ANI

Patna, October 20

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Bihar Lalan Paswan courted controversy by making bizarre statements about Hindu deities.

Paswan's statement sparked an outrage. People held a protest at Shermari Bazar in Bhagalpur and burnt the effigy of the BJP MLA.

Paswan, who is an MLA from Pirpainti Assembly constituency in Bhagalpur district raised questions on Hindu beliefs and argued with evidence to prove his stance.

He further raised questions on Lakshmi Puja on Diwali.

Paswan said, "If we get wealth only by worshipping Goddess Lakshmi, then there would have been no billionaires and trillionaires among Muslims. Muslims do not worship Goddess Lakshmi, are they not rich? Muslims do not worship Goddess Saraswati. Are there no scholars among Muslims? Do not they become IAS or IPS?"

The BJP leader said everything is people's belief. He said the affair of "Atma and Paramatma" is just people's belief.

He said, "If you believe then it is a goddess and if not then it is just a stone idol. It is up to us whether we believe in Gods and Goddesses or not. We have to think on a scientific basis to reach a logical conclusion. If you stop believing, then your intellectual capacity will increase." "It is believed that Bajrangbali is a deity with power and bestows strength. Muslims or Christians do not worship Bajrangbali. Are they not powerful?  The day you stop believing, all these things will end," added Paswan.

Earlier, Paswan came to light when he allegedly leaked a personal conversation with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Yadav.

 PTI

Mumbai, October 19

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres will pay tributes to the victims of the 26/11 terror attacks at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai on Wednesday on the first day of his three-day visit to India.

Guterres landed in Mumbai on Wednesday shortly after midnight via a commercial flight from London. He was greeted by senior Maharashtra government officials on arrival.

He later drove to the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in south Mumbai, where he will pay tributes to the victims of the 26/11 terror attacks.

The Taj Mahal Palace hotel was one of the targets of the horrific 26/11 terror attacks in 2008.

Guterres will deliver a public address at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai on the subject -- "India @75: UN-India Partnership: Strengthening South-South Cooperation" later in the day, before flying to Gujarat.

It is his first visit to India since his second term in office commenced in January. He had earlier visited the country in October 2018 during his first term at the top office.

The UN secretary general will join Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an event relating to the Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) in Gujarat's Kevadiya on October 20.

His visit to the country comes more than a week before the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee holds its two-day deliberations in India.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar would hold bilateral discussions with Guterres on issues of global concern, steps to deepen India's engagement with the UN, including through the country's upcoming presidency of the G20.

In Kevadiya, Guterres is expected to pay floral tributes at the Statue of Unity, the MEA said, adding that he will also visit the country's first solar-powered village in Modhera (Gujarat) and other development projects in the area.

The UN secretary general will also visit the Sun temple in Modhera, before departing for his onward destination, the MEA said.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has issued the final gazette notification for redrawing of municipal wards in Delhi, paving the way for civic polls in the city.

The 800-page gazette notification by the MHA, dated October 17, stated that the number of municipal wards in Delhi will now be 250. Before the reunification of the three erstwhile municipal corporations, there were 272 civic wards in the city.

According to sources, the move will now pave the way for the civic poll as after the final delimitation order, the Centre is likely to direct the state election commission to initiate the poll process.

According to civic body officials, following the gazette notification, the delimitation exercise should be understood to be completed.

Sources earlier said the final report was submitted by the panel to the MHA on Monday evening after disposing off all objections and suggestions on the draft report on delimitation.

The committee had received over 1,700 suggestions and objections to the draft report on the delimitation of wards in Delhi.

"And, whereas, suggestions/objections so received have been examined and the Draft Delimitation Order for wards of Municipal Corporation of Delhi has been amended wherever required, feasible and justified on reasonable grounds.  "Now, therefore, the Central Government, after careful consideration of all aspects, hereby determines the extent of each of the 250 wards as comprised within the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and as per Annexure to this order, " reads the notification.

Municipal elections in the city are due since April this year. The BJP, which was ruling the three municipal corporations -- NDMC, SDMC and EDMC --  in Delhi for over a decade before their reunification in May this year, the AAP, and the Congress have already started preparation for the polls.

