Tehran [Iran], Feb 3: Iran police on Friday arrested at least 29 women for participating in the ongoing protest against a law that makes wearing the hijab(headscarf) compulsory.
Tehran [Iran], Feb 3: Iran police on Friday arrested at least 29 women for participating in the ongoing protest against a law that makes wearing the hijab(headscarf) compulsory.
The protests that began in Tehran earlier this week has slowly spread to other parts of the country, according to The Guardian.
Many women across the country have been protesting for a hijab ban by climbing onto telecom boxes, by taking off their hijabs, attaching them to a wooden stick and waving them like flags.
Women in Iran have fought against the hijab for nearly four decades.
However, the new wave of protests has grabbed eyeballs worldwide and will worry the Iran Government more, who are already reeling under the recent anti-corruption protests.
The Tehran police said the campaign had been instigated from outside the country through illegal satellite channels under a campaign named “White Wednesdays.”
“Following calls by satellite channels under a campaign called White Wednesdays, 29 of those who had been deceived to remove their hijab have been arrested by the police,” the police said quoting Iranian media.
Iran’s prosecutor general, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, described the ongoing protestson hijab ban as “childish”, “emotionally charged” and instigated “from outside the country”.
Meanwhile, many Iranian women within the country as well as outside Iran have backed the protests.
Soheila Jolodarzadeh, a female member of the Iranian parliament, said the protestswere the result of long-standing restrictions against women.
“They’re happening because of our wrong approach. We imposed restrictions on women and put them under unnecessary restrains.”
Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian activist and now resides in the United States, started a social media campaign against the compulsory hijab law.
The hijab has been in place in Iran after the Iranian revolution in 1979.
The law mandates that a woman who does not wear a hijab in public could face a heavy penalty and jail sentences.
Iran recently witnessed a huge wave of anti-corruption protests as people took to raising anti-government slogans, over alleged corruption, oppressive rule of the government and rising prices that plagued the people of the country.
The official death toll in the anti-government protests is, as of now, 20.
Ottawa [Canada] Feb 3 : The Senate has passed a bill to make the national anthem gender neutral despite some Conservative senators’ opposition.
The Senate gave its approval to change the second line of the anthem from “in all thy sons command” to “in all of us command.”
The legislation will now only need the royal assent of the Governor General before it becomes a law.
Liberal MP Mauril Belanger had pushed the legislation for years.
Belanger passed away two months after the Commons passed the bill in June 2016.
Srinagar, Feb 3 : Train service resumed on Saturday after remaining suspended for a day in Kashmir valley for security reasons, following “Shopian Chalo” called by separatists to express solidarity with the families of civilians who died in security force firing during the past two weeks.
‘We have resumed all train runs in the Kashmir valley after a fresh advisory was received from police last night,’ a senior railway official told UNI.
New Delhi, Feb 2: Expressing hope to bring down the fiscal deficit to 3 point 3 per cent in 2018-19, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday reasoned that the GST was the factor for not achieving the target this year.
Fiscal deficit is a measure of how much the government borrows in a year to meet part of its spending needs.
New Delhi, Feb 1 : The government will evolve a scheme to provide a unique identity to every enterprise in India on the lines of Aadhaar, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said today.
“Aadhaar has provided an identity to every Indian.
Aadhaar has eased the delivery of so many public services to our people,” Jaitley said while presenting the Union Budget 2018-19 in the Lok Sabha.
Noting that every enterprise, be it large or small, also “needs a unique ID”, Jaitley said the government will evolve “a scheme to assign every individual enterprise in India a unique ID”.
New Delhi, Jan 31: The government is planning to abolish all posts which have been vacant for more than five years, and has directed all ministries and department to submit a comprehensive report on the matter.
In an office memorandum, the Finance Ministry said it had asked all ministries and departments to submit an action-taken report regarding abolition of posts vacant for more than five years.
According to a preliminary estimate, there are several thousand central government posts which are lying vacant for five or more years, the official said.
Mumbai, Jan 31: The Bombay High Court on Tuesday said the IPL has made people familiar with phrases like “betting and fixing” and in view of the alleged violations of foreign exchange rules it was time to see if the tournament was in interest of the game of cricket.
The scathing remarks were made by a division bench of justices S C Dharmadhikari and Bharati Dangre while passing its order on a petition filed by former Indian Premier League (IPL) chairman Lalit Modi challenging a July 2015 order of the adjudicating authority of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) refusing him the permission to cross-examine witnesses in a FEMA case.
The ED has alleged violations of foreign exchange rules during the 2009 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) held in South Africa.
The court allowed Modi’s petition and permitted his legal counsels to cross-examine the witnesses but made strong observations on the tournament.
“If IPL has led to serious violations then it is high time the organisers realise whether what has been achieved by conducting the tournament since the past ten years can be termed as a sport or game…for it is full of illegalities and breaches of law,” the court said.
“IPL has made us familiar with phrases like betting and fixing of matches. It is for the central government, RBI and organisers to now consider if conducting IPL is in interest of the game/sport,” the court said in its order.
The bench while allowing Modi’s petition said the impugned order grossly violates the principles of natural justice as the adjudicating authority was going to rely on the statements of the witnesses against Modi.
The court also noted that the proceedings have been dragged for too long now.
“We direct the adjudicating authority to issue summons to the witnesses to appear before it on March 2. The cross- examination shall be concluded positively by March 13. The proceedings shall be completed by May 31,” the court directed.
In 2013, the ED initiated adjudication proceedings against Modi under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) regarding a bank account opened by the BCCI and IPL authorities in South Africa ahead of the 2009 edition of the IPL.
Ahmedabad, Jan 31: On the run for the last 16 years, an accused in the 2002 Godhra train carnage was arrested by the Gujarat Police, an official said.
Yakub Pataliya (63) was arrested from Godhra by a team of B Division police in the town after they received a tip-off that he was spotted in a locality this morning, the official said.
“During patrolling, a team of Godhra B Division police received information about the presence of the accused. He was arrested soon after,” the official said.
He will be handed over to the Special Investigation Team (SIT), which is investigating the case, the official said.
Pataliya is accused of being a part of the mob that torched the coaches of Sabarmati Express near Godhra railway station on February 27, 2002, killing 59 kar sevaks and triggering state-wide riots.
An FIR was registered against him in September 2002 and he faces charges under sections 307 (attempt to murder), 143 and 149 (unlawful assembly), 147 and 148 (rioting armed with deadly weapons), 332 and 352 (causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 153 A (causing enmity among members of different religious g groups), among others as well as certain sections of the Railways Act.
“He had been evading arrest ever since,” police said.
Pataliya’s brother, Kadir Pataliya, was also arrested in 2015, and he died while being in jail while undergoing trial.
His other brother, Ayub Pataliya, is serving life imprisonment in Vadodara Central Jail.
In a judgement passed in October 2017, the Gujarat High Court had commuted the death sentence of 11 to life imprisonment, while upholding the life sentence of 20 other convicts.
A trial court had convicted 31 and acquitted 63 accused.