Shah also struck a placatory tone in his interview and said that there was coordination between the Centre and the state in tackling Covid in Delhi.
A group of five people, including candidates but excluding security personnel, is allowed to take part in door-to-door campaigning.
Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf traces the journey of PM-CARES from its founding to finally admitting it is not a government fund.
At least 33 people have been killed in flash floods in Bihar till Tuesday evening and 25.71 lakh people are affected in 16 districts of the state.
According to the National Centre for Seismology, the epicentre of the temblor which occurred at 1439 hrs was in Dhalai district in Tripura at a depth of 28 km.
The flood situation remained critical in Assam with 30 more villages reeling under water on Tuesday, taking the total number of affected people in this season to around 1.1 lakh in 11 districts.
Kerala Revenue Minister E Chandrasekharan made the announcement in the assembly while replying to a notice seeking adjournment motion moved by Congress-led UDF opposition on the serious situation prevailing in the state due to the sharp decrease in rainfall.
The government has announced an interim relief of Rs 1 lakh for the next of kin of the deceased.
According to disaster management control room of the civic body, no injury or casualty has been reported so far.
Normalcy is returning to the violence-affected districts of Baksa and Kokrajhar under Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts Council areas in Assam. The state government claims that there has been no incident in the last 48 hours as the security apparatus along with army is working relentlessly to restore peace.
Gale-force winds, heavy rainfall and high tidal waves swept the coastal belt of Kerala, Karnataka and Goa as Cyclone Tauktae hurtled northwards towards Gujarat on Sunday, leaving four people dead in Karnataka and two in Goa, damaging hundreds of houses, uprooting electricity poles and trees and forcing evacuation.
The ASDMA said more than 4.87 lakh people are currently suffering in Lakhimpur, Jorhat, Golaghat, Cachar, Dhemaji, Biswanath, Karimganj, Sonitpur, Majuli, Barpeta, Nagaon, Nalbari, Sivasagar, Morigaon and Chirang districts.
The India Meteorological Department said rainfall would be accompanied by gale wind speed reaching 140 to 150 kmph and gusting to 165 kmph along and off Odisha and north Andhra Pradesh coasts.
The Supreme Court on Monday made it clear to the Jammu and Kashmir government that it cannot force the Centre to take quick decisions on its demand for Rs 44,000 crore for relief and rehabilitation of flood victims.
The flood situation in Assam worsened on Saturday with four more deaths reported and over 6.5 lakh people being affected in more than 1,400 villages due to incessant rains across the state.
While the flood waters receded in Bongaigaon and Sivsagar districts of Assam, fresh inundation occurred at a dozen villages in Nagaon even as four districts continued to reel under the impact of floods on Sunday.
The situation has improved marginally in Tripura and Mizoram in the past 24 hours.
The worst affected districts are Lakhimpur, Golaghat, Bongaigaon, Jorhat, Dhemaji, Barpeta, Goalpara, Dhubri, Darrang, Morigaon and Sonitpur
In Uttar Pradesh, two persons were killed since Tuesday in the floods which have affected around 8.7 lakh people in 987 villages of 28 districts in the state.
In Uttar Pradesh, southwest monsoon has been normal so far where rains and thundershowers occurred in few places since Friday.
1 person died in Dibrugarh and Tinsukia district each taking the toll in current phase of floods to 31.
The human toll in the floods and relentless rain across the country reached almost 200 by Thursday, even as thousands in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Assam, Odisha, West Bengal, and elsewhere were forced out of their homes into temporary shelters.
Apprehending trouble in the state especially in violence-affected Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District Council areas in the aftermath of declaration of results of election in the state on Friday, the Assam government has requested the army to be in stand by for quick deployment, if the need arises while helicopter surveillance is being continued in vulnerable areas of the violence-affected BTC areas and along India-Bhutan border.
The Manali-Leh National Highway-3 was blocked after heavy rainfall triggered landslide in Himachal Pradesh's Kullu district on Friday.
The army, SDRF and NDRF are assisting the district administrations in evacuating the affected population to safer places, the authority said.
In the Northeast, while three people died in Assam, two each lost their lives in Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram in rain-related incidents.
The picturesque port town of Visakhapatnam, a major industrial, educational and tourism hub in the east coast, is still reeling under the impact of havoc caused by the cyclonic storm Hudhud and is picking up pieces from a trail of destruction left behind by the calamity.
A senior official of the Union water resources ministry said it was an unprecedented situation on the Chinese side where Tsangpo broke a 150-year record with swollen waters and hence China has shared the information with India.
In a curious turn of events on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi picked Rajeev Topno, a 1996 batch Indian Administrative Service officer from the Gujarat cadre and a part of the Prime Minister's Office under former PM Manmohan Singh, as private secretary.
Swirling floodwaters have paralysed normal life and marooned over 1.20 crore people.
The flood situation remained critical in Assam, affecting 7.35 lakh people in 18 districts where one lakh hectares of cropland have been inundated by the surging waters of the swollen Bahmaputra and its tributaries.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal over phone and discussed about the prevailing condition on Monday.
Under its impact, rains will start on Sunday night and gradually increase on Monday in the northern districts of Chennai, Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram, S Balachandran, Director, Area Cyclone Warning Centre, said.
The flood situation in Assam remained grim after fresh heavy rainfall in Meghalaya's Garo hills and Goalpara district as the death toll mounted to 40.
The Odisha government is preparing for Cyclone Phailin -- which is expected to hit the east coast on Saturday evening -- on a war footing.
District authorities on Wednesday reported nine more death cases in the wake of the devastation caused by cyclone Hudhud even as the worst-hit Visakhapatnam city was limping back to normalcy with adequate supplies of essential commodities.
With the recovery of four more bodies today, the death toll mounted to 36 in Assam floods that affected about 10 lakh people in 13 districts and rendered majority of them homeless.
The death toll in Assam in the current flood rose to 30 on Wednesday with 14 bodies recovered from worst-affected Goalpara and Kamrup (rural) districts even as relief and rescue work continued round-the-clock.
The South Central Railway as well as the East Coast Railway cancelled several trains while some were terminated midway, officials said, adding a few express trains were also diverted.
State Health Minister K K Shailaja told reporters that the government has declared the epidemic as a 'state calamity' to take all necessary steps to ensure that the outbreak is effectively controlled. A medical bulletin issued by the government said the health status of all the three students, who tested positive for the virus, was 'satisfactory'.
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