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Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram on Sunday favoured a consensus for the post of the AICC chief and asserted that Rahul Gandhi will always have a "pre-eminent place" in the party irrespective of whether he is president or not as he is the "acknowledged leader" of the rank and file.  

So far, Rahul Gandhi has declined to take on the mantle of party presidency but may change his mind, the former Union minister and Congress Working Committee member said, just days ahead of the notification of polls to elect the AICC chief. 

In an interview with PTI, Chidambaram said there was no occasion for any controversy over the fairness and transparency of the party president polls and asserted that had central election authority chairman Madhusudan Mistry's last statement on the concerns of some of the leaders come on the first day, the matter would have stood resolved.

Underlining that it is not the practice of any political party to publish the roll of the electoral college, he said the PCC-wise electoral roll will be available for inspection at the office of the PCC concerned, while the all India electoral roll will be available for inspection at the office of the AICC.   

"Every nominated candidate will be entitled to a copy of the electoral roll. Mr Mistry has since clarified these self-evident points and the MPs have said they were satisfied. The matter is rested," Chidambaram said.  

Lok Sabha members Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari, Karti Chidambaram, Pradyut Bordoloi, and Abdul Khaleque, had written to Mistry, seeking clarity on the issue of electoral rolls, to which the party's poll panel chief had clarified that anyone wanting to file nomination for the post of Congress president will be able see the list of the over 9,000 PCC delegates at the AICC's central election authority office from September 20.  

P Chidambaram also asked if the media had raised such issues when the BJP or any other party held its party elections.   

"I cannot recall Mr J P Nadda asking for the electoral roll or filing his nomination!" he said.

Asked whether consensus or elections would be better for the post of AICC president, Chidambaram said while election is the default option, "the better course  and all parties follow this  is to elect a national president by consensus".   

"If my recollection is correct, Mr Nadda, and before him Mr Amit Shah, Mr Rajnath Singh and Mr Gadkari, were all elected by consensus," he said.  

On whether Gandhi will heed appeals of party workers and leaders, Chidambaram said he does not know the answer to that question.    

"Rahul Gandhi is the acknowledged leader of the rank and file of the party.  They want him to be the President of the party also. So far, he has declined. He may change his mind," the senior Congress leader told PTI.  

Asked whether the Gandhi family will continue to occupy a place of pre-eminence in the party if a non-Congress president is elected, Chidambaram cited the history of the Congress and pointed out that between 1921 and 1948 Mahatma Gandhi was the acknowledged leader of the Congress, and afterwards, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, one following the other, was the acknowledged leader of the party.  

Apart from the Leader, there were several persons who held the office of president of the party for one or two or three years. There have been periods in Congress' history when the Leader and the president was the same person, there have been long periods when the Leader and the president were different persons," he said. 

  The Rajya Sabha MP said that if Rahul Gandhi is elected Congress president, he will be both leader and president, but if he is not, he will remain the acknowledged leader of the party and there will be another person holding the office of president.  

"Rahul Gandhi will always have a pre-eminent place in the party," Chidambaram asserted.  

Asked if a non-Gandhi family person will command the same respect and authority, the senior leader said the office of Congress president carries with it a great tradition and history, vast powers and huge responsibilities.    

"I am certain whoever is elected Congress president will rise to the occasion and command respect among the leaders and the rank and file of the party," he added.  

The notification for the Congress president's election will be out on September 22 and the process for filing nominations will be held from September 24 to 30.  

The last date for the withdrawal of nominations is October 8 and the election, if required, will be held on October 17. The results will be out on October 19.  Talking about the party's Bharat Jodo Yatra that began on September 7 from Kanyakumari, Chidambaram said that from what he saw in Tamil Nadu on the first two days, and from what he has gathered from his colleagues in Kerala, a large number of dormant Congressmen and women and sympathisers came out of their homes and joined the padayatra for short or long distances.   

Many hundreds more stood on the roadside and welcomed and cheered Rahul Gandhi and the yatris, he said.    

"It means that the elephant has been awakened. Thousands of people are hearing an ancient, yet new, message: that this country cannot be allowed to be divided by hate or anger or communal conflict; that love and tolerance and fraternity will unite the people of the country; and that such unity alone can lay the basis for economic and social progress," Chidambaram said.    

This message is very different from the divisive and hate-filled messages that we have heard over the last seven years, he said.   

