “effective re-view and reconsidera-tion” of the conviction and sentence of Jadhav and also to grant consu-lar access to India with-out further delay.

The ICJ, in its 2019 verdict, had asked Paki-stan to provide a proper forum for appeal against the sentence given to Jadhav.

Guwahati: While ad-dressing the media on Thursday, Biswa Sarma said that the immigrant Muslim population must adopt decent fam-ily planning norms as land and resources are limited.

“If the population is not controlled then var-ious problems and crimes would come up jeopardising the future of the new genera-tions,” he added.

In response, Assam Congress’ Media De-partment Chairperson Bobbeeta Sharma said that the Chief Minis-

ter’s statement in the context about popula-tion ‘explosion’ in As-sam is “misinformed and misleading”.

She said that as per the latest National Fam-ily Health Survey (NFHS) undertaken by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Wel-fare and released in De-

cember 2020, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) across most Indian states have declined in the last five years.

“The total fertility rate is defined as the av-erage number of chil-dren that would be born to a woman by the time she ends childbearing. A TFR of 2.1 is known as the replacement rate. Fertility rate of less than 2.1 implies that the total population will be less than the existing population which is also called the negative growth rate,” Sharma said. —ANI

Kulbhushan Jadhav

Biswa Sarma

Tokyo Olympics: Sports Min not to send delegationNew Delhi: The Sports Ministry said on Friday that it has decided not to send its delegation to the Tokyo Olympics to accommodate “maxi-mum” support staff, including coaches and physios, for ath-letes participating in the Summer Games. A total of 100 In-dian athletes have qualified so far and another 25 to 35 are likely to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics to be held from July 23 to August 8. “The ministry has decided

to depute maximum additional support staff like coaches, doctors, physiothera-pists, to optimise the performance,” the ministry said.

It said, “Visit of any person other than the athletes, coaches and support staff shall be taken only if there is a pro-tocol required.”

Aisha Sultana

SRINAGAR:The PDP on Friday said it cannot participate in the ongo-ing delimitation pro-cess in Jammu and Kashmir as only elected representatives can take part in it and the party has none at pre-sent. Addressing a press conference here, chief PDP spokesper-son Suhail Bukhari said the delimitation commission has been designed in a way that only elected representa-tives can be part of the exercise.

Not to participate in J&K delimitation process: PDP

Italian Marines who shot dead two Kerala fishermen.

Yogi meets...CM Yogi the Prime Min-ister of the multi-pronged approach adopted by the state gov-ernment to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the most populous state in a one-hour meeting. Yogi also expressed his gratitude to the PM for his continuous guid-ance during the Corona times. The Prime Minis-ter’s Office tweeted a picture of the meeting.

During his meeting with Shah, Adityanath presented a copy of the

report ‘Solution of Mi-grant Crisis’.

His visit to the na-tional capital started a day after Jitin Prasada quit the Congress and joined the BJP.

After Adityanath met Shah, Prasada called on the Uttar Pradesh chief minister here. BJP MLC A K Sharma, a former IAS officer who is seen as a trusted hand of Modi, is also in Delhi to meet party leaders and allies. BJP’s general sec-retary (organisation) B L Santhosh had earlier

this month visited the state to review the par-ty’s preparations for the assembly elections and held meetings with key ministers and organisa-tion leaders.

Senior BJP leader Radha Mohan Singh, who is in-charge of the party’s affairs in Uttar Pradesh, had also visit-ed the state.

OH ROY!...He joined the BJP in No-vember that year. In September 2020, Roy was made national vice-

president of the BJP. Roy’s son Subhrangshu too joined the BJP in May 2019. Subhrangshu, also a former TMC MLA, lost from the Bi-jpur seat in this year’s Assembly polls. Specu-lation about Roy’s re-turn to the TMC began after his son Subharang-shu wrote on Facebook that “self-criticism was more necessary than criticising a govern-ment elected by people.”

Also, Abhishek Ba-nerjee — TMC MP and nephew of Mamata Ba-

nerjee — had last month visited Roy at the hospi-tal where his wife was admitted. The next day, Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi personally had a conversation with Roy on phone.

PK lunch...“It was a private lunch meet. Don’t read too much politics in it,” Sule said later on Fri-day. The three-hour-long meeting was held at Pa-war’s Silver Oak resi-dence.

Kishor, too, described

the meeting as a “good will” tour and a part of a “thanksgiving visit” to all those leaders who had expressed solidari-ty with the Trinamool Congress and West Ben-gal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee dur-ing the Assembly elec-tions in that state.

This is Kishor’s first meeting with Pawar af-ter the victory of the DMK and the TMC in the assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal respectively. He had helped craft the

election strategy for these parties in the as-sembly elections.

Recently, Pawar has resurfaced from his con-valescence after a gall bladder procedure in late April. He visited thespian Dilip Kumar, who is undergoing treat-ment at a Mumbai hos-pital, met party mem-bers and also received Opposition leader and former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.

US FDA..information and data”,

and Ocugen is in discus-sions with the regulator to understand what ad-ditional information is required for a BLA sub-mission. It expects that data from an additional clinical trial will be re-quired.

The development is a major setback, as Ocu-gen will now have to work harder for a li-cence to provide Cov-axin in the US. It is ex-pected to take much longer to receive a BLA as compared with an EUA.

