Slamming Rahul Gandhi for the political turmoil in Punjab, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said the Congress leader should first look after states ruled by his party before giving lectures to others.

Briefing mediapersons, Javadekar said, “Rahul Gandhi should first look after his (Congress-ruled) states rather than giving lectures to others. Punjab Government has been provided more than 1.40 lakh doses of Covaxin at Rs 400 and they have given it to 20 private hospitals at Rs 1,000.”

The Union minister said the Government of India has given 22 crore Covid vaccine doses to all states for free. He added that it is the state governments that had demanded decentralisation of Covid vaccines. Now when it has been done, the States are demanding centralising the vaccine supply.

Javadekar accused the Punjab government of ignoring the people for petty politics. “Punjab is affected by corona. The vaccination drive is not being managed properly. Their internal fight has been going on for the last six months. The entire Punjab government and Congress Party has been in Delhi for the last 3-4 days. Who will look after Punjab? Even for COVID vaccination, the state government wants to earn a profit. What kind of public administration is this?” he added.

The BJP leader’s remarks come against the backdrop of the factionalism in Punjab Congress and deliberations in Delhi regarding the matter.

Notably, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh is in the national capital to meet the Congress’ three-member panel. The agenda of the meeting is to resolve the widening differences between its leaders, Captain Amarinder Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu, said Congress sources.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged that the Central government is hiding actual Covid-19 deaths.

The Indian Navy will soon issue a tender worth around Rs 50,000 crore to build six new advanced conventional submarines with the Defence Ministry clearing a proposal for the same at the Defence Acquisition Council meeting on Friday.

“The Defence Acquisition Council meeting attended by functionaries cleared the project and the Navy will soon issue the tender to two Indian strategic partners,” government sources said.

The project named P-75 India has been in the making for a long time now and would be the successor to the Scorpene or Kalvari class submarines being built at the Mazagon Dockyards Limited in partnership with France.

The Navy has identified and cleared MDL and Larsen and Toubro as the strategic partners who can tie up with five global manufacturers including French Naval Group, German TKMS, South Korean Daewoo, Spanish Navantia and Russian Rosoborboexport, they said.

The Indian Navy has two major projects under the strategic partnership policy which had been envisaged to develop the indigenous private sector in defence as major producers. Now, it has also seen public sector firms taking part.

The Indian Navy plans to acquire 24 new submarines, including six nuclear attack submarines, to bolster its underwater fighting capability. It currently has 15 conventional submarines and two nuclear submarines.

As per the requirements stated by the maritime force, it wants the submarines to be equipped with heavy-duty firepower as it wants the boats to have at least 12 Land Attack Cruise Missiles (LACM) along with Anti-Ship cruise missiles (ASCM).

Sources said that the Navy has also specified that the submarines should also be able to carry and launch 18 heavyweight torpedoes in the sea.

Compared with the Scorpene, the firepower required in the next line of submarines is many times more than what is being put on the Scorpenes which have the heavyweight torpedoes and the Exocet surface to surface missiles as their main weapons. ANI

The reins of Punjab Congress will remain with Captain Amarinder Singh as the party has decided that he will remain the Chief Minister till the 2022 Assembly elections.  Highly-placed sources told The Daily Guardian that no change of guard will happen in Punjab till the Assembly polls, due in 6 months. However, the man who raised a banner of revolt against the CM, cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, will be accommodated respectfully and will be spared this time for targeting his own government and Chief Minister. Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi is expected to take final call on Sidhu.  The development came after CM Amarinder Singh met the three-member panel formed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi to mitigate the Punjab crisis at 15 GRG Road, better known as the Congress war room, for over three hours.  Walking out from the marathon meeting, Amarinder Singh downplayed the issue, saying it was a mere election preparation review meeting. “Elections are hardly 6 months away. This was an introspection meet. I won’t divulge what I discussed with the panel,” Captain said even as questions were hurled upon him about MLAs being miffed with him.  Speaking with The Daily Guardian, former MP J.P. Agarwal, member of the three-member committee, said that the panel heard all stakeholders patiently and a report would be sent to Sonia Gandhi in a day or two, following which the high command would take the final call on the issue.  Congress sources said that several MLAs have asked for complete revamp of Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee, which has been noted by the panel, and might pave the way for replacement of current PCC chief Sushil Jakhar. There are also indications that the party might also appoint a Dalit as a Deputy CM to strike balance with caste equations. It is pertinent to note that Amarinder Singh comes from Jat background and a Dalit deputy CM will enhance electoral prospects of the grand old party in Punjab, which has the highest SC population in the country.

