ANTI-CAA PROTESTS ARE TAKING COUNTRY ON THE ROAD TO ANARCHY: PMCalling the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act a "road toanarchy", Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday said "protest marches,violence and arson" against a law duly passed and notified by Parliamentwill "create a problem for the country". He said the Opposition is buildingnarratives keeping only the vote bank in mind."I am sounding a warning against this. this will create a problem for you(Opposition Congress) as well. if the Assembly in Rajasthan, where you havea govt, passes a decision and no one there is willing to accept it, andpeople take out protest marches, commit violence and arson. what will be thesituation? Can the country run like this? Is this road to anarchy right?"Modi said in Lok Sabha while replying to the Motion of Thanks to thePresident's address.Delving into history and invoking nation builders during his twin speechesin Parliament to strongly defend the CAA, he said the sentiment in thecountry had always been in favour of offering shelter to persecutedminorities from Pakistan and Bangladesh. He read out an extract from a 1947resolution of the Congress Working Committee and quoted Jawaharlal Nehru,Lal Bahadur Shastri, B R Ambedkar and Ram Manohar Lohia to reiterate this.In Lok Sabha, the motion was passed with a majority but in Rajya Sabha, itwas passed amid an Opposition walkout. On the CAA protests, Modi said thatthe "Congress and its ecosystem" were keeping up the "ruckus" and were"inciting" people with "imaginary fears".Seeking to blunt Congress criticism of the CAA, Modi said Jawaharlal Nehruhad accepted that minorities from Pakistan needed to be given citizenship."In the Nehru-Liaquat Pact (of 1950), it is written to grant citizenship tothe minorities of Pakistan. Why did Nehru, who was a big thinker, say'minorities' and not 'all citizens' of Pakistan?" He read out Nehru's 1950letter to first Assam Chief Minister Gopinath Bordoloi in which Nehru saidthat the Assam government needed to differentiate between "Hindu refugeesand Muslim immigrants"."Was Pandit Nehru communal? Did he want to create Hindu Rashtra? Did hediscriminate between Hindus and Muslims?" Modi asked the Opposition benches.He said his government was saying today what Nehru had said decades ago.As the Opposition benches started demanding that the PM speak on"unemployment", Modi took a swipe at them, saying he would always ensurethat the Opposition remained unemployed. He also described Congress leaderRahul Gandhi as a "tubelight".When Rahul Gandhi rose from his seat and questioned him on the issue ofunemployment, Modi said he had been waiting for the Congress leader'sreaction but it took him 30-40 minutes. "I have been speaking for 30-40minutes but it took this long for the current to reach. Many tubelights arelike this," he said, leading to much merriment among NDA members.Earlier, without naming Gandhi, the PM also referred to his comment on"youth beating Modi with 'danda'over lack of jobs" to take him on. The PMsaid he would increase the number of "Surya Namaskars" so that his backcould become stronger to bear the brunt.IN RAJYA SABHA, OPPN UNITY DISSIPATES WHEN IT MATTERSThe Opposition united Thursday to launch a blistering attack on the govt inRajya Sabha on a range of issues, and moved an unprecedented 431 amendmentson the Motion of Thanks to the President's address, but "lack ofcoordination" resulted in Opposition members failing to force voting on theamendments, or turn the tables on the ruling party like they had done in2015 and 2016.The Opposition did not reach out to fence-sitters like the BJD and NDAallies Akali Dal, LJP and JD(U) which have openly expressed reservations onplans for a nationwide NRC.Among the amendments was one which wanted the President's address to expressregret on the failure to "allay the people's fear of a nationwide NRC andNPR".Many senior leaders, including Ahmed Patel and P Chidambaram of Congress andDerek O' Brien of Trinamool Congress, were not in the House when the PrimeMinister replied to the debate. The Opposition staged a walkout once hisspeech was over and did not move the amendments - this raised questions onthe "silence" over issues ranging from the CAA to the Kashmir clampdown tothe economic slowdown. The BSP did not join the other parties in thewalkout.The Opposition, however, was combative. Senior Congress leader Anand Sharmatore into the government, saying