NATIONAL NEWS
Two protesting farmers killed after being run over by car driven by Union Minister’s son, allege farmer bodies
Farmer bodies on Sunday claimed that two farmers protesting against BJP leaders were killed and several others were injured after they were run over by a car that allegedly was part of a convoy of Union minister of state for home affairs and BJP MP Ajay Kumar Mishra in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district. Farmers in Tikonia area of Kheri had lined up on the roads with black flags to protest against the visit of Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya to the district. The Samyukta Kisan Morcha, a body of farmers protesting against the three new farm laws, said a third farmer died after being shot and the car was driven by the MP’s son Ashish. The claims could not be independently verified yet and UP police are yet to comment on the incident or casualties. Following the incident, angry farmers set on fire and vandalised vehicles of the BJP leader and staged further protests as the area remained tense. Senior officials from Lucknow as well as farmer leaders rushed to the spot. Official statements from the police and the BJP leaders accused by the farmers for the incident are still awaited. Mishra told a Hindi news channel in a phone interview that the driver of his car, which was going to receive Maurya at the helipad, was injured and died after being struck by a stone. The driver then lost control of the car, causing the accident, he told News1 India channel. Mishra, also known as Teni, said he had invited Maurya as the chief guest at the annual wrestling event held in his village in the district, the Ambika Prasad Mishra Smriti Kushti Pratiyogita. The car was going to receive the Deputy CM from the helipad, said Mishra. Someone pelted a stone at the driver, he lost consciousness and died. He lost control of the car which caused an accident…some people were injured in the incident and some lost their lives, the minister and two-time MP said. The SKM said three farmers were killed and around 10, including SKM leader Tajinder Singh Virk, were seriously injured in the incident. SKM leader Darshan Pal said farmers had planned to gherao a helipad to prevent UP Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya from landing. After the protests, the farmers were going back when three cars in the convoy of Mishra ran over the farmers, he alleged.
Mamata Banerjee wins Bhabanipur bypoll with record margin of over 58,000 votes
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee won the Bhabanipur Assembly bypoll on Sunday by a record margin of 58,832 votes against her nearest rival Priyanka Tibrewal of the BJP. This victory makes Banerjee a member of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly and will allow her to continue as Chief Minister of West Bengal. She had contested the Assembly poll from Nandigram and lost to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari by a margin of 1,956 votes. She was unanimously elected Chief Minister by the Trinamool Congress legislature party in May 2021. The numbers of voters at Bhabanipur are relatively less and about 1.15 lakh votes were polled this time. This time we have won by a margin of 58,832 votes, Banerjee told media persons outside her residence. The Chief Minister said the results would provide her encouragement to work more for the people of the State. Banerjee had represented Bhabanipur seat in 2011 and 2016. In the 2021 Assembly poll, Trinamool Congress candidate Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay had defeated BJP Rudranil Ghosh by a margin of 28,790 votes. In 2011, the TMC chairperson had won Bhabanipur with a margin of over 54,000 votes. Highlighting that the margin of victory had surpassed all previous records, the Chief Minister said that in every ward of the constituency she had won on this occasion. She said that about 46 % of the electorate of the constituency were non-Bengali, and they also overwhelmingly voted for her. The BJP fielded Tibrewal, who secured about 25,000 votes. Elections to Bhabanipur and two other constituencies, Jangipur and Samserganj, were held on September 30. TMC candidate Amirul Islam won Samserganj by a margin of 26,379 votes by defeating his nearest rival, a Congress candidate from the seat. At Jangipur Assembly polls, TMC’s Jakir Hussain defeated the BJP candidate by a margin over 92,480 votes. With these victories, the TMC has increased its tally in the West Bengal Assembly to 219. TMC had won 213 seats in the Assembly polls but its MLA from Bhabanipur had resigned. Four legislators of the BJP had defected to TMC and three won the by polls on Sunday, taking the tally to 219. The Trinamool Congress chairperson also announced candidates for bypolls for three of the four seats that are scheduled in the first week of October. Chattopadhyay, who had resigned from Bhabanipur to allow the Chief Minister to contest the bypolls, will contest from Khardah seat in North 24 Parganas, and Udayan Guha will contest from Dinhata in Cooch Behar district. The TMC has nominated Braj Kishor Goswami from Sanntipur. The BJP has won Dinhata and Santipur in the 2021 Assembly polls, but two sitting MPs, Nisith Pramanik and Jaganath Sarkar, did not take oath as MLAs from the respective constituencies.
New DGP after consulting Sidhu: Channi
Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi on Sunday said that a new Director General of Police (DGP) would be appointed soon in consultation with the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief Navjot Singh Sidhu and other ministers. His comments came hours after Sidhu had tweeted that DGP Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota and Advocate General (AG) Amar Preet Singh Deol must be replaced as their appointments are like rubbing salt on the wounds of the victims of the sacrilege issue. Sidhu’s latest tweet comes just days after Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi reached out to him for a compromise after he sprang a surprise by resigning as the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief to protest against these appointments. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a government programme to announce debt waiver for farm labourers and landless farmers, the Chief Minister said, as mandated by law, the State government has already forwarded the names of all senior police officers with 30 years of experience to the Centre. Now, it is awaiting the Centre’s clearance to a panel of three names from which the new DGP would be appointed, a statement from the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) said. The name would be finalised after consultation with Sidhu, and all the ministers and MLAs, the CMO statement added. Channi also told reporters that a coordination committee has been constituted for better coordination between the government and the PCC. Earlier, in the day, Sidhu had tweeted that not replacing the DGP and the Advocate General would leave the Congress with no face. Demand for Justice in sacrilege cases and for arrest of main culprits behind the drug trade brought our Govt in 2017 & Due to his failure, People removed the last CM. Now, AG/DG appointments rub salt on wounds of victims, they must be replaced or we will have No face, Sidhu tweeted. In an attempt to placate him, the Channi government appointed R.S. Bains as Special Public Prosecutor to handle all the sacrilege-related cases. However, Sidhu, whose status as the PCC chief is still not clear as he has not formally withdrawn his resignation, seemed to harden his stance a day after his tweet that he would stand by the Gandhis, post or no post. Will uphold principles of Gandhi Ji & Shastri Ji … Post or No Post will stand by @RahulGandhi & @priyankagandhi ! Let all negative forces try to defeat me, but with every ounce of positive energy will make Punjab win, Punjabiyat (Universal Brotherhood) win & every punjabi win !! he had tweeted on Saturday. The cricketer-turned-politician, who has made the Bargari sacrilege issue the main poll plank ahead of next year’s Assembly polls, wants the DGP and AG changed for their roles, respectively, in the sacrilege issue. His objection to Deol is that he defended the former Punjab police chief Sumedh Singh Saini, an accused in the Behbal Kalan police firing case of 2015. Sahota has earned Sidhu’s ire as the head of a Special Investigation Team on the sacrilege issue that reportedly gave the Badals a clean chit.
