GOVT DERAILED HOUSE: OPPOSITION DRAWS BATTELINES OUTSIDE

A day after marshals were deployed in the Rajya Sabha during the passage of the insurance amendment bill, a united opposition on Thursday questioned the excessive use of security personnel in the House describing it as a “murder of democracy”.

Leaders of 15 opposition parties, including Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, SP’s Ram Gopal Yadav, Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut, CPM’s Elamaram Kareem, CPI’s Binoy Viswam, DMK’s Tiruchi Siva among others are to meet Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to lodge a protest.

“The parliament session is over, and frankly, as far as 60 per cent of the country is concerned, no parliament session was held because their voice was crushed, humiliated and yesterday in Rajya Sabha it was physically beaten. This is nothing short of murder of democracy,” Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said.

Gandhi said the opposition raised the issue of Pegasus and sought a debate on it but the government refused. “We raised farmers’ issue outside Parliament because we were not allowed to speak inside. We raised the price rise issue outside because we were not allowed to speak inside. We are not allowed to speak in Parliament. Therefore, we are before you today. What happened in Parliament is nothing short of a murder of democracy,” said Gandhi.

NCP leader Praful Patel quoted his party chief Pawar as saying that he had never seen in 55 years of his political life the visuals seen in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

GOVT FIELDS 8 MINISTERS TO PIN BLAME ON OPPN

The Modi government Thursday fielded eight Union ministers to take on the Opposition, accusing it of “bringing anarchy from the streets to Parliamen”.

During A press conference, the ministers, including Cabinet ministers Piyush Goyal, Dharmendra Pradhan, Pralhad Joshi, Bhupendra Yadav, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Anurag Thakur, as well as Ministers of State for Parliamentary Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal and V Muraleedharan, sought the “strongest possible action against those who broke the rules”.

Joshi, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, also blamed the Opposition for the early end of the Session, saying the government actually intended to extend it till Monday (it was to wrap up on Friday). “However, the Opposition said we will not discuss. I requested them to cooperate at least in the passing of our Bills. We were threatened, saying that if you try to pass the Bill… insurance Bill and other Bills… a more disastrous situation (might happen). You saw in the evening what happened yesterday, the climbing on tables, more than that was going to happen. This was clearly told in unambiguous terms. It was told to us. Now, they are saying that Bills were passed in the din,” Joshi said.

Responding to the Opposition’s allegation that women MPs were manhandled in the Rajya Sabha by the marshals, Bhupender Yadav said: “You can see the footage which shows women MPs misbehaving with women marshals.”

Rejecting the Opposition charges that outsiders were deployed for Rajya Sabha security yesterday, Goyal said: “Eighteen male and 12 female marshals were deployed to protect the Chair, table and House property in the light of what happened on August 4 when some women MPs damaged RS property while trying to enter the chambers and wounded a female security officer. Only 30 marshals were on duty in the Rajya Sabha yesterday.”

The government also released a list of 18 Bills, which were passed in a hasty manner during the UPA rule between 2006 and 2014.

GOVT WORKING TO EASE OVERSEAS TRAVEL CURBS: JAISHANKAR

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said his top priority is to make sure Indians are able to travel abroad with the least number of restrictions and hoped that Covaxin, one the two vaccines being primarily used in India, would get WHO approval by next month.

“As a country whose people look at the world as a global workplace, it is up there in my priority,” Jaishankar said while responding to Tech Mahindra CEO C P Gurnani’s observation about travel impediments at the CII’s virtual annual session on Thursday.

He also acknowledged the issue about vaccines at some places, saying that Europe started the problem by exempting people only with certain kinds of vaccination from quarantine. “We got Covishield in. Covaxin is still a problem.  Maybe in September, we should get some kind of indication,” he said.

The solution was a vaccination certificate on the lines of the ‘Yellow Fever’ certificates where there was no insistence on a particular type of injection. “I do see it as a challenge. Some countries try to get across their viewpoint that their vaccine is a must to deal with them. There will be a push and pull out there,” the Minister observed.