FROM PG 1

NEWS07

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FOUR IPS OFFICERS AVOIDING FIELD POSTINGS

At a time when the state government is busy posting

IPS officers in field and has undertaken large-scale transfers of these officers, four IPS officers already posted as district police chiefs in various districts have approached the DGP headquarters to shift them to non-field postings for personal reasons. Interestingly even one of them has already proceeded on leave after writing a transfer request letter to his

boss. According to information SP Pratapgarh Akash Tomar, SP Jaunpur Raj Karan Nayyar, SP Amroha Suniti and SP Varanasi Dehat Amit Verma have shot off letters to DGP headquarters seeking their transfer to non-field posting. They have given their personal reasons for transfers from the field. Even SP Pratapgarh Tomar has proceeded on leave after sending request letter. These strange requests have become matter of discussion at

the DGP office, which has so far officially not recognised any such move. However, the opposition parties raising a question over such a move said that these officers have sought transfers for political reasons as they donot want to work in their respective districts during district panchayat chairmanship election. It may be mentioned that always there has been interference of the administrative machinery in this election. —First India Bureau

JITIN EXIT A RECIPE FOR INFIGHTING?

What else could Jitin Prasada do other than leaving the

Congress party?: The arguments that flowed among party workers after Prasada’s exit from Congress are clearly indicating that there is a possibility of increase in infighting in the party. Due to growing dissatisfaction with

leadership, after the exit of around 20 leaders of Congress party followed by former Union Minister Jitin Prasad joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), speculations have also been strengthened that a young leader of one of the oldest political family associated with the Congress is also likely to switch over to another party, in most likelihood, the Samajwadi Party. In the Rohilkhand region, the family that remained the face of the party for decades, its stalwart leader Jitin Prasada joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday. While taking membership of BJP, he did not openly say anything about the Congress leadership, but his supporters are discussing the reasons behind the move.

Although fearing disciplinary action, the supporters of Prasada have not come out openly but are raising questions as to why the leadership did not talk to him when Jitin’s discontent was visible for a long time. Not only this, the efforts Jitin was making to connect the upper castes with the party also did not get the support of big leaders of Congress. Apart from this, when he was opposed on his home ground, the allegations of conspiracy were leveled against senior functionaries of the party, whose audio also went viral. Even after this the communication gap persisted between Jitin and party leadership.

—Amit Baliyan

Conspiracy to torture and kill her by turning off Oxygen: Dying wife admitted in Paras Hospital tells husband

Taj Mahal gears up to open for tourists from June 16 onwardsFirst India Bureau

Agra: The Taj Mahal is all set to be unlocked after the decline in cas-es of Corona infection in Agra. Tourists would be able to see the beauty of the Taj again from June 16. Top police of-ficers have inspected the security arrange-ments. These days, ren-ovation work is besides carried out by Archaeo-logical Department in Taj Mahal.

It is likely that 100 people would get admis-sion in one shift. There

will be no crowd outside the Taj Mahal. Follow-ing the Covid protocol, people will be able to see the Taj as soon as it gets green signal from ASI.

The Taj Mahal was closed for 188 days from March 17 last year due to the Corona epidemic. This year it was closed for 60 days in 2021. Or-ders were given to close the Taj Mahal for tour-ism from April 15 to June 15, which ends on Tuesday post which the Taj Mahal is likely to be opened from Wednesday June 16 onwards.

First India Bureau

Agra: All was not well in the Shri Paras Hospi-tal sealed by district ad-ministration on the in-tervening night of 26 and 27 April. A young man who lost his wife due to Corona infection has accused the hospi-tal manager and staff of murder. He has pre-sented the chat made by his wife during her stay in the hospital as evi-dence. In this, his wife is talking about a con-spiracy to torture and kill her by turning off Oxygen.

Saurabh Agarwal, a resident of Rajamandi, has given a complaint. He said that on April 15, he had admitted his wife Radhika to Shri Paras Hospital after she suffered Corona infec-tion. Hospital manager Dr Arinjay Jain and staff got him to deposit Rs 3 lakh but failed to provide proper treat-ment. After the video went viral, it is now clear that Radhika was killed by the hospital manager and staff by turning off the Oxygen. Since then he had not complained in the mat-

ter because the authori-ties would ask for evi-dence.

Now in the viral vid-eo, the hospital manag-

er has revealed his bru-tal act on the basis of which Saurabh Agarw-al has tendred a com-plaint. Inspector of

New Agra police station Bhupendra Balyan said that the police will not register a case on any complaint and whoever has a complaint with Shri Paras Hospital, he should register their complaint in the office of ADM City. A case of such culpable homicide is not written against the doctor. On the other hand, advocate Prakash Chand, resident of Chhipitola informed that he would not give a complaint to the police as he was a lawyer and when no one listened, the court listened. His

father’s name was not even recorded in the list of the dead.

Saurabh says that his wife had informed him about the staff turning off oxygen by sending a WhatsApp message. She had sent a message that the planning to kill her was going on in the hospital.

She had mentioned in Whatsapp Chat to take her away from the hospital as the staff was torturing her for oxygen. However, on be-ing contacted doctors could not provide satis-factory answer.

UTTAR PRADESH GOVT’S WAR ON SMOGThe Uttar

Pradesh state g o v e r n m e n t

has decided to bring about infrastructure development in large scale to eliminate pol-lution in seven cities in the state. The Yogi government has come up with an action plan to control air and noise pollution in the state and this action plan will be imple-mented in the cities of Lucknow, Agra, Praya-graj, Ghaziabad, Kan-pur, Varanasi and Meerut.

The state govern-ment has decided to set up new automatic monitoring stations which will monitor air pollution levels 24/7. These stations will also display the data in real-time and it has been decided that the number of manual sta-tions will also be in-creased. A state-of-the-art control room will also be set up for mon-itoring and to take im-

mediate action when pollution level rises.

The whole initiative began with the central government releasing its first installment for the urban bodies of million plus cities from the 15th Finance Commission. Under this central govern-ment released fund, the 7 cities mentioned above received Rs. 357 crores. The fund can be used by the state government to develop basic infrastructure for the control of pol-lution in the cities. The Uttar Pradesh Pol-lution Control Board has been set in motion and has prepared a de-tailed action plan to curb pollution in sev-en cities.

