Farmer unions have criticised the police action, pointing out that even the Supreme Court has described the sedition law as “colonial”, and questioned its need after 75 years of Independence.
Some protestors on Saturday allegedly attacked vehicles of BJP leader Sanjay Tandon and Chandigarh Mayor Ravi Kant Sharma in the city’s Sector 48 area. The two leaders were attending a function as vandals reportedly broke the windshields of the politicians’ cars, according to The Tribune.
“The arrangement by the police was poor,” Tandon said. “They should not have allowed people, most of whom were outsiders, to attack our vehicles.” The BJP leader said the vandals seemed like anti-social elements who had joined the protests.
A video purportedly from Chandigarh of a child sitting in a police vehicle was also posted on the Twitter account of Kisan Ekta Morcha, a joint front representing the farmers protesting against the Centre’s agricultural laws.

The Kisan Ekta Morcha had said that the meeting of farmer leaders, the police, and the Sirsa district authorities started around 3 pm. However, the 90-minute-long meeting failed to reach an agreed upon conclusion, reported The Indian Express. Farmers then blocked Sirsa’s Prajapati Chowk and the Sirsa-Barnala highway.
Bharatiya Kisan Union chief Rakesh Tikait said the police did not have any evidence and accused them of sending men “to create law and order issues…to pressurise farmers”, reported The Indian Express. “We shall hold a morcha here in Sirsa as a part of our ongoing struggle.”
Earlier on Saturday, Tikait had said that despite the Supreme Court’s observation, the police in Haryana were booking farmers with sedition charges.
Earlier on Saturday, Haryana Superintendent of Police Arpit Jain said that they have made adequate deployments to stop protestors. “Over 10,000 personnel from across all districts of Haryana, Rapid Action Force and paramilitary forces have been deployed along with 30 checkpoints so that nobody disrupts law and order and attempts to break the law,” he told The Indian Express.

However, barricades set up by the police were knocked down in Sirsa on Saturday afternoon as demonstrations continued, according to NDTV.
Sirsa Civil Lines Police Station Station House Officer Ram Niwas told The Indian Express that a first information report was lodged on Wednesday on the complaint of Assistant Sub-inspector of Police Prem Singh, who had received injuries on July 11.
The FIR in the sedition case was registered on July 11. Earlier that day, farmers had staged protests at several events attended by the Bharatiya Janata Party leaders.
In Sirsa, they allegedly pelted stones and smashed the windscreen of the Haryana deputy speaker’s car while he was coming out after attending a function at the Chaudhary Devi Lal University. The deputy speaker escaped unhurt in the incident, according to the police.

Protests against farm laws
Thousands of farmers have camped outside Delhi since November, demanding that the central government repeal the three laws that open up the country’s agriculture markets to private companies. The farmers have hunkered down with supplies that they say will last them for months, and have resolved to not leave until their demands are met.
Talks between farmers groups and the central government to resolve the protests came to a complete deadlock after farmers rejected the Centre’s offer to suspend the laws for two years. The last time both sides met was on January 22. Since then, most farmer leaders have said they were willing to speak to the government again.
The farmers fear the policies will make them vulnerable to corporate exploitation and would dismantle the minimum support price regime. The government, however, continues to claim that the three legislations are pro-farmer.

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New Delhi, June 02 (KMS): The Indian Union of Muslim League (IUML) has moved the Supreme Court to stay an order issued by the Indian Home Ministry on May 28, empowering the collectors of certain districts to grant the Indian citizenship to the non-Muslim migrants from the neighbouring countries despite the pendency of its 2019 writ petition to declare as void the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019.
IULM has prayed before the court to halt the said order till the 2019 writ petition is decided by the court. The said petition challenges the related amendments in the Foreigners Order 1948 and the Passport (Entry into India) rules 1950.
In its pending writ petition, the IUML had through PK Kunhlikutty (72) of Kerala sought to strike down the amended Act as unconstitutional for violation of Articles 14, 15 and 21 for discriminating among persons on the basis of their faith and religion. In its new petition, it cited as illegal the Ministry order to grant citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, but not the Muslims.
During the hearing of its 2019 petition, New Delhi had prayed not to stay the amended Act since its rules have not been famed, the petition said, alleging that the May 28 order is “an attempt to circumvent the assurance given to this court, sought to implement their mala fide designs envisaged under the Amended Act.”

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New Delhi, June 01 (KMS): The Congress has slammed the Modi government alleging that it mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic which brought economic activities to a virtual standstill in many parts of the country.

In a Twitter post, the party said, “India needs a Prime Minister, not an event manager.” The post contained an image with the text reading, ‘BJP Infected Economy – 23 crore people have been pushed below the poverty line and into indebtedness’.

The opposition party in another post maintained that the only reason for India’s economic trouble is one man’s high-handedness. The Congress was pointing to reports which said that India’s GDP contracted by 7.3 per cent in 2020-21.

