MODI, BIDEN TO HOLD VIRTUAL MEET, TALKS ON UKRAINE LIKELY

The Ukraine crisis, developments in South Asia, the situation in the Indo-Pacific and bilateral cooperation are expected to figure at a virtual meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and United States President Joe Biden today.

The Modi-Biden meeting will precede the fourth India-US '2+2' dialogue in Washington on the same day which will be led by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on the Indian side while the US delegation will be headed by Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Announcing the Modi-Biden meeting, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said it will 'enable both sides to continue their regular and high-level engagement aimed at further strengthening the bilateral comprehensive global strategic partnership'.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki in a statement said, "President Biden will continue our close consultations on the consequences of Russia's brutal war against Ukraine and mitigating its destabilising impact on global food supply and commodity markets." She also said that the two leaders will advance ongoing conversations about the development of an 'Indo-Pacific Economic Framework' and delivering high-quality infrastructure.

In its statement, the MEA said Modi and Biden will exchange views on recent developments in South Asia, the Indo-Pacific region and global issues of mutual interest.

NDA HAS SPENT MORE ON INFRA, SOCIAL SECTOR THAN UPA, SAYS SITHARAMAN

In the latest battle on social media between Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Congress leader P Chidambaram, who also held the Finance portfolio during the previous UPA govt, the former has asserted that the Narendra Modi govt has spent the maximum among all dispensations on social sector programmes and infrastructure development over the past eight years.

In a series of tweets, Sitharaman said she was responding to Chidambaram’s comments on the very high collection of fuel tax, but less spending on the people.

The overall developmental expenditure undertaken by the Centre amounted to nearly Rs 91 lakh crore between 2014-15 and 2021-22, she posted. Embedding RBI’s data in her tweet, Sitharaman said in contrast the Congress-led UPA govt spent Rs 49.2 lakh crore during its 10 years in power.

Sitharaman also tweeted details of the RBI data regarding the govt’s expenditure so far on food, fuel and fertiliser subsidies as well as capital creation. The Modi govt spent Rs 24.85 lakh crore on these three heads and Rs 26.3 lakh crore on capital creation. But the UPA spent only Rs 14 lakh crore on subsidies over its 10 years, the minister said.

Earlier this month, Chidambaram had said the Modi govt collected Rs 26.5 lakh crore from fuel tax collections between 2014 and 2021, but the total outgo on PM-KISAN, free food grain, cash allowances to women and other cash transfers is “no more than Rs 2.25 lakh crore — which is less than the annual fuel taxes collected by the Centre alone”.

BOOSTERS FOR ALL BEGIN, 10K UNDER 60 GET JABS

India started offering booster doses of Covid-19 vaccine to people between the age of 18 and 60 years as the latest phase of the country’s immunisation drive kicked off on Sunday, even as the first day saw a relatively slow start with only around 10,000 beneficiaries in this age group having taken the third shot yesterday

Govt officials said they had expected a slow start to the latest phase of the vaccination drive on account of the first day being a weekend as well as coinciding with the festival of Ram Navmi.

Due to the nine-month gap required between the second and third doses, the drive is expected to be relatively slow the first few weeks as it will initially only cover people aged 45 and above, and only those in the 18-45 age group that received a shot of Covaxin, which has a smaller dose gap compared to Covishield.

INDIA'S DATA LOCALISATION RULES TO BE A BARRIER TO DIGITAL TRADE: US

India’s proposed data localisation requirements under which firms need to store data within India “will serve as significant barriers to digital trade” between the two countries, says the US govt.

In the recent National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, the US says it believes such requirements will act as “market access barriers, especially for smaller firms”. If implemented, the rules will “raise the costs for service suppliers that store and process personal information outside India” by forcing them to construct unnecessary and redundant local data centres here.

The crux of America’s concern is India’s proposed Personal Data Protection Bill and the electronic commerce policy that impose broad-based localisation requirements for data. Under the Bill, firms are expected to store sensitive and critical personal information related to Indians on servers located in India. In the case of critical personal information — a yet-to-be-defined category — this cannot be transferred outside India under any circumstance.

