At a meeting convened by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on a range of issues ahead of Monsoon Session of Parliament, the seven chief ministers unanimously agreed to the need for filing a review petition urging the Supreme Court to reconsider its recent order rejecting the postponement of the competitive exams.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government marking its first anniversary on Saturday, the first year is likely to be remembered for the fulfilment of decades-old Hindutva demands as Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the huge majority his party won in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls to push through its core agenda.
Future Group and V-Mart have put in place systems to prevent panic buying at their neighbourhood grocery stores.
'It is a ticking time bomb if the authorities don't come forward to help these hapless people.'
In an order, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said buses shall be used for transport of such groups of stranded people and these vehicles will be sanitised and will have to follow safe social distancing norms in seating.
The migrant workers were walking along the rail tracks apparently to escape the attention of police. A video clip from the scene of the tragedy shows the bodies of migrant workers lying on the tracks and nearby with their meagre personal belongings scattered around.
'If done well, the containment measures can help minimise the impact of the epidemic.'
It took a lockdown for us in India to even recognise that the plight of migrants needs to be addressed. They were faceless and unrecognised. They were unappreciated and even hounded. They were poorly paid and exploited, notes Ramesh Menon.
Leading hotels are taking all precautions but the unusual service the staff has been pressed into puts them at the forefront of COVID fight.
The Centre managed to collect only Rs 990 crore as compensation cess in April 2020-21, almost one-ninth of the figure of Rs 8,874 crore mopped up a year ago. The subdued collection would further increase states' problems unless the GST Council, which meets next week, decides to borrow from the market.
'As people have moved from cities to small towns and villages, they have carried the infection into new territories.' 'Poor healthcare infrastructure in these places should be a big worry in the days to come.'
'It won't be easy to undo the damage that has been done to the economy by the lockdown and the solution will not come from two minute presentations,' observes Aakar Patel.
The expert noted that in India the pandemic is unlikely to be over in the months to come, and the number of people getting infected will continue to rise.
'Not unlike politicians who gravitate towards whoever is in power, mafia dons too have a great survival streak, switching loyalty to the party in power,' observes Virendra Kapoor a week after gangster Vikas Dubey was slain in an alleged encounter.
Here's the full text of President Ram Nath Kovind's address to the nation on the eve of 72nd Republic Day.
In its daily briefing, the government also reported Goa is now free of coronavirus.
'Modi is still immensely popular and, therefore, he can sustain any number of policy failures.' 'Modi himself has worn multiple faces so it would be naive to think that the Modi of 2021 will be the same Modi that will be campaigning for re-election in 2024.'
'Why has this turned out to be one of the greatest humanitarian crisis that has caught the Centre and the states in a bind with no answers to this unexpected tsunami?' asks Brigadier Narender Kumar (retd).
A promising young actor suffering from depression has had his life laid bare for the grubby public to paw through. An ordinary family has been pitched into the middle of a nightmare of an investigation and arrested for no reason discernible at present. And a young actress has had her reputation, and probably career, destroyed so that TRP ratings can soar, notes Sherna Gandhy.
'People are getting admitted to hospital two to three days before their death in a very serious respiratory compromise state and they are passing away within 48 hours.' 'Those who are coming early in the disease, the minute they are suspicious that they have COVID-19, the recovery rate has been much, much, higher.' 'The moral of the story is: We must destigmatise COVID-19.' 'People should be told: 'Look, if you have anything like this, please come immediately'.'
After five weeks of lockdown, migrant workers' patience ran out and so did the money, which forced them to leave Mumbai on bicycles.
For many of the bereaved families the agonising wait started on Tuesday evening when they were informed by senior Army officials about the sacrifice of the 20 soldiers in the clashes with the Chinese Army along the Line of Actual Control a day earlier.
Mukesh Singh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) were executed at 5.30 am for the savage assault in an empty moving bus on the 23-year-old physiotherapy intern who came to be known the world over as Nirbhaya.
Sheela Bhatt drives from New Delhi to Agra and Firozabad to capture the stories of an India under lockdown.
'Modi's finest political legacy ought to be a border settlement with Beijing,' asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'There is lack of demand because people have no jobs, and no income.' 'Lakhs of people have lost their jobs and they have no income which has led to no demand in the market.'
'Uttar Pradesh, our largest state by population and the most powerful, is also the worst governed.'
'The government has given up its focus on economic growth because it it not something Modi has been able to fully understand.' 'This explains the extraordinary focus on divisive politics by the BJP even at a time when the world's most important man in visiting India,' notes Aakar Patel.
Around 81 per cent of the workers constitute the unorganised sector - devoid of any social security cover and outside the purview of a complex set of labour laws.
'Urbanisation results in heavy rainfall events.'
'Right now, politics is operating in a state of suspended animation. That works to Modi's advantage.'
'Kerala is probably the only state, where (with regard to) the clinical management and the overall protocols, we have an infectious disease team heading the whole containment plan.'
'It might get worse. We don't really know what is it that is resulting in the high value of R now.'
'The situation is so bad that they are now sleeping on bridges or footpaths.' 'Therefore, they want to go and die before their parents or wife in case they get infected with COVID-19.' 'Workers don't want to die a dog's death in cities.'
'The stimulus packages, sector reliefs, loans etc are coming to industry, but state governments have not got any money from GST, no money from excise, no money from any income source.'
'While the poor have little say in shaping India's intellectual or public discourse, they do have a significant role in deciding political outcomes,' points out Roshan Kishore.
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