| | 3. Here’s how you will vote in the Covid-19 era |  | The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday came out with a broad set of rules for the conduct of elections, with the first polls since the onset of Covid-19 due in Bihar later this year. For the voters- Mandatory thermal screening at entry with compulsory wearing of masks. If one is not wearing a mask, spare masks kept at the polling station will be provided. Voters are also required to wear hand gloves. For physical identification, voters will be required to lower their face masks when asked.
- If temperature “is above set norms”, such voters will be given a token or certificate and will be asked to come back in the last hour of polling to cast their vote, strictly observing mandatory Covid-19 related preventive measures.
- Postal ballot to be allowed for voters above 80 years of age, people with disabilities (PwD), those employed in essential services and those who are in quarantine or isolation.
For the voting booths- Provision of sanitiser, soap and water at entry and exit point, with sanitisation of the polling station a day before the polling.
- Markers for demonstrating social distancing when voters are standing in a queue — depending on space availability, the marker circles will be minimum 6 feet apart, with three separate queues, one each for men, women and PwD.
- Since only 15-20 voters will be allowed to stand in a queue at a time, given social distancing norms, a shaded area with chairs and floor mats is to be provided for those waiting to cast their vote.
For candidates- Door-to-door campaigning will be allowed, subject to other Covid-19 restrictions, with a maximum of 4 people accompanying the candidate other than the security personnel, if any.
- For roadshows, “the convoy of vehicles should be broken after every 5 vehicles” instead of the existing allowance for 10 vehicles, with a time gap of at least 30 minutes between two sets of vehicles.
- Rallies will be allowed, subject to necessary permissions from the District Election Officer and can be held only at designated grounds where entry, exit and social distancing markers will be clearly marked.
For full list of dos and don’ts, read here | |
| | 5 THINGS FIRST | Today: Oxford Covid-19 vaccine phase 3 trials in India likely to begin; Festival of Ganesh Chaturthi begins; Two-day BJP Bihar state executive meet for assembly poll strategy. Tomorrow: ICC Cricket Hall of Fame Inductees for 2020 to be announced; Champions League final, PSG vs Bayern Munich (12:30 am, Monday) | |
| | 1. Nine killed as fire breaks out at underground power plant |  | - Nine workers, including a woman, died after a fire broke out at the underground Srisailam Left Bank Hydel Power Station in Telangana. Eight others were injured. The fire started at 10:30 pm Thursday, but its underground location meant the bodies were retrieved only on Friday afternoon. The hydel power station is built inside a near two-kilometre long tunnel under the Nallamala hill range, and falls on the Telangana side of the Srisailam Reservoir on Krishna River, a joint irrigation project of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
- Chilling: Asphyxiating in thick smoke, some of the trapped engineers called their families to bid their farewell, some others recorded videos of desperate attempts to douse the fire. “I may or may not be able to come back home. The situation is bad and difficult. It looks impossible for us to get out of this. Take care of the children...,” assistant engineer Dharavath Sundar Naik told his family over the phone; the facility had a landline. His body was retrieved 16 hours after the call.
- Likely cause: Officials supervising the rescue operations said the fire could have been caused by a short circuit in one of the electric panels. Thick smoke engulfed the 1.2-km-long tunnel leading to the plant, making access difficult for rescue teams, said Telangana energy minister G Jagadish Reddy.
- Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao ordered two inquiries into the incident— one by CID and another by Telangana State Power Generation Corporation. He also announced Rs 50 lakh ex gratia to deputy engineer Srinivas Goud’s family and Rs 25 lakh each for the families of the other victims.
- One too many: There has been a spate of industrial accidents in the region since the lifting of the lockdown. Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam alone has recorded four accidents, including the gas leak at LG Polymers that killed 15 people. In Telangana's Peddapalli, four coal mine workers were killed early June in an accidental explosion.
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| | 2. Why CAG couldn’t audit Rafale offset deal |  | - The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)'s performance audit report of defence offset contracts signed between 2012-13 and 2017-18, submitted to the government eight months ago, does not cover the deal between French company Dassault Aviation, the maker of Rafale jets, and its partner Reliance Defence of the Anil Ambani group, reports Times of India, quoting a top source in the federal auditor.
- The auditor was initially meant to look into 32 defence offset contracts but early last year, it was curtailed to 12 offset contracts, which did not include the Rafale offset deal since the CAG did not receive details of the deal. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) told CAG that Dassault Aviation has said that it will share any details of its offset partners only after three years of the contract.
- The government is yet to table the report before Parliament though the convention is to table it in the first available session of Parliament and immediately refer it to the Public Accounts Committee, led by the Opposition leader, for its scrutiny.
