NATIONAL NEWS
Petrol to cost ₹3 cheaper a litre in Tamil Nadu
In a major announcement, Tamil Nadu’s DMK government on Friday announced a cut in the effective rate of tax on petrol by ₹3 a litre, effective midnight of August 13. Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan made the announcement while presenting the revised budget for 2021-22 on the floor of the Assembly here. The decision will result in a loss of revenue of ₹1,160 crore a year to the State exchequer. Tamil Nadu has 2.63 crore two-wheelers. This has become the most popular mode of transport for the working poor. They keenly feel the pinch of the rising cost of petrol. The Chief Minister [M.K. Stalin] keenly feels the pain of the working poor and the middle class, Rajan said in his maiden budget speech and hoped that the cut would provide a major relief to the toiling working-class people in the State. Contending that the Union government was solely responsible for the increase in the cost of the fuel, Rajan underlined, Nowhere is this dilution of the spirit of federalism more apparent than in the taxation of petrol and diesel at the pump. The overall Union levies on petrol were increased from ₹10.39 per litre in May 2014 to ₹32.90 per litre today. The State government also announced a waiver of loans to the tune of ₹2,756 crore due from self-help groups to the co-operative credit societies. The government will work out a suitable mechanism to infuse equity into the cooperative credit structure in stages to ensure that the lending capacity of the co-operatives is not affected, the Finance Minister said. As for an important scheme relating to the payment of ₹1,000 every month to women heads of households, Rajan said, To ensure that the payment of basic entitlement income is targeted to the genuinely poor, the government in consultation with experts is formulating guidelines on the objective criteria by which the eligible households will be identified for this scheme. In another announcement to implement a commitment made in its election manifesto, the DMK government enhanced the period of maternity leave from nine months to 12 months for women government employees with less than two surviving children with effect from July 1, 2021. The lumpsum grant from the Family Security Fund paid to the family of a government employee who dies while in service will be enhanced from ₹3 lakh to ₹5 lakh, the Minister announced. With the Minister’s announcement that the enhanced Dearness Allowance (DA) to government servants and to pensioners will be paid with an effect from April 1, 2022, the government indicated that the DA for them would not be revised this year. Unlike in many other States, government servants in Tamil Nadu have been paid salaries in full and without any delay throughout the entire Covid-19 pandemic period. In many departments, government servants have served selflessly, often putting their own life to risk in this period. I am sure that government servants will appreciate the difficulty that the government will face in enhancing Dearness Allowance at this stage, Rajan, who is also Minister for Human Resources Management, said.
Twitter interfering in India’s political process, says Rahul Gandhi
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused Twitter of interfering in India’s political process and described the social media platform as a biased one. In his first video statement on Twitter blocking his account, Gandhi said Twitter only listened to the government. Last week, Twitter blocked his account after he posted the picture of the parents of a 9-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and murdered in Delhi. By shutting down my Twitter they are interfering in our political process. A company is making its business to define our politics. And as a politician I don’t like that, Gandhi said in a two-minute video. It was not just an attack on him but the democratic structure of the country as it was denying the right to an opinion for his 19-20 million followers. Our democracy is under attack. We are not allowed to speak in Parliament. The media is controlled. And I thought there was a ray of light where we could put what we thought on Twitter. But obviously, that’s not the case, he stated. It’s obvious now that Twitter is actually not a neutral, objective platform. It’s a biased platform. It’s something that listens to what the government of the day says. As Indians, we have to ask the question: are we going to allow companies just because they are beholden to the Government of India to define our politics for us? he observed. Gandhi cautioned that taking sides in a political contest will have repercussions for Twitter and could be a dangerous thing for investors. Since its action against Gandhi last week, Twitter India has blocked thousands of handles associated with the Congress, including the official party handle and over two dozen senior leaders. In its defence, Twitter said they acted against Gandhi a after receiving a complaint from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), which has pointed out that posting the picture of the parents of a victim is a violation of Indian law. However, the Congress pointed to Twitter’s double standards as a similar picture of parents had been shared by the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) on August 2. When The Hindu checked the timeline of the NCSC, the offending photograph from August 2 was removed but the account was functional and the last tweet from the verified handle was sent out at August 11:50 a.m. on August 13.