The Bill has been through the scrutiny of a joint parliamentary committee and is expected to be promulgated later this year.

COVID DASHBOARD – INDIA

As of 0800 IST / April 11

from mohfw.gov.in ,

New Cases on Sunday 861

Active Cases 11,058 (-74)

Total Deaths (Deaths Yesterday) 5,21,691 (1)

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

======================

PAKISTAN'S PARLIAMENT TO RECONVENE TODAY TO ELECT NEW PM

Pakistan will have a new Prime Minister today when the National Assembly, which was adjourned in the early hours of Sunday, reconvenes to elect a new head of the govt after Imran Khan was ousted from office through a no-confidence vote, becoming the first premier in the country's history to suffer this ignominy.

Pakistan's Opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday nominated himself for the post of prime minister, while Imran Khan's party threatened to withdraw its lawmakers from Parliament if the former Punjab chief minister was allowed to contest the election for the top post on Monday.

The joint Opposition -- a rainbow of socialist, liberal and radically religious parties -- has nominated 70-year-old Sharif for the premier's post while ex-foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi was named by Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) as its candidate.

Imran Khan served as the prime minister of Pakistan for three years seven months and 23 days. The term of the current House is up to August, 2023.

In his first comments since ouster, Imran Khan in a tweet said, 'Pakistan became an independent state in 1947; but the freedom struggle begins again today against a foreign conspiracy of regime change. It is always the people of the country who defend their sovereignty & democracy.'

Tipped to be the next prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif is a hard-core realist and over the years has earned the reputation of a matter-of-fact person. Shehbaz, the 70-year-old younger brother of former three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has served as chief minister of the country's most populous and politically crucial Punjab province thrice.

US COMMITS TO MORE ARMS FOR UKRAINE AS FRESH BATTLE LOOMS

Russian forces continued shelling targets in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, as Washington said that it would meet Kyiv’s request for more military aid by providing “the weapons it needs” to defend itself against Russia.

Russian forces fired rockets into Ukraine’s Luhansk and Dnipropetrovsk regions on Sunday, officials said. Missiles completely destroyed the airport in the city of Dnipro, said Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the central Dnipropetrovsk region.

Russia’s defence ministry said that high-precision missiles had destroyed the headquarters of Ukraine’s Dnipro battalion in Zvonetsky.

Since Russia invaded, Zelenskiy has appealed to Western powers to provide more defence help, and to punish Moscow with tough sanctions.

MACRON & LE PEN SET TO QUALIFY FOR APRIL 24 RUN-OFF

France’s incumbent leader Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen are heading for an April 24 presidential poll runoff, projections showed after first round voting on Sunday.

Macron garnered 28. 1-29. 5% of votes in the first round while Le Pen won 23. 3-24. 4%, according to separate estimates by pollsters Ifop, OpinionWay, Elabe and Ipsos.

That would set up a duel between an economic liberal with a globalist outlook in Macron and a far-right, deeply eurosceptic economic nationalist who, until Ukraine war, was an open admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

THE REST

=========

MAYAWATI HITS BACK AT RAHUL, ASKS HIM TO WORRY ABOUT CONGRESS

BSP chief Mayawati on Sunday hit out at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for claiming that the former Uttar Pradesh CM had rejected their overture for an alliance and said Rahul should worry about his own party.

“The Congress leader yesterday made some comments regarding our party and especially about the party chief. These remarks reflect the casteist mindset and a feeling of malice towards the BSP. It shows similar feelings towards deprived sections of society, especially the Dalits...Before levelling any allegation on the BSP, Rahul must introspect. He is unable to manage his faction-ridden house, and is raising fingers on the style of working of the BSP,” Mayawati said.

Rahul had yesterday claimed that the Congress had offered to ally with the BSP in UP elections and also offered CM’s post to Mayawati who refused to talk due to “fear of the CBI, ED and Pegasus.”

She said the Congress had fought the 2017 UP elections with the SP and despite this could not stop the BJP from coming to power. “The Congress should first explain this,” Mayawati said.