The polls were earlier slated to be held in April, and are now anticipated to take place by the end of this year or early 2023.

The central government had fixed the total number of seats in the MCD at 250 from the existing figure of 272. This was stated in a Delhi Gazette notification, issued on September 10.

The total number of seats reserved for the members of the Scheduled Castes in the MCD in proportion to their number is also determined to be 42, it had said.

The previous three corporations in Delhi comprised 272 wards. While the North and South corporations accounted for 104 wards each, the East corporation had 64 wards under its jurisdiction.

Parliament on April 5 passed the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Bill-2022 to unify three civic bodies in the national capital, capping the number of total wards to 250.

The MHA in July had set up a three-member panel for a fresh delimitation of the municipal wards in Delhi.

The panel had three members -- Vijay Dev, State Election Commissioner, Delhi, who was its chairman; Pankaj Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary in Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs; and Randhir Sahay, Additional Commissioner, MCD.  The delimitation exercise in Delhi was last conducted in 2016 and the number of wards was kept at 272 with each having an average population of 60,000 considering a variation of 10 to 15 per cent.  The erstwhile MCD, established in 1958, was trifurcated in 2012 during Sheila Dikshit's tenure as the chief minister. PTI AKM KND NSD NSD

Bhopal, Oct 19 (PTI) The work on the second phase of ‘Mahakal Lok’ project in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain city has started which includes renovation of ancient temples and heritage structures and restoration of the Chhota Rudra Sagar lake, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has said.

After the completion of the second phase works, it will be transformed into “Shri Mahakal Mahalok”, Chouhan told reporters in Ujjain on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last week dedicated to the nation the first phase of ‘Shri Mahakal Lok’ corridor constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 351 crore.

“The work on the second phase of ‘Shri Mahakal Lok’ has started, including development of shikhar darshan, meditation room, restoration of Chhota Rudra Sagar, renovation of ancient temples and heritage dharamshala,” Chouhan said.

Earlier, he inspected the work of second phase of Ujjain’s Mahakaleshwar redevelopment project and felicitated workers and artisans involved in the construction of the Mahakal Lok corridor.

Chouhan said he will send the ‘prasad’ of Mahakal temple with a letter to important dignitaries in the country, including governors, chief ministers, and Union ministers and invite them to visit the Mahakal Lok.

The chief minister also laid the foundation stone of Meghdoot Upvan to be developed on a seven-acre land at an estimated cost of Rs 11.36 crore under the second phase of the Mahakal Lok project.

The administration acquired land worth Rs 69 crore for this project by removing encroachments and demolishing 187 shops and gardens constructed by land mafias, he said.

The smart city department will develop a city forest on the land, with a parking facility for 650 vehicles with charging stations, walking tracks, sitting areas, cafeteria and carry out beautification of the riverside, Chouhan said. PTI ADU MAS GK GK GK

 New Delhi, October 18

Calling for the international community to work faster for “eliminating safe heavens” for terrorists and criminals, PM Narendra Modi today said there was a need for a global response to present-day crime, as threats had transnational dimensions.

High time world came together

When forces of good cooperate, forces of crime can’t operate. It’s time world came together to defeat threats. Narendra Modi, PM

Pakistan FIA chief mum on Dawood Ibrahim

Pak FIA chief Mohsin Butt chose to keep mum when asked by media about fugitive terrorists Dawood Ibrahim and Hafiz Saeed, suspected to be cocooned in his country

Addressing the inaugural session of the 90th Interpol General Assembly here, PM Modi also highlighted that when the “forces of good cooperate, the forces of crime cannot operate”. He warned about the harmful globalised threats that the world faces — terrorism, corruption, drug trafficking, poaching and organised crime. Noting that the pace of change of dangers from criminals was faster than earlier, Modi said, “When threats are global, the response cannot be just local. It is high time the world came together to defeat these threats.”

After inaugurating the event, the Prime Minister also released a commemorative postage stamp and a Rs 100 coin to mark the 90th General Assembly. He was welcomed at the venue by Home Minister Amit Shah, Interpol President Ahmed Naser Al-Raisi and Secretary General Jurgen Stock.