Political battles should not be fought on the ‘Table of the House’, says Venkaiah Naidu
The political battles should not be fought on the table of the House, Rajya Sabha Chairman and Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu said in an informal interaction on Friday, two days after the General Insurance Business (Nationalisation) Amendment Bill, 2021 was passed in Rajya Sabha amid fierce protests from the Opposition, who also had a tussle with a strong contingent of marshals deployed in the chamber. On August 10 when Rajya Sabha took up a discussion on the agricultural problems and solutions, some opposition members, demanding a discussion on the Pegasus cyber-attack and a repeal of the farm laws, had clambered onto the reporter’s table which is placed right in front of the Chair. On August 11 again, when the government, despite demands from a united opposition to send the Insurance Bill to a select committee, pushed to pass the legislation, similar scenes were repeated. To prevent opposition members from climbing on to the table, 42 marshals were deployed. As The Hindu has reported, the Bill was passed amid clashes between opposition members and marshals. Legislatures are meant for debate and discussion and outside political battles should not be fought on the Table of the House, Naidu said. He also commented that it is the government’s prerogative to decide which bill is sent to a Parliamentary Committee. Whenever differences persist on such matters in the House, the House collectively takes a decision and the Chair cannot force it one way or the other, he added. Naidu said the Opposition and Treasury benches in the House are like his two eyes and are equal for him. One cannot have proper vision if one eye is not functioning properly. For me both government and opposition are like my two eyes, he said. Meanwhile, the Rajya Sabha secretariat has prepared a detailed chargesheet of the August 11 events indicting the Opposition. The Opposition, on the other hand, had complained about the scale of deployment of security officers inside the chamber, comparing it to a war-like situation. The internal report states that additional security officials were rushed in to prevent MPs from causing any damage to the Chair and the Table of the House. When the opposition MPs, the report said, failed to breach the cordon of security officials (Marshals) and their efforts to cause potential damage to the Chair/Table of the House went in vain, they started manhandling security officials (marshal).
Covid Watch: Numbers and Developments
The number of reported coronavirus cases from India stood at 3,21,50,112 with the death toll at 4,30,579. Bharat Biotech’s BBV154 intranasal vaccine has become the first of its kind to receive the regulatory approval for Phase 2/3 trials, according to a release issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology on Friday. This is the first of its kind Covid-19 jab to undergo human clinical trials in India. BBV154 is an intranasal replication-deficient chimpanzee adenovirus SARS-CoV-2 vectored vaccine. The Company has in-licensed technology from Washington University in St Louis, USA, said the release. The development of the vaccine was supported by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and its PSU, Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), the release stated. As per information released by the Ministry Phase 1 Clinical trial has been completed in age groups ranging ≥18 to ≤60 years.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Taliban close in on Kabul, embassies prepare for evacuations.
The Taliban seized more major cities on August 13 as they raced to take full control of Afghanistan and inched closer to Kabul, with the U.S. and Britain deploying thousands of troops to evacuate their citizens from the capital. The evacuation orders came as the Taliban took control of Kandahar the nation’s second-biggest city — in the insurgency’s heartland, leaving only Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad and pockets of other territories in government hands. The Taliban also captured the capital of Logar Province, just 50 km from Kabul, with a local lawmaker saying the insurgents were in complete control of Pul-e-Alam city. Earlier on Friday, officials and residents in Kandahar said government forces had withdrawn masse to a military facility outside the southern city. Kandahar is completely conquered. The Mujahideen reached Martyrs’ Square, a Taliban spokesman tweeted, referring to a city landmark. Hours later, the Taliban said they had also taken control of Lashkar Gah, the capital of neighbouring Helmand Province. A security source confirmed the fall of the city, saying that the Afghan military and government officials had evacuated Lashkar Gah after striking a local ceasefire deal with the militants. The government has now effectively lost most of the country following an eight-day blitz into urban centres by the Taliban that has also stunned Kabul’s American backers. Meanwhile, Washington and London announced plans late on August 12 to pull out their Embassy staff and citizens from the capital. We are further reducing our civilian footprint in Kabul in light of the evolving security situation, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters, while noting the embassy would remain open. This is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal. The Pentagon said 3,000 U.S. troops would be deployed to Kabul within the next 24 to 48 hours, underscoring they would not be used to launch attacks against the Taliban. The insurgents have taken over more than a dozen provincial capitals in the past week and encircled the biggest city in the north, the traditional anti-Taliban bastion of Mazar-i-Sharif, which is now one of the few holdouts remaining. As the rout unravelled, three days of meetings between key international players on Afghanistan ended in Qatar without significant progress on August 13. In a joint statement, the international community, including the United States, Pakistan, the European Union, and China, said they would not recognise any government in Afghanistan imposed through the use of military force.
No need for further WHO virus origins probe: China.
China on Friday rejected the World Health Organization’s calls for a renewed probe into the origins of COVID-19, saying it supported scientific over political efforts to find out how the virus started. Pressure is once more mounting on Beijing to consider a fresh probe into the origins of a pandemic which has killed over four million people and paralysed economies worldwide since it first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. A delayed and heavily politicised visit by a WHO team of international experts went to Wuhan in January 2021 to produce a first phase report, which was written in conjunction with their Chinese counterparts. It failed to conclude how the virus began. On Thursday the WHO urged China to share raw data from the earliest COVID-19 cases to revive its probe into the origins of the disease. China hit back, repeating its position that the initial investigation was enough and that calls for further data were motivated by politics instead of scientific inquiry. We oppose political tracing and abandoning the joint report issued after the WHO expert team’s Wuhan visit in January, Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu told reporters. We support scientific tracing. That report said the virus jumping from bats to humans via an intermediate animal was the most probable scenario, while a leak from Wuhan’s virology labs was extremely unlikely.