Earlier, apart from meeting Sidhu, the 3-member panel met the party’s MLAs, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs and even other senior leaders of Punjab. Several MLAs had even objected to the entire meeting exercise that summoning the entire Cabinet including CM and MLAs to Delhi in Covid era had dented the party’s image as the Opposition got an excuse to attack the ruling dispensation. 

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar took a dig at the Congress over the ongoing crisis, saying if all MLAs, Cabinet and CM are in Delhi, who is running the Punjab government? He said that this shows that the party was only interested in keeping power rather than serving people of Punjab.

The Delhi High Court on Friday dismissed the plea filed by actor-environmentalist Juhi Chawla against the setting up of 5G wireless networks in the country.

The High Court, in its order, said that the suit seemed to have been filed for publicity. The plaintiff, Juhi Chawla, circulated the link of the hearing on social media which created disruption thrice, it said. The court, therefore, imposed a fine of Rs 20 lakh on Chawla and other plaintiffs for abusing the process of law. 

The Delhi HC also ordered Delhi Police to identify the persons and take action against those who created disruption. 

The court said that the plaintiffs, Chawla and others, were required to first approach the government for their rights and, if denied, they should come to the court 

The HC had on Wednesday reserved its order on the plea filed by the Bollywood actress against the roll-out of 5G telecommunication services in the country.

Juhi Chawla, who has been actively creating awareness of the harmful effects of radiofrequency radiation (RF), had filed a lawsuit in the Delhi High Court against the implementation of 5G mobile technology in India. The actress said that 5G technology exposes people and animals to RF radiation that is 10 to

100 times greater than it exists today. 

On 2 June when the first virtual hearing commenced on Juhi Chawla’s petition and the actress joined, someone on the call began singing “Ghoonghat ki aad se Dilbar ka” from her 1993 movie Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke. After which Justice J.R. Midha said: “Please mute.” A while later during the hearing, somebody again sang: ‘Lal Lal Hoton Pe Gori Kiska Naam Hai’ from the 1995 movie Naajayaz after which that person was removed from the virtual hearing. The hearing was again disrupted when a participant began singing ‘Meri Banno ki aayegi baarat’. The judge directed the court master to identify the person and remove him immediately from the virtual hearing and issue a contempt notice against him. 

The court observed the submissions on three applications of the plaintiff regarding Section 90, concession in court fee, and permission regarding the institution of the suit. 

The Delhi HC asked Juhi Chawla to file a short note on her plea. The court said that it will first take up four applications filed by the actress and two others in the plea including permission to institute the suit. It also permitted advocate Amit Mahajan, representing the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), to file a one-and-a-half-page note to see if an audience is required to be given to it.

Former US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that he was right about the “China Virus coming from Wuhan lab”. He also asked for a penalty to be imposed on China for the deaths and damages caused by the “lab leak”.

“Now everyone, even the so-called ‘enemy’, are beginning to say that President Trump was right about the China Virus coming from Wuhan Lab,” Trump said. He, therefore, called for imposing fine on China for the death and destruction they have caused due to this “lab leak”.