the President's address was "disappointing"and "uninspiring" as it did not talk about the current economic situationand job crisis. He charged the govt with "monumental mismanagement of theeconomy" and said it had embarked on a "grand sale" of national assetscreated over decades to finance the revenue deficit. The govt, he said, wasrunning away from the real issues.But the Opposition enthusiasm dissipated as the debate came to a close. TheOpposition benches were not full when the PM launched a scathing attack onthe "Congress and its friends." One leader said the Congress did notcoordinate with other parties. "There was no meeting. There was no properplan. But three-four parties - the Congress, DMK, Left and NCP - had decidedto press for voting. But there was a sudden walkout. We had no option but towalk out with others," an Opposition member said.SAUDI ARABIA COLD TO IMRAN'S CALL FOR OIC MEET ON KASHMIRSaudi Arabia is reluctant to accept Pakistan's request to immediatelyconvene a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation's (OIC) Councilof Foreign Ministers (CFM) on Kashmir, a Pakistani daily newspaper, Dawn,reported on Thursday.Amid Islamabad's growing unease over failing to garner support for OIC's CFMmeeting, Pakistan PM Imran Khan had voiced frustration over the silence ofthe 57-member bloc of Muslim countries on Kashmir while speaking at athinktank during his recent visit to Malaysia. "The reason is that we haveno voice and there is a total division amongst us. We can't even cometogether as a whole on the OIC meeting on Kashmir," he said.Pakistan has been pushing for an OIC foreign ministers' meeting since Indiarevoked the special status of Kashmir in August last year. Underscoring theimportance of the CFM meeting, Pakistan foreign minister Shah MehmoodQureshi had recently said at a press meet that it was needed to send a clearmessage from the ummah on the Kashmir issue.Saudi Arabia reportedly made several proposals to Pakistan to avoid the CFM,including holding of a parliamentary forum or conference of speakers fromMuslim countries and a joint meeting on the Palestine and Kashmir issues,but Islamabad stuck to its proposal.CAN CONSIDER EVACUATING PAK STUDENTS FROM CHINA, SAYS MEAIndia can consider evacuating Pakistani students from the novelcoronavirus-hit Hubei province "if such a situation arises", the Ministry ofExternal Affairs said on Thursday while clarifying that Pakistan made nosuch request till now.Asked about pleas by Pakistani students and whether India could help them,MEA official spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, "No such request has beenreceived. But if such a situation arises and keeping in mind the resourcesavailable, we can look into it."India airlifted 654 people, including seven Maldivians, from Wuhan.Meanwhile, the armed forces have been sanctioned to set up 10 virus researchlabs to provide diagnostic support.TRUMP CELEBRATES IMPEACHMENT ACQUITTAL AND BLASTS RIVALSUS President Donald Trump has taken a victory lap one day after hisimpeachment acquittal, in a White House tirade against his politicalenemies."I've done things wrong in my life, I will admit... but this is what the endresult is," he said as he held up a newspaper headlined "Trump acquitted"."We went through hell, unfairly. We did nothing wrong," he said at the WhiteHouse. "It was evil, it was corrupt."He earlier criticised impeachment foes who invoked their religious faith."Now we have that gorgeous word. I never thought it would sound so good,"Trump said from the East Room, which was crammed with supporters and cabinetofficials, "It's called 'total acquittal'."DOUBT OVER CHINA'S OFFICIAL CORONAVIRUS NUMBERSIn what could be a serious cover-up regarding the actual death figures inthe Novel Coronavirus outbreak, Chinese multinational conglomerate holdingcompany Tencent allegedly published "real" data on the novel coronavirusdeaths, with briefly listing death toll as 24,589 -- way too higher than 563deaths China officially announced on Thursday.According to a Taiwan News report, "Tencent... seems to have inadvertentlyreleased what is potentially the actual number of infections and deaths,which were astronomically higher than official figures".Once people noticed this, Tencent allegedly updated the numbers to reflectthe government's "official" numbers, according to the report."Netizens noticed that Tencent has on at least three occasions postedextremely high