The Congress said that those who promised to make India a $5-trillion economy, have seen an almost $5 trillion bank fraud during their tenure. Common people have to pay the price for Modi’s fake promisesm, it said.

Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also hit out at the Modi government. She said that disaster in the economy is the masterstroke of the Modi government. “GDP Rate: -7.3, Unemployment rate: 12%, Second wave: 1 crore jobs lost, 2020: 97% of people’s income decreased, Petrol: Rs 100, Mustard oil: Rs 200, LPG: Rs 809. Disaster in the economy and Opportunity in disaster -is the masterstroke of the Modi government,” she said.

Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi said that the current state of the economy is the PM’s hall of shame. “PM’s hall of shame – Minimum GDP, Maximum Unemployment,” he said.

“The GDP in 2020-21 is lower than the GDP in 2018-19. 2020-21 has been the darkest year of the economy in four decades. The performance in the four quarters of 2020-21 tells the story…The current state of the economy is no doubt largely due to the impact of the pandemic, but it has been compounded by the ineptitude and incompetent economic management of the BJP-led NDA government,” said Rajya Sabha MP, P Chidambaram.

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Apart from the six districts that recorded more than 500 cases, the districts that are emerging as areas of concern include Jajpur, Bhadrak, Boudh, Kendrapara, Jagatsinghpur, Balasore, Dhenkanal and Koraput, four of them affected by Cyclone Yaas.

On May 28, the state had tested 48,000 samples, the numbers have increased to 66,000 at present. Officials said that after evacuees began returning to their homes from shelter homes, new clusters have emerged in these districts.

However, thousands of people are yet to return to their houses as many villages are still marooned after inundation and heavy rainfall. Over 6 lakh people were evacuated to relief shelters ahead of the cyclone.

In the four coastal districts — Bhadrak, Balasore, Jagatsinhpur and Kendrapara — around 25 villages have been declared as containment zones.

In the past two days, Balasore has added 754 new cases, Bhadrak has added 581 new cases, Jagatsinhpur has added 579 new cases and Kendrapara has added 445 new cases.

In Jagatsinhpur, coastal villages of Gadaharispur were declared a containment zone till June 4.

Erasama Block Development Officer Kailash Behera said, “Around 32 shelters were identified with a capacity of 1,000 persons in the block. But as the cyclone approached, apart from those whom we evacuated many people left homes and took shelter fearing for the worst. We had over 8000 people in nearly 150 buildings.”

In the same block, after the cyclone, 14 people, including the panchayat executive officer and the gram rozgar sevak, who had undertaken the evacuation process, tested positive for Covid-19.

The Odisha government has announced that all the evacuees will be screened for Covid-19. “We have asked all respective collectors to specifically focus on the cyclone-hit villages. The positivity rate in the state has gone down overall, which is a good sign. But we are on alert in these districts and containment process will also be put in place as and when needed to keep the situation under control,” said PK Mohapatra, Additional Chief Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department.

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In a statement, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said President Rodrigo Duterte approved extending the travel bans imposed on India, and six other countries including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.

The government earlier imposed these restrictions to prevent the entry of the COVID-19 variant first detected in India.

As of May 26, health authorities have so far detected 13 cases of the so-called double mutant variant or B.1.617 in the country.

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“I have learned that India has lost 5,000 doctors and more healthcare workers in the second round of coronavirus surge,” Dr. Prem Gandhi, SUNY Plattsburgh Distinguished Professor emeritus, said.

“That is a number that is staggering since India can ill afford this loss when every healthcare worker and doctor is needed to bring the surge down.

“India has now commissioned senior medical students to assist in the hospitals.”

In the past two weeks, Gandhi, and his wife, Aruna, also a college retiree, have lost two additional members in their extended family.

“Sad to learn of the loss when the immediate family members cannot be there to take care of the last rites,” he said.

NATIVE SON

Gandhi was born in a region of India, which is now in Pakistan.

“When India was divided up after independence, my family moved to New Delhi,” he said.

“I got my bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Delhi, a very prestigious university.”

Afterward, he came to the United States to do his MBA and PhD at New York University.

He was hired at SUNY Plattsburgh in 1966.

“One thing led to the other, and I was promoted to associate professor and then full professor and then distinguished professor in 1992,” he said.

Gandhi served as a dean for the School of Business and Economics from 1992 until his retirement in 2000.

INDIAN DIASPORA

Gandhi now resides in Orange County, N.Y.

“Most of my family members are in India,” he said.

“In my immediate family, we have four in the family. Two of us are here, and two of us are over there. They all have their families over there.

“Every Indian family has someone, a friend or a relative or family member, who lives abroad, particularly in the United States because the United States has the best education system.”

Many in his generation were attracted here for that very reason.

“You wouldn’t believe the reason why I came to the United States was because there was no program for business administration at the master’s level in any part of the world except for the United States,” he said.

