India's COVID-19 recoveries have sprinted past 27 lakh, taking the recovery rate to 76.61 per cent, while the case fatality rate has further dropped to 1.79 per cent, the health ministry said on Sunday.
Action against the foreign Tablighi Jamaat members were taken after over 2,300 activists, including 250 foreigners of the Islamic organisation were found to be living at its headquarters located at Delhi's Nizamuddin despite the 21-day lockdown imposed to check the spread of coronavirus.
Extensive arrangements have been made due to the COVID-19 pandemic including personal protective equipment kits for election staff, more polling booths, thermal screening, sanitisers, masks and gloves for voters and markings to ensure social distancing, officials said.
36 more deaths drove the swine flu toll past the 1700-mark while the total number of people suffering from the contagious disease reached close to 30,000 in the country this season.
India is currently under the 21-day lockdown since March 25, with only essential services exempted to contain the fast-spreading virus.
The lockdown in India has been a timely, graded, proactive and pre-emptive public health measure to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and has been part and parcel of the government's overall strategy, Dr V K Paul, Member (Health), NITI Aayog, and Chairman, Empowered Group 1, said at a media briefing on the COVID-19 situation.
Elections in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan will see the BJP and Congress in direct contest.
In the Interim Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that a high power committee would be set up to consider the challenges arising from 'fast population grown and demographic changes.' 'But who wants data? It pays to feed people's fears, insecurities and apprehensions. If such fears don't exist, they must be created,' her husband Parakala Prabhakar says in this fascinating excerpt from his book, The Crooked Timber of New India: Essays on a Republic in Crisis.
There are 1,53,106 active cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), while 1,69,797 people have recovered and a patient has migrated, according to the ministry data updated in the morning.
Report by Greenpeace also presented a grim picture of India's pollution level.
Goa on Sunday joined several other states in banning the sale of Nestle's instant noodle brand 'Maggi' which is at the centre of a raging nationwide row over food safety concerns.
This is the fifth consecutive day that COVID-19 cases have increased by more than 50,000 in the country.
Farmer leaders on Monday started their day-long hunger strike against the Centre's new farm laws and said protests will be held at all district headquarters later in the day, even as more people are expected to join the ongoing agitation at Delhi border points.
A senior EC official said the COVID-19 pandemic and the flood situation were two reasons behind the decision.
A special bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and Dinesh Maheshwari, which posed tough questions to the Andhra Pradesh government on its decision to hold Class 12 board examinations, asked the standing counsel for the state Mahfooz A Nazki to place before the court the "snapshot of the file" giving reasons to hold the test.
Swine flu has claimed the lives of 15 more persons in the last two days as the death toll climbed to 2,123 while the number of affected persons in the country inched towards the 35,000 mark.
The mother-to-be, named Sandhya Yadav, a resident of Simaria village, had to endure hardship after state government's Janani Express (ambulance) didn't reach in the said time.
He said that when he became the prime minister, he realised that it is the duty of the Centre and not the states to hand over land rights to the tribals.
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.
Congress MP Karti Chidambaram and Communist Party of India-Marxist politburo member Mohammed Salim were among the prominent politicians who tested positive for COVID-19 as a rapid spike in cases took the tally in the country to over 18 lakh on Monday.
A total of 3,006 session sites across all states and union territories will be virtually connected during the launch at 10.30 am by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and around 100 beneficiaries will be vaccinated at each session site.
Soon after assuming charge, J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti promised a transparent, accountable and responsive government.
'Priyanka would not have been brought into active politics if there was confidence within the Congress in (party chief) Rahul's leadership'
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention on Wednesday in the alleged "whimsical" functioning of the railways in sending Shramik Special trains to West Bengal and urged the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre not to pursue politics when the state is battling a dual crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic and trail of destruction left behind by Cyclone Amphan.
A day after opposition parties, including the Congress launched a scathing attack against the Union government and the railways for charging money from migrants for the travel, sources in the railways said the national transporter is spending around Rs 80 lakh per service for the special trains, and it has run 67 such trains carrying around 67,000 stranded migrants since May 1--- incurring an expenditure of over Rs 50 crore.
Thakur, who is one of the seven accused in the case being probed by the NIA, appeared before the court on Monday. On Tuesday, Special Judge P R Sitre granted exemption to Thakur after her lawyer J P Mishra filed a written application, citing the MP's difficulty in travelling in Mumbai regularly due to health and security concerns.
A group of Hindus in Uttar Pradesh's Mahoba district has decided to observe Roza with their Muslim neighbours.
Gandhi had decided not to celebrate her birthday because of rape incidents and assaults on women in the country.
The new Ministers of State sworn in by President Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony in the Rashtrapati Bhavan include Virendra Kumar, Anant Kumar Hegde and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, former IAS officers Alphons Kannanthanam and R K Singh, former diplomat Hardeep Puri and ex-Mumbai police chief Satyapal Singh. Two other new faces are Ashwini Kumar Choubey, a member of the Lok Sabha from Bihar, and Shiv Pratap Shukla from Uttar Pradesh.
The government has asked the eleven municipal areas to step up monitoring in old cities, urban slums and other high density pockets like camps and clusters for migrant workers for management of COVID-19 cases.
These 51 cases were detected from over 45,000 samples sequenced so far in the country.
'It is mind-boggling that a party can be in rigor mortis even after numerous electoral defeats,' observes Ramesh Menon.
IndusInd Bank was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, rallying up to 46 per cent. Other winners were Bharti Airtel, L&T, Bajaj Finance, Kotak Mahindra, Bajaj Auto, HUL and HDFC -- rising up to 10 per cent. On the other hand, Maruti Suzuki, Tech Mahindra, Sun Pharma and Reliance Industries closed with losses. NSE Nifty finished 323.60 points, or 3.89 per cent, up at 8,641.45.
The company would venture into khadi products and animal feed this year, Ramdev said.
Delhi, Uttarakhand and Maharashtra on Monday confirmed bird flu cases, adding to the list of seven states -- Kerala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh -- which had already reported avian deaths due to the disease.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Monday said 28,252 cases of mucormycosis have so far been reported from 28 states/UTs in the country, of which 86 per cent cases have a history of COVID-19 and 62.3 per cent with a history of diabetes.
The number of poor people in India fell by about 415 million between 2005-06 and 2019-21, a "historic change" and a demonstration that the Sustainable Development Goal target of reducing at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty by 2030 is possible to achieve, even at a large scale, according to the UN.
The Centre, however, noted that the last national serosurvey findings have shown that over 70 per cent of the population is still susceptible to the disease.
The sudden spike in cases of fever in India has claimed over 100 lives in five states, including UP, MP, Bihar, Haryana, and West Bengal. In UP, Firozabad and Mathura alone have reported 72 cases.
The total number of positive cases has increased by 106 in the last 24 hours to reach 1,024.
