New Delhi : The second phase of polling in Uttar Pradesh today saw 65.5 per cent voting while at 68 per cent, Uttarakhand recorded its highest ever turnout, Election Commission today said.
The poll panel said the “very sensitive” second phase in Uttar Pradesh, during which polling was held in 67 Assembly constituencies, passed off peacefully and overall mood made it appear like a “festival of democracy”.
It said the figure registered till 5 PM was likely to go up in both the states, and that it may touch 70 per cent in Uttarakhand.
Enforcement agencies seized Rs 16.52 crore in cash, 3.29 lakh litres of liquor worth Rs 9 crore and drugs worth Rs 1.16 crore in Uttar Pradesh while 1.5 lakh weapons were deposited.
Vijay Dev, Deputy Election Commissioner in charge of Uttar Pradesh, told a press conference that 117 electronic voting machines (EVMs) and 24 voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines had to be replaced during the polls.
The corresponding figures were 20 and seven in case of Uttarakhand.
There was one instance of paid news in Uttarakhand, EC said, adding that polling was free from any violence and largely uneventful.
When asked about the Dainik Jagran case, Dev appealed to the media to go for “self-imposed implementaion” of the norms and refused to share any further details saying the matter was under probe.
A polling party had to trek for two days to reach a height of 10,000 feet for conducting vote at the Reeh polling station, which has only 275 electors, located in the Tehri Garhwal district.
“There were 479 polling station which were in snow-covered areas,” Deputy Election Commissioner in charge Sandeep Saxena said.
Around Rs 3.38 crore was seized in cash in the hill state along with 147 illegal weapons. Liquor worth Rs 3.1 crore was seized and drugs worth Rs 37.23 lakh.
“The voting percentage had breached all records by 5 PM when it touched 68 per cent. Around 67.22 turnout was recorded in the 2012 Assembly polls while 2014 Lok Sabha polls saw 62.15 per cent turnout,” Saxena told reporters.
In this phase of polling in Uttar Pradesh 82 women candidates were in the fray while the same was 60 in Uttarakhand. The number of third gender candidates were eight and two respectively.
The President is learnt to have cleared the names of five high court judges, including four chief justices of state high courts, for elevation to the Supreme Court.
Sources said the names cleared for appointment to the apex court are Madras High Court Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Rajasthan HC Chief Justice Naveen Sinha, Kerala HC Chief Justice Mohan M Shantanagouder, Chhattisgarh HC Chief Justice Dipak Gupta and Karnataka HC judge S Abdul Nazeer.
The notifications of their respective appointments will be issued in the coming days, the sources said. The working strength of the Supreme Court will receive a fillip once the five judges take oath of their new assignment.
Though it has a sanctioned strength of 31, it is working with only 23 judges. Chief Justice of India J S Khehar, Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Prafulla Chandra Pant are retiring from the Supreme Court this year.
Polling will be held on Wednesday in 67 Assembly constituencies of western Uttar Pradesh in the second of seven phases and in 69 Assembly seats in Uttarakhand.
The ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pardesh had in 2012 won 34 of these seats spread across 11 districts. It has tied-up with Congress this time in the contest against BJP and BSP. 720 candidates are in the fray in this phase in UP with a maximum of 22 from Barhapur (Bijnor) and a minimum of four nominees from Dhanaura (Amroha). 2.28 crore people are eligible to vote, including over 1.04 crore women.
14,771 polling centres and 23,693 polling stations have been set up in the districts of Saharanpur, Bijnor, Moradabad, Sambhal, Rampur, Bareilly, Amroha, Pilibhit, Kheri, Shahjahanpur and Badaun and elaborate security arrangements made to ensure free amd fair polling, election officials said.
Islamabad, Feb 14 : In an unusual piece of advice to senior officers, Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa has told them that the army had “no business” in running the government and asked them to read a book on how India has succeeded in keeping the military out of politics.
“The army has no business trying to run the government.
The army must remain within its constitutionally defined role,” The Nation newspaper quoted Bajwa as saying.
He also asked his officers to read a book titled ‘Army and Nation’ written by Steven I Wilkinson, a professor of Political Science and International Relations at Yale University, about Indian Army’s relationship with the civilian government after independence.