Cruise ship drugs party: NCB arrests Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan
The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Sunday arrested Aryan Khan, son of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, in connection with the seizure of banned drugs onboard a cruise ship off the Mumbai coast. Aryan Khan would be produced before a metropolitan magistrate’s court shortly. Advocate Satish Maneshinde would be representing Aryan Khan in court. Aryan Khan has been booked under various sections of the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS) for possession and consumption of banned substances. He and seven others were detained late Saturday night by NCB sleuths after they raided the cruise ship on its way from Mumbai to Goa.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Google removes 93,550 content pieces in August in India, shows compliance report
Google received 35,191 complaints from users and removed 93,550 pieces of content based on those complaints in the month of August, the tech giant said in its monthly transparency report. In addition to reports from users, Google also removed 651,933 pieces of content in August as a result of automated detection. Google had received 36,934 complaints from users and removed 95,680 pieces of content based on those complaints in July. It had removed 5,76,892 pieces of content in July as a result of automated detection. The U.S.-based company has made these disclosures as part of compliance with India’s IT rules that came into force on May 26. Google, in its latest report, said it had received 35,191 complaints in August from individual users located in India via designated mechanisms, and the number of removal actions as a result of user complaints stood at 93,550. These complaints relate to third-party content that is believed to violate local laws or personal rights on Google’s significant social media intermediaries (SSMI) platforms, the report said. Some requests may allege infringement of intellectual property rights, while others claim violation of local laws prohibiting types of content on grounds such as defamation. When we receive complaints regarding content on our platforms, we assess them carefully, it added. The content removal was done under several categories, including copyright (92,750), trademark (721), counterfeit (32), circumvention (19), court order (12), graphic sexual content (12) and other legal requests (4). Google explained that a single complaint may specify multiple items that potentially relate to the same or different pieces of content, and each unique URL in a specific complaint is considered an individual item that is removed. Google said in addition to reports from users, the company invests heavily in fighting harmful content online and using technology to detect and remove it from its platforms. This includes using automated detection processes for some of our products to prevent the dissemination of harmful content such as child sexual abuse material and violent extremist content. Under the new IT rules, large digital platforms with over 5 million users will have to publish periodic compliance reports every month, mentioning the details of complaints received and action taken thereon. The report needs to also include the number of specific communication links or parts of the information that the intermediary has removed or disabled access to in pursuance of any proactive monitoring conducted using automated tools. Recently, Facebook and WhatsApp also released their compliance reports for the month of August. Facebook said it had actioned about 31.7 million content pieces across 10 violation categories proactively during August in the country, while its photo-sharing platform Instagram took action against about 2.2 million pieces across nine categories during the same period proactively. In its report, WhatsApp said it had banned over two million accounts in India, while 420 grievance reports were received by the messaging platform in the month of August.
Shringla visits Trincomalee oil tank farm, key India-Sri Lanka economic partnership link.
Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla on Sunday visited the World War II-era oil storage facility in the strategically advantaged port district of Trincomalee in Sri Lanka’s east coast, which has been a key bilateral economic partnership link for decades. The Trincomalee Harbour, one of the deepest natural harbours in the world, was developed by the British during the World War II. Since 2003, the Lanka IOC, (LIOC) the Sri Lankan subsidiary of India’s oil major Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), has the leasing rights to 99 tanks at the facility for a period of 35 years for an annual payment of $100,000. According to the Indian High Commission, the LIOC briefed Foreign Secretary Shringla about the developments undertaken at the tank farm and the possibilities for further strengthening India and Sri Lanka energy partnership to enhance Sri Lanka’s energy security. The Indian mission also tweeted pictures of Shringla at the Trincomalee oil tank farm. Foreign Secretary @harshvshringla was happy to be with LIOC for the launch of LIOC’s new product – ‘Servo Pride ALT 15W-40’ during the visit, it said in a tweet. His visit to the site assumes significance as oil sector trade unions in Sri Lanka have demanded that tanks be brought under the control of the state fuel entity Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC). As per the agreement, the IOC was also given one-third share of the Sri Lankan government entity, Petroleum Storage Limited. However, the CPC trade unions had been pressing for the takeover of the tanks. Initially, the CPC wanted to develop 25 of the tanks by investing USD 25-30 million. The CPC maintains that it will allow them to strengthen their oil storage and distribution in the north and eastern provinces while allowing stock maintenance to suffice 2-3 months. Shringla arrived in Sri Lanka on Saturday on a four-day visit during which he will meet the top leadership, including President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, and review the bilateral ties between India and the island nation