Addressing the gathering, comprising delegates from 195 member countries of Interpol, which also included a delegation from Pakistan, led by its Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Director General Mohsin Butt, Modi said India had been combating transnational terrorism for decades. “Long before the world woke up to it, we knew the price of safety and security. Thousands of our people made the ultimate sacrifice in this fight,” he noted.

Asserting that “a safe and secure world is a shared responsibility of the global community”, Modi said, “There can be no safe havens for the corrupt, terrorists, drug cartels, poaching gangs or organised crime.”

“Such crimes against people in one place are crimes against everyone, crimes against humanity. Further, these not only harm our present but also impact our future generations. Police and law enforcement agencies need to devise procedures and protocols to increase cooperation. Interpol can help by speeding up red corner notices (RCNs) for fugitive offenders,” the PM said.

In his 14-minute speech, Modi impressed upon the fact that terrorism was not limited to physical space and had spread its presence through online radicalisation and cyber threats. “At the click of a button, an attack can be executed or systems can be brought to their knees...,” he added.

 PTI

New Delhi, October 19

The Congress will get its first non-Gandhi president in 24 years on Wednesday after more than 9,500 votes cast to choose between senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor are counted to cap the election contest, the sixth in its 137-year-old history.

The counting of the votes cast on Monday will begin at 10 am today at the AICC headquarters here. All sealed ballot boxes from the 68 polling booths set up across the country have been brought here and kept in a "strong room" at the party office.

While Kharge is considered the firm favourite with his perceived proximity to the Gandhis and a large number of senior leaders backing him, Tharoor has pitched himself as the candidate of change.

The sealed ballot boxes will be opened before the candidates' agents and the ballot papers will be mixed repeatedly.

Congress central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry has expressed satisfaction with the party's presidential polls process, saying it was "free, fair and transparent". He has also said it was a secret ballot and no one would get to know who voted for whom.

Of the total 9,915 Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) delegates that formed the electoral college to pick the party chief in a secret ballot, over 9,500 cast their ballot at PCC offices and the AICC headquarters, Mistry said at a press conference after the polling ended on Monday.

The Congress has claimed that its internal democracy has no parallel in any other party and it is the only one to have a central election authority for organisational polls.

It is the sixth time in Congress' nearly 137-year-old history that an electoral contest is deciding who would take up the mantle of the party's president as successor to Sonia Gandhi.

It was way back in 1939, when an electoral contest decided who would be the Congress president, and Mahatma Gandhi's candidate P Sitaramayya had lost to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

Then in 1950 came the Congress' first post-Independence election for the post of party president when Purshottam Das Tandon and Acharya Kripalani faced off. Surprisingly, Tandon, seen as a Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel loyalist, won the contest, trumping the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's choice.

In 1977, following the resignation of Dev Kant Barooah as party president in the wake of the defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, K Brahmananda Reddy defeated Siddhartha Shankar Ray and Karan Singh in the party's polls for AICC chief.

The next election that needed a contest came 20 years later in 1997 when Sitaram Kesri squared off in a triangular contest with Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot. Except for Maharashtra and parts of Uttar Pradesh, all state Congress units had backed Kesri. He posted a landslide victory, getting 6,224 delegates' votes against Pawar's 882 and Pilot's 354.

The fifth contest came in 2000 and this was the only time a Gandhi family member was challenged in the elections with Jitendra Prasada taking on Sonia Gandhi. Prasada suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Gandhi, who garnered over 7,400 votes. Prasada had reportedly polled a paltry 94 votes.

The current polls are historic as the new president would replace Sonia Gandhi, the longest-serving party president who has been at the helm since 1998, barring the two years between 2017 and 2019 when Rahul Gandhi had taken over.

The Nehru-Gandhi family has been at the helm of the party for about 40 years since Independence. The five family members to take on the mantle of the Congress president included Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

Electors in the Monday's Congress presidential polls had been asked to put a tick mark against their candidate in the ballot paper after Tharoor's team took up with the party's top poll body the issue of its earlier directive that voters write "1" to reflect their preference. This, the team said, might lead to confusion.