numbers, only to quickly lower them to government-approvedstatistics," said the report.Some people speculated a coding problem may be behind the real "internal"data but others believe that someone is actually trying to reveal the realnumbers.There have been multiple reports of Wuhan officials cremating deceasedcoronavirus victims before they could be added to the official death toll.The Wall Street Journal reported that the coronavirus numbers coming out ofChina are "fishy".If the numbers from the alleged Tencent leak are accurate, it would putcoronavirus' mortality rate at almost 16 per cent. By comparison, SARS'mortality rate was 9.6 per cent, reports CCN.As of Thursday, the official death toll in China rose to 563, with 28,018confirmed cases.A Chinese doctor, Li Wenliang, 34, who was detained by police for issuingthe first warning about the coronavirus outbreak in late December, died ofthe disease early on Friday, triggering a wave of anger and grief.DETAINED SINCE AUG, OMAR, MEHBOOBA HIT WITH STRINGENT PSASix months after placing them under preventive detention following theabrogation of Article 370 last August, the J&K administration has nowinvoked the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) against former chiefministers, Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah. Omar's father andParliamentarian Farooq Abdullah is already in detention under the PSA.The administration has also invoked the PSA against NC general secretary AliMohammad Sagar and PDP leader Sartaj Madni.Mufti's daughter Iltija Mufti said that her mother has been booked under thePSA. Later, she posted on Twitter: "Ms Mufti received a PSA order sometimeback. Slapping the draconian PSA on 2 ex J&K CMs is expected from anautocratic regime that books 9 year olds for 'seditious remarks'. Questionis how much longer will we act as bystanders as they desecrate what thisnation stands for?"The PSA allows the administration to detain a person without trial for threeto six months. It was promulgated in 1978 by a government led by FarooqAbdullah's father and then Chief Minister Sheikh Abdullah as anadministrative measure aimed at keeping timber smugglers "out ofcirculation".However, it has been misused by the successive governments against politicalopponents and to stifle dissent. Last September, Farooq Abdullah became thefirst mainstream political leader and sitting Parliamentarian in J&K to bebooked under PSA.However, between November and December, the Jammu & Kashmir High Courtquashed orders passed under the PSA in at least five cases, ruling that thegovernment did not communicate the grounds of detention to those detainedand hence violated fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution.On Thursday, the NC and PDP slammed the government's move. "For 70 years, weheld the Indian flag in Jammu and Kashmir and this is how the government isrewarding us. The people of Kashmir see us as collaborators and New Delhisees us as enemies," said a PDP leader.An NC leader said the PSA move suggests that New Delhi "is not ready yet forany political outreach" in Jammu and Kashmir.DELHI POLL DIN ENDSThe campaign for the 70-member Delhi Assembly poll concluded last evening.After the last-minute push by stalwarts of various parties, the outcome ofthe poll now rests in the hands of Delhi's 1.46 crore voters who willexercise their franchise on February 8. The result will be out on February11.The contest for Delhi has shaped up as a fight between Chief Minister ArvindKejriwal-led AAP and PM Narendra Modi-led BJP with the Congress almostmissing from the scene. Home Minister Amit Shah held two rallies today whileDeputy CM Manish Sisodia took out a foot march in the Patparganj segment.Congress top brass, including former PM Manmohan Singh, former partypresident Rahul Gandhi and AICC general secretary Priyanka Vadra, held onlyfour rallies, although AAP and BJP carried out an aggressive campaign. TheBJP seeks to end its 21-year-exile with former party chief Amit Shah leadingthe campaign from the front and the PM doing his bit with two rallies. "Onecan clearly feel the winds of change in Delhi. The results will shockeveryone," Shah said today, prompting Congress veteran P Chidambaram totweet: "The Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi should assure us that electionswill be free and fair."The BJP canvassed on the agenda of anti-CAA protests, making the sit-in atShaheen Bagh the centre point of debate. The