Month: September 2020

Lok Janshakti Party chief Chirag Paswan should be the chief ministerial candidate in the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections and the party should fight on 143 seats, said LJP national general secretary, Shahnawaz Ahmad Kaifi on Tuesday.

This comes amid reports of confusion in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) over seat-sharing in the state.

Kaifi, however, said that he has made Chirag Paswan aware of the demands being raised by the party workers and members.

“Chirag Paswan is definitely the Chief Minister candidate of our party, there is no doubt about it. The leaders, workers in our party are of the same opinion,” Kaifi told ANI here.

“The party members also believe that we should fight on at least 143 seats in the elections. I too would urge the party to fight on these many seats,” he added.

He further said that Chirag Paswan’s decision in this matter would be a final one and it would come shortly.

Earlier, BJP had clarified that the NDA would go in the elections under the leadership of incumbent Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Bihar has 243 Assembly seats and elections in the state are due and expected in October-November as the tenure of the current Assembly will end by last November this year. The Election Commission has not yet taken a final call on poll dates in Bihar. (ANI)

India on Tuesday said it has never accepted the so-called unilaterally defined 1959 Line of Actual Control, and that the county’s position has been consistent and well known to all including China.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said at a news briefing here today rebutted reports quoting a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement regarding China’s position on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the India-China border areas.

“India has never accepted the so-called unilaterally defined 1959 Line of Actual Control (LAC). This position has been consistent and well known, including to the Chinese side,” the MEA spokesperson said.

Srivastava pointed out that under their various bilateral agreements including the 1993 Agreement on Maintenance of Peace and Tranquility along the LAC, 1996 Agreement on Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) in the military field, 2005 Protocol on Implementation of CBMs, 2005 Agreement on Political Parameters and Guiding Principles for settlement of the India-China Boundary Question, “both India and China have committed to clarification and confirmation of the LAC to reach a common understanding of the alignment of the LAC.”

“In fact, the two sides had engaged in an exercise to clarify and confirm the LAC up to 2003, but this process could not proceed further as the Chinese side did not show a willingness to pursue it,” the spokesperson added.

The spokesperson added that “the insistence now of the Chinese side that there is only one LAC is contrary to the solemn commitments made by China in these agreements.”

He said that India has always respected and abided by the LAC.

“As the Hon’ble Raksha Mantri stated in the Parliament recently, it is the Chinese side which by its attempts to transgress the LAC in various parts of the Western Sector, has tried to unilaterally alter the status quo,” the spokesperson added.

The official said that the Chinese side “has repeatedly affirmed that the current situation in the border areas should be resolved in accordance with the agreements signed between the two countries”. “In the agreement reached between External Affairs Minister and his Chinese counterpart on 10th September also, the Chinese side has reiterated its commitment to abide by all the existing agreements,” the official said.

“We, therefore, expect that the Chinese side will sincerely and faithfully abide by all agreements and understandings in their entirety and refrain from advancing an untenable unilateral interpretation of the LAC.”

India and China, which held the sixth round of Senior Commanders’ meeting on Monday following border tensions in eastern Ladakh, have agreed to avoid misunderstandings and misjudgments, stop sending more troops to the frontline, refrain from unilaterally changing the situation on the ground and avoid taking any actions that may complicate the situation.

The two sides also agreed to strengthen communication on the ground and to hold the next round of Military Commander-Level Meeting as soon as possible.

A joint press statement on Tuesday said that the two sides had a candid and in-depth exchange of views on “stabilizing the situation along the LAC in the India – China border areas”. It said that the two sides agreed to take practical measures to properly solve problems on the ground. (ANI)

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Tuesday said that her party will fight the upcoming Bihar polls in alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) and former union minister Upendra Kushwaha will be the chief ministerial candidate.

“We have decided to fight elections in Bihar in alliance with Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samta Party and other parties. Upendra Kushwaha will be the CM if this alliance gets the blessing of people of Bihar in the polls,” Mayawati said at a press conference here.

The BSP chief said the alliance will work for benefit of oppressed classes and poor in the state if voted to power.

“Our alliance has been formed keeping the interests of Dalits, tribals, OBC, minorities and upper-caste poor in mind. Bihar needs a change based on the philosophy of ‘Sarvajan Hitaay, Sarvajan Sukhaay’,” she said.

She said the alliance will work to solve the recurrent problems of the state including floods.

Mayawati said that she will not be able to go to Bihar for the election campaign due to the situation created by coronavirus.

“I will not be able to go to the election campaign because of coronavirus situation. I appeal to people to give us an opportunity to serve them,” she said.

The BSP chief said her party will contest by-elections in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh without any alliance. The by-polls to 56 assembly seats were announced by the Election Commission on Tuesday.

The assembly elections in Bihar will be held on October 28, November 3 and 7 and the counting of votes will take place on November 10.

