SEVERAL STATES GET NEW GOVERNORS

The government on Sunday appointed six new faces as governors, besides carrying out a rejig of the gubernatorial posts in seven states.

According to a Rashtrapati Bhavan spokesperson, President Droupadi Murmu has accepted the resignations of Bhagat Singh Koshyari and RK Mathur as the governor of Maharashtra and the lieutenant governor of Ladakh respectively.

Ramesh Bais, who was the governor of Jharkhand, has been appointed governor of Maharashtra.

Koshyari, 80, took charge as Maharashtra governor in September 2019 at a time of a political turmoil in the state following Shiv Sena severing its ties with the BJP. He administered the oath of office to Devendra Fadnavis as the chief minister and NCP leader Ajit Pawar as the deputy chief minster, which lasted only three days.

When the Uddhav Thakeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi was in power, he had several run-ins with the government on a range of issues, including the appointment of 12 members to the state legislative council from the gubernatorial quota, which he never approved. The MVA had accused him of acting in a partisan manner.

Mathur has been facing stiff opposition led by noted education reformist Sonam Wangchuk in the three-year-old Union territory. Governor of Arunachal Pradesh Brig BD Mishra (retd) has been appointed in his place.

Justice SA Nazeer, a former Supreme court judge, was appointed as the new governor of Andhra Pradesh. The incumbent, Biswa Bhusan Harichandan, has been shifted to Chhattisgarh. Justice Nazeer, who retired on January 4, has been part of several path-breaking verdicts, including those on the politically sensitive Ayodhya land dispute, instant 'triple talaq' and the one that declared 'right to privacy' a fundamental right.

The President also appointed Lt Gen Kaiwalya Trivikram Parnaik (retd) as governor of Arunachal Pradesh.

Four BJP leaders, including two from Uttar Pradesh, were also appointed as new governors. Lakshman Prasad Acharya, CP Radhakrishnan, Shiv Pratap Shukla and Gulab Chand Kataria have been appointed as governors of Sikkim, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Assam respectively.

Other than Bais, Mishra and Harichandan, the other transfers included the shifting of Anusuiya Uikye from Chhattisgarh to Manipur, La. Ganesan from Manipur to Nagaland, Phagu Chauhan from Bihar to Meghalaya and Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar from Himachal Pradesh to Bihar.

KHARGE CALLS OPPN MEET ON MONDAY TO CHALK OUT FLOOR STRATEGY

Congress president and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge has called a meeting of "like-minded" opposition parties on Monday. The meeting is believed to be called to chalk out the strategy of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha on Monday.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday reiterated his party's demand for a joint parliamentary committee probe into the businesses of the Adani Group in the wake of the report by US short-seller firm Hindenburg Research.

Addressing a press conference, Kharge said, "Shouldn't there be an inquiry into the Adani scam? Shouldn't the matter be referred to the JPC? Should not there be a discussion on the money that public sector banks invested in Adani's businesses? Public money is involved in it. Why does the government have a problem taking Adani's name?"

Kharge alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi acted as an 'agent' for the Adani group of companies.

Questioning the regulatory bodies of the country, Kharge said, "The RBI, SEBI, ED, Corporate Affairs Ministry, Income Tax, and the CBI seem paralysed. Can they not see the corruption here? Is Adani invisible to them? With our institutions in inertia, it is our duty to question the government. The people sent us to the Parliament as their representatives and it is our responsibility to safeguard the public."

"We tried to raise several issues in the Parliament. However, the Prime Minister evaded all questions and just gave an election speech, boasting about himself," Kharge added.

EXPUNCTION FROM SPEECHES, MP’S SUSPENSION SHOW ‘BLATANT PARTISANSHIP’, BJP’S ‘DICTATORIAL FACE’: CONGRESS

The Congress on Sunday said “blatant partisanship” was witnessed in the expunction of remarks of its leaders and suspension of its Rajya Sabha MP, and alleged the BJP-led government wanted to establish an “authoritarian dominance” in Parliament by “terrorising” the Opposition.

Senior Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi claimed the BJP does not want Parliament to run through consensus, collaboration and concordance, but through “clash, chaos, and conflict”.