The political journeys of the two dramatis personae in the Congress presidential elections have been disparate.

Kharge is a grassroots politician and hardcore loyalist of the Gandhi family, while Tharoor, a social media pioneer and often outspoken, joined the Congress only in 2009 after a long stint at the United Nations.

Ahead of the polling, Kharge had said he would have no shame in taking the advice and support of the Gandhi family in running the party affairs, if he becomes its president.

Tharoor, on his part, took a veiled dig at some senior leaders supporting Kharge, saying that some colleagues were "indulging in 'netagiri' and telling party workers that they know who Sonia Gandhi wants elected".

 New Delhi, 18 October (HS): The Central Government has opposed the petition in the Supreme Court seeking a Uniform Civil Code. The union Law Ministry in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court said that the petition should be dismissed with fine, as the PIL for Uniform Civil Code is not maintainable.

New Delhi (HS): Delhi's Rouse Avenue Court has refused to cancel the bail granted to Bihar's Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, accused in the railway tender scam case. The court directed Tejashwi Yadav to speak publicly in the future. Special Judge Geetanjali Goel gave this order.

Lucknow,(HS): Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's 'Brand UP' to make a mark of its own in the world. Chief Minister's efforts are turning out to be fruitful to give Uttar Pradesh a separate identity on the global stage. A 31-member delegation from the US met Chief Minister Yogi. This is the second major meeting of the chief minister with a foreign delegation within 24 hours.

This meeting is being seen as a big success of the government for advanced infrastructure with huge investment in the state before the Global Investor Summit-23 (GIS-23).

Yogi meeting the 31-member delegates of the US India Strategic Partnership Forum (USIPF) is considered very important. 'US Forum' will make way for the USA to invest in Uttar Pradesh. This delegation will brand the Chief Minister's '3-T Concept' in the US.

For the proposed Global Investor Summit in Lucknow in January 2023, the Yogi government is trying to bring investment from all over the world, they have set a target of investing ₹10 lakh crore from all over the world in this summit. During this meeting, ministers of Yogi government Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi, Rakesh Sachan, Chief Secretary Durga Shankar Mishra and others were involved.

Hindusthan Samachar/ Dilip Shukla/ Mugdha

Kohima,(PTI) Preparations were in full swing in Nagaland for the famed Hornbill festival, which will be held with much grandeur this time after two years of subdued celebrations, an official said on Tuesday.

The festival will be held from December 1 to 10 at Naga Heritage Village, Kisama, around 12 km from state capital Kohima, said advisor for Tourism and Art & Culture H Khehovi Yepthomi.

Yepthomi chaired a coordination meeting with the tribal hohos on Monday on the preparations for the festival, the annual tourism promotional event of the state government that brings together the Naga tribes. This will be the 23rd edition of the festival, which began in 2010.

The celebrations were disrupted in 2020 and 2021, but this year’s Hornbill Festival will be a grand affair with new ideas and concepts, Yepthomi said.

In 2020, the festival was celebrated virtually for three days due to the pandemic, while last year the festival was called off midway after the killing of civilians at Oting in Mon district.

The Hornbill Festival, which has achieved global fame, promotes the rich and colorful culture of Nagaland and its tribes, Yepthomi said.

Asking the tribal hohos or organisations to start repairing their morungs (huts) in Kisama, and prepare for the festival, he said everyone should contribute towards its grand success.

Kisama Heritage Village is designed to resemble the map of Nagaland with tribal morungs allocated as per their geographical locations, he said.

With the Tikhir tribe getting recognition as a major tribe, a space has been earmarked for them to set up the 18th morung, he added.

At present, Nagaland has 18 recognised major tribes.

The seven tribal hohos under Eastern Nagaland Peoples’ Organisation (ENPO) did not attend Monday’s meeting alleging negligence towards them during the festivities. They have also declared that they would not participate in the Hornbill Festival.

Yepthomi said the government will speak to ENPO functionaries on the matter soon. “We hope they will join the celebrations,” he said. PTI NBS SOM SOM