Month: July 2019

Jharkhand opposition holds meet to plan for state polls

Source: hindustantimes.com

The Opposition parties on Wednesday outlined the contours of pre-poll alliance at the residence of JMM working president Hemant Soren.

The leaders stressed on charting out a mutually agreeable formula ahead of the assembly polls.

It was agreed that the parties will give candidates from the seats they had won respectively in 2014 and there was no qualm on it.

The parties also stressed on earmarking the seats in the name of the respective parties wherefrom they finished second in the last assembly election.

Besides, there was confusion over the rights of the JVM (P) to contest the six assembly seats it had owned in 2014 but the party legislators defected to the BJP after winning.

The above two contentions were kept open for further discussions and debate while the allies have been asked to submit their wish list within seven days in writing. The grand alliance of the opposition is cautious after being humiliated by the BJP.

The meeting was attended by the representatives of Congress, JVM (P), RJD, Marxist Coordination Committee (MCC) and Forward Bloc.

However, the main Left parties – the CPI, CPI (M) and CPI (ML) Liberation did not attend. The decision was taken on Tuesday.

The Left decided to identify the seats the parties want to contest and to negotiate with the grand alliance parties thereafter. Confirming this, CPI state secretary Bhubaneswar Prasad Mehta said the Left parties will meet on July 16 to finalise their list.

Clarifying further, CPI national secretary Atul Anjan said the Left is open for negotiations. We will support any forces that are keen to defeat the BJP, he said. He said that the most Opposition parties do not have ideas on how the BJP is disintegrating the Opposition engineering defection.

JMM working president Hemant Soren, after the meeting, said that the efforts are on to bring all Opposition parties under one umbrella to show BJP the exit door. He said the parties have been directed to identify the seats they are confident of winning and submit it in writing in one week.

On claims of the parties from the sitting seats they had owned in 2014, Hemant said it is a natural claim. For the rest of the seats, decisions would be taken later regarding who will contest where, he said.

On the vexed issue of seats owned by six JVM (P) legislators, who joined the BJP later, he said, “We are serious on that too and working on mutually agreeable solution before staking claims on those seats.”

Moderate to heavy rainfall in past 24 hours in Bihar

Source: newsonair.com

In Bihar, moderate to heavy rainfall occurred in western and eastern parts of the state in past 24 hours. 

Due to incessant rainfall in the catchment area of Nepal originating rivers for the last four days, Gandak, Bagmati and Budhi Gandak and their tributaries are swollen. 

Evacuation drive has been started in West Champaran from low-lying and riverine area of Gandak to shift people to safer places. 

East Champaran and Muzaffarpur. Traffic has been disrupted due to water-logging of Bagmati and Lalbakeya river on Sheohar-Motihari road. 

Extra vigil is being maintained on barrages, embankment and riverine area of Gandak, Budhi Gandak and Bagmati by engineers of water resource department. 

Flood relief & rescue teams have been put on standby by the Disaster Management Department. 

Heavy rains in Maharashtra’s Palghar district have disrupted traffic movement from Mokadha to neighbouring Nashik district. 

According to the Chief of Disaster Management Cell Vivekananda Kadam, a major portion of a bridge on a small river at Morchundi village washed away this morning. While no casualty has been reported, incidents of rainwater gushing inside villagers’ homes have come to light.

Ranchi: Anti-lynching protest turns violent as mob tries to set college bus on fire; FIR lodged, 6 arrested

Source: financialexpress.com

Ranchi violence: The Ranchi administration is on its feet trying to water down the simmering tension in various parts of Jharkhand’s capital city after an incident last Friday when a mob tried to burn a college bus and vandalised several other vehicles. The police swung into action after CCTV images of the purported violence went viral. The incident reportedly took place during a rally organised to protest the lynching of Tabrez Ansari in Saraikela district on June 17.

The viral video shows a violent mob attacking a bus in Ranchi’s Doranda area on July 5. According to reports, some elders among the crowd were seen trying to pacify the agitated men not to resort to violence.

