Terming the Emergency that was imposed by former prime minister Indira Gandhi a mistake , Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said what happened during that period was wrong , but it was fundamentally different from the current scenario as the Congress at no point attempted to capture the country s institutional framework. In a conversation with Kaushik Basu, professor in the Cornell University in the US and India s former chief economic advisor, Gandhi said he is all for internal democracy in the Congress, which fought for India s independence, gave the country its Constitution and stood for equality. Asked about his views on the Emergency, he said, I think that was a mistake. Absolutely, that was a mistake. And my grandmother (Indira Gandhi) said as much.
Extending an olive branch to the dissenting camp in the Congress, interimparty chief Sonia Gandhi on Monday appointed former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan as the chairman of the screening committee for Assam. The work of the screening committee is to recommend candidates to the Central Election Committee of the party headed by Sonia Gandhi, which is the final authority to distribute tickets to the aspiring party candidates. The 126-member Assam Assembly will go to the polls in three phases on March 27, April 1 and April 6. The counting of votes will take place on May 2. Chavan was one of the signatories of a letter written to Sonia Gandhi last year, which demanded sweeping reforms within the party. Sources say the Congress doesn t want any confrontation with the dissenting camp at this crucial juncture with five states/UT going to the polls in a month s time.
Read more about Securities forces have restricted Pakistan s acts to borders only: Rajnath on Business Standard. Indian security forces have not only restricted Pakistan s nefarious acts to the borders only but are also giving a befitting reply to them, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told the Rajya Sabha
Union minister Shripad Naik, who is admitted in a Goa hospital after he met with an accident, is conscious and recovering, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Wednesday said, adding that there is no need to shift him to New Delhi for further treatment. Sawant told reporters that a team from the Delhi-based AIIMS, led by Dr S Rajeshwari, in the morning reviewed the treatment being given to Naik at the Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) near here. The AIIMS team is happy with the line of treatment. Naik is recovering. There is no need to shift him to Delhi, the chief minister said.
Eleven out of 950 passengers who came in four flights from the UK at Indira Gandhi International airport have tested positive for coronavirus, Dr Gauri Agarwal, Director, of Genestrings Diagnostic Centre, said on Wednesday. Since the directive from the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) came, a total of four flights have landed at the airport. Testing of all the passengers was done comprehensively, as per the directions. A total of 950 inbound passengers from London were tested at our lab at Terminal 3, IGI and 11 of them tested positive, Dr Agarwal said. These 11 samples have been duly stored in cold storage and sent to the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Delhi for further research using genome sequencing. We do not know yet if any of these positive are infected with the new UK strain, she added.