With RLSP and BSP deciding to fight the polls together, a third front appears to be emerging in the state apart from the ruling NDA and the likely alliance of RJD, Congress and Left parties. (ANI)

Seeing the atrocities inflicted by the Chinese government on the Uyghurs, a Washington Post journalist recalls the constant scrutiny she and her team faced while they were in Xinjiang throwing light upon the crimes against the community by the Chinese Communist Party.

“It was the start of four days of intense surveillance and nuisance checkpoints designed to obstruct our reporting and ensure that local people were too afraid to talk to us. There were cars that tailed us everywhere and the Keystone Kops, men who would jump behind bushes or pretend to talk on their phones while obviously following us,” journalist Anna Fifield, a former Beijing Bureau chief wrote in the Washington Post.

In her piece, she further wrote that the Public Security Bureau officers “who repeatedly called us to the hotel lobby” to insist that the group followed local reporting regulations “that, among other things, required that we get anyone’s permission to interview them”. “Before long, we endured a farcical argument about whether we needed assent before we could photograph a public building,” she added.

Fifield said that the trip to Kashgar (in Xinjiang) was the “final reporting expedition” she would make after 10 years in Asia but it made her recall not her trip to China but a previous assignment in North Korea.

She described Kashgar as an “evocative city, the home of Uighur culture” that was once a stop on the Silk Road and “has been turned into a Potemkin village, like Pyongyang, where it’s impossible to discern where the real ends and the staged begins.”

Visting Kashgar as a tourist for the first time in 2006, she remembered it to be “a magical place of Uighur people who looked Central Asian and spoke a Turkic language written in Arabic script”.

“Before returning to Kashgar this month, I dug out my photos from that trip. I found pictures of the renowned Id Kah Mosque, abuzz with activity. Photos of men with beards and women with headscarves and young children smiling and posing for my camera. I wondered what had happened to these children, many of whom would now be in their early 20s,” the scribe wrote.

The Chinese government has detained over 1 million Uighurs in “in reeducation camps designed to strip them of their culture, language and religion”. The scribe wrote that in these camps the Uighurs had to shave their beards and uncover their hair.

“They’ve been made to pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party. Children have been taken from their parents and put into orphanages,” she wrote.

It was when she returned to Kashgar that she was struck by how, “at first glance”, it seemed relatively normal. “In the Old City, families were out at the night market, eating piles of meat and bread. Kids could be heard laughing through open upstairs windows. There were even young men — prime targets for the detention campaign, which was ostensibly about deradicalization — on the streets again,” she wrote.

“Had any of the people I saw in Kashgar this month been affected by the “reeducation” campaign? Almost certainly. But I couldn’t ask them. Just as in Pyongyang, I didn’t try to interview people on the street or in stores, as I would do anywhere else in the world,” she added.

Had she interviewed one of the people on the street, she wrote that it would have put those people in danger. “I would have loved to talk to someone who had been through the camps — but I was conscious of the risks I posed to people if I tried to discuss sensitive subjects. Or talk to them at all,” she wrote further in her story in the Washington Post.

Writing about her arrival in China, while finishing a book on Kim Jong Un and “immersed in North Korea”, she said, “I tried to stop myself from looking at China through the lens of its paranoid neighbour. China is not North Korea, I told myself.”

But Xi Jinping taking over as president of China did not make it easy for the scribe to keep her thoughts about North Korea “at bay”. “There is still a level of latitude and commerce and vibrancy here that is unimaginable across the northeastern border, but some days China really feels like North Korea,” Fifield wrote.

“Not just in Xinjiang but across China, it has become extremely difficult to have conversations with ordinary folk. People are afraid to speak at all, critically or otherwise. Students and professors, supermarket workers and taxi drivers, parents and motorists have all waved me away this year,” she added.

But, every now and then, she wrote that she would encounter a “brave person” who wants to talk, and “I am always grateful to them for their honesty” but with that honesty comes a new layer of fear that whether her story would result in this person being detained. Those who speak out face severe consequences, including many years in prison.

She further wrote that it was clear that China now thinks the cost of having foreign correspondents — people who do pesky reporting on human rights abuses — outweighs the “benefit of having people to write about what a great destination China is for investment”.

“I don’t see the situation getting freer or easier for the Chinese people any time soon, nor for the foreign journalists who try to show their audiences back home what it’s like to be on the ground in China, for better or for worse,” she wrote further remembering a joke from an acquaintance, ” “We used to think North Korea was our past — now we realise it’s our future.” (ANI)

Pakistani soldiers are allegedly fighting alongside the Azerbaijan troops in Agdam, according to a telephonic conversation between two civilians, posted by Free News.AM.

During the telephonic conversation, two Azerbaijanis were speaking about the presence of Pakistanis in their territory, according to the Free News.AM.

