New Delhi, June 13 : The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved the proposal of Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) for the nomination of the Union Home Minister as ex-officio Chairman of North Eastern Council (NEC).
NEC is a statutory body with Governors and Chief Ministers of all the eight North Eastern States as its Member.
The Cabinet also approved that the Minister of State (Independent Charge), Ministry of DoNER would serve as Vice Chairman of the Council.
According to official sources, NEC implements various projects through the state and central agencies.
“Under the new arrangement with Home Minister as Chairman and Minister of DoNER as Vice Chairman, NEC and all the Governors and Chief Ministers of North Eastern States as Member(s) would provide a forum for discussing inter-state matters more comprehensively and also consider common approaches to be taken in future,” the official statement said.
The NEC can now also perform the tasks undertaken by the various Zonal Councils to discuss such inter-state issues as drug trafficking, smuggling of arms and ammunition and boundary disputes, sources said.
New Delhi, June 13: The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved the continuation of the Three Year Action Plan (2017-2020) of the scheme for Agricultural Education Division and ICAR Institutes with an outlay of Rs.2225.46 crore as salary component for AICRP-HS for strengthening and developing higher agricultural education in India.
This is aimed at strengthening and development of Higher Agricultural Education in India – Rs 2,050.00 crore; ICAR-National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM) – Rs. 24.25 crore and ICAR – Central Institute of Women in Agriculture (CIWA) including All India Coordinated Research Project on Home Science (AICRP-HS) – Rs.151.21 crore, Union Minister Piyush Goyal said after the cabinet meet.
The scheme is aimed to generate quality human resources from the institutions of higher agricultural education.It encompasses several new initiatives including, steps to attract talented students, reducing academic inbreeding and addressing faculty shortage.
It will also take care of green initiatives, mitigating faculty shortage, international ranking, alumni involvement, promoting innovations, inspired teacher network, reducing inbreeding, academia interface, technology enabled learning, Post-doctoral Fellowships, Agriculture Education Portal, Scientific Social responsibility etc. for quality assurance ranking of the agricultural universities has been linked to the financial support under the scheme along with accreditation.
Support for strengthening and modernization of infrastructure related to student and faculty amenities and capacity building of both faculty and students in cutting edge areas through Niche Area of Excellence programme will improve teaching and encouraging holistic development of the students, an official statement said.
This will lead to generation of competitive and confident human resource.
Bengaluru, Jun 13 : The Congress today won the Jayanagar assembly seat in the city by a margin of more than 2,800 votes, wresting it from the BJP.
According to election officials, Congress’ Sowmya Reddy secured 54,457 votes against her nearest rival from the BJP, B N Prahlad, who managed 51,568 votes.
Assembly elections were held across the state on May 12, but the polling on Jayanagar seat was countermanded owing to the death of BJP candidate B N Vijayakumar, who was holding the constituency.
The bypoll was held on June 11.
Prahlad, brother of Vijaykumar, and senior Congress leader and former minister Ramalinga Reddy’s daughter Sowmya Reddy were locked in a direct contest.
Ahead of the polling, the Janata Dal (Secular) had on June 5 pulled out its candidate from the contest and extended the party’s support to its ruling coalition partner, the Congress.
This was the first election after the JD(S)-Congress combine came to power in the state in which they put up a united fight against the BJP.
Both Congress and JD(S) had fielded candidates against each other, despite being coalition partners, in the recent election to the Rajarajeshwari Nagar Assembly seat in the city.
Congress’s Munirathna had won the seat, relegating the JD(S) candidate to a distant third behind the BJP.
United Nations, Jun 13: Heavy rains have caused severe structural damage to camps in Bangladesh hosting over one million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, the UN has said.
Some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State to Bangladesh since August last year when the army launched a violent crackdown, resulting in a major crisis in neighbouring Bangladesh.
So far, more than 9,000 have been affected and the number is expected to rise as the monsoon rains, which lashed the camps for the last two days, continue, the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.
More than 30,000 camp residents are still living in areas considered to be at high risk of deadly flooding and landslides, it said.
“The situation in the camps is growing more desperate with every drop of rain that falls,” said Manuel Pereira, the IOM’s Emergency Coordinator in Cox’s Bazar, the district in south-east Bangladesh where the refugees have settled.
“You have close to one million people living on hilly, muddy terrain with no trees or shrubs left to hold the ground in place. People and their makeshift shelters are being washed away in the rains,” Pereira said.
For months now, UN agencies and their partners have been warning of the threat posed by the monsoon season, which runs from June to September.