Trump also took aim at Dr Anthony Fauci, who was head of the Covid-19 task force, and had often clashed with the former President on handling of the pandemic. Dr Fauci had initially been sceptical of the claims of Trump that Covid-19 had leaked from a Chinese lab. “The correspondence between Dr (Anthony) Fauci and China speaks too loudly for anyone to ignore. China should pay $10 trillion to America, and the world, for the death and destruction they have caused,” Trump said.

The former President was referring to emails of Dr Fauci released by the US government in which he was told early in the pandemic the virus had “unusual features”. Republicans pointed to the emails to allege Dr Fauci knew of the work at Wuhan Institute of Virology early on.

After Dr Fauci’s private emails were revealed to the press the debate over the coronavirus coming from a Wuhan Lab has sparked once again.

Over 3,000 pages of emails were obtained by the Washington Post, Buzzfeed News and CNN through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, date from January to June 2020. The emails revealed about early days of the Covid-19 outbreak in the US. Dr Fauci and his colleagues took notice, in the early days, of the theory that Covid-19 may have leaked from a laboratory in China’s Wuhan.

On the “lab leak” email, Dr Fauci told CNN he still finds it unlikely that a Wuhan laboratory released the virus. “I don’t remember what’s in that redacted (email), but the idea I think is quite far-fetched that the Chinese deliberately engineered something so that they could kill themselves as well as other people,” he said. “I think that’s a bit far out.”

But in recent days, amid criticism of an inconclusive international probe into the virus’ origins and new reports of Covid-related illness in the region weeks before it was officially identified, the theory is once again sparking debate.

The Indian team sent to Dominica with the objecting to bring back Mehul Choksi is reportedly headed home without the fugitive diamantaire after the High Court of that country adjourned his habeas corpus petition to July and extended its order on removing him from that country.

A habeas corpus petition is filed for producing before a court a person who is under arrest or in unlawful detention.

The 8-member team led by CBI DIG Sharda Raut—stationed in Dominica for nearly seven days to bring back Choksi, who is wanted in the Rs 13,500-crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam, to India—flew home on a Qatar Airways private jet that took off from Dominica’s Melville Hall Airport on Thursday night, according to news agency PTI. The team was hoping to bring Choksi back to India if the Dominican court cleared his deportation.

The Dominican High Court on Thursday adjourned its hearing into Choksi’s petition. Judge Bernie Stephenson will decide the next date of hearing after meeting both sides, Antigua News Room reported. The adjournment is to allow lawyers for Choksi and the Dominica government “to agree on the language to be used with respect to the injunction filed to prevent his removal from Dominica”, the media outlet reported.

Meanwhile, in a separate proceeding, a Dominican magistrate’s court also refused Choksi bail after he was charged with illegally entering that country. His lawyers had argued that other non-nationals had received bail for similar matters, but the Dominican government tagged Choksi as a flight risk and pointed to Interpol notices against him.

Choksi, 62, was caught allegedly trying to escape from Antigua to Cuba via Dominica. He went missing 23 May, prompting a manhunt by Antigua police, and was caught 27 May in Dominica.

After his arrest in Dominica, Antigua said Choksi should be handed over to India directly. “We asked them not to repatriate him to Antigua. He needs to return to India where he can face criminal charges against him,” Prime Minister Gaston Browne was quoted as saying.

However, Choksi’s lawyer said that his client is no longer an Indian citizen and can only be sent back to Antigua, where he is already fighting cases related to his citizenship and extradition.

On Thursday, India said it will continue to fight to bring Choksi back. “India remains steadfast in efforts that fugitives are brought back… He is currently in custody of Dominica with legal proceedings underway,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said.

“He (Choksi) is currently in the custody of Dominica with some legal proceedings underway. We will continue to make all efforts to ensure he is brought to back India,” Bagchi told reporters. “Let me emphasise that India remains steadfast in its efforts to ensure that fugitives are brought back to India to face justice,” he added.

Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi had fled India in January 2018, weeks before the PNB scam rocked the Indian banking industry. Modi escaped to Europe and was finally held in London, where he is contesting his extradition to India. Choksi took the citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda in 2017.