The “autocratic and dictatorial face” of the BJP and the ruling dispensation was in full show in each House of Parliament in the “undemocratic and unparliamentary” expunction of several remarks of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, and in the suspension of Rajani Patil from the Rajya Sabha, he said.

Alluding to the expunction of words from Gandhi and Kharge’s speeches in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha respectively while participating in a debate on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address last week, Singhvi said not a word stated therein justifies the use of the power of expunction “There is no use of unparliamentary language, no expletives, no debasement of any institution, no objectionable or abusive word or phrase.

“Unless free, frank and fearless discussion is allowed to take place within the two Houses of Parliament, democracy is fundamentally and irreversibly imperiled,” he said.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

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US FIGHTER JETS SHOOT DOWN OCTAGONAL OBJECT NEAR CANADIAN BORDER

US military fighter jets on Sunday shot down an octagonal object near Lake Huron, US officials said, the fourth object downed this month as North American security forces have been on high alert for airborne threats.

President Joe Biden ordered the object to be shot down as it traveled over Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and neared Lake Huron on the US-Canada border.

The object appeared to be octagonal in structure, with strings hanging off but no discernable payload, a US official said. It did not pose a military threat or have surveillance capabilities, officials said, but could have potentially interfered with domestic air traffic.

The object was recently detected over Montana, prompting the closure of US airspace.

This marks the fourth unidentified flying object that has been destroyed over North America this month. US officials identified the first object as a Chinese surveillance balloon, and the incident has strained US relations with Beijing.

Officials said the latest object was shot down using a Sidewinder missile in US airspace at an altitude of 20,000 feet.

QUAKE TOLL TOPS 33,000 & COUNTING; TURKIYE PROBES CORRUPTION ANGLE IN COLLAPSE OF BULIDINGS

The death toll from the huge quakes that hit southeastern Turkiye and northern Syria rose to 33,179 on Sunday and was certain to keep increasing as search teams locate more bodies in the rubble.

As despair bred rage at the agonizingly slow rescue efforts, rescuers continued to probe the rubble in hope of finding additional survivors who could yet beat the long odds.

The picture of the plight in Syria was less clear. UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs Martin Griffiths, visiting the Turkish-Syrian border on Sunday, said that Syrians have been left “looking for international help that hasn’t arrived”. “We have so far failed the people in Syria. They rightly feel abandoned,” he said. The first UN convoy to reach Syria from Turkiye was only on Thursday, three days after the earthquake.

The toll in Syria’s rebel-held region has reached 2,166, as per the rescue worker group the White Helmets. The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, though the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn’t been updated in days..

Turkiye vowed on Sunday to probe anyone suspected of responsibility for the collapse of buildings.

Opposition parties have accused President Erdogan’s government of not enforcing building regulations, and of mis-spending special taxes levied after the last major quake in 1999 in order to make buildings more resistant to quakes.

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PM MODI OPENS MEGA EXPRESSWAY IN RAJASTHAN

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the first phase of the ambitious, nearly 1,400 kilometres long Delhi-Mumbai expressway in Rajasthan's Dausa yesterday. The 246-kilometre Delhi-Dausa-Lalsot stretch of the expressway will cut down the travel time from Delhi to Jaipur from five hours to around three and a half hours. It is also expected to boost economic opportunities in the entire region.

"Studies show investment on infrastructure brings in further investments," the PM said, addressing a public gathering in Dausa's Dhanawar village, in eastern Rajasthan. He pressed the button of a remote to mark the inauguration. "Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas is our mantra for nation, we are making 'Samarth Bharat' while following it," the PM further said, adding that the expressway is "a magnificent picture of developing India".

PM Modi said when the government invests in highway projects, ports, railways, optical fibre, and opens medical colleges, it gives strength to traders, small shopkeepers and industries.

The PM said those who travel to Delhi for work can now come back home in the evening after finishing their task, adding that rural 'haats' are being developed around the expressway where the local artisans can sell their article.

The entire highway has automatic toll booths, and the toll tax will be deducted only once -- it will be calculated from the moment one enters the highway to the time they exit. The toll tax for the 220-km-long Delhi-Jaipur journey is ₹ 70 rupees.