The rains began on Saturday and within 24 hours incidents including landslides, water logging, extreme wind and lightning strikes were recorded.
The IOM said it is “working against the clock” to secure road access and drainage, and to improve preparations for more heavy rain to come.
The UN agency and its partners are also ensuring that the refugees will continue to receive assistance such as access to water, sanitation and health.
However, it warned that risks remain huge, given the vast size and the nature of the makeshift camps.
The Rohingya are a Muslim minority community in Myanmar, where most citizens are Buddhist. The majority of those in Bangladesh began arriving in the wake of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state which began last August.
An agreement signed last week between the Myanmar government and UN agencies is expected to pave the way for scores of Rohingya to return home, once their safety and rights are guaranteed.
It will also allow the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to access the Rakhine state.
Myanmar and Bangladesh have reached a deal on the return of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas.
According to the agreement, which was finalised in Myanmar’s capital Nay Pyi Daw, a two-year deadline has been set for the repatriation of the Rohingyas.
New Delhi, June 12: India on Monday registered a strong protest to Pakistan against the so-called “Azad Jammu and Kashmir Interim Constitution Act 2018” and asked the neighbouring country to vacate all areas immediately.
“The Government of India has conveyed a strong protest through diplomatic channel on Monday against the so-called ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir Interim Constitution (13th Amendment) Act 2018’,” the ministry of external affairs said in a statement.
It was clearly conveyed that the entire State of Jammu and Kashmir, which also includes the so-called ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir’ is an integral part of India by virtue of its accession in 1947, it added.
Any action to alter the status of any part of the territory under forcible and illegal occupation of Pakistan has no legal basis whatsoever, and is completely unacceptable.
Instead of seeking to alter the status of the occupied territories, Pakistan should immediately vacate all areas under its illegal occupation, the ministry added.
On June 2, Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly and the Kashmir Council in its joint session held in Muzaffarabad adopted Azad Jammu and Kashmir Interim Constitution (Thirteen Amendment) Act, 2018, which would help in the Pakistan government to directly address the related issues.
New Delhi, Jun 11 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues stayed put at the Lt Governor’s office till midnight over their three demands, including a direction to IAS officers to end their “strike” and action against officers who have struck work for “four months”.
Kejriwal along with his deputy Manish Sisodia and two other ministers met Lt Governor (LG) Anil Baijal this evening. They are likely to remain at the LG office till morning.
Sources said the chief minister, who is a diabetic, had to take insulin during the sit-in and got specific food from his home.
A number of AAP MLAs and leaders also camped outside the LG office, and the police have barricaded the area.
Kejriwal tweeted at 6 pm from the waiting room of the LG office that a letter was handed over to Baijal but he refused to take action.
“Handed him this letter. LG refuses to take action. LG is under constitutional duty to act. Left wid no option, we have politely told LG that we will not leave till he acts on all points. We hv come out of his chamber n sitting in his waiting room (sic),” he tweeted.
Kejriwal along with Sisodia and other cabinet colleagues Satyendar Jain and Gopal Rai met Baijal and demanded that he direct the IAS officers to call off their “strike” and punish those who struck work “for four months”. He also asked the L-G to approve his government’s proposal on doorstep delivery of rations scheme.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump arrived in Singapore Sunday for an unprecedented summit, with Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal at the top of the agenda and the US president calling it a “one-time shot” at peace.
Bringing the Korean War to a formal end 65 years after hostilities ceased will also be on the table at the first-ever meeting between a North Korean leader and a sitting president of its “imperialist enemy”.
It is an extraordinary turnaround from the tensions of last year, when Kim accelerated his weapons programmes — earning the North more sets of UN Security Council sanctions — and the two men traded personal insults and threats of war.
But critics charge that the meeting risks being largely a triumph of style over substance.
Kim arrived in Singapore on board an Air China 747 that, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24, took off from Pyongyang in the morning ostensibly bound for Beijing then changed its flight number in midair and headed south.
He was driven into the city centre in a stretch Mercedes-Benz limousine accompanied by a convoy of more than 20 vehicles, and later met Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, thanking him for hosting the event.
“If the summit becomes a success, the Singaporean efforts will go down in history,” Kim said.
Trump landed in the evening after a long flight from Canada and the G7 meeting there, telling Singaporean officials who welcomed him that he was feeling “very good” about the summit.
Authorities imposed tight security around the summit venue and the luxury hotels where the leaders were to stay — including installing extra pot plants outside Kim’s accommodation to obstruct reporters’ views.