Internet shutdowns by law enforcement agencies like the one in Manipur and Punjab cost $1.9 billion to the Indian economy in the first half of 2023, a report said on Thursday. The shutdowns also led to a loss of nearly $118 million in foreign investment and triggered over 21,000 job losses, the global non-profit Internet Society said in its report 'Netloss'. The non-profit arrived at the financial impact of the shutdown going beyond the loss of output and included factors like change in the unemployment rate, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) lost, risks of future shutdowns, population in the working age etc.
Senior Madhya Pradesh Congress leader Kamal Nath on Tuesday asked whether it is needed to say separately that India is a 'Hindu Rashtra' given the fact that 82 per cent of Hindus live in the country.
India has incurred the third highest losses globally due to Internet shutdowns in 2023.
The community comprised seven percent of the total population of the state, but it represented only 2.57 percent in the government's grade I and II jobs.
The operation in Nagaland and Manipur was carried out after the army received "credible and specific" intelligence.
Pawar has summoned a meeting of party leaders in Mumbai on Saturday to finalise its plans for the assembly elections in Karnataka scheduled for May 10.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday apologised in both Houses of the legislature, as well as outside, for remarks made a day before on the importance of women's education to control population growth.
At these 'relief camps' people had nothing to sleep on except for a piece of cloth and men and women, boys and girls all cramped together. Factor in the fact that Kakching in the 2011 census had a population of 28,746 people and that about 90 per cent of that population has been affected by the floods now, and one can work the math of the crisis at hand.
Addressing a huge rally in Maharashtra's Nagpur on the occasion of the Congress' 139th foundation day, he said unemployment in the country has reached its highest point in the last 40 years.
The Congress will conduct a caste census in Madhya Pradesh after winning the assembly polls and establish a university in the name of Sant Ravidas, said party president Mallikarjun Kharge, accusing the regime at the Centre of wishing to change the Constitution.
Personnel to be deployed in election duty will be included in the frontline workers category.
Wayanad will continue to support Rahul but not to the same extent as in 2019, when his margin of victory had been enormous. Articulate, to the point and speaking in fluent Malayalam, CPI's Annie Raja, had the people who gathered to see her, listening in rapt attention, notes Shyam G Menon.
Modi wants the BJP to gets an additional 10% of the vote share from what it won in 2019. Plans are afoot to get new faces to replace MPs with poor chances of winning. Sources say more than 100 MPs are like to be axed, notes Modi biographer Ramesh Menon.
A plea has been moved in the Supreme Court by two Kashmir residents challenging the Centre's decision to constitute the delimitation commission for redrawing the assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies in Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
An Allahabad high court bench of Justice Shekhar Yadav had on Thursday last urged the government and the poll panel to consider postponing the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections for a month or two and banning all political rallies amid the fears of an impending third wave of Covid.
Will BJP campaigners start using the term 'Ram Rajya' to refer to the nation under Modi's rule, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
What are the political equations, the challenges, and the threats?
Bomb blasts on Thursday rocked Assam and Manipur during Independence Day functions injuring one person even as chief ministers asked extremists to abjure violence and return to the mainstream.
The Centre and the states need to continue working in collaborative spirit as was done during the previous surges for COVID-19 prevention and management, Mandaviya said.
The vote value of an MLA is calculated on the basis of the total population of the state, based on the 1971 census.
The minister appealed to states and Union Territories to continue and strengthen surveillance and focus on genome sequencing for identifying new variants in the country.
'The next war will be fought by China-Pakistan against India and we have to fully be prepared. We must read the writing on the wall.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in the assembly polls on Thursday has put the party on a stronger wicket for the election for the post of President expected later this year.
'The first two years of the Jal Jeevan Mission were wasted in UP.' 'But after a push from the Centre, work has picked up pace in the state.'
"Despite the high number of cases reported so far, we have been able to contain the spread to under 2 pc of population," said Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal.
Harsh Vardhan said that 51 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses will be made available by July and 216 crore more between August and December.
The Election Commission is confident of holding the five assembly polls due early next year, including in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, on time as the poll panel has gained a lot of experience from the electoral exercise in Bihar, West Bengal and four other assemblies amid the coronavirus pandemic, Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra has asserted.
The Union health ministry has directed states to identify all left-out people and ensure everyone gets their Covid jab through initiatives such as workplace vaccination, as part of the government's "Har Ghar Dastak" campaign. Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya held a review meeting on vaccination progress with Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Puducherry on Monday. In a tweet, the minister said, "Spoke about augmenting Govt's #HarGharDastak vaccine campaign. Requested help from religious leaders, NGOs & political groups to speed-up vaccination coverage." Health secretary Rajesh Bhushan has asked state officials that workplace vaccination should be organised for targeting people due for their doses.
Thirty districts in the country, including 13 in Kerala, eight in Mizoram, four in Meghalaya, three each in Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, two in Sikkim and one in Meghalaya are reporting a weekly positivity rate of over 10 per cent.
Landslides triggered by incessant rain snapped rail and road links, an official bulletin said.
According to NHFS-5, over 75 per cent women justified men beating their wives in three states -- Telangana (84 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (84 per cent) and Karnataka (77 per cent).
Vaccinating all citizens above the age of 18 years against COVID-19 will cost Rs 67,193 crore, of which states together will incur Rs 46,323 crore, India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) said on Thursday. As the second wave of COVID-19 sweeps the country with alarming speed and severity, the government has announced a liberalised and accelerated Phase 3 strategy of COVID-19 vaccination. Under this scheme, all persons above 18 years of age will be eligible to get COVID-19 vaccine doses from May 1.
There are lessons for the Congress to learn from the Karnataka elections of how burying the hatchet among top leaders and not washing dirty linen in public can help, says Ramesh Menon.
Allies since the 1990s, the JD-U and the BJP have in the recent past squabbled on issues ranging from Agnipath, caste census, population law and ban on loudspeakers.
If the BJP is set to return to power in UP, Uttarakhand, Manipur and even Goa, it is not because of the party's performance or the quality of governance. No. It is essentially Modi's popularity, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra appears to have shed the maximum sweat among top leaders for over the last 45 days in the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh assembly elections campaign.
With their high-decibel campaigns so far, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party may appear to be locked in a direct fight in Uttar Pradesh.
The Supreme Court Friday granted the 'last opportunity' to the Centre to file its reply on a public interest litigation seeking directions for framing of guidelines identifying minorities at the state level as Hindus are in a minority in 10 states and are not able to avail the benefits of schemes meant for minorities.
The North East is a sizeable success story for the Modi government politically and for the BJP electorally. It will be an unpleasant surprise if they choose to blow it, bowing to their basic, polarising instinct at any point, points out Shekhar Gupta.
'There is a joke that is cracked in hushed tones sometimes in Manipur, what would many of the insurgent outfits do if AFSPA is indeed taken away? What would they fight against?'