The Ranchi Police has set up special teams study the CCTV footage of the violence. Six people have been arrested so far and three separate FIRs have been filed, Ranchi SSP Anish Gupta said.

Earlier this week, the Jharkhand High Court asked the Jharkhand state government to submit a report on the lynching of Tabrez Ansari, 22. Hearing a public interest litigation, the High Court asked the state government to submit an action-taken report by July 17. The court also asked the Ranchi Police to submit a separate report about recent incidents of violence in the city.

Ansari was brutally thrashed by a mob which accused him of theft on June 17. He succumbed to his injuries on June 22. At least 11 people were arrested for the mob lynching incident.

The incident of Saraikela even featured in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech in Parliament on June 26. PM Modi said he was ‘pained’ by the incident. “The lynching in Jharkhand has pained me. It has saddened others too. But, some people in the Rajya Sabha are calling Jharkhand a hub of lynching. Is this fair? Why are they insulting a state. None of us have the right to insult the state of Jharkhand,” PM Modi had said.

Hi-tech watch to clock clean drive

Source: telegraphindia.com

Global Positioning System-enabled watches will keep tab on sanitary workers to ensure cleanliness in the state capital from September onward.

Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) will hold a pre-bid meeting on July 17 of leading GPS-enabled watch manufacturing companies to take stock of the options before starting the process of selecting a private firm for supplying 2,100 watches.

The photographs and phone numbers of each sanitary worker will be taken for creating an ID in the monitoring system at the control room of the RMC, a senior official explained. The ID will help in tracking every worker. Each watch will also have a pulse detector to ensure that it is worn by the sanitary worker. If a worker gets out of the working area during duty hours, the control room will get a notification and action will be initiated against the worker.

The watch will also have a panic button, by pressing which workers will be able to directly communicate with higher officials of the civic body.

“We have formulated beat plan and roster for sanitary workers in cleaning of drains and roadside, lifting of garbage and collection of door-to-door waste. But the compliance part is monitored manually and there is always scope of human error or laxity,” municipal commissioner Manoj Kumar said on Wednesday.

“We plan to procure the GPS-enabled watches to keep track of the staff through computers installed at our control room to ensure beat plan and roster is maintained and the sanitary staff concerned would be easily identified for any deviation or missing from the beat/roster. We hope to selected the agency in a month or so and start distribution of such watches from September onward,” he added.

There are around 2,100 sanitary workers for cleaning of drains, sweeping of roads, collection of roadside garbage, door-to-door collection of waste. The beat/roster plans are made for cleaning to be carried out between 6.30am and 2pm, 3pm and 9pm, and 9pm and 4am.

Sources in the civic body said that the decision to procure GPS-enabled watches was taken following numerous complaints by residents of laxity and negligence by these cleaning and sanitary workers.

“After the RMC took over cleaning and lifting of garbage in all the 53 wards last month, there have been complaints that the staff do not adhere to the beat plan and roster. While a few lanes and drains are cleaned almost daily, others are cleaned once or twice in a week,” a senior RMC official said under cover of anonymity.

“As of now, our control room operators call up residents to inquire if lanes and drains are cleaned or not and rely on the report presented by the supervisors. However, the computerised monitoring will ensure that any laxity on the part of the sanitary worker is detected immediately and action taken promptly,” the official added.

No ‘regular’ chemist to check quality of potable water supplied to Bihar homes

Source: hindustantimes.com

The Bihar government does not have any regular chemist to test quality of water being supplied to homes under “har ghar nal ka jal”, one of the seven flagship schemes of the state government.

In 2004, the state government had appointed as many as 29 chemists to test quality of supply water in various districts through the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC). But they still continue to work on temporary basis and thereby being denied suitable pay scales and other benefits.

As per rules, the state should have at least one chemist in each of its 38 districts and 75 sub-divisions.

The matter came to the light when Janata Dal (United) member Sanjeev Shyam Singh raised the matter in the legislative council during the question hour and sought the government’s reply on whether it was considering regularising their services and had any plan to equip the water testing labs across the state with qualified technical persons and infrastructure.