- In the run-up to the 2019 General Elections, the Rafale deal had caused a lot of controversy, with the main opposition party, Congress, demanding a CBI inquiry on the terms under which Dassault Aviation appointed Reliance Defence as its offset partner. The government has not made any statement on who had bagged the offset contracts, saying it was the sole discretion of the French manufacturer.
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| | 4. High Court asks Delhi Police to show evidence against activist |  | - Delhi High Court on Friday reserved its order on a bail plea moved by Pinjra Tod activist Devangana Kalita, arrested in a case related to the Delhi riots, but asked Delhi Police to submit evidence showing her making the instigating speech as has been accused, news agency PTI reports. “Show me any portion of the speech recorded by the media or anyone else which showed that Kalita instigated the mob to commit the crime,” Justice Suresh Kumar Kait said.
- Kalita and Natasha Narwal, a fellow member of Pinjra Tod, a women’s rights collective, was arrested by Delhi police on May 23 in connection with anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests in Jafrabad in North-east Delhi. A day later they were granted bail by a Delhi court, but moments later the city police moved an application to interrogate them in a separate case. The two were later charged with rioting, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy and using criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty.
- Appearing for Kalita, senior advocate Kapil Sibal argued that the trial court that granted her bail earlier had stated that she merely participated in the anti-CAA protests and did not indulge in violence. The counsel submitted a video that showed police were recording the protest, yet did not have a video of the alleged remarks by Kalita.
- Opposing the bail plea, Additional Solicitor General SV Raju defended the unavailability of video evidence, saying; “There were a lot of people who participated in that protest, it is not possible to expect the CCTV footage to capture the faces of all of them.” Raju argued her mere participation in the unlawful assembly constituted an offence. But a police officer heard the instigating speech, he argued. “It was all part of the larger conspiracy to malign the image of India by timing the protest during the visit of American President Donald Trump,” he said, reports LiveLaw.
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| | | 6. Covid cases set to cross 3 mn, last million in just 16 days |  | - The pandemic is set to reach another grim milestone, with India on the verge of becoming the third country in the world to record 3 million cases. The country’s caseload is projected to cross that mark today. Thus, Covid-19 cases in India will have risen from the 2 million mark in just 16 days — the fastest rise among the three countries, the US and Brazil being the other two, which have recorded that many cases (see above graphic).
Friday’s count- Cases: 68,682; Overall: 2,971,112
- Deaths: 958; Overall: 55,858
- Recoveries: 2.22 million+
- Active Cases: 700,000+
- However, India’s death toll remains far lower than the other two countries. At the 3 million mark, the death toll in the US was over 130,000 while fatalities recorded in Brazil at the same stage were just over 100,000.
- Job space: As efforts are made to bring the millions of migrant workers back to factories that power the economy, the paradox of states putting up policy pickets and trying to ring-fence jobs for locals is simultaneously playing out. Consequently, while industrialists hire cars and buses and book seats on trains, and even planes, to fetch their workers from faraway corners of the country, the employment field for migrants is shrinking (see graphic below).
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- City alert: The Supreme Court on Friday permitted devotees to pray at three main Jain temples in Mumbai during the last two days of the annual holy event of Paryushan Parv after giving the Maharashtra government a piece of its mind for opposing the move, citing the rising number of Covid cases, while allowing malls and liquor vends to open.
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| | 7. And India’s sporting best are... |  | - The Sports Ministry on Friday accepted an unprecedented five recommendations for the country's highest sporting honour — the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award — for 2020. (The maximum number of winners was previously in 2016: 4). This year’s list comprises Rohit Sharma, Vinesh Phogat, Manika Batra, Rani Rampal and Mariappan Thangavelu. In a first, the awards will be held virtually on August 29, the National Sports Day, instead of the Rashtrapati Bhavan this year due to the pandemic.
- Note: The criteria for the awards takes into consideration the athletes' performances over a four-year period. A weightage of 80% is given to athletes winning medals at various international competitions with the remaining left to the discretion of the panel members.
- The winners: Rohit becomes the fourth cricketer after Sachin Tendulkar (1998), MS Dhoni (2007) and Virat Kohli (2018) to be conferred with the award. And while Vinesh was the first woman wrestler to win an Asian Games gold medal in 2018, table tennis star Manika Batra had a remarkable year in 2018 wherein she won the Commonwealth Games gold medal and Asian Games bronze in women's singles.
