NATIONAL NEWS
Bharat bandh sees mass rallies, shutdowns
The Bharat Bandh call given by the Samyukt Kisan Morcha today to protest three contentious farm laws passed by the Government, led to mass rallies, shut down of markets and institutions exactly a year after the President gave his assent. The SKM, a platform of farm unions which joined hands to protest the contentious laws, whose members marched to the borders of Delhi in the tens of thousands 10 months ago to demand that the three laws be repealed. Their call for a Bharat Bandh between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Monday was supported by major political parties including the Congress, the Left, Akali Dal, YSR Congress, Trinamool, Aam Aadmi Party, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam. Trade unions and transport unions also backed the bandh in some parts of the country, though some declined to shut. In Kerala, the bandh was complete in most parts of the State with a full shutdown of normal life. There was a more lukewarm response in Karnataka, with some protesters detained in Bengaluru. Heavy rain in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh dampened protest activities, but the farmers’ cause was supported by most political parties, including the ruling YSRCP in AP, which suspended the State bus services and declared a school holiday. Farmer bodies staged protests in parts of Tamil Nadu as well. Markets were shut and public transport stayed off the roads in Odisha and Jharkhand. The RJD and the Congress workers blocked roads and rail tracks in parts of Bihar. Rallies were held in parts of Rajasthan, with train services affected in border districts. There was little impact on normal life in Mumbai, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Assam or Arunachal Pradesh. Vehicular movement was disrupted on national and State highways in most parts of Punjab and Haryana, with hardly any public transport, buses or taxis seen on the roads. Shops and commercial establishments were closed in many parts of the two States which make up the largest mass of the protesting unions, though the situation was normal in their joint capital Chandigarh. Train tracks were blocked at more than 20 locations in the northern zone, with the Railways saying at least 25 trains were affected in the morning. There were also reports of train tracks being blocked at some locations in Bihar and West Bengal. In the national capital, there were massive traffic snarls at Gurugram and Ghazipur as Delhi’s borders with Haryana and Uttar Pradesh saw heavy security due to the farmers protests as the Delhi police instituted intensive checks of vehicles entering the city.
Accessing healthcare, only a click away
With the promise of healthcare only a click away, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission to provide a digital health ID to people which will contain their health records. The pilot project of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission had been announced by the prime minister from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15, 2020. Currently, Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission is being implemented in a pilot phase in six union territories. Based on the foundations laid down in the form of Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile (JAM) trinity and other digital initiatives of the government, Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission will create a seamless online platform through the provision of a wide range of data, information and infrastructure services, duly leveraging open, interoperable, standards-based digital systems while ensuring the security, confidentiality and privacy of health-related personal information, according to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). It will enable access and exchange of longitudinal health records of citizens with their consent, the PMO said. The key components of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission include a health ID for every citizen that will also work as their health account, to which personal health records can be linked and viewed with the help of a mobile application, a Healthcare Professionals Registry (HPR) and Healthcare Facilities Registries (HFR) that will act as a repository of all healthcare providers across both modern and traditional systems of medicine. This will ensure ease of doing business for doctors and hospitals and healthcare service providers. The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission Sandbox, created as a part of the mission, will act as a framework for technology and product testing that will help organisations, including private players, intending to be a part of the National Digital Health Ecosystem become a health information provider or a health information user or efficiently link with building blocks of Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, the PMO said. This mission will create interoperability within the digital health ecosystem, similar to the role played by the Unified Payments Interface in revolutionising payments, it said.