The issue assumes considerable significance as the public health and engineering department (PHED) had set up as many as 93 water testing labs in the districts and sub-divisions to ensure supply of safe water in arsenic and fluoride infested areas. Consumption of arsenic and fluoride laced water causes many diseases, including cancer.

In his reply, PHED minister Binod Narayan Jha said the government was looking to regularise the service of chemists appointed through the BPSC. He said chemists could not be appointed as they were appointed as temporary staff under the planned allocation. Later, their posts were transferred under the non-plan section.

Countering the reply, the JD(U) member said it was ironical that the government was treating technical staff appointed by BPSC as casual and denying them appropriate wages under a design by vested interests in the department.

Singh also alleged that the PHED could not develop any reliable set of manpower to ensure supply of tested water despite the Central government’s protocol, stipulated a few years ago, to raise a separate cadre for water testing staff. “As quality testing staff are on temporary basis, engineers, who are dealing in supply, generally held sway in the decision making,” Singh pointed out, adding that the rules framed for better management of human resources in 2016 also contained many discrepancies.

Intervening in the matter, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi the government would look into the issues and correct it as BPSC was not the body to appoint temporary staff. “There might be some mistakes in the past that led to such discrepancies,” he said.

Bihar government to hire over 1.4 lakh teachers by year-end

Source: .hindustantimes.com

Education minister Krishnnandan Prasad Verma on Tuesday assured the state assembly that the state government would complete the process of recruiting new teachers for primary and secondary level by end of this year even as Opposition RJD staged protests over the shortage of teachers in government schools.

Verma’s reply came during a starred question raised Vidya Sagar Singh Nishad of the JD(U), who sought to know what steps were being taken by the government to fill up vacant posts of teachers at Morwa block high school and the high school at Raghunathpur in Samastipur district.

“We are in the process of recruiting teachers. There is a shortfall of teachers as many schools have been upgraded from middle to high school while the process of upgrading high schools to plus two level is also going on. But we will do the appointments soon,” said the minister.

However, opposition members remained unconvinced by the minister’s reply and demanded that the government inform the House about steps being taken for teachers’ appointment. RJD’s Lalit Kumar Yadav, Bhola Yadav and Congress leaders, including Sadanand Singh, were vocal in slamming the government over the delay in filling up the vacancies.

In totality, the government plans to appoint around 40,000 teachers for the high and plus two schools and around 1 lakh teachers for primary and middle schools. The government has already initiated the process. For secondary teachers, applicants having qualified STET ( state teachers eligibility test) are eligible while for primary level, those having qualified TET( teachers eligibility test) are eligible. At present, there are around 4 lakh government teachers including contractual teachers.

In another short notice question, education minister said the government had started the process of transferring money to students enrolled from class 1 to 8 in government schools via direct beneficiary transfer (DBT) to purchase course books from this year by replacing the old practice of distribution of books after printing them through government agencies. “ Transfer of money to school students via DBT for purchase of books is proving much useful and fast, unlike previous times when the distribution of books used to get delayed for months,” said, the minister.

He elaborated that the government has already transferred Rs 528 crore to around 1.47 crore students, covering almost 90% of the students in government schools. “ Out of the total students having given money through DBT, 70% of the students have got books. We will ensure that rest of the students gets books early,” the minister.

Intervening at this point, deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi too emphasised how the DBT method had proven to be much easier.

Monsoon Intensifies in North; Extremely Heavy Rainfall in UP, Bihar and Uttarakhand

Source: weather.com

The Indo-Gangetic plain has been witnessing very heavy rainfall since Tuesday. As the monsoon gains strength over the region, the rains are forecast to increase and persist throughout the week.

On Tuesday, some areas in Uttar Pradesh witnessed torrential rainfall, with Bahraich recording 202 mm. Other regions, including Gorakhpur and Sultanpur in UP and Bhagalpur in Bihar, also witnessed rainfall of around 100 mm.