“How can we write? I don’t have money. We are fine, don’t worry, 7-8 villages were liberated, don’t be afraid,” replied the second civilian.

“Yes. I know. I have seen on Instagram that Fizuli, Agdam have been liberated from occupation. Our side says that we have also taken Mrav mountain. What’s wrong with the internet, why doesn’t it work?” the first civilian stated.

The second civilian replied saying, our ministry has turned it off. As a lot of things happen here, people get in touch with Armenians, that’s why they have turned it off.

The first civilian asked if shooting is taking place in another civilian’s area.

To which the second civilian replied, “On Agdam’s side. They have gathered Pakistani soldiers and have taken them towards Agdam.”

Since 1991, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been waging an ongoing conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority autonomous region that proclaimed independence from the then-Soviet Azerbaijan Republic.

Yesterday, heavy fighting between the forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia broke out in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh region. The region lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since 1994.

The flare-up continued for the second day.

Most of the international community, including the United States, Russia, Iran and European powers, have been calling for an end to hostilities and the start of talks. As the clashes continued on Monday, UN chief Antonio Guterres spoke to the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Guterres stressed that “the need for an immediate stop to the fighting and resumption without the precondition of meaningful negotiations without delay under the umbrella of the Minsk Group co-chairs, and also for the immediate redeployment of [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] monitors to the region,” according to Guterres’ spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric. (ANI)

Michael Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health emergencies program, said on Monday that the current death toll from the coronavirus disease was likely underestimated.

“Just to reassure you, there are no people who are suffering from accidents being counted as COVID cases … When you count anything, you never count it perfectly, but I can assure that the current numbers are likely an underestimate of the true toll of COVID rather than anything else,” Ryan said during a virtual briefing.

The number of COVID-19 related deaths worldwide is approaching 1 million (996,342), according to the WHO. The total number of confirmed cases stands at 33,034,598. (ANI/Sputnik)

Pursuing two of her passions simultaneously, Tabish Aijaz Khan of Anantnag district is a self-taught artist who paints on Chinar leaves and waste material while pursuing her education.

Tabish hailing from Iqbal Abad in South Kashmir’s Anantnag district is currently pursuing MBBS and is having tremendous skills in painting. She has been a self-taught painting artist since her school days. She was in 4th standard when she first drew painting and since then it has become her hobby.

“I started painting cartoons and drawings back in school as a hobby and with practice, my painting skills were improved,” Tabish told ANI.

Back in 2016, Tabish completed her schooling and took up painting while preparing for medical college. This is when she realized that she is passionate about her art.

“I started painting more in 2016 and I used to post the pictures of my art on the social media platforms for which I received a great response. It encouraged me to paint more. Earlier, I used to think it is my hobby but during this time, I realised it was my passion,” she said.

Being an artist, Tabish sees even a broken cup and chinar leaf as her canvas.

“I paint on canvas sheet, papers but I also paint on waste material like chinar leaves, wooden block, broken cup, plate eggshell, and stone. As I believe that nothing is useless, it is the way you see the object. When those useless things are painted, it is turned into a beautiful art piece,” she added.

On being asked about her parent’s reaction to her painting, Tabish said, “Currently, I am in the fourth year of my medical course. My parents have always been supportive. They have encouraged me to pursue both painting and MBBS.”

“Painting helps me to relieve my stress as my course (medical) is a stressful one,” she added.

Tabish’s mother said, “I am really proud of my daughter. She always wanted to pursue the medical course and become a doctor. I am happy to see her pursue both – painting and academics.” (ANI)

Nagorno-Karabakh’s defence ministry on Tuesday said that 27 of its fighters were killed in fighting with Azerbaijan forces, bringing their total military losses to 58.

The overall death toll rose to 67 including nine civilian deaths — seven in Azerbaijan and two on the Armenian side, Al Jazeera reported.

Azerbaijan has not reported any military casualties, but Armenian separatist officials released footage showing burnt-out armoured vehicles and the bloodied and charred remains of soldiers in camouflage it said were Azerbaijani troops.

Yesterday, heavy fighting between the forces of Azerbaijan and Armenia broke out in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh region. The region lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since 1994.

The flare-up continued for the second day.

Most of the international community, including the United States, Russia, Iran and European powers, have been calling for an end to hostilities and the start of talks.

As the clashes continued for Monday, UN chief Antonio Guterres spoke to the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Guterres stressed that “the need for an immediate stop to the fighting and resumption without the precondition of meaningful negotiations without delay under the umbrella of the Minsk Group co-chairs, and also for the immediate redeployment of [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] monitors to the region,” according to Guterres’ spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric. (ANI)

Accusing Pakistan of conducting the worst forms of violence and persecution against the people of Balochistan, Chairperson Baloch People’s Congress, Naela Quadri Baloch, has urged United Nations to intervene to prevent the ongoing “genocide” in the region.