Chidambaram cited the lines from a poem written a hundred years ago by Tamil poet Subramania Bharati which translate to, "So that this country may arise as one, come forward to do a great deed! Come! Come!".    

"As this message resonates throughout the country, it will certainly rejuvenate and revive the Congress," he asserted.  

On the BJP's criticism of the yatra, Chidambaram said the ruling party was not prepared for the kind of response that the yatra has evoked and alleged that its leaders were resorting to misinformation, lies, mocking and abuse. 

Leh, Sep 18 Ladakh Lieutenant Governor R K Mathur on Sunday directed officials to install central heating facilities at all health centres before the onset of winter and cover all residents under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) and Universal Health Insurance schemes.

Chairing a meeting of the State Health Society of Ladakh’s governing body, Mathur also instructed the officials to extend social security cover and welfare schemes, including Atal Pension Yojana, to workers of the National Health Mission (NHM) as well as ASHA.

"Central heating systems at all the health centres may be made fully functional before the onset of the winter," Mathur said.

He directed the officials concerned to ensure that all residents of Ladakh are covered under PMJAY and Universal Health Insurance schemes so that the people could avail of benefits such as insurance coverage and reimbursement in case a patient is referred to any empanelled hospital outside the Union territory.

Further, he suggested that blood banks at community health centres in Khaltsi, Diskit, Padum and Drass are established and trauma centres at these CHCs are made fully functional in the current financial year.

Ladakh NHM Director Iftikhar Ahmad Chowdhary said the Centre has sanctioned a budget of Rs 184.4 crore under the mission for the financial year 2022-23.

He also briefed the meeting about extending social security benefits and welfare funds to its over 1,200 employees under the Records of Proceedings.

Further, he submitted a proposal to provide ex-gratia to the next of kin in case of death of an NHM employee while on duty and Rs 5 lakh in case of more than 50 per cent disability due to an accident; ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh for the family of an ASHA worker in case of death and Rs 2 lakh in case of more than 50 per cent disability due to an accident. PTI 

Sheopur (MP), (PTI) Amid the excitement over the arrival of Cheetahs in the Kuno National Park, villagers in the surrounding areas of Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district have a variety of concerns including the fear of land acquisition and the fear of the big cat itself.

Some people are, however, optimistic that once the KNP becomes famous for its new entrants, increased tourist footfall will create jobs. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday morning released eight cheetahs brought from Namibia into a quarantine enclosure at the KNP as part of a project to revive the population of the animal which became extinct in India in 1952.

“What will happen to my small food outlet when remaining four-five villages are shifted for the park? We are already affected financially because of the relocation of 25 villages for the Kuno Park over the last 15 years,” said Radheshyam Yadav, a vendor selling snacks and tea on Sheopur-Shivpuri road, speaking to PTI.

Ramkumar Gurjar, a farmer, has apprehension that the people of Sesaipura will lose their livelihood due to a nearby dam project.

“Villages were shifted earlier for the national park. Now a dam project is coming up on Kuno river in nearby Katila area. This project is going to affect at least 50 villages which are connected to Sesaipura. After their shifting, what will happen to grocery, clothes and other small business outlets in Sesaipura? Then our village will be left alone here,” Gurjar told PTI.

Asked about the hope that the cheetahs will bring more tourists, he claimed that the hospitality business will be run by “rich outsiders” and local residents will only get menial jobs in hotels and restaurants.

Santosh Gurjar, another resident, said that following the shifting of villages, a local shopkeeper who sold groceries, fertilizer and seeds had to shift to Shivpuri for lack of business.

Dharmendra Kumar Ojha, who runs a clothes shop, apprehended that cheetahs may enter the villages.

What will the local people get from this project?.. Outsiders are buying up land for hotels and restaurants. The relocation of villages will further affect the business. But the project will bring infrastructural development,” Ojha said.

Surat Singh Yadav, who runs a tea shop on the road leading to the national park, believes that the cheetah reintroduction project will generate employment in the area.

“Land prices are going up.. those having legal title of land are asking for higher prices. There is a temporary jump in the business due to the PM’s programme but I can not say about the future,” he said.

Another shopkeeper, Keshav Sharma, claimed that his business has grown three times.

“Land prices have gone up.. Tourists used to come here in small numbers earlier but their numbers will certainly go up now,” he said.

Kailash, a labourer and resident of village Tiktoli, two km from the KNP’s entry gate, was nervous about the future.

“I don’t know about benefits, but I am afraid because the cheetah has come here. Where will we go,” he said.