KEY COVID NUMBERS

Current Active Cases Countrywide: 3,79,792

New Cases in last 24 hours: 40,063

Recovered in last 24 hours: 41,709

Change in no. of Active cases in last 24 hours: -2,229

No. of deaths in last 24 hours (Total Covid Deaths so far): 583 (4,30,285)

Daily Tests (Tuesday): 23,13,689

Daily Positivity Rate (Proportion of Positives among total Tested): 21.9%

Percentage of Population Vaccinated (At Least One Dose / Two Doses): 30.5% / 8.8%

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

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AFGHANISTAN URGES WORLD TO ACT AGAINST TALIBAN ‘WAR CRIMES’

Afghanistan Thursday urged the international community to act against the Taliban’s “war crimes and blatant human rights violations”, saying stopping its violence will be in the interest of the whole world.

Kabul, which also stressed the need for an immediate ceasefire, made the request during the ‘Extended Troika’ talks in Qatar capital Doha, which were attended by representatives from the US, Pakistan, Russia and China.

Addressing the meeting of the Extended Troika, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, who represented Afghanistan at the interaction, “stressed the need to start meaningful and sincere negotiations to establish an immediate ceasefire and reach a political agreement”.

“The chairman of the High Council for Reconciliation called on the international community, especially the Troika meeting member states, to adopt serious measures to prevent Taliban attacks on cities, which have led to war crimes, widespread human rights abuses and humanitarian catastrophe,” the Afghanistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

The Taliban captured Afghanistan’s third-largest city, Herat, and a strategic provincial capital, Ghazni, near Kabul on Thursday, making them the 10th and 11th of 34 Afghan provincial capital to fall in less than a week.

US HAS DECIDED THAT INDIA IS A STRATEGIC ALLY, SAYS IMRAN

Pakistan PM Imran Khan told foreign journalists that he believed the US had picked India to partner with in the subcontinent. “I think the Americans have decided that India is a strategic partner. Maybe that’s why Pakistan is being treated differently. Pakistan is just considered to be useful only in the context of settling this mess (Afghanistan),” Khan said at an interaction with foreign media in Islamabad.

A nightmare scenario for Pakistan would be a protracted civil war in case the Taliban tried to form an exclusive Afghan government through a military takeover,” he told the journalists, explaining that the Taliban were a Pashtun-majority group and hence there would be spillover effects in Pakistan’s Pashtun-majority areas.

He also contradicted what his national security adviser had claimed in a recent interview to the “Financial Times”, saying, “I am not waiting for a call from US President Joe Biden.” The subject has been discussed and written about in the country for the last few days and the PM’s statement on Thursday has once again confounded many who wonder why Khan needed to say what he has said.

US WHITE POPULATION FALLS BELOW 60%

The browning of America is accelerating with the white population in the country poised to drop below 60% for the first time in its history even as people of colour add to its numbers, according to latest US census data. The trend, which has white nationalists agitated, is mostly on account of white people having fewer kids and starting their families at a later age than other groups, in a development demographers call “baby bust”. White nativists though attribute it largely to immigration.

The browning of America is being fuelled primarily by minority groups, particularly Hispanic or Latino Americans who grew by at least one million in eight of the last 10 years, and overall by 10.5 million between 2010 and 2020. Asian Americans too grew by about half a million in seven of the last 10 years, going up by 4.7 million over the decade. African Americans registered a slower growth, expanding by 3,00,000 in eight of the last 10 years, for an estimated 3.4 million increase since 2010 census.

But while the Latino and Black growth came mainly on account of natural growth from people already living in the US who are giving birth, Asian Americans were the only group to experience more growth from immigration — 3.3 million people — than from natural increase — 1.2 million.

THE REST

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LEAVE ISRO ALONE, SAYS JAIRAM RAMESH; MINISTER HITS BACK

Senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh and Union minister Jitendra Singh, in-charge of the Department of Space, engaged in a verbal spat after ISRO technical error yesterday.

ISRO launched GSLV-F10 rocket, with an earth observation satellite (EOS-03) on board from Sriharikota spaceport, however, the failure to ignite the cryogenic stage of the launch vehicle prompted the premier space agency to declare that the mission could not be achieved as intended.