Bajwa’s comments during a gathering of senior army officers at Rawalpindi Garrison in the General Headquarters in December indicate a shift in Pakistan army’s stance on its relationship with the civilian government and could be good news for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government.
Bajwa, who took over from Raheel Sharif with whom the Prime Minister had a uneasy relationship, communicated to his officers in unequivocal terms that there should be cooperation and not competition between army and civilian leadership of the country.
The civil-military equation in Pakistan has always been a thorny issue.
From 1947 onward, Pakistan has been ruled by military dictatorships for half its history. The last period of direct military government ended in 2008, but the military has retained considerable power and influence behind the scenes.
Bajwa also alluded that an impression of a competition between the civilians and the military is counter-productive for the country.
Wilkinson’s book provides details of changes made in the structure and recruitment pattern of India army to suit the fledgling democracy in the new country.
The almost 300-page book makes for an interesting reading as it details why the democratic process in India has been a success.
Wilkinson argues that India took a number of steps after partition to correct the civil-military imbalance.
Army or the civilian government have so far not commented about General Bajwa’s remarks.
New Delhi, Feb 14 : The Karni Sena wants pre- censorship of period films and plans to approach the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in this regard.
It had recently protested against Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film “Padmavati” accusing him of presenting “distorted facts”.
It even stalled the shooting of the Ranveer Singh-Deepika Padukone starrer by vandalising the set at the Jaigarh fort in Jaipur in the northern state of Rajasthan and also assaulted Bhansali.
Though Karni Sena patron Lokendra Singh Kalvi made it clear that the demands of his organisation and the Rajput group have been fulfilled by the director, he says there are still few points that he wants to discuss with the ministry.
“We are asking the I&B ministry about the pre-censorship of the historic films. We are also hoping for some support from producer and director associations and in fact they are ready to give their support.
“Our demands have been fulfilled by them. They have promised that they won’t show any kind of personal rapport between the actors in the movie (‘Padmavati’),” Kalvi told PTI.
Kalvi says his group will also try to hold discussion over pre-screening of all historic films to journalists and historians.
“We just want that all period drama, including ‘Padmavati’ should be shown to the historians and journalists prior to their release. We don’t have an interest but we just want to ensure that there is no distortion of history,” he says.
A bomb exploded outside the Punjab Assembly in Lahore during a protest, reported the Dawn. The explosion took place on Mall Road with reports of multiple injuries. A group of chemists and pharma manufacturers were protesting in front of the assembly when a vehicle exploded nearby. Pakistani media outlets reported that 10 people were killed and several injured. The bomb was reportedly fitted inside a motorcycle.
Among those killed was DIG Traffic Lahore Captain Ahmad Mobin and there are reports of more casualties among law enforcement personnel. Earlier, Mobin was negotiating with protesters to end the strike and clear the area.
Residents below the tallest dam in the United States, near Oroville in Northern California, were urgently ordered to evacuate on Sunday after a spillway appeared for a time to be in danger of imminent collapse.
The earthfill dam is just upstream and east of Oroville, a city of more than 16,000 people.
At 770 feet (230 meters) high, the structure, built between 1962 and 1968, is the tallest dam in the United States, besting the famed Hoover Dam by more than 40 feet (12 meters).
The abrupt evacuation orders came as authorities said that an auxiliary spillway on the Lake Oroville Dam could give way at any time, unleashing floodwaters onto rural communities along the Feather River. “Immediate evacuation from the low levels of Oroville and areas downstream is ordered,” the Butte County sheriff said in a statement posted on social media. “This is NOT A Drill.”
The California Department of Water Resources said on Twitter at about 4:30pm PST that the spillway next to the dam was “predicted to fail within the next hour.”
Several hours later the situation appeared less dire as the spillway remained standing and the Water Resources department said crews using helicopters would drop rocks to fill a gouge in the spillway. Authorities were also releasing water to lower the lake’s level after weeks of heavy rains in the drought-plagued state.
Butte County Sheriff Korey Honea said at an evening press conference that he was told by experts earlier on Sunday that the hole that was being created in the spillway could compromise the structure. Rather than risk thousands of lives, the sheriff said, a decision was made to order the evacuations.
But he said he was told later that the erosion was not progressing as rapidly as earlier feared and that the amount of water flowing over the spillway had dropped quickly.