Former Goa CM likely to join TMC
Amidst speculation that Luizinho Faleiro might join the Trimanool Congress, the former Goa Chief Minister and Congress leader resigned as member of the State Legislative Assembly on Monday, bringing the party’s strength in the 40-member Assembly to four. Minutes before resigning, Faleiro praised West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC head Mamata Banerjee and said the country needs a leader like her to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Faleiro, who represented the Navelim Assembly seat and was recently made the Goa Congress’s campaign committee chief in the wake of the state polls due next year, submitted his resignation to Assembly Speaker Rajesh Patnekar. The Congress had won 17 seats in the 2017 state Assembly elections, but later a number of MLAs resigned from the party. In July 2019, 10 MLAs quit the party and joined the ruling BJP. Mamata is the one who has given a fight to Narendra Modi and his juggernaut, he said. He further said the Mamata formula has won in West Bengal. She has been able to stand up…she is a street-fighter…, the 70-year-old leader said. We need such fighters who have the same wavelength, ideology, principles and programmes. The country needs a leader like Mamata, he said. I am a Congressman, I would like larger picture of all the Congress parties (which have split from the Congress) to come together and fight the next parliamentary election. I would do everything to achieve this dream. It is definitely my dream, he said. Meanwhile, TMC leader Derek O’Brien told PTI on Saturday in Goa that the party will be contesting the upcoming Assembly polls and they were in touch with several local leaders. The party will be announcing its chief ministerial candidate soon.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Merkel loses; to stay till road ahead clears
The center-left Social Democrats in Germany’s national elections defeated outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Union bloc in a closely fought race. Election officials said that a count of all 299 constituencies showed that the Social Democrats won 25.9% of the vote, ahead of 24.1% for the Union bloc. But Merkel, who was the chancellor for 16 years will stay at the helm till the way forward becomes clear as the results so far indicate nothing about who is going to succeed her or what the next government is going to look like. The environmentalist Greens came third with 14.8% followed by the pro-business Free Democrats with 11.5%. The two parties have already signaled that they are willing to discuss forging a three-way alliance with either of their two bigger rivals to form a government. The far-right Alternative for Germany came fourth with 10.3%, while the Left party took 4.9%. The party, known by its German acronym AfD, failed to get its core issue — migration — onto the campaign agenda this year. Germany’s Left party has scraped into Parliament, despite failing to meet the required 5% threshold. The Left, which is partly rooted in the communist party that ruled East Germany for decades, managed to win three constituencies outright in the September 26 election. Had it failed to win those constituencies it would have been kicked out of the Bundestag, as it is currently projected to receive only 4.8% of the vote. Another party, the South Schleswig Voters’ Association, looks set to win its first seat in Parliament since 1949, German public broadcaster ARD reports. Election officials said that the party is exempt from the 5% rule because it represents a national minority group, the Danes in northern Germany. Voters in the German capital have backed a proposal for the Berlin regional government to take over nearly 2,50,000 apartments worth billions from corporate owners to curb rising rents. A nearly complete count of the September 26 referendum showed 56.4% of voters in favor of the measure, and 39% opposed. Both the Social Democrats and the Greens made gains in the elections, but the Greens had hoped for better results. Projections from public television, based on exit polls and early vote counting, put voters’ support at around 26% for the Social Democrats and about 14% for the Greens. Social Democrats supporters waved the party’s red flags, broke into chants and burst into long party candidate Olaf Scholz walked onto the stage at the party’s headquarters in Berlin. Scholz thanked the crowd, voters and campaigners across the country. saying on September 26 that the party managed to pick up vote in three separate elections — nationally, in Berlin and in the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania State elections. Michael Mueller, the outgoing mayor of Berlin who ran for a seat in the country’s national Parliament, said as he stood in the crowd: I couldn’t be happier tonight.
UK warship makes first Taiwan Strait transit since 2008
Britain sent a warship through the Taiwan Strait on Monday for the first time since 2008, a move that challenges Beijing’s claim to the sensitive waterway and marks a rare voyage by a non-US military vessel. HMS Richmond, a frigate deployed with Britain’s aircraft carrier strike group, sailed through the strait on a trip from Japan to Vietnam, Britain’s defence ministry said. Wherever the Royal Navy operate, they do so in full compliance with international law, the ministry said in a statement. The UK has a range of enduring security interests in the Indo-Pacific and many important bilateral defence relationships, this deployment is a sign of our commitment to regional security, it added. Britain said it was the first time one of its warships had travelled through the narrow waterway separating Taiwan and mainland China since 2008, when HMS Kent made the voyage. US warships regularly conduct freedom of navigation exercises in the strait and trigger angry responses from Beijing, which claims Taiwan and surrounding waters — and almost all of the South China Sea. The US and most other countries view those areas as international waters that should be open to all vessels. China’s initial response to the British warship’s passage was muted on Monday. We hope the relevant countries can do more to build mutual trust between countries and uphold peace and security in the region, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters. Until recently, Washington was the main global power willing to sail through the Taiwan Strait. But a growing number of US allies have transited the route as Beijing intensifies its military threats towards Taiwan and solidifies its control over the disputed South China Sea. Canadian, French and Australian warships have all made voyages through the Taiwan Strait in recent years, sparking protests from China. A Royal Navy survey ship, HMS Enterprise, transited through the strait in 2019 but it was not a warship. Taiwan’s defence minister Chiu Kuo-cheng confirmed to reporters that a foreign vessel had sailed through the waterway but did not state which country it was from. Taiwan’s 23 million people live under constant threat of invasion by authoritarian China, which has vowed to seize the island one day — by force if necessary. Beijing has stepped up military, diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan since the election of President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016, who views the island as already independent. Last year, Chinese military jets made a record 380 incursions into Taiwan’s defence zone, and the number of incursions for the first eight months of this year has already exceeded 400.