“I’m talking about when I came to this country in the late 1950s. I completed my MBA, after that I went on to start my PhD program as I was working.

“In the golden days, there used to be middle men, who used to buy accounts receivable,” Gandhi said.

“Then, the clients would pay them back. After my MBA, I worked with that organization, and that was a very good experience for me to be in because I got to know the inside of the business world.”

REPORTS FROM INDIA

India’s COVID-19 death toll tops 300,000 as the pandemic rages as Cyclone Yaas pummels eastern India.

“I tell you what we have been hearing, what we have reading and what we’ve been listening to, it’s no exaggeration, the coronavirus has really created a havoc in India, especially in the metro areas — Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore,” Gandhi said.

“You name it, any metro city in India is suffering from the surge. And you know, it didn’t have to be that way. That’s what the sad part is because “India was doing so well in the first round.”

India was not only able to contain the virus, but export the extra medicine throughout the neighboring countries, even to the United States, Europe, Canada, and United Kingdom.

“But in the process I think they become careless,” he said.

“The administration become careless thinking that they had already licked that virus.

“So, they took certain steps, really foolish steps, in retrospective.

“Even at that time, I think there was a lot of controversy about the steps that they were taking that has led to this second surge, which is deadlier than the first one.”

Now India is caught with low supplies of medicine, hospital beds, masks, and oxygen.

“It didn’t have to be that way,” he said.

“It’s not that India doesn’t have the technology or the sophistication. India is the largest producer of medicine. “Would you believe that? Yet because of the carelessness of the administration because of the missteps that they took, unfortunately it has led India to this situation.

“Now the thing is that India is short of medicine, short of every other equipment that goes in taking care of patients like the hospital beds, the masks, oxygen. You name it, India is short of that. That’s the sad part.

NO ONE UNTOUCHED

Gandhi has learned from immediate family that they have all suffered.

“I have a nephew who is a medical doctor, his wife is a medical doctor,” he said.

“They took the medicine, and they were still affected by the coronavirus.

“My wife’s sister she is basically indoors, and she got the virus. She got the first shot, and she couldn’t get the second shot because the supplies had ran out. It has hit personally at home.

“I have lost a very dear cousin because of the coronavirus. You hear the stories from the people that you know of, and each one of them has suffered whether they’re in the congress, whether they’re in the government, whether, they’re the doctors — each one of them has suffered.”

His heart goes out to Indian students at SUNY Plattsburgh.

“I’m sure that they have a family member that they must be worried sick about what is going on,” he said.

Gandhi and his wife have contributed to the Red Cross in India.

“I think that is the kind of help that they need in especially in procuring medical equipment, procuring the medicine, and more than that I think it’s ingredients that will go into manufacturing the medicine of the vaccinations,” he said.

“India has the equipment. India has the technology. India has the personnel. I think basically what is needed. If they would provide basic ingredients at this time, I think that will be a lot of help.”

— Courtesy Tribune Publishing

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Leaders of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party recently shared portions of a document on Twitter they said was created by the main opposition Congress party highlighting government failures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Congress complained to Twitter saying the document was fake, after which Twitter marked some of the posts as “manipulated media”.

The Delhi Police, which is directly controlled by Modi’s government, on Monday visited a Twitter office to serve notice to the firm’s country head of a probe into the tagging of tweets.

“Right now, we are concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve,” a Twitter spokeswoman said in statement.

“We, alongside many in civil society in India and around the world, have concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global Terms of Service,” the spokeswoman added.

The social media giant’s statements drew strong criticism from the Delhi Police, which said the firm was refusing to cooperate with law enforcement.

“Twitter Inc’s latest statements are devised to seek dubious sympathy when they themselves not only refuse to comply with the law of the land but also claim to be possession of material evidence but refuse to share it with legal authority duly recognised,” the police said in a statement.

“Twitter India’s convoluted stance is similar to a deer caught in the headlights.”

India’s technology ministry also slammed the U.S. tech firm.

“The only instance of scuttling free speech on Twitter is Twitter itself and its opaque policies, as a result of which people’s accounts are suspended and tweets deleted arbitrarily without recourse,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry assured the staff of Twitter and all other tech firms that their staff in India was safe.

It also asked Twitter to comply with Indian laws, adding that the tech firm’s statement was completely “baseless, false and an attempt to defame India”.

Twitter has been battling with the Indian government since February after the technology ministry asked it to block content alleging Modi’s administration was trying to silence criticism related to farmer protests in the country.

Following that showdown, India announced new rules that aim to make social media firms more accountable to legal requests for swift removal of posts.

On Thursday, Twitter urged the technology ministry to give it three more months to comply with the new regulations, which include the appointment of an Indian grievance officer to deal with complaints. The new IT rules have spurred legal battles, including a lawsuit filed by Facebook-owned WhatsApp this week which calls out India’s government for exceeding its legal powers by enacting rules that will force the messaging app to break end-to-end message encryption. — Courtesy Reuters

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