Evacuation centres were set up at a fairgrounds in Chico, California, about 20 miles northwest of Oroville, but roads leading out of the area were jammed as residents sought to drive out of the flood zone.
It is not clear how many people were affected by the evacuation order. More than 160,000 people live in the evacuation area comprising three counties, according to U.S. Census data.
The Oroville dam is nearly full after a wave of winter storms brought relief to the state after some four years of devastating drought. Water levels were less than 7 feet (2 meters) from the top of the dam on Friday.
State authorities and engineers on Thursday began carefully releasing water from the Lake Oroville Dam some 65 miles (105 km) north of Sacramento after noticing that large chunks of concrete were missing from a spillway.
California Governor Jerry Brown asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Friday to declare a major disaster due to flooding and mudslides brought on by the storms.
Based on Reuters report.
As the power struggle within the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK) continues to plague the political ambience in Tamil Nadu, general secretary VK Sasikala received a sigh of relief as Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao has clarified that he hasn’t sent any report to the Home Ministry, which allegedly cited she was not qualified to stake the claim of being the Chief Minister of the state.
The office of the Governor issued a press release that said, “Thiru Ch. Vidyasagar Rao, the Governor of Tamil Nadu, has not sent any report either to the Ministry of Home Affairs or to the President of India, as reported in some of the media.”
Earlier in the day, it was reported the Governor had sent a report to the Union Home Ministry and cited the pending disproportionate assets (DA) case against Sasikala as the reason for her not being qualified to stake the claim.
The alleged reports also said the Governor had also taken note of the Public Interest Litigations (PIL) against her, on which the verdict was pending.
The suspense of the Tamil Nadu AIADMK drama has been on the rise for a few days as both Sasikala’s and Panneerselvam’s camps remained tight-lipped about their respective closed-door meetings with Governor Rao.
Three months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprised the nation with his demonetization drive, followed up with a series of other steps to fight corruption, the government on Friday decided to tighten the noose and discipline shell companies to take its fight against black money to the next level. Shell companies are firms which do not conduct any operations and indulge in money laundering.
The punitive actions announced by the government include freezing of the bank accounts used to launder money or evade taxes under the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act, 2016.
The action comes after top officials in the Prime Minister’s Office along with those of other departments reviewed the functioning of shell companies.
Recently, a Delhi-based lawyer, Rohit Tandon was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for allegedly floating his own shell company to convert part of his illegal cash into white money.
The meeting held at the PMO was told that just a small sample analysis has highlighted that a whopping Rs 1,238 crore in cash has been deposited in these entities after demonetization till December. The meeting decided that in order to create a credible deterrence, a new approach will be adopted through coordinated efforts and by leveraging technology.
“It has also been decided that appropriate red flag indicators would be used for identifying shell companies, and a data base of such companies and their directors will be built by pulling in information. The data base will also note Aadhaar numbers of individual directors,” the meeting decided.
A task force with members from various regulatory ministries and enforcement agencies has been set up under the co-chairmanship of the Revenue Secretary and Corporate Affairs Secretary to monitor the actions taken against such companies by various agencies. The regulatory ministry concerns will ensure that disciplinary actions are initiated against the professionals indulging in malpractices and abetting the operators of the shell companies.
The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), a multidisciplinary organisation under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, assigned to detect white-collar crimes and frauds, said they have already filed criminal prosecution for cheating the national exchequer. This came after investigation of entry operators running a group of 49 shell companies.
Sources said the Income Tax department has detected more than 200 shell companies operating in Delhi, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Punjab besides Uttar Pradesh that converted illegal money to ‘legal’ in the last two months. The department is examining the pattern of revenue streams of these companies to understand the nexus between such entities and the beneficiaries who used them to engage in alleged money laundering.
A detailed analysis suggests that some 559 beneficiaries have laundered money amounting up to Rs 3,900 crore with the help of 54 professionals who have been identified.
Sources further said that this information has been shared with the Special Investigation Team (SIT), I-T Department, ED, SEBI and The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).
There are some 15 lakh registered companies in India, and only six lakh companies file their annual returns, implying that a large number of them may have been indulging in financial irregularities.
Voting for the the first phase in India’s high-stake northern Uttar Pradesh state began on Saturday morning.
The election process is being held in 73 assembly constituencies spread across 15 districts of the state.