Election Commission Thursdayissued a showcause notice to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanathfor his statement in which he alleged that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwaloffered biryani to Shaheen Bagh protesters.The poll panel has asked him to respond to the notice by 5 pm Friday.The EC also issued a notice to AAP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singhfor his statement, in which he said the BJP is planning to cause "majortrouble" on February 2 in Shaheen Bagh and Jamia areas.TWO WEEKS ON, MOST BROADBAND SERVICES YET TO BE RESTORED IN VALLEYTwo weeks after the Jammu and Kashmir administration issued orders torestore broadband connectivity in the Valley, a majority of fixed linebroadband services are yet to be restored as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited(BSNL) has been unable to install the firewall that will block social mediaand all other websites barring the 329 sites whitelisted by the government.The J&K's Home Department on January 24 had ordered the restoration ofbroadband and 2G mobile services in the Valley with some restrictions. While2G mobile internet services were restored a day after the order, broadbandservices are yet to be restored.At present, around 90 per cent of the total broadband connections in theValley are from BSNL.Private Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have resumed broadband Internetconnectivity, with only the whitelisted sites accessible. The ISPs have alsotaken an undertaking from customers.NEW RETAIL LOANS SET TO GET CHEAPER AS RBI TWEAKS CRRLoans for housing, auto and small businesses are likely to get cheaper evenwithout the Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy committee reducinginterest rates. RBI governor Shaktikanta Das on Thursday took someunconventional steps to bring down borrowing costs.In his last monetary policy for the current fiscal, Das said RBI wouldprovide cheap long-term financing to banks for up to Rs 1 lakh crore throughlong-term (one-year to three-year) repos. He also said cash reserverequirements would be waived on deposits that are used to provide retailloans between January 21, 2020 and July 31, 2020. This will make housing,auto and SME loans cheaper as 4% of deposits impounded in cash reserves willbe freed.The third measure announced to bring down cost of loans was benchmarkingloans to medium-sized enterprises to RBI's repo rate (the rate at which RBIlends to banks).The RBI's measures to reduce cost of borrowing were received positively bythe markets on Thursday, with shares of banks, housing finance and realestate companies rallying sharply. The rupee and bond markets alsoregistered gains.SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar said while the decision to hold policy rates wasuniversally anticipated, the bouquet of developmental and regulatory stepswas a positive surprise to the financial ecosystem.HC GIVES PETER BAIL AFTER 4 YRS, SAYS NO PROOF OF HIS DIRECT ROLEFormer electronic media honcho Peter Mukerjea, an accused in the Sheena Boramurder case, was granted bail by the Bombay high court on a petition he hadmoved last April. Mukerjea was arrested in November 2015, months after histhen wife Indrani was arrested for the suspected murder of her 'daughter'Sheena.The court, however, stayed its order for six weeks to enable the CBI to filean appeal before the Supreme Court. Mukerjea, 64, got the bail in his fifthattempt over the last four years.Mukerjea is facing trial in the case along with Indrani-they divorced lastyear -and her former husband Sanjiv Khanna for the 2012 murder of Sheena,Indrani's alleged biological daughter with her first partner. DriverShyamwar Rai was also arrested, but he later turned approver in the case.In his order, Justice N W Sambre observed that there is "no proof of hisdirect involvement on the day" of the alleged crime on April 24, 2012,noting that Mukerjea "was not present in India" on that day. "In a criminalconspiracy case, conviction cannot be based on suspicion," he added,referring to an SC ruling submitted by Mukerjea's counsels Shrikant Shivadeand Amit Ghag.BANGLADESH ENTER MAIDEN U-19 WORLD CUP FINAL, TO FACE INDIA ON SUNDAYBangladesh stormed into their maiden ICC U-19 World Cup final with acomprehensive six-wicket win over New Zealand here on Thursday, setting upthe title clash with record four-time champions India. Bangladesh reached212-run target in 44.1 overs.