A fund of Rs. 143 crores have been ear-marked to be spend under the five-year ac-tion plan prepared for the seven cities. A sum of Rs. 18.72 crores will be spent Lucknow, Rs. 17.63 crores in Agra,

Rs. 15.83 crores in Prayagraj, Rs. 21.86 crores in Ghaziabad, Rs. 24.17 crores in Kan-pur, Rs. 16.98 crores in Varanasi and Rs. 27.64 crores in Meerut for setting up monitoring stations,etc. in these cities. The urban bod-ies may be given fund in the next FY based on their performance during the current FY.

It has been decided that an urban body scoring 80 to 100 marks will get 100% of the fund allocated for it will be given, an urban body scoring 60 to 80 marks will be given 75% of the allocated fund, urban body scor-ing 50 to 60 marks will get 50% of the allocat-ed fund and urban bod-ies scoring 40 to 50 marks will get just 25% of the allocated fund. It has been de-cided that any urban body which gets scores under 40 will not be given any fund in the next FY.

Yogi government has come up with an action plan to control air and noise pollution in the state and this action plan will be implemented in the cities of Lucknow, Agra, Prayagraj, Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Varanasi and Meerut

Nine of the world’s top 10 most pol-luted cities are in India. Seven are in the world’s largest subnational entity and the hotbed of Indian politics – UP. Both these details are according to a new report by IQAir.Another study, presented through the Air Quality Life

Index report, has found that UP’s air is so bad that resi-dents of Lucknow, could lose 10.3 years of their life expectancy on aver-age if the pollution persists. Lucknow has the highest level of pollution in the country, fully 11-times more than WHO limits.

POLLUTED AIR IS RIFE IN STATEz Installation of Continu-

ous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring System.

z Installation of manual air quality monitoring stations.

z Develop automatic noise monitoring center.

z Purchase of sound gauge for testing.

z Establishment of state-of-the-art control room in the city.

z Strengthening of laboratories for measur-ing air pollution.

z High mast camera and video fencing.

z Mobile station for checking air quality.

z Training of officers

and employees of urban bodies.

z Linking local technical institutions as well.

z Third party audit of sources causing air pollution.

z To conduct an impact study on the impact of pollution on the city.

z Developing micro air quality management tools for cities.

WORK TO BE UNDERTAKEN UNDER INITIATIVE

MONEY REQUIRED IN THE COMING YEARSz 2021-22:

`54.30 crore

z 2022-23: `20.81 crore

z 2023-24: `21.19 crore

z 2024-25: `23.94 crore

FIle photo of police personnel outside Paras Hospital in Agra.

LUCKNOW | SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2021

LUCKNOW | SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2021082NDFRONT

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First India Bureau

Jaipur: Renowned neu-rologist and Padma Shri recipient Dr Ashok Pa-nagariya, 71, died of post covid complica-tions here on Friday. His cremation was done at Shri Jain Shwetambar Nirwan Sthal in Adarsh Nagar where his son Arihant lit the funeral pyre. Dr Panagariya was battling for life and was on ven-tilator support for the last sev-e r a l

days. After his condition worsened, he was shift-ed from EHCC hospital to his home in afternoon and he was declared dead at the residence.

President Ram Nath Kovind, PM Narendra Modi, Lok Sabha Speak-er Om Birla, Governor

Kalraj Mishra, CM Ashok Gehlot and

other leaders condoled his de-mise.

About 10 days ago, his health deterio-

rated after tak-ing the

second dose of the Covid vaccine. Sources close to him said that his lungs were damaged due to co-rona infection. He lost the battle after suffering for 48 days.

A team of specialist doctors from India and abroad, including top nephrologists, pulmo-nologists and physi-cians, were engaged for his treatment. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot was also getting con-stant updates on his health.

Dr Panagariya start-ed feeling the symptoms of covid on April 24 fol-lowing which he went to a private lab at JLN Marg and got HRCT done. His score was 17 in the HRCT report. He

then got admitted to RUHS Hospital on 25 April. After his health deteriorated there, he was shifted to EHCC Hospital located near Jawahar Circle.

Sources said he had restrained his move-ment in the last one year. Even during his son’s wedding function in July last year, only 15 people were invited.

He had also stopped seeing patients due to the corona pandemic and was giving online consultation.

Dr Panagariya re-ceived the Merit Award from the Government of Rajasthan in 1992. He was the Principal of the medical college from 2006 to 2010.In 2002, the Medical Council of India hon-oured him with the Dr. BC Roy Award. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2014.

Dr Panagariya was the first doctor from Ra-jasthan to get a Doctor-ate in Medicine (DM) degree in Neurolo-gy. According to his close friends, he had turned down an offer of

Rs 12 crore per annum from a major private hospital in the country in order to serve his pa-tients. The condition of the hospital was that he would not see patients anywhere other than the hospital, but did not accept this for his patients.

Dr Dinesh Swaroop Mathur, who was the professor of Dr Pana-gariya in SMS Medical College, said that he was the smartest stu-dent of his batch.

He was also a re-nowned astrologer and a political advisor. Po-litical leaders from all parties would seek his advice on both fronts- astrology and politcal analytical acumen.

Padma Shri Dr Ashok Panagariya: a man for all seasons

Adarsh Nagar where his son Arihant lit the funeral pyre. Dr Panagariya was battling for life and was on ven-tilator support for the last sev-e r a l

Kalraj Mishra, CM Ashok Gehlot and

other leaders condoled his de-mise.