Earlier in the day, Singh said the first two stages went off fine, only after that there was a difficulty in cryogenic upper stage ignition. The mission can be rescheduled some time again, he said.

“ISRO has the resilience to bounce back. And it will. However, it should be allowed to function as a scientific and technological enterprise as put in place by Vikram Sarabhai and Satish Dhawan. There is far too much political grandstanding on it now,” Ramesh, who is the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, tweeted.

Sarabhai is widely regarded as the father of the Indian Space programme. He died in 1971.

Hitting back, Singh said, “Jairam ji, please don’t forget, most of Space related pitfalls, including mysterious midnight death of Vikram Sarabhai, happened during Congress regime. Going by the same analogy, had Congress refrained from political interference, Sarabhai could have contributed valuably for many more years.”

TWITTER ACCOUNTS OF CONGRESS, SURJEWALA, VENUGOPAL, MAKEN LOCKED

The Congress on Thursday said the party’s official handle and several accounts of its leaders and volunteers had been locked by Twitter and alleged that the micro blogging site was acting under pressure of the government.

Former party chief Rahul Gandhi’s account already stands suspended.

The Congress alleged that accounts of seniors leaders general secretaries Randeep Surjewala, KC Venugopal, Ajay Maken, AICC Assam in charge Jitendra Singh, Mahila Congress chief Sushmita Dev, MP and Lok Sabha whip Manickam Tagore had been suspended among those of many others.

The party also said close to 5,000 accounts of party workers had been suspended for sharing pictures of family of the minor victim of alleged rape and murder in Delhi.

The Twitter action followed a notice from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights to act against Gandhi’s handle for violating privacy laws for minor victims. Juvenile justice act prohibits revelation of pictures of minor victims of crime and their families.

TMC TO OTHER OPPN PARTIES: DON’T TAKE US FOR GRANTED

Stating that the TMC “should not be taken for granted”, Saugata Roy, senior TMC leader, on Thursday said other opposition parties must appreciate that the TMC was a “bit different” than them as it singlehandedly defeated the BJP in Bengal and formed government there on its own strength.

Roy, who was addressing a press conference here today with TMC Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien, said the non-BJP state governments in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu were being run by coalition of parties. “We deserve to be treated with respect. It should not be like someone calls you in the morning and tells you that there is going to be an event and we should join. We discuss it among ourselves and then take guidance from supremo Mamata Banerjee,” Roy said on being asked why the TMC did not take part in the opposition protest today.

COMING SOON, A SPY BOOK, WITH SECRETS ABOUT RAW, ISI

A forthcoming book, “Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of the RAW and ISI”, by two American authors has detailed their active involvement in a back channel connection between India’s top security managers and their Pakistani counterparts.

Highly respected Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, who have written well received books on the region, made startling claims on Kulbhushan Jadhav, the Pulwama and Pathankot attacks, Burhan Wani and the Mumbai attacks.

On Jadhav, for which the primary source is a middle-level ISI officer gone rogue, the authors write that he was not an Indian intelligence officer but after basing himself in Iran, he was outraged by the Mumbai attacks and had offered his services to the intelligence services. The Pakistanis had spotted him meeting RAW men and had baited him by using a Baloch strongman with connections in Iran.

The authors claim that the ISI had got them to tell NSA Ajit Doval that it was not involved in the Pulwama attacks. It was the handiwork of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) which had planned it in Afghanistan and was intended to start a regional war.

They were told by a former RAW officer that the Pathankot airbase attack by four JeM terrorists was facilitated by “corrupt local police officers” but the NIA charge-sheet has no mention of that.

Burhan Wani’s whereabouts were known to the security forces but they did not deliberately kill him for a long time as they used him as `flypaper’ to trap other militants, they claim.

The authors have quoted from interviews by Doval, Khanna, former Defence Intelligence chief Lt Gen Vinod Khandare and former IB chief Asif Ibrahim. They have also claimed that Saudi Arabia has played the role of mediator between India and Pakistan.