AFTER 3 FAILED ATTEMPTS, MCD TO MAKE FOURTH BID TO ELECT MAYOR ON FEB 16

Delhi LG VK Saxena has given his nod for convening the next session of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi House on February 16 for election to the post of mayor. The government had sent the proposal to hold the House session on February 16 and Saxena has accepted it, they said.

Three successive meetings of the House were adjourned in the last one month amid ruckus and commotion over the decision to give voting rights to aldermen without electing the mayor, deputy mayor and members of the standing committee of the civic body.

After the civic polls in December, the House was first convened on January 6 but was adjourned following acrimonious exchanges between members of the BJP and AAP.

The second municipal House held on January 24 was briefly adjourned after the oath-taking ceremony, and was later adjourned till the next date by the pro tem presiding officer.

After that, the House was adjourned on last Monday again for the third time, a month after the first municipal House.

AAP has alleged that the mayoral election could not be held as the BJP was "strangulating democracy and the Constitution of India", while the saffron party accused the Aam Aadmi Party of coming out with excuses to stall the mayoral poll and blamed it for the stalemate.

DELHI POLICE SERVES FRESH NOTICE ON GEHLOT'S OSD IN PHONE-TAPPING CASE

The Delhi police has served a notice on Lokesh Sharma, the officer on special duty to the Rajasthan chief minister, asking him to appear on Monday for questioning in a phone-tapping case. The phone-tapping controversy dates to the July 2020 political crisis in Congress-ruled Rajasthan.

On March 25, 2021, the Delhi police registered an FIR against Sharma for criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust and unlawfully intercepting telegraphic signals (telephonic conversation) on a complaint lodged by Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, the BJP MP from Jodhpur.

Audio clips of alleged telephonic conversations between Shekhawat and Congress leaders surfaced amid a rebellion against Gehlot by his then deputy Sachin Pilot and 18 party MLAs supporting him.

It was alleged that Sharma circulated the purported clips about an alleged conspiracy to topple the Congress government. Sharma has rejected the allegations.

JAIN MUNI STORMS OFF STAGE OVER JAMIAT'S ARSHAD MADANI’S REMARKS

Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind chief Maulana Arshad Madani on Sunday stoked controversy at the prominent Muslim body’s general session by claiming that “Om” and “Allah” were the same God worshipped by ‘Manu’, drawing objections from a prominent Jain monk who stormed off the stage along with a group of other religious leaders.

Speaking on the third and final day of the 34th general session of the Jamiat at the Ramlila Maidan here, the Muslim cleric said he asked the “dharma gurus” as to who was worshipped when there was no Shri Ram, Brahma or Shiva. “Some say Manu worshipped Shiva. Very few have pointed out that there was nothing in the world and Manu worshipped Om.

“I asked who is Om, many said ‘it is just air, it has no form, it has no colour and it is everywhere, it made the sky and land’. I said this is what we call Allah, you call Ishwar, those speaking Persian call Khuda and those speaking English call God,” Madani said.

“This means that Manu, that is Adam, used to worship one Om, that is one Allah,” he said.

Manu is a term found in religious texts, referring to the first man or the progenitor of humanity.

Arshad Madani’s remarks were strongly disapproved by Jain monk Acharya Lokesh Muni who walked out of the session, accusing Madani of digressing from talking about unity to spinning a story about “Manu and Allah”. “We only agree with living in harmony, but all these stories regarding Om, Allah, and Manu are all baseless. He (Madani) completely spoiled the environment of the session,” Muni said.

“The stories he narrated, I can narrate even bigger stories than that. I would even request him (Madani) to come for a discussion with me, or even I can come to meet him in Saharanpur,” he said.

On Friday, Mahmood Madani, who heads the other faction of the Jamiat, triggered a row by claiming that India is the “birthplace of Islam” and the oldest religion of the country. He had asserted that the country belongs to him as much as it does to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. Mahmood Madani had said it is wrong to suggest that Islam came from outside and claimed that the “first Prophet of Islam Adam descended here”.