TELANGANA COOKS UP A STORM OVER PADDY PROCUREMENT

Amid the ongoing paddy procurement row with the Centre, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) led by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will stage a protest in Delhi on Monday, demanding 100 per cent procurement of rice grains from Telangana produced during the Rabi season. The political move comes in the backdrop of the BJP making steady gains in Telangana and attempting to create a perception of being the sole challenger to the ruling TRS.

The issue is largely over the procurement of parboiled rice, which is majorly produced in Telangana during the Rabi season (November-April). Due to high temperature, local or common varieties of rice are soaked, boiled and dried in the mills to prevent breakage.

The TRS is insisting that more than 90 per cent of the rice grains produced in the state must be procured by the Centre, along with the parboiled rice stock yielded during the last Rabi season. TRS says the Centre’s ‘apathy’ has put the lives of 61 lakh farmers at stake.

Union Minister for food and public distribution Piyush Goyal has slammed TRS for making “misleading and meaningless” claims. Goyal said the TRS govt itself signed an agreement stating they will no longer supply boiled rice this Rabi season. Further, Goyal also told Parliament that Telangana’s original target for parboiled rice was 24.75 LMT, which was enhanced to 45 LMT on the request of the state govt. However, despite that, he said the state failed to supply more than 28 LMT.

NORTHEAST GROUPS OPPOSE CENTRE’S HINDI MOVE, CALL IT AN ‘IMPOSITION’

Several Northeast-based organisations — including Assam’s apex literary body, the Asom Sahitya Sabha and Manipur’s Meitei Erol Eyek Loinashillon Apunba Lup (MEELAL), a group established to safeguard Manipuri manuscripts and language — have opposed the Centre’s proposal to make Hindi compulsory till Class 10 in the region and urged the govt to reconsider its move.

“The Union Home minister should have instead taken steps to develop Assamese and other indigenous languages. Such steps spell a bleak future for Assamese and all indigenous languages in the Northeast. The Sabha demands that the decision to make Hindi mandatory till Class 10 be revoked,” the Asom Sahitya Sabha said in a statement released on Saturday.

Earlier this week, Union home minister Amit Shah, who chairs the Parliamentary Official Language committee, had announced that Hindi would be made compulsory in all eight northeastern states upto Class 10. Shah had said that 2,200 Hindi teachers had been recruited in the Northeast, adding that Hindi was the “language of India”. He had, however, clarified that Hindi should be an alternative to English and not local languages.

JNU: STUDENTS INJURED IN SCUFFLE OVER ‘RAM NAVMI POOJA’, ‘NON-VEG FOOD’

Several students were injured in Jawaharlal Nehru University after violence broke out on campus Sunday evening. This followed a tense day between two groups of students – Left activists and ABVP members – with the former alleging attempts to stop non-vegetarian food from being cooked and served in the Kaveri hostel mess and the latter alleging attempts to disrupt a Ram Navami puja in the same hostel.

ABVP activists however claimed non-vegetarian food was not an issue. “Common students of JNU were conducting a Ram Navami havan in the Kaveri hostel but the Leftists wanted to bring discord and came to prevent it from happening and stop people from joining. It was supposed to start at 3:30 pm but could only start by 5 pm because of the ruckus. No one objected to non-vegetarian food, this controversy has been created as a cover… An iftar party and the havan were taking place simultaneously in the hostel with no issues,” claimed Umesh Ajmeera, secretary ABVP-JNU.

In the meantime, the Kaveri hostel mess committee – a student-run body which determines the menu – wrote to the Dean of Students in the evening asking for intervention from the administration.

“Today, a group of people arbitrarily asked the meal manager not to cook non-veg (chicken) food for which he complied without informing the hostel and mess committee. The vendor who came to deliver chicken was verbally abused, threatened and manhandled. Students from outside of Kaveri hostel assaulted hostel committee members,” read their letter.

BIHAR OFFICER AMONG 8 ARRESTED FOR STEALING 60-FEET LONG IRON BRIDGE

The Bihar Police on Sunday arrested eight persons including a Sub Divisional Officer (SDO) of the water resources department in connection with the theft of the 60-foot abandoned bridge in the Rohtas district, an official said.