About 10 days ago, his health deterio-

rated after tak-ing the

nephrologists, pulmo-nologists and physi-cians, were engaged for his treatment. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot was also getting con-stant updates on his health.

ed feeling the symptoms of covid on April 24 fol-lowing which he went to a private lab at JLN Marg and got HRCT done. His score was 17 in the HRCT report. He

Dr. Ashok Panagariya is bid a tearful farewell by his son Arihant, family members & close friends in Jaipur on Friday.

Keep faith in your heart and science and logic in your brains. During crisis- give ‘brain’ the prominence,

while the ‘heart’ holds you steady.—Jagdeesh Chandra, CEO & Editor-in-Chief, First India

First India Bureau

Lucknow: With the As-sembly elections in Ut-tar Pradesh just around the horizon, one can see big parties as well as the small parties strat-egising to have the most impact in the state.

In once such move, while MP from Mir-zapur & former Union Minister Anupriya Pa-tel met Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi on Thursday, her young-er sister & Apna Dal Vice President Pallavi Patel met Samajwadi Party National Presi-dent Akhilesh Yadav on Friday. There are specu-lations going around

that Samajwadi Party & Apna Dal might form an alliance for the upcom-ing Assembly elections in state. SP Chief Akh-ilesh Yadav has already been giving hints of contesting this election while forming alliance with smaller parties.

Apna Dal (S), which is the party of Anupri-ya Patel, the elder daughter of Sonelal Pa-tel, who was a promi-nent leader of Kurmis had contested the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections as well as the 2017 UP assembly elec-tions while forming al-liance with the BJP. Anupriya was also named as a Minister in

the first term of the Modi government at the center. However, in the Yogi government and in the second term of Narendra Modi at the center, none of the party’s leader got a ministerial post. Apna

Dal(S) has 2 MPs and 9 MLAs in UP and after the Anupriya Patel’s recent meeting with Amit Shah it is believed that she may be given a place in the Modi cabi-net and her husband in the Yogi cabinet.

First India Bureau

Lucknow: The Alla-habad High Court on Friday, 11 June, noted that the religious conversion of a wom-an to Islam would not be a relevant factor when it comes to se-curing the liberty and life of the couple. While granting re-lief to a couple seek-ing protection from threats, the court di-rected the police and the family members not to interfere with the married life of the couple. The petition was moved by Yashi Devi (aged about 20 years) and Guchhan Khan (aged about 40 years) who entered into marriage on 11 Janu-ary 2021, after Yashi converted to Islam.

First India Bureau

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Congress Chief Ajay Kumar Lal-lu and other party workers were detained by police ahead of their protest against the hike in fuel prices. Party’s media convener Lalan Kumar said the UP Con-gress chief was not al-lowed to step out of his house and later taken to the Eco Garden, along with the workers.

The Congress work-ers were scheduled to stage a protest at a fill-ing station in the busy

Hazratganj area and then march towards the Vidhan Sabha as part of their protest, Lalan Kumar said. I was not allowed to step out of the house in the morning and later brought to the Eco Gar-

den where about 350 party workers, includ-ing MLC Dipak Singh and other-officer bear-ers were present, Lallu told PTI over the phone. “This shows the dicta-torial attitude of the government. We were

stopped from raising the matter which con-cerns the common peo-ple of the state and the country,” Lallu said.

Similar protests have been staged across the state, he said, adding that party leaders were “arrest-ed” in Allahabad. The Congress workers held demonstrations in a peaceful manner to register protest against the unprecedented hike in fuel prices on the call of party gen-eral secretary Priyan-ka Gandhi Vadra, La-lan Kumar said.

First India Bureau

Lucknow: The Alla-habad HC has rejected the bail application of Bhadohi MLA Vijay Mishra in a case filed against him by his rela-tive Krishna Mohan Ti-wari for illegally occu-pying a house of Krish-na as well as threatening to kill him and pressur-izing him to make a will in the name of Vijay Mishra’s son. Tiwari had filed a case against MLA Vijay Mishra in the Gopiganj police sta-tion in Bhadohi. The Justice Om Prakash of in view of the gravity of the allegations & the in-volvement in the crimes rejected bail application. The advocate said that the allegation is baseless & no will have been made till now & his cli-ent has been cooperat-ing in all the trails of the cases. The Justice noted that no one dares to file an FIR against the MLA owing to his influence and that cases have been registered against him on heinous charges like murder and misconduct.

Janardan Misra

Lucknow: The con-struction of temple at Ram Janambhoo-mi in Ayodhya will be completed before parliamentary elec-tions in 2024. The foundation laying work at the temple site is going on in full swing and will be completed by this Oc-tober after which the construction of the first floor will begin.

According to the general secretary of Ram Janam Bhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust Champat Rai, the stones from three dif-ferent places are be-ing used in the foun-dation, which include those from Mirzapur and Rajasthan. He said that more than 70 per cent of the work is being done through machines

hence there was no impact of the Covid crisis on the con-struction activities. The work is going on round the clock with two shifts each of 12 hours. He said that the experts from the National Geo Re-search Institute of Hyderabad and Indi-an Institute of Tech-nology Guwahati have been giving ad-vice in the construc-tion of the temple.

The trust general secretary informed that the construction committee of temple would meet at Ayod-hya on June 13 & 14 in which the pro-gress would be re-viewed. The commit-tee has set a deadline of year 2024 for com-pleting the construc-tion. The first phase of the temple may be completed next year.

PARTIES LOOKING FOR POSSIBLE ALLIANCE

Construction of Ram Temple to complete before 2024 LS polls

‘Conversion to Islam irrelevant for giving protection to couple’

BJP, SP are vying with one another to keep smaller parties in good humour ahead of the 2022 elections

Anupriya Patel Pallavi Patel

‘BAD DAYS AHEAD FOR YOGI, WANDERING DOOR-TO-DOOR TO RETAIN CM POST’

ALL SET TO SAIL

A health worker administers a dose of COVID-19 vaccine to a boatman before he begins his boat operation in Ganga river, at Water Police Offi ce at Dashashwamedh Ghat, in Varanasi on Friday.