AMID CHATGPT REVOLUTION, GOVT TO UPGRADE INDIAAI

India is making an aggressive play in artificial intelligence (AI) with twin objectives of “making AI in India and making AI work for India”. In this direction and against the backdrop of the revolutionary transition in AI brought in by ChatGPT, the government is expanding the INDIAai initiative in partnership with Indian tech companies, start-ups, and academic institutions.

The arrival of ChatGPT (generative pre-trained transformer), developed by OpenAI, has changed the AI land space, with companies globally rushing to come out with similar advanced chatbots. Microsoft recently announced upgrading its search engine Bing and browser Edge with ChatGPT; this move forced Google, the king of the search engine market, to scramble and announce a rival AI Bard. Companies in China like Baidu are also expected to build homegrown chatbots based on GPT technology.

Explaining the broader vision behind the AI push, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said: “India has the best talent for AI in the world. The government is setting up three centres of excellence for AI (which were announced in the Budget) and we will make AI in India and make AI work for India.”

Vaishnaw said the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has undertaken a lot of work in the AI space in solutions for varied Indian languages where ChatGPT has already been integrated. “One good example is Bhasini — a natural language AI platform, which enables automated language translation and is already being integrated with ChatGPT.”

INDIA TOPPLES FRANCE TO BECOME UK’S LARGEST SCOTCH WHISKY MARKET

India has overtaken France to become the UK’s largest market of Scotch whisky in terms of volume with a 60% hike in imports in 2022 over the previous year, according to figures from Scotland’s leading industry body.

The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) said that India imported 219 million 70cl bottles of Scotch compared to France’s 205 million last year – representing growth of the Indian Scotch market of more than 200% in the past decade.

“SWA analysis shows that a UK-India FTA deal which eases the 150% tariff burden on Scotch whisky in India could boost market access for Scotland’s whisky companies, allowing for an additional GBP 1 billion of growth over the next five years,” it noted. The value of the Indian market for Scotch exports comes in at fifth worth GBP 282 million, up 93% in 2021 and behind France, Singapore and Taiwan.

WOMEN’ T20 WORLD CUP: JEMIMAH SHINES AS INDIA BEAT PAKISTAN IN THRILLER

Experienced batter Jemimah Rodrigues produced a master class of an innings as she and youngster Richa Ghosh held their nerves under pressure to guide India to a seven-wicket win over arch-rivals Pakistan in their opening match of the Women's T20 World Cup in Cape Town on Saturday.

Jemimah (53 not out off 38 balls) and Richa (31 not out off 20 balls) stitched 58 runs for the unconquered fourth wicket as India chased down a challenging target of 150 with six balls to spare.

Shafali Verma (33 off 25 balls) and Yastika Bhatia (17) gave a good start to the Indian run chase, stitching 38 runs in 5.3 overs. The powerplay overs yielded 43 runs for one wicket.

The tournament being held in South Africa has 10 teams, divided into two groups:

Group 1: Sri Lanka, Australia, South Africa, Bangladesh, New Zealand

Group 2: England, India, Pakistan, West Indies, Ireland

DHARAMSALA GROUND FAILS BCCI TEST

Dharamsala has lost the opportunity to host the India-Australia Test, which was scheduled to be held there from March 1 to 5. A team of BCCI officials, which inspected the cricket ground on Saturday, had stated that the ground was not ready and the match venue should be shifted from Dharamsala.

The BCCI has decided to shift the match venue as the outfield is still not ready. The Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA) had recently started the work of relaying the cricket ground. The work has still not been completed in some small portions of the outfield. The BCCI decided to shift the match venue as the ground and the pitch have not been tested after being relaid. The BCCI officials were of the view that the ground should first be tested for domestic matches before an international cricket match was held here.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. - H.L. Mencken

OFF TRACK

A Mr. Dubey goes to a psychiatrist.

Doctor: What's your problem?

Mr. Dubey: I don't have any problem. Am Emperor Akbar. How can an Emperor ever have a problem? The problem is with my wife Begum Jodhabai.

Doctor: And what's her problem?

Mr. Dubey: She thinks she's Mrs. Dubey!