Kamal, who belongs to Tiktoli and currently lives in Sheopur, said the village has no water supply, telephone network and jobs and the only source of livelihood is subsistence farming

New Delhi,Kishan Lal, who lived in Tughlaqabad area of Delhi, was stabbed to death on a cold February night in 1997 and the killer was untraceable.

Lal, who worked odd jobs, had left behind his wife Sunita, who was pregnant with their first child at the time.

Litigation started in the death case and the Patiala House Court declared absconding suspect Ramu, a daily-wage earner, as a proclaimed offender. He lived in the same neighbourhood as Lal.

His case file from the pre-digital era continued to bite dust for over two decades until a team of the Delhi Police's North District which is trained to handle old cases laid its hands on it in August 2021.

A year later, Sunita got a call from the Delhi Police and was asked to reach Lucknow immediately.

The Delhi Police had caught hold of a 50-year-old man, whom they believed was her husband's killer. They wanted her to confirm the identity of the suspect.

Sunita, who was accompanied by her son Sunny (24), confirmed to the police that the man was Ramu before she fainted.

“The woman had lost all hopes of getting justice and even closed doors on our police team that reached out to her last year when they started working on this old case. But it was understandable on her part since a lot of time had lapsed,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (North District) Sagar Singh Kalsi told PTI.

The officer heaped praise on the four-member team for cracking the quarter-century old case, noting that it had no eyewitnesses of the murder, no photographs of the accused or clue of his whereabouts.

The team had sub-inspector Yogender Singh, head-constables Puneet Malik and Omprakash Dagar under Inspector Surrender Singh with Assistant Commissioner of Police (Operations) Dharmender Kumar as their guide, Kalsi said.

“It was pretty much a wild goose chase for the team where they were hoping to get one substantial clue for several months. During the period, the team went undercover on several occasions for investigation within Delhi and in Uttar Pradesh,” the DCP said.

The team posed as life insurance agents when it went to Uttam Nagar in Delhi, where they had traced a relative of Ramu on pretext of helping them with money for their deceased kin, Kalsi said.

The team also managed to reach Khanpur village in district Farrukhabad of Uttar Pradesh under the same guise when it met relatives of Ramu, he said.

It was in Farrukhabad that the police chanced upon a mobile number belonging to Aakash, the son of Ramu. Further efforts led the police team to a Facebook account of Aakash through which he was traced in Lucknow's Kapurthala area, the officer said.

The police met Aakash and enquired the whereabouts of his father Ramu, who now lived under the name of Ashok Yadav. He told the team that he has not met his father in a long time and only knows he now runs an e-rickshaw for a living in the Jankipuram area of Lucknow. “This happened recently and the case that was progressing slowly for almost a year suddenly caught pace. The police team, which was undercover, suspected that the information that someone has been inquiring about him might reach Ramu and he may again go into hiding,” DCP Kalsi said.

Hot on the killer's pursuit, the police team opted for the guise of agents of an e-rickshaw company and contacted several drivers in the Jankipuram area.They interacted with them on the pretext of providing them subsidies on new e-rickshaw under a central government initiative.

“During one such interaction, an e-rickshaw driver led them to Ashok Yadav (Ramu), who was staying near a railway station on September 14. He was apprehended for questioning; he first denied being Ramu or having ever lived in Delhi,” the officer said.

The police team had contacted the relatives of Ramu in Farrukhabad to ascertain his identity and also called Sunita from Delhi to confirm if the man indeed was her husband's killer.

Finally when his identity was confirmed, Ramu (50) also confessed that he had hatched Lal's killing for money from a “committee” (a chit-fund type system among a small group of people) in February 1997.

He had arranged for a party on February 4, where he got Kishan Lal sloshed before stabbing him with a knife and fleeing away with the money, hiding at different locations before settling down in Lucknow, according to officials.

While in hiding, Ramu got identification cards, including Aadhar, made under his new but false identity as Ashok Yadav, Kalsi said.

Now the legal proceedings in the 25-year-old case of murder are further being carried out at the Timarpur police station here, the officer added. PTI

Mulchera is the third village in the country and second in Maharashtra after Telangana's Nalgonda village and Bhilwadi village in Sangli district of Maharashtra to start this practice, the police said by PTI

 Chandigarh - Students of a private university in Punjab's Mohali held a protest on the campus after videos of several women students were posted on social media, police said Sunday by PTI

Students of a private university in Punjab's Mohali held a protest on the campus after videos of several women students were posted on social media, police said Sunday.