Speaking at a side event on the occasion of 45th UN Human Rights Council Session, Naela Quadri on Friday said: “So this is the situation (in Balochistan), you can call it a genocide. It’s not just limited to the human rights violation.”

“From the last two days in the conference, Baloch people have presented the situation of genocide in Balochistan and how Balochistan is bleeding,” she said.

Quadri was speaking at the ‘Human Rights Situation in Pakistan… Balochistan is Bleeding’. The event was organised by Center for Gender Justice and Women Empowerment, Baloch Voice Association, Baloch Peoples Congress, Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) Connect Lobbying Associates Brussels, African Culture Association.

“We appeal that the United Nations should intervene. It is a cry, it’s an appeal and call for intervention. So I’m appealing to particular United Nations Office on genocide prevention and responsibility to protect. The responsibility to protect embodies a political commitment to end the worst forms of violence and persecution under international humanitarian and human rights law and the reality faced by the population at risk of genocide, walk-run, ethnic cleansing,” she said.

Balochistan is a resource-rich but least developed province of Pakistan where a movement for freedom is ongoing for the past several decades. Many Baloch believe that the region was independent before 1947 and was forcibly occupied by Pakistan.

Pakistan Army has launched several operations in Balochistan and has supported criminals, which locals call “death squads”.

A large number of political activists, intellectuals, women and children in Pakistan’s Balochistan province are victims of enforced disappearances by the security agencies.

Many of them are languishing in detention centres whereas mutilated bodies of some of these abducted Baloch are found in isolated places. (ANI)

India’s COVID-19 tally crossed the 60-lakh mark with a spike of 82,170 new cases and 1,039 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, according to the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry on Monday.

As per the Ministry, India’s tally stands at 60,74,703 including 9,62,640 active cases.

The number of cured and discharged or migrated patients is currently at 50,16,521, apart from 95,542 deaths due to the disease.

With 10 lakh recoveries in just 11 days, India’s total recoveries crossed 50 lakh-mark on Monday.

“India’s total recoveries cross the landmark milestone of 50 lakh. The rise from 1 lakh in June ’20 has been steep. The last 10 lakh recoveries were added in just 11 days,” said Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The ministry also said that recovered cases have outpaced active cases by over five times.

“India has witnessed a very high level of more than 90,000 recoveries every day recently. Recovered cases have outpaced active cases by more than 5 times,” it said.

“The commendable feat has been achieved through enhanced medical infrastructure, implementation of the standard treatment protocol, full dedication, and commitment of doctors, paramedics, and frontline workers,” the ministry said in a series of tweets.

Maharashtra continues to be the worst affected by the pandemic with and reported 11,921 new COVID-19 cases, 180 deaths due to the viral infection on Monday. “Total cases in the state rise to 13,51,153, including 35,751 deaths and 10,49,947 discharges. The state has 2,65,033 active cases currently,” said Public Health Department, Maharashtra.

Karnataka with 1,04,048 active cases is the next on the list. While 4,69,750 patients have been cured in the state, the disease has claimed 8,641 lives so far. The total COVID-19 tally of Karnataka reached 5,82,458 today.

Meanwhile, Tamil Nadu reported 5,577 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total tally of the state to 5,86,397 cases. According to the state control room, Tamil Nadu reported 70 deaths today, taking the toll in the state due to Coronavirus to 9,383. Tamil Nadu currently has 46,306 active COVID-19 cases, and 5,30,708 people have recovered from the viral infection.

Andhra Pradesh which is also severely affected by Coronavirus reported 5,487 fresh COVID-19 cases and 37 deaths on Monday. “The total number of positive cases in the state is 6,81,161 including 63,116 active cases, 6,12,300 recoveries and 5,745 death” Andhra Pradesh Government said.

Kerala which was the first Indian state to report a COVID-19 case, recorded 4,538 new Coronavirus cases, and 20 deaths today, taking the total number of positive cases in the state to date to 1,79,922. The state has reported 697 deaths so far. The test positivity rate in the state is 12.59 per cent.

The National Capital Delhi reported 37 deaths and 1,984 fresh positive cases in the last 24 hours. As per the Delhi Health Department, the total number of COVID-19 cases now stands at 2,73,098 including 2,40,703 recoveries, 27,123 active cases, and 5,272 deaths.

As many as 2,112 new COVID-19 cases, and 15 deaths were reported in Rajasthan today. “The total number of positive cases rose to 1,30,971 to date, including 20,043 active cases, 1,08,476 discharged cases and 1,456 deaths,” said the State Health Department.

According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), 7,19,67,230 samples have been tested up to September 27 for COVID-19.

Out of these 7,09,394 samples were tested on Sunday. (ANI)