More rains are expected from Wednesday to Friday as the atmospheric circulation over the region is expected to be active. The cause for the downpour is a monsoon trough—an extended region where the atmospheric pressure is the lowest—that persists from east to west on the Indo-Gangetic plain. The well-marked low-pressure is expected to move up north along the Himalayas gradually. Therefore, in addition to UP and Bihar, Uttarakhand is also likely to experience extremely heavy rainfall this week.

The India Meteorological Department has issued a red warning (its highest level of vigil/action) in Uttar Pradesh from Wednesday to Friday and in Uttarakhand for Thursday and Friday. During this period, the department forecasts heavy to very heavy with extremely heavy rain at isolated places in the region. Bihar also has a yellow ‘watch’ warning for the entire week, with likelihood of heavy to very heavy rain and extremely rain at one or two places.

Normally, monsoon sets in over Uttar Pradesh on or around June 15. However, this year the arrival was delayed by over a week, and the monsoon reached the state only by June 22. The resulting deficit in rainfall in the northern region ranges from 23% in east UP to 31% in West UP and 47% in Uttarakhand from June 1 to July 9.

Ranchi ‘Smart City’ locality with mud roads and no drains

Source: telegraphindia.com

Over 1,000 residents of Jagatpuram, a new settlement on a flank of Kanke Road (Ranchi-Patratu Road) less than 5km from the chief minister’s residence, are forced to live without concrete roads and drainage.

A seven-minute drive from the CM’s residence, Jagatpuram mocks the tall claims of the central and state governments of working towards making Ranchi a Smart City.

The locality, which grew virtually from farmland in the past four years owing to the capital’s rapid urbanisation, now has around 200 households. Some of these are opulently built.

But, the first heavy hours have bared the non-existent civic facilities in the area that falls under Ward 1 of Ranchi Municipal Corporation.

The locality has only one cemented road, 200 feet of it, in a part of the colony built with Ranchi Zilla Parishad funds. The mud roads turn slushy streams. The low-lying area is virtually marooned.

Ramanand Raman, who lives here and works at a private pathological laboratory, said he was already regretting having bought land here for his house. “I purchased land here six months ago, I’m already repenting my decision. It rains, and everyone is trapped at home, children can’t go to school, there’s no road to walk on,” Raman said.

Another resident Pramod Kumar said it was a relatively new settlement, not more than four years old.

“Many influential persons bought land here, you can see their palatial buildings. In another season, it may even look like a posh locality. But on the ground, and in monsoon specially, things are a mess because we don’t have proper roads and drainage. These are basics,” he said.

He added that as the bulk of the area was flooded or slushy, sanitation workers had stopped coming. “Imagine, we have to dump garbage here and there. Perfect conditions for mosquitoes to breed,” he added.

Contacted, Ranchi deputy mayor Sanjeev Vijayvargiya admitted to the problem at Jagatpuram. “RMC is aware of the road and drainage problems there and has prepared a detailed project report worth Rs 5 crore to address them. Work will be done in phases. In the first phase, a Rs 1.5 crore road will be built, for which the tender will be floated very soon,” he said.

2 children die, 5 others hurt in Patna after office building’s wall collapses

Source: hindustantimes.com

At least two children, including a seven-month-old girl, were killed and five people injured in Bihar’s Patna after a wall of an office building collapsed on a hut following heavy rains on Tuesday night, officials said on Wednesday.

Seven-month-old Nandini and nearly two-year-old Suraj alias Vishal died in the accident and Gopal, 3, Jackie, 8, Golden, 10, Binod Malli and his wife Reena Devi were injured.

The incident took place at about 9.45pm on Tuesday, when a portion of the 8-feet high and 70-feet long compound wall of the office of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited’s (BSNL) deputy director general fell on the nearby hut owned by Suresh Malli.

According to the police, the wall caved in due to heavy downpour near R Block under Sachivalaya police station area in the state capital. Patna received nearly 110 mm of rains from Monday morning till Tuesday evening.

“All the families have been contacted. I personally interacted with them, visited the accident site and gave Rs 4-lakh cheque to each of the two families,” Patna’s district collector Kumar Ravi said.