UP Cong chief, party workers detained Allahabad HC rejects bail plea of MLA Vijay Mishra“Congress workers

held demonstrations in a peaceful manner to register protest against the hike in fuel prices on the call of party general secre-tary Priyanka Gandhi”

PEACEFUL PROTEST

Ajay Kumar Lallu

MLA Vijay Mishra

DISREGARD FOR COURT ORDERS BY OFFICIALS HAS GRAVE CONSEQUENCES ON RULE OF LAW: HC

The Allahabad HC censured the state police for its repeated failure to provide instructions to government advocates in bail matters. The court said the police authorities’ failure to pro-vide timely instructions to govt lawyers struck at the root of the law. “It leads to unjustifi ed incarceration of an accused in jail”, Justice Ajay Bhanot said. The “disregard shown by the senior-most offi cials to the orders passed by the court has grave consequences on the rule of law in nation,” Bhanot said.

ALLAHABAD HIGH COURT GRANTS ANTICIPATORY BAIL TO JOURNALIST

Allahabad HC has granted anticipatory bail to a journalist and another person booked for allegedly trying to destroy a ballot box & resorting to fi ring along with villagers during voting for the panchayat polls. The journalist had claimed that he was targeted as he had reported through his Twitter handle about the alleged irregularities in the polling booth by the authorities and infl uential people. An FIR was lodged against them under Sections 147, 148, 149, 395, 397, 332, 353, 504, 506, 427, 336, 307 and 34 of the IPC.

nindita Chandra is a 21-year-old girl who was born and brought up in Durgapur, West Bengal. She is a

model and also a student of anaesthesia technology. Not

only this, she is a state-level badminton player, trained in classical music and has

learnt 6 different forms of dance. When asked about how she thought of enter-

ing into the modelling indus-

t r y, the

eternal beauty replied, “As a kid, I always wanted to become a super-model because of the uncondition-al love I had for the profession. I was very skinny, tall & dusky and was always bullied for my appear-ance. Also, my family used to say that it is not easy for a middle-class family like ours to make a career in the glamour industry. But I be-lieved in myself and my dreams.”

The beauty queen achieved her first victory at the age of 12 years when she won a fashion show which boosted her confidence. In 2017, she participated in Miss South Bengal and then she decid-ed to get trained in pageantry. She got the pageant training from Ri-tika Ramtri at the Tiara pageant Training Studio, Pune. After that, she got a wonderful opportunity to participate in Miss Ocean India 2020 which she won and further to represent India at Miss Ocean World. She said, “Under the men-torship of international director Yogesh Mishra and national direc-tor Nimisha Mishra, I won the title of Miss Ocean World Asia 2020 (2nd Runner-up) and Miss Ocean World Ramp walk. I cannot thank them enough for training me so beautifully and giving me

this wonderful opportunity which I will cherish throughout my life.” Anin-dita believes in following

her passion with full dedica-tion and this is the mes-

sage she wants to give to the young girls. She is

currently living in Mumbai and

chasing her d r e a m s

with a vi-sion to be-

come a suc-c e s s f u l

super-mod-

el.

LUCKNOW, SATURDAYJUNE 12, 2021

09

MISS OCEAN INDIA 2020, ANINDITA CHANDRA MISS OCEAN INDIA 2020, ANINDITA CHANDRA WHO FOUGHT AGAINST ALL THE ODDS TO WHO FOUGHT AGAINST ALL THE ODDS TO

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A

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SagittariusNOVEMBER 23 - DECEMBER 21

Selective eating will keep you fi t as a fi ddle. Setting out early on a journey will be in your favour. A

property matter, pending for long, will proceed smoothly and get your dream house registered in your name. Excellent academic performance will help you catch up with the lead pack.

CapricornDECEMBER 22 - JANUARY 20

Take up meditation or yoga for achieving a fi t body and mind. You will manage to tie up a lot of loose ends

on the domestic front. Your desire to visit someplace out of town is likely to get fulfi lled. You will manage to book property that you had been wanting to for long.

AquariusJANUARY 21 - FEBRUARY 18

Your depressing thoughts vanish as a special friend or relative arrives to lift up your spirits. Those fed up

of frequent travelling will be able to do something about it. Some major changes may be initiated in a property owned by you. You will need to become profi cient in everything opted.

PiscesFEBRUARY 19 - MARCH 20

Getting nominated for something prestigious cannot be ruled out. A family get together may

fi nd you in your element. Travelling to meet someone close is indicated. A house or an apartment is likely to come in your name. Competition on the academic front may unsettle you.

10ETC

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YOUR DAYHoroscope by

Saurabbh Sachdeva

AriesMARCH 21 - APRIL 20

Family will be loving and supportive of your ideas. A ride to the countryside will help some unwind.

Property issues are likely to get settled in your favour. Distractions may fi nd your focus wavering on the academic front, so take care. Someone you hate is likely to turn over a new leaf.

TaurusAPRIL 21 - MAY 21

A loan you had applied for will be sanctioned. Remaining regular in workouts is the key to

achieve total health. You may get involved in arranging something on the family front. You get a chance to visit your favourite place. Settling a property deal is on the cards for some.

Gemini MAY 22 - JUNE 21

You enjoy good health by remaining regular in your exercise regimen. A guest arriving at home will prove

quite entertaining and lighten the domestic atmosphere. Gains from rented out property are foreseen. Enjoying extra time on your hands on the academic front may not be possible.

Cancer JUNE 22 - JULY 22

Some of you are likely to get worried about your advancing age. Some of you will have a good time

in the company of friends or cousins. Going on a short vacation in future after lockdown restrictions just for a break is possible. A property is likely to be yours soon.