Elaborate security arrangements have been made for smooth polling, especially in sensitive areas of Shamli, Aligarh, Muzaffarnagar, Mathura, Bulandshahr and Agra.
A polling official, Mohan Kumar, said paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has been deployed at polling booths.
The electoral battle in the state has grabbed all eyeballs, be it the electoral merger between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party or the infighting within the first family of this politically crucial state.
With the Congress and the Samajwadi Party formally sealing the alliance, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made efforts to seal deal with other smaller parties to ensure it achieves the mandate.
Voting in Uttar Pradesh will be done in seven phases – February 11, 15, 19, 23, 27, March 4 and 8. The counting of votes will take place on March 11.
Kabul : The death toll from avalanches and freezing weather conditions across Afghanistan has risen to 191, officials said today, as rescue operations were underway in the worst-affected areas.
Twenty-two provinces in Afghanistan have been blanketed by days of heavy snowfall, triggering avalanches, destroying buildings and leaving many trapped in their snowbound homes.
“The death toll we have received from avalanches and freezing weather has risen to 191,” Mohammad Aslam Sayyas, deputy minister for disaster management, told AFP.
“The worst-hit province is northeastern Nuristan where at least 68 people have been killed,” Sayyas said.
He added that search and rescue efforts had been stepped up this week amid improving weather conditions, after the authorities initially struggled to reach remote mountainous areas.
Sayyas said 300 people have been injured and more than 500 others were rescued in different parts of the country.
Residents of Nuristan have suffered heavy financial losses as dozens of houses have been destroyed, provincial governor Hafiz Abdul Qayyom told AFP, adding that cash and food items were being delivered by helicopter to bereaved families.
The International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) said thousands of families in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan were struggling to survive after heavy snowfall in both countries.
“Life will never be the same for these families,” Ariel Kestens, IFRC’s chief in Afghanistan, said in a statement.
“Losing everything that they have overnight is already tragic enough. Having to cope with extreme cold on top of that is a life-changing experience, regardless of how used to low temperatures they are.”
Deadly avalanches are common in Afghanistan’s mountainous areas in winter, and rescue efforts are frequently hampered by lack of equipment.
Despite billions of dollars in international aid after the ousting of the Taliban government in 2001, Afghanistan remains among the world’s poorest nations.
Last month heavy snowfall and freezing weather killed 27 children, all under the age of five, in northern Jowzjan province.
New Delhi : Congress today accused the government of being “insensitive” towards implementing GST and said the blame for delaying the key tax reform measure for three years should be on the Modi dispensation.
There is confusion on the launch of GST on July 1, Congress leader M Veerappa Moily said.
“VAT income of all states has declined sharply. This is mainly because of demonetisation and other factors. GST revenues will be decelerating in all states. The states will be badly hit. This has not been envisaged by Finance Minister.
No provision has been made in the present Budget for meeting such challenges.
“That means they are most insensitive for implementing a very important enactment like GST, which was brought by us. If at all any blame should go, it is to the present government, which has delayed implementation of GST for more than three years,” the former Union Minister said.
He said the GST network had rejected CAG’s request to name Auditor and do extra audit. “This has had sad reflection with regard to preparedness to launch the GST,” he said.
Moily said the Budget allocation for defence reflects the “sad affair” of allocations to the sector.
He said the allocation has been reduced by 5 per cent and this will “decelerate military modernization and preparedness”.
Pointing out to the story of BSF soldier Tej Bahadur, who had put out a video of the food quality given to soldiers on social media, he said it reflects the morale of defence forces which is depleting day-by-day with such incidents.
“It is most unfortunate story, which reflects how the Army has been managed, how they are not being properly supplied with the rations, uniforms,” he said.
He alleged that Rs 7,000 crore of capital budget in 2016-17 has been surrendered, “which underlies the structural incapability of this Government to spend even the inadequate allocation. I do not know whether the Defence Minister is doing his job or not except thumping his own chest”.
“They do not do anything to strengthen the capabilities of their establishments. India faces conventional war challenges from Pakistan s F-16s and rapidly modernizing Chinese Air Force.
“The capital outlay has decreased in the fiscal year 2017-18 to Rs 10.5 billion that means 5 per cent decrease from the previous year. This will decelerate military modernization and preparedness,” he said. .