Ravi said three of the injured people were immediately rushed to Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) for further treatment and they will be closely monitored. He added that he has directed PMCH to provide free treatment to the injured.

Eight people were sitting inside the hut while Suresh was outside and his wife Bilaiya Devi was cooking. Locals rushed to the spot after they heard their cries and raised an alarm.

Rescuers also reached the accident spot to remove the collapsed portion of the wall with the help of an earth moving machine.

Local, however, alleged that the rescue operation was started late leading to the death of the two children who died under the debris. They said the wall was old and in a dilapidated condition.

“We had earlier complained about the poor condition of the wall but authorities didn’t pay heed to our complaints,” Anil Kumar Singh, a resident, said.

A Bengal bomber and his southern sojourn: How NIA prevented an imminent terror attack

Source: oneindia.com

New Delhi, July 10: Five fabricated hand grenades, one timer device, three electric circuits, suspected explosive substance, different components for making IEDs/rockets were recovered by the National Investigation Agency, following a confession of a Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Bangladesh operative, who was arrested in Bengaluru recently.

The recovery comes following the confession of the JMB operative, Habibur Rehman, who is also an accused in Burdwan blast case. The NIA said that these weapons were to be used in various terror acts in different parts of the state.

Rehman was arrested on June 25 in Bengaluru. He had been chargesheeted in the Burdwan blast case. Initially, he was shown as an absconder in the chargesheet.

NIA officials say that they are taking Rehman to various places in South India as they believe that the had travelled to several places with an intention of setting up modules and carrying out terror attack.

In this backdrop, one must re-visit the investigations into the January 2018 Bodhgaya blast. This attack was masterminded by a Bangladeshi terrorist against whom a death warrant was issued.

Secondly, the probe suggests that the incident at Bodhgaya was to rake up the Rohingya cause in India. Thirdly, the probe shows how terrorists from both Bengal and Bangladesh have made south India their playground.

The National Investigation arrested Mohammad Zahidul Islam alias Munna from a hideout near Bengaluru. NIA officials tell OneIndia that his arrest was carried out as investigations showed that he was the mastermind of the Bodhgaya incident.

The NIA got information about Islam following the arrest of Abdul Karim, a resident of Murshidabad and Mustafizur Rehman a resident of Birbhum, West Bengal. The duo were arrested from Mallapuram, when they hiding in a camp meant for Bengali speaking people.

The probe revealed that Islam was familiar with the Mallapuram camp and visited it several times. It was in fact he who made arrangements for the other accused persons to stay in this camp.

The arrest of Islam is a major breakthrough. He is an expert in bomb blasts and officials suspect that he had even trained the other accused in making the IEDs. In fact in Bangladesh, he was involved in several serial blast cases and also the attack on a police van in Trishal. He escaped from Bangladesh in 2014 and entered India through West Bengal, where he stayed for a while before re-grouping his JMB module.

In Bengal, he decided that he should carry out a series of attacks both in India as well as Bangladesh. He was part of the Burdwan module, which was in the process of preparing 500 bombs.

In Bengal, he set up several modules in Burdwan, Nadia and Murshidabad. These were very active modules. Over the past year, he decided to spread his operations down south.

Officials say that his intentions of coming down to south along with his module members was not just restricted to find a safe hiding spot. They were in the process of setting up modules and the JMB already has dedicated sleeper cells in Karnataka, Telangana and Kerala.

The issue he was planning to rake up was the cause of the Rohingyas, who are in good numbers in Hyderabad. The JMB has been in touch with several Rohingyas spread across the various camps in India. Their main target was however the ones in Southern India, an Intelligence Bureau official says.

After his entry into India, his activities went completely unchecked for nearly 4 years. This time was used by Islam to go about the country setting up or re-activating his modules.

When he was arrested in Bengaluru, the NIA recovered from him electronic devices and explosives, which is a clear indicator that he was planning a big attack down south. He had even asked his accomplices in Mallapura to lie low and await instructions, officials also say.