Leo JULY 23 - AUGUST 22

Not taking adequate rest can tell on your health. A family youngster may need to be dealt with fi rmly in

regards to spending money. You will need to defi ne your career goals clearly before deciding what to pursue on the academic front. Much excitement is in store for you on the romantic front.

Virgo AUGUST 23 - SEPTEMBER 22

A job switch promises to offer better salary and perks. Coming back in shape can prove an uphill

task for some. You will go out of your way to extend a helping hand to a family member. Be careful of property dealers promising you the moon. Doing exceptionally well will add to prestige.

Libra SEPTEMBER 23 - OCTOBER 22

Good news on the professional front can prove highly motivating. Planning something

together with family will be fun. A different mode of conveyance will be better suited to your needs. A good price can be expected for a piece of property being sold.

Scorpio OCTOBER 23 - NOVEMBER 22

Taking up meditation will prove benefi cial for both body and mind. A family youngster may require a

push from your side to gain confi dence in something attempted. Adopting a more convenient route for workplace is possible. Giving a facelift to an ancestral house is on the cards for some.

wanted to try out a new genre for writing my next review - so I picked up a ‘ro-mantic book’ written by Jose-

phine Cox. The raving reviews bowled me over - “Readers will find it im-possible to tear them-selves away”, “Another masterpiece”, “Cox’s tal-ent as a storyteller never lets you escape the spell”, & “The latest emotional-ly-charged story from the mega-selling author won’t disappoint her army of fans”. Ah Well !!! I can’t vouch about join-ing her ‘army of fans’, but yes, no doubt about the ‘emotionally charged story’. Pure melodrama at its best. A typical 3-star masala Bollywood Blockbuster in the mak-ing. Frank Arnold would put any Shakti Kapoor to shame. (I wouldn’t say Pran or Mogambo or Gabbar Singh, simply be-cause even in their nega-tivity they bring about an unsurpassable gran-deur to villainy, by their sheer presence).

Josephine Cox is one of the UK’s most popular authors. As a ‘London Times Bestseller’, she delights her fans with this heartbreaking, en-grossing, electrifyingly exciting, dramatic story of a love triangle gone wrong. In Blood Broth-ers, she’s at her capti-vating best. As she draws readers “deep

into this

tale of two siblings with nothing in common, but a desperate and danger-ous desire for the same woman”.

Blood Brothers is a modernized Cain and Abel tale of 1950s Eng-land, in which two broth-ers Joe and Frank vie for the attention of the young and beautiful Al-ice Jacobs. She is inno-cent, lively, ‘wild as the wind’. She wins hearts with her ‘shy smile’ and ‘kind nature. In the Ar-nold family, she finally finds a home that she has always yearned for. Tom and Nancy Arnold, a most respectable couple, have raised two very d i f -fer-

ent sons- Frank and Joe. Frank is a devious,

manipulating, unscru-pulous, brutal man. He lures Alice to a life of stability, as a homemak-er, which she deeply de-sires. He wants to ‘pos-sess her’ as his ‘prized trophy’, ‘a key to his for-tune’, since she comes from a ‘first-class busi-ness’ background. Joe, on the other hand, is a man of integrity. He knows when to speak his mind and when to keep his silence. He also knew when to walk away, which is exactly what he did when he fell madly in love with Alice on their very first meeting.

He, reluctantly re-turned, only on Frank’s insistence, for the wedding. Passions ignite, logic is forgot-

ten. Joe and Alice are drawn towards each other, unable to resist. Tragedy

follows this for-bidden indul-

gence and all are en-

gulfed in the wildfire. Alice is torn between

her head and heart. The head constantly reminds her that she is betrothed to Frank and is duty-bound to marry him. Her heart craves for Joe. Meekly, succumbing to the circumstances, Alice marries Frank.

Frank’s evil, shrewd mind, sharpens his senses, as he realises, all is not well. He tortures Alice ‘to confess her crime’. Heavily drunk, blinded by raging ha-tred, Frank’s sinister self comes forth. He bru-tally hurts Alice, leaves her half-dead, bound and gagged, and rushes with a shotgun to finish off Joe. His ultimate ret-ribution tears apart the Arnold family and shat-ters every life around him. The tragic violence that follows is bone-chilling to the core.

Josephine Cox is an exceptional writer. She crafts a story that will linger with you. You sim-ply cannot shrug off the lurking sense of danger-

compelling you to read on, page after page.

As a typical vintage era film, the characters are uni-dimensionally black and white. The good guys, like Joe, are without flaws. The bad characters are without any redeeming qualities. Frank is pure unadulter-ated evil. Maureen and

Pauline (Alice’s- cold, calculating, wicked and jealous- mother and sis-ter, continue to be mo-notonously same- throughout her joys and sorrows). Alice is sicken-ingly perfect. The senior Arnold’s - Tom and Nan-cy & Alice’s grandpar-ents- Joshua and Tricia - two very affable cou-ples, are almost identical in their comfortable ro-mantic relationship and mutual bickerings.

Thanks to Cox’s mel-odramatic writing skills, the plot holds the read-er’s attention. Sympa-thies lurch from one character to another. As events reach their dra-matic conclusion, read-ers find it impossible to tear themselves away till the very end. She has rightly co-titled is as “Drama with Heart!”.

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DEEPAK’S CORNER

BLOOD BLOOD BROTHERSBROTHERS

FACE

OF TH

E DAY

SANAYA, MODEL

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also adapted the Persian term into “magus.” While defend-ing himself at trial for performing “evil deeds of magic,” the second-century philosopher Apuleius claimed he both was and was not a “magician.” He insisted he was like a high priest or a natural philosopher rather than some-one who uses unsavoury means to get what they want. What’s interesting here is that Apuleius uses one idea of high philosophical magic to combat another idea of crude, self-interested magic.