The protest was held on the university campus located at Ludhiana-Chandigarh road past midnight.

 The woman student who was involved in sharing the videos online has been apprehended. She had made videos of some women students and sent those to a youth in Shimla who allegedly uploaded those on social media, they said.

 Police said an investigation into the matter was underway.

 Punjab Minister for School Education Harjot Singh Bains asked the students of the university to stay calm and assured them that the guilty will not be spared.
    "It is a sensitive matter and concerns the dignity of our sisters and daughters. We all, including the media, should be very cautious. It is also a test of ours as a society," Bains said in a tweet. 

The National Logistics Policy unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday will substantially reduce transportation costs across the entire supply chain and has the potential to usher in "ease of moving" in the country, by PTI

While the new policy addresses challenges of the logistics sector, it together with the infrastructure augmentation plan PM GatiShakti will address gaps, he said.

CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said besides improving ease of doing business and ease of living, the policy along with other pillars of the PM Gati-Shakti has the potential to usher in an unprecedented era of 'ease of moving' in the country, ensuring the speedier and seamless movement of cargo and people across various modes of transport.

He said the reduced logistics cost and increased efficiencies will energise the economy across sectors in multiple ways and take us many steps closer to emerging as a global manufacturing powerhouse.

Assocham secretary general Deepak Sood described the National Logistics Policy as a major structural transformative initiative which will substantially reduce transaction costs across the entire supply chain.

"It (the policy) will facilitate India being embedded across global value chains, as we move ahead on the path towards Bharat@100," Sood added.

The Union government has been working on the National Logistics Policy for three years. The commerce ministry released a draft logistics policy for consultation in 2019, but it was delayed due to Covid-19 pandemic.

The National Logistics Policy was once again announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Budget for 2022-23.

 Ahmedabad, Sep 13 Aam Aadmi Party's national convener Arvind Kejriwal will hold a town hall meeting with sanitation workers in Ahmedabad on Tuesday and also make a "guarantee" announcement, an AAP functionary said.

Kejriwal will also hold meetings with local AAP leaders and welcome new members to the party on the second day of his visit to Gujarat where the Assembly elections are due later this year, he said.

The AAP claims to have emerged as a prominent challenger to the ruling BJP in the state.

On Monday, Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal held town halls with auto-rickshaw drivers, lawyers and businessmen in Ahmedabad.

He also had dinner at an auto-rickshaw driver's house in Ghatlodia area of the city.

During his multiple visits to Gujarat in the recent past, Kejriwal had announced a slew of "guarantees", including free electricity up to 300 units per month, allowances for women and unemployed youth, free and quality healthcare and education and creation of jobs.

Source:- PTI

New Delhi, The Supreme Court has deprecated the tendency of making allegations against judicial officers when adverse orders are passed against a litigant and said if this continues it will ultimately demoralise the judges.

The apex court dismissed the pleas seeking transfer of proceedings pending before a court in Rajasthan's Dhaulpur to a court in Noida in Uttar Pradesh.

A bench of Justice M R Shah and Justice Krishna Murari noted that one of the grounds on which the proceedings are sought to be transferred is that the petitioners believe they are not getting a fair trial and the respondents, being "local bigwigs", can influence the court there.

"We deprecate such a stand and the ground on which the proceedings are sought to be transferred. Merely because some orders are passed on the judicial side (in the present case in the execution proceedings) which may be against the petitioners, it cannot be said the court, which passed the order was influenced," the bench said.

It said if the petitioners are aggrieved by any judicial order, the proper remedy would be to challenge it before a higher forum.

The top court said merely because some adverse orders are passed against the petitioners by the court, it cannot be said that orders on the judicial side are passed under influence.

"Nowadays, there is a tendency to make such allegations against the judicial officers whenever the orders are passed against a litigant and the orders are not liked by the concerned litigant. We deprecate such a practice," the apex court said in its order passed on September 2.

"If such a practice is continued, it will ultimately demoralise the judicial officer. In fact, such an allegation can be said to be obstructing the administration of justice," the bench said.

It said another ground raised was that when the warrant issued by the executing court was sought to be carried out, a false criminal FIR was filed and therefore there is apprehension on the life of the petitioners.

The bench noted that if the petitioners are aggrieved by the FIR, the remedy would have been to approach for quashing the same. "No ground is made out to transfer any of the proceedings as sought to be transferred," the bench said