ALLAHABAD HC QUASHES DETENTION OF 3 UNDER NSA IN UP COW SLAUGHTER CASE

Quashing the detention of three persons under the National Security Act (NSA) in a cow slaughter case, the Allahabad High Court has said that slaughtering a cow “in the secrecy of one’s house” could involve a law and order issue but not public order.

Hearing habeas corpus petitions filed by families of the three – Irfan, Rahmatullah and Parvez – who were arrested for alleged cow slaughter in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district in July last year, an HC bench said: “…an act of slaughtering a cow in the secrecy of one’s own house in the wee hours probably because of poverty or lack of employment or hunger, would perhaps only involve a law and order issue and could not be said to stand on the same footing as a situation where a number of cattle have been slaughtered outside in public view and the public transport of their flesh or an incident where an aggressive attack is made by the slaughterers against the complaining public, which may involve infractions of public order.”

FUTURE GROUP PROMOTERS APPROACH THE SC AGAINST AMAZON

Future group promoters, including Kishore Biyani and several group holding companies, have approached the Supreme Court against an order passed by the Delhi High Court directing to enforce the order of the Singapore-based Emergency Arbitrator.

They have requested to set aside the orders passed by the Delhi High Court in execution proceedings for enforcing the order passed by the Emergency Arbitrator (EA) on October 25, 2020, it added.

Passing an interim order, the EA of Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) had on October 25 last year restrained the Future group from going ahead with its Rs 24,731 crore deal with Reliance Industries to sell its retail and wholesale business, and the logistics and warehousing business.

In August last year, Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) had said it would acquire the retail and wholesale business, and the logistics and warehousing business of Future Group for Rs 24,713 crore. The scheme of arrangement entails the consolidation of Future Group's retail and wholesale assets into one entity Future Enterprises Ltd and then transferring it to Reliance Retail.

The deal has been contested by Amazon, an investor in Future Coupons that in turn is a shareholder in Future Retail Ltd.

LORD'S TEST, DAY 1: INDIA ON TOP, WITH RAHUL'S TON, ROHIT COMMANDING 83

India batsman KL Rahul cracked a superb unbeaten century and Rohit Sharma made 83 as the visitors reached a strong position at 276/3 after the opening day of a rain-hit second Test against England at Lord’s on Thursday. Engkland won the toss and chose to field first.

Rahul dropped anchor early in his innings as Rohit led the charge before switching gears to bring up his sixth Test century following an impressive 84 in the first innings of the drawn first Test of the five-match series. Rahul’s knock of 127 not out included 12 fours and a six.

England seamer James Anderson dismissed Rohit and Cheteshwar Pujara to give the hosts hope of clawing their way back but India skipper Virat Kohli (42) stitched together a 117-run partnership with Rahul before departing.

Ajinkya Rahane was unbeaten on one at the close.

Earlier, England’s pace bowlers got plenty of movement in overcast conditions after the start of play was delayed by 30 minutes due to rain, but they had little reward thereafter as captain Joe Root was left to rue his decision to bowl.

INDICATORS

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GBP 0.72 /US$, Euro 0.85 /US$, Jap.Yen 110.40 /US$, Aus$ 1.35 /US$, Sing 1.35 /US$, Bang Taka 83.26 /US$, Can$ 1.25 /US$, Mal Ring 4.23 /US$,

Pak Re 163.33 /US$, Phil Peso 50.38 /US$, Russian Rouble 73.48 /US$, NZ$ 1.42 /US$, Thai Baht 33.05 /US$, Ukraine Hryvnia 26.52 /US$

Bitcoin - USD 45,373

Dollar Index 92.94 Brent Crude 70.80 BDI 3,503

Gold world Spot Price USD/aoz 1,755 India (Rs. per gm 24k/22k) 4,654 / 4,554, Silver (Rs. Per KG) 67,500

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t. - Rikki Rogers

OFF TRACK

An old man strode in to his doctors office and said, "Doc, my druggist said to tell you to change my prescription and to check the prescription you've been giving to Mrs. Smith."  "Oh, he did, did he?" the doctor shot back. "And since when does a druggist second guess a doctor's orders?" 

The old man says, "Since he found out I've been on birth control pills since December."