A gang of thieves who posed as state irrigation department officials had pulled off an extraordinary heist by stealing a 60-foot abandoned bridge in Bihar's Rohtas district in full public view.

According to the police, the thieves arrived with JCBs, pickup vans, gas cutters, and vehicles, and in 3 days cut off the entire bridge and disappeared.

FILM-MAKERS WANT CENSORSHIP TO BE STATES SPECIFIC

Film associations in India want changes in the film certification process. In a meeting they held with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting last month, 50 film associations from across the country suggested using different standards of censorship for different states, and easing the certification process.

Officials in the Ministry of Information and Broadcast have promised to take the recommendations into consideration when the central govt officially introduces amendments to the Cinematograph Act, 1952, the law that governs film certification in India, a press release issued by the ministry said.

The associations want the CBFC — the organisation entrusted with film certification in India — to apply different yardsticks while certifying movies in different states. A subject that could possibly affect a certain region should not face a blanket ban in areas with the capacity to consume it, the associations say.

“Sometimes people in progressive states like Kerala and West Bengal have the capacity to consume content that is more controversial in other states,” FFI General Secretary Ravi Kottarakara, who was present in the meeting, said. “It doesn’t make sense to use the same standard of censorship in these states.”

For example, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat created ripples within the Rajput community, leading to violent protests across Rajasthan, Delhi, and Gujarat, but such reactions were largely absent in southern and eastern states.

Ashoke Pandit, president of the Indian Film & Television Directors’ Association, said the solution is to introduce additional regional censor boards that would be able to understand the sensibilities of a given region.   “This will help avoid blanket bans and censorship,” Pandit added.

Decisions on whether or not to release a movie should ultimately lie with state govts, Kottarakara said.

IPL MATCHES 19 & 20: DC HAMMER KKR, RR EDGE OUT LSG

Openers Prithvi Shaw and David Warner's fearless batting laid the foundation as Delhi Capitals out-batted Kolkata Knight Riders by 44 runs to notch up their second win in the IPL in Mumbai on Sunday.

On a batting belter, KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer's decision to put Delhi Capitals in backfired as they piled up 215 for five riding on half-centuries from Shaw (51 off 29 balls) and Warner (61 off 45 balls).

In reply, KKR were all-out for 171 in 19.4 overs and it was left-arm spinner Kuldeep Yadav's (4/35) evening at the Brabourne Stadium as he exacted sweet revenge against a franchise that didn't treat him too well during his stint as his career came to a halt.

Delhi now have 2 wins from 4 matches while KKR have 3 from 5.

In the 2nd match yesterday, Shimron Hetmyer lived up to his Rs 8.5 crore price tag with a six-hitting exhibition before Yuzvendra Chahal and Trent Bout displayed their wizardry with the ball as Rajasthan Royals outwitted Lucknow Super Kings by three runs in an IPL game in Mumbai on Sunday.

Invited to bat, RR score 165/6 in 20 overs.

Trent Boult (2/30) then struck twice in a sensational opening over, while Chahal (4/41) picked up four wickets to make the match interesting. Kuldeep Sen, making his IPL debut, showed great nerves as he defended 14 runs in the last over as RR limited LSG to 162 for eight.

Royals became the first team in IPL history to employ the 'retired out' tactic as Ravichandran Ashwin went back to the dug out despite being 28 (off 23) not out. RR skipper Sanju Samson said the decision to withdraw Ravichandran Ashwin 'retired out' in the slog overs was a call made by the team management, taking into consideration the match situation.

With this win, RR bounced back from their four wicket loss to RCB in the last match to take the top position in the IPL standings,  with 3 wins from 4 matches.

LSG also have 3 wins from 5 matches so far.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. - Will and Ariel Durant

OFF TRACK

A bald man took a seat in a beauty shop.

"How can I help you?" asked the stylist.

"I went for a hair transplant," the guy explained, "but I couldn't stand the pain. If you can make my hair look like yours without causing me any discomfort, I'll pay you $5000."

"No problem," said the stylist, and he quickly shaved his own head.