- Mariyappan got the nod for his gold medal in the 2016 Rio Paralympics, in T42 high jump, and Rani (though a late inclusion) is only the third hockey player and first female hockey player to win the award.
- Special applause: The Arjuna recommendation of Winter Olympic Games legend Shiva Keshavan, who has represented India six times in the luge event at the Games from 1998 to 2018 was lauded by the sports fraternity. Keshavan has won innumerable medals for India at the international level and has several world and Asian records to his name. Also, with the sports ministry pressing for recognition to indigenous sport, the Arjuna Award list also included an athlete from kho-kho (Sudhakar Sarika Kale).
Full list of awards (including Dronacharya, Arjuna) here | |
| | 8. India’s improving exports is more about importers |  | - The improvement in India's export numbers in July is led by a full 78% spike in shipments to China and other Asian economies which had successfully contained the pandemic, constituting 16% of the overall exports basket, a Crisil report said on Friday.
- In contrast, exports declined to Western economies such as the US, Brazil and Britain which saw a much higher caseload and were struggling to control it, the report argued. While exports to the UAE plunged 53.2%, the same to Britain contracted by 38.8%, to the US by 11.2% and to Brazil by 6.3%.
- The reason: “Exports growth in the pandemic-dominated world is inversely related to the rise in the pandemic caseloads in its export destinations. Stated differently, exports are flowing back to economies that have checked the affliction. That explains why, exports to certain economies are looking up, while overall exports per se are still declining, though at a slower pace,” the report says.
- This means that export prospects for this fiscal will pivot on the trajectory of the pandemic across countries. It will rise to those countries which have controlled their caseload and restarted activity. More details here
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| | 9. Sevilla stamp Europa class with sixth title |  | - Sevilla were three-peat Europa League winners from 2014-16. And after three years without continental silverware, the Andalusian club took back what's theirs, beating Inter Milan 3-2 in a thrilling final in Cologne, Germany. They have now won the trophy for a record-extending sixth time (add 2006 and 2007), while maintaining their perfect record in finals of the competition.
- And it was defender Diego Carlos who struck the decisive goal in the 74th minute of the see-saw tie — an overhead kick which took a huge deflection off Inter forward Romelu Lukaku. This after Lukaku had fired Inter ahead with a penalty in only the fifth minute of the match, after being hauled down by Carlos in the box.
- But the Italian side’s lead lasted just seven minutes before Luuk de Jong levelled the score with a diving header off a cross from captain Jesus Navas. And the Dutch international then put Sevilla in front 2-1 in the 33rd minute with another header, this time from an Ever Banega freekick. However, Sevilla's joy was short lived as they too were undone by a fine set piece three minutes later, with Inter defender Diego Godin heading home from close range.
- It was a special night for Sevilla coach Julen Lopetegui as well, who won his first trophy as coach at the senior level after a torrid period which saw him sacked by Spain and Real Madrid.
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| | | BEFORE YOU GO | | 10. Why the UK desperately needs Indians to fight Covid-19 |  | - UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has issued a nationwide SOS “urgently” seeking Asian, or more specifically, South Asian plasma donors to treat people affected with Covid-19 as people of South Asian origin have been found to have a higher count of antibodies. In the UK, South Asian is a term largely used to denote Indians as they constitute the largest share of the population of South Asian origin. Till now, 7% of all plasma donors in the UK have been of Asian origin, according to the NHS.
- The notification issued on Friday is based on results of several studies, one of which found that among “Asian first-time donors, 44.1% had high enough antibodies for the trial, compared with 22.4% of white donors”. Another report by the Public Health England (PHE) found that Asians and South Asians have a higher risk of becoming seriously ill with Covid-19 — with the result that the more seriously ill people become due to Covid-19, the more antibodies they produce.
- The indications that South Asians have a higher antibody count in their convalescent plasma were apparent a few months back when the NHS’ Blood and Transplant division found that “63% of Asian donors” compared to just “36% of white donors” met the minimum threshold level of high antibody titer — number of antibodies — in their blood plasma, though at that time, the study couldn’t pinpoint the reason behind this anomaly.
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| | | Answer to NEWS IN CLUES | Earth. Today is Earth Overshoot Day, marking the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. For the rest of the year, we are maintaining our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating CO2 in the atmosphere. We are operating in overshoot. It is an improvement over 2019, when Earth Overshoot Day landed on July 29. That means we’ve pushed the date back three weeks, thanks to the Covid-19 lockdowns, which at least temporarily reduced emissions. | |
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| Written by: Rakesh Rai, Judhajit Basu, Sumil Sudhakaran, Tejeesh N.S. Behl
Research: Rajesh Sharma
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