CHRISTIANITY AND MAGICThe first Christians inherited these varied ideas of magic alongside their Roman neighbours. In their world, people who did “magical” deeds like exor-cisms and healings were common. Such people sometimes explained religious or philosophical texts and ideas, as well.

This presented a problem for early Christian au-thors: If wondrous deeds were fairly common-place, how could a group look to attract followers compete with “magicians”? After all, Jesus and the Apostles did extraordinary deeds, too. So Christian writers made distinctions in order to elevate their heroes.

Take the biblical story of Simon the magician. In Acts 8, Simon’s magical deeds entice the Sa-maritans and convince them to follow him un-til the evangelist Philip performs even more amazing miracles, converting all the Samari-tans and Simon, too. But Simon relapses when he tries to buy the power of the Holy Spirit, prompting the Apostle Peter to rebuke him. This story is where we get the sin of simony: the purchase of religious office.

As I’ve discussed elsewhere, texts like this do not depict real events. They are teaching tools aimed at showing new ad-herents the differences between good Christian miracle workers and evil magi-cians. The earliest converts needed such stories because wonder-workers looked a lot alike.

CHRISTIANITY AND MORALITYTo some ancient people, stories of

Jesus’ miracles probably didn’t seem far removed from the deeds magicians performed for money in the market-place. In fact, the church fathers had to shield Jesus and the Apostles against accusations of practising magic. Celsus argued that the mira-cles of Jesus were no different from the magic performed by market-place sorcerers. Origen agreed the two shared superficial similarities but claimed they were fundamen-tally different because magicians cavorted with demons while Je-sus’ wonders led to moral refor-mation.

Like the story of Simon the magician, Origen’s disagree-ment with Celsus was a means of teaching his audience how to tell the difference between morally suspect magicians who sought personal gain and miracle workers who acted for the benefit of others.

Ancient authors invented the idea that the miracles of Christians possessed inher-ent moral superiority over non-Christian magic be-cause ancient audiences were as enticed by magic as modern ones. But in elevating Christianity above magic, these writ-ers created false distinc-tions that linger even today.

agic’ is often defined in the West as evil or separate from “civi-lized” religions like Christianity and also from the scientific observation and

study of the world. But the irony is that magic was integral to the development of Christianity and other religions – and it informed the evolution of the sciences, too.

THE ORIGINS OF MAGICIn Western culture, magic is of-ten defined in opposition to reli-gion and science. This is prob-lematic because all three con-cepts are rooted in colonialism. For centuries, many European scholars based their defini-tions of religion on Christi-anity, while at the same time describing the practices and beliefs of non-Christians as “primitive,” “superstitious” or “magical.”

This sense of superiority helped Europe’s Christian monarchies justify con-quering and exploiting In-digenous peoples around the world in a bid to “civi-lize” them, often through extreme brutality. Imperialist legacies still col-our how some people think about non-Christians as “oth-ers,” and how they label oth-ers’ rituals and religions as “magic.”

But this modern understand-ing of magic doesn’t map neatly onto the world of the first Christians. “Magic” has always had many meanings. From what scholars can gather, the word itself was imported from the Persian word “maguš,” which may have described a class of priests with royal connections. Sometimes, these “magi” were

depicted as performing divination, ritual activi-ties or educating young boys who would take the throne.

Greek texts retained this earlier meaning and also added new ones. The famous ancient Greek historian Herodotus writes that the Persian magi inter-preted dreams, read the skies and per-formed sacrifices. Herodotus uses the Greek word “magos.” Sophocles, a Greek playwright, uses the same term in his tragedy “Oedipus the King,” when

Oedipus berates the seer Tiresias for scheming to

overthrow him. Although these two Greek texts both date from roughly the ear-ly 400s B.C., “magician” has different connota-tions in each.

The seven Harry Pot-

ter fantasies are the world’s best-selling book series, with more than 500 million novels sold since the first story was pub-lished in 1997. Mike Clarke/AFP via Get-ty Images Starting in the first century B.C., Latin authors

AMERICANS ARE FASCINATED BY MAGIC. TV SHOWS LIKE “WANDAVISION” AND “THE WITCHER,” BOOKS LIKE THE HARRY POTTER SERIES, PLUS COMICS, MOVIES AND GAMES ABOUT PEOPLE WITH POWERS THAT CAN’T BE EXPLAINED BY GOD, SCIENCE OR TECHNOLOGY, HAVE ALL BEEN WILDLY POPULAR FOR YEARS. MODERN POP CULTURE IS A TESTAMENT TO HOW ENCHANTED PEOPLE ARE BY THE THOUGHT OF GAINING SPECIAL CONTROL OVER AN UNCERTAIN WORLD!

www.fi rstindia.co.in I www.fi rstindia.co.in/epaper/ I twitter.com/thefi rstindia I facebook.com/thefi rstindia I instagram.com/thefi rstindia

IS MAGIC

IMMORAL?

‘M

Source : https://theconversation.com/us

ETC11

LUCKNOW | SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2021

12LUCKNOW | SATURDAY, JUNE 12, 2021www.fi rstindia.co.in I www.fi rstindia.co.in/epaper/ I twitter.com/thefi rstindia I facebook.com/thefi rstindia I instagram.com/thefi rstindia

CITY BUZZGET VACCINATED

STAY MASKED

BACK TO NORMAL!BACK TO NORMAL! Ever since the coronavirus-induced lockdown, most Indians have craved two things: a carefree ‘normal’ life and some chaat. After being in the dumps for a few months, things are finally looking up for street vendors in Lucknow. Photographer Sumit Kumar captured citizens enjoying the street food and women rejoicing the mehndi experience outside after a long time in Hazratganj, Lucknow on Friday.

JOIN THE FRIENDS’ JOIN THE FRIENDS’ STYLE BANDWAGONSTYLE BANDWAGON

OTHER THAN GIVING USSTOMACH SOARING GAGS FOR CLOSE TO TWO DECADES, ICONIC TV SHOW FRIENDS HAS ALSO GIVEN US SOME EXTRAORDINARY FASHION STYLES!

en seasons, 236 episodes and 121 hours of television gave us one show: F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

The story of a bunch of 20 some-thing friends manoeu-vring through life and sticking with each other through thick and thin, taught us a real understanding of friendship.

The recently held re-union of the show re-minded us that other than giving us roaring chuckles for over 17 years after the show ended, Friends TV show has given us the iconic fashion style of the 90s and early 2000s.

Cue the theme song and those four grand claps for City First have listed the most iconic looks of all the six characters from the show that still is com-patible with today’s fashion world.

T

MONICA PRABHAKARcityfirst@firstindia.co.in

CHANDLER BING

PHOEBE BUFFAY

RACHEL GREEN

MONICA GELLERThe character of Monica is known for her perfectionist nature which, perfectly emulates in the finale of season 4, “The One with Ross’ Wedding”. Monica dons a stun-ning cowl neck crimson slip dress, which she wore as a bridesmaid in Ross’s second wedding.

Chandler Bing and his chronicles of Cuban col-lars went on for all of the ‘90s, the laid back attitude reflected in his style. In season 1, “The One With The Thumb” Chandler shows up in a white Cuban collar shirt paired with blue mid waist regular Levi jeans, giving off the ultimate cool guy look of today.

The adjectives quirky, unique and eccentric define both Phoebe’s personality as well as her style. In season 2, “The One Where Heckles Dies” Phoebe slips into a light poydot skater dress layered with an applique bomber jacket, a look straight out of Pinterest.

To find one iconic look from Rachel Karen Green’s wardrobe is a Her-culean task. All her looks are iconic but the black spaghetti strap high slit dress in season four, “The One With Rachel’s New Dress” de-serves special men-tion.

JOEY TRIBBIANI The ultimate ladies’ man, Joey, played the hunk of the show and also dressed like one. In the first and foremost episode, he made a dapper statement in the dark wash straight fit jeans paired with a round neck pullover and a leather jacket. A look still standing tall today.

ROSSRoss’s iconic leather pants. Granted, he proba-bly could have considered the cut a bit better to avoid the extensive use of talc and lotion in his date’s bathroom, this look is ad-mirable and androgynous.

CITY FIRST

The statue of Ma-harana Pratap, a symbol of the pride of Ra-

jasthan, will now be es-tablished in Ayodhya. A 12-and-a-half feet high bronze statue has been prepared by Jaipur sculptors Mahavir Bharti and Nirmala Kulhari.

On the occasion of Maharana Pratap’s birth anniversary on June 13, BJP State Pres-ident Satish Poonia, RSS state campaigner Dr Shailendra Kumar, Jaipur MP Ramcharan Bohra, BJP General Secretary Diya Kumari MP Rajsamand, San-ganer MLA Ashok La-hoti, Kailash Meghwal

of BJP SC Morcha, BJP State Minister Ashok Saini, Former Chair-man of Child Protec-tion Commission Manan Chaturvedi, for-mer chairman of Lalit Kala Akademi Ashwin Dalvi National General Secretary of Sanskar Bharti Ravindra Bhar-ti, Ajay Dhandhia from VHP Pratap Bhanu will give a green signal be-fore dispatching the statue.

When established in Ayodhya, it will be un-veiled by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adi-tyanath. The statue has been constructed by the Akhil Bharatiya Kshatriya Welfare Coun-cil. The design of the statue is made by Nir-mala Kulhari.

Veteran actor Dilip Kumar has been discharged from the hospital after undergoing a pleural aspiration procedure. The actor was admitted to Hinduja hospital in Mumbai after complaining of breathlessness on Sunday. He shared the news via a tweet.

DISCHARGED!

ACT NOW: END CHILD LABOUR!

The 2021 World Day Against Child La-bor has arrived, a day commemo-

rated every year on June 12 to raise awareness about the social evil of promoting and hiring children for labour. In India, children be-tween the ages of 5-17 are classified as children. The World Day Against Child Labor has a long history, but to compre-hend it, we must compre-hend its significance.

Children around the world are routinely en-gaged in paid and un-paid forms of work that

are not harmful to them. The work of children was important in pre-industrial societies, as

they needed to pro-vide their labour for their survival. However, they are

classified as child labourers when they are either too young to work, or are involved in hazardous activities that may compromise their physical, mental, social or educational development.

CHILD LABOUR AMID COVID-19Children have lost parents and caregivers to the virus, leaving them destitute, without parental care! The number of children in child labour has risen to 16 crore worldwide the fi rst increase in two dec-ades with millions more at risk due to COVID-19, accord-ing to a new report by the International Labour Organisa-tion (ILO) and the UNICEF.

If we are to teach real peace in this

world, and if we are to carry on a real

war against war, we shall have to begin with the children!

—Mahatma Gandhi

MITALI DUSADmitalidusad01@gmail.com

DANCING DADI!

Amid daunting challenges and uncertainties of life, very few of us can fuel aspirations with increasing age. While bodies may grow old, it is the vivacity of our spirits that keeps us younger, agile and full of dreams. Popularly called ‘Dancing Dadi’, Instagram’s Ravi Bala Sharma has become a breathing testament to these words. Leading her way on what she joyously refers to as the ‘second innings’ of her life, the 62-year-old woman is a viral sensation, enthralling millions through her twists and twirls!

Mahavir Bharti preparing the sculpture

Representational Image

PRIDE OF RAJASTHAN